#i mean the man possibly committed multiple murders so

[eggs-attorney]

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Eggman: We now convene for the trial of Yanshu Dryll the Mole. I trust the prosecution is ready to commence?

Payne: The prosecution's been ready for days, your honor.

Eggman: And is the defense ready to proceed?

Reiker: Yes, your honor.

Reiker: (Yeah… Ready. No evidence, no alternate theories… Guess I should just pay attention and do my best.)

Payne: Seems the murderer finally gathered enough funds for a private defender. How'd you do it? Kill another robot? Rob a casino?

Eggman: Actually, this man is our new public defender. This will be his first case.

Payne: Oh, how precious… I bet he'll be running out of town with his tail feathers between his legs after we confirm the guilty verdict.

Reiker: (… Is he serious?)

Eggman: We’ll see, now… Let's not keep this waiting any longer than we already have. Prosecutor Payne, your opening statement?

Payne: The solution to this case is so obvious that no private defense attorney would even pick up the case! In fact, I almost feel sorry for the poor sap standing across from me.

Reiker: Can we get on with it instead of gloating?

Payne: So eager to face your own demise? Very well, then…

Payne: The crime took place around 8:45 PM last Wednesday. The victim, Flash Driver, is a new member of the doctor’s E-5000 line.

Payne: The victim was found with his legs battered and multiple components taken out of their rear hatch. We cannot obtain camera footage due to the parts being missing, however, we have multiple reasons to believe it was the mole standing before us today.

Reiker: Wait, his legs were battered?

Eggman: This is basic information, did you not read the autopsy report!?

Reiker: With all due respect, you never gave me the autopsy report, your honor.

Eggman: Hm… I suppose in this instance your ill-preparedness is somewhat understandable. Don't let it happen again.

Payne: Feh. Here, fledgling - your first piece of evidence. Please try to keep your gape-mouthed self from drooling all over the pages.

Strait: … I think I’ll be fine, thanks.

Autopsy Report (Flash) has been added to the Court Record.

Reiker: (I should take a closer look at that. Remember, Strait - evidence is a lawyer's best friend! Good thing I keep it Pinned at the Top of my mind!)

Reiker: I notice you haven't mentioned a motive, or why my client is your prime suspect. Was she even near the crime scene at the time of the murder?

Payne: Listen, kid, I have this case down tight. Your defendant there is one of 10 people who could have possibly committed the crime at hand.

Reiker: … One of 10? How do you figure?

Payne: Let's just call them the tools of the trade. Specifically, the tool set a Robo-Tech like her uses daily.

Eggman: Ah, you must be referring to the Omnitools, no?

Reiker: Omnitools?

Eggman: You're familiar with the concept of an army knife, correct? Imagine a compact device like that, equipped with every screwdriver, wrench, and key needed to access all the technical parts of my machines, including Robians. This one is assigned to her.

Yanshu's Omnitool has been added to Court Record.

Payne: No one could have accessed the stolen parts without those tools, not to mention that Yanshu was the last person to meet with the victim, during a routine maintenance checkup…

That was anything but routine!

Eggman: Uh... Interesting. In what way was it not routine?

Payne: Well, the perpetrator is right here. Why don't we ask her? Miss, let's start with your name and occupation.

Yanshu: Eep! I, um… M-… My name is Yanshu Dryll. I'm a Class C Robo-Tech, f-for the Main Division…

Payne: And if I'm correct, you assisted the victim…

On the day of the murder!?

Yanshu: W-well, yes, but that doesn't mean I killed him!

Eggman: The court will be the judge of that. Now, if you could please testify regarding this maintenance appointment you had.

Yanshu: Y-yes doctor- I mean, sir! I mean-… Y-yes, your honor!

Testimony 1 - The Maintenance Appointment

1:) I had been assigned to Flash to do a routine checkup, scheduled for Wednesday at noon.

2:) All the required checks were proceeding as normal, and the appointment was rather short.

3:) My boss came by and signed off on my maintenance sheet…

4:) … And shortly after that, Flash left, just like he usually does. That was the last time I saw him.

Reiker: (Hm… Not much to work with... At least that old cat has just as little information as I do.)

Reiker: (But if that’s really the case, why does he look so confident…?)

Payne: … Really? That's all you have to say?

Yanshu: Y-yes, and it’s the truth! Wh-… What more could you want?

Eggman: I will kindly ask the prosecution to not badger the witness. Now, defense, are you ready for the cross examination?

Reiker: (I need more information… Just gotta dive into the old Thought Pool and figure out what to ask. Maybe I'll glean some new information! Once I think I've got it down pat, I can Present an idea by connecting a Statement with an Item in the Court Record!)

[offscreen-gloomverse-probably]

Amadeus: I could never hate you. I mean, unless you became like a villain or something, then we'd have to talk.

Petunia: Sweetie, if I became a villain you'd just assume I had a good reason for it and I'd wake up to find you drinking coffee from a "World's Best Minion" mug.

Amadeus: …true

[eatingoutmen]

⌜ 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐎𝐎𝐍 ⌟

💌 : 𝜗𝜚 author’s note : please keep in mind that these stories may or may not be released in the order I put set it on, and that each of them are all separate stories and do not have a connection to one another; I will decide for myself in which story should I work on first and then so on and so forth. 𝜗𝜚

˚₊‧꒰ა❤︎໒꒱ ‧₊˚ STORY 1 ˚₊‧꒰ა❤︎໒꒱ ‧₊˚

“ A SINFUL REDEMPTION . ”

𖦹 IDEA BY : @hornydilfsinyourarea

𖤍 SUMMARY : You have committed a grave sin and went to ask for the priest for redemption, but in order to get it, you must give him something first in order to be forgiven.

𖤐 PAIRINGS : Father Sal Tedeschi x Male Reader

⚠︎ CONTENT WARNINGS ; mentions of murder, mentions of family abuse, sex inside a church, semi-public sex, exhibitionism, praise kink, humiliation kink, slow and sensual to fast and rough sex, creampie, porn with plot.

˚₊‧꒰ა❤︎໒꒱ ‧₊˚ STORY 2 ˚₊‧꒰ა❤︎໒꒱ ‧₊˚

“ EAT ME OUT , FUCK MY STRESS AWAY . ”

𖤍 SUMMARY : The Professor, or rather your secret boyfriend has been so stressed out from the heist and the chaos from the battles of the law, so he calls you into his office in need of something. You, an oblivious but obedient man decided to pay your boss a visit, little did you know that you were gonna be his personal fuck toy stress reliever.

𖤐 PAIRINGS : [FTM] Sergio Marquina x Male Reader

⚠︎ CONTENT WARNINGS ; cunnilingus, blowjob, handjob, teasing, fingering, slight mean/bratty! reader, punishments, brat taming, exhibitionism, p in v, pussydrunk reader, praising, oral sex (both receiving and giving), slow and teasing sex, fast and rough sex, creampie, bondage (BDSM), dom/sub dynamic, porn with plot.

˚₊‧꒰ა❤︎໒꒱ ‧₊˚ STORY 3 ˚₊‧꒰ა❤︎໒꒱ ‧₊˚

“ MAKE ME , DETECTIVE . ”

𖦹 IDEA BY : @hornydilfsinyourarea

𖤍 SUMMARY : You have been interrogating Berlin for hours on end, you tried everything to get some information on where the next heist is going to be out of the cocky man but nothing worked, so you decided to finally take matters in your own hands, by pleasuring persuading him with your skillful ways of seduction.

𖤐 PAIRINGS : Berlin/Andrés de Fonollosa x Male Reader

⚠︎ CONTENT WARNINGS ; oral sex, handjob, blowjob, throat fucking, penetrative sex, cock warming, bondage (BDSM), teasing, edging, overstimulation, brat taming, degrading kink, humiliation kink, fast and rough sex, orgasm denial, creampie, porn with plot, plot twist in the end.

˚₊‧꒰ა❤︎໒꒱ ‧₊˚ STORY 4 ˚₊‧꒰ა❤︎໒꒱ ‧₊˚

“ MY HEART’S TORN BETWEEN TWO SOULS . ”

𖦹 IDEA BY : @hornydilfsinyourarea

𖤍 SUMMARY : You have had feelings for Raquel for a long time now while working with her on capturing the Professor, but when she joined the other side, you were left heartbroken and now tasked to hunt her down and possibly hurting her. In the end of all of that chaos, you left the law and now live alone in a peaceful and quiet life away from the world. But what happens when the woman you still love finds her way back into your life with her new fiancé asking for help?

𖤐 PAIRINGS : Raquel Murillo x Male Reader x Sergio Marquina

⚠︎ CONTENT WARNINGS ; mentions of Sergio & Raquel being engaged, mentions Reader still not moving on from Raquel, Reader getting jealous of Sergio, pussydrunk Reader, slow-burn, angst, fluff, smut, kissing, making out, cuckholding, dom/sub/dom dynamic, oral sex, blowjob, handjob, cunnilingus, threesome sex, spit roasting, anal penetration, vaginal and anal, pegging, cock warming, body worship, praise kink, fast and rough sex, creampie, porn with plot.

˚₊‧꒰ა❤︎໒꒱ ‧₊˚ STORY 5 ˚₊‧꒰ა❤︎໒꒱ ‧₊˚

“ LA COMPETENCIA . ”

𖤍 SUMMARY : Berlin and Professor, or rather; Andrés and Sergio, set up a competetion on which one of them manages to sleep with you.

𖤐 PAIRINGS : Sergio Marquina x Male Reader x Andrés de Fonollosa

⚠︎ CONTENT WARNINGS ; Reader goes by the codename “Seoul”, alcohol, sub/dom/sub dynamic, blowjob, deepthroating, teasing, brat taming, orgasm denial, multiple orgasms, cumplay, fast and rough sex, penetrative sex, oral sex, creampie, cock warming, porn with plot.

ʚ all works belong to @eatingoutmen do NOT steal, copy or repost anywhere without my permission from ME personally; reblogs and interactions are fine. ɞ

[saintsenara]

I’ve curious about something you said… you mention that you believe 💯 that Barty Crouch Jr was a full on DE/Blood purist Before being sent to Azkaban but to me the trial scene made me think otherwise- could you elaborate on why you think he was faking and is a true DE?

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

barty crouch jr. is - obviously - a fascinating character. but this doesn't override the fact that his primary purpose in goblet of fire is to be a narrative device: the plot twist of the century at the denouement of the book, when "professor moody" is revealed as an imposter; and a man everyone assumed to be dead is revealed to be alive; and a man many people [including harry and, it's implied, dumbledore] suspected - on the basis of his performance at his trial - might simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, rather than a fanatical death eater, is revealed to be... a fanatical death eater, who has been working for a full year to facilitate voldemort's resurrection.

like in a murder mystery, the narrative purpose of crouch jr.'s unmasking at the end of the book is to reveal that several things the text presents as clues before harry [the reader surrogate] has all the information are actually red herrings once he does.

the first of these is that, like philosopher's stone, goblet of fire goes out of its way to suggest that the faithful death eater at hogwarts is snape - which it does magnificently:

A grim smile twisted his lopsided mouth. “Oh if there’s one thing I hate,” he muttered, more to himself than to Harry, and his magical eye was fixed on the left-hand corner of the map, “it’s a Death Eater who walked free...” Harry stared at him. Could Moody possibly mean what Harry thought he meant?

harry - and, therefore, the reader - is, of course, immediately primed to interpret this as the real moody suggesting that snape is still suspected of being a loyal death eater. what we learn later, of course, is that crouch-as-moody is actually accusing snape of being disloyal:

“I told you, Harry... I told you. If there’s one thing I hate more than any other, it’s a Death Eater who walked free. They turned their backs on my master when he needed them most.”

and the second is that goblet of fire treats barty crouch sr. not as a villain - per se - but as one of the long line of civil servants who appear in the series whose commitment to doing everything by the book - being precise, bureaucratic, inflexible, and so on - only ends up making them extraordinarily cruel. crouch is the precursor to how percy will behave in order of the phoenix, and he also has numerous things in common with how dolores umbridge [an unambiguous villain] and rufus scrimgeour [an antagonist, but not a villain] are written.

the text suggests on multiple occasions prior to its denouement that crouch's rigidity made him incapable of mercy [a virtue the series really values].

but, in addition to this, it suggests that crouch's cardinal sin isn't that he didn't show mercy to the genuinely guilty... but that he didn't show mercy to the innocent.

how do we know this? because he's the man who's responsible for the miscarriage of justice which defines the series:

Sirius’s face darkened. He suddenly looked as menacing as he had the night when Harry first met him, the night when Harry still believed Sirius to be a murderer. “Oh I know Crouch all right,” he said quietly. “He was the one who gave the order for me to be sent to Azkaban - without a trial.”

sirius also tells us that crouch was power-hungry and corrupt:

"Crouch’s principles might’ve been good in the beginning - I wouldn’t know. He rose quickly through the Ministry, and he started ordering very harsh measures against Voldemort’s supporters. The Aurors were given new powers - powers to kill rather than capture, for instance. And I wasn’t the only one who was handed straight to the dementors without trial. Crouch fought violence with violence, and authorized the use of the Unforgivable Curses against suspects. I would say he became as ruthless and cruel as many on the Dark Side."

and he also gives the reader a nibble at the other half of this red herring, when he suggests that barty crouch jr. might have been nothing more than a victim of his father's ruthlessness, just like winky - the innocent house elf whose cruel treatment at crouch sr.'s hands not only infuriates hermione, but is also given by sirius as proof of crouch's near-villainy:

“Was his son a Death Eater?” said Harry.  “No idea,” said Sirius, still stuffing down bread. “I was in Azkaban myself when he was brought in. This is mostly stuff I’ve found out since I got out. The boy was definitely caught in the company of people I’d bet my life were Death Eaters - but he might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, just like the house-elf.”

when harry ends up in the pensieve a couple of chapters later, then, he and the reader are primed to view barty crouch jr.'s hysterics on the stand as authentic, to be horrified that crouch sr. could send his son to azkaban with such brutal ease, and to highly suspect that his conviction - like sirius' - was illegitimate.

but - of course - the twist at the end of the book is that harry [and sirius] is completely wrong about this.

barty crouch sr.'s decision to send his own son to azkaban was the right one. and the thing that ruined him was not making a ruthless decision, but making a merciful one.

because, as barty crouch jr. tells us, his father breaking him out of azkaban, around a year after sending him there, meant nothing to him... other than the chance to return to voldemort:

“And what did your father do with you, when he had got you home?” said Dumbledore quietly. “Staged my mother’s death. A quiet, private funeral. That grave is empty. The house-elf nursed me back to health. Then I had to be concealed. I had to be controlled. My father had to use a number of spells to subdue me. When I had recovered my strength, I thought only of finding my master... of returning to his service.”

these are not the words of someone who was anything other than a sincere death eater when he and the lestranges attacked frank and alice longbottom.

and they are, therefore, the words of someone whose performance of horrified innocence - just in the wrong place at the wrong time - at his trial is one hundred percent fake.

[anderscim]

bagel’s drdt death predictions but they’re all based on character relationships and assumptions (lots of assumptions)

//spoilers for drdt ch1 + ch2 pt. 1

//long, long wall of text warning (nearly 4k words…)

i mean, the title explains it all.

there’s really nothing else other than my unhinged predictions which will likely be wildly incorrect compared to the actual outcome in DRDT.

so, as always, take this with a grain of salt

alright, let’s get straight into it.

arturo and j:

obviously these two have a… very interesting dynamic. they’re constantly at odds with each other, and this worsened especially after arturo found out about j’s family through her secret.

arturo is following j around and she hates it. arturo constantly crosses j’s boundaries, idolizes her, places her in his own “perfect image” that she doesn’t want to be a part of, and she (justifiably) hates it.

meanwhile, arturo sees j as one of the “beautiful people” that he idolizes and tries to get close to in order to improve his self value, possibly in an attempt to resolve his own insecurities. (okay i don’t think i’m gonna talk about this later so i’m gonna say it now. but based on the fact that arturo seems very attached to “societally valuable” things and people (major brands, celebrities, etc.) and the fact that he instantly pushes away things he sees as “ugly,” arturo may actually be trying to preserve a certain image of himself and/or his ego by surrounding himself with valuable things—which could be due to holding some sort of insecurity that he can’t be as “valuable” as others without those factors surrounding him constantly. maybe because he sees himself as “ugly.” just a thought. not justifying his actions though. idk)

but though i love j with all my heart… i’m very, very scared that she’s going to be the culprit for this chapter.

except for the possible motive, there’s actually a suspicious amount of logical conclusions and reasonings one can make that point to j being the culprit.

this isn’t my post, but i’m going to put this here because u/Difficult-Parfait627 on reddit explained the logic significantly better than i could have:

i also saw some theories on j’s secret weapon (the remote) possibly opening trapdoors that only she could access, so that’s definitely another possible advantage.

aside from that, i find it intriguing that MonoTV makes specific mention of this detail regarding the playground:

it would be very, very interesting if this proved to be foreshadowing of some sort regarding arei’s murder. whether it would just be the height of the room that plays into a factor of the case, or the fact that the movie screening room and the playground are only separable by a single wall, or both—that, i don’t know. but seeing multiple prevailing theories it could be possible that this is more important than we think.

not only this, but during the trial j constantly pointed fingers at many people and jumped from suspect to suspect—which is exactly what min did as well, and might be an indication that j is desperate to pin the crime on someone else.

though i’m probably wrong

revision: the following is… likely incorrect (_ _;) i’ll keep what i originally said here for the sake of it, but just know that arturo is more likely to double down and shun himself even further from any guilt if this theory proves to be true. here’s a reblog chain ft. @/aquariiium that explains it really well!

but if j is the culprit for this case, it could actually lead to character development for arturo. after all, if j gets caught, he would probably blame himself—if he didn’t get so worked up over eden and the reveal of his secret, if he didn’t let j overhear the conversation—she might’ve not committed a murder. i think he might feel intense guilt that he let j die—especially since he’s so (unhealthily) attached to her.

don’t know man. just trying to give him redeeming qualities here lmao

essentially, i think j might die this chapter as the culprit for arei’s murder, and arturo will survive for at least the next few chapters. whether he’ll be a victim/killer in the last few chapters i’m unsure about at this current moment, but bear with me

side note: it would be absolutely cruel if whoever the killer is, they get a quiet execution in a way that reflects arei’s body discovery ;-; also tbh i’m probably wildly wrong about all of this. for you guys who say the true culprit is someone else (especially people who think it’s levi, eden, or whit), i see you and i do see why that’s definitely a possibility. take all of my theorizing with a grain of salt lmao

whit and charles:

(sorry i couldn’t find a proper CG for them haha)

ah, one of my favorite dynamics. i love these two so much

it’s cool to see how they’re actually quite open with each other now, compared to the beginning where they were established as near-total opposites of each other (mainly looks at the free time event)

but as it goes with many ships in danganronpa…they’ll probably end in tragedy. unfortunately

i believe i made a really brief analysis earlier on how whit deals with grief by completely deflecting his true sentiments through the use of humor, and i think as of now this still holds true. whit’s bottling up his grief, and sooner or later he’ll have to come to terms with it.

whit has developed an understanding for charles, though, and seems to be genuinely considerate towards him. plus, he’s willing to admit to any mistakes he makes and is very open about it to charles, which indicates how close they actually are

charles struggles with not only his hemophobia + necrophobia (fear of blood and fear of corpses/things associated with death), but with the pity from others that result from it.

he really, really hates being pitied. we actually saw this earlier in the FTE between charles and whit as well—he seemed very worked up with how whit was “belittling” charles to make teruko laugh. obviously whit figured this out, admitted what he did, and eventually became more considerate of charles’ feelings. charles notices this and decides to open up to him.

👆 this line is so cute btw

i think though, especially because they’re so close to each other it’ll really impact their characters when tragedy strikes. personally i’m more scared that charles is going to die (as a victim) because plot-wise it would force whit to come to terms with his grief—the grief over not just his mother but the participants of the killing game—that he has pushed into the back of his mind for a long time.

but at the same time charles surviving is also definitely a possibility given his importance in the plot right now—and not only that, if whit dies, i think he would have a clear moment of feeling ashamed of himself for not even being able to look at his partner’s body and being unable to come to terms with whit’s death until later.

either way, one of them is definitely doomed to die, and the other is probably going to be a survivor.

for me, regardless of who bites the dust, they’re going to be a chapter 3 death. i personally believe this because it would give both of them time to cope and face their grief in their respective character arcs over the next few chapters—but also because i think chapter 4 is going to be surrounding a separate character dynamic.

nico, ace, and hu:

yes, it’s the “two people who absolutely hate each other and the one person that stands in between” trio.

as already established within the series, nico and ace hate each other. i don’t even need to put screenshots as proof—plus nico literally attempted to murder ace.

and by the way, for those of you who said other people manipulated nico into doing it, i think that would be very contradictory with what the series is trying to get at. nico is their own independent person—and they’ve tried to solidify that fact. this specific murder attempt was to probably establish that nico has their own limits, despite how much they are infantilized by others. if it’s true that someone manipulated nico, i feel like it would… just take away from nico’s individuality and turn them into someone to be pitied upon.

not only that, even nico established themselves that they have a tendency to be agressive.

there’s not much to analyze here, but it definitely is a strong indication that nico does have their own limits and will not act all innocent-like if those boundraries are crossed. it’s interesting though, because this kinda makes nico a foil to ace. while ace is “all bark and no bite,” and/or accusing and insulting everyone 24/7 but never acting upon it, nico is the opposite: not the type for words but will genuinely act if they are pushed hard enough.

i genuinely think nico attempted to murder ace on their own accord. plus, it would fit perfectly with one of the themes from this chapter

anyways—though i’m not going to condone her for infantilizing nico—there’s one person who’s kinda been keeping both of them in check. (or moreso, keeping ace in check) quite literally, hu defending nico, despite the fact that her way of doing so was really flawed, temporarily stopped their conflicts with ace from escalating in a short amount of time. at least until ace almost got murdered though.

the thing is, hu sees things in black and white. she trusts a little too much into nico and she thinks they desperately need to be protected. meanwhile, she essentially antagonizes ace, and didn’t seem to attempt to sympathize with the fact he almost got murdered. she didn’t make many attempts (especially during the second chapter) to genuinely understand their “grey areas,” instead jumping to what she knows. and… it’s understandable why she does this, but regardless, it’s one of her greatest flaws. however, that flaw is exactly what humanizes hu. she cares immensely about others, even if that means trusting them too much. she puts it on herself to help anyone she can. she wants others to rely on her, even if that means she inadvertently forces the role of “the damsel in distress” onto them as a result. though it doesn’t exactly justify her actions, i felt it was still important to bring up. (by the way i actually like hu, plus i love the concept of a really flawed but sincere mother figure. i don’t hate hu at all lmao i think she’s a really good character)

especially as of ch2 ep11, hu seems to show possible signs of change after getting called out by david. his so-called “betrayal” (by throwing hu’s personal impression and expectations of himself out the window) might begin a development arc allowing hu to see past her… i guess… her biases.

but, i’m scared that hu’s character arc would end (whether abruptly or gradually) in the middle of the series, rather than continuing to the very last episode of DRDT—and that she’ll get killed/executed before she can truly develop and leave the killing game with a new perspective.

additionally, as far as i can tell i don’t expect nico and ace to ever make up during the killing game—because in traditional danganronpa, that never seems to be an actual occurrence. not only that, but the whole tension surrounding their situation has already gone too far—neither of them will probably ever forgive each other after how far this conflict went (especially ace, who almost got killed by nico). i personally think hu, though the way she went about this was not exactly the best, acted as a “mediator” of sorts between ace and nico by throwing herself in and breaking up each conflict. if hu dies, their relationship will completely fall apart and their arguments will likely escalate past the point of no return—which seems to be a perfect setup for a murder case. personally i’d put hu as a chapter three death (regardless of victim or culprit), nico and ace’s dynamic escalating to a breaking point during chapter four, and either nico or ace dying in chapter four (with the other one surviving the killing game). my personal opinion as for who dies is nico, but mainly because i think ace might actually be a survivor.

ace and levi:

oh no i wasn’t done talking about ace yet, did you seriously think i would stop talking about him after all of that? plus i. didn’t give ace a proper character analysis in that previous section

ace and levi’s relationship is very unique as well. at first, ace and levi felt at least relatively comfortable around each other—which was really rare for someone like ace, who’s essentially scared of everything and holds many insecurities that prevent him from easily trusting people/processes/objects.

over time during chapter 1, ace and levi get closer to each other. ace develops a feeling of safety when around levi, since to him, he seems like one of the only few people who don’t just see him as a coward.

and that was true for a while, at least, until this happened.

this blog post by @thefandomenchantress explains the effects of levi’s dialogue here better than i ever could. go read this. please but essentially—the death threat is really important because it essentially shattered ace’s sense of security around levi, but the fact that levi out of all people called ace a coward really seals the deal for him. this is my interpretation, but ace probably felt that levi was more non-judgmental than the others and was also one of the few people that saw past his insecurities. so levi specifically targeting one of his largest weaknesses, probably hurts a lot.

not only that, but ace genuinely seems to believe that this is what levi actually thinks about him. though he focuses on the death threat here, i think it still holds true that he’s really paranoid of levi and thinks he actually hates ace, despite their dynamic in the first chapter.

on the other hand, levi regrets threatening and insulting ace in the first trial, and makes attempts to apologize and make up with him. he even asks teruko for advice here.

since ace is really insecure, it’s really difficult to make him actually forgive levi. ace’s paranoia makes him believe that others are out to “get him” and cause him harm, especially when it comes to people who bluntly pointed out his insecurities in the past. and as a person who genuinely hates those parts of himself and wants to get rid of his paranoia, it makes ace act really aggressive when people begin pointing out those issues again. after all, they’re reminders of what he thinks he is.

👆this quote is actually from an earlier point, and is ace talking about why he still races despite being scared of horses. but it’s representative of how he hates his own reputation and his insecurities that are connected with it—which he desperately doesn’t want people to see. that’s why ace is so aggressive. it’s because he feels he needs to bluff and act all “strong” to prevent people from targeting his insecurities.

the reason why i actually believe ace would be a survivor is because of some personal unhinged interpretations i have for chapter four. like i mentioned earlier, i personally believe that the current conflict between nico and ace will reach its climax during chapter four, which will likely also be a major part of the murder case during that chapter. and uh. if we go by traditional danganronpa patterns we know which character is probably doomed during that chapter (that is, assuming DRDT still follows a similar equation). though i admit the stereotype of “buff character dies during fourth chapter” is a bit overused—the thing is, if the conflict between nico and ace does actually reach its climax during that chapter, it actually makes sense relationship-wise for levi to play a major part of it. getting into major “this is probably wrong” territory here despite the fact that ace is currently distrusting towards levi right now, i think there’s still some part of him that harbors more personal feelings towards levi (whether that’s positive or negative)—i don’t think ace would be attacking levi so much otherwise. he probably feels like he was betrayed by levi, likely due to their changes in character dynamic during the first chapter. i also find it interesting how ace has always harbored a feeling of resentment towards nico—and i personally feel that this is because nico also reminds ace of one of his insecurities. they represent something that ace hates about himself, or they represent the antithesis of this insecurity—as for what specifically, i’m not sure, but it likely has something to do with ace’s paranoia. that’s probably why he attacks nico so much—because they remind him of something he hates about himself.

if both of them die, in the same chapter, i think ace would start doubting himself. all that would be left are people who have already seen how insecure he is. i think he’d lose his “purpose” and “relationships” in some ways, in that case—which would actually be a great setup to his secret quote: “i don’t know what to do with myself anymore.” ace markey existential crisis at 3 anyone /j

okay but. like. idk what i was even trying to say there. just take all of that with a grain of salt

okay, finally:

david:

(okay he’s literally just his own category at this point.) (i like to psychoanalyze him independently because i uh. have so much to say about him)

if you couldn’t already tell from my multiple theory posts about david, i have a considerable amount of interpretations regarding his character:

his current demeanor doesn’t reflect his true personality, but it’s not exactly like he’s a constantly optimistic person either

he’s not actually manipulating everyone into making the worst decisions. even his plan, though it wasn’t foolproof, was probably better than any of the options the cast had. however he did try to preserve his own image a little while presenting the plan since he’s trying to hide his depression

(both of those bullets are linked to other theory posts i made that elaborate more on these points)

either way, david is currently established as the “antagonist” character for this series, which was especially solidified after his breakdown in ch2 ep11. i think we all know what usually happens to the antagonist character in chapter 5.

however—david, unlike other canon danganronpa antagonists (especially nagito and kokichi from goodbye despair and killing harmony), has different motivations. rather than acting fully evil and/or cynical in an effort for the “greater good,” to me, he just… seems like he’s acting cynical and manipulative because that’s who he thinks he actually is. he’s playing a glorified version of his self-doubts and insecurities. so, to be completely honest, i think rather than him acting in a way to throw everyone off and ultimately end the killing game, i think david’s just in the middle of a breakdown and is acting suicidal. he’s actually pretty smart, so unless he was really emotional/desperate, i don’t think his lying would be as obvious as it is now. i think he honestly would’ve thought about it more (/lh) if he was genuinely attempting to end the killing game through lying and making everyone vote wrong. plus, we have already seen in chapter one that david doesn’t really… think straight when he’s emotional. we saw this during xander’s trial with the way he kept accusing teruko and thought she was the culprit despite the gradual accumulation of evidence that proved her innocence. (i think it’s general consensus that david actually did care about xander—and arei actually—and was therefore pretty emotional regarding their deaths, but i will make a post on that later if necessary.)

if david really is breaking down and acting suicidal in the second trial, i think it would fit if the plot decided to pull some irony and… y’know, have the one person who wants to die the most actually be a survivor. i really have no backing to this (and tbh i think i’m saying this because i want david to live LMAO), and i don’t exactly have any concrete evidence that establishes david as an antagonist character that doesn’t follow canon danganronpa antagonist traditions, but even then i still think it would be pretty cool if that happened.

god. this was. unhinged.

okay but watch me be entirely wrong on this lmao

i hope you guys could actually understand that entire wall of text because i don’t even know what i was writing halfway through also i didn’t put chapter 5/6 here because i literally have no idea what’s going to happen. it’s just going to be full of plot twists and i know it

i also didn’t exactly put a clear amount of killers/survivors so they don’t exactly. match up. plus i didn’t actually do a thorough analysis on veronika, rose, eden, teruko, etc so i’m probably going to have to go through those if i genuinely feel like doing a proper death order. (something is telling me rose and veronika are both going to get significant character development though, especially in the later chapters. we don’t have too much information on either of them yet (moreso veronika than rose) so i’m kinda waiting until we get more scenes to make assumptions about those two in particular)

but in summary:

j might die this chapter, arturo’s going to get significant character development as a result

no matter what, charwhit is absolutely doomed and one of them is going to die in the third chapter while the other is a survivor

hu will probably die in the third chapter, leading the conflict between nico and ace to escalate and reach a climax during the fourth chapter

(of course, this is assuming drdt follows traditional danganronpa and has a double murder during the third chapter. i’m not too much of a fan of the trope myself, but for the sake of organization)

nico and levi, who ace has the most personal (mostly negative) emotions towards at the current moment, will probably die during the fourth chapter leading ace to have an existential crisis and get character development (and will have to navigate his way to the end)

david is a non-traditional antag so he might die during chapter 5, but i personally see it more ironic and fitting to see him survive until the end seeing his current emotions and character

anyways.

i know there’s a lot of you who are significantly better at analyzing certain characters than i ever could so please please don’t hesitate to correct me if there’s an assumption i made that’s incorrect, and/or if you have anything i said that you could refute

plus i didn’t like. rewatch the entire series to make this i just had a long train of thought and searched for certain scenes that fit the most to what i was saying even if my assumptions weren’t correct

and as always. take this all with a grain of salt

(no but seriously, feel free to voice your opinions on this as well! i’ll definitely listen to them)

[lyledebeast]

The Duality of Martin

Over the years, let's not dwell on how many, I've found that a lot of people's problems with The Patriot lie with its main character, and most of those lie with his inconsistency. Benjamin Martin doesn't support the war, but then changes his mind when the very things he predicted come to pass. He loves his children, but he abandons them multiple times. He's a devout Christian who spends most of the film's plot pursuing vengeance. He has and eats his cake like a certain queen of France, but without facing similar consequences, of course. All this contributes to a character who is meant to be complex but is instead incredibly frustrating to watch. So, this rewatch, I wanted to think about how he might actually be made interesting.

Commentors I have much respect for have suggested that just acknowledging that Martin is not a paragon of moral virtue would go a long way. I agree, but I think acknowledging that there are two different Martins would go further. There is one man who is genuinely concerned for his family and wants to keep them from harm, and it is this same Martin who plans to return to his children after burying Gabriel. It's possibly even the same Martin who declares that his men will, henceforth, spare any wounded or surrendering British soldiers while nearly standing on a pile of dead ones. Then there's the other guy, the one who arms his children and takes them to a massacre where they collectively kill twenty men, punctuated by him hacking a fleeing soldier into mincemeat. It's not just that Martin has a temper when provoked, because the same Martin who does this, who ordered the atrocities at Fort Wilderness, also believes what he does is justifiable.

While watching over Gabriel's corpse, Martin asks, "Why do men think they can justify death?" Well, Benjamin, let's rewind to just about twenty minutes or so earlier when you said, "As long as your officers target civilians, I will order the shooting of officers at the start of every engagement." I mean . . . if you don't know . . .

Wouldn't it be so much better if the violence, and the justification for it, belonged to one part of Martin's psyche and the awareness of guilt and consequences belonged to the other, and the central conflict of this film was between these two parts? It would mean giving up Colonel Tavington as an antagonist, which would be a wildly different film, but just hear me out. If Martin's main conflict was internal, there would be opportunity for genuine reflection and change. Martin could actually deal with his past instead of just shutting it up in a trunk and hoping everyone forgets about it.

The story we have spends about a quarter of its screentime setting Martin up as this humble, peace-loving father, but that characterization is quickly overshadowed by the violent, sanctimonious one and only trotted out when needed to do damage control for the second characterization's antics. Instead of actually giving Martin complexity, the narrative relies on Tavington as a foil to show what a bad war criminal looks like. That this contrast minimizes Martin's atrocities is probably unavoidable.

Martin's choice of violence in this film is, initially, a response to British violence. I'm not saying the British wouldn't commit atrocities in the version I imagine, but that could be accomplished without a British main antagonist. Let's say a British officer does order Gabriel executed, burn the Martin home, and murder the Continental soldiers and Thomas. But then we never see that officer again. Let's say Martin and his sons carry out the massacre in the woods, but rather than having Martin say "I have done nothing, and of that I am ashamed" after he's done . . . THAT, let's make THAT a relapse he deeply regrets. Let's have him endure the fear in his children's eyes for more than just one (1) night. Let's have Martin. not Gabriel, be the one to flip out over his men shooting surrendering British soldiers. Martin claiming to be traumatized by his own actions at Fort Wilderness nearly twenty years ago would carry a lot more weight if he hadn't committed similarly extreme acts just months prior that are never referenced again. Let's acknowledge the horror of Martin's violent actions and let his better nature prevail.

I'm not saying this would be a better movie than Roland Emmerich's The Patriot (2000), but I could sympathize with this version of Martin far more than the one who gets to enjoy all the benefits of violence without facing any of the consequences (at least not himself). This has been an intellectual exercise. Obviously. the version with Tavington is more enjoyable because . . . Tavington!

[stars-in-a-jam-jar]

Thinking about how I developed an Immediate attachment to Damian Wayne the second I learned he existed. Not even the second I saw him, the second I heard his name in a YouTube video about those animated movies he's part of, something in me went 'We are going to make liking this boy the newest facet of our personality' and that was when I was like *15 years old*. I've never actually directly read any of the comics he appears in because accessing them required (in order) money I didn't have, library locations I didn't have access to, piracy skills I had too much on my plate to acquire, and more energy to go further out of my way than my ADHD would allow me. So instead I simply kept up with my boy from afar.

My image of him is both so clear and probably So Far Off Base.

He is haughty and entitled. Because he is Ten Years Old and raised to believe if he was mean and deadly enough he could do whatever he wanted forever. Because his existence was functionally an experiment to see How Powerful Of A Being Batman's genetics could create and now he is obsessed with his own bloodline and birthright in a way No Healthy Person Is. Because in all the ways that matter to him, he has succeeded through Raw Stubborn Determination up until he is confronted with the fact that he cannot please his father while staying this way.

And isn't every child entitled to their father's love? So why does his father disapprove of him so much? Why does he treat these other people like family when Damian is his real family? Why does he work with them so closely but tell Damian to step back and follow orders? Damian is better than all of them in all the ways that matter most, obviously! He's earned his father's love and he should have it by default anyway!

But Damian doesn't know what love looks like. He knows what expectations and tests and goals and master plans look like. When you love someone you watch over them and notice things about them, but the only thing he was ever watched for, the only thing that was noticed about him all 6-to-10 years of his life was his ability to dispense death and navigate mortal peril and rigid high-control-group power structures. He doesn't know, he doesn't know how loved he is when Bruce tells him to put the blades away, to reel himself in, to not commit murders, to go to bed on time. How easily and automatically his father looks at him and sees a child in his care. Because to Damian, 'child' is a demeaning powerless role that only applied to him for as long as he had yet to grasp the mechanics of walking.

He doesn't realize how lonely and starved for affection he is. His slowness to believe in others and his overly formal abrasive speech speak to someone so unsocialized with anyone it'd be appropriate for him to socialize with that nothing short of Multiple Years Of De-Conditioning could possibly get him to a place where he can comfortably exist in a casual, gentle setting.

And then his dad Fucking Dies (this is comics and also It's Fucking Batman so obviously he gets better, But Like Still) and he has to orient his life around one of the people he started this whole journey territorially attacking for daring to think he had a comparable place in the heart of Damian's father just because he came into Bruce's life first. He becomes Dick Grayson's Robin, and suddenly everything about the way he's been operating gets shuffled and shaken and crackled into a shape that looks like a properly heroic young man. He connects to Dick in a way he's never connected with another person, he doesn't just feel a sense of 'Yes, this is The Correct Way Of Going About Things', he feels comfortable and like he's part of a team and not a Power Structure.

Has anyone else seen this? Do they touch on this Even A Little in the comics? All I know is the broad strokes and yet I Am Obsessed With This Boy. He's lifted from the original context of his life into the role of 'Batman's youngest son' and is floundering for a place in this family, but he doesn't understand that 'love' and 'family' and 'power structures' are not synonymous words. He is trying! He's trying to prove he's so cool and competent and valuable and why does everyone keep treating him like one of the least competent forms of person??? He's not a child, he's Damian Wayne Al-Guhl. He takes the mantle of Robin for himself because he refuses the idea that he should be asking permission, because to ask is an admission that not everything is meant for him all the time.

I'm so sleepy I wanna say more but I've already written so much about a character who I've only directly experienced in Wildly Inconsistent Forms.

I just like Damian Wayne a bunch, he's my blorbo.

[holden-norgorov]

Some more small details from "Restless" I really like

I know I've already talked at length about this episode in the analysis linked above, but there's just so much about Restless that's worth exploring and pointing out, and upon my latest rewatch of it I couldn't refrain myself from highlighting all the small details about it that I find most amusing and interesting, and that somehow I don't remotely see talked about enough.

So here it is:

1) Harmony trying to bite Giles while he uncaringly and deliberately ignores her, in Willow's dream. It foreshadows Giles's staunch and glaring inability to recognize the kind of path Willow is gradually embarking on and her (somewhat latent) capability for evil until it's already too late to prevent or properly tackle. It also recalls Something Blue, when Willow's misuse of magic literally renders Giles blind. I think there's a leitmotif spread through S4 to S6 about Giles failing to meet what can be properly framed as his responsibility, as the only expert and adult member of the group and the one who has already experienced first-hand the addictive component of dark magic usage in his youth ("It was an extraordinary high!", The Dark Age), when it comes to making sure Willow doesn't develop an unhealthy relationship with her reliance on magic that in turn might make her vulnerable to the idea of abusing it for morally questionable ends. Giles completely underestimating Harmony's evil nature and its potentiality of killing him here, to the point of framing the moment as comical, is a reflection of his underestimation of the way magic abuse is substantially molding Willow's nature into something potentially lethal for herself and others.

2) Another detail that I find amusing in Willow's dream is the subtle parallelism between the Harmony/Giles scene I just mentioned, and the moment of the play shown here in the picture.

In both occasions, Giles and Buffy blatantly ignore Harmony and focus on Riley. Giles explicitly tells Harmony to cut her annoyance off and disregards Harmony's "props?" in favour of Riley's "props?". As already said, I think that's a commentary on Giles' lack of involvement in Willow's growing practice of magic and the possibly dangerous consequences such negligence might entail. On the other hand, though, Buffy also has her back turned on Harmony and completely ignores her crying next to the corpse of an unidentified man a couple of scenes later. She's too busy ranting to Riley against men's behavior, possibly foreshadowing their future break-up, whose first signals can be seen right from the following episode. But if we take Harmony as a stand-in for undetected Dark Willow in the rise also in this moment, then this scene aptly foreshadows S6's finale by having Willow, filled with nihilistic dread and pain, melting down after killing Warren (the result of her unchecked immersion in dark magic). As a consequence, Buffy being too distracted by an ossessive and unhealthy focus on a man while Willow gradually loses herself inside the dark magic to the point of committing murder can be framed as a parallelism to her Spike addiction in S6, and the role that addiction plays in making Buffy unable to prevent Willow from becoming Dark Willow. In a way, the scene seems to imply that Buffy's partly at fault, along with Giles, for ignoring Willow.

3) The final scene of Willow's dream, when Welcome To The Hellmouth is directly referenced. The multiple levels of interpretation of that moment fascinate me. I've already talked about this in my aforementioned analysis, but basically you can draw a specific meaning of that scene depending on whether you consider current Willow, S1!Willow or Willow as the Spirit of Buffy The Entity. It's beautifully complex. From S4!Willow's perspective, she is afraid her newly gained confidence, stemming from her improved experience, social connections and emotional maturity acquired in U.C. Sunnydale compared to her high school days, is actually a facade she is wearing to hide what she really is and feels she will always be: "just some girl" (Wrecked), "a loser" (Two To Go) or a life-long victim of bullying and domestic neglect that will never be anything else. I think this greatly foreshadows basically the core issues that will be at the center of her unhealthy dependance on Tara as a source of an inflated self-perception of amazingness, and of her resulting unhealthy dependance on magic as a compensatory source of that same self-perception as soon as Tara is no longer available to her. It's indeed worthwhile to note, and very telling, that the two occasions where Willow most vehemently dives into unhealthy magic abuse in S6 (respectively, Smashed/Wrecked and Villains/Two To Go/Grave) come right after Tara abandones her (respectively, Tabula Rasa and Seeing Red). On the other hand, from S1!Willow's perspective, she is afraid that the people she loves (Oz and Tara) are actually conspiring against her behind her back, thus reinforcing the idea that all she really deserves to be is bullied; that her life-long best friend and fellow bullying victim (Xander) doesn't actually like her and is as tired of her as everyone else ("Who cares?!"), and that Buffy, the new girl, is going to leave her to die a gruesome death (at the hands of the Order of Aurelius in Welcome To The Hellmouth and of the First Slayer here) instead of embracing back her Call and coming to her rescue. In fact, as opposed to what actually happened in the pilot, the Buffy we see here is uninterested in saving S1!Willow, reinforcing the idea in S1!Willow that she is not worth saving. From the Spirit's perspective, instead, S1!Willow is trying to present an analysis of a book, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis), centered around a Christ-like figure whose role is to sacrifice himself on behalf of others (comparable to the Slayer) in order to motivate Buffy The Entity to embrace her destiny, but Buffy's Heart is still reluctant to accept that destiny (Xander makes his annoyance loudly known) and Buffy's Body is completely uninterested and just stares motionless back at her Spirit's vitalizing call, leading to its demise. Overall, a fantastic, deeply-layered scene.

4) Xander's "I'm a comfortador, also", directly followed by his performance of masculinity being analyzed by the Initiative. A great moment that summarizes his character's function and arc perfectly; his constant strive towards a kind of heroic, traditional masculinity that is capable of providing him with a sense of purpose and nobility, that he intimately craves as a result of the feeling of shame he attaches to his parents, his background and himself; and his comparably strong strive towards the acceptance of a double nature fighting inside him (Assertive Xander and Fearful Xander, The Replacement) and the need to integrate both of these sides of himself in his own identity, thereby coming to terms with not only his narrative place as The Hero's Nerd Pal as opposed to The Hero Full Stop (something S1 and S2 spent a lot of time on with relation to his character's function), but also with the existence of some kind of willingless inside him to be at ease with that role, and to own it. He's both looking for a conquest and for comfort. That's one of my absolute favourite character moments for him, in that it highlights his contradictions so well in such a simple way.

5) Xander calling his parents "vampires". I can't even begin to unravel what this says about him, and how with one very simple line the viewers are forced to basically rewind Xander's character altogether and put into question where the true motivations of a huge part of his choices, actions and behaviors in S1-3 actually come from, right from the get-go with Jesse's double-death (first as a human, and then as a vampire at the hands of Xander himself). This creates an incredibly interesting conundrum as well: does Xander call his parents "vampires" simply because he hates vampires and thinks of his parents as subhuman like them as a consequence of their toxic parenting, or does he call them "vampires" because his deep hatred of vampires actually originates from a correlation he made between them and their parents, based on how they both intimately victimized him (even physically, not just psychologically) and made him feel ashamed, worthless and without purpose for his entire life? "I'm inadequate. It's fine. I'm less than man" he says in The Harvest as if he's accostumed to hear such a thing about himself, right before following Buffy anyway to rescue Jesse from those vampires, in an attempt to prove to himself that he can stand up against his father them, if needed be. What if Xander viscerally hates vampires because they remind him of his father's violence and monstrous behavior towards both him and his mother for years? What if his deep-seated mistrust and callousness towards Soulful Angel and Spike, especially when they find themselves having direct influence on Buffy (or Willow), actually originates from his traumatic response to his domestically violent childhood that cemented in him the idea that real-life monsters can have a soul and still be evil and never change, and from his desire to protect his female friends from experiencing the same kind of abuse he was subjected to from those very monsters? What if part of his judgmental tendencies towards Buffy's emotional attachment to vampires (knowing full well they are vampires) is a defence mechanism he activates to protect himself from the idea that this might mean that his father (whom he sees as a vampire as well) could be also worthy of love and redemption, in spite of what he did to him? Or even worse, that his father may deserve to be loved more than him, despite being an abuser? ("Nah, forget it. I'm not him. I mean, I guess a guy's gotta be undead to make time with you", Prohecy Girl). I mean, I'm not exaggerating when I say that that simple line where he compares his parents to vampires completely redefined my understanding of Xander's character from head to toe. It gives him an additional astounding level of complexity that in my opinion is incredibly undervalued.

6) Xander subconsciously harboring the idea that Giles failed him as a father figure as well, by having Giles express paternal affection to Spike in his dream. This always makes me think about Giles never even showing up at the hospital in Empty Places, after Xander has lost an eye in the first battle against Caleb. As opposed to the deeply layered father-daughter dynamic he shares with Buffy, and the reciprocally fruitful relationship based on mutual respect, common expertise and a similarity in temperament and experience he has with Willow, Giles’s attitude towards Xander has always been one of obligated tolerance at best, straight-up annoyance at worst. Despite Xander’s relationship with his father being arguably the most problematic and traumatizing among the group, and despite Xander being the one who would have arguably benefited the most from gaining a surrogate father figure that could offer him guidance and set up a strong example, we’ve never seen anything other than irritation, dismissiveness or mockery coming from Giles towards him – and here we are being shown that Xander knows it to an extent, and suffers from it. It's a sad realization nonetheless, but I have to say that it particularly punches me because it comes right after the parents-as-vampires bit. I incredibly feel for Xander through this episode, ad through the entire show because of this episode. The way Xander averts his eyes from his father when he finally opens the basement door, full of fear and shame, his body responsive through traumatic signs... it really gets me.

7) Giles hypnotizing Buffy. A very evocative scene about the nature of relationships between Watchers and Slayers and, to an extent, men and women in the past, with Buffy's laugh and disregard foreshadowing her subversion of that system in Chosen.

8) Olivia crying in heavy make-up with a stroller turned upside down while Giles turns his attention on Spike. Another instance where multiple layers of interpretation are provided. On one hand, this qualifies as foreshadowing for Giles, who's definitely going to come to terms with his middle-life crisis by reinstating his position as Buffy's Watcher and turning his back from the opportunity to build a personal life in England, in the final scene of Buffy vs. Dracula. On the other hand, this is also Buffy's Mind coming to terms with the fact that her supernatural destiny is bound to force her to prematurely cut ties with her innocence (stroller turned upside down), and that she has to quickly take her mind out of mourning it (Olivia crying) and focus on the purpose of sacrificing herself for others (Spike's crucifix pose as the crowd ecstatically sighs with praise and relief). The closing moment of Giles's dream is also incredibly haunting, with his blood covering his eyes as he stares right towards the camera, and the viewers are finally able to connect the dots on what's happening.

9) I don't know exactly why, but there's something about the section of Buffy's dream where she's talking to Riley and Adam that particularly fascinates me. Buffy seems to react to Riley's stereotypical masculine presentation (he's at a corporate boardroom, dressed as a CEO, has just got a promotion, has a Freudian phallic-like gun pointed right at her, exudes confidence, etc.) with an uncharacteristically remissive feminine role (she's basically barefoot, in a cute dress, with a highly-pitched tone and an overtly agreeable demeanor towards him, is welcoming and smiling to him almost dutifully, proposes they celebrate together his promotion, etc.). The scene also makes a point to portray Buffy as unusually dumb, almost bimbo-like ("It-it's that a good?" she asks about the coffee-makers that think). Riley and Adam are also portrayed as basically engaging in "mansplaining" (a term I don't really like as I often think it gets misused, but that I think perfectly applies here). Riley paternalistically says "Baby, we're the government. It's what we do" and Adam adds "She's uncomfortable with certain concepts" talking about Buffy's ignorance of the true nature of her own powers. It seems to me that there's a specific tone about this whole interaction that I can't quite wrap my head around to this day, but at the same time it can be nothing but deliberate and purposeful, as I don't think it's something that I'm imagining. I'm sure part of the commentary is about the facadeness and ineffectuality of military structures as soon as real threats are to be handled with (as shown by Riley's suggestion to create a fort with pillows when the demons escape), but I have a sense that something else is being said here. Maybe a commentary on the Watcher's Council? On how they are as much institutionally powerful as they are only ornamentally useful in the fight against Evil? And maybe about how Slayers are asked to remissively accept that contradiction and never put it into question, resigning themselves to their instrument status? I don't know. But there's definitely something going on there.

10) Obviously the entire sequence between Sineya and Buffy is noteworthy, but I already tackled that in my analysis as well.

[gyllenhaalstories]

So I HAVE to ask!!! What's your thoughts on presumed innocent?!?

HI!!! my thoughts are i love this show because it's so good and i hate this show because it's so good. it's so stressful, i don't even know how i'll survive the finale! but it's so good. my favourite part has to be the way the trailers told us so much yet so little and how most of the more important scenes came up in the first 2-3 episodes so we've had a lot more to discover with the rest of the episodes! so much is intertwined too and the editing is really good. how they transition and/or focus on different characters after important scenes and dialogues is so! wow! i mean, how was i going to hate this? we've seen jake's ass more in this one series than in the last decade. we have been BLESSED. i would have been satisfied with just jake standing there and looking hot with his glasses but the show is really good. the cast is so strong! the story too. i really love it! i don't think it's something i will gravitate towards after it ends, i don't see myself wanting to binge watch this heavy and stressful show on a random tuesday, but there are certain scenes i'll enjoy watching just for the fun of it. i do want to watch it again, but it's certainly not an easy watch. i will definitely miss having new jake content every week and having something to haunt my thoughts in between episodes!

i have so many thoughts about who could have done it, i'll put them under the read more. but i'm curious to hear your thoughts, anon!!! have you watched the show or did you wait to binge all of it before/after the finale? do you have theories??? let me know!!! 🥰💖

i don't know if you're asking about who i think is responsible for carolyn's murder, but i'll just keep on rambling about it. i've stated multiple times how i fall into every single trap they set up before me. i hope it's barbara. she would be the most logical choice although i have no idea how they will target her since she's been so meticulously kept out of people's minds. not a single person accuses the wife who was cheated on for months perhaps longer? who's husband would not hesitate to dump their family to start one with the woman he loves (who CLEARLY does not love him back)? like why? if it was the other way around, with the wife having an affair and killing the other person the husband would be the FIRST SUSPECT. i don't know. it's like the way the show is edited points at barbara yet no one in the room dares to even consider her as an option. it's giving fake feminism as in "women are all fragile and tiny and weak they can't commit bad things". is she going to call herself up to the witness stand like "the people call me hehe" and just go "i kill that woman because my husband fucked her and i want to ruin my husband's life too with this gruesome murder". if she did... absolute boss. i love barbara.

my second theory is tommy. something something he was in love with carolyn she hated him he knew rusty was having an affair with her AND rusty had the job he wanted (and that carolyn wanted as well, sorry for not believing you right away rusty but you were right about that xoxo). easy peasy lemon squeezy. he could have killed two birds with one stone (or well, one fire poker). it would not be as satisfying as barbara, but satisfying nonetheless. this man who is going mad trying to accuse rusty being the one who did it all along? nico would lose his shit eating grin. and they have initiated that possibility with eugenia explaining how the only complaint ever made by carolyn was towards him. the door is slightly more open for tommy than it is for barbara.

any other option, to me, sounds less exciting. rusty? pointless. 8 pointless episodes just for him to go "teehee i killed her bc i got angry snap snap <3 but if i had known she was pregnant with my baby i would have hit her with a proposal not a fire poker :(". carolyn's ex-husband? boring. it would be less boring if SOMEONE OTHER THAN RUSTY had started to dig around on carolyn like hello? her son's messed up and she's got no contact with him, the husband looks depressed as fuck. someone! should! have! pushed! this! i'm not just saying this because i disliked carolyn from the start and i made it very clear she was creeping me out, but also because it's so strange how no one is digging deeper about this (the same way no one is thinking of the possibility of barbara doing it). liam reynolds or brian ratzer? so boring. the kids??? hmm. creepy. michael is a strange one, looking up sketchy crime websites to keep up with his mother and THE bunny davis case in particular is... interesting... could the dad have killed her in a fit of rage (he is also capable of snapping! like rusty! carolyn had a type apparently) and the son visited the scene quickly after to finish the job and make her look like the bunny davis case he studied with such interest? hmm. disturbing. but. kyle and jaden are also interesting, kyle has his father's temper and he's a mama's boy. jaden cares so much for her father who's she's really close to. but i don't really think jaden would do this. the kids would be interesting but again, very disturbing.

SO MANY THEORIES AND POSSIBILITIES. i hope it's barbara i want it to be barbara. raymond can give her his title. barbara "the slay" sabich. it has a ring to it.

[bitter-sweet-coffee]

i think blaze is like that bc every murder mystery usually has the cold/cynical character in it, so it might just be you looking too far into it? not trying to be mean or rude, its a good observation! but its also a silly little april fools game and it wouldnt even make sense to put wave in, like you said.

okay but espio and shadow are more the cold and cynical type, not blaze. plus the way she was written wasn’t even cold, she was literally ripping the poor little player character to SHREDS 😭 like this princess who is always so respectful dutiful and heroic suddenly does a 180 to commit crimes and roast a pathetic wet dog of a man for no reason? c’mon now anon, like i’m half kidding because that’s literally the only outlier in the game imo, but also i was liveblogging on my server to which multiple people reached the same conclusion hence why i don’t think it’s too out there

and for the record i don’t actually ship wavouge, its just the closest possible reason to write blaze Like That. even some of her sprites were closer to that of wave’s art in the comics and cutscenes than ANYTHING blaze has put done. i’m not going to compare screenshots because the game is so new and i don’t want to have to spoiler tag this, but like… whatever that was it sure as hell wasn’t blaze. wave is the other female thief in the sonic canon who is also known for being a bitch, so i mean… i’ve connected the dots

[euphoricfilter]

I shouldn't be surprised at the amount of haters for gender fluid jk but like... Yeah, it's a work of fiction, first of all, its not that deep. Some of y'all are chill with a/b/o dynamics but not with playing with gender? 🤨 secondly, it's jungkook. THE jungkook. Are they telling me him possibly using different pronouns is a turn off? 🤨🤨🤨 that's so weird, the man could seriously be into feet and I'd still love him if he let me ((i dont mean to compare queerness with a fetish, it's just the example that popped up first)). i dont get queerphobia in general (bc we're just, ya know, existing??) But yeah, if you're not into something, scroll on? Mind your business?? Nobody is getting hurt here.

And their idea that you portraying him as queer is "dehumanising" is especially telling of their morals and I don't care for it at all.

Idk, you're doing amazing sweetie, we don't listen to the phobes, good job

i told my best friend when i started writing gender fluid jk that i just know someone’s gonna come in my inbox and be an absolute bitch about it. no joke, not even an hour after i posted the teaser someone had already said something. not even the full fic, just the teaser??

but that’s what i’m saying!! if you’re gonna get mad about me changing pronouns then why are they okay with jungkook as a hybrid, a/b/o, yandere, shitty mafia guy that murders people, a real mean bitch of a man that’s hella misogynistic. like ??? it’s a story, just like every other fan fic trope that exists that they’ve probably read?

boo hoo i made yoongi a lesbian 🍅 mega boooo because i gave jungkook he/they pronouns 🍅🍅🍅 suck my dick

it’s not that deep. and non binary, lesbian, gender fluid, gay, trans, all the works armys exist 🚶‍♀️be real, let everyone have a little fun sometimes, like i know within the community it’s not always easy to find fics that are completely relatable, and that’s why i love the representation

SERIOUSLY!!! disclaimer before i get weird people in my inbox again, but literally jungkook has never specified his pronouns. and that’s not me saying he should be nonbinary or gender fluid plus, once again since apparently it didn’t stick the first time, it’s a story

fictional jungkook isn’t gonna give you cooties because he’s gender fluid. he’s living his best life with his cutie partner 🚶‍♀️

LMAO i understand what you mean though, literally jungkook can be into whatever, or whoever, he can like what he wants, identity as what he wants and that’s not gonna throw me off, have you seen that guy. i would commit multiple war crimes for him

that’s what i said :( just unfollow me, block me even, i don’t care. it’s not that deep and i’m not gonna miss them at all.

it’s just, i guess upsetting that someone would come onto my page and say something that isn’t true about me when they clearly know nothing?? and then treat me like i’m the ignorant one 🚶‍♀️

i hope they know bts absolutely hates them for being queerphobic. yoongi has our back fr 🙏

yay thank you babes 🫂💕 kicking my legs and giggling or whatever because you’re so sweet. please accept a smooch ‼️ MWAH

[factual-flittermouse]

100%

I mean, I do think they were romantically involved but not because of the vengeful murder spree. (More to do with some of the original wording about sharing a tent and such)

I would commit many crimes for those I care about, but I’m not in love with them. The whole “they’re too close to be /just/ friends” perspective annoys the heck out of me.

Additionally (albeit somewhat unrelated), can we stop saying that characters in media who aren’t in a romantic relationship by the end of the story are gay? Especially when it comes to female characters? I’m not saying it’s not a possibility, but at least base the argument on something other than their being single. I saw someone (multiple someones, actually) say that Merida from Brave was a lesbian because she didn’t want to marry a man and stayed single throughout the film and I was very sad. She’s an arrow ace. (Get it?) I know that, in theory, she could be straight or a lesbian, but she’s seen as kind of one of the only bits of aro/ace representation in media so it felt a little like erasure. (I know that no harm was meant, but still)

TL;DR people can be close without being romantically involved and being single doesn’t automatically mean being gay

Obviously I'm all for gay rights and stuff but as an aroace person I really wish we would stop acting like certain things are automatically romantic. One example I can think of is with Patroclus and Achilles, people often say that Achilles wouldn't have been so incensed with rage and killed so many Trojans after Patroclus' death if they weren't lovers. And I'm not saying they weren't, but can we not pretend that there aren't people who would do that for their friends? Because there absolutely are. I'm so fucking tired of people who claim that romantic love is inherently stronger or deeper than platonic love because it's NOT.

[je-suis-problematique]

Death's Obsession if it was written by us

Okay so forget Lilith the main character is a Catholic priest named Vincent. Don't worry he is just as mentally ill if not more and he's got a dark past of his own that haunts him. We like to think that he's hurt people before becoming a priest, maybe even killed someone (or multiple someones), but our ideas range from first degree murder to a drunken hit-and-run. In his earlier designs Vincent was a cult leader with a considerable body count and we don't want to scrap that concept COMPLETELY so I'm thinking first degree murder of an abusive partner with the help of an accomplice but Vincent never got convicted because Vincent lied in court or something and made his accomplice take the fall. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Look I'm brainstorming here okay it's not gonna be perfect. Anyway this one murder is enough to make Vincent unhinged but I want more drama so why not make it so death followed Vincent everywhere he went after that murder meaning whatever friends and family he had started dropping like flies. What if strangers he interacts with end up dying shortly after under mysterious circumstances. What if whatever pets he tries to adopt or house plants he tries to grow just die off without any explanation. And what if the accomplice Vincent doomed to a life in prison manages to break out of prison because he's pissed off and wants to hurt Vincent. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Or he gets set free because he convinces the court that he can help lead them to and convict the REAL killer (which was Vincent) and they give him a chance? Imagine the possibilities, imagine the DRAMA.

Vincent is a drug addict who abuses prescription meds AND uses street drugs. I like the idea of death following Vincent everywhere he goes and Vincent going insane with guilt because of it, on top of the guilt he already feels for sentencing someone to life while he got away scot-free. OUR version of the Grim Reaper is also a-bit-a-lot of a stalker soooo notes/letters, ominous texts, gifts, maybe money and food because it's not like Vincent is rich or anything, clothes, car upgrades, you name it. Vincent's accomplice to the murder he committed is also stalking him, threatening him even – no matter if the guy broke out of prison or if he was set free deliberately he can't afford to hurt Vincent without immediately incriminating himself again so he keeps it at fear tactics for now. Vincent gets nice notes from one stalker and then his tires get slashed by the other, you get the point. The stress of it all just keeps fueling his addiction further.

Our Grim Reaper goes by many names but the human name he chose for himself is Heinrich Grimm oh and yeah, he has a whole ass human form that he uses to eventually pester Vincent in broad daylight. Not in dreams or visions, no – in person. Whether or not other people can also perceive him remains debatable because Heinrich can blink in and out of existence at will so if he wants to remain hidden from someone you bet your ass he'll make Vincent look like he's insane by disappearing mid-conversation so the person Heinrich is hiding from will think Vincent was talking to himself, 10/10. Heinrich is 100% based on Erlok Grael from the Ruination novel both in looks and personality so you KNOW he is a sarcastic petty menace and not the poetic sexyman Letum was supposed to be. Heinrich can still be poetic, romantic, and sexy but like, you know.... In his own way. He IS an immortal being courting an extremely mortal man, their views on relationships aren't really going to align most of the time.

Heinrich's true form is mostly skeletal and he has no face though. Or hair. Or any rippling muscles. In fact he's not particularly muscular in his human form either, he has A Shape but he's mostly just thin and sickly really. Vincent is more muscular than Heinrich's human form.

The first time Heinrich made himself known to Vincent in person, they didn't fuck. In fact I'm pretty sure Vincent threatened Heinrich with a knife or a gun, called him names while slurring his words because he's high as fuck or drunk or both then stumbled over his own feet and fell down, got called pathetic by Heinrich, and then either passed the fuck out only to wake up to Heinrich making him breakfast or something or passed the fuck out and woke up to a note left by Heinrich. Regardless of what actually went down that night it wasn't romantic or sexy but Heinrich starts appearing more and freaking the fuck out of Vincent but Vincent KNOWS this man from somewhere, he just can't remember where.

We don't know how we feel about the whole "Lilith and Letum developed an entire relationship but Lilith forgot about it" thing but I DO like to think that Heinrich revealed himself to Vincent on the night of the murder and then on the event of every other subsequent death that happened around Vincent following the murder. He revealed himself to Vincent first as a glance, then as a presence, then as an interaction, getting closer every time somebody new died. Vincent knows Heinrich intimately but he also doesn't – there is still so much he DOESN'T know. Heinrich knows everything there is to know about Vincent though.

Yes, there have been suicide attempts and yes, Heinrich refused to let Vincent die every time.

Vincent👏 tops👏Heinrich👏 (only as a human though, because in his true form Heinrich tops Vincent)

I really want to go apeshit and incorporate dubcon/noncon into this but I think the only noncon that will be happening is if Vincent gets raped by a different person who ISN'T Heinrich. Since Heinrich is based on Grael we uh – we just can't see Heinrich being the one to do it, sorry-not-sorry. Anyway if Vincent gets raped ever at any point in the story, his rapist/s will be dead the same day/night.

Vincent doesn't have a therapist because he can't afford one despite REALLY needing some therapy. It's okay though, Heinrich is there to save the day. Most of the time.

No big journey through grief here but rather through addiction, trauma, loss of (religious) faith, and guilt. I'm sorry but we don't think Death's Obsession portrayed PTSD or abusive relationships all that well or at least not in the flavor that we experience it so we wanted something that's more accurate to our personal experience with all that shit.

There's more talking and less fucking because no, Heinrich can't and won't solve all of Vincent's problems by fucking him stupid though there's still plenty of that too just.... Heinrich actually communicates with Vincent through more than just the notes he leaves him, helps him process some shit, make some decisions. We actually thought of a scenario where Vincent's accomplice comes to confront him (or the police come to arrest him) and Vincent decides to just go with it and like, confesses everything, takes responsibility for the murder he committed. He gets sentenced to death or something (while his accomplice gets a reduced sentence or whatever I dunno) and he accepts it, doesn't fight it. He knows he'll be reunited with Heinrich once he dies and he tried to kill himself so many times too so like, the execution doesn't scare him. And I like Death's Obsession's take on faith, that the person's soul gets "processed" into whatever afterlife they personally believe in. Vincent used to believe in a Heaven and a Hell but now all he believes in is Heinrich, so that's where he ends up. A bittersweet ending with no real closure for US but Vincent does get HIS closure, kind of.

Also a concept where Vincent kills himself and Heinrich finally agrees to take him because honestly Vincent doesn't have anything left to live for anyway anymore and Heinrich feels merciful for once.

More blurbs/speculations in a part 2 maybe?🤔

[thepoliticalvulcan]

If this is the result of America trying to leave the Middle East without really leaving the Middle East, just give it to China. The problems that white people cause aren’t going to be solved by white people. America needs to be isolated until it can start acting right.

I have mixed feelings on this. First off in the post I think you're responding to, I'm giving my take on what I think Team Biden's worldview is. I agree with part of it, but other parts I think are some mix of tragically idealistic and outright nihilistic.

I don't like my taxes being used to support wanton murder regardless of what system of government it is or how vile the alleged target is. The means too often sabotage the ends and they sabotage the ends so thoroughly that they lead to very reasonable questions about whether the stated ends are the real ends, or if the real ends are the ones being stated by the likes of Ben Gvir and Netanyahu's son.

There are a whole range of regimes and situations that I think would get a whole lot worse without some threat of US retaliation, if not militarily, then cutting of the purse strings. I wouldn't expect a regime actively engaged in one genocide to be overly sentimental if the Saudis took another stab at invading Yemen and once again managed to succeed at killing everyone and anyone except actual combatants. Same with Israel and Lebanon.

A Middle East that throws in with China is also a Middle East that is indirectly or even directly helping Russia in its invasion of Ukraine and possibly other ex-USSR states. IF Putin is insane (and I don't really think he is, but it can never be ruled out) he might flirt with poking nations covered by NATO and Article 5. Which would be very bad under the worst case scenario.

Although there again, while invading Ukraine in the first place is held up as an example of Putin being "insane" this war has also managed to not go nuclear despite it lasting almost three years at this point and the indirect involvement of multiple nuclear powers on Ukraine's side, and the French flat out admitting they are in country providing some sort of aid. Probably not direct combat aid, probably more of a support role, but still, its a dicey thing, but also a testament that Putin is a bad person who may have made a catastrophic error in judgment that he has spent tens of thousands of lives doubling down on, but not nuclear war crazy.

So my main thinking about US involvement in the Middle East is the pogrom treadmill. Even the current invasion of Gaza is in some fashion an X order consequence of the original sin of invading Iraq. Without the invasion of Iraq, I seriously doubt Iran does anywhere close to as much arming and training of various insurgent groups across the region.

Invading Iraq was stupid and evil. It also isn't something that can be undone and leaving the region entirely isn't necessarily something I think automatically wipes the ledger clean.

Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't. If there's ten more pogroms in the region or ISIL gets up off the mat, how much of that is on us? Not all of it, but some of it to be sure. We may not have set the last dominoes to fall in motion, but we sure set the first ones in motion.

Of course there's a deeply pessimistic reading of the last two decades that says we can't know how many pogroms the US has prevented by wrapping Saudi Arabia et al. around our finger, but we can certainly measure how many have happened as a direct result of the instability caused by the US screwing with the equilibrium between the regional powers, different sects etc. A pessimistic reading of recent history that says that claiming we're a stabilizing force is just an excuse, a modernized version of the White Man's Burden.

The part of me that is very committed to Virtue Ethics says I want to reduce my overall share of responsibility for the killing of any noncombatant, regardless of their ideological or religious convictions, who happens to be within the blast radius of a JDAM dropped on a suspected terrorist.

The part of me that knows a stopped clock is right twice a day would likely feel just as guilty over whatever happens after the US leaves the Middle East to a China that most certainly will not have campus protesters and pockets of Muslim voters in key districts threatening to unseat Xi.

I also know we're probably not going to be able to do better than we did, morally or diplomatically, than we have. We're unlikely to ever have a State Department as skilled, funded, and staffed as the one that negotiated the Iran Nuclear Deal or a population that is as squeamish about civilian deaths as it is now. So maybe we should rip the band aid off and let the chips fall where they may.

[tiger-moran]

Between trying to work out what really happened to Adair in this story and something I wrote in my Moriarty and Moran essay, and the Midsomer Murders episode Blood Wedding being on yesterday I am seriously thinking about what did Adair really get himself involved in because I don't think it was just him being unlucky enough to partner himself with a card cheat who also happens to be Moriarty's right hand man.

I still don't think (for various reasons that I'm not going into here) that it is conclusively proven that Moran killed Adair, it's a possibility but there are multiple other possibilities too and I think maybe... Holmes is not corrupt or any great lover of the upper classes but he may be a little naïve? Maybe because of his own history and his brother being connected with the government, maybe he is a bit too inclined towards believing some of the English upper classes are better people than they actually are (and also at that moment in time especially way too inclined to think the worst of Moran without examining the evidence too closely).

And I still do think Watson is a bit too trusting maybe, and perhaps too generous also, in assuming that Adair is this great easy-going guy who can do no wrong simply because his family and upper class mates all say so, as if any of them would willingly, publicly admit anything bad about him. Sorry but they absolutely would not do that, if they knew something dodgy about him they would close ranks.

From my essay:

"When [Moriarty and Moran] so defy the law and what is considered 'normal' in other ways and seem to live by their own rules, there is a strong possibility that they may both be queer. As such, they might also be acquainted with other queer people, likely other queer men in particular. Though it seems unlikely, due to Holmes's attitudes towards them both (which is far more respectful and even jovial at times than compared with his attitude to master blackmailer Charles Augustus Milverton) that the pair ever actively blackmailed anyone over their sexuality, were they backed into a corner they might still have been willing to use information they had collected in order to protect themselves. There is the possibility therefore that the authorities might have found it very convenient to let Moriarty as well as Moran 'slip the net' and disappear to another country for a while rather than be put in the dock in England for fear of what either or both might reveal were they forced to have to defend themselves in court. It would perhaps also be convenient for them if a certain amateur detective with a 'bee in his bonnet' about the Professor ended up pushing him over a waterfall. And then there is the matter of why Moran, who Holmes insists will hang for the Adair murder (Empty) is still alive twenty years later in His Last Bow. Although there are other possibilities (such as the evidence not being anywhere near as damning as Holmes seemed to think), did Moran actually use information he and Moriarty had accumulated about the homosexual proclivities of various high-status men to ensure he was never prosecuted for Adair's murder? And one does still tend to wonder why exactly Adair, a young aristocratic man who seemed to do little besides hang about in male-only clubs and had recently broken off his engagement, was really associated with Moran anyway."

"There is even the possibility that Moran and Moriarty had nothing to do with Adair's murder and Moran was just a convenient scapegoat for it – how do we really know after all that Adair was simply the “easy-going young aristocrat” that Watson (who never knew him) makes out?"

And the reason that episode of Midsomer Murders made me think more about this is because the murderer and his friends in that are aristocrats who basically think because they're 'the old families' who own most of the land and wealth etc etc they can do whatever they like, including committing murder, and they don't have to answer to anybody for that. And I mean, I think they're nonsense but still some of the best known/most popular theories about the Jack the Ripper murders are that 'Jack' was an aristocratic man and/or the murders were some sort of cover up to protect someone in/connected to the monarchy. There are always these ideas that people who are born high up in society think they are better than everyone else and they can do whatever they like and very often they will get away with that too even if their actions do get exposed.

And it's not outside the realms of plausibility that this idea of being able to do whatever they like extends even to killing one of their own i.e. another aristocrat and that therefore Adair was killed to cover something up and that something was a romantic/sexual relationship with some other man from the aristocracy, and even possibly that someone could have exploited Moran's history and connection with Moriarty to try to frame him because he was such an obvious suspect, and probably because he's not really one of them anyway (since he's likely of Irish descent, he was in the Indian army not the actual British army and he got made to retire from the army; he's not exactly, you know, pukka) likely not realising that there's absolutely no way Moran was ever going to actually be hanged for this or even found guilty, not only because the evidence didn't hold up but because Moran, and probably Moriarty too, still knows things and still has acquaintances in high places too.

(I don't know what to do with this thought though, I have really not got the energy to figure this out and expand on it properly so I think probably who killed Adair in this story in particular may well remain a mystery)

[ignitesthestxrs]

Review-Thoughts-Experience: IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote

I came to this book with an ingrained reticence to reading books that are older than me, a mental block that I haven't managed to navel-gaze my way into unpacking even at my big age. The hole in my personal literary canon this has left is something that I've been tentatively poking around the edges of for the last couple of years, only for Truman Capote to stick his leg out and send me tripping face first in. I didn't mean to blorbofy a real life gay man who's been dead for forty years, but the group chat can attest: I stan.

I do find myself intimidated by the prospect of pulling together some thoughts on this book, as though the existence of several decades worth of commentary on a text means that I can't have my silly little goodreads review. It's largely self-imposed - I don't have the expectation of an audience here - but the vague insistence that if I'm going to bother saying something, I must Bring Something To The Text hovers menacingly over my keyboard anyway. The funniest aspect of this (funny haha and funny strange) is that IN COLD BLOOD itself is extremely approachable.

This is narrative non-fiction written for the general public. The emphasis on the setting, the multiple POVs, the scattering of background details to ground you in who a character is while their segment dives in to what they've experienced - the text is welcoming. It invites you to sit with these people and their experience of murder, whether that be committing it, discovering it, investigating it, being on trial for it, making a life after it.

True crime often brings to mind wine-drinking white women sharing tips on how to avoid being sex trafficked via random objects on your car and emphatically insisting on longer, crueler carceral punishments - this is, admittedly, a gross generalisation, but one that exists for a reason. While I think any true crime enjoyer can point to favoured exceptions to this rule, the genre as a whole has had the effect of flattening the lived human experience of murder into something easily digestible, a little thrill to spice up lives that are statistically safe from the kind of violence they're consuming.

If a (fair!) critique of true crime as a genre is that murder is too often treated as salacious entertainment, I found IN COLD BLOOD to be a thoughtful, considered text - while also one intended as entertainment for a broad audience. Looking briefly into the aftermath of its publishing, it's clear that the small community at the heart of this novel was uncomfortable with their depiction, that the fame of the murder case was a burden to them. IN COLD BLOOD added to both that fame and discomfort, especially with Capote claiming his depiction was the absolute truth.

The interesting tension to me here is that, while that claim might have served Capote's ego and the book's promotional purposes, the text itself is aware that it's depicting a situation where there can be no 'absolute truth'. Capote writes from the point of view of the victims, the murderers, the investigators, the community affected by the murders, and at one point a distant take on his own role as interviewer. It's clear upon reading that much of what he relays must be an interpretation of events - there's no possible way for Capote to have records of precise dialogue, let alone the thought process of every individual POV the text inhabits. But this isn't a text that's interested in delivering the reader to the One Truth about these murders - it doesn't want to solve the crime, it wants to explore it.

What drives a person to murder? What drives two people to murder? Are you a murderer because you killed someone, or because they state says you are? Who were the victims, how did they live their lives prior to their deaths, what plans for their future were abruptly cut off? Capote goes so far as to dip into the mind of the insurance manager who signed a contract with one of the victims the day before the murder - what is the impact on this business, what decisions are made in the wake of the murder, what is the difference between a moral decision and a business decision, or is a moral decision a business decision? Again and again, these tiny slivers of perspective are served up for the reader's contemplation, the ripple effects of a thousand choices leading to murder, and away from it.

Capote claims he came away from the experience of writing IN COLD BLOOD believing that the death penalty should be abolished, and it doesn't surprise me. IN COLD BLOOD reflects on the sheer pointlessness of these murders - the reader is aware from the beginning that the murderers are mistaken about the wealth they expect to find, that they will come away from the act with little to show for it, no means to change their life, no real remorse for what they've done beyond the impact it's had on them.

And yet their perspectives are written with empathy - the pointlessness of it all is, perhaps, the point. That there was no reason for these people to die, that there was no grand purpose or great evil that drove these men, that this was a case of two guys who thought they had found a reasonable situation to an unsolvable problem, and that this is where the horror of it all lies. There's no over-arching narrative here - the Clutter family died for no reason. Murderers Richard Hickock and Perry Smith died - because they killed, or were next to the man who killed, sure. But what impact does their death at the hands of the state have? It brings no one back to life. Their incarceration and death are as purposeless as the crimes they committed. IN COLD BLOOD tells us that there is no great tragedy to their death, but no great justice in it either. The tragedy is in the unfolding of it all, the vague sense that it didn't have to be that way, the knowledge that it was always going to end in a graveyard.

The conclusion of the book is, according to the man who features in it, entirely Capote's invention. Lead investigator Alvin Dewey never met Susan, the childhood friend of Nancy Clutter, by the Clutter family graves. While I think that's something that matters very much to the real people who were really impacted by the events of the Clutter family, in terms of the purpose of narrative non-fiction, this scene doesn't exist to report what really happens. It's metaphor - the closing of the book, but the carrying on of the story. Nancy and the Clutters are dead, and so are their murderers. There is no more story for them. But their community can't stop with them. They can visit, they can remember, but they have to leave again, to grow older and grow away.

Can you look a real person in the face and say, well the narrative purpose of this thing that was made up about your life serves a higher master than the literal truth? Obviously not. But I do think IN COLD BLOOD begs us to question what we mean when we demand the truth of something, and what it means when we are given it.