#chock dort

[orcusivanth]

Shock dart

[wordsandrobots]

I just don't get it.

I've been dwelling all day on the times I've seen someone claim/state that the characterisation in Iron-Blooded Orphans Season 2 is inconsistent with Season 1 and I still can't understand how people get to that conclusion. Clearly they do. But everything about S2 reads to me as a really straightforward acceleration of the flaws established in S1, and we know from the writing side, the intention was always to have this end in tragedy, even if the timescale changed. (Which, to be clear, is something I think was entirely to the show's benefit, allowing for a midway 'hope spot' where everything works out by the skin of its teeth, driving everyone to greater levels of reckless confidence.)

Most of the major personality rug-pulls happen by the time we hit the build-up to the climax of S1. We go from seeing Orga in his element -- the charismatic, clever military leader taking control of a miserable situation for the sake of his comrades -- to seeing what he's like in the wider world -- winging it, latching on to new ideas like a limpet, chasing the biggest rewards as fast as he can -- to seeing what's underneath it -- his awe/fear of Mika, his inability to do what's smart in the face of what his friends want, and the way he crumbles under the weight of casualties before stubbornly keeping onwards in an effort to turn the loss into a meaningful sacrifice. There is a straight line from the Dort Colonies where Orga gets pressured into becoming involved, to the point everyone insists on going after Jasley, to what happens in the middle of the battle with the Arianrhod Fleet. It's practically the same scene three times over with the desperation on Orga's face dialled up each time.

Same for the others. Despite his light-hearted presentation, Shino is deeply affected by his friends' deaths and commits himself to fighting so they don't have to, ego driving him to do reckless shit that doesn't quite work. Gaelio is a prideful dick who, while he has various good instincts, ultimately acts based on his emotional reactions alone. Hell, Mikazuki is literally introduced firing a gun that knocks him clean off his feet, his body too frail to withstand the violence he's committing on behalf of Orga, who watches with a mix of terror and amazement, that morphs into a teeth-clenched determination to keep going -- because what else do you do when faced with *that* level of devotion at your command?

McGillis is the only one where I can kind of grasp why it would seem inconsistent, because the reveals about the exact shape of his past are left to the back half of S2, and the twist that he was rooting his entire world-view in childish mythology is (deliberately) dissonant with his ruthless manipulation of the rest of the cast. But, like -- he treats Tekkadan as this amazing, miraculous event from the word go. He is heavily invested in imagery (around them, around Kudelia, around the Gundams) and waffles on endlessly about the Calamity War. His wearing of a mask is explicitly framed as playing dress-up, in which he takes a giddy delight. The revelations set all this in a new light, sure. They're hardly inconsistent with it. Not in a show chock full of people caught up in their own ideas about other people and what a better world would mean.

My point is, Iron-Blooded Orphans is about messed-up people in shitty situations making actively terrible life choices because they're trapped inside the event horizons of their own trauma. It is about everyone crushed by indifferent systems of power, shouting loud and proud that they are human beings with hopes and dreams and loves and fears, and smashing them to pieces regardless because that is what *happens* in an unjust world. It runs on its characters' flaws, like any good tragedy, on their flawed reactions to the very real problems they struggle against. Season 2 is an escalating series of runaway trains, each crisis shaping the reaction to the next in worse and worse ways. I could spend ages breaking down how it goes from Tekkadan at the peak of its ability to brazen through problems on sheer guts, to their strength actively working against them even when they are saving the world with it, to where it ends, a tragic, bittersweet peace that, as cynically as it could be read, still contains small triumphs.

At no point does it seem to me to be anything less than extremely clear and consistent about what it is saying. I've had people comment on my fic saying I've fixed the characterisation for them, and I have to state openly, that is not what I thought I was doing! I'm just taking what I saw in the series and extrapolating from it. There *are* parts where I've added stuff, to fill in the gaps you need to when you're making secondary characters into leads. But I know which bits I made up whole-cloth and, well, maybe I'm fooling myself but I don't think I ever had to introduce something to explain anyone's actions in the series itself.

Anyway, sorry for waffling on so long. Please don't take this as me calling anyone daft for where they landed on IBO, it's just that these reactions always make me twitch and wonder if I've hallucinated something over a gap somewhere. Then I go back to all the times Orga rides rough-shod over Biscuit's good advice and -- no! No, the text very firmly set up why this all goes horribly wrong and pays off each and every point like the world's most appalling check-list! You are 100% free to not enjoy that, but it's clearly working as intended

[baleboste]

Il y a une petite qui est dans l'autre classe de ce2 qui m'avait l'air discrète, timide et toute mignonne jusqu'à ce que je constate qu'elle avait fait pleurer sa copine en classe soi-disant parce qu'elle la recopiait. Elle est mauvaise en fait !