#but i think the way cycles of abuse and possessive thinking continue are interesting

[hirokiyuu]

SolNem 42

42. Chasing butterflies

"Apparently some humans used to do this with like, nets or whatever, I've seen it in vids," comes Sol's voice, as Nem edges closer and closer to the edge of the Garrison. "I'd kinda like to try it that way, it seems like it'd be fun! Probably easier than this, y'know?"

Nem peeks around the corner and there they are: Sol and the alien motherfucker trying to steal her whole goddamn life, smiling at each other without a care in the world. Her girlfriend's hair's down and loose and tangled, and as she runs around chasing some dumb bugs, Symbiosis is sitting in the grass and watching with a smile warm on his face. "You're acquitting yourself quite well, though."

"Ehh," says Sol, sticking her tongue out, and Nem has only one single moment to feel a familiar flush of anger at their obvious familiarity with each other before she adds, "Nem would be way better."

The anger dies in her chest. Sol continues on, oblivious: "She's always been way better than me at anything athletic or whatever, y'know? Like when we were kids, she'd always kick my ass at sportsball pretty much every time we played."

That makes the alien smile a little, eyes staring into some middle distance, like he's imagining it--like he's thinking about human children, the most vulnerable kind of humans in the world, and somehow that brings a smile to his face--but the smile fades soon enough into something a stupider person would call pensive. "I do hope..." he says, slowly, "...that my presence in your life hasn't...."

"Aw, bud," says Sol, before giving up on her latest bug and sitting down right beside him, close enough that if he wanted he could reach out and snap her fucking neck. "I know things with Nem aren't... I mean, they're not... they're not great, but...."

Sol has to visibly swallow at that, which makes Nem feel like shit even though none of this is her own damn fault. Just that stupid alien's. Still, any guilt dries up the moment Sol leans over to put her head on the alien's shoulder easily, like she's done it a thousand times. "You're one of my best friends too, y'know? I would've gone totally crazy when that stupid war started without you."

And that makes the stupid fucking alien look so fucking fond and warm and bright that Nem wants to march straight over, punch him in the face, and then drag Sol away by the wrist. That's her girlfriend, she thinks, her fucking girlfriend, not his, and he shouldn't be looking at her girlfriend like--

It takes her a second, to recognize the cadence of her thoughts, and as she does she feels sick. No. No. She's not going to be like that, not when she only just escaped it herself, and not towards the very person who saw herself standing in the jaws of some horrid beast and pulled her away before they could come down on her neck; she won't be that beast herself, she won't, she won't--

Her eyes meet the alien's, staring over in surprise. The blood drains from her face; with no care for whether anyone else saw her spying like a lunatic, she turns and bolts.

[lavellaned]

Actually I think one of the reasons why this game is so awful to get through is how it treats abuse, abusers, and abuse victims.

Under cut due to length of rambling:

First of all, Morrigan. Abused as a child by her mother, Flemeth aka Mythal, learned about the world and how to interact with it in a skewed way. Was treated in a way that no child should be by anyone let alone their parent.

Fast forward to Inquisition, particularly a worldstate in which Kieran is alive. The scene in the fade where Morrigan confronts Flemythal is one of the most important and special scenes in all of dragon age to me.

Growing up through abuse as a child you never think "I don't deserve this", you mainly think things like "Why is this happening to me?" and "Bad things happen to me." You know that these things are bad and make you feel bad, but when your baseline for how you should experience the world is abusive, you don't have the point of reference to think otherwise. And then you grow up. You look back on the abuse through the eyes of the child who experienced it but also through the detached, adult view that you currently have and have to reconcile the two. It's not easier nor pleasant. Getting to the age your abuser was/getting into the position of power your abuser had over you is difficult. Being at that stage and picturing yourself doing what was done to you to someone else is fucking sickening, and then you start to realize "I wasn't the problem, it WASN'T my fault, YOU are the one that's fucked up." But a lot of people can't and therefore the cycle of abuse continues.

But Morrigan does. She straight up tells her abuser "I will not be the mother you were to me." To have a character who survived childhood abuse be able to reach a point in their life where they can take back their personhood from their abuser is pretty damn important, actually. To this day I get weepy just thinking about it.

And then fucking veilguard happened.

Not only does it not matter if Kieran is alive or if Morrigan drank from the well (something that would BIND HER SPIRIT TO HER ABUSER), but Morrigan straight up let Mythal hitch a ride in her. The very thing that Morrigan tried to prevent ever since the first goddamn game? And we're all just supposed to accept and be ok with this?

The only way I can see this not being a complete character assassination of Morrigan is if Mythal just straight up possessed her unwillingly/killed her. Have Mythal use Morrigan as a information receptacle for new players, but also use old players' already-implemented relationship with her as a way to manipulate them. Either way, shit sucks.

Then there's the Crows. You know, the guild who takes children from brothels, orphanages, the streets and puts them through Hunger Games levels of training in which they either die or survive to become a slave assassin for the rest of their life. Not in veilguard. We're all just one big happy family. We rule Antiva, yippee!

Finally, there's Solas. One could argue his entire existence is the product of abuse, and everything that has happened in Thedas is because of it. I think framing his regrets as physical manifestations that want to kill him is a really interesting narrative choice. Unlocking the regret murals was one of the very few parts of this game that invoked a strong emotional response from me, not just because I'm an unapologetic Solas Enjoyer but because the implications are heartbreaking.

And then the game has you sit through the most fucking unbearable CBT group therapy session to talk about them with some of the most annoying damn people in Thedas who treat the literal apocalyptic levels of abuse Solas went through for millennia as something like a joke? And we the player are not given the option to challenge this? This game makes the point to force the player to agree with the flippant attitudes brought up from this.

Then brings up the final scene with Solas. Do I think the meeting with Mythal and Solas was handled well? Yes and no, but that's for another time. Solas is so far in the trenches of the trauma of abuse that he will not stop until his abuser pretty much tells him "I'm done abusing you." I think this was good and bad, again another time.

The way Solas interacts with his abuser is the direct flipside of how Morrigan does. You see more than one way someone can heal/not heal from it.

Morrigan, someone with arguable little power in the world, stands up against her abuser unflinchingly.

Solas, described through history as a GOD, someone with unfathomable amounts of knowledge and power, cowers and offers his abuser a literal weapon to kill him with, unprompted.

If this was a good game, it would be about regret but also about survivor's guilt, something that those who survived abuse have to deal with for the rest of their lives. But it's not, because it's a a bad game.

[miss-sweetea-pie]

I just saw an interesting maiko post. I didn’t want to comment or reblog because I figured that person didn’t want to have a discord considering the tags and some times tumblr recommended things to you. I probably wasn’t meant to see it honestly, But now I want to talk about it.

It was about how Zuko and Mai are just teenagers who don’t understand each other sometimes and then fail to communicate.

Also about how Mai’s emotionless trait collides with Zuko’s need for emotional validation and Zuko’s controlling possessiveness collides with Mai’s need for freedom. But they care for each other that doesn’t make them a bad couple, and Mai is not a bad girlfriend.

Honestly it a really good way to frame the relationship. I would also call it incompatible, maybe even toxic? it doesn’t make them bad people, but sometimes people do bring out the worst in you. Technically, this is true for Zuko, considering he went back to the fire nation, and he started dating Mai at the same time. Mai is the first person we see him speaking to after betraying his uncle and the show wants us to know he made the wrong choice. Mai is use as a narrative tool for Zuko’s lack of support in the fire nation,he’s miserable when he goes back home, and the one person, you would think he could connect with, his girlfriend, is cold and emotionally withdrawn. The show used Maiko to explore the the emptiness of being home in the fire nation, the empty promises of fire nation glory he been chasing and it doesn’t resonate with him anymore, also the impossible standard of gaining conditional love. (Sorry but Maiko is Zuko centric so it does makes Mai hard to read at best and abusive at worst)

I don’t deny that they care about each other in someway they’ve known each other since they were children, it’s safe and comfortable. but love is not enough. Honestly most toxic relationship in irl continue because they love each but they are not good for one other. Zuko and Mai they don’t understand each other and it seems like they don’t really want to understand each other. That’s the problem. (Mai mostly).

Maiko is really just a toxic cycle of their needs not being met

This scene where Zuko want to talk about his feeing and open up to her

Mai: *yawn* I just asked if you were cold not for your whole life story.

(Not going to lie, that was funny but it’s still a very dismissive thing to say, especially to your partner.)

Zuko is actually a little bit more sympathetic when she tells her “sob story” he didn’t yawn

Zuko: I like when you express yourself.

(her being off and on with her anger. Is like a metaphor for him being in the fire nation, trying to make something work and it’s not working. Constantly feeling like he said or does the wrong thing)

and It just bubbles over until they finally blew up

Zuko’s possessiveness is a reaction to after he feels like he has done all sorts of stuff to please her. it’s zuko reaching his breaking point. Boy is really insecure in this relationship because the feed back he gets from her is contempt. Sure we could argue and say that doesn’t make mai a bad girl friend maybe this is just her sense of humor or personality. well, it doesn’t mesh well with Zuko therefore, they are incompatible, and a bad couple with each other. 

( also Zuko is not nice here that’s kind of the point he hads regressed  in his character arc so to speak.)

and then they get back together by making out.

Sure she says she cares but why when did she actually show it? Actions speak louder than words! We never get a moment where Mai gets it and really understands him.

[batsplat]

btw at le mans 2013 some vale fans had a huge (cringey ofc) banner which went like

yzr-m1: someday my prince will come

vale badly photoshoped as a prince: sorry babe

here’s how we can tie this to rgu and the whole prince&princess theme

also remember how in rgu the movie utena turns into a car and all? well what if valentino had some weird (vaguely erotic) dreams in that vein…….

(x, x) kermit at that poster not at the ask, to be clear!! weird ass sport

anyway, let's talk more about how to apply surrealist anime rgu to motogp! and yes, again, we are kinda stripping rgu from a lot of the stuff it was Actually About, but y'know on the other hand it'd also be flattening that particular artwork if your stance is that the 'only' things the story is relevant to is like. cycles of abuse. structural patriarchy. on-screen depictions of sibling relationships designed to make you extremely uncomfortable. all that stuff. so we are taking it as read for the rest of this post that rgu deals with more serious stuff than competitive sports and work from there

the car stuff!! anthy's prince literally turns into a vehicle to allow her to escape! it ends with both of them like... intertwined on the remaining husk of that vehicle, riding off into freedom. also the car looks cool

this isn't super relevant, I was just thinking about how much fun they made that car. like they made sidepod-wings into horsies. eat your heart out, ducati

now, in the film this is basically a metaphor for growing up, right. anthy is finally breaking out of the school and embracing her revolution by quite literally freeing herself from the prison she had both been entrapped in and had continued to entrap herself in. and isn't that... isn't that basically what valentino is doing when he's leaving honda for yamaha. well, no, obviously it's nothing like that. but say that it was like that, and that essentially this is the process of growing up, coming of age, growing into his own or whatever you want to call it. self-actualisation. a spiritual journey to a different bike manufacturer. valentino does think he's like... imprisoned in honda, it's his whole theme that year, he does a cute callback when he's won the title. brno 2003 is both the prisoner celebration and where he signs for yamaha, like he's not really being subtle about this. and the only way he can fully become himself is standing on his own two feet, thrive or fail, at yamaha. because now he's no longer following the path that's been set out for him. honda was comfortable in many ways, it was a very pretty prison - even if he felt underappreciated, he was still the golden boy at The Most Successful Manufacturer, he'd inherited doohan's team, he was building up a dynasty of his own. he was leaving behind basically... a completely guaranteed title for 2004 and most likely years beyond that for something far less secure

there is a kinda. obvious point here. and it's that according to this framing, valentino is implicitly being cast in the role of the princess. and the bike is the prince, who is being ridden to safety. which fits into the idea that there's like,, a deeply possessive element, of the bike towards the rider, and that's basically the key prince trait beyond lip service commitment to 'nobility'. I think that does kinda... work, not just because the contrast with the expected gender roles makes it more interesting, but also because 'seeing a vehicle as a symbol of liberation' inherently feels like a very valentino thing. the thing about anthy is that it's always a bit unclear how much power she has over what's happening, but when you rewatch the show enough times you do increasingly go 'huh has she been psychologically tormenting all of these characters for over thirty episodes as a diversion from the horrors of existence'. and the film very much then becomes... her version of events, if you will, where her brother the devil (that guy sure keeps cropping up in these asks) has become this defanged parody of himself,, and it really becomes more about her using utena to make the final step. or something!! obviously this is only one interpretation etc etc. but idk I think there's a fun element of this dual role of 'princess' and 'witch' where you've got a character who increasingly exerts autonomy over their own narrative and plays god a little bit and can also force other characters into slightly sadistic mini-arcs where they get turned into cows and who eventually brute forces their own vision on the world. because they do have power, and they are the instigator of the entire plot

so. so. I think one of my favourite things about valentino is... okay, so I don't actually really like when athletes are that good. with both valentino and marc, I have a very begrudging attitude towards just how successful they are, because that level of dominance is extremely 'meh' to me as a sports fan. they're really the exception here as far as I'm concerned, I'm very tenuously okay with their title count but it is also A Bit Much. but the thing about valentino, right, is that he mostly gets around that bit of my brain by also seemingly have a bit of an issue with dominance. the way he progressed through the ranks to the premier class is like,, nowadays, doesn't even stand out as notable because that's Just How Feeder Series Work, but back then it wasn't as guaranteed because they weren't feeder series!! it's not necessarily like clearing a level... you can just stick around to win more than one of these titles, and valentino was seriously considering doing as much but decided to move up anyway. I think there's something fun about how he kinda needs a certain difficulty level to get his brain into it. he's flirting with depression after 2002, writing in his autobiography about how AWFUL it is that winning isn't FUN any more, does his insane little yamaha switch which somehow worked out for him, got really into his f1 flirtations until quite literally when he starts losing again... he needs a bit of drama, he needs enemies, he needs MEANING!! I think inherently he's very suited to any role that casts him as a quasi-malicious storyteller, especially one that's searching for like,, some kind of Growth and progression. and also playthings. which then regularly feeds into a set of callous behaviours towards The Competition when it's seen as necessary. or just satisfying

the way this works when you. y'know. personify the bike into the prince,, is that inherently the prince's pov on this is also quite selfish, right, like it's a saviour complex and thinking you are The One who can claim the princess as your own. the prince can keep the princess safe... who can be used by the princess/witch as a tool to bring about world revolution, and so on. the prince attempts to control the princess, and the princess is devoted to the prince. and also, they can make each other worse!! it's kind of... eventually as a duo they can become so dedicated to this sick game they're playing that basically any act is excusable as long as it helps them win. anyway crucially I do think if you did a surrealism on valentino's brain, some blue haired girl personification of the m1 rocking up to save him from his shackles and allow him to finally attain revolution by turning into a vehicle and literally carrying him to safety... does sound about right, yeah. weird erotic bike fantasies and all

[sammygender]

Choose violence ask game. 16 and 21. ❤️

ask game

thank u sm for enabling me to be a hater

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing

well dstiel obviously though i do understand why people like it so much. it's because they're stupid.

aside from that.. oh wait this one is so random and no hate whatsoever (in fact only love) to people who like it but i don't really like transmasc dean in a canon setting. as an au it's incredibly interesting but i see it as occupying similar space to a cis girl dean au in a way where it definitely is..... an AU. in canon like. yeah no. that's NOT a trans guy im sorry. trans guys can be annoying dont get me wrong. but you'd have to be VERY special to be annoying the way he is. also he wouldnt transition for ages cause hes dean winchester and he likes to conform to and in fact play up his expected role. so he certainly wouldve not transitioned in the canon when we see him.

i dont feel this way at all about transmasc sam however. he'd be the same pretty much. as would transfem sam who we all know i adore. anyway i'll probably change my mind in a week and get obsessed with transmasc dean and post 20 times in a row about it and you are all allowed to pelt me with rocks.

21. part of canon you think is overhyped

this was surprisingly hard. in the interest of being interesting and not just going for 'destiel' or something, i'm actually going to say kripke era. it IS my favourite era!! its objectively the best in terms of writing, atmosphere, plot, characterisation. like no contest, obviously. in fact when i recommend the show to people i tell them just to watch the first 5 seasons (while planning on baiting them into continuing after swan song by going 'but its suchhh a bad ending for sam :(( dont you want to see what happens next.....').

so i use 'overhyped' very loosely to mean that despite me recognising it as objectively superior to the rest of the show, i don't actually hugely enjoy a lot of it that much more than i enjoy later on? a lot of my favourite parts of supernatural are heavily built on in the later seasons, or even introduced then. sam & lucifer's cage dynamic and everything resulting from it. the gadreel violation and in fact most of sam's..... everything. ofc this is all present in kripke and it's explored much Better and thematically and gothically and its just more atmospheric and intentional-seeming. whereas late seasons is kind of like this hodge-podge by different writers where you get these insane and intentional gems amid a bunch of white noise. but i just.... im a late seasons kind of person!! i loved buffy s6!! i enjoy works jumping the shark and i enjoy what art becomes when it already has so much to build on. shrug emoji.

like. ok. what first made me compulsively obsessive over supernatural (after the dean daddy issues, which i HAVE to admit hooked me........this is why im the ultimate critique of deangirls, because i was one for 3 seasons <3) was sam & azazel, the metaphor & violation present in his whole demon blood storyline. obvi this is kripke era. and i have to give kripke era credit for it. but a lot of what i consider fundamental to sam & this theme of uncleanliness especially in regards to assault and violation in some way is just soo built on post kripke. his cage trauma in s7. 8x21's "i'm not clean" speech. every compounding incident that happens to sam and his body, from gadreel possession to chuck in s15................

BASICALLY this is to say not that kripke era is really overrated but that so much credit is given to it at the expense of late seasons, when the domestic horror, cycle-of-abuse-sitcom, gabriel's tv show style thing it becomes is actually such a huge part of my enjoyment of spn. and wow i never thought i would be saying this. but i watched riverdale so idk what i was expecting. sigh. but really. what other show is giving us toxic polycule made up of brothers and an Angel of God coparenting the devil's child... also the devil happens to be brother #1's (sam is brother #1) abusive ex.... and hes currently fighting the polycule for custody rights. also the kid was born last week and hes 15. like sorry this is so fundamental to my supernatural. i could never rewatch and stop at s5. i rewatch late seasons eps all the time. ALSO LATE SEASONS SAM WINCHESTER. LIKE. COME ON. EARLY SEASONS SAM IS OVERRATED COMPARED TO LATE SEASONS. <3

[greywindys]

I think I can see your line of thinking, but I'm interested to hear why you think the album is about Murdoc more than it is about 2Doc this time.

Yeah, of course! I want to precede this answer by saying that this is all my fanon interpretation. The inferences I make use canon to support them, but Ed didn't seem to write anything like this into the actual CI story. I'm always open to new perspectives though. What really guided how I listened to CI was this quote, from this interview with Damon:

"It's very easy to suffer from delusions of grandeur in a culture like today's. The messiah complex is very real today, and it's evidently powered by social media. History teaches us how things end for false prophets, the madness that comes with any movement with one of them at the center."

Overall, CI isn't exactly saying anything new. I can name, off the top of my head, quite a few pieces of media that commentate on the same topic, in almost the exact same way. But the concept is, overall, consistent throughout the album, and I feel like I can hear a narrative. I don't like to conjecture too much about Jamie or Damon's artistic viewpoint, I'm not that kind of fan, but the songs seem to show a speaker getting pulled into a belief system, a vice, a ~cult (it's vague) and going through the motions of being a believer(Oil, Silent Running), to being a leader leading others down their same self-destructive path and being consumed by their own Messiah complex (Tarantula), to eventually coming out of it in the end, possibly (Skinny Ape, Possession Island). At the very least, there's an evolution from being the one controlled to the one who abuses their power (or tries to, at least). IRL, this could be Damon grappling with his own "Messiah" role, bestowed upon him by fans.

So why, if Damon is "2D", am I not saying this is about 2D?

The short answer: because none of that has anything to do with 2D. The narrative in the album, imo, is a lot more consistent with the cycle Murdoc's character has been stuck in consistently throughout Gorillaz' entire run. Murdoc is the one who sought out fame, love, recognition, etc, and constantly gets derailed by vice after vice, only to fight through it, but fall into old patterns again not long after. How many times have we played the "is he better this phase or not?" game? Who "suffers from delusions of grandeur'? Who had the Messiah complex this phase? Who has been both hurt by the world, and hurt the ones close to him? Murdoc. The album, to me, plays like an outside narration of Murdoc's journey this phase, and on a wider scale, the cyclical pattern of his life (and the band's).

Murdoc has often been used as the main character to voice the controversial opinions, to carry out the problematic decisions, essentially move the plot along at the expense of his own reputation among the fanbase. So it makes sense for me to think about each CI song in connection to each step of his ongoing, unhealthy patterns (one of which could be his relationship with 2D, hence where we can get the 2Doc reading). "Moonflower" is less of a real character to me than she is a representation of Murdoc's various vices and insecurities. And of course they unite in the end. He's either freeing himself of them, or welcoming them back to him so he can start down the wrong path all over again. Which leads me to my next question...

I'm still going back and forth about the ending of the album. Is it optimistic? Is it depressing? Is the message that we're trapped in our own addictions to social media, belonging, acceptance etc, but hey, at least we're trapped together? Are we Murdoc? Lmao, but I'm also also being somewhat serious.

I can already hear the counter arguments about how it was 2D who "literally fell for the cult," but the thing is, the narrative doesn't fault 2D for that. 2D also never had a Messiah complex, or got sucked into fame the way Murdoc did, and continues to do. All of 2D's flaws have all but been erased these last two phases. Talk about his children he doesn't pay child support for, his addiction to painkillers, his homewrecking, and whatever else, but the fact is that none of those things are acknowledged by the current canon anymore, and the current writers don't treat them as relevant. They might as well not exist, because the writers want him to be 100% "pure." The narrative doesn't portray his relationship with the rival cult as his fault either, it's Murdoc and Moonflower's fault for manipulating him (Moonflower) or being mean pushing him away (Murdoc). As he's currently being written, he doesn't have the range to be the main character on this album, imo. To be frank, there's little to nothing of substance there anymore (part of the reason I don't really respect what his character has become, despite liking him in the past).

I'm actually a little bit irked about the story we got versus the actual substance of the album. Though I typically defend Ed, I feel like he interpreted the concept very literally and gave us a simplified version of Damon's vision. It was a cute story, but compared to the album, it's kind of basic, imo. I think it also illustrates the overall lack of communication between the art, music and writing pieces. You can tell there wasn't a lot of cohesion until late in the phases development, and the cartoon band side of it missed out on a lot.

[kuh-boose]

You're using bad and evil as though they're exclusive to each other. They aren't, they're both just a way to say immoral. Ascended Astarion and repeating the cycle of abuse is very blatantly not the moral decision here, even Astarions actor and writer have made it clear that spawn ending is his good/moral ending. There is nothing wrong with going with whatever route you want according to your preference or roleplay, its a rpg, the writing and acting are all around great and should be enjoyed. but you need to recognize that Ascended Astarion is not healthy. He is still living in his fear, he is not healing, everything he proclaims after being ascended is him alluding to--if not blatantly saying--he intends to victimize others. If you detect thought during the kneel scene, he considers Tav as degrading themself for him.

Anyone trying to get to the sex scene will likely chose the "I want your body" dialouge, especially if this is their first experience with the story. but even chksing differently, saying you want to be a vampire, after knowing how that went for Astarion, hearing him tell you how he was turned, hearing him tell you that vampires will not turn spawn because it makes them competition--it is still ignoring his story and everything he's told you up to that point. Hell, even his dialouge shortly after is him saying he just knows you want to obey him, how he wants to command--enslave--everything.

Ascending him is not in his best interest, as much as he thinks so. You're dooming him to the cycle, where he will exist sadistic, hungry for power, and likely paranoid, just waiting for the next in line to slaughter him, like cazador did vellioth, and astarion did cazador. Power corrupts. Abuse continues if we dont make an effort to stop it.

I think there are remenants of the love Astarion had for Tav, but it's corrupted and twisted into possessiveness. It becomes very toxic, and dangerous for Tav. Post tadpole, should tav try to leave, Astarion says they're his, that he controls them and they cant ever leave. Meaning he blatantly lied about turning them fully into a vampire. That is not love, not even close. If you think otherwise, and I mean this genuinely, not as an insult or one-up, I think you should seek counseling. Abusers will claim their jealously and possessiveness is just their love, but its not, its their greed and need for dominance and control.

No one with Astarions best interest in mind would ascend him. You wanna roleplay a different character that doesnt care? thats fine, enjoy yourself. Maybe your Tav has a world view that makes them want him corrupted, maybe they don't realize what they're doing, maybe you just like dialouge or the villan fantasy. But from the real world looking in, its bad.

anyone else find it interesting that when turning Tav into a spawn, Ascended Astarion forces them into a kneeling position, the same position Cazador was in when Astarion carved the contract onto him and made him "take his place"

might just be a general "bow before me" ego thing, but I was watching my recordings and this stood out to me. it felt like he was reliving that moment when he turned Tav

I also find it interesting that to get to THE scene in the ascended ending (you know the one) ascended Astarion (and the writer) force Tav to handwave clearly degrading words, and depending on dialouge choices, ignore blatantly nasty things said. The main dialouge choice to get to that scene is to tell Astarion you want his body, ignoring all the strife over how Astarion feels about sex and being ised for his body. Then, after the scene, after being rewarded for being obedient, he forces you to kneel down, just as Cazador was, submitting completely. Thats why I dont understand how people can argue that ascension is a good ending for him. You overwrite all of his growth, his tendency for manipulation (previous survival strategy) is stronger than ever and its very clear that he is still living in his trauma (both by continuing the cycle of abuse and by reliving his domination over cazador, though the latter may be a stretch.).

side note, I had to reload like 4 times to get that scene and become a spawn cause I couldnt help but call the fucker on his shit. like, bitch, I just got knee deep in fucking werewolf guts, I got bit by bats--I probably have rabies right now--I helped you fuck up literal thousands of people, helped you carve a bastard up...call me a wretch again you motherfucker, I will stake you right now with a god damned bed post.

side side note: neils acting is phenomenal. You can hear a major difference between Spawn Astarion and Ascended Astarion. You can hear, leading up to the ritual, the times Astarion is trying to manipulate you because he sees this as his best shot at safety. Its also neat that because it was his fefault with new people, when first interacting with Astarion you may not have heard the manipulating tone, but as you progress, as you see him be genuine, it becomes easier to pick up on. You truly get to know the man intimately. Its such good writing and acting. I love writing that shows that healing is not linear. You can be a good way into healing and still fall back on those habits. You're still worth the love and effort so long as you try.

[odinsblog]

Across the United States, we are facing an epidemic of bullying masquerading as lawmaking. It is an approach to governance, or at least a distorted facsimile of the concept, that is rooted in cruelty. At the national, state, and local levels, we see a toxic brew of bad faith, hypocrisy, and sneering viciousness that is poisoning the wellspring of our democracy. 

Instead of tackling this nation’s actual problems and challenges, instead of trying to unite and lift up the populace, instead of tending to the fickle flames of hope, opportunity, and community, we have political actors who use the power and privilege of their positions to debase, troll, and outright attack their fellow citizens. And like most schoolyard bullies, they seek to target, ostracize, and abuse the most vulnerable and marginalized members of society. 

The laws they are passing — around “critical race theory,” LGBTQ rights, and now even tenure at state universities — won’t fix broken bridges, lower health care costs, reduce crime, or secure our environment. These purveyors of manufactured outrage don’t even pretend that they care about the myriad issues to which politicians usually pay lip service. For them, the act of proposing and passing legislation is merely another manifestation of an endless political campaign based on culture wars and calibrated — with lethal precision — to stoke the worst instincts of their base. 

Bullying is what helped sweep Donald Trump into office. He showed he could smash every norm of polite discourse and not only pay no price, but be rewarded with the presidency. And then he bragged about it, with his signature shamelessness. On his scorched march to the White House, Trump mocked a disabled reporter, attacked the Gold Star parents of a dead soldier, and created juvenile nicknames for his political opponents (and that’s just the beginning of a long and sordid list). He had the cunning and instinct to recognize that if he was always on the attack, he could dominate news cycles. The more outrageous he acted, the more he obliterated the boundaries of what was once considered “acceptable,” and the more attention he attracted.

It would be giving Trump too much credit to say he was the first politician to weaponize cruelty. This is, after all, the playbook of autocrats and dictators the world over. American history is also full of examples of politicians rising to power by fomenting division. Our fitful journey to becoming a multiethnic, multiracial, multicultural democracy illustrates that the diversity of our populace has often provided fodder for those who recognize that there can be great advantage in playing to fear. Sadly, some version of “us” and “them” is too often a winning campaign strategy. 

All that being said, I think there is something different about this moment. Where once politicians at least pretended that their objective was service to the people, many now spend most of their time tending to the bile of their Twitter feeds or ratcheting up the hateful rhetoric on right-wing media. All pretext for civility is gone. For many, there is little to no interest in going through even a pantomime of governing. It’s a circus of the absurd, with twirling stunts and carnival barkers who seek roars of approval as they distract, disgust, and dishonor. 

One of the hallmarks of bullies is that they appear to possess all the power. They are usually stronger physically, or more popular, or wealthier than the people they pick on. They find and exploit the weakness and insecurities of their targets. But another hallmark is that they are often cowardly and insecure. The only way they know how to feel better about themselves is to make others feel worse. They go after those they perceive as weak, because they themselves are weak. 

(continue reading)

[buck-yyyy]

alright, i've got a really hot take and not everyone is going to agree with me on it (actually i have a sinking feeling that not many people are going to), but that's perfectly okay- just please hear me out.

someone liking billy hargrove as a character does not mean that they're racist, homophobic, or a bad person in any way.

alright, let me explain.

first and foremost, a disclaimer:

BILLY WAS RACIST. THIS IS A REOCCURRING MOTIF IN SEASON TWO. TO IGNORE THAT IS TO DIMINISH WHAT LUCAS WENT THROUGH AT BILLY'S HANDS.

BILLY CONTINUED THE CYCLE OF ABUSE TOWARDS MAX. THIS IS A REOCCURRING THEME IN SEASONS TWO AND ESPECIALLY FOUR. TO IGNORE THAT IS TO DIMINISH THE TRAUMA MAX EXPERIENCED FROM HIM.

now, here are my thoughts.

i think that a lot of us have had rather... unpleasant, lets say, interactions with billy stans, and that's led us to be very against anyone appreciating his character.

a big problem in this fandom is the amount of people who excuse racism, homophobia, sexism, etc etc simply because the actor playing the character who said it is attractive- and that is definitely a big problem with steve fans, which is a whole other post in of itself, but it's an even BIGGER issue with billy fans.

we've all seen someone who uses the billy's father's abuse to say that nothing he did was bad and that he was just in pain- i'm not saying that that's okay.

but i think that we tend to come down too hard on the people who appreciate billy's place in the story simply because of his backstory.

there are a lot of people out there, most notably abuse survivors, who see themselves in the fact that billy's response to trauma is to lash out with anger, and there are a lot of us out there who are quick to invalidate those people by saying 'what's wrong with you, why do you sympathize with a racist wtf'- which i don't think is fair.

billy is an incredibly nuanced character, and we don't get to see very much of him. we see very little of who he was back in california, and when he has the most screen time, he's literally possessed- leading to us only being able to deduce a couple main character traits.

because of that, it's easy to reduce his character to simply his racism, which, again, should not be ignored.

but as a community, we often look down at the people who do what we do with byler that decide to look deeper into billy's character rather than simply leaving him flat, 2-D, and unexplored.

i don't think that's fair.

it's an incredibly fine line between enjoying analyzing his character and/or seeing yourself in his trauma responses versus glorifying his character and excusing his bigotry- however, plenty of people are doing perfectly fine with that line and still get lumped in with the apologists.

let's not be the people policing other people's interests, shall we?

tldr; billy apologists leave, billy appreciators you keep doing what you're doing and i'm sorry that you're getting harassed for finding representation or expressing interest in a complex character.

[clairenatural]

I think about this all the time and I know that there are other people who would be much better at putting it into words than me, and this is going to be very long (sorry) but like. there’s a very clear narrative that Dean is fed about his parents his whole life, which is: 

- His dad is trying his best. His dad just wants him to be strong, like a man, to protect Sam. Everything his dad did was for his own good. He should be grateful to his dad. He should want to be his dad.

and

- His mom is a mythic figure. She is warm, and soft, and perfect. She exists in the memories that he has of her, where he associates her only with being safe and taken care of, and in the stories his dad tells him, where she is flawless. She is not a real person, she’s an idea--a symbol of the life they could have had. She is why they do everything that they do.

And Dean’s entire character arc from the very beginning is set up to have him break away from these thought patterns--from season 1 we see Dean idolize John, but then see John behave in ways entirely undeserving of that praise. He wears John’s coat. He drives John’s car. But as early as 1x09 Home we start to see that John is not the idol Dean talks about him as. 1x18, Something Wicked, is one of the more heartbreaking episodes when we see just how much John expects of him at age 9, both how much he has to take care of Sam and also how angry John gets when he accidentally puts Sam in danger. In 1x22, when John is possessed, Dean realizes it’s Azazel because “John” tells him he’s proud of him. Literal yellow-eyed demon Azazel overestimates how good of a father John is. And it’s a little later, but it’s still fairly early on in the series (3x10) when Dean has his “he wasn't fair! I didn't deserve what he put on me” moment (and it also has the “daddy’s blunt instrument” line). Like this was clearly set up, from the beginning, from Eric Kripke’s hand himself.

But it’s interspersed with these moments where John sells his soul for Dean, or has uneasy reconciliation with Sam, where it’s possible for the audience to stop and go “Wait. Maybe he....cares about them in his own way?” It’s supposed to be confusing because that’s why it’s so hard for Dean to break away from it, too. John sells his soul for Dean and Dean thinks, okay. He wasn’t bad. He did love me. I can’t be mad at him, because that would make me bad and ungrateful, etc. My dad was brave and I should want to be like him. And the cycle continues.

The problem! The problem is that a huge amount of the audience, and even a chunk of tptb, also buy into this narrative. Huge amounts of people believe exactly what Dean was told, even though the whole story is designed, from the beginning, for Dean to realize that’s all wrong--so the result is that there’s never any narrative closure. The audience is continuously told “John Winchester was an abusive monster who really fucked up both of his kids. Except, no, he was a Good Man and the boys need to forgive him and Dean should want to be a Good Man like him” which is also the message that Dean gets, which means he can never break the “Dad was abusive, except no, he was a Good Man and I should be like him” cycle.

This also happens with Mary, which is potentially where this post gets more controversial. We also start to see the “perfect mother” façade of Mary being dropped fairly early, when it’s revealed that she was a hunter and that she made the deal for John in exchange for Sam. But, obviously, the “perfect mother” ideal is fully deconstructed when she comes back in s12. 

I do think there are valid criticisms of Mary and I think they could have done parts better, and she does go on to betray them, but on a basic level Dean’s first instinct is to be angry that she doesn’t fit his perfect memories, not any of the other stuff. This leads to actual character development--to start to heal from his childhood, it’s important for him to realize that the mom he had in his head that he was Doing It All For wasn’t really a full person--just the idealized stories from his obsessive father and his own memories of 4-and-under, drenched in childhood nostalgia and the warmth of the only stable home he’s ever had. 

For some reason, Mary doesn’t have the untouchable status of John, so they’re actually allowed to grapple with this a bit and she and Dean are able to have the face-to-face “I am your mother, but I am not just a mom. And you are not a child.” “I never was.” conversation, which is heartbreaking because they’re both correct. I have not-so-positive thoughts about how the narrative holds her more accountable for simply not fitting into the idealized version of Mother Mary that her sons hold than it does John for being actually abusive, but that’s not this post, and ultimately they do move forward with the storyline of Dean coming to terms with it.

But people got so angry. I’m not talking about the people who have valid criticisms about how her character could have been more interesting, or how she does betray them, or any legitimate stuff--I’m talking about people being mad specifically because she “abandons” her sons again, and being mad that she didn’t just appear in the bunker’s kitchen baking endless pies. Those people have fallen into the exact same trap that Dean did--they idealized Mary and are angry when she’s a real person and not just a fantasy mother. 

This is a really long post but my point is that: when we meet him, Dean believes a set of fake truths about both his parents, which the narrative then tries to deconstruct. But, for some reason, a good chunk of the viewers (and, at least on John’s part, at least some of the production team) have also fallen for those fake truths; they think John was misguided but not abusive and ultimately was a good father, and that Mary was a perfect, pie-making mother. The end result is that John is never allowed to be held accountable, so Dean can never heal and grow, and Mary is absolutely demonized the moment she strays from that paradigm. And I just. Don’t know how to end this post but I think about this a lot. And it’s interesting. And I wonder how the show would have been allowed to go if it hadn’t happened like that.

[anti-catradora-receipts]

Catra abused Adora.

I want to start off by explaining my own experience with watching She-Ra for the first time. I started to watch the show and continued to watch it for various reasons. But I want to make it clear that I wasn’t watching the show to see who ended up with who. I enjoyed the show mostly because it had such wonderful messages surrounding healthy families, friendships, and relationships. And so, one of the main themes of the show ended up being: abuse. 

The show demonstrated that abuse can take a variety of forms. The show demonstrated that people can suffer from abuse in different ways. The show presented that people can break the cycle of abuse and people can continue the cycle of abuse. The show demonstrated that in some cases people can try and help an abusive person, but the abusive person may abuse the person trying to help. The show also highlighted that people are allowed to leave abusive relationships.

Before we begin, I want to note that I won’t be answering the question “Did Catra’s own experiences of abuse influence her actions?” Because the answer to this question is obviously Yes. And I sympathize with Catra and the fact that she was abused while she was growing up. In addition, there’s a lot of complexity and depth surrounding the abuse Catra received. But Catra also continued the cycle of abuse. And in real life, people who have been abused can also end up abusing other people. 

Now, since we’ll be focusing on Catradora in this commentary, we must look strictly at the interactions between Catra and Adora. The reason behind this is we are evaluating only whether the relationship between Catra and Adora is healthy. In addition, if your friend told you they were being abused, would you ask the question, “I understand, but what about your abuser? Was your abuser abused?”. No, I don’t think you would. You’d ask your friend, “Is there any way I can help?” And so, in this case, Adora is your friend and Catra is the abuser.

Thus, the main question remains: Did Catra abuse Adora? And the answer is Yes.

(Please note that the underlined statements are hyperlinked to websites providing information on abuse.)

Signs of Emotional Abuse

Catra has unrealistic expectations of Adora:

Catra makes unreasonable demands of Adora.

Catra expects Adora to put everything aside and meet her needs.

Catra is constantly dissatisfied no matter how much Adora gives.

Catra invalidates Adora:

Catra undermines, dismisses, and distorts Adora’s perceptions of reality.

Catra accuses Adora of being "crazy”.

Catra refuses to acknowledge or accept Adora’s opinions or ideas as valid.

Catra dismisses Adora’s requests, wants, and needs as ridiculous or unmerited.

Catra suggests that Adora’s perceptions are wrong or that Adora cannot be trusted by saying things like “you’re not making sense”.

Catra uses emotional blackmail:

Catra manipulates and controls Adora by making Adora feel guilty.

Catra uses Adora’s fears, values, compassion, or other hot buttons to control Adora or the situation.

Catra exaggerates Adora’s flaws or points Adora’s flaws out in order to deflect attention or to avoid taking responsibility for her poor choices or mistakes.

Catra denies that an event took place/lies about it.

Catra acts superior:

Catra treats Adora like Catra’s inferior.

Catra blames Adora for her mistakes.

Catra doubts everything Adora says and attempts to prove Adora wrong.

Catra talks down to Adora.

Catra uses sarcasm when interacting with Adora.

Catra acts like she’s always right, knows what’s best, and is smarter than Adora.

Catra controls and isolates Adora:

Catra treats Adora like a possession or property.

Signs of Physical Abuse

Catra kidnaps Adora.

Catra scratches Adora.

Catra shoves Adora.

Catra kicks Adora.

Catra slaps Adora.

Catra uses weapons on Adora.

Catra physically restrains Adora.

Catra attempts to murder Adora multiple times.

Adora suffered from Catra’s abuse and Adora displayed the effects of this abuse:

Short Term Effects

confusion

fear

hopelessness

shame

Long-term effects

guilt

anxiety

Adora also tried tactics that are not effective ways of dealing with abuse:

Adora arguing with Catra.

Adora trying to understand or make excuses for Catra.

Adora attempting to appease Catra.

Adora also figures out how to properly deal with Catra’s abuse:

Adora makes herself a priority.

Adora establishes boundaries.

Adora stops blaming herself.

Adora realizes she can’t fix Catra.

Adora avoids engaging with Catra.

Adora builds a support network.

Adora deserves to be in a healthy relationship, which consists of:

Trust

Adora should be confident her partner won’t do anything to hurt her or ruin the relationship.

In a healthy relationship, trust comes easily and Adora shouldn’t have to question her partner’s intentions or whether her partner has her back.

Honesty

Adora should be able to be truthful and candid without fearing how her partner will respond. 

Adora’s partner may not like what Adora has to say, but should respond to disappointing news in a considerate way.

Respect

Adora’s partner should value Adora’s beliefs and opinions.

Adora’s partner should love Adora for who she is.

Adora should feel comfortable setting boundaries and should feel confident that her partner will respect those boundaries. 

Adora’s partner should cheer for Adora when Adora achieves something. 

Adora’s partner should support Adora’s hard work and dreams, and appreciate Adora.

Equality

Adora’s relationship should feel balanced.

Both Adora and her partner should put the same effort into the success of the relationship. 

Neither Adora’s nor her partner’s opinions should dominate. Instead, they both should hear each other out and make compromises when they don’t want the same thing. 

Adora should feel like her needs, wishes and interests are just as important as her partner’s. 

Kindness

Adora’s partner should be caring and empathetic to Adora, and should provide comfort and support.

In a healthy relationship, Adora’s partner will do things that they know will make Adora happy. 

Kindness should be a two-way street in Adora’s relationship: it’s given and returned. 

Adora’s partner should show compassion for Adora and the things Adora cares about.

Taking Responsibility

Adora’s partner should own up to their actions and words. 

Adora’s partner should not place blame and should be able to admit when they make a mistake. 

Adora’s partner should genuinely apologize when they’ve done something wrong and continually try to make positive changes to better the relationship. 

Adora’s partner should be able take ownership for the impact of their words or behaviour had, even if it wasn’t their intention.

Healthy Conflict

Adora and her partner should be able to openly and respectfully discuss issues and confront disagreements non-judgmentally. 

Adora’s partner should not belittle or yell during an argument.

Adora’s relationship should have healthy conflict by recognizing the root issue and addressing it respectfully before it escalates into something bigger. 

Fun

Adora should enjoy spending time with her partner.

Adora and her partner should bring out the best in each other.  

A healthy relationship should feel easy and make Adora happy. 

Adora should be able to let loose, laugh, and be themselves.

Adora’s relationship should not bring Adora’s mood down but should cheer Adora up. 

Adora’s relationship doesn’t have to be fun 100% of the time, but the good times should definitely outweigh the bad.

In conclusion:

Whatever Catra says, Catra’s violence towards Adora is unacceptable. 

Catra’s violent behavior is always Catra’s responsibility, not Adora’s.

Catra’s abuse is not okay or justifiable.

There are so many scenes throughout the series where Catra emotionally and physically abused Adora, and these scenes are captured on this blog. 

I just want to add that even when Catra emotionally and physically abused Adora, Adora continuously tried to reach out and help Catra. Adora gave Catra so many chances for her to apologize and rectify her mistakes. But Catra didn’t. Not only that, when Adora left, Catra continued to abuse people. Catra emotionally abused Scorpia. Then, when Scorpia left, Catra began abusing Lonnie. Catra’s abuse didn’t stop when Adora left, Catra just found a new victim.

In addition, there were so many significant moments of growth for Adora. Adora found people who supported her and did not abuse her. Adora began to heal from Catra’s abuse. Adora no longer made excuses for Catra. Adora realized that she is not responsible for Catra’s atrocious actions. 

Adora was strong and brave for moving forward in her life without her abuser. 

Moreover, Adora is a victim of abuse. Catra abused Adora emotionally and physically. Catra repeatedly admits to manipulating Adora in order to meet her own selfish goals. Catra did not show any remorse for her abuse against Adora throughout seasons 1 to 4. Catra continuously blamed Adora for her own atrocious actions. And finally, Catra attempted to murder Adora on several occasions. 

And here’s the most important thing. I don’t care who Adora would have ended up with. I just care about the fact that Adora ended up with Catra. What I mean is: I would rather have Adora end up without a partner, than end up with Catra.

Irrespective of whether you agree or disagree with my points on Catradora, these will be final points:

Abuse can happen anywhere at any time.

Abuse can happen in any relationship, including lesbian relationships.

Abuse is unacceptable.

Make sure YOU can recognize signs of emotional and physical abuse. 

Make sure YOU know that it’s okay to leave an abusive relationship.

Make sure YOU can trust and depend on your PARTNER/FRIEND. 

Make sure YOUR PARTNER/FRIEND knows they can trust and depend on YOU. 

Make sure YOU are being treated with kindness and support in your relationships. 

Make sure YOU are treating YOUR PARTNER/FRIEND with kindness and support. 

Make sure YOU are in healthy relationships and friendships.

In conclusion, EVERYONE deserves to be treated with love and respect.

Thank you.

[2n2n]

ngmn2002

It makes sense... it makes me think that's the reason why Amane and Tsukasa were drawn wearing like Karuto from "Dear my living dead", another work by AidaIro. What he did to the girl he loves was out of love and possession as well. Maybe the twins being drawn this way has some foreshadowing?

Yess I LOVE ‘Dear my Living Dead’, and I think Cult (Karuto) shares many similarities with Amane, especially! Not just aesthetically, but temperamentally. He tries very hard to resist doing something terrible, and even tries so hard to convince Lily to leave to protect her from himself.... but in the end, he gives in to his possessive urge.

I think the ‘familiars’ system in DMLD is applied very similarly to Yorishiro, as a storytelling device. In DMLD, we define Familiars as ‘animals’, so that when Cult betrays this norm and makes Lily his Familiar, we know to feel she’s been dehumanized, but for a sentimental and heartfelt reason, and in an urge to protect/keep her (though it’s done still, without her consent). Meanwhile, we have Yorishiro constantly defined ‘possessions/objects’, so that seeing a human Yorishiro, is very shocking, and confusing-- maybe a little scary, or foreboding. I really like how one story has a person placed into the role of a pet, while the other has a person placed into the role of a possession. Either way, there is a kind of ‘ownership’ feeling. Cult and Amane share a similar scary smile when they’re up to something. It’s interesting Amane wears that sort of smile in the times closest to the murder..... 

Cult also was young with Lily, and Lily is very childish-- she speaks in a very childlike manner... not unlike Tsukasa! Though, she also has naive, girlish, sweet, and difficult/fussy Nene traits, getting flustered and hating to be teased, and resembles Nene. I think she is a little of both Tsukasa and Nene, and AidaIro thought hard about how to create a more interesting story, using more characters. It’s so straightforward in DMLD. So Amane’s love and life is more full, with a brother and a love-interest, and not only one thing.  I think his feelings are sortof split between the two as well... but very similar no matter what, to Cult’s feelings towards Lily, which were both familial and romantic, given their childhood.

I think Aidairo have narrative themes they really like, and those include attachment, possessiveness, growing up together (Akane/Aoi and Sumire/Hakubo also grow up together, after all!).... their other old short story about a Fox Spirit and a little girl continuously growing up together, trapped in a cycle of something tragic inevitably happening to the other, also reminds me a little of Tsukasa and Amane. This sortof ‘inevitable tragedy’ feeling. The fox children cannot find their happy ending, and loop continuously. I feel like Tsukasa is trying to resolve a happy life for Amane... 

.....both DMLD and the Fox Spirit story, also have abusive parents...in DMLD, Cult is attempting to not take after his abusive father. It’s interesting. AidaIro like themes like that... so maybe that will also be present in Amane/Tsukasa’s childhood. 

[fightabear]

so some time ago, someone asked me to do meta about a scene in Injustice and i wanted to revisit that scene with the scene from Year Zero in mind. and then i ended up getting deeply into injustice damian, his relationship with his two awful dads, and it’s kind of a mini character essay?

so! here’s a warning for: tyrannical totalitariam regimes, child abuse, abusive fathers, emotional manipulation, evil superman, character death & also random he-man. please note that this is entirely about injustice and its characters, which are not a reflection on their mainstream counterparts.

there’s tension between damian and bruce from the get-go in injustice, and we’re never really told why. if we take cues from the game (though that entire scene doesn’t make sense) then it’s because bruce didn’t save jason, which fits in with my reordered robin theory in which tim and jason were switched, and jason has only recently died.

now, we don’t know whether jason is running around as red hood right now or not. but i’m inclined to say he isn’t, as his injustice 2 ending makes a big deal of him becoming red hood. and damian is close with jason in injustice 2, close enough that jason listens when damian tells him that he’s a lot more than bruce thinks he is and drops the shitty batman costume. close enough that during the (extremely weird, extremely out of alignment with the comic) scene in injustice 2 where damian betrays bruce for clark, jason is the name damian throws at him with the most vehemence. regardless of the robin ordeer, bruce’s failure to save jason is seems to be an incredibly sore point between them.

so it’s interesting that bruce is already counting damian out before injustice even starts. he’s comparing damian to jason - someone who he apparently no longer considers part of his legacy. 

the kicker is: damian in injustice is actually probably the most morally centered version of himself. he shows open compassion and care for other people more often than he does in most of the mainstream runs. damian’s sense of right and wrong is solid, but what he wants is to break the cycle that gotham is trapped in. which from his perspective, is something bruce doesn’t seem to want to do.

injustice’s version of bruce is someone who truly believes that the ends justify the means - which means he’s apt to do some heinous things to people until they see his side of things. he seems to view people questioning as an act of betrayal, so instead of ever explaining himself he resorts to things like installing viruses in cyborg, kidnapping hawkgirl and replacing her, beating allies within an inch of their life - all of it is fine to him so long as they’re not dead. 

but it’s not fine to damian.  damian is constantly horrified at the lengths bruce will go to.

damian is afraid of his father. 

so, this is about a specific scene.  let’s get to that scene. its just important to note the difference between them, and emphasize that he’s not going with any intent to fight. if he was going to do that, he wouldn’t be doing this:

or respond like this:

or this:

he’s there to make amends, or at least try to. he still loves his father and he wants to be forgiven, and this is something that will carry on ten years later in injustice 2. damian made the choice to oppose bruce’s controlling nature but damian didn’t choose to abandon him and the bat family permanently. that choice was made for him. damian wants to come home. 

and he’s terrified of his father. i cannot stress that enough. bruce at this point has already shown that he knows how to hurt his closest friends if they oppose him.

damian is a highly trained fighter, but he’s also a  thirteen year old boy who knows he can’t overpower a man twice his size and weight.

and bruce?

bruce’s entire argument really hinges on ‘you, my thirteen year old son, didn’t take my side in this argument’. because, i have to put this in bold, the league was not executing the criminals they were removing from arkham. they were just transferring them to a more secure facility. something which is actually sorely needed, especially given what has just happened to metropolis. arkham isn’t fit to house them. and as far as damian sees it, bruce doesn’t like it because it’s removing an element of his control.

now, bruce isn’t wrong about how things will escalate. 

but damian’s not wrong about his motivation here.  i think there’s a conversation to be had about how bruce’s methods in trying to stop the regime actually drove it to further and further extremes. bruce never tries to talk to clark - or anyone, really. he just starts playing mind games to make them do what he wants.

it harkens back to the conversation bruce and dick have in the batplane. that bruce doesn’t talk to people, he doesn’t explain himself. he’s either right or you’re wrong and he won’t explain his stance. there is never room for debate. he’ll just stop talking and leave until you agree.  there is no option where he sits and listens to an open and honest dialogue, no scenario where he entertains that he might be in the wrong or maybe things aren’t black and white.

and that’s why injustice bruce is not a good guy. 

even on prime earth, damian had to bend over backwards to prove to bruce that he wasn’t a monster. it was damian who spent months digging through the sewers for martha’s pearls. damian who had to prove he was capable of loving titus. damian who constantly had to show that he was capable of empathy and thinking of others - bruce did none of the heavy lifting in that father-son relationship, he made damian climb the entire hill and still continues to put little effort into it.

and injustice bruce is even less empathetic and expressive than prime bruce.  

which is why you get a confrontation like this:

this goes beyond dick’s accident and ties back into what clark said about bruce not tending to his son’s who are grieving because they lost friends in metropolis.  damian’s fed up with never meeting bruce’s expectations. but more than that, he’s fed up with his feelings coming second to bruce’s. 

bruce has already made a judgement on who and what damian is. damian has the potential to be dangerous and requires work to fix, and so he’s not interested in getting to know him beyond that. he tells dick that he’s “worried about  damian being seduced by darkness” but never talks to damian himself with him about it.

but clark has looked at damian and and decided that damian is good. damian has problems, clark can admit that and does, but damian is good. like bruce himself.

and ultimately why when dick dies, clark is the one that reaches out to him because he sees damian for what he is: grieving child who just made a terrible mistake. it was an accident. damian didn’t mean for this to happen. meanwhile, bruce feels as though he was proven right. damian was dangerous and now his real son is dead. bruce will later admit, once he stops trying to manipulate damian, that damian was dead to him the moment dick died.

going back to year zero for a minute, they subtly show that damian is doing his best to be like bruce. baby damian idolizes his father. so i imagine a lot of bruce’s own feelings towards damian stem from self-hatred. from bruce seeing himself in his son and not liking the reflection it forces him to confront. injustice bruce projects a great deal of his own insecurities and shortcomings onto his youngest. damian is his worst what-if.

even though damian doesn’t deal with his grief the way bruce does. there are similarities, he puts his feelings into his fists and hits. just like bruce. but unlike bruce, and most likely because of dick, he does try to communicate. come injustice 2 he even talks about his feelings.

that doesn’t justify any of the violent outbursts. and he has a lot of them. he has significant issues with controlling his anger and struggles with lashing out, verbally and physically. it both worsens and improves as he gets older.

damian knows that he’s more than his grief, his loss, his anger. he’s also compassionate and capable of incredible feats of kindness. we see that in the flashback chapter in injustice 2. people aren’t pawns for damian, they aren’t a means to assuage his own guilt and validate himself as a good person. he wants to be good for those people.

damian’s relationship with heroism isn’t built on an intrinsic need for control or power, nor is it a means of validating his self worth.

people just need him. they’re suffering.  and he wants to be there for them.

but again, we’re not there yet.

so, alfred reaches out to touch damian. damian asks him repeatedly to let go. when alfred doesn’t, damian tries throwing him off, not realizing how much strength he now possesses.

damian  has a thing about being touched when he’s wound up tightly. it almost always ends with him lashing out at someone. which, tying back into why he felt comfortable coming back here, probably goes into his expectation that he’s going to get the lights knocked out of him. because again, damian did not go to the cave to fight or hurt anyone. the pill is entirely for his own defense.

from what we know of damian’s childhood in both prime and injustice, violence is the expected retaliation for misbehavior. toeing out of line is grounds for getting the shit beaten out of you, and while things should be different here....

from how bruce reacts he’s not wrong to expect it.  note that bruce dodesn’t run to alfred to see if he’s okay, he goes after damian for hurting him. it’s damian who runs to alfred after he’s thrown bruce away from him.  

( granted, yes, he threw bruce into the penny and it almost crushes alfred )

damian apologizes and he means it.  alfred’s first question is to ask for bruce.  

“”hawkgirl”” intervenes to try to end this fight before it can escalate further.

damian deduces that this isn’t hawkgirl and blows some stuff up.  bruce calls after him probably - not to have a serious heart to heart with him about what just happened, or what happened in arkham, but to try to manipulate him into taking bruce’s side or in the very least stop his ruse from being uncovered.

this is a theme moving forward. bruce will dangle forgiveness in front of damian, but only when it benefits him and can be used to control him. eventually he’ll stop and will use the guilt he knows damian feels to wound him.

and here’s the second theme it introduces: damian is scared shitless of his father. he’s not afraid of bruce’s violence, as after this he charges straight for him time and time again, but he is utterly terrified of the lengths bruce will go to get his way.

this is also where he takes dick’s suit. i think this was his way of telling bruce that he didn’t deserve to use dick’s memory the way he uses his parent’s death - as justification for what he does.  this comes up in injustice 2 later down the road, damian will bring up that bruce uses his pain to justify how he brutalizes the people around him. damian does the same thing -- but we also see damian grappling with his conscience about it. he wants to be better. he doesn’t want to be all his violence and loss.

back to the topic at hand, damian doesn’t do anything with dick’s suit. unlike bruce, damian doesn’t wear his grief and guilt in plain sight. he puts it in a box and doesn’t look at it, he covers the wounds with anger and as he gets older, develops a death wish and basically begins seeking a noble death in order to make up for what he’s done. it isn’t until dick passes the mantle to him in an attempt to steer him back on the right path that he even looks at it again.

damian isn’t the one that ended his relationship with bruce. bruce did. damian is very willing to reconcile if bruce genuinely wants it, but bruce doesn’t bother with damian outside of combat or when he needs something. damian actually keeps up visits with alfred, he gets him birthday presents, they meet up often and despite their opposing viewpoints, they get along just fine. damian even listens to what alfred says. he still loves his family.

damian himself is a mess. this line resonates because damian, too, is afraid. afraid of bruce, afraid of being what bruce thinks he is. there’s only so far he can bury it under the anger.

by the next issue of year one, after the confrontation at the manor, damian’s discarded any notion that bruce is a good person or justified in anything he does. everything he says on this page is true.

he’s not wrong. he’s more than bruce has even given him credit for being. injustice bruce sorts people into boxes impossible to climb out.  damian made his attempt at reconciliation and instead, found out that bruce has kidnapped and replaced one of his friends to spy on all the rest. in that split second when bruce came at at him, he saw the disgust and anger in his eyes. he’s seen how bruce sees him and wholeheartedly rejects it. 

he doesn’t want to be bruce. he will not be bruce.

batman was supposed to be better than the league. it was supposed to be a new way. instead he just found a new, different means to brutalize and control, and a new way someone justifies causing harm. and he doesn’t want it.

this isn’t to say that damian is a saint. he’s a very flawed, very broken person. he went from one abusive parental situation, to another, to another, and has the damage to show for it. he’s got bad habits from all of them, many of which he isn’t aware of or doesn’t think are a problem. 

but unlike his two dads, damian doesn’t close himself off to what he’s feeling completely, nor does he decide to rush towards external solutions for his pain. he’s, again, very aware that something is wrong. he doesn’t hold to his convictions the same way bruce or clark do, he questions.  he’s deeply unhappy with who he is and what he’s doing. 

but damian is seeking answers using a very limited toolset, and there’s a very limited pool of people he can ask that won’t give him a biased answer or try to manipulate him for their own means. one of the people he confides in does just that.

the other gives him the honest truth.

his relationship with selina is fraught and she’s often one of the very nastiest people towards him, but it’s because of that  he ends up opening up to her. she isn’t going to bullshit him and just say what he wants to hear.

and this is what makes damian different from them. both of them.

because he stops, because he questions, he’s still connected to reality. to his own humanity.

injustice’s bruce is a bruce that has quietly let his humanity die. he’s completely given over to the cold logic of batman and the idea that whatever he does to the people around him, no matter how morally dubious, is justified so long as it means protecting lives. he might not kill, but he really stops just short of that. he just doubles down on his beliefs and takes anyone who doesn’t agree with him as a traitor. he will go out of his way to rationalize how a largely guilty person is innocent (harleen) and how a largely innocent person is guilty (damian). and so he uses damian’s “betrayal” - ie, damian standing with clark instead of him - as justification for icing him out. that way he can ignore all the people who have reminded him time and time again that it was an accident.  

bruce also can’t stand that damian won’t do what he says. bruce will ignore damian unless it benefits him. bruce will go on to frequently weaponize how badly damian wants forgiveness against him. there are multiple instances where he says “just do as i say and i’ll forgive you, son.”

and then in the next breath, he’ll tell damian that he “can’t forgive the deaths”, all the while he has harleen as his new sidekick.   it’s fine that harleen helped with the scheme to blow up metropolis, killed jimmy olsen, and countless others. it’s not fine that damian did something he did all the time to dick - something dick himself shrugged off, because the expectation for this behavior was that dick would catch the baton - and it ended in tragedy.

because harleen listens to him and damian doesn’t. bruce cuts damian neatly out of his life and only really cares about him again when he’s a corpse.

damian, meanwhile, never stops trying to earn bruce’s forgiveness. in the canonical bad end (or well a comic offshoot of the canon ending) damian essentially dies begging bruce to forgive him, admitting that he always cared. he launches an absolutely insane rescue mission to save his father from clark’s torture and it costs him his life.

( but it’s worth mentioning - it takes damian showing bruce an image of kara for bruce to acknowledge him. )

even before this, damian was looking out for bruce in other ways. he was the reason selina got involved with the regime. because he offered her the chance to join and save bruce. damian’s anger towards bruce is less that he wants him dead, and more that bruce won’t stop unless he’s killed.

and damian is willing to kill him if bruce poses a threat to his ‘new’ family. he’s not going to watch bruce hurt the people he loves.

but his new father sucks just as much as his old one.

talia and bruce were more obviously abusive parents. they were controlling and sometimes asserted that control and obedience using physical violence and intimidation. in obvious ways you can point to and see abuse. 

damian doesn’t recognize clark is using him until he sees clark discard kara, who should be everything to clark and is someone important to damian. before that, he has inklings that they’ve gone too far, but clark has been such a paragon of good that when he tells damian not to worry about it, he doesn’t. he hides all his darkness behind that  smile and tells damian he’s good and worthy of people loving him, that they’re saving people and they won’t let another metropolis happen. clark talks to him and still (seems to) accept him even when they disagree.

damian misses clark’s equally as abusive tendencies because they hidden under the guise of a fatherly concern. 

clark is manipulating him into divulging more than he wants to. a boundary damian set is being broken without damian even realizing it.  damian’s uneasy. his body language goes from very easy and relaxed to overtly uncomfortable and almost submissive. it’s also very subtle but clark actually rises higher off the ground to intimidate and loom over him.

damian, who has only known bruce’s stormy silences in moments of disagreement, doesn’t recognize this for what it is.  clark doesn’t take the slight out on him. clark doesn’t stop talking to him because he dared to question.

instead, he loops an arm around damian and praises him, rewards him for being honest and makes it seem like this is an open dialogue and not an interrogation. which it is. i wouldn’t call it gaslighting, but i would call it lovebombing. damian doesn’t realize that there was anything off about the encounter, or if he does, he’ll tell himself he’s just being paranoid.

after all. this ended amicably, not with him standing alone wondering what he did wrong, or being thrown across the room. clark basically stops just shy of ruffling his hair and calling him sport. 

he was rewarded for honesty. and so any discomfort he felt was imagined.

 i think a thing that a lot of fans miss is that injustice’s damian is a forthright person. he doesn’t lie or deceive much, and later on it will bother him that he’s keeping secrets from kara for ‘the greater good’. he loathes that bruce does it and works hard to not fall into that trap. he wants to be honest. he’s glad when he’s rewarded for that honesty. 

because injustice’s damian doesn’t want to be batman. he wants to be superman. he wants to be good.

but injustice’s superman is not a good man. 

clark keep secrets, many terrible secrets, and often hurts people and justifies it to himself. he just hides it far better than bruce does.  clark is even more controlling and cruel, but he leans harder into his humanity and emotions to hide it. it’s easier to see bruce being cold and calculating and miss the way clark subtly uses what you want to get what he wants out of you. and you never really see it coming when he lashes out. he’ll apologize for it, of course, and if you’re not dead you’ll forgive him, because it’s clark. he didn’t mean it. right?

bruce manipulates overtly and grandly using intimidation, clark manipulates subtly using emotion. damian only recognizes one of these things when they happen.

so clark gives damian what he wants - a parent who loves him, someone he can talk to and even show a little vulnerability with - and then uses that against him. 

the worst thing -  the very worst thing - is that bruce and clark love damian. he knows this. both seem to genuinely consider him their son. and he knows this.

in injustice vs motu, bruce snaps fully into awareness just as diana snaps damian’s neck. he’s awake just in time to watch his son die.    and when clark is brought onto the scene, clark falls to his knees and mourns damian and laments his role in driving him to this.

but they weaponize this parent-child bond he wants against him and each other. frankly, neither of them were very interested in him for who he was. nor for helping him be better and master his anger. damian’s body isn’t even cold before bruce uses it against clark, failing to acknowledge his own part in damian’s all too early demise.

he’s another chess piece on their board. one clark can use to wound bruce. one bruce can use to wound clark.

the person damian is when away from both of their influence is a more complete damian. he’s the very best of both of them.

the damian here is still curt and sometimes rude, but he laughs and bonds with the people around him. he values people’s freedom and seems to strive for honesty and communication. meaning no one is in his war to reclaim the world doesn’t want to be, and he makes no move without everyone knowing.

when he recruits adam,  he tells them their story and what they’ve gone through and gives adam the choice to join them or stay in eternia.

anyway, all of this is to say that even all these years later, i continue to be so sad about injustice damian wayne. 

edit:

now, there’s actually one other thing i want to bring up because i totally forgot about it.

so. issue 8 of injustice 2.  

if we’re going with the idea of the reordered robin theory, which is what makes the most sense to me considering jason’s age and the friction between bruce and damian, this before jason dies. and if i’m wrong and the robins don’t have a different order, then this is before some enormous event that broke the slowly building trust.

there’s none of the undercurrent of hostility and distrust that shows up in year 0, which is immediately before year 1. we’re not given a timeframe for when this occurs, either, it’s just happier times.

but what’s really hard to ignore is that the dynamic between bruce and damian is completely different here. maybe tom taylor’s just settled more into writing the two of them, but i don’t think so. year zero comes after this. 

he even acknowledges damian’s anger earlier in the chapter. but it’s less of a condemnation of his character and more a concern that he might not be ready to be on his own. alfred is the one advocating for caution, asking if he’s ready, bruce is the one saying yes, he is.

it’s a complete reversal.

and his trust is rewarded with a night of damian abandoning the “”mission”” he was given (get home from the furthest point of gotham in three hours) to help everyone along the way. which was the real goal all along, it was a test to see if damian’s compassion would win out over his want to win. and it does. bruce is proud of him.

so... what happened between them? what caused that shift? 

i’m kind of worried we’re never going to know. like, i’m so glad that tom taylor is dc’s new golden boy and they’re just letting him build a million different aus. i buy every book he writes. 

but also i’m dying because IJ2 was clearly planned to go on a lot longer than it did and i have questions that i know netherrealm doesn’t care about answering.

[frenchphobic]

long fucking post on why a c!dream is a shitty person and probably should not have a redemption because it is unpog

honestly i just want to refute dream apologists thats why im making this post. i think that dream as a villain is interesting but i think that trying to make him out to be secretly a good guy is just bad ngl. also /roleplay and all

tw for abuse and mentions of suicide

dream as a villain

dream is a villain. he is chaotic evil according to wilbur, deliberately does not stream to appear less sympathetic (and yet), and is set up as an antagonist to tommy who bears the title ‘hero’. dream is not a good person, no matter how you look at it or try to justify his actions.

‘but he wants to unite everyone to be a big family :((’ the ends dont justify the means believe it or not. having a vaguely positive goal does not excuse the actions you’ve done. it also goes hand and hand with saying dream is correct for punishing tommy the way he did because he acted up. if i socked you across the face and then suddenly said ‘sorry there was a roach on ur face’ does that make it okay? probably not i still punched you, enacting an unnecessary amount of violence. thats a very simple analogy i will admit and there are more complex comparisons. another example off the top of my head is say a child just scribbled all over you walls with crayons. would hitting them be a justified answer? if u said hes thats really fucked of u go seek help u loon. violence as a punishment is very toxic, just because it gets the job done does not mean it is okay. at the end of the day, you still committed this act and the harm you caused is real, having a good motive doesnt suddenly make it okay.

‘but tommy causes all of the conflict’ the disk war wasnt even caused by tommy, it was sapnap and then tommy got involved. and the reason why tommy even caused conflict was because of the discs, because he wanted them back. and most of the time there was a level of antagonism from another party, such as schlatt exiling him, dream taking the disks in the first place, dream threatening l’manberg. and if dream wanted to end the conflict so badly, why didnt he just give tommy back his disks? tommy upfront said everything started with the disks, so he wants them back so he could end the conflict. notice how after tommy got his disks back he has been staying out of conflict, apologizing to everyone, and the only bad thing hes done is try to scam people but everyone does that. this would have been the most peaceful option, yet dream chose the path that would further antagonize tommy which then draws everyone else into conflict. why did dream need to have leverage over tommy so badly? why did he want to hold power over tommy so badly? its because of control, and that’s ultimately dreams end goal. sure he wants a big server family, but would said family have a free will?

‘but dream is sad’ the thing is dream is completely at fault for everything that happened to him. he pushed away sapnap (and george ig). he tried to take control over the server and their possessions. literally everything that happened to tommy. literally everything involving ranboo. villains can be sympathetic, i am not arguing against that. but it does not mean that they should be left off the hook. that doesnt mean u should ignore the shit theyve done because ‘oh no theyre sad’ because it doesnt make anything better. dream had this shit coming for him.

now people also skirt around calling dream an abuser. which is fair ig, its a very loaded word. its much easier to say manipulated. that being said, dream can classify as abusive. and no, tommy is not abusive. abuse is about control and a power imbalance. dream has power over tommy, but tommy does not have power over dream, at least not in the way dream does. he’s taking back power to stand up for himself, dream uses power to control.

the reasons i listed for why dream is from the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project so if u want a source on that, there you go.

using coercion or threats: dream often threatened tommy, such as the pit thing and often employed violence on him. while normally this could be attributed to Normal Minecraft Player Go Smack. minecraft mechanics cannot always translate to real world since violence is pretty normal in minecraft however we also need to consider the context of the scene. dream gave an order, tommy refused, dream applies violence, tommy submitted. thats why its a threat, it has tangible effects that can correlate to real life.

using intimidation: dream blew up logsteadshire as a punishment. dream also destroyed tommys items anytime he visited. dream also hit tommy with his axe i believe. he killed mushroom henry, one of tommys pets.

Using Emotional Abuse: dream guiltripped the shit out of tommy for just hiding things and pinning the blame on tommy for just wanting his own private items. he definitely played mind games on tommy, pretending to be his friend. honestly i probably dont even need to go as in depth because it was so obvious.

Using Isolation: putting him in exile in the first place. destroying the bether portal so no one could visit tommy anymore. i really dont think i need to expand upon that.

Minimizing, Denying, and Blaming: dream in tommys stream when he got trapped said that exile wasnt that bad. he does shift the blame onto tommy for logsteadshire being blown up, even though dreams reaction was entirely unjustified for not listening and hiding.

Using Economic Abuse: see this is where i attempt to parallel minecraft mechanics to real life. obviously, there is no monetary system in place, so when i mean economic, i will use valuables such as armor, food, etc in place of currency. the idea behind economic abuse is to limit the victim’s resources so that they are dependent on the abuser and cannot escape. dream only really allowed tommy to have the armor he gave him while not giving access to armor so he does not regain a sense of power, and in the prison stream, dream holds all the potatoes which puts him in a position of power over tommy. this argument is more ambiguous i feel cause the whole minecraft mechanics thing is kinda weird so u don’t necessarily have to take this part in.

i feel like i need to emphasize this very strongly because dream is not a good person. abuse cannot and should not be a response to someone. its an awful mentality to have. i just want to prove the point that dream is not a good person, his reasons absolutely do not justify his actions.

what makes a good redemption

redemption arcs are tricky. when done right they are great. when done poorly, its a slap in the face. rn im going to establish a formula to what makes a good redemption with an example.

the most well known example of a good redemption is zuko from atla. first, its the magnitude of what theyve done and why. zuko did commit some shitty actions, since he was in a position of power in the fire nation but its because he is a child being abused and wanted to regain honor. zukos real awful acts was season 1 and the whole betrayal thing. thats not to say that zukos actions suddenly are okay, he did shitty things. but its something that can be traced to a higher entity or seem less malicious then the other villains. the thing also about the magnitude of actions is that there is a certain point of atrocities that there is no redemption. some people simply cannot be redeemed because the actions they commit are so ingrained in their character or the action itself has serious moral issues that it would just be wrong.

the next is acknowleding what they did was wrong. a genuine reflection on the self and analyzing what they did and why it was not okay. zuko realized what he did to uncle iroh was bad for example. he turned his back on his father, realizing he didnt and shouldnt seek acknowledgment from someone as heinous as him. its pointing out your actions and going ‘hey, this wasnt right i should not have done this’ and not even excusing ur actions. its also going straight for the root of the problem and figuring out to stamp it from the source. just because a character is sad does not mean they are reflecting, sometimes they are attempting to garner pity. it has to be direct and clear acknowledgement of the injustice.

and finally, an important part about redemption arcs is the actual redemption part. its when you make amends. zuko made amends with katara by trying to help her get revenge, he fought against the fire nation and tried to make things more peaceful in his rule. he apologized to iroh. an important part of the amends section is that it does have to be a genuine desire to change and become a better person, not to change a person’s perception of you. the thing is u cant expect a person youve hurt to forgive you. you cant expect people to be sympathetic towards you nor should u attempt to make urself sympathetic. u shouldnt be expecting a pat on the back or an award. redemption is about internal and character change.

why dream should not be redeemed

ive already established the key points to a good redemption (imo) but heres where dream falls short. his actions are extremely heavy so redemption may not even really be possible. abuse is not something you can wave off so it does cross to the point of fucked up. acknowledgement of what he did was wrong? all he said was that he changed, yet never explained why he changed or was too vague. he needed to label specifically what he did and bring it up. attempting to make amends? he’s been doing the exact opposite in fact he continues to manipulate tommy and ranboo. its not a genuine change. he is still repeating the cycle and has given no indication of ceasing. at the moment he does not have any signs of redemption.

and the thing is most of the attention around a dream redemption comes from either justifying his motives (which i do want to emphasize does not make anything suddenly okay) and because he is sad in prison sad face. these are not good reasons. its gonna pain me severely to bring this up but snape from harry potter does have some form of sad character ig yet he very much abused his authority to bully children as old as 11 just because he said ‘aight gonna die’ doesnt suddenly make his general bigotry and abuse suddenly okay there is a threshold. again im so sorry for using harry potter as an example none were coming to mind and i needed a popular one i do not like harry potter please dont say i do i would pass away.

and the last thing to consider is the audience. keep in mind that the audience is composed of minors and while yes there are adults, minors are the main component of the fandom. keep in mind that there are quite a few people who can relate to tommys character because they might be in the same position or have gone through his experiences. tell me what kind of message does it send to that audience that abusers can be redeemed. this is not a narrative u should push to this audience in these situations and the writers are seemingly aware of it. remember how in exile tommy spiraled into a suicidal mentality? consider how fucked of a message it would be if he just committed suicide instead of escaping abuse and attempting to recover from his experiences. tommy did an excellent job in not going that route and having a message of ‘it will not get better’. its the same thing here. victims are not obligated to care for or forgive their abuser, and portraying an abuser as sympathetic might fuck with the message a lot, even change their perception in that ‘oh, maybe my abuser was right, maybe they had a reason for treating me the way they did’. this is not to say that every victim watching this will internalize this message, but people also look up to these characters. there can be a degree of influence from the story onto oneself and thats the dangerous part.

conclusion

all in all dream is a shitbag asshole and probably shouldnt get a redemption because it would not be pog thanks for coming to my ted talk.

[docnoctem]

What do you think of movie Shiori and her motivations?

Hi! I've had a lot of evolving thoughts about movie Shiori over the years, and I hope you don't mind if I copy-paste a few of my own past thoughts about her here.

-I'd argue that Shiori in the movie is in some ways a representation of what a girl is left to be when the fairytale narrative they exist within has already filled the necessary roles with the other women in the story, and she is establishing (or desperately clinging to) an existence in the story through her actions. She isn't quite the maiden. She isn't quite the witch. She isn't the princess, even as she cares for the ghost of the prince, because the prince did not ultimately choose her. (Utena was once the maiden as an innocent child, but she denies a familiar past for a more honest future, casting off her chance to be the princess. Anthy is denied the title through Dios' relation to her more than her own standing, and through the cycle of abuse her blood begets, she becomes both princess and witch.) In an arguably more structured fairytale now, Movie Shiori is more closely related to the townspeople than she is her own character in the show.

-She knows the truth of that school and that world, but what's she going to do with it? Her prince is dead, and he died for another; even if she "makes Juri play the prince" as she claims, Shiori knows she's not the princess, and she isn't empowered or punished enough to be the witch. Shiori is something in the movie that exists, but it's a role the fairytale as we know it hasn't defined for her, and so she just moves through the confined world at a whim, neither rewarded nor stopped, she speaks to the shadows and lives among the dead and holds back the living. You could say she's just trying from every angle to affect this story-- or to play a part in this story that she knows is all a façade. I think that's an interesting aspect to her heightened selfishness and perhaps arrogance in the movie: why should she want it? She shouldn't. She should get to reject it and escape, she should get to leave for the outside, she should be the one who is bigger than her place in the world... but... why shouldn't she have a place in it to begin with?

-Not that dissimilar from Wakaba honestly, I think she's resentful of her place and her lack of "special" qualities in both continuities, but the movie just makes it more... well, more. It's just more. Shiori is a girl that was abandoned by the prince-- more than that, she's a girl who was touched (in the sense of being impacted by the prince, being close enough to change her life) but never loved by the prince, and that has set the foundation for who she can become in the rules of the story. That's not someone who gets to be the bride who breaks the chains of the dead prince's possession, nor the tragic victor who lets go of the chains of the prince's lost love. Her prince is dead, but he didn't die for her; she can be with him still as they are now, white sheets covering the room she shares with a phantom, and it isn't seen as a triumph. She's starting at the bottom of the tower, and the fairytale is taking place in the highest room, a room she'll never get to. And that just isn't fair.

-On her design: The movie really stepped it up in making Shiori seem more beautiful, but she lacked that immediate visual cue of demureness, which is kind of interesting in how much it calls attention to how simple but well-designed she already was. The series design has a clean, polite charm to it, but what stands out most is the reservedness in her styling and posture, and the sadness of her eyes. The show succeeds in this with all of the characters, but I really have to commend the expressiveness in Shiori's eyes, even (and especially) when that expression is one of resignation. Something I highly enjoy about Shiori's character is how it juxtaposes that timid outer appearance with something much harsher and much more destructive under it-- a very sharp bite of loathing and resentment directed toward herself and the people who make her most aware of herself. The movie makes her look feminine but not demure, reminding us that those aren't the same description.

[hafanforever]

Tyrant Terror

So I know it’s no surprise to my closest friends and fellow Disney fans on Tumblr that I have a strong, deep affinity for villains, including those by Disney. And over the last several months, the more I wrote about King Runeard in my Frozen II analyses, the more I realized what made him a tyrant, albeit a secret one, and that led me to think about other villains in the Disney animated canon who were tyrants.

The thing is, while most historical tyrants were people of royalty, you don’t necessarily have to be a monarch in order to be a tyrant. The definition of a tyrant isn’t limited to being a KING or QUEEN who is openly cruel, hostile, harsh, uncaring, oppressive, persecuting, and unjust towards the people they rule. I mean, that is one way to express tyranny, and probably the most famous way it is and has been done. But what it really means for a person to be called a tyrant is being in a position of power, authority, and/or control over other people and MISUSING, to the point of ABUSING, that position, and often for that tyrant's own selfish desires rather than in the best interest of the people being ruled by the tyrant.

So from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Frozen II, there are a handful of tyrannical antagonists who are indeed monarchs, such as the Queen of Hearts, Prince John, and Scar, but also plenty others who are not. There are tyrants who are corrupt government officials, such as Governor Ratcliffe, Frollo, and Bellwether, and even those who wield magic, such as Maleficent, Ursula, and Jafar. And like the villainous monarchs, the non-monarch villains prove themselves as tyrants all because they abuse their positions of power, magic or non-magic power, and authority that they have over other characters. In fact, there are even a couple of heroic characters who start off more as protagonist villains because they display tyrannical behavior before they become better people. On the contrary, the main antagonist enemies of these tyrant heroes serve as darker reflections of what the latter characters could have become had they not learned the error of their ways.

Below is my list of all the villains from Walt Disney Animation Studios that I perceive as tyrants, from monarchs to government officials to sorcerers, and what scenes in their respective movies depict them displaying tyrannical behavior. I even listed villains that would have become tyrants had they succeeded in their longterm goals.

Monarchs

The Evil Queen: Though we never see her actively governing her kingdom on screen, the abuse that the evil queen displays in her authority over Snow White by dressing her stepdaughter in rags and forcing her to work as a maid in an attempt to make her (Snow White) unattractive makes her a tyrant for sure. Furthermore, the way she mocks the skeletal remains of a prisoner in her dungeon suggests the queen is indeed a cruel, tyrannical ruler.

Queen of Hearts: If we want to consider the epitome of a true tyrant that is a monarch from Disney, it can be safely assumed that that role belongs to the Queen of Hearts. While every resident of Wonderland is insane in some way, the Queen is the most dangerous one of all by being the ruler of the land. An egotist extraordinaire, she loves to get her way, insisting that “All ways are MY ways!” and enjoys hearing the words “Yes, Your Majesty”. The Queen outwardly abuses her authority and power over her subjects by becoming furious over even the smallest of matters, during which she loses her literally explosive temper and flies into violent rages. She is also extremely irrational and unjust in making decisions, primarily by utilizing executions as her only and immediate solution to any problem, especially whenever she feels someone has wronged her, while also refusing to let the individuals she wants beheaded explain their sides of the stories. Enraged upon seeing her white roses painted red, when she misses a shot in croquet, and when she becomes the target of a prank caused by the Cheshire Cat, the Queen sentences those she deems responsible to death by beheading. All of this proves just how much she persecutes and oppresses the residents of Wonderland, instilling only fear and intimidation into their hearts. (A pun that is VERY much intended by me, the Queen of Puns! 😆😆😆)

Prince John: While possessing a short temper that isn’t nearly as explosive and violent as that of the Queen of Hearts, Prince John is displayed to be extremely incompetent as the ruler of England during the time that King Richard is off fighting in the Crusades. Stingy and greedy, the prince continually finds ways to rob and swindle his people in pursuit of wealth for himself. John shows absolutely no care that the harsh laws he decrees to gain more money drive the citizens of Nottingham into poverty and starvation, and he even cruelly mocks them on their poor states by saying, “Rob the poor to feed the rich!”. After the villagers start making fun of him with the song “The Phony King of England”, John punishes them by further increasing the tax payments. Soon everyone in Nottingham is stripped of their money and they are put in prison due to their inability to pay their taxes.

Horned King: Even though the Queen of Hearts projects herself as the ideal example of a royal tyrant, she is far less evil and scary than the Horned King. A skeletal creature with green, rotting flesh, the Horned King is completely frightening in appearance and in personality. Malicious, cruel, malevolent, sinister, power-hungry, megalomaniacal, ruthless, and merciless, he is the epitome of a tyrant who is nothing but purely and completely evil. His goal is to find the infamous Black Cauldron and use its powers to unleash an army of immortal warriors called the Cauldron Born in order to become immortal and conquer the world.

Scar: Denied a legitimate chance to succeed Mufasa as the King of the Pride Lands once Simba is born, Scar schemes to have both of them killed to become king. After murdering Mufasa and believing that Simba has been killed as well, Scar ascends to the throne. However, because he allows the hyenas unrestricted hunting rights in the Pride Lands, their overeating leads to a shortage of food, and a drought leads to other animal herds moving away. Ultimately, these events turn the kingdom into a barren wasteland under Scar’s reign, leaving it completely devoid of green vegetation, water, and food sources. Incredibly lazy and incompetent as a ruler, and caring about nothing except the power and authority that being king gives him, Scar refuses to accept that his allowance of the hyenas overeating is what leads to the destruction of the Pride Lands. He instead blames it on Sarabi and the other lionesses since the hyenas complained to him that they refuse to go hunt. When she suggests they leave Pride Rock to survive, Scar obstinately rejects the idea, not at all caring that he has essentially sentenced them to death. He argues that his place as king puts him in the right for whatever he decides to do: “I am the king! I can do whatever I want!”

King Runeard: In his life, Runeard openly presented himself as a peaceful, generous leader to the people of Arendelle AND the Northuldra. But Elsa discovers from his snowy manifestation in Ahtohallan that he did not trust the Northuldra just because they followed magic. Despite his kingdom having seen him as a benevolent ruler, the face the figure of Runeard makes as he sneers "of a king!" implies that only really cared about himself as well the power and authority he had in being a king. Therefore, he secretly misused and abused it whenever the opportunity came along. This is displayed perfectly when Runeard had the dam constructed in the Enchanted Forest, presenting it as a gift to the Northuldra. He claimed that it would strengthen their land, but admitted only to the second-in-command that the dam’s effects would be just the opposite. This was all part of Runeard’s subtle plan to destroy the Northuldra, as he feared they would try to usurp him and take over Arendelle using their magical ties.

Government Officials/Authority Figures

Lady Tremaine: Like the evil queen before her, Lady Tremaine has control and authority over Cinderella once the latter’s father dies, and misuses it by turning Cinderella into her servant. Day after day for ten years, Lady Tremaine orders and bosses Cinderella around, forces her to do every single bit of housework and menial task for her and the former’s daughters, and subjects the poor girl to an endless cycle of abuse and torment. When Cinderella is accused by Anastasia of putting Gus under the latter’s teacup, her stepmother refuses to let her explain the truth and unfairly punishes her with extra chores. Later, Lady Tremaine falsely promises Cinderella she may attend the ball if she finds a suitable dress and finishes her chores, but gives her chore after chore to do to keep her from working on her dress. After Cinderella appears wearing the dress her mouse and bird friends fixed up for her, Lady Tremaine subtly and cruelly manipulates Drizella and Anastasia into destroying it so that she can appear to be fair in her side of the bargain (”If you can find something suitable to wear”) while simultaneously keeping Cinderella from going to the ball in the first place. The following morning, when she realizes Cinderella was the mysterious girl who danced with the prince at the ball, Lady Tremaine follows her stepdaughter up to her room and locks her in to prevent her from trying on the glass slipper when the Duke arrives with it.

Sheriff of Nottingham: Despite not being the main antagonist of Robin Hood, the Sheriff of Nottingham is as much of a tyrant over the town as Prince John is to it and the entirety of England. This is because he is abusive, ruthless, and completely unsympathetic towards the people’s poverty and continually demands that they pay their taxes, regardless of what other problems they may have that hinders them from doing so. It is because of the Sheriff’s harsh decree of taxes, and then by that of Prince John once the latter takes up residence in Nottingham, that the town’s citizens are driven into poverty. The cruel, immoral way the Sheriff collects taxes includes forcing out the coins Otto had hidden in his leg cast, not caring that his act was causing the blacksmith pain from his broken leg, confiscating the one farthing Skippy had been given for his birthday and insincerely wishing him a happy birthday, and taking the single farthing that was in the Friar Tuck’s church's poor box and laughing as he did it.

Ratigan: A notorious crime lord, Ratigan is the leader of a gang of thugs comprised primarily of mice, but also including a bat named Fidget, who is his second-in-command. Although they willingly help their boss with his crimes, they also participate out of fear for their own lives. Ratigan is an abusive tyrant to his minions and threatens to feed them to his cat Felicia if they ever do something that angers him, even if it occurs unintentionally. This is shown after one of his drunken thugs calls him a rat during "The World’s Greatest Criminal Mind”, and Ratigan threatens his other minions with the same fate if they do not keep singing. Ratigan’s latest scheme is to take over London by murdering the Mouse Queen during her Diamond Jubilee celebration and secretly replacing her with a lifelike robot. He and his thugs (who are disguised as royal guards) infiltrate Buckingham Palace and kidnap the Queen, who is taken to be fed to Felicia by Fidget. As the Diamond Jubilee takes place, the Robot Queen names Ratigan as her new "Royal Consort", and Ratigan, dressed in an ornate robe, immediately presents himself in front of the gathered citizens of Mousedom, terrifying them. He then proceeds to read over his long list of tyrannical laws, one of which is a heavy tax policy for people he deems "parasites", including the elderly, infirm, and children.

Governor Ratcliffe: A completely unscrupulous and greedy man, Ratcliffe leads John Smith and other sailors on an expedition to Virginia to find gold, but he secretly plans to keep all discovered riches for himself. Upon their arrival to America, he forces all of the settlers to dig around their encampment, but refuses to do any manual labor himself out of his own sheer laziness. When no gold turns up in the searches, Ratcliffe becomes greedily convinced that it is because the Native Americans are hoarding it. He refuses to believe John's claim that there is no gold around the land, claiming that the Powhatans’ land is his land for the taking and that he makes the laws. After John is captured by the Powhatans, as they believed he murdered Kocoum, Ratcliffe takes it as the opportunity to take the non-existent gold from them, but claiming to his men that it is a rescue mission.

Judge Claude Frollo: Perhaps the darkest and most malevolent of all Disney Villains in animation (aside from the Horned King), Frollo uses his position as the Minister of Justice in the city of Paris to enrich himself and persecute anyone and everyone he considers inferior. He especially holds a deep-seated hatred for the gypsies and plots to eradicate them from the city. Despite his dark deeds, Frollo refuses to find any fault within himself and he truly believes he is a good person who is only trying to rid the world of sin and malice. Any time he commits a crime or is about to do one, he makes excuses to justify them, saying he is doing it in the eyes of God and that his victims are the ones who are really at fault. After chasing and murdering Quasimodo’s mother since he believed that the bundle she was carrying was stolen goods, Frollo attempts to murder Quasimodo since he believes the latter’s deformity makes him an unholy demon. Years later, after trapping Esmeralda in Notre Dame and upon discovering that she has escaped, he launches a ruthless manhunt around the city to find her, burning down the houses of anyone suspected of sheltering gypsies (including an innocent miller and his family, who survive thanks to Phoebus’s intervention) and interrogating gypsies who are captured. During the climax, Frollo makes the excuse that Esmeralda has proven herself to be a witch and will be executed by burned at the stake as her sentence.

Hades: The reluctant ruler of the Underworld and Lord of the Dead, Hades abuses his authoritative role by subjecting his lackeys Pain and Panic to harsh mistreatment whenever they fail a task assigned to them and any other time they do or say something that angers their boss. The two imps only put up with Hades’s abuse not so much out of loyalty to him, but out of deep fear for him. When he discovers that the two did not succeed in killing Hercules as a baby, Hades furiously grabs both Pain and Panic by their necks and chokes them as he demands they explain themselves. Later, after Hercules becomes a famous hero in Thebes, Pain and Panic adorn themselves with some of the hero’s merchandise, much to their boss’s complete ire.

Shan Yu: The ruthless yet respected leader of the Hun army, Shan Yu is an extremely dark, merciless, and dangerous individual determined to take control of China. His thought-to-be impossible feat of getting through the Great Wall to invade China soon makes him notorious and feared throughout the entire country. In his journey to the Imperial City, Shan Yu and his army destroy one village, then slaughter the entire Imperial Army and residents in another village at the Tung Shao Pass in the mountains. He and five of his elite soldiers are the only ones who survive a snow avalanche caused by Mulan. When the group arrives at the Imperial City and take control of the palace, Shan Yu orders the Emperor to bow to him, and decides to kill him when the latter adamantly refuses to do so.

Turbo: Initially believed to be the ruler of the game Sugar Rush, King Candy is secretly Turbo, a racer from the old game TurboTime who was believed to have died after his game was permanently unplugged. Having stolen the throne from Vanellope Von Schweetz, the true ruler, Turbo turns her into a glitch and makes himself the ruler of her kingdom. While he is viewed as eccentric and flamboyant, yet jovial and benevolent, to his subjects, Turbo is extremely obsessive and possessive of his new royal status. He continuously lusts for power and authority and goes to great lengths to secretly abuse his position, not just by allowing the other racers to ruthlessly torment Vanellope, but especially by keeping Vanellope from racing so that she cannot regain the role he had stolen from her.

Bellwether: The epitome of the famous phrase “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”, Dawn Bellwether pretends to be sweet, meek, and friendly to successfully hide her true prejudiced, ruthless, embittered nature. Initially the overworked assistant mayor of Zootopia to its mayor Leodore Lionheart, Bellwether secretly hates him and all predators, viewing them as nothing more than savage, dangerous monsters. In her scheme to overthrow him, take control of the city, and drive all predators out of Zootopia, Bellwether becomes the leader of a secret organization of sheep terrorists who create a serum from night howlers to turn predators feral. This would give the illusion that they were biologically reverting back to their "primitive savage ways" and eventually be regarded as too dangerous for society, allowing only prey animals to take up the entire population. However, in her goal to become the mayor of Zootopia, rather than subjecting Lionheart to becoming savage, Bellwether instead develops her plot to ensure that he is removed from office and his positive reputation amongst the citizens is ruined, allowing her to rise to power in his place.

Magic Users

Maleficent: Known as The Mistress of All Evil, Maleficent is a ruthless tyrant who rules her own subjects at her home, the Forbidden Mountain. Using her dark magic, she continuously abuses her power and authority over her minions, particularly whenever they display incompetence and stupidity. This is shown when Maleficent flies into a rage and attacks them with her magic upon realizing that, over the last 16 years in their search for Aurora, they were only looking for a baby, not realizing in their idiocy that Aurora would be growing up.

Ursula: Known for her dark reputation as a sea witch, Ursula was banished from Atlantica by Triton. She explains in “Poor Unfortunate Souls” that she uses her magic to help merfolk attain their deepest desires and only imprisons them if they can’t keep their side of the bargain. However, after she takes Ariel’s voice away and turns the latter into a human to try and win Eric’s heart, Ursula reveals she has no intention of letting Ariel follow through with kissing Eric to remain human. She proves herself to be a tyrant because all she really does is backstab the merpeople with whom she makes deals in order to ensure that only HER desires are met! When she bargains with Triton so he will surrender himself to her in exchange for Ariel’s freedom, Ursula steals his crown and trident, then grows to giant size, declaring herself the ruler of the entire ocean.

Jafar: Unbeknownst to the Sultan of Agrabah, his Royal Vizier Jafar plots to take control of the kingdom, and he needs the Genie of the lamp from the Cave of Wonders to pull off this feat. Once the lamp is in his possession, Jafar succeeds with his first to become sultan. But after Jasmine and her father refuse to bow to him, he wishes to become the most powerful sorcerer in the world to have an even greater amount of power. During his brief reign, Jafar proves himself to be a tyrant by turning Agrabah into a dystopian wasteland, dressing the Sultan as a living marionette and allowing him to be abused by Iago, and making Jasmine his own slave girl.

Tyrants-Turned-Heroes

The Beast: From the time he is cursed and until he finally starts to soften, the spoiled behavior the prince had before his curse remains. He is aggressive, rude, impatient, and frequently and easily loses his temper when something annoys or irritates him. Primarily due to his short temper, the Beast acts like a tyrant towards his servants because he is mean and cruel to them as he gives them orders, which makes them deeply afraid of him. Only on some occasions do they openly rebel against him or talk back to him, such as Mrs. Potts ordering the Beast to act more like a gentleman around Belle, and both her and Lumiere deciding to feed Belle despite being told that she was not allowed to eat unless she ate with the Beast.

Kuzco: In the beginning, Kuzco is very arrogant, lazy, selfish, and self-absorbed, viewing himself as superior to all simply for being the emperor. He rules his empire completely without the best interest of his people and always seeks to have his way, never showing any concern over the chances things could turn out badly for other people involved. This is shown when he sets his sights on building his summer home of Kuzcotopia on the top of the hill where Pacha, Pacha’s family, and other villagers reside. Since the plan will only benefit himself, Kuzco shows absolutely no care or concern that destroying Pacha’s village to build Kuzcotopia will render the residents homeless.

Would-Be Tyrants

Gaston: From what I described about him in “Bride and Prejudice” with his growing obsession with Belle and his low, inferior views of women, there is no doubt in my mind that, had Gaston succeeded in marrying Belle and starting a family with her, he would have run his household like a tyrant. He would be very controlling to the point of being physically abusive to his wife in order to get her to obey every single one of his commands and orders. Like many of the tyrants I listed above, Gaston would undoubtedly use fear and intimidation to keep his wife in her proper place of being beneath him, and he would instill these same feelings on to his own children.

Yzma: Her ire drawn after Kuzco remorselessly fires her, a furious Yzma decides to kill him so that she can take over the empire. While Kuzco is initially selfish, callous, and uncaring towards his staff and people living in his empire, he learns to change his ways by the end of the film. Had Yzma succeeded in her goal, she would have been far more of a selfish, ruthless tyrant than Kuzco was at first. This is evident during her introduction scene, which is one of many times she governs the empire whenever Kuzco is not present. As a peasant complains to her that he and his family are suffering from limited food sources, Yzma spitefully says his problem is of no concern to her, and that the man should have realized this ahead of time.

Hans: While taking over as temporary ruler of Arendelle in both Elsa and Anna’s absence, Hans wins the hearts of the people by acting as a kind, caring, benevolent ruler during the harsh conditions brought on by Elsa’s magical winter. Though he reveals his true, dark nature to Anna and his plot to take control of Arendelle, the fact that he earned the trust and respect of the Arendellians suggest that Hans could truly have been a very worthy ruler. However, now that we have Frozen II and it revealed that Runeard was actually a malevolent tyrant behind the same kind of benevolent facade that Hans used, there is no doubt in my mind that had he succeeded in stealing Arendelle’s throne, Hans also would have become a ruthless, power-hungry, selfish tyrant in secret.