#but I also think fates would benefit a lot from actual grey morality

[kisant]

I’ve been thinking about how in Fates, while the siblings of each side are one of the main reasons to pick a path, the leaders of both factions also play a big part on who to join. And so, Garon’s extreme assholishness and Mikoto’s extreme saintliness do a disservice to the story, because while the siblings of each side have both good and bad character traits, Garon and Mikoto are presented respectively as Obviously Evil and Obviously Good, with the only ambiguousness being Garon’s past as a good father (only present through support conversations and the nohrian siblings’ dialogue at the end of Conquest) and Mikoto not doing anything about Valla (which is justified because of Anankos’ curse) 

So here are some ideas and headcanons on how to balance both sides. Some are more headcanon and some are more AU. 

---- Headcanon ----

- The primary reason for the age old hostility between Nohr and Hoshido is because of resources. Nohr’s climate is very cold (which makes the skimpy outfits make even less sense, many hoshidan units tend to wear clothes that are far more suited to colder climates than most nohrian units do. Let nohrians wear pants and warm coats, especially in the extremely cold Ice Tribe ffs) and the fields barely produce enough food, making it very vulnerable to bad harvest seasons and famine. However Nohr is very rich in minerals, so they ought to have both a lot of iron-making materials and also gold and other expensive minerals.

Hoshido, on the other hand, has a far more forgiving and warm climate and bountiful fields, and thus ought to have an economy based primarily on agriculture. But they don’t have much mineral wealth, and thus lack heavily armored units. 

So Hoshido should have more than enough food to go around and a bigger population, but not many minerals to forge weapons and armor or gold to buy it, while Nohr should have habitual famines and less population, but the nobility should be far richer than Hoshidan nobility and the army should be very well equipped.

So each kingdom has something the other lacks, Hoshido has food and Nohr has minerals and gold. The problem is that since Nohr has a lack of food and abundance of weapons, they have resorted to attacking neighbouring areas in times of famine, while Hoshido has isolationist tendencies and puts barriers to trading with foreigners. Through the centuries, Nohr progressed from raiding other countries in times of famine to conquering and annexing them, while Hoshido, as a response, completely closed its frontiers. 

Honestly, this all is pretty much canon text in the game, only with a “Nohr is evil and aggressive, Hoshido is peaceful and wonderful” filter firmly in place. 

---- AU ideas ----

- So, Corrin’s kidnapping and Sumeragi’s death. This is the one event that should have used Anankos and Valla as a primary explanation, but didn’t. They even put that one chapter in Revelations in which Ryoma’s and Xander’s armies blame each other for the destruction of the neutral city of Cyrkensia when the real culprit was Anankos and his invisible zombie soldiers. It would have been interesting if both Nohr and Hoshido blamed the other country for the attempt at a peace treaty going horribly wrong, and for both countries to have lost something. Hoshido would have lost Sumeragi and Corrin, and if we are going with human Garon who is not a zombie in order to avoid him being his cartoonishly evil canon self, Nohr could have lost a prince/princess or two. 

One thing that is very clear about canon Garon back when he was alive was that he truly valued all his children, and went as far as to make the concubine’s children a legitimate part of the line of succession, and to stop taking concubines when they started killing each other and the children in order to increase their own child’s chances of eventually inheriting the throne. So it would make sense for human Garon to take Corrin and raise them as a nohrian prince/ss as revenge for losing one of his children to the Hoshidan “betrayal” at Cheve. 

- In this kind of AU, what would make sense would be for Corrin to be raised in Krakenburg instead of in the Northern Fortress and for them to have the exact same responsibilities and expectations placed upon them as the rest of the nohrian siblings. So they already should have military experience through working with Xander for a while, and the start of the story being about them being ready to be in command of their own section of the army, instead of being “ready” to join the army at all. That way, it would also make far more sense for Corrin to be the main leader and tactician during the whole game even after the “prove yourself” arc is over and the far more experienced Xander and Leo join up for the invasion of Hoshido. Leo would be on the same level as Corrin and starting to command on his own as well despite being younger because he is a prodigy, while Elise would be the more sheltered and naive one because of her youth, being at most on healer duty at the rear, and definitely not having seen an actual frontline yet. 

This version of Corrin should also be a lot less naive about nohrian culture and way of life due to not being almost completely isolated from it. They’d likely hold a position similar to Azura in canon, especially if they knew the truth about being originally hoshidan the same way Azura knew she was originally “nohrian” and that her heritage was inescapable despite being treated well by the hoshidan siblings. It would be interesting to have a Corrin who genuinely wants to prove themself as a true Nohrian for more than two chapters of the plot instead of feeling super guilty for the first half of  the game and using it as a facade to hide their true agenda (and feeling even more guilty) for the second half like in canon Conquest. 

- Azura’s kidnapping is one of the few shady things Hoshido did in canon, and even that is glorified by Mikoto being her aunt and in the know about Valla, as well as Azura being mistreated by the other concubines and their children. So in this AU, Azura would have been kidnapped first in order to force an exchange and get back Corrin, but Mikoto would have no intention to actualy give her niece back. While an exchange doesn’t happen, what does happen is an increase in the tension between the two countries, as now both of them are trying to extract a prince/ss from the other. Mikoto’s barrier and the faceless attacks are simply parts of the escalation of hostilities until Corrin is actually kidnapped during a mission and dragged behind the barrier. Which would prompy Nohr to launch a full-scale attack to rescue Corrin before the hoshidan queen can use the chance to brainwash them (since the barrier did effect the minds of the people who crossed it). Mikoto’s death happens either like in canon (by a vallite spectral asssassin pretending to be nohrian and targetting both Corrin and Mikoto) or in the chaos of the nohrian attempt to reclaim Corrin, causing the barrier to fall, giving Ryoma a reason to start an al out war with Norh and having Corrin make the choice to support Nohr, Hoshido or neither.  

- Garon would start his slippery slide down into batshit insanity during the events of the game because of Anankos’ mindcontrol, much like Takumi. That way, it would make sense for the nohrian siblings to still be loyal to Garon for most of the story and not wanting to believe that he was both not well in the head and that there was a foreign influence causing his obviously aberrant behaviour instead of being a consequence of the stress of the war and tha he would get better once it was over. It would also make it more tragic for them to have to eventually cut him down if there was no other way to free him from Anankos’ control. 

- Azura should have her own agenda regarding Valla. One of the main issues canon Azura has is that she knows everything but does nothing to fix the root of the issue unless a very specific chain of events occurs. In two of the three paths, Azura uses her power to destroy or free one or two of Anankos’ thralls, sacrificing her own life in the process and without making any effort to even hint towards Valla or there being another enemy manipulating them from the shadows, and that knowledge is lost with her death, giving Anankos a free shot to undo your efforts in Birthright or Conquest a few generations down the line. So this AU’s Azura’s main motivation should be plotting to reveal Anankos’s existence and influence in a way that doesn’t erase her own. And she chooses to follow Corrin regardless of the path they take because she saw in them a way to do so, because while she favours Hoshido her real allegiance is to her mother’s land and her mission is to destroy Anankos and foil his plans.

- Talking about Valla, another of the “shady things Hoshido does” that does happen in canon and most people don’t acknowledge is that the Hoshidan siblings blatantly and shamelessly lie to Corrin about being related by blood when Corrin was Mikoto’s child from an earlier marriage and they are Sumeragi’s ADOPTIVE child. Sure, they were siblings, but they were not blood related, at all. That is something they only admit after choosing Birthright (or Revelations) and doing some support conversations, but their initial pitch to have Corrin choose Hoshido was all OUR BOND IS MORE REAL BECAUSE WE ARE BLOOD RELATED, UNLIKE YOU AND THOSE NOHRIANS, WHO AREN’T YOUR FAMILY AT ALL. And they kept hammering the “we’re your real siblings because we are blood related, how could you betray us for your fake nohrian family?” in Conquest. Like, wow, hypocrisy much?

- Talking about hoshidan shadiness, Yukimura and Reina are characters tha I think were meant to be darker hoshidans but weren’t very well executed in canon. Yukimura is Iago’s hoshidan equivalent and also the most unreasonable hoshidan in Revelations, while Reina is an obvious parallel to Peri, but her bloodlust doesn’t get as much focus because she only gets to support with Corrin. So AU Yukimura could be the puppeteering mastermind he may have been supposed to be, while pacifist Mikoto having a blood knight who delights in seeing the light fade from her enemies’ eyes as one of her retainers could hint at Mikoto not being as pure and honest as her public image makes her look. 

[travllingbunny]

Tribes of Europa, season 1 - thoughts

I finished season 1 of German post-apocalyptic Netflix drama Tribes of Europa a couple of days ago, and I have... lots of thoughts and mixed feelings.

It's a standard post-apocalyptic show with all the usual tropes, but mostly well done, and has potential. I ended up liking it better than I expected, mostly because one of the storylines (Kiano’s) turned out to be pretty good/interesting.

The main problem of the show is that most characters, so far, don't have a lot of depth. An exception is a female villain who has proven to be quite complex and interesting. On the other hand, while  I loved seeing Oliver Masucci, in a role completely different from Ulrich Nielsen, and he's great and charismatic, I feel like I've seen the exact same lovable rogue-turned-mentor character a dozen times in various shows and movies. The main trio of young protagonists have the potential for interesting character development, but it remains to be seen what saason 2 does with it.

At least there's one thing that makes the show different than most post-apocalyptic shows I'm aware of - I can't think of any others that take place on the European continent? Usually it's North America, Australia, or UK. So, that's interesting... But then, after I finished it, I started thinking a bit more about some of the elements of the worldbuilding, which are a bit... questionable? I'm reserving judgment till these things are explained.

Spoilers under the cut.

In the first episode, the show did the GoT thing of introducing us to a likable family and then having siblings separated by fate and trying to get back together, while having different storylines. But they should've spent a bit more time with them together and explaining their history.

The show also does that thing where the siblings look nothing like each other and are played by actors of different ethnic origins, so I was waiting to hear they were half-siblings or some other explanation, but there was none. Well, OK then.

One thing I wasn't crazy about is that Kiano had a girlfriend we saw for about 20 seconds and then she apparently got killed for no particular reason. I can't say it's even fridging, since he never even mentions her afterwards and he has a lot of other reasons to hate the Crows.

But Kiano's storyline turned out to be the most interesting , and most disturbing, the kind that can make or break the show, depending on how it deals with issues like slavery, rape, trauma. So far, the show has dealt with it well, which made me like the show more than I thought. (It definitely beats The 100 - a show it was the 100 in the Netflix promo campaign - in that respect. I was already scared it would do something similar to The 100, which really dropped the ball when it touched on such issues in a really clumsy way in season 3.)

Lord Varvara has turned out to be the most interesting and compelling character, and excellently played by Melika Foroutan. (I wish I could say the same about the Crows’ big boss, Yvar - but whether it is mostly due to the OTT costume and makeup or the similarly OTT acting, I had a hard time taking this guy seriously.) She is not exactly morally grey - she is definitely a villain, slaver rapist and murderer, but her role as a former slave - a victim of abuse turned abuser, and someone who upholds the ideas of Social Darwinism - makes her role very interesting and ambiguous. I think that (especially based on some hints) that she used to be a sex slave, too, and if she was also made to be a Crow by her former slave master, that would probably mean Yvar used to be her master. That could lead to some interesting tension and conflicts, as she probably hates this guy deep inside, but still has to vie for his approval, even now that she has “made it”.  And she sees to see something in Kiano that makes her think they are similar, that he is 'strong' like she thinks she is (on the other hand, she despised her other slave who had a huge Stockholm Syndrome for her).

I'm curious how they deal with Kiano's character development next season, and how far into moral greyness or darkness it will be willing to go with him. Varvara is a blueprint of what he could become.  He didn't exactly show much concern for the lives of other slaves, except his father.  

Liv's storyline was also pretty interesting. with her navigating the political issues of the Crimsons. I liked that the Crimsons as a whole turned out to be more morally grey than I initially expected - with their strict military discipline to the point of authorianism and lack of tolerance for dissent. 

I don't know if the show expected me to side with the general (aka "Father") or think his views were right, as Liv did? I did not.. "Let's make peace and unity with slavers"? No, dude. But I’ll go with the idea that we are not necessarily supposed to side with him rather than David just because Liv did; or that a third option may be found (such as causing a rebellion among the Crows themselves, which would be my preferred direction of that storyline). 

(I also rolled my eyes whenever he started going on about "old European dream" or whatever he called it. No, my dude, you need to brush up on your history. Your plan is nothing like the EU, unless your plan is to go and deliver a bunch of demands to the Crows:  "Unless you guys: abolish slavery; ensure human rights for everyone; install a viable non-slavery based economy etc.. - we're not letting you into our new unified Europe!" He also may needed to be reminded EU was formed after Axis powers were defeated.)

I've heard that a lot of people didn't like Elja's storyline because they found it the least interesting, and sure, it wasn't very emotional and didn't have much character development, but I'm very curious about the mystery of the Black December, the Atlantians etc. so I liked it.  And I liked the fact that Elja wasn't a naive kid and could deceive people and keep secrets when he needed to.

But there are certain problems I have with the show’s world-building... which, at its worse, may end up being just as problematic as The 100′s was.

While I like the idea of a post-apocalyptic show set in continental Europe, and with languages other than English - almost all of the characters are only speaking German or English (the latter, I guess, for the same reason it's widespread today - people speak it as a second language and use it to communicate). We should really see more people who speak other languages. So far, that’s only happened sporadically - but my problem is more with the fact that the most villainous tribe, Crows (murderous, slave-owning Eurotrash-like villains with very Social Darwinist views) -  even though they speak German or English 99% of the time - very notably use certain words from Slavic languages - and only for specific terms like "lubovnik" ('lover' - actually sex slave), "boi" (fight/battle), "svobodnik" (free man?). These were very recognizable. I have no idea what "Bozie" means, but I read somewhere it comes from Russian. What's supposed to be the backtory behind that? Sure, I am for more language diversity, but did a German show have to give the kind of barbaric-version-of-fascist villains these questionable Slavic references?  That would be uncomfortable in so many ways.... It's not just Slavs, because another notable Crow character, Grieta at some point used Romanian (and the actress is Romanian), but I hope they're not going with the Evil Barbaric Eastern Europeans here. To be fair, many Crows were clearly slaves at the beginning, which complicates things... but Varvara says her real name - slave name - was Sophia, which could be anything - while her Crow names is Varvara - which definitely sounds Russian or Bulgarian (or, I guess, it could be Greek).

On the other side, opposed to the Crows, we have the more “civilized” tribe/army of former Eurocorps, whose members have so far only been heard speaking English, German and, at one point, Dutch - curiously called Red Crimson Army (!), I have so many questions...

Another questionable thing, pointed by the host of the Culture Cave YouTube podcast, who did an overall favorable review of the show, howeverpointed out that the Crows - the villains - are the only ones who don't conform to gender roles? And the males who are the most 'effeminate' looking are baddies. I didn’t even think of that initially, but thinking about it... yes, it has been like that so far, hasn’t it?

I’m reserving judgment till next season, but I only used to give The 100 the benefit of doubt with its questionable world-building, and we know how that turned out.

[kadomoni]

I always thought I might be bad, now I’m sure that it’s true…

I really can’t tell you what to think of Pink Diamond/Rose Quartz. I can’t. It’s something you have to decide for yourself, but I’m going to explain why she’s one of my favorite characters of the show, but I also think she is the villain.

Now, I know what Pink Stans are saying, “She’s not the villain! She’s morally grey and trying to change!” And, to that I say, yes clearly. She’s an incredibly well-written, nuanced, and complex character. But, as much as she has done good, she has also done very, very bad. And, I’m here to explain why I think Pink is not evil—she’s just bad (and she knows it).

There is no doubt about it that Pink was raised in an abusive family. White is a pretty typical narcissistic parent (over-reliance on perfectionism, wanting people to please her and be like her but no one ever living up to her expectations, trouble with empathy, ect.). Yellow and Blue love Pink but have no idea how to raise her. That’s pretty typical of dysfunctional family dynamics. None of them had a good role model, so they can only replicate a bad role model.

I understand this dynamic. I had a “mother figure” who was very emotionally (and sometimes physically) abusive. My parents were nice and good parents but they had anger issues. I went from being petulant to shutting down, but I think I fit more into a Pearl archetype because instead of acting out my pain, I kept it inside and felt like it was me that was wrong. Pink does this, but not before causing a lot of issues, and often exploding outwards.

((Major Steven Universe/Future Spoilers under the cut))

We’ll start with what we know about Pink, which is very limited.

The first “memory” we have from her is the astral projection dream Stevonnie had where she threw a tantrum about wanting a colony. It was childish, yes, but Yellow response was no better considering she just yelled at her. They both threw tantrums, and no doubt, she was going to get locked up in her tower after. Pink got angry, she punched a mirror (hopefully, she’d only punched mirrors, please, Rebecca, don’t hurt me like this).

Secondly, we have the dream Steven had about Blue, who begged Pink to stop being combative and letting her “organics” loose, but ultimately just ended up admonishing her further. It’s also implied that she had her stay in the tower room.

Also, that tower is even more fucked up than just isolation. @singlepalerose​ explains this in her meta that Gems need light to live, not food. Rebecca says in an interview when asked that she “can’t say” what would happen if put in a place with no light. But, @singlepalerose​ comes to the conclusion that this might be literally akin to starvation, which is torture. There’s a good chance that Pink was literally tortured by her care-givers.

And, poor Pink Pearl. I don’t know what happened, but whether it was a scream or some physical altercation, it was frightening enough that she broke her pearl so badly, it couldn’t be repaired, which as seen in RS’s concept drawings, Pink is really fucked up by this. She becomes more introverted with her feelings because of this.

                                                          Don’t Break This One.

I’m not going to comment on whether these actions make her “bad” or “abusive.” She was clearly a child in an emotionally maladaptive environment, and she did decide to change and to keep her anger and frustration internalized at the risk of harming the people around her.

But, unfortunately, the information after this is where I begin to feel disturbed by Pink’s actions.

She got a colony. At first, she liked it, but clearly, she either grew bored or disenchanted with managing it. I feel as though she was expecting some sort of freedom, when really, the extra responsibilities probably just weighed her down even more.

The events of ‘A Single Pale Rose’ come into play now. Pearl suggested they go down to Earth, and Pink felt her first taste of unrestrained freedom. She liked interacting with other gems, liked interacting with humans, and finally decided that she didn’t want to destroy the Earth. And, she did beg all the Diamonds to let her give up the colony, but not only had Pink kinda shot herself in the foot with this one because she begged so hard for a colony and made so many big scenes about it, White and Yellow are incredibly steadfast in tradition and rules, and this wasn’t going to fly.

So, she decided to take drastic action.

I personally think that the idea to fake her own death was…weird. And, pretty extreme. I understand her reasoning, but this was the first time where she made a decision that benefited her far more than it did others (and I’m not talking about the planet right now because that’s a whole separate thing). This action traumatized Pearl to the point where she doesn’t eat, won’t shapeshift, and can’t talk about it. Yes, I know she commanded Pearl not to talk about it, but this caused significant emotional distress for her later on in the series.

This also traumatized the whole gem race, specifically the Diamonds, because she’d framed it as a terror attack. It would be way different if she stood up to White herself publicly, but there was so much deception going on that it fundamentally changed the course of Gem Culture and the fate of the Earth. Mostly what bothers me here is how manipulative this action was and how unnecessarily complex it was. Pink did everything she could to wipe her slate clean, be seen as a martyr of Gemkind, and also live freely on Earth.

It was a very good way to get her freedom, but it was also extremely harmful to all parties involved.

The War only escalated at this point. They had to fight Homeworld as a full-on army, and countless of gems were shattered.

Now, yes, of course, these actions saved the Earth, which is good in our perspective because we live on Earth. Earth is essential to us because it is our only frame of reference. But, something that continually complexed the Homeworld gems was why someone would fight for one measly planet at the cost of so much. It makes sense to us because we would sacrifice a whole heck of a lot to keep our planet from being invaded by space aliens, but the gems were colonizing tons of planets and destroying them for energy. It was obviously horrible as colonizers are horrible, but it’s sort of like how different armies will invade other countries, but because we’re being told that it’s for good, most people don’t really care.

From the gem’s perspective, this was all a horrible disaster—a loss of countless life, resources, and pride.

And, for The Crystal Gems, the “loss” of the war meant that all of their friends were corrupted, except Rose’s closest friends (which I’m personally unsure if this is completely truthful. I would hope it would be, but it’s also very suspicious because letting only the people that trust her the most survive would make it easier to control her own story).

Speaking of which, wtf is up with her bubbling Bismuth? It just feels like it would be easier to hide her away instead of trying to explain why she doesn’t want to shatter the Diamonds. But, Rose shattered Pink, anyway? I personally believe Bismuth was too close to figuring out her story, and she didn’t know what to do. I can’t think of any other explanation that would explain her actions and make sense with telling the Crystal Gems she’d been shattered. It feels very manipulative and selfish.

All of this obviously traumatized Pearl (we see it in her Pearl within a Pearl within a Pearl), and it had to have traumatized Garnet considering her reactions to mentions of the war and the “fusion” experiments. It was especially bad on Garnet’s end because she thought the war was actually what Rose said it was, which is why she freaked out when it wasn’t.

She kept secrets from everyone, even Her Pearl. But, Pearl didn’t know that she didn’t know everything. You could call Pearl delusional, but I think this is more proof that Rose never did something in front of her that made her feel like she was being untruthful.

And, I said y’all don’t want to get me started on Rose’s treatment of Pearl because I go feral when I get worked up about it. I would like to personally thank @theroguefeminist​ for their meta on Rose/Pearl and Fandom Ableism. It’s super good, and it was the meta that made me finally sit down and watch all of SU way back in the day. But, it illustrates the point that fandoms tend to look down on characters that act “bitter,” “weak,” “jealous,” “depressed,” or “neurotic.” It’s even more sinister because the reason why Pearl acts the way she does in the first two seasons is because she’d been manipulated by Rose.

She was Pink’s Pearl, her partner in crime, her renegade. They were the Heroes of The Rebellion. Pearl admitted she had feelings for her, and Rose’s response was enthusiastic (“Don’t ever stop!”). From what we’ve seen, the disregard of her feelings only began when she started dating Greg, considering Pearl didn’t see “the men who came into her life now and again” as threats because they “didn’t really matter until [him].” But, the treatment that we see of Pearl in “Story for Steven” and “We Need to Talk” is dismissive at best and cruel and uncaring at the worst.

After Greg was trying to flirt with Rose, Pearl said defensively, “I can sing!” and they laughed at her. Even Rose beamed. They were basically making fun of her when Pearl was only reacting that way because she loved Rose and felt threatened by Greg, even at this point.

I do want to add that I think Rose was trying to be a good person by telling Greg to go away. She made a good point that he shouldn’t give up on his dreams to be with her (especially considering that she knew that nothing would become of him in a place like Beach City). But, she was wooed by him. She laughed and gave into her instincts to surround herself with people who look up to her (even Vidalia said something about how Greg worships her).

But, I find Rose’s treatment of her in “We Need to Talk” to be unnecessarily flippant. Obviously, Pearl was very upset during the whole “What Can I Do For You?” song, and her last ditch effort was to show off Rainbow Quartz and try to belittle his efforts, but Greg was rightly defensive. This doesn’t mean Pearl was being “salty” or “abusive” or “bitchy.” She was reacting negatively towards the emotional neglect that Rose was showing her. Of course, we don’t know every interaction that Pearl and Rose had, but it’s very heavily implied that Rose never communicated with Pearl how their relationship was developing.

I do not, I repeat—I DO NOT—think that Pearl was owed Rose’s love. What I think is neglectful about this situation is that Rose didn’t either apologize or properly explain the nature of their relationship. It’s implied that Rose made her believe they were an item and then proceeded to sleep around and eventually find an alternative partner. No one is owed affection with someone who doesn’t want to be romantically involved, but to lead someone on for thousands of years is horrible, and the idea makes me nauseous, especially since the fandom is more likely to blame Pearl even though Pearl was literally her glorified slave and only able to break out of that thought process years after Steven was born.

Pearl was so emotionally fucked up by Rose’s possible emotional neglect that she had several traumatic episodes starting from “Indirect Kiss” and culminating in her “Cry for Help.” She literally believed she was powerless and felt so weak that she thought the only way to feel agency was to manipulate and extort affection from Garnet. I’m also not defending Pearl for doing this, but it’s clear that she did this because she was mentally ill and not because she was knowingly or maliciously disregarding Garnet’s feelings to fulfill her own needs. Trauma episodes often cause you to act in destructive ways towards yourself and others, but it’s also very different from how Rose did disregard the feelings of others to get her way, or have fun, or “play” with people.

It also reminds me of her treatment of Spinel. Pink was having fun with Spinel until they decided to give her a colony, and then, instead of bringing Spinel with her or sending her back to the Diamonds, she told her to stay there, and she abandoned her for 6,000 years with no plans of returning for her. To be fair, it would really mess up the Crystal Gem dynamic if she suddenly returned with a Spinel who was gifted to Pink Diamond. So, in Rose’s perspective, I get it, but as myself, I don’t think it’s right.

Greg, even, I think was taken advantage of. He’s so sweet and trusting and good that she would easily have been able to get him to do anything. I’m not going to go too much into this because there’s not too much evidence besides her behavior towards him in “Greg the Babysitter” and how she laughed at him in “We Need to Talk.” I just have the feeling that Greg knows something that no one else does and that his perma-sunburn might have something to do with Rose and/or Steven’s conception. Don’t take my word for it since this is just a theory, but I do think there’s something we don’t know yet.

Alright, now that most of the character stuff is out of the way, let’s talk Rose symbolism. In almost every episode, there’s a shot of Rose’s portrait with her eyes covered or something obscuring them. This is classic anime imagery of a suspect character, and it’s foreshadowing of her suspect actions. All of her organic experiments eventually go rouge without constant maintenance from Rose (see: the moss in “Lars and the Cool Kids,” the thorns in “Indirect Kiss”). We don’t know why this happens, but it points to the idea that there’s something malignant lurking underneath Rose’s creations.

Rose’s Room also has disturbing implications. The fact that it gives Steven whatever he wants, but more often than not, it turns into psychological horror is telling. It may be that Steven just doesn’t know how to use the room, but also, the Gems didn’t want him to go in there. (“It doesn’t know how to handle a task like that!” What do you know, Pearl????) The creepiest one, in my opinion, was how the Fake Connie he made in “Open Book” eventually turned on him, attacked him, and basically physically forced him to admit feelings he wanted to keep hidden. I’m not saying this is the intended purpose of the room, but I find it troubling that it can be used in this way and defaults to it when there isn’t anything stopping it. It could also be that when the illusion the room makes is broken that it reverts to an angry (and dare I say Pink Diamond-esque) temperament.

My final point is how her decision to have Steven, even though eventually for good, hurt many people, Steven included. To make the decision to die and have a kid was confusing to everyone, but more so, the gems. They don’t understand human reproduction outside of a biological level, and the fact that gems normally can’t sexually reproduce makes the concept even more foreign. It seems like she explained that she was doing it and would die but didn’t fully prepare the gems about what that would entail. I think this is most clearly seen in “Three Gems and a Baby” because the Crystal Gem’s behavior towards baby Steven reflected Pearl’s response to emotional neglect, such as acting impulsively and dangerously just for not understanding the complexities of the situation.

Their whole dynamic was screwed up, and they all felt deeply hurt by Rose’s death. If you compare how they act at the beginning of the series to the end, they were basically all at each other’s throats because they couldn’t communicate properly due to all the undealt with baggage that had been left behind. It ended up becoming Steven’s job to emotionally support the gems when he should have been the one being emotionally supported. This imbalance of “the parents being the child” and “the child being the parents” is a huge reason why we see Steven in such emotional distress during Future. He’s internalized the idea that he should be the leader, the supporter, the helper, and he hasn’t properly been able to find his own identity because Rose looms over all of them (see: “Rose Buds”).

It’s hard to say whether Rose intentionally left Steven to clean up her mistakes or if she just felt like he could fix it all when she couldn’t, but there is no denying that Rose’s actions have seriously messed up our boy. This is the clearest theme presented in the show, so I’m not going to go super hard on this topic because basically the whole show is Steven angsting over his mom.

So, the point of all of this is that, yes, Pink was abused. There is no doubting that she was very badly abused and developed her personality and coping mechanisms due to this trauma. However, Rose has hurt her friends, family, and gemkind due to her actions. A lot of abusers have been abused. I know my abuser was abused in the same way I was, but that doesn’t give her an excuse to enact that abuse on me. It’s the same as Rose. Her bad upbringing gives context about why she turned out the way she did, but it’s incredibly short-sighted to say that Rose acted in mostly good ways towards others.

And, she knows she’s bad. Whether or not Rebecca will outright admit what the song is about, we have enough context to know that “Love Like You” is Rose talking to Greg (if not the other gems as well).

“I always thought I might be bad Now I’m sure that it’s true ‘cause I think you’re so good And, I’m nothing like you

Look at you go I just adore you I wish that I knew What makes you think I’m so special”

Rose is admitting that she thinks she’s bad and isn’t special and doesn’t understand what Greg sees in her. She knows she’s done bad things, but in my opinion, she didn’t do enough to fix her problems. She made Steven instead. It was her final act of avoidance. Maybe she gave up on herself. Maybe she knew she couldn’t “Love Like You.” I don’t know the answer to that. I just know that Rose’s actions were abusive. She’s not good. She’s morally gray. She did good things, but she did many bad things as well. She’s not evil, but she is the series’ antagonist. She has good things about her, but she has many bad things as well. People can be two things. But, saying she’s not an abuser is making excuses for her behavior.

Here are my answers to a few common complaints on my shitpost meme.

Q: Rose didn’t want to cause war! She just wanted to free the planet/have freedom/save the gems, ect. A: If she didn’t want to cause war, she very well could have…not started the war? There are much less destructive options than pretending to be a rebel when she really was a Diamond. The double life thing is so ridiculous, no one in the show could even guess it. Q: Don’t discredit her Rebellion! A: I just think she cared more about herself than she actually did the Earth. The Rebellion did save the Earth, but not without crazy death and destruction. Q: Pink was good compared to Japser, the Diamonds, Lapis, ect. A: All of you saying that those other characters are bad while Rose is good totally misses the point. All those characters did abusive things. So did Rose/Pink. Pink is good and bad. It’s really showing your ass that you hate x, y, z but will cape for Pink even though she’s probably caused the most harm of the entire series. Whatever happened to all those morally grey arguments?

Q: This take is bad! A: soz bruh cry harder Q: This is black and white thinking. A: I shouldn’t have to explain every aspect of a character in a shitpost. This meta is my full explanation, so here’s my morally grey meme uwu

Q: Blue, Yellow, and White are colonizers and also really abusive. A: Yes. It doesn’t negate Pink’s actions, though.

Q: Pink Pearl was an accident! She changed after!!! That’s not abuse!!!!!!! A: Abuse isn’t always intentional, and we don’t canonically know it was an accident. Pink Pearl said that it was, but she admitted she was making excuses for her. But, accident or not, hurting someone deeply can be abuse if it’s not dealt with. Pink Pearl was not dealt with. She was brainwashed for 8,000 years, instead. Pearl-Pearl helped her deal with it. The continual explosive anger from Pink was abusive, hands down.

Q: She’s not a villain! A: She certainly is framed as Steven’s villain. Regardless of what you personally think of Pink, Steven is deeply disturbed and harmed by Rose’s actions. It’s literally the whole plot of the show! If Pink is eventually redeemed, I won’t mind, but she’s irredeemable in my eyes.

[daresplaining]

[ID: Excerpt from Lee’s Daredevil run. Jack Murdock is boxing with a blond-haired opponent in front of a large crowd. College-age Matt and Foggy are cheering him on from the sidelines.]

Jack: “The Fixer said I have to take a dive in the first round tonight! But my boy’s here tonight, to root for his dad! I’ve always trained him to do his best... I can’t disappoint him now!”

Fixer: “Murdock! You fool! Take it easy! What are you doin’?! If you’re tryin’ to double-cross me, you’ll live to regret it! You’re supposed to dive now... hear? Dive!”

Foggy: “He’s winnin’, Matt! Your dad’s pulverizing him!”

Matt: “(I know it! I can follow the fight perfectly, by hearing the sound of each blow, each footstep!)” 

Jack: “It’s my one chance! ...Maybe my last chance... to do something to make my son proud of me! I’m not gonna fail him! I’m gonna win... do ya hear... I’m gonna win!”

Daredevil vol. 1 #1 by Stan Lee, Bill Everett, and Sam Rosen

    This is unprompted by anything, but since it’s on my mind, I wanted to discuss it: 

    There’s a conversation that can be had about Jack’s decision to not throw his final fight, and whether or not it was a responsible thing to do. On the one hand, it was a powerful move that symbolically shaped the rest of Matt’s life. Jack makes the decision to stand up for his morals, and for himself, and with his son cheering for him, he does the impossible and wins a fight everyone told him he had to lose. This type of persistence against incredible odds is a major Daredevil motif. Jack’s decision to stand up to the Fixer and his cronies aligns with the bullying themes that exist throughout Matt’s origin story, and is reflected afterward by Matt’s decision to take that same stand and become a superhero. It’s also a beautiful, emotional depiction of a man who has struggled his entire life and finally achieves a sense of self-worth and empowerment. Jack’s final fight is a powerful picture of heroism, and this is why it is such a frequently-referenced moment in DD history. 

    But it also got Jack killed, and-- and this is the tricky bit-- he presumably knew it would. Jack was born and raised in a neighborhood dominated by organized crime. Whether or not you subscribe to the version of continuity in which he was blackmailed into working as a mob enforcer for a while, it’s a clear fact that Jack, having grown up in this environment, would have a sense of how gangsters operated, which means knowing what happens to those who anger them. While the earliest versions of the story (in Daredevil #1 and #53) gloss over the actual conversation between Jack and the Fixer before the big fight, Roger McKenzie spells it right out in his retelling in #164:

[ID: Excerpt from McKenzie’s Daredevil run. Jack Murdock is working out in a gym in nothing but short shorts (I swear...) when two gangster-looking men in fedoras come in. One (the Fixer) is short, the other is tall.]

Fixer: “Jackie boy, you been workin’ too hard. You ought’a take it easy. Real easy. So easy you lose your next fight, know what I mean?”

Jack: “Why, you lousy little--! I never threw a fight in my life! I sure as hell ain’t gonna start now!”

[ID: Jack tries to punch the Fixer, but the tall gangster grabs his wrist.]

Fixer: “Jackie boy, you either take a dive... or you’re a dead man!”

Daredevil vol. 1 #164 by Roger McKenzie, Frank Miller, and Glynis Wein

    Jack knows the stakes: if he doesn’t throw the match, he’ll be killed. Entering into this impossible situation is part of the tragedy of his story. He was previously aware of the Fixer by reputation, and avoided having anything to do with him until he had no other option. For Matt’s sake, Jack sacrifices both his morals and his personal safety by agreeing to associate with a manager who is known within the boxing community to be crooked and dangerous. 

[ID: Two panels from Thomas’s Daredevil run. In the first, Jack is walking down the street, away from the viewer, with his hands in his pockets. In the next he is in the office of a boxing manager, leaning over his desk. The manager is lighting a cigar.]

Jack: “I’m too old... haven’t been able to land a fight in weeks! But, I’ve got to keep fightin’... till Matt gets thru college! I owe him that!”

Matt (caption): “Finally, in desperation, Dad made a fatal decision...”

Guy: “Sorry, Murdock... but the only guy who’ll manage a has-been like you is... the Fixer!”

Jack: “The Fixer! I always swore to steer clear of a guy with his reputation! But now I’ve got no choice... I have to get a fight!”

Daredevil vol. 1 #53 by Roy Thomas, Gene Colan, and Artie Simek

    But in spite of this knowledge, Jack also shows a surprising degree of naivete in this situation. He’s a good person, maybe a little too trusting, maybe not quite as street smart as he ought to be. He is a victim, toyed with by people who are happy to prey on his earnestness and desperation. Despite being aware of how shady the Fixer is, Jack is still shocked to learn that his fights are being fixed, and affronted by the suggestion that he would agree to take part in that deception. But even so, once the situation becomes clear to him, he does know that the consequences will be dire for him if he refuses to throw the fight. For Jack, deciding to welcome those consequences and finding the strength to actually win the fight is a personal victory, but there’s an uncomfortable grey area within that decision, because by choosing to set a moral example for his son in spite of the risk, he is also choosing to abandon Matt. 

[ID: Excerpt from the Battlin’ Jack Murdock mini-series. Jack is in an alley, getting beaten up by several gangsters in fedoras. His face is bloody. One of the gangsters, Slade, holds a handgun to Jack’s head.]

Slade: “You ain’t scared, huh, tough guy?! Maybe after we’re done with you, we’ll go get your boy. Maybe we’ll make him deaf and dumb too! Whaddaya think about that, Murdock? You think we should go see your boy?”

Jack: “Heh heh. You... you do that. Ha. You go see my boy. Ha ha ha!”

Daredevil: Battlin’ Jack Murdock #4 by Zeb Wells and Carmine Di Giandomenico

    The Battlin’ Jack Murdock mini-series makes an effort to break down Jack’s mindset regarding this decision. Ultimately, it resorts to using a retcon (or at least, an addition to the canon not seen elsewhere) to justify Jack’s actions: Jack discovers Matt’s fighting abilities shortly before the match, and goes to his death safe in the knowledge that his son can take care of himself. I like this plot point just because the idea of Jack discovering Matt’s secret is fun to consider. But it doesn’t really work to smooth over this wrinkly bit of characterization, because a parent’s concern for their child’s wellbeing usually goes further than just “can my kid physically defend themself against possible future retribution stemming from my actions?”. Jack’s “Oh phew, Matt’s a badass!” doesn’t, I feel, go deep enough. Without Jack, Matt only has one other significant person in his life at this point: Foggy. And that does end up being enough-- Foggy’s support gets him through the initial anguish of losing his father, and Matt graduates college and builds a successful life for himself-- but it still looks a lot like selfishness. Jack may be trying to set a moral example for Matt by winning the fight, but what good is that when it’s a decision that ends up harming them both? Jack may be willing to die for the sake of taking a stand, but shouldn’t Matt, who is forced to suffer the emotional toll of losing his father, have a say in that decision too? 

    Jack wins that fight for himself and for the message it sends to Matt. This is firmly established. But what is also firmly established is that Jack would have done anything for Matt. He sacrificed everything to give his child the best life he could, and for a long time, the two of them only had each other. Jack certainly made mistakes, but it seems wrong to think that he would willingly choose to leave Matt alone. It is possible to read this moment as Jack deciding that Matt is ready to be left alone-- he was in college, well on his way to adulthood and independence, he had a caring best friend, and thus Jack felt safe in letting Matt go off on his own. I think that’s part of what Battlin’ Jack Murdock was trying to get at, and I do certainly think that was a factor. But I also believe strongly in the sheer emotional force of that moment in the ring when Jack made his fateful choice. 

[ID: Excerpt from the Daredevil: Yellow mini-series. Jack, in the ring, punches his opponent in the face while Matt and Foggy cheer him on from the sidelines.]

Matt: “Take him, Dad!”

Announcer: “Unbelievable! ‘Southpaw’ Jack Murdock has floored Creel with a hard right to the jaw!”

Daredevil: Yellow #1 by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale

    I want nothing more than to give Jack the benefit of the doubt, and my personal interpretation of the decision is that there was no forethought involved. Jack goes into this fight angry and horribly conflicted, and then in the heat of it all he realizes he can win, he hears Matt cheering for him, and he just goes for it, unleashing a lifetime of grief and frustration, determined to behave heroically in front of the son who means more to him than his own life. Maybe, in the elation of the moment, he convinces himself that he’ll be able to handle the Fixer’s retribution, or maybe he no longer cares one way or the other. But it’s such a visceral scene that for me, I’m convinced that emotion was the main driving factor behind Jack’s decision. 

[greenninjagal-blog]

currently vibing in a two-week lockdown, can you share some of your favorite fics? i need some new things to read, and I've got too much time on my hands-

Aw man, same! The rest of my actual Spring Semester got turned online… Let’s see…..Fic recs for the pseudo End of the World (Courtesy of AO3, arranged by most prominent ship!) Keep in mind that my descriptions are shorter and written mostly for comedic effect than the actual fics, so if something looks interesting Click it! Get more info about it! Don’t just take my word! I tried my best to get a lot of variety of fics and topics and tropes, as well as authors that might not be as well known! Uhhh here are the links to lists I’ve already made for various other reasons check out my Fic Rec Masterlist!

I also am including various of my fav authors masterlists for funsies!

jungle321jungle’s || Max-isTired’s || TrashficParlour’s || Lefaystrent’s || Mine!

Completed Fics

A Deal in which Virgil tries to summon a familiar and gets a Circle King instead. And he’s really pretty. (Anxceit)

Love Like You in which Virgil decides to give up looking for a romantic partner and considers adopting instead. He finds more than he’s looking for with a set of twins and the man who watches over them (Anxceit)

A Dragon’s Tail in which Logan is cursed to be a Dragon by his best friends stepmother, Virgil is struggling to learn a power he can’t control, Patton who’d rather marry a servant than the Prince, and Roman has no clue what is going on but the Prince he’s supposed to be saving can probably kick his ass. (Logicality, Prinxiety)

A Game of Vice in which Remus kidnaps Roman and turns it into a game of who can come save him from his lonely tower. (Logicality, Prinxeity) 

double down with the paradigms in which Logan tries to explain away his own OCD while dealing with the emotions he has for a certain Pre-Vet. Excellent depiction of OCD, made me cry, 300/10 would read again. (Logicality, Prinxiety)

It Takes Two to Tango in which Roman begs his brother, Logan, to let him go back in time to meet a famous dancer. Falling in Love was not part of the plan. (Prinxiety, Logicality)

A favorite star in the heavens in which everyone has at least one soulmate. They’re luckily enough to have three each. (LAMP) 

Forgotten Forests and Magnified Myths in which Logan finds out very suddenly that he has the passive ability to talk to dragons. (DAMP, Remilie)

Sense5 in which five people in different countries are suddenly psychically linked together and uh…yeah fun times. (DLAMP)

Stray Hearts Are Subject To Change in which black cat hybrid Virgil plans to die very heroically in an alley and Roman completely messes up that plan by being a decent human being. (Prinxiety, Logicality)

Hidden In Shadows in which Virgil is the boogieman every adult warned you about but he doesn’t actually enjoy being scary. Good thing the three Sanders kids aren’t scared of anything. (Not so good for their very confused Dad who isn’t sure what to do about their new imaginary friend)

Paved with Good Intentions in which the dark sides agree to send Virgil to the light sides as a way to get Thomas to listen to them more. Now if Virgil can just get along with the Light sides enough to actually start making some progress…

Absent Gods and Silent Tyranny or: How Logan Learned to Stop Over Thinking and Love Everyone in which Logan is a morally grey scientist who just works for supervillains because they pay well. He doesn’t expect someone like Virgil to change that.

Series

Clouds and Moss AU in which the sides are gods and its very gay and very good. (Intrulogical, Roceit)

Colors in which Logan is an excellent Dad, Virgil is an amazing son, and the world is very colorful. (Logicality)

Labeled in which Logan is a famous superhero, Patton is a doctor, and they adopt the would-be super villain and everything is soft and lovely and I cry at the purity. (Logicality, Remilie)

Fbi!au in which the sides work for the fbi and I diligently reread these series of oneshots for a daily dose of serotonin!  (Logince, Moxiety)

Growing Old is More Fun with You in which Patton is a PTA dad and so is Deceit and they have a “rivalry”. (Mociet)

Gilded Cage in which Roman is forced to dance for the fairy queen whenever she wants it. (Prinxiety)

Renegades! in which the sides live in a dystopia and fight the government while being completely in love with each other. (Prinxiety, Logiciality) 

Love and Other Fairytales in which a couple decides to keep their changling and their actual son, a child is cursed gifted a voice that makes people do whatever he says, a boy makes a rotten deal for the sake of his friend, and centuries before any of this, a fae prince is tricked into an endless sleep by his brother. 

The Vampire Hunting Vampire in which Virgil was turned into a monster and LPR slowly convince him he’s not as bad as he thinks he is. Through cuddles. (LAMP, DLAMP)

Wasteland, Baby! in which there are things in the woods and Patton gets,,, intimate with them. On purpose! (LAMP)

Destined in which Damian has successfully ignored his Soulmates for five years and he planned on doing it for much longer but on his twentieth birthday fate intervenes with a second soultrait that forces him to come face to face with all of them. (DLAMP)

Old Gods in which Gods sometimes walk the earth and Remus is pleased to hear that people are still making offerings to him– wait that is not a goat. And other fun stories!

Sit back and watch the world go by in which Virgil is a human abducted by alien smugglers, befriends Patton, breaks out, and everyone fears humans as space orcs, almost as much as Virgil is afraid of them. 

Teaming the Pieces Together in which Thomas is a pokemon trainer and eevees just…click with him.

Tales from the Dark Sides in which the author provides a lovely hub of works where Virgil is abused by OC dark sides and DLMPR are there to help patch him up.

Uncle Emile and the Super Nephews in which Emile gets custody of his six nephews and tries to bond with them. They in turn try very hard not to tell him they have superpowers.

Cuffed Universe in which Remus is a cop chasing after a hacker, Logan breaks the laws and Virgil would just like tO KEEP ONE JOB WITHOUT ONE OR BOTH OF THE OTHERS DRAGGING HIM INTO THEIR SHIT. (Analomus)

Ongoing Fics

The Origin in which space travel via Thomas Sanders’s ship SS Revelation gets more complicated when the Planets themselves turn out to be entities who aren’t all on board with humanity spreading to the rest of the solar system. (Remile) 

Delicato in which Logan and Patton are music professors with very different conceptions of music, and Virgil and Roman are students in both their classes who just want them to kiss already. (Logicality, Prinxiety)

Coming out of The Shadows in which a small mutant child Virgil is treated as subhuman because of his uncontrolled ability to manipulate shadows up until a scientist buys him. (Royality)

Falling Stars At My Command in which Roman wishes on a star and Patton reaps the benefits while Logan unfortunately gets dragged along for the ride. (Royality) 

Sugar in which Patton has three sons and no free time to bother with a relationship while he’s trying to manage bills. At least until Roman walks into his life. Sugar Daddy anyone? (Royality) 

A Man, a Snake, and a Rat in which Logan, Deceit, and Remus become college roomates (Intruloceit) 

a.s.h.es, ashes (We all fall down) in which after Logan almost dies during one of his recuse missions, him and his partner start to dig into the superhero agency they’re employed by and stumble into something far bigger than they expected. (Logicality, Prinxiety, LAMP? LAMP)

Keep him safe in which Detective Logan falls for the owner of his new favorite bakery while his partner Roman falls for the gang member they’re chasing. Ft: emotions, a pet rat, dealing with delusions 101, trauma, and family so gooey it literally makes me melt whenever it updates. I love this fic so much. (Advertises as Logicality and Prinxiety but theres so much LAMP I can’t not put it down here)

Multitudes in which Virgil works at a coffeeshop, pines over the customers that come in, and wonders why they all tip him so well. (LAMP)

Songbird in which the only thing keeping Virgil’s parents alive is his voice: the moment the (new) King gets tired of listening to him its off with all their heads. And Virgil’s okay with that, he is…. Until three visiting nobles leaving him wishing for his freedom for the first time since he was ten. (LAMP)

Shatter in which Logan gets fed up with not being listened to, and takes some poor advice from Rage, which ends with the entire Mindscape being turned upside down and inside out. Now its up to Deceit fix it all. (aka the author decided it was about high time Deceit got some love and appreciation and I’m out here living for it.) (DAMP)

Incredible Cosmic Power in which Virgil awakens some genies by accident and they refuse to let him go back to living a relatively normal peaceful life. (DLAMP)

Plea for my New Self in which Vampire Virgil decides he wants to start over again, and goes back to college to work on coding. There he proceeds to do reckless good with his absurd amount of wealth and a “fuck it” attitude. Actually one of my favorite things ever okay. I love this one so much. (DLAMP)

Your Wish Is My Command in which Thomas accidentally rubs six lamps and becomes the glorified babysitter to six jinn who definitely don’t trust him. But its fineeee. (DLAMP)

6 Dads in which Deceit, Emile, Remus, Roman, Thomas, and Remy make a relationship work and their children aren’t sure how but go along with it anyway.

Rebel Rebel in which Thomas, a well respected man, visits the Imagination, for some pleasure business as a one time thing. Except that he keeps coming back. Maybe maybe falls in love with one, two, thr– all of the men who work there. 

A New Kind of Experiment  in which Virgil runs away from home, and ends up kidnapped by merman, and somehow he doesn’t mind that much.

Becoming His Own Hero in which everyone has to juggle their superhero lives with their regular lives and sometimes…its just hard.

don’t wanna be a tragedy in which brothers Roman and Remus get a house and subsequently find out its totally, completely, 100% haunted.

Don’t You, Forget About Me in which the author recreates Breakfast club and does it spectacularly.

Heart’s Heroes in which Patton may be a villain but that does not mean he wants to see the child heroes of the city dead.

Mortals and Fae in which Deceit barely escapes the wrath of his town when they all turn against him. Dying, he stumbles into a fairy circle hoping that with his name the fae make his death short and sweet. Big Shock for him when he wakes up with a Fairy Prince swearing to protect him.

Sanders Family in which Thomas adopts six kids and has no regrets about it.

How Not to Go About an Important Inspection in which after a devastating betrayal the crew of the USS Bifrost is docked for repairs and the crew just wants to go back to being a normal family but Command is insisting on an inspection to ensure nothing so…drastic occurs again.

Symbiotic in which certain Vampires have a vemon that leaves with victims craving getting their blood drunken. Deceit, one of these Victims, continues to burn bridges because that’s easier than admitting he might need help dealing with this. 

[chaoticbluebirdconnoisseur]

You are put in charge of a koei warriors game that takes place from the years 190 to 220 what factions would you put in it and which characters would you put in each faction? (Max 20 characters for each faction)

This turned out way too long

The classic Dynasty Warriors experience would be the Wei, Wu, Shu, and Others package, where every kingdom would have a short explanation on why and how exactly they came to power. I could list the most important officials and generals of each faction, and the narrative would be how each kingdom's merits and or failures shaped the outcome of the era. Of course if I would be in charge, the officer list would almost exclusively be orientated to history. Even with more historical accuracy it would still be the Vanilla-Standard-Dynasty-Warriors (which would still be three times better than the thing we have now).

BUUT how about the story doesn’t focus on the kingdoms per se but to the moral dilemmas of the time, a closer look at a clan, etc., etc.. I take inspiration from Spirit of Sanada, which had a more focused viewpoint about the Sanada clan, it’s changing allies and of course what that meant for the individuals who lived in that time. The game isn’t that great, but it had an interesting approach on how you could change up the story by highlighting the individual fates, something the main title (which has only limited resources of time and attention) could barely focus.

Since I have to make a game about the 190s to 220s, I think the most fitting scenario, fitting for the game I’m after would be the last struggles of the Han Dynasty. There is so much you can do wrong with this scenario (especially in the hands of Koei) since you have to at least in a degree restructure the Other faction, which would be encountered with a backlash from the fanbase. So it wouldn’t be fitting for a main title. But with proper care, opportunities for the story, narrative and character development (which were always suffocated for the benefit of already established tropes) would get much-deserved recognition. I know it sounds kinda boring but hear me out.

The restoration of the Han Dynasty wasn’t as black and white as many like to think. There weren’t these borderline insane Han loyalists or the cruel Caos who merciless usurped the imperial throne, there were far more grey areas and nuances than what is commonly assumed. The discussion of political hegemony of the Han Dynasty had a lot of opinions on if the Han Dynasty should be restored and how it should be restored. And the Han Dynasty wasn’t as united on how they could realize the goal of unification of the land.

In the Zhou Dynasty while the Spring and Autumn period, the court in Luoyang was holding imperial authority only in name, while their vassals were contending with one another for power. The display of insincere loyalty was frequently described as “chasing the deer” (taking the throne for themselves). So while in the Jian’an where most vassals were trying to ‘chase the deer’, the Han Dynasty was trying to piece together a court in which it could wield influence. The problem just was that most of their associates had experienced hardship through the Han Court in earlier reigns (The rule of the eunuchs with the Dangku arrests).

The Han loyalists, which is by most assumed a homogenized group of people, of the same social class, education, and political ideologies. Those loyalist act in favor of the Han court because they ‘owe’ the court, the rewards they have bestowed on their ancestors. The reality however presented itself a little bit differently. Sure some clans and individuals had this reasoning for their loyalty, but this was not the case for most of them.

Let’s take the Xun family to elaborate. At the start we have Xun Shu who was not exactly popular at the Han court for his opinions. then we got his nephew Xun Yu (昱) who was executed for his anti-eunuch activities. Then Xun Shuang spent around 10 years in hiding, because of the fear that the eunuch controlled Han court would arrest him. His commentary on the Yijing is a complete critique of the Han dynasty. Xun Yue refused service on accounts of illness. A passage from the Hanji (Xun Yue wrote) states:

He who confides himself to the crooked traducers, whom he employs in office, and banishes his loyal and virtuous [ministers from the court] ... who, [in a fit of] anger, inflicts punishment much more severe than that which the law precribes, who continues his misconduct and conceals his faults, blocks the way of the loyal and the virtuous, and executes those who give him honest admonition, may be called a doomed ruler ... A doomed ruler is destined to perish.

Reading this passage you have at least 3 Han emperors in mind. The Hanji actually has a lot of those passages. There is a lot of malice towards the dynasty, but as it seems they still supported the dynasty because of the positives provided, if the imperial court could take control again. Xun Yu’s reasoning in welcoming Emperor Xian, were calculated arguments of the psychological appeal of loyalism, the prestige of the emperor, and the resulting possibility of a stronger influence for Cao Cao’s regime. While all of that, there were Emperor Xian’s in-laws trying with force to restore the old regime, but it couldn’t mobilize enough people, because the not-so-much-doctrinated-loyalists who already suffered through earlier reigns, had no interest in restoring their worst nightmare.

Anyway back to the game, there are a lot of strongpoints for such a story to be implemented. Long asked questions could be answered entertainingly like: How did this mess even start? Why was there no chance the Han court could be saved? What were the intentions of those loyalists? I think a better understanding of why the Han Dynasty was doomed could not just benefit the Wei faction but also the others. Now to the factions.

The first faction would be logically the Han Court, with it’s main protagonist Emperor Xian. (The factions are max 10, because i can)

Liu Xie

Liu Bian

Fu Shou (and or Consort Dong)

Wang Yun

Kong Rong

Xun Yue

Dong Cheng

Yang Biao

Cai Yong

Cao Jie

The second faction would be Wei

Cao Cao

Wang Lang

Hua Xin

Cao Pi

Xun Yu

Xiahou Dun

Lady Bian

Jia Xu

Zhong Yao

Cao Ren

Last but not least we have the Other faction

Yuan Shao

Yuan Shao’s brood (anyone will do)

Yuan Shu

Dong Zhuo

Lü Bu

Liu Bei

Guo Si

Li Jue

Diaochan (why not)

Xin Pi

And that’s it. Now to sum up everything:

It’s definitely no main title

It will screw over Wu and Shu

It’s about a topic not much explored in the games generally and probably not that wanted

The factions are a little bit restructured

It’s a game I’d like to see, and I know that there could arise problems because it is more story-driven and probably won't fit in the Hack and Slash format. But I know that Koei will not in any way be capable to make out of this a good game. So I will enjoy the idea itself, hoping Koei will never get the idea to produce it.

[argentdandelion]

Betty You Fool: GlitchTale Analysis

Featured: a fool with bad plans.

Note: The following article analyzes Betty's evil motivations and actions to explain how foolish it all is. In Season 2, Episode 5 of GlitchTale, Betty refers to Frisk as a boy once. Up to that point, Frisk is called a "they". As this article almost entirely focuses on Season 2 Episodes 1-4 with only a little Episode 5, it will adhere to episode Episode 1-4 customs.

In brief: Betty’s plans (or "villainy", in general) are ill-conceived and doomed to backfire on her. Supposedly, her goal is to ensure humans and monsters never live in peace, for a civilization where the two coexist would eventually threaten humanity’s survival. However, her goals are based on unfounded fears, and her motives are contradictory. Furthermore, trying to achieve her goal by killing all monsters quickly, with herself as the obvious perpetrator, and killing many humans (including children) for her plan, is just going to unify humans and monsters by giving them a common enemy.

Introduction

In GlitchTale, Bete Noire ("Betty") is a being said to exist for the sole purpose of ensuring humans and monsters never live in peace. Her creator was Agate, the Wizard of Bravery and one of the wizards who created the barrier. Her opinions on monsterkind differed from her brother, another wizard that helped make the barrier. While her brother wanted to destroy the barrier, Agate thought it a good measure to keep the peace. Agate challenged him over the fate of the barrier, lost the fight, and exiled herself. Later, she used a forbidden spell to increase her power, returned, and killed her brother. Dying from the spell, she used her soul and the corpse of her little sister (who she killed to weaken her brother) to make Betty.

Betty herself was released from the barrier itself when it was broken. Soon after she woke up, Agate “uploaded” her memories to Betty, and told Betty her purpose.1 Disguised as a sweet human girl, Betty befriended Frisk. She also manipulated Jessica Grey, head of the Anti-Monster Division, who wanted revenge on monsters after learning Asgore killed her missing child 20 years ago. Betty promised to Jessica to turn all monsters to dust (kill them). However, she later showed her true nature: when Jessica wouldn’t give her the hate vial (a noxious power-up), Betty tormented her with a gruesome illusion of her dead child and attacked her.

Jessica, having survived, turns against Betty very quickly. She apologizes to Asgore, asks for his help in defeating Betty, and gets him out of prison/jail to this end. This is all for her daughter’s killer, which shows just how drastically Jessica's beliefs changed. Jessica also cooperates with several other monsters to take down Betty, and gets many humans to team up with monsters as well. She even sacrifices herself so that W.D. Gaster, a monster, may live.

If Betty’s goal is to ensure humans and monsters never live in peace, she really messed up.

Betty's Ill-Conceived Motivations

In roughly a month, humans adjusted very well to living with another species of sentient beings. From Season 2, Episode 1.

First, Betty’s beliefs are unfounded, and sometimes even contradictory. She (or possibly Agate) wants to “ensure humanity’s survival.” As she believes monsters are a threat to humanity, she wants to ensure the two never live in peace, or for that matter coexist.

Yet, as Frisk points out in the first episode of Season 1, monsters are harmless2: as of that episode, humans and monsters co-existed for about a month without any problems. Furthermore, integrating them into human society with more rights could only benefit humanity, increasing their likelihood of survival. (e.g., Gaster’s CORE expansion becoming a non-polluting, unlimited, self-sustaining power source that will make electricity free and blackouts a thing of the past)

Furthermore, if they somehow did turn hostile to humans, they couldn’t do much and they would be easy to kill off. As Betty knows from experience (and Agate might know from the war) humans are far stronger than monsters and can kill them easily, particularly since humanity as a whole massively outnumbers monsters now. Though Betty evidently believes a civilization with monsters and humans existing together “is just a time bomb waiting to go off” and “that [she is] doing good by speeding up the process”, in going through with her plan she causes problems and casualties where none previously existed.

It's possible Betty fears monsters would gain godlike power by absorbing seven human souls, just as the Waterfall plaques claim. Though the plaques also claim this had never actually happened, they then say humans attacked monsters out of paranoia they would take their souls. It is possible Agate told Betty about this, which is why Betty thinks monsters threaten humanity.

However, monsters living together peacefully with humans have no reason to do this, and might not even believe it possible so much as a myth humans made up. Indeed, if some monster went rogue and killed a human to absorb a soul, it's likely other monsters would team up with humans to take down the rogue monster.

Notably, Frisk went up against a god and won. If Betty only knew of Frisk's track record against beings with godlike power, she'd be even more eager to make Frisk an ally, just in case a monster did get seven human souls and cause the worst-case scenario humans evidently feared so long ago.

Betty's Plan is Doomed to Backfire

An example of cooperation: Jessica Grey, showing the extent of her reversal in beliefs.

Of all the ways she could operate on her (irrational) beliefs, her plan is the worst. First, she tricks a monster (Papyrus) into accidentally killing some humans by dropping metal girders on them. Sans (a monster) uses blue magic on the bars (represented as telekinesis) to try to stop them from landing on anyone, but Ms. Grey (secretly allied with Betty) disables his ability to use magic. The girders then crush some humans. Later, Betty's plan involves killing hundreds of humans (including many children) in a short time, to use their souls as a power-up so she can kill off lots of monsters very quickly.

Even if she’s evil enough to disregard the obvious moral issues of her plan, it would still have two problems. One, her aim is supposedly to “ensure humanity’s survival”, yet big parts of her plan are blatantly anti-human, and she makes herself a threat to humanity’s survival. Two, since she’s neither human nor monster, kills both, and makes it obvious she’s the killer, monsters and humans have very good reason to team up to kill her and, in the process, lessen prejudice between them. This would get them to cooperate more, increasing the chances of long-term peace between them.

Therein lies a contradiction: though her plans are supposedly for humanity’s sake, Agate tells her she can't trust humans, and Betty has no loyalty for humans. Betty evidently corroborates “humanity can’t be trusted” by seeing into Frisk’s memories (stated in supplementary material) and seeing their Genocide Routes. However, she apparently doesn’t check anybody else, and, if anything, wouldn’t she trust Frisk more for those routes if she hates monsters so much?

What Betty Should Have Done

If Betty were smart, she’d act like Batman. Batman is aware Superman is nigh-invulnerable, super strong, and has quite a lot of useful powers. Were Superman to turn evil for some reason, he would be a massive threat to other superheroes and perhaps all of humanity. Yet, Batman tempers his distrust/caution with evidence: Superman is very morally principled and (unlike some other superheroes) never kills.

So, rather than attacking, trapping, or disabling Superman immediately because he could pose a threat, or even just being mean to him, he acts friendly (by Batman standards) and secretly has a plan to take him down if necessary.

If Betty believes a civilization where monsters and humans live together is “a time bomb waiting to go off”, why not disarm the bomb? Wouldn’t it fall within her interests to solve inter-species conflict as much as possible, delay it as long as possible if diplomacy can’t solve it completely, and develop (proportionate) monster-killing plans in case of emergency? Even separating monster society from human society (which, by the way, would deprive humanity of monsters’ benefits) would be a better plan than all that murder.

Why Didn't She Do It?

The most likely cause for Betty’s irrational and contradictory behavior is: she’s an impatient, short-sighted, and probably also lonely species-ist who fears and distrust monsters for no good reason, wants to make her species-ist mother happy, and she doesn't consider that her creator or she herself could be coming to the wrong conclusions (e.g., checking Frisk but not anyone else afterwards). (Note that Betty, though not human, is still a child. It’s plausible she didn’t think this through.)

As far as can be inferred from the supplementary material; it doesn't have any dialogue or explanation. The interpretation was based on how TVtropes described it. ↩︎

In GlitchTale, it’s specifically stated that Asgore killed the seven fallen humans, who were all kids. Jessica Grey later visits him in prison; apparently he was in prison for killing those kids. ↩︎

[elizas-writing]

Netflix’s Death Note: A Trailer Analysis

So Netflix released a trailer for their Americanized (aka whitewashed) movie based on the beloved Japanese manga/anime series Death Note and, what a shock, everyone and their mother hates it. I’ll be honest, I knew about the casting months before, and it’s still pretty shitty, but given what happened with Ghost in the Shell, should we be surprised at this point? And that one’s getting a theatrical release. But the problems with this Death Note adaptation go beyond just whitewashing two characters; that’s just scratching the surface of the confusing mess and even more problematic implications we might expect from this movie. Also it should go without saying that I will be going into spoilers of the original series, so if you’re one of the five people unfamiliar with Death Note until now, you have been warned.

DISCLAIMER FOR ANYONE WHO THINKS I’M BEING TOO HARSH ON A ONE MINUTE TRAILER

Okay, I know there are gonna be a few people going “Just give it a chance! Maybe there will be something good! It’s unfair to judge before it’s even released!” And with all due respect, that kind of mentality completely disregards the entire point of marketing. Trailers are supposed to draw in an audience and give them a reason why they should spend their time and money to see a movie, TV show or any piece of media ever to exist. How many of you saw the trailer for The Force Awakens and almost shit your pants out of nostalgia when Han Solo came on screen and said “Chewie, we’re home”? How many of you got chills listening to Lin-Manuel Miranda sing for Moana? How many of you got pumped to see Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman together on the big screen? That is the power of trailers when done successfully, even if the movie itself doesn’t turn out well; if film makers want to make money, they need to show that their product is worth something.

If all you have to show is shit, then people will think it’s shit. This is increased exponentially when doing an adaptation of a pre-existing work because there’s already an audience with their own visions on what everything is supposed to look like down to the smallest of details. Most everyone I’ve seen who’s into Death Note now has low expectations for this movie. It’s fine to give the benefit of the doubt and hope some good will come out of it, hell, I always want to hope I’m wrong in some cases. But there is a fine line between (sorry live-action Beauty and the Beast, I just have to) going “Okay, maybe this will be a good Disney remake and they’ll do something new” and “Oh my fucking God, Emma Watson can’t sing. Please fire someone.”

So yeah, I’m still judging the trailer. I’m a Taurus, I’m stubborn, and I got some grievances.

From the get-go, the most glaring issue we can tell is that it is not going to follow remotely close to the original story at all. When is Light running from the police in his early days as Kira? And what even is up with the Ferris wheel bullshit? At that point, they might as well have created original characters; it would have saved themselves a lot of criticism of whitewashing and turning Light and Misa into absolute edgelords even when it’s so out of character, and topping it all off by giving them 4Kids dub names as a way to rub the salt in the whitewashed wound. At least Ghost in the Shell had some decency left to leave Motoko’s name alone. But thanks for getting rid of Light’s literal juxtaposing name of light and darkness to emphasize the moral ambiguity of his actions.

It’s only made worse when in fact an Asian American actor, Edward Zo, did audition for Light and was rejected for “being too Asian.” TOO ASIAN FOR LIGHT YAGAMI, A JAPANESE CHARACTER. What the fuck does that mean “too Asian??” So these filmmakers went out of their way to NOT cast any Asian American actors since apparently people still think American equates to whiteness (spoiler, no it doesn’t) and instead get that kid from the Naked Brother’s Band and some obscure HBO actress.

Not only are Light and Misa unrecognizable because of the whitewashing, they don’t even match on the same damn personalities. Yes, Light becomes a sociopath, but he doesn’t start off as some misunderstood loner or whatever vibe I’m getting from Natt Wolf (by the way, wash your damn hair, it looks greasy). Light was actually a very popular student with good grades, good manners and could easily get dates with any girl he wanted. And he’s very clever to hide his true intentions and manipulate. He’s your average, unsuspecting young adult which works well for the series to show how no one is above this kind of descent into madness. This white kid looks like fucking Dylann Roof, it’s so unsettling and ruins any subtlety to Light’s character. Even this whitewashed Mi(s)a suffered the edgelord syndrome with the image of her against grey colors smoking a cigarette. “Look at me, I’m so fucking dark and edgy.” You’re not making Heathers, give me back the hyperactive idol.

But what about Keith Sutherland, a black actor, as L? On one hand, I’m not too bothered with this change since L is canonically only a fourth Japanese so casting him as a black person isn’t too much of a stretch even though it takes away the iconic image. But at the same time, it lends itself to a lot of problematic territory when setting up a black character as the antagonist to the white character. L is killed in the original series, he loses, and his fight is picked up by his successors. So now we’ll potentially have a case of a white male serial killer with a god complex killing a black man who we’ve only seen so far in shadow and in a hood. Because that is not familiar to cases of racially motivated crimes of black people being killed because they looked “suspicious.” Classy, real motherfucking classy. I can only hope that they change up L’s fate like the Japanese live-action movies did, but this is already looking like a slippery slope to racist tropes as old as time.

And what the series chose to Americanize and to leave alone is just a set up for confusion as they left some of the original Japanese elements. For starters, the hell is Ryuk still doing here? Yeah, I want to see Willem Dafoe as Ryuk, it fits perfectly, but what is a JAPANESE god of death doing in SEATTLE, WASHINGTON IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA? Like how will you explain yourself out of this one, because I doubt your typical white American teenager will be familiar with Japanese spiritual beliefs. There’s also some graffiti briefly seen that says “Justice of Kira,” but in the original series, Kira comes from the Japanese pronunciation of the English word “killer.” So where do these Americans get Kira from? Explain, movie! Explain!

The themes will also not carry over well in this adaptation because of the differences in justice systems between America and Japan (this one I borrowed from @tadasgay‘s critiques, and it really puts into perspective the problems of Americanizing a Japanese story; giving credit where credit is due). A major driving force of Light’s motivations in the original series are because of criminal cases that don’t even make it to court. Therefore, criminals who are obviously guilty get away with their crimes despite the evidence against them. With the Death Note, Light acts as the prosecutor to "properly” deliver justice because of the facts he can obtain from police records. We don’t know if they will follow through with this, or if this Light will just kill whoever because they are bad. To top it all off, the American crime narratives tend to be biased on race, especially given the disproportionate amount of people of color in the for-profit prison systems. Japan doesn’t have that because it’s a mostly racially and culturally homogeneous country. Just a reminder that our protagonist is now a WHITE guy with a god complex and a black man as his antagonist. This is a slippery slope to twist the original narrative into something horrible and potentially racist. I’m sure I’m not alone when I hope I’m wrong on those aspects, but the fact is that we don’t know, and we won’t know for certain for another few months. These thoughts will be lingering over our heads until then.

At this point, we can only hope that the filmmakers will come out and explain themselves, and more trailers can be released to see more of the story and characters. At best, it will probably just be mediocre, but at worst, it could probably be another shitty American adaptation of an already great Japanese manga/anime. We won’t know for a while, but for now, we still have the original and I think we can all agree nothing will ever top it.

[travllingbunny]

The 100 6x04 The Face Behind the Glass

It’s an understatement to say that I’m late with this review, simply for having had no time to write it before, but here am I, trying to post it at the last moment, before the next episode airs tonight (or is it already airing in US? I will only be able to watch it tomorrow). In the meantime, the fandom has discussed a bunch of different theories, made all sorts of speculations, and I’ve participated in that, a lot.

I didn’t expect this episode to have quite this effect on me and many other fans who have guessed the big twist of this episode way ahead. But while it didn’t come as a surprise, it still hit hard, because the episode was, for the most part, well done, with important character moments for our protagonists, combined with further world-building and fleshing out of the new characters and communities..

And even though I always expected the „peaceful“ society from Sanctum to villains, but this show has achieved something I never expected: introducing villains who match or are, arguably, be even more evil than the leadership of Mount Weather.

I won’t discuss various theories, but I will mention what my favorite theories are, and touch on what I think may happen and what storylines I think could come out of this.

While it is perfectly understandable that the characters still haven’t realized it – because they don’t have the information we have as viewers, and don’t think of everything in terms of storytelling – as a viewer, it wasn’t difficult to guess from the start that something was very wrong with this „peaceful“ society, especially since everything was just too happy, shiny and too good to be true. This episode played on that in particular: there was a ceremony where Russell said all the right things about making peace with your loved ones, and making amends for the wrongs you’ve done – apparently, a traditional custom in Sanctum. (The level of hypocrisy is really high.) Russell himself apologize to Kaylee for closing the Sanctum door on her and her family when they found themselves on the outside and he had to protect the entire community. (This story must have resonated with some people in the audience, Bellamy in particular. Maybe it would have with Raven, too, but she wasn’t there.)  The people in Sanctum were all happy and smiling. Each one of our adult protagonists who does not already have a romantic partner either met a potential love interest, or had fun with a sex interest, or both. There was a party in a club, with music and dancing. And most alarmingly, delicious cookies were served – which brings back memories of the chocolate cake in Mount Weather.

Now, to make it clear, the Sanctum people are not a rehash of Mount Weather. They are very different from the Mountain Men, and in fact, they also have some of the worst characteristics of the Grounder culture – very hierarchical structure and religious worship of people with „special“ (black) blood who have computer chips with stored minds in their heads - only in a much more disturbing way. Whatever one may think of the Flame, it works very differently from these mind drives, and was created for a very different reason: the host retains agency, personality and full control over their body, and the dead people’s „spirits“ are there to help and guide the host with their knowledge and experience. (At least that’s the idea – how helpful it seems to have been to Grounders, is debatable.) These mind drives, however, were apparently modified so that they can store an entire consciousness, which then overtakes the hosts’ body completely. Essentially, it’s body-snatching – it helps the Primes extend their natural lifespans indefinitely, at the expense of the „disposable“ people – and in their minds, everyone is disposable, except them.

And this is what the Primes have in common with the Mountain Men. Mountain Men were horribly evil. They thought they were superior and entitled to live at the expense of everyone else, to put people in cages, drain/drill,  kill them horrifically, throw them away like garbage, turn them into slave monsters they’ll use against their people It was an incredibly evil society. And yet the Primes manage are arguably even more selfish and awful. At least the Mountain Men were doing it for their community, and had the excuse that they had all grown up and been raised to be like that, learning it from their parents,

The Primes, on the other hand, are those same people who started it all, 236 years ago. They’re the ones who have been stealing other people’s bodies to make themselves and their family members live forever, and who have brainwashed their entire community to worship them as gods and be OK with it.They have been stealing bodies to make themselves live forever. And they’ve brainwashed their entire community to be OK with it, worship them as deities and give them people willingly as sacrifice. While most of the Mount Weather community was complicit, actively or passively, in the crimes because it benefited them, the Sanctum community has been brainwashed to support and be complicit in the crimes that benefit no one other than the Primes. If they were to rise against the Primes, the Primes would have no chance. They don’t have the enormous technologically advanced weaponry of Mount Weather, they don’t even have too many guards to keep order – they instead function as a cult and keep everybody down through religion and belief.

In the end, maybe they are similarly horrible, but different types of evil. The allusions to Nazism were pretty obvious in season 2, from the way the Mountain Men would drain or drill people and then throw their bodies like garbage, to the guards going through people’s living quarters and murdering all the „traitors“ who were hiding the Delinquents to save their lives (though, to be fair to the Mountain Men, at least they had a legitimate motivation – needing to survive – while the actual Nazis were just a bunch of racist, ableist idiots). On the other hand, season 6 has had many more religious references. Gods, devils, Lucifer („light-bringer“ – Lightbourne), Gabriel, Gospel of Josephine (the name of the next episode), The magical number 12 (plus the rogue/special 13) appears again. We had the ill-fated 13th station, Sky people/Arkers as the 13th Clan, and now Dr Gabriel Santiago aka „the Old Man“ (he hasn’t explicitly been identified, but does anyone doubt it is him?) as the 13th Prime. In the eyes of the people in Sanctum, Russell and the other Primes are 12 gods, and Gabriel is a demon – like Lucifer, the fallen angel who was banished from the paradise. To us, however, it is the Primes who seem like the devils.

It’s as if we are going back in time to meet the same people who were a part of the elite that destroyed the world 229 years before. These people did not participate directly in the destruction of the Earth, but were closely connected to those who did.  These guys aren’t the descendants, but the same people we saw in the flashback at the start of 6x02 Red Sun Rising. But the things that didn’t seem as sinister then seem so much more disturbing when you pay attention and look back on it with what we know now. At first, I didn’t even notice that Josephine was a sociopath  - but what else would you call someone who test possibly poisonous plants on children and then laughs about it. Russell is a megalomaniac, as his wife noted. The eclipse psychosis brings out, in the most disturbing and exaggerated manner, what is already there inside the person, and for Russell, it was megalomania and desire to be in control: „Sanctum is mine!“ is what he was shouting as he went and killed almost everyone in the mission.

From the info we have gotten so far, the Primes that Sanctum worships are the 12 out of 13 people who were members of the original Eligius 3 colonizing mission, most of whom ended up killed by Russell. Apart from Gabriel, there were four families: Russell, Simone and Josephine Lightbourne (Russell was the astronomer and team leader, Josephine a taxonomist); Priya and her teenage son Ryker; Kaylee’s family – which consisted of mom, dad, and two children - son and daughter; and Miranda’s family – presumably Miranda, her husband and daughter. Out of these, we have seen 10, and 3 got killed by Diyoza and Madi while hijacking the ship, so 7 are still alive in host bodies. Russell said that Josephine was 3rd on the waiting list for a new host – the first two must be Miranda’s daughter (who was supposed to be put in Rose’s body) and husband. She is not going to be happy if/when she finds out Russell and Simone broke their rules and skipped the line for their daughter. There will probably be conflict within the Primes themselves.

But even though these characters and their histories are interesting, out actual protagonists interest me much more.

Unlike the Primes, the Children of Gabriel are actually morally grey. Compared to the Primes, they are definitely the good guys, and their goal to bring them down is definitely good – but they have a bit of ’end justifies the means“ going on, and the execution leaves a lot to be desires. (More on that later.) If they believe that the hosts are really dead once the Prime bodysnatches them, their willingness to kill hosts before they are bodysnatched is more understandable. Or maybe they are just prioritizing the death of the Primes over saving individual hosts. But the majority of their guerrilla fighters in the woods are a bit too into killing – in particular, the woman that got killed by Octavia seemed to love killing as much as Octavia does. The exception is Xavier, who seems to be a major new character this season, who is trying to hold on to a moral code of avoiding murder. He even deliberately let Octavia „get away“ so his people wouldn’t murder her, even though she killed several of the CoG (although I’m not sure that, if you want to minimize murder, letting Octavia in her current psychological be free is a good idea). She doesn’t seem to have understood that, since she is currently swearing to kill Xavier. Gratitude problem, indeed. If that’s really what she wants to do.

I’m curious to find out more about the role of the bodyguard (?) and the future hosts. Who were Rose’s parents? Why was Jade the only one who seemed to take care of her? Did she care for her as Rose, or as a future host for a Prime?

Octavia has been getting moments this season that parallel her brother’s in season 1 – first she stowed away on the dropship, and now she bonded with and tried to protect a child, showing her more humane side that’s still there, hidden beneath all the violence, and giving her the same „fear is a demon“ advice that she and Bellamy both heard from their mother. And she lost Rose, just like Bellamy lost Charlotte.

It will be interesting to see the team-up of two two „snakes“, „devils“ from season 5, as they are both good at fighting and killing, but are such a contrast to each other  – Octavia, impulsive, broken, and emotional disturbed, and Diyoza, rational, good at strategy, cool and snarky, and heavily pregnant. As Diyoza said, snarkily quoting Casablanca: „This is a start of a beautiful friendship“

Ironically, Diyoza thinks they can become heroes of the new planet by killing the Children of Gabriel – not realizing yet who the real villains are. But they should eventually learn the truth. For that to happen, however, Octavia first has to learn not to attack first. If she achieves something good and important by listening to people and saving people instead of going for the kill, that will show a real character development and positive change.

A character who fleshed out a lot this episode is Jordan. His romance with Delilah was fast and simple, but still cute – he is emotionally a teenager, living his first love, and she had the chance to live her last one, before handing over her life to someone else. But is also was a chance to see Jordan opening up to someone about what his life had been like on the ship. Before this, Jordan only seemed like a sweet and optimistic, smiling guy, but now we’ve seen his sadness and longing and his feelings of guilt, too. His description of his life on the ship was the best piece of dialogue in the episode. Monty and Harper may have gotten their happy ending, but they also sacrificed a lot – by removing themselves from the lives of their friends, and by putting their adult son back in cryo – and Monty eventually had to live all alone for quite some time, after Harper’s death. But they also put their son in a difficult position – of growing up with no one except his parents, without any people his age, or any other people in general – only seeing them as „faces behind the glass“, friends he could never have, a life that he couldn’t lead. Of course he wanted to be cryo frozen so he could once have that life, and of course his parents let him – because it would have been monstruous if they had been selfish and decided to prioritize their needs to have their son in their lives over his chance at life. And it’s sad that Jordan feels guilty for going into cryo-sleep, leaving his parents and becoming a „face behind the glass“ for them – someone they could only long for and never have again. But it shows his empathy and compassionate nature that his parents’ feelings are still so much on his mind and that he feels guilty for making them prioritize their child’s needs over theirs, even though that’s a normal thing for a parent to do.

Clarke spent a lot of the episode trying to apologize and make amends to her friends– and those interactions had to happen at this point, before Clarke gets bodysnatched. Each of her last (as in, latest) interactions with her loved ones – her words to Madi, where she accepted her role as a Commander but also told her she may remove the Flame and be a regular kid if she decides to; her apology to Raven, which Raven did not accept, but instead was very harsh with her, and the message Clarke gave her from Shaw, that she deserves to be happy; and her tender moment with Bellamy, where she apologized and told him how much he means to her, and her apology was fully accepted – is going to get so much more weight in these people’s minds after they find out what happened to her.

The scene between Clarke and Raven was a bit frustrating. I’m sure that the reason why we’ve had so many scenes of various people bashing Clarke is exactly because of what happens at the end of this episode. And don’t get me wrong: Raven and others (Murphy, Emori…) have very good reasons to feel angry over Clarke’s betrayal in S5, which happened so recently from their POV. It makes sense that they’re angry over that, and they are not obliged to forgive Clarke immediately. I was all for them hashing things out. However, the way they’ve done it and the things they’ve said is… weird. Because both Murphy and Raven keep talking as if Clarke has been doing awful things to them and betraying them for years, and that’s definitely not the case, quite the opposite – she was a hero and did things to save them a lot of times, and while she had to go to lengths to do it and kill people to save those she cares about, they’ve also done the same and participated in some of those same things, if they were not those that needed to be saved. The last time they saw Clarke before they went to space, she made it possible for them to go to space in the first place, and was left behind to be all alone for 6 years, except for a child.  It’s like the two of them have retconed the events of seasons 1-4 in some weird way. When Raven says that Clarke says sorry and then does HORRIBLE things AGAIN, I’m like… what horrible things? Clarke deciding to go save Raven instead of staying in the bunker, and ending up almost dying and all alone f(except for a child) for 6 years on a deserted planet? Clarke trying everything to save everyone from Praimfaya, including volunteering to be tested in the radiation chamber, risking a horrible painful death? Clarke making the list of 100 people to survive, after Raven told her she had to do it, bashing her at the same time (“I’m in charge of rationing, but deciding who lives or dies is your specialty”? ) Clarke going to the City of Light to save everyone? Clarke doing everything to save Raven from ALIE? Clarke saving Raven’s and everyone else is life from being horribly murdered by the Mountain Men? Clarke mercy killing Finn to spare him the torture - and do what is best for everyone? Yes, indeed Clarke had  "impossible choices". Which Raven never took responsibility for - she always expected Clarke to make them. Even demanded. She asked for the list to be made and ordered Clarke to do it, but Clarke got blamed for it. Not to mention all the times that Raven participated in the same things Clarke did to defend themselves or saved their people- like torturing Lincoln, blowing up the bridge in S1, facilitating the Ring of Fire etc. She was bashing Clarke for not telling the full truth to the people in Arkadia about their low chances of survival in season 4 - when she could have told them the truth herself and didn’t. Raven stood and gave moralistic criticisms about the plan to test someone in the radiation chamber, but Clarke was the one who injected herself with Nightblood and volunteered to get tested. Not to mention all the times when Raven did have to make terrible and impossible choices, but she seems to forget about it. Like leaving Clarke behind to die. She was also ready to leave Bellamy, Monty, Murphy and Emori to die in the season 5 finale, and was hurrying Clarke to pull a lever and leave them. And then there are times when she did or try to do awful things just to protect someone she loved. Remember when she wanted to give Murphy to the Grounders to be tortured and horrifically murdered for something he didn’t do? Murphy did murder others and cripple her, but Finn was guilty of that crime - which was a murder of a bunch of civilians for no reason. But Raven never blamed Finn. Then she wanted Clarke to kill the Grounder Commander and start a war, and probably get killed, just to save Finn, a murderer. And punched Clarke and called her names when she didn’t do it.

And Raven’s comment that the only difference between Clarke and Octavia is that Octavia „doesn’t pretend to feel bad about it“ shows how little she understands both of them: Clarke is feeling deeply guilty and has even tried suicide during her eclipse psychosis. And the difference between Clarke and Octavia is not that Octavia is not pretending to feel bad about it, the difference is Octavia is pretending to not feel bad about it. She feels awful inside, because she wanted to die, but instead of saying sorry and trying to do better, like Clarke, Octavia can’t bring herself to admit mistakes but instead antagonizes everyone, tries to make people kill her, or kills people for little reason – because she doesn’t know how to deal with her gult and self-loathing in another way. It’s the worst possible way to deal with guilt.

My rewatch of the show has reminded me that this is not the first time Raven has been judgmental, self-righteous and hypocritical to Clarke, but the reason why it didn’t stick out so much before is because she had other interesting storylines. Could the writers give her something else to do? Being mean to Clarke for several episodes in a row and doing little else – except have a brief romance – is getting old.

Raven did get to meet a new character – Ryker, who seems on the surface to be another in the series of apparently perfect love interests for her. Now, I’m usually not the one to jump to conclusions that every single new character is someone’s love interest, but they seem to be setting Ryker up that way – especially with the fact that Clarke told Raven Shaw’s message that she deserves to be happy, in the same episode where she meets this new guy. It seems a bit early to give another romance for Raven so soon after Shaw’s death. However, I don’t think Raven/Ryker is going to work – because, likable as he may seem, he is a 250 year old Prime, who may have been a teenager when it all started, but now he’s lived several lives taking other people’s bodies. And I think he’ll have to die at the end of the season. But this is why I think Ryker being some kind of a love interest for Raven may actually give her a really good storyline. (See further below under Predictions/Speculation.)

Ryker doesn’t seem to be all that into the whole Prime thing – he was late to the ceremony even though it was his own mother, Priya, who was coming back in poor Delilah’s body. Jordan, Clarke and the others used to think the „Naming“ was just some ceremonial thing with giving people names after celebrated ancestors – but they are going to start realizing something is up now, after Jordan experienced his first romantic heartbreak, by seeing Delilah come back as a literally different person, with a much colder demeanor, someone who doesn’t even recognize him – but who went straight up to Ryker and hugged him as her son, even though he is in a body that’s older than hers. „My beautiful baby boy“. That was one weird AF mother-son reunion.

BTW, fandom conversations about race regarding the new Sanctum characters are going to be so confusing because of the bodysnatching. Some of the Primes (Russell, Josephine) are in bodies of hosts who are the same race as their originally were, but others are not (Simone, Priya/Delilah, Ryker, Kaylee…).

Clarke continued her apology tour with the most important conversation – with Bellamy. Leaving him in Polis for his sister to throw him into the fighting pit, is what Clarke personally regrets the most and considers her biggest sin, because of what he means to her. Even though he has been very supportive of her, unlike the others from the Spacekru, she still seemed afraid of how he is going to react and if he was going to accept her apology and her assurances that he is a part of her ’family“ still and incredibly important to her. This warm and vulnerable moment – including another obligatory Bellarke hug, intense and intimate as their hugs and touches always are- between the two of them needed to happen before they are separated again – and before someone else tries to take Clarke’s place and impersonate her. So far, they have been having important conversations and moments, rebuilding their relationship after the awful conflict and misunderstandings from season 5: they have addressed Clarke leaving Bellamy, they have addressed her radio calls, they have not directly addressed Bellamy’s betrayal – from Clarke’s POV – but she showed trust in him to take care of Madi in 6x03 and repaid it. But I’m sure that this is not the last time they  talk about either of these things (and not just because we know from the trailer that there’s at least one other conversation coming up in S6 about the radio calls and leaving Bellamy in Polis). These things are ongoing plot points that are given a lot of weight – and the issues have not been fully cleared. Clarke still hasn’t addressed the fact that she didn’t just forget that Bellamy was also her „family“, she was angry and heartbroken  when she felt that Bellamy betrayed her, and when she thought he had told her she wasn’t a part of his „family“ anymore. And Bellamy hasn’t told her that one of the main reasons he did it, and the main or most immediate reason that pushed him to poison Octavia, was to protect Clarke („another traitor you love“). But once they are able to talk about all of it, I’m sure this will lead to other admissions they are not ready for right now. In 6x01, Clarke was scared of talking about the radio calls and her feelings, and now it was Bellamy trying to avoid the conversation. At this point, Clarke seems to have made peace with the fact that she can’t hope for anything else from Bellamy but rebuilding of the relationship they used to have, because he’s with someone else and doesn’t feel that way about her (or so she thinks), while Bellamy seems unsure about many things and trying to figure them out, but is unable to face those issues right now.

We also got the confirmation that Bellamy finds it easier to forgive Clarke because he understood and related to her protectiveness of Madi, as he used to be the same with Octavia, his sister/pseudo-child. But his line „I know what it’s like to risk everything for one person“ may also be foreshadowing. And so is Clarke’s assurance that she will never forget that Bellamy is a part of her family.

After unburdening herself emotionally like that, Clarke tried to do something she very rarely does: relax and have a good time, including dressing up, dancing and flirting in the club with the random good-looking person (specifically, tall, dark dude with facial hair) she had known for very little time, and have a hot one-night stand, after spending 6 years in forced celibacy. (Which is, BTW, only the 5th time she’s had sex in her life, as far as we are aware.) I like the fact that the show doesn’t subscribe to the idea that sex must always mean love – sometimes it has insta-romances, but this is one of those times when it’s really not about love or special bond, just having fun and taking your mind off the misery that’s the rest of your life.

Now, while I liked the fact that Clarke got to just have a one-night stand that didn’t mean anything but a bit of fun, which wasn’t presented as her doing something bad, hat I like a lot less is what happened right after – when the one-night stand led to Clarke being paralyzed, kidnapped and bodysnatched. This feels too much like the trope of punishing people (women especially) for sex, even if that was not th idea.

The doc was a Child of Gabriel, so one of the good guys, so to speak – but oh boy, did he screw things up. Why wouldn’t he have told her the truth (do CoG not understand that normal people are not like the brainwashed Sanctum residents and would freak out and turn against the Primes if they knew they were going to be bodysnatched?), instead of deceiving her, and then trying to explain when it was too late, then paralyzing her and trying to kill her so she wouldn’t be used as host, then committing suicide? Congratulations, dumbass, you just got the exact opposite result of what you planned and were supposed to do!

While Clarke was dancing with the doc, the camera made sure to show that Bellamy was watching them, and the song had very fitting lyrics:

Seaside

I’m running around looking for peace of mind

So come out and change me

You were always around to make me smile

 Stuck underwater

I’m stuck underwater

I just need some space

My friend

It’s not what you wanted

It’s not what you wanted

But I just need a change

Again

 And then when the camera panned to Bellamy:

 Help me out before I die

Save me now before I give up

Help me out before I drown

There has been some debate over whether Bellamy looked jealous (enough) – and while his expression wasn’t the obvious heartbreak on Clarke’s face when she was watching him kiss Echo in S5, he looked sad, wistful and lost in thoughts. Maybe some people expected a stronger, angrier reaction – but I always hated that idea: it would be OOC, he was never possessive of Clarke that way, and it would make him a jerk if he acted that way while he is in a serious relationship with someone else.

Then Echo arrived – which was a bit odd: unlike Jordan and Delilah, who came as a couple, Bellamy and Echo didn’t dress up or come together. Bellamy was still distracted, looking back to the dance floor, when she asked him if he was fine, and he claimed to be upset because he remembered Octavia’s arrest at the party on the Ark (which he described as the last party he was to before one – even though that’s not true. The last party he was at was in Arkadia in S4, a few days before Praimfaya, when he drank with Jasper and others and probably had a one-night stand with Bree, and then later left when he learned about the bunker, while the others from that party, minus Harper and Niylah, decided to stay and commit suicide.) Bellamy indeed looked very sad in this episode – in contrast to his livelier and more hopeful demeanor in the previous episodes – presumably because of what a huge moment and huge loss it was for him to decide to leave Octavia behind and definitely cut her off from his life. But when he immediately started to criticize Echo for not being emotionally open enough, (like Clarke?) it felt like this either came out of the blue, or was very much connected to the fact that Bellamy had that emotionally intimate moment with Clarke, and was just watching Clarke acting fin and sensual with someone else. I’m usually not too impressed with Tasya Teles’ acting, but Echo’s silent hurt in this scene is one of her best acting moments so far.

Bellamy then realized he had just acted like a jerk and took out his issues on her, so he and Echo had an emotional conversation, where Echo ended up telling him the story about losing her parents, when Queen Nia’s army took their land. But this scene was weird in some ways. Bellamy said that Echo told him before that she didn’t remember her parents. This is the first time she has told him the true story. Which is quite surprising - since they spent 6 years is close proximity, probably without much else to do but talk, and (while we don’t know how long they’ve been dating), have been at least friends for 3 years out of that time (since it took him 3 years to forgive her).  This may be a sign that she never really opened up and that they never really got that close as you’d expect. The conversation did start with Bellamy criticising Echo for not being emotionally open as he would like – but he said that the Echo he knew on the ring was more open. However, the dialogue went on to prove him wrong - since it turned out she hadn’t ble to talk about her parents for 6 years, and had lied about it to avoid conversation, and he never noticed.

So, this is either bad writing - or it is good writing that is intentionally meant to convey the lack of real intimacy in their relationship on the ring, and that Bellamy simply didn’t notice it because..? Maybe he didn’t want to? Or he didn’t have anything to compare it with, as his relationships with Raven, Murphy, Monty, Harper and Emori were not more emotionally intimate? It’s difficult to judge what “the time on the ring” was like, when we never saw any flashbacks, and the little info we got is contradictory. We hear that Echo proved herself there, or showed feelings when loved ones were in danger, but other times they talk about it as if nothing was happening and they were just bored and worried about not being able to get to Earth?

It’s also a little odd that Echo says that her emotional repression is because she was fighting for survival all her life - when that is also true of Bellamy. He had a huge secret to hide since he was 6, so you would expect him to be completely closed-off, and he is certainly not. A much better explanation would be Echo’s specific spy training, which we got a glimpse of in her hallucination in 6x02. That was IMO a much stronger character scene for Echo (and that episode was full of great character moments for everyone). If this scene in 6x04 is meant to be a full explanation of her personality, it’s not satisfactory. If it is meant as one of the setups for her to start struggling with her identity and get development in future episodes, I will like it better. 

 And finally, that ending. Even though the twist had been foreshadowed a lot and was expected by quite a few fans, me included, at least since 6x03 or not before, the scene where Russell and Simone decided to wipe Clarke’s mind and put their daughter’s into her body, was incredibly creepy and chilling, especially since we were practically in the POV of the paralyzed Clarke, who saw and heard everything but couldn’t move or do a thing. The dark room, the skeletons of previous hosts, all the way back to the original bodies of the Primes, all contributed to how disturbing it all felt – and so did the fact that Russell and Simone came off very human while incredibly monstrous at the same time. Russell is sad about doing evil, but then he does evil anyway and continues doing so, and he had some very hypocritical lines where he told Clarke she was giving them a „gift“ and that she can now „be at peace“. That’s not what she meant, Russell! Russell and Simone are convinced that they are killing Clarke – and the released script itself and Jason Rothenberg in the Inside the episode video confirmed that Clarke Griffin is indeed dead and gone…

Yeah, it’s pretty funny that they’re trying to sell this even for a moment. Of course, if it were true, it would be one of the stupidest, most pointless and offensive ways to kil off your protagonist, but we all know that’s not the case. The question is just, what exactly will be the condition of Clarke’s mind during the time Josephine is in control of her body, and how and when she will be brought back/freed. And most importantly, this plotline should give both Clarke and her loved ones a lot of great character moments and an exploration of their feelings. It should also propel the entire season’s plot, because our protagonists now have a personal stake in dismantling this awful society and putting the stop to the horrible practice that has been going on for 236 years.

Predictions/speculation

Out of the theories circling around, the one  I like the minds of the hosts are not really erased; they are just dormant because the Prime mind is written on top of them and dominant. After all, why would we assume that Russell and the other Primes know the truth about how the process works? They. wouldn’t really know, or care, if the hosts’ minds are gone or just trapped and unable to do anything as the Primes’ minds are in control – which, in many ways, is even more disturbing than a simple death of the host would be. But the hosts before Clarke have been willing (as far as we know), and might not have had anyone determined to bring them back (the Children of Gabriel are content to just kill the hosts if that’s the only way to stop the process). The Flame will no doubt come into play, but not the way some people think. As confirmed by Jason Rothenberg in his recent Twitter Q&A, the „mind drives“ are a version of Becca’s original technology, modified in order to store an entire consciousness. The Flame is a more developed version of Becca’s original design, and might help someone – probably Raven - figure out how to erase the process in the mind drives. The fact that Madi has Becca’s „spirit“ in her head could also play a role. I’m sure it won’t be easy, though, and a lot of other things will probably also be needed, including input from Gabriel himself.

What would be really interesting is to see what this does for Clarke’s character arc. We will see Josephine pretending to be Clarke, but I wonder if we will also see Clarke pretending to be Josephine pretending to be Clarke, Josephine fighting with Clarke, Clarke trapped inside her own brain and fighting with her demons… 

It will also be interesting to see how the loss of Clarke affects her friends and family. They have never before dealt with a situation Clarke is the one who needs saving for any longer period of time, and where everyone has to work together to save her. This should help show everyone’s real feelings for her. After all the bitterness and anger that some of them have shown (Raven in particular), her disappearance/“death“ will probably make them remember all the times that she did heroic things and saved them and others, and a comparison with a selfish, spoiled sociopath like Josephine should make them see what a real „bad guy“ in Clarke’s body would be like.

Will they also be able to save Delilah and the other hosts? Some people think that would be too „fairy-tale“ like, aka too good to be true – but, whatever Delilah meant by it, I think that her line “Don’t let me be a face behind the glass” (which compares the hosts to people in cryo-sleep) either hints at or foreshadows that the hosts can be saved. And I also think that the stakes will be higher if the hosts can be saved (or at least some of them – since some of the Primes may get killed in their hosts’ bodies before the end of this season), which would mean that the storyline must end with the final deaths of all the Primes – the destruction of their mind drives. If the hosts were really gone (and for some reason, only Clarke could be brought back), it would feel wrong to kill the Primes once they stop posing direct danger, and if there is another way to make sure they stop stealing other people’s bodies, especially if some of them end up helping put an end to the Prime rule and the bodysnatching practice.

But if the hosts can be saved, and given a chance at a real life that was taken from them at the age of 21, and if they can only be saved by destroying the Primes, who have already lived over 250 years at the expense of others… then this is a choice that will have to be made: the right choice, but maybe not an easy one. Especially if Ryker really ends up being Raven’s new love interest, and if ends up really not being fully bad and helping our heroes, we may end up being season 6 Maya, and at the same time, it could put Raven, for once, to be the one who makes the decisions who lives and who dies and has to stand by it, and – what would be even more interesting – to be the one who „kills“ her love interest for the greater good and what is right, this time, essentially going through Clarke’s season 2 role. Ryker’s line about about raven as an omen of death sounds like foreshadowing.

Rating: 8/10