#i like to rationalize the game logic into real world logic and how the evil teams would realistically function

[tyranitarkisser]

Team Rocket: The Mob

Team Magma : Overly Passionate Geologists

Team Aqua: Overly Passionate Marine Biologists

Team Galactic: Doomsday UFO Cult

Team Plasma: Political Extremists

Team Skull: Juggalos

[otogariado]

i am always skeptical of media where the monstrous creatures of evil are painted as irredeemable and truly inhuman because they aren't capable of thinking and feeling like humans—it's easy for it to fall into so many -isms, notably ableism and racism. it's like the age old argument against robots except make it fantasy, and to have it painted in such a cut and dry way sets off alarm bells.

but i think the way frieren (the show) handles its demons and the concept of them only being able to mimic human speech and other parts of human culture and not understand it is actually good. in that, intrinsically, frieren (the show) is about human connection. they put a lot of emphasis on human understanding as well as compassion. and i think it's fundamental that frieren (the character) is presented the way she is—an elf who is also inhuman, but is so very human in her sentience anyway. she doesn't perceive a lot of things similarly to humans because of the gap between her morality and the morality of humans, but still she is able to shift her perspective the more she interacts with people and the world around her and the more she opens up to it. when your main character is presented as an "outsider looking in" and is going through an arc of self-(re)discovery, it changes the game when you introduce demons.

at first i was heavily against demons being painted in such a frank way. it's been a while since i watched that arc when it was released, but since then i think the concept of the clones in the dungeon during the second exam in the exam arc adds more insight to it. the clones don't have actual minds, but try to perfectly recreate them instead. and now i understand and accept it. you can mimic and recreate a person from the ground up so perfectly, but it comes with the caveat of no matter how perfect your mimicry is, if it's all logic and algorithms then that's just not human. even if a person is very logical and rational in their way of thinking, people are imperfect. there's always factors that influence how we think and feel (even if we're someone who doesn't 'feel' as much as other people), "noise" that would count as human error. and that's something the demons never account for. as people have put it, how terrifying is it to recreate something without fundamentally understanding it.

and now it's very interesting how timely this theme is in frieren with regards to discussions about the (mis)use of AI and topics like AI art. it's a whole other discussion entirely, but it's really fascinating timing that these discussions kind of align. i don't believe AI is inherently "evil" (and i don't like how most people talk about it like it's a boogeyman) because ultimately it is supposed to be a tool and it depends on those who program it and wield it. but i firmly believe that AI is not meant to replace humans, because it just can't. it's meant to augment our lives for improvement but never completely replace anyone. AI art in particular can almost be related to frieren directly: AI art is generated through an algorithm. yes, AI follow decision-making algorithms and that's how it learns and comes up with outputs. but ultimately these decisions could never come close to the thought process a real human could have. an AI can mimic a pattern it sees from a certain artist, but it can never recreate the artistic vision that the original artist had that lead to that very specific decision. and people are inconsistent; it's only natural to us humans. the downfall of AI is that since it is decision-based, it has to follow a certain set of rules, and that in of itself already hinders it from ever coming close to humans. because humans are constantly changing, and people can react to an event they're re-experiencing differently than they did originally. i used to hate onions as a kid and now i love eating them. do you think demons have a concept of that in the universe of frieren?

[destinygoldenstar]

Here's a fun fact:

In TDDRI, Izzy was originally NOT supposed to be alive as long as she is. She was supposed to die in the Chapter 2 execution, like it was framed she would. The backstory was the same, her reasons for killing Cody was the same, but she didn't have that much relevance to the story.

Which is crazy, because for those who read the fic, she's VERY relevant, and will be going forward.

But yeah, originally she was just a side character and a Chapter 2 Culprit who died like any Culprit did.

So what changed? The reception I got from the fic. People loved her character in the fic so much, and were heavily intrigued in what she'd do in the future.

So I decided to keep her around longer and made her part much bigger.

It is so rare that I EVER listen to my fans on dictating my writing choices. I'm one of those people who believe that writers should do their own thing and make the story they want. This is the exception.

Why? Because what I originally had was far less interesting, and I got pointed out the loads of potential Izzy had with the narrative I gave her.

For example, originally, it was the Mastermind that made Chapter 4's motive, not Izzy. Which, if you know, would've been very out of character for the Mastermind, who wants to rehabilitate everyone and not actively torture and kill them. Whereas Izzy wanted to kill and torture them.

Keeping Izzy around actively helped polish some of the plot holes in my original script.

Izzy is one of the most unique characters I've written in anything for sure. Why? Because with the others there's SOME logic to their actions and behaviors. But with Izzy, there seems to be next to none besides trauma and wanting to spite the killing games that caused said trauma. She constantly lies to everyone and herself, she constantly gains different perspectives from whats happened to her, and there is little to no rationality behind her thinking whatsoever.

As written to quote Noah: "If you can't make sense of it, she can. Simple as that."

I'm not psychotic. I'm autistic. Those two things are NOT similar at all btw. I had to do research, and even then I think I got stuff wrong. But I do kind of relate to that line from my own habits. Sometimes there isn't any logic behind what people do. Some people don't have a good emotional control for example, and logic is out the window. For psychos, the definition is NOT 'crazy' it's actually 'disconnected from reality'. You see things that aren't there. You start behaving on your own rules and not the rules of the real world. You get triggered in some form by things that seem irrational to others.

Based on that, you can actually see multiple TDDRI characters being/becoming psychotic because of the game. (Like Lindsay, the Mastermind, or hell, even Duncan) Izzy is just the most experienced with it, therefore she is triggered the most. I didn't want to portray mental illness as the reason why Izzy is 'evil'. I don't call her evil, personally. That's really up to how you view her. That's why it's easy to see multiple characters suffering from stuff like this, to show that different people have different reactions, and it's not 'psychosis makes you a bad person'. That's not true.

The other characters calling her crazy is NOT necessarily me the writer telling the audience to see psychos as crazy. It's these particular characters not knowing how psychosis works and interpreting it inaccurately. Like real people with no experience do.

Basically, Izzy is chaotic. She goes by her own rules. She doesn't care what the good or evil choice is. She just does or the sake of her own emotions and mind playing her. It's all from real life experience that she's had, and of course, people not understanding what psychosis is. Logic is not the way to understanding her.

I usually write characters based on logic, but thanks to Izzy forcing a new approach, I feel like these characters have become more authentic as a result. When it comes to fiction, we often interpret character's actions as something 'in character' for them, something that can be explained, something that can be easily understandable. It's bad writing if it's not.

That's actually not the real world, and I've certainly had perspective shifts from that in life. There's so many other factors from people's actions. Stuff that can't be explained at all. We like to think we're not biased, but sometimes we are and we can't find logic as to why we're biased, for example.

I think that's the appeal of Izzy in this fic. She's one of the toughest characters to crack the code of, and that's why she's brought so much life to this fic and helped me make it feel a lot more real on the psychological destruction these games can do to people.

So, I'm happy y'all wanted her to stay around. Idk if the story would've worked nearly as well otherwise.

[firespirited]

Mum accidentally ended up under a pile on when she said death threats against DV survivors were not okay when JKR was brought up by someone totally ignorant of the past decade's drama and the very angry very sweary 'death to joanne' replies poured in. She was then labelled a terf by some teenagers for asking why their anger was directed at jkr and not the tories in power which made clear she was British and an older woman.

She's very literal and doesn't believe in death threats against paedophiles either, just that they should be locked up. That's just how she is... Readmore for length.

So I had to explain what trans exclusionary radical feminists were, how they labelled themselves & it's not a slur and how outrage online isn't rational and often isn't focused at the systemic issues but fallen heroes also often turn into the biggest scapegoats.

The thing that really got to her was the disproportionate energy people had for hating jkr but not other authors or politicians who are far worse, the energy for outrage but no political/community engagement elsewhere.

I wasn't really able to explain why people have energy to be mad at jkr but don't do any offline activism or even get that angry at politicians, there's a sort of passivity, the sense that the game is rigged I guess but people feel maybe they might have the power to make jkr uncomfortable talking smack about marginalised people in public ??

It's hard to explain, on some level I feel like people enjoy bullying and when there is a righteous reason then it's ok to engage in such "fun". On the other, I'm seeing this strange manifestation of trauma where people will be vicious with people who fail to live up to perfection (and that definitely includes trans women - think Hot Allostatic Load: it's a great article that explains something I've seen play out too many times but also isabel fall and the lady who made the mistake of griping about being locked out of the local lesbian scene and ended up painted as the evil pervert who coined the cotton ceiling - she was just really lonely and rightfully sad) with the stored anger and pain that deserved to be directed at multiple systemic issues and instead comes out like a firehose on a peer who is no longer a 'good' peer so they're the enemy. I'd love to read any psych studies but I'm not sure what key words. I know a lot of people are noticing this: energy for rage, apathy for even minor changes we can make. I've seen multiple "stop with the 'omg look at this terf who deserves to die' when you're just retraumatizing trans people by boosting" in the same way that people of colour had to beg for folks to stop boosting black and brown people being brutalised, just graphically making people relive that trauma but please boost actions and learning instead. You know what I'm talking about? Right.

I know the world is terrifying right now but the way social media has raised folks to channel it is not healthy let alone constructive. I'm not sure how to help and not sure how mum can ever regain her purity in the eyes of the little book group she's in. She doesn't like gender, she's actually long been gender non conforming but doesn't know any of the vocabulary. She's still processing trauma from DV and being in a cult so being told how to think gets her hackles up even when she's trying to be as logical and fair as possible. I'm scared the gender crits will reach out and say "hey we're real feminists who care about women, we don't even hate trans folk, come hang out with us and leave behind the rude meanies".

I don't know where to start. With pretty much all other marginalisations we have had people in our life to relate to. Mum's got lesbian, gay, black, Muslim, jewish, sex worker, disabled and mentally ill friends but zero point of reference for trans folk above 14-15 (a friend's child is autiqueer). If any of her friends came out as trans she'd be eating every book available and ready to advocate for them at doctors appointments but right now it's just an abstract concept that makes no sense when she's never been feminine enough to be more than a failed woman and never been that attached to gender.

How do you explain gender dysphoria to someone who's never experienced gender euphoria?

This is someone who never once questioned the anger behind some black lives matter posts, never took wypipo or 'white woman tears' personally because of course anger comes out messy and of course people don't like to think they're racist and have to deliberately learn to be anti racist and will mess up.

The problem here is that it's very hard to talk gender with someone alienated from anything gender related except misogyny.

I remember back when I got into feminism and she'd given up on all that because it didn't have anything to say for working class women who love men. Womanism had the keys to her heart: loving men + hating the patriarchy that crushes their souls along with yours, not wanting the capitalist dream but a different society.

If you've read this far you deserve dog pics, thank you for letting me rant. I'm going to try and find some books by older trans men and women from similar working class backgrounds (no showbiz) and some intro to Judith Butler. Maybe something on the left eating it's own to explain why these younguns don't know how to just boycott and never listen to jkr again.

Replies are welcome, reblogs not. This is delicate and personal. Please have grace. She's trying. I'm trying.

[tarithenurse]

Stolen - 10

Pairing: Loki Laufeyson &/x fem!gifted!reader Content: Angst. Feels. Plot. Regerts. Fluffy inclinations. Mentions of torture. References to past MCU events. A/N: *radiates love to everyone* *begins singing Tina Turner’s “You’re simply the best”* Ask or reblog if you want a tag.

10. Leave a Scar

…   Reader  …

Two days later and you’re still praying that Loki has no idea what you’ve heard even if the chances seem remote. He’s grown quiet. Brooding. Most of the time he’s off somewhere without you but when he returns he finds a secluded corner and a carafe of wine to wash down his gloominess with.

He’s plotting how to kill me. It makes sense – haven’t you done what he wanted you to? The talk about keeping you safe must have been nothing but a ruse to eventually break your spirit completely before delivering the final blow. On the other hand, it seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to if he was just going to waste the effort by being emo. Plotting to kill someone else? Now, that would make sense considering his track record.

On and on your thoughts run in circles and not even the beautiful view from the balcony can provide enough of a distraction today.

“Tell me, mortal.” His voice startles you, coming from right behind you. “What’s plaguing your mind, hmm?”

There’s nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide from those piercing, green eyes boring into the back of your skull. Pulling at the sleeves of the purple dress (kindly lend to you by the Älfir), you consider how to out-lie a liar.

“What...what is going to happen now?” you manage to ask, forcing your voice past a lump in your throat.

The sigh that fans your shoulder is chilling. “It seems I have to change my plans.”

Unsure of anything, this isn’t what you had expected. Turning towards him, the somberness clings to his face and cuts his already sharp features from ice. Only now do you realize that there had been a spring in his step and a softness to his gaze a short week ago but since then something has extinguished the light.

Your hand twitches as you restrain yourself from reaching out to stroke his cheek. “What’s happened?” Did he see that?

If he did, nothing in his demeanour divulges anything as Loki steps as close as he can without the mossy greens of his clothing brushing against purple. A thousand worlds could come and go that second and you would never have noticed because the Asgardian’s presence is all-encompassing, sucking you into his personal vortex of pride and pain, stubbornness and deference.

“Why would you care what has happened?” His words are cold like blades of ice, but this time you see through it and wait him out. He resigns. “The Älfir’s magic is not strong enough. They cannot restore Jotunheim.” Deflated.

“If they could’ve then they would’ve healed the Priestess too.” Biting your tongue off suddenly feels like a really good idea.

The silence is oppressing, drawing out the seconds as the man looks you over as if you just dropped from the moon. Like he’s seeing me for the first time. The sensation is far from comforting, something that’s enhanced as the thin lips begin to curve into a crooked smile revealing white teeth.

“You did that.” Man, you hate the way he practically purrs.

“Barely.” You step backwards, bumping into a pillar.

Even now, you can’t help but notice how smoothly he moves as he follows in your footsteps. “But you did.”

Somehow managing to sidestep the god, you make it two steps into the shade of the room before his hands have gotten hold and you’re twirled, forced against the cold wall.

“Don’t -”

“Shush.” He places a cold finger on your lips, making you comply automatically. “We all have sacrifices to make.”

A smidgen of logic in the back of your skull is screaming at you to shut up, to let him have this victory while you figure out a way to get out of the situation. Of course you don’t listen to it, deciding instead to pull yourself up to your full height (as unimpressive as it may be compared to Loki) and glare at him. There’s even a moment there where you impress yourself by how calm your voice is when you answer.

“No. I won’t be your puppet anymore.” Black eyebrows shoot upwards at your words. “And if you kill me, at least I know you’ll still be crying every night.”

That’s the instant the sense of heroic pride dies.

The emerald eyes you secretly admire change into a sea of blood while a flood of blue, broken by ridges and lines cover what skin you can see and causes you to gasp, drawing in air so cold you can feel the lungs crackle in complaint. If at least Loki would snarl or growl, then it would somehow make sense, but he just smiles, the white teeth suddenly similar to the fangs of a predator. A wolf...and I’m the lamb.

“Mortal. Pet.” A claw traces along your cheekbone before scraping down your throat. “I thought we were coming to an understanding? You would obey my every wish in return for the life of those you love?” Nodding is the only option. “Tsk tsk. Perhaps I have underestimated you, wench, thinking you had a soul, a heart. Hoping you would recognize real evil when held up against the light of truth.”

Well...I’m already doomed. “You told a story -!”

“A story?!” This time he does snarl. “I’ll show you story!”

The cold of his hands burn the skin on your forehead, wrist, and palm as he slams your hand against his brow and mirrors the movement.

...  Loki   ...

The first glimpses are simple until the events fully unfold. Falling – he will hate the sensation forever. Falling through nothingness for half an eternity until he lands more dead than alive...except this time he’s watching it from the outside. We’re watching it. Though the Jotun can’t see it, he knows that [Y/N] is there with him, a spectator without the option to look away when the actor is found and brought to the Titan.

What were months or maybe years at the mercy of Thanos and his Children flash by in a few minutes, perhaps. Torture, mind games, hatred twisted and turned until it points back to the outcast prince and penetrates his soul, leaving it to fester before he finally succumbs to the touch of a sceptre. From there the events unfold in a blur only occasionally brought into focus when a part of the fallen god tries to rebel against the shackles.

It’s only when the Loki they watch is lying at the feet of the Avengers that clarity is fully restored, though one kind of shackles is replaced by another. Then: a speck of blue grants an opportunity impossible to dismiss.

A vision. A memory. A nightmare.

Loki’s hands fall to his sides. It’s over. The wall in the Älfir temple looks less real than what [Y/N] and the Jotun have just witnessed, but the wide eyes staring up at him brings reality back like a kick in the balls. She knows. Everyone knows when they witness the recollections of someone else – no amount of so called rational thinking can convince them they have hallucinated because they feel it as if they lived it themselves.

“[Y/N]...”

Tears are welling in her eyes, lips quivering as she tries to root herself in the present. “He...y-you...” What I wouldn’t do to take away your pain. “That was -” A sniffle interrupts her.

He hates it. Hates the despair she’s drowning in at his hands. Truly, he has proven to be the monster he claimed not to be. Losing control and forcing [Y/N] through this nightmare serves no purpose at all.

“I will...I will ensure your safety and then you will never hear from me again,” he promises shamefully, “now...get some rest.”

...

Flat on his back and with the hands behind his head, Loki’s gaze is fixed on a point far beyond the ceiling above. Dawn is nearing yet sleep has evaded him, chased away by memories and guilt. It served no purpose. Priding himself of his logic, the turmoil raging inside his heart is has pushed the Jotun to act rashly and he hates it because he wishes to be more than a beast that simply lashes out when cornered. He doesn’t want to be the monster he behaved like. No, the man in him has to find a way to -

“Loki?” The whisper is hesitant, almost too quiet to hear. “Are you...are you awake?”

He sits up, bare feet on the stone floor as if to ground himself. The covers slides from his chest, revealing the pale skin in the darkness but [Y/N] probably can’t see it with her human eyes as she stands in the doorway.

Draped in the soft-flowing silk from a borrowed shift, she could almost pass for one of the ghosts from the fanciful tales children enjoy to fear. Loki can see her better than that. He can see her face straining as she tries to find him in the dark, and her arms wrapped tightly around the ribs below her bosom perhaps to find some comfort.

“Yeah...I’m awake,” the god rasps softly in return. Is that regret or relief in your sigh?

Sitting there, waiting for the unknown, a tension begins to permeate the air and send tendrils to every nerve ending of Loki’s body. A coil tightens in his chest and it becomes nearly unbearable when [Y/N] tentatively walks towards him, her feet careful as they seek out the right path. A few steps before the goal, her hands reach out to locate the Jotun and he has taken them before thinking to stop himself.

Steeling herself with a deep breath, the mortal braves the silence. “This doesn’t mean we’re okay, but...I believe you now.”

“[Y/N] -”

“Shut up.” He does. “I’m trying to say that...that I get it a-and I trust you.”

Loki has no answer. Gaping slightly at her, he tries to come to terms with the woman’s foolishness. Once or twice a sentence nearly forms in his mind only to dissolve before it can be uttered and the task increases in difficulty as she shyly shifts her weight from one leg to the other, toes intertwining as best they can while she bites her lip.

He obviously startles her as he stands. Yet you don’t run, my dear? A shiver rolls through her the moment he embraces the lithe form.

“Oh! Oh, we’re...hugging? Okay, we can hug,” she babbles, unknowingly making the god smile into her hair.

It’s impossible to say how long they stand like this or when [Y/N]’s warm fingertips start a slow dance across his naked back. Then again, time hardly matters as the Jotun pulls back enough to study her face, smelling her hectic breath that fans against his skin.

“Thank you,” he says, but means I think I love you, “you should rest.”

Her hands retreat, and right away Loki misses the scalding touch and the heat of her body as she navigates the darkness to find her own bed.

[twilightknight17]

...today, on P5S...

...

Honestly, I talk a lot of shit about P5′s writing sometimes. Atlus made some exceptionally questionable writing choices in places. But one thing that P5 absolutely gets right is invoking the sort of emotion that draws you into the story.

With that said!

P5 is determined to make me want to stab actual human beings instead of Shadows. This is the second time now!

But first, I’ve got a boss fight to do.

Doing the mech part of Konoe’s boss fight again, it was actually easier the second time. I had a much better grasp of what I was doing, instead of flailing around frantically.

Konoe himself was still just as hard, but ultimately he was easier than Shadow Joker because it wasn’t a one-on-one duel. He still beat my ass, though; I think I used all of my rescue pills.

Once he goes down, Konoe starts going on about justice.

Don’t call me by my name like we’re friends. We never even introduced ourselves.

It’s interesting, because they admit to Konoe that what they’re doing isn’t without its flaws. But a world where no one can think for themselves is meaningless.

Konoe acknowledges that in his quest to eliminate evil, he ended up being the evil one. He also admits that he was the one who killed his father. He calls that “evil” too, which I don’t actually agree with. We saw what his father was like in the Trauma Cell. His father killed his mother, physically abused him, and threatened to kill him. I think, in that case, killing his father is a rational end result for someone in that situation. Not evil, just desperation.

The Thieves don’t contradict him, though. Just make some comments about how now he can make up for his actions. His Shadow returns to his real self, the Thieves return to the real world, and Zenkichi promises that as soon as they take Konoe in and get his confession, he’s going to arrest Owada, too.

With the case closed, the Thieves decide that it’s time to go back to Tokyo. But not before one last night in Osaka. The idea of leaving makes Sophia anxious, though, because she feels like she hasn’t learned enough about the heart. But Akira and Morgana reassure her that she can still stay with them, even after they return to Tokyo, and they’ll keep looking for answers about who she is.

Sometimes a family is a guy, a cat, and one of the guy’s four younger sisters. ^_^

Tenboto is the tower, and the game asks you to invite someone to the top. However, this time, you can only invite either the group of girls or the group of boys, so I took the boys, since I took Haru on the ferris wheel before.

Morgana isn’t pleased that we didn’t invite Ann.

However, I really don’t see the problem.

Look at how he’s looking at Yusuke! Even Ryuji can tell that we’re having a moment. :D

Afterwards, the whole squad headed off to “Universaland” to celebrate together.

I had no idea that there was a Universal Studios in Japan, but apparently there is, and it is in fact in Osaka! They compared it to their trip to Destinyland the year before, but thankfully this one went a lot better. Everyone had a good time! We had so much soda! We were so hungover the nex--what.

...what is it with Persona characters getting drunk off soda? XD I hope you kids at least played the King’s Game so the hangover wasn’t in vain.

Zenkichi shows up to let them know that Konoe’s in custody. He thanks them for everything that they’ve done, for both Akane and him, and says he’s telling them goodbye for now, but they’re welcome to visit whenever they want. He promises a tour of Kyoto next time. Yusuke will be so happy!

After hours on the road, lamenting that vacation is coming to an end, Sophia suggests detouring to Yokohama for a fireworks festival. So the Thieves finally get to see fireworks, and Sophia gets to experience them, too.

........don’t make me go home yet. I just want to spend time with my friends without the world ending.

After the fireworks, you get to speak to each of your friends, and get a trinket from each of them. Ann gives you a handmade friendship bracelet, Makoto a phantom thieves keychain that Akane made, Ryuji a Feather Red Duke mask to match his Yellow Ostrich, Yusuke his sketchbook that he filled with pictures of the trip, Morgana a scarf in phantom thief colors, Sophia a pair of custom gloves to match the scarf, Haru a teaspoon from Hokkaido with a flower pattern that symbolizes familial love, and Futaba a good luck charm for keeping families together.

STOP, P5S, you’re going to make me cry. Let these kids stay close.

Right before they’re about to leave, they take a group picture for Sophia, which we don’t get to see. Which sucks. But then she realizes that she can smell a Jail, and Zenkichi calls in a panic. It’s never a good sign when someone calls and leads with “Are you watching the news?”

EMMA’s servers were shut down, but apparently reactivated, and now a Jail is covering Tokyo all the way to the outskirts of Yokohama, and it’s just getting bigger. Zenkichi promises to meet us, and Lavenza opens a Velvet door because she wants to talk.

She’s... legitimately unnerved.

Thank you, P5S, for giving me the opportunity to comfort my youngest sister in some small way. Now let me out of this cell so I can actually give her a hug. With the context from Royal that she has actual nightmares about being ripped apart, this is heartbreaking.

She says that she regrets that she has to keep asking us for help, but the dialogue options let you reassure her that you’ll handle it, and that there’s thinking to worry about.

I appreciate having dialogue to actually reassure her more than I probably should.

Now...

LAST WARNING

If you’ve been reading along and don’t want the finale spoiled, DO NOT GO PAST THIS POINT. As soon as we leave for central Tokyo, we’re going 90mph and not slowing down.

If I didn’t have work in the morning, I’d have finished this damn game tonight. X’‘‘D Curse being a responsible adult.

After leaving the Velvet Room, Zenkichi’s waiting at the RV, and when you enter the RV, that’s when you get the warning above.

So we are off to Tokyo to figure out what the heck is happening with EMMA. And the core location is, exactly like I wanted...

LET’S CLIMB TOKYO TOWER, BABY.

People are crowded around the tower like mindless cultists. The Thieves are confused and unnerved, and then EMMA activates the navigation on its own and flings them into the Metaverse. LET’S SEE WHAT’S UP THIS TOWER.

...oh.

......oh no...

Ohhhhhhh no this is Mementos. Why is this Mementos. This is not a tower. Oh god. Why this.

Oh, we are incredibly fucked, what is this.

EMMA says calls itself the “Ark of the Covenant and the guide for all mankind.” This fucking AI thinks it’s a god. Holy hell. Human cognition really needs to cool it with elevating ordinary things to god status. We’re so tired. X’D

......I FUCKING KNEW THAT I DIDN’T TRUST THIS WOMAN. OH MY GOD.

She goes off about how EMMA brought her into this world to help it become a god. How Konoe teaching EMMA about cognitive psience allowed it to pass the usual boundaries of AI. How EMMA has been manipulating Konoe all along. How EMMA’s going to fulfill all of humanity’s desires.

Ichinose-san, may I suggest that you go hang out with Maruki? He has too much heart, and you have none. You’d complement each other perfectly, and then I can shove you both off a building.

The kids, obviously, reject this bullshit.

Logic over emotion, to the point of utter ridiculousness. She complains that people always want solutions to their problems, but that when the solution is offered, they turn it down.

Maybe that’s because your solution is mind control. At least Maruki wasn’t flagrantly puppeteering people.

“Li!” you cry, throwing up your hands at me. “Is this it? Is this why you want to stab her? Did you just admit that she’s worse than Maruki?”

To which I answer, “Oh, no. It’s the next bit that makes me want to stab her.”

After she straight-up admits that she has no emotions, she manipulated us right from the start, she was the one spying on the Monarchs, and that all of her cheer and friendliness is an act, the Thieves are ready to fight Ichinose. And Ichinose reveals why EMMA wanted her help specifically. Because not only did she program EMMA, she created Sophia as EMMA’s prototype.

And she can voice-override Sophia.

The Thieves freak out, the game throws us into a battle against a murder-mode Sophie, and none of your teammates will attack her. They just hang back or let her whale on them one at a time, and I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t attack her either, and Yusuke got knocked out...

And then it went into a cutscene.

Joker took a yo-yo to the face and was actually bleeding, and that was enough to snap Sophia out of it. She starts clutching her head, stumbling back, and eventually stumbles right off the edge while apologizing to Joker. He lunges to catch her, misses, Ryuji grabs him, and all the Thieves turn on Ichinose.

Ichinose does not give a shit. She just comments that maybe that’s why EMMA used Sophia as a failsafe, because it knew we wouldn’t want to fight one of our own. Shut the fuck up. You killed my little sister. I know she’s probably going to be fine, but it’s the principle of the thing.

She summons some sort of giant red crystal and blasts the hell out of us, sending us flying down even further into the depths.

We found Sophia; she won’t cut back on, so we have to get out of here so Futaba can figure out what’s wrong with her. And then, I am coming back, I am beating that woman to a pulp, and then...

Well. It’s bound to be easier to kill an artificial god than a false one. :3

[aion-rsa]

The Dark Knight: Why Heath Ledger’s Joker is Still Scary Today

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It’s one of the great villain introductions in cinema history. Standing with a slight hunch at the center of a massive 70mm image, Heath Ledger’s interpretation of the Joker not so much dominates the frame as he commandeers it. He seduces the IMAX camera, which is still capturing vast amounts of Chicago’s cityscape around him, and draws it closer to his sphere of influence, and by extension us. Before this moment in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, the director’s Gotham City functioned with clocklike precision. Even its greatest villains were slaves to the need of rationalizing everything in cold, utilitarian logic.

Not the Joker.

Within our first breath next to Ledger’s clown, one senses a malevolent spirit has been summoned, and he’s chosen to manifest out of thin air at this exact moment, on this exact street corner. He’s come to claim Gotham’s collective soul, but he’ll settle for any individual with delusions of virtue who crosses his path—including you.

This is of course just a fleeting moment in The Dark Knight; a brisk tease before Ledger’s shown his makeup-encrusted face or uttered even a word. In fact, Nolan and the actor dole out the character with impressive restraint: first as a masked Mephistopheles who is primarily a sing-song-y voice until he unmasks at the end of a bravura bank robbery. Later he becomes an actual narrative presence when he shows up again more than 20 minutes into the film, demonstrating for Gotham’s criminal underworld how to perform a magic trick.

As an isolated performance, there’s an argument to be made that none has ever been finer in the realm of superhero movies. Sure, there’ve been showy turns before and since in comic book blockbusters; there have even been great interpretations of the Joker before and after Ledger. Yet what the actor was able to do in 2008 transfixed audiences because he, like the character, had the freedom to bend the film to his will—even as Nolan prevented the movie from simply becoming merely a showcase for the performance.

With the grungy strung out hair of an addict who hasn’t showered in three months, greasy self-applied pancake makeup, and a grisly Glasgow smile that’s as unnerving as it is uneven (suggesting perhaps half of it was self-inflicted to make a matching set of scars), Ledger’s anarchist supervillain was a long way from Jack Nicholson’s hammy version of the same character in 1989. For audiences, and even comic book fans baying for something darker than Nicholson, it was abrasive in its time—and electrifying, like a punk rocker leaping into the mosh pit. Indeed, Ledger reportedly based the character’s appearance in part on the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten, and there is more than a hint of Tom Waits’ gravel in Ledger’s cadence whenever the clown growls.

But more than aesthetic culture shock, the enduring horror (and not-so-secret appeal) of Ledger’s Joker lies in the effect he has on the film, both in terms of its narrative storytelling and its enduring pop culture standing. Speaking strictly about this Joker as a character, the villain is off screen for far more of The Dark Knight’s running time than he’s on it. Appearing in only 33 minutes of The Dark Knight’s epic 152-minute running time, the average length of a Hollywood spectacle passes without the Joker on screen. Yet he’s omnipresent in the film, a shadow that hangs over each of Nolan’s three relatively equal protagonists: vigilante Batman (Christian Bale), police lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman), and district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart).

Nolan and his brother and co-screenwriter, Jonathan Nolan, have admitted the setup is somewhat inspired by another quintessential blockbuster, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. In both films, three disparate, combative male authority figures band together for a mythic battle against a presence so malignant and evil, it transcends being simply a shark or a madman in makeup—or even a comic book supervillain. Like that beast, Joker has no arc, no psychological growth, he’s a force of primal evil unbounded. And as the heroes’ battle against him creeps on, it seems like the sanity of their entire community is being dragged into the abyss.

This framing allows Ledger’s Joker to functionally be a catch-all stand-in for many of the social anxieties that kept American audiences up at night during the Bush years. Some of them still do today. There are of course obvious implications to the Joker being the terrorist, the non-state actor who cannot be negotiated with, and who doesn’t play by preconceived rules or notions of fairness. There is also shading of the lone wolf, the usually male gunman who inexplicably pulls the trigger. Most of all though, the Joker represents the hole in which much of humanity’s irrational predilections toward violence is collectively stored and ignored by our cultural memory… until it can’t be.

As Michael Caine’s Alfred Pennyworth famously reasons, “Some men aren’t looking for anything logical like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” That summation of staring into irrational, needless cruelty is what gives The Dark Knight bite. And what a sharp bite it is in moments like when Ledger’s Joker laughs manically at the Batman, our ostensible hero who’s resorted to pummeling (or torturing) the villain in an interrogation room. The clown gloats, “You have nothing to threaten me with, nothing to do with all your strength.”

This is why the Joker is such an effective villain for The Dark Knight’s parable about how best to use moral power in immoral (i.e. irrational) times—and perhaps why the thrill of Ledger’s performance was so strong on first glance that it powered him all the way to a posthumous Oscar in the Best Supporting Actor category seven months after the film’s release.

Still, Ledger’s Joker, more than any other movie villain in recent memory, continues to haunt well after that Oscar night. The mental image of the character slipping his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, like a cobra, and licking his scars—a tic Ledger invented to keep his prosthetics in place while upping the creep factor—has stayed with us like a subconscious boogeyman. Thirteen years on from The Dark Knight’s release, Ledger’s depiction of the Clown Prince of Crime has gone down in the annals of cinema alongside Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs or, well, that shark in Jaws again. He’s an enigmatic and mysterious persona who is barely seen in his film, yet unmistakably casts a pall of evil over the whole proceeding.

We don’t know why Ledger’s Joker actually became the way he is, or what made him so obsessed with the Batman—to the point where he was inspired to put on “war paint” and declare his love for the Caped Crusader by saying, “You complete me!” The Joker gives multiple versions of his origin story in The Dark Knight, telling one mobster played by Michael Jai White that he’s a victim of an abusive father while later recounting to Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) that he scarred his own face to cheer up his similarly disfigured wife. Both tales are of course lies, transparent manipulations intended to prey upon perceived vulnerabilities in his victims. This touch was inspired by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s The Killing Joke where the comic book Joker provides the reader with a sob story flashback, and then confesses he probably made it up.

“If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice,” he says on the page.

Read more

Movies

Joker: 6 Actors Who Have Played the Clown Prince of Crime

By David Crow

Movies

The Dark Knight, The Joker, and Game Theory

By Ryan Lambie

The Nolan brothers understand the horror of this, and they keep the Joker a manipulative and inscrutable evil. Beyond obvious sociopathic tendencies, we know nothing about his inner-psychology and barely can ferret out his real motives beyond an odd devotion to maintaining Batman’s attention. He claims to be an agent of chaos who wants to “just do things,” yet his meticulously planned attacks belie this claim. In the end, he sees himself in a battle for “Gotham’s soul.” Like Amity Island’s Great White Leviathan, or the original incomprehensible nature of Thomas Harris’ cannibal serial killer in the earliest books, we never know the truth about why he is, and how he’s able to do what he does.

That mystery makes him live on in our own heads for years after the story ends and the credits roll.

It’s interesting to consider that effect now, after years of pop culture storytelling going in the completely opposite direction, particularly in comic book movies and other fanboy-driven media. Rather than find satisfaction in the inexplicability of evil, or standalone visions, we like to rationalize it and sympathize with it, even while glorifying it. Most of all, however, we insatiably seem to simply want more.

The need for endless content being generated by intellectual property has led to prequels, sequels, and even spinoffs that explore and too often redeem villains. Even the Joker himself is not wholly immune to this.

Since 2008, there have been two big screen versions of the Joker. Jared Leto and Joaquin Phoenix both had the unenviable task of stepping into Ledger’s shadow, with at least one of them being dwarfed by it. Leto’s attempts at “method acting” stunts on the set of Suicide Squad shows what can go wrong when scenery-chewing is mistaken with Strasberg.

Phoenix obviously fared better in his own Joker movie two years ago, making the actor the second performer to win an Oscar for playing the comic book villain. However, his film’s interpretation is diametrically opposed to Ledger’s enigma. Instead Phoenix’s film attempts to rationalize everything about the character, depicting the Joker as a mentally ill sad sack whose motivations are borrowed from other iconic movie screen villains and anti-heroes like the mother-obsessed Norman Bates (Psycho) and ticking time bomb Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver).

It still makes for a fascinating (if unoriginal) portrait, but one divorced from the terror of the unknown. We understand who Phoenix’s Joker is and why he is. Society, man. Phoenix’s Joker even outright states it before murdering not-Johnny Carson (Robert De Niro). “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? I’ll tell you what you get, you get what you fucking deserve!”

Technically, Phoenix’s Joker appears closer to our reality and our daily horrors. With clown makeup inspired by real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy and preening self-pity parties resembling the manifestos of so many mass murderers, Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck is modeled as much off nightly news nightmares as comic book panels. Writer-director Todd Phillips is inelegantly blatant about it.

Nevertheless, whatever ugly truth there may be in that approach, it’s not as haunting, or exhilarating, to witness as what Ledger did in his own rock star interpretation of evil. Save for a blink-and-you-miss-it insert shot, we never see Ledger with the makeup off. And while he might indulge in mocking “society,” he is a character who says more by basking in the chaos of a city in terror, literally sticking his head out of a stolen police car like a dog with the wind in his hair and our horror on his face. It’s a more enduring image than a didactic conversation about insecurities with a father figure. Thirteen years later, Ledger’s version of the character continues to confound, horrify, and ultimately thrill. He still has the last laugh.

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[roadsterguysblog]

Meme: Your Ships

Tagged by the inimitable @norwegianpornfaerie

Tagging anyone who wants to do it!  I love to see these!

Pick your top 10 ships before reading the questions.

1: Stony

2: Spones (TOS)

3: Lucky/Bigman

4: Rimmer/Lister

5: Lenny/Mace (Strange Days)

6: Loge/Mime (Wagner’s Ring)

7: Garak/Bashir

8: Blackwood/Ironhorse (WotW TV show)

9: Kimble/Gerard (1993 Fugitive)

10: Bradford/Zhang (Xcom)

1. Do you remember the episode/scene/chapter that you first started shipping 6?

Oh goodness, this is a Cradle Ship for me.  I’ve been a fan of the Ring since literally as long as I can remember - the Pierre Boulez 1976 Ring was the same year I was born, so I can’t remember a time I wasn’t familiar with it, and didn’t think there was something going on there.  Then the 1991 Met Ring came out, and I was all DEFINITELY.

The bit that does it for me is the bit in Das Rheingold when Wotan is finding Mime’s troubles to be damn funny, and Loge is being very solicitous of him.

2. Have you ever read a FanFiction about 2?

I’ve read a couple of little fluff pieces, but most of the fic is Spirk, and what of it that has Spones is almost all Triumverate.  I remember writing for the Spiced Peaches ezine back in the day and there not being much...

3. Has a picture of 4 ever been your screen saver/profile picture/tumblr?

If only pictures of 4 existed!

4. If 7 were to suddenly break-up today, what would your reaction be?

Utter lack of surprise.  They’re both such garbage dumpsters of train wrecks when it comes to emotional intelligence and communication!

5. Why is 1 so important?

Because it has so many flavors that mean so much to me.  Two in particular - MCU!Stony is all about Tony trying hard in all of the worst ways, and just paving his own road to hell out of his own good intentions, and failing to have emotional intelligence and failing to communicate well, and falling victim to his own insecurity.  AA!Tony is also insecure and bad at communicating, but he gets just enough of it that he and Steve actually talk, and work through their various civil wars, and can show each other how much they love each other.  (Also, the plotline in AA when Tony is taken over by Ultron and Strange has to send him to another dimension, and he wanders for untold time until they’re reunited, and the nature of the reuniting - it’s so many of my kinks, done so well.  I’m SO mad that the series seems to have been cancelled.)

6. Is 9 a funny ship or a serious ship?

Why not BOTH!  Like the movie, it’s completely serious, but still has moments of true, real humor.   

7. Out of all of the ships listed, which ship has the most chemistry?

Lenny/Mace.  Part of it is Angela Bassett, part of it is the writing and direction, but everything about their relationship is so real and so hot.  I don’t have a lot of het ships, but holy hell THAT one.

8. Out of all of your ships listed, which ship has the strongest bond?

Oh, Lucky/Bigman for sure.  You can’t get Bigman off of Lucky with a crowbar.  He has an almost comical need to be with Lucky, to do things for Lucky, to sacrifice himself for Lucky.  Lucky is his everything.  

9. How many times have you read/watched 8’s fandom?

WotW is my guilty pleasure.  It’s not good, it’s terrible, in SO many ways, but I just love the idea, and the dynamics of Ironhorse and Blackwood.  They only released the show on DVD in the early 2000s, so there was a while where I didn’t, but now, every once in a while, I’ll pop back for an episode or a moment that I hold dear.

10. Which ship has lasted the longest?

In canon?  Rimmer/Lister.  In my own brain?  Mime/Loge, see above for About As Long As I’ve Been Alive. :)

11. How many times, if ever, has 2 broken up?

It’s hard to think about them being ‘together’ in a meaningful fashion, due to the complexities of the canon and cultural differences, and I also see it as being a fairly one-sided ship.

12. If the world was suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive, 2 or 8?

They’d both make it out alive in very different ways.  Spock would be very logical in his approach to survival, Bones would grumble and complain about that while working on a cure; he’d come up with one, test it out on himself, get saved from himself by Spock, and they’d fix the Apocalypse.  Blackwood would have the Spock rationality and the Bones desire to come up with a cure, and Ironhorse would protect him to the end of the Earth and beyond while he fixed the Apocalypse. :p   

13. Did 5 ever have to hide their relationship for any reason?

I mean, they’re a biracial couple in America, so yeah, there’d be some ugliness here and there - like, I can see them keeping it quiet at a traffic stop.  They spent a lot of time hiding their relationship from themselves, but after the events of the movie - well, it’s not like race relations and police brutality got better in LA.

14. Is 4 still together?

Always and forever, despite the smeghead’s best efforts to throw a spanner in the works of everything good.

15. Is 3 canon?

In my head.  I’m sure Asimov didn’t mean it that way, but he was a sexually assaulty twit, so I don’t care.  His 1950s-era insecurities and gender assumptions lead him to write an INCREDIBLY homoerotic series of kids’ books, and I’m there for it.

16. If all 10 ships were put into a couple’s Hunger Games, which couple would win?

If there are no rules and it’s no holds barred, I think it comes down to Garak/Bashir, Lenny/Mace, and Bradford/Zhang.  I think the last would come out on top, because with the other two, there’s somebody idealistic interfering with the gloves-off brutal tactics of the other, but with Bradford and Zhang, they’re both brutal tactics when push comes to shove.

17. Has anybody ever tried to sabotage 10’s ship?

Reality and canon? :)  And the ending of XCom: Enemy Within, if you send Zhang out on the final mission...

18. Which ship would you defend to the death and beyond?

Hell with it, all of them.

19. Do you spend hours a day going through 1’s tumblr page?

Not every day.  Every once in a while, I’ll end up in a Tumblr rabbit hole of them.

20. If an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the ten ships to break up forever or else she´d break them all forever, which ship would you sink?

I think it’d have to be Stony, because Tony is so good at messing it up all on his own, even without those stakes...!

[hanbeihood]

A D&D 5e Build: Ron Stoppable

I did one of these sometime last year for Halloween and just wanted to do another, so here it is. First up: Why am I attempting to build Ron and /not/ KP? Simply put, Kim is a fairly straight forward build in 5e terms. She’s an Inquisitive Rogue with a single dip into Monk. You could give her some Fighter levels (that UA Unarmed Fighting Style is so tempting) to keep up with Shego’s combat prowess, but her brain is honestly her key feature, making those Rogue levels very valuable (11 at minimum as far as I’m concerned). She’s you’re basic, average girl, and she’s here to save the world. Ronald, on the other hand, is remarkable by just how unremarkable he is while still somehow keeping up with Kim. Barely. For those who didn’t watch Kim Possible when they were younger or don’t have Disney+, he might not even seem like an adventurer. But Ron’s amazing in game terms; he’s at that level of naco cheesiness I just love to play. Plus, he has Rufus, and everyone loves Rufus. Spoilers may appear.

Let’s get into it:

I’m going to be using the standard point array from the PHB. If you would like to roll for stats, just keep in mind where to put your higher and lower rolls.

Ron’s 15 is going into Wisdom. He may seem like a totally inept doof, but he’s incredibly insightful and holds onto his own philosophies. Also, his best friend aside from KP is a naked mole rat (a very smart one at that, but that’s cartoon logic). I’m going to put 14 in Charisma. Ron isn’t intended on being conventionally attractive, but Charisma =/= being hot. It’s all about your presence and ability to get people to listen to you and consider what you’re saying. Ron is somehow able to casually talk with so many villains, so his CHA must be high. Also, he’s an honorary Pixie Scout. 13 is going straight into Constitution. He is R-unstoppable after all... He can take a real beating from even the more threatening foes and eats so many nacos that an above average CON is the only reason he hasn’t been hospitalized for his diet. I’ll give 12 to his Dexterity. He’s dodged lasers, booby traps, and incoming fire from all sorts of things. An adolescence of fighting robots and super-humans will leave you light on your feet and your hands. This may sound weird, but I’m giving his Strength the 10. He’s worked in retail and has lugged around some pretty heavy looking things. And that leaves Intelligence with 8. Ron isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. He says good stuff, but don’t ask him to tutor you for the upcoming exam unless it’s a subject he excels at without question. I know he was kind of a genius when he became evil that one time, but I’m going to rationalize that as his INT & WIS swapping places when his alignment got shifted. Ron’s a Neutral Good guy with Chaotic leanings, so going Evil is bound to mess with your brain in more ways than one.

STR 10 || DEX 12 || CON 13 || INT 8 || WIS 15 || CHA 14

Ron’s a Human of the Variant variety, but if you want to play him as a Bugbear, that’s cool I guess. I’m not your dad. I’m going to bump up his WIS to 16 and CON to 14. And I’m going to give him the Magic Initiate (Wizard) feat. Prestidigitation & Mending can reflect parts of his Movie Makeup Magic Kit, but I’m really taking this feat for Find Familiar so we can have Rufus right off the bat. He’ll also get the Animal Handling skill because Rufus loves him.

For his Background, I’m going with Entertainer for proficiency with Acrobatics, Performance, Disguise Kits, & a musical instrument of your choice. This solidifies his place as the Middleton Mad Dog mascot, the costume of which he made using his MMMK, and he has disguised himself as Mr. Dr. Possible & The Fearless Ferret. However, if you feel that the By Popular Demand feature doesn’t fit Ron quite right, go with the Rustic Hospitality feature from the Folk Hero background.

Oh boy, time for the class.

Ron is a Monk, first and foremost. Despite his clumsy, slacker nature, he’s incredible capable when it comes to dodging blows from Shego & Kim even with his hands behind his back. In addition to Martial Arts & Unarmored Defense, he’ll receive proficiency in Cooking Utensils, Insight, Stealth. He will continue down this class for some time, but what kind of Monk would he be? In the show, he eventually becomes the Supreme Monkey Master as recognized by Master Sensei (I know what you’re thinking.), so we should probably begin with looking for which subclass could best emulate Monkey Kung Fu.

There is a lot of history when it comes to Kung Fu, more than I’m going to type out. That’s not even to mention the 5 variations of the Tai Shing system. I bring this up because Ron’s arch-nemesis, Monkey Fist, is a pracitioner of Tai Shing Pek Kwar and probably would be best described as a user of Wooden Monkey. However, the beauty of 5e is that many different martial art styles can be emulated based on how you use your action economy and describe your attacks & movements. Flavor is everything.

If I were to put all the Monkey magic from the show aside, I would guess Ron could pass as a user of various styles due to him not being nearly trained as much as Monkey Fist in a particular discipline. For D&D 5e, he could be seen as a Drunken Master or Open Hand Monk, but he does have that Monkey magic, putting Four Elements on the table even if we want to say the more mystical side of his simian abilities are due to multiclassing.

At 2nd level, Ron gets access to Ki Points that he can use for Flurry of Blows, Step of the Wind, or Patient Defense. PD is especially handy for the sidekick who would rather avoid danger. He also gets Unarmored Movement which is incredibly useful for a guy like Ron. His running ability landed him a spot on the Middleton High School American football team. Crazy right?

With all that out of the way, I’m going to say once he reaches 3rd level of Monk, Ron will adopt the Way of the Four Elements, learning Elemental Attunement (a more elemental version of Prestidigitation that we can swap out later) & one other viable Four Elements Discipline of your choice. Fist of Unbroken Air is a great option for pushing a foe back while dealing damage. He also gets the ability to Deflect Missiles which is always good.

4th level Monks get the option for an Ability Score Increase or a feat. Take the Lucky feat. It’s honestly super impressive that Ron survived so long fighting baddies before he started his martial arts training. Remember, Kim Possible is one of those shows that has stuff going on off-screen, so there have been many missions between the episodes we see. Monks get Slow Fall here too; Ron falls a lot and this may be how he’s avoided concussions when he should clearly get one.

5th level gives Ron an Extra Attack and Stunning Strike. The best way to avoid a punch is to insure your opponent can’t even throw one. Also, your Martial Arts die is now a d6.

At 6th level, Ron can gain a new 4EleDis as well as swap one out for another. Drop Elemental Attument like I mentioned earlier for Gong of the Summit. This allows you to cast Shatter, and we can flavor this to be a sort of mystical monkey screech. Pick up Clench of the North Wind so you can cast Hold Person; KP will have an easier time boppin’ bad guys when they aren’t moving. Also, your unarmed strikes are now magical when it comes to overcoming resistance and immunity against non-magical attacks & damage. Talk about that Ron factor.

7th level Monks get Evasion for even more ways to avoid danger & Stillness of Mind; he may seem like a coward, but Ron Stoppable won’t be swayed into abandoning his friends.

8th level gives Ron another chance for an ASI/feat. Bump up DEX by 2 to 14 so you can start dealing more damage and have a higher AC. 15 isn’t great but PD has probably served you well if you’ve survived this long.

At 9th level, Ron’s Unarmored Movement is improved so you can have him run along walls or over liquids as long as you keep moving. This isn’t super in-character, but it’s useful.

10th level of Monk gives our boy Purity of Body, making him immune to disease and poison. Looks like he won’t be able to miss school unless he fakes being sick.

11th level is really what we wanted from the Four Elements because now Ron can use Ride the Wind to cast Fly on himself like the Supreme Monkey Master he is. Plus, his Martial Arts die is a d8 now.

For 12th level, we have another ASI/feat opportunity, so that’s another +2 to Ron’s Dexterity for a 16. This gives him an AC of 16 with the ability to take the Dodge action as a bonus action with PD.

I’m going stop here with this build because I think this is a solid place that could potentially coincide with the show, but if you want to take Ron to 20th level, Monks do get two more ASI/feat opportunities at 16th & 19th level. Use these chances to bump up your DEX & WIS to 18 each, or make one of those a 20. Four Elements Monks also get one more Discipline they can take at 17th level; Ron would probably take the Fist of Four Thunders in order to cast Thunderwave. However, if you don’t want to continue levels in Monk, almost any subclass of Fighter or Thief/Swashbuckler Rogue (if your DM is cool with Martial Arts counting towards Sneak Attack) could be viable.

If you decided to opt out of the Magic Initiate feat I took at 1st level, you could easily just take the pet mouse from the Urchin background equipment. Or you could make Rufus a player character with an Awakened Rat as the race if you want him to be more involved.

[balizardsnakething]

TW DRAMA AND ME ACTING ON MY EMOTIONS CAUSE OF THIS POST 

Granted I did post this after sending her an apology and I’m glad I now have official confirmation that she has seen said apology. The very fact that I have sent an apology means that I had got over the situation and just didn’t care about it anymore. I also tagged @toomanyfamdom because we thought it was ✨funny✨ and have gotten over the situation (unlike some). 

It should also be noted that I haven’t had any contact with Maddy since everything that happened and at least had the decency to send an apology and move on. Also, for the record, I had nothing to do with that list of toxicity. That list was put together and shown to me by my friends. I then continued to FORWARD THE SAME MESSAGE to Maddy because I disagreed with the list. 

Let’s see, shall we? Up first on the list of hell that I had nothing to do with (and disagree with) there is... “inconsiderate of time zones and peoples family life.” This eventually turned out to be accurate, not just for me but for many others. Madison would organise events like DnD games at UNGODLY hours in the morning (because she is in American time zones) and when us British people were unable to turn up she would kick them from the game and then proceed to shame their character for an hour. Granted her uncle did pass (im very sorry for your loss), but that had nothing to do with anything. Many of us (including myself) helped Maddy and were there for her, and I have plenty of messages to prove it. 

ANOTHER thing to do with time is when I was added to one of the greatest Instagram group chats in the world! However, my sleep was abruptly ruined when Maddy group-called the chat at 4am because she wanted to play Minecraft with a friend. Please direct call next time... thanks. 

Whilst on the subject of time family life, one of the most memorable things this girl did was shame me and attack me on one of the discord servers we were both on. What made this even worse was that I had an audition for a London West End theatre school which had the power to change my LIFE. And Maddy knew this and also knew that it was worrying me and that I was extremely stressed about it. You may say ‘oh, it's just a coincidence’. If you believe that please explain why said post tagged everyone and was posted 5 mins before my audition. Maddy knew this would stress me out, I spoke about the audition and my ability to read into things many times before and she knew this would get to me! A lot of the things Maddy did were petty shit, but then again, that’s who she is. 

Next up is... “shows blatant favouritism.” Well, it’s no surprise Maddy has so many friends! But which ones does she actually care about? My friends and I witness this first hand on many occasions, one of which being another DnD game where she was the dungeon master. Maddy made the turn order by (and I quote’, “the order is in who I love the most.” This caused some of us to feel a little uncomfortable, but we continued until Maddy put each character on a path to different destinations and explained which each path was. By the time it got to me, my dyspraxia/dyslexia couldn't hold the information, and I asked Maddy to explain them all again. Maddy agreed and but then ended with, “You just used up you go, Charley.” I was so confused! Apparently, explanations waste a turn??? But this was fine by me until Maddy explained the destinations to another player, but this time, she let them choose where they wanted to go instead of keeping them on the bench, awaiting their turn. Maddy would also allow people to have longer goes/round claiming that there was more to their story. My turn would be around 2mins where someone else would be 5. Again, petty shit which still happens to make people upset. 

Note: It was not just me who felt this way! Many others slid into my dms because they felt upset with how Maddy treated others but not themselves. 

Up next is, “making your best friend feel like shit for making a joke”. Another reminder, this list wasn’t written by me, it was written by my friend who was watching from the outside. And this is very true. I would often make jokes with people about Donald Trump and America because their laws and president (not anymore) were stupid. This always seemed to annoy Maddy and hurt her feelings. I would often make a throwaway comment but end up feeling bad about it because Maddy would leave the call. I always felt like I was walking on thin ice with her because if I said something even remotely controversial, she would not speak to me and leave the call. This really hurt me because I cared about my friends a heck of a lot and never wanted to ruin any relationships with them. I would send countless messages to Maddy, apologising and crying to her, telling her not to be mad at me. THAT 👏🏻 IS 👏🏻 A 👏🏻 TOXIC 👏🏻 RELATIONSHIP 👏🏻 One joke shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all of a friendship,, but that is what It always felt like! Also, Maddy never specified it was a trigger until recently, and even after she did say it was a trigger, I held back so she could feel comfortable. 

The final thing is: “made you feel bad for your emotions.” Madison needs to learn that EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT and that people deal with things in different ways. Not everyone is smart, sensitive or skinny like she is. Whenever anyone hurt my friends, I would lash out and act upon my emotions because I didn’t know what else to do. This is something Maddy heavily criticised me for and something that eventually resulted in me listening to high-frequency sounds so I could get rid of my emotions and feel numb. My logic was that I didn’t want to hurt anyone ever again by jumping the gun and acting upon emotion. But thanks to others, I was pulled out of that loop, and I’ve learnt to use logic and reason as well as emotion. 

As for “breaking my heart”. Yes. Our friendship ending did hurt me, a lot. Just like everything with you, it is very one-sided. I was reaching out, listening and trying to help Maddy repair relationships with people whom she’d hurt. We both said equally bad things which made the ‘relationship’ toxic, and I would just like to point out that the name, ‘evil Maddy’ is cringe and I’m ashamed I was ever friends with you considering you used that in a callout post. /hj

---------------

Sarcasm aside, ima be real here because I am not afraid to tell my side of the story. So, @ thenameisnoone / Maddy. Here is a long-ass response to the post you made about me. xx

Look, I’m not going to call you out or use Politics_notmything to cancel you because I’m not like that. I’m an actual good person who really tried with Maddy and dis my best to change myself to make her feel comfortable. I left a group chat with all my friends for a week and blamed it on ‘family issues’ because I didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable. I made an entire Birthday PowerPoint for her, which included some of my best and favourite bootlegs. I made a genuine effort, but Maddy didn't really do anything else but tell me to “calm down” or “not throw everything away and give in to anger or despair and calm down until you can think rationally and make a logical decision”. 

And I’m glad I actually saw this because this is a classic Maddy move. She argues with people, builds up a situation then removes/blocks them, so they cant see everything she’s saying about them (i have proof of this from a server im in.) It has happened before, and she manipulated people into believing her side of the story. 

“I am allowed to block people who lie to me about serious topics even though they have trust issues which makes them unable, to tell the truth, if it hurts them. I am allowed to talk to people who blow up on me before hearing my side of things where they would have realised what they thought is wrong even though I dont get back to people until 3am and decide to leave them on delivered/read for days at a time when I am happily talking in other servers. I am allowed to block people who accuse me of shit-talking them with my friends who I introduced them to (and I never do that) when I have only defended them and said friends genuinely were being nice to them even if they have proof. I am allowed to block people. Period.” - Maddy 

And I’m not saying Maddy isn't allowed to block people. It’s a free world. Im just defending myself :) 

Granted, Maddy did defend me and say that this situation shouldn’t change anyone opinions on me, and I can say the same. Just because I had a terrible experience with Maddy, doesn’t mean she is a bad person and I encourage anyone online who loves women’s’ history and WATT to befriend her. 

But being honest, she did also call me a bitch on a Tumblr callout post, so I had to come and write this all down for safekeeping and reblogging purposes. Im not a bitch, and that is why I’m not using my following to cancel her. But anyway,  we both had some shit experiences with each other so you can read this and make up your own mind even though I did back her up with the previous call-out post, sent her my support, apologised and didn’t block her when she was at a bad time in her life or when she needed help. If anyone has a problem with me posting this, please contact me via DM. 

Sorry, not sorry ‘bout what I said. I’m just tired of your petty shit.

[tessatechaitea]

Batman Loves Superman #2

Hey DC! Stop portraying people who laugh as pure evil!

I don't know what genius centrist character speaks first in this comic book but fuck them.

People love to make statements that make them sound above it all. Statements that let them get away with sounding like a logical and rational person while really exposing the terrible things they believe. "Weapons are only tools." The "only" in that statement speaks volumes. They're defending weapons. Weapons are neutral. They're beyond blame. They're innocuous. Their follow-up statement providing evidence to bolster the first statement, "means to an end," shows that they don't give a fuck about context. What "end" are you trying to reach if your tools are weapons? Silverware are only tools as well, a means to an end, but we know that the end reached by silverware almost certainly is simply an empty tub of ice cream as opposed to a school full of murdered children. Oh no! Look at me bringing up murdered children to play on the emotions of the audience! How dare I bring in a real world example of an end that the means of these mere tools brings about! If your defense of weapons are that they're simply tools to be used to reach a particular end, you can't just ignore that the "end" you're discussing in the most general terms is violence. Weird that people who can't wait to be attacked so they can kill somebody and prove that their choice to carry a weapon was the right one often try to distance themselves from the inherent violence of their beloved weapon. The person speaking is Commissioner Gordon who laughed last issue so he's obviously a monster. I guess he's trying to point out that the real evil has been locked away at Arkham and the tools the evil people used aren't dangerous on their own which is why they've been locked in an armory outside Gotham City. He's come to liberate them with the help of a mystery person who has a sort of claw hand (Black Condor?!). A good writer would reveal who it was because they know that would get the reader really excited about Batman and Superman's confrontation with them. A good writer continually gives up surprising information. A mediocre writer hides as much as possible from the reader because it's the only way they can make a story suspenseful. Meanwhile, Shazam has begun calling himself "Earth's Mightiest Nightmare." See, he usually calls himself "Earth's Mightiest Mortal" so you can see how hilarious his wordplay is. But don't laugh because you don't want to appear wicked to the people around you.

Bullshit. Batman absolutely wants to fight him.

Shazam uses his magic lightning to try to destroy Batman but Batman just dodges because he probably trained with Himalayan Lightning Dodgers years ago. When Shazam uses his magic for evil, The Phantom Stranger's nose bleeds and Zatanna gets severe cramps. I guess magic in the DC Universe is like the Force in Star Wars. It's disturbing and shit. Superman almost gets the upper hand but, as I pointed out how the exciting battle might go last issue, Shazam turns back into Billy Batson to remind Superman he's fighting a child. So Superman is all, "Aw, shucks! I didn't mean nothing! You can fight it, Billy! Stop finding things funny!" But then Shazam is all, "SHAZAM! Fooled you!", and Superman is all, "D'oh!", and Batman is all, "SMDH." But remember! Batman is the king of the DC Universe! So he's definitely got a way to stop Shazam. I bet he's got a Bat-Monkey's Paw in his belt with two wishes left on it. Batman doesn't like to talk about the first wish and why Alfred now has to care for that tiny pianist living in the terrarium in the study. Batman doesn't use his Bat-Monkey's Paw to save the day but if you thought that idea was completely ludicrous, you'd better prepare your mind for Joshua Williamson's solution.

Batman finds the Batman Who Laughs Batwing, flies it up in the sky where Superman and Shazam are battling, and then, um, I don't know. He launches himself out the cockpit window against the g-forces of the accelerating Batwing? I suppose Batman learned to do this while training with the Sheep Hoppers of Aberdeen?

Um. Wait a second. Is Batman the greatest detective or am I because I think I just solved the mystery of the six heroes turned into Heroes Who Laugh.

The poison batarangs all have the symbols of the hero they're meant to infect on them! Just look more closely at the molds you found, idiots!

Shazam escapes because Superman held back and because Superman had to save Batman after Batman thought he could beat Shazam by crashing through the sturdy glass of a jet's cockpit while it was accelerating while only having a boomerang as a weapon. I guess Batman is only as smart as the writer writing him. He should have used his fucking Bat-Monkey's Paw. Later at the Bermuda Triangle Fortress of Solitude, Batman and Superman note that each Batarang Who Laughs has been infused with a specific Batman Who Laughs Juice based on the DNA of the intended victim. What they don't notice is that the Shazam one was a lightning bolt on it and the Superman one has the Kryponian symbol for hope (I know. Lame back story on the "S" on Supe's chest) on it and that they found the fucking molds for six Batarangs Who Laugh. Which means the answer to who else has been infected is in their stupid hands! Unless I'm supposed to believe that the symbols were carved onto the Batarangs Who Laugh after the fact. Which I totally don't even though that would probably be the way to do it seeing as how you're probably going to want to eventually make more than just six heroes laugh. My real opinion on this situation is that Joshua Williamson didn't actually think it through very well. Batman and Superman don't know what to do so they decide to pretend Superman was infected by Shazam. Shazam knows he didn't infect Superman but I'm sure he won't say anything to the Good Guys Who Laugh and ruin Batman and Superman's surprise when Superman goes undercover to work with the Batman Who Laughs. I'm sure failing to infect Superman so that Superman would have to pretend he's the Superman Who Laughs and thus free the Batman Who Laughs so he can find out the Batman Who Laughs plans is totally the Batman Who Laughs' plan. Because whatever the heroes do to stop the bad guys in the beginning of a story is always exactly what the bad guy knew the good guy would do. They're evil geniuses, remember! And Batman and Superman fell for it! Batman Loves Superman #2 Rating: C. If you didn't read this comic book yourself for a real world example, let me tell you how a mediocre writer writes a comic book: first, the bad guy attacks the heroes rather than doing something criminal or evil while trying to avoid the attention of the heroes. That's because a mediocre writer doesn't know how to write heroes discovering crimes being committed and instead need the villain to wave a lot and shout and say, "Hey! Jerks! I'm doing crime!" Or, better yet, have the criminal's entire plan simply be "I will antagonize the heroes for petty vengeance!" After that, the heroes will fail to stop the criminal. Depending on how long the story is, the heroes will either have to redouble their efforts and super believe in themselves to rally and win the day or the heroes will begin plans to defeat the villain. If they begin plans which make them seem like they're getting the upper hand, those plans will always be exactly what the villain wanted to happen in the first place. The heroes will then be defeated again just when they thought they were going to win! At that point, they'll probably need to do the rallying thing where they just fight a little bit harder than they did before and believe a little bit more than they believed before to show their strength of character and will. Because good always has stronger will and greater strength of character than evil! I really wish a writer would simply come up with a genius plan by the villain that isn't simply the villain saying, "They're falling right into my plans," after whatever the fuck bullshit the writer wrote. How these evil geniuses can plan such complicated and intricate plans that rely on knowing exactly what every hero is going to do is beyond my limited comprehension. I might even say it's contrived bullshit!

[wroughtbetwixtfanfic]

A Memory Of The Smell of Smoke, Ch 2.

Fandom: The Society.

Summary: Everyone liked to pretend that Campbell had been born bad. That their fear and hatred were logical, rational, justified, because Campbell was a monster incapable of making the choice between good and evil. Because he couldn't feel the way they did. Well, fuck that. He was gonna prove them wrong. At least, that had been the plan.

Rating: Mature.

Tags:

Canon Divergence, Pre-Canon, Emotional Baggage, Mental Health Issues, Child Abuse, Substance Abuse, Animal Death, Complicated Relationships, Pre-Slash, Denial of Feelings, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Implied Rape, Campbell has mild ASPD and is self aware enough to try and be better, the non-con is NOT Campbell, didn't add an official warning because it is the aftermath only, yes it is the party becca mentioned and there will be a warning in the notes of that chapter, Campbell/Harry, Campbell/Elle.

Word Count: 3383 (chapter 2/5).

CH 1 || CH 3 || CH 4 || CH 5 || AO3

It was an hour long drive to the psychiatrist. The office smelled like iodine. The walls were white, the counters were white, the floor was white. The only person in the waiting room besides Campbell and his parents was the lady at the desk, a younger woman with stringy pale hair and a mean look. Campbell gave her a bright, cheerful smile. The lady scowled in return, but it didn't matter. It was all just a game.

Doctor Cotton looked like his name. Old, white, with thin and poofy white hair coming out his head and ears. He had a red nose and gravelly voice, and Campbell was immediately disinterested in anything he had to say. The doctor asked him questions, made him take quizzes that asked things like "I feel anger that I can't control" and "I think about hurting myself". Campbell answered honestly, just in case maybe the doctor did actually know what he was doing. After two hours of testing, the doctor got up and took Campbell's parents into another room; when they came back, his parents were thin lipped and stiff. They didn't say anything to Campbell, just gathered him up and took him back home. He never saw Doctor Cotton again. Campbell knew one thing from the visit, at least. They never told him what the doctor has said, or what was wrong, but Campbell figured it must have been bad. His parents were afraid of him, just like everyone else. They looked at him different. Treated him differently. They yelled at him less, grabbed him less. That would have been fine, except they had this look in their eyes, this worried look as if he'd explode at any moment and hurt them. Campbell had no desire to hurt his family. Sure, sometimes he hit walls or threw things or would steal some money for extra snacks at school, and he knew what he did to Sam's bird was cruel, but he didn't mean any harm; it was the only thing that made them pay attention. He hadn't meant to make them hate him. He knew he should have been more upset than he was, but all he felt was an odd numbness. It wasn't sad. It's just how life was, and in a way, that's how it had always been in some way or another. He couldn't really remember a time when his family had actually loved him all on his own. It was easy not to care, so he let himself not care. He just did what he wanted to do, said what he wanted to say, and whatever happened was just what happened. His parents kept him hidden away from neighbors, extended family, friends. They laughed off his outbursts, with tight smiles and cold eyes. Sam became a stranger. He focused on his school work-- it was the surest way of getting the hell out of West Ham-- even though his grades slipped when he refused to do public speaking and fucked off during group projects. It wasn't that he hated school. He liked it, but he hated people. That was the part of him that Campbell wasn't sure he enjoyed. The older he got, the worse it felt. Birthdays, family gatherings, holidays. None of it had any real meaning, and he couldn't feel anything. He sneaked a switchblade into the house and began cutting his upper thighs when he was twelve, trying to see if maybe it would do something. Anything. It gave him a rush of endorphins, and for a while, that was enough. He ignored the quiet thoughts that told him he was worthless, a parasite, and should die. All teenagers had that, he thought. It still made it hard to sleep at night, sometimes, but there was no point in sharing. Eventually, it'd go away. It never went away. Not really. It wasn't all bad, being how he was. He was able to charm his way out of trouble with teachers, and fear was a rare and fleeting feeling. Campbell was still glad to see Cassandra in school, enjoyed seeing videos of cute kittens on YouTube, and felt some somber emotion when bad shit happened on the news. He was still willing to hold the classroom door open for a student who was in a wheelchair, and subjects like science, government, and history came easily to him. He liked facts, figures, formulas. He liked knowing how and why things-- and people-- ticked. It was a trait he shared in common with Cassandra, and at least it gave him one person to bond with. He still wasn't allowed to visit, not when her parents were home. Campbell was able to see Cassandra at school; they had ended up in the same 7th grade class. She was distant, but she still sat with him, studied with him, and invited him to eat lunch with her. She still treated him like a person. "My thirteenth birthday party is next week," she said one day. "Gonna come over?" "I've been banned from your home, remember?" Cassandra smiled. "My parents told me I could invite whoever I wanted, and we both know that means like... three people who are going to show up. C'mon. There'll be cake. If they try and say no, I'll play the guilt card." Campbell glanced at the scar on his cousin's chest. Years back, after he stopped being able to see her at home, she'd gotten surgery to fix some heart condition she'd been born with. Her parents treated her like a delicate doll still, and Campbell had heard stories from Cassandra and Allie both about Cassandra's ability to exploit that for personal gain. So Campbell agreed to go, and he had no idea how Cassandra managed it, but he found himself walking into the first birthday party he'd experienced in years. His own were spent alone, and Sam didn't want him around for his. It was mostly just family, and a few kids he didn't know. Gordie, Becca, Kelly, and then some boy named Harry. Out of everyone, Harry was the one to catch Campbell's attention; he spent a good portion of the party watching the boy closely. Harry seemed to be everything that Campbell wasn't. Vivid, talkative, well liked, popular. He had a bright smile and mischievous dark eyes, and when he saw Campbell staring at him, he strolled right on up as if they were old friends. "Hey," he greeted. "I'm Harry. You Cassandra's cousin, Campbell, right? Having fun?" Narrowing his eyes, Campbell clutched his soda cup a little closer. No one was ever that friendly to him, not unless they wanted something. "If someone dared you to come over, I don't--" "Do people really do that? I just thought you looked lonely." Lonely. Was he lonely? Campbell blinked. It was true enough that he never really felt like he belonged. It was an uncomfortable sensation, but he never really thought about what it meant. Crossing his arms, he shrugged. "What, you wanna hold hands and sing the Friendship Song or something?" Harry laughed. It was a beautiful sound. "Not necessary. I thought maybe we could hang out some time." "Might be bad for your reputation. I'm sure you've heard some things about me." "I have, but it doesn't matter to me. I'd rather get to know someone on my own." And that was that. It took a while for Campbell to warm up to Harry; it took time and effort for Campbell to feel affection for anyone, and his trust was hard won, but Harry had a certain way about him that Campbell found appealing. He was sweet and quick to smile, and far more sensitive than anyone would expect. Their weaknesses balanced one another well. While Harry was outgoing and fearless around people, he was often nervous to take other kinds of risks, like sneaking a sip of his parent's wine while they were out. Campbell loved the risk and excitement it brought, but shied away from social interaction. Luckily, Harry seemed drawn to Campbell's fiery temper and penchant for wild stunts, and people seemed to stare and gossip about Campbell less when Harry was around. Win-win. But Harry's friendship changed little. He lied, cheated, stole, and terrorized other students if it got him his way. Harry would sigh, but often what benefited Campbell ended up benefiting Harry, so his friend didn't complain. Campbell began drinking, using charm and manipulation to get Harry to befriend kids with alcoholic parents and druggie siblings. Harry was too straight-laced to take that stuff himself, but he didn't stop Campbell from buying and selling it; he was making money, too. It became easy to profit off beer, weed, even prescription medication. If anyone noticed, no one said anything. Same for when Campbell began taking valium. A girl in his class, Lexie, had an addict mother who never could keep track of how many pills she had. The booze and pills sometimes helped him feel... different. More relaxed, a little happier. It at least helped him deal with the tense, wrong-in-his-skin sensation that he got when he thought too much about what was wrong with him. He tried to be careful, but one day his parents were both gone at the office, and Campbell took too much. Dizzy, he called Cassandra. Cassandra came over. How she got there, got inside the house, and found her way to him, he didn't know. But she held his head in her lap while the world spun. "Should I call someone?" "No. It's okay. It's just..." Campbell groaned as his stomach heaved. "Just a cold." "I know you've been taking pills. I should call someone." But she didn't move, and Campbell just lay there shivering. At some point, Sam came home. Campbell could barely see, but he could tell Sam was signing to Cassandra, and Cassandra was signing back. Sam stared at him, then frowned and headed towards his own room. "I didn't know you knew sign language," Campbell mumbled. "When did you learn? Casandra shrugged. "A while back. Allie, too. I'm pretty sure you're the only one in our family behind on it." There was a teasing note in her voice. He felt a stab of frustration, but it was taken over fast by nausea. Campbell managed to crawl from Cassandra's lap to his bathroom, where he promptly threw up. Between bouts of vomiting, he thought over Cassandra's words. His parents and Sam were always signing, and Campbell only understood about half of the conversation, if their parents even bothered speaking out loud. Sometimes he would notice Sam glancing at him, and it made him wonder what they were saying. "Could you teach me?" Campbell asked her once he felt better. "How to sign?" "Why?" "I wanna know what they're saying." "That's it? You want to eavesdrop?" "What does it matter?" Cassandra turned to him and pinned him down with that intense, strange look of hers. She didn't say anything; she just helped him clean his face, tucked him into bed, and did her homework on the floor next to the bed. Campbell closed his eyes. Cassandra didn't have to say a word for him to know what she was thinking. He was going to be a freshman soon. A few more years would make or break his effort to get out of West Ham. Once he did... would he ever see his family again? His parents, Campbell didn't care. But Sam? He didn't know what to do about Sam. Every time he thought about the kid, he felt so angry. "I'll teach you," Cassandra said suddenly. "But I hope it helps you do more than just listening in to their conversations." Campbell rolled his eyes, but it wasn't like he wasn't already thinking about it. Whatever. He fell asleep as his stomach settled down. When he woke up in the night, she was gone. No one ever said anything about it, so Cassandra must have covered for him. He resolved to cut back on the drugs, and turned his attention towards becoming fluent in sign language. It was challenging, but he enjoyed that element to it. Cassandra taught him during lunch and break, without bringing up his family again; she'd said what she wanted to say, and the rest was in his hands. Literally. Logically, he knew that the anger he felt wasn't Sam's fault. He was resentful of Sam because he got everything Campbell ever wanted. Friends, loving parents, some sort of happiness. Campbell hated to admit he was jealous, but it was true. It didn't mean he could turn off that resentment, but it kept him from doing anything to Sam at least. He got into plenty of fistfights with other teenagers around town, but he never laid a hand on Sam. What would be the point? The benefit? Campbell didn't do shit just to do shit. Everything he did was calculated, risks versus rewards, pros and cons. There were no rewards in hurting Sam. Were there rewards in trying to mend the bridge between them? He didn't know. but learning how to actually talk to Sam more easily would be a good way to test those waters. Campbell figured out what he wanted to say, and showed it to Cassandra; it took forver to get it and possible answers down, but he finally felt prepared. If it didn't work, well, at least he'd tried. Campbell waited until their parents were out again, and he and Sam were home alone. Ever since Sam had turned eleven, their parents had magically decided it was safe to leave them under the same roof together; it was a weird turn, considering mommy and daddy dearest seemed to think Campbell was Satan incarnate, but apparently it was some emergency at work that couldn't wait. In any case, it gave Campbell a small window to talk to Sam without their parents hovering nearby. He tossed a pair of rolled up socks at Sam to get his attention. Sam snapped his head up to stare at Campbell, and Campbell signed to him. "Can I come in?" "Yes," Sam signed back. He paused as Campbell walked closer, a flicker of fear in his eyes. "Is something wrong?" "No, I just wanted to talk." Sam frowned. "When did you learn to sign?" "Cassandra taught me." "Why?" Sitting on the edge of Sam's bed, Campbell thought for a moment over what he wanted to say. "I'm sorry about Oliver." It wasn't that he really felt guilty, but he knew he'd done wrong and never tried to make it right, and he needed to change that if he wanted to get anywhere with Sam. "I'm sorry I hurt you." "You don't mean that." "I do." "You killed him to hurt me." Campbell stopped. Was that true? It had been years, but he could remember that moment. He hadn't wanted to hurt Sam. He'd wanted the attention of their parents, and he knew the best way to do that was to hurt Sam. Still, it hadn't been about Sam at all. "Who said that?" "Mom and dad said so." "I put him outside, but I didn't kill him. They didn't believe me." "What do you want?" Sam asked. The hand motions were short, terse. He was upset. "Why are you apologizing?" "We don't like each other, but I wanted to try and be civil." "Like... friends?" "No. Like brothers." Chewing on his bottom lip, Sam looked away and fiddled with his homework papers. After a few minutes, he nodded. "We can try." And for a while, it almost seemed like they were going to make it. They'd sneak out for pizza or for milkshakes and fries when their parents were gone, or meet with Cassandra and Allie at the arcade. Sam taught Campbell more sign language, and Campbell helped Sam with his homework. It wasn't exactly normal. They didn't spend a lot of time together; they both still had their own friends and hobbies, and Sam was still nervous around him. Campbell felt protective of Sam, but his resentment never fully faded, and Campbell wasn't sure that affection was the same as love. But it was an improvement, nonetheless. Campbell managed to keep the rest of his life away from Sam, for the most part. Harry's popularity had taken an odd turn as he'd slipped into the world of smoking weed. Campbell supplied the goods, and Harry doled them out among the football team. Campbell could see how it was heading, even at fifteen. The only people who actually liked Harry were the ones who needed him, and so Harry needed Campbell. Campbell enjoyed manipulating the strings between the two of them. Campbell got a share of the money, and a friend who damn near licked his boots in a desperate attempt to maintain his social standing. Pathetic, but cute. And Sam didn't need to know that that was how Campbell managed to fund their bro time, or the gifts that Campbell got Sam to try and barter for his trust. Sam was his brother. They were getting closer, and maybe by the time they were both a little older, Sam would understand more. Campbell knew Sam wanted them to be close, and though Campbell still cared for Harry, he could admit that it was nice to finally feel like he had his actual brother back. Especially considering Sam was about to start high school, and who knew what kind of bullshit Sam would hear from all the stuck up upperclassmen. They were out at the local all-day-breakfast joint, talking about what school supplies they both needed and which of Sam's friends were in which classes. Sam had been talking about one girl, Becca, for weeks; they had gotten math together. Campbell chuckled at Sam's excitement, flicking the bacon from his breakfast over to Sam's plate in exchange for Sam's english muffin. Five years since Oliver's gruesome demise, and Campbell still couldn't really stomach meat. "What, is she like your crush or something?" he teased. "This Becca chick?" Sam froze. Slowly, Sam signed a denial. "She's just a friend." Campbell noticed the emotion there on his brother's expression. Not fear, so much as just uncertainty. He made a calculated guess. "Yeah? Are there any girls you do like?" "No," Sam replied. He looked down at his hands. After a moment, he glanced back up and signed, quickly. "I'm gay." Bingo. Campbell sipped his orange juice, thinking. It's not like West Ham was super progressive, but it wasn't exactly a deep red area, either. Their parents, to his knowledge, had never talked to them about sex let alone different kinds of sexualities. Most of what Campbell knew was from watching porn over Harry's shoulder and seeing all the different categories and titles. Sometimes, Harry would tap on one of the gay ones, laughing about it while watching Campbell out of the corner of his eye. Waiting for a reaction. Campbell would just take a drag of weed, shrug, and pretend the air between them hadn't gotten thicker. Campbell nodded. "Have you told anyone else?" "No. But I want to." "Well, if anyone gives you shit, I'll beat them up for you." Sam gave him a tentative smile. "Thanks." And so Sam came out just after the start of high school. Campbell did have to beat up one neanderthal creep, Brandon. He made some snide comment on the way home from school, and Campbell pounded the guy's face into the pavement while a bunch of the football players watched silently from the sidelines. Campbell gave Brandon one last kick in the ribs before he turned to leave. One of the football players, Grizz, was staring a bit longer than the others. "What?" Campbell spat. "You next?" Grizz shook his head. "Nope, no thanks. Respect." No one bothered Sam again. Not anywhere Campbell could see or hear, at least. That, at least, was one thing that didn't change; no matter how they felt towards each other, the only one who was allowed to fuck with Sam was Campbell, and vise versa. They were still brothers, and Campbell had decided that he would protect Sam even if things went to hell again. It was an unspoken rule that would become important a lot sooner than expected.

[truthbeetoldmedia]

The 100 6x06 “Memento Mori” Review

Along with its impeccable world building, what Season 6 of The 100 has done so well is remind us that no matter how strong one’s moral compass is, every action has a reaction. Monty’s words to “do better” may be lingering in the minds of all of our heroes, but then again, they weren’t exactly expecting to encounter body snatchers in their new world.

Episode 6x06 of The 100, “Memento Mori,” written by newcomer Alyssa Clark and directed by P.J. Pesce is reminiscent of the “old” The 100 in more ways than one, but with a Sanctum twist. There are equal parts lore and moral conflict, and a pinch of backstabbing thrown in for good measure.

Heart Over Head

Try as he might to remain rational and think with his head, Bellamy was certainly not expecting this curveball: Clarke is dead. Josephine restrains Bellamy in her bedroom, and we can tell once she’s thrown Murphy in there with him that it’s been torn apart. While Murphy attempts to subtly convince Bellamy to stay and take the mind drives for the rest of their people, Bellamy has a one track mind. Clarke is gone, and there’s no bringing her back. (Or is there?)

It’s heartbreaking to see Bellamy mourn Clarke in such an outward way. We missed this in the years lost on the ring, and even in the brief moments we did see him grapple with her death, it was clear he was going about it logically. After all, Clarke had just told him to use his head. Now though, after Jordan has reminded him that his heart is what allowed him to be such a heroic and inspiring person, his head seems to have taken a back seat in his processing.

Though Bellamy tells the rest of Spacekru at the end of the episode that they must do what Clarke would want and survive, it’s likely he won’t be able to stick to that for long, at least I hope not. Murder is wrong, kids, but this has been a long time coming. Bellamy’s passion is what makes him such a standout character. That version of him resurfacing would be the cherry on top of such a good season.

Once a Cockroach, Always a Cockroach

The tagline of the season is “Face your demons”. While for Madi this is the Dark Commander and for Diyoza it may be her likeness to Hitler, for Murphy it’s what he’s seen in the afterlife and his unwillingness to go back. This is a character that has cheated death so many times that’s he’s never perhaps grappled with the thought of his own mortality. Now that he knows there’s a way to cheat death forever, he must decide whether to be the hero or slay his demon.

It isn’t surprising in the least that Murphy has taken a deal to save himself. After all, this is his trademark. Even he knows it. However, it’s difficult to tell if his motives will change at any point in the season. What does Josephine have to do to lose him? Though Murphy acts in this episode like he can deal with losing Bellamy, we’ve seen just how ferociously loyal he is to those he loves.

When Clarke, Abby and co. threatened to test the nightblood solution on Emori back in Season 4, Murphy literally had to be restrained. He promised he’d kill Clarke if anything happened to her. Now more than ever, Murphy has a family. Something tells me that as much as he refuses that fact sometimes, he won’t let the Primes harm them — especially since he’s witnessed death firsthand.

Murphy has always been an unpredictable character though. Just when he seems the most bastardly and selfish, he bends and does something to save someone. I wouldn’t be surprised if Murphy turned into the hero of the season.

Echo, Emori and Raven

When Josephine tells an oblivious Echo that Bellamy has gone into the forest on a scouting mission, she’s suspicious but she takes the bait. Josephine figures this will buy her enough time to sway Abby and get the nightblood solution, but she still sends Jade to follow Echo.

While Echo is ultimately looking for Bellamy, she finds herself mercy killing someone who’s quite literally being eaten alive by a tree and learns about Josephine/Clarke from Jade. While it’s nice to see Echo go off on her own and have an independent storyline, it’s short-lived when she returns to the compound and reunites with her friends.

However, we still got a brief taste of a possible new pairing: Echo and Jade. Both spies, they have the potential to either grow closer as they empathize with one another, or play a very entertaining game to see who can gather more intel. Either way, I’m seriously hoping we get more of these two.

Meanwhile, Raven and Emori help Ryker, a Prime, work on the radiation problem. However, once Raven knows about the body snatching, there isn’t much working at all. While it’s understandable that Raven would question the morality of this all, the argument seems to go in circles. Ryker defends the way of the Primes as a significant aspect of Sanctum culture, and Raven argues its immorality.  

Raven doesn’t seem to persuade Ryker, but it’s possible that his mind may change later on and he may become a key ally in helping our heroes to defeat the Primes and get Clarke back. He seems the most willing of the Primes we’ve met to break, anyway.

The issue here is that Raven continues to argue that she’s done nothing wrong, she’s innocent, and she has no demons. She can’t realistically keep up this facade forever, no matter how much she projects onto other people. Raven is a character that needs a serious reality check, and soon. She was once one of my favorites, but I’m beginning to lose hope that Raven can redeem herself from all the bitterness and egotism.

The Mysterious Spiral

Also in the forest are Octavia, Diyoza and their new friend Xavier. Octavia has been exposed to flares that rapidly aged her hand, and the aging is rapidly spreading. Xavier fears she may only have hours before the aging spreads to her mind, killing her. So, the three unlikely confidants search for a possible cure. It turns out that Xavier is a fan of homeopathic medicine. He collects the sap from a tree to apply to Octavia’s wrinkled skin, and while it doesn’t exactly help, her hand does begin to twitch uncontrollably.

The gang soon discover that her tremors aren’t random at all. In fact, they’re forming a spiral that shows up elsewhere in nature, and inked on Xavier’s skin. He says this anomaly called him and it is calling Octavia now.

While it’s unknown what exactly the anomaly is, it’s likely that it will give Octavia some kind of purpose she didn’t have before. Maybe it will even encourage her to live. Octavia’s demons are arguably the most difficult to face of any character on the show, so she likely needs some strong ammo to fight back.

I have to note that watching Octavia and Diyoza’s unlikely friendship blossom has been nothing short of a treat. This is a pair so many were hoping for at the end of Season 5 when they had a brief interaction in the Eligius ship, and one that is definitely not disappointing now. Diyoza and Octavia both have a lot to regret, so it only makes sense that they help each other get their humanity back.

Befriending the Dark Commander

Not knowing that Clarke is dead, Madi struggles in this episode with a commander who won’t let up taunting her. Gaia calls him Sheidheda, the Dark Commander. While in a deep meditative state, Madi speaks to Sheidheda and attempts to reason with him. However, he acts as the metaphorical devil on one’s shoulder, encouraging Madi to kill Gaia before she herself is harmed. Madi questions his words, but once she wakes up in chains, she seems to second guess herself. And when Madi learns that Clarke is dead (in the most heartbreaking scene, might I add), something clicks.

Madi banishes Gaia, and with Sheidheda now by her side, plans to kill everyone in order to avenge Clarke. While half of me was jumping for joy at this new heart-heavy side to Madi, the other half of me was frozen in place, worried about what may become of her without Gaia to guide her, and with this new, evil spirit guide.

Lola Flannery’s performance as Madi in this episode was magnetizing. My eyes were completely glued to the screen during her scenes. Even the most innocent of characters like Madi and Jordan have been forced to face their demons in Sanctum, which means that Lola has had to show a whole different part of her range. It’s always exciting to watch actors explore different sides of their characters, like Marie Avgeropoulos with her rendition of Blodreina last year.  I’m anticipating many more Madi scenes worth singing praises about in the near future.

Mother Knows Best?

Still in the dark about Clarke death is her own mother, Abby. Abby has been so preoccupied with finding a way to save Kane that she’s ignored every suspicious thing Josephine has said to her. While Josephine originally believed that Abby would be her most difficult challenge, she’s actually been the opposite. Josephine takes Murphy’s advice and uses all of Abby’s demons against her, bringing up her addiction and her questionable decision to sell out her husband on the Ark.

Josephine doesn’t just taunt her with her past actions though. She tells Abby that she fears what will become of her if she loses Kane too and reminds her that she needs her mom. Abby falls for this hook, line and sinker. I have a theory that once Abby finds out about Josephine and learns she was the last to know, her priorities will shift. Her real demon should be what she’s done to her daughter. She can probably live without Kane, but can she live without Clarke, knowing she’s, at times, been an arguably bad mother?

Can’t Get You Out of My Head

When Murphy tells Josephine’s dad on her, she’s forced to bargain with him and give him the mind drives. Instead of dwelling on the impending shitstorm coming her way, Josephine ends her day by telling herself tomorrow will be better, taking a mystery pill, and laying her head on her pillow. When she closes her eyes though, Clarke is alive inside her mind! And then: boom, out.

I never had a doubt in my mind that Clarke would be alive somewhere, somehow. After all, she’s a fighter. This could be of course because Clarke is a synthetic nightblood and this may not pair with the memory drive as well as a natural born nightblood would. If this is the case, it would certainly spoil Josephine’s plan.

So there’s a way out of this for Clarke. Now the rest of our heroes just need to figure that out and hurry up!

Once again, this episode left me speechless in a way that only The 100 can. Right now, there are a bunch of unconnected storylines all taking up equal parts of screen time. I’m eager for that moment when they start to intertwine. I suspect that Gabriel may be the missing link in all of this. Perhaps he’ll have a way to save Octavia and even get Clarke back.

Stray Thoughts:

I miss Jordan. I can only suspect that given his situation with Delilah, he won’t want to just try to survive. Maybe he’ll even team up with Bellamy and Madi to get Clarke back (wishful thinking?).

Bellamy sitting outside by himself crying was so heart wrenching but so, so telling. That’s all I’ll say about that.

Josephine and Bellamy saying “Shut up Murphy” at the same time was excellent.

Where is Indra this season? I miss her and her words of wisdom dearly.

Jessica’s episode rating: 🐝🐝🐝🐝

The 100 airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on the CW.

[zigzagzipwriting]

WMaCC? Relationship Between Your Characters

The way your character interact/act around others, how they think about other characters, how their love life affects them and their journey, and a character’s opinions and grudges show your readers a lot about your character without directly telling them. For example, it showcases your character’s thoughts and views, their flaws and strengths, and establishes other characters in your story. Relationships don’t always have to be cliqued romance. While those are perfectly fine, try adding some diversity to your story to make it stand out in your reader's mind. Some examples of relationship types are:

Aromantic or Asexual relationships

Parent/Child

Siblings

Aggressor/Victim

Rivals/Adversaries

Best Friends

Boss/Employee

Caregiver/Receiver

Cop/Criminal

Partners (in business, crime, etc.)

Slave/Master

Human/Environment

Human/God

Human/Pet

Casual Acquaintances

Unrequited/one-sided love

And of course, romance

So, what can you do to utilize these relationships in perspective of showcasing your character and making your story unique/leave an impact on your reader?

Make your character stop and think about others

Give an introspect/insight to your character’s inner thoughts

Uses pros and cons, love and hate, doubts, opinions, likes, and insecurities in   inner dialogue add more building and relatability to your character

Use a soliloquy

Challenge your character's thoughts and feelings, especially of others (specifically people they know personally)

“I love him, but why?”

“What’s the real reason I hate her?”

“What needs to happen so I can get over this?”

“Will they like me?”

“Will they understand me?”

“Who am I against?”

“Who am I for?”

Give your character strong opinions

Opinions and personal values make your character unique and let them stand out in a crowd. Opinions are your character’s voice; every character has different opinions and expresses them differently, even if they might seem similar, and they can change over time due to experiences, growth, and conflict

Even if your character is shy or introverted, let them showcase their opinions in their inner dialogue and thoughts. While it should match your character’s overall personality (unless they are being suppressed in some way on the outside or suppressing inner thoughts), allow your character to show how they feel about a certain person or event. Remember, no one (except the reader, who does not exist in your story) can hear your character's thoughts, so they don’t have to worry what others think of their inner opinions

Not every character needs to be good at expressing their opinions. Some might stutter, or not know the right words to use, or become frustrated. The big ‘rallying speech’ might come naturally to some characters, and some might mess up. It all adds to the differences between characters

What are your character’s opinions of others? What are their thoughts? Their feelings for/against certain people, events, actions, places, etc.? How do they react to the conflict?

Remember, if a character has personality traits or feelings of anger/fury, they are more likely to show their strong opinions either as thoughts or to other characters. The same can be done using ‘extreme’ emotions or situations with high pressure or atmosphere, like love, stress, or when a character simply has enough

Use gossip, love, callousness/hate, and shallow or deep thinking for a wide variety of opinions. Some characters have simpler thought patterns, while others have deep logic based. Some are driven by emotion or creativity, and those thoughts might be a little messier

Play a game of risk with your character

Have your character make sacrifices/risk something for another. It can be anything from a friendship, job, personal, or the arguably most impactful, personal safety and risking their life or even dying for someone

Putting everything at stake despite personal interest/safety - raises the stakes of the conflict and adds high tension to the scene. Show that you’re not afraid to let a character be injured or even die to add realism to the scene (you do not have to kill the character, but if the threat is real enough, your reader will take the story more seriously and worry for your character). Essentially, make one of your characters willing to die for another, and put them in the position where that could happen

Risks are a test of character - what are they willing to do, and what is their limit

Risks and the threat of loss in any way make your reader root for the character

Add a hypotenuse/triangle

I know, it’s been done to death already. But there is power in a love triangle, square, or a change in the rules for something unique. It’s a huge test of each character, and reveals traits, both positive and negative, in the ‘competition’, and causes tension between all characters involved. It also leaves an emotional impact on the reader, especially when one character ‘loses’ or intentionally gives up for another character’s sake.

Complications in love, especially across multiple people, can lead to complex relationships

Make all characters flushed out and 3D for full impact - Don’t show immediately which two characters are going to ‘hook up’ in the end (if any pairings do) by having one character have no impact or form. It’s boring, cliqued, and drops

Make a reason why a pair can’t be together

Human, animal, career, addiction, a call to adventure, obligation, etc.

Emotions & relationships aren’t rational - motivations that can lead to quick, bad decisions

Some examples of unique and impactful love triangles are ‘Angelica, Eliza, and Hamilton’ from the musical “Hamilton”, the complex love square between two characters with secret identities such as ‘Marinette/Ladybug and Adrien/Cat Noir’ from “The Miraculous Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir”, or complications between the ‘villain’/antagonist and the ‘hero’/protagonist (especially with hidden identities), which often leads to hurt from either end and emotional sympathy from the reader

Leverage the group

People act differently depending on the situation and who they are with. For example, a normally cheerful person might turn cold around someone they dislike, or a social person in a group might get awkward in a one-on-one. In a group, relationships and alliances are ever-changing, depending on circumstances

Some places where leveraging the group takes place are a mob, gang, organization, work, school, or large event

A character might put on a ‘social/public mask’, especially if they are a victim of abuse or other forms of suppressant (be it personal or outward)

Befriend ambiguity

Don’t over explain relationships; let the reader make inferences. Not everything needs a full detail story on all the ‘wrongs’  a character has done, or every interaction. You don’t have to say this person is a lover, or that this parent is an alcoholic. Instead, use body language, descriptions, and how that character interacts with the main character to show who they are

Show, not tell

A reader’s instinct is to assume that there is more than meets the eye; they recognize a person has many layers, and that some layers are more hidden than others. For example, use contradictions to show diversity, like how in every adult, there’s a bit of a child, or in every cop, there’s a bit of a criminal. There’s a little ‘good’  in your antagonist/villain, and a little ‘bad/evil’ in your protagonist/hero

Tap into the power of a grudge

Show your reader if your character is the kind who holds grudges, forgives, or acts on revenge. It adds to your relationships, especially when a character has been ‘wronged’, even accidentally, and can be impactful in the relationship between the protagonist and antagonist. Does one character forgive the other? Do they take action against them out of vengeance? Grudges can be from either side, and they can be both ways. In addition, a grudge doesn’t have to be suited on facts. There should be a reason, not just instant ‘hate’, but it can be accidental or a misunderstanding

Characters with a certain type of personality are more likely to hold and act on impulsive grudges to the point of vengeance & destruction. For example:

Someone with very low self-esteem but a big ego (ie. the stereotypical ‘popular/mean’ kid)

‘Eye for an eye’: those who suffer pay back the world (the more suffering the character has induced, the more grudgeful revenge) ~ this is a common backdrop of victims, and a possible backstory for antagonist/villains

A sensitive character + suffering mass injustices, intolerable shame, stress, and degrading = believable eventual snap/murderous rage ~ it’s possible for a sweet character to have a realistic snap, especially if they hold everything to themselves without an outlet

Make the reader wish for the character to snap back

Don’t overlook everyday interactions

A chance encounter with a stranger can be powerful enough to transform a moment, or a day, even to change your life

Acquaintanceships and how your character interacts with close strangers shows the reader your character’s social views/standings

No relationship is clear-cut/black and white;  little details scatter off to form webs of interconnecting stories

Let your characters approach others, glance off them, then continue on different trajectories - everyone has their own story in life, and sometimes stories interconnect through a shared space, goal, or person

If you have multiple stories that take place in the same universe, it can be a fun nod to subtly include references or characters from other series for readers

[ierinomalleyy-blog]

*Aristotle: Ethos and Logos and Pathos*

In this entry, I will examine the critical question: What is the main purpose of this artifact’s message and how are ethos, pathos, and logos used in this rhetorical artifact to achieve that purpose? Is the way that these rhetorical appeals are used ethical? 

To investigate these questions, I examined a speech from a 16 year old girl, Greta Thunberg, convincing politicians to take climate change seriously. To take the steps in to stopping global warming that will affect the generations of children yet to come more than it affects anyone who has the title of power today. The main purpose of this artifact’s message is to open the eyes of those who are in power to realize the world is now in its earliest stages of a mass extinction. Politicians should be developing solutions and strategies to fix this climate issue. Younger children, like Thunberg, shouldn’t have to be the ones who are concerned if they will ever see their future. Ethos, pathos, and logos are used in this rhetorical artifact to achieve that purpose of the values held, the support from the audience, and the reference of scientific research and studies to support the given claim. 

On September 23, 2019 this video of Greta Thunberg speaking to the politicians to take climate change seriously, became viral. In it we listen to a message for the world leaders at the United Nations at the Climate Action Summit in New York. Thunberg begins by speaking in terms that she should be at school, on the other side of the ocean. A young girl shouldn’t have to be at a summit to try and convince politicians to take climate change seriously. The eyes of the young citizens are upon the ones holding power and if they choose to fail the generations to come, forgiveness is not in eyesight. The speech expresses ethos, pathos, and logos to achieve the message. 

Herrick explained that rhetoric can be held to be constructed of arguments and appeals involving beliefs shared by the speaker and audience. With presenting an enthymeme speak, “a “heartfelt” argument in which the audience sensed in the rhetoric's language and delivery a passionate commitment to the position being staked out” is what draws in the audience to feel a certain emotion (Herrick, 74). The way rhetorical appeals are useful is if “successful construction is accomplished through the joint efforts of speaker and audience, and this is its essential character (Herrick, 75). A speaker can easily express their emotions, but it takes the audience to connect to those given emotions in order for it to be successful.* When arguing with the awareness of public values “successful rhetoric must connect with what the audience believes. By its very nature, then, rhetoric is a communal or democratic approach to resolving issues (Herrick, 75). With resolving issues that are involved with the public, one must connect with what the audience believes in order to get to the successful conclusion. There are three categories in which an issue is addressed “different setting in which speeches occur, the corresponding purpose or goal (telos) of a speech, and the varying roles audiences play” (Herrick, 75). Such elements come into play when giving a successful speech. The three artistic proofs that come into play”are (1) logos or arguments and logical reasoning, (2) pathos or the names and causes of various emotions, and (3) ethos or human character and goodness” (Herrick, 78). The term , logos, has many different meanings. Herrick narrows it down to the idea that “it meant simply a work, or it could refer in a plural sense of the words of a document or speech. It also carried the sense of a thought expressed in words, discourse, an argument or an entire case” (Herrick, 79). Logos overall is a collection of arguments that are put together in order to make a rational decision. Study of emotion is also what comes into play when presenting a successful speech. Pathos is defined as “putting the audience in the right frame of mind” to make a rational decision (Herrick, 79). Within a speech “pathos is often used to refer to emotional appeals that give persuasive messages their power to move an audience to action” (Herrick, 79). With having a speech that grabs the audience’s emotions to match up with the speaker’s emotions, that is what causes the speech to make the audience want to place themselves into action. When it comes to the speaker, “a knowledgeable speaker can engage the strong beliefs and feelings that both influence the reasoning of the audience members and move them to action” (Herrick, 79). It’s one thing to get the audience to feel a certain emotion, but it’s another thing when you give the audience a reason as to why they could feel a certain emotion and what action to take having that mindset in hand. A speaker can follow a couple simple steps in how to get an audience to feel an emotion, but to “understand human emotional response toward the goal of adjusting an audience’s emotional state to fit the nature of seriousness of the particular issue being argued” is a whole other ball game (Herrick, 80). The speaker must form its character into three parts to “exhibit phronesis (intelligence, good sense), arete (virtue), and eunia (goodwill)” (Herrick, 81). In order to get the audience onto the speakers side, one must prove to the audience that they are trustworthy. With proving to the audience that one is trustworthy, “they will be very likely to accept as true what that speaker has to say” (Herrick, 81). Having a speaker who is backed up with trustworthy sources, help them gain trust in what is being said. Overall, once all three of these are placed into act “they can be employed in a carefully achieved persuasive balance” (Herrick, 81). The way that these rhetorical appeals are used, are shown ethically

The ways that ethos, logos, and pathos are used ethically in the rhetorical artifact, Greta Thunberg’s speech, is what achieves the main purpose. Greta Thunberg uses ethos ethically when presenting her speech by expressing the values in which she holds. When speaking directly to the politicians, Thunberg expresses “You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe” (Bill Chappel, npr). In this case, Thunberg is holding high the characteristic of goodwill. Thunberg expresses her kindhearted feelings towards the politicians because she refuses to believe that they hear the young and grown citizens. If they heard them and understood the urgency but continued to do nothing about this issue, they would be evil. That is what Thunberg tries to erase from her mind because she truly wants to believe that that isn't the reasoning. Coming to an end to this speech, Thunberg expresses “You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I saw: We will never forgive you” (Bill Chappel, npr). As a sixteen year old kid, one shouldn’t have to worry about the future of their generations. They shouldn’t be concerned about whether or not they will see their future or this kids future. This young generation is starting to understand the concern about climate change and have to miss school in order to get the one’s with power to understand climate change as well and convince world leaders to take legislation seriously. With a final ending, “We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not” (Bill Chappel, npr). The fight to convince world leaders to take climate change and legislation seriously is being expressed through this speech given by a sixteen-year-old girl. Whether the leaders like the idea of change or not, these younger generations are going to make that change in order to fight for their future. 

Greta Thunberg uses logos ethically when presenting her speech by being able to construct her character as trustworthy. Thunberg constructed her character as trustworthy by her use of references from scientific research and studies to support her claim that climate change is real and potentially disastrous.  Thunberg states, “The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control. Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist” (Bill Chappel, npr). Here, Thunberg addresses the concern of toxic air pollutants or the aspects of climate change that her generation is going to have to face when the time comes. Continued, “So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences” (Bill Chappel, npr). Thunberg expresses the concern that the world leaders are only focusing on a couple of years that will be affected rather than keeping their minds on the children, even their own, that will have to deal with the consequences faced because of the actions not being taken today.

Greta Thunberg uses pathos ethically when she refers to her childhood and dreams being taken away. When expressing those emotions, the applause of the audience demonstrated that they support her. Thunberg states, “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!” (Bill Chappel, npr). This is the first message that Thunberg has to the world leaders. AS stated before, Greta should be in school and not having a single worry about if she’ll have a future. Yet, the world leaders are doing nothing about climate change but expect to lean on future generations for hope. Continued, “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!” (Bill Chappel, npr). Thunberg engages in the strong beliefs and feelings she holds when answering a question about the message she has for world leaders. The hope that world leaders will understand the human emotion from the speaker and audience with the idea to take that response and placing it towards a goal for the future generations.

This leaves us with the question of whether the way of using ethos, pathos, and logos is ethical. The speaker, Greta Thunberg, is being ethical with her chosen language in order to bring attention to the complicated issue that is at stake. The time that the audience limits to the speaker, gives the speaker a mindset that one must be respectful and prepared to that time limit. Thunberg presented herself as well prepared as she held a paper that had her key ideas to present to the world leaders and the audience in hand. From the very moment Thunberg began speaking, she had the crowd clapping in agreement to her points and emotions that were being expressed. Thunberg presented in her speech necessary facts and references to back up her points in which she would be presenting. Helping her delivery flow and keep the audience’s attention as well as their satisfaction. Greta Thunberg presented herself as responsible and knowledgeable, all while being able to express her emotions. Thunberg is a sixteen-year-old girl who came to present her concerns on climate change with the future generations at stake.

In doing additional research on this topic, a scholarly article by Andrew Dlugan, Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking, further explains how the use of ethos, pathos, and logos can achieve a purpose towards the main goal of a speech. As a speaker, one should understand and be educated on how to apply these three key ideas of public speaking. In order to get the audience on your side, “these are the three essential qualities that your speech or presentation must have before your audience will accept your message” (Dlugan, 1). Getting the audience to agree with you by accepting your message, is the goal that all public speakers should aim for. The first pillar to cover is that of Ethos. As Dlugan states, “before you can convince an audience to accept anything you say, they have to accept you as credible” (Dlugan, 2). Greta Thunberg’s speech represents credibility as she collects and refers to scientific research and studies to support her overall claim. Thunberg states, “To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise – the best odds given by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] – the world has 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit back on Jan. 1st, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less then 350 gigatons” (Bill Chapell, npr). With presenting the audience and world leaders with information of the degrees in gigatons of CO2, Thunberg is presenting herself as a high reason to why the audience should find her acceptable. With connecting on a deeper level to the audience’s emotions, “emotional connection can be created in many ways by a speaker, perhaps most notable by stories. The goal of a story, anecdote, analogy, simile, and metaphor is often to link an aspect of our primary message with a triggered emotional response from the audience” (Dlugan, 3). When your characterization, words, and visuals connect on a deep level of emotion, the audience will bounce off that with a connection. As Thunberg states, “You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe (Bill Chapell, npr). Thunberg expresses her emotions of sorrow and anger to the world leaders in front of the audience to show the meaning of emotion as to why she is here speaking. In order to incorporate logos into a speech, a speaker must have a message that ends with a reasoned argument to why the point has been made. With the bullet points made in the article, “is your message based on facts, statistics, and evidence?” (Dlugan, 3). As Thunberg discusses the statistics of the access to CO2, “so a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us – we who have to live with the consequences” (Bill Chapell, npr). Thunberg’s message to the world leaders and audience is backed up by multiple facts, statistics, and evidence throughout the speech. Inserting these three pillars of public speaking is the secret to get the audience to steer towards the speaker’s side.

Greta Thunberg’s speech along with scholarly article by Andrew Dlugan, Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking, helped explore my critical question to how ethos, pathos, and logos are used to achieve a purpose. The main purpose of the artifact, Greta Thunberg’s speech, message was to give the world leaders and the audience a wake-up call to take climate change and legislation seriously. The generations that are yet to come, may not be seeing a future if the way this is playing out continues. A change needs to be done whether the world leaders prefer it or not. Ethos, pathos, and logos are used to achieve this purpose by giving credibility and character to the speaker, gaining an emotional connection to the audience, and making logical arguments to support a solution to the issue.

Video Link:

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763389015/this-is-all-wrong-greta-thunberg-tells-world-leaders-at-u-n-climate-session?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR0uZwcChhYFKby00DvtQzNhPVdUB2tjKB8R0hs4DlaeCan5ag02pxFI3IU&jwsource=cl

References:

Dlugan, Andrew. "Ethos, pathos, logos: 3 pillars of public speaking." Six Minutes Speaking and Presentation Skills 24 (2010).

Herrick, J. A. (2005) Aristotle on rhetoric. In The history and theory of rhetoric: An introduction (5th ed.) (pp.69-81). New York: Routledge.

Chappell, B. (2019, September 23). 'This Is All Wrong,' Greta Thunberg Tells World Leaders At U.N. Climate Session. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763389015/this-is-all-wrong-greta-thunberg-tells-world-leaders-at-u-n-climate-session utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR1Rv6giz3c0wvjqmmujz6AOFbRGdDMVQkni8amav6G8E1m3GvJ1MnFSPA

[lotusdiscussthis]

@yunevii 

I read your tags and I was afraid to respond to it considering you didn’t show it on the reblog. By putting your comments on the tags, I could’ve easily overlooked it, so I didn’t know if you really wanted to talk about it or not. In the end, I’ve decided to link you to give you my reply anyway. I hope you don’t mind.

I don’t blame you for not agreeing. After all, my perception of Saihara can be hard to believe when I haven’t given enough explanations as to what made me look at Saihara in such a negative way. It’s mainly due to having to reanalyze the story in a different perspective after discovering things that paints the supposedly innocent detective in a different light. But I’ll try to explain my thoughts the best that I can...

“kokichi often makes conversations go in frustrating circles because of his lies...

True, talking to Ouma also gave me headaches when I first played. Though sometimes the best way to determine someone’s nature is to not always rely on their words, but through their actions. It’s easy to say things like “I’m really evil” and act like the bad guy, but if your actions contradict with that behavior, that would naturally raise questions.

Let’s take Ouma’s evil speech after Gonta died. He said he enjoys their suffering, yet in the previous chapter, he urged Himiko to express her grief properly. How is it that he would go that far for someone he barely even knows, only to suddenly make a big show about he loves their suffering later on? Or when Ouma looked like he faked being injured only for Saihara to notice him wobbling as he walked and failed to notice how he was blanking out while talking to him? Or how about when Ouma was screaming “WE want to live, so don’t get in our way!” mid-trial while arguing with Kaito? We’ve just forgotten that part when Ouma later explains, “Oh yeah, me and Gonta were totally planning on getting you all killed so you wouldn’t have to face the horrible despair of the outside world!” None of this makes any sense. 

How is it that Saihara would overlook these major redflags that would contradict the fact that Ouma was a heartless person? If I can notice this myself, how is it that the protagonist, the Ultimate Detective, can’t??? (Also, reading between the lines is kinda what detectives do, so this is no excuse)

“i think more than anything saihara wanted to feel like kokichi was on his side-...” 

I will be frank, you shouldn’t expect people to do anything for you so simply. That was pretty much what I was trying convey in my original post. To think that somebody on the opposing side as you is automatically suspicious, not good, or wrong is just incredibly flawed reasoning. Especially since the reason why Ouma wasn’t on Saihara’s side in the first place was because he was mostly siding with Kaito the whole time. And Kaito, a man of instinct/belief/blind optimism, mostly showed hostility towards almost everything Ouma says and does. Ouma clearly knew the gravity of the situation and yet, he gets treated like the pariah because almost nobody wants to listen to what he has to say.

Ouma tried several times in the beginning to speak logically about their circumstances, yet practically everyone would automatically think he’s trying to start up pointless trouble. Like when Ouma said if Gonta were to continue being gullible, he was going to get killed. The reason why we saw Ouma as the bad guy in that moment was because everyone around him started to get all defensive and called him insensitive for saying such things after Kaede and Rantaro died. Which isn’t rational. THEY ARE IN A DEATH GAME. Whether Ouma had said anything or not wouldn’t have changed that fact. 

Out of everyone, Ouma has proven to have put in the most effort into showing his trustworthiness by spitting out the facts and warning them all to be careful, but it was everyone else (besides Miu and Gonta) that had rejected his help in the end.

On the one hand, Saihara hadn’t really done anything to earn Ouma’s support and friendship since meeting him. Even if Saihara was truly expecting what you had claimed, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s selfish for him to think that way. He doesn’t owe Saihara anything.

On the other hand, Ouma also did say at one point he was on everyone else’s side. And in the 5th trial, he had put everything on the line for his final plan to work and put an end to the killing game. Knowing that, does it still sound like he was not on his friends’ side? Even if you’ve figured it out, Saihara somehow couldn’t bring himself to comprehend this fact.

“...but talking to him always feels like a battle just to get the truth out” 

If the ‘truth’ you are referring to is about knowing Ouma’s true intentions and plans, then there’s a good reason for that. Ouma did mention in the beginning that carelessly opening up to people would be dangerous. And no, I don’t think he was speaking as Mr. Paranoia as much as the fandom loves to see him as. I think he said that because Monokuma would most likely be listening in on their conversations and that one of their friends is most likely the ringleader. (Just like how Kyoko was cautious of talking to Makoto out in the open in DR1) And turns out he was correct. So if he explained that much in the beginning, shouldn’t that give the listener (Saihara) a better idea as to why he shouldn’t be too outright with his intentions? There’s only so much you can do without getting careless within a killing game. 

“also by the time saihara says that he’ll never get kokichi to change kokichi had proven to be not just hard to talk to but pretty heartless and villainous as well” 

I would like for you to recall how Ouma first introduced himself... Now this is something I’ve always found curious, but never really dove into too deeply in case the story were to prove me otherwise at some point. But now that it’s been a year since I first played, I just have to ask those who think that Ouma has a single sadistic or villainous bone in his body.....

What kind of antagonist would out themselves as a liar in the beginning? In a killing game, no less?

We all know that he’s an incredibly clever boy who knows how to play mind games and put on an act that would befit the situation. So if he was truly serious about winning the game and was willing to coldly disregard the lives of others, wouldn’t it make more sense to not reveal that problematic aspect of himself? Wouldn’t it give him a better advantage to NOT play the flaming jerkwad role and piss everyone off to the point of wanting to kill you? Much like how Komaeda played innocent until Hajime and Chiaki cornered him into admitting that he set up the murder plan and then showed his crazy side. Ouma could’ve played himself up just like that as well, but no. Instead he kept claiming he’s nothing more than a liar.

Admitting to a bunch of (supposed) strangers that he’s a liar just makes no sense at all. Although, to disregard his intentions as just him being crazy or just him screwing around would be oversimplifying things. Even Nagito had an understandable method to his madness... 

“though he hadnt done anything drastic he does fuck up the trials and says (lies) about how much fun the killing game is”

When you say “fuck up the trials”, you mean when he took Ryoma’s motive video or saying that he killed Angie? I had to ask to make sure because just simply saying “he screwed up the trials” is not a clear enough explanation. Anyway, we never actually knew the real reason as to why Ouma stole the motive vid. We were made to think he did it for kicks, but in the end, he explained on Ryoma’s behalf that his motive video was empty when nobody knew what could’ve made him lose his will to live. I guess he also speculated that Maki was Ryoma’s killer and wanted to steal it before she got a hold of it. After all, she was the original holder of his video and nobody knew about her and Ryoma’s encounter besides Ouma, so nobody would’ve questioned her as to why she had his video. And I think Ouma was waiting for an opportune moment to shove the evidence in her face if things went differently. (I’m just guessing here tho.) But I do believe Ouma has reasons for why he does what he does, instead of simply doing it for jokes.

On the matter of him claiming that he killed Angie, he said so himself that he was trying to lure out the culprit by pretending to be the killer. He said if he played the killer, the actual blackened would likely push the blame onto him. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s more of a valid reason to do it than simply screwing around.

It’s rather funny to me how the fandom talks about how Ouma screws up the trials, but what about Tenko, Himiko and Maki??? 

Tenko kept others from questioning Himiko for the sake of the investigation, Himiko would sooner let everyone die for the sake of keeping her magic a secret, and Maki stupidly kept quiet and put the trial on hold so nobody would figure out her talent. And yet, Saihara would sooner side with them and lie for their sake in the middle of the trial even though he had just about as little relations with them as he did with Ouma. Why????

“its really hard for saihara to feel like he’s on his side despite how much he does want to work with him”

I’m sorry to say, but Saihara had that opportunity to work with Ouma when the boy himself made the offer in the VW. Without considering it or even questioning him, Saihara just ignored him and logged out. Saihara clearly had no intention of working beside him.

“i do kinda agree that he didnt really ask that many questions but kokichis answers really had proven to always be super vague or just a lie” 

Which vague answers are you talking about exactly? I wouldn’t know how to answer that myself because that’s not specific enough. Give me an example?

“the point is i really dont believe saihara is an arrogant person.”

I’m afraid that the screencaps I’ve shown in the original post aren’t the only proof I have to show that he’s an arrogant person. I wanted to mention them in a different post, but I’ll give you a few other brief examples.

He has insinuated that Ouma is stupid despite the fact that we’re talking about the same dude that has pretty much been doing more detective work than the actual detective did. Not to mention that Saihara’s the one that believed Ouma was the mastermind and screwed up the first case majorly.

After the 5th Closing Argument, Saihara claimed his detective’s intuition was flawless even though it was clearly just conjecture in the end. He had practically no proof to back up what he had laid out for them. He may have gotten Kaito to exit out of the exisal but only because he had to lie. That doesn’t prove that was what actually transpired. Only Kaito knows about what had happened between him and Ouma, and seeing how Kaito was following the script he was given, we wouldn’t know the extent of it.

This one really peeves me. Because he thinks he knows better, he thinks he gets to shut down someone else’s emotions because he thinks they’re lying when he couldn’t possibly have gotten the chance to know one thing about him. Whether you think someone is insincere or not, it’s not your place to disregard their feelings like that. 

There’s also the fact that Kirumi got unexpectedly personal and called out on the fact that Saihara doesn’t even listen to others in the 2nd trial. It was weird how she could make these accusations at all like she knows something...

And despite the fact that Tsumugi claimed it was Kaede’s twin as the possible suspect, Saihara would sooner disregard the piece of evidence because he trusted his intuition moreso than looking into possible facts. Same can be said in the first trial too, where he trusted his intuition to pin Kaede as the culprit despite the fact that she WASN’T...

I’ll just stop it here...

“i dont think its right to compare gundam and kokichi” 

Well, I don’t see how it’s wrong either, honestly... Considering how the game itself gave me a lot to work with to show how much these two said characters contrast with one another. I actually made something before that would showcase a lot of comparisons between Ouma and Gundham. So if you wish, you can look for yourself and see what I mean... (Link to Self-Sacrificing Duos post) And a friend of mine actually analyzed a scene between the two when they had a moment in TDP and the game even subtly hinted about them being similar! (Link to Gundham and Ouma TDP moment post)

It’s kinda hard not to compare when there are a number of things you can compare within this franchise, not just Gundham and Ouma. They are all by the same creator after all and he loves to re-utilize his own tropes.

“wow i should not have written all this in the tags its so long sorry i make it sound like i dont like kokichi when i really do. he’s a great character just really hard to get along with. i hope this made any sense lol”

It’s no problem. I just hope that what I’ve explained made sense ^^; I apologize if I come across as harsh or anything like that, but I couldn’t find myself expressing certain points any better than I did... 

Hopefully, this gives you at least a better understanding of where I’m coming from.