#but its just a lot of unstable people in an echo chamber

[sacrificialmutt]

lore dropping in the tags because! uhm

[paradoxcase]

@maiden-roar:

I think the anti-voting people do seem to want a communist revolution, nothing else is good enough for them, there's just the small problem that conditions in 21st century USA are extremely different from conditions in early 20th century Russia

I feel like maybe I should be more open-minded towards their POV, like I appreciate it when conservatives turn away from trump, it's perfectly rational to be able to criticize your own side, and maybe that's largely what people are doing, so I should care more about their criticisms. By voting based on my fear of the other side, am I just as bad as conservatives who think gay rights and public health care will send us to the gulags? Far-right is so crazy scary tho.

I think a lot of these people are very young. And every single young person in the entire history of the world has always hated to be told by their elders that they should sit down, and be patient, and work hard, and maybe some day in the distant future they'll get what they want. They are young and full of righteous anger and are just so sure that there is a secret way that no one else has figured out to get everything they want right now

As for how you know you're not like the people who think gay people are going install Sharia Law, it comes down to where you get your information about the world from. Their problem is they rely exclusively on an echo-chamber of far-right news outlets. And like, if you start to feel like the places you get your news from are starting to become echo-chamber-like, it's good to branch out. There are plenty of reliable sources that rate news sites for bias, and you generally want to avoid sources that always validate the things you think you know already, or which are making emotional appeals or direct calls to action, even if they are sources on the left. Like, advocacy groups are fine and all, but you should get your actual news from somewhere else. And then, after reading news from multiple sources with limited bias, if you still think a Donald Trump presidency is scary as fuck, it probably is.

also MLs believe that revolution is the only way, and democratic socialism is evil, and marx apparently based his analysis on the french revolution, but like france and england and the USA all had their own paths to liberal democracy. French were extremist, USA compromised with slave owners, UK gradually expanded democracy. History says there's not only one way to do things. We don't know what the future holds. Also modern anarchists seem to be allergic to doing things.

French revolutionaries killed their political enemies, bolshevik-style, but their resulting goverment was unstable and france spent like the next 100 years flip-flopping between modes of goverment. The USA made compromises resulting in a more stable government but then people had to battle slavery for most of the following century. The UK as far as I know didn't have an equivalent event but they still made to basically the same liberal democratic endpoint.

I don't think the US and France are actually super comparable here - the US started out with a philosophy of embracing democracy. A very racist, sexist, classist kind of democracy, yes, but it was some democracy, which opens the door to gradually getting more democracy in a peaceful manner, and what do you know, that's what happened. Whereas, France was going from zero democracy to any democracy, which is much harder, and who knows if the French kings actually would have allowed that without some kind of violence? And also, the creation of the US and its nascent democracy did begin with a revolution. It was just kind of lucky that it happened in a colony where Britain couldn't oppose it as effectively and the revolutionaries didn't feel like they had to murder the king and all of his relatives in order to succeed (and also, they weren't really able to).

Whatever the UK did is probably a much better option than either of those. Although, I don't know a lot of the history of this time period, but I kind of suspect that the transition to democracy in the UK and other countries that kept their royals might have been influenced by observation of what was happening in France. It's kind of hard to imagine a situation where absolute monarchy transitions to democracy on a world-wide scale with no violence at all. But at the same time... the Romans had a partial democracy 2000 years before all of this happened. It wasn't actually ever necessary to go through an absolute monarchy stage, which means it's not necessary to have a revolution. Maybe if Caesar had never declared himself Imperator none of this violence would ever have had to happen.

Also I think if there's any kind of revolution-type activity happening in modernized industrial capitalist countries, it's going to be fascists overthrowing the government. There is almost zero desire for a left-wing revolution. You'd have to do a lot of convincing to get people to give up their comfortable lives and go to war and make sacrifices just to live in a communist country where their boss works them just as hard but maybe things will get better in 100 years.

Yeah, like I said in the last post, once you're in a position where you can change things peacefully through democracy, even slowly, violence becomes a lot less attractive. It's really only attractive to people who feel like they don't have the numbers necessary to get their way through democracy, and right now it's the left wing that feels secure that they have the numbers, and the right wing that doesn't, which you can tell based on which people are the ones attempting voter suppression tactics.

Communist revolutions seem to have happened mostly in poor farming economies, which then industrialize after the revolution. Meanwhile, in countries like the USA, people seem to find fascism to be a much more palatable form of violence. No waiting for the country to slowly transition from state capitalism, people get the immediate reward of killing inferior people.

I really don't think this is based on economic issues, I think it's just very hard to go from no political freedom to some political freedom, and then people look back on those early revolutions and don't understand (or forget) the actual reason they happened, which is no longer an issue in the modern day in most countries.

Also random side note, people like to say "if voting did anything, they wouldn't let us do it" when actually uh yeah the GOP actually does try to restrict voting, yes

The big problem is that no one thinks strategically or tactically about HOW to get from crappy point A to utopian point B. Just people being overly emotional on the website that rewards you with internet points for being overly emotional. Rage gets clicks, reason does not.

I mean, yeah, that's teenagers for you

Anarchists and MLs etc only want change to happen outside of voting. But realistically, the way that workers would realize they have the power to do direct action is through participating in unions. And we have parties that are more and less hostile to unions.

Yeah, definitely

[skybristle]

im just gonna dump a ton of starlight thoughts i had from my dms with mac moonsofmachinery because ast is Really fucking hard for me to write and. Idk. What do you think? my brains kinda mush rn but.... shakes her around... a lot of this is disorganized sorry it was very train of thought when i was writing it. @arsonstick come get your thangggg. i cut out what mac said where it wasn't relevant but some of it was important for flow of conversation

I think its very like. Interesting??? How ast went from being so hardworking towards the problem and nobody bothered her [partially because of adversion after maw, partially because of the group being generally a disorganized clusterfuck] but she was basically the only bh iterator who like

Actually. Did their job.Besides sparks but sparks is doing it for fucked up reasons

So im like. Very intrigued by whatever sent it spiraling and its motivations and feelings through it

Especially being rather asocial

If i hadddddd to guess [idk why im talking like this with my own characters it makes sense in my rambling work with me here mac] it Probably has something to do with the triple affirmative and iterator soceity basically descending into chaos

and factions

probably aligned with some fucked up form of sliverism for a time in regards to seeking personal ascension??? Maybe the only way she saw would be to take the old path. A blend of her very traditional and devoted beliefs and all of this new stuff it was introduced to via aurora

And that begins to stir in asts mind and makes a very. Very deadly combination

i think it would be fun too if like the culture of her city really rejected the streamlining of ascension and void fluid these days. Probably believed you had to actually make the pilgrimmage- otherwise you're not REALLY going to the void sea are you?

So maybe i won't move the rift. It would be really cool if there was all of these religious tunnels and stuff baked into the walls of it as you descend down, down, down. Like two pathways of religious ruins damaged by rain in a v shape sort of region if it was in the game

i think the sliver fiasco would have really enlightened her to like. The futility of it all and what she was doing. Inherently seeking a solution kind of went against the very traditional and grounded principles of her ancients- and she DID genuinely believe in her ancients. in some fucked up twisted way by breaking taboo and doing what ast does to whispers and etc etc etc it believes its following what they would have wanted. What silk truly would have wanted for their daughter

Because i think starlight at least in the beginning was seeking the solution, well, for her parents. And believed in their cause of freeing the world after they left. But after sliver left them with no answers whats the fucking point? Which i feel like is the mindset of a LOT of iterators. But. You know. She has weird and strange diseases

Got to imagine talking to basically no-one and being left in asts own echo chamber was. Uhm. Not good for it being sane and normal about it. Like yeah a lot of unstable iterators were effected badly and are also isolated but you know most of them like. Chat to people regularly and have friends and shit. starlight DIDN'T

which is why despite her apathy she gets SO ATTACHED to people who indulge her. Its why she answers to maws beck and call. Especially when maw frames herself as a 'higher power' and starlight is still kind of in a way scrambling after its beliefs in ascension were so shaken

I genuinely like. Believe that starlight did that to whispers with the intention of freeing them. She knew better. They were scared and didn't know themself and were trapped in a body that didn't let them live. Ast had to free them. Ast had to

Maybe the price to pay is some proding, some experimentation, some data points for next time

To it its completely fucking reasonable!! which just goes to show how FUCKED she's gotten

MAC: "honestly the fact starlight thinks ast is doing the right thing 'freeing' whispers makes it so much worse to me than if. it'd just been out of pure maw-like malice

ITS SO FUCKED UP..."

YEAH. AND I THINK ITS EXTRA FUCKED BECAUSE MAW IS MALICIOUS. SHE WANTS TO HURT PEOPLE AND HAS STARLIGHT WRAPPED ALL AROUND HER FUCKING FINGER

MAC: "Dude starlight could've been a fine person given different circumstances, she's not. actively malicious. but god do her actions tend to end in the worst things possi.... ohhhhhh heyyyy wait, sounds like THE ENTIRE PLOT OF BENDING HORIZONS!!!!"

I think starlight seeking aurora originally is like... so interesting too. Ast probably heard MANY of her citizens bitch and whine about albedo but you know. When the gears start turning and she starts diverging. Maybe. Maybe aurora knows something. Maybe aurora can put this all to bed- can make her feel normal and go back to work and be fine and content again. But aurora just opens the fucking floodgates and basically gives it all the sliverist and taboo chats and etc

TO him its like. He doessnt see consequences but also not much direct responsibility in things because 'well anyone can find anything eventually' which. Uhm. Aurora honey starlight would NOT have gone on global had you not gone 'welllll I don't know but all of these people seem to be talking about it :3"

i think starlight genuinely saw aurora as someone with such interesting and open perspective and ast was SO goddamn desprate to be affirmed. and. i mean. Aurora blew it off but Boy Did It Get Affirmed

[ectonurites]

My least favorite type of fic!Tim is when he’s portrayed as depressed/very mentally and emotionally unstable, but also at the same time as someone who is like lauded as being super dangerous/the most skilled or something like that?? Those fics where Tim is chugging caffeine and barely sleeping, but characters are still like “oh I wouldn’t wanna piss off Tim he is Dangerous” and that’s annoying enough but then there are fics that at the same time as that portray him as like on the edge of a breakdown. It’s very irritating even if I’m not sure I can articulate exactly why, it just really rubs me the wrong way. Like, I definitely do think Tim has some issues with depression and stuff, but in fics like those it’s treated more like a quirk sort of instead of a serious issue

LMAOO I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT i’m not a fan of that either. I’m apologizing in advance if I sound mean in any of this critique i’m about to give of that fanon version of him. I want to preface this by saying that people can write whatever the hell they want, like, they’re allowed to! And I’m not referencing/calling out any specific works here. Just trends. But I’m gonna bitch about some things I’ve noticed that annoy me, personally. (so again, not saying other people can’t enjoy this stuff! just. not for me)

so like sorry if im mean but this is just me ranting and also this is my blog anyways so:

(nobody take this as an attack on them please because it’s really not)

The problem is a lot of those fics seem to interpret Tim’s behavior in Red Robin (& especially like that last whole arc of his Robin run also by FabNic) as if that’s his normal, rather than the result of a few years of CONSTANT traumatic incidents pushing him to a breaking point (because while all the shit he went through with his Dad, Steph, Kon, Bart, and then Bruce dying was spread out over several years for us as readers, it’s regarded as like within two years in canon! It all happens when he’s 16 and 17. According to the Batman comic right after War Games, Jack was murdered only days after Steph died.

(Batman #634)

That’s a LOT to process for one kid jesus christ) 

I love Red Robin honestly, I do, but it is about Tim at the lowest points in his life. It’s the grand finale of Tim’s story, and everything crumbles, that’s kinda the point! The end leaves him in a position to either rebuild himself or fall apart. It’s all about how he chooses to continue after this point!

(Red Robin #26)

The way he acts and the things he does in that comic should be regarded as such. He can’t live the way he does in Red Robin forever or he will literally burn himself out/become something unrecognizable, like, jesus it’s kinda even acknowledged in the comic when he thinks about what his potential futures would be if he keeps it up like he’s doing:

(Red Robin #25)

He sees himself as dead, as Batman (which he has countless times said he doesn’t want to be and at this point in his history almost every time he’s seen a future he became Batman in he had become a killer), or needing to retire and taking over an Oracle-esque role, likely because he exerted himself too much to continue. 

When you look at him around this same timeframe when he’s not isolating himself/too deep into the mission and is instead working with his friends back on the Titans, you can see that he is starting to heal and work in a more positive direction. He’s choosing to work on coming out of this rough period by being together with his friends who he loves.

(Teen Titans (2003) #100)

Not to say that you can’t write about situations in which he doesn’t start to come out of it, but if you are doing so it’s something you should be taking seriously because that’s the idea you want to explore, not just acting like it’s perfectly okay or normal? (And again, there are a lot of works that do explore it in good ways, there’s just also a LOT that don’t)

Like, so much content I see just make any sadness and depression and tendency to over-work himself that’s rooted in his traumas (which! those do have a basis in canon!) into a quirky personality trait rather than a response to trauma. Acting as if he’s always been this way and it’s normal for him. That’s what bothers me. If people want to seriously explore the effects of all these incidents and how that plays into his ability to do his job as a hero, then hell yes do it! But when it all gets brushed off as ‘oh thats just tim, he just doesnt eat or sleep or feel any happiness but like its fine he’s just always been like that’ I feel my blood boil. 

This also often strikes me as related/tied to fanon’s seemingly never-ending quest to make Tim into this victim of so many things he really wasn’t. They make his childhood 10x worse than it actually was (yes he was lonely because he was sent to boarding schools rather than having his parents around, but he was NOT just left home alone all the time as a child. 

(Batman #441)

He snuck away during a school vacation week to follow Bruce one (1) time and to then track down Dick. This is established in his introduction story! PLEASE read Lonely Place of Dying!) and it just... going with those fanon assumptions as being true changes so much of how people characterize him! 

Some people will also (not to call out tim/kon shippers especially because I  literally am also one but) vilify the shit out of Steph and make their relationship out to be some abusive thing rather than just... a messy teen relationship between vigilantes because they had really complicated lives and baggage with one another? Which they both acknowledge they made mistakes in!

(Red Robin #10)

Or people will vilify the shit out of Dick in regards to the situation at the start of Red Robin, or literally just make anyone who Tim ever had a disagreement with out to be the bad guy despite the actual situations always being way more complex and multi-faceted than that.

And then on top of all that, aside from making him into this ‘im broken 24/7 and not doing anything to fix it also everyone around me is terrible to me’ type of character, because he’s a lot of people’s favorite, they also want him to be as cool and strong as he is at his high points. So they’re projecting all this stuff onto him that makes him what should be a barely functioning person but then also act like that’s fine and he’s able to be a dangerous badass on top of it. 

Like I’m sorry but someone who is going out and actively acting as a vigilante like that which is incredibly physically taxing is NOT surviving on coffee alone and no sleep. That’s literally not possible, he’d fucking collapse. (And like, again, if you want to explore him pushing himself to that point, that’s one thing! but acting like he can manage all of that for more than a few days at a time/maybe while working on one really tough case is nuts!) and like, even canon can be a little guilty of this type of thing particularly since the New 52 (Detective Comics 2016 had more than a few references to him barely sleeping, but at least they also made references to him eating normally/healthily and he wasn’t completely self isolating or anything) (and also that comic had him be so self sacrificial he was ready to die to save everyone and only didn’t die because of Mr.Oz’s interference, he’s definitely not in his best place there) but usually it’s still within some realm of possibility.

Also like. The fanon ‘chugging coffee to survive thing’ just annoys the shit out of me because, like, yes there’s a few moments in canon where he’s under a lot of pressure and pushing himself further than he normally would and had some coffee (one of the only times I can even remember him having it on panel is... oh... during that last Robin arc I just mentioned a little while ago shouldn’t be where you source your normal characterization of him because it’s a very difficult situation that pushes him further than he normally would go! huh!) But the thing is like, people play it off for laughs, or like it’s a normal thing he would do at any time in his life! If you want to explore him pushing himself and using coffee as a crutch, like, there’s ways you can write it that takes it seriously, but almost every time I see it come up in fics it is like a core part of his personality and just ‘oh haha silly tim always with his entire pot of coffee he must chug every morning or he’ll die :^)’ And that bothers the hell out of me. 

In general it’s just... people treat Tim so weird. They want him to be so many different things that he’s shown himself to be at different times for very specific reasons, except they want him to do all of it at the same time which just doesn’t work. A person can’t function like that, and it’s not even close to who he is in canon. 

Again, people can do what they want, and this is just my opinion obviously, but yeah. My two cents on the matter.  Read Lonely Place of Dying, read Young Justice, read his Robin run. Read his comics and get a feel for who he was before all the rest of his trauma, and see how he canonically reacts to it along the way. I know reading comics can be tough for some people but so much stuff just echo chambers and becomes barely recognizable in this fandom and it’s just... a shame when it happens with a character ya love. 

[tsarisfanfiction]

“Is- is that my blood?”

I’m stressed as hell and this was my way to wind down tonight (uni, dropping an unexpected deadline on me with barely a week’s notice that's before the deadline for the other thing I’ve been dying over for the past fortnight is not fair).  Got an ask from @scribeofred on my main the other day with the prompt “Is- is that my blood?” and Scott and decided to play in that sandbox a bit.

On that note, if anyone wants to send prompts for me to stockpile for situations like today, feel free (bear in mind they will be likely used for stress relief and Tsari stress relief is whumping characters).  This one was from this list.   Doesn’t have to be TAG if that’s not the fandom you follow me for!  I know I write a lot of TAG at the moment but that doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned the others.

Warning: Fluffember whomst?  Not this time.  Fluffember will resume when I’m not stressed to hell and back.

Might do more with this, at which point I’ll give it a name and proper summary and the like, but for now, here is a barely-edited piece of Tsari stress relief.  Enjoy.

“Is- is that my blood?”  The words slipped from Scott’s mouth unbidden, which was a pretty good indication that yes, it probably was.  He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.  On the one hand, if it was his blood then it wasn’t Gordon’s, but on the other… that was a lot of blood.

A lot.

Enough blood to make him feel nauseous and even a little light-headed at the sight of it, which was decidedly unusual considering he had a pretty good constitution for gore – sadly by necessity.

More than a little light-headed, he realised as he tried to pull himself to his feet and found himself overbalancing.  Well, that wasn’t the best start.  He took a deep breath, and something sparked with pain somewhere around the area of his abdomen.  Vaguely, he knew that wasn’t a good thing, but Scott was very good at ignoring inconveniences when he had other things to worry about, so the pain went ignored.

Gordon.  Where was Gordon?  He looked around wildly, hand landing in the warm-wet-sticky of too much blood instinctively to stop himself falling over as he searched for his younger brother. They’d been in the cave together, a mass of natural rocks and rusting metal scaffolding betraying the site as some sort of long-abandoned mine, before it had exploded on them.

Unsafe.  Entirely unsafe, and John was going to be hunting down the owner of this illegal, unauthorised mine with pinched lips and furrowed brow, turquoise eyes sparking dangerously.  There were supposed to be people down here.  They hadn’t found anyone, and then it had collapsed, exploded, whatever and now Scott had lost his brother.

“G-Gordon?” he tried to yell.  It came out more like a hoarse whisper, too faint and full of the pain he was steadfastly ignoring.  “Thunderbird Four?”

No answer, not even a crackle on the comms.  He fumbled for his baldric, fingers pressing too-clumsily down on the iR, and tried again.  The slightly blurry vision he blinked away was shoved unceremoniously into the same ignored part of the situation as the pain.  “Gordon?  Come- come in, Thunderbird F-Four.”

The rushing sound of blood in his ears and the thump-thump thump-thump of the pulse echoing inside his head were his only answer.  That wasn’t good, just like the too much blood wasn’t good and the nausea and light-headedness and pain and blurred vision being ignored weren’t good.

Scott only cared about one of those things.  “John?” he tried again, coughing as the name stuck in his raspy throat.  “Thunderbird Five, I need a fix on Gor- on Gordon’s location.”

There was no response, only his voice echoing dumbly in the chamber.  John wouldn’t abandon him, not when he was stuck (in trouble) and one of their little brothers was MIA.  Not by choice.

Comms down.

He was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way, but first that meant scrambling to his feet, hauling a resisting body up when all it wanted to do was stay crumpled exactly where it was.  He scrabbled against the collapsed rocks – the same, unstable rocks that had him in this situation in the first place – leaving streaks of red as his grip fumbled and fumbled again.  The sensation of nails tearing was almost an old friend by now, always the first casualty in a rescue no matter how short he kept them and with everything else that wasn’t immediately relevant to find Gordon, they went ignored.

Equally ignoring the way his vision darkened as he managed to snag a proper hold on the rocks, and the way his arms trembled with exertion as he forced all of his strength into them to find his feet, he swayed one way and then the other, colliding with the fallen rubble in a vaguely upright position.  It dug into his arm but he ignored that, too.

A step forwards and he crashed to the ground again, hands once more landing in warm-wet-sticky. His head swam, nausea spiking and vision going entirely black for a moment, but giving up had never been in his vocabulary and that wasn’t changing now.

Blood pounded in his ears, the rhythm off-beat.  Syncopated, he remembered old music teachers saying, or maybe it had been Virgil.  He dragged in a breath, feeling his chest expand and that ignored pain protesting louder, and reached out and up again, finding rocks, losing his grip from slippery fingers slick with blood.

A catch – rather a snag, with a sharp edge of rock cutting into his palm and adding to the warm-wet-sticky all around him but Scott ignored that just the same – and he hefted his weight onto it again, shoulder screaming, arm trembling, hand shrieking, legs refusing to lock in place until he overrode all the complaints with sheer willpower and a shaky breath completely out of time with the rhythm pounding his ears.

Success.  A tenuous, wavering success with his vision more black than not and a tingling somewhere near the top of his head emphasising that the light-headedness hadn’t gone away while bile jumped around in his throat, but a success nonetheless.

Gordon! he tried to call again, but his voice betrayed him, barely a whisper leaving his throat and dissipating to nothing by the time it passed his lips.  If Gordon did somehow, miraculously, hear and reply, the rushing in his ears was too loud.  Scott couldn’t even hear his own heartbeat now, just a rush of sound, indistinct in its noise.  No matter. He’d find Gordon.  He’d find him.

He stumbled forwards and no willpower was enough to stop his legs crumbling, depositing him back in that warm-wet-sticky.

Not that Scott noticed. He’d ignored the pain in his abdomen, the nausea and light-headedness.  Dismissed the black-outs, the blurry vision and off-beat pulse.

No more, his bleeding and broken body decided.

He wasn’t conscious to feel his face land in the pool of his own blood.

[vomara]

I saw your posts about Katara and the general treatment of female characters in the new ATLA fandom and what i wanna know is, why is it like this now? You know usually i'd say if there's misogyny in a fandom is because the show itself has big problems with it. But ATLA is like, the complete opposite of that? It's a very good show in terms of equality between female and male characters. And it was out there pushing that over a decade ago.

Like who's coming into this show full of great women and going "I only care about the boys and the girls are annoying"? Methinks these people are far too accustumed to shows and fandom where male characters and male focus are the norm, and they come into this show and start perpetuating the same, but this is to me at least almost entirily the fandom's fault. Cause the show isn't out there purposely ignoring or giving bad dialogue and arcs to the women in it. (2/2)

yeah, i agree. there's a very clear and longstanding male-centric bias in fandom in general, and atla is no exception, and yes, it really isn't well-supported by canon, which has plenty of well-developed female characters. atla fandom isn't the WORST i've been in, but the fandom focus has... shifted very male-centric nowadays in a way that wasn't always so prominent. while i'm not gonna say that it was a fantastic thing, before about 2015, there was a little bubble of more female-centric fanwork in the fandom -- mostly concerning azula, but other characters, too. (again, i don't think that it was a fantastic thing, given the fact that a lot of azula fanwork tends to ignore fundamental aspects of her, but it was there, and it existed.) now what? the fandom is predominantly z*ukka, with lingering remnants from a thriving z*utara fandom.

in general, i don't blame fandom for zuko being a fan-favorite -- he was practically designed that way. dramatic and attractive, with one of the most visible character arcs in the series. for other characters, you actually have to pay attention to see how they learn and change; for zuko, you don't have to pay much attention at all. but exempting him, the two most developed characters are aang and katara, both of whom get glossed over in fandom, particularly 2020 fandom. since katara is the main female, let's look at her.

why is she so disrespected in fandom? i think we can start by examining the largest pairings. the z*utara fandom goes all the way back to the airing of the show itself. it's a genuinely compelling dynamic and i like it, but the fandom repels me deeply... because katara is often forced into a position where she has to perform emotional labor in order to force zuko to redeem himself. her character often loses spark, and she sometimes becomes passive in way that's not canon. not to mention there's a whole subset of z*utara tropes that feels very... colonialist. and being a brown girl, fitting her into these more passive, colonized molds is... uh, not a good look on the fans. but i digress. at least she's there and present.

now flash forward to post-2015, but especially 2020, z*ukka fandom. (this fandom existed prior, but was much more lowkey.) the one thing about a lot of mlm pairings in practically every fandom, is how fans can choose to exclude the females of the narrative. this is in no way a disparagement of gay shipping -- but it is a criticism of how those same shippers behave to other characters. other characters, especially females, become accessories to their main ship, and because of that, they often become flat and unidimensional. furthermore, z*ukka had a rival ship in z*utara, so establishing a sense of superiority comes down to proving that sokka is somehow better than katara in some form or another. and how? she's homophobic, she's whiny, she's a "mom", she's "straight" (???) ... or maybe they call her badass and assign her no other traits. maybe they even pair her off with another person to get her out of the way, so they can focus on their mlm pairing, which they justify as more important because it's "progressive shipping". essentially, unlike z*utara, z*ukka stans can very conveniently throw katara out the window. she doesn't need to be present, and so often times, she isn't.

it's just all part of this continued shafting of brown girls in fandom. the fandom CONSISTENTLY loves to hate katara, specifically because she talks about her trauma so much. (which is justified as hell! she lost her mother and then became a mother to the rest of her village at a young age, and she uses this trauma to help her empathize with others!) zuko's out here monologuing about his trauma, and everyone loves him, but this same love doesn't extend to katara. it's irksome to say in the least. sokka, who's of the same race, gets a lot more attention, and that really says a lot about how gender plays into fan-following, because he isn't quite as developed as she is.

there are other girls in the fandom with notable followings, but honestly it would take forever going through each one of them step by step. azula is the most significant in fandom, and that's partially because her character development is strong and visible in the way that zuko's is. also, people have a tendency towards enjoying more unstable females, but that's its own thing. overall, though, even she has been long outstripped by the fan-following of the main mlm ship in fandom. there's no way to compete with that.

and really, that's all it is. this recent misogyny is very much a result of this almost cultish shift towards one particular ship in fandom, an mlm ship that very obviously allows for the exclusion of female characters. once you become a superfan and enwrapped in this type of cultish shipping, you no longer need canon, you no longer need the rest of the cast, and you no longer need female characters, and so you can just enter into a nice little echo chamber where you talk about the same two characters over and over again and get completely disconnected from the original material. and that sucks, because often times, it's the canon context and the complexity of other characters that provide complexity to these characters you're discussing, and now that you've disconnected, you've warped and flattened the dynamic of everyone including those favorite characters into something very generic and boring. and that's a travesty! but, well, i suppose it’s just another byproduct of misogyny.

[mrkanman]

game theory time boys

What Are The Corrupted Souls?

The Rusty Lake universe tells the story of those affected by the titular location that transcends several generations, with THESE bad boys as malevolent, ghostly apparitions that give you just generally a hard time. 

The White Door told us the story of Robert Hill, who is a confirmed corrupted soul, detailing the events of his involvement with the mysterious death of the woman. But moreso than Bob’s story, we actually started getting some more insight in what Corrupted Souls actually ARE which I’m gonna try to rationalize to the best of my ability--let’s go.

(SPOILERS FOR THE WHITE DOOR AHEAD) 

In the timeline, the first instance of a corrupted soul that we see is Caroline Eilander. 

Caroline Eilander had died prior to the events of Rusty Lake: Paradise, and was studying how to acquire the elixir of life in secret before her death. Her animal symbolism is the owl, which is shared by both her son Jakob and by Dale Vandermeer, and is typically representative of being the “ruler of the Lake.”

As a corrupted soul, her memories were split apart into ten black cubes that contained the elements for the elixir of life, which she bestowed upon Jakob to aide in his path to enlightenment. She was able to send down a plague as a corrupted soul, speak, and disappear and re-appear at will. When her bones are recovered during the ninth plague, they are ground into “magical powder”. So while her mind may have become broken, and the soul itself split off as its own entity, her body still had anomalous effects on it. 

This is important when we examine what happens in the White Door.

The body dies, the soul is carried over. But the body isn’t gone--it’s replaced.  

During the last plague in Rusty Lake: Paradise, Jakob is burned alive, but achieves enlightenment. *How* this happens at first seems vague, but by the end, and by what the game often instructs us to do, it becomes clear. 

The Elixir of Life alone is not enough to reach enlightenment, one must also embrace a corrupted soul, or well, *literally* merge with a corrupted soul. Mr. Owl was created when the elements were gathered as the cubes and when Caroline Eilander merged with Jakob, creating an entirely new being with (suspected) unlimited immortality and wisdom.

Corrupted souls are not so much as “ghosts” are they like the limbo between death and rebirth, a concept that is repeatedly echoed throughout the series. They eat, they sleep, and speak at times, but are strongly disposed towards violence and can even seem like wild animals. But they are like cocoons for the cycle of rebirth. 

Which is why I propose that: Mr. Boar, Mr. Deer, Ms. Pheasant, Mrs. Pigeon, and Mr. Rabbit *are* definitely reincarnations of the Eilander family, they’re very deliberately NOT the Eilanders when they are alive. It is only as Corrupted Souls do their past lives merge with each other, and their memories and perception of reality becoming confused and erratic. 

Their containment in the hotel effectively served as a stasis chamber, keeping them in their corrupted state to prolong the cycle of rebirth until they’re needed. When they broke out, some of them stayed at the lake as corrupted souls stalking for potential victims, while some split off and left the lake, still corrupted, but in a different “state,” a different life. 

Mr. Rabbit had tried to re-enter society as a corrupted soul, remembering the past life of David Eilander, but based off of what happens to Bob in a similar fashion as a corrupted soul, reality is distorted and Eilander is too unstable, resulting in the massacre of Dale Vandermeer’s family in order to retrieve The Pistol.

These pistols seem not to *kill* so much as, change your state of being. In the Blue Cube timeline of Dale’s birthday, Mr. Rabbit is shot and, as he is absorbed by the tree, beams of light shoot out of his body. Beams of light coming out of a corrupted soul is generally connotative with the soul being destroyed/purified. But as stated, he doesn’t die, he’s merely in a new state and returned to the lake. 

 Which brings me to the “Lady of the Lake” theorized to be Ms. Pheasant. 

Now the REAL “Lady of the Lake” is Caroline Eilander, as seen in painting depictions, so it’s important to recognize that this is a *stage production.* The woman in blue is playing a role, much like how Pheasant did in the Hotel. 

For this to be one of the lives of Elizabeth Eilander, I’d actually wager it to not be such a bad guess. It would be natural to assume for her daughter to inherit her legacy, even only as a pretender. She’s seen here in both a corrupted and non-corrupted state, which I don’t feel so much as to be a literal representation of her so much as how she perceives herself, or perceived through the lenses of the memories. 

Because another notable thing about Elizabeth is that she was blind, and not once was the Lady in Blue ever shown to open her eyes. This corrupted soul is still a PERSON, and in likely a similar state to how Bob was after he shot himself in the White Door(no memory of her past life and just generally being confused) and was taken in by the theatre as a performer to be kept close to the lake and still get to use her memories. 

These are the more concrete parallels and conclusions we can come to, with the relationship between Mr. Deer’s corrupted soul and Albert Vanderboom being one which I won’t go into depth: but there could be implication that Albert had also been trying to recreate the elixir, same as his father did, and maybe had a lost soul influencing him after 1894. (Which, mind you, two years later after the corrupted souls were released did he murder and torture his family outright.) I think the fact that the Corrupted Soul of Mr. Deer looking a lot like the silhouette of Albert was intentional in that way. He may have been a potential candidate for enlightenment before his brain was collected for William’s rebirth, maybe even becoming a corrupted soul himself. 

So basically what I’m saying is: corrupted souls are not so much as “souls” but as the physical embodiment of the inbetween of life and death, in which the lake serves as a sort of “womb” for. They cannot distinguish between imagination and reality, are supernaturally aggressive and malicious, have scattered and unreliable memories of all their past lives at once, and DO subsist off of a carnivorous diet, primarily that which of animals (or people) that are still alive. They can be killed and resurrected, are intelligent but only sometimes sapient, and the perception of how they physically manifest can depend on the level of corruption at which they are at. A living person *can* be corrupted with enough exposure to black cubes being forcibly extracted, but it’s a typically longer and riskier process. 

[kob131]

https://rwdestuffs.tumblr.com/post/616806790896680960

Ironwood: Yells, screams, rants extensively, shoots things, breaks things

He never screamed, he never ranted, he broke like one thing (a chess piece) and shoot one guy (who in his mind was trying to stop him from saving people).

Yeah, Ironwood is emotional. He’s a fucking veteran Huntsman fighting a war that he was lied about by the man he trusted and the allies he thought he had. He also kind of just had HIS ONE GOOD ARM FUCKING SCORTCHED AND HIS PARANOIA CONFIRMED. Pretty fucking understandable, you shouldn’t be misrepresenting him.

Fandom: Clearly this man is a rational, logical person who is making his decisions based solely on cold reason. RWBY is being too emotional.

Who the FUCK has argued that James is operating under cold logic? He’s not, of course he’s acting under emotion.

What are you even saying?

RWBYJNR: Lies, cheats, steals, rants about a politician trying to do his best to protect a kingdom from going to shit, and also harassed a kid when they’re lied to

You know, Psyga, it doesn’t help that not only are you ALSO misrepresenting shit (They never cheated, the stealing of one airship pales to the numerous DEATHS that would have been caused, they didn’t rant and ONE PERSON  messed with Oscar while the LEADER RUBY comforted him) but you yourself are guilty of this shit (Lying, cheating and stealing? Gee I wonder who else does that? *cough* RWDE *cough*)

Fandom: Clearly these group of well thinking, mentally scarred teenagers are rational, logical people who are making their decisions solely on reason. Ironwood is being too emotional.

Again, WHO IS SAYING THAT? Also, implying that Ironwood isn’t basically a walking mass of mental scars.

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe grown men in charge of armies should be held to a slightly higher standard than teenagers, rather than the other way around?

Has it occurred to you that they’re both adults, they’re both fucking up and everyone screwed Salem’s pooch here? Honestly the only guy doing good is Ozpin. Yeah, he started this mess but he did some damn good work before Cinderella.

Also no Psyga, I am not supporting your hypocritical ass. “they’re taught to be pinnacles of man kind’’ By the headmasters....which includes IRONWOOD.

I laugh at the idea of James “A few city blocks”   Ironwood trying to do the best to protect his kingdom. Especially when he peaced out and decided to scarper not cos of Salem but due to a chess piece, all while ignoring the fact he had Salem agents on his stupid little rock already to instead focus on shrieking at RWBY a bout loyalty. 

The same James “I’ll promote you all to Huntsmen, I’m the one to tell my subordinates the truth first and I SUFFER FROM PARANOIA AND PROBABLY A HOST OF OTHER MENTAL SCARS” Ironwood right?

I mean you support Yang Tumblingxelian because ‘uwu vagin- I mean PTSD’ so SURELY you support Ironwood RIGHT?

Also, he freaked out about a chess piece because it’s SALEM’S SYMBOL. Its like saying “Oh its not Hitler it’s just his CALLING CARD”. And no shit James is calling out Team RWBY, he trusted them and they lied to his face. You know, the same position Team RWBY was in with Ozpin.

Plus Ironwood himself lies and steal in regards to supplies from Mantle and rants too, except unlike RWBY he doesn’t have nearly as good of an excuse save for the fact he’s surrounded himself with enablers and refuses to accept or seek out help. 

Amity? Yes.

Supplies? Where? Robyn says they should be going to Mantle, that doesn’t mean they’re Mantle supplies. Show me where it was shown, said or explained he TOOK the supplies.

Also, what enablers? People who put their trust in him? That’s like saying Team RWBY were enablers for Ozpin: it’s the Ace Ops and Winter’s fault for not looking out for their leader, just as it was James’ issue for not looking out for Ozpin.

Like seriously, nothing is ever done to show RWBY as unstable or irrational, at best they are uncertain which is frank;y better than Ironwood or Opzin’s “I know best” attitude because it means they are open to changing rather than breaking the moment they run into a problem their methods can’t solve. 

Changing, like going from opposing lying to lying themselves right AFTER knowing how bad of an idea that is.

This is the fucking Yang/Adam situation all over again, removing fault and agency just because you don’t like the other side.

We also literally see their rationales, they need to get he lamp to Atlas before either Salem’s agents find them or it potentially lures Grimm in. They make a good plan that only doesn’t work out cos the local general decided t bust out a super mech and prance around screaming and they still hung around long enough to help solve the problem that idiot created. 

Strange that you don’t their talk of telling the truth....

When it comes to Mantle their rationales for why its awful and Ironwood’s decisions are wrong are explained both morally and in terms of practicality, Ironwood sometimes listened but usually ignored them cos he’s an arrogant ass. 

Or, you know, he’s been lied to numerous times, he’s in immense physical pain right now, his mental issues are being played on and he’s in a rushed, fucked if you do fucked if you don’t situation.

You know, WHAT THE SHOW FUCKING SHOWS.

On one side is a pack of teenagers dragged into a lot of nightmarish shit they were in no way ready to deal with, who are trying to work together and find a way to save the world. They do this despite being horribly traumatized, physically dismembered in two cases, having to fight off their abusers (to the death in one case), all the while admitting they’re in over their head, they’ve made mistakes, and trying to fix them and generally improve things.

The other side is a military general blatantly abusing his political power to deprive a city of critical resources, leaving them exposed to man eating monsters, declaring martial law to stop the rest of the government from stopping him from outright abandoning the people of that city (and the rest of the planet) to those monsters, ordering the cold-blooded murderer of an elderly woman to steal her magical powers, ordering the arrest of a group of teenagers and one older man because SOME OF THEM vocally disagreed with these actions, then shot a teenage boy for politely disagreeing with him, with the intent being that the boy would die from either the bullet of the long fall that followed. He does all this while insisting he’s being logical, that he’s making the hard choices on everyone elses behalf, and that he is always right. While hallucinating, ranting and screaming about disloyalty, all of which because he failed once (And that’s ignoring how he backstabbed several supposed friends before that traumatizing incident.)

A. Ironwood is also dragged into this by the same metric.

B. James is ALSO in over his head. Everyone not named ‘Ozpin’ is and Ozpin BARELY qualifies.

C. And James is being abused and used too!

D. ‘physically dismembered in two cases’ One and *taps Ironwood’s metal arm*

E. To try and help EVERYONE he’s ‘depriving resources’ because shit ain;t infinite.

F. Aas opposed to the genocidal, ancient witch CONTROLLING the man eating monsters?

G. And the other option? Have everyone DIE in his eyes.

H. Cold blooded murder...that she agreed to of her own volition....

I. You misspelled ALL as SOME. As in, ALL of the protags disagreed with him.

J. ANd you know, trying to stop him.

K. You know, like literally everyone else

M. He never hallucinated, ranted or screamed

James Ironwood is a coward and a traitor to the Kingdom of Atlas. On top of that, he is an entitled little shit that neglected his responsibilities to the civilians of the Kingdom, and then was so fucking arrogant that he was actually OFFENDED that people were angry with him for not doing his job. Quite a lot of that can be blamed on the culture of the Atlas military, of the demands of blind loyalty and yes-men creating an echo chamber without him even noticing. But in the end, he made the decisions. He decided the people of Mantle are an expendable resource, months or even years before Cinder broke into his office. He decided to order the murder of an elderly woman, to overthrow his government, to arrest anyone that dared to disagree with him, and to personally shoot a boy in cold blood. 

You want to know the twisted part? I think those of us that admit Ironwood is in the wrong actually respect him more. We can see how he came to this point, the cultural indoctrination, the dangers of military culture, the PTSD he’s clearly suffered since Beacon... We can feel sympathy for a fallen hero. Those who support him continue to insist that he’s in his right mind, that all his decisions, from volume two onwards, have all been completely logical... And what kind of person would that make him?

Oh fuck you with that “Because I disagree that makes me better bullshit.”

You didn’t portray a fallen hero, you portrayed a flatter version of Adam, denying Ironwood’s reasons, glorifying Team RWBY and painted it black and white.

And before anyone claims I am supporting Team RWBY:

Actually look up my opinions of them on my blog. Or hell, this single post. I think both parties are at fault for the situation here for their own flaws. ANd I feel sad for both them.

The conflict in the fandom, however?

[chubbyooo]

Blurred Lines: Cursed Past Chapter 72 - A Common Enemy

hey all had a little block but it’s over now :D

Kyradia and Ashara head to Kowak to follow Zash’s trail

Kyradia saw the planet of Kowak come into view; well this was bound to be interesting, she could only begin to imagine the reasons why Zash had broken into a botanical plant. She was up to something with the nightsisters but the planet selection didn’t add up what the heck was there on Kowak except those weird monkey lizards certainly no magick.

Still there must be something on these planets that the nightsisters wanted, she never understood the culture even though she despised it the Wrath had never really explained her methods. She was feeling weirdly calm, Dzûsa’s weird class had chilled her out somewhat, it was kinda odd, she was just glad no one had seen it. How long would it last though she already felt her brain freaking out a little in the back of her mind, it never ever stopped not since she could remember she doubted it ever would. It was difficult to explain her mind to be honest if she understood it she’d probably not have such a problem dealing with it.

Andronikos grumbled “is this that place where those weird monkey lizards are from” Kyradia chuckled Andronikos had always been uncomfortable around them

Ashara nodded “yeah Nik why do you not like them?” Andronikos didn’t respond just looked away

Kyradia chuckled “he thinks they’re creepy he’s super scared of them” Ashara chuckled as Andronikos glowered at Kyradia

Ashara stifled her laughs “oh wow are you serious Andronikos” Kyradia gave a teasing smile Andronikos was all too familiar with at this point.

Andronikos sulked “I’m not scared of them they’re just creepy have you heard their laughs why would anyone have them as a pet” Kyradia recalled the time she’d chased Andronikos around the ship in a monkey lizard mask last Harvest day, needless to say he was less than pleased with the costume

Kyradia smirked “He won’t let me have one as a pet Ashara I can’t see any reason why” Ashara chuckled clearly enjoying the quarrel

Ashara smiled “I can’t see any reason why not maybe we’ll find one while we’re there” Andronikos narrowed his eyes as he landed the ship

He turned around “I swear you better not Ashara” Kyradia chuckled getting up and giving him a peck on the cheek

Kyradia smiled “you’ll have to wait and see” she gestured for Ashara to follow as they headed to the landing ramp

Ashara turned to her as they exited the ship “so I assume we’re not actually gonna do that?” Kyradia smirked and shook her head

She chuckled “oh no trust me he’d kill me if we did I just enjoy messing with him, he’ll get me back soon enough” Ashara nodded with a smile as they began to walk towards the plant

Ashara responded “he seems to be starting to accept I’m back, I think me saving your life helped with that” Kyradia laughed yeah that would help

“Yeah he may have been harsh at first but Andy can’t hold a grudge for too long” she laughed “otherwise he’d be furious at me for a million pranks” Ashara chuckled looking away for a second

Ashara’s tone shifted “and what about you are you feeling better?” Kyradia didn’t know if better was the word for it

Kyradia nodded “sorta I guess” she looked away “I dunno I feel calmer but it’s kinda tough keeping it all at bay” Ashara nodded she looked a little dejected, Kyradia knew she wanted to know what was up but Kyradia couldn't explain it’s just too much.

Ashara smiled “well I’m here regardless and I got us a lead that didn’t damage your psyche so that’s a win if you ask me” Kyradia guessed that was a plus but they would’ve gotten here sooner if she’d been involved

Kyradia folded her arms “what is this place anyway?” They were now at the front gates of a moderately sized compound that looked a little damaged, the break in was clear but Zash had never been subtle.

Ashara held her chin “it’s some kind of botanical plant, they were testing the effects of certain plant pheromones and substances on the monkey lizards” Kyradia frowned she understood very little of that sentence

Kyradia sighed “uh Ashara can you dumb that down to someone who wasn’t educated in the republic or empire” Ashara’s eyes widened realising her confusion

Ashara nodded “they were testing the plant stuff against the animals to see if their behaviour changed” Kyradia nodded since when did plants affect animals, science was a mystery.

Kyradia stroked her chin “and what was the result?” she had a hunch but it wasn’t confirmed yet

Ashara shrugged “dunno didn’t read that much into it” Ashara knocked on the door then realised there was an intercom and shuffled over to it awkwardly “Hi this is Ashara Zavros I called earlier about helping with the break in” she seemed a little stunted talking to normal people Kyradia doubted she’d done a lot of it in a while.

A crackle came back “what’s your clearance” oh great clearence everyones favourite bureaucratic bs.

Kyradia walked up to the comm “Commander Kyradia of the Alliance I’m pretty sure there is no higher clearance” hopefully she sounded agitated enough

There was a long pause before “oh yes of course come right in commander” Kyradia smiled gesturing for Ashara to follow, they made their way across the compound to the large glass building.

As they reached the door a Duros waiting for them, he stammered “y-you’re the commad-” Kyradia didn’t have time for this guy

Kyradia interrupted ��-der of the alliance yes I know I’m amazing such a honour to meet me take me to you boss before I decide to use your head as a kickball” the duros’ eyes widened as he quickly led them into the lab.

Kyradia had never been in a botanical lab and was surprised to see it looked just like a regular jungle, they must have tonnes of rare species in here, Ashara shuffled up to Kyradia and whispered “maybe don’t threaten every person who’s helping us” Kyraida scoffed she wasn’t allowed to threaten people now

Kyradia folded her arms “but he’s helping us out faster now” Ashara frowned at her “fine I’ll use ‘tact’” Ashara smiled and followed along behind her. 

Soon the Duros led them into a more open lab room with no plants in it, there was a woman with red and black hair seemingly working at a desk, Kyradia frowned that wasn’t very common. The Duros mumbled “here we are may I go now” Kyradia nodded barely registering the Duros as she focussed on the woman.

Ashara spoke up “I thought they were supposed to be testing on plants in here” Kyradia has to agree but had a feeling the answer would be Zash

A very familiar modulated echoed voice filled the chamber “that’s exactly the reason you are here” she turned around “it was vandi…” she stopped in shock as her eyes met with Kyradia’s, Kyradia smiled she knew she recognised that hair it was Darth Malora “c-commander it’s such a surprise to see you here this seems a little above your pay grade” Kyradia smiled she wished she had that effect on everyone

Kyradia strode over “yes well I have a personal interest in your burglars” Malora nodded stroking her chin “I have been on their tail for a while now and I need to know what happened here, but first…” Kyradia pulled up a chair “I have to know how a dark council member ended up as a low level scientist on Kowak” Malora narrowed her eyes containing her anger as Kyradia taunted her

Ashara shuffled up “um did I miss something, you two know each other?” Kyradia turned to Ashara she guessed Ashara had always just missed their interactions

Malora spoke “we were apprentices at the same time and had helped each other out a few times, Darth Malora a ‘pleasure’ to meet you” Ashara was clearly a bit put off by Malora’s looks the corruption had certainly done a number on her or maybe the science could be either

Kyradia smiled “Former Darth actually, we met last year on Ossus she was the new dark council member until Malgus kinda threw her off the landing platform” Kyradia could see an audible shudder from Malora clearly that was a sore point “so I see it didn’t get better after that?” Malora gritted her teeth clearly furious with Kyradia

Kyradia wasn’t scared she’d beat her in a second, Malora folded her arms “After your offer to join the alliance I decided taking some time to regain some of my lost potential was important, at heart I am a scientist so I began a new batch of experiments” Kyradia frowned she guessed that made sense but with alliance funding she could’ve done much more.

Ashara frowned “so you came to Kowak?” Malora nodded seeming to not see any problem with that

She had a rather weird smile “there is a plant here called springwort its bile has a remarkable effect on animals; turns them savage and carnivorous” Kyradia’s eyes widened. That was not good if Zash had it regardless of the ways she used it but what if… Malora continued “I was thinking if manipulated the right way I could create a new type of foot soldier kind of like my Geonosians” Kyradia shook her head out of a daze she’d fallen into

She frowned “you mean the Geonosians that you lost control of and they attacked everyone?” Malora gritted her teeth clearly not a fan of Kyradia pointing out the problems in her ideas

Ashara gasped “she did what?!” Kyradia nodded looking between them

“Yeah I had to clear the mess up she still hasn’t said thanks” Kyradia did want that thanks from her, she frowned realising they were very off track.

Malora let out a loud sigh “this wouldn’t be like that believe me I’ve learned my lesson from using mutations they’re unstable and can easily change this would be something I could turn on and off like a sort of berserker rage” Kyradia knew all too well what going into a rage felt like but she could see it’s application definitely more so than the geonosian idea.

They needed to get back on track, the gloating time was over, they were here for leads on Zash “and I’m guessing the bile is what the burglars stole?” Malora nodded gesturing to a pile of blackened roots

She gripped the arm of her chair tightly as she spoke “not only that they turned the plant to that, it was as big as this room before hand” typical Zash if she has it no one else can “I tried to fight off the acolytes but I underestimated the blonde she was very powerful” Kyradia somehow wasn’t surprised

Kyradia shook her head “well that’ll be because that blonde was not just a young acolyte that was my old master Darth Zash” Malora frowned at that her face turning to a smile

She chuckled “very funny Nox but I’d prefer you be serious” Kyradia narrowed her eyes and quickly Malora’s expression changed filling with dread “oh you’re serious” Kyradia nodded

She explained “years ago she tried to steal my body but I trapped her in my Dashade, as soon as I could I then trapped her in a mind prison, it took her years but she got out and took a very powerful young acolyte with her taking her form, that’s why she’s such a threat” Malora nodded her expression becoming far more serious and maybe a little fearful

Ashara spoke up “you knew Zash too?” Malora held her chin shaking her head

She responded “not personally but I knew her through Kyradia and by reputation I knew her power” Ashara looked at Kyradia and frowned

She folded her arms “Since when were you and Malora friends?” Kyradia rolled her eyes Ashara had just met her and already questioning 

Kyradia shook her head “I told you, we weren’t friends we just had done a few favours for each other” Malora nodded clearly agreeing

Malora sighed “yes and after Zash became a darth you and her disappeared from Korriban, but if she’s back why hasn’t she revealed herself to the dark council?” Kyradia wasn’t exactly sure beyond the fact that the current dark council was a bunch of melon headed idiots.

Kyradia shrugged “I assume it’s because she wants to accumulate more power before revealing herself, the bile was a step towards that” Malora nodded she had become a lot less angry and more pensive since she brought up Zash

Malora frowned “Do you know how, is there some property I missed? And if so are you sure it was even her” Kyradia sighed someone was in heavy denial

Kyradia folded her arms “well honestly I don’t know what she wants with it but I do know how to know it was her, was she with a Mirilian with white hair” Malora nodded reluctantly “and the giant dent in the floor and the dead plant suggests an immense amount of power she wields so those are clues too, not the first time you’ve been thrown off something by a powerful sith” she couldn’t help herself

Malora scoffed “yes alright I was bested again you can stop gloating because I know where they’re going” Kyraida’s eyes went wide “but I have a condition on telling you” Kyradia’s hand brushed over her saber “I want to come with you, this research is important to me and I’m not going to let someone as self serving as Zash take it from me” Kyradia’s grip relaxed off her saber

She looked to Ashara “I don’t see any reason why not, I mean I offered you a job before I think she has plenty of potential” Malora laughed at that dismissing the comment

She shook her head “let me be clear this is just about my research working with you is unfortunately a necessity” Kyradia didn’t believe that but whatever

Ashara nodded “of course it is Malora, still welcome aboard but if you’re going to join us there are a few rules” Kyradia nodded as Malora let out and echoed groaned

Kyradia cut in “no sitting on the ship, when using the force you cannot use lightning when I’m around, if you ever ask me about my tattoos ‘meaning’ I will gut you, no talking after 1pm, no forks and knives only spoons, when you... ” Ashara was glaring at Kyradia

Ashara spoke up “those are all false… except maybe the tattoos one” Kyradia nodded “the actual rules are simple, no secrets unless they’re traumatic, listen to me if you’re stressed out or angry and uh try to act with a hint of morality” Malora nodded cocking her head at Kyradia

Malora smiled “has this one made you go soft Kyradia” Kyradia raised her eyebrow soft how dare she

She stood up “why don’t you come over here and find out” Malora nodded seemingly satisfied with the threat “now where are they going?” Malora got out a datapad and started to find the planet

Malora explained “A desert planet called Savareen I managed to track the hyperlane they took due to… previous engagements I had it ready to track” Kyradia chuckled paranoid much “I don’t know what they’re doing there but we can catch up if we go now” Ashara nodded seemingly ready to go

Kyradia raised her eyebrow “alright Malora wanna go kick a sith’s teeth in?” Malora smiled seemingly excited to get back to the action, she tossed her lab coat aside and followed after them...

[consilium-games]

A New Offering

It has been entirely too long since my last post, and likewise, since my last title, so let me rectify that right . . . now!

In The Queen Smiles, I played with a new mechanical embellishment, on top of my usual Ghost/Echo-inspired framework. The 'One Red' system gave me a surprising amount of interesting design space to play around in, and as I said in the previous post, I found enough to make a fair supplement!

That supplement is here: One Red explores a wide range of different mechanical conceits and additions and minigames and subsystems, all intended to make even the most routine roll of two six-sided dice into as much of a workhorse as your group could want. You can put mechanics onto "unnatural mental effects on your main character", or "terrifying (or beneficent) being sharing your character's body", or even "procedurally generate the world or play an NPC no one should directly control". You can even play around with time itself, telling a story out of order, and zooming in or flashing back (or forward) to the causal connections between the key moments of a story. Whether you use this for Rashomon-style conflicting events, or creation-myth exploration of a people's defining tale, or even use it as a meta-narrative device, in which some mysterious sequence of events requires investigation, you can do things few other games can survive trying.

That's Great, But Why?

Mostly, I like exploring design-space in RPGs. While no one could ever hope to exhaustively do this, it has always fascinated me just how much you can get even a simple system to do, especially when that system really does the intended work. By that, I mean that while a game like Dread really does lend itself to feelings of dread . . . it doesn't lend itself to anything else in particular. It's not a system, it's a mechanic--like "roll two or more dice, one determines success or failure, all others determine complications or costs". And systems allow all the cool interesting exploration.

In particular, I had fun seeing just how detailed, or how abstract, one could be in figuring out the Queen's values, priorities, sensibilities, and attitude. One minute, She Smiles on you putting one of her emissaries in your rear-view and flooring it, and narrowly escaping. The next, She Smiles your getting pulled over and taken to jail. Why send that emissary after you if She likes that you escaped? If She likes that you escaped, why should She approve of you going to jail? These contradictions require some kind of resolution, whether it comes from the Queen having elliptical, corkscrew logic, or some simple, clear, but unexpected priority. Perhaps the Queen sends emissaries to provoke you to drastic action, and whether you succeed or fail, She wants you to become a champion, hardening through hardship. Or, maybe you carry some kind of contagion, and She never intended her emissary to kill you, because then you can't spread the lilting melody from Arcadia--but you can certainly spread it in a jailhouse.

But as I quickly saw, I'd created a mechanic and then built a system around it. So I began to ask, what else could I do with this mechanic now that I had it, and what other systems could I make with it? And that was before realizing, I'd actually made two mechanics, and only used one in The Queen Smiles. Clearly, I had to remedy this.

The first mechanic in the 'One Red' elaboration is the one that The Queen Smiles actually uses: adding a special significance to one of the dice in the roll, without changing its mechanical meaning. The rules don't care what you tack onto the Goal or Danger holding the Red Die, only that you tack on something. And given that in all of my Succession-derived games, the dice you roll have a hard and tangible link to the narrative, this means that the One Red die projects a narrative meaning on top of an existing narrative meaning.

But the other mechanic I realized I'd made, as ideas started to congeal and extrude, is adding a special value to one of the dice, layering a mechanic on top of a mechanic. This shows up more One Red, perhaps more than the former. In this approach, the story or narrative may not directly notice or care which facet of a roll you assign your Red die to. But the rules themselves, the ones that say when to roll, and how to interpret the dice, directly care about the added layer of value on one of your dice.

The former gives us things like "portraying a character that no one should directly control", whether that be an incomprehensible being from beyond, or a collective entity that players would have incentive to bias, or even a character that should seem unpredictable and unstable, at all times. You're using the same machinery for creating stories, but you've done something a bit complicated in tying the story back to the machinery.

The latter gives us things like prompts to cut forward or backward in time, defining parts or features of the world around you as you move through it, even nominally very mechanics-heavy things like a form of wild magic you only barely control at all--but that you still do, yourself. The same machinery, but tied to itself in a complicated feedback loop.

So What to Use This For?

As far as One Red goes, most of its verbiage relates it to Succession, rather than The Queen Smiles, for a few reasons I want to get into here.

First, amazing as the scope of Cool New Mechanics might be with One Red, the nature of One Red makes it more difficult, if not impossible, to sensibly use the Red die for more than one thing. The Queen Smiles, as a game, really can't also use most of the ideas in One Red--while one or two could work, it invites confusion and doesn't directly aid the game's core intent.

Second, since publishing Succession, I've had a few readers describe the book as anything from "hard to read" up to "impossible to understand". I also have had readers describe it as a really great game, and say that its unique style and approach adds a lot to what kind of game it plays, and what way to tell its stories. I knew during writing that I wanted to try for the latter, and if I got it then it would come at the expense of the former.

But, I've also gotten better at writing rulebooks for public consumption--funny how repeatedly doing something can make you better at it, right? And while I still consider Succession a fine game, maybe better than anything I've made since, that 'expense' above is steep. Steeper than I want to pay again. So Chamber+Circle has its blunter, more direct, rule-focused style, and The Queen Smiles prattles on for a decadent twenty pages when its source material is literally "take Horror and Fairytales from Book of Sand, and rub in a novel mechanic".

So in making this latest supplement, by addressing the rules directly to Succession as a starting frame of reference, I hope to make Succession, retroactively, a bit better and more valuable. The book still has the same cryptic, sphinxian delivery as ever, because the book hasn't changed. But, someone getting Succession, or who already got it, has one more supplement that immediately speaks to making this cryptically-written game into something even more unique, and without any obfuscatory delivery. That's definitely not to say that One Red can't enhance Chamber+Circle, or indeed any Succession-related Ghost/Echo-inspired game. Just put a Red die among the ones you were already rolling, and see what you can do with that distinction within rules! But artistically, I wanted to tip the scales more for Succession, as the darling I made that has the most objections.

And as for future offerings, I have a book very much in mind. I haven't seen a lot of RPGs that deal at all with romance. It's almost a taboo topic, judging by the reception of Monsterhearts (now with a second edition!) And while Monsterhearts is a fine game for what it wants to do, it has some rough patches, and even if you sand those off, it wants to do some very specific things. If you don't, Monsterhearts has a lot for you to navigate around. So my next title will present my take on heartwarming, sincere, passionate romance stories, focusing on madness, tragedy, and personal loss. It's gonna be a fun one and I look forward to publishing it this year!

[polygrumpssecretsanta]

Redshirts

Author: @sailorbryant Recipient: @a-d-a-a-r Pairing: Egobang Warnings: Nearly Factual Star Trek Information Title: RedShirts Summary: Star Trek AU. Next gen-era. Joining Starfleet hasn’t really been the non-stop action-packed adventure that Arin had been led to believe, but at least he’s got a buddy - and unlimited access to some ancient video games - to keep him sane.  Word Count: 2600

Joining Starfleet had to have been the worst god damn decision of Arin’s life.

“My neck is still killing me," he wined, collapsing down on his bunk. He stared up at the blinding white ceiling above him once again wishing he was a high enough rank so that he could have a small port head window in their quarters. It would be nice to stare at something besides the blinding white of the bulkhead that was the same as the rest of the ship.

“Don't be a baby," Dan said offhandedly typing away at his PADD from his desk on the other side of their cramped, shared ensign quarters. “It was just a normal inoculation hypo.”

“No man, I'm telling you. Barry doesn't like me. He always jabs them in super hard.”

Dan scoffed. “That’s Chief Medical Officer Kramer to you ensign,” Dan parroted back mockingly, still never looking up from his PADD. “And maybe he only hates you because you keep calling him Barry like he doesn’t outrank the fuck out of you. Now be quiet, I have a thousand pages of requisition forms to go through.”

Arin sighed, stretching his arms up and resting his head on his hands, pulling his full body red uniform tightly around his midsection.

Life aboard a Galaxy-class cruiser had ended up being quite different than he imagined. The holo’s had always made life aboard an exploratory vessel seem like a non-stop thrill ride. Traveling to unexplored world’s, traversing the complicated social quagmire that was a first contact moment, or the heart-pounding thrill of battle with a violent, warmongering enemy.  

Instead, his day to day on the USS Endeavor was spent mostly on continued training, drills, and tons and tons of data worth of reports he had to fill out, then fill out again when they were sent back from a CO with a list of minor errors and recommendations.

The closest he came to experiencing life or death situations was reading the official reports of the adventures aboard the USS Enterprise, whose crew seemed to be living a life closer to what Arin had imagined as a teenager who hung up Starfleet Academy posters in his room.  Not that Arin would wish upon his crew the death and danger that seemed to constantly follow the Enterprise around. Still, he thought as he realized he’d been staring nonstop at the bulkhead nonstop for a long time, there was a reason they were constantly receiving lectures about watching for the signs of space madness. It was easy to get obsessed with the monotony.

It wasn’t all shift rotations and paperwork, he reminded himself - forcefully shaking off his far too introspective mood. His head slowly turned to look over at his roommate, sitting at his desk in a red uniform identical to Arin’s.  His bouncy, untamed hair casting a shadow onto his forehead, his brow tensed in concentration.

Arin stared at him for a long time, greedily admiring his slim frame, and intense look. He had never thought that their long jumpsuits were very flattering, but it did seem to hug to Dan in a way that never failed to catch Arin’s gaze and hold it.

He shook his head vehemently. This was not the time for perving on his friend.

“Dan,” Arin said suddenly, his tone serious, and his roommate groaned.

“Arin,” he replied just as serious.

“Best buddy.”

“No, Arin, I’m serious. Whatever you’re going to suggest, I’m not going along with it. I’ve got too much stuff to finish.”

“Let’s hit up the holodeck.”

There was a long drawn out pause before he heard Dan mutter a soft, “Fuck,” before sitting down his PADD.

Arin was already leaping out his bunk, a grin stretching across his lips.

---

When Arin was young his dad had taken him to an old museum in town for his birthday. It was one of the few museums on Earth that still had classic games: board games, card games, and Arin’s personal favorite, video games.  Old, ancient games that required a controller and a screen, nothing like the virtual games that children played now with their heads stuck inside a helmet that showed them brand new worlds in a heartbeat. Those games were practically archaic compared to the ones available now.

Arin had loved them.

He had begged his dad to take him back to the museum as often as he could in order to have the chance to play through the small dismal selection that they had until he knew them all by heart.

Now he was stationed aboard a Galaxy-class cruiser with admittance to the ships’ many holodecks available to him whenever he had any downtime. The holodeck was the peak of virtual technology, giving him access to any moment in time or space and only limited by what the user could imagine.

“Oh, come on you little shit, get it together!” he cried out at the screen, once again leading his little avatar on the screen into its doom, and ignoring Dan’s loud giggles beside him on the couch.

And Arin used it to play late 20th/early 21st-century video games.

It wasn’t a hobby that a lot of people understood or even wanted to. HIs first year aboard the ship he’d spent his breaks in the holodeck, enjoying the games alone.  Then his old roommate had been transferred off ship and Dan, fresh-faced from the academy, had moved in.  They had hit it off immediately. He didn’t understand at first, but he’d been open-minded enough to give Arin’s strange way of spending leisure time a shot, and here they were. Dan only played sometimes, spending most of his time enjoying just watching Arin play, adding his own commentary or mostly just laughing at Arin’s own off color commentary as he hilariously failed in what he was trying to accomplish.

“Jump up on that ledge, you ding dong.”

“You’re speaking nonsense and I won’t listen to it,” Arin said as he jumped up on the ledge immediately, only to find himself knocked back by a giant lizard and fell to his death. “You whore!” he bellowed into the echo chamber of the holodeck room, while Dan laughed and laughed at him from his seat beside him on the couch.

When the darkness of space closed in around him, and the routine of an excitement deprived existence started to wear him down, spending an hour or two with Dan. Watching his toothy smile and listening to his distinctive laugh - it was definitely the bright spot of his days.

---

After two years on board the USS Endeavor excitement finally came to their ship.  It was supposed to be a routine mission. First Contact with a new planet that's first foray into light speed travel had sent one of their ships into a near head-on collision with one of the Federations’ satellites. Some initial surveillance had shown them to be a relatively benign, peaceful species whose last planetary level war had been hundreds of years ago.

Most of the primary bridge crew had opted out, giving their seconds and replacements a chance for a learning experience. There were very few members of security heading down with the landing party, and those that were had some sort of separate specialty that they would get a chance to indulge in. That was why Dan was going down, with his focus on botany, to study a particular fascinating species of trees that their probes had picked up on that they felt could have some useful medicinal purposes. Most of the landing party were young crewmembers on their first or second missions, the highest ranking member being Lieutenant Brian Wecht, the head of the astrophysics department, who, being the newest ranked officer, had found himself bullied into the position.

It would’ve been a very easy, run-of-the-mill mission if the Romulans hadn’t beaten them to the planet first.

When the red alert alarms had started blaring, Arin kicked into gear and reported to his designated station without a thought. It wasn’t until he saw the look on CO’s face that he realized that this wasn’t a drill.

He tried his damndest to be on the party sent down for the rescue, but instead, he found himself standing beside CMO Kramer waiting to assist him whenever they brought back the survivors. It was only his training that kept him standing as he overhead the reports being delivered to Barry.

Half the landing party immediately incapacitated and captured. ��At least two deaths so far, a good chunk of them missing.

Guilt burned through him like a phaser blast. He had wished for excitement and danger, but now that it was here instead of adrenaline running through his veins it was just an ice cold and nauseating dread.

He had other friends that were missing. People he had graduated the academy with, fellow ensigns he saw every day, but it was the worry about Dan that seemed to be overwhelming him completely. Never seeing Dan’s teasing smile, or hearing his laugh.  It was unthinkable.

Arin was so busy stuck in his head, imaging him sitting in the holodeck alone or an empty bunk across from his that it took him a moment to notice the movement in the transporter room. Then Barry’s hands were on his arm, pulling him back out of the way, and he came back to the present. The room buzzed suddenly, the sound of particles forming and rearranging, then the platform was filled with materializing crewmen.

Dan’s hair stuck out like a rose bush in the middle of a desert. There were a few bodies lying prone, but Dan wasn’t one of them; his arm was slung around the shoulders of Lt. Wecht’s bright blue uniform. He looked weak, but his eyes were open, searching the room until they met Arin’s and a small smile quirked up the side of his lips.

His knees almost gave out and sensing his unstableness the CMO’s grip tightened until he was able to keep himself steady. Then they were both heading into the fray to help.  Arin didn’t even pretend like he was heading anywhere else but straight to Dan’s side.

“Hey,” he found himself saying in a breathy voice, unable to look away from Dan’s bright open eyes, or half smile.  There was a speck of dried blood on his temple but it only slightly registered to Arin.

“Hey, yourself,” Dan replied equally as soft, looking up at him with a tired grin.

“I-” Arin started to say, but was quickly interrupted by Brian.

“Make yourself useful, Hanson,” he said sternly, but not unkindly, and Arin took the soft reprimand to heart. Sliding Dan’s free arm around his own shoulder, he took his weight onto himself (spending a lot of energy not thinking about how right Dan felt pressed against him) and freed the Lieutenant to help other injured crewmen.

They slowly made their way towards the med bay, Arin joking with Dan about how lucky he was going to be - being doted on by the nurses and getting extra rations that Arin would be trying to steal - and treasuring every small chuckle that Dan gifted him with. He left his friend in the capable hands of the med bay, reluctant to the point of flirting with insubordination, but the reassurances of his friend in his relative wellness forced back to help with the ongoing crisis.

The second he was relieved from his shift, six hours later, exhausted and weak on his feet, he rushed to the med bay and pleaded his way to Dan’s bedside.  His friend, still looking rather worse for wear, but comfortably lounging on the bright white sheets, gave him a small smile as soon as he entered the private room.

“I’m so sorry, I just got off shift,” Arin breathed out in a rush.

“You look like shit,” Dan huffed out, interrupting him before he could continue. Arin glared at him, but Dan just laughed. “You should go to sleep man, it’s just going to be worse tomorrow. I’ll still be here when you wake up I promise. No one ever died from some cuts and bruises and a sprained ankle.”

Something truly awful must have crossed Arin’s face because Dan immediately looked regretful.

“I’m sorry, I’m a little woozy from the painkillers. Pretty bad taste I guess, just ignore-”

“Dan,” Arin said seriously, stopping the other man’s rambling in its tracks. “This is all my fault.”

There was a silent pause, before Dan finally huffed out, “What?”

Arin collapsed into the empty chair sitting beside the bed.

“It’s all my fault. All I’ve ever done is whine and complain about how fucking boring it always fucking is and begging for something to fucking happen and then something happens and I nearly fucking lost you!” His voice cracked at the end and realized he was nearly shouting. He slid further down in his chair. “You could’ve died,” he whispered, knowing his voice sounded haunted just at the thought, but the mixture of exhaustion and the rapidly approaching adrenaline crash had left him unable to think before he spoke.

Dan stared at him, obviously trying to take in the sudden seriousness of his usually laid-back friend before he finally graced him with a quiet smile. “But, I didn’t.”

Arin nodded, unable to let his gratefulness of that fact overweigh the tremendous guilt that was currently clinging to his heart.

“This isn’t your fault, you idiot,” Dan continued, fondness lacing through his voice. “Shit happens, man, and you didn’t cause this any more than you can change the weather or make the stars fall out of the sky. There’s not a person on this ship who doesn’t want any break from paperwork that they could get, but I bet none of them are sitting around thinking that they are somehow responsible for the Romulans being absolute jerks. It was just bad luck,” he finished softly.

Arin took a deep breath, and it felt like the first one he had taken since he had found out what happened to the landing party.

“Besides,” Dan continued with a rakish grin, and Arin felt his heart melting at the sight, “you complain about everything. Doesn’t make this one thing any more special.”

Dan’s hand was laying on the bed, palm up, and Arin was gripped with the urge to hold it so strong it nearly jerked him forward in his seat. It seemed like such a great, wonderful idea he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t done it the second he walked in the room. Why he hadn’t done it months ago when they’d been sitting so close on the shared couch in the holodeck.

“I don’t know how I’d survive on this damn ship if you weren’t here every day,” Arin blurted out instead. “It wouldn’t just be boring, it’d be fucking excruciating. You make me happy, not just because you’re my friend, but just because you exist and if I never got to see you smile again I just don’t what I’d do with myself.”

There was a stunned silence in the room, only permeated by the sounds of machines beeping in the hallways as both men tried to come to terms with what Arin had just said.

“That was pretty gay, man.”

Arin glared.

“Oh quit being a dumbass and just come over here and kiss me,” Dan finally said, sitting up in his bed.

They shared wide, identical grins before Arin stood up and did as Dan asked.

Joining Starfleet had to have been the best god damn decision of Arin’s life.

[softdarkiplierimagines]

Theories for why Dark is the way he is

Personality wise at least.

Mark gave us Dark’s motive ages ago; He wanted what Mark had without really working for and earning it. Simple motive and personality for a simple creature that was supposed to be clearly seen as evil. But after WKM?, Dark isn’t pure evil, he’s more grey- but I’ll talk about this soon-  but first, we need to acknowledge that Mark has grown as a creator and storyteller. He doesn't just want to make comedy, even if it’s his main focus, he wants to portray death, anger and sadness as such, not just only use them as punch lines anymore, which is why Dark went from twitter poems and eyeliner, to a tortured creature made of ~3 souls/what have you, shoved into  body that never belonged to them in the first place. I’m not saying all of Mark’s skits will be serious, they won't be and not all of WKM? Was serious either, but now he's taking human emotion more seriously in his stories, his making the pain his characters feel have actual weight on them. A better example would be to look at Wilford. He was a slapstick character and everything he did was exaggerated for a punchline, but now he's a mentally broken man and Mark isn’t washing the blood off his hands with a punchline anymore. He killed us and mourned over our dead body then left us dearly calling for his friends what vanished without a trace.

Secondly, with that in mind, we need to look at all past videos with a grain of salt. Both Wilford and Dark have grown a lot, and the past works for them may not truly reflect who they are now/who they're gonna become. The beautiful and bad part of mark's works is that we can see hem grow due to mark’s own growth, but this leaves cannon and “erased cannon” a muddled mess. What is going to be brought back up and be a “Oh god that's actually sad now” moment (The neck cracking) and what’s going to be just funny goofs of the past (The “relax” video in it’s entirety.) is a very hard thing to determine.

Thirdly, Mark has made it clear that Dark will not be a spotless hero “When all the light is gone, all that’s left is dark”and I’m willing to bet that in Mark’s mind, where the story most likely stretches further than what we’ve been able to be given, Dark has grown probably twisted into a monster and not the morally grey vintagiality that he is now. It’s all a matter of the author writing the next chapter for us to read.

Fourthly, these are simply me taking the above into mind and trying to guess how Dark’s character will be developed while assuming Mark will have Dark be morally grey rather than a simple villain.

---

Dark is made out of four things, 3 mind and 1 body. The three minds in a body that all have influence, but in different ways, in a body that belongs to none of them.

Celine is the source of most of the emotions, anger, and behavior, threatening, and personality, manipulative and demanding and Damien is more nuance things, appearance, voice and pronouns. You may argue that Damien's things are important markers of who you are but you can take these traits and dress them up in any face, but when it comes to Dark it’s the personality, not appearance that Mark always talks about. He’s put a big emphasise how Dark acts not how he looks, at first it was most likely to remind us that Dark was a villain, but when the “change” happened, he made Celine have these traits very clearly, not Damien. We can clearly see how they are and how they are, but something that’s more subtle is the house.

It has some sort of intelligence and clearly has supernatural powers, Mark said that it “Didn’t want us to see that room (The detectives note room.) yet. Which is why we never saw it before we went through the weird goopy world/upside down world when it took us to directly to said room.) and a piece of the house is within/part of Dark, which would explains   the “aura”, the rigging, the deadness, etc. I see hr house when it as a limited/mild effect on people- as in they where in its clutches for a few days, it heightens the traits that make you more useful to it, whatever they may be. Damien became more disoriented/unsure of himself. (“I know I should be a leader in this situation but I can’t help but feel lost. It made him unable to gather everyone to band together and figure out what happened.) Colonel became more reckless and trigger happy. (Target practice inside anyone? It made him look less trustworthy.) Abe became more suspicious. (A sane investigation does not end up looking like that room did. It made him on edge and willing to pin the blame on anyone, while leaning to the Colonel.) We became more passive. (We rarely question anything or prosted to people asking us to follow them/we followed people like a lost puppy. Then again we where a device to tell  story so take some salt with this one.)

This bit of the house that’s in Dark can function two ways:

It is the house and the house has it’s own goals.

It’s been warped to become an echo chamber for Celines and Damien’s pain and it’s making them more and more cruel and vengeful.

In both cases it makes sense why the house would want Celine to be the more dominant personality, assuming it’s repressing Damine via heightening Celine, and in either situation it has a goal that a cut throat person is more suited for helping it reach.

Look at it this way: the house possessed Celine when she had her own body so even a fragment of the house could hold MASSIVE sway over their behavior.

-----

Theory 1: Dark’s mind went through a Blender

Mark has said that all that’s left of Damien and Celine is there worst parts of them, now imagine that being heightened by the house's influence. Quite the poison has been brewed and bottled in Dark. But even if it’s the worst parts of them, it’s still Damine and Celine. So what that if there 100% gone, what if the only thing that’s there are mannerisms/behavior that composes the “worst parts of them”. What if Dark isn’t like a fusion with Celine and Damien trying to function while battling, or unwittingly being further poisoned by, the house. He’s just made of there echo’s. This hurts in the sense that they're not fully gone or dead, and they’ll never rest, they’ve just been reduced to something nigh recognizable of the people they once were. Blurred words that were torn up to rewrite a sentence.

Theory 2: An eye for an eye

Dark want’s to take the place of this timeline Mark as compensation for what WKM!Mark did to Damien and Celine. They'll never have the lives they once had but at least it's something. They're drawn to us because they want to recreate the relationship they had with is in the WKM? Timeline, trying to protect us from Mark or a mix of the two.

Theory 3: A Promise is a promise (Making things right.)

Mark has taken Damien's body, and Damien (With the help of Celine) want’s to take a body from a  different timeline Mark, so Damien can have a body of his own again and also take this timeline us’s body to give WKM? Us a body again to because Damien didn’t want to leave us in the mirror, but he was convinced it was the best course of action (By Celine on her own or Celine possessed or influenced by the house is up to you.)But, the House’s influence is making them think it’s the the way to fix things, when really the house wants to take our body in this timeline so it can have a separate host from Dark. What happens to Dark (Damien and Celine) or anyone else is no concern to it.

Theory 4: Mistaken Identity and lack of functioning personal identity

Dark was somehow pushed into our universe and mistakenly believes that our Mark is WKM!Mark and want’s to protect us from him.In this theory Dark is very disoriented and confused, being made of the fragments of roughly 3ish minds doesn't help. His memory of the past is, for lack of a better word, shot, and he functions by impulsive feelings. Mark = Bad Us = Good, but also guilt/shame Himself = Suave/collected and he’s trying to be the person he once was, but he's unstable now and can’t be what he once was, so that's why he has a shell/why it cracks. Dark is lying to himself/trying to be someone who’s been long dead by putting prices of them and two other together in a duct tape and gulgun fashion. The only other person who he has a strong bond with is likely Wolford, and he’s mental health and grip on reality are clearly severy damaged as well. In this theory Damine and Celine are also not really people anymore.

Theory 5: Dark isn’t an actual conscious begin.

Dark isn’t his own person, it’s an empty name for husk being piloted by two angry and grieving people who made a vow to destroy Mark in every timeline no matter the cost.

[the-e4b]

I have a very good inkling on who this anon might be. And if it’s true what I’m thinking then you just lowered yourself immensely in my regards of respect. I have only one watcher on DA that knows and criticized me on my statuses (because those are private to watchers) AND is a fan of Peet. 

And no, there were no “allegations of tracing”. You saw the pictures yourself in an earlier post. They might not be 100% traced but you can’t deny that almost 90% of the picture was. Then there is also the fact that this artist was spreading rumors about me harassing others and I gave my watchers hard evidence that it was not me who was harassing anyone. Granted, I was no angel but I didn’t do anything wrong in the aspect of harassment. And I shared my comments together with that hard evidence so I left NOTHING out of that whole ordeal.

And that brings me to the next thing: We do not make empty accusations. We have proof for those. Screenshots and archived links, might I add. You know what those are? Those are links that come directly from the source and stay on the internet for as long as the internet exists.

Peet was throwing some things out of the window lately regarding some “lies and slander” we were throwing at it. Shall we begin?

Let’s start with the most important thing of all, the pedophilia accusations. No, it’s not because you have a relationship of a 47yo with a 24yo or because you feature a pedophile being institutionalized. It’s because you had a scene written in your original story (which you deftly removed after being pointed out) that had a 14 year old Scootaloo having wild sex with a fully grown, mentally unstable Rainbow Dash. https://archive.fo/pd2N9 (last point on Trivia if you scroll down) and like I said, the internet never forgets: https://fimfetch.net/story/170125/stockholm?html#14 HUGE NSFW WARNING!!! (If you scroll through starting from where the link leads you, you will come across a horizontal line that’s followed by a part entirely written in cursive, that’s the “juicy stuff”)  Which also brings us to the fact that Peet was manipulating its audience to draw R34 art of a minor (at the time) because she disagreed with a ship on Tumblr. https://archive.is/tz299 

Second accusation: The fact that Peet says that it never told anyone to kill themselves (this one’s not that hard to debunk, just go check its privatized twitter) https://archive.fo/Lm5aS . Also check Josh’s “response to Peet” video. In the description you’ll find tons of “Kill republicans” archives.

Third accusation: the sockpuppet accounts. Well, please, don’t let ME explain myself, let me show you someone who can, an admin of a site where Peet had several sockpuppet accounts and was banned for it. 

https://derpibooru.org/434414#comment_1859030 

Now the only accusation I’m not going to throw is Tara. Tara is allegedly a girlfriend that Peet made up and then was thrown into prison for owning child porn. I would love to proof that but unfortunately there is too less proof for this fact to hold. The only thing we know is that the avatar she used on several sites was a picture found on Google. And that there were a lot of suspicious things going on at that time to make us believe that Tara was a fake persona of Peet. (But like I said, no hard proof unfortunately).

Last thing before I pass the torch to my fellow mods: See Peet, we make only accusations that have legit proof and when WE are accused of something we don’t do damage control or pretend it never happened (a.i. delete our posts or block the people who criticize us). When we are accused of sth we will own up to it if it’s true or debunk it with hard facts. Not write endless paragraphs turning around the same point but never adressing the actual point.

The one throwing a temper tantrum when contradicted and throwing their toys out of the pram is not us, deary. It’s you.

- SM

What we have here as my co-mod eloquently stated is a response to an ask from an anonymous watcher who had been quite the bother to us in the past who watched our Space Mare… or it could be a former subject on the blog who googled her up to find some juicy dirt. I wanted to talk about my thoughts on a certain comment in the response talking about our ‘recent’ post… I think we’ve had more asks since that one you singled ouyt

As DP said in a previous ask, if Peet were to change and stop breaking people down, we would back off right here

I said something similar when we received an ask corresponding to the last post over here suggesting I wouldn’t remove the screencaps and archives, keeping them as a reminder of not becoming your on-air persona. Peets felt it would be better if “I would pretend nothing happened and keep up the posts…”

I’m confused here, what do you mean ‘nothing happened’? This blog is merely a catalogue of some of the worst individuals in the fan base and you are on the way to being the worst, you’re tied with a man who hid his niece’s Twilight Sparkle toy because he believed Alicorn Twilight Sparkle would make women regress back to the 50’s way of social norms.

We want people to learn from these footnotes of how to better themselves and try not to let history repeat itself because the future belongs to the next generation and they shouldn’t follow down the same path as we have to emotional oblivion.

-JoJo

Figured I’d add my two cents as well (and keeping myself calm by not flying into the usual swearing rage to chill-hop).

It’s amusing that Jerry once again pulls the political card on the blog and says we’re right-leaning.

Oh sure, coming from the person who’s so infamously left that even 4chan would cringe at, example?

Or use a tragedy like a shooting as his soapbox and rage to the echo chamber he calls his tumblr:

Clearly Jerry knows how America works as a country. It’s called research Jerry, sweetie. Learn it!

As we’ve made clear on this blog, we’re not at all interested in politics, regardless of what the ever screechy DisneyMaster once accused us of. I can’t speak for my friends on their political view but I’ve stated I stopped caring for political topics due to how abrasive people turn over them. And while the blog has made a few political posts, it’s rare and it’s always in a neutral stance.

Meanwile Jerry over there goes so political left that it’s not even funny, such as:

Stating the Republican Party only panders to “neo-nazis”,”the KKK”, and the “big stupid masses”.

Screeching that Donald Trump should be killed.

Saying Pence should also be killed.

STILL thinking the Electoral Collage doesn’t work because “WAH HILARY SHOULD HAVE WON!”

Blaming the Orlando shooting on Republicans because “THEY AGAINST LGBT!!!”.

And of course the one that struck a nerve:

“If you don’t enforce politics in your reviews, you are a terrible critic”

If that’s the fucking case, then the late Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel sucked at making movie reviews.

In all honesty, that post might as well be Jerry again throwing a fit because there are people out there who don’t like his actions and will critique him for it.

It’s lovely to see the sodium each time Jerry focuses his time yelling at his detractors than his content.

…Then again, that’d be considered a saving grace considering his content is as bad as his rage inducing posts on tumblr.

But the archived postd don’t lie. But we’re still gonna get a fucking “KNOB” post. I can feel it.

- deafpony

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

The Vindication of Venom Part 10: Diving Deeper

Part 9

Part 11

We’ve established that Brock was a delusional psychotic but there is in fact much more to his psychology that has to examined if we are to address the criticism in question.

 ·         Eddie Brock’s motivations for hating Spider-Man are weak and make no sense

Whether you believe Brock was always delusional or that his delusions began upon the loss of his career, it wasn’t as though he was one symbiote away from being the homicidal maniac we meet in ASM #300.

  Indeed, it is possible to argue that Brock was not truly mentally unstable at the time that he began blaming Spider-Man for his job loss, merely that he was in denial over it being his fault.* However whether you believe that or not there is no doubt that he was clearly mentally unstable and truly delusional by the time the symbiote found him, and that it was in this state that they gave birth to Venom.

 Brock came to be in this disturbed state not so much because of the loss of his job in and of itself, but from the life he led in response to his ruined career. It was this that truly drove him into the depths of depravity and cemented his delusions along with his burning hatred of Spider-Man.

 For starters Brock’s life fell apart, which would already put a massive strain on anyone’s mind. This would be an especially big blow if we believe that he really did have a prestigious career as he claimed and was now facing accusations on ethical grounds. However to merely survive he had to demean himself to trite articles about trivial matters such as celebrity scandals. This would give his ego, self-esteem and general mental stability another blow. Again this would’ve hit home even harder if you run with the idea that he had begun as successful and respected news journalist to a major metropolitan newspaper.

 One might also argue that long-term exposure to such seedy material could also have poisoned (if you’ll pardon the pun) Brock in regards to his mental health. This is not dissimilar to how police officers exposed to horrific crimes can be mentally affected by what they see. The same can be true of soldiers.** Brock even touches on this notion when he says: 

And the garbage I was forced to write began to rot my soul.

 Not helping matters was the apparent isolation Brock experienced. I don’t just mean being shunned by his colleagues (or as we later find out, by his ex-wife and father) I mean looking at the flashback images they paint a picture of Brock as truly having no one in his life. No friends, no other colleagues, nobody, at least nobody he’d have any kind of comforting connection to. The impression given is that he was just by himself doing little except furiously exercising, writing mean spirited drivel, and ruminating upon his misfortunes and the causes of them, all of which is obviously unhealthy.

 When in such a dark place in his life and surrounded by little but ‘venomous’ articles and his own frustrated and tormented thoughts (many of which focused upon hating Spider-Man) Brock’s mind likely magnified his negative feelings. In doing so he reinforced his beliefs and by extension exacerbated the mental instability he was suffering from; almost like a psychological echo chamber. If I am not mistaken, in psychology this would be referred to as ‘positive reinforcement’, although the things it is positively reinforcing are negative thoughts and behaviours.

 This is likely the reason that all of Brock’s exercise didn’t  relieve his stress. And given just how much muscle he had, he was he was obviously doing a lot of exercise, giving us an indication of just how  incredibly stressed, frustrated and otherwise negative he was.

 Indeed the degree to which Brock exercised, the way he describes violently hurting Spider-Man and the wall of news clippings about Spidey he possessed speaks to someone with an obvious unhealthy obsession. Brock again admits as much about this when he claims the headlines on his wall ‘fed his hatred’, as much a constant reminder of what he’d lost as his seething hatred for Spider-Man.

 Essentially Brock was in a vicious cycle that simultaneously made him more and more mentally unstable and reinforced his irrational delusions about himself and his hatred for the Wall-Crawler. Add on a Catholic upbringing that seems to have provided a problematic way for Brock to contextualize the world and you have a recipe for disaster.

 And at first that disaster took the form of Brock seriously considering suicide, which truly speaks to how mentally fragile he really was at the point where he encountered the symbiote.

 Is it honestly any wonder that someone under these conditions might irrationally blame someone else for their misfortunes and then fan the flame of that blame into an obsessive hatred?

 I’ll go a step further. Does this truly make for such a ‘weak’ motivation from a creative point of view?

There are other cases real and fictional that echo Brock’s actions, at least as far as his irrational delusions and scapegoating blame are concerned.

 In the excellent animated television series Gargoyles (courtesy of Greg Weisman, of Spectacular Spider-Man and Young Justice fame), the villainess Demona seeks to give her people (the eponymous gargoyle creatures) dominion over the castle they share with medieval humans, whom she has little love for. To this end she arranges for the castle to be invaded by Vikings, the intention being that they would rid the castle of the humans leaving her people in peace. 

However, things go awry and her own people wind up massacred. Whilst initially seeming to blame herself, she quickly shifts all the blame she quickly shifts all blame onto the humans who actually perpetrated the massacre and by extension all humanity. She accepted little-no responsibility as the true instigator of her people’s demise, spending centuries blaming others.

Both Emil Gregg and Stan Carter themselves in fact present cases of delusional and mentally unstable individuals. 

From a sane and rational point of view anyone looking at either character must ask why precisely Gregg would ever believe himself to be a mass murderer when he has no evidence of that beyond hearing plans for some attacks that eventually took place. 

And in Carter’s case, why would he think it was a good idea to kill people merely because they were soft on crime, especially when he was himself a police officer and could probably be tougher on crime himself in various ways?

Well in the former’s case ‘he was crazy’ (in what way I do not recall ever being specified) and in the latter’s he was also mentally ill due to experimental drugs.

In fact at one point during the Death of Jean DeWolff arc, the story goes out of it’s way to point out how Sin Eater is a ‘religious lunatic’. It presents Carter himself basically outright stating that his rationale for killing only makes sense to himself. He does this whilst confessing to a Priest, claiming his actions have religious righteousness behind them. Then he kills said priest, which one would imagine is at least a little hypocritical of him. 

Retroactively the same came be said of Carter’s murder of Jean DeWolff herself. In a sequel story called ‘the Return of Sin Eater’, Peter David (author of the original story) had Carter claim that he and Jean were lovers. 

It is arguable that this was a claim born of Carter’s disturbed mind. However if taken at face value Carter’s decision to kill someone he cared about (maybe even loved) seems rather confusing from a rational point of view.

Additionally Gregg was on some level aware that the priest in question was a target for murder and admitted he tried to warn him but did so in a vague, indirect way, claiming he couldn’t bring himself to confess. Isn’t this arguably just a little illogical on his part?

En masse readers of the time and later years have accepted Gregg and Carter’s motivations as perfectly valid for their actions. Indeed the story that both characters were vital parts of (‘The Death of Jean DeWolff’) has been acclaimed since its publication in the mid-1980s.

Yet despite both of them being directly referenced in Venom’s origin, Eddie Brock similarly being mentally unstable and that instability being inherently linked to his hatred of Spidey, Venom’s origin and motives are regarded as an unacceptably weak. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

In fact there are villains a plenty in superhero fiction who, like Brock, take up a vendetta against people for reasons which boil down to them looking for someone to blame and/or their own issues; which can include mental instability.

Perhaps the prime examples from the Spider-Man franchise are J. Jonah Jameson, Harry Osborn and Norman Osborn, all generally popular characters.

Jameson of course hinges a lot of his career and reputation on the ruination, capture or sometimes even death of Spider-Man to the point of where it is truly irrational. There has never been a truly definitive answer on that one and the answers we have gotten boil down to Jonah having serious issues. But these answers don’t make Jonah’s actions any less irrational or unreasonable. Especially when he is literally creating super villains like the Scorpion to capture someone he simply doesn’t like for no valid reason.

It is curious how readers accept one person with a flattop haircut having a seething and irrational hatred for Spider-Man but not another one. Especially when that other one is so over the edge that he wants to violently murder the wall-crawler and considered suicide?

Harry Osborn of course was a drug addict in his youth, but as we later found out was also himself in denial (and possibly delusional) about the nature of his upbringing. Whilst he’d believed for years that he and his father had a friendly relationship flashbacks revealed that to not be the case. Norman Osborn was at times distant and at other times critical and abusive.

In the iconic Amazing Spider-Man #122 Harry witnessed the ‘final’ battle between Spider-Man and his father Norman Osborn/the green Goblin, wherein the latter tried to impale Spidey in the back with a glider. Of course Spider-Man dodged thanks to his Spider Sense and Norman was seemingly killed instead.

Despite witnessing this scene (and being aware of his father’s murder of his friend Gwen Stacy) Harry unabashedly blamed Spider-Man  for his father’s death. Initially the story culminated in Harry being taken to a mental institution and despite recovering, in later life he relapsed and was clearly mentally unstable.

In Norman’s case he was explicitly implied to be insane in ASM #40.

Later in ASM #121 Norman blames Harry’s drug problems not on Harry himself, nor on his own failure as a father, but on Harry’s friends, especially Peter.

In the 1990s one shot ‘the Osborn Journal’ Norman does something similar. Not only does he blame Mary Jane  for Harry’s drug problems, but he also blames Peter for driving Harry to his death. Harry had used a new version of the strength enhancing Goblin formula that proved toxic to his system. Norman was fully aware of these facts and yet instead of attributing blame to himself or Harry he blamed Peter Parker.

In both cases we have clearly mentally unhinged individuals who are blaming Peter Parker for bad things in their life which rationally it is at best difficult to truly hold him accountable to.***

J.R. Fettinger (whom I’ve cited before in this series) not only finds these motives for both characters logical, but also  (rightly) celebrates Norman Osborn as a great and complex villain character. He is not alone as I’ve yet to encounter anyone who finds these motivations illogical or examples of poor writing. But despite Venom being far from dissimilar to either character Fettinger and other readers still hold him in contempt on both counts.

To be fair, their problems with the character and issue as a whole might lie less with recognizing Brock’s mental instability and more with his seemingly flimsy reasons for targeting Spider-Man specifically.

That’s okay though, because that’s the subject of the next instalment.

*I find this very unlikely personally. I think Brock was delusional to some degree when he lost his job and just got worse.

**This is partially why alcoholism and other substance abuses can be prevalence among the police officers and soldiers.

***I admit that Norman and Harry Osborn’s vendettas against Spider-Man began in the 1960s-1970s when writing standards for comics were not what they were by the time ASM #300 was published. However both characters had revivals as villains in the 1990s and those old vendettas revisited and expanded. 

P.S. The symbiote’s interactions with Brock and it’s unnatural presence as a part of his mind and body probably wasn’t going to help his state of mind given it’s fragility at that point in time. 

Part 9

Part 11

[yearsblog]

t’s 11am in a slightly dilapidated rehearsal room on a King’s Cross side street, and I can just about overhear a discussion in which Dominic Boyce, the affable drummer of psychedelic indie-pop troupe Peace, is considering returning a recently purchased pair of vegan sandals. “In hindsight, maybe I should keep them and commit to it,” he says at one point. “Maybe they’d be good for Glastonbury. Give the people what they want.”

Today, Boyce is joined by a speedily assembled who’s who – quite literally in some cases – of indie, rehearsing for Wednesday night’s NME awards, where they will perform the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter, and Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth. Rallied by the NME, the group will be joined on the night by Charli XCX, who right now is somewhere over the Atlantic, but today consists of Boyce and Sam and Harry Koisser from Peace, Olly Alexander from Years & Years, Pixie Geldof, Isaac Holman from Slaves, Izzy Baxter from Black Honey, Austin Williams and Cavan McCarthy from Swim Deep, and Joe Falconer from Circa Waves.

While you may not be overly familiar with each act’s entire back catalogue, everyone in the room today is very committed to raising money for refugees, and that’s a positive and wonderful thing. The plan is that anyone watching the performance online – or reading an article about its rehearsal – can text REFU to 70700 to donate £5 to the British charity Help Refugees. It’s the sort of thing that routinely prompts a kneejerk sneer, but it’s a simple and effective move and knees can’t sneer anyway because of biology. The morning moves slowly with dramatic highlights including a broken keyboard stand, a leaking battery, Harry Koisser being unable to see the colour red, and an absence of maracas. At one point, Baxter is handed a red, gold and green guitar strap. “I’m too white to wear that,” she observes, although it’s fair to say this is one room in London where it’s impossible to be too white for anything.

After a run-through of the songs and lunch in the pizza place across the road, we’re joined by the NME editor, Mike Williams, who has turned up to check on progress. I ask him whether this whole supergroup business might be better with a few more famous people.

“That’s a bit of a mean question,” he says. “We haven’t even approached the Dave Grohls and Lady Gagas of this world – we wanted it to be in the spirit of what Bands 4 Refugees were already doing. It wouldn’t have been right for NME to storm in and swap them out for big American artists.”

Asked to clarify the message that he’s hoping to send out by drawing awareness to the refugee crisis during the NME awards, Williams adds: “Politicians and people with influential voices are being irresponsible with their words and changing the views of otherwise decent people. There’s a negative and demonised view of vulnerable people not that different from us who have been badly affected by wars and terror attacks. We want to show a bit of the reality.”

It’s cheering – but also a bit of a rum old do – that in the current climate, the first major creative statement from the global music community has come in the form of the new Katy Perry single, Chained to the Rhythm, a song about echo chambers and numbness that she has described as “purposeful pop”. But isn’t it also frustrating that the best song choices for Wednesday night’s show are both more than 50 years old?

“A song like Gimme Shelter is incredibly powerful and the message will resonate with everyone in the room on the night and watching on Facebook Live,” Williams says. “That said, bands have told me in the past they don’t want to speak out because the internet is so unforgiving, but it feels like people have got to get over that now.”

Alexander chooses his words either far more carefully or far less carefully, depending on how you look at it. “The message I’d give Theresa May is that she should resign and take her entire cabinet with her,” he says. “Someone else should have a chance now. There’s lots of talk of Clive Lewis of late, isn’t there? Is he good? I don’t know. Maybe he’s just young and a bit hot.”

Alexander initially felt wary about becoming involved in Bands 4 Refugees. “A little bit of me always worries about the perceived vanity of ‘I’m supporting a cause’, but worrying what people think actually is a vanity problem,” he says. Currently midway through writing Years & Years’ second album, he acknowledges the pressure to write about world events. “It feels like that choice is more important now than it was a couple of years ago,” he says. “You could write a song about love, and people would go: ‘We’re living in a dumpster fire apocalypse and this is what you’ve chosen to write about?’”

A recent writing session helped put things in perspective. “I felt like I didn’t want to write about politics simply because I felt like I should, but then last week I wrote a song with the Pet Shop Boys. It’s inspired by a fairground in Margate called Dreamland, but while I was writing it, Neil Tennant said to me: ‘This makes sense right now with Trump closing the borders,’ and the song became something that touched on what’s going on in the world. I’d write lyrics and he’d say: ‘No, it needs to be more direct.’ He’d take a simple line and interject a subversive political statement. That’s the challenge as a pop writer, to do both at once.”

Baxter is more plain: “It’s important not to be like fucking Bono going: ‘You should do this.’ As an artist, you don’t have to answer all the questions, but you can still pose them.”

Most of today’s lineup has been assembled by Koisser, and while he’s keen not to take credit for dragging the other artists here (“All I’ll say is that I’ve probably been the most annoying person”), he hopes he can help start a bigger conversation among artists. “I’d like someone who’s a lot more important than us to see it and be inspired to do something gigantic on a level we can’t,” he says. Of course, if – meanness alert! – today’s supergroup did indeed want some more famous people, it might have made sense to ask for guidance from someone with experience in that field. Someone with a penchant for calling up superstars and getting them in a room in order to knock out a charity banger.

I mean, I wonder out loud, does anyone here today have any such contacts? It’s hard to know where to start, really. Isn’t it, Pixie Geldof?

“One or two names come to mind,” she smiles, a little wearily. “Yes, something like that may have happened before. And, yes, I see where you’re going with that. I don’t know what his plans are, but, yeah, I mean ... Band Aid is a Christmas song. Although I do like listening to the Tammy Wynette Christmas album throughout the year.” She’s clearly warming to the idea. “OK!” she eventually says. “I’ll have a word. Maybe. Oh, I don’t know.”

Back in the rehearsal room, Holman is handing out lollipops and, with each new vocalist added to the song, Gimme Shelter is sounding more and more unstable, like a pop Buckaroo. But by 5pm, it’s sounding pretty good. At one point, the band stops to debate whether the audience will clap along during the breakdown in For What It’s Worth. “Ignore the tables,” is one suggestion. “They’ll be too busy with their free dinners.” Someone else offers: “It all depends on how drunk they are.”

The group are limited to performing a faithful rendition of at least one of their chosen songs, a decision explained when I put it to Koisser that a tropical house version of Gimme Shelter might have made more impact in 2017. He says they needed the Rolling Stones’ approval to perform the song, “and there’s a thing that says you’re not allowed to change the genre or style. It has to be the same arrangement, structure, genre – and you can’t change the lyrics. Even if we wanted to do a tropical house version – and trust me, that went through my mind – we wouldn’t be able to.”

In the past, Mick Jagger has described Gimme Shelter as “a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. It’s apocalypse.” I pull Boyce to one side and ask: is the world about to end? He thinks for a while.

“I hope not,” he says eventually. “But it feels like the start of the end of something.”

The end of what?

“Humanity?”

He’s starting to look a bit troubled. “I mean I’m hoping it’s not,” he clarifies. “But something’s about to snap. It would be good to give it all another go, wouldn’t it? Start afresh.”

He’s sounding quite chipper about the prospect of life as we know it coming to an end. In fairness, the prospect of global apocalypse isn’t exactly unappealing these days. It would be great if that could wait until after the NME awards, though.

[thegraydivide]

DGM Week || Day 2

Lonely Boy

People were scared of him.  Either they’d been involved in cleaning up the ruins of Lab 6 or they had heard stories from those who had.  Yu felt no guilt in making the fear worse.  He was trapped with these people.  He wanted them to feel caged in with him too.

The only ones who weren’t frightened of him where the remnants of Chan family and Marie.  They just acted sad and guilty and he hated them all.  Marie’s company was the easiest to bear...but once he was rehabilitated, he’d been sent away to fight again.

Yu had not been happy when that happened.  Marie hadn’t been a Second Exorcist...but he could have been.  He’d almost been placed in one of the cold birthing pits and that counted for something to Yu. 

He could synchronize with his Innocence, but they weren’t happy about its natural shape and were reforming it into something more ‘appropriate’.  He also had all sorts of stupid and idiotic lessons to learn.  He had to learn a language called Japanese.  He had to learn the customs of the same land the language was from.  When he asked why, they told him it was because his body was modeled to appear as if he was from Japan.  So he had to learn to act like he was from there too.

Yu didn’t enjoy the learning.  Why they thought it was important when he was going to live and die (and revive and do it all over again until his curse failed) on the battlefield and probably never really need to know that much about Japan, he couldn’t understand.  Most days, he tried to learn, because that was the quickest avenue to being able to leave.

Today was not a good day, though.  The Chans had been especially pathetic in their guilt and what little patience he possessed after putting up with them evaporated within the first few minutes of the language lesson being foisted onto him.  He felt cold despite the anger burning in his chest.

He wanted Marie.  He couldn’t have Alma and he couldn’t really have Marie either, but Marie was alive, at least. Alma was dead.  Dead and never coming back and the cold feeling in his chest was too much.

Yu feigned being physically sick (which shouldn’t have worked but the people were idiots enough to forget he couldn’t even get food poisoning) and knocked his tutor out when the woman got close enough to hit.  Then he ran.  He was chased, but few were daring enough to hinder him as he passed.

Technically, there was no where he could go to hide.  The Guardian God of Asia HQ saw everywhere, but she’d let him go undiscovered sometimes. Never for long, but long enough he’d noticed.

Yu managed to get into a darkened lab room before anyone chasing him saw.  He scanned the room and wrinkled his nose at the clutter.  It looked like this was some forgotten storage for random junk.  He hated labs, but they were usually better places to hide because everyone knew how much he hated them.

He cautiously stepped around all the paper stacks and littered beakers and other equipment. Knocking over anything would be a dead give away to his presence.  He opened a cabinet beneath a sink and cautiously removed just enough for him to sit in a ball.  Then he thought better of it and removed everything which could be dangerous.  Which was actually everything.  He doubted extra clutter on the floor and other surfaces would be noticeable.  He could stretch out and not worry about knocking anything over.

He lay there in the dark for nearly five minutes before he heard the door open.  Yu stilled and held his breath.

“Lee?”

Yu’s pathetic imitation of a heart came about close to stopping as it ever could.  Had there been a person in here?  Why hadn’t he noticed?

“Lee!” the voice shouted.  “Wake up, Lee!”

Whoever at the door probably didn’t want to try and pass through the chaos on the floor.  Yu had managed it, but maybe only because he was still small.

There was a muffled curse from the door and Yu heard something being thrown.

“Ow!” a new voice said. “What was that for, Yuen?”

“We’re looking for Yu,” Yuen sounded put on.  “The Second Exorcist.  You’ve seen his picture.  Have you seen him?  He broke his tutor’s nose and ran out on her....”

“No, I haven’t,” Lee replied.  “No one’s come in either.  You can tell.”

Yu stiffened.  This Lee guy would have to know there was a lot more clutter around the sink than there had been before.  Surely, the scientist would realize someone had, in fact, entered the room.

“If you do see him, catch him and bring him back to the library,” Yuen said.

“...I can make the attempt,” Lee said, “but I doubt I’ll see him.  I’ve heard Yu hates the labs.”

“He hides in them, sometimes, but its not often.”

“Well, he can’t be in here.”

“Yeah, okay.  Toss me my shoe back, will you, Lee?”

Yu heard the shoe being tossed back through the air.

“You didn’t need to throw anything at me,” Lee said, voice practically a whine.

“You wouldn’t wake up!”

The door closed, but Yu didn’t relax, because he could hear the scientist moving around.  He’d been too distraught to notice there was someone in the room when he came in.

Supid, he berated himself, pressing his face against his arms.  So stupid.

The footsteps were right outside of the cabinet now.  Yu didn’t want to be caught, not right now.  He could handle the scolding later, but not now.  He felt too awful right now.  Everything was terrible and he knew it would only get worse.

The cabinet door creaked open and Yu tensed, ready for a hand to grab the back of his clothing and haul him out.

Only it didn’t happen.  Instead, something soft was placed on top of his head, the cabinet door closed and the footsteps went away.  Tentatively, he reached up to touch the object.  It was a folded blanket.

Yu’s body went slack from the confusion and used the blanket to muffle the confused laughter which came out of his throat.  The laughter dissolved into tears and he tried to silence the sobs.  Eventually, he fell asleep.

He woke up to a door opening later.

“Lee, are you sure you haven’t seen Yu at all?”  Yuen’s voice.  “We can’t find him anywhere.”

“I’ve been in here, with only Jerry for company at lunch,” Lee complained.  “I’m busy, Yuen.  These blueprints won’t draw themselves.”

“I’m sorry, Lee, really.  We’ve even checked the ruins of Lab 6 and he isn’t there.”

“There’s a lot of old, unused tunnels around here though,” Lee said.  “Fou’s priorities are on the inhabited parts, aren’t they?”

“...That’s true...,” Yuen said.  “He’s been told those areas are unstable though.”

“If he was frustrated enough, he might be desperate enough to try down there to find some solitude,” Lee replied.

How long had Yu been sleeping? 

“I’ll suggest it to the others, then.”

The door closed and there was a long silence.  Lee suddenly spoke, “You know, it won’t be much longer before they have Bak order Fou to pinpoint your precise location.”

Which was was true enough.  He pushed open the cabinet door and crawled out carefully, clutching the blanket to his chest.

Lee was a tired bespectacled man who looked around Bak’s age, with long black hair pulled into a messy tail.  He wasn’t looking at Yu, instead he was looking at his work.

“You let me hide,” Yu remarked slowly.

“...You looked like you needed it,” Lee said.  “They don’t seem to give Exorcists much breaks though.”

“Never,” Yu agreed.  In Lab 6, the sync tests had occurred every day for hours and hours.

“I try to work around the clock myself,” Lee said.  He lifted a mug of something to his lips, but grimaced and set it down.  “Doesn’t seem fair otherwise.”

“Why would you care about fair?”

“My little sister is an Exorcist.”

Yu stared silently.  There wasn’t really anything he could say to that.

“If she doesn’t get to have breaks, I shouldn’t either.”

Yu stared some more and then looked to his feet.  He shouldn’t stay here much longer.  And he didn’t know what to say anyways.  He wasn’t any good at conversing with people.

“Go ahead an leave the blanket in the cabinet, if you want.  I’ll just say it was lost to an accident.  Wouldn’t be the first one either.”

Yu’s head snapped up in shock, “Huh?”

Lee looked up at him, a thin smile on his lips.  “Leave the blanket under the sink, Yu.  When you really need it, it’ll be there."

Yu stared at Lee, but slowly set the blanket down into the cabinet and closed the door.  He wasn’t sure he believed the man and he was careful about making his way across the cluttered floor to the door.  He paused, briefly, to look back at the scientist.

Which was when he saw a set of headphones perched on the edge of the desk.  Yu stilled and stared, eyes flickering between the headphones and Lee.  Marie had been given a similar set during his rehabilitation.  They filtered out echos and the like.  Marie had been able to pinpoint the source of sounds even in the big echoing chambers of the Asia HQ with far greater accuracy than before he’d had them.

Had Lee made them?

Yu couldn’t bring himself to ask.  He slipped out the door before Lee could call him on it.  He managed to avoid anyone for five halls before he literally ran into someone when he ducked around a corner.  He let himself be dragged away and barely listened to the lecture.  He apologized to his tutor when they told him but only because he didn’t want to be threatened with worse punishments than a long list of inane chores around the HQ.

Yu decided it would be better to put Lee out of  his thoughts.  He couldn’t afford to trust the man, even if he had a sister who was an Exorcist and even if he had made Marie’s headphones.  He hated scientists.

Despite it all, some weeks later when everything got too much and the weight of being alone seemed like it was trying to freeze him from the inside out, Yu found himself outside of Lee’s laboratory with Mugen in hand.  He had slipped away quietly this time, instead of making a break for it.  He should’ve been in the training room with his Innocence and that was something they usually left him alone for because it was one of the few things he normally didn’t ditch - and why he’d picked up the katana from Zhu Mei at all.  It might be awhile before he was missed.

He slipped inside the room and looked over to the desk.  Lee seemed to be sleeping, head propped up on his hand.  He looked as exhausted as the day Yu had met him.

He crept over to the sink and crawled inside.  It had been padded with more blankets.  There was even a pillow.  Yu put Mugen down, blade edge facing the wall and simply lay there in the dark.

He might have been alone under the sink, but he didn’t feel quite so cold anymore.