#he’s still a hero whose moral fibre is enough

[age-of-moonknight]

“Chapter 3: Avenger,” Fallen Friend: The Death of Ms. Marvel (Vol. 1/2023), #1.

Writer: Saladin Ahmed; Penciler and Inker: Andrea Di Vito; Colorist: Edgar Delgado; Letterer: Ariana Maher

[actuallyevilgay]

The Apathy (Part 1)

Astarion x Male Reader/Tav

DNI if you are a minor. Dead dove don’t eat. Please read my about before replying. Content: Astarion x Male tav, spoiler warning for act 3 and epilogue.

Summary: After the final battle, Tav disappears, perhaps to mend his broken heart. The adventure has done more damage to him than everyone thought at first. Notes: Astarion is the vampire ascendant, Tav is not a heroic figure. Contains headcanons for several characters, contains headcanons for illithid brain alteration but not evolving. Tav uses daggers and magic. Astarion is an Arcane Trickster Rogue. Content Warnings: Tav suffering from depression / ptsd, self-neglect. A/N: This is my first fic idea I wanted to explore. Some of these elements are inspired and used from my oc, I won’t overly describe Tav, but I wrote it with a long-living race in mind. So Elf, or Half Elf, or Tiefling and such. Tav would not age very quickly.

. . . . . .

The adventure had been.. Brutal. From the day you awoke on the nautiloid, all the way until you fought the nether brain. Without much peace in between the night, the fighting, the plot thickening, you remember every horror and every threat. You were not a hero, you’ve told Wyll that much. When he pleaded to hurry after the father that abandoned him, or when Karlach asked you to beat the shit out of some fake paladins.

You were not a hero, even as you helped up Shadowheart from the sands, or saved Gale from the portal or fed him a useless ring.

You told them, time and time again. Especially Astarion and Lae’zel, whose eyes pierced yours with a silent kinship. You did not trust any of them until they somehow managed to crawl into your heart.

Saving the tieflings wasn’t so bad, but everything went downhill from there.

And yet you still helped every friend you made, you kept promises and fulfilled them. You swallowed your pride as you consumed the powers from tadpoles, feeling the illithid magic take from you, childhood memories you might have once cherished. It made you numb, like you lost something- The ability to understand your own experiences. You could not put words to it, perhaps it scratched away the small bits of morality you harboured a very long time ago.

Jaheira certainly was stupid enough to trust you despite your lack of caution to the tadpoles. It wasn’t until the emperor revealed himself that you realised power comes at a price. For a moment, sense returned- you killed the very thing that promised you evolution with a stomp. No, you would not let this adventure take more than it already had.

Perhaps it was too early to think that it could not take more. Baldur’s gate had come. And everything was horrible. You remember the dread as you led Shadowheart back into her cult, to slay the woman who had raised her. You dread with every fibre of your body as Orin kidnapped Gale, you fear for his life. You remember Karlach’s heartbreak at the corpse of the man she once trusted most in the world. As unheroic as you claimed to be, you still helped save Wyll’s father.

And then.. Vampires. The night raid on the camp. It was time to face Astarion’s nightmare. You were in love with the pale elf. Sharing stories of your past as you struggled to keep it together. You needed to be strong for all of them, not just him…

Leading this band of adventurers into the mouth of hell, time and time again, coming out victorious and triumphant. You don’t remember if you were smiling, but you remember their faces clearly, when you let him ascend.

It had occurred to you that you were sacrificing 7000 souls. But you didn’t care about the cost, beaten and broken from the fight. The colourful edges of once rich, lively looking eyes staring down the back of your lover.

Cazador’s screams were delightful. The agony, the pleasure of taking from him what he wanted most and giving it to the person who had been your entire world the past few months. It was everything.

And you were berated for making the choice.. Your friends wouldn’t fight you on it, so close to the end. It wasn’t until Jaheira pulled you aside and fussed over your mental state that your numbness subsided for a moment.

Are you even a good person? ..Does it matter?

The memory of Astarion’s sultry voice thanking you for your actions and talking of a reward was blurry, like it wasn’t real.

‘’What can I do for my dearest pet?’’

‘’Huh?’’ You looked up at him, as if shaken from a dream.

‘’Darling, there must be something you want? Don’t be dense..’’

There was silence, before you opened your mouth again. ‘’I’m sorry, all I can think about is sleep.. We’ll have to face the netherbrain soon. Gods.. I’m tired.’’

You barely remember the rest of that conversation. Astarion wanted something from you and expected you to know what it was, but all you could think about was how exhausted you were.

He hurt you with words, and you hurt him with silence. It numbed you so bad the memory was lost in the sea of nightmares. You don’t remember why you broke up. You don’t remember why, but it hurt you so much to even look at him. It hurt you so much to be around these people.. These people you loved. These people who were your dear friends. After it all was over.. When Karlach and Wyll descended into Avernus and Lae’zel flew away on a red dragon, you just looked to the sky absently. Barely hearing Shadowheart’s suggestion of sharing a drink. You could feel Astarion’s eyes staring into your back as you left without a word, leaving the remainder of your friends bewildered and confused. You couldn’t hear Gale calling for you as you disappeared into the streets and left Baldur’s gate for good.

All these memories were scarce and incomplete. Like a long distant echo of a time you wanted to leave behind. You disappeared like you never even existed, and even the city itself seemed to have forgotten about its saviour.

……

Six months later, your old friends gathered together to talk about their lives, a party organised by Withers himself at your dear old camp.

‘’I did not expect you to be here, out of everyone.. To be honest with you.’’ Gale arrived early, to be met with Astarion who wore his prideful new garments with much flair. ‘’Ugh, you look like a mess Gale. No offense.’’ He eyed the wizard up and down. ‘’I would’ve liked to be fashionably late, but I prefer doing things differently.’’ Astarion added, waving his hand in a dismissive manner.

Gale laughed a little. ‘’Ah, I thought I was running late myself.. But yes, I should’ve taken my time before coming. These are my teacher’s robes!’’ He nervously scratches the back of his head, making a faint smile. ‘’It doesn’t take that much time to make an effort. You could’ve tried at least.’’ Astarion speaks in a familiar tone, ‘’But,’’ He takes a breath, ‘’ You were the clumsiest out of everyone, it reminds me of the many times you’ve slipped on your own ice spells, Tav would complain about it a lot. I shouldn’t expect too much from you.’’ His tone remained friendly. Astarion grew tired of the conversation. Pondering when his lost love would arrive. He had so many questions for him.. The memory of his departure haunted him.

‘’And this is why you are never getting married, Mr Dekarios.’’ Tara nearly startled Astarion as she spoke up. ‘’Tara! I do my best alright? Six Months is not enough to recover from several near death experiences, having a netherese orb extracted from- and.. and I’ve only just landed this job!’’ 

The mind numbing conversations continued as every guest slowly made their show. Even as Wyll and Karlach were magically transported to this familiar place, as shadowheart and Lae’zel joined hand in hand, declaring their relationship. They would not shut up.

Jaheira, Halsin, and Minthara were here too. Even Minsc! Everyone.. Except..

Astarion stared into the night sky, expecting Tav to arrive any moment now. Withers let out a loud ‘’ahem’’ as he made a toast.

‘’Where is Tav?’’ Astarion interrupted. ‘’Are you still expecting him to come, fanged one?’’ Jaheira interjected. ‘’Is that the only reason you are here?’’ Everyone grew quiet.

‘’Oh, I am here for the drama alright.’’ Astarion snarled back at Jaheira. ‘’Do you have the faintest idea why he isn’t here?’’ Astarion’s voice had a growl.

Jaheira’s expression softened. ‘’Don’t blame me, I tried to follow after him as you were satisfied with your diabolical ascension and crimson palace.’’

Astarion wanted to do many things, but arguing was not one of them. He waited for Jaheira to continue speaking.

‘’I could not find him, I tried. It’s like he erased himself from existence. He doesn’t want to be found.’’ The harper spoke with a melodic sadness, but also acknowledgement. 

‘’Why did you come, Astarion? Did you want to gloat in front of him?’’ Shadowheart added.

‘’No.’’ Astarion’s reply was quick. ‘’I don’t know why, anymore. Why did he leave? After all we’ve been through?’’ He masked his desperation, not wanting to appear weak in front of his old friends. He knew they judged him for his actions. For the way he spoke to Tav when they broke up. For the way he lied bitterly through his sharp teeth when Tav needed him most.

‘’Perhaps,’’ Karlach’s voice broke slowly. ‘’It was all too much for him, wasn’t it?’’ She turned to withers, expectantly for an answer. The old skeleton shook his head. ‘’His soul remains on the mortal plane.’’ Everyone’s eyes widened.

Jaheira shakes her head. ‘’The question remains, is it even a good idea to search for him?’’

‘’Well.. If I were him, I would want my friend to know if I’m doing alright. Oh- and I am doing quite fine, don’t worry.’’ Gale’s reply was met with an eyeroll of both Jaheira and Astarion.

‘’Maybe he’s fighting battles elsewhere. He was a good leader.’’ Lae’zel suggests, but it doesn’t stop everyone from theorising.

Minsc and Wyll both came up with ridiculous suggestions, from bounty hunting kobolds to slaying giants. Something, something, with dragons? Gods. Shadowheart thought maybe he left to start a new life somewhere, perhaps as a labourer, but it bothered her that he wouldn’t write a letter at least.

Everyone had their own ideas and fantasies about what the hell Tav was doing, coming up with one new thing and the next. Travelling. Carpenting. Exploring the underdark. Farming. Solving murders, painting nobles, crafting potions, writing songs. Astarion could not picture it at all. The idea of not knowing after all this time stressed him out.

If he wasn’t dead, and still in this plane.. He had to be somewhere.. Working, living. Breathing? He had to be doing something.

‘’You did pass him your invitation letter, correct?’’ Astarion eyed Withers intensely.

‘’Yes.’’ A crude response, but it offered no further suggestions to the whereabouts or well being of their old friend.

‘’Then you know where he is.’’ Astarion’s glare expanded. ‘’Tell us.’’ The silence grew heavy. Withers’ dead eyes looked over the vampire, noting the hidden concern in his voice.

‘’Neverwinter. I will not say more.’’ 

‘’Why in the hells is he in Neverwinter of all places?’’ Astarion questions. ‘’He is baldurian..’’ 

‘’Perhaps to get as far away as he can, from you.’’ Jaheira’s remark bit through Astarion’s side, but he swallowed his pride and did not bark back.

‘’Baldur’s gate did take quite a hit..’’ Gale looked excited at the prospect of visiting Neverwinter. ‘’Maybe.. If I divine a little.. I could find him, or at least, scry on him?’’

‘’Guys- Guys! We shouldn’t just turn up or.. it might be different. Perhaps he’s.. On an undercover mission!’’ Karlach tried to hide her excitement. ‘’Oh- But I do miss him.. Maybe-’’ The idea of joining in on an adventure to find their lost friend was refreshing, only to realise she still needed to pay Dammon a visit before she could even consider it. And as a result, miss out.. She let out a loud sigh,

‘’..You can scry on him? Why haven’t you?’’ Astarion turned to Gale, who stuttered in response.

‘’Well.. I.. Tried, but something blocked me out. I think he pushed me away.’’ Gale’s reply did only make the matter more concerning.

‘’Push you?’’

‘’You remember when we had those parasites? It was kind of like that.. I only just locked in on him, and felt a harsh push.’’

‘’I’d be godsdamned if he turned into a mindflayer after all-’’ Wyll interrupts, the panic finally hits him too. ‘’After all he’s been through-’’ Everyone exchanged looks and glances, expressions ranging from horror to helplessness.

‘’No.’’ Withers interrupted. ‘’His soul remains.’’ The rising tension calmed immediately.

‘’But you did see him?’’ Astarion turns back to Gale.

‘’Barely, I’m sorry.’’ The wizard shook his head.

Astarion huffs. ‘’I had enough. Forget about the toast.’’ He leaves the party, pondering about all the information he had just learnt, replaying the scene of his departure in his head.

The tadpoles. The god damn tadpoles. He remembers that night, after he ascended. His dearest Tav, barely keeping his eyes open. ‘’I’m sorry,’’ His drained eyes, scattering over the floor. ‘’Gods, I’m tired.’’

He remembers his spat. His little.. Unfortunate mistake. No, the biggest mistake. The yelling, the hurtful words. Tav barely responded, his eyes said so much and yet so little.

After the netherbrain fell, that look on his face remained. Lightless. Dull, empty. Broken.

The job was finished. He must’ve walked without much thought. Astarion curses under his breath as he makes his return to Baldur’s gate.

He should’ve gone after him before. But now he knows where to find him.

[emathevampire]

Compass for team chaotic good

Compass: who’s the moral compass? in general: what are your OCs’ morality like? do they have high morals, or not? are their morals self imposed, or do they base their morals on religion/family/influence of others?  Well, considering that they’re called Team Chaotic Good, that should give you a pretty solid idea of what they’re about! But not everyone is ACTUALLY chaotic good. Some aren’t even Chaotic. Or Good, in fact! Funnily enough, about half of them are Lawful, actually. So here’s the breakdown. Team Chaotic Good has quite a few members, so I’ll put it under a cut, as it’s a bit long.

Kíhyué: The team leader. Is Actually Chaotic Good. Has a very strong moral core, and while he doesn’t expect everyone he associates with to actually BE good-aligned, he damn well expects them all to act like it. The society he was raised in was largely Lawful/Neutral, but his outlook ended up completely different as a result of the mistreatment he suffered at the hands of strict laws and “neutral” stances that did more harm than good. “No such thing as an innocent bystander. You stand by and do nothing, you do not want to get involved, fine. But do not call yourself innocent. Do not say you did no harm when you could have done good instead.”

Inimicia: Sort of like his second in command, she’s Exalted Lawful Good. Not something you’d expect from the infamous Assassin Queen, or a half-vampire, or someone whose name literally means “the enemy,” but she’s had a long hard crawl up from being born chaotic evil and like hell she’s going to give up the good fight now. Her morals are 100% self-imposed, and she goes out of her way to find others in need of similar impositions and help them learn how to use objectively evil powers for good. Her order of assassins is ironically mostly good aligned, and she works very hard to keep it that way, sending them on missions to slay demons and devils and other undeniable evils who’ve managed to blend into society. This often leads to them looking like the bad guys, of course... nobility who keep their sinister deeds well hidden suddenly drop dead murdered in their own homes, and no one understands why. No one, except the victims of their cruelty whose pleas Inimicia’s spies overhear. She’s especially wary of religion, and any religion that claims to serve “the greater good.” A deity, of course, has the power to decide just what they think the greater good actually is, and cannot be trusted not to be acting solely in their own self-interest, or to actually do good deeds at all. “Go ahead. Paint me as your enemy. The world can believe you all it wants to, I’ll be the villain if you make me. I’ll still know the truth... and so will you.” Xadrea Shadowborn: Is Exalted Chaotic Good out of sheer spite and determination. Unlike Kíhyué, she absolutely expects Good out of everyone, even if she has to drag them kicking and screaming into behaving like decent human beings. Arguably this is the result of outside influence, though it’s... complicated. Essentially, she and her companions in a different universe had been given these artifacts that would tempt them into corruption in exchange for power, ultimately transforming them into an avatar of one of the Archdukes of Hell if they succumbed to enough temptations to lose their souls. Xadrea watched this happen to SEVEN of her party members. She outright refused to fall, ended up hosting the deity Heironeous instead of an archfiend, and saved the universe, all thanks to pure fucking spite and refusing to do as she was told by the voice in her head. Her sense of justice and honour don’t always conform to what one would expect of a literal divine embodiment of Valor, but she argues that’s what makes her best for the job, since she absolutely will not get caught up over doing the lawful thing as opposed to the right thing... something she and Kíhyué both agree is what makes their approach to fighting evil the best one. Her morals, ultimately, come from the shitty little slothful voice in the back of her mind that wants her to lie down and accept defeat, protect herself and forget the world... “Oh, you wish I’d quit, don’t you? Well it’s not gonna happen. NEVER gonna happen. You want apathy from me? Get bent, devil. I’m going to CARE. I am going to care SO much, ON PURPOSE, about EVERYTHING but you, and you can’t fucking stop me.” Anaziah the Kind: A paladin of freedom, Anaziah is another actual Chaotic Good member. If her former epithet of “the Wrathful” isn’t enough of an indication, she certainly didn’t used to have a moral compass, and it’s a testament to her strength of will that she’s managed to change and become a better person. She’s still pretty new at this whole “being a good person” thing, and looks to Faendys and the others for guidance, very grateful to all of them for giving her a chance instead of judging the Drow book by its cover. “I was raised to hate everything that wasn’t like us. To hate, to subjugate, to destroy. But... I was never really like ‘us,’ was I? All they ever really taught me was how to hate myself. The surface world isn’t like that. I’m free here. I’m allowed to love instead. It’s not easy, but, doesn’t everyone deserve the chance to try?” Faendys: Neutral Good, Faendys is the very calm one, who’s never trying to make any sort of deep commentary on anything on purpose, but often ends up making unsettlingly wise comments anyway. They rarely have to say much, and rarely do say much when things get serious, but their small voice piping up with something profound is always what gets the rest of them to shut up and act reasonably when their opposing alignments cause conflict. Even if it’s just a simple “That’s... not okay,” Faendys trusts their gut when it comes to tough ethical dilemmas, and the others generally listen to them. “I know it sounds hard. And it’s probably going to make us a lot of enemies. Even if we get away with it. But... we haven’t been afraid of that before, have we? They need our help, and we know it. What makes this time any different?” Arekos Aidoneus: A dread necromancer who’s also the party healer, Arekos is Lawful Neutral, and the only thing preventing him from being Good is the fact that many of the spells he casts are technically evil (see: raising armies of undead). However, he’s very careful to only use these spells for good purposes, and also has a few spells from the Book of Exalted Deeds on his list... his moral fibre is rather complex. His approach to the subject is based very strongly on his culture and religion: keep the balance in all things, use your dark powers only to serve the light, and defend the cause of good for the cause of evil needs no help to prosper. This creed is how he stays lawful despite actively working towards arguably chaotic goals, because dismantling the government brick by brick is, in fact, something he is required by his social and religious obligations to do, provided that the government in question is evil. Kíhyué and Xadrea absolutely hate it when he brings this up. “The world would love to prove that we cannot be good, that we cannot be kind, that we cannot be anything but evil and should not exist. I should very much like to prove them all wrong.” Amanthos Panideios: Also Lawful Neutral, with a heavy emphasis on Lawful, this librarian monk knows full well that he does not really fit in here... so he follows the others’ lead more often than not, managing to stay lawful despite the chaotic things they get up to the same way Arekos does. He also just... avoids getting directly involved with anything that would involve breaking the law in ways he can’t rationalise. Amanthos is not Moral, he is Ethical, and this is both a good thing (he’s able to rationalise many of the chaotic things he engages with as actually complying with the code of ethics he is meant to follow) and a bad thing (not everything has an easy answer, and it’s very easy for him to potentially fall into Lawful Evil behaviour if someone else isn’t around to check his work). “Oh dear... we didn’t cover this in any of my moral philosophy lectures... Arekos? Arekos, do you know the answer to this one?” Psamion: The bard, the sea captain, the Chaotic Neutral (but good-leaning!) one. He did his time as the hero, and quite frankly he hated every second of it, it traumatised him thoroughly, and he never wants to speak of it again. He’s perfectly content to continue doing his best to help people, in his own way, but absolutely does not want to let himself get dragged into another high-stakes demon hunt to the Hells and back, because he barely came out of the last one alive. That being said, Kíhyué is his closest friend in the entire universe, and he would do anything for him... so, naturally, when Kíhyué says “We have to save the world again,” Psamion just sighs, packs his things, and says “Can’t it just stay saved for once?” as he follows Kíhyué out the door. “Look, I don’t much care for this whole ‘getting involved’ thing, but if Kíhyué says it’s time to put up a fight, and he needs my help, you’d best believe I’m pulling out my knives and hucking a flaming bottle wherever he points me to. The world’s in trouble, and damn it all, by some miracle I’m STILL one of the idiots who lives in it, thanks to him... If I’m gonna fight, it may as well be a good fight.” Eomer: Is a gryphon. Kíhyué raised him from a hatchling, and their moral cores are as such pretty much identical... though Eomer is much more empathetic and often needs to give Kíhyué a kick in a more compassionate direction. “I think you very brave for trying. Maybe we fail, yes, happen some times. But what if not! Any thing can happen! Good thing, even! You would not even try for good? For happy thing? Stupid. Go try. Come try with me. I will go by myself, yes? No? Good! Together, we stand a chance, always worth a chance.”

[marginalgloss]

my record of this bird

There’s a moment near the beginning of The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe where two young boys are being quizzed by their schoolmaster, a sentient robotic attendant named Mr Million. He has presented the boys with some replica tools supposedly taken from Sainte Anne, the sister world of their planet of Sainte Croix. Mr Million asks the boys to present an argument for why these items, presented behind glass in the local library, actually had little importance in the lives of their owners. The narrator, who is one of the two boys, put it as follows:

‘You might say they needed those obsidian arrowheads and bone fishhooks for getting food, but that’s not true. They could poison the water with the juice of certain plants, and for primitive people the most effective way to fish is probably with weirs, or with nets of rawhide or vegetable fibre…those stone things got in the glass case here because the snares and nets rotted away and they’re all that’s left, so the people that make their living that way pretend they’re important.’

But David, the other boy, says this: 

‘If you could have asked them, they would have told you that their magic and their religion, the songs they sang and the traditions of their people where what were important. They killed their sacrificial animals with flails of seashells that cut like razors, and they didn’t let their men father children until they had stood enough fire to cripple them for life. They mated with trees and drowned the children to honor their rivers. That was what was important.’

Both answers are two sides of the same coin. We are more than the sum of our future trash. A universal tautology: a precious thing is precious because we know it is ephemeral, and that is what makes it precious. But it is the inner life, the dream life, that is the most precious because it is the most fragile, the most formless. In retrospect inner lives become vague abstractions, senseless reproductions; a description written in a language we have forgotten how to read. 

In this case, the ‘they’ the boys are referring into is the aboriginal inhabitants of the other planet, Sainte Anne, who would later become the inhabitants of Sainte Croix. We are told at least two versions of what happened to them. The first version is that they were wiped out by the human settlers. The second version is that the aborigines were shape-shifters who killed all the human settlers and mimicked their forms. But becoming human did something to them. They forgot their ability to shape-shift; they forgot they were ever anything other than human. 

The story of the video game Nier: Automata is also a story of two worlds which are, perhaps, not two worlds at all. In the distant future, aliens invade Earth, using robots to take over and destroy the planet. The surviving humans escape to the moon, where they fight back against the robots by developing sophisticated android soldiers. You play as one of these androids, 2B, accompanied by her partner 9S. You go to Earth: it is an unholy post-apocalyptic mess. Nature has reclaimed the cities. But everything is not quite what you were told. 

After fighting through waves of faceless, primitive robots, with their spherical heads and unblinking eyes and funny little clockwork legs, you find little clusters of robots who seem to want to have nothing to do with fighting. Some of the robots are dressed as people. Some of them are dressed as families. Some of them have formed communities. Some of them won’t fight you, and if you attack them, they plead for their lives. 

All this time the game is telling you that what you’re seeing isn’t supposed to be possible. These are only robots. In the name of humanity it is necessary to wipe them out, even when what they have come to imitate is a primitive, half-remembered version of humanity. The fact that you are controlling an android dressed like a woman who is also not supposed to be encumbered with things like ‘gender’ or ‘emotions’ is not commented upon. The absurdity is supposed to be self-evident: 2B’s assertions that emotional responses are forbidden for her kind are punctuated by anguished phone calls from her heartsick android operator back on the moon. 

Both The Fifth Head of Cerberus and Nier: Automata initially posit this dichotomy between a world of primitives and a world of sophisticates only to subsequently prove it false. One can get used to anything. The world of Sainte Croix is founded on slavery. Children are traded openly in the markets. The narrator is indifferent: not uncaring, just disinterested. His tone is lofty, considered, educated; the tone of the story is conversational, ruminative, with an opening line that seems like a direct reference to Proust. He is capable of profound reflection but is seemingly devoid of moral sensibility. Later, he and his friends will break into a locked room in his father’s study and murder the malformed slave they find there.

The protagonists of Nier: Automata are equally aloof. Much like any other avatar for a video game player, they are capable of a certain amount of self-reflection, but they never let that get in the way of the violence at hand. The tone of the game veers between melancholy and absurd. An early boss battle pits the player against a giant comedy tank in the repopulated ruins of a theme park, crewed by cheerful robots. The player can choose not to destroy it at all. But this is mostly exceptional. You are, for the most part, regretfully cleaving through them in their hundreds or thousands. 

It is a lonely affair. There are not many other characters in this game. Almost all of the robots and androids are unnamed. 

2B and 9S move and respond as if they are two complementary sides of the same person: one cold and calculating, the other ardent and sentimental. Tender moments are scattered throughout this game but they are always framed as distant improbabilities. The little robots seem capable of feelings of great intensity, but for the most part our androids only look on in disbelief. 2B and 9S don’t have families like they do. They don’t belong to a society; they are part of an organisation. They aren’t heroes; they are only actors, performing a role whose purpose has been forgotten. 

Part way through the game they witness a group of robots performing a demented version of Romeo and Juliet, which degenerates into a massacre. A dark joke about how games ape the profundity of other art forms while retaining violence as a crutch, perhaps. But what else is there? If you don’t do it, says Nier, somebody else will. 

The final revelation in Wolfe’s story is that the narrator’s body is not his own. He is a slave in his own particular sense: he and David are clones of his father, who in turn was a clone of his father. It is clones all the way down until Mr Million, who was the original of them all until he put himself in a computer. For the narrator the question of personal ownership is no longer so simple as it is for the people in the marketplace, or the long-limbed women who walk the halls of his father’s house in a parody of human sexuality. Even if he gives up his life he’ll only be reproduced again in another form. 

Nier: Automata is equally familiar with the process of endless duplication. The game explains that every time you transport yourself from one location to another, your android consciousness is uploaded into the network and transferred into a new identical body at the destination. The myth of the Ship of Theseus is invoked, floated in the context of the trope of ‘dying’ in a game, only to be dismissed again: perfect duplication of the mind and everything it involves is taken for granted. If you are destroyed a thousand times and rebuilt a thousand times, it doesn’t matter. You’re still a slave to the context of a system which owns you. Living forever in the cloud means the most elemental struggles in our nature are played out on the battlefields of eternity.

‘It doesn’t matter’ is a valid reaction to all of this. There is a point of view that says the question of origins in The Fifth Head of Cerberus is a literary puzzle that it serves no purpose to solve. Similarly, one could argue that the endless pondering over the nature of existence in Nier: Automata is equally uninteresting: the humanity of all involved is real on a psychological basis, if not on a material one. 

But to go further we have to set aside those questions of origin which initially hang over both works. The truth emerges from the mystery of the question, not the possibility of an answer. Imagine solving the Turing Test by an overwhelming assertion of humanity, even when the material evidence of machined artifice is equally overwhelming. Imagine a world in which we are all revealed as copies indistinguishable from a common template. Does that leave us debased? How do we avoid becoming the worst versions of ourselves when we’re only capable of repeating the past? 

All screenshots were taken directly from the PS4 edition of Nier: Automata.

[elizabethrobertajones]

Do you think Cas will get a happy ending? I used to be Cas' ending would be a choosing to be human thing but now I don't know. Not just the whole Billie thing but also Cas was involved in killing a child. There a certain things you just dont came back from and certain things show's won't have their main heroes do even in a fantasy setting -the protag can kill but he wont cheat, rape, or harm a child usually for example. :(

I didn’t feel like the episode was trying to tell us, Cas killed a kid and now he’s terrible, but instead, Cas feels responsible for the death of the kid, and he feels terrible, which really changes this from my perspective.

Dean killed a kid and it’s not routinely dragged out by the show to prove he shouldn’t be happy. I’m sure it’s tormenting him but narratively, that all disappeared when he got the Mark off into a sort of blob of generic terrible things he did under the Mark guilt, which wasn’t really that well explored either. At this point I’m sure they’re all writing it off as under mind control as a technicality, and not focusing on it like that.*

Sam drank the blood of a screaming nurse, killing her (a valued member of society with kind of a moral event horizon similar to killing children when it comes to listing innocents) - off screen, but it was Sam’s over-the-edge act that demonised HIS soul for all of 10 minutes at the end of season 4, and he only needed a season to repent for it all and stop Lucifer, and again, Cindy is pretty much never mentioned again. 

*Note: not interested in starting the debate about how culpable Dean is for the stuff under the Mark (or I guess Sam under demon blood and Ruby’s manipulations); just commenting on the way the show presented it. It’s probably under the same bracket as Sam trying to murder Bobby in 6x11. Everyone can feel guilty and horrible but for the sake of core characterisation it wasn’t their fault enough to drag them under with it, and in 3 episodes time they seem mostly back to normal :P

Anyway. Both of these actions were objectively worse and more terrible and actively detrimental to Sam and Dean’s moral fibre and our perceptions of them than anything they showed with Cas. I’m not just defending Cas because, idk, I like him more than Sam and Dean; I don’t hate either of them for these things (and if I like Cas more it’s unrelated :P) 

This episode was very careful to establish a villain who would evilly want to kill a child because he’s just plain awful (Ishim) and to contrast Cas to him repeatedly as a dark mirror to Cas’s character, AND use his actions of lying to them to make them enact orders that were emphatically described as part of the angel’s moral code, to trick the rest of the angels into being complicit in this murder. 

Even when Cas thought it was a nephilim and not a human child, this was his immediate reaction to the nephilim being killed - a being that he thought was an abomination and that should be destroyed by all the laws he upheld:

He flinches at the sound of a young girl screaming, despite all of that, there’s a part of him even then that’s not entirely okay with it - that same part of him that’s always been terrible at following orders and of feeling sympathetic or protective of the innocent and defenceless, which is his core goodness that makes him such a great character. 

This scene also directly implies that Cas murdered who knows how many babies:

NAOMINot always, angel. There was that day, back in Egypt, not so long ago, where we slew every first-born infant whose door wasn’t splashed with lamb’s blood. And that was just PR.

CASTIELWell, I wasn’t there.

NAOMIOh, you were there. You just don’t remember it.

And the implication was that he resisted and rebelled there, and maybe even was controlled to do it just like Naomi forcing Cas to attack Dean in the crypt, as by that point it was established she could control his actions completely and use him to kill whoever she wanted (except Dean that one time - but the “first borns” thing is interesting to me anyway for the comparison). 

All of this is meant to horrify us but I don’t think it’s meant to show Cas has broken morality - instead it highlights that he has GOOD morality because of how he reacts to these evil actions and situations, and the fact both times it’s less that he’s made evil choices but that he never had a choice. He may not have had “true” free will until 4x22 when he finally chooses to rebel against heaven and no longer heed their orders, and to decide for himself what is right or not. Obviously killing Lily’s kid came way before that, so we have to weigh how Cas’s character evolved over season 4, the way it was shown Heaven manipulated out dissent and rebellion (Anna tells us rebellious angels will be killed) and gives us the sort of emotional backstory on what Cas would have been up against 100 years ago, following orders and believing completely in Heaven because what other choice did he have? The fact his orders in this case were a lie isn’t even a part of this line of thought - if it HAD been a nephilim, this is how Cas reacted and felt, and what he was up against convincing him he had to do it while he was basically in a state where he was unable to pretty much THINK dissent or more than vague uncertain doubts he didn’t give voice to until 4x07 (100 years later :P). Throw in their absolute and unquestionable law that nephilim are evil and must be killed, and of course the Cas we saw there is following these orders and could have seemed even pleased or satisfied that the child was killed, but EVEN SO, he flinched.

BUT looking at the wider picture, even that they were lied to on top of that somewhat diminished responsibility, I’d agree blood is still on their hands because they helped, but their actual intent to murder is completely diminished by Ishim’s actions because they didn’t know it was an innocent human child and obviously would not have gone along with it if they knew. As the only angel who survived to find out what Ishim had really done, Cas isn’t just in a place to question his orders and assumptions about it being fine to murder Nephilim on principle, but to feel betrayed, manipulated and coerced into the murder of Lily’s kid - obviously this is on a personal level away from how Cas actually talks to Lily about what happened. All he can do THERE is express how sorry he is and to admit her right to be avenged if she wants to, because of course whatever he FEELS about it, his past actions still helped lead to her child’s murder. 

This episode definitely gave a lot of room to ethically exonerate Cas of everything except what will be his conflict with the current nephilim plot - the duty/obligation/moral code from Heaven which dictates that they must be destroyed. And even that, he has to admit he’s now gained enough insight that even seeing it as a separate thing from what happened with Lily’s kid (since she wasn’t a nephilim, the ethical lesson about murder being bad technically doesn’t apply to actual nephilim) he WOULD feel some hesitation now, so the episode has even begun to shake his faith in that, even setting aside that tiny hint that our Cas has always been in there somewhere even when following these orders seemingly blindly. He was the angel who doubted.

I mean, there’s still a long and dodgy road to go about wtf the show will do with Lucifer’s baby, but this is a good sign that they’re edging away from killing it on principle, and it’s Cas’s principle that’s dictating that. So he hasn’t actually reached the same crossroads as Sam and Dean did when they murdered innocents, and he’s already had a strong lesson in questioning his assumptions, and what to do about nephilim. I think unless he decides to do it anyway, at this point your fears about him being unredeemable aren’t a problem yet at all.

At the moment I don’t feel Cas is in any moral danger in this way compared to Sam and Dean’s various bad moral slides, because he started in the uncompromising place, in 12x08 and flashback!Cas whose lines were pretty much all enforcing the idea from Heaven that nephilim are bad and need to be killed and so on, and now by the end of 12x10 this has been at least chipped at a little so far. I have some hope now that Cas will make the right choice, by whatever standards the show works on (this whole thing is really ethically messed up when it comes to the Lucifer baby stuff so idk how much that will relate to what fans think the right choice will be and people with different opinions in general will react differently to what they do, I guess.) But at least by the show’s apparent rules for the characters and whether they’re being presented as good, bad, redeemable, in danger of moral lapse, they’re apparently trying to show us Cas changing and learning and hoping to find another way to deal with it than the old, absolute rule of Heaven he was trying to enforce. Which is all a positive sign that he WON’T go down a bad road and kill the kid and end up in this place where it affects him in the long run…

I hope :P 

I don’t know if Cas will get a happy ending or not because they’re really messing around filling time on a show they know at the moment they can write as if it will never end, but Cas has clear goals set out for happiness and belonging and a sense of home, as well as obstacles to stop him getting there, settling in, and then being in a place where he’s achieved all his goals before the end, and then obviously has to have terrible stuff happen to him to take it away again because that’s not how things work in stories >.> So these delays on Cas getting what he wants are good because obviously they want to hold something back for him to aim at.

But I definitely don’t think Cas has been damaged beyond the point of ethical redemption or deservedness of a happy ending.

I DID in my watching notes, when Ishim was talking about tearing out Lily’s heart because she broke his, and went for her daughter, immediately link it to when by Cas’s POV on being heartbroken by his family turning on him and refusing to help/believe in him/trust him in 6x20, he then goes off and breaks Sam’s wall to slow up Dean from stopping him. Obviously that’s a really exaggerated bad example I just made with a lot of character slander to compare what Cas was doing to what Ishim did. BUT it was his one big, truly “unforgivable” action in the narrative. 

Dean acts as the shows moral compass, and often/mostly has the final say on ethical issues like this, determining who is good and bad (and if he’s wrong, it’s on his shoulders to deal with that - 7x03 was the last episode I watched this week working through the show with my mum, and of course the next episode after that is the judgement one where Dean’s heart is weighed, and blah blah off track here but Dean’s moral judgement is really important on the show). DEAN FORGIVES CAS for hurting Sam. It’s an almost miraculous recovery because to Dean hurting Sam is just… the absolute worst thing you can do. Dean is otherwise the sort of person who would advocate shooting their own grandfather for betrayal, but after Cas does it and inflicts the worst damage on Sam we’ve seen anyone go through in the whole show… He lets Cas back in and accepts his attempts to redeem himself. Cas’s season 7 redemption is one of the most important stories on the show for him or Dean or even Sam when it comes to personal relationships… I like to just randomly watch Cas’s season 7 episodes and bawl at the screen :P 

Anyway, Cas went right over the moral event horizon in 6x22, but he was brought back already, years ago, and like Sam jumping into the cage to atone for season 4, has been morally recovered, in a way, for a very long time. He still feels some guilt for it but the narrative (which blurs with Dean’s opinion :P) has forgiven him. Sam and Dean are initially horrified by Cas’s story in the middle of the episode, but don’t reject him and the final conversation is positive, with them discussing that change and hoping for a change with their next decisions.

(still not sure what’s up with Dean and the Mark and all that, but as I said… rug sweeping :P But yeah, Dean is the character always talking about how they go down swinging and doesn’t see a happy end, and I do think he doesn’t think he deserves one, just that exploring any of the reasons why has all been suppressed by him, so it’s not being dealt with >.> He’s probably got a list of reasons dating back to when he was four years old. Whether HE gets the happy ending is something they’ve been poking at for years, and when that starts getting properly addressed, we’ll know the show is nearly over :P)

[theowlsarenotwhattheyremembers]

Episode Seven: The Dragon and the Wolf

Cocks and Blood.

I don’t know how many levels of irony Scene One was on. The Unsullied, last heard of / forgotten after having pointlessly won Casterly Rock pre-stripped of food and besieged, are now lined up in well-fed ranks, because of plot nihilism. Jaime and Bronn discuss blood (family) and cocks and how they have them but the Unsullied don’t but then the barbarously virile Dothraki turn up with clearly more and bigger cocks apiece than any Lannister or lannlackey. What does all this mean? Is there an answer? Maybe, in the end, it is just cocks.

Look I know this recap is about a fortnight overdue. I have had to hand in a dissertation and then I was tired. We are all tired. This shit is tiring. Settle down. Rest. We have an hour and twenty minutes to get through and darn it we are going to escape from everything that’s tiring us out through lushly cinematographised fanfic cocks and all. Who doesn’t like cocks? Cocks cocks cocks.

Let’s carry on.

Scene Two: Tyrion lets Jon know that the leaping loins of Fleabottom have populated the city with a million warm sweaty bodies. King’s Landing, when compared to other cities of the early modern period, is bigger than any European city was ever, after Rome fell, until the Industrial Revolution. It’s more like the equivalent of Beijing or Edo-period Tokyo. Cool! This is, Jon observes, bigger than the entire North, and they’re all going to be ice wights unless our heroes prevail. Why would anyone want to live with all those other people?? The fucking’s better, Tyrion explains.

Scene Three: The bagged ice wight has retained its horrid vigour!!! Does this mean that the White Walkers can’t take unlife away once they’ve given it? (Does anything mean anything any more)

Scene Four: Cersei tells her undead henchlump to kill everyone.

Scene Five: Dragons understand that property is theft and children can be delicious if you are a large fanged lizard, so they had to be put in prison, which destroyed them and the vigour they animated the Targaryen blood with, Tyrion lets Missandei know. Then we have a massive reunion pile-on! The feels get mushy as Pod+Tyrion “you can suck his magic cock later”, the Hound+Brienne (Arya’s ultraviolent fosterfam are so proud of her!)

, and Bronn+Tyrion “I’ll pay you double”. That everyone is about to die is vigorously foreshadowed making me extremely anxious, but the pre-tension is pissed up the wall and everyone settles down for a civil conversation, because nothing matters any more. Tyrion+Cersei. The Hound+The Mountain, brothers, death and unlife can’t change blood, blood runs strong and hot, it’s the end of the world but #cleganebowl has been written in ruddier ink than this multideaths-are-coming tensionmusic can inscribe. Then the Queen herself arrives, atop her non-cock Drogon, who envelops with flame but does not penetrate (but wait till the final scene when Ice Viserion fucks the wall). Everyone is v impressed with Daenerys’ lady-D and how unambiguously it testifies to the rights her blood demands. Prophecy music plays. Cersei is upstaged. Did you know that the Lannisters are basically just nouveau-riche - their Age of Heroes ancestor Lann the Clever wasn’t even a king or a god like the other aristocrats? At best he was only the bastard son of one. Uncle Euron taunts Theon about his sister; but Tyrion/Cersei shut him up. These guys, the Greyjoys, trace their line back to the Grey King, who won a war against the Storm God, married a mermaid, and lived for a thousand years (i.e. was basically some form of deity himself). Seems likely Theon’ll bounce back eventually. They do the show and tell with the wight and then Euron storms off pretending to go home but actually going to pick up the legendary mercenary army Cersei just hired. Qyburn is definitely not on the side of the living. These guys are evil!! Cersei makes a pretend offer to help but Jon Snow is full truth, in love, with fire in his blood and his britches, so he messes up the fake negotiations.

Scene Six: Tyrion+Cersei chat over wine, and Cersei wins by letting Tyrion think he’s found her out for being pregnant. Tyrion points out that Daenerys isn’t a foreign whore who can be abducted, beaten up or intimidated, because of her blood and non-D.

But as @lasophus points out this (not this actually, violent death, usually via crossbow / arrow penetration) has happened to literally every other lowblood foreign whore (Ros Shae Ygritte Osha), plus all the lesbians. But not Daenerys! But Cersei Plannister has a plan. She doesn’t kill Tyrion because of blood / because otherwise the dragons and the dothraki and the unsullied would torch the city. She plays him instead.

Scene Seven:

Daenerys: I can’t have children

Jon: *hip thrust* oh really, let me introduce you to this gentleman here, I call him The Dragon

Daenerys: *swoons*

Scene Eight: I think Sansa was always playing LF but also kind of also knew he was her only friend and the only person who approached understanding her, but then her brother explained to her that LF was super betraying her so she had to kill him whoops getting ahead of myself

Scene Nine: Since diarising a meeting between Daenerys and The Dragon Jon in this war strategy meeting is looking at her with the disrespectful pout/halfsmile of the total lad who knows he’s about to get laid, and they arrange to take a ship up to the north together despite the danger because they have a very BUSY schedule.

Scene Ten: Jon lifts a finger to be on Theon’s recovery team, by telling him that it’s ok to follow his blood and save his sister.

Scene Eleven: Theon wins a fight and assumes his bloodright as sea prince by virtue of not having a penis. He staggers out into the surf and is rebaptised in the cold salty water as destiny music plays. I guess actually some cephalopods don’t have penises.

Scene Twelve: Sansa stands in a snowstorm making a difficult decision: yes she is going to go ahead with it. She gets flunkies to bring her sister to the Great Hall, and there, in front of all the ballachingly obstreperous northern lords, explains how LF has been the villain all along (via Bran’s magical insights). “How do you answer these charges ....... Lord Baelish???”, she reveals, as our prayers for Arya turn into a globe-spanning cry of BAZINGA!! It was us who underestimated the girls all along, and believed in their fights when actually they were just putting it on for the benefit of the spy at the keyhole and the viewer at home!!

“I deny it! None of you were there to see what happened,” LF says, no longer himself but just a plot toy setting himself up for Bran to coolly recollect that actually he was there to see it and all other things; an accusation based on magic which the northern lords don’t have any reason to believe in but which still floors our arch-manipulator to his knees, begging for his life. “Thank you for all your many lessons, Lord Baelish,” Sansa says to her friend and teacher, weeping, then delivers the nod to Arya, who slits his throat. As his blood spills we may reflect on how LF has been dead since the beginning of the season.

LF is of low blood and uses his tongue not his dick, so we do not have room for him any more. LF makes the plot diverge off in weird complicated directions, so we do not have room for him any more.

He killed Ros though

BAZINGA

Scene Thirteen: Another one of those tricksy bitches and Sansa’s other teacherenemy Cersei Lannister reveals the Plannister to Dummbister Jaime: just wait in the south until all the enemies have marched north to turn into an army of wights (which then maybe Qyburn could do something about or maybe I don’t care because “I’ll do anything to protect my family” is just madbitch speak for “I am now aligned with the forces of death”). Jaime is not with the programme because He Made a Promise and is aligned with the forces of the living after Brienne+Jaime met up and she worked her customary powers on his moral fibre. Despite basically giving the order to kill him Cersei flubs it at the last minute and Jaime walks away from her, finally choozing the right floozy, as Cersei makes an impotent I’m-not-evil-enough-yet fist.

Then we have a really nice and eerie snow scene where a christmas-y version of the title song plays and King’s Landing gets dusted with white. Winter coming maybe can be nice or cause people to do good things because of christmas?? I fucking love christmas!

Scene Fourteen: Sam’s initial reaction to Bran telling him he became the three-eyed raven is the kind of “Oh!” you’d give your kid if it told you it made friends with a stegosaur in school that day, but then has the wits to ask the follow-up question which has thusfar eluded other characters: “I don’t know what that means?”, and Bran delivers a semi-coherent explanation, representing, together with his material use to the case against LF, marked progress from the days when he was just scaring and upsetting people. Why is Bran so intent on telling Jon that he’s actually Aegon Targaryen, the true heir to the Iron Throne and D’s nephew, when he is, just this precise moment, eagerly performing eagerly-anticipated activities with D on a ship?? In these circs it seems like it would just be upsetting news which could threaten an alliance pleasant to both parties and vital to humanity. Whose side is Bran on?

Scene Fifteen: This conversation, “does it bother you that I’m the Lady of Winterfell”, “no obviously not let me introduce myself”, “I never could have survived what you survived, not like what I said in front of LF that one time”, feels like their first make-up-and-closure chat, which makes it seem like they weren’t pretending the whole time. Unbazinga.

(Direwolf thoughts: Sansa’s direwolf is dead and she’s totally different to how she was before and also not so much of a Stark (she didn’t swing the sword though she passed the sentence; she rules LF/Cersei-wise not starkly); Bran’s wolf died (at the moment his three-eyed-raven skills got transferred into him) and now being Bran is just one memory amongst millions of others; Arya’s is alive and thriving and she is the same as always and thriving; Jon’s is for all we know still alive and ditto (D got his chilly post-dead juices heated up again); Rickon’s wolf died and then he did.)

Scene Sixteen: Oh yeah, the ice dragon. Seems everyone this episode, including this recapper, just had too much darn stuff on their plates to mention to each other about you know how the White Walkers can reanimate corpses - people, bears, horses, giants, so on, he has a fucking ice dragon now obviously, climate change has nuclear weapons now obviously, everything is fucked, obviously.