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lazyliars · 4 years ago

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The Quackity Meta: a Tale of Two Absolutes

More than anything else, Quackity wants control, and to never, ever lose his own autonomy. And that is why he despises Technoblade.

But wait, how is Technoblade a threat to Quackity's autonomy? Techno is all for individual freedom! He wants to eradicate the government so that no one can be controlled!

There's the question though... How do people exercise control within the framework of a video game like m/inec/raft?

“a person exercising power or control in a cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary way.”

Power on the Dream SMP cannot be translated one-to-one with real life power. In real life, yes, a government had infinitely more power than an individual, for numerous reasons. But on the Dream SMP, the government's power is always directly tied to the power of the individuals who are willing to defend that power.

Technoblade is powerful. This is not debatable. How he uses this power, historically, has been a mix of generosity and self-interest*, although primarily the latter.

Generously, He gains resources and then distributes them to his allies during the Pogtopia Rebellion, gearing everyone up and giving them a fighting chance against Dream. However, in the aftermath of Tubbo's being appointed president, Techno turns on them, swiftly and mercilessly. The moment that it becomes clear** that Pogtopia's interests don't align with his own, he crushes them with the aim to prevent them from ever recovering.

( *I use self-interest as a neutral term here. Everyone on the SMP is selfish to some extent – it doesn't make them evil, and in fact has been treated as a positive at times, as well as a negative.

**I want to note that whether or not Technoblade knew of Pogtopia's goal of reinstating the government is unclear. It would seem that from Techno's POV that he didn't know, or assumed that it was a minority who wanted another government. But on the other hand, no one was actively lying to him about their intent, and people like Tommy and Quackity made their goals very clear. Further doubt is cast on the idea that Techno had no idea when you take into account that he enchanted the Netherite armor in the vault with worthless enchants like Fire Res.

Ultimately, there's no way to know until it is confirmed by cc!Techno himself, and it doesn't pertain that much to this analysis, but I'm aware that it's a hotly debated topic so I wanted to address it.)

It can be argued that Techno's destruction of L'manberg, both the first and especially the second time, was necessary. It can also be argued that it was cruel and a disproportionate retribution against both culpable and innocent parties. Extant of these arguments however, how does it feature into control?

Well, we can’t talk about control without mentioning the most controlling force on the server and the other person on Quackity's hitlist, Dream.

Dream is a tyrant. I don't think anyone can really make an argument against that in good faith at this point. He ticks off every box, no matter how vague or esoteric. This makes the interactions that Quackity and Techno have with him very interesting.

Quackity despises Dream. He's one of the earliest adopters of the hating-Dream-train, to the point that some people have compared him to Cassandra, a priestess who was cursed with the vision of prophecies that would always be true, but never believed. And indeed, Quackity's apprehension of Dream comes in as early as Pogtopia, and grows at a steady pace after the fact.

But despite his rightfully calling out Dream's hypocrisies and his controlling tendencies, Quackity was largely ignored on this front, especially when the time came to exile Tommy and Quackity basically predicted the next arc – If they gave Dream this concession, they would never be able to get out from under his thumb. Flash forwards to the Green Festival, and the moment Tubbo hands over the discs, any illusion of nicety drops and Dream proceeds to destroy them, side by side with...

Technoblade has always had an amiable relationship with Dream. From their first proper interaction on the server being Dream giving Techno some hefty resources, to their snap team-up on Doomsday, they've had a smooth time, with some notable bumps.

Techno fought against Dream during the Pogtopia rebellion, but when it became clear that Dream was more invested in chaos than his other allies, Techno temporarily allied with him to summon the Withers and drive the nail deeper into Manberg’s coffin.

The only time Techno has really bothered to challenge Dream directly is when he came for Tommy in exile. Techno went to great lengths to protect Tommy, hiding him and distracting Dream.

He did give Dream the option to call in his favor and take Tommy, but there are arguments to be made that he did this more as a challenge – that Tommy is worth the favor. Again, we probably wont ever know.

The difference in their relationships with Dream is polarizing. It also reflects the difference in personality – Quackity is an aggressive, ambitious person, whereas Techno leans more towards passivity and caution. Quackity is looking for enemies to challenge, where Techno is avoiding them, people who actually stand a chance against him most of all.

Technoblade is an individual with extraordinary amounts of power. Others have pointed out that he is rarely challenged by other characters or the narrative, and regardless of the merits or flaws in that, it paints him as nearly untouchable. His being in the good graces of Dream only adds to this.

And like with Dream, the only way that people have been able to threaten Techno is when they work together. The Butcher Army, for all it's flaws, managed to capture Techno through numbers – with Tubbo and Fundy (barely) holding off Techno's blood rage while Quackity snuck off to take Carl hostage. And they would have gotten away with it too, if the other most powerful person on the server hadn't stepped in – both by pointing Techno to a totem of undying in the days before the attack, and by getting Punz to cause a distraction and directing Techno to the final control room, where he could escape with Carl.

So, if the most powerful person in the world can only be threatened by people working together, and the most common form of organization is by government, then what does it say about Technoblade, who wants the government destroyed?

People like Tubbo, Fundy and yes, Quackity, all benefit from organizing and working together. They all tend to be less armed, less ready to defend themselves, and completely unable to stand up to titans like Techno and Dream on their own. It's safety in numbers, but it's also control, and control is power.

Ranboo's insistence that Snowchester is a Government is interesting when viewed through this lens. Ranboo is another person who is insanely rich, and able to defend himself and his belongings consistently. Ranboo doesn't need other people to defend him – he's living with Techno and Phil not out of necessity for his survival, but out of need for connection with others.

This seems to be the main difference he finds with Snowchester, which has a more structured environment, geared to defend itself and it's people, if harm should come their way.

Which makes sense, considering it's founder, Tubbo, holds no earthly belongings, and Jack, another prominent member, has made a character trait out of losing his things every other day. The two of them have no conceivable way to defend themselves against people who are stronger than they are. But together, holding the keys to nuclear armaments, they can suddenly play on the field of gods.

The anarchist commune, despite having all members working together and being on good terms, aren't really an organization, they're individuals with common goals and interests. They don't need to live together to be strong, they're all already strong, they choose to be near each other because they want to.

Snowchester is not a government and has no ruler, but together, it's members hold power. They have sway in the world when they work as a collective, and most members have a vested interest in keeping themselves and each other defended because of this. Consequently, the “identity” of Snowchester becomes more prominent, resulting in the flag, the uniforms and the, well, identity.

(Now, the more perceptive among you might have noticed that I basically just compared Techno Phil and Ranboo to the ultra rich 1%, which. Um. Is a pretty serious comparison to make about in a block game rp?

And I wanna say that I don’t think this was necessarily intentional on the parts of either the CCs or the characters, and beyond that, it’s just one way of examining the text. This analysis is by no means the “Right” way to view the story, just a different one.

Regardless...)

Techno uses his considerable power to further his own goals, first and foremost. This is not inherently good or evil, it just is.

Contrast with New L'manberg's cabinet; Four people, pooling their limited power to further their shared goals. Not good or evil, just a way of exercising power.

But power is not static. Power is fluid and changing, moreso now on the SMP than ever before, and Quackity and Technoblade are fighting to define what Power means going forwards.

Techno is fighting for the status quo, knowingly or not. Individuals with power should lead the world, and those without should strive to emulate their betters. He destroys all forms of government, which strip away the rights of the individual in exchange for hierarchy and consolidated power within that hierarchy.

At it's best, this is a very freeing ideology, where nothing and no one can hold back the individual. The world is your oyster if you are willing to work for it.

But at it's worst? “Violence is the only universal language,” is the key phrase. Where does this ideology leave people who aren't strong? Where does it leave those who cannot fend for themselves? If Violence is the only universal language, then the weak have no means to speak.

Quackity is fighting to get a foothold for a contrary ideology – One that prioritizes words over violence and offers alternative methods of gaining and exercising control, such as through currency and conversation. Quackity has tried to varying degrees of success to implement this on the level of his own individual power, such as during the elections, but his attempts at employing this on a grand scale have all been short-lived.

At it's best, this ideology can uplift anyone, regardless of their strength. It encourages more communication, more commerce, and thrives under, you guessed it, strong government.

At it's worst however, it creates a brutally controlling environment. Where a few people gain absurd amounts of power through the complex machinations of a fiat currency, and are then able to use their sway and influence with governing forces to exercise power that they would never be able to hold on their own.

Again, neither of these ideologies are inherently good or evil. They both have flaws and benefits, and benefit no one more than perhaps Techno and Quackity respectively, while hindering the other.

Techno is benefited by anarchy because he holds incredible amounts of individual power. He is the strongest person on the server, he is rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams, and on a meta level, he's straight up good at the game. The current status quo puts him firmly at the top of the food chain, and this is most obvious on Doomsday, when he and the other two most powerful individuals (Dream and Philza) come together and crush the combined forces of New L'manberg. They are not meaningfully challenged in any way, whatsoever.

Meanwhile, Quackity is deeply hindered by the current status quo. He's not strong, he's poor, and he's vulnerable to anyone who wants to bully him with brute force. On a meta level, cc!Quackity just straight up does not play m/inecraf/t as much as some of the other people that on the server. (To be clear, I do not mention that as a criticism, just to contrast Techno. Neither of their levels of play are better or worse for content, they just add to the experience differently.)

On the other hand, in a government? Quackity “Law Student” HQ is suddenly on top. He's charismatic enough to debate with Wilbur “Can Talk His Way out of Anything” Soot during the elections, and come out of that arena smelling like roses. Back during the days of El Rapids, Quackity held his men back from conflict with Dream, and talked him into a corner of technical truths where Dream had to concede that he viewed El Rapids as an independent nation if he wanted to get involved with their conflicts.

And Techno, while he is brilliant and an English Major, suddenly loses a lot of his intimidation factor if he has to respect laws preventing brutal murder. Techno can certainly debate, but his go to conflict resolution is usually violence, and if you take that away, you take away the threat of challenging him. Because make no mistake, challenging Technoblade right now? Is suicide.

And this duality, this grey morality and clash of ideals, is why Quackity is my favorite character on the SMP. He isn't strong. The power he holds is tenuous and balanced on a knife's edge. It would make more sense for him to stay quiet, keep his head down, and if anything, try to change things from the shadows, where he'll be in the least danger.

But he isn't quiet. He doesn't just challenge authority, he challenges the authority; Dream, Wilbur, and of course, Technoblade.

And in all but one of those matches, he's come out with a concession from his enemy gripped between his teeth. He schooled Wilbur in the debates. He forced Dream to grant El Rapids Independence at a time when he hadn't done so for New L'manberg.

But he failed miserably when he challenged Technoblade. Quackity lost that fight in the final control room before it began. He lost the moment he formed the Butcher Army. He would have lost if he managed to kill Technoblade, and he lost still when he died.

He lost because he conceded that the only way to achieve his goal was through violence. He decided that the only way to establish himself and New L'manberg as powerful? Was to kill Technoblade. And he lost that fight and he always will. There was never a way that he walked out of that fight with the victory; Quackity lost the ideological battle long ago.

But not the war.

As of writing this, Quackity is in the process of introducing an economy to the Dream SMP, on Sam's initiative. There is no action I can think of that is wiser for him to take right now. Now, when Dream has been deposed and there's a vacuum in power; Now, when people are getting tired of endless violence and the loss it brings; Now, when people are looking for something new.

An economy is a direct challenge to Might Makes Right. Trading, supply and demand, politics. It offers a new way for people to obtain resources and a direct alternative to brute force; other methods to pay for slights and breaches of honor and etiquette. No more will pet wars be fought with iron swords and shields, but with money! A healthy sum of cash for the murder of Fungi!

If Quackity can get this system off the ground (and with Sam's help, he definitely can,) the stage would suddenly be tilted in the favor of not just Quackity, but the people who he has associated himself with most closely – Tommy, Fundy, even Schlatt. They're all business men, all scammers. This could be Quackity's world, and he's damn well intending for everyone to live in it.

We’ll have to see what Techno thinks of this - Quackity hasn’t made any moves to start another government, and an economy doesn’t inherently contradict anarchy. But it does hold a potential threat to Techno’s current power.

And as for Quackity? What will he do once he’s at the top? Will he finally become a true tyrant? Will he usher in a new age of equality and justice? Or will he eschew all of that in favor of personal riches. For once, the cards are in Quackity's favor, and we might get the chance to see what he does when he holds real power.

#Dream SMP #Quackity #Technoblade #Ranboo #Dreamwastaken #Dream SMP analysis #lazytext #long post #its done its done i did it its done #ive been working on this for THREE WEEKS #THREE WEEKS OF CHECKING VODS AND WIKIS AND AAAAAAAAAAAAA #If theres typos I DONT CARE #I LIVE MY LIFE AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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nealcassatiel · 4 years ago

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The Supernatural Finale’s Nullification of the Symbolism of the Road: Dean Winchester lived as a progressive hero and dies as a static shadow

During the emotional height of its grand finale, Supernatural’s Dean Winchester ensconces the show’s earlier themes as a road narrative by showing an elongated montage of him driving his classic car along an endless, American road. By returning to the original mythic and intertextual narratives from which Supernatural was born, the finale entrenched within its themes the grand myth of the freedom of the American road. However, this grand myth and symbol, representing the traveller’s metaphorical journey towards inner freedom and self-discovery whilst exulting their newly found connection to the beatific landscape on Earth, placed within the context of heaven - is rendered redundant.

Without canonical material to provide a true world-building of this new heaven, we must rely on the idea of heaven from previous seasons, as well as extratextual narratives of heavenly realms. The audience is told that in this new heaven, souls have freedom and new memories may be created. The vision we see of the finale’s heaven is glowing, sanitised, and idyllic. Coupled with the general Western audience’s presupposition that heavenly realms within texts will be devoid of true horror or suffering, we are to assume these new memories and freedoms will also be heavenly and devoid of suffering. This assumption is bolstered by the appearance of The Roadhouse, Bobby Singer, and Baby, all representative of ‘good times’ and shot with soft lighting (peaceful), then juxtaposed against Dean’s dark, gritty, violent, and horror-filed final moments on Earth. This entrenches the message that Supernatural is sending: Dean is at peace and saved from his suffering.

This disallowance of suffering in Dean’s heaven is antithetical to the myth of the road: the metaphorical journey towards inner-freedom, ‘self-display, and self-discovery’[1]. Conflict, suffering, and trials are essential towards self-discovery and character development, and this is truer for the ‘hero’ protagonist than others. Dean, our hero, in his sanitized heaven is now in stasis. His external goal of defeating god is destroyed, and his internal journey (created by reacting and responding to the trials and tribulations of a varied life) is curtailed. His symbolic drive through Americana heaven has been stripped of its meaning. Our hero is no longer a hero of the road and his journey of self-discovery is terminated. Kris Lackey in RoadFrames: The Amerian Highway Narrative, writes that ‘Car voyaging remains a symbolic gesture, describing in spatial terms a character’s education in or flight from domesticity’[2]. Whilst Dean is spatially driving away from home/Earth, his character is deprived of the ability to progress or to be educated by his surroundings, and therefore Dean’s drive through this physical space has been stripped of its metaphorical meaning. The physical road of heaven is illusory: it’s symbolism only taking on meaning and worth when the traveller changes in tandem with the view from the car window. The view from ‘Baby’ may change, but Dean cannot.

American road narratives have long set themselves against the urban. Following in the footsteps of Transcendentalism, in particular Thoreau’s Walden, the road symbolises a rejection of materialistic and capitalist society and a return to the land. The urban and the road are set in comparison: the urban taking on meaning as a place where one lives as a shadow and lives a half-life in a modern hell, stripped of connection to the Self and to others. The road thus takes on the meaning of a place where one can live fully, where, as Thoreau writes, one can ‘live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.’ [3] The road is thus an allegory for living with heightened experiences, living life fully, and rediscovering a more meaningful human experience through a greater connection to the land. Dean’s heaven road is not in opposition to the urban. Heaven is not a place where one can live deliberately and learn from the joys and pains of human life. The land, a peculiarly Earthly notion, can only ever be absent in Heaven. The essential nature of Heaven and Earth is that they are wholly separate. Each of their meanings is derived from the fact that they are not the other. The myth of the road is so inherently connected to the land on Earth, that transmogrifying it into a realm which has always defined itself as ‘not of Earth’ yet again nullifies any symbolic meaning attributed to ‘the road’.

This inability for character development, an inability to learn from the land, and an inability to learn from the suffering of an Earthly road renders our hero stuck, with his life suspended. In On the Road, ‘Kerouac’s Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty… exemplify the surviving type - outsiders whose hardscrabble road-lives fit them for roles as satirists and enemies of settled bourgeois life.’[4] Dean, whose character is based on Dean Moriarty, whilst visually drives a car in heaven and is seen as always moving forwards, Dean himself is completely settled in his current reality – unable to move forward in any way other than physically. Whilst Sam and the people left behind on Earth are able to move on, Dean, as he ironically speeds through heaven’s roads is now stuck in the same place forever.

On the Road’s message is one of a rejection of a settled, domestic, and stultifying bourgeoisie life. The semi-autobiographical nature of the work allows us to interpret the text in connection to Kerouac and Cassady’s real life. Whilst this anti-domestic theme is ingrained in Kerouac’s text, Kerouac himself ended his years living with his mother, having stopped travelling. When comparing Kerouac’s later life with his protagonist’s youthful life in On the Road, we can make a case that youth is inherent to contextualising the book’s central themes, most importantly: the theme of freedom. With the characters and writer in their 20s, this novel resonates with the youth. Their youth calls for a rejection of the domestic and of the settled. Likewise, Sam and Dean’s earlier years before they move into the bunker are, and should be, seen as a rejection of the domestic and settled. Thoreau’s Walden, Krakauer’s Into The Wild, Ruess’ A Vagabond for Beauty, Kerouac’s On the Road, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Ben Reitman’s Sister of the Road – these, along with the majority of road narratives (both literary and on-screen) are populated with protagonists in their 20s. Had these seminal road narratives had protagonists in their 40s, as Dean Winchester is in the finale, the message of a life on the road would be incalculably altered. Whilst the youthful Sal and Dean in On the Road choose to reject a settled life for a vagabond’s, the middle-aged Dean Winchester is forced from a settled life in the bunker (a home that he cherishes) into a vagabond’s life on the road. He is thrown into a road narrative which brings joy to younger protagonists as it did for him in his 20s, however since the age of 34 (roughly) when him and Sam find the bunker, he as a character no longer sought out this life of the road. Their father’s (John Winchester’s) nomadic life which moved him from one dark and dingy motel room to the next was portrayed as somewhat sad, a sacrifice, and a life he was forced into once his domestic life literally went up in flames. John Winchester’s nomadic life started when he was 29 years old and has never been representative of the careless freedom of the road. Like John, symbolising Dean as being back on the road is somewhat sad and reads as a form of hollow nostalgia for the freedom of youth. Dean’s drive on heaven’s road and its rejection of the domestic no longer reads as youthfully liberating and bold, but tragic that he is forced from his age-appropriate domestic home into an unsettled life that he wilfully moved on from in season 8. As viewers, we must ask ourselves if it is still freedom if one is forced to be free? Whilst I could delve into the writings of Isiah Berlin or Rousseau’s writings on the ‘social contract’, Supernatural in many ways answers this question itself. In the fight against an interventionist god, our characters (self-named as ‘Team Free Will 2.0’), believe that one’s ability to choose their path in life is the ultimate freedom. If god had forced their freedom, they would not consider that as true freedom. Therefore, the symbolism of the writers forcing Dean from the domestic and back onto the freedom of the road cannot be read as true freedom. He had no choice.

Supernatural’s finale aimed at recapturing the tone and themes of its pilot episode, and consistently mirrored shots, costume, locations, dialogue, and themes of the pilot. It used visual signifiers to play into the show’s earlier mythology. However, the unintended consequence of this visual and narrative symbolism forced the character of Dean into trying to recapture his youth. Dean had moved on from the open road since the pilot, however the resounding mythic image during Dean’s final screen-time is him on the road. In the end, ‘Carry On’ unintentionally satirises its own mythology. It is less like On the Road, and more like Easy Rider. David Laderman writes of Easy Rider, ‘At a certain point down the road, the road movie’s glorified mobility seems to yield a disillusioned attitude in the protagonists, who have been unable to truly escape, and who have internalized the pressures of conformist society.’[5] Easy Rider’s protagonists, maddened by consistently defining themselves by the road realise that the search for such a freedom from a violent and conservative nation is futile. The hippie dream, in the context of the Martin Luther King assassination as well as the other assassinations and the war in Vietnam, was dead by 1969. After the traumas faced on the road, the protagonists are confronted with the knowledge that ‘the initial promise and thrill of mobility gradually turns sour.’[6]So too is Dean now unable to escape his previous life on the road and his new life on heaven’s road.

As a character who canonically repressed emotions and played into hyper-masculine traits at the expense of the catharsis of emotional vulnerability, like Easy Rider’s protagonists, Dean never escaped his internalised ‘pressures of conformist society’ before his death. With no trauma or challenges to confront on heaven’s road, Dean can never go on the internal journey to free himself from his repression. Heaven’s road will never help him free his Self. On the Road’s protagonist, Dean Moriarty is based on Neal Cassady who was a bisexual man and his relationship with poet Allen Ginsberg was written about within Ginsberg’s work. Dean Winchester was also based on Neal Cassady, giving some credence to viewers of Supernatural who have long read Dean through a queer theory lens, and presented him as bisexual. Through this bisexual reading, Dean’s inability to find true freedom on heaven’s road becomes allegorical to his inability to free himself from his repressed sexual desires. Like On the Road’s omission of Dean’s bisexuality, Supernatural can be read as doing the same. Increasingly, freedom is stripped from the symbol of heaven’s road. Both Neal Cassady and Dean Winchester die at the same age of 41.

Road movies and their mythology combine both conservative and progressive ideologies, and many try to walk this line without politicization. The myth of the road can be read as inherently conservative and patriotic as it plays into the American ideology of frontierism and individualism. Yet the mythology of freedom from the suburban/urban and the incorporation of road narratives into progressive counterculture (such as the Beats and the Hippies) makes the genre appear liberating. By setting itself in juxtaposition against capitalist and urban life, road narratives appeal to the progressive, and many of the genre’s protagonists are indeed progressive.

As outlined earlier, Dean’s return to the road does not feel freeing or liberating. His journey on the road does not include a Merry Prankster-esque or Easy Rider LSD binge, nor a stop for a wine-heavy jazz night, nor a Neal Cassady-esque exploration of his sexual needs and desires. Like heaven itself, this road trip montage is sanitized, pure, and holy. This sanctity and purity of heaven’s road highlights the nationalistic mythology of America as a promised land, anointed by god himself, and above all others – the Pilgrim’s ‘city on a hill’. Whilst the audience can assume that heaven is supremely American because it is Dean’s heaven, it is difficult to intellectually separate your thoughts from what Supernatural is so powerfully visually telling us: heaven is America. By placing such strong (even if unintentional) nationalistic symbolism alongside the knowledge that John, Mary, and (soon) Sam will be central to Dean’s heaven, Supernatural marries two resolutely conservative American values: the heterosexual nuclear family, and god’s promised land of America – his heaven on Earth. This firmly aligns the mythology of the road closer to its conservative symbols, than its progressive ones. Perhaps such patriotic symbolism wouldn’t read as harshly when the pilot aired in 2005. Yet during the staunchly bipartisan Trump years where examples of white supremacy, violent jingoism, and xenophobia are rife, a departing message of an American heaven and the importance of a heterosexual nuclear family can be easily politicized and be seen as bolstering the patriotic symbolism which it draws upon.

A large majority of Supernatural’s fanbase (as oppose to general audience) is composed of young, progressive, and queer women. Supernatural’s narrative themes of found family and Castiel’s declaration of homosexual love engendered a sense within its audience that the series was narratively leading towards the progressive finale. Yet the patriotic road trip montage, the knowledge of Dean’s return to his nuclear family, and Sam’s montage of living out his life in an apple-pie, baseball throwing, middle-class house, heterosexual nuclear family lifestyle sans his deaf love interest (a montage more akin to the Raegan-era nostalgia films of the 1980s than anything made in 2020), tonally, visually, and symbolically reads as a finale steeped in conservative and Republican mythos. These are particularly tonally jarring for Supernatural’s progressive audience, especially after the promise of queer representation, disabled representation, and themes of a found family that were prevalent just two episodes previously.

In conclusion, Supernatural returned Dean Winchester to his road trip routes, yet divorced from his youth or an ability to progress as a character, the progressive symbolism of the road was nullified. By ripping him away from his desired domesticity and forcing him onto the freedom of the road, his deepest desires of a settled life and the freedom of choice were also destroyed, therein destroying his character arc. Supernatural, therefore, strips the progressive symbolism of freedom associated with the road and further sanitises and sanctifies it by placing ‘the road’ in heaven. We are left with a pure road, America as god’s land, the elevation of the importance of a nuclear family, and a nostalgic montage of Sam’s conservative life. Dean’s road is now imbued only with the conservative aspects of it the symbol’s mythology. For an audience in 2020 seeking progressive representation in the jingoistic years of Trump, to be confronted with staunchly conservative ideologies and symbols (which appear even more extreme than when first broadcast in the Bush years of 2005) there is no cathartic nostalgia to be had.

‘We laugh, at the [road trip] movies, at the frequency with which the hero goes ‘out there, away from all this’ to ‘find himself,’[7]but there is nothing for Dean to find at the end of heaven’s road. He is frozen forever in unchanging happiness – a hero deprived of a journey. And so Supernatural ends with Dean on the road, the camera portraying with powerful imagery a hollow and tragic myth, completely stripped of its progressive meaning. With socio-political and character context changed, Supernatural’s return to the pilot unintentionally satirises itself, and alienates a fan base who define themselves against the ultimate message of the finale: heterosexual nuclear family, and white national chauvinism.

I finish with Allen Ginsberg’s words in his poem Elegy for Neal Cassady, written after hearing news of Neals death at the age of 41.

OK Neal aethereal Spirit bright as moving air blue as city dawn happy as light released by the Day over the city's new buildings --

[...]

Sir spirit, forgive me my sins, Sir spirit give me your blessing again, Sir Spirit forgive my phantom body's demands, Sir Spirit thanks for your kindness past, Sir Spirit in Heaven, What difference was yr mortal form, What further this great show of Space? Speedy passions generations of Question? agonic Texas Nightrides? psychadelic bus hejira-jazz, Green auto poetries, inspired roads? Sad, Jack in Lowell saw the phantom most -- lonelier than all, except your noble Self. Sir Spirit, an' I drift alone: Oh deep sigh.

[1] Leed, Eric., The Mind of the Traveler, (1991), p. 13.

[2] Lackey, Kris., RoadFrames: The American Highway Narrative, p. xi.

[3] Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings, p. 172.

[4] Lackey, Kris., RoadFrames: The American Highway Narrative, p. 8.

[5] Laderman, David, Driving Visions; Exploring the Road Movie, (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2002), p. 76.

[6] Laderman, David, Driving Visions; Exploring the Road Movie, (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2002), p. 76.

[7] Lackey, Kris., RoadFrames: The American Highway Narrative, p. 92.

If you would like to read more about my writings on Beat literature and Supernatural, you can find them listed under my tag ‘Cas x Ginsberg x Buddhism’ . If you would prefer to have a PDF version of the above essay (is this an essay? i feel like it accidentally became one lol), then just let me know and I can send you that file. I wrote this this afternoon and feel like I have a lot more to say on this whole thing and barely touched upon lots of ideas that arose when I was writing this. I decided to stick firmly to the road symbolism stuff rather than bombard you with more than 3000 words in one go.

Thank you to @drsilverfish and this post of theirs which inspired me to revisit my Supernatural/The Beats tag, so thank you and you should all read that wonderful post.

I started off rambling with this and then I decided to turn into into something of hopefully some worth and put effort into thinking over what I was trying to say. Do let me know if you want to to expand on anything I wrote here, and my asks are always open for questions. Let me know if more of this may be of interest.

#cas x ginsberg x buddhism #ON THE ROAD #supernatural and on the road #supernatural and the beats #supernatural and beat literature #spn #supernatural #supernatural finale meta #my supernatural meta #supernatural meta #bi!dean meta #literature and supernatural #spn as a road narrative #road narratives #symbolism in spn #supernatural finale #15x20 #spn finale

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aboveallarescuer · 4 years ago

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Parallels between Aerys II Targaryen and Cersei Lannister (and why they are both foils to Dany)

In this post, I gathered all the parallels I could find between Cersei and Aerys II after recently rereading Cersei’s chapters and Aerys’s section in TWOIAF. While a lot of people have made good points criticizing how Cersei was written (namely, as incompetent, misogynistic and irredeemable, at least in the canon timeline where her fate is already sealed) considering her special place in the narrative (namely, as arguably the female character who most frequently and openly questions and challenges the validity of Westerosi patriarchy, as well as the only major female villain of the story and the only woman among the three Lannister siblings), it’s also true that GRRM intended her to be paralleled with Aerys II in many ways, which will be laid out here.

Recognizing how Aerys II and Cersei are alike is particularly important for emphasizing that both characters were written as foils to Daenerys, so I will also explain how Dany doesn’t share their similarities.

Both believe they are destined for greatness

Aerys II:

Aerys II did not lack for ambition. Upon his coronation, he declared that it was his wish to be the greatest king in the history of the Seven Kingdoms, a conceit certain of his friends encouraged by suggesting that one day he might be remembered as Aerys the Wise or even Aerys the Great. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

Cersei:

The Lord of Casterly Rock deserved rainbows. He had been a great man. I shall be greater, though. A thousand years from now, when the maesters write about this time, you shall be remembered only as Queen Cersei’s sire. (AFFC Cersei II)

That’s not the case with Dany. Her titles (the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons, Mhysa, Azor Ahai, etc) were given to her by other people, she doesn’t think she’s special despite birthing dragons and receiving multiple prophecies and she’s incredibly hard on herself for every mistake she makes. She simply doesn’t have an exaggerated sense of her importance or abilities like Cersei and Aerys II do.

Both are cut by the Iron Throne

Aerys II:

Yet still the blades tormented him, the ones he could never escape, the blades of the Iron Throne. His arms and legs were always covered with scabs and half-healed cuts. (AFFC Jaime II)

Cersei:

The barbs and blades of the Iron Throne bit into her flesh as she crouched to hide her shame. Blood ran red down her legs, as steel teeth gnawed at her buttocks. When she tried to stand, her foot slipped through a gap in the twisted metal. The more she struggled the more the throne engulfed her, tearing chunks of flesh from her breasts and belly, slicing at her arms and legs until they were slick and red, glistening. (AFFC Cersei I)

While Cersei was only cut in a dream, this moment is still significant because the Iron Throne is infamous for only harming and ‘rejecting’ the bad rulers. GRRM could have written a similar dream for Dany if he wanted to make her and Cersei follow the same direction, specially in AFFC/ADWD where he noted multiple times that they’re meant to be paralleled and contrasted. Instead, while Cersei’s first chapter in AFFC begins with her dreaming of being on the Iron Throne and being cut by it, Dany’s first chapter in ADWD begins with her dreaming of a house with a red door. Also, while Cersei wishes she could sit on the Iron Throne but is unable to because only the King and the Hand can sit on it, Dany willingly gives up on the privilege to sit on an elaborate throne and chooses an ebony bench that "did not befit a queen" in Meereen. So, not only the author emphasized that Dany doesn’t want power for its own sake (but rather to help people) and that she wants to be at the level of her people, he also didn’t take the chance to portray her as a bad ruler (because she is a good one) like he did with Cersei and Aerys II.

Both feel excitement and pleasure at the sight of wildfire

Aerys II:

Frustrated, Aerys turned to the Wisdoms of the ancient Guild of Alchemists, who knew the secret of producing the volatile jade green substance known as wildfire, said to be a close cousin to dragonflame. The pyromancers became a regular fixture at his court as the king's fascination with fire grew. By 280 AC, Aerys II had taken to burning traitors, murderers, and plotters, rather than hanging or beheading them. The king seemed to take great pleasure in these fiery executions, which were presided over by Wisdom Rossart, the grand master of the Guild of Alchemists...so much so that he granted Rossart the title of Lord and gave him a seat upon the small council. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

The sight had filled him with disquiet, reminding him of Aerys Targaryen and the way a burning would arouse him. A king has no secrets from his Kingsguard. Relations between Aerys and his queen had been strained during the last years of his reign. They slept apart and did their best to avoid each other during the waking hours. But whenever Aerys gave a man to the flames, Queen Rhaella would have a visitor in the night. (AFFC Jaime II)

Cersei:

Cersei thought of all the King’s Hands that she had known through the years: Owen Merryweather, Jon Connington, Qarlton Chelsted, Jon Arryn, Eddard Stark, her brother Tyrion. And her father, Lord Tywin Lannister, her father most of all. All of them are burning now, she told herself, savoring the thought. They are dead and burning, every one, with all their plots and schemes and betrayals. It is my day now. It is my castle and my kingdom. (AFFC Cersei III)

Cersei felt too alive for sleep. The wildfire was cleansing her, burning away all her rage and fear, filling her with resolve. “The flames are so pretty. I want to watch them for a while.” (AFFC Cersei III)

Jaime knew the look in his sister's eyes. He had seen it before, most recently on the night of Tommen's wedding, when she burned the Tower of the Hand. The green light of the wildfire had bathed the face of the watchers, so they looked like nothing so much as rotting corpses, a pack of gleeful ghouls, but some of the corpses were prettier than others. Even in the baleful glow, Cersei had been beautiful to look upon. She'd stood with one hand on her breast, her lips parted, her green eyes shining. She is crying, Jaime had realized, but whether it was from grief or ecstasy he could not have said.

The sight had filled him with disquiet, reminding him of Aerys Targaryen and the way a burning would arouse him. (AFFC Jaime II)

That never happens with Dany. She does describe the flames positively during the ritual to hatch the dragon eggs, but so does Jon Snow and GRRM himself. She does claim the fire as hers, but it has to do with her magical intuition as she puts two and two to birth her children and is ultimately validated. Most importantly, unlike Aerys II and Cersei, Dany a) never feels excitement while watching things burn for their own sake, b) never takes pleasure viewing or imagining her enemies burning and c) is never compared to Aerys II to highlight any disturbing behavior from her part. She is called the Mad King’s daughter by her enemies (the slavers and Mace Tyrell), but the characters around her and the ones who have nothing to gain by defaming her (Barristan, Tyrion, Illyrio, Quentyn) reiterate that she’s nothing like him. Meanwhile, two of the people who have known Cersei the longest (Jaime on the quotes above, Tyrion) compare her to Aerys II.

Both grow paranoid with time; they imagine implausible scenarios in which their perceived enemies are working (often together) against them, accept their baseless fears as truth and make hasty decisions based on them

Aerys II:

The march of the king's madness seemed to abate for a time in 274 AC, when Queen Rhaella gave birth to a son. So profound was His Grace's joy that it seemed to restore him to his old self once again...but Prince Jaehaerys died later that same year, plunging Aerys into despair. In his black rage, he decided the babe's wet nurse was to blame and had the woman beheaded. Not long after, in a change of heart, Aerys announced that Jaehaerys had been poisoned by his own mistress, the pretty young daughter of one of his household knights. The king had the girl and all her kin tortured to death. During the course of their torment, it is recorded, all confessed to the murder, though the details of their confessions were greatly at odds. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

The birth of Prince Viserys only seemed to make Aerys II more fearful and obsessive, however. Though the new young princeling seemed healthy enough, the king was terrified lest he suffer the same fate as his brothers. Kingsguard knights were commanded to stand over him night and day to see that no one touched the boy without the king's leave. Even the queen herself was forbidden to be alone with the infant. When her milk dried up, Aerys insisted on having his own food taster suckle at the teats of the prince's wet nurse, to ascertain that the woman had not smeared poison on her nipples. As gifts for the young prince arrived from all the lords of the Seven Kingdoms, the king had them piled in the yard and burned, for fear that some of them might have been ensorcelled or cursed. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

Captivity at Duskendale had shattered whatever sanity had remained to Aerys II Targaryen. From that day forth, the king's madness reigned unchecked, growing worse with every passing year. The Darklyns had dared lay hands upon his person, shoving him roughly, stripping him of his royal raiment, even daring to strike him. After his release, King Aerys would no longer allow himself to be touched, even by his own servants. Uncut and unwashed, his hair grew ever longer and more tangled, whilst his fingernails lengthened and thickened into grotesque yellow talons. He forbade any blade in his presence save for the swords carried by the knights of his Kingsguard, sworn to protect him. His judgments became ever harsher and crueler. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

Once safely returned to King's Landing, His Grace refused to leave the Red Keep for any cause and remained a virtual prisoner in his own castle for the next four years, during which time he grew ever more wary of those around him, Tywin Lannister in particular. His suspicions extended even to his own son and heir. Prince Rhaegar, he was convinced, had conspired with Tywin Lannister to have him slain at Duskendale. They had planned to storm the town walls so that Lord Darklyn would put him to death, opening the way for Rhaegar to mount the Iron Throne and marry Lord Tywin's daughter. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

And when the triumphant Prince of Dragonstone named Lyanna Stark, daughter of the Lord of Winterfell, the queen of love and beauty, placing a garland of blue roses in her lap with the tip of his lance, the lickspittle lords gathered around the king declared that further proof of his perfidy. Why would the prince have thus given insult to his own wife, the Princess Elia Martell of Dorne (who was present), unless it was to help him gain the Iron Throne? The crowning of the Stark girl, who was by all reports a wild and boyish young thing with none of the Princess Elia's delicate beauty, could only have been meant to win the allegiance of Winterfell to Prince Rhaegar's cause, Symond Staunton suggested to the king. (TWOIAF The Fall of the Dragons: The Year of the False Spring)

When the news reached the Red Keep, it was said that Aerys cursed the Dornish, certain that Lewyn had betrayed Rhaegar. He sent his pregnant queen, Rhaella, and his younger son and new heir, Viserys, away to Dragonstone, but Princess Elia was forced to remain in King's Landing with Rhaegar's children as a hostage against Dorne. (TWOIAF The Fall of the Dragons: The End)

Cersei:

“I am counseling you. If you will not yield the regency to me, name me your castellan for Casterly Rock and make either Mathis Rowan or Randyll Tarly the Hand of the King.”

Tyrell bannermen, both of them. The suggestion left her speechless. Is he bought? she wondered. Has he taken Tyrell gold to betray House Lannister? (AFFC Cersei II)

“Lord Manderly hacked the head and hands off the onion knight, we have that from the Freys, and half a dozen other northern lords have rallied to Lord Bolton. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Where else can Stannis turn, but to the ironmen and the wildlings, the enemies of the north? But if he thinks that I am going to walk into his trap, he is a bigger fool than you.” (AFFC Cersei VII)

“No doubt. Tell me, was it our little queen who commanded you to kill Lord Gyles?”

“K-kill?” Grand Maester Pycelle’s eyes grew as big as boiled eggs. “Your Grace cannot believe ... it was his cough, by all the gods, I ... Her Grace would not ... she bore Lord Gyles no ill will, why would Queen Margaery want him ...”

“... dead? Why, to plant another rose on Tommen’s council. Are you blind or bought? Rosby stood in her way, so she put him in his grave. With your connivance.” (AFFC Cersei IX)

She knew Joff was too strong for her, Cersei thought, remembering the gold coin Qyburn had found. For House Tyrell to hope to rule, he had to be removed. It came back to her that Margaery and her hideous grandmother had once plotted to marry Sansa Stark to the little queen’s crippled brother Willas. Lord Tywin had forestalled that by stealing a march on them and wedding Sansa to Tyrion, but the link had been there. They are all in it together, she realized with a start. The Tyrells bribed the gaolers to free Tyrion, and whisked him down the roseroad to join his vile bride. By now the both of them are safe in Highgarden, hidden away behind a wall of roses. (AFFC Cersei VI)

Cersei’s case is complicated in that she has valid reasons to be anxious: prophecies come true in her world, the Tyrells did kill Joffrey (she’s right in that regard, at least) and the coin found in the cell could be evidence that the Tyrells were involved in Tyrion’s escape. The problem is how she deals with her suspicions. To defeat Margaery, she projected her experiences on her (every widow definitely has sexual appetites, so Margaery definitely has lovers), held on to the few dubious signs that she was cheating on the king (Margaery asking Pycelle for moon tea or having a lively court), tortured an innocent man to confirm the story she needs to incriminate Margaery and arrested several innocent people. Besides that, Cersei also: alienates Kevan by avoiding his recommendations and giving important titles to other cousins based on her hunch that he was bought by the Tyrells (quote above); avoids giving the Tyrells help when the ironmen attack the Shield Islands based on her baseless suspicion that Stannis made an alliance with the ironmen and was, therefore, behind the attack on the Shield Islands with the intention to turn Cersei’s eyes away from the Storm’s End and Dragonstone (quote above); forces Pycelle to "confirm" what she wants to believe because of her guess that he helped the Tyrells kill Gyles Rosby (quote above). And these are just some of the major examples.

Dany has moments when she is unsure of whether the people around her are reliable or not. She questions if Reznak is trustworthy or if he, Hizdahr and the Green Grace joined forces against her or if Groleo could be one of the three prophesied treasons, but she remains willing to listen to their advice and never undermines or punishes them solely based on her suspicions because, unlike her father or Cersei, she has a healthy distrust of others.

Both choose to be excessively and needlessly brutal against their enemies and the people who offend them (even when their offenses are relatively minor and/or not supported by facts)

Aerys II:

When one such reported that the captain of the Hand's personal guard, a knight named Ser Ilyn Payne, had been heard boasting it was Lord Tywin who truly ruled the Seven Kingdoms, His Grace sent the Kingsguard to arrest the man and had his tongue ripped out with red-hot pincers. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

By 280 AC, Aerys II had taken to burning traitors, murderers, and plotters, rather than hanging or beheading them. The king seemed to take great pleasure in these fiery executions, which were presided over by Wisdom Rossart, the grand master of the Guild of Alchemists...so much so that he granted Rossart the title of Lord and gave him a seat upon the small council. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

When Darklyn and his family were presented to him in chains, Aerys demanded their deaths—and not only Darklyn's immediate kin but his uncles and aunts and even distant kinsmen in Duskendale. Even his goodkin, the Hollards, were attainted and destroyed. Only Ser Symon's young nephew, Dontos Hollard, was spared—and only then because Ser Barristan begged that mercy as a boon, and the king he had saved could not refuse him. As to Lady Serala, hers was a crueler death. Aerys had the Lace Serpent's tongue and her womanly parts torn out before she was burned alive (yet her enemies say that she should have suffered more and worse for the ruin she brought down upon the town). (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

Cersei:

"M'lord, begging your pardon, Her Grace said those as didn't meet their numbers would have their hands crushed," the anxious smith persisted. "Smashed on their own anvils, she said."

Sweet Cersei, always striving to make the smallfolk love us. (ACOK Tyrion III)

"Y'Grace," he said quietly, "the boys caught a groom and two maidservants trying to sneak out a postern with three of the king's horses."

"The night's first traitors," the queen said, "but not the last, I fear. Have Ser Ilyn see to them, and put their heads on pikes outside the stables as a warning." (ACOK Sansa VI)

“I hope you did not wake them, Ser Boros. Let them sleep.”

“Sleep?” He looked up, jowly and confused. “Aye, Your Grace. How long shall—”

“Forever. See that they sleep forever, ser. I will not suffer guards to sleep on watch.” (AFFC Cersei I)

“His Grace should send the Wall a hundred men. To take the black, ostensibly, but in truth …”

“... to remove Jon Snow from the command,” Cersei finished, delighted. I knew I was right to want him on my council. “That is just what we shall do.” She laughed. If this bastard boy is truly his father's son, he will not suspect a thing. Perhaps he will even thank me, before the blade slides between his ribs. “It will need to be done carefully, to be sure. Leave the rest to me, my lords.” This was how an enemy should be dealt with: with a dagger, not a declaration. (AFFC Cersei IV)

“Send some of your whisperers to these shows and make note of who attends. If any of them should be men of note, I would know their names.”

“What will be done with them, if I may be so bold?”

“Any men of substance shall be fined. Half their worth should be sufficient to teach them a sharp lesson and refill our coffers, without quite ruining them. Those too poor to pay can lose an eye, for watching treason. For the puppeteers, the axe.”

“There are four. Perhaps Your Grace might allow me two of them for mine own purposes. A woman would be especially ...”

“I gave you Senelle,” the queen said sharply.

“Alas. The poor girl is quite ... exhausted.”

[...] “Yes, you may take a woman. Two, if it please you. But first I will have names. (AFFC Cersei V)

“I cannot have Falyse spreading tales about the city. Her grief has made her witless. Do you still need women for your ... work?”

“I do, Your Grace. The puppeteers are quite used up.”

“Take her and do with her as you will, then. But once she goes down into the black cells ... need I say more?” (AFFC Cersei VII)

Dany doesn’t act like this. She burned the masters in Astapor to protect her retinue and punished the Meereenese leaders who ordered the crucifixion of the slave children, but she also spared all the Yunkish masters and most of the Meereenese masters. Her leniency is the root of her problems in ADWD, since it allowed them to retaliate against the abolition of slavery. Additionally, Dany doesn’t punish Ghael for spitting on her, she doesn’t punish a boy for trying to attack her, she doesn't punish Xaro for threatening her to her face, she chooses not to follow her councillors' advice to punish the former slavers indiscriminately and so on. You can read more about how Dany's tendency is to avoid using violence in this meta.

Both use torture to get people to confirm what they believe or what's convenient for them

Aerys II:

Cersei:

“Tell us how you pleasured the little queen. [...] How many of them did you have carnal knowledge of?”

“None of them. I’m just a singer. Please.”

[...] Lord Qyburn ran a hand up the Blue Bard’s chest. “Does she take your nipples in her mouth during your love play?” He took one between his thumb and forefinger, and twisted. “Some men enjoy that. Their nipples are as sensitive as a woman’s.” The razor flashed, the singer shrieked. On his chest a wet red eye wept blood. [...]

By dawn the singer’s high blue boots were full of blood, and he had told them how Margaery would fondle herself as she watched her cousins pleasuring him with their mouths. At other times he would sing for her whilst she sated her lusts with other lovers. “Who were they?” the queen demanded, and the wretched Wat named Ser Tallad the Tall, Lambert Turnberry, Jalabhar Xho, the Redwyne twins, Osney Kettleblack, Hugh Clifton, and the Knight of Flowers.

That displeased her. She dare not besmirch the name of the hero of Dragonstone. [...] The Redwynes could not be a part of it either. [...] “All you are doing is spitting up the names of men you saw about her chambers. We want the truth! [...] Horas and Hobber had no part of this, did they?”

“No,” he admitted. “Not them.”

“As for Ser Loras, I am certain Margaery took pains to hide what she was doing from her brother.”

“She did. I remember now. Once I had to hide under the bed when Ser Loras came to see her. He must never know, she said.”

“I prefer this song to the other.” (AFFC Cersei IX)

Dany doesn't act like her father or Cersei in that regard either. She allows the use of torture (which is normalized in her world) to question people regarding the murders of former slaves, but she stops it once she realizes that the results are unreliable because, unlike her foils, she cares about punishing the actual perpetrators, not about having her beliefs confirmed at any cost.

Both are often cruel, rude and disrespectful to others

Aerys II:

At the great Anniversary Tourney of 272 AC, held to commemorate Aerys's tenth year upon the Iron Throne, Joanna Lannister brought her six-year-old twins Jaime and Cersei from Casterly Rock to present before the court. The king (very much in his cups) asked her if giving suck to them had "ruined your breasts, which were so high and proud." (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

Over his Hand's strenuous objections, the king doubled the port fees at King's Landing and Oldtown, and tripled them for Lannisport and the realm's other ports and harbors. When a delegation of small lords and rich merchants came before the Iron Throne to complain, however, Aerys blamed the Hand for the exactions, saying, "Lord Tywin shits gold, but of late he has been constipated and had to find some other way to fill our coffers." (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

Tyrion, as the babe was named, was a malformed, dwarfish babe born with stunted legs, an oversized head, and mismatched, demonic eyes (some reports also suggested he had a tail, which was lopped off at his lord father's command). Lord Tywin's Doom, the smallfolk called this ill-made creature, and Lord Tywin's Bane. Upon hearing of his birth, King Aerys infamously said, "The gods cannot abide such arrogance. They have plucked a fair flower from his hand and given him a monster in her place, to teach him some humility at last." (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

Cersei:

Cersei stared at her, aghast. “Your lackwit sister gets herself raped by half of King’s Landing, and Tanda thinks to honor the bastard with my lord father’s name? I think not.” (AFFC Cersei II)

She wanted a storm to match her rage. To Jocelyn she said, “Tighter. Cinch it tighter, you simpering little fool.”

It was the wedding that enraged her, though the slow-witted Swyft girl made a safer target. (AFFC Cersei III)

“Would Your Grace honor her white knight with a dance?”

She gave him a withering look. “And have you fumbling at me with that stump? No. I will let you fill my wine cup for me, though. If you think you can manage it without spilling.” (AFFC Cersei III)

“Very well. Get off those saggy knees and try to remember what it was to be a man.” Pycelle struggled to rise, but took so long about it that she had to tell Osmund Kettleblack to give him another yank. (AFFC Cersei IX)

For the vast majority of the time, Dany is kind and courteous. Her detractors tend to question that fact with two main arguments: a) she laughed at Quentyn; b) she is intolerant about Meereenese culture. Their first argument is very weak. Dany didn't laugh at Quentyn, she laughed about the reason why Quentyn is called frog and then forgot to explain why she did so in the Common Tongue. Even then, though, Quentyn is so overwhelmed by her kindness that he only remembers that "the queen had always spoken to him gently". Their second argument is also unconvincing because Dany's dislike of several aspects of Meereenese culture has to do with their ties to slavery (case in point: the fighting pits) and, even then, she makes several concessions to culturally adapt. Additionally, unlike Aerys II or Cersei, she doesn't express her critical thoughts (which are way less common and way less derogatory than Cersei's) verbally.

Both give rewards and promotions to those who blindly obey and agree with them, regardless of whether they’re experienced, competent or trustworthy

Aerys II:

He was also vain, proud, and changeable, traits that made him easy prey for flatterers and lickspittles, but these flaws were not immediately apparent to most at the time of his ascension. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

His father's court had been made up largely of older, seasoned men, many of whom had also served during the reign of King Aegon V. Aerys II dismissed them one and all, replacing them with lords of his own generation. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

The king replaced him as Hand with Lord Owen Merryweather, an aged and amiable lickspittle famed for laughing loudest at every jape and witticism uttered by the king, no matter how feeble. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

The Mad King could be savagely cruel, as seen most plainly when he burned those he perceived to be his enemies, but he could also be extravagant, showering men who pleased him with honors, offices, and lands. The lickspittle lords who surrounded Aerys II had gained much and more from the king's madness and eagerly seized upon any opportunity to speak ill of Prince Rhaegar and inflame the father's suspicions of the son. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

Cersei:

"A weak ruler needs a strong Hand, as Aerys needed Father. A strong ruler requires only a diligent servant to carry out his orders." (AFFC Jaime II)

The Kettleblacks would charm her, take her coin, and promise her anything she asked, and why not, when Bronn was matching every copper penny, coin for coin? Amiable rogues all three, the brothers were in truth much more skilled at deceit than they'd ever been at bloodletting. Cersei had managed to buy herself three hollow drums; they would make all the fierce booming sounds she required, but there was nothing inside. (ACOK Tyrion IX)

My councillors. Cersei had uprooted every rose, and all those beholden to her uncle and her brothers. In their places were men whose loyalty would be to her. She had even given them new styles, borrowed from the Free Cities; the queen would have no “masters” at court beside herself. (AFFC Cersei IV)

Grand Maester Pycelle had wanted an older man “more seasoned in the ways of war” to command the gold cloaks, and several of her other councillors had agreed with him. “Ser Osfryd is seasoned quite sufficiently,” she had told them, but even that did not shut them up. They yap at me like a pack of small, annoying dogs. (AFFC Cersei V)

"She would have done better to leave the tower and burn her Hand. Harys Swyft? If ever a man deserved his arms, it is Ser Harys. And Gyles Rosby, Seven save us, I thought he died years ago. Merryweather ... your father used to call his grandsire 'the Chuckler,' I'll have you know. Tywin claimed the only thing Merryweather was good for was chuckling at the king's witticisms. His lordship chuckled himself right into exile, as I recall. Cersei has put some bastard on the council too, and a kettle in the Kingsguard. (AFFC Jaime V)

Besides the Kettleblacks (as shown above), Cersei rewards many other people that are rarely, if ever, willing to question her - Harys Swyft, Orton Merryweather, Aurane Waters, Gyles Rosby, Meryn Trant, Qyburn (the only one who doesn't turn his back on Cersei after she falls from power), etc. The only one that disagrees with her decisions regularly is Pycelle, which is why she rebukes him quite a few times throughout AFFC. Also, while Cersei considers Aerys a weak ruler, they both believe that their Hands should be servants that know their place and follow them blindly.

Dany doesn't restrict herself to only listening to the people she agrees with. She welcomes dissent multiple times throughout the books and so, consequently, her council gives voice to multiple groups (from the Unsullied to the freedmen to the former slavers to the Dothraki).

Both alienate and undermine important allies because of disagreements that could have been mended and fears that lead both rulers to perceive these potential allies as enemies

Aerys II:

The growing rift between the king and the King's Hand was also apparent in the matter of appointments. Whereas previously His Grace had always heeded his Hand's counsel, bestowing offices, honors, and inheritances as Lord Tywin recommended, after 270 AC he began to disregard the men put forward by his lordship in favor of his own choices. Many westermen found themselves dismissed from the king's service for no better cause than the suspicion that they might be "Hand's men." In their places, King Aerys appointed his own favorites...but the king's favor had become a chancy thing, his mistrust easy to awaken. Even the Hand's own kin were not exempt from royal displeasure. When Lord Tywin wished to name his brother Ser Tygett Lannister as the Red Keep's master-at-arms, King Aerys gave the post to Ser Willem Darry instead. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

Perhaps seeking to gain advantage of His Grace's high spirits, Lord Tywin chose that very night to suggest that it was past time the king's heir wed and produced an heir of his own; he proposed his own daughter, Cersei, as wife for the crown prince. Aerys II rejected this proposal brusquely, informing Lord Tywin that he was a good and valuable servant, yet a servant nonetheless. Nor did His Grace agree to appoint Lord Tywin's son Jaime as squire to Prince Rhaegar; that honor he granted instead to the sons of several of his own favorites, men known to be no friends of House Lannister or the Hand. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

Lord Denys, seeing that Aerys's erratic behavior had begun to strain his relations with Lord Tywin, refused to pay the taxes expected of him and instead invited the king to come to Duskendale and hear his petition. It seems most unlikely that King Aerys would ever have considered accepting this invitation...until Lord Tywin advised him to refuse in the strongest possible terms, whereupon the king decided to accept, informing Grand Maester Pycelle and the small council that he meant to settle this matter himself and bring the defiant Darklyn to heel. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

Cersei:

Garth the Gross on the small council and his two bastards in the gold cloaks ... do the Tyrells think I will just serve the realm up to them on a gilded platter? The arrogance of it took her breath away.

“Garth has served me well as Lord Seneschal, as he served my father before me,” Tyrell was going on. “Littlefinger had a nose for gold, I grant you, but Garth—”

“My lord,” Cersei broke in, “I fear there has been some misunderstanding. I have asked Lord Gyles Rosby to serve as our new master of coin, and he has done me the honor of accepting.”

Mace gaped at her. “Rosby? That ... cougher? But ... the matter was agreed, Your Grace. Garth is on his way to Oldtown.”

“Best send a raven to Lord Hightower and ask him to make certain your uncle does not take ship. We would hate for Garth to brave an autumn sea for nought.” She smiled pleasantly.

A flush crept up Tyrell’s thick neck. “This ... your lord father assured me ...” (AFFC Cersei II)

Cersei had named her cousin Damion Lannister her castellan for the Rock, and another cousin, Ser Daven Lannister, the Warden of the West. Insolence has its price, Uncle. (AFFC Cersei III)

“I have been remiss. With a realm to rule, a war to fight, and a father to mourn, somehow I overlooked the crucial matter of naming a new master-at-arms. I shall rectify that error at once.”

Ser Loras pushed back a brown curl that had fallen across his forehead. “Your Grace will not find any man half so skilled with sword and lance as I.”

Humble, aren’t we? “Tommen is your king, not your squire. You are to fight for him and die for him, if need be. No more.”

She left him on the drawbridge that spanned the dry moat with its bed of iron spikes and entered Maegor’s Holdfast alone. Where am I to find a master-at-arms? she wondered as she climbed to her apartments. [...]

Aron Santagar was Dornish, Cersei recalled. I could send to Dorne. Centuries of blood and war lay between Sunspear and Highgarden. Yes, a Dornishman might suit my needs admirably. There must be some good swords in Dorne. (AFFC Cersei V)

He had even had the temerity to object to her sending to Dorne for a master-at-arms, on the grounds that it might offend the Tyrells. “Why do you think I’m doing it?” she had asked him scornfully. (AFFC Cersei VI)

“Your Grace, let me take Dragonstone.”

[...] No one had given Cersei such a lovely gift since Sansa Stark had run to her to divulge Lord Eddard’s plans. She was pleased to see that Margaery had gone pale. “Your courage takes my breath away, Ser Loras. [...] Swear to me that you shall not return until Dragonstone is Tommen’s.”

“I shall, Your Grace.” He rose.

[...] Pycelle had to struggle to keep up. “If it please Your Grace,” he puffed, “young men are overbold, and think only of the glory of battle and never of its dangers. Ser Loras ... this plan of his is fraught with peril. To storm the very walls of Dragonstone ...”

“... is very brave. [...] I have no doubt that our Knight of Flowers will be the first man to gain the battlements.” And perhaps the first to fall. (AFFC Cersei VII)

Dany doesn't do this; instead, she makes plenty of concessions to appease her influential allies, from wearing the tokar to marrying Hizdahr by Ghiscari rites if he gives her ninety days of peace to allowing Hizdahr to reopen the fighting pits to accepting a deal between Meereen and Yunkai that allows the latter to reinstall slavery. All of these decisions are ultimately mistakes since they unwittingly prioritize the privileges of the former masters over the rights of the former slaves, but they still show that Dany is capable of making alliances in a way that Aerys II and Cersei aren't due to their black and white thinking.

Both are extravagant rulers who plan grand schemes that are never realized

Aerys II:

His Grace was full of grand schemes as well. Not long after his coronation, he announced his intent to conquer the Stepstones and make them a part of his realm for all time. In 264 AC, a visit to King's Landing by Lord Rickard Stark of Winterfell awakened his interest in the North, and he hatched a plan to build a new Wall a hundred leagues north of the existing one and claim all the lands between. In 265 AC, offended by "the stink of King's Landing," he spoke of building a "white city" entirely of marble on the south bank of the Blackwater Rush. In 267 AC, after a dispute with the Iron Bank of Braavos regarding certain monies borrowed by his father, he announced that he would build the largest war fleet in the history of the world "to bring the Titan to his knees." In 270 AC, during a visit to Sunspear, he told the Princess of Dorne that he would "make the Dornish deserts bloom" by digging a great underground canal beneath the mountains to bring water down from the rainwood.

None of these grandiose plans ever came to fruition; most, indeed, were forgotten within a moon's turn, for Aerys II seemed to grow bored with his royal enthusiasms as quickly as he did his royal paramours. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

Cersei:

“Would that we could do the same to the rest of this foul castle,” said Cersei. “After the war I mean to build a new palace beyond the river.” She had dreamed of it the night before last, a magnificent white castle surrounded by woods and gardens, long leagues from the stinks and noise of King’s Landing. “This city is a cesspit. For half a groat I would move the court to Lannisport and rule the realm from Casterly Rock.” (AFFC Cersei III)

A group of merchants appeared before her to beg the throne to intercede for them with the Iron Bank of Braavos. The Braavosi were demanding repayment of their outstanding debts, it seemed, and refusing all new loans. We need our own bank, Cersei decided, the Golden Bank of Lannisport. (AFFC Cersei VIII)

That's not the case with Dany either. Throughout her reign, she only makes reasonable and attainable decisions to improve Meereen's economy, such as planting grapes, beans and wheat, replanting olive trees, making an alliance with the Lhazareen and freeing the slaves of the hinterlands to bring crops to the city.

Both are unpopular with the common people

Aerys II: (note that Tywin himself is unpopular with the smallfolk)

They cheered Father twice as loudly as they cheered the king, the queen recalled, but only half as loudly as they cheered Prince Rhaegar. (AFFC Cersei V)

Cersei:

As she made her way through the ragged throng, past their cookfires, wagons, and crude shelters, the queen found herself remembering another crowd that had once gathered on this plaza. The day she wed Robert Baratheon, thousands had turned out to cheer for them. [...]

No one was smiling now. The looks the sparrows gave her were dull, sullen, hostile. They made way but reluctantly. (AFFC Cersei VI)

Thrice that day she heard the sound of distant shouting drifting up from the plaza, but it was Margaery’s name that the mob was calling, not hers. (AFFC Cersei X)

We have yet to see how the common people in Westeros will view Dany, but she is very popular among freedmen and slaves from all over Essos, so she doesn't fit this either.

Both feel threatened by the shadow of Tywin Lannister

Aerys II:

By this time, King Aerys had become aware of the widespread belief that he himself was but a hollow figurehead and Tywin Lannister the true master of the Seven Kingdoms. These sentiments greatly angered the king, and His Grace became determined to disprove them and to humble his "overmighty servant" and "put him back into his place." (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

Cersei:

“Lord Tywin was a great man, an extraordinary man,” he declared ponderously after he had kissed both her cheeks. “We shall never see his like again, I fear.”

You are looking at his like, fool, Cersei thought. It is his daughter standing here before you. (AFFC Cersei II)

She was tired of Jaime balking her. No one had ever balked her lord father. When Tywin Lannister spoke, men obeyed. When Cersei spoke, they felt free to counsel her, to contradict her, even refuse her. (AFFC Cersei V)

This is not a perfect parallel because Cersei alternates between hero-worshiping and drawing inspiration and strength from Tywin to resenting the control he had over her, so much so that she lists her father alongside her enemies and takes pleasure in the fact that he's now dead. Even so, both Aerys II and Cersei feel that they were owed the treatment that people gave Tywin.

This doesn't happen with Dany because she doesn't feel threatened by anyone nor does Tywin play an important role in her story.

Both feel threatened by a younger, more beautiful, more popular would-be king/queen

Aerys II:

The cheers of the crowd were said to be deafening, but King Aerys did not join them. Far from being proud and pleased by his heir's skill at arms, His Grace saw it as a threat. Lords Chelsted and Staunton inflamed his suspicions further, declaring that Prince Rhaegar had entered the lists to curry favor with the commons and remind the assembled lords that he was a puissant warrior, a true heir to Aegon the Conqueror. (TWOIAF The Fall of the Dragons: The Year of the False Spring)

The lickspittle lords who surrounded Aerys II had gained much and more from the king's madness and eagerly seized upon any opportunity to speak ill of Prince Rhaegar and inflame the father's suspicions of the son. (TWOIAF The Fall of the Dragons: The Year of the False Spring)

Meanwhile, King Aerys was becoming ever more estranged from his own son and heir. Early in the year 279 AC, Rhaegar Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone, was formally betrothed to Princess Elia Martell, the delicate young sister of Doran Martell, Prince of Dorne. They were wed the following year, in a lavish ceremony at the Great Sept of Baelor in King's Landing, but Aerys II did not attend. He told the small council that he feared an attempt upon his life if he left the confines of the Red Keep, even with his Kingsguard to protect him. Nor would he allow his younger son, Viserys, to attend his brother's wedding. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

The memory was still bitter. Old Lord Whent had announced the tourney shortly after a visit from his brother, Ser Oswell Whent of the Kingsguard. With Varys whispering in his ear, King Aerys became convinced that his son was conspiring to depose him, that Whent's tourney was but a ploy to give Rhaegar a pretext for meeting with as many great lords as could be brought together. Aerys had not set foot outside the Red Keep since Duskendale, yet suddenly he announced that he would accompany Prince Rhaegar to Harrenhal, and everything had gone awry from there. (ADWD The Kingbreaker)

Cersei:

Her mood was not improved when Mace Tyrell arose to lead the toasts. He raised a golden goblet high, smiling at his pretty little daughter, and in a booming voice said, “To the king and queen!” The other sheep all baaaaaaed along with him. “The king and queen!” they cried, smashing their cups together. “The king and queen!” She had no choice but to drink along with them, all the time wishing that the guests had but a single face, so she could throw her wine into their eyes and remind them that she was the true queen. (AFFC Cersei III)

“Your Grace, she ... she is the queen ...”

“I am the queen. (AFFC Cersei IX)

It was a pity that Maggy the Frog was dead. Piss on your prophecy, old woman. The little queen may be younger than I, but she has never been more beautiful, and soon she will be dead. (AFFC Cersei IX)

Cersei's case is more justified in that she believes that, by defeating the YMBQ, she'll also prevent her children from dying and the valonqar from killing her.

This doesn't happen with Dany.

Both lost a child (children, in Aerys’s case) and fear for the safety of their remaining child (children, in Cersei’s case) to the point that these concerns become intertwined with their fears that someone is out to get them

Aerys II:

Cersei:

I am dreaming still, Cersei thought. I have not woken, nor has my nightmare ended. Tyrion will creep out from under the bed soon and begin to laugh at me.

[...] A dream, that’s all it was, a dream. I drank too much last night, these fears are only humors born of wine. I will be the one laughing, come dusk. My children will be safe, Tommen’s throne will be secure, and my twisted little valonqar will be short a head and rotting. (AFFC Cersei I)

Cersei had a sudden vision of the dwarf crawling out from behind a tapestry in Tommen’s bedchamber with blade in hand. Tommen is well guarded, she told herself. But Lord Tywin had been well guarded too. (AFFC Cersei I)

The younger queen whose coming she’d foretold was finished, and if that prophecy could fail, so could the rest. No golden shrouds, no valonqar, I am free of your croaking malice at last. (AFFC Cersei X)

Like in the previous parallel, Cersei's bad reactions are more justified due to the fact that prophecies come true in her world and due to her understandable sense of self-preservation.

This doesn't happen with Dany.

Both had unhappy marriages and believed that their spouses weren’t the right ones for them

Aerys II:

What Tywin Lannister made of this is not recorded, but in 266 AC, at Casterly Rock, Lady Joanna gave birth to a pair of twins, a girl and a boy, "healthy and beautiful, with hair like beaten gold." This birth only exacerbated the tension between Aerys II Targaryen and his Hand. "I appear to have married the wrong woman," His Grace was reported to have said, when informed of the happy event. (TWOIAF The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II)

Cersei:

“...Your father will find another man for you, a better man than Rhaegar.”

Her aunt had lied, though, and her father had failed her, just as Jaime was failing her now. Father found no better man. Instead he gave me Robert, and Maggy’s curse bloomed like some poisonous flower. If she had only married Rhaegar as the gods intended, he would never have looked twice at the wolf girl. Rhaegar would be our king today and I would be his queen, the mother of his sons.

She had never forgiven Robert for killing him. (AFFC Cersei V)

The major difference in this parallel, of course, is that Aerys raped his wife and Cersei was raped by her husband.

This doesn't happen with Dany.

Comparisons in the text between Aerys II and Cersei

"Let all of King's Landing see the flames. It will be a lesson to our enemies."

"Now you sound like Aerys."

Her nostrils flared. "Guard your tongue, ser." (AFFC Cersei III)

The sight had filled him with disquiet, reminding him of Aerys Targaryen and the way a burning would arouse him. (AFFC Jaime II)

"Westeros is torn and bleeding, and I do not doubt that even now my sweet sister is binding up the wounds … with salt. Cersei is as gentle as King Maegor, as selfless as Aegon the Unworthy, as wise as Mad Aerys. She never forgets a slight, real or imagined. She takes caution for cowardice and dissent for defiance. And she is greedy. Greedy for power, for honor, for love. Tommen's rule is bolstered by all of the alliances that my lord father built so carefully, but soon enough she will destroy them, every one.” (ADWD Tyrion VI)

Again, as I said above, the comparisons between Cersei and Aerys II come from two of the people who have known Cersei the longest (Jaime, Tyrion).

Meanwhile, Dany is only called the Mad King’s daughter by her enemies (the slavers and Mace Tyrell). The characters who actually know her and the characters who have nothing to gain by defaming her (Barristan, Tyrion, Illyrio, Quentyn) reiterate that she’s nothing like him.

#aerys ii targaryen #cersei lannister #daenerys targaryen #asoiaf meta

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auburnflight · 4 years ago

Text

Jeanne, Vanitas and Agency

From the little I’ve dipped my toes into it, the VnC fandom seems pretty heated regarding Jeanne as a character. In drastic situations, I’ve seen accusations of misogyny based solely on someone’s comments on their feelings about Jeanne... a single character. And while yes, critiques can certainly be rooted in misogyny (must women be strong all the time? must they be submissive?), I think it’s important to consider not just the character herself, but how the story treats her and why we’re making the critiques we are.

Given that points of view in the fandom are so polarized, I’m going back to canon--to the text itself--to orient this essay. In particular, I’m going to focus on the point of agency--the freedom to make one’s own decisions about one’s self and one’s course of action. This goes beyond just Jeanne’s background as a borreau, trained to fight and follow orders. Agency is also consequential in her relationships with other characters and with the story as a whole.

(Content warning for discussion of abuse dynamics, and brief mentions of sexual assault.)

It’s natural to start off with Jeanne’s first appearance in the story: alongside Luca, she’s introduced as a new agent of conflict with Noe and Vanitas’s budding alliance. In fact, she is the one who initiates the physical altercation with Noe and Vanitas, while Luca is still trying to talk them into giving him the Book of Vanitas:

Aesthetically and conceptually, she’s introduced as an active element of the story. At this point, the “forced kiss” scene during the initial fight seems more like a fluke, a comment on Vanitas’s personality (and willingness to do despicable things to get what he wants) rather than Jeanne’s.

That brings me to why I found it so jarring when colored art of her that was subsequently revealed: that agency fell away to portray a visually more passive air.

In the existing full-color art we have of Jeanne, she’s more static in her environment, looking towards the viewer but with a face that looks rather blank, even meek. Specifically I want to point out this wallpaper, which I obtained from the official site fairly early on in Vanitas’s serialization (December 2016), in contrast to another piece of official art that was released of Noe and Vanitas with Memoire 11, around the same time:

In both cases, the characters are posed intentionally, rather than actively doing something. And, they’re aware of the viewer’s gaze to some extent. However, Jeanne has her back turned to the viewer, and her expression is more idealized and ambiguous. Meanwhile, Noe and Vanitas are rather assertive: their expressions are more intentionally focused, and they seem to know their situation in the artwork. Jeanne is simply passive, very nearly objectified.

...Yeah, maybe this is just my art background speaking. But I also notice something similar happening in other official colored pieces of Jeanne, such as the cover of volume 4.

By this point in the story, lack of agency has become an even more significant element in Jeanne’s character arc: we learn that she’s been cursed. Not only is she unable to speak of the curse, it’s also in direct opposition to one of her primary character motivations, to protect Luca and those she cares about. Due to her uncontrollable urge to kill and drink blood, Jeanne fears that she’ll unintentionally hurt the very people she’s trying to protect.

Jeanne’s involvement with Vanitas also unfortunately comes with a sacrifice of her own agency. Seeing that she’s been cursed, Vanitas demands that she drinks blood from no one but him in exchange for keeping her secret. He further establishes her sense of reliance on him by promising that if he ever does see her lose control, he’ll kill her (so that she doesn’t harm Luca). Whether he’s simply a smitten 18-year-old who doesn’t yet know how to conduct healthy relationships, or whether he’s crafty and intentionally drawing Jeanne in further--or even whether it’s a mix of both--this idea of Vanitas’s control over her is reflected in the cover art for volume 4.

At this point, considering the literal events of the story, Jeanne’s passiveness is not only visual, but symbolic. In this illustration, Vanitas’s hand is grabbing Jeanne by her bow, and functionally by her neck: she’s being dragged along against her will, with little means of escape. And she looks at the viewer with a surprisingly similar expression to the previous illustration: one that communicates little say in the situation.

This matches up with their literal relationship in the story itself. Knowing she’s cursed, Vanitas is establishing her exclusive reliance on him, in exchange for keeping important secrets from others with whom she’s close (i.e. threatening to drive a wedge into their relationship). He’s already pushed himself upon her physically with clearly no warning or enjoyment from her. Yes, he’s been kind. And when Dominique trails Vanitas and Jeanne on their date, she notes that Jeanne is “terribly weak against any sort of kindness.” But in spite of some more “cute” and candid moments, the overall dynamic between Jeanne and Vanitas is far from genuine kindness. Returning to how Vanitas garnered an edge over her in their initial fight--with taunting, carefully chosen words--I would phrase it more as that Jeanne, a borreau trained to kill and inexperienced with matters of feelings, is particularly susceptible to emotional manipulation. (There’s more than a little irony in this internal comment from Jeanne, at the beginning of her date with Vanitas:)

Jeanne’s relationship with Vanitas becoming important isn’t, in isolation, inherently an issue. In most cases, it’s fun to see how a character who usually appears unshakeable is rounded out when we see them at their more vulnerable times. What makes me feel squicked out and worried on Jeanne’s behalf is how it’s executed, considering how it works in opposition to how she was introduced as a character, and how Jeanne and Vanitas’s relationship harkens back to known dynamics of abuse.

In other words, my discomfort is not at Jeanne herself for falling for Vanitas and his tactics. It’s at how she’s introduced with a promise of agency in her own story, and that agency is subsequently taken away in how she’s portrayed in official art, and in plot points as the story progresses. It’s at how their relationship begins to fall into a harmful template perpetuated by rape culture, where a man forces himself upon a woman at first, but she is shown to eventually enjoy those advances even when unwanted. I had high hopes for Jeanne as a character developed with her own agency, motives (and yes, for cool fight scenes that WLW like me can admire), and so far, Vanitas’s effect on her has threatened to overshadow these. This is where I think sections of the fandom throwing accusations back and forth of each other being misogynistic, on the grounds of criticizing Jeanne and her relationship with Vanitas, fail to see the wider issue.

Of course, eliciting this sort of discomfort may even be the whole point. Jun Mochizuki is known for putting her characters through tragic and painful situations, and her previous work Pandora Hearts is rife with unstable, imbalanced, and otherwise less-than-perfect relationships. But even without this background knowledge, a decisive scene that convinces me of the intentionality of this purpose is one I’ve written about before: Jeanne’s internal fantasy as she’s left unattended by Luca and loses herself in a storybook.

Here, Jeanne fantasizes about being the agent in her own story, a position that, the art reminds us, is often occupied by a male character such as a prince. Ultimately, this progression looks innocent and could serve to remind us of Jeanne’s more vulnerable, innocuous side. But including it here in the story could also serve as foreshadowing, a contrast to what Jeanne’s situation is like for her in reality. (If you want to read more on this panel specifically, my analysis is in the source link of this post!)

Essentially, critiquing Jeanne as a character requires more nuance than simply judging her individual characteristics. It’s necessary to also take into account the way that the story treats her and her relationships with others and other forces in the story. Not just is she allowed to be soft and emotional, but what consequences does this have for her, and how do the story elements lead the reader to feel about her being soft?

Personally, I think she’s very likeable as a character--her situation just seems unfair, and I feel like she deserves so much better than Vanitas and his schemes. I mean, she could easily destroy him with her gauntlet, and he knows it! But, then, it’s Jun Mochizuki. We should probably expect to be feeling pain and pity for her characters. Still, the relationship between Jeanne and Vanitas has always kinda rubbed me the wrong way, and I think this pretty much sums up why.

#vnc #vanitas no carte #the case study of vanitas #vanitas no shuki #aki likes analyzing things

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hurglewurm · 4 years ago

Note

C- Can I read the coraline essay 😳?

ok but it’s Long so i’m putting most of it under a cut

lmao ahem.

Promises of the Womb

Neil Gaiman’s Coraline presents a horror that takes the form of what is often the most comforting: a mother, and a home. The novel’s protagonist, the eponymous Coraline, is nearing the cusp of adolescence, and therefore slowly exiting the dependence that children have on their parents. As she struggles with the new distance between her and her parents, she also faces the Other Mother and the Other World, which invite her to re-enter her childhood state of dependence on her mother (only now her Other Mother)—to accept and become part of the space that the Other Mother has created, and thereby be reintegrated into the metaphorical womb. Because Coraline is of a liminal age, neither a helpless child nor yet an adolescent, reintegration into the metaphorical womb is both revolting and somehow appealing; revolting in how it would disintegrate Coraline’s identity and selfhood, and yet appealing in its promise of never again facing the stress of growing more independent and separate from her mother.

The novel opens with Coraline in her original world, where she, as a child, feels silenced by adults, who do not make efforts to recognize her identity. This is especially seen in the mispronunciation of her name, which David Rudd identifies as a factor of Coraline’s “frustration of feeling neglected” by the adults around her (Rudd 164). Coraline often ineffectually protests: “It’s Coraline. Not Caroline. Coraline [….] I asked you not to call me Caroline. It’s Coraline” (Gaiman 2), only for her neighbours to continue calling her “Caroline”. Chloé Germaine Buckley argues further that the collective inability of her neighbours to say her name correctly signals that “ ‘Coraline,’ the ‘child,’ is a particularly tricky, unstable construct” (Buckley 71), and that she exists to them as “a figure who always emanates from and belongs to the adult imagination” (71), meaning they assume to know how she feels and what her name is based on their own expectations as adults speaking to a child. Coraline’s struggle being tied to her age is made explicit in her conversation with the police officer over the phone, and she “trie[s] extra hard to sound like an adult might sound, to make him take her seriously” (Gaiman 52); Coraline is aware of her age and how it makes people perceive her, and this frustrates her all the more, as she cannot do anything about it.

In the Other World, however, this struggle is conspicuously absent, as Other Mr. Bobo and Other Misses Spink and Forcible speak Coraline’s name correctly before she even gives it to them; Other Mr. Bobo says, “Hello Coraline” when he sees her (30), and Miss Spink invites her on stage and says, “Now, Coraline, […] what’s your name?” (40). Furthermore, the Other World paints itself as appealing to Coraline by how much attention she gets from the adults there, particularly the Other Mother; despite Coraline’s wanting not to be treated as a child by the police officer, the Other World functions to soothe and contest the “fear that the increasing independence her real parents demand of her amounts to rejection and abandonment” (Gooding 396), as Richard Gooding puts it. While the real world simultaneously dismisses her for her youth and demands independence of her for her being suitably old enough to warrant it, the Other World provides an alternative: Coraline is invited to embrace her youth, to reside in a child’s bedroom with walls painted “in an off-putting shade of green and a peculiar shade of pink” (Gaiman 28), to play with “[a] whole toy box filled with wonderful toys” (28), and to wear “dressing-up clothes” and costumes that “she would love to have hanging in her own wardrobe at home” (67). In short, Coraline is invited to integrate into the space the Other Mother has created for her, free of the pressures of growing up, and to become her daughter: to take her place permanently in the Other Mother’s womb.

Viewing the Other World as womb-like in more than a strictly metaphorical sense requires a certain putting aside of the novel’s descriptive language taken from Coraline’s perspective, which largely describes the Other characters as bug-like as they start to devolve: Miss Spink and Miss Forcible’s bodies are mashed together inside of a sac like a “spider’s egg case” (99), “stuck to the back wall like a slug” (98); the Other Father is “pale and swollen like a grub with thin, sticklike arms and feet” (108); Mr. Bobo is likened to an “enormous dead insect” (116); and the Other Mother is described as distinctly spider-like, with skin “the colour of a spider’s belly” (126), a predator to all the others. Rudd plays on the spider imagery in his article, describing Coraline as being in danger of becoming “trapped in the ‘other mother’s’ web, and ultimately absorbed” (Rudd 160). However, the bug-like descriptors are relegated to similes, meant to evoke emotions in the reader but not necessarily a strict likeness to bugs—in fact, the Other Mother’s eating of bugs (crunching) is not at all reminiscent of how a spider would trap its prey and liquefy it before consumption, and Buckley presents the Other Mother as having rather “predatory bird-like characteristics” (Buckley 66).

It is in looking at the Other characters in the novel that the fetal elements become more apparent, painting the space where they reside as a womb. Gooding quotes Karen Coats in describing “the degenerate forms of Miss Spink and Miss Forcible” which now “resemble fetuses, suggesting an ‘infantile state of undifferentiation’ ” (Gooding 399), as they have “melted and melded together into one ghastly thing” (Gaiman 100). The Other Father, grublike though he may seem, is certainly no bug: his body is malleable like “pale clay” (109), and his most frightening aspect seems to be his mouth, which “open[s] in the mouthless face, strands of pale stuff sticking to the lips” (108), recalling a notion of Kristevian abject. Julia Kristeva defines the abject as “what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules” (Kristeva 4): the Other Father’s transgressive mouth, creating an opening in his body where there was none, is an example of this. The unidentified “strands of pale stuff sticking to the lips” further the feeling of abjection, as this substance is never properly identified—it could be parts of his amorphous clay-like flesh, or, if we explore the womb-like space and the process of reproduction, it could be breastmilk or semen.

The Other World evokes abjection, as it does not respect the boundaries between bodies, as seen with Misses Forcible and Spink, with Mr. Bobo when his body becomes rats, and with the Other Father, whose skin is “tacky, like warm bread dough” (Gaiman 109), much unlike a body’s boundary is expected to be. This abject feeling is aggravated by likening the Other World to a womb, as it disturbs Coraline’s identity both as a growing child (and not a fetus) and as having come from another’s womb. However, the Other World does seem to have some kind of order to it, following Gooding’s observation of the real world of the novel (which the Other World mirrors) as rather concerned with “things being under other things” (Gooding 393). If one views the Other World as a body, then the old man upstairs is the eyes, being made up of rats, which the Other Mother “uses […] as her eyes and hands” (Gaiman 73); beneath that live Misses Spink and Forcible and the Other Mother, residing in the womb-space—Spink and Forcible especially, existing in their fetus-like state in a sac of “sticky, clinging whiteness” (100), once again evoking the abject through suspicious possibly-bodily substances; and beneath that in the cellar resides the Other Father, the only male figure in the Other World (aside from Mr. Bobo, who is made of rats, and the cat), taking the place of the genitals, as the hidden secret below.

Furthering the notion of abjection and fluid boundaries, the idea of integration is at the core of the Other Mother’s desire for Coraline, as the cat explains: “ ‘She wants something to love, I think,’ said the cat. ‘Something that isn’t her. She might want something to eat as well. It’s hard to tell with creatures like that’ ” (Gaiman 63). For the Other Mother, to love and to consume are synonymous, as ultimately she would break down the boundaries between her body and Coraline’s and absorb her. It is impossible to say whether the Other Mother has a true stomach or a true womb, but I would argue that they would function in the same way: to hold something other than herself within her own body, and to integrate it until there is nothing remaining of its original selfhood. The result of such a process is seen in the ghost children trapped in the mirror, who warn Coraline: “She [the Other Mother] kept us, and she fed on us, until now we’ve nothing left of ourselves, only snakeskins and spider husks” (83). The ghosts are “faraway and lost” (81), unable to remember their names or even what gender they were in life, and Gooding asserts that the novel hinges on Coraline not becoming one of the ghosts by resisting integration with the Other Mother—on a more psychoanalytic level, on her “capacity to surmount an infantile desire for permanent (re)union with the mother” and resist the “regressive desire to disintegrate her subjectivity” (Gooding 397, Buckley 74). Coraline’s ultimate choice to resist integration and maintain her selfhood and identity is integral to her escape, as only she can save herself from the Other Mother: as Rudd puts it, “in order for a person to take up their place in the world, distinct from the mother figure who once provided all and everything, the maternal must be set apart” (Rudd 166).

In the end, completing the likeness to a body and a womb, Coraline’s escape from the Other World requires traversing the passage between the two worlds, which is “described […] in terms of a birth canal” (166): the wall is “warm and yielding” when Coraline touches it (Gaiman 133), and moments later is “hot and wet, as if she had put her hand in somebody’s mouth” (133). By escaping the womb through the birth canal, Coraline essentially performs her own birth, the ultimate and inevitable separation from one’s mother. Back in the real world, Coraline must still rid herself of the Other Mother’s disembodied hand, and she does so by enacting a performance, “reverting to a younger self, to one that still plays with dolls [….] affect[ing] an innocence she no longer possesses” (Rudd 167), playing at the youth that the Other World invited her to retain forever. Coraline then buries the hand in a hole; according to Freudian theory, the fear/desire of being buried alive evokes the memory of being in the womb (Gooding 403)—just as the Other Mother buried and re-buried her own mother (Gaiman 91), Coraline traps her Other Mother “down into the darkness of the well” (157), in an inescapable womb.

Coraline explores the horror of growing older and more independent from one’s parents, and frames this horror as the threat of losing one’s subjectivity by being reintegrated into the womb. The Other World presents itself as a space where Coraline can release her anxieties of being neglected by the adults around her by accepting her place in the womb, where she never has to grow up or be separate from her mother again—and yet, as a womb, the Other World is also where unfinished, fetal creatures reside, evoking feelings of abjection in both the reader and Coraline as her identity and selfhood are threatened, and she ultimately defeats the Other Mother by performing the very youth and innocence she no longer has and trapping the hand in another womb.

Works Cited

Buckley, Chloé Germaine. “Psychoanalysis, ‘Gothic’ Children’s Literature, and the Canonization of Coraline.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 1, John Hopkins University Press, 2015, pp. 58-79.

Gaiman, Neil. Coraline. Harper Collins, 2008.

Gooding, Richard. “ ‘Something Very Old and Very Slow’: Coraline, Uncanniness, and Narrative Form.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 4, John Hopkins University Press, 2008, pp. 390-407.

Kristeva, Julia. “Approaching Abjection.” Powers of Horror, translated by Leon S. Roudiez, Columbia University Press, 1982, pp. 1-27.

Rudd, David. “An Eye for an I: Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and Questions of Identity.” Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 39, no. 3, Springer, 2008, pp. 159-168.

#did i go too hard for this essay? i did actually #this essay was me being Extra because i. had to #worked out for me so who cares #asks #knicknack #pls no one plagiarize my essay lmao that would be lazy and dumb #but if u want to write abt this absolutely go into the works cited #buckley mostly quotes from gooding and rudd #but has a lot to say that i didn't include in my essay #kristeva's abject is like. it simply fucks. i can't say more #it makes me feel insane

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i-make-fun-of-spn-characters · 3 years ago

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i actually did think you didn't like sam and cas for the longest time, but it's more than your bias for dean is evident. it took awhile to see through that and understand you are coming at sam and cas out of love and in a fun way and just happen to like dean more. there are a lot of other blogs that make digs at characters (esp sam and cas) in a NOT fun way, but pretend they "love all of TFW" and that's on me for lumping you in with them.

You know Anon, back when I used to post absolutely NOTHING except for memes, and also had a Sam banner and icon, someone asked me who my favorite character was, and I made it a poll because I was curious how good of a job I was doing keeping my content even. Lo and behold—they chose in order by vote percentage:

Sam

Cas

Dean

Jack

Then as the poll has stayed up ever since, I think Dean and Cas have traded places in the voting (but by now everyone knows Dean is my favorite). But a very large percentage of people did not know Dean was my favorite starting out. I was surprised, because I do indeed love Dean very VERY much. It isn't that I don't like Sam and Cas—but to me, Dean is possibly one of the greatest characters of all time. I could not possibly put into words how much I enjoy his character and all of the reasons why he's touched my heart. There is just no one out there quite like him in my mind. I think my bias for Dean has come through more in recent times—especially since the finale, because I miss him very much and his shitty death gutted (DON'T) me.

I think watching the show, when you look at the story only through one characters' lens, it's very easy to resent the others for not being perfect friends/family/brothers. I have even seen someone voice the sentiment before, "To some degree, to love Sam is to hate Dean, and to hate Dean is to love Sam" (paraphrasing). The thing is, when you genuinely look at your favorite (whether that's Dean or Sam or Cas) and look at their motivations and feelings and actions, it's clear that they love each other very much. That's an unavoidable fact in my mind. Both the best and worst things they've done have been at least partially motivated by the love they have for one another. I cannot, ultimately, dislike Sam or Cas knowing how much Dean loves them. To hate them would be to hate a part of Dean that is innate to who he is—his love for his family—and the choices and sacrifices he has made due to that love. It would be to say that there is something broken inside him that makes him unable to make the right choices about who should and should not be in his life. It would be to say that the foundation of the show, at the center of which is Dean's heart and how people around him are pulled inside of its orbit, is something tainted and unworthy.

It would also be to say that Dean's mistakes are okay and theirs are not, because you will find countless parallel events and threads tying their different actions together in ways that are different but also are often very much the same, if you get their motivations.

I think, for every stan out there of any main character... it would be a good idea to watch through the show trying to see it through a lens besides that of your favorite. I did this with Sam, and I am currently doing a rewatch where one of the goals is to focus on Cas's point of view more. Nothing can give you greater compassion and understanding than trying to step inside someone else's shoes, and having done this is one of the primary reasons I can't bring myself to follow many SPN accounts I have come across on Tumblr, because resentment runs rampant in many places, over characters or ships, and I don't care for that negativity. It's also the primary reason I started this blog to begin with. I wanted to carve out a positive space, where I didn't completely refuse to engage with the characters flaws (god knows fandom won't shut up about them anyway), but a place where I pointed out their flaws only to say those flaws are okay, don't make any one of them more unworthy of love than any of the others. Those flaws (at least—the ones I agree exist... there's a lot of flaws attributed to Sam, Dean, and Cas that I don't agree with at all) are what makes them human (err... or angel, respectively). I am not interested in Mary Sues (and I am definitely not interested in fans who sand down characters into Mary Sues to escape any semblance of their favorite being "problematic"). Just show me why they make the choices they do, even when those choices are broken, and I'm compassionate and I'm fascinated. I dare anyone to do better than the characters did with the cards they were dealt—with the lives they lived.

I can't say I've had the same experience on Tumblr as you with blogs pretending to like Sam and Cas while having a clear bias for Dean... I've tended to see quite a lot more of the opposite or worse. There are, after all, several blogs dedicated to absolutely nothing except trying to spread outright hate for Dean, and there was a time not long ago that you could not even go in the Dean tag without seeing countless ugly posts spewing vitriol about him (that has faded significantly since the show ended). But I think we're all bound to be most wise to the bias against our favorites (hell—I have picked up on someone's dislike of Dean from a gif blog before... and it was later confirmed that I was right). This is also part of what feeds the culture of anti-ism in the fanbase. People watched these characters for 12-15 years, and they latched onto one of them, and they know that character, and in many cases find identity and comfort with that character, and they see that character accused of terrible things that really aren't accurate at all, and the kind of innate human response to that is to want to do the opposite—hate their favorite because they hate yours. I think it's clear that that isn't what we're really supposed to get out of SPN. I don't think the intended narrative is that Dean hates Cas or Sam or that Sam hates Dean or that any one of them is unworthy of love and acceptance or is perfect or is too flawed. People can choose the narratives they want, but I'll continue vehemently disagreeing with them and making fun of them with the tag #don't feed the stans after midnight.

#being serious for 5 seconds #spn finale poo poo #mail #don't feed the stans after midnight

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arcadialedger · 4 years ago

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How Catra and Zuko have been saving me lately: A (sort of) meta

A very long, personal post under the cut. This is really important to me, and I could really use some support, so if you could take the time to read and reblog that would be greatly appreciated. I just want to reach out.

Once again, please PLEASE read. I really need help.

Recently, I’ve found myself desperately latching onto the characters of Zuko and Catra, as many have in the past. To put it simply, I’m in one of the most difficult times of my life right now.

I’m transferring colleges because I was doxed by an online hate mob (long story) , and in general because I just didn’t belong at my old school. I went to three different high schools, moved around a whole bunch, and I don’t really belong anywhere. All of my friends are far away, my parents are busy working and I’m alone.

I just feel like I’m wandering aimlessly in darkness, unloved and unsure where to go. I’m faced with making a huge decision about my future with this transfer, and I’m terrified. Terrified I won’t make the right choice, and terrified it won’t be the newfound happiness I so desperately need it to be. But most of all, I’m terrified of being unwanted and alone again, wherever I go.

I’m used to not being wanted. I’m 4’10, not thin, and have been tossed aside because of my appearance my entire life. I’m 20 years old and haven’t been kissed (how pathetic is that). I moved schools and stayed in my room depressed because I never got to lay down roots and establish a foundation. Hell, I never even got to live as a teenager. I’m just behind and broken.

I was hoping Tumblr would be my place, where I could write and analyze and showcase my talents. Be wanted for once. For a while, it looked like it might be. Then a friend blocked me and made a callout post, due to me having a different opinion on a sensitive matter, and a domino effect began. I lost more friends and half of the fandom we’re both in blocked me seemingly at their word. I had featured this friend on an episode of my podcast at, had many fond memories chatting with them, and even bought a zine to support them. The loss hurt, and I was cut off from one of the few things I had. It was all taken away from me. My growth halted as I dealt with months of online abuse: including death threats, suicide baiting (these people knowing I’ve struggled with being suicidal), aphobic slurs (knowing I’m ace), mocking and editing images of my face. My Twitter was hacked, I lost podcast deals with creatives who my friends who blocked me and started all of this went on to interview because of said hacking, and I was threatened to be doxed. I suffered blow after blow while the people who hurt me grew and were rewarded, allowed a place here, and this continues to this day. The damage remains. I have to self reblog a whole bunch to get my content remotely seen in the algorithm.

Because my entire life, it feels I’ve never been allowed a win. I’ve never been allowed to have and keep anything good. I’m short and ugly, talentless with nothing to give to the world, my family has no money so I haven’t gotten to travel or experience a lot of things. I’ve spent my entire life envious of the “hot skinny girls” who’ve been wanted and dating since high school, who live in McMansions and get to go on vacations.

When I work to make good content on Tumblr and build a following talking about what I’m passionate about? It’s taken from me. When I work hard to get into my old college’s honors program and earn a trip to Greece which I could otherwise never afford, a global pandemic comes along and makes sure I don’t get that kind of positive experience in life.

I’m used to it all, being worn down and unwanted and losing. I’ve gone my entire life behind, lesser, and not enough.

And that’s why I’m so scared. I have a big decision to make, I’m at my own crossroads, and I desperately need all of this to come together for me this year. I’ve gone so long without happiness and love. I need this to be the light at the end of the tunnel, newfound happiness. I need to find newfound happiness. All I want is to escape the darkness, find peace of mind and function day to day doing the things I love without being stressed.

So when I see Zuko— so angry at the world for being given the short stick, abused, and never making things easy, and Catra— driven mad by comparison and feeling as though the world takes away everything from her? Gosh, I feel it so hard.

Because that’s just what I do. I get angry at the world for making things so hard for me. I compare. I feel like the world just takes and takes and never gives me a win. And so I’m never happy. I feel their pain and loneliness so deeply, and I’m terrified that I’m the villain because of it. I cry at the anguish and self loathing in their eyes because I have been there. I AM there.

Like Zuko comparing to Azula, I feel lesser because the world has constantly told me I am so. I feel cheated and given the short end of the stick, as though life has it out for me. I get angry and lash out from my pain.I’m desperate for validation from people who can never give it to me. I’m so scarred from my past, I can’t believe I have a future.

Like Catra, I’m always left behind. I’m lonely and driven mad by the unfairness of the world. It takes and takes until I’ve lost it all, but it never gives. I’m so afraid of losing anyone and anything else, I refuse to let anyone in. Because why would I deserve love? There’s nobody who wants me, no purpose for me on this world. I’m nothing, just constantly chasing an impossible goal of perfection to justify my existence.

“You drive them away, wildcat”

Yeah, I know their hurt. I know what it all feels like. To be that broken, that insecure, that left behind and unwanted. The punching bag of fate. These characters suffering is so much of my own.

And that’s why they’re the only thing to give me hope.

Seeing them be where I am now, and where they end up, I allow myself to believe that maybe, just maybe, that can be my future. That I’ll get a happy ending. It gives me the courage to believe that what I’m so desperately striving for can happen.

Zuko standing up to his father and forging his own path in life, which leads him to a better place as he finds his destiny and happiness after so many years of torment. We both have scars-- if he can overcome his, why can’t I?

Catra, after so many years of struggle, taking agency over her life back from those to abused her, and finally learning to accept the love of those around her. Opening up to pain and rejection and ultimately being forgiven. Catra felt so lonely, unable to see the love around her-- maybe I’ve been doing the same thing. Maybe I’ll find the strength to take my life into my own hands and find my own love.

It’s so empowering, a flicker of light in what feels like eternal darkness. I am so worn out and broken. I’ve never had love, or learned to love myself. In the real world, it is find to find hope.

It is only in these characters, who have felt my pain and found their way to a better place, that I find comfort.

I am one of so many who have been touched by these characters arcs, and they are one of the purest examples of why stories are important. Why the emotions narrative can evoke are important. It is not only escapism, it opens up a door to critical self introspection that can make a real difference in our lives. It holds up a black mirror of our lives, providing an outside view of our deepest, darkest emotions and struggles which can be so hard to understand when they’re inside.

These characters, and their stories: insecurity, abuse, doubt, comparison, chasing validation, just wanting to find your purpose in life and happiness-- they are the stories of life, stripped down to it’s rawest emotions.

There is power in redemption. There is power in rising from the bottom.

As I said in my last post about Catra and Zuko:

“Their stories: being angry at the world, driven mad by comparison and a need for validation, making wrong choices, processing trauma, needing help but being too scared to open up and accept it, feeling as though they don’t deserve love or forgiveness, fighting to restore and maintain valued relationships, convincing themselves they’ve lost it all, feeling conflicted or confused, realizing what they thought they wanted isn’t fulfilling and hasn’t brought happiness, escaping years of mental conditioning which told them they were worthless, not seeing the love they have right before them, constantly fighting uphill for a life which seems to throw everything it can at them… Well, isn’t that just the most human story of all? And so their redemptions give us hope.”

I have been so lost and lonely for so long, and now I’m at a crossroads. I’m so scared to believe that this change, this new path, can lead to a better place, but these characters? They give me strength to. They give me faith.

This has been a rambling post of feelings, and I am thankful to anyone who has read this far. I’m just so tired of feeling this way, and needed to reach out and share this. If you are also feeling this way, know you are not alone. You are so very far from alone.

I just really don’t want to feel unwanted and unloved, like I don’t belong, anymore. I want to have a place here. I probably sound desperate because I feel that way. I don’t know how else to cry out for help other than sharing this.

If anyone wants to message or send asks about this, please feel free to do so. I want, and very much need, to talk.

#personal #personal post #zuko #long post #catra #meta #avatar: the last airbender #avatar #she ra and the princesses of power #she ra #a:tla #atla #spop #mental health

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leonawriter · 3 years ago

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Second half of what was going to be just one post but I wanted to make each point stand out on its own-

I think that the Port Mafia is going through a character development arc throughout the manga, just the same as the ADA is, and by the time the series ends will be almost unrecognisable from the mafia we started out with.

Funnily enough, the first person who springs to my mind when I think of this is actually Kouyou. Though I will touch on others later on.

Kouyou is certainly not the first PM member we meet. Strictly speaking, that’d be Dazai, or Higuchi, or Akutagawa. But I feel like her change is the most indicative of the route the mafia is taking, and the difference between the pre-manga PM, and the PM after the manga started, and after several arcs. In fact, this is also something I tend to try and think about when writing her in fics, because it is highly relevant.

Chronologically, we know that her timeline is thus; she was part of the mafia in the time before Mori took over, and under the old boss she wanted to run away, likely encouraged by an older man who she may have had feelings for, romantic or not. That man died, and left her feeling that no matter what, she would be unable to escape the darkness. At some time after that, Mori took over the mafia. A year later, she was one of his trusted subordinates, and she is tasked with taking a young Chuuya - previously an enemy of the mafia, and someone who had no idea how to talk to the mafia’s business partners - under her wing. She would go on to become an executive, and at some time before the manga began, found and took in Kyouka. She would then go on to be murderously protective of her young ward, much like a mother or older sister, and encourage her to believe as she had - that she would never be able to live in the light.

So what we see from this is that Kouyou up until this point is a woman with a dark past and a dark heart who is full of grief, and I think that a lot of people overlook this because she’s beautiful and because the way she is later is more popular, but... she is just as guilty of perpetuating the cycle of abuse as Mori, Dazai, and Akutagawa. She was imparting to Kyouka the same “life lessons” that she had learned herself, in much the same way that Atsushi’s headmaster had. Both of those people had suffered, and so both of them taught their charge in a way that they saw as somewhat more forgiving than what they had gone through, in a way that to them would ready the child for the outside world and their future, but was ultimately doing more harm than good.

So, what changes?

I’d say that to answer “Dazai” is to over-simplify things.

The situation had become such that it was no longer viable. Kyouka refused to go back to the mafia. Kouyou was afraid for her, that she would lose herself in some way, and despite her previous words to Atsushi, she did want Kyouka to succeed; or at the very least, saw how a failure would break her, as we see it does while she’s in the jail plane, chained up in midair. Their organisations are not just at odds, but as an executive she’d have to be seeing that neither of them are in a safe position.

Kouyou was already in the perfect place to accept Dazai’s suggestions before he came to her with them (and, admittedly, he may have predicted that things would get to this point, may have used the situation to his advantage).

So, what changes the way that she sees things?

Dazai is one aspect. A rather large one, considering how he himself puts that he managed to get out of the mafia, and is someone with his sort of past (and personality) who not only made it out, but has been staying out, and succeeding. He also points out that with him present in the ADA, he’s able to ensure that Kyouka can flourish in the way that she deserves to.

Atsushi is another aspect, I’d say, because he was the one who was willing to suggest that their organisations work together.

Even just staying with the ADA and not being treated with anything other than respect (and yes, that includes “respect for how dangerous she can be”) would work towards this.

In summary, Kouyou before the Three Company Conflict arc is a grief-ridden woman filled with despair, who sees herself as someone only capable of showing her true potential in the darkness. She comes out of said arc as someone who appears happy with where she is, and who chooses to be where she is, yet who is also happy to help Kyouka from the shadows.

This is just focusing on the one I feel is the best representation of this phenomenon of PM members coming out better.

Another would have to be Chuuya, which is something that many people have written about, myself included, on how before the manga starts he’s bitter over Dazai’s defection, seeing that trust in his partner as having been shattered. Yet over the course of their first reunion, he is forced to see that his partnership with Dazai need not be over simply because Dazai is now a traitor to the mafia, and that Dazai, well, missed him. As a person. That the connection is still there. And later, during the Lovecraft battle, they work together fluidly again, just like old times and reminding them that just because they’re older, doesn’t mean they’re too much different to still be partners. You can really see it in Dead Apple, where his acceptance of Dazai is less in how willingly he trusts in him and activates Corruption, and more in how comfortable he is after he’s woken up again both in the movie when he sees Akutagawa, and in the promo images where he’s still next to Dazai, and they’re smiling.

Akutagawa needs almost no explanation, given how his arc is still ongoing, and he’s already gone from being the rabid dog of the mafia who kills before he thinks to someone who goes out of his way to leave people alive, and who because of that, is learning to see things from another point of view, just as Dazai wanted of him.

Yet, it’s not just these obvious ones; Higuchi has to work with the ADA on several occasions, tempering down on her novice’s pride in her organisation that she had on her introduction, and is also coming into her own as well. Kajii may well have taken something from his encounter with Yosano, and we see how he’s more than just a mad lemon scientist when he says how much he respects Mori (and I wonder if anything else is going to happen with that). Hirotsu is now able to talk with Dazai again and it isn’t something that he would have to worry about being seen as treasonous.

And last but not least, Mori himself - when it’s said during his match against Fukuzawa that they’ve both got more to protect now, that’s not just cheap words; Mori protects his people. He shows grief when his people die and it was out of his control. He accepts that an alliance with the ADA is the best and most optimal course when it’s put on the table, even with the understanding that it’ll put them at a disadvantage in the short term. He is forced to begin to come to terms with things about his past that he had been trying to rationalise, and ignore, such as how his actions led to Dazai’s defection, and I sincerely believe that although he does not regret what he did, he does regret how it ended, and what it cost him.

Mori, the leader of the mafia, is being forced in the current arc to come face to face with the realisation that the mafia can’t live as an island, merely taking from the ADA what they need and giving nothing in return. It is Mori’s lack of action that led to things becoming as bad as they are now, and because of that, his own people are suffering. I’ve said this before to personal friends, but I do think that this is indicative of the mafia’s growth as a group - Mori needs to learn that the alliance with the ADA has to be an equal one.

What’s more, the ADA is learning through their own growth in general that they have to be able to trust the PM in return.

What does this say to me?

Other than that the characters of the mafia have been influenced positively by the plot, into becoming better versions of themselves, and the development is still in progress because the series isn’t over? That you can’t write them the way they are now, into a fic set years before the series starts?

That the themes of BSD are such that the PM represent the underside of society, a cruel and callous way of thinking that we often don’t wish people to see, or that we cover up. That even the ADA, on the twilight of the law, is still more often than not too proud to accept the help of criminals who are less ashamed and more forward about the way that they do things being criminal. That both sides are slowly moving down the path of being able to accept one another better, and in doing so, they’ll better be able to accept themselves.

We already see this with Kouyou and Akutagawa and Chuuya especially. We see this with Dazai, and to a degree with Kyouka. I believe that the longer the series goes in this direction, the more other ADA characters will accept themselves; such as Tanizaki, with his ability to use his ability in ways that Hirotsu notes are “perfect for assassination,” and with Ranpo, who hides the fact that he has insecurities and is also fully willing to make a demon of himself in order to protect his own - which is far more of a mafia attitude than an ADA one, even if, just like with Chuuya, I’m not sure I can imagine him in the other organisation.

The ADA will always be the ADA, and the PM will always be the PM, but together they can be better than they were before on their own. Currently they seem to be on a tentative truce of sorts, uncertain about doing things together and constantly in a state of tension. If they can get to a point where they trust each other more implicitly, that’s where the real strength is going to come from - something that Mori saw himself, when sending Chuuya out to help Dazai - and yet it won’t just be in the sense of power and how well they perform in their casework and missions, but strength of character, in who they are as people.

#bsd #bungo stray dogs #bsd kouyou #bsd port mafia #again I'm tired and rambling but I hope this made sense

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jesteradio · 3 years ago

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Had the absolutely most fucked supernatural dream (I have not seen supernatural). They had announced an epilogue episode to the series. So it starts pretty normal, Cas and or Dean have a boyfriend and for some reason the dream is completely from his perspective for the first part. As the dream keeps going it's revealed that something super fucked is going on in heaven and Cas keeps getting random migraines and stuff. We reach the end of the epilogue and everyone's kinda just hanging out, two people went to go outside to talk about something important that I did not get to see at all and then they quickly run back inside and that's when it all goes to shit. Cas has become evil due to whatever is happening in heaven and grabs me (the boyfriend) and buries that gay. He also tries to kill Sam and Dean. I slowly enter heaven after dying and I switch perspectives to an angel or demon I don't know which, named Balthazar. Balthazar saves Sam and Dean and brings them somewhere safe to explain what the fuck is happening. Thus ends the epilogue episode and begins the five part ultimate crossover miniseries (also I am freed from the perspective of just one character).

So Balthazar basically explains that universes are colliding and that the person causing it has taken over heaven and hell (but Balthazar is cool and immune for reasons). It is then revealed that Sam Dean and Balthazar are not on earth they are in a fucked up office space between universes. They try to escape the labyrinthine office but are unable to find an exit. Then the DC characters begin showing up. Various DC characters are also stuck in this maze of an office and eventually help the gang get to a conference room and it's revealed those characters were not real at all. Then Raven (pre-new 52 specifically for some reason) teen Titans and She-ra show up like hey we can help you escape, which is immediately sus because of what just happened. They both eventually start arguing because Raven is having a hard time containing Trigon in this era I guess and She-ra thinks she should just Speedrun the arc she goes through in the comics. I the viewer of this special but also Balthazar goes "this kinda fucks." And then Sam or Dean point out that Raven and She-ra are definitely not real as Starfire rolls up and we all go yep and this still fucks but would have fucked more if they could have had more Raven stuff in the climax. As we escape this conference room which at some point became in space we run into an office lady, which is uh oh because she works here. She is like follow me and we kinda just assumed we are being taken prisoner. She eventually brings us to one of her coworkers who makes portals to the universes outside the labyrinth and knocks him the fuck out. She makes a way for us to escape and we leave. Then she turns the corner and in the next room is a giant swimming pool with the big bad evil guy sitting next to it. She pretends that absolutely nothing happened back then but he quickly reveals that he fucking knows about her betrayal. He pushes her into the pool and she short circuits to death because I guess she was a robot. Also unrelated but every office worker had a giant dog too and I don't remember it ever being like super relevant but I needed to share.

Cut to Sam Dean and Balthazar are all going through this portal where there good friend Barry shows up, it is implied that Barry is from a show they had previously had a crossover with.

Cut to a view of every single portal into every universe in the dream warner bros multiverse opening up in the middle of this town square. I'm talking random shows that don't exist. Im talking invader Zim (owned by Paramount in real life). Coraline is there. Every character from adventure time other than Finn and Jake (they were busy I had another dream about them earlier). And of course every single looney tune character ever. The old lady from Looney Tunes slowly makes her way to the stage in the middle of the square to give a rousing speech for all these characters to fight against the forces of heaven hell and the wb corporate office. Then i woke up.

#dream #long post #it was so fucked guys

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eijispumpkin · 4 years ago

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some musings about yut-lung, inspired by a post i saw on the dash earlier today:

if the story of banana fish were to be reframed with yut-lung as the protagonist, ash would not actually be the primary antagonist of the final arc. eiji would.

why? because yut-lung’s issue was never really with ash. it was with his own lack of happiness after he got his revenge on his brothers. we can see this in episode 24 when he tells sing that his entire life’s purpose was to hate his brothers, and now that they’re gone, he’s empty.

now, obviously, during the beginning of this retelling, none of the characters we really care about from canon would matter. the primary antagonists would be the lee siblings, particularly wang-lung as head of the family. most of yut-lung’s actions in canon are behind the scenes, but in this retelling they would be front-and-center. i’m not gonna linger on that point because i think it’s fairly self-explanatory, but ash and eiji would not really be relevant to yut-lung’s story until after yut-lung’s plans are well underway (i.e. until hua-lung is drugged and has already become his puppet).

so, what is yut-lung’s relationship to ash?

i would posit that he latched onto ash as someone he saw himself in. someone that had been through similar trauma, someone who should have been as broken, unlovable, and unable to heal as himself. (or at least, as he saw himself.) that was the root of his fixation on ash: the belief that if yut-lung himself couldn’t heal and be happy, even after getting his revenge, why should someone else?

and, when we analyze why ash was more capable of healing in the timeframe he did than yut-lung, obviously there’s eiji, but eiji is not the only person to care for ash. there’s shorter, nadia, max, ibe, alex and the other gang members, etc; while ash has had an undeniably hard time, he has also found a support network.

yut-lung has not.

in fact, the whole thing is so foreign to him that he completely discounts the entire network, and decides that ash’s sole support is eiji. now, ash and eiji are definitely important to each other, but it would be remiss to say that eiji is the only person important to ash or the only person to care for him. this is a misinterpretation of ash, caused by yut-lung placing him on a pedestal as “the only one who understands”, so to speak, and it’s why yut-lung fixated so hard on eiji as the obstacle to remove in order to bring ash to his level.

ash’s actions towards yut-lung are not actually antagonistic. ash tells him he’ll kill him one day, but he never tries to actually act on it, or do anything else to hinder yut-lung’s plans in general. frankly, ash doesn’t really give two shits what yut-lung is doing, until ep 20 when yut-lung has eiji, alex, bones, and kong. that is (iirc) the second time ash and yut-lung even see each other after shorter’s death.

now let’s contrast that with eiji.

in episode 9, yut-lung says that eiji really annoys him, because he’s too innocent. he echoes that in episode 14, when he says that people either want to protect eiji, like ash, or they want to “tear him up and destroy him”, and that yut-lung himself is one of the latter. putting his idealization of ash aside for a moment, it’s pretty evident that this hatred is motivated by jealousy (a common theme in yut-lung’s story): why should eiji have had a happy childhood, when yut-lung didn’t?

in fact, that whole conversation in episode 14 is pretty telling. yut-lung tells eiji that he’s stupid for thinking he’s ash’s friend, because “ash has no need for friends [...] all he needs are those who idolize him, and those, like arthur, who defy him. he doesn’t need anyone else. especially not you, who is only a burden to him.”

yut-lung isn’t talking about ash. he thinks he is, but really? he’s talking about himself. or, rather, what he wants himself to be.

in ep24, we see him breaking down because he doesn’t know what his life purpose is without having an enemy. that combined with how he thinks that someone like ash (i.e., someone like himself) “doesn’t need friends”, the fact that the heart of his quest for vengeance is his mother, and his jealousy regarding eiji’s happier childhood, all comes together to suggest to me, at least, that at his core, yut-lung craves companionship, and at the same time desperately wants to deny that he wants it.

this conflict is the crux of his character. yut-lung’s story is ultimately a man-vs-self battle; he has an image of himself that he wants to be (cold, calculating, alone, satisfied), and he’s trying desperately to force himself to fit into that box, but he can’t actually do it. he’s hurting, he’s lonely, and he’s scared, and he lashes out and gets petty, bitter, and vicious.

so how does eiji come in?

eiji is the antithesis of everything yut-lung wants. he’s evidence that ash (i.e. yut-lung’s mirror) can heal and be loved, and yut-lung doesn’t want to see that, because it shatters his worldview that he’s on a path no one else except ash and those like him can walk. he doesn’t want to accept that people like ash (i.e. himself) can need love and support and friendship. eiji threatens to undermine his entire outlook on life.

and how does eiji respond to that?

eiji responds by loving ash harder. by insisting that yut-lung won’t ever understand, but that he will stay by ash’s side. that they understand that they both care for each other. yut-lung kidnaps him after ash is stabbed and reported dead, and eiji refuses to stay put. tries to escape many times, until he finally does.

and when he does, yut-lung says that he’s just decided that he will be ash’s enemy, for as long as eiji is his only weak point. this is just a thinly-veiled attempt to make eiji leave ash, because eiji’s presence threatens yut-lung’s entire delicately-balanced view of himself.

so yut-lung’s plan to get blanca to blackmail ash via eiji? meant to prove that eiji is nothing more than a weakness. really, he has no need to force ash back to golzine--he’s gotten his revenge, he could have done it without golzine’s involvement, he didn’t have to do this--but to him, it’s necessary to prove that he was right all along, that eiji is ash’s weakness and not an asset, that having eiji around was a detriment and he was right.

because if he’s wrong, it means he could have been healing, could have been loved, could have been less alone... and he wasn’t.

so yut-lung decides that ash has to fall back into hell in order to make himself feel secure in his own previously-established patterns of thought. unfortunately for him, eiji brings people together--as eiji is wont to do, like yut-lung said in ep14--to rescue ash, and turns everything on its head again.

this is why he goes to the museum to attempt to dupe golzine. it’s not really about ash. it’s about his view of himself, and the threat to that that eiji poses.

eiji is the real antagonist to yut-lung’s protagonist. ash is someone he puts on a pedestal and sees as a mirror of himself, and while ash is important to his story, eiji is the one who primarily acts in contention to yut-lung. he’s the one who thwarts so many of yut-lung’s plans, who tells him he’s wrong, who tries to stand in his way.

overall, the main villain in yut-lung’s story is his own trauma. he developed many irrational thought patterns as ways to cope with what happened to him while he dealt with it alone, and wound up projecting them onto ash and eiji’s relationship (honestly, in a way blanca did as well, but that’s an essay for another day). however, within the bounds of that projection, eiji shows much more active opposition to him than ash.

#banana fish #banana fish meta #yut-lung lee #GOD this got so long i am Dying #ANYWAY THERES MY 2 CENTS...??????

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dragonrajafanfiction · 4 years ago

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Tokyo Tower (Part 5) Butterfly Effect

Please enjoy this! :D I’ve changed a lot about this scene to cut out the irrelevant and pointless parts and keep it focused on the MC and the characters we want to see! @rurifangirl by request

“You think I would use the perfect evolutionary medicine on my own daughter and use her to create the perfect dragon race?"

"The so-called perfect evolution is the ultimate evolution that can maintain divine wisdom. Even if she evolves into a dragon, she is still your daughter. With her obedience to you, she can destroy the world for you, which is the reason you have been raising her so far."

“And if you get God's fetal blood, you'll use it on yourself?"

"It seems that only using it on myself is the safest way. I wanted to try it on Chime as well, but that boy is too hard to control, a viper's heart hidden under a feminine appearance!"

You speak the words but your playful manner has gone and been replaced with a numb realization that so long as Herzog was alive, you’d never find peace. You had a sisterhood and love with Renata but she was shot in front of you. You had just found love again before Herzog had Chance assassinated. And now that you had finally taken solace in a man like Ruri Kazama and bonded as a sister again with Erii, here he was threatening them both.

It would never end. Next would be Caesar, Chu Zihang, Lu Mingfei and then, once he was finished with you, you would be next. The man was a bottomless pit. He had no attachments, no empathy. Nor could he have them even if he wanted to. He’s whole life’s view was eat-or-be-eaten. There was no such thing as balance, no such thing as co-existence.

What he liked to call evolution was nothing but eternal slaughter, breathtaking in its scope. It was hard to believe someone like him could exist. You were horrified and amazed. While you have made decisions to kill others before, for the first time, you’re confronted with someone who had to die in the most absolute of terms.

You speak up again after listening for a bit. “Herzog and Erii were both exposed to dragon blood and started to turn into dragons, but were unable to complete the process. He says they were semi-evolved. Half-evolved. Bondarev has the raw materials Herzog needs, and Herzog has the methods and research to create the evolution medicine. They have agreed to work together.”

You didn’t believe they would really work together. At the first opportunity they would fight to the death. There was very little difference between these two men and the deadpool sphinxes in the mural hall of Genji Heavy Industries. Cannibals.

"Damn it! How did the Tortoise get here?" Caesar suddenly snarled.

"Brother!"

Caesar and Ruri Kazama spoke almost simultaneously, both in horror, but the messages conveyed in their tones of voice were completely different. Ruri’s uncontrolled dismay showed that Chisei was still special to him as his brother. Caesar was more concerned about the success of the mission.

“We haven’t had time to blockade Tokyo Tower yet! Tachibana Masamune might still escape!” Caesar shouted.

"Quick! Seal the elevator and the iron ladder! Brother may not have a chance to win against the King General! He will underestimate him!" Ruri Kazama said urgently.

While Caesar was concerned about Tachibana escaping, Ruri Kazama wanted to keep Chisei out of the clutches of Herzog.

"Calling Ruri! Calling Ruri! Change of plan! We're going up the tower now to intercept the King General, you stand by for a kill!" Caesar called loudly.

There was only rustling background noise in your headset. Ruri Kazama's voice disappeared. Caesar switched between different channels, and there was no answer from Ruri Kazama in each channel.

Ruri Kazama might have turned off the communication device or discarded it, in any case, he was detached from the communication network.

“I knew we couldn’t count on that guy!” Caesar yelled in annoyance.

Just like that, the entire operation was in disarray. You didn’t know what happened to him. Maybe an assassin had found him. Maybe Ruri was already dead! “Wait! He said we should stop Chisei!”

Caesar’s voice brooked no arguments. “Ruri Kazama withdrew from the mission. It’s up to us, the commissioners of the Cassel Academy, to carry out the mission of the Secret Party. Since both the King General and Tachibana Masamune have personally admitted to wanting to resurrect the White King, then they have already committed the felony of being enemies of the entire human race and have to be wiped out right now! MC! Lu Mingfei! Prepare your rifles!”

You hesitate. Ruri Kazama specifically told you that not even Chisei Gen was certain to be able to kill the King General. While Caesar was strong and clever and resourceful, he couldn’t rival Chisei's pure brute force. You look down at your sniper rifle in dismay. You heard the King General say that he was a semi-evolved dragon. This rifle was absolutely useless! You throw it down and turn and run.

Mingfei turned his head. “MC! What are you doing!”

The fastest way down the building was the stairwell and you leap down flights at a time. You feel like you were too slow no matter how fast you run! You burst out of the ground floor exit door and streak across the Tokyo Tower’s main plaza. You don’t see Chisei anywhere but you urge yourself to go faster! Lighting flashes and illuminates the black veins on your wrist and black veins peeking out from the collar of your shirt. They pulse like tentacles. You’re running unnaturally fast, fast like a demon, like a werewolf, pushed by the superhuman force of your dragon blood. You didn't need to use blood rage this time. Your condition really was deteriorating, bit by bit. Now Blood Rage was only a thought away.

You reach the stairs faster than any sprinter and start to climb up as fast as you can!

Then you hear footsteps behind you. You whirl to confront who was following.

In the dark and the wind and the rain, you were once again facing Chisei Gen.

Chisei Gen came stepping through the storm, his windbreaker flying like a battle flag in the gale. He was looking up high into the sky, his pupils flowing with the color of molten iron. There is no need for him to sneak. He is an emperor, the absolute emperor. Any opposition he faced he would simply crush with absolute violence.

So you shrink and make yourself as small as possible. “I can’t fight you. I can only tell you that you’re making a mistake! Don’t go up there!”

“What are you doing here?” The sword Onimaru glittered like pure ice in the rain.

“We received intelligence on this meeting from your brother. Caesar and Chu Zihang are also on the way to kill Herz… I mean, the King General and Tachibana for crimes against the Secret party. The King General is a half dragon. Chime didn’t believe you could defeat him and wanted us to stop you from going up.”

At the mention of the name ‘Chime’, Chisei’s eyes burned bright in the dark and the pupils narrowed to needles! He moved like the wind, crushing you against the iron stairs. The metal risers slam into your back leaving deep bruises. Pain explodes in your legs and you realize that he’s broken them. You scream and seize his hair, the only way you feel you can detain him. He’s amber reptilian eyes burn into yours. He snarls low. “I’ll interrogate you later.”

“Fine.” You sob, shaking, pale, and sweaty with pain. You release him. “Go die. Chime is the only one who cares about you anyway.”

Chisei’s eyes widen and then suddenly distance and dim and, for a moment, they revert back to their dark natural color. He looked so much like his brother in this state -- soft, sad, lonely. Those eyes were full of pain and regret. The rain ran in rivers down his face like tears. So little got to him, but those words did.

He straightened up over you and rushed off, flying up the stairs like an eagle, leaving you on the stairs in a curtain of rain. Your legs hurt so bad you want to swoon and every time you look down the world spins and you want to throw up.

“So… how’s it going?”

“How did I know you were going to show up?”

Z sits on the stairs and sighs deeply, holding an umbrella over your head. “Because I’m always by your side. Unlike some people.” He moves his hand to rest it on your hair and then retracts it. “I really do support you. You’re important. And I would rather things have gone my way with our relationship. But, like I said, I can’t make you do something like that. Like the genie in Aladdin. I can’t make you love me.” He chuckled. “But… like the genie, I can fix your legs. And I’ll do that.”

“Why… would you help me? I’m so confused.” You lift your head from the cold metal step. He was still in his fashionable suit and leather shoes.

“I didn’t tell you much when I was courting you, you think I’m going to tell you things now?” He laughed. “You’re doing amazing things. At least, I think you are. Hard to tell.” He turned to look at you with his golden eyes, then his eyes lift up to the stairs where Chisei disappeared. “It’s like the butterfly effect. Tiny little changes that don’t seem to matter have a cumulative effect. Now I’m curious. Hm…” He laughed, musing to himself. “Anyway. Your ride will take a few minutes to get here. In the meantime, I have to let you stay wounded so you don’t wander off and die prematurely. When it’s time to go. You’ll know.” Z stood up and walked away, stepping off the staircase and walking through the rain with nothing but open air beneath him until he vanished out of sight.

You lay on the steps, taking one breath at a time. It was hard not to moan but surely no one heard you over the torrential rain. Your mind drifted to Caesar Gattuso who would probably kill you even if you survived this. Or at least fiercely scold you. He would ask you what you were thinking, running off and confronting a furious Chisei Gen alone. You should have known he’d crumple you like paper. Caesar’s supposed to be the only one with the harebrained ideas.

You wondered what you were thinking. And you recall Ruri Kazama’s desperate words.

Brother!

It wasn’t just any exclamation. Chime was terrified of losing Chisei. His twin brother.

You hear a sudden loud bang, like there was a car collision right above you. As you look, a dark shape looms towards you. You feel a sudden jolt of fear! Metal bits and shredded dark pieces of cloth are raining all around your head and you hear the rattle of machine gun fire from the stairs!

“Ouch! … oh… Ow! Ow!”

A man-shaped thing was moaning while dangling by a rope between the shadowy metal struts of Tokyo tower. You recognized the voice. “Fingel?”

He sighed, whimpering. He was spinning while holding on to a thick rope. “Oh hey girly. Fancy meeting you here.”

“What happened?”

“Uh… the King had an escape plan. A big ol’ metal blimp! Bigger than mine! Haha!” He flinched. “Ow.”

You push yourself upright and suddenly realize that your pain is gone! You look down at your legs.

They were fine.

At that moment, far more ferocious weapons than assault pistols boomed on the far roof of the building. It was Mingfei!

“The King’s escaping?” You grip the hand rail and pull yourself up. Your legs are wobbly, like you’d been sitting for hours, but they didn’t hurt.

“Yeah… I’m… I’m done here.” Fingel wearily groaned. “I want ramen… and more of that miso soup. I think I’m going to get out of the way. Good luck!” Fingel suddenly started sliding down the rope.

“Hey get back here! I don’t… I don’t have any weapons!” You lean against the hand rail to look down but he is already gone. You grumble to yourself. “Dog with no morality.”

“You can always join meeeee….” Fingel shouted from below.

He was right. You could go home right now. But Ruri was still out there. He might need your help. And… your legs were fine. You sigh deeply.

Chisei was an idiot. He didn’t listen. He never listened. He had a set path, a script to follow and he was following it without delay.

But Chime loved him.

You push away from the railing and turn away from Fingel and dash up the stairs. You climb on healed legs until you reach the top of the stairs. The outer observation deck was completely covered in broken glass. Every window had been blown out. Chisei Gen was standing on the observation deck with submachine guns but he didn’t even notice you. He was staring into the distance and you follow his gaze.

The King General’s blimp was still aloft, but it was disabled. The man was hanging on by a ladder and buffeted like a limp doll in the wind. Immediately, something like a light black hawk took off from the rooftop of the building next to him, the gusty wind pounding its wings, carrying it to the sky. When the lift was exhausted and this strange bird reached the apex of it’s climb, it turned violently and swooped down like thunder and lightning.

it was a black glider, and under the glider hung a dressed-up Ruri Kazama!

He was wearing a dazzling kimono, his robe and sleeves danced in the wind and rain. He carried his cherry red sword in his hand. Even without makeup, his plain white face was as beautiful as a supreme heavenly maiden, but with a lion-like smile.

He came in full costume to kill!

The blimp’s rudder was broken. It couldn't dodge and everyone could only watch Ruri Kazama's performance. The black wings hid the General from everyone’s eyes and no one knew his last expression. Whether he changed that mask-like smile.

Ruri Kazama brushed past the hanging ladder and cut off the King General's head with a single slash.

That was not the end of it. With his gliding wings, he expertly whirled around the King's corpse in a very tight circle, and the second slash cut the king in half at the waist. The third cut severed the hanging ladder. The King's body fell in pieces in the pouring rain, and Ruri Kazama waved his sword in the air to remove the blood on it, and his glider carried him into the buildings ahead.

This was the real trap with no way out, where the strongest bloodline ability cannot be brought to bear. Ruri Kazama understood that Herzog would never entrap himself in the tower. He already guessed that he would have an airship prepared to escape, but, because Ruri did not trust anyone, he didn’t say anything to anyone.

Not even you.

The air was filled with his laughter after he had won, like the laughter of an actor on stage, so exaggeratedly contrived, but hollow and sad. He hated Herzog so much. Your mind fills with questions. Why did he hate him so much? How many years did he prepare to kill this man?

“Chime…” Chisei’s eyes were full of questions and confusion too.

He finally noticed your presence and stiffened, hand on his sword. But you don’t move. “Do you believe me now?” You ask.

Chisei’s hand released. “How.”

“Oh this?” You shake one leg at him. “The ghost of my dead boyfriend came and healed me.”

Chisei’s gaze unfocused and you realized that you meant Z but Chisei was thinking of Chance. “I won’t ask your forgiveness.” He said.

“Good.” You bark a laugh. “I guess that means you’re not a total idiot.” You cross your arms over your chest and smirk.

Chisei sighs, but he smiles a bit. “Even in a dire situation as this, you make me laugh.”

“I have a feel for a dragon’s sense of humor. If the dragon is laughing, it cannot eat you.” You tilt your head slightly.

“And why are you here?” Chisei looked past you.

Moving like a shadow and completely unnoticed by you, Sakura Yabuki stepped forward. She had been at your back, ready to kill you if needed. You feel a sudden chill, but the danger was already over before you noticed it.

"As a result of a discussion with Crow. It was expected that you would come to the special observation deck, so I decided to send men to protect you." Sakura's answer was curt, "I was the only one suitable for the job, so I came."

Lithely muscled, tall, in a black bodysuit and face half covered, Sakura Yabuki was made to live in the shadows. You’d only seen her a few times on your arrival, but hadn’t seen her again since. It was probably a good thing. She didn’t seem to be the type who let you see her at all, unless she was the last thing you ever saw.

What stands out to you though was that subtle humor. Your eyebrows raise. She was funny!

You hear a soft grunt. Bondarev was holding his chest. He smiled that winning smile up at you. “MC. Long time no see!”

Anger rose from the soles of your feet to the top of your head and you stare down at him, fiercely judging. “What’s done is done. I’m not into revenge.”

“Yes… I will… face the judgement of God.” Bondarev hung his head slightly. “Chisei… let this girl go. She’s caught up in it. She’s innocent.”

“Cut the crap, Bondarev.” You say in sharp blistering Russian. He looks up at you again, eyes wide. “You’re not going to fool me. The minute I turn around, you’ll have me killed. This will end in blood because you don’t know how to live any other way.”

For a moment, Bondarev’s blue eyes sparkled. His Russian was smooth and unbothered by his injuries. “You’ve… learned Dr. Herzog’s lessons very well.”

Your lips quirk up in a smile.

Chisei’s eyes bounce from your face to his. “You … know each other?”

“Long story.” You back away from all of them, hands raised. “Do what you need to. I won’t interfere.”

"We must hurry up and get someone to clean up the scene," Bondarev said. "...and call a doctor for me."

"You've been taking some kind of drugs, haven't you?" Chisei Gen asked.

In the low light, you noticed an abnormal sheen on his body. It was the play of the light on small ivory scales.

"It's worse than that, it's preserved fetal blood, but with serum therapy, it's no problem to live for another few years or even a decade." Tachibana smiled, "Maybe enough to live to attend your wedding."

You glance at him and he meets your eye. Why would he mention that in front of you? Speaking in English, a language you would understand... Did he think you didn’t know about the serum treatment? He knows you’re dying and is dangling that in front of you. But you’re covered. Caesar would make sure to knock him off his throne and give you the leadership of Japan and the serum treatment without the constant threat of death. You respond to his look with a derisive snort and an unpleasant grin. You drawl in Russian. “No, thanks.”

The rain was still falling. The wind was sweeping across the special observation deck and carried a faint cry to your ears.

‘Tachibana’ froze for a few seconds and a great fright came into his eyes. He retreated step by step towards the interior. Chisei and Sakura also retreated with him. The majestic wind and rain seems to hide something more terrifying than even the King General.

Surprised, you turn to look for yourself.

A black shadow rose slowly from below the observation deck. The heavy rain hit its greenish-gray scales, breaking into a shining white mist. It unfolded several meters wide wings gently waving them in a graceful rhythm. A long snaky fish tail slowly stretches below its body.

Its long, dark hair is disheveled in the wind and rain, hiding its pretty female face. The corners of its mouth moved slightly, as if to laugh out loud, but what came out was a baby-like cry, and its mouth was full of thorny sharp teeth.

Flying Deadpool.

Not one but a group. They rose up from all directions, as if they were flying snakes in ancient frescoes, a sight that in the legends of all ancient civilizations heralded cataclysm.

#Dragon Raja

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