#except for the part where an oppressive system that in a good story would have been changed/fixed/altered/removed stays in power in the

[its-just-hyper]

In anticipation for the ending of my hero academia, I gotta say: man, is anyone remembering that one time that one beloved book series about a wizarding school ended with the flawed government staying exactly the same, everyone having kids and naming them after killed off characters, and the protagonist becoming a cop?

[dailyadventureprompts]

I just discovered your blog and I love it a lot! You have such a rich understanding of dnd and a lot of creativity! I was wondering if you could do a monsters reimagined on illithids/mindflayers? They are so iconic and I love them, I think a good idea for them is to keep the weird hivemind and brain eating and psionics, but ditch the tadpole concept. I would also just like to know how they came to be as they are right now, like. How did we get here?? Thanks!!

Monsters Reimagined: Mindflayers

The illithid have been a popular ask for reimaginings but It's taken me a while to get around to them in part because unlike a lot of the other features on monsters reimagined, their lore/execution within the game doesn't rest on a specific problematic trope or inconsistent storytelling. Mindflayers as they stand IMO are one of d&d's great villains, and if anything suffer from being too successful to the point of overexposure.

It took the asker remarking on how much they liked mindflayers for me to give them the onceover they really deserved. Yes, they worked great as antagonists ( being irredeemable slavers who violate the minds and bodies of those they subjugate, working inevitably towards the most awful ends), but their villany was born out of the same shallow bioessentialism as “always evil” orcs,IE inherent to their character. I’m a firm believer in the idea that if something is capable of making decisions, it’s capable of deciding not to be a bastard, so If I was going to overhaul the illithid, I’d need to get to the roots of why the squid headed bastards were the way they were.

TLDR: What we know today as the mindflayers are in fact the remnants of a long dead world, with many of their most monstrous qualities being bioengineered attempts to stave off the inevitable and hold onto their power. The “Elder brains” which rule the illithid are tyrants, the ultimate class parasites, who indoctrinate and mentally dominate the other mindflayers into acting as tools of domination over the peoples they consider chattel. Is possible for an individual illithid to break free of this system, but doing so is difficult, as it requires them to not only break out of any magical compulsion, but to abandon the paradigms that have defined their existence.

Spoiler alert: we’re going to be talking about white supremacy in this one

I think someone described it pretty succinctly that alien invasion stories are something that industrial nations invented when they started imagining what would happen if a more advanced people came along and started doing to them what they’d be doing to everyone else in the world.  Mindflayers (and a few other aberrations) fill that niche in oldschool d&d, with the low levels made up of the feudal heroes largely picking on “uninteligent” tribal brutes, only to hit level 7 or so where all of a sudden they’re fighting creatures who’s intelligence exceeds their own. 

The weird thing is how in the alien invasion stories, the aliens always want to enslave humanity.. Despite imagining the technology required to cross the vastness of space, the authors were unable to conceive of a world outside of the hierarchies of exploitation, even in the case of benign colonization like “day the earth stood still” and “childhood’s end”.

I’ve talked before about how d&d has a lot of baked-in tropes that assumes colonialism and racial supremicy as a default, but today we’re going to look at things form the other angle. Namely: can we use the mindflayers to talk about systems of oppression and how they manipulate us into being complacent tools with colonialism and genocide. 

First though, a detour on illithid biology/feeding, and how I’ve tried to make it make sense:  

In addition to a mostly vestigal digestive system, mindflayers possess adaptations that allow them to turn psychic energy into health and wellbeing, with their feeding being something like running a magnet over a computer screen except that the screen is a brain. This can be done delicately so as to case no long term damage, but sometimes it’s faster to just shuck the brain out and be done with it.

On their homeworld, the illithid cultivated a form of “thinking fungus” that draws in stray thought energy from the astral sea, the stray equivalent of radio static. This fungus grows around many mindflayer settlements and is one of the dead giveaways that they’ve moved into the region.

 The goal of every illithid is to prove themselves so at the end of their life (or sooner) they can join with the elderbrain, a grotesque amalgamation of all the most bastardly awful mindflayer’s brains that lives in a big tank in the center of their settlements ( or pilots their spelljammer ships) and mentally influences everything in a 5 mile radius. The elder brain creates a reinforcing social pressure: if you’re not doing everything you can to serve it, you’ll be culled, and if you don’t do your absolute best ( or if the elderbrain is just feeling cruel) your whole life will be for nothing. These brains are not a natural part of the illithid lifecycle, and are instead more equivalent to liches: influential mindflayers that learned that they could force others of their kind to tribute psionic energy through thier bonds, extending their life long beyond where their bodies can keep up. By ensuring that only those most useful join the gesthalt, the original ego ensures that no other personality is capable of overtaking their own.

Every so often in their life, mindflayers reproduce by regurgitating a load of parasitic tadpoles into the elderbrain pool where the weak ones get to be its snacks, and the strong ones get implanted into the skulls of promising candidates who’s brains are eaten as they’re transformed into new midnflayers. All of this is super squick, but what’s almost nonsensical is the fact that left to their own devices the tadpoles grow up into colossal, borderline feral worm monsters, meaning that in their natural state no one would be around to put the tadpoles in anyone’s heads. I rationalize this as the result of extensive biomancy augmentations that occured in the illithid’s development, a “cure” for the sterility imposed by their dying world and a handy means of population control/indoctrination for the elder brain, who’s able to etch the basics of its own personality onto each tadpole as it prepares to take a host.

And here we’ll bring the two ideas together, about how illithid can help represent white supremacy:  Like all imperialist or autocratic systems, the society of the mindflayers is self reinforcing, creating a population of desperate individuals and using their desperation to turn them into a tool to benefit those at the system’s top. Every illithid is not only born with the elderbrain’s world view as the foundation of its mind, the society in which it is raised is set up so that the only metric of growth or success is being useful to the elder brain, with any deviancy from expectation ( incluging over ambition) are dealt with harshly to the point of execution.

An indivual illithid could break free, but that would require a depth of personal examination is frowned upon in mindflayer circles, as well as the acceptance that there is a way to live outside the elderbrain’s guidance without going hungry and devouring their own sapience like the pale and wretched creatures that outsiders call “illithid vampires” 

Much like racism,misogyny, imperialism, capitalism and fascism, the society of mindflayers creates a desperate population that are convinced that the only way to be is to be in a particular way that ends up benefiting those at the very top. Breaking free takes a tremendous amount of bravery, and a willingness to alienate yourself from all you thought familiar and true in the process.

Art

[welcome-to-oslov]

Dear Author

Let me explain by saying that my first language is not English, so I apologize in advance if there is anything that is not understood or causes misunderstandings my intention is far from that.

I don't know how to express what you feel once you finish Oslov unraveled, have you ever read/seen something so good that it becomes part of you and you are doomed to spend your life thinking about it to every time you hear a song think about how well the character does or when you hear a phrase think about how the story applies, to every minute of your existence that story lives in the sea of your thought when you finish and not process it like a storm and then like a gentle undercurrent in your mind that will stay there YEARS. ...WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED TO ME WITH OSLOV'S KEY.

I swear I will be eternally grateful that I found this in the jumble of tags I was looking for one afternoon for fun and found this story AND DEVOURED IT IN LESS THAN 3 DAYS (everything except the prequel with Malsha I'm not mentally prepared for that yet I feel I have to digest all of this first) I don't Know where to begin to explain why this story is so good, I still have to process a lot of what I just finished reading so here are a few points.

Most works of fiction in ao3 with sla/ver/y represented in is not well represented or written and although in Oslov slavery is not allowed as you rightly say is the best way to define what happens to Tilrey and other characters, where most would fall into a case of stockholm syndrome or a too naive and simplistic denouement, you have known to take your time to explain why this system has remained so long, what is wrong with it and that changes do not happen overnight.

The way this revolution happens when janta turns off the lights and the characters are mixed each with their own agenda with Einara's plan starts because she wants to be more extreme than Tilrey and how there are groups trying to take advantage of all the chaos, something I really liked is that I remember fictions where the theme of revolutions are about only one point here we see several from Besha who only wants to benefit his own interests , Davita and the others who tries to preserve the status quo because it always benefit them and those who have been oppressed by it like Steffan and Tilrey finally stepping forward.

The characters I have no words to explain the level of three-dimensionality they have no white doves and totally evil characters ( except Veran and others who definitely deserve a painful death ) it is full of gray characters who we have seen how the system affects them and we can only wonder if in another society or if x situation had not affected them they would be better love each one from Gersha to Einara and what to say about Tilrey he stole my heart ( something I love is that in my language Tilrey would be read as a compound name " Til-.Rey and Rey means king which basically shows some leadership skills that the character is going to take).

How they talk about and the characters deal with trauma one of the chapters I liked the most is when Tilrey and Einara talk about how they endured the rapes by letting go of their mind and Tiley explains dissociation plus how they have a hard time letting go of dehumanizing themselves after all the treatment they've been through.

I definitely have to read this again calmly to analyze more I plan to stop by ao3 to drop this off and when time permits and leave a comment on each chapter.

I'm sorry if this comment is too long, but I had to vent this is an amazing story that should be published somewhere because of how well narrated and the complexity of the issues it deals with because god I need more people to read it.

I just wrote a longer response to this on AO3, but I just want to say again, thank you!!! ❤️❤️ Comments like this mean the world to me.

I’m reaching the point where I feel very tempted to publish these stories, and I do have some knowledge of how to do that and the advantages and pitfalls of the different methods. I always come back to the fact that only immensely popular fics (or original stories) do well in the marketplace, and this seems to be more of a niche story. Still … thank you for giving me another reason to consider it.

[beyond-a-name]

So I keep seeing that post about critiques of superhero narratives going around, and while it sounds really good, something about it rubs me the wrong way.

The best thing to do with power is to give it away. That is not what superheroes do.

They use their power to help people, but it's never a redistribution of power. Even in settings where power can explicitly be granted to basically anybody, it is kept with a select few because that is integral to what makes it a superhero story.

Take Spiderverse for example, maybe my favourite ongoing franchise. In the Spiderverse, it is explicit that the powers of spiderman can be granted through a uniquely irradiated spider. There is an entire organization wholly devoted to connecting with other spider people across dimensions, but the story, even in the comics, never explores what would happen by putting all that funding and research into replicating those spiders.

Now, a big theme of every Spiderman retelling, and indeed almost every Superhero narrative, is what those characters lose to keep their city, their world, and their (remaining) loved ones safe. These superhuman characters go through exceptional sacrifice and loss because they have power, a kind of noble suffering, all for the good of those around them. This makes for a very compelling story, but that eternal martyrdom is also how abuse gets justified. If power is some noble burden, then it is both justified to give power to as few people as possible (to prevent suffering) while also to venerate those that have it (for their sacrifice and kindness).

This same justification, of course, extends to how real world government systems are justified. Really, it's quite tragic that our leader president king leviathan superhero has all that agency, they have to make all the "hard choices". Look at how strong they are for doing that, for taking care of everybody, even when people don't know what's best for them. And of course they don't, not always, because only the people with power have the ability to know. With great power comes great responsibility, after all, but it is the with-holding of responsibility that is precisely the problem.

This is the core of the power fantasy that superhero media presents. That you, dear reader, can be that hero. That you get to help people and be universally loved for it, and that all of your suffering is noble and justified. That even if your suffering is due in large part to the fact that you shoulder this burden alone and do not (or cannot) ask for help and thereby extend agency to those around you, you are right to do so. That even if you won't be outright revered, you will still be able to rest easy that it was you that made The Hard Choice instead of someone else, and that you're Keeping People Safe.

So let's go back to Spiderverse. As it stands, even though I think it could go farther, it's obviously (at least partially) a deconstruction of the superhero genre. Whereas Into The Spiderverse shows its greatest thematic strength in the power of community in the face of tragedy, Across the Spiderverse goes a step further to start asking why we have to keep making all these damn tragic decisions in the first place. Into the Spiderverse assures you that you're not the only one making hard choices, actually, and shows how nice that actually is. But Across the Spiderverse asks why anyone has to suffer in the first place. Across the Spiderverse resonates so strongly because it takes a look at the trolley problem and does what everyone who sees the trolley problem reflexively does, which is to start asking who tied all these people to the tracks and why do we take people dying by trolleys to be such a given? The film, in actively questioning the implicit assumption of tragedy and "noble sacrifice" is directly undermining part of the core superhero power fantasy. Whereas abuse and oppression are preserved in maintaining systems of power as necessary hardship and noble suffering, change is pioneered in questioning those power structures and recognizing that suffering is not a virtue. If suffering isn't a virtue, how noble are these sacrifices, anyway?

While I'm deeply excited to see the next Spiderverse film the moment it releases, like I stated earlier, the series doesn't go as far as it could. While it partially recognizes that the distribution of power is entirely arbitrary (who gets bit by that spider is effectively random), it doesn't ask why we aren't then redistributing it. Spiderverse, at least thus far, does not fully embrace actually giving that power away.

And it is here, dear reader, that I present to you a book recommendation. If what you've read here resonates with you and you're curious to see a work take that final step, then I'd like to direct your curiousity to the Nemesis series by April Daniels.

The (currently unfinished) trilogy begins with Dreadnought, in which Danny, a young, closeted trans girl, watches the world's greatest superhero die in front of her, before inheriting his powers. But with Dreadnought's abilities, Danny also gets her ideal feminine body, rendering it impossible for her to remain closeted any longer. While the book is obviously a trans narrative first and foremost, and a profoundly impactful one at that, the book also criticizes the centralization of power and touches on how deeply traumatizing all that "noble suffering" really is. The other superheroes are deeply traumatized and living in a state of constant vigilance, and everyone is of course bickering over who gets to benefit from Danny's powers and to what end. All the while, mind you, while telling a transfeminine narrative so archetypal that I could directly match it to my own lived experience, one for one: transphobia, homelessness, even her friend's perceived entitlement to her newly feminine body.

The second book, Sovereign, much more directly confronts the authoritarian fantasy at the heart of the genre (while also keeping it delightfully queer). In Sovereign, it is eventually revealed what is increasing the number of all these super- people, and casts its titular villain as a grossly rich man who seeks to keep that power as selectively distributed as possible. Not only does the book have Danny explore what heroism looks like outside of the corrupt, state-sponsored "White Cape" framework, but Danny also consistently reflects on just what it is she is actually getting out of all this violence.

Book 2 concludes with the forward expectation to redistribute this power much more freely, but book 3 isn't yet out to follow up on it. I personally suspect that this is largely due to the core challenge of redistributing power in a genre where the centralization of power is so integral to its telling. (I mean, it's not like anything else of note since 2017 could have had any sort of impact on the writing and publishing of a queer novel). Still, the series even thus far does a much better job of deconstructing the power fantasy and martyrdom that superhero media relies on than many mainline works before it, and its two finished books already stand on their own beautifully. Also it's trans, which rules. (It's one of my all-time favourite series, if you couldn't tell).

Anyway, you started this post expecting a thorough response of a specific rebuttal of leftist critique of superhero media. Namely, that rebuttal argues that superhero media, at its core, is about helping people. This is partially true, but it is almost never about empowering people to help themselves, which is precisely the problem.

I agree, the best thing to do with power is to give it away. Really be nice if it did that lol

[finitefall]

ASOIAF really brings out the worst in so called progressive liberals. No, GRRM isn’t telling us a story about how bastards, sex outside marriage, and magic are bad and nobility and the Faith are good. We aren’t supposed to side with the system that oppresses women what the hell is wrong with people ???

Edit: Anon lifted @sereneioflys post on twitter about this.

GRRM, the man who explained where his inspiration for Arya Stark (one of the first characters he created) came from by saying "a lot of the women I’ve known had aspects of Arya, especially when I was a young man in the Sixties and Seventies. I knew a lot of young women who weren’t buying into ‘Oh, I have to find a husband and be a housewife,’ who would say, ‘I don’t wanna be Mrs. Smith, I wanna be my own person.’ And that’s certainly part of Arya’s thing." GRRM, the man who took five outcasts as his key five characters. GRRM, the man who wrote an entire book about House Targaryen but not any other House. GRRM, the man who dedicated a part of said book about a war starting with a woman being usurped because of her sex.

His social and political views aren’t hard to understand, nor the fact that he doesn’t hate Targaryens and magic at all. Except for Greens stans, apparently.

[marzipanandminutiae]

The difference between Victorian prudery and 50's prudery is that Victorian prudery was a genuinely reasonable response to the situation women lived in, while 50's TV prudery actually was stupid.

I've let this percolate for a bit because I wanted to collect my thoughts on it. And they vary depending on what Anon meant.

What I think this is trying to say is that, given the emphasis placed on women's reputations back then re: sexuality, it made sense for them to behave in an extremely straitlaced manner. Because (for most women) their lives would quite literally be destroyed if their virtue were seriously called into question. They would struggle to find employment or a husband, might be cut off by parents or other supporting entities, and could find themselves alone in the world with no means of support. And with that general idea, I agree. Pretty logical to refuse to even kiss a man before marriage if your entire livelihood is on the line.

(Not to mention, a working-class white woman, a middle-class white woman, a white heiress, and a woman of color regardless of social status all had different standards for what they could get away with. While they all lived under similar unfair standards and systemic misogyny...intersecting axes of oppression and privilege definitely played a role here)

Except.

A. That was not the extent of extreme Victorian prudishness. While stories about table legs being covered for modesty are pure invention, you DO hear about some people in the 19th century going pretty far in the Prim and Proper department. I recall one 1870s issue of a fashion magazine by the renowned Madame Demorest where she cautioned her female readers about arraying their legs "like ballet dancers" in the wildly popular striped stockings. To do so, she implied, was to invite the stares of men when a lady lifted her skirt to go up steps.

And I honestly don't see any way that could be construed as reputation-ruining behavior, given that...well, like I said, the stockings in question were everywhere. I have two separate fashion dolls of the era who both wear their original striped hosiery. Clearly women weren't risking their means of support by wearing them, and yet at least one conservative writer considered them Improper. That, then, hardly seems justifiable prudishness to me- and that's just one example.

It leads well into my second point, namely:

B. Even the Victorians though some Victorians were too prudish. Etiquette manuals can tell us a lot about the ideals of an era, but they aren't a good record of real human behavior. Take, for example, the use of the word "limb" to substitute for "leg." Out of context, this seems like proof that our 19th-century ancestors were stuffy prudes who had the vapors at the slightest hint of anything remotely racy.

But if you actually look at sources from the era, most of them seem to be mocking rather than endorsing the practice (source)

That holds true for many other illogically prudish behaviors of the time- in my experience, many people seem to have rolled their eyes almost as hard as we do today at a lot of the "nice girls don't" edicts. The big one remained largely unquestioned: don't have sex outside of heterosexual wedlock and don't give anyone reason to think you have. And that latter part covered a lot of behaviors we- rightly -see as absurd and misogynistic today. But rules that got as minute as the appropriate number of times to dance with a specific man at a ball were often waived in reality- or at least, endorsed for reasons of potential rudeness rather than scandal.

Which is to say, not all Victorian prudishness can be justifiable if even they themselves thought some was ridiculous.

C. A lot of the pressures on women to remain chaste and morally unassailable remained- or had returned -in the 1950s.

I'm surprised I even have to say this, because I figured it was pretty common knowledge. But every reason a woman might shut down relatively tame amorous advances in 1850 was pretty much present in 1950: a woman known to be "ruined" could have a very hard time functioning in mainstream society. Things had loosened up a bit- although, to be honest, being caught in a kiss wouldn't even necessarily destroy a woman's reputation in the 19th century -but the central theme of Don't Let Anyone Suspect You've Had Extramarital Sex Or Your Reputation Is Toast persisted.

And as for things that were patently absurd in the 1950s- you mentioned "TV prudery," which I assume means things like married sitcom couples sleeping in twin beds -well. That sort of nonsense was present in the Victorian era, too. And as in the Victorian era, I expect plenty of people snickered at it in the 1950s.

TL;DR- To me, the idea of one period having Logical Prudishness and the other having Performative BS kind of falls apart because both eras had examples of both types. I can see a point of agreement here in the idea that some uptight behavior in women who wanted to do otherwise was a logical response to insanely rigorous moral standards, but the rest of your argument doesn't really hold water for me.

[bestworstcase]

Do you think the atlas VS mantle conflict will be relevant in vacuo? If so, how?

Ok, so, imagine a bunch of the atlesian rich people move to mistral and continue being wealthy there, they’re no longer the atlesian wealthy they’re just a part of mistrals society now, they haven’t removed the existing ruling class of mistral they’ve just become a part of,it, it’s no longer atlas’ specific system of oppression.

Or even in vacuo, let’s save some of atlas’ elites and whatever is left of the atlas military band together and try to conquer some patch of vacuo and make a “new atlas” or even just try to exert power over the other refugees for their own gain.

At that point they’re not a continuation of that system, they’re just a bunch of assholes with guns akin to raven’s bandit tribe.Even if some of atlas’ upper class manage to regain power or cause problems for the refugees, they no longer have the entrenched systemic power they had before.

So thematically the while class warfare themes of the atlas arc can never effectively come back

You said before how the mantle citizens may try to take revenge against their Atlesians oppressors, but is that necessarily an inherently bad thing?

The people,of mantle rising up agaisnt the atlas opressors seems like the ultimate goal in atlas anyways? To be fair angry mobs aren’t usually very discerning of their targets, so yeah killing innocent people in the crossfires would be wrong

But somehow I don’t think RWBY will be able to properly portray that subtlety, given its history with such matters

I’m worried RWBY’s theme of “unity” might make this into some centrist dribble about how “the rich and poor need to put their differences aside and just come together” like we haven’t been shown how humans and fuanus get fucking killed in their mines to fuel the Atlesians lavish lifestyle, and them losing atlas because Salem wanted a re,I’d doesn’t make all that go away and it SHOULDN’T, the people of mantle should not have to “come together” with the people,that have continuously and knowingly caused them nothing but pain for their personal benefit,

Like, imagine telling cinder she needs to “come together” with the madam, there is no context in the world where that ISN’T insulting

the solution to class inequality is not to mob formerly wealthy people who are now homeless, penniless refugees. like, you get that right. the material social, economic, and political power the atlesian upper class had before is GONE. there are no dragon hoards to seize, no wealth left to redistribute for the common good, no grotesque excesses to puncture and drain so that the select few can no longer marinate in luxury at the expense of everyone else who’s struggling to put food on the table.

vengeance is not justice. violence is not justice; it is, sometimes, a revolutionary tool, when an unjust system cannot be dismantled except by force. but violence is the means, not the end.

this is a distinction that rwby explicitly understands.

it’s why sienna chews adam out after the fall of beacon. to sienna, violence is a tactic that is effective and valuable when it is applied judiciously to rebuke active harm—hence she focuses narrowly on hitting corporations like the SDC where it will hurt them most, i.e. their bottom line. to adam, the goal is not to forcefully demand equitable treatment but to reverse the direction of persecution; making people suffer is the point. ghira’s pacifism [and the narrative’s naïve view that non-violent/violent protest is a distinction with a hard, clear line rather than a broad spectrum of different tactics and strategic approaches all of which will be deemed violent by the oppressor class] muddies this contrast to the narrative’s detriment, but the story is nonetheless firmly on sienna’s side, here; adam’s point of no return is killing her after she tells him that violence for violence’s sake is not what she stands for and his actions have endangered the people he is ostensibly fighting for. likewise the point of saving haven academy isn’t only to prevent more senseless violence* that will only intensify hatred and demonization of the faunus, but also to construct a counter-narrative that challenges the hatred that already exists; the haven arc ends with the belladonnas preparing to leverage the good press to push harder for systemic change. they didn’t rush to mistral to nobly save their oppressors out of the goodness of their hearts, they… recognized the danger adam’s perversion of sienna’s strategy represented to the faunus, and equally recognized the political opportunity they could win by stopping him.

(*in juxtaposition to the sensible violence sienna orchestrated, which you'll note ghira did not partake in for personal reasons but nevertheless supported and accepted as genuine activism; he is open about his and sienna's ideological differences but also makes it crystal clear that he trusts her to lead the white fang for the betterment of faunuskind. his stance on sienna is "i, personally, am not comfortable with her methods, but she is my ally in this fight and i recognize and value her dedication to the cause we share." his stance on adam is "holy fuck this egomaniac is planning to assassinate sienna and massacre people, human and faunus alike, we can't let him speak for us!" there is, uh. a difference. remember that ghira left the white fang specifically to make room for sienna to lead, and in the five years since then he has kept very cordial relations with the organization. he's very clear about his personal discomfort with violent resistance—but it's just that, personal. he doesn't like fighting, he doesn't want to fight, but he doesn't have a moral problem with sienna's tactics. he supports her leadership of the white fang! he's horrified and outraged that adam intends to overthrow her! there's important, textual nuance here, it's just clumsy bc the writing team didn't have the necessary vocabulary and tried to get the idea across with a simplistic violence/non-violence model that made it difficult for the narrative to coherently articulate why sienna is right and adam is wrong. V7-8 improves on the revolutionary discourse of V4-5 not because the ideas have changed but because the vocabulary is better developed. anyway,)

a couple volumes later weiss slam dunks a guy into a dumpster for making a racist remark to her friend and the narrative treats that as a perfectly acceptable way to react, because it is. robyn goes full vigilante and starts using tactics identical to the ones sienna adopted—robbing cargo trucks and redistributing resources by force—and blake is so deeply uncomfortable with the idea of arresting her for it that she and yang take matters into their own hands, tell robyn what the real situation is, and cover for her to help her escape; and the narrative, again, treats that as the right call. because it is. robyn is V7’s heroic antagonist to ironwood’s villain protagonist.

rwby as a narrative is unequivocally on team “violent self-defense or defense of others is okay” on both the individual and organizational level. but the defense part is crucial. you cannot just hurt people because you feel like it. you cannot have a mob dragging refugees out of a tent and beating them in the streets because they used to be rich and call that justice, because it’s not. who are you protecting? what purpose does your violence serve? anger against injustice is a clean-burning fuel but even the purest fire can still rage out of control and hurt you and yours. you always, always have to be clear about what point you’re making, what end you’re really serving.

there’s no atlas left to rise up against.

as for rwby’s “theme” of unity, uh. rwby has explicitly put that theme into the mouths of its non-salem-adjacent villains specifically to illustrate the amorality and meaninglessness of ozpin’s ideology: jaques slaps weiss across the face and then says “you think running off like your sister will make the family name stronger? it won’t. siding with her only divides us.” adam twists blake’s concerns about how comfortable he is with killing people (in contrast to, say, sienna, who tears robots apart but aims to disarm and incapacitate when she’s facing living opponents, killing only when it’s necessary, and preventing adam from killing a human who was unarmed and on the ground) into “i just get scared when it feels like you don’t believe in me anymore” and “it’s good to know i’ve still got you.” ironwood’s paranoia and perception that the slightest disagreement with what he thinks is right is a betrayal, his foundational belief that “loyalty always matters” and indeed matters more than anything else, is a critical element of his downfall. and while ozpin himself is not a villain, his singular focus on maintaining “unity” is shown explicitly to be antithetical to social progress and real systemic change as early as the beginning of volume two, when blake sharply rebukes him for trying to “we’ve made great strides uwu everyone is welcome here” her after he, you know, isolated her from the rest of her team to interrogate her while making insinuations left and right that he thinks she might be a terroristic sleeper agent. his prioritization of “unity” as an end unto itself leads him to lie, manipulate, cover up problems and pretend everything is fine instead of actually trying to effect change. and the narrative overtly pulls back the curtain to say “this ideology is hollow and completely worthless, look how easily it is corrupted and transformed into a tool for abuse and persecution.” lol

but what does justice look like when you are redressing the harms of a violently hierarchical system? it’s not beating up the people at the top of the ladder to make everyone below them feel better. it’s removing the ladder. it’s taking away the excesses from the people at the top and splitting it up between everyone below them so that everyone has what they need to live safely, comfortably, and peacefully. and once the ladder is gone you have to be able to take a deep breath and remember that the people who were at the top are human beings, too. you don’t have to like them, you don’t have to forgive them, you certainly don’t have to coddle them or be friends with them. but you do have to accept that they’re people who deserve the same rights as you’ve fought for. and you may have to accept working together with them for the common good, if they decide to join that fight. is that “coming together” with your oppressors? no. it’s understanding that people can change and allowing them the chance to do so. it’s accepting that an inevitable, necessary ingredient of social justice is extending the social justice even to the people who defended injustice, because the goal is not to flip the ladder over, it’s to get rid of the fucking ladder.

and that’s what makes it so hard! because, god, it’s easy to rage and hate and joke about guillotines. it’s a lot harder to reckon with what it takes to build a society that isn’t forged in blood and domination. it’s hard to imagine what equality really looks like from inside a world that needs inequality to function. but you’ve got to try. you’ve gotta be able to to recognize that evil is just an action. it is not something that lives inside some people and not others. the goal is to stop evil, to prevent a certain kind of action and to repair the harm done by the actions of the past and present.

this is, like, social justice 101. anger is a sword and a shield and it’s our responsibility to know when to fight with it and when to set it aside. <- and thats what i expect the core theme of the vacuo arc to be, because vacuo is a lot of scared and angry people who have very, very good reasons to be scared and angry, trapped in a room packed floor-to-ceiling with powder kegs ready to explode at the slightest spark. they are all on this tight rope over the spike pit together. there is an opportunity for justice here, a way to leave the failures of atlas in the past, but it’s going to take focus and care and deliberation and compromise and, yes, active refusal to turn the atlesian refugees into the new underclass no matter how tempting it feels.

they’re not a threat anymore. the systemic power they once had is gone forever. if they try to claw any of it back, or if they lash out in anger or try to make trouble, they should be stopped. but it’s time to move on. pick up the pieces and focus on making something better. if the defunct atlesian elite want to sulk about it, let ’em. if some snobby socialite tries to act like she’s still in atlas and gets cold-clocked by someone who’s at the end of their rope, fine. tensions are running high. shit happens. but that can’t be allowed to escalate. the rich people landed face-down in the same dirt everybody else did; they can keep lying there, or they can get up and start helping. beating them into the dirt helps nobody and steals time and energy away from things that actually matter, like making sure everybody has enough food and water to survive and a safe place to shelter from the harsh elements. and if you take the “either shut up and stay out of the way, or get over yourself and help, your choice” approach, some of those former rich people will probably take you up on it and now you’ve got more hands on deck than you did before; the right thing to do here is, luckily, also the smart thing to do.

[yinyangofnevermore]

Sorry if these asks are to frequent

Racism is a lot more complicated then just “people don’t like the Faunus” like marrow said in volume 7 it’s a deeply embedded systemic issue, as an example o highly doubt Jacques could be convinced the Faunus “aren’t that bad” because he directly profits from those systems of oppression. And the majority of humans ignore it because they also benefit.

Dismantling those systems is a difficult process that requires some level of direct action, it takes a lot more then just convincing humans to like you with some speech.

It’s true we haven’t seen any official human/Faunus relationships, except technically a mention of velvets parents, but so far I doubt it will play a major plot role

In fact, I doubt one can realistically “unite all, of humanity” in the amount of time the show has left, quite frankly I think the gods demands of ozpin are vague and unfair as is,

A story where Blake and yang convince the huma and Faunus refuges to “get along”would honestly feel kinda insulting. This isn’t a problem that can be solved by people “just being nicer to each other”, honestly being the “bridge between humans and Faunus” to me implies the issue is some self existing chasm, and not a cage human society has purposefully put the Faunus in.

All good points. But, with respect, that's not the central conflict of the show. It is most definitely a very important aspect that I hope they address further and that they learned stuff in the past from. It's also possible they took a step back from it cuz they realized they weren't equipped to write such a story and do it WELL so they want to figure it out and get it RIGHT. But, obviously, Salem and all of that is the central plot. Of course that's what's going to take most of the screen time, along with things directly affecting Team RWBY themselves at whatever moment it is in time. Like the shit in the Ever After rn and their personal fallout from what happened in Atlas.

Also, they don't necessarily have to "unite all of humanity." People are gonna people. And all that, that entails. They just have to either somehow stop Salem or make her understand. "So long as this world turns, you shall walk its face. You must learn the importance of life and death. Only then may you rest." Pretty sure THAT is the key. She latched onto that first part and may have skipped over the second.

Again though, this is all just speculation at this point. The simple truth is that we have NO IDEA how the story will go. Only CRWBY does at this point. If there's one thing I've learned while watching this show for so many years, it's that I'm actually very bad at predicting shit for it. Normally I'm great at that. But not with this show. Doesn't stop me from trying though 😂

Regardless, I still think Yang would be involved with the efforts of Blake, the Belladonnas and the White Fang. She would have anyways, I feel like. But especially now that they're together. We may not get to directly see it in the show but..... yeah.

[mae-i-scribble]

As a fan of manhwa in general for the life of me I will never understand the praise that Revolutionary Princess Eve/The Princess Imprints the Traitor gets because it is straight up one of the most racist plots I have seen in a hot minute save for like, the general nonexistence of melanin in anything manhwa related (technically not all of them but like, cmon yall know what im talking about). To me that’s what makes it more insidious? Like people can call out the blatantly racist bs but the moment its more casually interwoven into the narrative it’s praises all around. What is awful even further is that this manhwa presents itself as the exact opposite, our protagonists are on the side of good, undoing the system of slavery, and with some very minor tweakings, you would actually have a gorgeously done story about how to best inspire large scale societal change, to what lengths should we use violence to further our righteous goals, changing the system from within vs using external pressure of retribution/rebellion, the nuances that come from being in a privileged position but still genuinely doing their best to help the people around them, the struggles that it takes to actually unite a group of people even if you are part of an oppressed class, and more themes actually very much relevant to the story it is theoretically trying to tell. Instead we get a flaming pile of garbage because the author refuses to actually engage with the themes and world set up.

Surprisingly, the glaring issues pop up within the first 3 chapters. First and foremost being the reason why Mikael started this entire revolution. Mikael is the first to break out of the brainwashing as the “king” of the homunculi and leads the revolution to overthrow the monarchy that upheld this institution of slavery. It all makes perfect sense, of course he would want his freedom and autonomy and vengeance against the people who tortured him so, and also wants that for his fellow homunculi- except oh wait no he didnt do that for any of those realistic reasons silly. He wasn’t upset at being a slave or at the unjust and cruel treatment of those deemed lesser for no reason other than their identity as a homunculus. He was in *love* clearly. With the 7th princess who he has only had 1 conversation with. When he heard she was being sold off he just had to stage this revolution to make sure that wouldn’t happen. No other reason :)) (insert eye roll here). Like oh yes the slaves were perfectly fine being slaves I guess. Like this isnt explicity what the story is saying bc it goes out of its way to show you how miserable the homonculi are, but by having Mikael’s sole motivation be to like, get together with Eve eventually it makes him a wet cardboard character with no compelling motivation or backstory. It’s also just degrading the idea of slaves uprising and fighting for their rights, because nooo our love interest can’t have done anything for those reasons, that’s wrong. And that is such a fucked worldview to present. People shouldn’t fight for their right to exist as human beings and not property. Only when motivated by actual pure reasons such as love or non violent change is it the right course of action.

And coming back to the whole, Mikael has been in love with Eve the entire time thing which is fucking stupid to me because I hate love at first sight tropes. Logically, doesn’t it make for a far more compelling story to have them at odds by virtue of their positions and life experiences despite ultimately holding similar viewpoints and then have them find common ground in the new timeline where Eve is more proactive and they actually interact for more than just a longing stare? You can’t even argue he was in love with her for plot reason- he doesn’t need to be in love with her for this story to start. When Eve dies he’s the one who wants to try and bring her back, but who does he actually need to do the procedure? The sage, or Eve’s personal mentor. Literally. Just. Have. The. Sage. Turn. Back. Time. It would make perfect sense considering how close the two are and how unfairly Eve was assassinated when she had been doing her best for the homunculi. You could have Mikael honor her with a funeral, respectful as to what she meant as a royal who publicly was against the homunculi system and then have the Sage bust in the middle of the night and drag Mikael unknowingly into this spell because they’re the one that wants to give their precious student a second chance. It literally solves all your problems in one without reducing Mikael’s entire personality to just “in love.” It’s also a great way to introduce the Sage and make the reader wonder just how special Eve must be for someone to go to such lengths for her.

Furthering the romance talk, this manhwa is a romance, except its an incredibly disturbing one from start to finish. When Eve imprints Mikael his entire thought process is changed. This is quite literally mind control magic forcibly changing his opinion of her to favorable. They explicitly show that!! Multiple times!! He even sees her as beautiful because of the imprint and nothing else! And you cannot argue what are his true thoughts and what aren’t because the imprint works to actively change his thoughts unless he is consciously going against it. So logically we have to conclude that any emotion Mikael feels about her is constructed by the imprint or in the case of any positive ones, being drastically amplified. This is not love. This is not a romance. This is just mind control but we’re supposed to see it as romantic because our protagonist obviously cannot do anything wrong. Also, the imprint makes it so that little spark of personality we see in Mikael when we first meet him in the floating prison goes away completely. Our two protagonists never truly argue about anything after that point. It’s so,,,, stale. All of the conflicts we could have had between them to further the themes and their relationship just don’t exist because the author wants Mikael’s personality to be “simp” and Eve’s to be “perfect princess who never does anything truly wrong.” In a story dealing with such a direct allegory for the slave system and dealing with racist institutions not have those sort of furthering arguments is a massive blow to the story’s integrity. I can’t see it as anything smart despite the promise its idea shows because clearly the author isn’t going to actually follow up on anything. How could they when they can’t even give us the relationship between the two main characters without resorting to using mind control to mellow out one side’s feelings.

Ironically, out of everything in this mess Eve is by far the best written aspect of it. She very easily could be a white savior trope through and through, naively condemning Mikael’s actions on the basis that “violence is wrong UwU.” To some extent, she does fall into this because one of her major goals is to not have that revolution Mikael starts. However, it’s made more complex by Eve’s mindset. Eve doesn’t consider herself exempt from the homunculi’s scorn. She recognizes that her resistance while novel in itself never lead to results, so she effectively did nothing for the people she was trying to help. In the original timeline she fully believes that Mikael hates her for these exact reasons, and his kindness towards her is only a ploy for her to lower her guard. She also doesn’t deny her place as an inheritor of the very monarchy that began and enforces this systemic racism, she will always be connected to their misdeeds. To Eve, Mikael rising up to take down the emperor is a death sentence, because to kill off the imperial family in condemnation of their crimes means that she too will be executed. Eve wants to live just as much as she wants to help the homunculi, so of course she’s going to stay far far away from that path. Another aspect of it is that Eve is genuinely sad for the destruction caused by Mikael’s methods, because a lot of innocent people inevitably got caught up in the crossfire. More than that, Eve in this new timeline actually goes about trying to correct her mistakes in the past timeline. She plays the political game in order to put herself in a position where she can actually help the homunculi rather than just saying they deserve better treatment. And she does so without ever losing that perspective of “im sure i can’t be seen as some sort of good person to the homunculi because of who i am and the part i have unwillingly played in their suffering, but i will do everything in my power to make things better.” Sure, I realize it’s just there so it can be proven wrong eventually and have Eve realize she was adored all along but its really an excellent perspective to have without considering that.

However, even with the positives there are plenty of things that fall short. Without any proper conflict of ideologies, Eve’s mindset of changing the system from within by becoming crown princess and letting reform start there goes uncontested. It is upheld as the “right” choice because it is what leads her to her victories. In turn this utterly condemns any sort of violent response, even in the face of unspeakably cruel and inhuman treatment. Rising up to fight back is never right, see how much happier everyone is now that the nonviolent option was chosen? If the author had just made Mikael into a properly autonomous character with his own opinions it could have made for a very interesting juxtaposition of their worldviews. Eve could come to terms with her own implicit biases, and come to even understand why Mikael did the things he did. By having her just be right all the time it takes so much depth out of the story.

Having read spoilers for the ending of the novel out of curiosity, I was disgusted to find that not only does most of the royal family go unpunished, but both Rosie and the King are redeemed???? Which like okay, I’m not saying you can’t have redemptions, I’m not saying god awful characters cannot be redeemed. But I am saying that the half-hearted bullshit given to us by Revolutionary Princess Eve is downright disgraceful. Even ignoring that the entire royal family besides Eve willingly kept personal slaves also used as sex slaves, often throwing away the homunculi’s lives for enjoyment, the King is quite literally just garbage. He relishes in the power he holds over the homunculi, he resists change time and time again because losing that power and system of free labor would be devastating to him. He only cares about his children when they meet his standards, and then forgets about them when they aren’t doing anything that grabs his interest. Neither Eve nor Mikael have any reason to forgive or accept this man as a part of their lives and yet both of them do????? He never faces any real consequences for his actions or anything, just retires on in peace. The same thing goes for Rosie and what happens between her and her personal knight (slave) who she repeatedly raped and abused and yet somehow. SOMEHOW. the author has the fucking gall to make it a “oh well things are bad here but one day they’ll probably be together” sort of ending for those two???

All of this just goes to show that despite coming in strong with its promises of a racially allegorical story about breaking down a society’s racist systems, this manhwa never had the slightest intention of actually approaching the incredibly dark ideas it puts in the forefront. Nothing is followed through upon, nothing is rightfully challenged, our main characters hardly have arcs to speak of. In the end all we have left of those promises is an incredibly racist narrative that says violence is never the answer to face your abusers and slavers, our privileged protagonist is always in the right with her mindset on this very delicate situation, and any character from the enslaved class gets 1 personality trait and that is to love Eve. How anyone can appreciate this for anything other than the hot garbage it clearly is has a mind I cannot comprehend.

[spikeinthepunch]

i wanna say i hate to compare BG3 and DAI buuuuut you know they have similar intentions not including the combat system. theyre both high fantasy RPGs that focus on major story choices/consequences and making a protag that you can shape based on personality options, along with class/race specific effects on the way characters mold with you.

so. i think they can be compared, without any note of the technical advancements from since DAI came out of course.

and i say this just based on my current progress (i guess the first 'part'? i just got to the end of the druid grove stuff). i think the bg3 protag is fine! no issue there really, its different but i like what i can do. but i can feel the issues with romance in this game creeping up, as i had heard some things started before by others... that theres a very quick focus to romance. and honestly.... is it romance even at this starting point? immediately i am just asked about who i want to fuck. i like to fuck, i like the sexual relationships. but i can see where ppl may have their issues here.

on this first celebration with the party members, the woman who i helped do the raid with, who i literally dont know, before i even got to the party was like- i am talking to you in your mind and i want to fuck you in thanks for this. and she is the one character you can just fuck without any relation with. and then i talk to Astarion who is like, who do you want to fuck tonight lol? and even if i hadnt talked w him, every other character there except Gale had the option to suggest i wanted to fuck them. bro i hardly even know these guys still. i want to fuck astarion eventually and im glad he turned me down bc honestly why would he accept?. but shadowheart and laezel were totally up for it!!! and man i hard travelled with laezel bc i dont like her lol.

and listen i am sure i will get to learn way more abt these characters that i romance but the fact i am opened up to the sex option immediately is just. so strange when i compare it to the romances of DAI. i think i could take a few characters who just want sex. thats normal. not everyone wants commitment and i would actually like that nuance. but also, really putting the sex on so quick and so blatantly is a surprise to me even as someone who wants to have sex stuff all the time!! but i like good writing too! and i imagine its even more uncomfy for others who really didnt expect or want that. to just assume you character wants to have sex so fast is weird and the only other option denying everything (no implication you want just romance/are interest but dont want sex) is just wild to me too.

DAI has such well written romances. really. i saw ppl saying they were excited this game would blow bioware's romance writing out of the water but i dont think i can say that at all rn and im not sure this current impression will change enough for me to say otherwise entirely....

this also goes into why "everyone is bi" isnt always good. because i think it takes a lot of potentially personal weight out of the writing. not even in that if one character is gay then there will be oppression angst between them and you for being gay. or that the straight one will voice their straightness in context of gays existing in world. its about how "everyone is bi" isnt actually good, chosen bi rep. its just a game mechanic thrown in to satisfy all ends. we can have bi characters, we just cant have them all being labelled that in order to fill that check mark.

dorian is a really good example in DAI of how a character being strictly gay and also facing in world oppression makes his romance storyline SO good. its so important for sexuality labels to exist bc it makes you an individual of your own. and for it to be EXPRESSED in some form too. a character should be able to voice their thoughst on their unique sexuality when you romance them. but the 'everyone is bi just because' means like no character is every talking about that, let alone in a meaningful way when the reason applies to every other companion.

sorry did not mean for this to become a rant on romances. im still looking forward to the writing that will unfold with these characters but i think its so important to not get lost in the hype (and the hate to DAI? which i think is just hate to bioware really) bc people ALWAYS get to ahead of themself when they hear "you can romance anyone regardless of gender" without thinking twice about whether or not that makes it good writing or rep

[thrythlind]

So, reddit wasn't letting me post this comment so I'll just post a link to the reddit discussion that I was trying to respond to.

My first comment is that it is perfectly valid to have preferences in the style of game that you desire to play. I also respect the "I'd rather be doing it in real life". Some people are just not going to enjoy the hobby. However, the phrasing feels very judgmental. Instead of being satisfied with just stating the preference, the request is stated in a very "wrong bad fun" manner.

I appreciate the push for media literacy to understand some of the things that exist in the periphery of various games and it is good practice to keep yourself aware of some of the societal forces that inspire some game styles. But at the same time, sometimes a game is just a game. I personally like finding a deeper meaning in my fiction and game play. Finding what it means to me, often separate from the meaning assumed by other people. And I do occasionally interrogate myself as to what I find enjoyable about a particular story or game but for most games it is just a shrug. There comes a point where the urge to find deeper worth to our recreation feels like an internalization of good old Protestant Work Ethic where we've been convinced that enjoying things is a sin and that there must be a purpose in all of our activities. (Never mind that enjoyment is a purpose in and of itself and vital to mental health.)

As regards the points in summary:

For the first point, I do sometimes enjoy playing ordinary people. I wrote a whole supplement about slice-of-life gaming, and I have an entire setting where the average supernatural person is just as much a civilian as the humans of the setting. I thoroughly enjoy a setting where people are people are people and games where the big challenge is building the best booth for the school fundraiser fair. But sometimes I just want to punch some bad guys. That power fantasy can be cathartic especially in a life where we have little to no power in real life.

I am also fairly offended by the idea that wanting to play someone exceptional is ableist. Specifically, I am offended by the idea that wanting to play an exceptional person is ruling out the disabled. This feels like a bit of condescension to me. Like they would be among the people who would complain about adventurers in wheelchairs being unrealistic. I have some minor physical issues (apnea, lymphedema, and recurring anemia) and also have had regular issues with depression and anxiety. This may play into the fact that I play a lot of characters that have mental issues and appreciate mechanics that give me a genuine feel of such issues while remaining distant and safe so I can appreciate overcoming them from a clear mind.

For that matter, while I've not been diagnosed, I am some manner of autistic and have a lot of markers for ADHD as well. If I lived in a health system that isn't set to wringing me for money like a towel for water, I'd have gone to get an official diagnosis. This is part of why when I go to D&D, I've leaned heavily into the yuan-ti culture. Back when Volo's was posted, they had a section on the psychology of the yuan-ti where they tried to justify why they were evil and they did the obnoxious thing of "they do this neurodivergent thing and that's why they're evil." But cutting it down to just the neurodivergent things, they were a host of relatable experiences which I've had that have never led me to wanting to be cruel or murderous to people. So, yeah, yuan-ti became very much a "this is me" group.

All this is to say, that I kinda find it ableist to label the desire to be a hero as ableist.

On the second point. This isn't really a standard in a lot of games I imagine it's more prevalent in video games where proper modeling of societal change is very difficult. Tabletop games I've been in have largely been more focused on resisting or toppling oppressive or corrupt regimes. But also there's a very real difference between protecting the status quo in a game versus protecting the status quo in real life. I mentioned earlier that real life can grind you down and sometimes you want to come back from that and just have a feeling of being able to protect something. And again, that catharsis is useful and healthy. Yes, there's a point you reach willful ignorance, but that's not going to be the majority of players.

Sometimes that status quo you're protecting is your own hope and self-worth and you just embody it in your mind as some fantasy kingdom or superhero city.

Likewise, I'm going to pull out the Terry Pratchet and point out that fantasies are important towards the purpose of taking an ideal and making it into something real. When we put a noble king or mayor or priest or some other authority figure into a game, that's not a real person. It's going to be some version of what we wish authority figures are... as in actual authorities in the sense of authority meaning someone who knows what the fuck they're doing and means well. Again, most of the time there's nothing really deep going on, but like we have to be able to imagine an ideal government if we're ever going to create one. And giving it the face of a queen or king or mayor or whatever is fine.

In this regard, I like playing characters with a lot of faith or who are religious in some ways and usually in ways that are different from the stereotypical holy types. Ranging from ace sex worker paladins to artificers imbuing prayers alongside arcane formula into their crafted items or priestesses whose class is bard or celestial warlocks bound to massive couatls or the Book of Exalted Deeds. And yes that's all D&D, but also I play a fair amount of Scion 2e where you are often on the path to being a god. And you know what my favorite enemy is to face for these sorts of characters? Oppressive religious figures. And that's definitely because I find megachurches and the plethora of false prophets preaching hate and violence in real life objectionable to my personal faith. Which is a whole other conversation. Suffice to say I was raised Catholic but am more agnostic these days.

Again, sometimes the status quo you're protecting is your vision of the future you hope to see created.

On point three, yeah, this can definitely be an issue. And the one I have the least problems with. I find it weird to call it a "glorification of the war on terror" because again, that's a single interpretation and such interpretations will be different from player to player. Also that's a very young interpretation and this tendency is far far older than the war on terror. I'd point toward colonialism instead. While there are definitely companies out there doing their best to address colonialist approaches in games, this is going to be very different table to table. A game thoroughly imbued with colonialist thought can become thoroughly anti-colonialist in the hands of one table while a very progressively written game can become horribly regressive and oppressive in the hands of a different table.

That said, this does seem to counteract the second point, because if you're protecting the status quo then that tends to imply you're part of that status quo and thus one of the locals. Not necessarily true, I know. But still feels weird.

Also, my favorite way to do this is to show that the heroes are NOT the only competent team out there. Campaign situations are vast and complex problems with many troubles. There are going to be other teams that the PCs occasionally work with that are contributing their own issues. Heck, my games our groups tend to encourage building up the locals and working with other heroes to get things done.

Once again, the helplessness of the locals is going to depend on how your table runs things.

On the 4th, I've played a D&D campaign where over the course of 10 sessions we had 3-4 rounds of combat. Not per session. That was over the entire stretch of 10 sessions. My group leans heavily towards diplomancy and talking out our problems with the locals. That said, this is another case of catharsis.

There's a lot of complex problems that are so big and hard for a single person to address in real life. But you come into a game and you can give misogyny or racism or ableism a face and punch this incarnate form of the abstract issue that is giving you issues. It's a vent for the frustrations we experience trying to deal with corporations, megachurches, and bigots. Once again, asking yourself why you enjoy the violence in a piece of fiction is valid, but fantasy violence is not the same thing as real life violence. And the threshold of when it becomes unhealthy is not nearly as thin as many people think.

This is the same line of thought where people say video games cause violence.

[quillyfied]

Hellaverse Theories: Helluva Boss S2E2

Welcome to Quilly’s Hellaverse Theories, where I overthink the entire Hellaverse! Given that the word count for the s2e1 post was close to 6k…it is safe to say that the rest of season 2 for Helluva Boss will follow the Hazbin Hotel pattern of being single-episode instead of doubled up. And lol at my past self for thinking these posts wouldn’t be as long, because I forgot that while speculating about Phenomenal Cosmic Plot is fun…interpersonal character stuff is what I really go rabid for. So of course I’m gonna talk about it more. Lol. ANYWAY.

Let’s jump into one of my very favorite episodes, s2e2!

Let’s be honest, folks, I could listen to a weird eldritch astronomy lesson from Stolas any day. The fact that he’s telling it as a bedtime story to Via only makes it that much better—and the fact that teenage Via is SO EXCITED for it is the cherry on top!

…the explosive, explosive cherry. A cherry bomb, you might say.

(Sidenote that every single character doodles on their calendars and it’s cute, okay, it’s so cute and I love it)

Alright, time to get a moment of realness that I really, really need certain fanfic writers to pay more attention to: Stolas really doesn’t care that much about imps. He cares about Blitzo. But look at how he treats the other imps in and out of his employ. He isn’t Stella, isn’t screaming and throwing them around, but in this exact scene, he isn’t being particularly kind, either, and I’d say probably the most outright cruel he’s ever been to an imp: he has the butler squeezed into one hand like he’s a goddamn stress ball (poor Pringles, even if that isn’t your name it is now), and is waving him around as he carries the phone around with him WHEN HE OWNS A DAMN CELLPHONE AND DOESN’T HAVE TO DO IT THIS WAY (unless Stella called first, which is likely).

And in earlier episodes: he dodges Pringles when Stella throws him at Stolas instead of trying to help him out, he constantly overlooks Moxxie and Millie and calls them “you littler ones” or “you little creatures,” and with the exception of his childhood butler, he doesn’t interact with the other imps much unless it’s to ask them something (like to bring him absinthe, and I notice too how the servant he asks isn’t the one who shows up with the bottle and glass and instead looks like he’s being forced into the other imp’s place bc she doesn’t want to deal with Stolas). Just because he isn’t vicious about it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have bigotry. I get the reaction to write him as caring more about imps, I understand the impulse to have him know his servants’ names and converse with them and win their loyalty by being a generally good person to them, but Stolas canonically isn’t there yet. It would be cool if he could get there. But he isn’t. And this is part of the problem that Blitzo has with Stolas and one of the many cracks in their relationship foundation. Which makes me more hopeful that Stolas is going to address this within himself, at least (more so if he gets demoted and stripped of his powers at the end of the second season).

(And sidenote to wonder if the imp/hellhound prejudice baked into the foundations of Hell is ever going to be meaningfully addressed; it would be nice, but this is a raunchy dark comedy, so I doubt any task as complex and grueling as tackling systemic oppression is going to get any nuanced and meaningful attention. Maybe a sugarcoated tied-in-a-bow resolution, maybe just ignored and made better for the characters we care about, but not really fixed. It’s not like the real world is any better at it.)

Alright off my soapbox, now time to enumerate the ways Stolas is being a messy father :P

Hang on have to squeal about the cute little cuff that Pringles has on the spade of his tail. Fancy dude be fancy.

On the one hand, good on Stolas for not shouting at Via, but again, just because he isn’t shouting doesn’t mean he’s being nice. I went off quite a bit in the s2e1 analysis about how Via and Stella’s relationship is an unknown outside of what context we can try and draw from Via’s behavior, but I said something at the very end that I will repeat and then spend this episode reiterating: Via has the very normal and common habit of being mad about one thing and it actually being about her anger or fear over something else. Like this is a thing I think everyone does, but for Via, it’s more common for her episodes to follow that pattern. In Loo Loo Land, she’s upset about her parents’ crumbling marriage and being forced to spend time with her dad’s new sidepiece, but the root of that anger and despair is actually her fear of being left behind by her father; the other two things are manageable once that root is taken care of. We’re seeing something similar here: Octavia is excited to see a meteor shower with Stolas, but his feud with Stella gets in the way and she reacts, angry about the meteor shower and the broken promise (spoiler alert: that isn’t the root of her anger, either, but we’ll get there when we get there).

Even for the meteor shower not being what she’s truly upset about, she is still plenty mad about it, and she should be; Stolas is dropping the ball. Again. The straw that’s breaking her back, so to speak. And Via isn’t a little kid anymore. She’s old enough to act. So she does. Hell yeah, Via. I’m so ready to see how she’s going to be when she’s old enough to be introduced into Goetian society, because I cannot wait to watch her tear down her enemies with verbal precision.

Paused on Blitzo’s calendar and I just have to say, I am disappointed, fandom; there is not NEARLY enough Blitzo drag/cross-dressing material, for how often Blitzo shows up in dresses in canon. Not only has he put a doodle of his own head over Verosika’s on the sexy calendar, but right next to it, pinned to the wall with an arrow, is a doodle of himself in a fancy froofy dress. I need to screencap this and save it for always, excuse me a moment.

While I have the calendar pulled up, though: I notice that the little note that says “Stolas: Full Moon??” isn’t crossed out despite the day passing. That doesn’t mean much, because the only things that are scribbled out are notes for Blitzo to finally talk with Loona, an “I <3 Moxxie” that I really want to know if Blitzo wrote or not, and various fuck days, but. Hmm. Hmmmmm. It’s implied later that Stolas and Blitzo might not have been meeting for the full moon for a couple of months, but it does make me wonder if this episode is the first time they see each other since Ozzie’s. It’s not nearly awkward enough for that, but they do have more pressing matters to deal with, I suppose.

Hang on I have to laugh at Loona throwing hecking SHURIKEN at Blitzo while he tries to give her a little talking-to; she is being very violent, which calls back to her bad behavior in the pilot episode tbh, but. SHURIKEN. WHY??? XD

Moxxie living his best life, tbh.

I constantly forget when watching this episode that Blitzo and Loona are also in the middle of some father-daughter problems, mainly Loona not taking criticism well and Blitzo trying a tough love tactic that…well. They both know it’s completely toothless, because Blitzo loves her way too much (and can’t afford a new secretary are you kidding me) (…YET, Stolas as IMP Secretary for Season Three please), but. Enforcing some boundaries with Loona’s office behavior isn’t exactly a bad thing. Unfortunately, Loona sees any criticism of her behavior as proof that she’s about to get landed back into the shelter and reacts with anger that’s explosive, violent, and very defensive, so the fact that her dad loves her to tiny wibbly pieces doesn’t mean much when five-plus years of adoption as an ADULT isn’t gonna erase the coping mechanisms she learned as a CHILD. But it HAS been enough time for Loona to rely on Blitzo and believe that he’ll be there for her when she needs him, because he’s proven it. So maybe this tough love hits a little harder than Loona wants to admit.

Enter Octavia, doing a very cool ninja routine that really would not work on any other day: the floor layout doesn’t normally put a couch facing its back to the door, and Loona might actually care more about someone sneaking into the office (have she and Via met before this?? I don’t think Loona went with them to Loo Loo Land…yeah this might be their first meeting, and Loona wins some major cool points by not ratting her out. Nice) when she and Blitzo haven’t just had a big fight. The fact that Via finds the book with so little trouble is pretty hilarious, but it’s also so interesting to notice that despite her being so close to adulthood, she really doesn’t seem to know what to do with the grimoire besides make requests of it. Makes sense, her being a cautionary heir instead of a full heir like Stolas, who would have had to study the thing since childhood; also makes sense given the kind of doting father that Stolas has tried to be. He likely didn’t want to force her to study magic if she didn’t want to, or force her into mingling with the rest of the Goetia family, come to think of it. It’s surprising that even Stella doesn’t seem to force that issue, either. But then again, we don’t know for sure; Via not being at her parents’ “not divorced” party might just be because it was an “adult” party and not a “kid” party. Stella declares that she loves throwing parties; maybe she’s thrown plenty and forced Via to go to those. I’m just. So upset that we don’t know what Stella’s parenting is like.

Also what kind of monkey’s paw bullcrap is in that grimoire, that “Take me to see the stars” lands Via in Los Angeles, of all hellholes? And it’s a recurring thing throughout the episode—every time Via asks for help in seeing the stars, it’s always movie stars. Not the meteor shower she’s looking for. Another clue in the ongoing picture of Via being powerful but untrained, woohoo. And for that matter, is Loona using the grimoire just because Blitzo wants to keep her out of harm’s way for missions…or also because none of the rest of IMP can work the book? In which case, how much inherent magical ability does Loona have, or does any Hellborn demon have? Is it the book that’s magical and the wielder that’s inconsequential? Because Asmodean Crystals and a lot of other magical items in Hell seem to just work, no matter who’s wielding them. Is the grimoire the same?

Ah, LA. I wonder if it was Octavia’s teleportation that killed Brennon Ragers (lolololol), or if he was already dead and Octavia just happened to show up where he was? Seems like the portal might have dropped her on top of him, but would that be enough to kill him? Also, notice: Via doesn’t have a human disguise, either. Seems like it might be something that Loona learned from the book, since Stolas can’t make them without it, at which point the next very loud and obvious question is why the rest of IMP doesn’t have them, buuuuuut they are accessing the living world illegally and the ongoing gag of the many ways they try (or, in this episode, don’t try at all) to hide themselves is funny.

OKAY HERE’S THE BIGGEST SCENE TO DATE TO FEED MY “IMP AND STOLAS ARE LEGALLY BONED” THEORY: The human protest in LA. They’re just chanting “protest,” but their signs are very interesting. “Demons walk among us.” “God hates you personally.” “To Hell” with an arrow pointing to whatever building they’re in front of. And the golden statue, which has haunted me for many viewings and which my insane brain has now become convinced is human Vox (I have zero proof; the statue has no identifying features beyond being a smiling man with a top hat, a suit, and a flower in his lapel. It doesn’t even share any traits with Vox whatsoever. It’s just vibes). The building they’re protesting in front of doesn’t seem to have any identifying features outside of some fancy architecture that’s kinda going to pot like the rest of the city around it. But why this tiny scene makes me think it relates to IMP: if DHORKS had so much footage of them and their exploits, it’s not crazy to think that some of that is online and circulating, maybe gathering steam as a weird conspiracy theory movement that just happens to be correct in this case. Human unrest, coupled with actual breach of Hell’s boundaries by angels using human-made technology? Pretty huge strike against IMP (and by association Stolas). And then Via getting spotted all over the place in LA, too (tripping over a second dead body? Poor girl). No camera flashes yet but I’m on the lookout for them now.

And the transition from Via’s panic attack straight into Blitzo’s really makes me want a bonding episode with them even more, thanks Spindlehorse :P and can you IMAGINE, if Blitzo and Stolas haven’t really talked outside of texts since Ozzie’s, THIS being the first call that Stolas gets from him when he’s stressed and in the middle of kicking his soon-to-be-ex-wife out of his house?? Stolas shows some restraint, frankly.

Via once again letting her inexperience get the better of her by going on a celeb-stalking tour, wonderful. But her excitement is so cute. I just wish she was able to be safe and excited with her fully engaged and present father. Just a thought.

Okay, the fact that Loona can not only track the smell of the portal, but knows exactly where in the human world that is?? LOONA YOU HAVE A PAST AND I WANT TO KNOW IT.

Loona and Moxxie’s animosity towards each other is entertaining. The fat jokes are not. Sigh.

Another instance of the background being framed just so in order to give the audience a look at a background detail that’s important: the LA water fliers. Which state that LA water is mostly acid and sewage. Gross. Important, but gross.

Blitzo’s very obviously flustered reaction to seeing human Stolas is interesting…given how canonically gross he finds humans :P apparently not all humans, huh, Blitzo? Exceptions made for ones that you bicker with like an old married couple?

(Stolas. Stolas you have to pay for—Stolas you can’t just steal—STOLAS—)

Also, the fact that LA is one of the few places they can walk around openly as demons and not have it be taken all that seriously is very funny to me. And Moxxie’s insistence on supporting street artists is even better. I also find it interesting that in the same city where some sort of anti-demon-flavored protest is going on, someone else finds Moxxie’s “demon costume” impressive enough to toss him a quarter. And the fact that he appears to be in a demon costume to begin with isn’t questioned Hmm. Hmmmmm.

Also. How interesting that Via pays attention to a particular stop on the bus tour with a father begging his wife and child to stay, only the second they’re gone to start smooching his male lover. How not at all a chilling parallel for Via’s own life. (The difference being that Stolas never once begged Stella to stay as far as we know, but…again, given how Via is upset with her father for also not caring about her mother…I wonder how much Via wishes he would beg them to stay? How much she wishes her parents actually loved each other? I mean, it would make for a better reality than the one she’s living in now where they hate each other’s guts pretty murderously, but…I do have to wonder how common a childlike fantasy that is for a kid whose parents are divorcing, to wish that their parents would just love each other and not have so many things drastically change for them all at once. But again: the root of that upset is the change, the fear of getting lost and forgotten and broken. Once that fear is addressed and assuaged, the separation can often become much easier to bear, especially if it makes both parents happier and more available to their kid. But that’s my outside observation. And my prediction: when Via gets the full picture, she can start to process her parents’ separation much better, and maybe try to reconcile her happy childhood with her horrific present, give it context and understanding. Though. The fact that her mother has tried to kill her father twice now and I suspect her uncle is about to jump on that train ain’t gonna be an easy pill to swallow.)

To the folks who make earnest predictions post-this episode about what Blitzo would look like as human and it isn’t just Brennon Ragers: you’re wrong but that’s okay. The giant ears slay me.

The Elmo head on a dinosaur body is unsettling, though, I’m glad the guy takes it off.

HEY WAIT A FUCKING SECOND. Just paused at exactly the right moment to notice that the guy in a pink shirt next to the Dino-Elmo furry has a tiny little design on his chest that looks an AWFUL LOT like the Voxtek logo. HMMMMM. TINY LITTLE EASTER EGGS. AND THE GUY IN ORANGE KINDA IN THE BACKGROUND BY THE GUY IN PINK DOES TOO. I might need to post a screenshot of this, actually, hang on let me rewind and see how much it’s popping up and I’m not seeing it. Alright, seems to just be those two for now. Which makes my “the golden statue is Vox” theory look a lot less stupid, huh? XD I love that the sign says “Holly’s Wood,” too. One: lol boner joke. Two: reinforcing that the Hellaverse world is just a little left of center of the one we’re living in now. Familiar enough, but different. Which is what makes speculating about the biblical differences in Hazbin Hotel so much fun, too.

I think about that screeched “I’m taking this out of their pay!” at least every other day. I just like the delivery. It’s funny to me. I haven’t paused this episode enough before to check and see what the guy with the whistle is waving around until now, but it being a film production degree is pretty great actually. As is the little popup ad that I desperately wish YouTube would go back to rather than now making me skip individual video ads as they pop up (does anyone know how to get adblock on a phone).

Proof that Stolas might need to date around a bit before he and Blitzo get together: bird likes being manhandled XD (not that Blitzo doesn’t or couldn’t but I doubt he can just pick Stolas up like this beefy dude does, not without some finagling and props)

I also wonder who/what does some of Blitzo’s imp noises, because the animalistic growling is pretty impressive.

And the way Blitzo just gets back on target when Stolas worries about Octavia—he’s a GOOD DAD and a GOOD FRIEND okay!!! Might not be on best terms with Loona right this second, given how she seems to ignore his orders until she accidentally stumbles on a trail to follow Via finally, but heck. He really does do the best he can while getting dragged into his own shenanigans.

And here we have the THIRD crime scene that Via has just walked through today; that is way too much crime :P The Star Owl souvenir sign is super cool though (poster when??). Poor kid.

Putting Blitzo back into showbiz like this is such a cool character moment, too—he’s nervous, he’s freaking out, he has experience but not good memories, and to have Stolas be there for it is priceless. First because he gives comfort by appealing to Blitzo’s ego via complimenting his sexual prowess (which I think normally would be just fine for a confidence booster for him, and might be Stolas reiterating that whatever else is going on with them, at least the sex has always been amazing), and second because Stolas has always been one of the few people to laugh at Blitzo’s jokes when he gets going (and the fact that we KNOW THIS since CHILDHOOD is something that KILLS ME).

Heh. Child star (???) snorting coke out in the open. Nice.

Hang on need to just. Live in the “breathless” moment for a bit. The touching, the blush, the gulp, the smile. Just. Living here. Forever. (Further proof that their arrangement isn’t just one-sided; even if they haven’t actually slept together or spent time together since Ozzie’s, Blitzo finds Stolas affecting and I love that for them.)

The big sparkly eyes Blitzo gets when people start reacting positively to his performance, though. I just. He’s just so. SPARKLY EYES. HE JUST WANTS ATTENTION AND VALIDATION DAMMIT. He’s just…not everyone’s cup of tea XD Bless him. And then Stolas’ big admiring eyes, and Blitzo’s finger guns, and Stolas gulping down 98% acid and 2% leaking sewer water—I WANT TO LIVE HERE.

But I can’t, because we have to check in on the budding sisterly relationship I want for Loona and Via so badly. I love that it’s an observatory that Loona finally finds her. STOP THE FUCKING PRESSES I JUST PAUSED ON THE NEWSPAPER: There’s a shot of Blitzo’s shadow under the headline “Alien Attack?” I’M TELLING YOU IMP IS GOING TO COURT OVER THIS OKAY.

I don’t know how I keep forgetting that Blitzo and Loona had a fight earlier in this episode that Blitzo isn’t feeling good about, when such a huge part of this episode is Blitzo’s flashback to getting Loona. Now let’s talk about the shelter for a bit: obviously run down and messy. Looks more like a jail than an animal shelter (though admittedly I’ve never been to…either, actually). And it’s an adult hellhound showing Blitzo around. I just have so many questions. Why is Blitzo looking for a hellhound? Wanting one for work? He does say he’s looking for one that’s more “family friendly,” but his excitement at being there feels like it’s a personal stop. He doesn’t say he’s looking to hire muscle or a new worker. He seems specifically there to adopt. Which. Only really works if the hellhound is a minor (even if only barely, Miss I-Was-One-Month-Away-From-Being-Eighteen). And it seems like it’s only minors in the shelter anyway (barring the second hellhound Blitzo is introduced to, who seems older). Maybe Verosika’s jab about Amber Alerts earlier was more of a hint at Blitzo wanting kids than I thought.

More questions: the sign overhead says “Hellhound Adoption” but the hellhound guide says “he’ll be perfect for whatever work you want to use him for.” So. In order to get hired, do hellhounds…have to get adopted or at least be adopted at some point? Did Verosika adopt Vortex? That feels wrong and weird. Frankly the fact that hellhound adoption is a thing already begs so many, many questions about hellhound societal dynamics. I’m drowning a little here. “A gift for the wife, huh?” YIKES. YIIIIIKES. Yeah there’s a reason hellhounds are on the same level as imps, huh? Though it seems like imps might even be slightly above hellhounds in some ways, if hellhounds have adoption centers like this and can be GIFTED to other people, even imps. “We’ll be rid of her next month when she ages out. Good riddance, if you ask me. She’ll never amount to anything much.” WONDER WHY, LADY. And the way Blitzo just immediately latched onto her—THEIR NEED FOR CONNECTION IS KILLING ME SLOWLY OKAY.

And the fact that Stolas can tell that Blitzo is suddenly not okay—oof. Also, “you little anal fissure” is hands-down my favorite insult Blitzo deals out in the entire show, bar none. It’s poetry. It’s grace. It’s beauty. It’s so funny I die laughing every time.

I also die over Stolas’ little wimpy “eh!” as he throws a bottle of acid at the producer and most certainly kills him. STOLAS YOU CAN TURN INTO A GIANT RED AND BLACK ELDRITCH MONSTROSITY. WHAT ARE YOU DOING XD

Y’know. Shooting up and burning down a production studio in LA while there are CAMERAS RECORDING…not good for being low-key in the living world if you’re Hellborn and trying to stay out of sight. Also, the way the electronics around the place start to go a little goofy—“Let it burn” on the teleprompter, “Panic” on the screens facing the audience, the way the lights shut off and then back on and there’s a lot of dead folks all of a sudden—makes me feel like a certain cosmic someone is reveling in the chaos and violence here (Roo show yourself u mysterious temptress).

I believe in Blitzo’s muscles, Blitzo Is The Lovely Bride 2k25. (Or however that meme goes with the lovely pony bride and the fucked up little pony husband.)

Now back to Loona and Via and very important future stepsibling bonding: I LOVE that Loona drops her human disguise before drawing Via’s attention. And that Via opens up to her so quickly. She really could use a friend; no indication that she has any of those, which isn’t good for her or for her and Stolas’ relationship either. My Hellaverse friend said she thinks Via is 100% right when Via says “why does he hate her more than he loves me?” and that Stolas’ child being his only positive relationship his entire life isn’t good for either one of them, especially not Via. I agree…to a point. I think Stolas does hate Stella more than he loves Via…FOR NOW. I think the emotions he’s trying to regulate are all so intense right now, so new to him, that he is failing Via, but Loona is also right that this situation isn’t entirely as simple as that, either. Stolas is trying the best he can, and while it may not be a very good best right now, it’s not nothing (for examples, see Paimon and Cash, who both need giant punches to their terrible fatherly faces). It’s the kinder side of praising bare minimum, I think: acknowledging that sometimes, yeah, scraping bare minimum really is an accomplishment and should be celebrated.

(Via’s little bird noises. SO cute.)

And we come back around to the root of what Via is really upset about: it isn’t about the meteor shower, it’s about how her father’s attention and affection is somewhere else, and how alone and abandoned that makes her feel when that’s already an issue she has. But, much like the entire situation between her parents, Via doesn’t have all the information. She doesn’t know that her dad is down in the city looking all over for her (and to the folks who want to disregard that and say no Stolas wasn’t, he was hanging around Blitzo and ignoring Via the whole time, may I remind you that Stolas can’t track Via and he doesn’t have Loona’s number. If Loona finds Via while they’re trying to get out of this human showbiz mess they’re dealing with now and can’t really escape without causing a scene…which happens anyway…Stolas would have no way of knowing. His powers are limited. They are technically not supposed to get noticed as demons. He is ONLY safe with Blitzo right now, and only able to have half a chance of catching up with Via if he sticks close to the guy who DOES have Loona’s number and WILL hear about it when she finds Via). She doesn’t know how bad things are between her parents. It’s likely she doesn’t even know how bad her mother truly is (FUCKING HELL CAN WE JUST GET SOME SCENES WITH VIA AND STELLA THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH STOLAS—). This shit DOES get messy. And only going to get messier, thanks to Andrealphus and Stella.

Listen. Stolas does need to be trying harder with Via. But it’s understandable that he’s letting the ball slip, between his own self-loathing and now this messy separation and also the very messy situation with Blitzo. He doesn’t get it right every time. He can’t. Just like Blitzo with Loona, the fact that Stolas is even trying isn’t nothing. Yes he can be doing better, but what he’s doing ISN’T NOTHING. These two things can be true at the same time. Stolas isn’t worried about reputation or appearances, he just wants Via to be safe, and being in the human world by herself is not safe for her. And Blitzo wants Loona to be less offensive to customers, but he also wants her to be happy and know that even if she drives away all their business, he still loves her and wants to be in her life (and wants her in his, won’t be replacing her or getting rid of her EVER). Fucking. STOP PRESSING MY DADDY ISSUES BUTTON, VIV. IT’S RUDE.

The HUG. I just need them to be friends so badly. Parent Trapping their dads at some point, but also hanging out because they both need friends so badly.

Stolas doesn’t yell or lecture, he just wants her to be okay. And then immediately apologizes when he realizes how badly he messed up. HE’S TRYING.

“What the fuck is that?” “MY ACTING CAREER.” Yeah, not the first time a career in showbiz has gone up in flames for Blitzo, huh?

…I’ll just. See myself out for that one.

I love how even though Via’s going to have to wait another thousand years for the next showing of Azathoth’s Tears, she and Stolas are still making the best of the situation and admiring the fireworks. Making lemonade out of lemons, I suppose. Just enjoying each other’s company, which is what Via really wanted all along. She’ll come to terms with the divorce, with her parents’ true relationship, all of it…so long as she can still hang out with her dad and feel seen and loved.

Which is what’s gonna make their next confrontation in s2.5 hurt so damn bad, huh? :))))

Okay, brief interjection to say it took me so long to understand what “Mackin Stols do it now” translated to, because “macking” is another way of saying “making out” or kissing and I got very, very sidelined by that train of thought before I realized he was saying “Making.” Also. Are we…gonna talk about how Blitzo can spell out loud just fine but can’t do it when typing or writing? No? Fine.

I’d love to see more of Moxxie getting sucked into supporting local artists to the detriment of everyone around him. It’s such a great character trait.

Okay, that’s that! On to the next! Trying to get these all out tonight and tomorrow and making terrible time, woohoo!

[thebibliosphere]

So some people are @’ing me (sorry, inbox is still closed and my IMs are a Nightmare atm so I’m largely avoiding them while I try to work) wanting to know how the Scots Wiki thing could have gone on for so long without anyone noticing, and tbh, there’s several factors at play here.

One, Scots is a marginalized language (and I will not argue this point. It is a language, not a dialect of English. If you’re going to argue this with me then save yourself some time and fuck off now.) that is primarily spoken, so it doesn’t surprise me that people didn’t even realize the website was a thing. We’re not used to seeing our language written down, and those of us who are, only ever see it at academic levels. Or y’know, Scottish Twitter. There’s also issues regarding dialect, and how there’s not one true form of Scots, so wrangling a project like Scots Wiki would require massive effort on behalf of people who both know it, and are technologically savy enough and have the time to do so. Which is where point two comes in.

Namely that up until recently, Scots was not a part of any official curriculum. We were banned from speaking it in my school, and often told to “speak properly” if we lapsed too far away from Queens English. Scottish Literature only became a thing when I was in my final year of high school (15 years ago), and even then it was an elective and not compulsory. You could choose to study your own language in your own country if you wanted to. But the only books you could read were things like Robert Louis Stevenson and Rabbie Burns. Hardly conducive to the study of contemporary Scots as a living language. I only actually got to study it linguistically when I was in my second year of university and opted to take it as an extra class, and the department was constantly underfunded and struggling. They still are. 

My parents were certainly never allowed to study it, and while I was merely scolded for sounding “uneducated” by my teachers if I used Scots words in the classroom, my dad tells stories about corporal punishment being doled out to instill a sense of fear around using it instead of “Proper English”. So while I still spoke Scots at home with my family and friends, there was also a deep sense of shame about it. I was sent for elocution lessons, partly for a mild stutter, but also to make me sound more British. Because my parents knew, they knew if I wanted to get ahead in the workforce I needed to sound less like myself and more “proper”. And I didn’t really realize how right they were till I got a job working at an English based publisher who were surprised to find out I was Scottish. Apparently I “sounded much smarter than that”.

And the microaggressions didn’t end there. It came out in the form of things like “you’re surprisingly thin, I thought all Scottish people ate deep fried mars bars” or making jokes about Scottish money being fake so they could pay me in monopoly money if they wanted to. (Legal tender discourse explained.) They used to refer to me in the office as “the smart” or “civilized Scot”. Usually before they laughed and handed me off to some American writer who needed help unpicking the mess they’d made of their Scottish dialogue. And I would smile and nod and grit my teeth, because it was that or make a fuss and potentially risk losing the only career job I’d managed to get because they made it clear over and over, there were plenty of people who could do my job.

Except there isn’t, not really. Oh there’s plenty of folk who speak it and could have a fair crack at it. But there’s not many actual Scots Linguists. Certainly not enough to save a language. I don’t even qualify as one. I just studied it for two years out of sheer interest. So things like the Wiki project rely not only volunteers, but on people being aware of it. And as mentioned, there’s very good reasons for Scottish people to either not know it existed, or to not want to be associated with it. The Scottish Cringe is very real. And it’s the end result of generations of cultural death and the insidious mantra: “speak properly” repeated over and over again until part of you believes it. I still code switch if I need to do something like talk to the bank or talk to a client. I tell myself it’s because I’m living in America and I want to be understood. But I did it before I moved here. I did it while living in Scotland, because I knew having the “proper” accent helped.

So yeah, the idea of a brony destroying a Scots based wiki with nonsensical gibberish sounds funny. But only until you realize it’s part of a broader problem rooted in systemic cultural and class warfare. It’s also why it’s no very funny when people post things like “what language is that LOL” under Scottish media, because the answer is Scots. And it’s dying.

Edit: I also shouldn’t need to say this, but seen as how this is tumblr and we are in Hell: if any of you take this post and use it to play oppression Olympics with Black and marginalized people I will manifest in your home like snakes, rip your spine out through your toes and beat you to death with it. Our history of oppression does not negate the harm we do. If anything it means we ought to know better, and the fact that we don’t is beyond reprehensible.

[mordigen]

Unpopular opinion: Christians are not witches

I said it. Fight me.

There has been a trend that has been growing ever more problematic recently: overbearing, hyper-zealous, hyper-vigilant "acceptance" This means the pagan community is an absolute free-for all, and you are not allowed to so much as even feign the possibility that you do not agree with absolutely 100% of everything, lest you be named a gatekeeping, ignorant bigot.

Whether you like it or not - there ARE paths out there that have specific rules...regulations...stipulations...tenets - whatever the hell you want to call or classify them. End. Period. There's no other colour that comes in - that's it. Sorry for you, but they DO exist. In fact, there are many of them.

If you do not follow those rules, tenets, etc..., then you are not of that path. Point. Blank. And there is nothing wrong with that - it simply means that you are of some other path. That's it! That's all that means! It may be *nearly* identical to the path in question - but it is not, hence the 'nearly'.

If you happen to be a part of one of these paths, there is absolutely nothing wrong with saying so. If someone claims to be a part of one of these paths, but are absolutely, blatantly not - there is nothing wrong with saying that, and explaining why that is. Some people just honestly don't know there is a difference, or that these certain prerequisites are indeed a definitive factor - so they learn something, they broaden their horizons. Everyone seems to be all about educating themselves about being sensitive to other cultures and customs - except the pagan community, apparently, because this mentality does not translate across that pagan/witch line. Instead of taking it as a learning experience, you are immediately pounced on with notions of 'there are no rules!' 'you can't tell someone what to do on their own path!' Or, simply, the name calling. Well yes, while all of that is true - it still remains that how ever you want to practice or whatever you personally decide to do, may just simply not be what you are claiming, or calling it. It may just be semantics - but semantics matter when dealing with nuance. And paganism is extremely nuanced.

You can call a tomato an orange all you want to - but that thing will never be an orange, no matter how much you believe in it. And people are not wrong for informing you that you may have the wrong name, that is in fact, a tomato. If you go on deciding to call it an orange, you can do that - but that is willful ignorance. So, in your fight to be unapologetically accepting of every ridiculous notion, you are perpetuating willful ignorance - whilst being directly in opposition of your goal and being, *GASP*, unaccepting to those who follow a path where distinction and definition matters. You are completely invalidating those people's paths and beliefs while trying to defend another's (another who may, in fact, actually be wrong) and actively using their path & beliefs as the very reason to berate and ostracize them. Pretty fantastically hypocritical of you. Now...on to the second problem. I do not, at all, in any form, believe in "ritual magick" - as perpetuated by Aleister Crowley hardons. And no, that is not a knock on Crowley, just the idiot followers that don't understand half of what he taught and latch onto the superficial.

When you look at the origins and make up of magical beliefs, and magic itself as a separate entity - no matter which particular branch - they were all created by religion. They all have roots in highly spiritual cultures and customs. So, I absolutely do not believe for one second that you can believe in magic without SOME form of religion - whatever one you adhere to is your choice, but you cannot have the first without the latter. You cannot. Even if you claim that you have no religion, or spiritual faith, your practices absolutely do. You are calling on elements and agencies that absolutely have divine ties and connections one way or another. Oh, how many atheists I see calling on the seals of Arch Angels.... are you fucking shittin me? Really?? So let's bring it all together now - with the fact that many faiths DO have prerequisites, AND the fact that magic is religious/spiritual -- Christians are not, and cannot be witches or pagans. They are mutually exclusive. Not only because so many various paths have such prerequisites, and very define religious/spiritual beliefs that are contradictory to others - but simply because Christianity DOES, very much, have very clear and stringently defined Do's & Don'ts, and obviously the religious aspect itself clashes with the religious beliefs of others. Their religious beliefs clash with people who believe in their same god - so how could they not with those who believe in other gods?? Considering this, no other path would even need such stipulations themselves for them to be mutually exclusive, as Christianity already covers that issue so completely, but the fact that so many pagan paths do only exacerbates an already existing problem. That being said - that does not mean you cannot believe in the Christian 'god', by whatever name you know him by - or that you cannot believe in Jesus, and also be a witch or pagan. In fact the latter has an even bigger argument for believing in both, as paganism, generically, in itself is polytheistic, so it is very fitting to simply have the Christian god and Jesus amongst the many deities being worshipped. But those two things alone is not what makes Christianity. A good start, yes, but that is not all it takes - in fact, there are many that are shunned, excommunicated, banned, condemned and moreso whilst having those very two qualifying factors. You can find this in *every single* sect of Christianity, so...the proof is in the pudding, as they say, that it is much more than simply believing in 'God' and Jesus that makes a 'Christian'. And if you take that to heart and follow all those rules - you cannot be a witch or pagan, many times over, as you would be in direct opposition, or violation, of a number of their teachings - both on the aspect of simple 'rules', but also on a much deeper spiritual level of the entire foundation of their faith. Cannot serve two masters, and all that... If you do not follow those rules, then sure, you could be a witch or a pagan - but then you cannot be a Christian. That is just the facts.

Many people like to argue the use of magic and mysticism in the bible - but the issue is what parts of the bible they are found, and all the amendments of the further books. Again, what really carves out being a Christian vs. any of the other sects of Abrahamic beliefs. As, news flash - there is far more than just Christianity. And some of them, do, in fact, do hand in hand with magic. The Kabbalah is an astounding example of that - and, in fact, where a lot of the so called *ahem* 'non'-religious 'ritual magick' comes from. In this same vein, I would like to note that I have never had any issue or seen conflict with the Hebrew or Jewish take on shamans, mystics and witches, as they really do go hand in hand - They have their own very in depth, detailed, spiritual and sentimental form of mysticism that was a natural progression from pre-Abrahamic religions and culture, and grew into their teachings and belief system, so it does not go against their core beliefs the same way it very stringently does in Christian theology. Considering their ethnical histories and cultural heritage - this is a brilliant example of the natural evolution and progression of faiths - not simply ripped from the hands of the brutally oppressed and rewritten as a mockery to wipe out the preexisting notion of faiths -- as the Church has a history of doing. The Book of Enoch is another shining example of Biblical magic, or Angelic magic. But, this also also turns my point into a self fulfilling prophecy, as in the fact that it is accepted amongst all denominations as heresy, and it is taught that these magics - though they do, in fact, exist, were for the angels and completely forbidden from mankind. So, thusly, if you are a follower of Enoch, you are not a 'Christian', by name and membership, as you are outright going against it's teachings. You are a heretic, a blasphemer. Perhaps you may be one of the many other forms of the Christian god's followers - but not a Christian, as being Christian denotes a very specific set of beliefs and tenets - end of story. Magic, and paganism, is in direct conflict with those teachings, and therefore, cannot coexist.

On top of the logic - there is also the emotional issue. Christianity has a long history of abuse towards various pagan, tribal and indigenous faiths, while stealing our beliefs as their own, and demonizing those they couldn't successfully acclimate into theirs. To now be expected to be OK with this faith, yet again, latching on to *our* sacred rites and practices as being a part of their own is a hard pill to swallow at best, a slap in the face to most, and flat out perpetuating trauma at worst. Once upon a time, people sought out these very same communities and groups within their pagan circles as an escape, a safe space, and a shield and guardian against the Christian onslaught, torment, oppression, or just exhaustion - and now, we must not only tolerate them invading our private spaces, but must now welcome them with open arms and expected to be happy about it? Forgive me if I don't sympathize....

If we are going to now be forced into being shoulder to shoulder with them, the very least you can offer us is neutrality. You can be accepting of all and still be neutral grounds - not taking any one side anywhere, all you have to do is be respectful to each other. Disagreement is not disrespectful. Could someone who disagrees with a certain viewpoint *become* disrespectful? Sure, of course they could. But simply the act of disagreement is nothing hateful or hurtful in any way shape or form - in fact, good discourse is how progress is made. So we need to remain neutral grounds and normalize the acceptance of different viewpoints - we need to recognize and accept that, yes, there are paths out there that do have specific requirements, expectations and limits - there are paths that are going to disagree, or just flat out not believe in something. Instead of name calling, when someone of those paths decides to speak up and enlighten and elaborate on information that may be inaccurately described or depicted, you need to LISTEN and learn, and not just bludgeon them with presumptive judgement. You also need to accept that there are many, various different closed practices out there - beyond Native American & Voodoo practices (as those seem to be the only ones the pagan community recognizes) and if someone of those closed faiths tell you - no, you are not xy or z, that is also not being judgmental or hateful or hurtful - that simply is. ....a very important side note here is that acknowledging closed practices is also not a carte blanche for screaming about cultural appropriation. Please shut the fuck up about cultural appropriation. Not being of a specific faith is not equivalent to cultural appropriation - Telling someone "no, you're not xyz" is very different from telling someone "no, you can't practice xyz" (looking at you smudge-Nazis) You can enjoy, practice, learn or celebrate anything you want of any faith you want while not actually being apart of it - that's the beauty of sharing and learning. And I think that is where all the trouble boils down from:

Yes, you can do whatever you want and can create whatever path you want for yourself...just don't misrepresent it, don't call it something it is not, and don't deny those who are more educated & experienced in that particular department. We get enough of that from outsiders to start doing it to each other.

[writingwithcolor]

Arab Character Joining Corrupt Superheroes, Police Parallels

Anonymous asked:

I’m writing a story with a Arabian diaspora main character. The story is about corrupt superheroes, and how they affect an oppressed superpowered minority. The main character is one of these superheroes, naively joining them in his teens believing he’s going to help people. Doesn’t help that his parents are having money trouble. Eventually he ends up fighting a superpowered crook, and gets a bystander killed.

1)I know portraying an Arabian character committing violence is a pretty touchy subject, even if accidental. Is there any way I can write this that makes it clear to the reader that the action itself is messed up without the unfortunate implication that Arabs are violent? 

2)A large part of the story is the MC’s parents reaction. They are loving parents, however after this incident happens, they are confused and ashamed. While they still love him, they temporarily cut ties with him. Eventually they reconcile and start to be a family again. In my research (they are diaspora Saudi Arabians), Family is very important and tight-nit. Shame towards the family is to be avoided at all costs. However I’ve also read that disowning a family member rarely ever happens. Is there a way to write this kind of narrative with respect to this aspect of Arabian culture?

Let us begin with some terminology.

- If a person is from Saudi Arabia, they are Saudi Arabian, or more commonly, Saudi. This is their nationality.

- They may or may not be Arab. Arab is an ethnicity. Not all Saudis are Arab. Not all Arabs are Saudi.

- Arabic is a language. Lots of people across the world who are neither Saudi nor Arab speak Arabic.

- Arabian on its own is a word used to refer to a specific breed of horses.

If you are referring to humans, you want to either say "Saudi Arabian" (both words) or “Saudi” to indicate nationality, or "Arab" to indicate ethnicity. If you’re looking to describe your character’s culture, you probably want to call it Saudi culture. (While grammatically correct, talking about “Arab culture” doesn’t make much sense because Arabs are an incredibly diverse ethnic group and there is no such thing as a single monolithic Arab culture).

Now for the first question. In my mind, the issue is less about the character committing violence, and more about the premise of the story and how it mirrors real-life oppressive structures. You have an organized group of superheroes who think they are doing good by fighting “crooks” but in reality are enacting systemic oppression upon a marginalized group. This immediately brings to mind police violence, racial profiling, and the way that policing in North America is used as a tool of white supremacy while glorified in propaganda as a force for good. Essentially, you are telling a story about a character who joins an oppressive policing force, enacts violence upon a marginalized group as a result, and (I’m assuming) eventually realizes that they are not, in fact, the good guys. This is very close to being a “bigoted character learns not to be bigoted” story. I recommend re-examining your premise in light of the real-life parallels and asking yourself whether this is the story you want to tell. 

The issue is compounded by the fact that your character is an Arab teen, who in real life is more likely to be the one facing racial profiling from the police. Taking this character and making him the oppressor in your story makes the already flawed premise even more problematic, especially if the characters in the oppressed group are white.

As for your second question, it seems believable to me that a teen’s parents might reject him if they learned that he committed a crime. However, when the family in question is Arab, you are suddenly feeding into harmful tropes about oppressive and violent Arab parents. You are asking if there is a way to write this respectfully. I believe that there is, but it requires a great deal of care, nuance, and cultural awareness. While it is possible to write a Saudi Arab character grappling with the consequences of violence and familial estrangement in a compelling way, the way your ask is phrased leads me to believe you are not equipped to do it justice. 

- Mod Niki

Think about why Arab people committing violence is a touchy subject, and then think about the general propaganda narrative that came about from the act that made things so touchy. 

It’s going to sound one hell of a lot like what you have here.

Military and police use buckets and buckets of propaganda to continue hooking in young, impressionable teens to commit state-sanctioned colonialism and oppression. That propaganda looks suspiciously like “we have health insurance, we will pay for your education, you just have to do what we tell you even if that means hurting or killing others, but it’s okay because you get to be the hero in the situation.”

Now, propaganda is a very powerful tool. I was taught, in my media classes, that controlling the message means shaping reality. The media is built as a propaganda machine, and when you start to see who owns what media properties you start to see some really disturbing patterns (Rubert Murdoch owns a lot of right-wing sources across America, the UK, and Australia, and he’s too rich to investigate his culpability in spinning terrible narratives found in right-wing publications. He owns the big names).

As Niki said, this situation mirrors police violence and police-sanctioned terrorism. And the very, very unfortunate implications of making the target of police violence be in that wheel. But I want you to look at the media situation that has made the plot happen.

Because even if you swapped out ethnicities, you’d still have a reckoning to do with the American culture that their primary social safety nets involve killing people.

I am not kidding.

Some of the most well-funded unions in the country are police unions. These people have pensions. They have health insurance. It’s damn near impossible to fire them. They get overtime very well mandated, and it’s a known thing among defence lawyers that arrests happen right before a cop’s shift will end so they get the overtime of filing the paperwork. They absolutely go into poor neighbourhoods and recruit based off people needing an escape, and them having the money to provide it.

A similar sentiment is true for the military, except they push for college education a bit more and don’t really have overtime, but they do have deployment bonuses. So the way to get extra pay for yourself is to go out and do colonialism outside the borders. The military doesn’t necessarily like it when the economy is doing well, and don’t like the idea of college being affordable, because they rely so heavily on poverty and fear of college debt to recruit. 

The story you’re telling here goes so far beyond an individual’s actions and instead taps into America’s single biggest cultural investment: that oppressing others makes you a hero. 

The Pentagon funds most military media out there as a propaganda tool, including most superhero movies and a large number of video games. This is in their budget. They will also go so far as to literally commission the games to exist. Part of getting that funding is you cannot critique America’s military, basically at all (the only exception I’ve seen is Ms Marvel, but that’s set in the 90s). This turns any sort of military-using media into a potential propaganda tool.

And the thing is? Even if you fall for that propaganda and were part of the military or the police, you still have to reckon with the fact you put whatever your own desires were above a huge track record of those groups being terrible. You still have to reckon with the fact you didn’t realize they were wrong, and were complicit in a lot of crimes.

This goes very far beyond “the action is terrible” and goes into “the system is rotten to its core, and you chose not to believe it, or to believe you could change what was built with blood.”

“Good” police officers get fired. If you try to question anything, if you try to say this action is wrong, you will absolutely get destroyed. Military’s much the same. You need some degree of buy-in to the concept of white supremacy to sign up for the military or the police, because you need to see their actions as not deal breakers instead of actions that violate multiple international laws. 

In short: you need to see the people being oppressed as deserving of being oppressed to some degree in order to participate with police and the military.

Marginalized people can hold this belief, it happens. But that is a very sticky situation that outsiders shouldn’t touch. 

It’s possible but difficult for you to write a white person having this sort of arc, but it would be extremely challenging to have it not come across as a white guilt story. To not have a socially aware audience roll their eyes at how long it took. You’d definitely not be writing a story with a diverse audience in mind, because you’d mostly appeal to those who saw the propaganda as just fine and not that bad.

This isn’t even getting into the oft-cited adage that boys who bully others become cops, while girls who bully become nurses. And the more police atrocities become mainstream news, the less and less people can convince themselves that becoming a police officer is a good thing.

Which brings me to the point of: how well-documented is this oppression? Is this character walking around in an oppressive situation like, say, pre-social-media where there was no direct access to the oppressed groups and you could close your eyes and look away even if it made national news? Or is this in a media connected world where these oppressed populations have a voice in the narrative?

The former has an angle of the character slowly realizing the horror and it’s slightly more forgivable for their early ignorance. But in any sort of world where there’s access to the people getting hurt? Things get more and more “ignorance is indistinguishable from maliciousness.” And keep in mind, these stories are read in the real world, where police brutality and war crimes go viral, and a lack of knowledge is getting harder and harder to defend as a position.

Media plays a huge role in shaping our perception of what’s happening. Cameras on a situation makes different activism tactics work, as we can see with how activism changed in the 60s and 70s as tv reached the masses. Social media has made it possible for you to look up firsthand accounts of discrimination within seconds. 

This is a factor you are absolutely going to have to consider, when you want to look at how nice your hero is seen by marginalized or otherwise socially-aware people. If there is a way to find out how bad this superhero organization is before you sign a contract with them? Then that doesn’t look particularly good on the “hero”. You’d really have to establish them as super idealistic, super sheltered, super desperate, and/or just swallow the knowledge that they really don’t see anything that happens “over there to those people” as that bad. 

All of the above is more than possible. And they’d still be seen as complicit no matter what justification you gave, because they are.

Does this mean all corrupt organization stories are off limits? No. The reason these stories have such deep cultural resonance right now is because of the propaganda I outlined above. 

But you as the author are going to have to examine your own engagement with the propaganda narrative and do your own private reckoning so your own sense of guilt and compliance doesn’t bleed through the narrative too strongly, so you can tell a good story instead of an overt message story that’s you working out your own feelings.

By all means, write a story where police and the military are taken down, where propaganda is weaponized and the media is controlled (because that’s sure as hell the modern world). 

But know that stories where the hero discovers the corruption already have a ticking clock because we, in the real world, are slowly being faced with a mountain of apathy instead of ignorance. The knowledge of oppression is out there so much that marginalized people are tired of the ignorance defence. 

As the saying goes, “privilege is the ability to ignore the oppression of others.” 

Propaganda, centralized media, and strategic cultural investment made it possible for police and the military to have a chokehold on their public perception. But that’s changing. The chokehold is starting to fade, people are starting to question their beliefs. 

The past year has shown that knowledge isn’t the issue; it’s white supremacy. People don’t want to believe that any of this is that bad. People want to believe that oppression is justified, that if people just followed the law they’d be fine. They don’t want to question themselves. And marginalized people are tired of these narratives where, suddenly, people snap out of it. Because there was so much evidence to show it was bad, but it was only when you do one of the worst crimes imaginable that you realize this is bad? It’s only when it becomes personal that things are worth looking at critically?

No. And you need to examine where you are in processing your own complicity before writing a story where you’ve swapped around the ethnicities to try and distance yourself from the problem, where in the end you made the target the oppressor.

~Mod Lesya

[freshtomatoesddd]

I'm kinda over how Zuko is praised to the sun for going, "Wow, people shouldn't suffer under institutions of oppression." Like damn, good on the guy who benefited from said institution of oppression for realizing that. He's also praised for standing up against the system, but how about we congratulate the characters who were actually negatively affected by colonialism. Like Katara and Sokka, who's culture and people were systematically driven to near extinction because of Zuko's grandfather. This isn't a dig at Zuko, he did ultimately end up doing good by giving people rights (crazy) But I barely see anyone praise Sokka for standing up against FN colonialism, and even less so Katara, even though they directly suffered under FN colonialism.

I feel like this has to do with how Zuko is noble-born, how he's constantly juxtaposed with his sister who's far less socially aware than he is, and greater FN politics.

Even after we as a society recognized that nobles are no different from us, we still collectively have a rosy view of the past where those nobles were seen as otherworldly. Watch any period drama and you'll immediately see this. And because ATLA is set in a fantasy world, we expect it to adhere to medieval values, but instead we're given very modern moral dilemmas to contend with: the morality of war.

Before WW1, war was seen as an adventure. People heard stories of new world conquest and think it exciting to take part in, which was why global exploration became popular (also because it brought home tons of STOLEN gold) The Fire Nation is shown to hold this older view of war, which is framed as archaic through both Aang's pacifist worldview and Zuko's later realization that "war bad." It gives us the impression that ATLA's story, though set in the 'past,' will give us modern solutions on how to solve that moral dilemma.

But no, instead Aang defeats the big bad and Zuko takes his place as Fire Lord, without any changes to how FN government functions (as the comics confirm) He doesn't change the institution that was complacent in and encouraged ultra-nationalist expansionism, which leaves the government basically the same except a "good guy" is in charge. If that "good guy" dies, what's to stop his descendants from repeating the sins of their ancestors? There certainly aren't any safety measures stopping them, because Zuko conveniently didn't implement any laws that would inhibit his absolute power.

Again, it's all very outdated. Applauding a noble-born son while barely acknowledging the very real struggle of 'common folk.' It gives you something to think about while Bryke makes the Zuko movie. LMAO.