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cl-0v3r · 8 months ago

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Mel is alive, but at what cost

Mel was nearly killed TWICE, her mother began being a struggle, she'd been thrown aside and trying her best to stop her, her boyfriend is not doing well, neither is anyone else (can't blame them) and the fact that she hadn't cried or spoke much about this situation to anyone a single time?? She IS upset about every single thing, yet she stays strong and enduring every bit of torture. The most she did was tell Jayce that Ambessa put her palm on the table, and let him know that she is going to push for hextech. That's it, nothing remotely related to her feelings.

The fact that she was constantly looking at Caitlyn, being able to understand her grief and knew she was in pain?? Mel knows this feeling. She'd went through it.

And in the end SHE has to pay the price of her mothers incompetence.

The intro is very much foreshadowing, we know the hands represent black rose/LeBlanc.

This is what happens in act one, she gets kidnapped by them. The lyrics do correspond to the characters as well (not just Mel, everyone.)

"Tell you you're the greatest" plays as a petal of the black rose floats down the screen, I think it adds significance to the power this organization holds, possibly the Medardas greatest foe.

"But once you turn, they hate us" both Ambessa and Mel were present in this line, I think its foreshadowing for when Ambessa switches up for whatever reason and goes against both Piltover AND Zaun. And Mel WILL go through change as well, a change that could hurt her relationship with others, and receive interest from others too.

"They hate us" could be read individually too, I feel like its a sort of "realization" ?? Perhaps Ambessa WASN'T the one that switched up, maybe Piltover switched up on them, and maybe Mel JUST got out of wherever she's taken to, and saw the mess Ambessa had done to her city??

I think this represents ACT TWO.

The hands pull away and it sort of looks like Mel is fighting back, a "get away from me" type of scream. you know what this reminds me of??

Don't mind me just pushing my Jinx/powder-Mel parallel agenda

Here is when i think Mel truly learns about LeBlanc/BR, she curiously and slowly goes to grab the rose, she learns about the history between her Mother and them, Kinos death, and most of all, learns about HERSELF. The lyrics speak otherwise.

"Pray away, I swear

I'll never be a saint, no way"

This feels like a parallel to caitlyn of sorts if that makes sense. Caitlyn had done everything to try and stop the council from attacking the Undercity, she kept her mouth shut when Jayce asked about Jinxs grenade, she was willing to protect Vi and the undercity, but how many times has she been tossed around? She'd been burned, exploded, kidnapped (god knows what happened during that time) and hit in the face by the same person, her MOTHER died because of the same person. She has every right to go insane. And she is hunting ONE person, which is Jinx. Although she is harming the people around her along the way.

What if Mel goes through a similar situation? Her mother pushed for war in her city, she dragged the enemy along with her even if she didn't mean to, she manipulated everyone around her INCLUDING Jayce, she LITERALLY got Mel hurt from the chembarons attack and killed so many people during a MEMORIAL to get her hextech weapons, Elora is most likely DEAD, not to mention whatever happened in the past between them. And the thing is, this will NEVER end throughout the entire season.

And what if she learns what she is? That she's 'blessed' by Kindred? The fact that the wolf is quite literally in her blood?

I feel like the "ill never be a saint, no way" also sort of indicates Mel will realize she'll never be able to push for peace and mercy like she always hoped for no matter what, and she comes to accept that as much as it hurts. But not like how ambessa accepted the wolf, but she sort of realizes she needs to push a little violence, towards nobody but the one and only, Ambessa "fine, if you want me to be like you, I guess I'll be like you towards YOU." Type of acceptance.

I think its also related to Mels new outfit too, she's dressed like her mother, in red and all of that. I will still stand by the idea that she has plans to decieve, but she will do something she doesn't want to do.

Mel was left with no choice, that lyric sounds like realization, acceptance, but also like a plea at the same time, an "I'll never be who I wanted to be" because in the end, she's still a Medarda, she's still her mothers daughter, she still has violence in her veins, she will never not suffer from the weight her name holds, and she will never escape it either, its like a shadow.

The Characters won't be themselves at their core this season. And those vital parts of their characters that represent them are no longer there in the intro, they all have given up what makes them, THEM design wise. (e.g.) Vi without her tattoo, Viktor hiding his identity with the mask. And the thing is, they did that to themselves because they do self-harm, they're changing themselves because THEY want to, they're forcing themselves to do that, they think they're undeserving and they're erasing their past selves.

But Mel? Mel doesn't have her gold accessories, Jewelry, or her Armor, she'd been stripped bare and hidden away because of the brutality of her name. She pays the price her mother brought to HER city. She's forced to change herself against her will, because nobody is giving her a chance to push for her ideals.

This entire theory never ends, and with all of this? I kinda do see Mel actually committing Matricide, it lifts the "Ambessa will die" theory further.

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croquettish · 3 months ago

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Claustrophobia as a Metaphor for Hans' Feelings for Henry

All right. I'm ready to go full tinfoil hat here but I have a theory, y'all. And there is a lot of evidence to back it up even if you decide I'm off my rocker for most of it:

I think Hans' claustrophobia exists in parallel to his feelings and, more importantly, how Hans feels about his feelings for Henry.

We first get the hint that Hans is claustrophobic when he and Henry get tossed into the dungeon at Trosky:

This is immediately post-divorce era. The boys haven't quite yet made up and Hans has gotten his first taste of what life is like without Henry. He did not care for it, and that realization comes alongside an incredibly unexpected vulnerability that Hans is not used to and has not had to deal with before.

The threat of losing Henry before was of course something he could conceive of before, most recently following Henry's ~terrible fall, but that would have been losing him in the abstract. If he lost Henry because of their fight, that would be (at least in his eyes), 100% his fault, at least in part because-- as you'll recall-- Henry was ready to make up literally the next morning. Earlier, even, if you watch the way he tries to look at Hans while Hans is stubbornly staring away as if to keep from being persuaded by Henry's puppy dog eyes.

The divorce era presented a different sort of loss, namely losing Henry not because of God's will, but because of his own stubborn pride. He got Henry back after, but the risk was there and it's only after getting him back that the full weight of what he almost lost hits him. At the beginning, when he's still panicking in the cell, he's still in what he perceives to be the proverbial doghouse, and he promptly follows this up by eating crow and apologizing to Henry for being an asshole.

Panic abated.

Until Henry is taken away from him, of course, and the walls truly start closing in. I have to really commend the creative direction of this scene in particular because that zoom out + transition to a Dutch angle is so fucking haunting in this scene while we watch Hans clearly trying not to have a full breakdown. It really induces the feeling of claustrophobia even if a person doesn't suffer from it themselves.

Henry was taken away from him, and as far as he knows, he might never see him again. No wonder the walls start closing in on him.

After that, things return to normal. No bad claustrophobia concerns for some time, incidentally. Henry is there, and his feelings regarding Henry are completely logical and rational. What a good friend Henry is!

The next time we see Hans' claustrophobia flare up is after Nebakov is hit by the Finger of God/bombard. Hans is trapped under a beam and is (understandably) freaking the fuck out. We also know from his dialogue later on that this scene magnified his claustrophobia even more than it was before.

What's notable, however, is that Henry at this point is barely conscious and isn't responding to Hans. As far as he knows, Henry isn't alive. That bombard could have easily killed any/all of them and tbh it's kind of a miracle that it didn't. Never mind that after his brief foray into consciousness, Henry is promptly hit by a full-length ceiling beam and (presumably, logically) knocked the fuck out. Meanwhile Hans is being crushed by his own fear of his feelings.

We obviously don't know what happens between the time of the tower's destruction and the scene in the cart after, but we do know that Henry was woken up at dawn to the commotion and by the time they get done being tortured, it's very late at night. So presumably Henry was out cold for a while there. Not only are the walls closing in on Hans here, they're literally crushing him. The fear of losing Henry is more present than ever.

And to make matters worse, he has no idea when or even if he's ever going to see Henry again. Henry has no value as a hostage. He could easily be simply disposed of without a second thought.

Henry could die, and it would, in Hans' eyes, be all his fault. At this point his feelings on the matter are guilt and a tremendous amount of self-pity (as we later learn from Brabant). As if to coincide with Hans being confronted with his feelings regarding Henry and the loss of him at this point and time, he ends up stuck in his gilded cage at Maleshov.

Once again, the walls are closing in.

We learn about how he felt about this only later when we chat with him at the Devil's Den:

The big problem with the room, Hans explains, was simply that he couldn't leave.

If we bear in mind the claustrophobia : confrontation of feelings metaphor here, this makes sense. Henry could be dead. He could have been tortured. He could still be in captivity. Hell, depending on how you play Henry being tortured, he even tells the torturer to just go ahead and fucking kill him because he's not talking. Henry was ready to die.

Hans knows Henry. Extremely well. He knows that Henry has some truly insane principles that he will stick to no matter what. There's no doubt in my mind that Hans probably knows there is a good chance that Henry doesn't make it through this. And he's confronted with all of these feelings over an extended period of time where he gets to sit and spin.

In light of that, I think it's interesting that he calls it a hole, because I would never use a word like that to describe what is effectively a fancy hotel room. But figuratively speaking, of course it's a hole for him. He's despairing. He needs Henry in his life and there's nothing he can do to get to him or to save him. He can't leave.

And then, of course, Henry shows up after all. No wonder Hans looks so unbelievably elated to see him. Of course, this is when Henry brings up the secret passageway. Hans is told that he can leave this enclosed space for another, even tighter enclosed space!

Now, if you pick the correct dialogue option here and tell him that you'll make it through, together, Hans of course discloses that the shit about how it's not ~chivalrous was bullshit and that it's because he might endanger him:

He just spent the last x amount of time (depending on how long you had Henry dilly-dallying around Kuttenberg and its environs) trapped here and steeped in his feelings regarding Henry. The fear of losing him is at the top of this list. To Hans, going into that passageway could also make him lose Henry. And it would be his fault. Again.

There's also something to be said here about close quarters. If we're to return here to the metaphors, then those close quarters force Hans to confront his feelings for Henry. Henry even says it himself back when they're in the Trosky dungeon together:

From there, it's on to Raborsch. Which is where things get very interesting.

Hans is told that he's going to be getting married. Much like in the Trosky dungeon, we get that zoom (albeit in the other direction this time) and then his POV. The way time seems to slow, the wobble of the camera... being something of a panic attack haver myself, this is exactly what it feels like. It is honestly impressive how well they mimic the feeling of it. And the way it's executed almost makes it look as though the room is shrinking.

This is my own personal headcanon that will probably not be shared by most people, but I think this is the moment that Hans realizes that he's in love with Henry. It would make sense for him to feel faint and like the walls are closing in on him in that moment.

It's also the worst possible moment for him to realize.

And then he proceeds to try and shove those feelings aside and repress them as best as possible. Nevermind that yet again Henry isn't there to help support him.

There was a wonderful post going around the other day about why Hans' responses to the romantic dialogue options Henry chooses sound so platonic. Because... yeah. He's holding that shit in TIGHT. He is on LOCKDOWN.

And we see that reflected in where he chooses to place himself physically after that point!!!!

After the announcement, Godwin can find him outside on the balcony getting absolutely hammered and talking to Rabbi Jehuda.

Even at the Devil's Den, where he's objectively free, he feels... crowded. Like the walls are closing in on him:

No fucking wonder. If he just realized that he's in love with Henry, then at this point in the story he's still trying real hard to repress that shit. Hans is erecting these walls himself as if he's trying to choke these feelings out of him. It also makes sense why he's constantly going out to get away from this confrontation of feelings as much as possible, riding out whenever he can:

Even in the group meeting with the Devil's gang, he says this:

Now it's the whole tavern! Anywhere that has walls and a roof is choking the life out of him! And of course here Henry is suddenly fucking everywhere.

When talking to him about the rides he goes on in the surrounding areas, this line of inquiry leads him to ask if he's fucking poaching again, and Hans comes back by saying this:

Allow me to just say.

And I cannot stress this enough.

He did not need to tell Henry that.

Henry tells him as much, but it feels fairly obvious that this was said with intent. It's like he's trying to reinforce his own heterosexuality to both him and Henry.

I would also like to highlight here that to Hans, it's always outside that this heterosexuality occurs. Even at the baths those hookups are merely in tents. The girl from Bohunowitz he found in (or near) a hunter's camp in the forest.

So we see a pretty direct correlation here. The inside of pretty much any building (or passageway) that also contains Henry or the Absence of Henry (in the abstract) is profoundly unsafe. This is the space where feelings always seem to happen and where Realizations™️ occur.

So! The outside is safe! Nothing can get him there, not even his feelings for Henry!

It's interesting, then, that Hans decides to invite Henry into that very space not long after:

Even in the space Hans uses as an escape (including as an escape from Henry), he still wants Henry there. Much as I discussed in this post, Hans views hunting with Henry in this scene as an escape into the past. Pre-betrothal, pre-feelings. A simpler time and a return to normalcy.

Naturally, he has to counteract Henry's presence in the Comphet space by bringing up as much heterosexuality as possible:

He brings this up regardless of how you respond.

Depending on your dialogue choices, you then learn that the girl from Bohunowitz is named Karolina. (Tbh if I didn't know better, I'd assume she was fucking made up seeing as she shares a name with the same girl he was running after in The Amorous Adventures of Bold Sir Hans Capon and there is no such girl to be found in Bohunowitz.)

Regardless of whether you chose to tease him or grumble about his womanizing, Henry makes it pretty clear that he doesn't want to hear about it. He says something similar as well earlier, when Hans says that the girl from Bohunowitz (who may or may not be made up) gave him a ~ride:

Hans quickly changes the subject, but Henry keeps them on topic and brings it up again, effectively asking him if these wenches are more important to him than he is:

(Tbh it's pretty fucking obvious from these interactions that Henry is already feeling quite a lot here and is looking for validation from Hans... which Hans then, perhaps unwittingly, provides. Maybe he just can't help himself. The truth slips through the cracks.)

Hans immediately reassures him, of course:

At which point it's Henry's turn to brush him off and put some distance between them again.

Distance which Hans immediately closes up again...

... only to freak out and instantly backpedal.

The assault on Maleshov really hammers this connection home, where even outside, he can't run from his fear.

In this case, because the Finger of God fires and hits the fortress walls.

Hans falls back and just... stares.

And just stays there for a while. For long enough, in fact, that Henry and Godwin have to come help him up.

Henry, in this instance, is both the problem and the solution: all Hans has to do is accept the fact that he's in love with him—with a little help from Henry.

And then we get to the Italian Job. Hooo boy.

It does not escape my attention that these two dialogue options come up in the same conversation, one of which of course leads to a romance choice:

Henry tries to insist on how much he enjoys Hans' company only for Hans to brush him off. Quite substantially. Like if I was Henry I'd be fucking gutted or at the very least baffled that my friend could be that obtuse when I'm over here dropping all these hints.

And then, of course, Hans promptly panics again when Henry brings up the underground passage and asks if he's joining him in going through it (almost as if those two bits of panic are related).

He even brings up societal judgment! But I think it's that last one that carries by far the most weight. He's still looking for any possible way out that he can find and asking for validation from Henry while he's doing it. Which is asking quite a lot of Henry imo.

Of course, then he suddenly doesn't have a choice anymore. Which is also where Hans actually comes to terms with his feelings. He has to go through the passageway. There's no choice. The walls are closing in and he has to accept it or he'll go insane if he keeps repressing any of this any longer. The narrative is practically telling him: you can't run from this anymore. His feelings for Henry are real and they're right in front of him and they're not this terrifying thing that he's been running from all this time.

Katherine tells Henry that Hans was trailing behind Godwin and her "like a dazed sheep" and that she hopes he didn't get lost.

The good news is that he didn't. Instead, quite the opposite happened: he finally found his way to accepting how he feels.

And when he does, he finds that he's no longer afraid of them. Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, confronting his fears meant that they're not nearly as terrifying anymore.

Again, Henry asks if he's really all right, and Hans insists that he's never been better. No fucking wonder. This was a come-to-Jesus moment if ever I saw one.

And then he checks on Henry. All this time, he's been looking at his own fear, stuck in this, quite frankly, closet, and not thinking about how Henry has been feeling.

Even so, Henry is worried. At which point Hans gets to reassure him that, no, he's all right. In fact, the one holding him back and hurting him most in all of this has been none other than himself. If anything, Henry has been encouraging all this time. He does his job well. And that includes loving Hans.

Henry suggests that he overcame his fear, and Hans insists that no, that's not quite it.

Which makes sense. You don't just overcome your fears by facing them. Certainly not something like claustrophobia. It's also unlikely that an actual miracle occurred here. If you listen for his idle talk before or after this conversation, even Hans is absolutely baffled that he just... overcame his fear. Just like that.

To me, that suggests that this is about something else entirely, and not tight, enclosed spaces at all. He's always been afraid to face this part of himself.

In fact, if we recall what happened during their successful siege on Maleshov, Hans fell and couldn't recover without aid. Here, he fell and got himself up again because... it didn't kill him. It's okay to have—wait for it—fallen in love with Henry.

Is this a stretch? Maybe. But the fact that it happens twice makes me think that it was done with intent.

(If I wanted to bring in a real stretch here, I'd suggest that there's meaning behind the fact that Hans helps Henry up to his feet several times, first after his terrible fall at the beginning, while they're walking to Bozhena's, and again after he's on the floor getting kicked at the Semine wedding. If this was meant to be a hint as to where Henry realized that he was in love with Hans, having lost him first almost to death and then again to the divorce arc, it wouldn't surprise me tbh. He fell, and Hans was there to be his solution—the only difference is that Henry wouldn't have had a problem accepting it the way that Hans did. But, like I said, this one is a stretch.)

All of which brings us to the second confession.

Henry tried telling him this same exact thing before, after nearly losing him to the noose and their temporary split. Now he's saying this exact same thing again. Which feels... pointed and frankly intentional.

And this time, Hans responds in kind. He also cares about Henry. He's just really bad at showing it sometimes.

Because of course he's bad at it. He's spent the whole game thus far stuck in a closet of claustrophobia battling against his own internally homophobic demons.

But his success in a) escaping that closet and b) battling those demons brings us to the promised land.

Where they fuck in a (relatively, considering Hans' fear from before) small room and with Hans underneath Henry, the safest ceiling to come (down) on him of them all ♥

#hansry #kcd #kingdom come deliverance #hans capon #henry of skalitz #kcd meta #kcd2 spoilers #I'M SORRY THIS GOT SO FUCKING LONG #should've been working on researching medieval gays (dissertation) instead of doing research on medieval gays (kcd) but here we are #I literally played through the whole game again just to compile this fucking thing #weeks have gone into this!!#well okay no I was about three quarters through my replay of the game when this hit me and I had A Revelation #as you can all see #I SWEAR it all makes sense and it isn't all just me donning a tinfoil duncecap #tfw tumblr was like you want to put HOW many fucking images into this post?? no #and I had to improvise #also I promise I didn't write up this whole post just to make a joke about come #anyway #I would say I have regrets but that would be a lie

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zeropro · 1 month ago

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Like, Starscream was messed up ever since Cryak. I absolutely love how you made a parallel between them two 'I will do anything to survive', almost a sort of curse where no matter how much you supposedly love someone, they are expendable to you and so the kindest thing you can do to someone you love is let them go, something Cryak didn't want to do to him. And why would she? She literally paid to have him onlined, for the specific purpose and she knew it was always on the table. And as far as it was implied it was something permissible for her to do. That fucks one up. "the relationship that should have been different, the most formative one - ultimately it was about consuming and exploiting and all the love was but a mask". The Trine had never met him not messed up. Like, he keeps manipulating people he cares about and he realizes he is not doing right by them and he likely even knows what it means to do better, but can he?

Skywarp already had messed up moral compass and some really repressed and internalized trauma from all his experiences in military + as a glorified ship engine. Like, his split loyalty was really something that made it difficult for not just Starscream but probably for TC too to fully rely on him (and he is the eldest!) after certain point. I feel like once it became apparent that there was a conflict, he didn't want to give up either on his trinemate or Megatron, and so in an attempt to keep both ended up picking Megatron, again and again bc it felt easier (especially as he did come from military background and while he is a troublemaker, he still likely structures his baseline understanding on 'correct' way around military hierarchies). And also Megatron was his hero and he knew him for a long time. He isn't used to introspection (and too much introspection would likely prevent him from functioning at all at this point) and seems to prefer overlooking things that could result in uncomfortable implications. Starscream really did instigate much of the conflicts with Megatron but, like, it doesn't seem like it came from nowhere. And even then, Was his treatment acceptable? But now Skywarp is metaphorically 'grounded' in reality without ability to warp around. He now realized that he had after certain point been enabling Megatron's horrible treatment of his mate and is now seems to be trying to do right by him but how exactly would it be when TC already left them (does Skywarp feel any resentment over TC leaving them even if he probably realizes why?) and Starscream is so distant?

Thundercracker feels the most ''innocent'' but like, I do not think he is exactly not complicit in the trine's messed up dynamics. There is a nice little thing going on with him where on one hand he on the more 'moral' side (at least by abysmal standards not just of Decepticons but mayhaps of Cybertron at large) of the coin and so he hesitates to enact cruelty and even occasionally protests it. He tries to dissuade Starscream from staying where it would hurt him, or from doing questionable thing. But. Even then he is mostly 'along with the flow, even if the flow takes him in directions he hates. As much as he tries to take care of those he loves, to do the right thing, he feels complacent in how he keeps many of his doubts to himself because of his many doubts and too often seems more like a bystander. It is almost like, he acts definitely but by the time he decides to take action, it may be too late. But what he could have done different, in the end? Like, it is not as bad as telling Starscream he deserved it or continuously pushing Skywarp away or being generally manipulative and abrasive. But like. I wonder if he feels deep inside he should have tried more to do what felt right instead of what felt 'safer'.

Thank you so much for this comment omg.

I wasn't sure how to share it since it's so long I cant even screenshot it in one go, so I figure I'd just post it as is.

It's so awesome seeing how you've picked up all the little pieces I've scattered about and are putting together the narrative. It's so encouraging to see the ideas getting across.

Works referenced in this post: [Trine: Origins series] [Skywarp's baggage] [The trine's ages confirmed] [Cycle of Abuse] [Skywarp's injury] [and] [subsequently] [being unable to warp around] [Starscream's accidental neglect] [of skywarp] [and distancing himself] [because of it] [Thundercracker's morality] [Starscream's abuse] [Thundercracker cutting Starscream off] [Thundercracker's resentment]

I really appreciate anon for also pointing out how Thundercracker, while seemingly the most innocent, is still complacent in how things got this bad.

Thanks so much for engaging with my brain rot ^^;; and to everyone as well, I read all the comments on the posts and even in the tags. Genuinely keeps me going, I am feral for my boys grr grr

You'll just have to trust me when I say, they do love each other, and I promise I'll put the trine back together again. :(

#transformers

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sqgeism · 2 months ago

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love mail — some small little headcanons of the dynamic between the reader x anaxagoras 😽 this is for the people who fw stuff like this (* ´ ▽ ` *) if ppl like this i'd love to do phainon and mydei,, and if u wanna know other stuff feel free to ask!! also hi airi if u see this were u srs ab the hsr tag im too shy to clarify ( *´・ω)/(；д； )

more often than not, i tend to portray anaxagoras and the reader as married. that is intentional as i feel like anaxa would struggle to be affectionate with someone who he isn't sure is his forever, so him being married to them gives him great comfort and lets him feel more open to genuine romance.

this is random and it has always depended how you all insert yourselves into the story... how anaxagoras and reader fell inlove, but i always stood firm on the idea that they were professors who fell in love with each other and their respective fields <3 so cute..

the nickname anaxagoras gives them, "dove", is based off the idea that those very birds can represent new beginnings. when he met them, he genuinely thought that he had been given a second chance in life. that in the short time he had left, he was able to see a new perspective on the world just through looking at it through the readers eyes, hence the nickname.

i think in one of my veeery first works of anaxa, he was pretty closed off but still made efforts to be there for his dove, which was a very big jump to suddenly being married! so i want to emphasize that it likely took about 3 years before anaxa would propose to reader. you can take the stuff i've written as their sort of build up but i wanna write a genuinely like.. establishing up to their marriage fic soon! + if anaxa knew just how much reader would mean to him, he would've proposed earlier. since he dies and allat Σ(´□｀ )

i do want to explore more into the more complex and 'darker' themes of a relationship with anaxagoras (this section is for you ri, ily <3) and i do think that before marriage, he was relatively distant but oddly possessive. didn't spend too much time around (chrysos heir things.. research.. all of that took time) and yet he'd get moody when he wouldn't see you during the day. he wasn't as sweet as he is now, either. he was as sharp as his aim—precise and knew where to hit. so arguments, though rare, were still intense to some degree. while you were just trying to communicate, anaxagoras saw it as some sort of debate, a battle of intelligence. he would need to be alone and clear his mind to realize his mistakes.. but be too proud to admit to them until a week or so later, where he musters up the courage to apologize.

thank goodness it wasn't for too long, 8 months of that back and fourth.. anaxagoras is convinced that any sane person would've packed their bags and gone home. however you stayed, despite his indifferent attitude to life. broke down walls he but with bloodied hands from the hardships thrown at him, and loved every ugly part of him before ever seeing the good. he always reminds you that he's eternally grateful that you were tenacious, and avowed that he couldn't ever forgive himself, had you rightfully turned your back on him and found someone else.

porcelain!dove was a really interesting concept that i want to bring back, since i feel like their development tg would be really sweet,, them being parallels of each other and learning how to go through the complexities of human emotions with each other

if i had to describe the way i write anaxagoras, i think of a man who loves his partner dearly—a yearner, even. but there will be more times where he slips up than when he doesn't, as the fact of the matter is; anaxagoras would struggle to be a good husband. he's undoubtedly good to dove, but he fails in romance and especially vulnerability. he's open for you to be vulnerable and will (try) to comfort you.. but never himself, he doesn't feel ready for it even with reader.

reader and anaxagoras live seperately. though you could say that they practically live with him since they're probably at his place more than his own home. i like to think there's an established need for personal spaces, but don't mind sharing in healthy hours. if you did ask to move in with him he wouldn't mind but would make you a seperate lab/office/area for your own work or interests.

anaxa prefers holding readers waist/hip because it lets him be closer rather than holding hands. will do it if you ask though, but that's his default when you two are side by side

the reason he urges you on having you call him anaxa because i hc he sometimes struggles to recognize your voice from other people, or just generally having a hard time to differentiate voices. so letting you call him something special makes sure he knows that whose calling him is important.

if you made a joke about the whole him being tied up in chains thing, he'd say he's not against it. you want to think he's joking but it's in a deadpan voice and you don't know how to feel.

#ㅤ 𐔌᭥ᩙ༉ㅤnew flower bloomed ! :ೃ࿔𔓘 #honkai star rail x reader #hsr x reader #anaxagoras x reader #anaxa x reader #hsr x you #honkai star rail x you #anaxa x you #anaxagoras x you

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that-one-malereader-enthusiast · 7 months ago

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𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐞 · 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐠𝐮𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐋𝐞𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬

ׂ╰┈➤ ◖ 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐈 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐊𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐈 𝐍𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐝 ◗

𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐜𝐨 𝐱 𝐌𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

꒷꒦︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶꒦꒷‧₊˚⊹

cw : MDNI - S2 Arcane Act III [spoilers], parallel universe, alternate male reader, alternate Silco, slightly suggestive, top male reader, old man yaoi, mentions of nudity, chem-baron male reader, crime boss male reader, mentions of alcohol abuse, mentions of suicidal tendencies & thoughts, mentions of injuries, bitter sweet ending, open ended, fluff, angst, proofread. wc : 1.6k

__________________

now playing : What Have They Done To Us (from the series Arcane League of Legends) - Mako, Grey

꒷꒦︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶꒦꒷‧₊˚⊹

prologue · epilogue ←

overview · With Silco dead and gone, it seemed as if all your strength, your will to fight, will to live — it all disappeared with him. It was as if your entire world had fallen apart all at once, that you'd been forsaken or damned by some higher power to simply live a life of constant cruelty. Just as it always has been, just as it always will be — toiling in misery as the place you once called home seemed to be burning before your eyes.

Or maybe, just maybe...it was all nothing but a bad dream.

꒷꒦︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶꒦꒷‧₊˚⊹

You woke with an abrupt gasp, a cold sweat clinging onto your body after waking from a less than pleasant dream. Your breath stuttered as you fisted against the sheets to ground yourself to reality. As your vision slowly adjusted to the darkness, it was only then that you realized you were in bed within your allotted room. As the sheets stirred beside you, a slender hand moved to run itself against your bare, scar riddled body — starting at your stomach and slowly making its way up your chest — before finally settling against where your heart resided.

“You alright?” Silcos' voice cut through the quiet air of the room, now able to hear your sudden laboured breathing. He was just barely awake at the time, but the moment he not only heard, but felt you wake in such a panic, he didn't hesitate to come to your aid. The way your heart seemed to race under his touch only worried him that much more about your current state.

“Yeah, no, I just…I just had a weird dream, that's all. Nothing to worry about, just wasn't too fond of it since, well, it seemed so real. Call me crazy, but everyone we knew was there.” You wiped a hand against your own face, still half awake yourself. One hand went up to overlap the others while another went through your hair, combing it back with your fingers balling up towards the end. After a moment or so and being able to catch your breath, you laid yourself back down, resting against the pillow propped under your head.

Silco huffed out, doing his best to sit up, maneuvering a pillow behind his back as he moved positions. “Is that so?” He knew that you were prone to having vivid dreams every now and then, and when it was something intriguing or something that kept you up, he didn't mind letting you ramble on when recalling said events.

“I was some sort of…crime boss and so were you. But you were much scarier than me,” you started, only to snicker at the thought, practically hearing the other playfully roll his eyes at your active imagination. “Though, I will say it got really depressing rather…rather fast. Lots of people got hurt, people I cared about dearly. You, you were there, and suddenly…you weren't.”

“Darling,” he called out for you, though in the moment of recalling what felt like years worth of memories shoved into one dream, you couldn't help but to continue your rant before the thoughts completely disappeared from the forefront of your mind.

“You and Vander, god,” you sighed out, brows furrowing and eyes glancing about the ceiling, as if you were trying to find the image. “You two were up in arms against each other, and I…and I just sat and watched as everything burned. Like I was helpless to it all. The kids, they — Silco, bad things happened, left and right and it was as if the world was against you, us…me? And Powder, damn it, she was so…lost, so broken, and there…there was nothing I could do to—”

Your head snapped down to your arm as you felt a hand slip into your own, squeezing it reassuringly. Your head then tilted up, looking back to your companion with a slight pout on your lips.

“I'm not going anywhere, you know that. I'll always be beside you, understand?” Silco croaked out.

You gently smiled in turn, twisting to where you were laying on your side before reaching out to cup and caress against their face. “Just as I’ll be here next to you, unmoving. My love, unwavering,” you say onto him. Your thumb gently rubbed against the scarred skin of his face, tender touches under the discolored eye you'd come to adore, all before leaning in and tenderly pressing your lips against his own.

Silco reciprocated immediately, tilting his head as his own free hand came up to the nape of your neck, slowly threading his fingers through your hair before giving it a gentle tug, humming as he felt you groan into his mouth.

Regretfully pulling away, you looked at him through half lidded eyes. Your heart throbbed within the confines of your ribcage as he looked at you with the same look he always gave you, the look that makes you fall harder for him everyday.

The look of absolute love, devotion, and admiration — the type of love you couldn't find anywhere else, the type you thought you never deserved.

But Silco knew you deserved more. You deserved the world and he'd give it to you the moment you asked, no hesitation.

Before long, the sheets were moved and your bodies were entangled. Your lips were quick to spoil and praise his skin, pressing hot, heavy kisses against his neck, slipping down to his collar, nipping away while he called your name in such a sultry tone. You practically melted. Your hands drifted to his sides, playing against his bare skin while his hands dipped and diverged, one against your back — brushing against the many scars you'd earned throughout the years — the other threading through your graying hair.

You were once again breathless, but for all the right reasons. A warmth surged through your body, swirling around your core as Silco egged you on.

Leaning up, you found yourself stealing a kiss, your tongue swiping along his bottom lip before slowly pulling away, his teeth catching your bottom and tugging it shortly after. As you two parted, you couldn't help but to stare. Oh how you adored this man, would break the world for him if he asked or demanded it. What wouldn't you do for the man you loved. “I love you…”

Peering into his heterochromic eyes, he looked back into your own, just as he looked at you across the bar all those years ago. “I love you too darling, more than you'll ever know.” He pressed his lips against your once again.

“And nothing will ever change that.”

₊˚⊹ ₊

Your eyes shot open and your body lunged forward, gasping for air as if you'd been choking on fumes. You hacked and coughed before slamming yourself back against the brick wall you laid again, groaning as pain surged throughout the entirety of your body and a harsh banging against your temples. You could barely think in the moment, but you were awake enough to notice that you were somewhere shoved in an alley, slumped against one of its many grime covered walls.

Before you could even attempt to move again, there was a searing pain that seemed to occupy the entire left side of your body. Slowly turning your head, you gazed upon the rather harsh and horrific burns that were in your skin. A pained yell let loose from your lungs as you tried to sit up straight, the pain making your vision flash white.

The Lanes had gone to hell, devastation around every corner, and what was left for you?

Despair, destruction, it all came down and brought back nothing but misery. Something you'd been all too accustomed to.

“What a fucked up dream,” you sneered, wincing with every breath you took.” Maybe…Maybe just one good thought of him before it's lights out.” In the corner of your eye there seemed to be an eerie green glow that lit up the darkness of the Lanes. It caused you to weakly turn your head towards the product of such a glaring light. Only then, could you remember where you truly were, what you'd done.

You could do nothing but sit and watch as The Last Drop was engulfed in flames, the fire lapping at every entrance, window, and wall. You could still feel the flames that nipped at your flesh, eating away as you slumped yourself at the bar in those final moments. Everything started to make sense to you, watching Jinx as she lit the place a blaze, watching her shadow, foreign without her long hair.

The memory was too painful for her, and you didn't blame her.

You could never blame her.

You could never hate her. After all, she was your forsakened daughter, whether you acknowledged it or not. The last thing you could have imagined was her harming Silco, but in the end, you knew she couldn't have done such a thing on purpose, not when she missed him so dearly. Just as you did.

You wanted your suffering to end there, as sad as it seemed, you saw it as a means to an end. One last drink before a final goodbye.

The three people you held dearly, all three of them, gone. Only you remained, to suffer in their silence.

You couldn't remember if you dragged yourself out, or if someone else did, but as you closed your eyes, you could hear his voice encircling your mind.

“You aren't just a mutt fighting for scraps anymore. You're a hound willing to fight for what's yours. You aren't pathetic enough to put yourself down, nor has anyone had the strength or audacity to kill you. So do what you do best…and fight.”

It was as if he was right in front of you.

“Keep fighting, or I swear I'll take everything you care about and watch it burn. Keep fighting. For me…”

As the blaze that once was the Last Drop continued the burn, you couldn't help but to think rather fondly of the dream you had. “Maybe in another life, yeah?” You muttered to yourself. Staring off into the flames, you could feel the darkness seeping in, ready to take you down into the depths of unconsciousness once again.

“Maybe…what could have been.”

꒷꒦︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶꒦꒷‧₊˚⊹

a/n : thank you for suffering with me, arcane gripped my heart and I'M STILL HURTING— anywho, don't forget to like, comment, or repost! Arcane requests are open! <3

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epic-curious · 3 months ago

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The thing to understand about Amy Dallon is that she's an incel. You'll make so many mistakes in trying to understand her character unless you start from this lens.

She has:

An abusive home life which encouraged emotional repression and resentment

An inability to change for the better, despite being socially and economically suited to do so (by virtue of being a parahuman)

Most importantly, a strong belief in the just-world hypthesis; in her mind, bad things only happen to unjust being, good things happen to good people, and doing good things regardless of intent/sincerity entitles you to a reward

These are all traits she has common with incels based on how they describe themselves and what they believe. There's this belief in the fandom that her sexually violent behavior came out of nowhere, but I posit that these character flaws, combined with Amy's knowledge that Victoria would never willingly reciprocate her feelings, provide the perfect setup for her to do what she did.

I don't think was an accidental writing decision either, like Taylor's attraction towards women. It really feels like Wildbow purposefully wrote Amy's downfall to parallel stories about "nice guys" who fly into meltdowns or become crazed stalkers after finding out that no, basic decency doesn't entitle the object of your affections to fuck you. Men who, despite real challenges, have the resources to become well-adjusted but refuse because they completely lack an internal locus of control. Just like them, Amy had resources outside of her abusive family in the form of the PRT, who despite their own issues would have moved heaven and Earth to make sure they didn't lose a valuable cape like her. Instead, she continued to hide her deteriorating mental health and continued to harbor feelings she knew wouldn't be reciprocated until she finally messed up like she'd always been meaning to:

"Do you know how many hours I’ve spent awake at night, wishing my powers would just go away, or that some circumstance would come up where I’d make some excusable mistake where they would eventually forgive me, but where I couldn’t visit the hospitals anymore?”

Another commonality with incels and "nice guys"; not wanting to actually get better, but waiting for a reason to let their worst impulses loose.

I also think this was the reason Amy's character drive Wildbow so crazy. Imagine, you write a character whose mental illness and entitlement cause her to rape and mutilate her sister, who has clear parallels to an incel's violent reaction to being rejected. The response by a not insignificant part of the fandom is accusations of bigotry, because they have invented a version of your character in their heads that has all of her identity markers but none of the characterization you wrote. Coincidentally, most of this part of the fandom hasn't read your work to completion, if at all. Some of them even blame the sister for being raped! This isn't helped by the fact that you are a bit homophobic, that you wrote your protagonist to be bisexual but didn't realize it, that you described the sexuality of one of your bisexual characters as "hedonist", that you inexplicably wrote a character who canonically looks butch, is obsessed with your female protagonist, but is somehow straight. Maybe you could have done some of that better, but the fact that your biggest detractors are fans of your incel rapist is confounding to say the least. Combine all this with the inkling suspicion that this discourse wouldn't exist if you had written Amy as a man...yeah, I kinda get why Wildbow went insane about her.

Now, I'm not writing this as some sort of callout for a fictional character. I love evil women and seeing Amy actually lean in to being an incel crashout would have been fun as hell. But I really hate this idea that Amy was a poor little meow meow whose character was assassinated by the author. The pieces are all there, you just understand this character less than Wildbow which is really saying something.

#amy dallon #worm #parahumans #wildbow

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iscdisc · 2 months ago

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I'm bringing back this conversation because I will forever defend Y'gthba ("Mona Lisa") within the context of the episode, "Evil of Dregg"-

I know it was kind of annoying to have Y'gthba and G'Throkka ("Sal Commander") written to be so gullible with both the Kraang and Lord Dregg / Armaggon, but I still think the dilemma Y'gthba was faced with in this episode was valid. I think this was an extremely difficult and debilitating decision she had to make, a choice she honestly shouldn't have had to make in the first place. But it didn't surprise me or shock me to see her choose her home planet over Raph.

Like, let's be real, everyone and their Mom acknowledges that 2012 RaMona was super rushed by the writers. So I think it makes sense for their relationship to have been super new as well, meaning that it would be illogical for Y'gthba to choose a guy (And his team-) that just barely knows / just met over her ENTIRE PLANET AND SPECIES OF PEOPLE. This is something Donnie even acknowledges by the end of the episode when she ultimately chooses to rectify her mistake of betraying Raph by helping them escape.

I'm not saying that Raph wasn't entitled to be in his feelings about her betrayal, since that doesn't necessarily not make sense to me, but I feel like how the show sort of weaponizes Raph's emotional distraught over the situation towards Y'gthba is really annoying. I feel like if the context was reversed, everybody would be gaslighting Raph about how unreasonable it was to choose Y'gthba the over saving Earth?? Even if that wasn't the case, I'm sure the writers would come up with some way to make it seem like the main characters did nothing wrong because they "didn't actually give up their friends" / "it was all an act, regardless of the fact that their allies thought it was real" or something- My point is, I feel like if Raph was the one betraying Y'gthba, the show would definitely portray this entire thing differently and make it seem like Y'gthba was being overly reactive. 💀

That's also why I added the last image with Raph, because I wanted to show him really pondering and questioning what he would do if he was in her position- I'm sure his go-to answer would be, "To save you, obviously!", but I feel like it wouldn't take him long to realize how complicated this dilemma actually would be. I also hate that the show didn't draw this parallel, because this is the entire point of the Space Arc?? I wish their rekindling at the end of the episode was handled differently, with Raph genuinely acknowledging why she did what she did and forgiving her from that standpoint rather than Y'gthba saying, "I love you" for the first time resulting in Raph completely disregarding everything.

I just feel like this is another example of the 2012 writing loving to villainize the female characters for things that they would not villainize the male characters for doing / going through (i.e. If Karai and Leo's situations were swapped, I highly doubt they would have villainized Leo as much as they did Karai, especially during his redemption-). I don't know. 🙃 Lmao

#raph #raphael #y'gthba #mona lisa #ramona #tmnt #tmnt 2012 #teenage mutant ninja turtles #teenage mutant ninja turtles 2012

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heartsickspider · 2 months ago

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in another life; in every life (arthur morgan x reader)

a/n: idk if i really believe in the multiverse/parallel lives, but the idea of two people finding and choosing each other over and over again? my inner helpless romantic is SCREAMING. so here's a lil something about that with arthur :') tags: arthur has tb (i'm sorry </3), soft angst, hurt/comfort, grappling with mortality in the gentlest way possible, cosmic soulmates type beat

the stars gleamed in the navy blue twilight, twinkling as they welcomed the moon into their night sky. the air was cool and quiet, the stillness broken only by the crackle of the dwindling fire and arthur's soft, uneven breaths.

you couldn't help but steal the occasional glance at him as you idly whittled away at some wood with your knife. he was focused, eyebrows furrowed and jaw set as he meticulously polished his favorite revolver. you knew that look all too well. he was lost in his head again, thoughts gnawing at his conscience in the same way the illness was slowly withering away at his body.

he'd rarely talk about it, not directly anyway. said he didn't wanna cause you pain, as if watching him unravel before you hadn't already imprinted a permanent, dull ache in your chest. as if ignoring it made it any less real.

the silence stretched on, comfortable but not quite peaceful. you continued to pick away at the wood to form some sort of figure, the rhythmic scraping lulling you into a hazy state. today's ride had been long, and your body was desperate for a hot bath and his familiar arms holding you close.

"y'ever get the feelin'," he said suddenly, setting the gun aside, "like you've lived something before?"

you blinked, his low voice bringing you back to the present. "how so?"

arthur's gaze was focused on the dying embers that gently illuminated his tired features. "don't make sense, but sometimes i feel like we've done this all before. lived this life... the same, but different somehow."

you stared at him for a long moment, hands going still as you realized what he was getting at. arthur had never been one to believe much beyond the physical. notions of the afterlife or fate were foreign to him, silly ideas to be scoffed at. and yet, here he was, contemplating something so far outside his usual ways of thinking. the clumsy half-carving fell forgotten in your lap as his words slowly settled in, soft and steady, easing the weight of your weary heart.

he shook his head, a rasped cough escaping his chapped lips. "it's damn stupid, i know."

"it's not." you reached out, intertwining his calloused fingers with your own. "sometimes i can't help but feel like i've known you forever."

his eyes finally met yours, flickering with vulnerability and a hint of relief. "yeah?"

you nodded, a small smile tugging at the corners of your lips. "i like the sound of that," he murmured as he gave your hand a soft squeeze. "maybe in another life, this all goes different."

you let out a soft hum and gently ran your thumb across his scarred knuckles. "how would you like it to go?"

he looked up at the stars, glowing brighter now that the sky had settled into an inky black. "reckon it would be just us," he explained quietly. "none of this running and surviving. a small piece of land, a few animals. that's all i want."

the simplicity of his wish struck something deep within you. he was a man riddled with sin, yes, but surely not beyond forgiveness. it was probably foolish to think that way. he'd spilled more blood than several lawmen combined, participated in cons that ripped apart innocent lives.

and yet, all you could see was the man before you. the one who carried the crippling burden of shame and regret like it ran through his blood. the man who stood by those he loved in the name of loyalty, without question. the one who, despite his fragile state, fought every single day just to keep breathing for you. wasn't that worth something?

you leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his stubbled cheek, letting your lips linger just a moment longer than necessary. "we'll get that," you whispered as you pulled away, just as the fire finally flickered out. "i can feel it."

#rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #arthur morgan #arthur morgan x reader #arthur morgan x you #arthur morgan fanfiction #rdr2 arthur #rdr2 fanfic #rdr2 angst #arthur morgan angst #rdr2 fandom #rdr2 community #soft angst #hurt/comfort #drabble #soulmates #storiesbysarah

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deerspherestudios · 4 months ago

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THEORY!!

i have had this theory for a while now , but i feel like MO is based on the sleeping beauty. how so? 1.) Mychael's three hens parallels with the three faeries in the sleeping beauty 2.) Menu screen theme but thats more obvious lolol 3.) The princess in the sleeping beauty was cursed to prick her finger on a spindle's needle , when it was time for the curse to take it's action she was almost in a state of hypnosis[?] and walked up to the spindle wheel to prick her needle. NOW mc in MO is sort of hypnotized too because we see on day 3 how mc [sort of] willingly walked upto a mushroom ring [if your choices lead to that] and attempts to touch it. i think i've connected the dots..... /silly 4.) this might be a little farfetched but mychael watches us sleep.... sleep... sleeping.... sleeping beauty,,,,, honk mimimimi.... 5.) Maleficent cursed aurora because she was considered an 'outsider' and wasn't invited and welcomed to the grand celebration. guess who else is the 'outsider' [sort of]? MYCHAEL!! humans do not welcome him well! 6.) the forest themes... yummy.... i loved the aurora living in a cabin in woods parts of the movie... who else lives in a cabin in woods? you guessed it!! mychael!! 7.) my memory is hazy but i think one of hen's name is a direct reference to the sleeping beauty... primrose was aurora's name when she had to hide her identity as a civilian. thats what i think so far... i might've not worded some of it correctly but i hope this made sense! i really really reallyyyyyyy enjoy MO<3 thank you for sharing this piece of art with us :DDD have a lovely day i hope this ask finds you and doesn't get consumed by tumblr algorithm TnT <333

,,,I'm actually stunned speechless because hey? I kinda see it,,,?

I can debunk it wasn't based on Sleeping Beauty but I commend you for connecting dots I didn't even realize I'd made haha! It's just incredible coincidence you were able to find pretty decent comparisons here.

I don't usually add much to theory posts because that's the fun of theorizing but enjoy me yapping below if you'd like!

Of everything above, the only thing I can confirm is

4.) this might be a little farfetched but mychael watches us sleep…. sleep… sleeping…. sleeping beauty,,,,, honk mimimimi….

is exactly what I was going for; since Mychael did indeed discover you while you were sleeping (ironically the one point you thought was farfetched haha) and that's what made me choose the main menu theme!

The reason it happened to be a music box version of Once Upon A Dream is because (get ready for Cheea lore here) I played an OFF fan-game titled UNKNOWN as a teen, and in it was a music box version of A Cruel Angel Thesis; it changed my brain chemistry about music box covers ever since. (I don't even watch the anime 😭!)

In fact, I almost used the music box version of Waltz in E-Major, Op. 15 Moon Waltz by Cojum Dip in Astronought's ending scene!

It's also a major part of the reason I gave Mychael a kalimba! I recommend looking up music box covers of songs you know if you enjoy the sound!! <3

Everything else was a coincidence!

Also just an extra tidbit for people who read this: when I was deciding Mychael's favorite Disney movie, it made me think how much he'd want to be Prince Phillip, (I mean genuinely the movie was never about Aurora it was about the fairies lmaoo but I digress) especially after the finale with him defeating Maleficent with the fairies' help.

He'd never consider himself a princely hero but he wishes he could be. And something about meeting your soulmate in the woods by accident really spoke to him.

#mushroom oasis vn #mushroom musings #adding prince phillip to his kin list next to shrek /silly #this was a fun little surprise ngl #at first i was like nah but then i was like hm actually...#like that woman trying kombucha meme...#thank you for the fun read!#cheea chatter #bts

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ghost-bison · 2 months ago

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I had a sort of epiphany as to what makes Ten and Donna's relationship so appealing to so many people, so much so that it's been over 15 years and we're still talking about it.

What i'm about to say is nothing really new but I find it interesting how for hundreds of years, the Doctor's been the person and the companion has been the mirror.

What I mean by that is, the Doctor's this all impressive, wonderful being, this super-human to the people he meets and especially those he travels with, and so they think that in order to deserve him and this life, they need to be like him.

We saw it with Rose, who by series 2 started becoming a totally different character: careless, her immaturity hidden behind a newfound confidence encouraged by the Doctor - who, at this point in the show where his most defining traits are guilt and regret, desperately needs an equal.

This change in Rose's personality and demeanor is explored during her talk with her mum in 2x12 "Army of Ghosts":

JACKIE: You even look like him. ROSE: How do you mean? I suppose I do, yeah. JACKIE: You've changed so much. ROSE: For the better. JACKIE: I suppose. ROSE: Mum, I used to work in a shop. JACKIE: I've worked in shops. What's wrong with that? ROSE: No, I didn't mean that. JACKIE: I know what you meant. What happens when I'm gone? ROSE: Don't talk like that. JACKIE: No, but really. When I'm dead and buried, you won't have any reason to come back home. What happens then? ROSE: I don't know. JACKIE: Do you think you'll ever settle down? ROSE: The Doctor never will, so I can't. I'll just keep on travelling. JACKIE: And you'll keep on changing. And in forty years time, fifty, there'll be this woman, this strange woman, walking through the marketplace on some planet a billion miles from Earth. But she's not Rose Tyler. Not anymore. She's not even human.

Then, we have Martha. The better-known side of her relationship with the Doctor is that she has an unrequited love for him, but do people ever think about what's going on inside his head during his year with her?

Cause he pretends like he doesn't see it and it sort of works, for we all know he's pretty dense (when Cassandra possessed Rose's body, not ONCE did he glance down at her voluntarily revealing neckline, and he always looks so dazed and surprised when women kiss him, etc...). So Martha believes him when he acts like he doesn't see how she looks at him.

But he didn't have to kiss her passionately if he didn't want her to fall for him. He could have just done some weird shit as always and lick her cheek or something. He chose to kiss her because at this point, because of what he's done to Rose, he's forgotten that that's not what his relationship with people needs to be. He thinks she'll leave him if she doesn't idolize him.

Another side of their relationship we think even less about is Martha being a doctor (or doctor-to-be). She has this particular view of the title that comes with years of university and hospital internships, a view that's less present in companions who don't work in the medical field (Rose, Donna, Amy, Clara, Bill, Ruby...). So she has this advantage where, as she said, "You need to earn that title", but also this bias where she realizes he does live up to it, and because she wants to be a doctor, he's everything she needs to be.

This creates an interesting parallel with other medical worker companions: Rory and Belinda, the nurses.

Rory's relationship with the Doctor mainly exists through Amy's relationship with the Doctor: he's been seeing, ever since they were kids, what their encounter did to her, and then by the time they're adults and Amy sees the Doctor again, what it evolves and will evolve into.

At some point, Rory tells the Doctor:

RORY: You know what is dangerous about you? It's not that you make people take risks, it's that you make them want to impress you. You make it so they don't want to let you down. You have no idea how dangerous you make people to themselves when you're around.

And then, this is what Belinda tells the Doctor the first time he takes her into the TARDIS:

BELINDA: Is that what you say to all the girls? Is that what you said to Sasha? She trusted you, and she died. You tested my DNA without even asking my permission. God... You're dangerous. [...] I am not one of your adventures. Now I'm asking you, Doctor, to do the right thing.

Interesting coincidence that the two nurses of the show, basically the two people who aren't impressed (in the sense of "dazed") by the title of "Doctor", are two of the only companions who can see how messed up some situations he puts them in actually are where most companions would make an awkward "that was bad" joke out of it, or even just not say anything.

BELINDA: Some things don't change. There's always a doctor standing back while the nurses do all the hard work.

then:

BELINDA: So what's your name? Doctor what? THE DOCTOR: Just the Doctor. BELINDA: What? You're actually called "the Doctor"? THE DOCTOR: Yeah. BELINDA: All right then, I'm called "the Nurse".

To them, this title is just this: a title. To Martha, it's her future.

And to Donna... it means strictly nothing.

The first time she meets him in 2x14 "The Runaway Bride", she's transported directly inside the TARDIS. She sees the inside before she sees the outside. So where other companions would realize "it's bigger on the inside", Donna sees the contrary: it's smaller on the outside.

When she asks WHO he is, he just says "I'm the Doctor". Then he asks who she is in turn, and she says "Donna". She doesn't try to understand why he gave her this instead of an actual name, nor does she try to obtain an actual answer to her question. She just gets that he's strange, rolls with it, and tells him her name in turn.

By the end of the episode, there's no mistaking the fact that she IS impressed with him... but it's not a good thing.

The Doctor is surprised: he's used to it being a good thing. Generally, it gets him what he wants, which is a new companion. He's done everything right: saved her life, showed her the stars, he's even made it snow to make her smile!

And yet, at this point, all Donna thinks about is how the Doctor drowned kids in front of her, and in front of their own mother, and didn't even blink as he did.

THE DOCTOR: Come with me? DONNA: No. [...] I can't. I mean, everything we did today... Do you live your life like that? THE DOCTOR: ...Not all the time. DONNA: I think you do. And I couldn't. THE DOCTOR: But you've seen it out there. It's beautiful. DONNA: And it's terrible. That place was flooding and burning and they were dying and you stood there like... I don't know. A stranger. And then you made it snow, I mean, you scare me to death!

She is impressed, yes, but she is not dazed, yet. And by the time she is in series 4, she's had too long to think about it to let it cloud her judgment:

When they meet again in 4x01 "Partners in Crime", and she's finally ready to come with him, she gets a glimpse of how narcissistic and self-centered he is when he makes it clear that he thinks she wants to be with him in a romantic way (as I said earlier, he's forgotten that not all his relationships needed to be like this, and this belief that he has was reinforced by his time with Martha).

But Donna immediately puts him back in his place, twice:

DONNA: That Martha must have done you good. THE DOCTOR: Yeah, she did, yeah... She fancied me. DONNA: Mad Martha, that one! Blind Martha, charity Martha. [...] THE DOCTOR: I just want a mate. DONNA: You just want to mate? THE DOCTOR: I just want a mate! DONNA: You're not mating with me, sunshine! THE DOCTOR: A mate! I want a mate! DONNA: Well just as well because I'm not having any of that nonsense, I mean you're just a long streak of nothing. You know, alien nothing.

Then, throughout the whole of series 4, she spends half of their time together learning things about the Universe, about herself, and the other half challenging him:

In 4x02 "The Fires of Pompeii", she doesn't obey blindly. She asks interesting questions, pushes back, disagrees with him. She wants to save the whole town, he tells her they can't do that, she doesn't care. He's not used to having to engage in long explanations as to why his word is to be followed, because he considers himself to be righteous. This is mainly why she challenges him: she's a grown, capable woman and he treats her like a child:

THE DOCTOR: Donna, stop it. DONNA: Listen, I don't know what sort of kids you've been flying around with, but you're not telling me to shut up.

Then, she reminds him once more that they're equals and that she knows what she's doing with him when she puts her hands on that lever, taking on part of a burden that the Doctor thought was going to be entirely his again. And then, finally, she shows him that if you can't save everyone, one person is better than no one at all. She gives him hope and reminds him of his purpose.

On and on, she keeps doing stuff like that, until the point where the line starts blurring between them: they were the DoctorDonna before Donna had even gotten near that hand.

And instead of the companion trying to mirror the Doctor like every other time, the Doctor starts becoming the companion. And Donna does find him dazzling, she said it to her gramps, but she knew better than to let it show when she was with him.

Where he changed Rose into someone else entirely (which ended badly and could have been avoided had they been more careful), pushed Martha into forgetting her own individual worth (which she ended up understanding and decided to leave for her own good), he only gave Donna a glimpse into what she already was, and SHE was the one who changed HIM for the better.

Donna's fate couldn't have been predicted or prevented by either of them; it was destined to end like this, and this, all of this, is what makes their relationship so absolutely magnificent: both the simplicity and complexity of it, and its ineffability.

#doctor who #dw #tenth doctor #donna noble #doctordonna #tendonna #10th doctor #fourteendonna #fourteenth doctor #14th doctor #catherine tate #david tennant #doctor who meta #dw meta #god i am sick for them again #wtf rtd #rtd #russel t davies #doctor who series 4

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wishyoudwell · 4 months ago

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Theres often talk about Legends trauma and how he tries to distance from his emotions, how his experiences have affected him, and in turn I also like to think about how Ravio operates with his own trauma. This might sound pretty silly but I think both of them are equally as terrible at dealing with their issues. Ravio is still Links counterpart after all, and I'm more than sure he's gone through a fair share of things, especially hailing from Lorule. There's just differences in how they handle it. While Legend is often written to be repressing his trauma and keeping himself tight under lock and key, Ravio seems to be pretty casual about mentioning bad happenings. It kinda feels as if Ravio would make light of his own trauma, hardships or bad experiences before quickly brushing them off/playing them off as jokes. He sort of does this ingame, after all? The way he says it makes you unable to take him seriously, but when you really think about what he's saying...

"Finally, no more sleeping in the wild. Tough world out there, you know?" "But—! But—! But aren't we buddies? You'd kick me out? Into that cruel, cruel world out there? Please? You don't know what it's like trying to get some shut-eye with all those creepy-crawlies!"

You could argue that he's only saying this to garner sympathy and pity from Link. But since he escaped Lorule without knowing if he could ever even return....yeahhh, I think there's a lot of truth here. Casually hinting at how he he had to sleep outside while worrying about being left defenseless to monsters... I don't think Ravio really lies (much). He's just pretty good at omitting information. He's also really good at playing a character. Ravio also says some pretty weird and mildly concerning stuff once he's "in retirement" and being all philosophical on Links floor.

"I always thought sleeping all day would be fun. But now I think I'd miss breakfast and lunch, right? Yeah, I've got a new outlook on life, and it's all thanks to you, Mr. Hero!"

"For a long time, I believed that if you put your ear to the ground, you'd hear the world's heart beating. That the world just goes on living, whether you were there or not. Weird, right? And sorta sad. So I've been listening here for a while, and you know the only heart I've heard? Mine! I couldn't be happier. Ha! I've got a new outlook on life, and it's all thanks to you, Mr. Hero!"

"You know, whenever I used to just lounge around... I would think how I'm just a tiny speck in a great, big world. And I still believe that I'm a teeny, tiny, little speck in a world that's SO much bigger than I ever thought! But even a speck can change the world if he puts his heart into it. I've got a new outlook on life, and it's all thanks to you, Mr. Hero!"

"I've never really had the time to take a lot of naps before. The world looks so different from here! Sometimes just changing your perspective is the key to... well, to everything! I've got a new outlook on life, and it's all thanks to you, Mr. Hero!"

"When I look at you, Mr. Hero, I now realize that just about anything is possible if you put heart into it. Ha! Seems like it's about time for me to decide where to put MY heart!"

It's a lot of fun, trying to imagine what the future holds. Ha! I've got a new outlook on life, and it's all thanks to you, Mr. Hero!

One thing that does become pretty evident though is how Links presence and the land of Hyrule itself seems to have had a really positive and healthy influence on Ravio and his psyche. He appears to have been a lot more somber before, but meeting Link and experiencing his courage firsthand has helped Ravio grow too, to the point he was able to develop a happier, positive outlook on life. Meanwhile you could argue that Legends become more bitter overtime on his outlook on life the more adventures he has to go through (lol). Hmm...yeah, I didn't really have anywhere specific I was going with this. It's just another interesting parallel to me how Legends personality and portrayal would clash with his counterparts. They're interesting to me, they compliment and play off each other well...they process and experience life so similarly yet differently...

#lu legend #linked universe #lu ravio #ramble #this kind of feels like a cornplate post but thats okay. i like ravio #well im really bad at putting my thoughts into words so i hope this post is worth sooomething??#but basically i like thinking about how ravio seems to pretty obviously has his issues too #hes cheerful in his manner and casual about mentioning them #you wouldnt take him all too seriously and thats probably his intent

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nephilimeq · 4 months ago

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Emotional Growth in 9-1-1

This newest episode is so interesting, because looking at Eddie it becomes obvious that we are looking at a man who is emotionally neglected and stuck at the age that he got Shannon pregnant.

Because he is.

He had a kid so young that he never had the chance to figure out who he was as a person, and then he used his identity from the military straight into the LAFD as trying to tell himself that he's someone who saves other people.

He also felt like he was saving Christopher when he became a single father, so that was an easy transition for him.

But then Christopher goes and makes an emotional decision to leave, and I feel like a part of Eddie is only just realizing that he never had that autonomy at any point in his life and it's sort of this panicked knee-jerk reaction to go straight out to him because he doesn't know what else to do and doesn't have the emotional maturity to stand up to the consequences of his actions and try to fix himself.

We see this in the way he is doing things like growing a mustache or shaving it off and then reenacting Risky Business.

He's not facing the emotions.

He's avoiding them...

...versus Buck who has had the chance to experience a lot of the world because he was emotionally neglected. He went out and traveled the world and figured out what parts of himself that he liked and didn't like, and then became a firefighter because he knew he wanted to help people (even though that is a part of his trauma, the people pleasing, most of it is completely honest).

We see him in therapy several times, and it's obvious that over the seasons he has been trying to come to terms with the darker parts of himself.

And now he's at a point in his life where he's just discovering another part of his identity, he's now finally secure in it...and then when Tommy left it felt like part of him was leaving.

Buck's endgame has to be Tommy because it's the only thing that makes sense in terms of his character arc.

To fall in love and make that home.

Because unlike Eddie, Buck has had the chance to have a lot of different relationships in several different ways, so he knows what it's like to have an infatuation versus actually being in love, and Tommy feels very emotionally different from every single other relationship that we've seen him have on screen.

The only relationship in which we saw Buck being himself.

The only relationship where he felt seen.

The only relationship where he was happy.

The only relationship where he was finally Evan, without the trauma behind his name anymore, and not just "Buck".

...and the fact that we have seen Tommy's character in previous flashbacks as part of all of the "Begins" episodes, it would be the perfect parallel for Tommy to be where Buck ends and Evan begins.

By Eddie running away to Texas and letting Buck stay in his house, it is very synonymous with how Buck is stepping into that chapter of his life of settling down and creating his own family outside of anyone else's expectations.

Eddie was Buck's first real friend in the 118, one of the first ones to start to let him feel seen.

...but now Buck no longer needs that constant validation. He is stepping into a much more healed version of himself, even if he still is a little bit impulsive sometimes—though his impulsiveness can be good, we've seen that on the job. It's saved more than a few lives when no one else might have taken the risk.

Because of how Buck has grown, we have seen him actively learning from his mistakes—versus Eddie, who is still running from them, which is why this plot line makes a lot of sense to me.

Eddie can't grow where is.

Buck can.

That's why Buck living in Eddie's house is so symbolic, because it's a way of showing how different the two of them are now. Buck can grow and move forward in a place that Eddie was never able to.

He recognizes change and embraces it. He jumps into the unknown with two feet—it's the one thing we have seen consistently from him over the seasons, and I think this is where Buck is taking a moment to breathe and really think about what he wants next.

If the writers do it right, we will see Buck settling into himself even more...

...and then reach back out to Tommy.

Feeling more settled, he and Tommy will finally talk and all of their issues will be dragged out into the open and dealt with.

They both acted impulsively but in different directions when they broke up, and I think this season will be about Buck finally slowing down and looking before he leaps.

But he'll still leap ;)

#911 abc #911 #911 meta #evan buckley #tommy kinard #bucktommy #buck x tommy #tevan #tevan endgame

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princessofghosts-posts · 5 months ago

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Recently realized that demigods at CHB are either rich/upper class or poor/broke by default.

You got Piper,and she is really the daughter of a famous Hollywood's star,she grew up under the spotlight all of her life,full of people that wanted to have her father's attention,and is super rich. She shoplifts thanks to her charm-speaking ability,yes,but she still got the money.

Rachel's the daughter of an important CEO,her family's money got her a last-minute helicopters (and taxis in all the city too-) to fly to Manhattan,in a couple of hours,while she was in a totally different locations. She hates her dad,and her family business isn't the best ecological one,but she is rich.

Annabeth's father is a professor that got his family of 5 (counting Annabeth even tho she doesn't live with them that much) moved from a state to another,Virginia to San Francisco. He might not be Rachel/Piper level of richness,but he is still able to provide a big family with an house in an expensive place and without economics problem. Annabeth is upper class.

Nico and Bianca's family is part of italian old money. Their grandparents were politicians,so was their mother,and they were probably related to someone with a noble title. During the start of the war,only a couple of people,usually the rich one,could travel from a place to another (Maria didn't met Hades in Italy after all). They lived in the Lotus and that place is full of everything you ever wanted,especially with the infinite credit card. Hades is the good of the riches too. They are upper class.

Half of the Aphrodite's cabin,if not full,is probably related to rich or famous people because of her nature. It's impossible she only had Piper that was from a famous actor. Silena and Drew are probably rich too but not on "Hollywood's star" level. (Tanaka is a japanese surname,and japanese families are usually well off,Beauregard is french surname so she is probably french,and most french people have a pretty expensive lifestyle.)

Thalia and Jason's mother was a famous television star that got Zeus attentions twice,so at least the first years of their life they had a good economic situation. She then went insane,and was horrible to her children and Thalia had to live on the street to get away from her (like Annabeth) while Jason got adopted by Lupa.

Then you got Leo that basically jump from a foster home to another,most of which are abusive or mistreat him. The guy lost his mother and the rest of his family hated him so much that decided to hand him to CPS directly. He lives day by day,and probably on the street a couple of time too. He is completely broke.

Percy (before Sally published her book and became a well-known writer,and Paul entered their life) was poor. They had enough to get by with Sally's money,and most of it was wasted on alcohol by Gabe. He didn't had a comfortable life,fortunately now his economic situation is better.

Now,you can discuss that Luke wasn't really poor,but the guy ran away from his mother and spent half of his childhood in the street. And with May's condition I don't think someone would employee her,and if she had a job before she probably got fired.

Ethan Nakamura literally lived on the street all of the time,either because he was doing something for Kronos,or because he didn't had a place at CHB (Hermes's cabin doesn't count).

Half of the children of minor gods/goddesses,and the revolutionaries who joined Kronos,were probably in the same situation as Ethan,if not worse.

Jason lived in a forest with a bunch of wolves. Then at CJ it's not like he had any monetary problem since they didn't really needs money inside the camp. And for any quest to do,I'm sure the romans had a vault,or some sort of safe,to keep money in case it was needed.

Probably majority of the Greeks demigods weren't in a good situation in their finances too,but I personally think that most of them had at least a a life with an enough stable economic situation.

Also,gotta love the parallelism that some of them have:

• Annabeth and Thalia (and Jason) are upper class thanks to their mortal parent's job,but had to live on the streets because their family were shit.

• Percy was poor but after his mom's business skyrocketed,and thanks to Paul's job too,they never had to worry about rent and not having enough food.

• Piper is rich but spent all of her teenager years shoplifting and stealing,trying to get her dad's attention.

• Rachel is rich but prefer to be an activist-artist,with oracle problems because she hates her dad.

• Nico and Bianca are rich,from both family's sides,but were forced to live in "poverty" (I have to desagree on this one because it's not accurate since it was from Percy POV's during BotL).

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tritoch · 1 year ago

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Have you got any thoughts to share about Sphene? I saw your post about how misrepresented FFXIV’s female characters are, and I’ve been hoping to see anything more than the typical “Evil AI colonizer etc.” or “Tragic woman who can never change ever” or “Wuk Lamat’s girlfriend”. Maybe our interpretations will differ but I’ll be happy if you can provide anything more complex than those.

Sure! Throwing all this under a read-more for anyone who hasn't finished 7.0 yet. I think I'll probably expand on this more later but wanted to get initial thoughts down. (Note after writing: I meant this to be brief but uhhhh brevity is not my strong suit sorry. This take just sort of ends abruptly because I realize I'm rambling.) Again, spoilers through the end of 7.0 MSQ.

I think Sphene is the sharpest work the game has done yet in casting the antagonist as the noble double of the protagonist (a well it returns to a lot with Emet, and Zenos, and Golbez, and...). But because the protagonist here is Wuk Lamat and not the Warrior of Light, that's also a much more defined and interesting role. To me, Wuk Lamat is, above all, the Righteous Queen, who rules thoughtfully, wisely, and justly, and whose claim to the throne is justified by her moral clarity. Sphene, in turn, is also a wise and good queen, one who undertakes all her actions with her people first in her hearts, a sense of compassion towards all, and a clear eye for the consequences and costs of her intended course of action. And it leads to utter disaster, for her, her people, and the people of Tural. That rocks!

The first half of 7.0 is about justifying the fact that Wuk Lamat's going to be Dawnservant. Wuk Lamat is compassionate, curious, wise, and open-minded. She wins over rebels and malcontents not by asserting her authority or by strength of force, but by taking her obligations to them (as her subjects) seriously. She knows many of her subjects personally and takes a great interest in their lives, and she respects even those who openly oppose her.

And everything Wuk Lamat does, Sphene does to 11. Wuk Lamat respects her subject peoples and is curious about their cultures? Sphene forcibly annexes Yyasulani, but goes out of her way and expends Alexandria's limited resources to enable the remaining Xak Turali to live in their accustomed way if desired (…to the extent allowed by the new permanent lightning storms and the internal conflicts caused by regulator adoption). Wuk Lamat cares about her people not just in the abstract but as individuals? Sphene visits sick kids, knows them by name! Wuk Lamat understands the burden of rulership is too great and cedes half her power to her brother? Sphene recognizes her own weaknesses and makes a deal with the devil to keep Alexandria's culture alive! Wuk Lamat is willing to die for her people? Sphene will forcibly traumatize herself into being a better queen, if that's what rulership demands.

For an expansion that spends the first half being like "wow isn't this perfect candidate for the crown so likable and humble? wouldn't it be nice to be ruled by a good king?," it sure is funny that the final boss is THE QUEEN ETERNAL and she hits you with attacks like LEGITIMATE FORCE and ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY and ROYAL DOMAIN. This, to me, is Sphene's role: she complicates and questions the themes we've developed in the first half. Most importantly to me, she makes us ask: what is devotion to a people or culture even worth?

There's a thing I kept thinking of constantly during Dawntrail, not because I think it directly influenced the game in any way but because the parallels were so stark and startling. It's Jonathan Hickman's New Avengers #18 (2014). Truthfully, I'm not a big comics guy; I only know this sequence because Ta-Nehisi Coates cited it as inspiration for his Black Panther run on Twitter once (I also didn't read TNC's run, I was following him for politics talk). Forgive me, comics people, if I get any details wrong. The parallels are almost comical, though. It goes like this:

A superhuman secret society formed of some of the smartest heroes (and villains) in the land re-forms to oppose an existential threat caused by incursions from other dimensions that threaten to cause literal collisions between Earth and its alternate dimension counterparts. Seeing no other alternatives, they undertake work on a weapon to destroy these other worlds. T'challa—king of a fictional hyperadvanced nation called Wakanda, and also the superhuman Black Panther—meets with his ghostly predecessors, the previous Black Panthers/kings, for he fears the moral stain on his soul and the souls of the people of Wakanda, if they survive explicitly by killing their alternate counterparts, will be too heavy to bear. His ancestors are not impressed.

To them, there is no question at all. A king's duty may be complex in the execution, but it is simple in its conception. Your people come before all others. Always. This is, must be, the fundamental ethic of a good king. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the social order on which this imagined good monarchy is built. In a situation like this, the only option is to do what you must to protect them. "Will there be a cost? Yes. Might the universe burn? Let it. . . . You will kill them all if it means Wakanda stands. The golden city must never fall."

"I will do what I must" is Sphene's guiding principle. It is so important to her that when she recognizes that her sentimental attachments are making her waver in her duty, she severs them entirely, sacrificing her whole identity to the throne. It is also implicitly Wuk Lamat's position: she has no choice but to fight Sphene because to do otherwise would be to fail to protect her people. In fact, it's briefly even sort of the Warrior of Light's position, as when you tell Sphene before her trial that you understand what you must do, which is shut her down to protect others.

(One quick thought about the Warrior of Light: one cool thing about the antagonist this time being a double in a more exact way than Emet or Zenos is that it means other characters get a chance to relate to her differently than Wuk Lamat. The Warrior of Light, for example, is pressed into her service immediately upon your first meeting as the Queen's Champion, there to defend her if need be against all evil. This role is further affirmed by both robot Otis and Endless Otis, who essentially hand off their role as her knight to you, and reinforced when you flash back to the "might I call upon your aid" moment right before the end. Except, of course, you are loyal not just to her, but to the principles she represents, which her own acts betray, and so your ultimate act of aid is to essentially pass judgment on her and execute her. In a sense, you become the internal safeguard that a political system is supposed to have to protect against this very issue, and which Alexandria explicitly lost when it cast out/forgot Otis. Very Voeburt/ShB tank quests, it owns.)

But really, it's Sphene who embodies this sort of grim logic best. Aside from her transformation into the Queen Eternal, it's also why she suggests you simply become Alexandrians. It's the only way for her to reconcile her values and worldview, which have backed her into a corner where preserving Alexandria has come to mean a maximalist declaration of war on all life outside its borders because the kind of absolutely pain-free life she envisions for her citizens is completely unsustainable.

In this reading, one of Sphene's main beats is to unsettle what has preceded her in MSQ. In nearly all respects, she shares your values. She prizes life, is curious about other cultures, believes in the greatest good for the greatest possible number. But she is also a queen, and therefore irrevocably (in her eyes) tied to her state. Gulool Ja Ja and Wuk Lamat (and Koana) are the mythical wise rulers, thank god--but what if Wuk had inherited a Turali state that wasn't desperately in need of cross-cultural understanding, but one in a state of war? What value would her deep love for the people of Tural have held then? Sphene says, it would have held no value. If the survival of your people means harming the innocent, you harm the innocent. Kingship allows for no alternatives.

But she also concedes, in the very next breath, that she is still kind of wrong. Because what happened here was not inevitable, despite her programming (a brief note: to me Sphene being programmed is exactly the same as Emet being maybe-tempered, it's a fantasy gloss on the idea of social and cultural education. "I was programmed for this" is really no different from "I was trained and educated for this"), because the truth is that this kind of thoughtful, principled devotion to the state and its people is also a form of sentimental attachment, in the end. One that is maintained not because it is natural, and necessary, but because the monarch, too, likes it, and gets something from it.

In so many ways, in so many senses, the monarch is the state. Kings and queens may fancy themselves merely a reflection of their people's needs and desires, but of course even a cursory glance at history will tell you that far more often, states reflect their rulers. Sphene and Wuk Lamat both suggest that their conflict was inevitable, but was it? Or is the truth, as Sphene glancingly acknowledges here, that she turned her own fears and desires into the same policy goals that led to this tragedy? And if so...what does that say of our Good Queen, Wuk Lamat? Perhaps this could be different if they met earlier, says Wuk Lamat. But when? When did Wuk Lamat ever not love her people so dearly that she would not have sacrificed herself for them, or caused mass death for the sake of their survival? When did Sphene not believe the Endless to be people, or the preservation of Alexandria to be the most important thing? Maybe she means "had we met before you met Zoraal Ja," but of course, we the player actually saw their meeting. And we know that Sphene even then was not the hapless naif she'd like to pretend. She always knew exactly what she was doing.

We know the price of this kind of thinking, this Hobbesian view that states are engaged in a struggle of all against all. Living Memory lets you walk through it. To preserve Tural, we exterminate the Endless. We befriend them, learn about their lives, promise to remember them, and then we destroy them and their homes, leaving nothing but a bleak blank landscape and the sound of wind. This is what Sphene would have done to Tural and Eorzea. Indeed, it's what she's already doing to the people of Yyasulani, because no amount of well-intentioned aid can make up for trapping people under the dome for 30 years and systematically eroding their culture through the resonators.

To me, this is what makes Sphene really work, that way she has of forcing Wuk Lamat and the player to commit the same kinds of sins she has. We'd like to think ourselves better than her, but of course, we've already reconciled with and integrated Mamook's brutal eugenicist regime back into Turali society well before we ever met Sphene. At the end of our long "wow isn't having a wise queen cool???" expansion, we are met with "Legitimate Force" and "Absolute Authority" and see them for what they truly are: nothing but tools of violence. No longer does the idea of the Warrior of Light hanging around Tural as Wuk Lamat's advisor have the same attraction, now that we have been reminded of the way the putatively unquestionable logic of kingship can ultimately lock even the wisest and kindest rulers into a path of war and exploitation and destruction.

I think Sphene is FFXIV's most interesting and nuanced depiction yet of a leader. She really, truly, wants nothing more than to save her people and protect them from pain. But even seemingly loving and compassionate goals like these can readily lead us down dark paths. She's a "hard men make hard choices"-type character, a noble but misguided opponent, but as a loving and elegant fairy queen instead of a grizzled knight or extremely sad man. She fucking rocks.

#sphene #ffxiv #dawntrail spoilers #dt spoilers #spoilers #overtagging this one lmao #sphene alexandros xiv #meta: durai report

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