#but don’t fundamentally change the character so you can like them

[bodega-catto]

People defending Snow because he’s a handsome white man despite him:

-Thinking of selling Tigris (in like page 4 mind you.)

-Despises working with people.

-ONLY helps Sejanus because the cameras are watching.

-Spends the whole book thinking about how things can benefit him and how to make everything to his advantage.

-Tries to remind the public that Lucy Gray “belong to him” and how he was constantly angry about not owning her.

-Calls district people: bestial, not evolved and unfortunate barbaric creatures (yea including Lucy.)

-Tries to delude himself that Lucy is from the capitol because he’s shamed of liking her.

-Says he prefers Lucy in the capitol because he knows exactly where she is at all times (liked Lucy in the games because of the same reason, he could watch her 24/7 and control her.)

- Moved in with Sejanus parents after betraying their son and getting him killed.

-Killed Highbottom who was trying to prevent him from rising to the top because he could see his true nature in his eyes and was afraid of him (and his father.)

And this is all just in BoSbaS, told from his own perspective. Think about everything he did after.

[ceaselesswatchersspecialboy]

Relistening to Checking Out, and I’ve always liked this scene in particular, as it is one that’s very open to interpretation.

I believe, from what I’ve seen personally at least, one or the most common interpretations is that Helen’s observation is either incorrect, or intentionally misleading, and that Jon’s response actually stems from touch aversion, or a degree of it, attributed to his trauma, particularly moments where he’s been left helpless and at the whims of others. E.g. Kidnapped by the Circus, almost killed by Daisy etc. And while I think this interpretation is both interesting and plausible, I don’t think I’ve seen much for the opposite interpretation, which is that Helen’s observation is correct.

It can be difficult to talk about Jon’s humanity sometimes, as there’s a lot of nuance and layers to cover. The fact is, Jon, especially in season five, does not completely think like a human. He is simultaneously a painfully human character such with deep compassion and guilt and self-loathing, while also being a being of immense knowledge who sees and understands the world in a different light, and in a way no one else can possibly comprehend, which has to be very isolating all things considered.

As with everything in TMA, Jon makes a choice, and his choice is to end the apocalypse, to stay with Martin, and to stay as human as he possibly can. We know from Annabelle that had she have taken Martin, who is presumably acting as one of his main anchors to humanity, Jon potentially would have snapped completely, the final push over the edge as she puts it. It has to be a difficult thing for him, to try and balance his existence when he is so fundamentally changed, and when this world naturally feels right to him, and you could argue that him snapping at the mother here is simply his instinct, being what he is.

He is The Archivist, the meant-to-be Pupil of the Eye, one of the most important beings present, and so it makes sense there’s almost an instinctive detachment from the victims. He is meant to Watch them, and Watching means no physical interaction. By touching him, the mother has broken this barrier, and so, instinctually, he reacts — with anger, notably.

I’d say it’s meant to contrast how we see him acting prior to the touch, where he seems genuinely sympathetic with the mother, and he is trying to help in what little way he can. Because before she touches him, that gap between Watched and Watcher is still firm in place, and so he can handle that.

Bearing in mind, I haven’t re-listened to the rest of season five with this, so I may have missed something.

I also think both interpretations can co-exist too, and that could be just as interesting to explore. Either way, I find that, with Jon, it’s important to consider his status in the Eyepocalypse and his nature vs his choices, although, his nature vs his choices goes for the whole series I think, as choice is such a consistent theme in TMA and in the Avatars.

[creekwritersblood]

pass emotions to your readers creating relatable characters

Crafting characters is essential in storytelling, they can captivate readers convincing them to read your stories, and also give the narration a kick to bring the narrative to life. As a person capable of writing, a writer, create well-developed characters is a fundamental part of drawing in your own audience and keeping them committed to your work.

I will give you a few advice on how to do it, based on my own work.

Give your character complexity and depth: Each character should be seen by the reader as a real person, someone he can relate to in various situations. As a writer you should give them unique personalities, motivations, strengths, and flaws.

Show don’t tell: Be accurate, writing about your characters' background, telling their stories, giving them traits, and showing all of that in their actions, dialogues, interactions with others. This will give the reader a sensation of authenticity while reading and they will be able to immerse into your words, feeling like they are reading about something bonded to them.

Growth and Change: Writing about your characters changing the more the page turns will help both you and the reader to feel the character more closer. You can write about little changes as bigger ones regarding their behavior, their persona, and their life. By doing so the reader will be even more taken into your story and will be more than happy to see how the story will unfold under their own eyes.

Relationships with other Characters: Another aspect very important. Their interactions can reveal their point of view, their values and beliefs. By writing down dynamic relationships instead of static ones, you can give depth to them and create opportunities for conflicts, romance, and growth within the story itself.

By doing so, you will be able to show your crafting capabilities as a storyteller.

[calliesmemes]

ABSOLUTELY UNHINGED COMEDIC RELIEF

ASSORTED QUOTES FROM TUMBLR TEXTPOSTS, X (formerly known as twitter) POSTS, TIKTOK, MEMES, AND OTHER SOURCES AROUND THE INTERNET

CHANGE gendered words and in-universe phrases as needed.

SPECIFY muse for multimuses.

���   Currently considering becoming a bother and a nuisance, maybe even a menace or a rascal. ”

“   Hungry? Eat the government. ”

“   Yes, I wanna fuck after every argument. ”

“   Silence, you uneducated peanut! ”

“  They should invent a being alive that isn’t so difficult. ”

“   Women have to think I’m hot or none of this matters. ”

“   Due to personal reasons I will be named an enemy of the state. ”

“   Being overdressed is a myth made up by people who didn’t want you to have fun and be sexy. ”

“   What even are daddy issues? Just traumatize your father back. ”

“   I LOVE complaining! You can’t take that away from me! ”

“   I went to the silly goose convention and they all knew you. ”

“   I’m simultaneously ‘I’m tired of this grandpa’ and ‘that’s too damn bad!’ ”

“   The word ew coming out of a pretty girl’s mouth holds so much power … I think that it can tear apart nations. ”

“   Someone made fun of my shoes and the whole time I just thought of ways to push them out the window. ”

“   If you’re short, simply get taller. ”

“   I better think twice? Buddy I don’t even think once. ”

“   My off putting looks, awkward demeanor, and strange behavior have captivated you. ”

“   There’s something deeply, fundamentally wrong with you. Can we kiss? ”

“   You are a fool. When you walk, clown music plays. ”

“   I mean yeah he’s evil and all but what if I were his favorite? ”

“   I really do hate thinking. ”

“   In my defense, I simply do not vibe with the law. ”

“   I’ve done nothing wrong. Except all the atrocities. Besides that, I’m innocent. ”

“   Sorry I couldn’t hear you over my internal monologue. ”

“   Of course you have white hair and trauma. ”

“   So apparently the bad vibes I’ve been feeling are actually ‘severe psychological distress’. ”

“   Stop calling me a bad person just because I’m orchestrating your downfall! ”

“   The more lip gloss I collect the longer I live. ”

“   Sorry that I am obsessed with you in the unhealthiest way possible. As if it's my fault ”

“   The multiple failed assassination attempts against me have helped build both character and self esteem. ”

“   I could be your loser boyfriend. Do you ever think about that? ”

“   Accidentally went and got myself killed yesterday, but god wont let me die so I’m back ”

“   What do you mean napping isn't a good coping mechanism? What do you mean my problems are still here? ”

“   Academic validation is required for my sanity. ”

“   RIP to everyone killed by the gods for hubris but I’m different and better. Maybe even better than the gods. ”

“   Researching the stages of grief to see if I can get them finished in ten minutes tops. ”

“   My parents were like I’m gonna make a child that is so beyond help. ”

“   It’s not easy to admit when you’re wrong, and that’s why I won’t do it. ”

“   Why can’t this family ever have a funky good time? ”

“   How do I show people that I’m more than my unethical career choice? ”

“   I fucked my way into this mess, and I’ll fuck my way out. ”

“   You look so biteable today. ”

“   Why am I suffering? I have so many correct opinions and takes. ”

“   I AM HAUNTED BY A PAST THAT I CANNOT GO BACK TO! anyways ”

“   Challenging authority, angering gods. The family business. ”

“   Third base is me telling you about my father. ”

“   Hey girl. Plagued by terrifying visions? ”

“   Got caught giving a fuck. Embarrassing. ”

“   I didn’t ‘miss’ the red flags; I saw them and thought that they looked sexy. ”

“   Do my dark circles and deteriorating health make me look hot? ”

“   I get my news from the only reliable source, cryptic symbolism in my dreams. ”

“   Another day of being a bisexual disaster. ”

“   I’m going to let myself be a little unhinged today, as a treat. ”

“   Some of you act like murder is such a big deal. ”

“   You wanna hunt me for sport so bad that it makes you look stupid. ”

“   You’re not a girlboss unless you’ve killed someone. ”

“   It’s so weird how no one ever has correct opinions about things except for me. ”

“   Hello, my love — I mean, my rival ”

“   No one is calling me baby and it’s outrageous I can’t believe it. ”

“   No talking stage. Mutual obsession and you see god in my eyes or nothing. ”

“   I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOOKUP CULTURE DIE IN MY ARMS ”

“   Yes baby your emotional walls are high and impenetrable can we kiss now? ”

“   Affection is disgusting. Drown me in it. ”

“   I am gatekeeping my respect from you. ”

“   Well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions. ”

“   I am equal parts fuck around and find out and please don’t yell at me I’ll cry. ”

“   Short legs, big butt. I’m a corgi. ”

“   Fuck being the bigger person; I’m going to start biting people. ”

“   Well that wasn’t very slay of you! ”

“   May I please get a crumb of affection? ”

“   I crave power! Please don’t yell, though; I’m sensitive. ”

“   You call it a near death experience; I call it a vibe check from God. ”

“   Here are some scissors. Now cut it out. ”

“   Might commit a little tomfoolery, maybe even some shenanigans. ”

“   All these flavors, and you choose to be salty. ”

“   How can I live, laugh, love in these conditions? ”

“   What if I said ‘to be honest’ but then lied? ”

“   I'm financially at a stage where I understand why people do fraud. ”

“   Yes I may be evil and morally corrupt, but I’m also incredibly beautiful and I think that makes up for it honestly. ”

“   Debates are stupid. Why would I want to sit down and argue with someone blatantly dumber than me? ”

“   I forget but I do NOT forgive.. I'm just walking around hating bitches can't remember why ”

“   Ding dong your opinion is wrong! ”

“   I’m coming for your kneecaps. ”

“   You dropped your nose you fucking clown. ”

“   Are you a fire alarm? ‘Cause you are really fucking loud and annoying. ”

“   Call me an escalator, because I let people down. ”

“   I love me a good lesbian scandal! ”

“   If you can’t run away from your problems, you’re not running fast enough. ”

“   Everything I want to do is illegal. ”

“   Don’t make me hit your ankle with my Barbie scooter! ”

“   I tell gay jokes because I am a gay joke. ”

“   Fuck! I dropped my mental stability! ”

[vigilskeep]

hello! you know a lot of dragon age lore so i thought id ask you— i saw a post earlier that was discouraging to me aa trans person where the op said that veilguard having top surgery scars in the cc goes against established worldbuilding. does it make sense for top surgery to be possible in thedas? thanks

my rule of thumb is that in a world where healing spells exist, there’s absolutely no logical, believable reason for it not to be possible. you don’t have to go back and provide sources about historical surgeries—which is something i personally know nothing about—for this to be true

like, i just can’t take this line of thought seriously. ohhh we can have floating cities and magical neon lights and spirit healers who can mend injuries just by passively standing next to you, but we draw the line as soon as it’s something that would make our trans players happy! it’s so transparent. do not listen to these people or let them discourage you

if you want to get into the worldbuilding potential of it—which is just fun to do—we can probably guess that for the top surgery scars to be as neat as they seem to look in the veilguard character creator, similar to modern ones, magical healing was involved. now i do believe that the chantry might get suspicious of body-altering magic, that magical power is hoarded by the circles in the south and the wealthy in the north, and also that “out” trans people are a minority in thedas. so i’m not saying that this is something easy for your average guy to get hold of. that’s where you can feed it into backstory. are they powerful and connected enough that they could find specialists willing to go beyond the ordinary? or do they have underground connections to hidden apostate healers, whose only priority is what helps (or perhaps just how much you’re willing to pay)? do they belong to a culture that might not be restricted by the chantry’s norms about gender or magic, like the dalish or the rivaini? or do they belong to a mage-focused community or order, who among themselves do whatever they like? endless options

some might be referring to a line in dai from krem, a trans man, where you can ask him about potentially changing his body with magic and he essentially says he wouldn’t let magic that could do that anywhere near his body, though when he was younger he might have dreamed about the possibilities. firstly, krem is absolutely not the gold standard for trans representation and nobody should care about being flexible from what bioware put out a decade ago. secondly, krem is a random mercenary who knows one (1) mage, who spends the entire time insisting she’s not a mage. i very much doubt he’s the no. 1 source for what might be magically possible in this or any regard

also ultimately, and i cannot express this enough, you can do whatever you want forever. it could be absolutely fundamentally impossible in-world somehow and it would still not be that serious to be “unrealistic” in the dragon video games. don’t let anyone discourage you from making the character you want to make. it being an option makes it canonically part of thedas, end of. they put it in the game and nobody bitching about it can take it out

[erinwantstowrite]

OKAY. I DIDNT. I don’t know if it’s been confirmed that bruce is otherworld ben but i’m fairly confident he is and i’m losing it. bruce. i didn’t realise that meant HE’D DIED THE WAY HIS PARENTS HAD. LIKE SAME BUT DIFFERENT, I DIDNT REALISE THE BEN = BRUCE DEATH IMPLICATIONS UNTIL YOU WROTE PETER TELLING DICK ABOUT IT.

YOU’RE AN EVIL GENIUS /POS

even if it’s unintentional there’s a lot in this chapter that’s. delightful. devastating too

it is a SHAME i can't reply to two asks at once so anon #2 this is for you as well teehee

Benny was foreshadowing!! Benny is a counterpart to another guy that Peter knows in his world: Biggie. (he'll show up later in a Ned POV). Biggie and Benny are very similar, but in a way that made Peter wonder if Benny was a counterpart to someone that Biggie is related to- Benny is older, he was military, he also looks different enough that it took Peter a minute to see similarities. But they are, in fact, the same person/soul, and are counterparts to each other. Peter does not know this yet, but he has his suspicions.

that's because some counterparts do not look the same, and have different stories, etc, but are the same person. i'm reeeeaaaaaalllllyyyy stretching it here, but i wanted to play around with possibilities. Kind of like concept art? there can be multiple different versions of the same characters drawn down, one makes it to the movie that we see. but in another universe, a different design was chosen. same character, different design and concept. the timelines between worlds is shifted about 7 years behind for 1300 (Bats') compared to 1299 (Peter's), but that doesn't mean everything is perfectly matched up. there are faces in the crowd that are older or younger or look completely different, but they are there.

this includes Ben and Bruce - which, by the way, Benny's name being Ben is also foreshadowing that Ben is playing a role here: with Bruce. a gruff older guy named Ben takes Peter in to make sure he has a home and he worries about him and is very bad at hiding that fact, and then we look at Bruce and raise our eyebrows. (Ben really is haunting our narrative) Benny was a hint the whole time to counterparts not being the exact same across universes, and he's technically the first counterpart that Peter meets. he had gone into the burger shop before he met Nightwing, but it's not until later in the chapter do they talk to each other.

fundamentally i can see Ben and Bruce as the same person/character type (far more than i can see Jason as Ben, which I don't hate, but it doesn't appeal to me as much). Bruce has a more parent type relationship with Dick than Ben has with Richard but the relationship is not that far off. Circumstances changed and things are different but ultimately they are the same souls. Bruce and Ben advocate for responsibility to help other people with the power you have, they both are trying their best to raise a kid that needs a teacher/guiding hand to comfort them but also push them forward out of their grief, etc. and their stories revolve around gun violence. Ben died protecting Peter from a gunman which is very close to how Martha and Thomas died from a mugger. and i did, in fact, giggle when i wrote it down :3

[whatlurksbean]

Erm hey I have an interest in and a basic understanding of cat genetics, so, I did the thresher fam + Tusk 👍👍

I had to make some changes, I make Ray genetically black but he still looks ginger, so he’s carneliannn. I don’t know how a cat with an ec got onto a middle of nowhere island and I’m not gonna think about it. Peace and love on planet Earth.

To make Sturgeon, Hake, and Urchin possible (cats who are genetically black and tabbys look brown (GENERALLY), it’s why they got the black stripes.) I made them smokes with ghost marks, very pretty kitties, they’re fundamentally the same.

Biggest change I’d say is I had to make Minke have a manx tail, so Trout can get her tail. Shes also a smoke, I figured it would be less noticeable on her than Thresher. Sorry Minkeeeee

I made Sturgeon, Hake, and Urchin ticked tabbies 👍 solid is epistatic to tabby patterns, so Thresher and Minke could have ANYTHING hiding under there, they can be ticked‼️

https://i.imgur.com/gYaxuhE.png

Sorry if this sounds like I’m trying to “correct” your characters, I HATE it when people do that, this is just for funsies yay

Wee cat genetics! While they are not an interest of mine, i still enjoy seeing folk try to make sense of fantasy genetics. The chart is very cool to look at, thank you!

say goodbye to your tail minke..

(chart linked in op)

[queenvhagar]

Allegedly Rhaenyra will carry a sword starting next season and it's per Emma D'Arcy's request? Quote from them in a recent interview:

“All the men in the show don’t have to worry about where they put their hands because they’re constantly holding the pommel of their sword. That obviously sounds like innuendo and you can do with that what you will but that is true. And all the rest of us are going, 'Where do we put our f—king hands?' Anyway, next year one hand is going to be taken care of. That’s what I want. I want a sword and I’ve been really clear about that with Ryan and I think that’s happening.”

While I understand that yes! Wouldn't it be cool for a female character to carry a sword and be a warrior queen and fight to change the world? Hell yeah! But is this Rhaenyra's character as it fits into the narrative of the story and universe in which she lives? Absolutely not, never was, and it diminishes the story to alter it so significantly yet again.

And for what? Is the creative team really so clueless about what to do for the writing that they're letting the actors run the show again, just like they've done in the past, including the Mysaria kiss that was never mentioned again and led to nothing? It's very clear that everyone in the creative team has fundamentally incorrect views about this story, it's characters, and the world it's set in.

The failures of this adaptation continue to truly astound and disappoint me in ways I did not think were possible.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Dm Tip: Playing the Villain/ Guidelines for "Evil" Campaigns

I've never liked the idea of running an evil game, despite how often I've had people in my inbox asking how I'd go about it. I'm all about that zero-to-hero heroic fantasy not only because I'm a goodie twoshoes IRL but because the narrative-gameplay premise that d&d is built around falls apart if the party is a bunch of killhappy murder hobos. Not only would I get bored narrating such a game and indulging the sort of players who demands the freedom to kill and torture at will (I've had those before and they don't get invited back to my table), but the whole conceit of a party falls through when the obviously villainous player characters face their first real decision point and attempt to kill eachother because cooperation is a thing that goodguys do.

Then I realized I was going about it all wrong.

The problem was I had started out playing d&d with assholes, those "murder and torture" clowns who wanted to play grand-theft-auto in the worlds I'd created and ignore the story in favour of seeing how much unchallenged chaos they could create. They set my expectations for what an evil campaign was, and I spent the rest of my time developing as a dungeonmaster thinking " I Don't want any part of that"

But what would an evil campaign look like for my playgroup of emotionally healthy friends who understand character nuance? What would I need to change about the fundamental conceit of d&d adventures to refocus the game on the badguys while still following a similar enough narrative-gameplay premise to a hero game? How do we make that sort of game relatable? What sort of power/play fantasy can we indulge in without going off the deepend?

TLDR: In an evil campaign your players aren't playing the villains, they're the MINIONS, they're mooks, henchmen, goons, lackeys. They're the disposable underlings of uncaring overseers who have nothing but ill intent towards them and the world at large.

Where as in a hero game the party is given the freedom to challenge and overthrow corrupt systems, in an evil game the party is suck as part of that corrupt system, forced to bend and compromise and sacrifice in order to survive. The fantasy is one of escaping that corrupt system, of biding your time just long enough to find an opening, find the right leverage, then tossing a molitov behind you on the way out.

Fundamentally it's the fantasy of escaping a shitty job by bringing the whole company down and punching your asshole boss in the face for good measure.

Below the cut I'm going to get into more nuance about how to build these kinds of narratives, also feel free to check out my evil party tag for campaigns and adventures that fit with the theme.

Designing a campaign made to be played from the perspective of the badguys requires you to take a different angle on quest and narrative design. It’s not so simple as swapping out the traditionally good team for the traditionally bad team and vis versa, having your party cut through a dungeon filled with against angel worshiping holyfolk in place of demon worshipping cultists etc. 

Instead, the primary villain of the first arc of the campaign should be your party’s boss. Not their direct overseer mind you, more CEO compared to the middle managers your party will be dealing with for the first leg of their journey. We should know a bit about that boss villain’s goals and a few hints at their motivation, enough for the party to understand that their actions are directly contributing to that inevitable doom.

“Gee, everyone knows lord Heldred swore revenge after being banished from the king’s council for dabbling in dark magic. I don’t know WHY he has us searching for these buried ancient tablets, but I bet it’s not good”

Next, you need a manager, someone who’s a part of the evil organization that the party directly interfaces with. The manager should have something over the party, whether it be threats of force, blackmail, economic dependency… anything that keeps the antiheroes on the manager’s leash. Whether you make your manager an obvious asshole or manipulative charmer, its important to maintain this power imbalance:   The party arn’t going to be rewarded when the boss-villain’s plan goes off, the manager is, but the manager’s usefulness to the boss-villain is contingent on the work they’re getting the party to do.  This tension puts us on a collison course to our first big narrative beat: do the party get tired of the manager’s abuse and run away? Do they kill the manager and get the attention of the upper ranks of the villainous organization? Do they work really hard at their jobs despite the obvious warning signs and outlive their usefulness? Do they upstage their manager and end up getting promoted, becoming rivals for the boss-villain’s favor? 

Building this tension up and then seeing how it breaks makes for a great first arc, as it lets your party determine among themselves when enough is enough, and set their goals for what bettering the situation looks like. 

As for designing those adventures, you’ll doubtlessly realize that since the party arn’t playing heroes you’ll need to change how the setup, conflict, and payoff work. They’re still protagonists, we want them to succeed after all, but we want to hammer home that they’re doing bad things without expecting them to jump directly to warcrimes. 

Up to no good: The basic building block of any evil campaign, our party need to do something skullduggerous without alerting the authorities.  This of course is going to be easier said than done, especially when the task spins out of control or proves far more daunting than first expected. The best the party can hope for is to make a distraction and then escape in the chaos, but it will very likely end with them being pursued in some manner (bounties, hunters, vengeful npcs and the like).  Use this setup early in a campaign so you have an external force gunning for your party during the remainder of their adventures. 

Dog eat dog:  It’s sort of cheating to excuse your party’s villainous actions by having them go up against another villain who happens to be worse than they are. The trick is that we’re not going after this secondary group of outlaws because they’re bad, we’re doing it because they’ve either got something the boss wants, or they’re edging in on the boss’s turf.  This sort of plotline sees the party disrupting or taking advantage of a rival’s operation, then taking over that operation and risking becoming just as villainous as that rival happened to be. This can also be combined with an “Up to no good” plot where both groups of miscreants need to step carefully without alerting an outside threat. 

The lesser evil: This kind of plot sees your party sent out to deal with an antagonistic force that’s a threat not only to the boss’s plans but to everyone in general. In doing so they might end up fighting alongside some heroes, or accidentally doing good in the long run. This not only gives your party a taste of heroism, but gives them something in their back pocket that could be used to challenge the boss-villain in the future.  

The double cross: In order to get what they want, the party need to “play along” with a traditional heroic narrative long enough to get their goal and then ditch. You have them play along specifically so they can get a taste of what life would be like if they weren't bastards, as well as to make friends with the NPCs inevitably going to betray. This is to make it hurt when you have the manager yank the leash and force the party to decide between finishing the job , or risk striking out on their own and playing hero in the short term while having just made a long term enemy. This is sort of plot is best used an adventure or two into the campaign, as the party will have already committed some villainous deeds that one good act can’t blot out. 

Next, lets talk about the sort of scenarios you should be looking to avoid when writing an evil campaign:

Around the time I started playing d&d there was this trend of obtusely binary morality systems in videogames which claimed to offer choice but really only existed to let the player chose between the power fantasy of being traditionally virtuous or the power fantasy of being an edgy rebel. Early examples included:

Do you want to steal food from disaster victims? in Infamous

Do you as a space cop assault a reporter who’s being kind of annoying to you? in Mass Effect

Do you blow up an entire town of innocent people for the lols? in Fallout (no seriously check out hbomberguy’s teardowm on fallout 3’s morality system and how critics at the time ate it up)

I think these games, along with the generational backwash of 90s “edge” and 00s “grit” coloured a lot of people's expectations ( including mine) about what a "villain as protagonist" sort of narrative might look like. They're childish exaggerations, devoid of substance, made even worse by how blithely their narratives treat them.

Burn down an inn full of people is not a good quest objective for an evil party, because it forces the characters to reach cartoonish levels of villainy which dissociates them from their players. Force all the villagers into the inn so we can lock them inside and do our job uninterrupted lets the party be bad, but in a way that the players can see the reason behind it and stay synced up with their characters. The latter option also provides a great setup for when the party's actually monstrous overseer sets the inn on fire to get rid of any witnesses after the job is done. Now the party (and their players) are faced with a moral quandary, will they let themselves be accessories to a massacre or risk incurring their manager's wrath? Rather than jumping face first into cackling cruelty, these sorts of quandaries have them dance along the knife's edge between grim practicality and dangerous uncertainly; It brings the player and character closer together.

Finally, lets talk about ending the villain arc:

I don't think you can play a whole evil campaign. Both because the escalation required is narratively unsustainable, but also because the most interesting aspect of playing badguys is the breaking point. Just like heroes inevitably having doubts about whether or not they're doing the right thing, there's only so long that a group of antiheroes can go along KNOWING they're doing the wrong thing before they put their feet down and say "I'm out". I think you plan a evil campaign up until a specific "there's no coming back from this" storybeat, IE letting the Inn burn... whether or not the party allows it to happen, it's the lowest point the narrative will allow them to reach before they either fight back or allow themselves to be subsumed. If they rebel, you play out the rest of the arc dismantling the machine they helped to build, taking joy in its righteous destruction. If they keep going along, show them what they get for being cogs: inevitably betrayed, sacrificed, or used as canon fodder when the real heroes step in to do their jobs for them.

Art

[havoc-7]

I wasn’t a die-hard Tech Lives believer (more of a “I HOPE Tech Lives” believer) but the end of the show has me grieving hard all over again, so here’s my little ode to Tech based on things I’ve noticed about him from rewatching the show:

Tech LOVES his brothers, and he genuinely misses Crosshair. When he has his heart to heart with Omega in the ipsium cavern, the way that he mentions Crosshair—even though that wasn’t even really what they were discussing—shows how often Crosshair is on his mind, so much so that he can’t really talk about people leaving and changing without bringing him up. When they get the Plan 88 from Crosshair, Tech is vocal and insistent about doing whatever they can to bring Crosshair back—because “he is still our brother.”

Tech is incredibly moral. Not that he’s any more moral than I think generally TBB is, but he’s not afraid to speak up when he sees something that he disagrees with fundamentally. “The systematic termination of the Jedi is a big one for me.” “There’s a fundamental different between taking fire in battle and being used for target practice.” Even in just the first episode, we see how firm his opinions are, based on what he believes: that people are people, that HIS BROTHERS are people, that they deserve better, that there is such a thing as right and wrong.

Tech may be practical, but that doesn’t make him any less crazy than his brothers—in fact, I would argue he is one of the more unhinged members of the bad batch. His plans and ideas see everything factually, factoring in risk not as an emotional factor but as a numerical one. He knows their skills, and what they are capable of, and he pushes them to those capabilities, even if the resulting strategy is absolutely insane. The best part is, as insane as he may be, his brothers trust him, because, as Tech himself said, he is seldom wrong.

Tech has a beautiful sense of wonder and awe for the world around him. How many times do we see him go wide-eyed as he encounters something that absolutely fascinates him—even if that thing is a Zillo beast that just ate an entire Imperial crew.

Tech is INSANE. Not unhinged, like I said earlier, but skill-wise, ability-wise, he is an absolute powerhouse. I will forever be grateful to the writers of TBB who gave us a techy, intelligent character who is not your average scrawny computer guy that we get in action movies. You have to have a lot of guts to be the guy in your squad who turns your back on the fight to bend over a computer and hack into a file or break an encryption or alter the programming—already a delicate operation, but with the added risk of getting shot with your back turned. He frickin wields double blasters so that he can shoot more clankers more efficiently (if that’s not practical Tech, I don’t know what is). He DOESN’T WEAR LEG ARMOR SO THAT HE CAN CARRY HIS TOOLS WITH HIM INTO THE FIELD. In “Faster,” we see his hand inching towards his blaster, ready to defend and protect the second it’s necessary—and you know he would’ve beaten anyone to the draw. He fought a group of Imperial troopers!!! With a broken leg!!!!!

Tech was amazing, and I hate that he’s dead, that we never got to see him grow old, that he never saw Crosshair again. But WHAT A LIFE HE LIVED.

[mysterycitrus]

I know a lot of ppl ask u abt jason or dick but im wondering now, what do u think about bruce? I find him a very interesting character whose characterization is incredibly feeble, both bc of his 80 years of history and the tendency writers have to project their own male fantasies on him. So i'd definitely love to hear ur own thoughts about him. I personally enjoy depicting him as someone morally grey, although my sympatization for him changes day to day. Wether you think he is a good or a bad person, i believe u need to make him dedicated to gotham and the bat as a symbol, and that comes with all its advantages and drawbacks

bruce wayne is sooooo interesting (derogatory) because like u said, he carries the baggage of every masochismo author that decided batman was too woke and should hurt his kids and that supporting gotham’s infrastructure is for pussies. there’s also the flipside of that, where he’s the perfect father who’s waaaay too emotionally regulated for my taste. both of these interpretations are bad imo, and both functionally miss the point.

i think part of this (in fandom) is an obsession with moral angst — u can either be a good person doing good things, or a bad person doing bad things. think about how some characters are crucified while others are babied. someone always has to be absolutely right, and the other has to be absolutely wrong.

in reality, there are a lot of people who are fundamentally kind and fundamentally want to do good that are really terrible to the people in their lives. bruce wayne being someone who relies on having so much control that it implodes his connections to the people around him is an important part of his character. his profound love for his children, for gotham and her people, for humanity in general and his belief in peoples ability to change, doesn’t circumvent the fact that he’s often an emotionally abusive man who hurts others to achieve his own ends. he contains multitudes.

writing him as a functionally irredeemable, violently abusive person is the anti-thesis to the symbol that he himself created. no, i personally don’t believe he actively beats his kids (even though it’s supported in the text). no, i don’t think he’s an irredeemable sadist (as much as frank miller wants u to believe otherwise). to have people like dick grayson and diana and clark and dinah love and believe in u means that there has to be something there worth caring about, otherwise the whole universe is gonna fall apart.

that’s what makes his relationship to cass so interesting — he sees his neuroticism, his dedication to the cause above all else, and does not find it admirable. he finds it confronting and upsetting. and to be clear, cass (like dick) is very much the moral ideal of what batman should be, but still bruce finds it hard to deal with!!

his abject failures — his treatment of the robins, his crippling guilt about jason, his fears of becoming a killer, the impossible load he gives himself to carry — means that when he’s shown as someone who genuinely cares, it makes him more complex. like yeah, bruce isn’t actually a cold hearted person. he really really gives a shit. too many shits, to be totally honest. he’s a morally grey person that wants to do good, but is so terrified of losing control that he keeps others away and hurts them in the process. there’s a reason why his emotional crutch was a traumatised eight year old fr. nothing is more important than the mission, including bruce wayne himself

[dekusleftsock]

I think that there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what exactly is…happening with Izuku’s character. Specifically in regards to chapter 425.

I’m glad that a lot more people generally recognize that Izuku is not a character that can be read at a surface level, given that he’s both a repressed person with built up emotion of basically everything and also a very glaringly HUGELY unreliable narrator, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I agree with the ways I’ve seen this most recent chapter spoken about.

I see posts, comments, etc with ideas like “Izuku don’t suppress your emotions! Open up with people! It’ll be okay I promise!” When that’s fundamentally not what is happening here.

There’s always always ALWAYS been a distinct difference in character throughout horikoshi’s writing when he is showing that a character is:

A—Avoiding emotions, thoughts, ideas less than ideal for them. Not opening up when they probably should about their problems given that they’ve been handed the space to do so. Just genuinely not acknowledging, feeling, or expressing emotions that they don’t want.

B—Reflecting on the ways they feel about the world, themselves, or other people given their new perspective on a situation. Not outright reaching out to others to talk about these problems/feelings, but instead waiting until the moment they feel they have the most confidence to do so with their new outlook on their own life.

And genuinely, guys, to grab your BkDk attention rn, this is the exact reason why Ochako’s reflection on her feelings for Izuku and thereafter decision to pull away from them WAS NEVER GOING TO END IN OCHAKO EXPLODING WITH HER LOVE FOR HIM.

This was another common interpretation I saw of Ochako and Izuocha for a long time. That because she pushed these feelings away, they were somehow going to explode in this unbelievable way and she would “get the boy” because of it. That her arc would surround accepting her romantic feelings and that she can’t just push away how she feels for a career.

But yk. That didn’t happen. At all. Nowhere close even.

The same kind of goes for Katsuki, allmight, etc. They all had moments in their arc where it was spent genuinely reflecting, and the only reason we as the audience never connected it in the same ways we do ochako or Izuku was ALWAYS BECAUSE the narrative showed their inner thoughts while doing so (mostly because Allmight’s arc after losing OFA and Katsuki’s arc on what it means to be a hero were so intrinsically tied, both starting at the same time and ending at the same time during the final war. And because they were so tied this caused their own reflections, development, and thought process to be broadcasted to us frequently throughout their arcs… to each other. They also somewhat shared aspects with Izuku, but these were cherry picked more often than not, like dvk2 for example).

To us Katsuki never seemed to be.. idk, suppressing his anger in any way because we were always told what he was doing and why (side note: this is why I’ve always thought arguments against Katsuki were so weird, bc unlike characters like endeavor or Ochako he wasn’t like… hiding who he was and how he was changing. Ever. Like the audience knows at all times past basically season 3 what Katsuki is thinking and doing. Like how do you watch this happen, stare me dead in the eye, and tell me how much of a terrible and awful teenage boy he is. Like damn I didn’t think we were this dumb. This is also my theory as to why he’s most popular, his arc is very… in your face if that makes sense). Katsuki’s entire mini arc on reflecting his mistakes and his childhood and his future is spent TELLING YOU that it’s what he’s doing. (I’m referring mostly to the endeavor internship arc, the provisional license exam makeup, and basically everything in the war arc related to him leading up to bakugou Katsuki rising here)

And see, Horikoshi will stare you dead in the eye, tell you “this girl has taken into consideration that she doesn’t want to waste her time training her career focusing on a boy because he kinda caught her fancy”, and y’all will still say that this will explode in her face.

Y’all this is a series about learning how to manage emotions, maturity in relationship to one’s emotions, how to feel an emotion, but in a way that is helpful. Horikoshi isn’t telling you “go buck wild, feel everything all the time and always express it”, in fact he explores why you DONT do that! Through Toga or Shigaraki, they show how grief and anger can genuinely consume you. But he also shows why you shouldn’t just put everything in a box to never look at or acknowledge, or why you shouldn’t just let your grief destroy the world around you, or pretending that some emotions simply don’t exist.

I can’t say this enough, so let me say it now, mha is about the extremes of your psyche. That you should control something, but not too much. Everything can be harmful. Everything can be good.

Izuku is not controlling too much, he’s expressing just enough.

I LOVE shaming this dickhead at all times in all my posts. I love saying he’s an ignorant dipshit with a weird amount of distaste for a girl who just confessed to him. I’ve joked that chapter 348 is basically an entire chapter spent on Izuku calling Himiko a mean dyke. And yet I also believe he’s doing nothing WRONG here.

In fact, I’ll even say that this moment right here?

ISNT EVEN IZUKU DOING THE SOCIALLY APPROPRIATE THING ABOUT IT! But he’s still TRYING to reach out to someone he thinks MIGHT be able to understand. (And frankly, this moment is far deeper than what it’s being made out to be, to me it reads more like an unrequited friendship that Izuku both desires and has thought of them to have, while simultaneously showing the distance Ochako has successfully wedged between them for her own sake. Maybe it was always there though, maybe in weird, miscommunicated Horikoshi fashion, this is a representation of how Ochako always read all those “fun friend hangouts” as a little more than that, and without those feelings the friendship never really held any substance to her in the first place. Where Izuku saw his first real friend at UA, she saw little more than acquaintance)

Simultaneously, Izuku is genuinely reflecting on what it means for the world to change, to be a hero, to live after loss—and trying and failing to gain the connection he desires from individuals who can not and will not afford him that.

Izuku is ready for the world to change, a few select characters are also ready for the world to change (mirio, for example), but not nearly enough are. So maybe I’ll have to take this back if I’m proven wrong and I accidentally looked into this far past what everyone else did for no reason, but I genuinely believe with moments like this

And this

Aand this

That Izuku has come forward with that aspect of his character development. He’s reflecting on his new beliefs, not repressing his emotions for them.

[roomtemperaturesuperconductor]

The world of scavengers reign is a world of pure mutualism. The show never asks “should we isolate ourselves from nature or connect with it” because that’s a false question; there is nothing BUT connection, there is no form of life outside of the ecosystem. Whether they can see it or not, every character becomes part of the planet the second they touch down.

The question then is what their connections will look like: if it will be mutually beneficial, parasitic towards one side or the other, or harmful to both.

I’ve seen people read Kaimen and hollow’s relationship as either kaimen “corrupting” hollow or hollow “manipulating” kaimen. But the truth is their relationship is just a noxious, unstable feedback loop. Neither party is really “in control”, they’re following the guidelines of an evolved relationship that was never meant for creatures as large and emotionally complex as humans to be part of. It’s the same process that occurs with the introduction of any invasive species: simple relationships shift in unstable ways, niches swap places and gain unexpected importance, and the health of the whole ecosystem is put in jeopardy through the lack of sustainability. The truth is that the strange, lovecraftian nightmare Kaimen and hollow create together is bad for BOTH parties. It’s the worst case scenario of the introduction of humanity onto the planet; not humanity “corrupting” some ideal, static image of perfect nature, but the relationship between the two making things worse for everyone.

It’s why one to stop Kaimen/hollow has to be Levi. Whose mutual relationship with the fungus in their circuitry has created something new and beautiful. Something we see has LONG TERM affects on the planet itself with the little baby planet Levis now growing from the flowers. This isn’t the case of nature “claiming” Levi. This is a collaboration, a partnership, something that utterly transforms both sides. It really seems like the death flowers form in some way the “mind” of the whole planet. And Levi has given that mind the artificial circuitry to think on a far higher and more active level than it was ever able to previously. It’s why hollow wasn’t able to control them. Trying to wrangle levis mind is like trying to hold a whole planet in your hands. Something wild and new and beautiful has been created here.

But these transformation can be scary! Sam’s fight with the parasite, paired with his prior skepticism at trying to “understand” the planet the way Ursula was, leaves him unable to adapt. Forced to either lose himself in the process of assimilation, or die separated from it. And again, the show doesn’t take for granted that these mutual connections are “good”. They’re necessary. Sam cannot live separate from nature. But for him, that death was still better than allowing it to change him so fundamentally. His strong willed nature makes him unable to let go the way Levi or Kaimen do, and the result is he doesn’t experience good OR bad results. He’s to brittle to allow for change. He simply ceases.

And so they you have Ursula and Azi. Who are both forced to learn and grow with the planet. Forced to follow the flow of nature even when it takes them places they don’t quite want to be. While at the same time finding little ways to exert their own agency, to not get swept away in the tide. And it’s a complicated balance. One that takes constant effort and isn’t guaranteed to end how they want. But they still have to do it. Because there’s nothing but connection.

[howlsofbloodhounds]

What would you call the seven sins of Undertale AU fans? (Sin as in general thing most of them do that rubs you wrong.)

Uh..i don’t know? All I have are just pet peeves related to my favs ig.

1. Forcing ships where they don’t need to be and where no one wants them. There’s nothing in the video, art, music choice, tags, comments, nothing that indicates that the content is supposed to be a ship yet people leave comments about the ship and tag it with that.

This is massively with Killermare and its shippers. No one can make, write, draw, or talk about killer and nightmare even standing beside eachother without someone coming in and sexualizing or romanticizing it and making it in to a ship.

2. Making everything about ships. It pisses me of when people make the conflict between Color, Nightmare, and Killer into a love triangle or a ship war.

Not only because this does a massive fucking disservice to Color’s character, but it also fundamentally mis-fucking-understands the situation between them.

Nightmare kidnapped Killer. He holds him captive. He’s trafficking, using, and abusing Killer. He’s manipulating him. He’s isolating him from people and resources that could help him. He’s taking advantage of a traumatized, mentally ill man for his own benefit because he’s skilled, intelligent, powerful, and easy to take advantage of.

Killer is not a person to Nightmare. Killer is a tool, Killer is property that belongs to Nightmare. And given the way the Multiverse works and the fact he has already canonically replaced Killer multiple times (meaning he’s either killed or allowed Killer to be killed/die multiple times so that this being with high amounts of Determination just gives up completely, not counting all the times he simply killed a Killer because they could Reset and it was convenient for him) Killer is a resource to be exploited.

Color is helping someone who needs help, who asked him for help, because he’s a decent person and because he—unlike Nightmare—cares about Killer genuinely as a person and his basic fucking right to live and be free. Not because he’s in love with Killer, or because he’s jealous of and hates and demonizes Nightmare.

He does hate Nightmare. But not because Nightmare’s a romantic rival. But because Nightmare’s a kidnapping abusive trafficking Multiversal terrorist who knows what he’s doing and shows no signs of stopping or changing and Color has every damn right to despise Nightmare.

The conflict between Color and Nightmare and Killer is a fight for Killer’s sanity, his health, his identity, his grasp on reality, his very basic freedom and rights, his very life and right to exist. Not his love.

3. Sexualizing and romanticizing abuse, sadistic torture, conditions and abuse that can arguably fall under MC and OA in RAMCOA, and trafficking just because it’s a gay popular ship and nightmare is supposedly “hot.”

No, TikTok killermare shipper #35, a video depicting Nightmare horribly beating and terrorizing Killer while he trembles and shakes in pain and fear is not, in fact, “definitely sex” or “kink.”

Real people go through the same shit Killer does. Some of them survive, some of them are still alive, most aren’t. All of them are deeply traumatized and nearly all are permanently disabled and struggle to support themselves because of what people chose to do to them. A lot of them were children—infants, babies, toddlers— when it happened, born and raised in it or sold or kidnapped off the streets.

It’s not fucking cute. It’s not “uwu toxic killermare!!11!!”

4. The complete erasure of Color Sans and his relationship with Killer.

only ever acknowledging him or bringing him up to demonize him for some fucking reason, replace him with someone else Killer either doesn’t even know or care about, pretend like Killer would ever choose Nightmare over him without consequences and that somehow ever being a good thing for Killer, trying to painting him as only caring for Killer because he’s in love with him (that’s not the reason he’s trying to save killer ffs.)

And also people completely ignoring that Killer literally asked Color to save him.

Killer. Wants. To. Be. Saved. From. Nightmare.

We can stop pretending that Color is forcing himself on Killer and not taking no and his “I don’t want to be saved” for an answer now in all the little fanfics.

Even if Color did think Nightmare was brainwashing Killer in these fics or not, regardless of if it’s true or not, he wouldn’t fucking force Killer to leave against his will. That would only push Killer back into Nightmare’s arms and Color knows that.

And also. Only bringing him up to kill him in a way that was clearly just done to push Killer into Nightmare’s or someone else’s arms and serves no purpose in developing killer’s character or the plot.

5. The lack of anything done with Killer and Something New Chara’s relationship as if that wouldn’t effect Killer for the rest of his life and effect the way he views, builds, and approaches relationships of any kind and people and the world now in his present.

As if that wouldn’t affect his views of and relationship with Nightmare, either, that are not just going to be fixed just because Nightmare “saved him” in some fanon interpretations.

Like. KC is still in his head, he believes they live in inside him.

6. The inability to ever let Killer be independent or even separate from Nightmare ever and that being the reason why some people refuse to explore Killer and Color’s relationship or even Chara and Killer’s. Hate the framing that Nightmare is somehow the most important person in Killer’s life.

7. The lack of exploration with Papyrus. There’s been more of it, but Something New Papyrus is alive in timelines where Killer is with Nightmare. He doesn’t remember Killer, but he remembers Sans. Interesting ideas. And just in general the lack of exploration of Something New characters as a whole like Flowey and Chara. Don’t really consider it a “sin” just something I want to see more of.

Also wanna see more of the fact that Killer is aware of Players. He may even be aware of Creators, but he just calls them Players..

[cherrybomb107]

Now that I know that the “writers room” for this season functionally didn’t exist, everything makes perfect sense now! So here are some things I would change if I had the chance

1. We’d have three seasons. Two seasons is just an awkward length for me in general, so 3 just seems like a sweet spot

2. We cut the soundtrack in half. We have 23 songs as of right now, so let’s have no more than 11-13 max. That’s not crazy for 9 episodes

3. Speaking of the soundtrack, there’d be more Black artists. Syd, Little Simz, Tyler the Creator, FKA Twigs, Yseult, JID, Akintoye, Brandy, Doechii etc all would’ve fit the vibe.

4. Last one about the music, I promise. It’d be quieter. I feel like the music was louder than the dialogue at some points, and it completely took me outta the scenes

5. Onscreen development! “Oh but they don’t have to spell everything out for us!” Cool! But wanting to SEE characters meaningfully interact does not fit the definition of “spoon feeding” or “spelling things out” in my book.

6. There would have been more foreshadowing that Maddie was a spy. It was obvious, but it also wasn’t set up properly.

7. Ekko wouldn’t have been sidelined for an entire act. His relationship with Vi would be present. Best believe I would give him the chance to cuss Vi and Caitlyn out for what they did as enforcers

8. Speaking of that, Vi would have wrestled with the decision to become one. Notice I said “decision” because it should’ve been her choice. Caitlyn had no right to guilt trip her and then strong arm her into becoming one

9. Vi would have fought with Caitlyn over her wanting to use The Gray. The Vi I know and love would not go so hard in rationalizing the use of it

10. Caitlyn would’ve gotten meaningfully redeemed. In order to do that tho, we would have to show the true weight of using The Gray and enforcing martial law in Zaun. Caitlyn would be forced to confront the harm she caused with her own eyes, and actually be genuine remorseful

11. Let Jinx be unhinged! I love my baby regardless, but I do agree she was defanged a bit this season. Let her kill more enforcers and act up in front of Isha before realizing where she is and what she’s doing. Let Jinx want to be better and then develop into the kooky version of herself she is in season two

12. Isha would be more than a plot device for Jinx’s story. Let Isha live on and be happy with Jinx. Killing her was just for shock value.

13. Part of the reason why I think Isha should live is so she gets to grow up in a better Zaun. A free Zaun. She deserves better. They all do.

14. The au episode would’ve been way different, cause it doesn’t makes sense for centuries of oppression to just magically go away all of a sudden because one kid(and a Zaunite kid at that) died.

15. More scenes of Sevika guiding Jinx in how to rally the troops and get ready to fight for their freedom

16. Ekko and Jinx reconciling because although there’s no shortage of bad blood between them, there is love buried deep in there somewhere too. Let Jinx be the main freedom fighter and have Ekko back her up today, so he and the Firelights can focus on community building and organizing tomorrow.

17. Jinx’s rocket should’ve killed more people. All the Councilors(sorry Shoola but you too girl) except Mel, Jayce, and Viktor should’ve died. Viktor and Jayce should’ve been in critical condition but Mel would’ve been fine.

18. Heimerdinger and Ekko’s relationship would be fundamentally different. He should NOT be cozying up with that little furball whose inaction is directly responsible for the current conditions in Zaun

That’s all that comes to mind for now, but yeah. It would’ve been a completely different story. What could’ve been for real 😭😭😭

[books-and-omens]

Okay okay, so I really want to talk about S2 Crowley.

I’ve been thinking about who Crowley is in the book and who he is in the show, and the gap is significant. (@tbutchaziraphale has fantastic meta over here which I think is spot on.)

Book!Crowley is an optimist, yes? I mean, we’re outright told this:

“Because, underneath it all, Crowley was an optimist. If there was one rock-hard certainty that had sustained him through the bad times—he thought briefly of the fourteenth century—then it was utter surety that he would come out on top; that the universe would look after him.”

Honestly, what a thing for a fallen angel to believe! And to me, it’s powerful, yes, but it never quite answers the question: where is he getting that certainty?

Tv!Crowley, in the meantime, is emphatically not this. He’s never been an optimist, not even in S1—although in S1, it might have been easier to look at A & C and consider them essentially similar to their book selves if a little out of sync.

In S1, Crowley gives the whole “don’t test them to destruction” speech. He cares about humanity deeply, even if he won’t admit it. He will try to stop the Apocalypse.

And there is still a moment when he feels helpless. When he has no innate optimism to carry him through, no deep belief in the universe looking after him or anyone. When his instincts tell him to run, and he tries to follow them. When he despairs. Aziraphale pulls him back out of that despair; they make a stand together. As we know, it works.

But the thing is, the thing is. I find tv!Crowley’s lack of optimism so very relatable.

I find despair so very relatable, too.

We live in an age of deep anxiety. (Climate change, anyone? Just for starters! The promise and wonder of the Moon landing and the end of the Cold War are far in the past; day to day, we deal with the effects of capitalism, of reactionism, of continued exclusionism. It’s far too easy to feel helpless.)

So in S2, Crowley is very much the same character as he was in S1, except we see it even clearer.

He is not an optimist. He wants to run; he wants to escape when faced with Gabriel’s arrival; he wants to protect Aziraphale and himself, and believes that the best—perhaps only—way to do that is by them retreating as far away from the problem as they can.

In Heaven, Crowley finds out about The Second Coming. His need to escape and to keep his angel safe become overwhelming. But he doesn’t tell Aziraphale about the Second Coming, does he? And his repeated offer to run away together doesn't even make sense to Aziraphale. (Not that Aziraphale would want to run if he knew. Quite the opposite, in fact, which Crowley must know.)

Anyway, Crowley already knows that the clock is ticking. Aziraphale is about to find it out. (Do you notice how often, in the last fifteen minutes of S2, we hear nothing in the background but the ticking of a clock?)

And just—the despair, the desire to retreat and escape when you are faced with overwhelming odds, with a fundamentally broken system, are so relatable.

And yet escape has never been the answer.

I hope, of course, that this is what we’ll see in S3 if there is a S3. Crowley deciding, emphatically, that running away is not the answer. 

We didn't get there yet. We were dropped out of the story at the darkest point.

But I think being at this point is precisely what makes Crowley’s confession at the end of S2 transcendent.

Because it’s the same conflict, isn’t it, except on a personal scale. Despair in the face of overwhelming odds, followed by the decision to not give up.

Crowley, who’d been ready to confess, sees what is likely to happen. He sees the way the deck is stacked against him, sees that he is unlikely to get through. He feels the coming loss. 

And then he does it anyway. 

He confesses anyway. He says what he has set out to say, gasping and clawing for every word. He does it at the point when everything appears lost.

And no, we don’t see the effects of it, not yet. We don’t see what he has launched, the hook that sank into Aziraphale, the change it has wrought in Crowley himself.

But his bravery won’t be lost.

We live in a dark timeline. I maintain that this is precisely what makes this story so compelling.

Be brave. Do the difficult thing anyway. Do it anyway. Do it anyway.

Even in the face of overwhelming odds. Especially in the face of overwhelming odds. While not being an optimist in the slightest.

This is what hope is.

This is what we have to do.

(And to all of us who’d lost a comfort story: I’m so sorry. I, too, am still grieving for it. I know, I know.

Emphatically: all is not lost.)