#i think the show lacked a unified vision

[imthepunchlord]

Is there anything the show could do to make you go back to watching it?

I... don't really know.

Show wise, ML isn't really for me anymore. I realized that s2 which is why I stopped after it, and only checked out a handful of eps afterward that I was intrigued with enough to see. But everything about it just leaves a sour taste in my mouth and it's just unpleasant.

The ship that is the center stage of the show and is going to get the most priority, I don't like. Why watch a show that's going to heavily focus and care about this ship I do not like. I haven't genuinely liked this ship with no grievances since s1.

The characters are unlikable or it's just unpleasant to watch them.

Character relationships are just a joke or non existent. I can't say anyone in this show are actual friends. There's nothing enjoyable in how characters work off each other, not in a long time.

The hero designs are boring and basic or ugly. Worst offenders are for the girls and whatever the heck Gabriel has going on when he unifies with more than one Miraculous.

The lore is incredibly lacking or confusing.

The writing makes weird choices I don't like or agree with. Some of which goes into really icky territory and I got to wonder wtf are they thinking.

The clear bias and toxic messages are irritating.

Powers are all over the place, are frustrating, or are confusing.

The kwamis, which easily could've been the most fascinating part of the show, are just disappointing and easy to cut out. Heck, they actually get the least amount of content. I search up a specific kwami to look at fanart and I just get the holders.

Even if I hear that s6 is really good, I don't know if I would want to watch it. S6 is going to work off the mess that is the prior 5 seasons. A lot of which did stuff I don't like.

And this show would make me so mad and frustrated I had to step away a good few times.

At this point, my only enjoyment with ML is just thinking of ideas and exploring them. One of the big frustrations is that this concept is just so full of potential and it's so easy to get creative and experimental with it, and what we got was their lazy slop. And it's really that frustration that just keeps reeling me back.

If I was to come back to ML the show, I would wait for a reboot personally. I would be more open to watching it rebooted. I want this current version of it to just stop. Cease to be. Try again with a fresh start, a more defined vision, and have some actual consistency.

[cloudmancy]

not to rekindle old discourse if you've moved on, but i was listening to you & @kindlespark's interview on the complicated women podcast / have enjoyed reading your fhjy posts and wanted to ask your thoughts on why the beginning of the season felt so promising to you? i enjoyed the premiere and the premise of the stresses of 11th grade/the rat grinders as foils, but as the season continued i started to feel disillusioned - it seemed less and less like an interactive/collaborative story (cassandra's death, fig's quest to rehabilitate ruben, the ratgrinders being really hard to find/interact with in general) and more of a tour through some unsatisfying callback easter eggs (i simply don't care about porter and it kind of felt like not even emily did). imo the ratgrinders were set up to fail as a narrative concept ever since the bad kids got mad at them for grinding and brennan just sheepishly grinned and shrugged at the camera, and while i share your disappointment that there was no coming together/addressing the root academic injustices that plagued both the bad kids and the ratgrinders, i don't think it was as surprising to me, as the season had already felt too filled with bits/joking around to be that dramatically tight - ironically, i think they got too bogged down in roleplaying scholastic tedium. i tend to come to d20 with a mindset of like, this is primarily a comedy and if they end up producing a satisfying narrative arc, great (and they certainly have achieved this in the past), but i don't think it's a coincidence that most d20 seasons are regarded as having unsatisfying endings - i think it's an incredibly hard thing to do in a ttrpg setting, even for professionals, especially so if their instincts are more towards comedy. they are great artists and improvisers, but evidently that doesn't mean they can't fail to cohere, and i think this season suffered from a lack of investment in narrative all around - brennan not being as flexible with the plot as he's been in the past, the players i think (some anyway) feeling a little tired of these characters and playing them as more chaotic/violent than usual (kristen's random nudism, fig's truancy, gorgug's hatred/bullying of maryann, fabian threatening to skin ivy). idk, i'm just rambling at this point - my overall message is that i'm in agreement that the finale was a letdown, but i'm curious as to how you thought the promising themes interacted with the story/performances in the earlier parts of the season, cause when i look back at it i don't see a unified vision, just some individually interesting pieces that never seemed to fit together, and i don't think i just feel that way in hindsight, but am open to other perspectives (disclaimer that obv this is all opinion and subject to debate)

here are sam's thoughts on it!

ok my thing is that 1) i love porter as a villain and i don't think the twist takes away from his character; i think brennan tied him to ankarna REALLY well and with genuine thought. the lore drop scene in the temple was genuinely chilling and very very cool to me and brennan clearly set up a lot of lore around it that was interesting and not just funny bc fig thought he was bad the whole time. i think porter is a great character and had the bad kids engaged with his philosophy of rage and not had ice feast completely nullify his threat he could've been a really compelling villain. 2) i genuinely had hope for the rat grinders because of brennan's insistence to make npcs like eugenia talk about them as foils, the fact that they used to be the high-five heroes, and the fact that he made them closer to unwilling participants than actual villains. seemed like genuine threads of complexity that the bad kids just didn't pick up on, but i also clearly was fooled bc that brennan didn't react to fig's attempts to convert ruben shows that he wasn't really prepared to have the final battle as anything but tbk vs trg 😭 i think the downtime system was actually really fun and effective at portraying both scholastic tedium while also embellishing the themes (rage tokens!!) 3) this probably wasn't made clear in the ep but i didn't expect d20 to write a perfect thematic story about addressing systemic injustices; i just wanted them to give me any kind of thematic acknowledgment in the battle at all and not just with ankarna. i am very aware that im always reading into the subtext of d20 seasons--that lament is more for the subtext that Could've Been. i agree with you about everything you've said wrt ttrpg settings and lack of narrative investment, but i had higher hopes because fhsy and tuc are so much better with their themes and the themes brennan appeared to be setting up seemed so… obvious to me…. it had me ignoring all the red flags 😭

[kaibutsushidousha]

How would you rewrite your three least favorite story sections of London, Spetem, and Shimosa? Not a complete rewrite from the ground up, but reimagining/using the components that were already there or just some small pointers you beleive that would've improve the story by a decent margin that is within reason.

Septem

The original plot of Septem is that Goetia failed to find anyone who would want to destroy the world during Nero's reign, so he personally stay there and summoned a bunch of past emperors to overthrow her. Hard premise to believe, but Sakurai's constant habit of introducing logistic difficulties for her villains is one of my favorite things about her writing. Evil doesn't need to be easy. Keep this part. The prompt is asking to work with what's there anyways.

What's lacking there is simply direction. If Caesar, Caligula, or Romulus replaces Nero as the Emperor, what happens? Would it be any different at all? Septem doesn't establish what its antagonists want, so any goal would already make a huge difference.

I don't have concrete ideas for what the goal should be nor do I think that's a question I need to answer in this thought experiment. But one thing there are a few things I want this to do:

1) The goal must be an ideal that Nero wholeheartedly agrees with. The main conflict of the original Septem is that Caesar and Romulus are objectively better emperors than Nero, but Nero opposes them because she believes she deserves her chance even if she 100% agrees the others are better options. This is a core theme I want expanded rather than discarded.

FGO at this point wasn't too preoccupied to characterize Fujimaru yet at this point, but Septem is actually a golden opportunity to start working on that because at this point Fujimaru is nothing more than a replacement for 47 people objectively better than them. We can't let the Nero parallel pass unaddressed here again.

2) The goal must be an ideal that Boudicca and Spartacus violently disagree with. A problem with Septem is that their allegiance to Nero was too flimsy and easy, so it's important for them to consider the threat so big that they'd rather take Nero's side than risk losing as an independent faction. Draw some from Boudicca's characterization in Quirinus's interlude.

Jing Ke obviously also needs to disagree, although not as intensely. Pull some random Romulus/Shi Huang comparisons for this one. Both are into the same "unified world" shit, even if Shi Huang's vision of it is extra awful.

3) It's absolutely essential for the story that Romulus and Flauros have more presence as the chapter villains and debating the goal is the perfect way to provide that. Doubles as a solution to the major problem of Septem being a Nero solo show.

Quirinus and Goetia are two characters I love, so if a revised Septem manages to deliver an intriguing outline of the future characterization these two will get in these more complete forms, I don't think I can ask for much more. It'd be genuinely great to get shades of Goetia's more sympathetic side this early, and even greater for it to come through Lev's face.

Also, remove Altera. That was a really shameless piece of Extella cross-promotion that didn't do anyone any favors.

London

The plot on this one is that, again, Goetia failed to find anyone who would want to destroy the world during the Industrial Revolution, so he coerced the first big powerful mage he found to do it in his stead. Again, Sakurai villain logistic troubles are cool and we keep that.

Our chapter antagonist in London is Makiri Zolgen, the unfortunate mage saddled with the mission to destroy the world. Makiri obviously would rather not die, but when pressed with the choice of die now or die later when you destroyed the world, he chose die later. As such Makiri planned out his operation: he made a Grail-powered machine that covers London in a toxicly dense mana fog, and the excess mana in the air would randomly spawn Servants. Makiri would then wait on his random Servant generator until an electricity-based Servant came out, and that Servant would discharge at the center of London, causing all the fog to explode and vaporize the British Isles, or something.

Anyways, yeah, our chapter villain is in the plot due to a death threat and chose the route of actively stalling Goetia with the slowest and most unreliable doomsday project he could come up with, hoping that the random Servant generator would produce a hero that would non-lethally take him out of the game because his only wish in all this is to survive. The only thing preventing him from being a super likable and sympathetic character is that Makiri Zolgen is Matou Zouken, so he has hefty negative baggage that this showing absolutely can't compensate for.

So, the first order of priority in improving London is making the enemy Master not Zouken. Make a new character for that. The story needs to be a powerful mage from one of 72 Solomonic families, so just call them Lord Solonea or something like that if you don't want to bother giving the new character a full name.

Does that mean I want Zouken removed from the story? No, he's essential. The chapter is named City of Magical Mist precisely for the "magical mist in Japanese is read makiri" pun that defines the whole setting. But I think the pun would have been a lot more clever as a red herring to direct suspicion at him before Chaldea can figure out the real culprit.

Besides, I don't want to mess with greater lore, so Barbatos still has to be the Pillar of the Zolgen family and the one Fujimaru kills in battle. Babylonia established that Singularity victims soon die in different ways in the fixed history. FGO's timeline only had its 1st Holy Grail War in 2004 and Zouken dying in 1888 can't be totally unrelated to that (even though the 4th Singularity is already supposed to be after at least 2 Fuyuki Grail Wars).

Now with the elephant out of the room... what else did London do again? Chaldea just went there, chased some empty red herring because the fog randomly generated Servants, then we found and beat Zouken. The characters may or may not have done cool things but none did memorable things. It's Septem's problem of Nero being the only character, except there's not even a Nero here.

Since we are already majorly shaking up the cast, I'll just say who I think should stay. Jack is a very aesthetically relevant red herring in a foggy London. I still want Zouken to stay as the main red herring, but Jack can keep her role as the first red herring. Fran and Mephi are relevant in a mage conflict because they're products of magecraft. They only need something done with it. Paracelsus and Babbage are perfectly appropriate picks for their roles as the two Servants working directly as Makiri's (here Solonea's) partners. Just expand their scenes a lot because Solonea needs their characterization built from scratch.

Mordred is the main character of the chapter and thus can't be kicked out despite having nothing to do with the plot. We need something more personal and engaging than "I have connections to this city's past". Anything. All the original London has to offer with Mordred is

Teaching Mash to take initiative and aggressively pursue her ambitions, resulting in a new Taunt Skill where Mash rushes to take a bullet for the ones she wants to protect.

A battle against last-minute-spawned Lalter because that is personal closure, Sakurai guesses????

Lastly, we have Tesla. With Zouken/Barbatos killed, he forces the summon of the electric Servant needed to blow London up, and this Servant's bombastic personality and unique circumstances made him the only memorable Servant in London. I love the plot point that he can fly to the center of London and nuke the mist but instead he power walks and gets side-tracked by the Servants he meets because he was summoned by Makiri's will to stall out the Singularity as much as possible. Keep that as is.

I won't waste too much time coming up with things to replace London's nothingburger adventure with, but I have to say one of London's biggest sins is being set in London during the Industrial Revolution, one of the most important moments in the Clock Tower's history and doing nothing about it. We could have more direct and involved glimpse at that than anything Case Files could have offered. The Solonea version of London certainly would have at least one Solonea/Makiri conversation about it using their views on the forming factions as a characterization piece to define the core differences between two enemy Master suspects.

Shimousa

This one is a lot more complicated. It's not because Shimousa has a bigger number of decisions I hate (it does) but because I'm interpreting the prompt as "change this chapter without changing the rest of FGO" and Shimousa is just far too linked to Heian. Every good idea Douman has in Heian can be linked to a lesson he learned from a bad idea backfiring in Shimousa. Douman sucking complete ass in Shimousa is not negotiable.

[UPDATE: Samurai Remnant is coming to complicate this section even further, so I'm making the executive decision to call it quits on this ask instead of continuing to wait for inspiration after 5 months of not having it]

[sweepseven]

Cirque du Soleil: Echo review

Another glorious visit to Montreal, this time marked by my ideal lineup of events: Odesza one night and Cirque the next. This was also my first time seeing a Cirque show in its infancy, and though the act quality was incredible and the show was packed with rare acts any GC audience is lucky to see, I regret to report that Echo has a very long way to go before it can be considered anything close to an effective show.

Evidence of its troubled development abounds. There is no unifying theme - despite what marketing materials would have you believe - and the show's utter lack of direction is made worse by deliberately muted costuming. Recognizing any but the main characters is not just impossible but an actively, maybe even deliberately pointless effort. The three main characters (though only two of them could really be called "main") are given so little room to grow and breathe that they could be eliminated altogether with no impact on the show whatsoever.

In its current state, Echo bears the combined flaws of Kurios and Volta. Like Kurios, it is a collection of unrelated acts taking place simply because they look cool. But Kurios' greatest strength is the clarity of its setting and aesthetic: it makes sense that there is no larger story there because it exists purely to have fun in a fun world, and it succeeds wildly in its effort. Kurios knows exactly what it is. Echo does not. And like Volta, it is trying and failing to tell a human story. But where Volta was strengthened by exceptionally emotional acts and memorable characters, Echo chooses to obscure emotion at every turn by dressing dozens of artists identically and covering their faces for the majority of the show.

So not only does Echo lack identity, it lacks any emotional depth. Fatal combo. BUT there are still plenty of interesting details to share, such as how this is the most racially diverse Cirque show I've ever seen (possibly to an uncomfortable degree...read on), the remarkable quality of the acts, clowns brought to you by Jeff Bezos, and a few ideas for what this show might become if it develops the way I hope it can. I want a Kooza glow up for it, not an Amaluna tornado of confusion. I fear we'll get the latter, but again, it's only two months old.

Act by act beneath the cut, juxtaposed with the official descriptions of each because the reality is so detached from the stated vision of the show.

Animation: Two identically dressed clowns get the crowd clapping. That's it, that's what ya get. Closer to the start of the show, the Cartographer walks onto the stage and looks around as though taking stock of his surroundings. At this early point I'm thinking he might be some sort of architect or guide-like character - his costume suggests something like schematics, and he moves like a very thoughtful, mature, deliberate character. I would soon be proven very wrong. Apart from this - clapping clowns and a wandering Cartographer - there is no other lead-up to the show.

Opening: Future plays fetch with her dog, Ewai, with what appears to be a doll version of the Cartographer (??? zero reason given for this). While playing they stumble upon the cube à la 2001: A Space Odyssey and it comes to life at Future's touch, rippling and reverberating thanks to some frankly stunning projections. Throughout the show the projections would prove themselves to be remarkable, however somewhat hampered by the uneven surface of the cube itself. Overall the opening is reminiscent of Kooza's, though abbreviated and utterly lacking in characterization apart from "this girl is friends with her man-dog."

Cube suspension: Official description: Animals hang in a vertical position on the CUBE, performing an acro-dance routine where we see them meeting each other as animals who share this world, discovering life, and living in harmony.

Actual experience: projections take the lead while animal-masked artists swing on cables in a performance anyone in the audience could achieve themselves given the right tools. Think Ka's Battle scene, but slower and with way worse choreography. The projections and music make it feel pretty epic and cool, but linger too long on what's actually happening and this act reveals itself to be a rather weak opening, and probably the weakest act in the whole show.

Bungee aerial straps: Official description: As the CARTOGRAPHER flies into the story, light projections track his every movement, leaving behind marks that influence the world. The animals move away from him, not knowing his intentions, but his energy and presence demand the respect of the stage.

Actual experience: a pretty standard aerial straps act until the end, when they lean more into the bungee element and it becomes cooler. It made me miss Alegria's flying man, and then Luzia's straps. It was just blank in terms of setting or emotion. The Cartographer himself carries what looks like a giant protractor or some other tool with him, so as soon as he arrives you're like wow, he's probably going to map out Future's journey to come or something! No. He leaves after this act and does not come back until the finale. He has ALL the markers of a strong guide character, and if not that, at least a recurring theme or motif. Despite having one of three unique character designs in the entire show, Echo does nothing with him. Utter waste of what could have been a cool character bearing important narrative weight.

Icarian games: Official description: Two dizzying performers come to the stage in an act of flipping and rotation that spins the story forward. Their motion acts as a machine to help DOUBLE TROUBLE extract boxes from The CUBE, moving faster and faster to speed up the process of extraction.

Actual experience: who knows or cares what the clowns are up to because these two are on absolute fire. This act blows Varekai and certainly Ka straight out of the water. The crowd was wild for it and the artists' enthusiasm and fun was infectious. ZERO notes on their performance - it was vibrant, electric perfection. I would have put this act second to amp up the energy before proceeding with the rest of the first half. The official description betrays a classic failure of this show: why is the cube a machine now? Ten seconds ago it was a geometric map, and before that it was Animal Planet. What are we "extracting"? Are we commenting on industrialization now? There are two little set pieces that lend themselves to some sort of reference to an assembly line, but they're out of place and ultimately pointless.

Double hair suspension: Official description: When some troubling questions arise, the lights reveal two FIREFLIES, beautiful artists who soar through the air suspended by their hair. Their grace and power inspire FUTURE and the DOG, giving them hope that the world can be rebuilt.

Actual experience: Wait, is the world in trouble?? Suddenly it needs to be rebuilt?? Future and Ewai seemed to be doing a-okay this entire time, and at no point was any degree of peril implied. Whatever, this act is heavenly. And I mean that literally because these artists invoked galaxies more than fireflies, in my opinion. I'd never seen a duo like this before and the audience was floored. Really really incredible. My favorite part - and the most magical part of the entire show imo - was that drone fireflies flutter out over the crowd before this act begins! It was SO enchanting!! It was a touch of the innovation and modernity I expected of Echo, and utilized to exactly the right extent. Also one conked out and fell into the audience lol.

Banquine/Korean cradle: Official description: The COLOR PAPER PEOPLE come together in a thrilling mix of banquine and human cradle acts. With the help of the CUBE and the encouragement of FUTURE, they learn to collaborate and realize the importance of having fun in a dizzying array of stunts.

Actual experience: I don't think these people needed any help or encouragement having fun, because they were up there with Icarian games for most incandescently happy artists onstage. Energy: infectious. Skill level: pinnacle. Crowd: losing it.

However. And this is weird. But I felt some kind of way about the particular brand of smiling in this act. I mentioned before that this was the most racially diverse show I've ever seen from Cirque, which I love. This was an all-Black banquine team, which I also love. But thus far the show had been very emotionally hollow, and though this was a fun, high energy act, something about the utter lack of emotional depth made their smiles look exceptionally fake, sometimes to the point of desperate. And every artist wasn't smiling: most of them were, but then you'd catch one or two that were utterly stony-faced. It makes the audience too aware of what has to be a directorial choice, one that some artists deliberately chose to ignore. The music for this act is kind of early to mid 20th century-ish, as is the choreography for the dance breaks, so in a very strange and particular way I could not get the idea of minstrelsy out of my head. I don't know. It's very very difficult to explain without seeing it in person, but my friend and I both felt an instinctual little prickle of "uhh" at some of this act's choices. I wondered how many of those choices actually belonged to the performers themselves. I would love to hear other people's opinions on this, because I know describing it here feels like a stretch.

Transition to intermission: CUE MEAT MAN. That massive ugly red puppet bursts from the cube and towers over the stage in a display that seems like it wants to be inspiring, and failing that, maybe even frightening. Instead it is neither, because the only reaction one can possibly have to seeing this is "what the fuck." The puppet itself is stunningly operated, though he is weirdly disproportionate. Why is he here? Why was he in the cube? Is it bad that he was in the cube? Has he destroyed the cube to get out? What are his intentions? Why is he business formal? These are questions whose answers will forever be unknowable to mankind. Future (remember her? she's in this show! ha!!) seems okay with him though, and hops onto his hand and up to his shoulder. And it's pretty! She does it delicately! Are we about to say something?? But by this point any attempt at theme is lonnng gone, and I became resigned to a fully meaningless show. If we knew even one single, solitary thing about Future as a character we might have an idea why any of this is happening or matters. But we don't. We had a whole 45 minutes and we didn't get there. Boom, end of first half.

Transition from intermission: Really really cool cello solo. More on the band later. I just want to remember that this part existed because it was fucking great.

Slackwire: Official description: Smoke billows from the floor, flames break out within the CUBE, and a tense double slackline act ensues, as two animals stand on a line between life and death. They will give everything they can to survive as long as they both have each other.

Actual experience: are we in survival mode? Is it Meat Man's fault???? I don't know and I don't care to find out because this was my favorite act of the night. Finally we are using the cube as something other than a projection screen, finally we have an act with any sense of gravity or depth. Animals parade behind the cube as it takes center stage, some of them carrying other seemingly dead animals on their shoulders. The artists' masks look like skulls as they slowly discard them. They walk in constant balance with one another, almost intersection, almost disrupting one another, but they never do. There's tension and stakes and, had Echo accomplished anything in its first half, potentially some meaning. This act should be the framework for rebuilding this show from the ground up. I was so impressed. No flames tonight - not sure if they were just out or if they've been cut, but I didn't feel like the act was missing anything in their absence.

Flying poles: Official description: This flying poles act features a first-of-its-kind pole apparatus named Chrysalid that is semi-attached to the stage floor. This groundbreaking performance requires exceptional strength, and signals the rebuilding of The CUBE.

Actual experience: first of its kind? Groundbreaking? Bitch this was in Volta, it was just shaped a little different. And it accomplished the same task too: showing unity between apparently disparate groups. Insects fly at the top while propelled by animals and business people in red Meat Man bowler hats. Evolution, supporting one another, coming together for a common goal, okay, we get it. I still don't know why this matters because we are an hour in and no meaning has been conveyed. More weird forced smiling that at this point I cannot keep from distracting me.

Diabolo (in for juggling): Official description: In an act of love and gratitude, the DOG breaks into a fascinating diabolo manipulation act that catches the eye of an unseen character. The FOSSORIAL appears above ground, approaching the DOG with caution and curiosity, and pushing him to be more and more creative with his flicks and tricks.

Actual experience: is juggling actually in this show? I feel like I only ever see diabolo. Either way this was pretty true to its description and it's a fun act with an incredible showcase of skill. The diabolos light up! And we get to see Ewai's face!! For a whole five minutes! And then the mask comes down again and he's gone. Whoops, close call, we almost connected with him for a second there. Wouldn't want that to happen.

Contortion/dislocation: Official description: The FOSSORIAL puts his flexibility and adaptability on full display in a contortionist act that will leave audiences stunned when the artist dislocates his limbs to maintain his loving embrace with FUTURE and Ewai The Dog.

Actual experience: apparently the Fossorial is supposed to live under the stage and always be reacting to the actions above it because "what happens on earth impacts his home below." Like, okay, fine, he does poke his head out a couple of times throughout to mess with Ewai, but much like every other character in the entire show he never seems impacted by that or anything else. I didn't spot much loving embrace either. What I DID see was a really cool act that should have made the audience deeply uncomfortable and instead takes you on such a whiplash journey you don't have much time to feel anything but amazed. This artist is remarkable in every way. Right up to the line without crossing into body horror territory. Very very cool and unique - a real standout.

Washington trapeze: Official description: When FUTURE looks up to see the final missing box flying in the air, she realizes it’s up to her to place the missing piece back into the CUBE. The Washington trapeze descends towards her in a poetic moment, as the animals return to stage to orchestrate her flight.

Actual experience: literally did not know we were rebuilding the cube until she put the final piece back in. Didn't even know it needed rebuilding. Kinda thought it just changed and adapted to fit whatever needed to happen onstage. Also very unclear on why the animals are at all invested in Future's flight, but regardless the choreography is very beautiful and it's just a treat to see this act at all. Future's artist is a fantastic aerialist and though there wasn't much swinging back and forth like we see in O, the diversity of the tricks is much wider and she uses the apparatus in ways I'd never seen before. Very strong act.

Teeterboards: Official description: In a high-flying performance, the paper animals celebrate connection and coexistence through an exhilarating triple teeterboard act. As the playful birds take flight from their teeterboards, they inject a palpable energy into the air, overjoyed by the feeling of togetherness.

Actual experience: cool that there's three, but otherwise there isn't really anything unique about this teeterboard act. A pretty bland finale act. I think the artists were having a bit of a rough night - there were some timing issues and redos, but that's circus baby, that never bothers me.

Finale: The cube takes center stage again and the animals parade around it, and slowly it revolves to reveal a kind of tableau of all the artists and animals together inside of it like a frame, which is a very cool visual. Music swells, we're all happy, and then it's over. Unfortunately this is the only Montreal Cirque performance I've seen where the cast didn't get a standing ovation from the entire audience.

Clowns: weird. Like they were fine, they got some laughs, but they neither reflected on the show nor seemed to meaningfully exist inside or outside of it. Like everyone else in the show, they were identical to one another. Both of their acts had to do with stacking boxes - which like, we get it, cube, boxes, okay, fine - but what got me was the very deliberate line of white packing tape across every box they used. In a show ostensibly about humanity's future, all I could think was Amazon Amazon Amazon. Had the show conveyed any sort of meaning, this might have been an interesting contrast to an environmentalist message. Maybe an actual commentary! Instead it just felt tacky and wasteful. Like we just watched all these animals we're supposed to care about, and now we're hefting around a dozen delivery boxes filled with nothing. I don't think this is wholly the artists' fault. Had they been given more substance to work with, they might have had a really interesting impact on the show.

Band: Beautifully featured! Gorgeously, androgynously costumed! Four vocalists! Four!! And some of the least memorable music I have ever heard from Cirque ever. Not a single song stood out, not a single one lingered in my head after it ended. They were so ancillary to the story, which might have been fine but they kept coming out onstage as though strictly to remind us that they existed in the first place. A shameful waste of immense talent.

Odds, ends, and final thoughts:

It may seem unfair to hold every act against its official description since so many successful Cirque shows and acts differ hugely from their marketing materials. But I do so here to highlight how Echo tries desperately cling to a message and theme, then abandons it at every turn. I don't even know if I would say the bones of a good show are there because I'm not convinced they are. Every element feels like it was salvaged from Under the Same Sky's scrap heap and retrofitted with just enough time to make Echo's premiere date. You couldn't make a show this disjointed. It's actually impossible. You would have to ignore every reasonable edit. But that's exactly what happened: they didn't make a new show. They just recycled an old one.

Great example: Ewai's name. "Ewai" is the first word in the only song we ever heard from UTSS, interestingly titled "Future." It's also the apparent first word of Echo's opening song, which has the same general melody as "Future" and is now called "Echo." So what, they just took a word from an existing and decided to name the dog after it? The alternative - that Ewai's name is the actual first sung word in the entire show - doesn't make sense, because Ewai has no connection to any sort of theme or journey. The only conclusion that makes sense is that he's just there, like every other detail, cherrypicked.

For real, what is the cube. It is utterly baffling to me. Is it good? Is it bad? Neutral? Did it break? Does it just transform? If it did break, are we meant to conclude that Meat Man is responsible and is a bad actor intent on destroying nature with his overtly capitalistic ways? If yes, why does Future seem to like him? If we see Future slide in the last piece, when did the cube's rebuild begin? Why have we centered a show apparently about unity and growth around such a static, angular structure? We should call the cube what it is: an UTSS holdover cum excuse not to build an actual set.

The costumes fail in exactly the way I feared during the show's development. There is no connecting with the artists because we almost never see them. Those that we see are dressed identically. Those that stand out are not given personalities or impact on the story.

Recommendations for fixes: redefine the Cartographer as a guide or architect. Position Future as a more powerful character, an instrument or inspiration for change rather than yet another stranger in a strange land. Ditch the fucking meat man, my god. Give artists unique costumes. Show artists' faces. Give us a moment to breathe and understand and enjoy.

I'm sorry for the negative review. Despite my tone it really doesn't give me much pleasure. I love Cirque and want their shows to succeed, but Echo is the kind of perfect storm I go nuts on: a wellspring of missed opportunity and untapped potential. I want to take the creation team by the shoulders and shake them until I understand how they thought this was a finished show, how they could claim to be proud of it. I'm honestly not convinced they are.

I was considering going down to DC to catch this again if I liked it, but I think I'm gonna hold off until it turns a year old or so. We saw radical transformations for Kooza, Volta, and Amaluna, all to varying degrees of success. I'd like to see elements of all those shows' developmental journeys in Echo one day, and I hope the artistic team takes the time to make the investment.

[navree]

What is your take on the relationship between Aegon I and his brother Orys Baratheon? How do you think it will be portrayed in the Conquest show? If Orys was half Targaryen, could he have claimed a dragon?

I don't necessarily know how it'll be portrayed in the Conquest show just cuz I haven't seen any information about it yet (ideally HBO will just give me the contract and it'll be whatever I want it to be, come on fellas) but in terms of my take, you know me, I have Thoughts because I love these characters too much.

As with everything about Aegon, this is a lot of conjecture because that man was giving us straight up nothing in terms of his thoughts and feelings, but despite what seems to be a lack of interest in their relationship from most people, it's clear that Orys was important to Aegon. It's likely that Aegon was just searching for a pretext to start war when he offered Orys for Argella's hand after he refused her, but he still cared enough about Orys and valued him enough that he thought that he should get to marry a full princess and have the potential to be a king, as well as valuing his life and safety enough that he was willing to pay an insane ransom just to get him back alive during his captivity in the First Dornish War. It's also clear that Aegon cared in the fact that he created the position of Hand. The Hand of the King is not something that existed before Aegon's attempt at unification, and while yes it does make sense to have some sort of advisor/grand vizier type of person, it's almost unheard of in the ASOIAF world to have a second in command with this much power and influence. The Hand is an incredibly significant position, second only to the king (and during Aegon's reign, the queen, since Visenya and Rhaenys were also administrators and essentially co-monarchs with Aegon, even though he was still at the top and the most powerful), and that is something Aegon came up with and bestowed on Orys because he wanted that to be Orys. That speaks to an insane amount of not just confidence in Orys as a person, but also trust. Considering how reserved Aegon was and how small he kept his circle, the fact that he trusted Orys as much as he did with such responsibility and power, even if it could come back to bite him should Orys have chosen to be a traitor, really speaks to the amount of value and affection he must have had.

I don't think it's one sided affection either. Most people who are given that amount of power and position likely would have tried to make the most of it, even try and supplant the person who gave it to them, and it's notable when that doesn't happen (why do you think Augustus and Agrippa and the way Agrippa never even tried to wrest power for himself even though he absolutely could have make me a bit crazy?). Yeah, Orys might have lost any eventual power grab, just based on the fact that Aegon had Balerion, but it would have severely weakened Aegon's position and probably led to the collapse of the Targaryens as a dynasty and rulers of a unified Seven Kingdoms. But Orys was perfectly contented to serve as Aegon's second fiddle, to go into battle for him and even die for him, to marry who he was asked to marry and rule where he was asked to do and even speak in Aegon's voice rather than his own. He was not only able to do it, but willing to do it, happy to do it even. And maybe some of it can be chalked up to familial obligation, but Orys was not publicly a member of that family. He wasn't ever formally claimed by Aerion, so even if they were raised as siblings, he wouldn't benefit as much from a Targaryen ascension the way Rhaenys and Visenya would (and of course, unlike Rhaenys and Visenya, he wasn't intrinsically tied to Aegon through marriage nor would his children have a vested interest in Aegon's vision working out the way their's would, seeing as they would also be Aegon's children). Orys wasn't motivated by family loyalty or his own personal ambitions or even lofty dreams about a unified world/protection against a greater threat the way the three Conquerors were, he was motivated by what looks like personal loyalty towards Aegon specifically. He was Aegon's before he was the realm's, even before he was House Targaryen's, and he was clearly willing to do whatever needed to be done for Aegon's sake. And not just in the Conquest, but even afterwards in other skirmishes. He didn't necessarily need to be leading armies in Dorne, now that he was the head of a Great House as well as the second most important man in the country (I don't think Jon Arryn or Otto Hightower were fighting on any frontlines while they were Hand) but he did it anyway. It's almost Rhaenys-like, in a fashion, the way that he was willing to put his own life on the line for the vision Aegon believed in, because he believed in it too (though, like I've said several times, Rhaenys had her own motivations for fighting in the Conquest and in Dorne beyond just what her husband wanted) even when he had a perfectly legitimate excuse not to, even though it ended up costing him dearly. And he never blamed Aegon for what happened to him, even though he was clearly embittered and became a crabby nightmare of a man in the aftermath who wasn't necessarily one for seeing things clearly (cut off Deria's hand? really? come on dude) and that's generally a recipe for heaping blame on the undeserving. But there's no record to suggest that Orys was ever angry at Aegon, or ever tried to remove himself from Aegon's life beyond resigning as Hand, or that they had any kind of falling out, that despite everything he was feeling, he never turned his emotions around on Aegon, as if the love he bore Aegon was too great to ever consider blaming him for Orys's misfortunes.

I also like the fact that Orys is actually younger than Aegon. The closest anyone gets to a date is the idea that he might have been born in 20 BC, which would make him seven years younger than his brother, which is actually a pretty significant age gap in terms of childhood development. And yet, they're frequently referred to as childhood companions. In spite of the age gap, Aegon took the time to spend time with Orys, to hang out with him, to engage with him and make the effort in their relationship. And that's not a small thing, because Aegon was probably only used to being around children roughly his own age. He doesn't seem to have had a lot of companions as a boy, and when it comes to his sisters, he was two years younger than Visenya and one to two years older than Rhaenys, which is much closer developmentally than an age gap of seven years. But despite not necessarily being accustomed to interacting with someone that much younger than him, he still tried his hardest, and idk there's something that tugs at the heart to imagine little Aegon, probably a quiet and unobtrusive kid, putting in that amount of attention and care into trying to bond with a baby, a toddler, a little kid even as he was growing well beyond that phase. It's easy to see why Orys would latch onto Aegon as a child, he latched onto his cool older brother, but Aegon was putting in the effort too, enough so that by the time that they were in similar developmental areas they were true friends and companions and so incredibly willing to die for each other. And even if that gap adds an element of sadness to the fact that they both died in 37 AC (Orys just a bit after Aegon I think, considering the Vulture King stuff happened during Aenys's reign) with Orys only being in his late fifties, there's something to the fact that Orys didn't really ever live much of a life without Aegon, that he loved him too much for it, and that Aegon deliberately cultivated that relationship not as an adult looking for an ally, but as a kid who wanted a companion, who loved Orys too and was willing to put in real work to show that almost from day one.

It's also possible that their relationship suffered in their later years. Once again, it all goes back to that most consequential of moments, the First Dornish War. Orys's mutilation happens before Rhaenys is shot down over Hellholt, so he was already a bitter asshole by the time that happened, but it doesn't seem like he tried to move himself out of his own mental funk when it happened either. So Aegon's dealing with grief from the loss of his wife/baby sister, probably even some guilt over not protecting her better, as well as some increasing panic and stress over the problems Aenys, his three year old son and only child, was developing as a result, and who could he go to? Visenya? Visenya was grieving too, and we don't know if their relationship was ever functional enough for Aegon to be any kind of emotionally open with her (I like to think it was, but that's a headcanon from me). Orys? Ideally yeah, you go to your best friend, your stalwart shield, your strong right hand, your brother, when you're hurting and scared and in pain and in need of comfort, but it's entirely possible that Orys was either a bad comfort or had already entrenched himself so deeply in his bitterness that Aegon didn't even look to him as an option for help. After all, Orys had deprived him of a necessary councilor during active wartime, and was more focused on his own issues than anything else, so maybe Aegon just felt that he couldn't rely on him in his most desperate time. That's a huge backslide in trust from what they were in the Conquest, and possibly irrecoverable. I don't think it was as bad or as permanent as the issues that ended up arising between Aegon and Visenya, since, like I said before, there isn't any record of a public falling out or anyone remarking on Orys's lack of influence, and he was at court regularly enough to be included in the group of people who had opinions on how to deal with the Dornish peacemaking delegation. I don't think that Orys did anything unforgivable or something like that, I think that Aegon just decided not to rely on him the way they were both used to, and it created a distance between them exacerbated by what appears to be a natural tendency from Aegon to shut himself off from most people he's not extraordinarily close to.

Man Aegon should have stayed well out of fucking Dorne, is there literally any interpersonal relationship of his other than, idk, the one with Balerion, that escaped even remotely unscathed from that godforsaken war? Christ alive.

Could Orys have claimed a dragon? It's possible. The dragons likely would have accepted him, considering they also accepted half Targaryen children like Velaryons who intermarried and Rhaenys TQWNW, who was herself half-Baratheon, and the Strongs and Alicent's children, both of whom only had half-Targaryen ancestry themselves. Would he have been allowed to, as a bastard? That's harder to say. It doesn't seem like bastardy held the same taint for the Targaryens that it did for the other nobles in Westeros, but it might have still been a Thing enough that, while they were children, Aerion wasn't going to allow a bastard to lay claim to a Targaryen dragon. We know even less about Aerion than we do about Aegon, including when exactly he was supposed to die, so while we know that Aegon might have been inclined to go against his wishes (considering that he brought Rhaenys into his marriage despite what were clear plans to have him only be married to Visenya), we don't know if his moments of rebellion, like the marriage to Rhaenys, happened during Aerion's lifetime or not. So it's entirely possible that Orys was prevented from participating in any dragon culture stuff in his youth, perhaps in spite of a younger Aegon's protestations, and that by the time Aerion was out of the picture, they're all adults and Orys had already decided that he didn't necessarily need or want a dragon when he was a capable fighter in his own right.

TL;DR I think they really loved each other, that Aegon valued Orys incredibly highly and that Orys in return deeply cared for Aegon, and that even if the relationship could have possibly suffered in the aftermath of the accursed First Dornish War, it wasn't anything irreversible and that the love was always there, and it was clearly appreciated and worked towards on both sides. I think Orys could have claimed a dragon if he wanted, but either never saw the need or might have been blocked from doing so by their father, potentially in spite of Aegon trying to make a case for him. And also I love them both very much.

[fableandfandoms]

Opalvira: The Unexpected Union

In the midst of *The Legend of Korra*’s fourth season, a fleeting moment between Opal and Kuvira sparked a creative journey that led to the birth of the ship *Opalvira*. Inspired by their tense interaction in "The Coronation," I saw an opportunity to explore the complex emotional landscape that lay beneath their conflict. While Opal grapples with feelings of betrayal toward Kuvira, once a trusted figure within her family, Kuvira’s determination to unify the Earth Kingdom brings a magnetic intensity to their dynamic. I coined the name *Opalvira* to capture this unique blend of warmth and ambition, envisioning a narrative where these two seemingly opposite characters challenge each other’s beliefs and ultimately inspire growth. Join me as I delve into the intricate journey of creating *Opalvira*, a story of redemption, understanding, and the transformative power of love between two women bound by history but divided by ideals.

I created *Opalvira* back in October 2014, when *The Legend of Korra* was in its final season. By then, the show had reached new levels of complexity, and I was fully invested in its characters and the story’s direction. It was in Season 4, Episode 3, titled “The Coronation,” where I first noticed an undeniable spark between Opal and Kuvira—a moment that went largely unnoticed by many, but for me, it was the genesis of something compelling.

In that episode, we see Opal’s raw anger and disappointment toward Kuvira for the first time. Kuvira had once been part of the Beifong family, Opal’s family, and her betrayal hit hard. Opal was visibly struggling with feelings of betrayal and resentment toward Kuvira’s transformation from a trusted figure to a feared leader. That interaction got my imagination racing. Here were two characters so different from one another, yet undeniably tied together by shared history and heartbreak. Opal was deeply principled and selfless, dedicated to the people and her family, while Kuvira had taken an authoritarian path, committed to unity and control at all costs.

I remember watching that episode and feeling that their interaction held an unspoken tension that was too intriguing to ignore. The way Opal’s emotions clashed with Kuvira’s determination and lack of remorse made me think about how their relationship might look if things had been different. I saw potential for Kuvira to challenge Opal’s understanding of loyalty and family while Opal, in turn, could become a reminder of the past Kuvira had chosen to leave behind.

That’s when I coined the ship name *Opalvira*. The name captured the essence of their dynamic—a mix of Opal’s warmth and moral clarity with Kuvira’s strength and ambition. It was a pairing that combined two seemingly opposite characters, bound by their connection to the Beifong family and their clashing ideals. From there, I built my vision of *Opalvira*: imagining what a romance or even just a deep connection could look like between two people who were constantly forced to confront the differences in their morals and priorities. I created *Opalvira* as a ship to explore the nuances of these two personalities, hoping to flesh out what might have been if Opal’s compassion and Kuvira’s strength could have led to a deeper understanding, or even a transformative connection.

It was a creative leap that allowed me to see beyond their brief interaction and build a story that brought out the best and worst in both characters. Through my fanfiction and the *Opalvira* ship, I could give them a story that explored redemption, conflict, and perhaps even love, highlighting a bond that was never shown onscreen but that I felt could have fit beautifully within the show’s narrative.

Creating *Opalvira* was a journey that started in that brief moment from “The Coronation” but quickly grew into something far deeper. When Opal confronted Kuvira, I could see that this wasn’t just a typical antagonist-versus-heroine interaction; it was layered with complicated emotions that felt personal. Opal’s anger didn’t just stem from Kuvira’s authoritarian rule over the Earth Kingdom—it was rooted in betrayal. Kuvira wasn’t just a distant, untouchable villain; she was someone who had once been family, practically an adopted sister to Opal’s brother, Baatar Jr. I began to imagine what that history could mean in a different context, how it would play out if Opal could confront Kuvira not just as a rebel, but on a more intimate level.

One of the key things that attracted me to the pairing was the idea of redemption, and how Kuvira’s character could evolve if she was willing to open herself up to someone like Opal. In the show, Kuvira is complex—fiercely dedicated to her ideals, willing to go to any lengths to bring what she sees as order to the Earth Kingdom. But there’s something about her that suggests she hasn’t entirely shut off her emotions; she still has a sense of loyalty, however twisted it might be. Opal, on the other hand, represents a moral center, a voice of compassion and conviction. Imagining her influence on Kuvira, even as they clashed over their differences, felt like it could be transformative for both of them. I started writing *Opalvira* stories, where I could explore the idea of Kuvira gradually peeling away her defenses under Opal’s influence.

As I developed *Opalvira*, I wanted to challenge the common tropes of hero-villain romances by giving both Opal and Kuvira a chance to change one another. Kuvira’s ambition and determination made her a character who wouldn’t easily admit fault or vulnerability. But through Opal, I could envision Kuvira facing her own actions and motivations. How would she reconcile her desire to unify the Earth Kingdom with the personal cost to the people who had once been her family? What would happen if she had to confront someone who saw her not as a conqueror or a ruler, but as the flawed human being she once was?

In the world of *Opalvira*, I wanted to create scenes that pushed Kuvira to reflect on her choices, while Opal found herself drawn to the complexity behind Kuvira’s cold exterior. I wrote moments where Kuvira would let her guard down, revealing glimpses of vulnerability that Opal could see, maybe even empathize with. But Opal, too, was challenged by her connection with Kuvira. Being with Kuvira forced her to question her own sense of loyalty and forgiveness, to ask herself what it truly meant to forgive someone who had hurt her family.

I saw *Opalvira* as more than just a pairing; it became a space for me to imagine a story of growth, redemption, and emotional transformation. It was about creating a path for Kuvira to find empathy, and for Opal to embrace the strength within herself to confront her own values and beliefs. Through this ship, I was able to explore ideas about the power of forgiveness, the complexity of relationships born from conflict, and the idea that sometimes, the people who challenge us the most are the ones who have the most to teach us. *Opalvira* was, and still is, a creative exploration of what happens when opposites collide—and perhaps, ultimately, understand one another.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

Least favourite part of canon:

Oeuf. I don't think this is controversial, at least among critics (idk how the fandom feels about it). It's a window into an alternate universe in which Hannibal was a normal procedural, so it's kind of analytically interesting along those lines in holding up a mirror to all the ways Hannibal is not a normal procedural (as well as demonstrating how effective a more unified creator vision can be in a show having consistent quality and tone and approach) - it shows a negative so we can see the positive. But Jesus Christ, it has the subtlety of a brick, a murder plot that feels like an after-school special, and a complete lack of bold and artsy imagery. Possibly the only episode of the show I'd genuinely consider "bad".

1, 9 for the choose violence meme :3

The character everyone gets wrong

It's very easy to say Will, what with him always being pulled too much in one direction and not enough in the other, but I'm actually going to say Alana. Possibly the character where I see the most portrayals of her (whether in fic or in casual one-liner text posts) that feel off the mark to me in a much more totalizing manner.

Which is to say, she's considerably more neurotic than gets recognized, and while she doesn't have low self-esteem at all, she is prone to continual and rigorous self-analysis. Her pathological introspection (her tendency to "be her own therapist"), her difficulties with intimacy, and her saviour complex all indicate that she has some emotional problems that she hides under the mask of professionalism.

And I also don't see that going away, necessarily, come season 3 and beyond. She becomes more hard-edged and less trusting or willing to open up to others, but she retains a lot of her base characteristics, such as her strong convictions and sense of personal responsibility. And I don't see that coming without a strong sense of guilt and internal conflict - she'll always be questioning what she's willing to sacrifice and what harm she's willing to live with, and resisting her worst impulses. That'll just take a different form post-canon.

That is to say - she's not spending her time flicking her hair and blithely luxuriating in how much better she is than Hannibal (and Will). I mean, she is obviously a better person, in general, and she's aware of it - but she has been marked by her association with Hannibal, and she's well aware of that too. She feels fury and hatred towards him, but she hasn't been spared his influence. And her total conviction that she's in the right has also steered her wrong in the past, and has the capacity to do so again.

[chronotopes]

whats your merlin thesis bestie

HIIIII okay i was gonna answer this first thing in the morning but then i drank coffee and had a "cleaning the house" fever come over me so now here i am

there's major ways to fix merlin, but both of them depend on the same basic premise, which is a) merlin is a bitchass liberal, b) uther and gaius are terrible father figures shaping arthur and merlin respectively into versions of themselves, c) fuck the dragon all my homies hate the dragon, d) morgana did nothing wrong*

*morgana probably did things wrong but as a product of very real things that shaped her, including gaius and merlin willingly keeping her in the dark as to her own magic, and an ongoing double standard within the show where merlin is allowed to murder every single magic user that makes an attempt on arthur and uther's life, but the moment anyone is like "so what if we just offed uther, you know, the guy who committed genocide" merlin does a whole BUT KILLING PEOPLE IS WRONG!!! kind of thing and then goes on to do his fifteenth murder of the season

so the 'averting tragedy' way to fix merlin is to make these institutions (sons becoming their fathers, morgana devolving into Scary Woman Villainy, the enforced status quo of 'you have to not tell arthur about your magic, ever') not NONEXISTENT but CHALLENGEABLE, make it a show about young adults who are manipulated by adults more powerful than themselves, who are raised to believe in Tradition and Decorum and Waiting For Destiny but who are ultimately able to care for each other and (in merlin and morgana's case) the oppressed group they are literally a part of more than they care for this upbringing, and choose to fight for that rather than the demands of uther, gaius, and that motherfucking dragon. that's a show i'd sincerely enjoy watching!

the 'entrenching tragedy' way to fix merlin, on the other hand, is to keep all of these elements – the tragedy of every goddamn stupid choice merlin makes on that show – and make it intentional. i don't want to really air out my "everything i like is the same" disease, but make merlin a fullblown terezi pyrope archetype, someone who is practically a child who, by means of necessity and of what he's rewarded for doing, grows to embrace the warped justice of upholding an institution that hurts him and everyone he loves. empathize with morgana on a writing-level the way katie mcgrath was clearly very capable of doing - don't make her Less Violent, but make her violence a Comprehensible Choice, not just a “she’s evil and sexy now!!!” message to the audience. basically, consciously and at every point of the story, write merlin as a fullblown irrational protagonist, and when arthur gets merked and the golden age doesn't happen, make it a show about the failures of fantasy-metaphor-liberalism and about sons becoming their fathers in horrible ways, and about the fucking tragedy of merlin killing morgana when they should have been allies from the start. that's a show i'd enjoy watching too, one that leaves you as hollow and angry as merlin-the-show had, but in a way that comes from skilled writing rather than largely-not-very-good writing that sometimes does something heartbreakingly meaningful long enough for you to keep watching.

[blueratgrmln]

SONIC MOVIE 2 SPOILER TALK ABOUT REFERENCES

!!!

OKAY SO I NOTICED A DICHOTOMY WITH ROBOTNIK AND SONIC USING THE MASTER EMERALD'S POWER, IN WAYS THAT EXPLICITLY AND IMPLICITLY REFERENCE TIKAL'S PRAYER

Tikal's Prayer:

"The servers are the 7 Chaos.

Chaos is power...

Power enriched by the heart.

The controller is the one that unifies the Chaos"

Aside from the illustrated exposition scenes which explain the importance of the first and last lines in the context of the film canon, the "Chaos is power....Power enriched by the heart" lines were embedded within the character arcs of this story, and I absolutely adore how they did this.

If I remember correctly, Robotnik says "Chaos is power" when he fuses with the Master Emerald. Robotnik symbolically and literally isolates that phrase from the rest of the Prayer, and twists it to support his vision of world domination. I LOVE how the course of the final battle shows Robotnik failing because he lacks the HEART part.....

....which SONIC has!!! Sonic activating the M.E's/Chaos Emerald's power by saying "I love you guys" beautifully showcases "Power enriched by the heart". The way Tikal's Prayer is honored in this story without explicitly speaking the whole thing is awesome storytelling & referencing IMO.

I think more could be said about the visuals symbolizing this dichotomy too. Robotnik isolates himself (ignoring Stone for a sec) in the Death Egg Robot's head/control room. Then he burns the fire ring around Sonic & Tom & Maddie, isolating them too. But the family literally holds onto each other's hands and they express love for each other in the face of death, the purest way to show UNITY and HEART.

Damn this movie is beautiful aaa

[architectuul]

An Attempted Utopia

The city of Shumen in Bulgaria is home to the country’s largest monument to the Founders of the Bulgarian State. An enormous, cathedral-like complex on the plateau above Shumen tells the story of the early Bulgarian rulers through a series of larger-than-life modernist sculptures. 

Shumen Central City Square (1988-1989), unfinished. Created by Ivan Sivrev, Elena Konyarska, Maya Petrova, and Tsvetan Vasilev; chief consultant architect Georgi Stoilov. | Photo © Darmon Richter

But while many other memorials built during the communist period have been doomed now to decay and obsolescence owing to their political symbolism – branded as they often are with hammers, sickles and stars – the Shumen monument, by focussing purely on the ancient past, has managed to remain relevant to, and loved by, its inheritors. Today this symbol of Bulgarian nationhood is better preserved than probably any other monument built during the 45 years of Bulgarian communism so many foreign visitors come to Shumen to marvel at it. 

An upwards view, from deep within the abandoned construction site of the Central City Square concrete tower.  | Photo © Darmon Richter

A vast concrete tower looms over Shumen’s city centre: phallic, foreboding, and visible from all ends of the city. Standing 18 storeys high, the tower rises from a construction site six storeys tall and spreading out to fill an entire city block. The Central City Square, a gargantuan experiment in urban design was intended to be revolutionary, incorporating shops, hotel, post office, cafes, restaurants, hall for weddings and rituals as well as municipal administrative offices but has never been finished. 

Glimpsing the full scale of vast Central City Square. | Photo © Darmon Richter

When the Bulgarian Communist Party relinquished its single-party system at the end of 1989 the country slid into a chaotic and economically unstable democracy and many former state projects has been left incomplete. All over Bulgaria are the shells of abandoned construction projects, orphans of a dissolved government but nowhere any come close to the size of Shumen’s Central City Square. The tower, its most visible element, stood between two unfinished blocks which rise behind a security fence established right along the city’s central pedestrian area on Liberation Square. Only by peering over that fence, does one realise that the tower and both blocks are all the same building, joined through lower levels, dug into the hillside, with road access to the site from a street behind. The lower levels of Central City Square extend beneath the street, emerging behind you as tunnel entrances that look like metro stations. Hotel Madara, overlooking the square, was supposed to be connected with underground tunnels that would grant guests easy access to the complex.

Cross sections of Shumen Central City Square. | Drawing via Promisljena estetika (1988) Vol. 1

The street was redeveloped in tangent with the Central City Square project, around the pedestrianised area are motifs thematically connecting it to both the new complex and the monument on the hill above. For instance, the tallest column of the Monument to the Founders of the Bulgarian State is topped with a stylised black granite lion, based on a 7th century carving, a design that is echoed in the streets below, with sculpted bronze lion heads set like sentries along a sheer concrete wall. Opposite the lions, the outer wall of the new complex nods to a culture that predates even the first Bulgarians, Hermes the messenger appears in sculpted relief on the face of what would have been the new post office.

A modernist relief at the subterranean entrance. | Photo © Darmon Richter

This redesign of Shumen city centre was a world apart from the monumental design of previous decades. Nearby, the 1949 Monument to the Red Army on Slavyanski Boulevard was pure, unadulterated socialist-realism; even the 1965 Monument to Freedom leant heavily into safe political territory with its hero figure and engraved hammer-and-sickle motif. 

Western block rises behind an advertising fence.| Photo © Darmon Richter

However, the complex at the heart of this city project was bolder still. Intended to revolutionise Shumen’s urban landscape in ways that would have made this city notable not just by Bulgarian standards, but potentially one of the more advanced urban centres anywhere in the socialist world.

In an interview with Ivan Sivrev appeared in Industrial Aesthetics, Decorative Arts (1988), a monthly magazine published by the Bulgarian State Committee for Science and Technical Progress, the architect described the project as a forum for this 100,000-person city. “Central City Square has been designed as a living organism,” said Sivrev, “the elements of which are interconnected and interdependent just like, figuratively speaking, the organs of a living creature. We intend for Shumen’s centre to materialise as a synthesis between aesthetic, artistic, social, engineering, ecological and other requirements, instilling the rich historical past of Bulgaria into a modern development.”

Ivan Sivrev (right) stands beside a model of Central City Square in 1988.

Sivrev lists the various facilities to be included in the complex “the ‘Man’s Industry’ Fashion House, ‘Pancho Vladigerov’ Festival Complex, the existing Hotel Madara, and on the first underground level, the House of Rituals and Services.” The Festival Complex alone was to feature “concert halls, a club house, recital halls, music rooms, a record shop and musical instrument outlets”, meanwhile, “the House of Rituals and Services consists of three ceremonial halls, a family centre and council offices where various administrative, legislative and technical services shall be provided. There shall be a conference hall with 400 seats and a club restaurant for the administrative workers.”

Preliminary (up left) and final (up right) building plan with silhouettes and cross sections (below). | Drawing via Promisljena estetika (1988) Vol. 1

Other outlets inside the building included tobacconists, pharmaceuticals, a panorama café, coffee shops, a luxury restaurant and nightclub for 250 guests. One particular theme that emerges from the interview is Sivrev’s commitment to environmental issues. The building was designed from the ground up with the goal of combatting congestion and pollution in the city; considerations which had been lacking from many of the Party’s previous large-scale constructions. The Shumen project was to feature open green spaces, rooftop gardens and planted terraces. It was planned with the intention of increasing the size of community green areas. Cascading water would provide a pleasantly refreshing spray in hot summers, while a unified public transport hub would free the neighbouring streets from traffic congestion.

A towering concrete skeleton of the complex today. | Photo © Darmon Richter

This effect would be achieved by moving some of the city’s essential functions underground. “The construction of underground levels is a social necessity” states Sivrev as “underground levels bring mass transportation stops immediately next to the city square without creating a conflict between pedestrians and motor vehicles. They improve usage of public transportation significantly and reduce noise pollution and car emissions.”

The first underground level was planned for public transport stations, flower shops, souvenir and jewellery shops, homewares, perfumes, a national lottery kiosk and ticket offices for Balkan airline, BDZ rail company, Avtotransport coach company. The second underground level was intended to feature a car park for 200 vehicles under the square and a space for 250 vehicles next to Georgi Dimitrov Boulevard. Below that, the third underground level would provide a united storage area for servicing all buildings in the square.

Silhouettes and cross sections along the main core axes of the central structure.  | Drawing via Promisljena estetika (1988) Vol. 1

The project as a whole reflected new ways of thinking about urban space. There are parallels between Ivan Sivrev’s design and the Radiant City proposed by Le Corbusier in 1930, when he exhibited his design for the perfected future metropolis - a linear city formed of standardised blocks, with underground transit routes reducing the surface traffic to allow for an abundance of green spaces. Each block would take the form of a self-contained vertical village containing shops, laundries, even kindergartens. The architect likened his vision to a living organism, composed of interconnected organs working together in harmony.

Le Corbusier’s proposed extent of the Radiant City. | Photo via Stadtstreicher

“I believe we managed to achieve conceptual synergy between urbanisation and architectural-artistic concepts. The development and its attributed buildings create the necessary conditions and allow for creating a unified architectural organism in which all levels and structures are both spatially and functionally connected. This is the very first such development in Bulgaria and it applies the most advanced principles of underground urbanism” is certain Sivrev. His design sketches show that the plan for Shumen Central City Square would have seen it grow considerably larger than what’s visible today. Much like Le Corbusier’s Radiant City the project would remain unrealised and today, those who venture inside will find not utopia, but a sprawling warren of abandoned spaces and twisting concrete corridors.

Unfinished spaces on the easternmost block. | Photo © Darmon Richter

Plants have taken root in some of the airier regions of the complex. | Photo © Darmon Richter

Bulgaria’s communist leader Todor Zhivkov was kicked out by his own party in 1989 in response to a number of growing criticisms throughout the final years of his regime. The rise of nationalism had been a major factor, culminating in Zhivkov’s attempted ethnic cleansing of Turkish and Roma minorities, beside that there had also been serious environmental concerns. Zhivkov had continued his predecessors’ urbanisation schemes, with large-scale industrialisation as cities were rapidly expanded to accommodate new work forces. The state had done little, however, to offset the effect this was having on the environment. By 1989, The Ledger reported that 85% of Bulgaria’s river water and 70% of its farmland had been damaged by industrial wastes and pollutants.

The Danube city of Ruse had it worst of all, when a chemical plant was built across the river at Giurgiu in Romania, it began to exhale toxic gases towards Bulgaria. Soil around the Ruse area was shown to contain concentrations of mineral acid at 40 times over the safe limit. A cloud of chemical gas descended on a Ruse meeting of the Young Pioneer organisation in September 1987, and children as young as seven were seen choking, running for cover with their red neckerchiefs clutched over their mouths. Zhivkov refused to act, however, unwilling to upset his fraternal relationship with the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. The Committee for the Ecological Protection of Ruse was founded, and they began protesting Zhivkov’s lack of solutions. Initially these demonstrations were crushed, Zhivkov allegedly ordered the beating of a group of environmental activists outside an OSCE summit in October 1989, but national dissatisfaction grew. Organised, nationwide protest gave birth to the Ecological Openness movement: a forerunner to the contemporary Bulgarian Green Party.

As Detlef Pollack and Jan Wielgohs note in Dissent and Opposition in Communist Eastern Europe, “On November 3 1989, Ecoglasnost (Ecological Openness) delivered the crucial blow to the Communist political system. At least 10,000 people came and marched to parliament, carrying posters and chanting the word democracy. It was a crucial breakthrough. Just a week following the Ecoglasnost march, Zhivkov was sacked.”

Bare concrete facades on the north side. | Photo © Darmon Richter

Shumen from the rooftops. | Photo © Darmon Richter

Perhaps Shumen’s Central City Square, a Corbusian city of the future, designed for a new ecologically responsible mode for urban living, had been a belated response to the problems. Perhaps it was intended as a trial, as the first of a new wave of ecologically-friendly urban redevelopments, but even if that were the case it was too little, too late.

Even by 1988, the project had reportedly been fraught with difficulties and by disagreements amongst its creative team. Sivrev explained these as “the inability to comprehend the unity and yet simultaneously multi-faceted nature of the development.” One engineer had baulked at the prospect of building the tower and ran away from the project. “Atypical solutions require atypical thinking” Sivrev concluded.

The unfinished tower. | Photo © Darmon Richter

But the final blow came in 1989 when the communist state was dissolved and Shumen’s Central City Square, like so many other unfinished constructions in Bulgaria, had its funding cut off. In place of a unified architectural organism the people of Shumen would be left instead to deal with a colossal, crumbling skeleton.

--

by Darmon Richter [Adapted with permission from Ex Utopia]

[bring-it-all-down]

I think it’s easy to think of Vane’s season one arc as being out of place with the rest of his time on the show, but I’d like to offer an alternative understanding. I think that Vane’s arc is an extremely cohesive examination of Hobbes’s social contract theory that begins with its acceptance and ends with its complete rejection. This is a rather lengthy analysis, but it’s one that people might find interesting if not compelling.

Hobbes’s Social Contract Theory

Central to Hobbes’s conception of political life are four terms: liberty, equality, fear, and power. Liberty for Hobbes is “the absence of external impediments” such as water being enclosed by riverbanks or humans being chained to something (xiv). This conception of liberty is purely physical, detailing a relationship between concrete things. Next, Hobbes understands equality as being the equal ability of one to kill another; there is no natural inequality among human beings as anyone has the power to kill any other person, either through strength of body or of mind, or of some combination of the two. Because everybody has equal power over everyone else’s life and one’s ability to be free, Hobbes states, “they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man” (XIII). This condition necessarily leads to “continual fear, and danger of violent death” (xiii).  

Finally, Hobbes defines power as the ability to acquire some future good. This conception of power stems from the fact that there is no private property in Hobbes’s state of nature: “It is consequent also to the same condition that there be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be every man’s that he can get, and for so long as he can keep it” (XIII). Power, according to Hobbes, manifests itself in two ways: natural or instrumental. Natural power is acquisition through using physical characteristics like strength and intelligence, whereas instrumental acquisition requires one to use one’s reputation, friends, good luck, etc. 

It is this fear of death and desire for acquisition that leads us to form political communities, which is our natural end; we are meant to live in communities. These communities form when their members “confer all their power and strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will” (xvii). This singular power, known as the Leviathan, is absolute; it cannot be transferred to another body (no separation of powers) or forfeited, and there is no power above it. The Leviathan enforces this power by tying its subjects through “fear of punishment to the performance of their covenants,” namely their covenant to live peacefully with one another (xvii). 

While the Leviathan’s power is absolute in theory, Hobbes does allow for its dissolution if it becomes too arbitrary or capricious on the ground that it would then plunge a civil society back into the state of nature, from which point they would be allowed to choose a new sovereign. However, because the state of nature is so feared, people are highly unlikely to dissolve the Leviathan’s power. This, then, is how authoritarian states justify their power.

In this account of the social contract theory of government, we see the relationship among liberty, equality, fear, and power. In order for people to fully exercise their liberty and power, their fear must be redirected from one another toward a singular entity. This creation of an unequal civil society is what allows for the development of private property, as well as concepts like justice and morality, which are absent in the state of nature due to the lack of agreed upon definitions. 

Vane’s Season 1 Arc

Initially, Vane appears to embrace a Hobbesian conception of the state of nature. His season 1 arc, I believe, is his embrace of Hobbes’s state of nature through the confrontation of the two people who hold power over him: Eleanor and his enslaver. After Eleanor gets him deposed as captain of the Ranger, he tells Idelle, “No captain on this island's ever known that kind of power. Power that doesn't care how many votes you can tally, who loves you, who hates you, who fears you...none of us have any right to hate her for it. She's strong and we're weak. That's the reality of things here. And no one down there is strong enough to change anything” (1.05). Here, Vane reduces things to power. Eleanor has the power to acquire private property and to cut off pirates from doing the same, and so people––including Vane––fear her. To them, she is a quasi-Leviathan figure. However, Nassau exists more as a state of nature than it does as a civil society, and so the possibility of being her equal remains.

While Eleanor threatens Vane’s power, he doesn’t fear her in the same way he fears his enslaver, Albinus, who threatens his life. This constant fear of Albinus manifests itself in Vane hallucinating Albinus’s presence in Nassau. This vision causes Vane to realize that if he is to become equal to Eleanor, he must first become equals with Albinus. He initially seeks to overtake Albinus through taking away his other slaves. He pitches Nassau to them as a place “where strong men live lives of pleasure, not labor, a place where you could be feared and respected once again” (1.07). For Vane, the pleasure comes through realizing one’s equality and thus one’s ability to instill fear rather than have fear instilled in them. As is typical in the state of nature, Vane’s relationship with Albinus ends first with Albinus believing he killed Vane and then with Vane actually killing Albinus. 

Vane’s conversation with Jack upon his return to Nassau cements his role as a Hobbesian figure. He tells Jack, “In some ways, Jack, it had to come to this, don't you think?...Me deciding if you live or die” (1.08). Over the course of the season, Vane has increasingly reduced relationships to the ability one has to kill the other and the fear such ability instills in people. Following a Hobbesian model, then, we would expect Vane to think the formation of civil society with a Leviathan figure to be good, but this is not where his season 2 and 3 arcs go.

Vane’s Season 2 Arc

Indeed, Vane quite explicitly rejects Hobbesian social contract theory. While Hobbes argues that humans are driven toward society in part because of a natural “desire of such things as are necessary to comfortable living” (xiii), Vane says to Flint, “‘Give us your submission, and we will give you the comfort you need.’ No, I can think of no measure of comfort worth that price” (3.08). For Vane, then, living in the “pre-political” Nassau is better than submitting to the power of the state. This is the case because no such “state of nature” exists; there will always be a state attempting to impose its authority on Nassau.

Vane’s separation from Hobbesian political thought, then, begins as a matter of practicality. He does not abandon fear of death as the starting point, but he expands his thought beyond himself. It is no longer simply his own fear of death that drives him, but the fear within his fellow pirates of that same death. After he learns that Charlestown has captured and will kill Flint he tells his and Flint’s crew that “Nassau is strongest when she’s feared. And if what promises to happen here tomorrow actually happens, a trophy made of one of her most notorious captains, she may never be feared again” (2.09). He reiterates this point to his quartermaster, who is concerned that his crew will kill Flint’s crew to steal the Man of War: “Tell them if this ship tries to run on a skeleton crew, they’re going to get chased, they’re going to get caught, and they’re going to get killed” (2.10). It is not fear of one another, then, that drives Vane toward a community but rather fear of the authority of the state. While he and Flint are equals, he realizes that neither is equal to the state, England, and if they remain as individuals, the state will kill them one by one.

Flint’s (and then Vane’s) trial stands as an example of a Hobbesian state; the lawmakers are the executors are the jury. All sovereign authority is placed in the hands of one body with no authority above it. When confronted with this example, Vane comes to conceptualize of community as the only means of instilling fear in the state; as the state is unified, so must be the pirates. 

In accord with Flint telling him “we remind them that they were right to be afraid,” he provides a refutation of Hobbesian sovereignty for the audience: “these men convinced you that they speak for you, that the power you’ve given them is used in your interests. That the prisoner before you is your enemy and they your friends. For those of you who live to see tomorrow... know that you had a choice to see the truth and you let yourselves be convinced otherwise” (2.10). He reminds them that they’ve granted the sovereign power on the basis of it working toward their collective good and can thus conceivably revoke said power. He then illustrates that the sovereign cannot fulfill its purpose of providing for their safety against the threat of pirates and therefore the covenant on which the sovereign’s authority is based is inherently faulty. He pokes metaphorical holes in Hobbes’s contract theory of government before he pokes literal holes in Charlestown with his canons.

Vane’s Season 3 Arc

Vane’s season 3 arc offers an alternative foundation for civil society than fear and desire for property: friendship. When Vane confronts Jack in the first episode of the season for lying to Vane about using slave labor to rebuild the fort when Vane stood up for Jack against Flint, Jack lays it out for Vane: “you and I had been through enough shit for you to know that I would do the same for you, that I have done the same for you, and would again without hesitation. I made a commitment to you, with you, to restore this place, to make it strong again...Please know that I meant no slight by it. No lack of respect or friendship. It's quite the opposite” (3.01). Vane is certainly right to be angry about enslaving people, but Jack is correct in reminding him that this new effort to free Nassau has as its basis friendship and mutual respect.

At this point, however, Vane does not yet understand what friendship entails. For that, he needs to confront his understanding of friendship, which he does through the return of Edward Teach to Nassau. The conception of friendship Vane learned from Teach is simply to let people live when you could have killed them. Teach did this for Vane when Vane betrayed him for Eleanor, and he did it for Jack after Jack lost the pearls in the ocean, and it was his offer to Eleanor after she betrayed him by freeing Abigail from him. 

When Teach offers to defend Nassau if afterwards Vane sails with him away from Nassau forever, he outlines what their relationship is: “I do not seek your partnership because I am too weak to defend myself. I don't seek it to protect my things or to increase profit...There is an instinct to leave behind something made in one's own image. Nature has denied me the ability, it would seem, but not the need” (3.03). This understanding of their relationship rejects the fundamental Hobbesian basis for such things––it’s not fear of death or desire for acquisition––and instead points toward a desire for a certain kind of immortality. However, this relationship still fundamentally falls within a Hobbesian conception of the family which is artificially constructed in civil society and which requires the children to obey and honor their fathers. Therefore, this, too, is a relationship not based on friendship.

It is Jack’s conversation with Vane before he leaves with Teach that offers Vane a different kind of friendship. Despite Woodes Rogers’ early arrival ruining their plans to defend Nassau and the target placed not only on Vane but on all pirates close to him, Jack refuses to leave with Vane. His refusal is predicated on the fact that he desires freedom: “Teach respects you...but me, I have no interest in living as a target of his….Nor would I be a ward of yours. I've made something for myself here. I'll make it again somehow, but I've come too far to go back” (3.04). Here, Jack presents friendship as a type of equality predicated on freedom. Friendship must be a choice rather than the obligation to repay a debt, and it must result in some type of good for the parties beyond the acquisition of material goods. Jack refuses to go with Vane because his desire to make something of himself is greater than his desire to live a subservient life.

Flint reiterates this notion of freedom to Vane when he comes to ask him to rejoin the effort to free Nassau from England. Vane tells him “my pledge to him began a long time before I ever knew your name. What I owe him…” (3.06). In response, Flint says this project is too important to be clouded by any of that: “Forget me, forget Teach, forget loyalty, compacts, honor, debts, all of it. The only question that matters is this. Who are you?” (3.06). While Hobbes defines liberty in relation to external impediments, both Jack and Flint understand it as something greater than that, something that points inward and moves beyond the desire for safety or the terms of contracts, be they written or otherwise.

After being presented with this understanding a second time, Vane finally accepts it as true. He leaves with Flint to join the revolution. He allows himself to be arrested in order to free Jack. He does all of this on the basis of this new understanding of friendship. When Jack asks why he came back to Nassau, Vane jokingly tells him, “got worried you two'd be lost without me,” but it’s more sincere than joke (3.08). He is committed fully to liberating Nassau not to return it to the days of Teach but to provide it as a counter to the social contract theory of civil society. His final speech before being hanged reveals this shift in his political thought:

These men who brought me here today do not fear me. They brought me here today because they fear you. Because they know that my voice, a voice that refuses to be enslaved, once lived in you. And may yet still. They brought me here today to show you death and use it to frighten you into ignoring that voice. But know this. We are many. They are few. To fear death is a choice. And they can't hang us all (3.09). 

He has gone from believing the fear of death to be the greatest fear, the motivator for all human action, to somebody choosing to let civilization kill him. He does this because he now knows there are things worse than death and things greater than physical freedom. He does this because he understands that he owes his fellow pirates the chance to obtain this freedom for themselves. He does this because he has come to recognize that friendship is the act of helping people better themselves.

Conclusion

Vane’s arc therefore acts as a critique of Hobbesian social contract theory. He demonstrates that the sovereign’s power is based on an illegitimate conception of human nature that emphasizes the desire to dominate others. But he also illustrates the fundamental problems with living in a pre-political community attempting to exist outside of the sovereign power. Through his arc, then, we are presented with the fact that a legitimate society based on true friendship in achieving the good of all is not only possible but is worth the sacrifice of one’s life.

[crispyjenkins]

B U I R, continuation of the last fic? Padawan Obi and master Dooku are freakin great. Would like to see more of jango being a disaster & a himbo for one (1) man

(my kid enabled me and i’ve been writing this between packing/moving the last week and i don’t know when i’ll be able to start something new (tonight? tomorrow? next week? lord knows), so i’m very sorry to the quinobi anon, yours is next, i promise!!

imagine that one Stiles/Malia cuddle that literally will not stop looping through my brain even though i haven’t watched teen wolf

warning for minor blood and injury, minor descriptions/implications of torture. takes place maybe three years after the last!) 

  It’s a little uncomfortable, trying to sleep against a wall while also trying to keep your sort-of-love-interest's headwound elevated on your own lap, and whatever remains of Obi-Wan’s internal clock protests to the surely late hour should they have been on Coruscant.

  Which they’re not, of course, because Obi-Wan has apparently run out of brownie points with the Force, and all his bad luck is catching up to him all at once: getting kidnapped by the Daan for ransom is one thing, getting his shuttle knocked clean out of the sky over Odos and barely managing to protect his fellow passengers in the crash is another entirely. A concussion and a Force-suppression collar later, Obi-Wan had been thrown in a clinically-plain but entirely-dark cell with a barely-conscious Mand'alor that he hasn't seen outside of holocomms since Concord Dawn.

  And some part of Obi-Wan is thankful for the excuse to see the real Jango again, not just the fuzzy holos that barely passed recognition and had to be viewed in private, but most of Obi-Wan is livid that this had only been made possible by the both of them getting snatched by the beginnings of a separatist alliance in the mid rim. 

  Livid that Jango has been here days longer than him, the passage of time marked in fist-shaped bruises and a bleeding lip — and Obi-Wan can't do anything about it, not cut off from the Force as he is.

  The single door on the other side of the durasteel bars slides open, spilling harsh white light into the room and sending a nauseating pulse of pain through Obi-Wan's head. The Rattataki nightsister that had dragged him out of the wreckage of the shuttle all but bounces up to the bars, smile cruel in its delight. Force, but she can't be more than twenty-four standard, and already she has two red 'sabers at her hips. 

  “Well, isn’t that sweet,” Ventress purrs, and Obi-Wan is far too tired to deal with her posturing. He elects to ignore her, letting his head sag into the corner all while giving Jango's wrist a harsh squeeze to surreptitiously wake him, careful to keep his free hand curled around the back of Jango's neck to let him know they're not in immediate danger, but to be wary. 

  The Mand'alor stirs, and he had been raised a soldier, he knows better than to give himself away immediately. Instead, he keeps his muscles slack even as he takes in the situation, the breathing of a third person in the room, the slow, steady brush of Obi-Wan's thumb over his pulse. 

  "You can ignore me all you like, Jedi," Ventress says, certainly sounding at ease in her upper hand. "When my master arrives, your tongue will quickly loosen."

  Obi-Wan simply grunts, glaring at her for all the good that will do. "I do hope he's not quite so young as yourself," he drawls, as Jango carefully shifts and tests his aches and pains. "You'll have to forgive me for finding it difficult to fear one younger than some padawans."

  Ventress hisses, one hand grabbing the bars to pull herself closer. "Not all can be so perfect as you, young Master Kenobi." Jango twitches against him, and Obi-Wan doesn't need the Force to feel his rage. "I do look forward to my master showing you what real power is."

  "Well, then I hope he arrives soon, before you manage to bore us to death."

  "Obi-Wan," Jango murmurs in warning, stupidly alerting Ventress to his wakefulness. 

  To his credit, Ventress doesn’t even look like she notices, lips curling back as she waves her hand and the barred door slams to the side. It’s a careless use of the Force, Obi-Wan thinks, which is a shame because she certainly isn’t lacking in skill, though perhaps this isn’t what he should be focussing on.

  Slinking into the cell followed quickly by two magnaguards from the hall, Ventress uses that skill to effortlessly grab Jango with the Force and drag him off of Obi-Wan, flinging him across the room into the arms of one of the magnaguards. The other shoves its electrostaff into Obi-Wan’s face to stop him from scrambling up to follow, Ventress leering over Obi-Wan with her fingers gliding over her ‘saber hilts.

  “My master warned me of your wayward words, Master Kenobi, you are foolish to think you can use your powers against me," she hisses.

  Maker, at least she's earnest. "I didn't think you'd be so quick to forget, darling," Obi-Wan says with a disarming smile, "that you've already made sure I have no powers to speak of."

  Over Ventress’ shoulder, Jango jerks in the droid’s arms with a desperately angry frown aimed right at Obi-Wan, and he’s probably right: Obi-Wan really should stop antagonising their captors. It’s difficult, though, when the bleary half-light through the open door frames the fresh split at the corner of Jango’s lip, that Obi-Wan is helpless to remedy.

  Ventress snarls at him and grabs the suppression collar underneath his chin, pulling just enough to make him grunt in pain as she forces his head up to look at her; Jango doesn’t make a sound, but yanks against the magnaguard’s grip with enough force that both he and the droid stumble. Ventress pays them absolutely no mind as she leans right into Obi-Wan’s face.

  “You will learn to fear us,” she whispers, sibilance bouncing around his mind like the spots that start to dance at the edges of his vision. “We have some more questions for his honor, but you get to sit here in the dark and reflect, perhaps you should meditate, Jedi, on the fate that awaits you at my master’s hands.”

  Obi-Wan has just enough leeway to suck in a breath, and uses it to murmur back, “I’m starting to wonder if you even have a master, with the way you hide behind his ‘power’.”

  With a ferocious snarl, Ventress yanks him clean off the floor and into the air by the collar, his surprised gasp cutting off into a wheeze as his head snaps back. Jango barks something at Ventess, though Obi-Wan can’t hear exactly what over the roar in his ears.

  He scrambles at Ventress' wrist in an attempt to pull himself up enough to just kriffing breathe, to take some of his weight off his neck, but it's been days since he's eaten, and his toes barely brush the floor, and Ventress knows exactly how to manipulate his body to make it hurt. Force, he can hear Jango's voice, low, dangerous, edged in panic, and he can't make out a single word. Instead, Obi-Wan curses his height that he normally doesn't mind, for the way someone at least five years his junior can hold him so powerless so easily. 

  And then after an eternity, after the world starts to grey and Obi-Wan almost feels like his neck will break, she drops him, oozing smugness as he crumples to the floor and barely manages not to smack his head against the durasteel; he lacks the strength to save his knees from the same fate. He chokes and coughs on the frigid, fake air, nearly retching at his lungs' attempt to suck in all his missing oxygen at once, and he's vaguely aware of Ventress saying something to him, probably gloating. He focuses on just keeping his head off the floor.

  Endlessly gentle hands brace his ribs and the back of his neck as they maneuver Obi-Wan up from his stomach to the closest wall, and Obi-Wan knows to trust these hands, that the hurried murmur cutting through the din is not Ventress, that he should probably listen to the owner of those hands. 

  Jango presses two fingers under Obi-Wan's jaw and checks his pulse, his holo-fuzzy face only coming into focus when the bars slam back into place and the door glides closed on the other side of the room. 

  "You with me, ner ca'tra?" Jango asks, tilting Obi-Wan's chin up until he nods. 

  Chest still jerking but forcing himself to calm, Obi-Wan looks around Jango's shoulder to the door, finding with relief that both Ventress and the magnaguards have left them in the dark once again. "Ar-Ar you alright?" he coughs, voice sounding as rough as it feels.

  Jango sighs sharply and drags his hand up to push Obi-Wan's loose hair back from his face. "Force preserve me from jetiise suicidal selflessness. I'm fine, kih'jetii, I'll pretend you asked because you've gone stupid from oxygen loss."

  Obi-Wan laughs, though it still sounds like a gasp, and lets the Mand'alor pull him gently into his shoulder. 

-

  "Padawan," Yan says softly, side stepping in front of the Neimoidian senator that had been talking his ear off for the past hour. Obi-Wan relaxes immediately as his master blocks out the rest of the room, the sounds and the light and the people, and he's never so thankful for Yan's height than he is when chill creeps over the back of his mind and digs its claws into his temples.

  It's easier now that he's older, he has more control, has a better understanding of the Unifying Force, and under Yan's tutelage, his shields certainly aren't lacking. Visions are rare, Obi-Wan mostly gets jabs and encouragement from the Force these days, and even in dreams, events are rarely clear enough to preemptively act upon. 

  But sometimes it's like this, ice starting just where his spine meets his skull, swiftly growing under bone and frosting over gray matter, crystalising his mental shields until they're brittle enough to shatter. He's been under Yan's care for more than half his life now, his master can feel a vision coming on almost before Obi-Wan does, and if it weren't for the crowded ballroom around them, Obi-Wan would sob in relief when his master gently settles two fingers on his temple and supports his mind from below. 

  Obi-Wan chases the flashes of colour and pictures, the vague senses of warmth and rain and contentment, before rock explodes and durasteel rends. Amorphous screams slam against the inside of his skull, and he leans harder into Yan's hand to combat it, to prop himself up until he can reach out and try and catch those will-o-the-wisps of answers, of hints of where or when these flashes will matter. 

  "Soon," he mumbles, feeling Yan move slowly and methodically over the cracks in his mind, patching them with care. "I don't... A terrorist attack, Master Yan, I don't—"

  "Easy, padawan," Yan soothes back and sets his free hand on the other side of Obi-Wan's face, like he used to before Obi-Wan had learned enough control. "The details matter not."

  He lets out a harsh breath. "The details matter not. The details... Desert. Refugees. Claw marks, master, and..." Obi-Wan frowns, pinching his brows together in confusion. "The... the stolen armour. From before."

  Yan rumbles unhappily. "Are you sure, Obi-Wan?"

  "I'm sure," he whispers. "I would know that armour anywhere."

Mand'alor —  “Sole ruler”, contended ruler of Mandalore. ner ca'tra — “my night sky”, intimate term of endearment  jetiise —  “Jedi” pl., sing. jetii kih'jetii —  “Little Jedi”, usually offensive but the relationship between Mandalorians and Jedi are better in this ‘verse so

[coolgirlontheweb]

eren jaeger (Attack On Titan) - ISFP

eren is a true IFSP - his dominant Fi seeks feelings of action, and honours his own beliefs and values. anytime eren says “i’ll kill the titans” or anything he says about his goals are driven by Fi. rarely do we ever see eren try to see the other side’s reasoning or why the titans eat humans pre time-skip, unlike armin, who indeed is an Ni dom and asks “what does it, no, they want?” the second he is confronted by the female titan. in season 2 episode 8 after he is confronted with the truth about bertholdt and reiner’s titan identities, he instantly shouts, deems them psychotic mass murderers and announces that he was going to “make you die the most excruciating deaths possible”. ISFPs who display the negative aspects of Fi suffer from a lack of objectivity, are unable to relate to things outside of their personal experience and treat their feelings as fact, unaware of their own biases. pre-time skip eren is all of this and never considers exactly why reiner and bertholdt are titans. only once does he actually weigh his options and make sense of what is happening, rather than immediately having an emotional reaction to it, and that is when ymir, a Ti dom, reminds him of his situation. signs of a Te grip are prevalent here - he was inclined to blame and reproach before he employed any rational thought to his circumstance. small hints of his Ni developing appear here when he begins to rationalise on how to escape, and what being captured may mean for the future and the scouts, but this is all shrouded in how overbearing his Fi is, i really don’t see how it can be overlooked.

throughout all of the manga, eren’s dominant Fi is at its optimal expression when he cries to ramzi in Chapter 131, “i’m sorry, i’m sorry…” optimal Fi expression helps dominant Fi users feel deep empathy when seeing people suffer, and works to ensure that every person has the freedom to authentically be themselves. even though eren knows he is going to kill ramzi, he cannot hold back from saving him, and crying to him is a heartbreaking portrayal of Fi in a doomed character. In the case that he was an Ni dom, eren would find it worthless to approach ramzi in spite of the future - which he actually initially thinks before saving him from being beaten, a sign of his Ni developing but his Fi overpowering it.

additionally, an unhealthy dominant Fi can foster feelings of instability, self-righteousness and self-pitiness. whenever eren is confronted with the damning reality of the titans’ existence he reverts from a strong willed and passionate Fi dom to one who is all of the aforementioned and above all, self-blaming. the greatest example of this that i can currently think of is in season 3 episode 9 during rod reiss’ abnormal titan attack on orvud district - eren’s Fi was so unhealthy that after rumination on being the cause of so many deaths and his overall role as “humanity’s saviour” (which is a self-righteous assumption, albeit true-ish), he begins to blame and pity himself so much that he started to physically beat himself up until he bled.

extraverted thinking (Te), being his inferior function, is naturally the least accessible to him, and therefore historically the least used. pre time-skip eren shows symptoms of Te grip. Te is an assertive function and tackles challenges head on and above all, its defining feature is that it applies logical, objective reasoning to the outside world. pre time-skip eren’s Te grip meant that he was ready to pick a fight about anything disagreeable, and had an overpowering urge to correct everything that is ‘wrong’. Te grip causes inferior Te users to recognise and dislike problems wherever they see them, yet offer no solutions to them. seldom did eren ever solve problems, he relied on erwin’s dominant Te for that and followed suit, or found guidance through armin. come the time-skip, and we are confronted by a strategic and assertive eren; his Te has noticeably developed. although, he has an extremely destructive expression of Te, i.e: abuse of power and position (as the founding titan) to get what he wants and believes the weak (his enemies, marleyans, the warriors and briefly the scouts) get what they deserve. he breaks out of jail, uses extremist ideology and manpower (the yeagerists) and ignores the chain of command, and his friends’ pleas to complete his goal. unhealthy Te users tend to be blind to nuance/context and see everything from a black and white, "i'm right and you're wrong" stance. they also have an extremely inflexible approach - rarely being convinced to change their ideas and plans. eren shows ALL of this: his Te is so influential that he is blind to any other approach to the Rumbling offered by the scouts or even zeke, since we know he doesn't activate a "small-scale" rumbling, but the whole thing.

alongside his developed Ni, eren’s character seems to do a complete 180 but it’s only a development of his Ni-Te. in my opinion, the reason why his shift in personality is because alongside an actual Ni-Te development, his facade makes it so that the strategy and stoicism he has adopted becomes pronounced. an INTJ wouldn't have trouble with healthy expressions of Ni-Te since it comes naturally to them - think of yelena: whilst all of this is happening, she remains the most pacific and rational person on paradis island. eren seems calm on the surface, but the emotional stress of having to rely on Ni-Te is definitely there. you can see it in his table talk with armin and mikasa. he attempts to stay calm in the beginning but all of the emotional stress comes bubbling to the surface in an outburst of unhealthy Fi rage. something else i think it's worth mentioning is that functions operate in oppositional pairs that push and pull against each other, creating internal conflict. eren’s singular worldview and morals in seasons 1-3 meant there wasn’t any room for internal conflict, but after seeing the other side of the wall, his Fi and Te are constantly in conflict. eren’s newfound Te, wants efficiency and order, but how does he fare with losing his humanity and treating the world as a machine as his Fi is challenged for the first time?

an early signal of eren’s Ni development is the thwarting of his previously healthy Se expression in season 3 episode 22. with Ni's future orientated intuition, causing him to be uninspired by sensory experiences, his Se gets shut down as he loses his happiness to the future. eren cannot bring himself to have fun at the beach, nor experience what he and armin dreamed about from a young age, instead, he points toward the horizon, towards the future and is utterly defeated by its prospects. this is honestly so sad, it’s as though he withers away as a person after the vision of the future.

developing Ni needs a lot of introspectivity, maturing and objectivity for a dominant Fi user. eren attains these traits in 2 ways; first, he actually peers into the future through the paths. this is sort of a cheat code into developing Ni, but it nonetheless dictates how he acts post paths vision. Ni is a future orientated function, and it experiences the world through what will happen. since eren already knows the future, his Ni expression is almost forced to mature. however, the second way that Ni is developed by eren naturally is when he runs away to marley and lives among eldians in the liberio internment camp.

contrary to suffering from a lack of objectivity due to negative Fi expression, eren is confronted with the other side of the wall. as he learns about the rest of his world, he slowly becomes more objective and understanding - his worldview has broadened, and he indulges in the part of Ni that approaches the world with a unified vision. albeit a weak Ni expression, which gives him difficulty in making wise decisions in season 4 because of a lack of clarity and no positive vision of the future, eren’s Ni develops nonetheless.

this becomes evident when we contrast his talk with reiner in season 2 episode 8 to his talk with reiner in Season 4 Episode 5. in the latter eren employs a mix of Ni-Te, almost showcasing his newfound functions to us, the reader, and reiner. eren is more calculating, authoritative, objective, and aware of his long term goal and its consequences.

[p0ck3tp03t]

Rampant Thoughts 25.

I think I wish to destroy love.

Death is a mysterious concept in its own right, coming when it pleases and then staying so long it turns into forever. I tended to believe Love would be the same but I couldn't have been more guillble.

I have realized while being alive that I trust in very few things, but in those I do, I do wholeheartedly. Turns out trusting in something does not mean that thing is exempt from desecrating said trust, on the contrary, chances increase with each passing day. I trusted that Love would be mine until the end of days, hence why I tied myself to it and followed it blindly, guided simply by my gut feeling and my trust that everything would be okay as long as Love would be within reach. As with all things tied to life, it is safe to say that things did not go as expected, bringing us to the present day.

My shoulders are heavy with guilt but as much as I hate myself for the things I committed, nothing can be changed about the past and from where I stand, not much can be done about the future either. I jumped in a pond for which I was not prepared and in my struggle to stay afloat, I ended up dragging others down to the point where they decided I was nothing but dead-weight,  unsalvageable and abandoned. The worst part is I was too blinded by the water to realize how detrimental I was to them.

What is even more despicable was the fact that I took for granted the shoulders I was being carried on, because I refused to learn how to swim in these new waters I suddenly found myself in. Deep down, I didn't want to be swimming in those waters in the first place but there I was, a parasite feeding on the energy of the one I loved, whom I subconsciously considered guilty for throwing me in those waters. My selfishness was at an all time high, guided by fear and immaturity, leading me to commit actions that would eventually bring the demise of something I believed to be eternal. My lack of perspective led me to become blindsided by my own demons, causing me to aim all my animosity for my condition at the only person that was by my side and was trying to help me. When I had realized what I had done, the damage was already too profound and no matter how much time would pass, a remedy remained a mystery.

Eventually,  an eternal winter fell over what was once a land built on the foundation of hope, trust and understanding, and the inhabitants of this land grew further apart with each passing day, to the point where the two began speaking different languages, becoming unable to understand each other. Tension grew and conflict became more prevalent across this small world, and what was once a unified nation had turned into two forces, doomed into conflict due to the lack of will to understand each other. Because of my actions I had betrayed her trust and in return she betrayed mine, a cycle that still goes on to this day, albeit dimmer but never extinguished.

Thinking it a phase, I waited and years passed, but change never occurred because for change to occur I had to change first, fact which for me turned out to be an impossibility and in response, she did not change either, and thus suffering became my relentless companion.

Now I believe I waited long enough and though it pains me to even think it, I believe it is better to leave these lands and return to where I was happiest last, and though chances are I will not find it, waiting anymore seems even more futile than looking for something that might or might not be there still. I do not yet know if I have the intrepidity to bring to fruition such endeavor but as of right now, the thought haunts me and fills me with anticipation as well as horror.

One year remains to see if this vision of mine shall become reality or remain another figment of my imagination, while I shall remain in wait for spring to show itself anew across the land.

For now, Love is dead and my hands are soaked in its blood and though I would like nothing but to have it breathe again, it takes everything I have to convince myself to let her die as I do not believe that letting her live would bring about anything but more winter for both.

On an ending note, the more I try to convince myself that what I want is for the better, the more I realize how difficult it will be to murder this love I once thought neverending.

                                                                                            By:PocketPoet

[vanillawaiver]

i tried to figure out the enneagram types of dream smp characters

have you ever wanted to know the enneagram types, and therefore motivations and fears, of your favorite dream smp characters? that’s a rhetorical question. don’t answer. this post contains a quick explanation of the enneagram and an analysis for every included character. i’m just gonna put it all under the cut.

i’d absolutely love to hear your thoughts!

ENNEAGRAM EXPLANATION

a quick low-down on the enneagram, for those who don’t know:

the enneagram actually refers to a funky circular graph, numbers 1-9 on the outside that depict 9 different personality types. each type is adjacent to two other types around the circle (see image for clarification). the two types on either side are the possible wings for that specific type, a wing being an additional set of personality traits alongside the main personality type. an enneagram type is written as [type]w[wing]. for example, my enneagram type is 4, and i have a type 5 wing, so my enneagram type is 4w5.

(the lines through the inside of the enneagram won’t be mentioned in this post, but you can find more information on them online if you’re curious. i won’t link anything because links can be sketchy)

the nine enneagram types are mostly easily explained by their basic fears and basic desires. the enneagram is intended to explain the “why” behind someone’s actions, which is why it’s so hard to type someone else. you cannot get inside their head to find out their true motivations. however, today i am working with entirely fictional characters and not the content creators themselves, so i give myself a free pass. please don’t go around psychoanalyzing your friends or people you don’t even know and jumping to conclusions without their input lol

also all of these are just what i think ! if you (respectfully) disagree, i would actually love to hear your opinions - you are probably right and i am probably wrong.i don’t watch every stream or even know of every event, and my reasoning is probably weak at best. enough rambling, here we goooo

the grouping will be by type, just because… idk how else to organize this.

again, /rp /rp /rp ! i don’t know these ccs in real life and will not pretend to. i’m talking about minecraft roleplay.

(also, i didn’t proofread this. sorry fnjakdfda)

type 1: the reformer

principled, purposeful, self-controlled, perfectionistic

desire: to be good, to have integrity

tubbo - type 1w2

tubbo is a classic example of a type 1 being put into the worst possible situation for their current mental state. tubbo was the moral and sensical anchor for tommy’s more eccentric and self-centered actions, and they functioned as this duo UNTIL tubbo was made the president of l’manberg. tubbo’s more self-critical tendencies were amplified because his actions had so much weight. tubbo is quick to turn against and polarize those he sees as “evil”, making broad generalizations like “technoblade is wrong” and “tommy is good”, regardless of all the moral gray areas, and even changes his mind drastically between them as he seeks the right answer. (ex: exiles tommy, but then decides it was the wrong idea, and now seems to agree with everything he says again.) i think part of his flip-flopping comes from a sense of people-pleasing and generosity, again amplified by his position as the (now former) president of a nation.

type 2: the helper

generous, demonstrative, people-pleasing, possessive

desire: to feel loved/appreciated

quackity - type 2w3

(as far as i know) quackity’s first major action on the smp was to run for president. wilbur and tommy wanted quackity (as part of swag 2020) to share the votes of the two parties in order to ensure a victory over schlatt. however, quackity acted out against them because he felt used instead of appreciated for his ideas. schlatt promised him at least some amount of respect, so quackity switched sides regardless of what was better for the smp at large. i believe quackity kept looking for approval from others, but also some sense of accomplishment, by founding mexican l’manberg (is this even canon…idk but i liked it), starting the butcher army, and trying to bring schlatt back to life. quackity even fought technoblade despite being grossly unqualified and i believe this is due to the martyr mindset that often comes with unhealthy type 2s. 

type 3: the achiever

adaptable, excelling, driven, image-conscious

desire: to feel valuable

nihachu - type 3w2

(at the time of writing this, niki hasn’t had a ton of canon screentime, so this is mostly based off of the doomsday stream.) when in emotional distress, niki applies her type 3 ideas of being the best she can be to others, hyperfocusing on “teaching them a lesson” by destroying l’manberg. unhealthy 3s also tend to become jealous of other people’s happiness and success to the point they attempt to destroy it, perhaps explaining how niki’s character felt that no one wanted to listen to what she had to say about the political state of things. i see niki as a character that values her image in relation to others, hence the 2 wing. when fundy showed her respect, she became even more sure of herself, and this seems to be the kind of thing she is after.

schlatt - type 3w4

much like ghostbur (as mentioned later), schlatt is a very exaggerated character. it’s hard to type him, because the enneagram focuses around people who behave in the way real people do, and schlatt is a larger-than-life villain. i’ve typed schlatt as a 3 because of his narcissistic tendencies. schlatt not only wanted to be but believed he was integral to l’manberg’s continued function. unhealthy 3s tend to be devious and manipulative in order to hide their own wrongdoing, like how schlatt exiled the main opponents of his rule. schlatt doesn’t have the emotional introspection of a 4, only the temperamental self-absorption, but i think this is the best i can do lol

type 4: the individualist

expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, temperamental

desire: to be significant, to find identity

tommy - type 4w5

most of my reasoning for tommy’s typing comes from his time in exile. tommy displayed an impressive connection to his emotions, maybe just out of necessity because he was alone. his constant cry was that no one cares about him, but not in the way a 2 may fear the same thing. tommy feared he had faded from significance. when he felt this way, he was quick to make rash conclusions and decisions. he is self-centered, caring more about his discs than about anything on the server. the 5 wing is there because of tommy’s constant assertion that people pity him when they show basic human kindness. he dreads others viewing him as incapable.

type 5: the investigator

perceptive, innovative, secretive, isolated

desire: to be capable and competent

awesamdude: type 5w6

is sam incredibly important to the plot? not as i write this. but i don’t want to leave type 5 empty. sam does cool redstone and built a cool prison. he’s super swag. i’m too lazy to attempt to do an analysis. this is just what i believe to be the objective truth on his character. give sam your primes.

type 6: the loyalist

engaging, responsible, anxious, suspicious

desire: to have security and support

wilbur (alivebur) - type 6w5

(pls disagree with me on this. this was so hard and i didn’t start watching dream smp until after the original “it wasn’t meant to be” moment sjkdfadkl) it’s right in the l’manberg national anthem. a place men could go to emancipate the brutality of their rulers. wilbur created l’manberg for what i interpret as security reasons. a peaceful land without americans. as an american, i understand completely. wilbur demonstrates the tendency of 6’s to shun outsiders and to turn to hysterical violence in times of distress. wilbur’s final action before his death was to blow up his safe place, because he believed the security had been tainted. i have typed wilbur with a 5 wing almost exclusively because of the intentionally radical beliefs that unhealthy 5s exhibit, becoming obsessed with blowing up the place he once called home.

type 7: the enthusiast

spontaneous, versatile, distractible, scattered

desire: to be satisfied and content, to avoid pain

fundy - type 7w6

fundy grew up in constant distress, what with his dad kinda losing it and the constant political turmoil. fundy has acknowledged that there is nothing that comes from conflict except for personal gain. fundy is selfish (taking netherite meant for everyone, hardly taking other people’s feelings into account) by nature of the society he was born into. like most distressed 7s, he has mood swings and comes off as demanding. i gave fundy a 6 wing because of what i see as the origin of his issues: a lack of support and stability. because of this, fundy often seeks external solutions (material possessions) instead of internal ones (fucking THERAPY OH MY GOD).

badboyhalo - type 7w6

“l’manberg? pogtopia? who cares?” :D

type 8: the challenger

self-confident, decisive, willful, confrontational

desire: to protect themselves, to be in control of their own life

dream - type 8w7

(warning, a lot of this typing is based on my own theories about the smp, because dream doesn’t stream rp to give us his own perspective.) dream claims that his motivation, at least presently, is to cause as much chaos as possible, but this has to come from a more philosophical place. dream is the one who started the server, and, i believe, canonically created the world they all populate. dream’s rule was originally questioned by the creation of l’manberg, which he interpreted as a personal attack. as a type 8 would, he is attempting to destroy all that does not conform to the vision he has for a peaceful, unified server. this may make it seem like dream should have 9 wing, but i don’t believe stability factors into his reasoning. dream seeks fun, for himself and others, and also finds this by causing chaos, as mentioned before.

technoblade - type 8w7

now, just because techno and dream have the same enneagram typing here does not mean they are at all similar. techno also lashes out at things that do not conform to his vision (anarchy) but has a stronger connection to his 7 wing. he wants to protect himself because of the comfort and happiness that would provide, not exclusively to be in control. he cares more about the pain and suffering caused by the government. still, i don’t think techno’s primary motivation is to be happy, as he still causes harm and puts himself in danger in order to achieve his goals. when a type 7 would become depressed and isolated, techno decides to spawn six withers. to each their own.

type 9: the peacemaker

receptive, reassuring, agreeable, complacent

desire: to have inner stability, to avoid loss

ghostbur - type 9w1

more than anyone on the server, ghostbur is a two-dimensional character. (absolutely not meant in a negative way. i adore ghostbur as both comic relief and a consistent character. ghostbur simply doesn’t behave like a normal person, and that is the point.) this makes it difficult to type him, but i tried my best. ultimately, ghostbur cares about others, but not in the way a 2 does. blatant negativity from people he interacts with doesn’t affect him in the slightest. he hands out blue because he is good, hence the 1 wing, and not to be loved. the only time (i can remember) that ghostbur has expressed anger was when friend the sheep was killed in techno and dream’s terrorism upon l’manberg. loss is the only thing he seems to be afraid of, and he applies this to all people within the smp. 

philza - type 9w8

to put it nicely, philza is a mediator. to put it not-so nicely, he doesn’t give a fuck. philza has actually achieved much of the goals a 9 has, making him an anomaly on the smp. (most every one of these characters expresses extremely unhealthy characteristics of their type.) philza is accepting of others, and does more listening than speaking. however, philza still feels the effects of loss from murdering his own son in cold blood (just minecraft things <3) and presumably fears losing something else important to him, thus forming few attachments (ex: didn’t care his house in l’manberg got blown up, didn’t react much to tommy’s betrayal.) i typed him as a wing 8 because of his healthy self-confidence and confrontationalism.

please keep in mind that this is all referring to the dream smp characters these streamers portray. i don’t claim to know anything about their deeper philosophical reasoning for whatever they do irl. not really on that parasocial type beat, ya feel me? i would love to hear your thoughts.

 thanks for reading!

[kingjasnah]

ALSO. I just finished ROW and you like the best cosmere blog out there so yeah (sorry if im being bothersome). About Dalinar and his politics: i actually like that he isn't like... Good yet. He is better but he isnt the best he could be yet. I like that he sees Adolin as this "man better than his father" without realising how much pressure he puts on his son. I like that for him a Thought of there NOT being a single monarch is hard to comprehend. It shows that he still has to grow (1/?)

first of all thx ;_;.....i think the religion stuff u mention is a really good point!! this was first hand experienced by him via stormfather visions, also not to mention the whole trusting the almighty and trusting sadeas before realizing he had totally misinterpreted what had happened.

i don't have an issue with the fact that he's not perfect yet, I mean he was never perfect and also you can't come out of a book where you admit to killing your wife absolutely perfect u know....in fact the point of OB seemed to be that growing and changing was a path that was gonna extend practically forever and i liked that for him too! i DO still think it's kinda weird that he was so down with specifically the slave trade when he spent the last three books personally shaking up alethi society, not just in a religious way but in a political way too. that felt a little out of place for me considering how much he hated the bridge crews

to me it signified that his sense of honor back in wok, his whole 'i don't do bridgecrews cause i would never carry one myself and I can't ask that of my men' was a little. ok this is gonna sound harsh and i don't mean it to i still think about 'a life is priceless' but I think it was a little more about his place as highprince leading the charge into battle than it was about the lives of the bridgemen who died.

i know you're talking specifically about the pro monarchy of it all and not how against killing the slave trade he was but....i think he has seen it? i think he genuinely knows what a tyrant can do to a society i mean he watched a bunch of countries eat themselves alive in wor due to infighting i just think he believes a lack of strong unified leader is the issue instead of the system itself.