#but ofc it has to be a matter of Good vs Evil and you are a scumbag if you like x y or z

[mantomhive]

obv i'm sure we're all tired of hearing about the increasing lack of media literacy pervading society (unless that's just my specific corner of the internet) but oh my god if you think that liking a book = affirming it as having a 100% morally sound educational thesis statement that ought to be proselytized to the masses, and disliking a book = unequivocally disavowing it of any valuable substance or merit whatsoever... I'm sorry to say you have fallen victim to brain rot!

[you-are-my-king-now-cariad]

Discord Thoughts

So basically this is room for me to talk about things in the Discord that inspired/reminded me of certain things, that I wanted to say but the conversation moved on, etc. In other words, I’m just rambling here. But y’all seem to like that, so here. No particular ordering of anything besides the order they came up-and some of them might be from my irl friends, I’m not actually sure.

Alice as Regent/Squire

Staying Close

Root Will Save Him

Willark VS Brelwyn

This might be my Brel Glasses, but it seems like William and Lark are intentionally the opposite of Bree and Sel. We don’t see them much, but we do know a few things: William is unquestionably good and pure, neither of them seem like they’re going to make a move, and Lark is remarkably perceptive about Brel.

1. William and Sel are surprisingly accurate foils. (Is it still a foil when they’re kind of opposites?) One is lawful good (and is proud of that) and the other is chaotic good. One is human, one is demon. One is never going to hurt anyone unless he absolutely has to, the other is… uh, Sel. Obviously both are generally ‘good,’ but Sel is fighting off an internal chaotic evil demon-not exactly going to blame him for being less than angelic. Also considering William has always been a safe space for Bree, particularly when Sel’s actively hunting her, and that they’re friends? It starts to feel intentional. Am I making any sense at all?

2. Both Lark and William are the definition of incredibly adorable gay panic.

Instalove VS Devotion

Okay, this is the first one I’m actually typing out bc I have the most to say about it and it’s probably the least coherent. Thanks @paigeagainstdamachine for making a vague comment that started this whole train-

I’m not saying instalove is ‘bad,’ or that her relationship with Nick is somehow fake because it was fast. Let’s get that out of the way. You can absolutely have a fast romance that is still incredibly real and long-lasting-see my parents, who were dating for 6 months before getting engaged and are still married after ~25 years.

But I will say that as someone currently in high school… I’ve seen this movie a lot. It’s true love with the boy who just moved in next door, until he’s not new and shiny anymore and you start seeing all the shitty parts of his personality. He’s not a bad person, either-just one too many red flags or negatives, but it’s not like he’s abusive or cheating or anything.

This doesn’t have to echo in Legendborn. I do believe that Nick genuinely loves Bree, and that it’s mutual. (At the very least, whatever they have is more than just friendship.) I’m just… if they’re endgame, they shouldn’t feel so immature. Yes, they’re adorable (especially in LB), but it feels like a high school romance-and it is. It feels like my brother’s senior relationship-they were going to different colleges and both agreed that they probably wouldn’t be able to manage long-distance, so there was a time limit from the beginning. I can’t actually explain why Brick feels so… young? It just does.

Brel, on the other hand? Yeah, ofc it’s also a high school romance, but like… there is so much trust and devotion and it feels natural. They have the kind of relationship where you actually can stay friends when you break up because you just fit together. Then again, I’m just a sucker for well-written edgy demon boys, so I could be a little biased. They fight, but a healthy relationship isn’t defined by ‘we don’t ever fight.’ It’s defined by ‘we can forgive and forget.’ It’s defined by ‘no matter how angry I might be towards you, whatever mistakes you’ve made, I don’t want you to suffer.’ And that’s exactly what Sel and Bree have found.

“We fought…”

“We’ll always fight, I think.”

They fight, and they move on. They forgive. They love the other no matter what. And not to be a Sel apologist, but uhh this is exactly the kind of relationship he’s needed for so long and as much as the “I can fix him” mindset is awful she literally is giving him a reason to be a good person. Both make really big mistakes, and they get mad, say and do things they shouldn’t… but they always, always come back together.

[springsheep]

War of Faith Notes Ep. 1 - 10

Ep 1 -> Wei Ruo Lai's intro, stock market

shen jinzhen the sniper appears.

Shen Jinzhen meets Wei Ruolai (rickshaw), Li Qin in pastel pink is soo pretty

Wei Ruolai sneaks in through the roof hahaha

Wei Ruolai is given a coat, goes to do the exam for Central Bank

Ep 2 -> Wei Ruolai doing the test (the fire).

Wei Ruolai interview with the Shen guy.

Poor Wei Ruolai, failed the interview becuz of his background

Wei Ruolai sneaks into Shen's party, sees Shen Jinzhen playing the piano. Wei Ruolai watches from afar.

Wei Ruolai tells Shen Tunan he has solved the Kunseng riddle.

Ep 3 -> Wei Ruolai is accepted!!! yesss

Wei Ruolai don't drink too much!! Shen Jinzhen watching them. Wei Ruolai: I'm really not a communist.

Wei Ruolai eating and drinking so much hahaha, Wei Ruolai is a bit drunk, playing violin.

Wei Ruolai's friends (from the "slums") celebrate his job.

Wei Ruolai's weird grandpa friend: In the financial world, it doesn't matter who can make more money or who can make money faster, what's important is, who can live longer. You win, when you don't lose.

Congyun doesn't like Wei Ruolai... hmmm

Shen Jinzhen infiltrating a hotel to kill someone. Shen Jinzhen 好帅啊啊 wearing pink dress tsk tsk so pretty

Wei Ruolai using binoculars to monitor the stock exchange

Lin Qiao Song interrogating Li something

Wei Ruolai understands what Mr. Shen is doing (I don't grr)

Ep 4 -> that guy's name is Lin Qiaosong.

Oh no, i think the Lonely Star is Wei Ruolai's brother... Secretary Huang is evil. Wei Ruolai learning how to identify real vs fake coins.

那个姓黄的再欺负我宝贝啊。hmph

Aaaaah poor Wei Ruolan, his brother got shot and fled to his apartment and he's bleeding everywhere. Wei Ruolan is begging his brother to go to the hospital...

Aaaah poor wei ruolan... wang yibo's crying is so infectious damn it.

Wei Ruolan buries his brother. Wei Ruolan's bro is supposed to bring the gold for the Communists. Wei Ruolan after seeing the gold: =_=

#poor Wei Ruolan's bro who only lived for 4 episodes

Ep 5 -> secretary huang is a biatch

Wei Ruolan thinks of his bro. Shen Jinzhen eats with Lin QIaosong.

Wei Ruolan stops the rich guy from emptying the vault. The Zhang guy was holding him at gunpoint grrr....

Shen Tunan arrives in time to save him (I'm starting to ship these two damn it)

Wei Ruolai posts the newspaper ad, will meet the handler.. aka Shen Jinzhen...

fuckfuckfuck Lin Qiaosong cracked the code also!!!! Fuckfuck

Ep 6 -> Shen Jinzhen and Wei Ruolai pass by each other, Shen Jinzhen scolds him to save him from Lin Qiaosong.

Shen Jinzhen fails to contact Wei Ruolai with the password, Lin Qiaosong starts to suspect Shen Jinzhen

so... the bro's name is Wei Ruochuan.

Li Shengda attacks Wei Ruolai, tells him his brother is a communist.

exam time (Wei Ruolai please get good grades arghs)

Shen Tunan (to Secretary Huang): Do you want him to leave or stay?

Ep 7 -> Everyone compete against Huang Congyun. Someone needs to kick him off his high horse (someone aka my baobei ofc)

Wei Ruolai: Secretary Huang said I need to be on standby for you 24 hours, so I missed some classes...

Shen Tunan glaring at Huang guy lololol

Wei Ruolai Vs. Congyun.

Wei Ruolai is so hardworking argh

He's been studying late into the night. Wei Ruolai wins (ofc)

Li SHengda acting bitchhh Wei Ruolai nooooo don't believe himmmmmm

Noooo Wei Ruolai told him about the 20 gold bars. whyyyy

Wei Ruolai suspects Li Shengda (thank god omggg)

Li Shengda is a piece of shit.

Ep 8 -> Wei Ruolai meets the correct handler.

Wei Ruolai swears revenge for his brother.

Li Shengda is killed (finally).

Shen Jinzhen is happy.

Lin Qiaosong wants to convict Wei Ruolai of being a Communist, but LOL Wei Ruolai is prepared. He 1) called the the police to report Li Shengda before, and 2) "turned himself in" by writing a report.

Shen Tunan looks so pleased lol, Lin Qiaosong is pissed obviously.

Everything is under Wei Ruolai's control (dis boi got plans hahaha).

Shen Tunan protecting Ruolai hahaha. Shen Tunan: I'll bear the consequences.

Mr. Kang is mad at Lin Qiaosong. Poor guy... he got whipped.

aww shen tunan's wife doesn't want to leave him.

Ep 9 -> Lin Qiaosong has a wife(?) girlfriend or something. She's upset to see his wounds. (I thought this guy was single).

Wei Ruolai 真的有本事啊

Wei Ruolai has photographic memory(?) Shen Tunan is preparing to make some big moves, tells Wei Ruolai to memorize the imports and exports blablabla.

The Central Bank is making big moves (tarrifs), people protest the Central Bank.

Shen Tunan (to Wei Ruolai）： It might be dangerous by my side, are you afraid?

Wei Ruolai expressed his thoughts, Shen Tunan praised him. halfway to sucess for the tariff reform.

Wei Ruolai asks for a gun from the Qian gang.

Mr. Qian: It's okay, i'll give you an axe instead. It's made of Manganese Steel. Wei Ruolai: =_=

Wei Ruolai visits a club(???) following the Zhang guy. Wei Ruolai what are you planning...? ohno don't kill him

Wei Ruolai stole Zhang Mingquan's gun and starts writing smth? and dismantles the gun and tries it out.

Ep 10 -> Su Cishu's acting ('nonono')

The Shen family's so cuteee lol and the Shen siblings bickering hahaha

Shen Jinzhen gave her brother a bulletproof vest.

Zhang and Yu want to assassinate Shen Tunan...

fuuck Shen Tunan is late for the tariff voting event, Wei Ruolai is gonna make a speech on his behalf (to delay the voting, cuz STN isn't there yet).

Damn an angry Wei Ruolai is shuaii hahaha

Wei Ruolai is making an impromptu speech letsgooooo

Shen Tunan is shot(?) in the arm. He fainted after the voting is finished.

Shen Jinzhen and Shen Tunan's wife are worried.

[actuallyverynormalbtw]

[ID: a screenshot of two tumblr replies. the first, posted by actuallyverynormalbtw, reads "just wanna come out and say im a diagnosed autistic AND i am a Bad Person (i dont believe bad people exist, but i AM the general concept of a "bad person"). i have sadistic/homocidal thoughts. ive cheated on most of my past partners. i have cheated with multiple ex "best friends'" partners. im pedophilic (and ofc yall are gonna assume so i gotta defend that i have never/would never abuse a child). i have a lot of fatphobic biases. ive hurt people on purpose and i dont feel guilty for it!". the second is a reply posted by gothglam which reads "@actuallyverynormalbtw holy shit dude..... die maybe". end ID]

@gothglam

the amount of self awareness you must lack to think that telling somebody to die puts you on a moral high ground is unfathomable. functionally, i was throwing myself under the bus to argue against an ableist princible. i expected judgement, as that was an essential part of the point i was making, but i did not expect the self-proclaimed "good people" to feel SO morally superior that they can feel justified in telling another person they do not deserve to live.

interpreting this situation by your dualist structure of good vs bad: i would think the person willing to both recognize their flaws/biases, and lay them out with the intention of defending a marginalized group's right to fully complex humanity, despite the judgement they know they will recieve, would be the "good person". while the person who believes they hold the moral highground and therefore feels justified in verbally wishing death upon another would be the "bad person".

i am not calling you a bad person. i am trying to demonstrate how ridiculous the concept is. both of us value morality. im sure you care about treating people well just as much as i do. but it seems as if one of us is using this value as a tool to elevate their ethical understandings and change harmful behaviors while the other seems to be using this value to elevate their ego and maintain the status of innocence. i think the latter is a bastardization of morality as a personal value. which is often a problem that solves itself upon awareness, so i encourage you to take a deeper look at the root and function of this value.

i dont care how progressive you think you are. if you can categorize people into either good or bad and use these categories to justify who is deserving of life or any basic rights, you are concerningly susceptible to fascist ideology. this is the same logic used to justify so much oppression and violence. if you allow these simplistic categories to determine how deserving somebody is of basic respect and rights, it will be very easy to convince you to be complacent in genocide. i wish i meant this as some sort of far-off apocolyptic consequence, but believe me, this is a serious issue Right Now (and has been for as long as people have have been oppressed).

i do not identify myself as a bad person because i truly think that i am one. i strongly do not believe that a human person (or any animals or plants for that matter) can be categorized into or described reasonably by the concept of good vs bad in good faith. and quite honestly, it was not until i deconstructed this concept that i was able to genuinely realize, admit to, and reconcile with with my own moral and pathological shortcomings. apparently, when materially doing wrong and/or having stigmatized mental health issues doesnt inherently mean you are irrevocably evil and unworthy of kindness, respect, and basic rights you're much more likely to come to terms with these things in a productive way.

an attempt to add nuance and challenge perceptions under the cut:

i could tell you that i am a leftist, that activism is very important to me, that i am anti-racist and that i love and support other queer people. i could tell you about my various ethical and moral philosophies, often based in causing the least harm and choosing kindness first and foremost if you have the resources. i could tell you that i always ask my friends how i can best accomodate them. i could tell you about how i risked my life to save my step-sister without a second thought. i could tell you i will do whatever i can to spare somebody even momentary or mild distress. i could tell you that my biggest dream since i was ~11 and ultimate life goal is to help rehabilitate the homeless (possibly/hopefully starting a nonprofit). and all of these things would be true.

i could tell you that i dont believe violence solves anything and that i would never act on my sadistic/homicidal thoughts outside of emergency self defense. i could tell you that i cheated on most of my past partners because (pre-diagnosis) a certain subsystem did not feel as if they were ever her relationships at all and our host literally could not remember it, and of course i could also tell you that we as a system/individual still did take full responsibility for the harm done and take steps to ensure it would not happen again. i could tell you that i never initiated it when cheating with my friend's partners and that this subsystem has many alters who fawn when triggered and are literally verbally incapable of saying no to sexual advances, and of course i could remind you that we as a system/individual did take full responsibility for the harm done and take steps to ensure it would not happen again. i could tell you we have had multiple auto-pedophilic subsystems (littles holding sexual trauma) since childhood and split a pedophilic subsystem in direct reaction to the stress of those subsystems existing/paraphilic guilt. and of course i Have To remind you that we have never and know for a fact we would never touch or abuse a child. i could tell you that i grew up fat and am traumatized by fatphobia and pretend that the awareness of my fatphobic biases means that i dont have them. i could tell you i that very consistently check my fatphobia because i dont want these internal biases to hurt anybody the way they hurt me. i could tell you that i have only ever hurt people unintentionally or in retaliation and pretend that decreases any material harm. most* of these things would be true as well.

(*aside from where it says pretend)

i could use these details to frame myself as a "good person" and ignore anyone who tells me otherwise. as a narcissist, im sure this would make my life a lot easier. but, i continue to align myself with "bad people". because i know moral liberation, as opposed to moral superiority, is required on the path to true liberation.

i use these details instead to personally acknowledge that i dont need to feel guilty for responding to my circumstances. i dont need to hate myself for my mental illnesses. i dont deserve to die for harm caused when i was a young teenager under active abuse. i am deeply traumatized and unwell. of course i am responsible for my actions reguardless of how out-of-control they felt, and of course everyone i have hurt has every right to their feeling/perceptions of me no matter how brutal. but i dont need to wallow in guilt and self loathing forever. that isnt sustainable, that isnt how you get better. interestingly enough, this mindset (moral liberation, personal nuance, and whatnot) makes it easier to be genuinely kind and make better choices.

i understand this is a ridiculously long and politicized response to simply being told to die on tumblr dot com, but i stand by my points.

you ever see a take so bad that

[maykitz]

i slept for 8 hours but i still need to say one more thing about david cage: the unbelievable arrogance of him saying detroit human is the game that "proved games didn't have to be about killing people" is that his idea of killing people 'but morally complex' is that he invents a scenario in which killing that person is obviously, obviously wrong but then rigs the situation through a qte and/or missing and misleading information, so that he can reveal their hidden "depth" afterwards and tut-tut shame you if you did kill them (or like, the qte did because you didn't know what to pick lol). and even then, if you kill someone it literally never matters in the end anyway. and that's not how you set up your players to think about a difficult ethical question, it's how you make them reload an earlier save to make the obvious only good choice now that they finally have all the info. IF they're trying for a perfect good score anyway- that's the other dumb presumption he makes.

like, that chapter where you investigate a customer getting killed at an android sex club, when you find the one who did it, she and a second bot attack you first. there's a drawn out fight scene where they don't pull any punches and you finally get prompted in a qte to shoot or spare the one attacking you, as she's lunging at you. that's the deep morally grey decision lol. which you have to make in 2 seconds. and ofc, if you don't shoot, she reveals to you that it was all self defense against a violent customer and that they are in love and hate being rented for sex and just want to be free together. how evil you'd have been if you shot this poor couple ): (sidenote: he used this exact same backstory for the male main character's love interest in the same game because that's one of the 3 plots he has for female characters)

meanwhile if you fail this fight and they beat your ass, they will also explain the same motives, and you get the option to shoot them in the back afterwards. and that's still a hilariously simple good vs evil moral decision but at the very least you can actually make this one with all the information given to you, and no cagesque "your attacker was actually innocent and justified 🥺🥺" reveal that comes afterwards to pretend like the decision was actually complex at all. heavy rain pulled it equally stupidly, where you also play a cop and you and your partner break into an innocent man's home, harass and assault him, and then you must answer the difficult question of whether it's justified to shoot him dead for trying to defend himself against the violent home invaders that you are. once again in a qte where he appears to be maybe, possibly preparing an attack- which ofc is revealed afterwards to not actually be the case. murdering that guy has absolutely no influence on the rest of the game either way. that's just how subtle and complex it is.

anyway back to detroit: in the cop bot's chapter 'last chance', he must figure out where the android resistance is hidden within a time limit or he's game over. if you shot those two at the club, their damaged bodies will be on display at the police station, one dead, one barely functioning. among other ways to solve the puzzle, you now have the option to yank out and puppeteer the dead one's head to her distressed and barely conscious girlfriend to trick her into revealing the location. he'll then drop the head on the floor and kill her as she's freaking out about it. this won't move you towards a bad ending or lock you out of a good ending about how androids deserve human rights (and neither does shooting them in the first place- even if you did it after hearing their story). because complex morality and subtle themes and stuff. like, are they or aren't they people, david?

[onewomancitadel]

More ranting about Salem and Ozma sorry

It is extremely weird to me and interesting that the whole 'yeah Ozma has been fighting against Salem for innumerable years trying to find some way to stop her with the intention of trying to kill her but she can't be killed' thing carries this takeaway that his way is a totally logical approach and ofc the natural answer is going to be killing her because that's the point of a cycle-breaker where R/WBY's actual story begins.

If it were, then who the protagonists happen to be wouldn't matter, and Ozma would be the main character. He's not.

And I genuinely don't know how the takeaway from V6's revelation of 'Salem can't be killed' leads to somehow thinking 'wow, guess we better figure out how!' as if the wordplay of Salem might still be able to die isn't there waiting for its narrative irony and her peaceful death.

There are so many facets to the issue (like Salem's army of Grimm is pretty much the same, albeit in a different coat of paint, as Ozma's army of Huntsman students) that it boggles my mind how one would come to any other conclusion, but I guess it must be a case of what you see is what you get. If the only story you're used to is the bad guy being smote by the good guy that's all you'll see, which is pretty ironic because that's basically what R/WBY is trying not to be.

I talk a lot about the fairytales and mythic influence in R/WBY, but everybody knows that R/WBY isn't just repurposing them, they're recontextualising them within the thematic bounds of their own story. The cosmic justice and cosmic order in a fairytale (where the good guy embodies primordial goodness and the bad guy primordial evil) aren't so in R/WBY, it's working in the narrative landscape of good guy/bad guy being 'real' characters/people, not just symbols and ideas.

If they're not just symbols and ideas, how do you recontextualise them in a meaningful and respectful way? You write something that's transformative. I genuinely do not believe that R/WBY is trying to say that Salem is mistaken for thinking she's owed a happy ending; I still (and I have said this several times over) believe that it's the long way around to one.

An example of this approach is that Cinder is both a Maiden and a dragon (who breathes fire). The reason the dragon isn't going to be slain is by virtue of how the Maiden powers thematically work in the story, and the dragon redeeming herself and being helped (not killed) by a knight is how that classic knight vs. dragon and maiden in the tower scenario plays out instead.

There's so much to what Salem and Ozma mean for the show and the way it's trying to tell its story (and other stories). It's the thing that holds it together and makes so much of it that otherwise could have been bland and unjustified instead flavourful and justified.

[ananke-xiii]

i got carried away while replying to @aliasl comment :D

yes, I didn't write it in my first post so you're right in pointing it out, but in my rb I clarified the jack/nick parallel(and this is another reason why I think Nick's definitely an interesting narrative choice but I personally don't agree with the way it's used or, at least, with my interpretation of it, ofc ).I'm not so sure about Sam, I think he's the one who says Nick deserves a second chance.Iirc he's the most understanding about Nick's situation untill he's not anymore.And he's not anymore because the narrative frames Nick as evil-evil because of Lucifer.And here's my problem.

The "all roads lead back to Lucifer" could be a "all roads lead back to Nick's abuser". And Nick's abuser could've been a random demon or angel and he could've ended up the same.Random demon or archangel doesn't matter because what matters is the abuse. So the focus, to me at least, is not so much where on the Evil Scale the "colonizer" is. When Nick calls Cas out and says he's a bodysnatcher just like Lucifer I think he has a point. But the show pounds on the fact that Lucifer is super evil.

In s14 Lucifer is the Supreme Evil but they don't show any alternative. As you've said: is there even an alternative when we find out that God is the Supreme Evil himself?So what about Lucifer now? He's his son. And what about Jack? He's his grandson.They're all still all related, you know, the apple and the tree (and I'm going with S14 theme of "nurture vs nature" here).

The feeling I personally get from S14 is a weird manichean view of the world where the "good" side is only supposed to be there, somewhere, go and find it yourself while the "evil" side is sure and they've got receipts to prove it. And I think it's extremely unfair??? Unfair even for the evil side, lol.

Previously Jack's "problem" was that he was a Nephilim, that was his nature and what people were scared of. Now it's not only that but, more importantly, he's Lucifer's son. At the beginning of the season he doesn't have his grace anymore and this is a problem because grace is necessary to balance his duality: both human and angel.

This is important because in s12 Sam and Dean wanted to extract Jack's grace so that he could be "just" human. We know now that it wouldn't have worked anyway but "Byzantium" rinforces the idea that, with or without grace, Jack's half (arch)angel. So much so The Empty wants to take him as he dies because he belongs there.

Therefore, the issue is no longer his power, S12- maybe 13's main concern about Jack (without his grace he doesn't have any, i.e. here's the narrative shift from Nephlim to Lucifer's son) but his being half archangel, half Lucifer. He still has a "bad" gene inside himself and this "bad" gene is mirrored in Nick's story. The show starts framing Jack as evil because he's the son of Evil Lucifer via Nick (while I think it'd be way cooler if they explored the "nature vs nurture" without any moral lenses, aka Jack's half angel and angels are crazy lol). The "good" side is supposedly his soul connected to his human side and when he starts losing it people are extremely concerned, which fair, but ultimately why? They seem to reason in terms of "either/or" and think that his soul acts as a dam without which evilness will erupt. Where do they think this evilness come from? From his angel side, perhaps?

I'm gonna call it like it is, the guy had issues even when he had his soul. Not blaming him but they were scared of him even with his soul. Mind you that by now Jack doesn't even have his original paternal grace but Michael's. He's without his OG grace and without (most of) his soul. By mid-season the situation is reversed but nothing has really changed. So what I get from the show is that the problem is not about his grace or his being or not being a Nephilim anymore, or even having or not having a soul: it's about Jack having a je ne sais quoi of evil inside himself, that angel side of him that's not dependent on anything but his genealogy.

Nick's story is used to suggest (or even endorse tbh) the idea that there's something left in Jack (re Lucifer) that's just pure evil. If, hypothetically, Michael had decided to have himself a nephilim baby instead of creating monsters(a perversion of his symbolic repressed sexual desires) would this nephilim be considered evil too or not? S12 seemed to suggest yes because the issue back then was the power of a Nephilim's grace but S14 is very much focused on Lucifer as the Evilest of Evils so much so that it doesn't matter if Jack's got grace or not, or whose grace he's got, the problem is that he has a dual nature: angel and human. It's not about the power of grace+soul or soul-grace anymore.

Jack kills Nick and symbolically kills his supposedly evil, angel side, the one connected to Lucifer and it's still not enough. Because he's still God's grandson as he says in "Jack in the box".(Dumah manipulating Jack sort of proves the original point of my post, aka that Jack's "otherness" would have been waaay more interesting if it were explored in terms of "all angels are deranged" rather than the morally boring "lucifer's evil" angle but this is just my wishful thinking).

So we're back to square one. Ofc, we know that in S15 Jack will symbolically embrace his paternal lineage (no mention is made of his maternal lineage in s15 or maybe I just don't remember what happened to his maternal grandparents) by incorporating Chuck, his grandfather inside himself (rather than killing him, i.e. rejecting it). In a way, his journey is complete. But is it really? Because Jack's inclination to self-sacrifice is very very concerning to me (and very angel-like). The show sees Jack's nature as "either/or" to the point that Jack's not allowed to just be himself, just be both angel and human, eventually he even must become God if he wants to prove that he's good. That's like...a lot.

So ultimately, and to wrap this up, Nick's story doesn't captivate me precisely because he's ad hoc used to prove the "Jack's got something evil inside himself" point in a narrative that sees good and evil as sealed off compartments and where the "good" compartment is totally absent from the board. In other words, the game's rigged: Jack's left with literally no choice, whatever he does is wrong (because, the narrative implies, he's inherently wrong), so he dangerously tends towards (self-)destructive solutions that deny him the possibility of being both/and.

I don't know if I made myself clear but I swear I've tried. I'm a person with a very convoluted mind :D

One of the reasons why Nick's story in s14 doesn't work form me is because of the show's insistence to pigeonhole Lucifer as "the supreme agent of evil". Of course, this is considered true in our real world (lol), specifically Christian world, but in-universe it just... doesn't work? If we want to go full-on dichotomy (and S14 very much goes there) if Lucifer's evil, who's the primary agent of good? No one, exactly. Definitely not Heaven.

Because there are, like, TEN seasons of angels going total batshit crazy, I mean we know that angels=good isn't a view the show supports since Cas appears in "Lazarus Rising". And we know that ALL angels downright lie, manipulate and coerce humans to get their "consent". We also know that the main issue with "the devil's spawn" in s12 was not so much "the devil" but the fact that "a Nephilim came into being".

The problem is NOT that who'll later be Jack is Lucifer's son, the problem is that he's a Nephilim. Lucifer has weight in the discourse merely because he's an archangel, NOT because he's the primary agent of evil. The issue is that "grace+soul"=a fucking lot of power. And a fucking lot of power means a fucking lot of problems.

We also know that humans get severely depressed after a possession, they have to face many struggles and sometimes society alienates them (see: "Repo Man"). So the argument that Nick's psyche is damaged because Lucifer's so evil his influence's still there even after he's departed is just... weak? A random demon can possess a random Jeffrey and the damages on the human psyche are still IMMENSE. From the human perspective random demon or most powerful archangel in the world are the same thing: they can carry out the same violence, abuse and trauma.

I might be wrong but what I get from the season is that the "primary agent of good" is the soul. And this is ALSO not true? Because shit gets real when Jack starts losing it, sort of implying that without the soul, his luciferian grace will make him become evil or will make him do evil things ("the devil made me do it" mentality). But we literally have a character such as Castiel, Angel of the Lord and Maker of Huge Mistakes but also Not in Possess of a Human Soul who actively strives to do good things (and he fails miserably so maybe he's not a good example but HE IS JACK'S CHOSEN FATHER, it MUST mean something ffs).

I think, maybe, I don't find the shift from "Nephilim" to "Lucifer's son" compelling because Jack's real "problem" (if we want to call it so) is that he's half (arch)angel and half human. Like, being an angel is a fucking issue in this show because these creatures are a bit deranged okay? LOL. On the other hand, being human is ALSO a fucking issue because it 100% doesn't warrant inherent goodness. Humans can be deranged creatures, too, okay? :D Both species can definitely just make mistakes, do bad things wanting to do bad things or ending up doing bad things without intention to do so. Ultimately, Jack's dilemma is being Other, just like his chosen father and just like Kripke-era Sam.

I still stand by my idea that all angels are a little bit like Lucifer. And there are episodes such as "Of Gods and Monsters" that sort of confirm it. When Nick calls Cas out and tells him "Castiel, you’re just a stone cold body snatcher. You’re no different than Lucifer" he's exactly pointing out the hypocrisy. Hell, the whole episode seems to question the season's main theme because Michael is literally possessing Dean, he conned him, he tells him that he owns him, he's creating an army of monsters as they speak, he's brutally torturing them but the primary agent of evil is still little ol' Lucifer.

Although, truth be told, I didn't particularly feel the need to learn more about Nick (sorry Nick, I know you're there so that Mark Pellegrimo could stay on payroll, I don't hold it against you), I can't deny that it had great potential as a narrative choice (let's not even go into the Sam/Nick parallels). But, to me, it didn't deliver because the show's murky on where it stands: on paper it wants to show the fallacies of "black and white" thinking but it effectively supports the same "black and white" view of the world that it seeks to question.

[rosheendubh]

Concept AU-Star Wars (orig trilogy to first 3 Zahn/Thrawn books...reworked), Keltiad inspired star systems in conjunction with FireFly-Serenity progressing from the events of Miranda...

*This concept is sitting on my IPad in some extremely confusing stream of consciousness notes right now...

*This really is spoof filk, bringing in ultimate Evil vs Luke, and the Heroes of the Galaxy, combined with a 70s/80s/90s/2000s pop SpaceRockOpera...there will be a tavern scene where Jayne, Mal, Lando, and Han rouse it up to ‘Fat-Bottomed Girls (make the world go around...)’...

*Princess Vespa from SpaceBalls has crossed the Wormhole to entrepreneurial interests on Tatooine, buying out Jabba’s Palace to open a megaplex mall, spa, and resort with a GastroPub called The MegaMaid-still going from Suck to Blow...

*Celtic and classical myth plays a big inspire here with the Mabinigion, some Irish tales relating to the Danu, the triad of Gwythr ap Greidiol-Creiddylad-Gwydion ap Don reflected by Luke-Thrawn battling it out, and OFC, Rhyanon ferch Garwen (combo of Daenerys and Marevel’s Valkyrie-maybe Scarlet Witch-with some added nanotech/healing-biomolecular manipulation capacity-she’s a Human psionically gifted CRISPR basically...lol), as the balance between the 2...

*Mara and Karrde (eh, if you don’t picture Aquaman-Jason Mamoa in that role, you need to spend useless diversion hours perusing some Karrde fan art, and Aquaman...) are definitely in this ring...

*Rhyanon/Yana has a female lover who’s a Dathomiri witch based off Kalinda from ‘The Good Wife’ (b/c I love Kalinda’s character...sultry/confidant/intelligent/all around kick-ass female...)-Yana does become Luke’s lover eventually-after a good bit of angst and animosity-there are complicated sexual tensions and emotions running all through this thread...again, Mara...

*Am I the only being in the multiverse who envisions Zoe Washburn and Lando Calrissian interacting...potentially in a romantic way? She needs some comfort after Wash’s death...

*This tale involves a Wormhole of course, drawing the distant quadrants of the Terran Federacy and The Republic Alliance-Galactic Empire together...

*and Vader-Anakin survives the DeathStar-while he’s not necessarily Evil Vader, he’s also not entirely benign Light Side either. He resides on Dagobah in self-imposed exile, due to the years of PTSD wrought by the war crimes he’d committed-Ashoka there as his mentor/ally as he reconciles a new role-still devoted to the Sith, and opposing the revival of the Jedi Order of the OldRepublic-wanting his son and daughter to understand the corruption, stagnancy, and ideological prejudice which had inundated the old Jedi order, necessitating it’s downfall-believing a more enlightened path possible balancing the nuances of Dark and Light to be less exclusionary and restrictive than the Old Order had become...

*Luke still holds a military position within the Republic Alliance a Fleet Commander now, occasionally leading squadron assaults, but now on his own battleship—“while he was no king, he fought beside the kings of Britain”—drawing some inspiration from Uther (Anakin), and Arthur (Luke), and Aella (Thrawn)...

*Zombie-looking Luke in the ArtManip isn’t DarkSide Luke in this version. More like Luke, sacrificing himself-simultaneously combining forces with Thrawn, who’s tapped into an extremely ancient prototype archaic genome (oh, that was my own conception, but I realize ‘The Expanse’—perhaps the finest example of modern Space Opera ever, combining Science with Fiction, and a lurid and lyrical storyline, deploys a similar concept—nothing new under the sun, as they say...) he Uses for hybrid clones (think ‘Alien’ here...), which have become increasingly powerful and difficult to control, while buying the Empire military superiority vs RepublicAlliance. Thrawn inoculated himself with the nucleic acids, which has brought on an expression of new powers over matter/time/space influencing the presence of the Wormhole, and the primordial creature behind it-and the new hybrid creations existing in a sort of multidimension DarkMatter/AntiMatter state seeking to colonize and spread across the galaxy now that they’ve been awakened. The Terran Federacy/Firefly segment has also discovered these archaic genomic sequences, which ties in with the creation of the Reavers, and the fallout from Miranda...and River Tam’s part of the travesty of a tale...

*Luke, in a stand-off with Thrawn, and the *unnamed Primordial DarkMatter Creature dating to the beginning of time*, is wounded, mortally, by DarkMatter creature (otherwise, cheekily referenced as QKZM-Quantum Kracken Zombie Monster), and the only way to prevent his death-more like Total Zombie TakeOver as he‘s assimilated into the QKZM’s hybrid beings-is for Yana, with her own powers over the manipulation of genetic molecular structures, to join with Thrawn in allowing *archaic genome conscience* into Luke’s body-sort of Pirates of the Caribbean-like with the heart of DavyJones providing a sort of cursed immortality. Problem is, Luke can only now reside in the dark places/planets which have been annihilated-and seeded with—the hybridized DarkMatter beings, and in the weird parallel shadow dimension where the DarkMatterAncientGenome Being inhabits. The purpose here is that Luke returns with Thrawn/abducted to this OtherWorld-UnderWorld in order to stymy the malignant spread of the nearly unstoppable QKZM, which places Luke in a perpetual state of using the Force to keep from being completely transformed into a minion of QKZM, while he and Thrawn try to navigate the DarkMatter dimension-trapped in the wormhole destroyed by the explosion of a fusion drive-which has also severed the connection between the Quadrants...Thrawn’s particular alien constitution makes him resistant to being completely dominated by the archaic genome mutated with his own biology...

*Yana, with River-Leia-Mara (like the 3, or 4 Queens of Avalon, who escort Arthur’s body back to the Otherworld), are left with trying to repair the massive devastation wrought across the galaxy, while trying to find some way of restoring the trans-spatial anomaly (Aka, Le’ Wormhole...), and Yana-in a reverse Eurydice-Orpheus kind of spin, ventures to find some way to follow Luke into that dark plain, and retrieve her lover-this involves ancient UnderGround pools on Earth That Was/Old Terra, which exists in a sterilized portion of space called the Wasteland (like that Arthurian theme?), now a blasted out expanse of light-years devastated by a massive surge of radiation flaring from a huge SuperNova 500-1000 years before (relating to the human inter-stellar diaspora alluded in the FireFly universe, with my own added strokes...)-as well as ancient trees existing in subterranean pools-yes, DarkSide Tree on Dagobah is a part of the web found on various planets, and is subsequently nicknamed Yggdrasil-wherein these ancient arboreal pools hold protoplasmic genomic sequences, but of less nefarious design than the DarkMatter Entity trying to conquer the inhabited galaxy (implied MilkyWay...)-all dating from the great cataclysm of the Universe’s creation. This segment inspired by the fact that it’s Rhiannon in the tale of the Mabinogion, who pursues her son, Pryderi, into the Otherworld w/o hesitation-as well as Inanna who dares the 7 Gates of Hell to prove her worth as Queen of Heaven-and the ancient tale of the goddess, Freya, who wept tears of amber pursuing her lost husband-lover, Svipdaeg-Odr (variance of Odin), across the world to return him to her side...

*I‘m sorry?

[fivekrystalpetals]

what would you like to happen vs. what do you think is likely to happen in the rest of mha’s last act?

Oh, this is a very interesting ask!

I will answer the latter question first: what is likely to happen in the rest of mha's last arc?

The only one thing I can say for sure is that the three main villains will be saved by their hero counterparts by the end of the story and redeemed (ways of redemption depend on the author).

As to what storyline the manga will follow to that effect is what is getting exceedingly hazy for me with the last few chapters (or maybe, the entirety of the last two arcs.) Personally, I feel like not much progress happened since the war arc ended. The story is at a standstill since then; nothing new under the sun on either the heroes’ or the villains’ side except for a few new characters who appeared and left after a couple of chapters with practically no impact on the story. (Or, maybe, it was just to drive home the fact that BNHA Japan is on its own in the final battle with no help from other countries.)

Anyways, now that little Tenko himself is calling out to Midoriya for help, the story might become relatively simpler and a good-prevails-over-evil sorts. Cue a typical shonen stylized super-powered battle (most probably at U. A. coz it is the starting point of everything) where a mid-battle conversation takes place in the vestigial plane with Deku going: “I am here!” (All Might style) and makes Tenko understand he is here to help him and in turn, he should convince the older him to side with him in the battle coz without Tomura’s help, they can never rid the world of the Big Bad. (This, if the talk takes place only between Deku and little Tenko and older Tomura isn’t even involved.)

On the other hand, if it is adult Tenko that Deku tries to reason with, I expect a much more powerful argument which is feasible enough to convince him (as well as me, as the reader, coz for now I am entirely on Tomura’s side and agree that the quirk-based society is toxic as hell.) I need Deku to convince us that his cause is worth fighting for otherwise the story is just gonna fall flat for me.

Plus, I just want to add: among the trio, it is (and should have been) Tenko/Tomura who’s the most difficult to save compared to Touya or Toga.

You see, Toga doesn’t really hate the society; she does want to make friends and be considered normal in all she does. She really wanted to be friends with Ochako and Tsuyu and still does (she ran to Ochako for her opinion, remember?) So, all Ochako has to do is to help her understand that what she does to quench her bloodthirst is wrong but that there are healthier channels through which she can release it and that she won’t be ostracized for her quirk again. That she will be given a proper place in the society to live normally once she finishes her rehabilitation/therapy/prison period.

Same with Touya. Touya really only wants his dad and his family to “look” at him. He wants them to save him from his personal hell. He wants them to appreciate all the efforts he put in trying to be the golden child in his dad’s eyes and he wants them, or Endeavor in particular, to assure him what he did was enough for him and that he will be loved no matter what. It won’t take much from Shouto once he convinces his big bro with the “you are me” or something in that line.

But Tenko? Tenko waited and waited for a hero to show up and save him from his tragedy but not even a single soul bothered. He gave chance after another hoping somebody would listen to him; even in the USJ arc, he wasn’t this completely done with the society. He tried to talk with the heroes (in a violent way, ofc, coz that’s all he knows lol) and even with Midoriya in the mall. Guess the war arc was his breaking point. The point where he completely gave up on trying to change the hero society and decided to destroy everything for once and for all, knowing the heroes will never change.

That’s why this idea of little Tenko calling out to Midoriya feels odd to me (assuming he is calling for Midoriya to be his hero and not any red herring). Little Tenko and adult Tomura are one and the same. It is the same man who resurrected himself through sheer hatred and rage and has decided to reject any help from the heroes. So that now it’s Midoriya’s turn to reach out, acknowledge his problems and convince him through words and actions that he can trust him and he isn’t like the other hypocritical heroes but a true hero, here to save him in spite of everything. Most importantly, that Tomura (and little Tenko) too can be saved in spite of everything.

Wow, the first part to this question went so long; so sorry anon T-T you asked this question to someone who can never shut up about Shigaraki lol

As for what I would like to happen/wanted to happen: (also, to those who read my latest fic, the following may contain spoilers to it so if you do or don’t want to get spoiled, you may want to skip this.)

- After waking up from his coma, Deku confronts All Might about Shigaraki’s connection to Shimura Nana and states his purpose to set out to save him from AFO’s clutches, having witnessed the manipulation firsthand and fueled by the first user’s and Nana’s faith in him. Plus, to protect the civilians from further attacks from villains in the name of OFA. All Might and Gran Torino advise against it, but Deku sets out nevertheless.

- Ochako and Shouto (and Bakugou) come to learn of his solo mission and join him, convincing him that they too have the same opinion as him. (Bakugou is just tagging along to keep an eye on Deku and not much else lol) plus one more student from class 1-A, say Iida for a Stain confrontation?

- On the way, they find how much the hero society has crumbled from just one mass attack from villains and the civilians are now lashing out against everyone; after prison break more and more villains keep appearing.

- In this chaos, they chance upon Toga who is fighting against some rogue villains and trying to fend them off all by herself. This time, the kids jump in to protect her and chase the gang off. Toga thinks they are here to kill her like Twice and goes feral trying to save herself but Ochako gets her to listen to her. Finally, she breaks down about Twice’s death at the hands of Hawks, the current condition of the League, how their leader is no longer their leader etc. etc.

- The kids console her and assure her that they are no longer blindly on the side of the pro-heroes; they want to learn of the cracks in the society too so that they can make decisions on their own as to who is right and who is wrong.

- Finally, Toga takes them to the League’s secret hideout with Dabi, Skeptic and Spinner. (AFO’s real body isn’t here; I don’t know where it is lol. It is somewhere out there)

- At first, of course, the villains think they are under another attack. But then, Dabi gives the kids a chance to explain themselves while Skeptic searches them for bugs. Midoriya tells them about how he saw the new Tomura-AFO being formed in the vestigial realm, warns them of the danger their leader is in and that they have to fight against the common enemy AFO and save Tomura. Spinner is the most worried; Dabi isn’t that convinced.

- (Of course, there are talks between Dabi and Shouto. Very awkward conversations that go something like: hey, Touya-nii, you are rather short for your age. Others (hissing): Todoroki, we are here for a ceasefire! You aren’t supposed to start a fight!)

Well, and so on. (If I go on like this, I will be writing an entire 10k fic for your one-line ask, I have no chill lol, so I’ll stop.)

tl,dr; I want more of talks than punches going forward in the story. But this is my personal opinion (and works better for my fic coz of other constraints like villains can’t straight up kill the kids lol) and probably won’t fit for a battle shonen manga. I don’t know. But I have full faith in the author to give us a very satisfying ending--I was really impressed by some of his past arcs.

[hiimsociallyawkward]

the wicked day

hey guys. i'm back with my random and annoying merlin thoughts. i should be studying for my bio quiz, but yk- i don't want to :,) love you @lady-ofmagic-andstars✨enjoy✨

literally every time i'm going watching i'm going to comment on john hurt that says young man instead of young boy

it's so subtle but wow. thanks i didn't need to be hurt so early on in the episode

i know i know i'm basically a child but this is so exciting

merlin is so cute

aw no not arthur being pouty abt his big birthday

I LOVE THE 'i heard that' thing so much. i love it i love it

off topic, but i love knife throwing. i've always thought that if i had to choose a weapon that's not a gun, i'd choose knifes. swords? maces? crossbows? sure. but knives?? that's where it's really at

i love arthur not wanting to overburden their citizens

ok uther? i hate him

but here? i love him

he's a good dad here. remembering arthur's birthday? that's so sweet. uther in season 4 is the only time i semi like him

AW ARTHUR AND UTHER AT DINNER

i love them

off topic but i like that arthur is wearing his 'every day' clothes, jacket and a tunic under his cape. that's it. the knights are all wearing his garb but arthur is just wearing his 'regular clothes'

hehe gwen being nervous about arthur being on the wheel is so sweet

idk why but i always get nervous at that last knife.

like of COURSe i know he's not going to get hit but it's scary.

the 'not wearing any trousers' thing omg. bbc really decided to do that

i wish we had more of this parental dynamic of arthur and uther

dam alright arthur. being out of it but still being in it enough to see the guy in the reflection? i stan

SKLFJASLDFJA uther fighting to protect arthur

literally me through his whole scene going 'oh jeez oh jeez oh jeez' on repeat.

so off topic but i kind of like the hairstyle they have for most of the guys in this show?? idk is that weird

oh jeez oh jeez oh jeez uther dying

like, i HATe him. i've been waiting for this since season 1 but this scene makes me sad

ok i don't remember the last episode of merlin so i forget what arthur says when he's dying in merlin's arms??

it's something like 'hold me' right? i feel like that has the same energy as 'stay with me' so while i can't exactly say this is sort of parallel, it's sort of parallel?

i mean, ok 1. dying in someone else's arms. 2. dying in the arms of someone you love? romantically, platonically, familial? doesn't matter. both uther and arthur died in the arms of someone they loved. 3. i'm just gonna say 'hold me' and 'stay with me' have the SAME energy, so if no one has called semi-parallels, i'm calling semi-parallels

bradley's single tear

stfu agarvaine. i'm serious. legit everytime he shows up i wanna pow pow pow him

legit. agaravaine needs to get away from morgana.

DO NOT GRAB HER ARM MISTER. LET GO OF HER

I DON'T CARE THAT YOU'RE SECRETLY IN LOVE WITH HER. LET GO OF HER RN

i've said it once and i'll say it again, i love gwen

not to romanticize death or anything but i like candle light vigils.

ok maybe slightly symbolic but probably not? ok actually i think it is, not to toot my own horn but this is also just really straightforward too.

arthur wearing 'street garb' and his 'knight stuff' sort of differentiates between 'arthur' and 'prince arthur'. the scene where merlin and arthur are looking over the vigil and merlin's talking about how there's nothing that can be done, and arthur mentions using magic, i may be off about this but i feel like he's speaking more from prince arthur rather than arthur, uther is my father.

like of course arthur's hurting, everyone knows he's hurting. but idk. i feel like he feels like he's not ready to be king. he needs more time, and he can't be king yet. so therefore, prince arthur is talking about needing to save their king.

gaius and merlin are both right here. idk what else to say.

wow merlin 'you can't stop me' love that

jeez 'maybe this is my chance to change that' little do you know what's happening soon merlin.

oh shoot.

arthur asking merlin if he would use magic to save his father? i'm just thinking back to merlin crying, but not crying over balinor because he couldn't tell arthur, and merlin having to mourn his father in secret. vs. arthur, asking merlin for advice. sharing all his worries and insecurities with gwen. begging gaius to do something more for his father. this just makes me so sad

arthur TRUSTING merlin. with everything. taking merlin's opinion on things and aw

this is dumb but tbh i really like merlin's outfit. like tbh i think i dress in the same sort of style, just ✨modern✨ sadly, no neckerchief for me but i do have a necklace that says 'heather' despite my name being 'ashley'. ily conan gray

ugh. arthur calling merlin a coward but also calling him brave?? you need to pick a side arthur

LMAO ARTHUR STOP THINKING ABOUT WATCHING MERLIN PEE

bruh arthur breaking the vase. it's so dumb but merlin referring to the vase over and over actually makes me chuckle

ok merlin going 'you have come to kill me?' reminds me of another show but i can't remember but i thought i'd put it out here anyways

oh shoot i just realized/remember that uther got stabbed on arthur's birthday. hell of a gift am i right 😭

hehe arthur 'sweeping' with the broom. silly goose

dragoon sounds so vulnerable asking for the right to use magic freely

i love you arthur. this scene, i'm like YES. arthur i love him

i love the saying 'my word'. like, i don't want people to promise me anything anymore. i want them to give me their word.

HAHA THIS IS SO DUMB. MERLIN SAYING 'QUESTIONS. SO MANY QUESTIONS'. I LITERALLY SAY IT WITH THE SHOW EVERY TIME. WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME

aw arthur just sitting there with the cup and trying not to break it HAHA he's so sweet. slightly scared after that vase yk what i mean

ok i don't like morgana and everything but that necklace? that's a stroke of genius. yes girl. make up the plan as you go along

frick you agarvaine. do not scare gwen you PERV

jeez agarvainewas SO rude putting that necklace onto uther. like yes, ik you don't like him but STILL. that's just rude

i'm going to start calling people toads now

hehe arthur closing his door and merlin being right there. it's not necessarily a trope but it totally is and i love it

ah yes. merlin and the tavern. i feel like it's been referred to before but it's still funny.

ok ik arthur carrying merlin is there for kicks for the kids but i laughed anyways

apparently i have the humor of a 10 year old

this is really dumb but the scene with arthur and the two guards. i'm just thinking 'how tall are these guards'. ofc ik that the staging/perception could be doing something that might be making arthur look shorter, but my first reaction was 'bradley is 6' just how tall are these guards??'

merlin's speech about magic makes me sad

aw 'i hope, one day, that you'll see me in a different light'

dragoon has the same effect on arthur as merlin does

uther waking up 😭

AW. UTHER'S LITTLE SIGH AND THEN 'ARTHUR' BREAK MY HEART COVEY. BREAK IT A THOUSAND TIMES.

they're both so happy. this makes me so sad now. oh jeez. oh jeez. oh jeez

oh jeez oh jeez merlin's expression. AW merlin gave arthur his word. oh jeez this is very stressful and i'm only watching this

ok obviously. merlin doesn't want to see arthur in pain. but ALSO this was merlin's chance to change things once and for all. and now uther is dead. #no liam just payne

arthur's face post crying. skf;aldjfa;ldk AW

frick you agarvaine. literally die. i can't wait for merlin to kill you

i think this scene is pretty. the light on the left and the dark on the right? ok actually, i'm going to be making an off base comparison now because that's all i do.

i'm remembering this post i saw on here and it was like, arthur uther and morgana in the throne room. in order of the way they sit in the throne room, first it's arthur, uther, and then morgana

well. the really dumb and off base comparison here is the 'light' goodness of arthur and the 'dark' evil of morgana being mirrored in the picture above.

'light', bravery, doing what's right- being on the left. 'dark', evil, power on the right- and arthur in the middle of it, king

like i said, it's a dumb off base comparison, but at least the picture is pretty

oh jeez this scene

my heart breaks for both of them

merlin not being able to form a sentence at first.

😭😭😭😭 arthur please. you're breaking everyone's heart right now

you already knew i had to include this scene

arthur walking in there all alone

oh jeez he's all alone

dumb parallel number 2. arthur walking into the throne room with uther, father and son. merlin and gaius closing the door for arthur- pseudo father and pseudo son.

'he'll never know who i really am'

i want to do a DEH post soon but jeez. the line that hits hardest for me in DEH is 'i never let them see the worst of me. cause what if everyone saw? what if everyone knew? would they like what they saw? or would they hate it too? and jeez that's all i can think about when i think about merlin and his secrets

again. no liam, just payne

asldkfja;sldkfjas dlf merlin waiting for arthur

i have so many feelings

i love the show of affections for his father. you already know that uther wasn't affectionate when arthur was growing up, but still. forehead kiss? i love it

I DIDN'T WANT YOU TO FEEL THAT YOU WERE ALONE. i hate this and love this so much. i'm not saying merlin is completely selfless, because merlin wants magic to be leagalized and arthur is the way to do that. but omg merlin not wanting for arthur to feel like he's alone breaks me

first, merlin being physically alone while waiting for arthur. arthur was technically alone too, but he was with his father

but also, merlin being alone in the sense of his magic. no one knows except for gaius. lancelot knew and then they killed him. merlin is so alone when it comes to his magic, and morgana's enchantment only pushes merlin into his 'magic shell' more. arthur thinks magic is pure evil, and merlin is made of magic. what does that mean would think of arthur. this hurts me so much i'm so sad

friend 😭

arthur asking if he's hungry and them getting breakfast together

ok this sound track

pendragon red. i actually stan

gwen wearing a purple dress?? color symbolism?? nah i'm over thinking

ASIFA;SDLFJAD HE'S KING OF CAMELOT

IT'S LIKE I WANT TO CRY BECAUSE I'M SO PROUD RIGHT NOW.

oh jeez oh jeez.

and merlin saying 'long live the king' at the end of the episode?

chills

Anyways! I’ll be back next week to rant more about aithusa so I’ll see you then! thanks I love you bye

[borisbubbles]

17. CZECH REPUBLIC

Benny Christo - “Kemama”

So first off, thank you for the nice commens. 😇The past few months haven’t been the happiest time for me, so thank you for your patience as I scraped my bearings together for another post! 😁

So I will now extend that same sympathy to Benny Christo, whom I think I damn fucking underrated. Let’s jump in~

ENTRY ANALYSIS

As one may expect i INSTANTLY liked “Kemama” because you know, it’s a fun, laid-back, tropical afro-breeze, completely different from anything else we would see in NFs and the year. EXACTLY the type of song I was hoping the Czech NF would deliver (and deliver they did, see NF Corner). This level of mild like swung into strong unironic like upon realizing that the title is a contraction of “Okay Mother” 😍 and the song deals with the subject of overcoming racially-tinged discrimination and rising above the hate. That just feels very poetic and apt? “Kemama” felt like the entry that had to overcome the highest odds in order to earn the respect it so fully deserves, and still hasn’t fully reached it.

.In our Western European bubble, comprised mostly of gays and left-liberal straights, we have a very grateful and universal acceptance of many different kinds of [lizard] people that make up Eurovision casts. Yet with “Kemama” we may have reached  an unusually grimy undercurrent of coded racism. 

Of course nothing I read was outrageously rancid, than Cod for that. The worst statement I read was a double-whammy of “EWW THIS ISN’T CARIBBEANVISION” and “WHY WOULD SOMEONE FROM *KENYA* WANT TO REP CZECHIA IN EUROVISION?”, and yes they first got the continent wrong and then *also* got the country wrong in the follow-up post and then they were torn limb from limb by a pack of aformentioned left-liberals. I’m sorry but i can’t not have any other response than laughter in the face of yet another fucking MORON faceplanting themselves with words like a... racist JK Rowling if you will?

Still, while I never read something outright vile about Benny doesn’t mean I found his deniers really annoying and they were! Think “Ew Solovey is ‘Too Aggressive’ it will NEVER DO WELL IN ESC”, a statement that isn’t coded nor racist (and yet extremely false and misguided), functioned as a similar idea by the same minds. A statement borne from the same breed of narrow-minded stubbornness which has caused elitist morons to be all “there is **SOMETHING** about “Kemama” i do *NOT* like and I cannot lay my finger on it... but I **DO NOT** like it at ALL. It won’t ever qualify because everyone will think the same way I do” -- Eurovision snobs, tiptoeing around racial coda in January 2020.

 They would also insist that Benny was “arrogant” because he was seemingly impervious to their (de)constructive criticism. Like, if you were a biracial butterfly living in a slavic country who had to deal with statements such as the above on a regular basis, you WOULD block out the noise. And if you heard them often enough you will start to block them out pre-emptively. DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW COPING MECHANISMS WORK?? (oh wait you’re white-privileged. Nevermind 🙄)

 So naturally, when Benny decided that he would revamp “Okay Mother” by adding in MORE African elements it only made me love him even more lol. 😍 Was it a bull-headed, contrarian and possibly really stupid decision? Yes, yes and absolutely yes. Was it worth it? Well he managed to incite even more meltdowns in a group of people I feel nothing but contempt for, so hell yeah? Eurovision was cancelled anyway so who cares how much ‘worse’ “Kemama” actually got. 

Okay, so we’ve arrived at the revamp.

Granted, it wasn’t the best ‘vamp, I’d be a fool to deny it. The new elements threw a wrench in the melodic balance of the song. Out went tropical laid-back fun, IN went that fucking guitar oh my god this is some Hotel FM piano levels of overbearing I swear. (nb: this still didn’t stop me from ironically stanning Hotel FM’s lame asses anyway 😍). However, it made the personal backstory that I loved and savoured take a backseat to the now inferior composition. 😭

Regardless, New Kemama was fundamentally the same song, and I fundamentally liked Old Kemama, so whatevs, it made no different to me. In the eyes of many Eurovision diehards we were experiencing WORST PRESHOW SEASON EVER (after three songs... lol) and nothing clinches this brainworm more than a revamp announcement. “OH MY GOD HE WILL RUIN IT! I CAN GUARANTEE YOU I *WON’T* LIKE IT”. Self-fulfilling prophecies, ya know? It certainly didn’t help when the official channel accidentally uploaded a vid with broken soundmixing (‘OMG HORRIBLE LAST IN THE SEMI!!!!’ calm the ever-loving HELL down) and took another FULL WEEK to upload the correct vid. The damage had already been done. Typing "SEE I TOLD YOU THE REVAMP WOULD BE SHITE HA HA HA” in the Kemama comment box really just is the ESC equivalent of reponding with “Actually, *all* lives matter :smug:” to a BLM support pamphlet, isn’t it?

NF CORNER

While not my favourite NF of the bunch, I found the Czech NF to be lowkey epic. Not epic enough to remember its name but regardless Czechvision or whatever marked the end of an era because it was also the last selection spearheaded by Jan Bors :o

I think I’ve made it clear enough in the past that I’m somewhat mixed on Bors Era Czechia - Lake Malawi were a toetapping good, Ickolas was a pockmarked, skin-crawling evil and the other three inhibit a purgatory somewhere between “moderately nice” and “moderate timewaste.”

Still, I have great respect for the man who orchestrated Czech’s comeback after scoring NINE POINTS TOTAL across three years with the mindset of “So what? Why says we can’t win?” so ofc I was all into the idea of the “EIGHT INDIE ANGELS, HAND-PICKED BY BORS HIMSELF” NF that would serve as his swan song.

Naturally things went down the drain the second Bors left, with one of the eight peacing and his successor cancelling the live broadcast (does anyone remember what exactly happened? I vaguely recall one was the cause of the other but lol it’s July can’t be bothered to factscheck (Factsczeck?) anymore, bitches.

Anyway, ON TO THE GOOD STUFF, and yes, there was plenty.

We All Poop - “ All the Blood (Positive Song Actually)”

Yes, as you can imagine I ofc IMMEDIATELY fell into like when I saw that chyron and invisioned the inevitability of the Czech Rep’s Rep immediately alienating every parent just based on their name alone <3 😍 w/e WAP quickly became that “Good but not great” song you find in every NF that everyone gushes over because it’s the whitest option available. Like, yes, “All the blood” is good, but musically it’s identical to Green Day and Twenty-One Pilots and god name ANY 90s-early00′s American Punk Rock band. For me the enjoyment came from the fact that WAP were openly crazy vegan fundamentalists and the VC clip actively condemns the use ANY animal protein by replacing the cattle and game with LITERAL HUMAN BEINGS. 😍 :fusedmarcintensifies: :kasiamosage:

Pam Rabbit - “Get up”

Ohhhh YES a glorious experimental Synth-Trap song only I could love and ofc I did. God what is there even to say; the provocative darkness of the verses combined with the swirling amorphousness of the chorus gives me LIFE. LUFF THIS SHIT <3333 Ftr, this was also the fave of Slovene Juror duo / synth angels / Boris faves ZALAGASPER, further proving their pathetic naysayers that they own all things music and the haters can suck a series of-

Barbora Mochowa - “White and Black Holes“

Lol, yes even with a “Get up” existing, there was a song I liked even more. Barbora proved a very competent Lana del Gay last year, but I was a YUGE fan of this year’s... Kate Bush-Björk blend of ethereal awesome. It is so soothingly beautiful and the rare example of a song that I find completely free of flaws. Were the competition not such a hard place, I’d be pissed she didnt win (at least she won the jury vote MASSIVE KUDOS to every alum on that) but w/e this selection had opions and I’m rather robbed of a “Kemama” than I am of a BRILLIANT IRREPLICABLE AETHERBALLAD. ~Danse balance sûr les white and black holes~

Elis Mraz & Cis T - “Wanna be like”

I *VERY* strongly felt that if the Czech Republic wanted to win ESC, they should have picked Elis and even now I STILL believe she could have won. That isn’t to say I gushed over “Wanna be like” because I find it kind of annoying lol. Yes, I LOVE an annoying female voice (:Tones&Icackle:) but Elis’s reaches a Camilla Cabello sort of place for me (good lord get Senorita OFF the fucking radio) and the Scat + White Guy Rapping middle-eight. 😬. However, the second I opened up the video clip for this paragraph and was immediately BLASTED by Elis murdering a ukelele and wearing a  “schoolgirl” outfit straight from a Japanese tentacle porn movie and OH MY GOD THE AGGRESSIVE TWERKING made me reconsider that hey, this min-sized Meghan Traynor actually kinda highkey owns, yo!  Yet, I’m not at all bothered we lost her in the Czech NF because we got UNO DOS QUATRO CINCO SEIS :fatmansplit: fill up the megameme slot instead, so...

Eurovision 2020 vs Eurovision 2021

BENNY RUINED HIS SONG AND NEVER WOULD HAVE QUALIFIED. jk I’m not a moron. Sure, “Kemama” wasn’t an easy sell because you know AFROBEAT in a contest where half of the people watching are fash (ie: all of Eastern Europe, who watch out of ~Nationalistic Sentiment~ 😬), but there are Kemama live renditions out there and he owns them SO hard lol. A few soundmixing issues really would not have stopped Benny from qualifying in that RIDICULOUSLY WEAKSAUCE SEMIFINAL are you fucking kidding me. He probably would’ve bombed in the Grand Final, but I mean it’s Czech and it’s not Ickolas so ofc it would have.

And Czech renewed him for 2021 regardless of the sceptics, woohoo! I think part of it was due the Czech not wanting to re-organize an ENTIRE NF from scratch without Jan Bors, but probably also because Benny owns live when he isn’t engaged in psychological trench warfare with actual human detritus <3 and also because the Czech fucking CARE about their artists and don’t drop them like a sack of rotten potatoes wtfshitprus.

Can’t wait for the moment when he qualifies and Efendi does not, etc, etc. 

FREAKY! FRIDAY! FACTOR!

I’d say that the core around which the Ben Drama spun was pretty standard fare: niche fave beats out the concensus fave, meltdowns ensue, people convince themselves it was the WRONG decision because it wasn the result they wanted, try to disown the song and make a fool of themselves because the song slaps, sorry. Even the revamp drama felt more of less generic for me, because yawn fantards melting down over a revamp of a song they don’t even like what else is new.  

However, what I do take away that the revamp was ENTIRELY Benny’s idea which he told no one about (cue to JAN BORS having a social media meltdown like he’s Caesar at the Ides of March 💔) added MORE afrobeat just to troll his haters even more <3  God, I’d say it was bad from a musical perspective but this level of in-your-face defiance is fucking iconic and hilarious, sorry. This entire this year is so batshit bonkers that the concept of a someone potentially shooting themselves in the foot and “torpedo’ing” their qualification chances  (not rly, he would’ve Q’d anyway lol) JUST to take the moral high ground in a racially coded argument only HE took seriously may not even be the craziest concept in the year! (lol it definitely isn’t. Look at the pics I haven’t greyed out yet)

This and more yield Benny some well-earned Senheads! Yay!! 

Score: 3 Senhits out of 5.

[mongoosejpeg]

Random concepts my brain comes up with (or just random things I think of)

I tried to avoid angst (and u!sides) but....I came up with a lot of angst (i think?)....ajdhdh sorryyyyyy

Also....dont question anything pls....im very sleep deprived and dont know anything and dont take anything to seriously

Also....theres very bad english in here so...yeah....

Warning: uh....might be u!sides.....idk ajshxh...itll be in the tags tho

Logan will quote a different school house rock song, everyday, to Virgil

Patton takes Romans sash and puts it around his forehead/waist cuz hes a pirate

Virgil steals Janus' cape and will be an airplane and everytime he passes a side he will say nyooommm

Roman will take Virgils makeup (who has a lot of different colors) and do the other sides makeup

Remus will take Logans glasses and wear them wrong on purpose cuz he knows it annoys Logan

Logan and Deceit don't do anything or take anything cuz theyre the parents™

Its legit canon that they have their own phones......Virgil has a lavender phone case, Logan has a gold case, Roman has a golden phone case, Patton has a red phone case (i think)

Everyday Virgil will give Patton a stone with a tiny piece of paper telling the meaning at the same time...everyday. virgil does this cuz 1. he has too many 2. it gives him smth to do and gets him to be a tiny bit productive

Janus has a bunch of plants a l o t o f p l a n t s like....almost an excessive amount

Dukexiety/tangled au.....repunzal as Virgil and flynn as remus (idk)

Logan t poses almost all the time

The way to tell Patton and Janus apart is that janus knows how babies are made (messenger falcons) and Patton does not

Virgil likes pasta with no sauce (pathta wif nu thathe) (if ya get the reference....good job)

Virgil has yet to have a debate with Patton, Janus and Remus

Every time there is a new disney movie roman will just be...*flappy hands* for like.....a good half hour before actually watching it

The mind vs. the heart is just an old married couple™ fight

"Oh ofc. i never wanted you to feel like you couldnt" like.....the way patton says it....sounds like a mix of Deceits voice and Pattons voice

Anytime the other sides/Thomas has a problem, Logan will dress up as Sherlock...and patton (no matter where he is) will pop up as Watson and the little arguement will happen everytime

Rhythm Redux has hints of Mandy goes to med school

Virgil is pretty short....not by much but still one of the shortest side. When his anxiety heightens, he grows taller for x hours. Then when he calms down, he goes back to his normal height

Remus would practice forbidden fruit all the time, so that when he and Thomas finally met, he wouldnt mess up (cuz ew...who wants tk mess up on their own song?). Sometimes he would scream it, especially when Virgil was around

In moving on pt.1 virgil said "no" and then his hand flew up to cover his mouth...which was deceit

Janus with a flower crown around his hat

Janus has a snek in his hat and its never ending...like a mandelbrot fractal

Logan info dumps about space and Janus is the only one who actually, truly listens

Are there healthy distractions has more analogical....

Logan will carry around a notebook and pen/pencil at all times....especially for Virgil...like...when he gets a panic or anxiety attack...logan will give him the notebook so he doesnt have to talk

Janus has several different bowler hats and the other sides (besides logan and maybe patton?) will steal all of them and hide them

Logan and Roman will watch movies together, purely to rewrite it....virgils there to have a disney debate with Roman

When Thomas gets really anxious, virgil will kick down a door and go through a window, feet first

they are their own villians

whats virgils, janus' and remus' biggest fears? Logan

All of the sides have/need glasses but Logan and Patton are the only ones who actually...wear them...obviously

For virgils birthday, Logan got Virgil a puzzle book (or Christmas)

Virgil met his new years resolution (like...he got it done)

*has to watch beauty and the beast for this one* technically....beauty and the beast isnt Stockholm Syndrom......belle traded herself so her father could be free....the beast never took maurice....he wondered into the castle by himself and got...captured....sooo technically...idk where im going with this ajsjxh

Virgil has a crap ton of funko pops

Everytime Patton goes into Virgils room, he'll come out scared of the curtains

When Roman said "you are nothing compared to the others" and his hand went over his mouth....was that deceit? like....him not wanting Thomas to even know about him or remus yet..or orange side?

"Im not evil" foreshadowing for remus

Patton can yell "i will physically fight you" as loud as logan can yell "falsehood"

Virgil is a Ravenclaw (i think we all knew this tho ajsjdh)

When Logan actually shows sadness (the like....one time he did) the other sides will give him validation (telling him hes right, he cool etc.) and just...give him love (they will also do this with the other sides too)

Logan will pop up and ask Thomas about the picture with circles that is hanging above Thomas's (?) couch.

Logan has yet to actually solve a problem by himself...... hes either used information they already knew, or needed/used the others help (sorry)

Virgils the only one Logans said "sorry" to....he usually says "apologies"

The dark sides have pan(heh) pancake and pillow fights (the darks sides....remus and Virgil and janus just stands there until something gets thrown at him....then he joins)

Every year for their birthday, Roman and Logan will always get a jar (or more) of crofters

Every time Logan has crofters (like...pb&j or toast or smth idkkkkk) he'll keep making puns for an hour straight (gay)

Virgil watched dhmis and got weirded out for like....a week

When Janus is around, Patton and Roman will make a bunch of snake puns and janus will stand there like :|

Logan is allergic to anything "sweet" like....butterfingers

Did....did you guys know...that the cast of sander sides....is...Thomas sanders....i just learned that....thats...crazy wow....when were you guys gonna tell me? (fun fact.....every fricken time thomas yawned in dwit....i yawned)

Virgil researches architecture or like.....studies it?

Remus and/or Janus is/are (?) a ghost....ok remus...

Remus is actually really smart and gets along with Logan pretty well

Virgil was the least...like...responsive(?) after forbidden fruit

Virgils eyes are more red in dwit (could just be Thomas and that he was tired or smth)

Whenever Remus walks past Patton, he'll take off his ears but then put them back on when he goes out of Pattons sight (english who?)

In the bloopers (not really but shhhhh) or smth when Remus knocked Logans teeth out, logan said "figuwawivwy"

Whenever Virgil "sounds the alarm" he (and maybe patton and remus) will go "weoo" for a few minutes as loud as he can

Logan has a baymax plush

Janus is obsessed with Hocus Pocus (despite Logan pointing out all the inconsistencies)

In clbg when patton said yes to thomas when he asked if there are anymore sides that were hidden away from him, he glanced at virgil (and logan) and virgil got super uncomfortable

Janus will always say the "you better watch out" vine

Everytime Logan has an idea, he'll say lightbulb out loud...like...just..."lightbulb" and the other sides just stare at him like.."wha-???" until he explains

[blog-sliverofjade]

Of Doms & Subs 6: At Least it Wasn’t Twilight

Pairing: Angus Hopper x OFC

Summary:  What's a submissive female to do when she fights her nature and goes on the run as a Lone wolf to avoid being assimilated into a pack?

Word count: 1411

Of Doms & Subs Master List

“Why are we watching An American Werewolf in Paris?” I asked, head tilted to one side that I distantly recognized as a faintly canine gesture.

“It’s sort of a tradition,” Alan answered.  “When someone’s newly Changed, we watch a werewolf movie just to talk all the way through it.”

“There’s no American Werewolf in Canada, but they got French Canadians, right?  Close enough,” Shane said.  Someone threw a kernel of popcorn at him, which he deftly caught in his mouth.

“Could be worse,” Mickayla said mournfully.  “They made me watch Teen Wolf.”

“I thought chicks were supposed to like that stuff!” Shane protested.

“Yeah, if you’re thirteen,” Mickayla and I said in unison.

“Do you have a teenage girl living with you, Shane?” Alan asked far too innocently.  “Because I could have sworn you had every season on DVD.”

The bickering that ensued masked the sounds of Angus entering the room, but not even the popcorn could hide his scent.  My heart beat faster when he passed behind the couch to settle in the recliner within reach of my left arm.  His de facto throne was the highest seat in the room and thus avoided any breach of protocol by anyone sitting higher than him.  I was so painfully aware of his presence that any one of the already crowded couches looked good in comparison to my seat.  Everyone who didn’t have other obligations had come.  I wasn’t sure whether it was courtesy, by design, or on accident that I ended up sitting next to the fearless leader.

The movie, surprisingly, was a good teaching tool.  They were quick to point out inaccuracies (take off your clothes, first, idiot!), many of which I already knew, as well as what laws both mundane and pack were broken.  No to mention cultural differences.  Such as: why don’t we get crappy underground raves?  It’s Seattle, why throw one when you can go find one?

Apparently they also had a cage in the basement for injured wolves and those who had temporarily lost control, like newbies.  When someone tried to suggest that it was for kinky purposes, Angus quickly shut them down.  No one even complained when Alan and I ranted about the medical inaccuracies for a good ten minutes.  (They’d all be so much raspberry jam on the sidewalk.  Did they use packing tape on that bandage?  What is it even for, anyway?  Broken nose?  Concussion?  Hiding his funny looks?)

“Reason number two: we can have a little ‘chat’ with your ex,” Mickayla said, continuing her randomly numbered list of reasons why packs are awesome, when the Big Bad Evil Guy/love interest’s ex was killed at the end.

“Uh, that’s really not necessary,” I stammered.  She looked at me skeptically.  The others quieted to listen, which made me stutter out an explanation.  “He wanted the perfect 1950’s lifestyle complete with a Suzy Homemaker waiting with dinner when he got home and a mistress on the side.  He didn’t try very hard to hide it because he thought I’d put up with it.”  There were several snorts of scornful laughter.  “He’d signed a pre-nup thinking I wouldn’t leave.  I’ll never forget the look on his face when I got everything, which was how I put myself through school.  Now he’s stuck with some nineteen-year-old he knocked up who can’t cook any more than I can.”

“I like her, can we keep her?” Alan asked of no one in particular, which elicited more good-natured jibes at his expense as well as general agreement.  Or matter that latter was just wishful thinking.  It was either that or their testosterone talking.  Probably the testosterone because the conversation turned to the various methods of disposing of bodies.

While the others debated the merits of burial at sea vs woodchippers and lye, Ellie caught my eyes with her own hazel ones before heading upstairs with several empty popcorn bowls.  I followed a moment later.

“I-if,” she stuttered, swallowed hard, then started again as she loaded the dishwasher.  Everyone else knew to leave the cleanup to Ian and Gordon as it was their turn, but she seemed to need something to do with her hands.  “What’s my timeline for making a decision?”

“The ceremony to bring a new member into a pack is done on the full moon, which is in eleven days.”  A look flickered across her face that suggested she was aware of the math, but refrained from interrupting as I gave a brief description of the ritual.  To her credit, she didn’t bat an eye at the thought of consuming my flesh.

I fell into a practiced relaxed pose in the hopes that it would put her more at ease as it often had with others in the past.  Even if she wasn’t adept at reading body language, or even consciously aware, her wolf would pick up on my cues.  I was glad that she had not yet learned to smell emotions and would have to believe what I allowed my face to reveal, which was currently wearing the mask of patient mentor.  What I felt, however, was worlds away from what showed.

“If I were to join a pack, what would be expected of me?”  I smiled at the conditionals, though they lacked the same determination as before.

“Monthly meetings.  A ten percent tithe once you find employment, which goes towards things like helping members get back on their feet, new wolves, and the like.  No one would ask you to fight, but any pack would benefit from your medical expertise.”  Her eyebrows quirked up in surprise.  “Fast healing can present its own issues, like bones that aren’t set properly.”  Soft, dusky pink lips pursed in thought as her sharp, sky-blue eyes with a touch of green and honey at the center flickered back and forth in contemplation of various scenarios.

“You already have Alan for that.”  That was not the conclusion I was expecting.

“As great as Alan is, he’s only one person, who has a full-time job,” I pointed out.  “What if, God forbid, he was hurt?  Or there were more injured than he could handle at once?”

“Does that happen often?”  Instead of appearing stricken at the prospect, or for not having considered those possibilities first, her eyes narrowed shrewdly as if she were already calculating assets and performing triage in her mind.

“Even once is too often.”  Ellie accepted that non-answer without digging further.

“Even though I have to give it up as a career?” she asked bitterly.  That was when realization hit like a hammer.  Nursing was more than a job to her.  She’d all but said that her ex forbade her to work.  Then she took his money to rebuild herself.

“Your wolf will see frightened patients as prey,” I said gently.  The dismay she tried to hide nearly broke my old, cynical heart.  “Even if the humans would let you once they figured out who you are.”

“Any specific duties for an unmated, submissive female?”  She had turned her back to me to wipe down the counters.  Her scent was a confusing mix of fear tinged with arousal.  Evidently she found her emotions bewildering as well because when she faced me again a rosy pink blossomed across her cheeks even as a furrow developed between her brows.

“Help out when and where you can as the situation calls.  As a submissive, your presence can have a calming effect on us sociopaths.”

“I think you mean ‘psychopath’,” she muttered.  A smile threatened to lift the corners of my mouth.  “And I seem to have the opposite effect on ya’ll.”

“How can you help this looney bin if you aren’t calm yourself?”  Small, white teeth worried at her bottom lip as she digested that.  I didn’t point out that the males were reacting to her like wolves in rut, which no amount of submissive energy would fix.  She was skittish enough as it was.

“I promise that I won’t touch you.”  Disappointment and relief flashed over her face like the shadow of a cloud.  To hide a small smile of satisfaction, I leaned until my nose nearly touched the soft flesh below her ear and breathed her in.  Her heart beat under her skin like a trapped butterfly.  Desire, both hers and mine, spiked sharply in the air.  “Not until you ask me first.”  I forced myself to walk away as casually as I could manage, her stare boring into my back.

[illidanstr]

I used to read - National Review Online, Redstate, etc.  they're now viewed as liberal RINO publications for wusses with no backbone.  ditto for romney, flake, mccain, etc

i get the picture fox news is viewed as kind-of-not-that-right wing by the Trumpian movement, now.  yes trump watches it all the time but they're not generating the ideas, they're just an outlet passing them on, and too many people at fox are uncomfortable with where the Right is going.  the idea of a more hard-right network to replace Fox comes up every so often and it’s got some real support.

here's an example (of where the right is going, not from fox).  someone raised the question - if Trump/Guliani really believe Biden corruptly fired Shokan, why did they go to ukraine about this?

this would be a matter for the US DOJ.  the only reason you would go to ukraine is if you wanted someone you could bribe to say whatever the fuck you want.

the answer is, of course, the US DOJ is deep state can't be trusted traitors etc the Trump movement has spirit, it has personality, it's trying to win unlike traditional republicans who seemed to be just dying off as the nation moved left - Bush never really wanted to eliminate gay marriage and abortion, he just campaigned claiming he would -

but in order to stay with the trump movement, you've got to become not just far-right but alex jones far right.

and... a lot of people are willing to do that, and a lot of people might not believe all of everything but they're willing to vote Trump over Warren when they hate both

i actually do think there's a lot to the "mainstream" being a corrupt good ol' boys club.  people like Mueller are part of a government which basically does mass murder across the world, in a sense; the hydra of american imperialism.  i am *not* confident that everyone involved is on the up and up, I don’t know the truth about various individual incidents, etc

but if you get to the point where you reject literally everyone in the world for being some sort of secret traitor for the opposition, you've lost it and, ofc, in terms of evil and lies, trump's appointed some of the worst people (pompeo, bolton)

where i’m going with this is that most people’s worldviews tend to hang together around the key things they find most important.  and they will fudge the details enough to retain them - religious belief, belief their friend/family/community collection is Good, whatever it is that is grounding for that person and ties everything together.  

the views of (average trump supporter) vs (average not-trump supporter) are clustering and moving away from each other in ways that represent extremely different perspectives of the world.  i’m afraid of what it looks like if something causes one of them to snap like a bungee

[mermaidsirennikita]

I think the worst thing they ever did to assassinate Aslaug's character was have her react so callously to the death of Bjorn's daughter Siggy. I get that she was deeply depressed and bitter about her life, and she was drunk to boot, but it still felt very OOC for her to react so cruelly to the death of a child, especially one in her care. I thought it was such a clumsy, transparent move to demonize her in the eyes of viewers.

It really was, because it flew directly in the face of her characterization and even the characterization she’d shown THAT FUCKING SEASON.

The thing is that up until season 4, they did not, in my opinion, lay the ground for Aslaug being a “bad” mother.  Quite the opposite.  Was she flawed?  Of course.  But up until season 4, her only major “transgression” was not being there when her kids were dumb enough to step out onto a frozen lake, and not making sure that they were being watched by one of the many women surrounding her and in her employ.  That seemed like a matter of miscommunication while she was distracted by Hagrid, which was a dumb plotline anyway and I’m never going to get his name right.  She makes one mistake that frankly lots of good parents have made when she’s finally, for the first time since she’d gotten with Ragnar, being paid attention as a woman...  Not as a mother, not as a babymaker, but as an individual young woman...  I’m not going to vilify her for that, and I don’t think most reasonable people were like SHE’S EVIL after that (especially since Ragnar came home from raiding and likely fucking other people to be like “WHERE WERE YOU”) so they had to step it up in s4.

Basically, Aslaug’s framing prior to season 4 was as this ultimate maternal figure.  She gets pregnant almost immediately after sleeping with Ragnar, juxtaposed to Lagertha who is not only less fertile, but losing one of her children in the same episode.  (RIP.)  The season 2 promotions compared her to Freya, she’s depicted as this pregnant tearful goddess.  She spends most of season 2 pregnant or around her children.  Her biggest episode in terms of screentime and character development is undoubtedly “Boneless”--for that season anyway--where we see her literally fight back death in order to survive and give birth to Ivar.  She would risk Ragnar’s wrath by directly going against his decision to kill Ivar and saving the baby’s life.  And she IS an affectionate mother to her other children!  Right before Ragnar surprised Jarl Borg (prior to the Blood Eagle thing) she’s seen telling Ubbe, Hvitserk, and Sigurd stories about Loki that parallel what’s going on plotwise.  For me, Aslaug’s clear love for her children was the first thing that made me start to warm to her.  My mom never “liked” her, but respected how fierce a mother she was.  Aslaug’s ability as a mother made people look at her in a different way, and that complicated the Evil Aslaug vs. Great Good Lagertha storyline he wanted.

So he destroyed her character.  He made her an alcoholic because that’s the iconic thing evil queens are associated with I guess (literally I’m pretty sure he lifted some scenes from drunk!Cersei’s playbook in GoT) and made her world revolve around Hagrid and twisted her love for Ivar to make it look perverse (and then... backtracked in 4b I guess because aside from Ivar being super spoiled by her they pretty much look like a mother and son who love each other, with some intensity added by the fact that Ivar has a disability which makes him a target in their world, and makes Aslaug even more protective).  She ignores the death of little Siggy, which is somehow supposed to be SO BAD even though Bjorn literally abandoned her, we never saw Ragnar or Lagertha give a single fuck about her... and that’s it.  Everyone failed Siggy, and if we’re going down the chain of custody...  Bjorn should have been the one to care for his own child.  And after that, in their society, his mother, what with Siggy’s being long gone.

Aslaug was basically given this child because Bjorn expected that she would care for her.  It was barely a question.  Earlier in 4a we literally see her look disgusted with his lack of interest in Siggy... and then we go on to make her the evil one who doesn’t care about the child?  What???  Aslaug was even kind to Bjorn at points, lest we forget; she freed Thorunn literally to make him happy.  And up until he came back she apparently cared for Siggy without question; she literally just expected him to do the bare minimum and be a father to his only (at the time) child and he couldn’t do that.  But Bjorn doesn’t get vilified.  Hell, he doesn’t look like he’s much of a parent to his kids with Torvi either but I don’t hear shit about that.

It was absolutely a transparent attempt to demonize her, and also it was back when Hirst was solidly about that “IVAR IS ACTUALLY A DEVIL CHILD” thing so ofc Ivar was like lol dead babies are coooool.  And now Hirst is on his “IVAR IS A DEMON CHILD BUT I LOVE HIM” train so he’s got him out there crying about throwing an ax in Sigurd’s chest, lmao.

[heavnofhell]

Maybe either you or Charlie-bradcherry could answer but do you think there is some sort of significance with Jack & walls? I didn’t really think much about it in the first episode when he was putting his fingers on the wall, but then the third episode, he was doing the same thing when Sam walked into his room. I was thinking it could be the writers using it to signify his powers and containing/using them.Or it has to deal with Lucifer & his dealings with the cage since he was surrounded by walls

Ah, you make a very interesting point. The first time we see Jack doing this, he’s talking to Sam about his powers. He said he remembered his mother - remembered “being her,” and he recalled creating the tear between worlds, but that he didn’t exactly feel like he was in control of his powers. 

In this context, yeah, I’d have to say it seems to be more of a metaphor for how he is feeling - as though he’s got this divide inside of himself, and he can’t quite figure out where the “human” part of him ends, and the “angel” side begins. 

And then, as you mentioned, we’ve got this little parallel: 

The majority of Lucifer’s existence has been spent surrounded by walls that were meant to contain him and his power. Like Lucifer, Jack has been told that his strength and his abilities are too much to be safe - too “inhuman” for humanity to be exposed to. Before he even knows what he is, he has been told that he is different, and that makes him evil. 

What he does know is that he isn’t human. He knows that his father is what most people consider to be the worst of all evil, but, thanks to Sam’s sensitivity to the subject, he also has been taught that Lucifer’s actions are not to be explained away in simple terms of good vs. evil. Sam has taken care in conveying to Jack that the world is not painted in black and white, and being half angel and half human does not, in turn, make him half good and half evil. 

So, all in all, I’d have to say that the whole wall thing likely symbolizes his ongoing search to find the middle ground - the place where what he is, meets up with who he is - where he can reconcile both, and learn to accept that his path is his to choose, and is in no way influenced by his bloodlines, his powers, his parents, or the people who surround him and fill his mind with their own subjective views. 

I can only hope that Jackie is gonna break through that wall, and he’s gonna be the shining little “chip off the old ball of Heavenly Light” that everyone needs. (And with Papa!Sammy on the job, I have at least a little faith that he’ll make us all proud.) 

{{ and, ofc, I open the floor to my darling @charlie-bradcherry to give us her thoughts on the matter. I know she loves the bb nephilim with all her heart, and I’m sure she has plenty of ideas on the subject. }}