#bc morality is complex and the world is fucked up sometimes

[byfulcrums]

Seeing people saying that Satoru doesn't actually care about Suguru and that the only reason Kenjaku caught him was bc he was surprised to see a person he killed alive is fucking wild, man

Like. Gojo's entire life revolves around Geto. The entire series happens because he loved Suguru too much to kill him, even though he knew he would have to do it eventually. The world literally went to shit because he wasn't over him

Geto Suguru's life would be completely unimportant to the story without Gojo Satoru, and Gojo Satoru's would be completely unimportant without Geto Suguru. They complement each other. They need each other

Two male betta fishes can't coexist. They will fight and one will die. They can't see each other — even if they're in different tanks, they won't be able to live. They'd eventually tire each other out, resulting in death. The only way for Satoru and Suguru's lives to be able to continue without the other would've been for them to never have met at all. And they can't be together. Not now, not ever again. Not while they're still alive. Not after everything that's happened

The entire story revolves around their relationship. Yuuji is a boy who ate a curse('s finger[s]), and Megumi is the prodigy who befriends him. Satoru is a prodigy, the strongest, and Suguru, the boy whose technique is eating curses, befriends him. The Jujutsu Kaisen story is all about parallels and they all connect to fucking Satosugu. It's all about them

The only reason Kenjaku's plan worked is because the body he used didn't belong to some random person Gojo killed, it worked because the body he used was Geto Suguru's, Gojo's one and only, his best friend. He must be thinking “Thank god they're gay” right now lmao

Gojo fucking hesitated. He hesitated multiple times when it came to Geto. He was supposed to kill him, yet he let him go. He has the Six Eyes, he could've easily tracked him down. He probably could tell if he was nearby (he can recognize Suguru from his scent) and just didn't go looking for him. And he could've so very easily escaped the trap that was set up for him, he was going to run away from it because we see him about to take that step but then Suguru's body shows up and says “Yo, Satoru!” with Suguru's voice and Satoru freezes and hesitates

They weren't able to let go of each other even after years of being separated (like a decade). When they meet, Suguru still greets Satoru warmly

Suguru is pretty much Satoru's moral code. He was the only person Satoru took at least mildly seriously pre-Toji (and we know Satoru just didn't do serious back then). He actually took his words to heart. He was kind, of course (especially from Suguru's PoV, since he's the person that knows him most), and not a bad person, but he wasn't nice. Suguru was always the ‘nice(r) one’, the one who actually had a moral code, while Satoru was more of an asshole to literally everyone and everything (some more, some less), thinking he and Suguru were above everyone else

When Suguru finally snaps (which, honestly. Fair) and goes genocidal (not so fair), Satoru slowly starts to be somewhat nicer and starts applying Suguru's old moral code to his own being — their roles weren't exactly reversed, but now they're not together anymore, so they might as well be. And Suguru was shown for having faith in the school and its system while it was Satoru the one who absolutely abhorred the higher-ups and all kinds of authority, but then it ended up with Suguru being the one to leave and become a cult leader with the blood of hundreds on his hands while Satoru was the one that stayed behind in the same place of the people he despises so much

(Imagine someone saying something like “Sometimes I doubt you even have a moral code” and Gojo answers with “Oh, my best friend my one and only is pretty much my moral code. He went homicidal a while back but it's okay haha” “...Actually, that explains a few things”)

Gojo doesn't have a god complex, but I wouldn't blame him if he did. I mean, he might as well be the closest thing to god human beings have ever seen. He used to put himself above everyone else, when he was a teenager. He thought that, the higher he was, the more he could do. And no one was better than him. But not Suguru. Back then, it wasn't “I'm the strongest” it was “We're the strongest and “We're the best” and “We're the ones that will beat you” and “We're the duo” and it was all about “us, us, us, us, us” instead of “me, me, me, me” like people thought it was — they were a pair. They still are

We know people thought and still think of Gojo as a weapon. As something that must be controlled, because on the moment he decides he doesn't want to be around them anymore, he could just straight up kill then without any effort (but getting rid of people in positions of power only gets other people in positions of power and it'll be a neverending story, and Gojo knows this so he's trying to do his best to fix it all through the younger generation, by letting them live). And we also know that Suguru is one of the very few people who did not believe that at all

Like their personalities and characters and stories and literally everything, their names complement each other. Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru are such similar names, I get them mixed up all the time (the amount of times I've called them “Gojo Suguru” and “Geto Satoru” is embarassing. Also, “Saturu”. “Goto”. “Gejo”. Ugh). Both of their last names start with a G, end with an O and have 4 letters. Both of their given names start with an S, end with an U and have 6 letters. They complement each other. They need each other

The only times we've seen Gojo with an expression of actual pure, raw emotion is when it's about Geto. When he finds out about what Geto did, when he realizes how thin and wrong Geto looks, when he sees him again for what we assume to be the first time in years, when he dies, when a thing wearing his corpse and using his voice greets him (“Yo, Satoru!” oh my god)

Suguru was able to fight back when in Kenjaku's control after Satoru said his name. Kenjaku himself says that had never happened before

And you don't even have to see them as romantic. You don't have to ship them if you don't want to. But you can't deny that they care about each other more than they will ever care about anyone else

[sewermageboy]

I think one thing that BG3 has really helped me consciously embrace is how shitty and rude and sometimes borderline evil characters can be, and that that doesn't take away my enjoyment of them. I don't need to moralize their actions or opinions, I don't need to ignore them. Astarion is a fucking asshole, he's racist, he's selfish, and yet he's one of my favorite characters of all time, partly because of how complex he is, and how much nuance he was given.

Like, retroactively, now that I'm back on my Dragon Age bullshit, I think I downplayed a lot of the negative aspects of Anders in the past, bc the debate around him is so heated, and there's almost that expectation of "if you like him that means you think he did nothing wrong ever" and "if you think he was wrong/cruel/whatever that means you must hate him."

But no. He's an absolute asshole to Fenris and Merrill, he's downright cruel in some of the comments he makes in party banter. Blowing up the Chantry stoked distrust and hostility towards mages across Thedas, and exacerbated the violence that came during the mage-templar war. And yet, it's understandable why he got to that point, why he felt it was the only thing he could do. He's cruel and obsessive, but he's also kind and selfless and loving, and that makes him so complex and multifaceted!

Anyway, the DA Fandom has this tendency to have everyone justify their enjoyment of a character according to both in-world and out-of-world politics, and BG3 with all its fucked up, flawed and lovable characters really helped me to consciously divorce myself from that.

[electricbathsalt]

HELLO HI YOU MENTIONED CHISAKI HAVING A COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP WITH HUMANITY AND I AM HERE TO HAPPY RANT ABOUT IT

it's like 2:30am and i should have gone to bed a while ago so this is gonna be a lil incoherent probably but anyways. yes. 100% yes i love that. i have so many ideas bouncing around my head about chisaki not being human, or like getting some secondary quirk in a secondary quirk wave that *makes* him (in his eyes) less than/not quite human, and also i sometimes use it/its pronouns for him because Reasons (i am projecting my own use of it/its onto him), and I also headcanon him as a) FtMtX (third gender/maverique), b) aroallo and gay and romance-repulsed, and c) autistic + low emotional empathy, and all of those things would 100% play into having a complicated and not-entirely-positive relationship with humanity in general (and his own humanity!) ESPECIALLY given that he spent formative years in the yakuza, which is bound to be a wildly conservative organization and an environment EXTREMELY hostile to several of those core immutable traits. ykno?

anyways you mentioned him having a complex relationship to other people/humans and humanity in general like he doesn't consider himself one so that's what prompted this. also please rant back i want to hear e v e r y t h i n g

Oh my god oh my god YES!! Okay I actually just woke up (yes my sleep schedule is fucked rn) so this is most definitely not gonna be coherent either buuut bro that is SO SIMILAR TO EXACTLY WHAT I WAS THINKINGGG

Okay this is by far the most difficult topic for me to try to articulate/explain bc I don’t really know how to, but I will try my damndest!! Yes. I think Chisaki has a very, very complicated relationship with both his own humanity and humanity as whole, in the way that he like. Does not view himself as human, and does not think of humans as the same as him, because they are on, like, separate playing fields. It’s not that he necessarily thinks of everyone else as worthless, or that he’s above them inherently (unequal)—he believes himself to be in a sort of limbo. He is neither worthless nor worthy. He is not human, therefore he cannot adhere to the same principles and standards of humanity. He is not human, and that is why he is never treated like one.

I think he subconsciously detached himself from it. He hated how the one person he (subconsciously) thought would one day view him as human and accept him, called him a monster and outcast him, like everyone else. The one person who showed him kindness with no catch (in his mind, because… yikes). That’s when he fully accepted that he’ll never be seen as human, that he is not human, and will never be treated like something with value/emotion, like something mortal and thinking and multi-dimensional, which is why he finally decided to just take matters into his own hands, with no regard to anything else. Why follow the morals of humans if he is not one? You don’t expect a wild animal not to maul you. Because for an animal, it is necessary. There’s no malice. They hunt and kill you because they need to eat and feed and protect. Is that not him? Is he not doing all this out of necessity? To keep himself and his family alive?

(Although, he doesn’t perceive himself as an animal. Just as not human). He believes he can’t be human. He believes he can no longer allow himself to be human anyway, because being human is too large an obstacle to his goals. He has to be a monster.

And kinda on the side of how he perceives other humans—it’s like, he’s more vital than them to the plan (which is the most important thing in the world), so he is above them in the way they are pawns whereas the plan cannot happen without him and Eri. But it’s dependent on his quirk, bc without his quirk, he is no longer Overhaul, who is the one who is vital to the plan; he is just Chisaki Kai. Chisaki Kai was not vital to anything and was just some not-really-human with a debt to pay off. Chisaki Kai is not worthwhile. Chisaki Kai is below other, real humans. So it’s split—Overhaul is above everyone else (in importance, in the fact he is not human. He is a monster). Chisaki Kai is below everyone else (he is indebted and clinging to the dregs of humanity he wants to have). The common ground is that both Overhaul and Chisaki Kai are inhuman accessories to the Shie Hassaikai. The Shie Hassaikai is more important than them.

He does not yearn to be human, he yearns for the casual acceptance and belonging that comes alongside being human. Humans have never treated him like how they treat other humans. He is not human.

Uggfhhhh I can’t tell if I’m explaining this exactly how I mean it. My vocabulary is just lacking I fear 😭 I have trouble streamlining my thoughts a lot. I feel like I have more to say but no way to properly express it, I guess. Also all your headcanons are extremely real and definitely add onto this/play a part in it!! I cannot imagine that the Yakuza would be all that accepting/an at all safe environment (ah. Well. That’s not true bc I have lol. I don’t like making sad stories 💀 but in canon… definitely not. Especially with Pops’ apparent falling-out with his daughter over her marriage 😒).

I don’t know if this all is what you had in mind or not but I think it has at least some semblance to what I think some of his mindsets are. My brain is a lil fried though. Also please please please elaborate. On everything. I wanna hear all your takes

[dykesynthezoid]

Literally would rather dieee than be a dropout fan on twitter and some of you are bringing that dumb bullshit here too. You are so mind poisoned by online “activism” it’s insane. “Every brand I know needs to make a performative statement Right Now or I’m going to assume they’re evil.” Do you actually fucking care about Palestinians? Seriously. Look me in the eye. How does this help anyone in Gaza? Why the fuck would the random personal statement of an extremely small, niche American streaming company with a vast majority leftist audience actually help? Hello? HELLOOO? Or are we going to say the quiet part out loud and confirm you only care about “testing” them bc their ceo is Jewish.

Do you think the people in Gaza struggling to survive right now are going “Maybe if this one obscure online streaming service from the states speaks out, then there’ll be a ceasefire.” Like are you for real? Pressuring Dropout into a statement is clearly not for Palestinians. It’s for you. So you can assuage whatever guilt you can’t manage to swallow down about being an American citizen at the moment. Because if you can pressure other people into “performing” activism correctly, maybe you’ll feel a little better about your own privilege. Well it’s shitty. And it’s not helpful. You aren’t changing the world by bullying a small entertainment company on twitter. It’s not about activism. It’s about you taking advantage of a horrifying situation to gleefully inflict any social power and control you can on the people around you.

“Your silence is deafening” I think some of us could stand to shut the fuck up sometimes actually, cause what I’m hearing seems to often be whole lot of bullshit and misinformation and half-baked opinions from people who know almost nothing about Palestine’s situation and can only even pretend to understand it by making completely inappropriate and inaccurate comparisons to events more relevant to your specific American experience, because god forbid we not center our Western perspective when people elsewhere in the world are dying. (That’s without getting into the fact that you all can’t respect Jewish grief to save your goddamn lives and can’t hold space for anyone to have a remotely complex emotion over such a devastating issue bc you’re more concerned with moral purity and making yourself look like a “good activist” than you are about actually helping anyone).

[likegemstone]

I spent several years so afraid that my writing might offend/hurt someone that even thinking about writing would cause intense anxiety and I simply didn't write for years. It even got to the point where I very rarely *read* anything because reading made me want to write, and that triggered anxiety.

When I finally started to write again (bc it's in my fucken DNA and I just. can't not tell stories) I had to tell myself that I was never going to let ANYONE read what I was working on, and I probably wouldn't even ever reread it myself. That was the only way I could get myself to relax enough to tell the story.

Writing/telling stories is how I have always processed and understood the world—all the messy, nuanced, confusing, painful, fucked up parts of the human experience. Stories are the only real way I've ever been able to connect to people in a meaningful way.

And for those years I wasn't writing, I honestly just wasn't processing my emotions, my experiences, my thoughts and opinions. Every confusing or painful or complex feeling or experience I had was utterly overwhelming. I slowly began to isolate myself more and more from everything because it was just too much.

In my attempt to make sure I never ever hurt anyone, I was slowly killing myself.

I have all this anger now. Anger aimed at the situations and relationships in my childhood that made me have such intense reactions to upsetting someone, at the spaces I was in leading up to this isolation that were so clique-y and judgmental and virtue signal-y that made me so convinced that any move I might make would be "problematic," and mostly at Me for letting this happen. For closing myself off and letting the world keep moving and growing while I sat there and just. rotted.

Even now that I'm writing again and even sharing my work, I catch myself sometimes watering Her Broken Magic down, to make it more palatable, less messy. I've done edits to tone down the characters' personalities to make them more "likable." And I'm pissed about that—that I've been made to feel like I have to, but also that I did it at all. HBM certainly still pushes the envelope in many ways, but it would be a much more brutal beast if I wasn't keeping its reins so taut.

It's fucking exhausting spending my life walking on eggshells. It's not sustainable. I will always be sensitive and arguably over-empathetic, I will always try to uphold my morals, be respectful and understanding, and I'll always feel awful any time I hurt someone. But I've had to accept that the only way to completely avoid hurting anyone is to not exist. To never have existed.

But I exist, and I don't want to be ashamed of that anymore.

[the-crow-binary]

Im quite curious about your opinion on the portrayal of the french revolution; I know it was a super complicated political moment with multiple fronts from the commoners wanting better life conditions, the bourgeoisie wanting to get the nobility out of the way (which it's part as to why it cant be directly translated into 21'st century american capitalism analogy 🙄), how multiple nobles supported the revolution for moral values despite going against their families interests (bc social class influences but doesnt instantly determines your morals) and that many revolutionary groups supported the independence of Haití (heck, many members of my countries independence participated and almost got beheaded in the resulting mess. And ad hundred and something years later France would try to invade us lol). What im trying to say behind my ramble here (sorry for that lol) its that im sure nfcv made it a slavery bad black ppl vs white ppl american dilemma without getting into the complexity of it and i say this as a foreigner with basic history knowledge, so i do wanna see your take on it

Which portrayal of the French Revolution? 🙃

I swear this very important Historical event that affected not just France but all of continental Europe and is considered as one of the world's biggest events was just used as background for the characters to fight and be racist. The characters keep throwing around the word "revolution" from all sides, but we don't see shit. Maria gives context in the first episode (there's a revolution, they overthrown the monarchy and declared a republic, they arrested the king...), talking to a group of revolutionaries, and from then on the story could've literally taken place in an imaginary country with imaginary politics it would've been the same.

Oh, what am I saying, there IS one thing. Our motto. 🙃"Liberty, equality, fraternity" 🙃 Yeah it has been thrown here and there... Except that it wasn't our official motto yet. We had the notion of liberty and equality, sometimes fraternity, and it was in the middle of other words such as "friendship", "sincerity", "charity" and "union". There is some people and even some books who used this motto but it was abandoned then taken back later... Just this is a mess lmao but the point is. I cringed everytime the characters screamed "Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!". And while we're on the subject, Richter, at some point, meets three girls during a festival (I suspect one of the girls to be Marianne, who wasn't a real person but the symbol of Liberty) talking about dressing up as Liberty and Equality and Fraternity. And Richter, thinking he is so smart, say that you need to be a man to dress up as Fraternity, because it means "brotherhood" (and the girls go "sisternity then" and don't correct him). Oh, and the writers clearly thought it was very clever too, since later on Annette's teacher (and even the Messiah I think??) will ALSO talk about the motto, saying "liberty, equality, brotherhood". IT DOESN'T MEAN "BROTHERHOOD". I MEAN IT CAN. BUT IN THIS CASE IT MEANS "FRATERNITY". IT'S A TERM TO TALK ABOUT A BOND EXISTING BETWEEN PEOPLE CONSIDERED AS MEMBERS OF THE HUMAN FAMILY. AKA IT CONCERNS EVERYONE. YOU ARE NOT CLEVER, AMERICAN WRITERS.

Also I thought a fucking festival at a time like that where people dress up at the concepts of our not-exactly-official-motto-yet was stupid, and it is. There was no such festival, however, we did have the "cult of the reason". To put it simply: it was a serie of events and civic holidays wich were organized by a group of atheists. In it there WAS an event called "Fete of the Reason"... Where one ACTOR dressed up as Liberty. It was NOT multiple people representing liberty, equality or fraternity.

The fun fact is, the French Revolution was a pretty good occasion for NFCV to promote it's CHURCH BAD mentality. We were taking away the church's power, more people became atheists, anti-christian vandalism and blasphemy was actually encouraged, it was a mess. Paris even ordered to shut down churches at some point, wich did not happen in the end. So yeah, this precise moment, right before the Vendée War, was perfect for the church-haters those writers are. And it ended up just being as bad as the original show, without any nuance... Ok there might be a little bit of nuance because of Mizrak, a guy who served the church and in the end actually team up with Richter and the gang, and it looks like he's there to stay. Emmanuel (the abbott) tries to be complex, but in the end, he is still a God-obsessed man that makes terrible decisions and is not a good representation for the church. So okay, it might be a BIT better than the original show thanks to Mizrak, but it's not saying much.

Another thing. Only the main characters are shown to have a dislike for the church. We don't see ANY of the french people doing anything against the church (but we do hear the church complaining about the revolutionaries, tell don't show y'know), not even talk about it. It's mostly jokes about how haha priests are sexual predators/they can't keep it in their pants (with the occasional "it exploits the people and take their money" line, and by occasionnal I mean once). There IS a few shades thrown at God here and there, honestly I didn't bother remembering the exact lines because they are so cliché and really not that deep. I think Maria is the one complaining the most.

What angers me the most is the lack of ANY ACTION FROM THE FRENCH PEOPLE. It's like nothing is actually happening except vampire killing people and vampire hunting (wich begs the question: WHY bother making it happen during the FRENCH REVOLUTION?). Nocturne literally made the french people the side (oh what am I saying, the BACKGROUND) characters in their OWN REVOLUTION. AND ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS. WHAT THE FUCK. Maria is supposed to be a revolutionary leader but she doesn't lead anyone. We never see anyone do anything outside of the main characters. The french are literal planks, except from those three girls from the festival and villains, they don't even have a voice. At some point the vampire Messiah arrives in town, in plain view, and people are like "OUR SAVIOR IS HERE! OUR DELIVERER!" and I thought the people shouting were vampires, but no, there is humans TOO. ALL TOGETHER. And you have no idea how much I hate that they basically portray the french people as not doing shit and needing someone else to save them 🙃 To do things for them 🙃 And also. That that someone else is not even french themself. 🙃 Even without the Messiah... the revolutionaries we saw were led by Richter (romanian/american/british idk at this point), Annette (Haitian, even if Saint-Domingue was owned by France at the time), Tera (Russian) and, of course, Maria, who's both Russian and French, at least. Those four were doing most of the work while the french people were in their houses cooking baguettes, I guess. And by "work" I mean fighting vampires and night creatures, there was nothing done about the Revolution. Almost like there is NO REASON TO MAKE A CV SHOW ABOUT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Oh and I just HAVE to talk to you about Saint-Domingue, and the BLACK PEOPLE ARE OPPRESSED theme going on with Annette. And that's when I'll have to take out this magnificent dialogue again:

"Even these french with their high ideas, what do they know about we've suffered? And what do they care? They're building new world, but it won't be freedom, or equality or brotherhood for US"

This is said by Annette's teacher. Worth to note that before that, in episode 3, she also shat on the French revolution and our motto. Basically, the show portray the French Revolution as being one thing and the slaves in Saint-Domingue having their own other revolution. And not just that, it implies that the French did not care about slaves, and that they do not know what suffering is (yeah, people just start revolutions because they feel like it y'know 🙃). And the anti-white dialogues are portrayed as normal and are even applauded, btw. And it is BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULLSHIT. MY FUCKING GOD. OH THIS SHOW MAKE ME SO ANGRY.

First off: Only the colonies were pro-slavery. The french pretty much weren't. A "Society of friends of black people" was even created in France in 1788 to fight for the abolition of slavery. People fought for black people's rights during the French Revolution. Books written by black people to join the fight came out. The French Revolution scared the colonies who were very against losing their slaves and it led to Haiti's own revolution (slaves rebelling, killing their owners, burning the plantations... Nocturne at least got that part right). So both revolutions are very closely linked and the slaves might not have rebelled at this point if it wasn't for the French Revolution threatening Saint-Domingue's economics and creating social upheavals.

And what does those shitty american writers remember? BLACK PEOPLE OPPRESSED. BLACK PEOPLE SUFFERED SO MUCH MORE THAN EVERYONE ELSE. LOOK AT THESE POOR BLACK PEOPLE. WHITE PEOPLE ARE SO POWERFUL. THE FRENCH ARE UNGRATEFUL ACTUALLY. BLACK CHARACTER IS RIGHT TO SHIT ON THE WHITE FRENCH WHO DON'T CARE ABOUT THEM.

FUCK.

Oh, and I mentioned the Vendée War earlier... So, fun fact, during the revolution, we have what we call "la Terreur". It's a pretty gruesome period of time during the Revolution that caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people. La Terreur happened from 1793 to 1794. So one year after this first season of Nocturne. 🙃 I'm just saying. It wouldn't surprise me if they used this for season 2. 🙃(I literally do not trust them)

And the vampires... Look the vampires have their own can of worms that I'm not motivated enough to open. I'll just say that, of course, in classic NFCV fashion, the message the show is trying to pass is not subtle at all. They're just evil. All of them. All of the french nobles. Evil evil EVIL EVIL!! NUANCE AND COMPLEXITY ARE FOR PUSSIES.

Also the count of Vaublanc? Annette's ex-owner? This guy existed. And he never owned slaves. He was pretty pro-royalty, at some point he voted against slavery, then later voted in favor of it... but he did not own slaves. But honestly I don't care about that guy much, I just wanted to show that NFCV really doesn't care about nuance. Everything has to be black or white (lol) and that's why we have no human nobility in Nocturne.

Urgh. UUUUUURGH. I SWEAR WATCHING THIS SHOW WAS A PAIN AND THE MORE I THINK ABOUT IT THE MORE PAINFUL IT BECOMES. THERE IS SO MUCH GOING ON IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND NFCV IS DOING JACKSHIT WITH IT. I MEAN IT'S SO MUCH FUNNIER TO SHIT ON THE BELMONT CLAN AND SHOW TIDDIES TO MAKE THE FANS HORNY.

So, my opinion on the portrayal of the French Revolution: CREATE YOUR OWN FICTIONAL REVOLUTION NEXT TIME AND LEAVE THE HISTORY OF MY COUNTRY ALONE.

[diamondcitydarlin]

I was in the critical tag just because I'm genuinely curious/fascinated by the way these people are processing the text and I know I've said this before but I'm gonna do it again; like, I get that in a lot of fandoms and subject materials we can easily pick out villains and heroes, the morally-pure (bc their actions are always justified by the narrative regardless) from the morally reprehensible and we can conclude from these themes that the villains/morally-bankrupt ones deserve nothing while the 'good ones' (arguable, in a lot of cases, but they're usually conventionally hot and/or digestible so they can't really be bad lmao) deserve everything and while that is to be debated in other places, OFMD esp in this latest season is showing itself to not be one of those narratives. OFMD is a story where flawed, sympathetic people do fucked up things, act rashly, hurt each other, destroy things, etc, and then we watch them have to work their way back from that. I know we have had some one-off villains that don't qualify for this, but for everyone within the main cast that seems to be the concept. If you're trying to figure out why one member of the main cast is just too icky to be entitled to the acceptance of the rest you're already missing the entire point. If you're also trying to figure out why your fave is too precious to be held accountable for the things they chose to do, you're missing the entire point. If you think just one character is having a redemption arc here, YOU'RE MISSING THE ENTIRE POINT (they ALL are actually). And more to the point, if you're looking for any of this to actually happen in this particular story then I think you're watching the wrong show. I really, really do. And I'm also going to go so far as to say I think a lot of people are intentionally misreading these themes, projecting their own hopes on to it, saying Izzy's story 'doesn't feel good' or 'doesn't make sense' because the idea that people can be flawed, make mistakes, hurt each other and still be deserving of love and acceptance throws too much of a curveball at their already very limited world view, one in which there are only 'good guys' and 'bad guys', one in which they are indisputably 'good guys' themselves who have never done anything bad ever (even though you definitely have, we ALL have, YOU HAVE HURT PEOPLE, I HAVE HURT PEOPLE, GROW UP AND REALIZE YOU CAN'T LIVE AN ENTIRE LIFE WITHOUT DOING IT AT SOME POINT).

This is a story of acceptance and forgiveness and the moral greyness in us all, not exclusion and punishment, not the hopelessly simplistic idea that the world is just made up of good people who should never be questioned and always get good things and bad people who have no more nuance than just being bad and getting punished for it. Like, can we please try to wrap our minds around more complex themes than that maybe? Can it possibly be true that Izzy and Ed (the two most often compared) are both deserving of love, acceptance and forgiveness? Can it possibly be true that there's more to these characters than just good vs evil? Must we deny these characters the nuance and complexity that's been given to them just because 'it doesn't feel good'? Like idk babe maybe sometimes stories aren't meant to make you 'feel good' all the time, maybe sometimes they're meant to take you out of your comfort zone and examine your own worldview once and awhile IDK IT'S A FUCKING THOUGHT

[cerseiwexler]

For whichever of your babies you feel like infodumping about most -- [4] How physically and emotionally affectionate they are? [13] What kind of sense of humor do they have, if any? [29] How do they deal with loss, stress and anger? [33] What are one of their fondest and most treasured memories?

HMM let’s do myrei!!!

4. extremely… i just talked abt this in the tags of another post a bit sry for being repetitive but she’s pathologically unable to be normal about someone lol. if she’s a hater the hate runs through to her core, but if she loves someone she’ll lavish them in affection and attention to whatever degree they can tolerate (and sometimes even more). she’s a big hugger, a big cuddler, a big forehead smoocher. HOWEVER. the mushy stuff is mostly in private. in some cases that’s bc it has to be lol ~*forbidden love*~ but in other cases her affection for her family, friends, and lovers just manifests in a different way — ironclad loyalty, backing her loved ones up unconditionally. which is important for morale once they have to go to war lol

13. she loves to laugh! her sense of humor is somewhat dry in a lannister-typical way, and a little bawdy. having so many kids also gives her an appreciation for the deeply silly things they can do and say when they’re young and still figuring out the world lol.

29. not well!!! loss utterly devastates her, she gets physical pains from the emptiness left behind and sort of oscillates between being overcome with emotion and numb. and sometimes really pissed off at this turn of fate. it makes her short-sighted. stress she tries to tamp down by overcompensating w/ an aggressive version of optimism, like (grits teeth) i am gonna be fucking happy if it’s the last thing i do. it doesn’t always work so well and often stresses her out even more when the happiness doesn’t come so easily. and anger makes her violent 💀 rarely does she act on it but she has a sick mind about her enemies. some of them deserve it! some of them don’t. when she does act on it, it tends to be in a less spectacular way than she fantasizes about.

33. she treasures a lot of childhood memories from before joanna died — they all have this warm golden haze over them. definitely a bit of rose-colored nostalgia glasses going on there, but it was a more peaceful time than she comes to be used to in life, and it was before she developed all her complexes (she only developed some of them lol). an easy to idealize time, yk.

[night-dark-woods]

YESSS another person out there who reads Mara Sov as autistic!

YES YES YES hope its ok i answer this publically if not not ill delete it as an ask and just post it BUT she is sooooo very much autistic to me like. i love her sooooo much and thats a huge huge part of it ESPECIALLY bc she gets to be SO delightfully complex and morally gray and a deeply sympathetic character who still is a bit of a horrible person sometimes which just ISNT something we GET a lot as autistic ppl like. augh!!! mara sov was constructed in a lab for me to care about.

anyway im not citing stuff bc im on mobile and copypasting to the tumblr app is Hell but i have fully read the marasenna like 4 times in the last 2 months so this is going to be rambly as all hell but:

-talk about fucking black and white morality. going back to earth is the Right Thing To Do and she will absolutely condemn* her entire colony ship to mortality for that.

-her conviction that she knows secrets and things no one else knows, that she is always in control in a way others arent, and her Need for that to be true, and her sense of herself as separate/better/other/above the rest and having a connection to a deeper knowledge. i feel like theory of mind gets tossed around as a dsm checkbox without people like. fully understanding the nuances of it.

-relatedly her... mercenary? approach to the social interactions and relationships she has (and her utter panic and confusion when she cannot use her models that she has, eg sjur). like she may not be able to Feel what other people feel but she can certainly pattern-match and manipulate.

-her absolutely oversized eldest daughter & gifted kid syndrome taken to absolutely absurd extremes (thanks osana and alis li!) bc of what authority figures told her to be true about herself at 19. (one of the times she had to dramatically readjust her model of How Social Interactions Work- the concept that how she is perceived is Her Responsibility which she immediately internalizes as Law). ALSO osana saying that mara never wanted to be her daughter like. ok we get it ur kid is strange and acts "older than her age" and is more self-possessed than a child her age should be except when shes not.

-god just. honestly everything about how shes written. idr if u have read seth dickinson's published books (the traitor baru cormorant) but baru from those books is SO SO SO similar like. ruthless in that the ends justify absolutely any means, self-centered, brilliant with a massive blindspot where it comes to emotions, manipulative bc she relies on a carefully constructed understanding of how social interactions work, most importantly disastrously world-shatteringly gay.

also i feel like part of it is that a lot of the traits and things that make me read mara as autistic are like... internal experience traits that arent easily recognizable by allistic ppl bc they dont Have a recognizably autistic-specific external manifestation and instead come off as like. being a bitch or selfish or stuck up or cold or Whatever. but are like immediately viscerally recognizable if u experience things the same way.

maybe at some point ill make an Actual Post abt mara sov, the travelers most autistic creature. but so much of it is Unexplainable Vibes. if u kno u kno. also thank u for sending this ask and giving me a chance to talk abt mara i love her SO much.

*i dont believe immortality is inherently good, so i dont think it was condemning is like, the right word, but in context of how characters see it.

[bloody-wonder]

Hi! I might be wrong about this so I'm sorry if I am but I think I remember a while ago on an ask about captive prince, I think you said something along the lines of the development of the main characters growing to love each other felt rushed? Or unrealistic or there was unsolved issues or something? Anyway, u said after that that u would rlly wanna read an enemies to lovers story where the ppl in the ship have done rlly horrible things to each other but yet the relationship can develop and it can be healthy and feel realistic. (I'm paraphrasing here sorry) ANYWAY, the real question I have is- is there a limit to the horrible things they could do? Like, is there a point where u think no matter how good the writing there is just no way of coming back from that and it being okay?

i don’t know?

i can’t say for sure until i read it bc that’s exactly the point - i want the author to convince me that this relationship could work. and i think many fictional relationships where people have hurt each other previously could work bc people change and forgiveness exists - but i believe in order for that to feel plausible and authentic the author should not rely on any romance tropes at all. bc many of those are problematic in itself and when you apply them to an “unconventional” relationship it only makes it worse.

which i believe is exactly the problem with capri - it’s a very compelling relationship story that’s trapped within the confines of the romance genre. and it’s a problem idk how to fix bc it being an enemies to lovers romance and relying on so many familiar tropes is exactly why so many people like it. you read it and you want laurent and damen to resolve their issues and get together, plausibility be damned, bc that’s what the story structure wants you to want in order to satisfy your expectations in the end. except i didn’t really feel satisfied and for a long time i thought that was bc cs pacat failed to convince me with how their relationship progressed in the second half of book three (bc it does feel very gradual and organic until everything makes a u-turn when jokaste appears). but recently i’ve realized that it’s only partly her fault bc she was just writing a romance and a romance has to have a happy ending with heroes ending up together unambiguously - otherwise it’s just another kind of story with a romance subplot. so in the end, unless you are willing to suspend your disbelief entirely, the way laurent and damen end up together with all their conflicts seemingly resolved, all their trauma “healed by Love” doesn’t feel authentic at all - especially in damen’s case.

that being said, when i look back on all the “problematic” ships i’ve ever liked i can see that with most of them i just had this vague desire for the characters to get together but i never thought about how their relationship would work after that and certainly not about whether it would be “healthy”. this is just not something i’m interested in in fiction. i wish everyone a nice boring healthy (whatever that means) relationship irl but as for fiction i like drama. (andreil is once again very much an exception bc nora is an aroace genius who said “fuck romance tropes”). i like insurmountable conflicts and intense, sometimes even toxic relationships. i like characters hurting each other, trying to forgive and failing and trying once again. i like forgiveness as a theme in general bc that’s something i struggle with irl and so i’m interested in deconstructing the christian dogma of forgiveness being the answer to everything and in exploring whether some realtionships could work without the characters forgiving each other. i like when love and hatred are presented as two sides of the same coin and when the character has an existential crisis about having fallen in love with the only wrong person. 

usually î want to experience this fictional Drama much more than i want the reassurance that the characters will have a healthy loving relationship in post-canon bc they are fictional, they are here to entertain me and that’s what i happen to find entertaining. when i ship characters that have hurt each other very badly i’m not necessarily looking for whatever scenario would be the “healthiest” - i’m looking for the one that would satisfy me personally the most.

[theghostofashton]

.

[dreadfutures]

(edit: while I am sometimes critical of Bioware please do not tag this post with Bioware critical or negativity related to Bioware, it frustrates me to see it in my notifications! I do think a set up like this is entirely within the realm of possibility given the previous and current writing teams. and I wrote this post specifically because I think it's a logical way for them to resolve it as game developers. Be kind or shut up.)

i’m imagining that solas and our pc will be chasing after a mcguffin and have to face down mythal or someone who also wants the mcguffin

have to team up with solas for that fight

at the end of the fight solas has been watching our PC’s choices through the game or whatever and silently approving/disapproving

and either he reaches the mcguffin first or lets you have it depending on if he thinks you’re worthy

and cedes the choice about the future to you.

that feels sufficiently complex about his character, empathy, morally ambiguous and shitty for the PC, like a good game choice. But also leaves the game with a neat way to funnel you into one of two different world states in the aftermath.

like maybe he looks at all the blood on his hands and decides he’s crossed the moral event horizon and you’re a paragon, you’re a no one and you’ve done so much good bc it’s what matters, and he thinks that no, the Inquisitor was right... he doesn’t deserve to make the choice for the world.

and you get to make the choice between the fate of the world.

or maybe he looks at your jackass PC and goes, “this vindicates me, I’m doing it myself” -- unless your Inquisitor had high approval with him, in which case, maybe he stays his hand but condescends your PC and says it’s for the Inquisitor instead

or maybe he looks at your jackass PC after your jackass Inquisitor and says fuck it. let it all burn.

and even in the best case scenario, where Solas decides it’s not his choice, or even that it’s no one’s choice, maybe, that burden still falls on your poor PC and why is it up to them? whichever way you choose a world dies, just like In Hushed Whispers. you and your PC would still have to live with that.

[starvels]

Thoughts on the blindspot that Steve can get, where he has a hard time seeing that Tony is having a hard time. And if it’s because of wishful thinking, stubborn refusal to accept the reason Tony isn’t doing well, situational blindness, or a flat out denial, does them getting together actually fix it? Or is Steve’s willingness to take Tony at his word and Tony’s tendency to downplay any troubles he’s having continue the habit?

mm this is some good thinky thoughting, my nonny nectarine. here are my thoughts, coming from the background of: i know and love someone i would say is quite like how i characterize steve - in anger and in belief in other folks and in tenacity to a moral stance or cause.

steve is complex and thinks he's not.

so as a short answer to your question, it's a mix of a lot of things, i think, yeah! most of the things you listed! his brain works very fast and his emotions come to him a month and a half too late. (tony's brain and emotions work at the same speed. chaos, my poor meow meow, etc), so there's always steve being like, you're my partner, we're in this together, look how good we are doing in the team, in small moments, etc. he's headstrong and narrowly focused when on a mission, professional or otherwise.

not to quote myself but, he doesn't recognize how wildly he swings to balance his own beliefs.

i don't know that canonically we are still at 'steve's willingness to take tony at his word,' because i think there's been a lot of doubting it and like all relationships, the amount you're willing to take someone's word really does depend on their consistency and reliability in the most pertinent past.

but steve does accept generally take tony's word and tony does generally downplay his troubles.

why?

bc i think sometimes it genuinely doesn't occur to steve that tony is doing unwell lol. i think steve wants to believe in the best in tony, even when he doesn't, he wants to. he's very unbiased about this guy, has too many pent up thoughts and lifetimes of history and that colors his ability to objectively be like is it logical that tony is doing good rn?

and tony puts up a good front and steve's hypocritical enough to be like?? 'why would you put up a front if you feel bad, just be honest.' and when tony is like 'i don't know' it means, last time i tried to tell you i wasn't doing well it came out all garbled because i wanted to choke the words out of my own throat for having the weakness to try and speak them and also you didn't want to hear it, you think the world should have the knees you do - to get up and get up and get up but not everyone has knees and not everyone lives on stable ground.

so i think tony says that he's doing okay, NOT in a lying sense (it's not really lying to him! i could write an essay on this) but in a HOPEFUL sense. in a - if steve believes in me and believes me here maybe i can channel that belief and i can then make that a reality, i can be that, be okay, i'm good at turning dreams into circuit boards, i'm good at routing my energy, right, right?

and steve actually believes him on almost the same level - i want to believe him, i want him to do well, the world is such a better place for the goodness of tony stark, my world is such a better place, he's strong i know he is, he knows i hate lying, he likes being believed in by me, i should believe him, i know him, he's surely doing well, right, right?

which is literally the same coin.

(sidenote for steve also has a lot of fucked up internalizations about ableism and labor capacity and work ethic and mental health and PTSD. he's often projecting because it's his ~defense mechanism)

but yeah, real eyes realize real lies ! steve and tony's problems aren't as a result of them being too dissimilar, it's as a result of them being too similar!

this would not change with them being in a relationship together, because being in a romantic relationship only strengthens the ways in which you want your partner to be well, to succeed and to be honest with you in the doing of it. but i do think if they were entering the relationship genuinely looking for it to last it would become evident quickly that they can't do that without working on their similar, burning instinct to give each other what want. and they would genuinely have to face the ways in which that instinct leads to their own individual and their combined detriment.

i wrote a line about it in are we satellites? that i always always think about:

Their problems have always been here, not in the ocean breaks where their lives and loves and morals meet up, but in the shore tide where tiny difference in their density intensities build them to choking foam.

the ocean is the ocean, even at different densities, but when the ocean meets the earth, how it behaves is entirely different - particle to particle, even as it stays strong and salty.

[madsexcellency]

Its so interesting hyperfixating on hannibal while indulging in some stranger things ships because harringrove is so controversial. I mean it makes sense, its not healthy. But like after months of cannibal romance and exhaustively dark and twisted metaphors for love, harringrove is not as bad as it could be. Like. fuck, hannibal and will nearly killed each other several fucking times. They put each other in jail and gaslight the fuck out of each other and it did really well! Gay ppl (me ha) ate that shit UP. Hargrove kinda shoves him and beats him up for (what looked like) kidnapping his sister (ngl steve didnt really look all that innocent then tbh). Like get steve to shove him around a few times and call it even.... Even Steven, Ha!

The D brothers set Billy up for a redemption arc. I mean they kinda fridged him for Max but still. He is a complex character full of flaws and tragedies and heartbreaks. As a writer i find it interesting and challenging to find a way to believably write a character arc where he grows as a person. As a reader i love watching character slowly subtly change naturally throughout a compelling story. In terms of fanfiction Billy Hargrove is a gold mine for good story potential. The duffer brothers know this bc he was and still is the at the center of major plot points. The man is an angst magnet.

Also, yeah, you're valid if you hate Billy bc its implied he is racist. Thats a very valid reason not to like him. As a queer poc living in this world fucking every day its nice sometimes to imagine that maybe people can change and be beautiful. Im willing to invest emotional energy into that because the only alternative is believing the world will never change.

ALSO key point: unhealthy dynamics in stories are always more entertaining when the lovers have equal power against each other. Makes it more interesting (and complex) and honestly a lot less likely that your readers will get that bad taste in their mouths and stop reading it.

Tldr; Billy is fucked up but people get a kick of out fucked up shit. (And racism is bad. good for you if you can maintain a moral compass without getting depressed im really jealous of you/gen)

[darlington-v]

I know different interpretations of a work are generally enriching and cool... but c!dream villan interpretations is like how to tell me you only watch Tommy without saying you only watch tommy.... which would be fine but its not a great place to be making statements about the whole nature of the dsmp lol

Wild speculation, but sometimes I wonder if like, because the dsmp didn't really start as a narrative, and a lot of fans don't nessecarily enter it expecting a narrative, but then there is one and the fandom is really discourse heavy and everyone is sort of excpeted to have an opinion while maybe not expecting to form one from the begining or not having a ton of experience with narrative in a way that would "expect" them to have an opinion or not take things at face value??, I don't know if I explained that well at all... and I don't really even think thats right nessecarily... but like wow sometimes some of the takes about power and government and villany...

Honestly, it makes sense!!!

I think something interesting is like.... looking at how animatics have shaped the like tone and culture of the fandom essentially. Like, an interesting fact that I didn't really fully grasp until SUPER recently is like...

c!Wilbur out the gate admits he is manipulating c!Tommy. Like his first youtube video on the Dream SMP he admits his goal is to manipulate c!Tommy and people like c!Tommy into helping him achieve a potion ("drug") empire to monopolize on potions because there were a lot of people on the server who like to min-max, which is to put all of your effort into this one specific skill essentially. so like... i know minecraft doesnt have a skill tree but if it did, it would be putting all your points into that one specific branch of a skill tree. So he wanted to exploit the labor of all the TommyInnits to.... maintain a Potion Empire.

THIS IS A LONG POST BC I GOT CARRIED AWAY SO BUCKLE UP

And I don't think a lot of the fandom who joined later on knows this. I certainly didn't until like a week or so ago? Like... I knew c!Wilbur had been manipulative from the start because I'm a mod of (shameless self promo incoming) @dsmpanalysis and we have a lot of different POVs in that mod team and discord and we talk about it really frequently. I joined the fandom as someone who was really big on L'manburg ESPECIALLY crimeboys, and have turned into.... *gestures vaguely to my blog*

And ngl I owe a lot of it to @1-michibiki-1 in terms of c!Dream "Apologism" but all of the mods there have expanded my thoughts and views on the storylines of this narrative.

My application consisted of like largely essays about like... how I think Dream was the villain but he was meant to be the villain because you don't get any insight into his character WHICH.... IS A FAIR ASSUMPTION AT FIRST GLANCE. People are easily villainized when you cannot get a glimpse into their thought process. It's easy to dwindle someone down into this flat character and starting out I knew Dream didn't stream the SMP on purpose.

And I personally came to the conclusion of "Oh! So Dream is supposed to be the villain." However as the story continued and I learned more about what Dream went through I began to realize that... it's more than likely a form of a red herring. My opinions on this were immediately solidified when I watched Ranboo's 2 MIL stream because both Ranboo AND Dream agree on enjoying red herrings.

There have been MANY times were Dream has said that c!Dream is a complex character and he's not a wholly evil guy and there have been times where the narrative has honestly just proved that.

Anyways, what's important though was that... I learned most of this from other people who were more focused on c!Dream rather than myself. Eventually I shifted from c!Tommy to c!Ranboo and c!Techno after c!Tommy betrayed c!Techno and I began to realize.... everything I learned before hopping in wasn't exactly what it seemed.

Part of this is because I'm older, I heavily identify with c!Techno's sense of loyalty and philosophies on government, but I especially identify with the anguish c!Techno voiced in... a lot of lore but especially the lore around Doomsday.

I'm not 16 anymore. I don't always feel wronged by adults, or older people in my case, whenever they absolutely have done something wrong by me, but I do feel wronged by my close friends. I also felt like c!Tommy's sense of loyalty didn't line up with mine after what felt like him constantly flip-flopping and refusing to understand c!Techno's morals on government didn't line up with his.

In short, it was easier to identify with Tommy in these animatics versus in the actual stream content because c!Tommy is played by a 16 year old. I'm not a teenager and my line of thinking doesn't entirely line up with people that age anymore. It's harder to place myself in the same shoes of someone's OC who is played closer to their actual age, because I'm not that age.

Regardless, I was still on the c!Dream is a villain train. I wasn't ever like... c!Dream is repulsive I hate him, but I was like omg hot villain lad go brrr.

Even when the first like... mellohi, panic room, Ranboo lore stream popped up I thought "Oh! c!Ranboo corruption arc?"

And I was excited because I really wanted this shy, nervous character to turn into villain buddies with his good pal c!Dream. I'm a total sucker for villains and corruption arcs and all that good shit.

SO I STARTED GETTING REALLY INTERESTED IN ENDERSMILE. I'VE BEEN ON ENDERSMILE SQUAD OUT THE GATE. NOT THE SAME WAY I AM NOW, BUT I'VE ALWAYS WANTED THEM TO TEAM UP.

So... upon not really keeping up with c!Dream and being relatively??? indifferent? I don't think I started arguments on c!Dream back then, but I might have. But I remember like... starting to participate more whenever c!Dream came up and looking more into Dream's character BUT ESPECIALLY TALKING WITH OUR SERVER'S C!DREAM SPECIALIST MICHI ABOUT DREAM A LOT MORE.

And because Michi has been a watcher since day one and was a DTeam fan rather than a SBI fan, she was able to provide me with more information on how the server worked pre-Tommy but especially pre-Wilbur.

Now, you could definitely argue well Michi probably has clear bias but it made sense to me when I looked back on how the storyline had been constructed and was going along, and everyone in the server talks a lot about our own biases and how we want people to maybe not lean so hard on them. Michi would also provide like anecdotes on what had happened and I'm sure links were probably provided at one point but the point was I felt like Michi had no reason to lie or manipulate how the story was told and if she did, eventually someone would have pointed it out because... Group of like... right now it's around 20 or more analysts but I don't remember how many at the time there were. POINT BEING, WE'VE ALL GOT POINTS TO PROVE AND IN MY EXPERIENCE NOT MANY OF US HAVE BEEN SHY TO PROVE THEM.

So if anyone ever had any differing opinions they would be talked about and we literally had and still have discussions.

REGARDLESS.... I DIDN'T FACT CHECK IN DEPTH BECAUSE I THOUGHT PEER REVIEW WAS ENOUGH WHEN YOU HAVE LIKE HOURS UPON HOURS OF STREAMS TO WATCH.

Anyways. Eventually I started paying closer attention and looking more into c!Dream lore but only recently have I started to triple check before speaking about c!Wilbur lore because I know everyone has biases and while I did trust everyone's thoughts and analysis in the discord, whenever I make essays I typically like it to be largely air tight and if theres a mistake, I want it to be because I forgot not because I just trusted what was said. Plus, I wanted to get down to the specifics of how Wilbur had always started with manipulation on the mind.

SO I WATCHED HIS FIRST VIDEO ON THE DREAM SMP.

AND WHAT I WAS NOT BY ANY MEANS EXPECTING WAS WILBUR TO SAY WORD FOR WORD, VERBATIM,

"SO WHY DON'T I START AN INDUSTRY WHERE I USE THE TOMMYINNITS OF THE WORLD TO WORK FOR ME, TO CREATE THINGS THAT THE MIN-MAXERS OF THE WORLD WILL WANT."

Like... this is in no way an attempt to like hardcore villainize c!Wilbur like everyone does Dream, it's just more so to like REALLY outline how far off a lot of fandom interpretation of c!Wilbur is....

Because of SBI focused animatics.

Now, when I joined I watched A LOT of animatics that really highlighted like... Wilbur being this self-loathing JD-esque, "I destroyed it because I had to because the world was against me because no one loved us, Tommy" type of character. At least... that's what it came across as.

And it definitely highlighted the fact that Tommy was a victim, which he is. He is undoubtedly a victim and no not even any dream apologist can change my mind otherwise. Tommy, despite being an instigator sometimes, didn't deserve the abuse he received.

But these animatics never shown the fact that c!Wilbur started L'manburg as a shady ploy to exploit people like c!Tommy and vilify c!Dream so he could have power.

And that was easy because Dream and Tommy had wars before. They had spars and pranks and here's the plan to take back my disks and here's the plan to out smart the thieving little child etc etc.

And all of the animatics I watched never mentioned this. Neither did the recaps though. The recaps gave the events flat out, there didn't sound like there was bias, and honestly I don't really know if there was rather than like... a lack of nuance. And it's hard to provide a recap with that much nuance in a short period of time for a youtube video, to be perfectly fair.

However, this creates a perfect formula for entirely rewriting the history of a server. c!Wilbur quite literally fucking succeeded TO A META LEVEL. He slandered and ran smear campaigns against Dream and like he even does that with Sapnap in the beginning. But what's crazy is that it transferred over into the meta! Most of this fandom understands Wilbur as a victim of mental illness, and yeah maybe? He definitely wasn't mentally well by the end of pogtopia, but he never started out with honorable intentions. L'manburg was never a victim, only its citizens. The TommyInnits of the world.

I just think it's like... such an interesting case study. Because this is like... an opinion like shared by at least half of the fandom, but the vilifying of c!Dream is shared by MOST of the fandom I would argue. Which is like even more crazy for me because that was c!Wilbur's goal!!!

LIKE I GO INSANE WHEN I THINK OF THIS BECAUSE HIS REACH IS JUST TOO POWERFUL. HE'S NOT EVEN ENTIRELY REAL, JUST A MANIPULATIVE PERSONA OF SOME BRITISH GUY.

And I mean... maybe people who have watched Wilbur's video on the SMP still maintain this idea that Wilbur wasn't always the bad guy, but honestly... I wouldn't be surprised if their introduction was still an animatic. Like bias is hard to check and I'm not going to lie I could have sworn I watched both Wilbur's AND Tommy's video on the SMP in the beginning and yet I STILL was a ride or die for tragic yet on some level still honorable Wilbur and a resilient Tommy.

Like... upon watching Wilbur's first video... possibly again I was surprised because I thought I did watch it like right before I even started watching the streams and yet I was still so invested in c!Wilbur as this tortured anti-hero.

It took 6 months of... not being in an echo chamber, full of multiple different people of different ages, different stream POVS, and people who joined the fandom at different points in time.

IDK IF THIS WAS EVEN ENTIRELY RELEVANT IT JUST FELT TANGENTIALLY RELEVANT AND THIS WAS SOMETHING I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT FOR A HOT MINUTE AFTER LIKE WATCHING WILBUR'S FIRST VIDEO AGAIN.

TLDR;

SBI CENTRIC ANIMATICS HAD A LASTING AFFECT ON THIS FANDOM AS IT'S HARD TO GO BACK AND ACTUALLY CHECK THE NARRATIVE FOR SOLID FACTS FOR YOUR OWN INTERPRETATION BASED ON THE FACT THAT THIS NARRATIVE SPANS OVER HUNDREDS OF HOURS WORTH OF TWITCH STREAMS.

[surveillance-0011]

TBOI Headcanons: Horsemen

Death

He/him

He’s...nice. Not a good person by any means but he’s the most polite of the bunch. Kind of strange though. Creepily calm, a bit sarcastic, and he has a pretty morbid view on the world.

Reserved and usually grumpy. He can be rather chipper off-duty, though. Putting up with the others takes a lot of energy from him.

Tired....

A bit neurotic but good at coming off as a down-to-earth guy.

He’s the most book-smart of the bunch and he’s fairly wise. A bit emotionally stunted, but he tries his best to be mature and make the right choices.

Death is more than a bit nihilistic and pessimistic. He has a hard time just... caring, mostly about himself.

Not to say he’s completely apathetic, he can be pretty empathetic but he tries not to act on that too much because if he did his job would have broken him by now.

He likes to think he’s got it all under control, but he does not. He’s more prone to pettiness and stupid decisions than he’d like to admit.

That being said he’s been pretty good with like. Growing and maturing though. He’s changed more than he realizes in just in the past.... decade or so ago. A bit of a late start for an immortal but hey at least he’s slightly less of a scumbag.

It’s usually not easy to anger him unless he’s really tired or something’s already set him off. When something does piss him off badly he’s a bit prone to freaking out. He’s not very good at handling his emotions. 

Sees his own job as a necessary evil, because hey, someone’s gotta do it.

Interested in botany/gardening, as well as literature.

Genuinely nice- or at least polite- to the kids when he’s not supposed to be murdering them. He sees no reason to go out of his way to do so, especially since unwarranted cruelty towards others has only bit him in the ass.

Famine’s older brother. The two have always had each other’s backs.

Diligent, and always considers the logistics to things instead of acting on emotion alone.

Protective of the other horsemen.

Pretty short tbh

His horse’s name is Chili.

Famine

She/he (bigender). You can use both interchangeably or only use one set, she doesn’t care. Fine with they/them too but it’s never really clicked w/ him enough to be preferred.

Usually prefers more masculine terms (brother, sir, mr...) but fine with anything.

.Flips between bouncing off the walls and having no energy whatsoever.

Impulsive, she’s got terrible judgement and has the most idiotic of ideas sometimes.

Fairly easygoing, tries to forgive and forget and doesn’t let little transgressions get to her

Actually pretty damn sad. Needs some self care but never looks after herself.

I mean she’s optimistic and usually happy but like. There’s always just a bit of sadness, you know? He’s dealt with a lot and it’s definitely taken its toll on him.

Disaster Lesbian

Tries to be a graceful loser but she can get a bit more competitive than she’d like to admit.

Has a hard time relating to others and considering how they feel, at least when it comes to anything more complex than “bad thing happened now I’m sad/mad” He’s a drifter by nature, always onto the next big thing for a quick thrill.

Eats a lot. It’s never enough.

Plants and a good deal of food will decay if she touches them, or even gets too close to them.

Like his brother he has some interest in nature. Famine is more on the adventurous side, though. She’s tried to live off the land a few times with varying success.

Named her horse Frisk

Pestilence

He/him

Calm, quiet, but also a pessimistic jackass.

Always in a bad mood. I mean, he’s permanently sick with just about everything contagious and deadly. You’d be grumpy, too!

Surprisingly high pain tolerance. A good deal of his nerves have probably just.. shut down or something. Or maybe he’s just numb to everything after a lifetime of pain.

Sleeps a lot

Dislikes his situation a lot, but doesn’t mind the company of the others.

Lazarus is terrified of this dude. The other kids are mostly grossed out or annoyed by him.

Likes to be alone.

Fairly smart, but comes off as absent minded bc he’s pretty much too sick to function. He slips up a lot and he’s pretty damn clumsy

Probably the most rational of the bunch, when he’s not in airplane mode. 

He’s also got a fairly strong moral compass. He doesn’t really like fighting the kids unlike War and Famine. Or just having to go up against people in general. Hell he hates the fact people get sick because of him. At the very least Pest has higher standards and is fairly transparent

But that isn’t to say he’s a good person. Yeah he doesn’t go out of his way to hurt others for shits and giggles and He’s Not Conquest but he doesn’t ever object to any of the shit the kids are put through and well. Yknow he still does kill them. He will also encourage some of War’s antics when it’s against someone he dislikes.

Tries to be as supportive as he can for the others. He knows he can’t do too much without overexerting so he tries to be encouraging and comforting as he can.

This compassion usually isn’t extended to humans, though.

Not very emotive, the only emotions he ever really expresses would be disdain and mild concern.

Not very fond of Conquest but they don’t hate each other. They actually work together well, too.

Friends with Mahalath. They’re pretty close!

His horse’s name is Moses.

War

He/it

He’s not very friendly, he’s pretty defensive and always on edge.

Out of all the horsemen, he’s probably the one closest with the Beast.

Lots of scars n injuries, it’s practically stitched together

One gold tooth

Impulsive, prefers solving issues through violence than through reason.

He can be fairly clever, though.

Intentionally angers/upsets others, likes causing problems and ruining things for people.

Desires wealth and power

Gets burnt out pretty quickly.

Emotional, insecure, and sensitive, and he hates this part of him. Definitely overcompensates for it.

Explosive temper, quite literally. Catches fire when upset and explodes if it’s more intense. Damage done to him also makes it happen. It’s not entirely voluntary but can be held off, and his “sobbing” sprite is him doing exactly that (but he’s probably also trying not to cry lmao). In the Ultra War fight, however...

Its daily routine leaves a lot to be desired. It wakes up, goes to work, then it goes home and just. Sits and rots.

Also, his diet is god awful. Please just eat a fruit or vegetable for once maybe you’d feel better goddamn.

He cannot remember if his horse is actually a horse or not but uhh he named her Bellum.

Conquest

He/they.

High and mighty sort of attitude. Can be very selfish. Stubborn, set in his ways. Gets defensive if you call him out or tell him he’s wrong.

Gay + nonbinary but in the closet (and denial) about both of those things. They’re trying to unlearn years’ worth of internalized bigotry.

Used to be worse, now trying to unlearn his toxic behaviors. But he’s still awful.

Doesn’t remember anything before their death. However they’ve held very strong Christian (specifically Catholic) beliefs all their life and they have a pretty black and white way of thinking.

Very cold and clinical. He has a bit of a temper but there’s a sort of calmness to everything he does even when he’s pissed.

Just as argumentative and aggressive as War but like more of a threat.

The others call him Connie sometimes, especially Death, who practically almost always calls him by this nickname.

Doesn’t harbor ill will towards Pestilence. They might have been overshadowed, but it’s not Pestilence’s own fault. If anything, being out of the spotlight has been good for Conquest, even if they do miss the attention sometimes. The only reason the two dislike each other is because their personalities clash.

Now if there’s anyone he hates that would be the Headless Horseman. Fuck that guy amiright

Very protective of Death. The two are close, Death is probably the only person who is consistently nice to him.

Utterly terrified of needles (hypodermic, not sewing needles, though he’s not good with sharp objects tbh) and medical stuff makes him anxious

Seems very... off. Just weird vibes but no one can pin point what about him is wrong.

Oh uh and his horse’s name is Josephine.