#i would let him commit atrocities both to my person and just. in general.

[corporalkiheart]

I just finished Long Live Evil and want the Emperor in a way that is frankly concerning. Sarah Rees Brennan knows her villain fuckers and what we want, because she is definitely one of us.

[inke-ri]

So I couldn't help but browse the THG tag bc those books own my whole heart. I actually check it now and again, and it's been interesting see how opinions have changed over the years, especially in regards to Gale and Peeta. Going through the evolution of them as just potential love interests to being far more complex than I could have expected has been a wild ride. Crazy how this reads different than from when I was a preteen.

That said, I wanted to give my unsolicited two cents on my boys, because though I have been enjoying the discussion on Peeta and Gale and what they mean to the story, I also feel like reducing them to Peeta = peace and Gale = war is far too simplistic... and oftentimes unfair to one or both of them.

See, I don't think Peeta and Gale are peace and war/destruction. They're compassion and indignation.

Peeta worries about the other tributes, or their families, or how to repay people like Rue and Thresh for what they did.

Gale is indignation at how the Capitol treats its citizens, it's anger at the injustice of inequality and brutality.

Both are needed in a story like THG. You can't have people like even Peeta not say something like "maybe we're wrong about keeping things quiet in the districts", you can't have him not drop the baby bomb, you can't start a revolution without Gale's indignation at the status quo. At deserving a better life but being denied it, at having your kids be mercilessly killed for literal sport.

However, if you start a rebellion and loose sight of your compassion, you end up no better than the people you're fighting against. Gale wasn't a bad person, imo. His heart was in the right place. He was flawed, yes, but so is everyone in this series. Gale, most importantly, lost sight of the line between fighting for the people he cared about and fighting against the people who hurt him.

Reducing Gale's indignation to just revenge and hatred ignores so much of what he stands for. Who hasn't seen laws passed that dehumanize people, who hasn't been angry and furious when someone is elected who fundamentally hates everything you are, who doesn't think some people need to pay for the atrocities they committed? There's a little bit of Gale in every single one of us - and it's important that it's there, because that's what gives us strength to challenge the status quo and make life better for the future generations.

But. You can't let it take over. You can't loose sight of your compassion or your empathy.

That's where Peeta comes in. Peeta is the voice in your head that worries about how many good lives will be lost when they give themselves up for this cause. Peeta is the worry about the people caught in the crossfire. Peeta is rebuilding when it's over and believing that the next generation will have a better life than your own. Peeta is being kind, even to people who may not deserve it.

And Gale... Gale looses sight of his compassion, and he doesn't realize it until it smacks him in the face when the bombs go off and Prim is gone and he's too far gone. Meanwhile, Peeta advocates for the end of the war even though it means the status quo remains - and regardless of what he believes himself, I don't think Suzanne chose him to say those lines by chance. It means both mindsets have their flaws: too kind and things that shouldn't remain will never be challenged and changed, too angry and you may loose sight of what you're fighting for.

And that's just how Suzanne uses her characters, both of them, all of them. Just look at who is with Katniss depending on the situation:

- Katniss chooses to "rebel" after Gale is brutally whipped. She kisses him.

- Katniss realizes that in order for D12 to rebel, everyone would need to be in on it, and she realizes most of them are not like her, that they're scared and she understands, emphasises with them. Peeta walks by her side.

- Katniss finally does it though, shoots the arrow at the force field, and Peeta is taken from her, it's now Gale by her side.

(You can't start a rebellion without indignation, and sometimes you HAVE to do it or things will never change, regardless of the inevitable pain that will come along.)

- Katniss is righteously angry at the Capitol bombing a hospital full of innocents to make a point. Gale remains there.

- Coin twists people's compassion into an army to fight for her own personal gain. Peeta is hijacked and looses his sense of self.

- Katniss and Gale go to District 2 and even though she tries to be like Peeta, she's still shot- reinforcing Gale's views, the person who was with her during that sequence.

- Katniss is angry at Snow, Katniss goes to the Capitol to kill him. Gale is there.

- Katniss gets in way over her head and realizes she is responsible for the death of most of her squad. She shares the lamb stew with Peeta, and later cleans his wounds.

- Finnick dies and she's at her lowest up until that point and all she wants to do is give up and give in to the anger. She kisses Peeta and begs him to stay with her.

... Claiming that Gale is destruction ignores the fact that he's with Katniss through her own moments of strength. Her desire to change things, to fight back, is as important as her compassion. Mockingjay just brutally shows you what war does to your indignation, to your compassion. How easy it is to cross a line between righteous anger and revenge, or how your sense of empathy and compassion can be manipulated into something monstrous by others, or by all the terrible, brutal, painful things you see.

How easy it is to loose yourself- and that goes for both of them.

Peeta and Gale aren't static characters, they go from representations of sentiments regarding an injust government to what happens to those feelings when an extreme situation such as war breaks out. All of that, by the way, while dealing with this duality themselves, because they are still characters who think and feel and struggle and have flaws of their own- and while I love what they stand for, I've seen too many comments that pin everything into what they mean, that they forget that Peeta and Gale are still people, they aren't perfect metaphors. They're human.

Ultimately, Katniss doesn't really choose peace. She wants peace, yes. But what she chooses is compassion. empathy. hope. There's a time and place for anger at injustice. There's a time when fighting back is the right thing to do. There are even times when you wanna give in to your despair and lash out. But if you want peace, then you have to choose Peeta, because Peeta represents what you need to focus on to achieve that peace. You have to let go of the anger or you won't ever rest. So Gale leaves, and does not come back... And yet, Katniss still has her moments of indignation, of making a stand, even as he goes - she still casts her vote at that meeting, she still shoots Coin. Katniss does not abandon that part of who she is. It's just not her main drive anymore.

So then she goes on to make the choice, every single day, to be compassionate to others. To have hope. To rebuild. Of course she chooses Peeta.

... Idk, man. These boys are so much more than what I see them so often reduced to. They're in all of us. There will be times to stand and fight, and times to show mercy and be kind. We just need to find that balance, as Katniss eventually did.

[progg]

Chasing Shadows

As of Chapter 397 of Hunter x Hunter, I'm no longer certain the Phantom Troupe is responsible for the Kurta massacre. In this post, I’ll explain why I hold this belief, who I think might be responsible, and why Kurapika’s revenge mission may be even more misguided than we thought.

Asking the Question

As I touched on in my analysis of Chapter 393, it’s a common writing tactic to have characters ask questions the readers should be asking themselves. Togashi employs this strategy frequently. On the Black Whale, Hisoka has been asked three times about his identity, but he has never definitively answered.

In a similar vein, the Troupe has been asked twice about whether they were responsible for the Kurta clan massacre.

Chapter 81:

Chapter 116:

In both cases, the Troupe gave a non-response. In fact, it’s Kurapika who repeatedly assigns blame to the Troupe, and he’s not exactly the most reliable source.

Uvogin does claim to remember something resembling the Kurta massacre, but it’s possible this was an act.

He refers to the event in only vague terms, using the knowledge that Kurapika has already provided him. As for the details he does provide, they are dubious at best. Uvo claims the Kurta were "pretty powerful", and while that may be true, it doesn't really add up. He also says Chrollo took “quite a liking” to the Scarlet Eyes which is just... weird. It suggests a shallow, materialist view that Chrollo has never expressed.

In Chapters 397, it’s revealed that the Troupe planned to garner a nasty reputation in order to protect Meteor City. 

This is all wrapped up in an allegory about acting. The Troupe want to “play the role of villains”, especially Uvogin.

It’s even in the name: Phantom Troupe. As in not real, fake, an illusion. I’m not saying the Troupe are completely free of wrongdoing, but it would have been in their interest to claim credit for the massacre (even if they didn’t actually do it).

On that note, it’s very possible Uvo was fibbing to Kurapika during their fight—playing the villain to antagonize him.

Sheila ‘the Good’

At first glance, Kurapika’s backstory chapters seem to unmistakably peg the Phantom Troupe as the culprit. Sheila’s actions are especially suspicious, as she seems to reinjure herself several times, suggesting she is faking her injury.

Not to mention, at the end of the chapter, the traveler who discovers the massacre is said to be a woman. 

All of this is meant to lead the reader to the conclusion that the Phantom Troupe committed the atrocity with the help of Sheila.

However, Chapters 395-397 paint a very different picture of Sheila. We learn that Sheila actually has a tendency to injure herself while walking, and this could very well explain her behavior in Kurapika’s Memories.

Her right leg is perennially in a cast because she keeps re-injuring it.

We also learn that Sheila was the closest to the Sarasa, whose death catalyzed the Troupe’s descent into villainy.

Sheila says, ‘we’re a package.’ Then she trips again.

Hyping up her friend.

Sheila is the first to offer Chrollo help in searching for Sarasa, and she is close enough to be acquainted with her nannies.

After Sarasa’s death, Chrollo plans to play the villain, enacting revenge on her killers and protecting Meteor City. Sheila disapproves of Chrollo’s plan, and she leaves Meteor City with a dejected expression.

Chrollo himself admits that Sarasa would not condone their plan, and it’s likely that, given how close they were, Sheila objects for the same reasons.

Replace Sarasa with Pairo here. Kurapika and Chrollo are very similar...

In general, flashback Sheila is shown to be a very kind, sympathetic character. It’s possible she gave D Hunter to Kurapika and Pairo out of generosity, which is impressive considering her attachment to the book and her lack of personal belongings.

The official translation for the top-right panel “I don’t really have much. In return, let’s see...”

The Manner of the Massacre

Whether or not Sheila was involved, there is still a major piece of evidence connecting the Troupe to the massacre. The second half of the Law of Retribution, a saying associated with Meteor City, is left behind at the scene. However, if we look at the manner of the massacre, it more closely resembles the work of the mafia. Consider the similarities between the genocide of the Kurta and the murder of Sarasa.

Decapitation, mutilation, a note left at the crime scene.

Decapitation, mutilation, a note left at the crime scene.

Additionally, Chrollo describes Sarasa’s murder as a “show” put on by the perpetrators.

When you think about it, this is very similar to how the Kurta massacre is described, not to mention Pairo’s beheading paralleling Sarasa’s.

Was the Kurta massacre a “show” as well? It’s possible the mafia’s intention was to frame the Troupe, but the message may also have been left behind as a statement. It’s not out of character for the mafia to respond to transgressions in this way. 

The Troupe can “take away” Meteor City as a source for trafficking, but Sarasa’s killers can simply take their dealings elsewhere. It’s a twisted interpretation of the Law of Retribution—taking it and spitting it back at the Troupe.

A Synthesis of the Arts

Whoever orchestrated the Kurta massacre wanted the Scarlet Eyes and decided to behead the villagers. While the Scarlet Eyes would be valuable to anyone involved in the Black Market, the showmanship of the massacre and the use of decapitation fits more closely with a certain Kakin prince.

The theory that Tserriednich has Pairo’s head begins to make a lot of sense. He didn’t buy it on the black market... he’s the original owner! It also explains why he has the Scarlet Eyes. He owns quite a few of them but may have sold the others.

I believe the mafia group responsible for Sarasa’s death and the murder of the Kurta, in this case, is the Hei-Ly. Not Morena’s Hei-Ly, but the Hei-Ly she overthrew prior to boarding the Black Whale. Everything surrounding Sarasa’s murder and the Kurta massacre fits Tserriednich’s profile. 

In Chapter 397, Chrollo concludes that Sarasa’s killers recorded her death and will disperse them on the newly developing dark web.

In Chapter 343, we learn that Tserriednich was identified as the eyes’ owner because he posted a video of them on the dark web.

It especially makes sense that Tserriednich would be interested in putting the disembodied Kurta on display, given his nature.

Finally, Tserriednich’s tattoo artist, a former Hei-Ly member, is complicit in Tserriednich’s hobby.

If the pre-coup Hei-Ly was responsible for both incidents, it adds an interesting layer to the conflict on the lower decks of the Black Whale and the conflict between Kurapika and Chrollo.

Note: In Yorknew, Feitan and Paku are very vague about it, but at least seem aware the massacre occured. Chrollo reasons Kurapika has come for the eyes and revenge, presumably against the Troupe. Chrollo's reasoning definitely makes it seem like they are at least aware they could be perceived as responsible.

<source>

<reddit discussion>

[bardic-irritation]

liveblogging The Magnus Archives first listen!

i only recently thought to do this so! starting from where I am now, having gone in basically blind, i'll be liveblogging TMA. spoilers below cut up through episode 48.

First, what i knew going in: everything i know pretty much comes from Uquizzes, @ wolfythewitch, and general fandom osmosis lol. I took a lot of "which entity are you" quizzes a while ago. I know there are a bunch of different fear entities, i know some of their names, and i think the institute is associated with the Eye somehow but i don't really know how that would be? Anyways, thoughts so far:

Distorted Michael is babygirl. something's deeply fucking wrong with him and i fully expect him to commit atrocities any episode now but i think i love him :D

(sidenote why are there so many gd michaels in this podcast)

idk who this freak running around the office is but that is NOT my Sasha. give her back. she better not be dead already.

i'm assuming given that they specifically mentioned that table from ep 3 arriving as an artifact, that's how Sasha's been replaced? i can't think of any other case where someone was replaced like that? i'm gonna look like a clown if that is actually real Sasha but i just don't like the vibes rn.

speaking of the other archivists i LOVE Martin. he's giving both final girl and the first person to get taken out in a horror movie, with no in between.

obsessed with Paranoid Jon™ hunched over in his office doing the supplemental tapes and jumping everytime someone checks on him. love that guy. hope he gets more mentally fucked up.

i feel like i remember Elias being a controversial tumblr sexyman at one point? i don't see it. he's boring me to death everytime he's there, i have to assume shit gets crazy coming up fast though.

i'm really interested in the implications of Michael on the lore. I'm assuming he's a manifestation of the Spiral, but he's been the only "taken over" person at this point to actively be trying to help (in his own creepy way, but still). i'm assuming there's not really a moral dimension to these entities but are there ones that are more lawful aligned versus chaotic? is there a pattern in which entities let people who weren't their targets live and which ones make statement givers turn up dead?

do they "ally" with each other in whatever "war" is happening, like is Michael helping the Institute bc the Spiral and the Eye are allies (or is he only really helping Jon and if so why)? there's gotta be fears that heavily overlap (like the Slaughter and Death) and ones that are opposed to each other (like the Buried and the Vast), right?

Is he just playing the long game and if so what does it mean that the Spiral can/does scheme and plot in a way that whatever Jane Prentiss was part of didn't seem able to do?

Posts will be way shorter and as I have thoughts come up from now on, just starting with a braindump lol

[pulim-v]

what are the *checks notes* obamitsu/muzan vs yoriichi parallels. Be insane

OKAY SO. I MIGHT JUST BE CRAZY

SO IN DEMON SLAYER THERE'S THESE TWO CHARACTERS CALLED OBANAI AND MITSURI

And they are quite possibly my favorite shounen couple ever.

So to give a basic rundown of their stories, both are very accomplished demon slayers (titled "pillars" because they support the whole organization), and they got the job for VERY different reasons.

Obanai was abused by his family. Rich aristocrats, who got their wealth due to the atrocities committed by a demon, they usually sacrificed all the boys that were born to said demon, but Obanai's heterochromia caught her attention, and he was left to live until he was older. Eventually, an older Slayer saved him and killed the demon (in the process causing the deaths of several members of the family), but the experience heavily traumatized Obanai - he feels at fault due to a relative of him blaming him for their deaths, he is afraid of women due to the demon's abuse, and he cannot eat regularly due to the abuse he endured. He goes into the Corps as a form of repentance - he kills demons and saves people to compensate for his cursed blood.

Mitsuri's situation is very different. She had a family that supported her, but she was born different. Her muscles are incredibly dense, which makes her physical strength very impressive, and her need for food very high (which had the side effect of causing her hair to turn partially pink). Sadly, though, that caused her to be rejected from society - when she was about to get married, her fiancé rejected her, telling her that her strength, hair and appetite were disgusting, and only a beast would settle for her. She hid her strength, dyed her hair and didn't eat nearly enough, living half of a life so someone would accept her. Then the leader of the Corps told her to use her strength to help people, because she was a wonderful person and shouldn't waste her talents. She saves people and kills demons because she finally found a place for herself, and in this she wants to find a husband, someone who is stronger than her so her strength isn't seen as a curse.

I could go insane over the two as a couple in general, but I'll save that for later. For now, let's get into Muzan and Yoriichi

Muzan is the king of demons, and the original person to BE a demon. As a child, he was incredibly frail and sickly, and his doctors all warned him that he'd die before he became an adult. One doctor, though, gave him a medicine that fixed his issues, and made his body much stronger, but it seemed to have some weird side effects. His body craved human blood, though that wasn't a big issue; the really bad thing was the face that he couldn't walk in the sunlight anymore, so after killing his doctor he used his newly acquired immortality to search for the thing that could fix that and make him a truly godlike being

Meanwhile, since he was a child, Yoriichi seemed very different from other people. He always had a sort of pleasant aura around him, and could see the inner workings of things without any effort. One day, while his twin was practicing swordfighting, his teacher seemed curious to see how Yoriichi would fair. What followed was him being utterly destroyed, Yoriichi striking four times in a mere moment and making him unconscious. This made Yoriichi be celebrated by his family, but he truly didn't want this level of fame - he ran away, and found the Demon Slaying Corps. He joined them, and taught them the way of Breathing Techniques, though they could never be as strong as he was. He finally found a place where he belonged, though even then he was never like the others near him, and they eventually rejected him too when he failed to kill Muzan.

So we have a cursed child, sickly and weak, who is fated to die at a young age but is saved by others, who hates their nature and tries to go against it, and an incredibly kind, blessed soul, who is unlike everyone else in their life, but never managed to find a home. The difference, in these cases, is that Obanai was kind and Mitsuri found her people. It's that Obanai was grateful to his savior and the Slayers accepted Mitsuri.

@risingscorchingsuns bestie sorry for tagging you in this but you're the KNY literary analysis moot to me and I want to get your input on this akjshdaksjhdjkash

[shytastemakerthing]

Well now I’m curious and I’d like a matchup too! (Romantic would be preferred but platonic is good too! Do what you’re comfortable with!)

I am an asexual person (she/they) who is very timid and honestly a bit jumpy. I can put my foot down when I feel I need to as I don’t like taking bs from people, but I’m more likely to avoid conflict than to instigate. I like to draw and while I’m a bit out of practice, I like to sing a bit too! My music taste ranges between techno pop, hard rock, soft and sweet little love songs or heartbreak songs, and touches on a lot of other genres here and there. I love me some good fantasy, whether it’s a game, anime/manga or movie. I also like sci-fi and a little bit of horror every now and then. I get tired easy and like to nap a lot, so someone I can trust to let me sleep peacefully or even join my nap would be super nice. I like hugs, like I’m a big hugger if I like you, but I won’t be overbearing if it’s something someone isn’t comfortable with. I know what it’s like to just not want to be touched and I won’t knowingly make someone that uncomfortable. Personal space and privacy are important but so is physical touch. It’s not always easy to find a middle ground… I try my best to hear out and understand people’s perspectives on things but that can also lead to me asking a lot of questions. I also really like the stars and the night sky. I could stargaze until I fall asleep if I really felt safe enough to do so.

I hope that’s not too much! Tysm! :)

Hi! Thank you so much for your request! I'm finally getting these rolled out so thank you so much for your patience! I do hope that you enjoy your matchup, Anon!

CW: None

I match you with.......

Lilia Vanrouge

🦇 He knows that you're jumpy.... and he uses that to his advantage. Man is a chronic prankster, whether that's all just him personally or his fae self kicking in, we may never know (it's a heavy mix of both, he just can't help himself). He will show up at the most random of places at the most random of times just to see you jump. It makes him chuckle every single time.

🦇 The first time you put your foot down and told him off about him spooking you like thay far too many times for your liking, he was honestly and surprisingly impressed and stunned (and he honestly found it extremely attractive). Now, he is a seasoned war general who has seen many atrocities committed, some even by him. But seeing you like that, it honestly intimidated him a bit.

🦇 Man raised a chronic sleeper son (who wad also cursed with such a spell to case these bouts of sleep), so he does not mind when you need a nap, he'll even join you. After all, he needs to rest those old bones of his. He's also a snuggler and no one can change my mind. He will welcome you into his dorm room, and you can both lay in bed, all nice and cozy under the covers. He'll even tell you stories about all of his adventures if that helps you.

🦇 It is Canon that this man plays games. And if you're looking for some good fantasy, he has plenty of recommendations for you. If you want one to read, he's been around for centuries, and he can get his hands on some of the best books there are no matter the year. He once gifted you a book of such a genre (the best in his opinion), that wss well over 150 years old.

🦇 Please join him at the Light Music Club, please. Honestly they would all love to have you there. There is such a mixture of music that all your music desires are met. And if you sing for them one time, Lilia is smitten and is extra cuddly. He just loves your voice.

🦇 By extension, you get Silver, Malleus, and Sebek. Silver begins to love you like a parent and is always making sure you're alright, thank you over and over for making his father so happy just by being there. Malleus has never seen Lilia so happy when he is with you. There is a difference between the familial love that he holds for his boys and the romantic live he has for you. Sebek is fiercely protective of you, almost on the same level of Malleus, and this is only because your with Lilia. But he will admit he is fond of you over time. He just likes that Lilia is happy.

🦇 Lilia does not mind all the questions that you will ask, actually, he promotes it. He has been around for so long so he will quite possibly have a lot of answers that he will be able to give to you. He just loves to be able to tell you things. To have someone ask him all of these questions, to show such interest, it warns that old heart of his.

🦇 The bat fae has seen so many stars in his long life. He's lived under them, mapped them, traveled by them, all of it. He has even seen some come and go. That means more knowledge that he can share to you. He will bring out the old maps that he used to use and he will gladly share them with you. If it's one of those nights where you're both just laying on a blanket staring out at the stars, he will also gladly just hold you close, thanking the stars above for blessing his life with you. If you happen to fall asleep, and it stars getting just a bit too cold, he can and will pick you up and carry you back (maybe even reverting to his true form for this moment) to his dorm, tucking you in all nice and warm.

🦇 Overall, Lilia honestly feels like he has been blessed when you showed up into his life. So much of his life was filled with pain and war and death and destruction. To have you, here, alive and well with him, loving him for all of who he is, it has brought him to tears more than once. He makes sure that you never have to hurt, that you always feel loved. You get someone who is respectful of you, who respects your boundaries, and loves you as you are.

[chrkrose]

I hope this is ok to ask, but what do you think of Daemon and Nettles storyline? I know you ship them, but what about how Martin writes it or the story he wants to tell/thinks he's telling? I'm not really a fan, much less so because by the time I got to that chapter I was already fed up with Martin. He's pretty much using F&B to talk about his favorites characters and while if you can't play in your own sandbox then where can you play, it makes it a little difficult to take very seriously

I wouldn’t say I ship “ship” them because it’s kinda hard to ship something when you have basically just the Wikipedia summary of what their relationship looked like. I think I ship the potential of the couple to a degree lol. And because I love cliche romantic tropes.

With that said, I’ve always been very cool about my ships in the sense that I know when I’m the one reading into it more than the story is giving me anything x the story wants me to see it in a romantic light. And I think George couldn’t be more obvious about how he wanted their story to be perceived as romance.

It’s not very hard to spot when George is going to the romantic angle of something, because his couples follow similar tropes, same as how it’s easy to spot his favorite characters because they all share similar traits. Nettles and Daemon in particular play very much into those things: Nettles is the underdog, who comes from nothing and is shunned by society, only to be proven that they are actually exceptional and special (with his more developed characters, Brienne and Tyrion come to mind, although Tyrion also falls into the next category) and Daemon is the character who commits tons of atrocities but has also certain aspects of his personality that are actually good and therefore the reader has complex feelings about him (Jaime and Theon are a good example of that in the main saga).

It’s only natural that he would pair these two together, especially if he can play with ideas such as the two coming from opposite backgrounds or clashing when it comes to their beliefs or even how they defy societal expectations when it comes to those characters getting romantically entangled. He loves to add any of those tropes to his couples (Dunk & Rohanne; Duncan & Jenny; Alys & Aemond; Jaime & Brienne. The last two in particular, it’s very very clear that Daemon and Nettles are the Dance version of Jaime and Brienne, to the point that even some of Daemon & Nettles plot beats echo those of Jaime & Brienne).

I think both Nettles and Daemon had different purposes in the story, each one having a different arc with a different goal in mind, and their relationship can be read in three different perspectives: what it means to Nettles arc, what it means to Daemon’s arc and what it means to them as a couple and love story. I can go into more depth about this if you want, let me know lol.

Ultimately, like I said before, people (sometimes willingly so they can fit into their own headcanons/agendas) misinterpret their relationship because they either want to close their eyes to the reality of it (“they are father/daughter” when it’s not because the book canonically makes it impossible and cmon, never mind all the obvious romantic imagery of their scenes and goodbye) or because they want to push a problematic angle that wasn’t really George’s goal (“daemon is grooming another little girl because is he’s a pedo” cmon George has a serious problem with ages in general to begin with, to the point I’m pretty sure he never saw a child/young teen in real life. Almost all of his romantic couples have a problematic age gap, which is why I can “overlook” this when it comes to Daemon and Nettles because it’s clear it’s not important in their case. Finally, because he goes out of his way to show that even though nettles is “young”, she is “older” than the girls he used to sleep with, and that with her it is “different”. I said in another post, he never wrote their relationship as a commentary about Daemon’s pedo tendencies, but in spite of it).

I think the story he’s trying to tell, to simplify, is of two awesome characters (subjectively lol. Nettles is awesome. Daemon is up for debate) he likes quite a bit finding romance and having an impactful story because since he likes those two characters quite a bit, and he’s the one writing the story, he can give them all the cool tropes and ideas just because. Which I get. I love Brienne so she’s always the most special one and the queen of everything whenever I write a fic. I can’t say I blame him for it.

And feel free to send me asks, I love answering it!

[nesiacha]

Bonaparte did much more than that in the list of grievances. Firstly, it wasn't him who saved the country. No one person saves a country alone. It's the entire people who do it, those who fight, those who bear the taxes, those who participated in the Bastille, on August 10th, who voted, those who ensured that the government remains effective, like the sans-culottes, those who fought in Year III against Boissy d'Anglas and company, etc. People who didn't participate in the government have just as much influence on history by exerting themselves tirelessly, and if you want names, here they are: Momoro, Simone Evrard, Louise Reine Audu, etc. Those who seek to profit from it must be fought against, or else they are impostors and fighters of the 25th hour in general (as happened during the Algerian revolution). In short, one must always remember the phrase: "There is only one hero: the people."

Secondly, if we really seek a government, in my eyes, it is the Montagnards like Billaud Varenne, Robespierre, Saint Just, Couthon, Le Bas, Charles Gilbert Romme, Ronsin (I talked about them in one of my posts during the excellent question asked by pleasecallmealsip https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/745212185045811200/in-your-opinion-what-was-the-most-significant?source=share). Here is their nuanced opinion, but they inherited a far more catastrophic situation than Napoleon and managed to save it independently, despite unforgivable excesses, but they did it, with a completely divided executive power and under universal suffrage. Of course, there were scoundrels who wanted to line their pockets (Tallien, Fouché, etc.), but let's not forget that the revolutionaries I mentioned wanted to punish them for their atrocities.

What did Bonaparte do? He did everything he shouldn't have done. Venturing beyond the borders and imposing wars of conquest. He said it was the monarchists who wanted war, but in that case, he should stick to natural borders and stay there. What he did was an invitation for France to be even more vulnerable. Moreover, if he resisted so well, one of the reason is that he inherited a better situation due to the work of his predecessors. I don't need to mention what he did in Jaffa. If I criticized revolutionaries committing atrocities, I don't see why I would spare him (even though honestly he's not a bloodthirsty being unlike the black legend). The guy does a coup and becomes a military dictator with a very rigged plebiscite. Compare him to Robespierre, Saint Just, Le Bas, and Couthon when they were outlawed, hesitating while they were in mortal danger and didn't seek as much trouble as Bonaparte, while 17 out of 49 sections spontaneously came to their aid, they wanted to stay within the law, hesitated, and had more scruples than him. Bonaparte did a coup for his glory and power ( with Sieyes) but fled for his life when he was justifiably outlawed thanks to the devoted army of others (this is my subjective judgment and Bonaparte has many flaws but is not a coward). Bonaparte never knew how to inspire true loyalty that cannot be bought with money but by merit (like Robespierre, Marat, Couthon, Romme, Prieur de la Marne). As a result, when he was in trouble, there was not a lot left. When Marat was accused, all of Paris rushed to him even though he didn't have a penny in his pocket.

Finally, the shameful reinstatement of slavery (many former slaves executed, hanged, pursued by dogs), the fact that he put women in worse conditions than other women in Europe, the civil code wasn't his idea fundamentally, he just took the idea and constantly regressed like in the worker's booklet, his hypocritical puritan laws, one law for him and his family and another for others. The executive power was too strong (it still is today). Moreover, the reinstatement of slavery was a grave mistake because unlike the other deputies of the Convention of 1792 (at least most of them), they were both moral and pragmatic. They knew that these former slaves would prefer to fight to the end and die, so they preferred to abolish slavery (Marat sang their praises and rightly predicted that Saint Domingue would become independent). Bonaparte, to solve one problem, created a bigger one. The same thing when he stupidly believed he could exploit countries without it backfiring on him. He blames everyone when there was the blunder of the Malet conspiracy when this conspiracy could never have happened under the Convention of 1792. And the worst thing is that since he has the strongest power, there are no collective faults like in the case of the Convention of 1792. He alone is the main culprit. The restoration of the monarchy was done under Napoleon in my opinion, not under Louis XVIII. What a betrayal. Louis XVI betrayed his country but never spent as much; he was furious about the Court's expenses and, at least, never betrayed his ideals. Napoleon did. His shameful expenses for himself and his family, the fact that he left France in a worse state than he found it, that he believed he could found a dynasty when it was obvious he couldn't, his shameful betrayal towards the Jacobins, the execution of the Duke of Enghien (what do I say, his assassination) just to consolidate his power, the scandal of the creation of the Bank of France, the fact that he married a Habsburg and that because of that, Francis, Emperor of Austria, tried at the fall of Napoleon to proclaim himself regent (he who wanted to destroy France because of the French Revolution) and thus almost got the keys to the country thanks to Bonaparte and his lack of foresight in this case.... Yes, in these cases, Bonaparte doesn't inspire sympathy from me. But he is adored due to propaganda that hides his thirst for power, the fact that the right needs him to justify that the executive is stronger than the legislative in my opinion, while Marat, Robespierre, Couthon, Romme, Babeuf, Momoro are either forgotten or demonized. Sorry if the answer was a bit harsh, it wasn't intended, and if you want to add because I'm not infallible. This is just my opinion.

as a frenchman i was confused and surprised at how much you guys as a whole dislike napoleon? he gets a lot of deserved rep for saving the country imo

bro he led 400,000+ French people to their deaths

meanwhile people act like the ~35k killed by the Reign of Terror was the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the history of humanity. it's just the double standard that pisses me off.

[dr-drckken]

Day 30: Character Wishlist

1. Dr. Doofenshmirtz: ALSO putting doof on my list because i think having him on multiple lists really speaks for how much his ass needs to BE HERE. begging, pleading, down on my knees. look people, what do I need to do to convince someone to get Doofenshmirtz!! He’s literally the best cartoon dead known to humanity AND he’s a mad scientist. We could be the best of friends, chopping it up on the block. Talking about lab safety! Complaining about how hard it is to find a good lab assistant! I’m not Anya, I don’t have his daughter to entice you with, but I do have his predecessor in funny little cartoon scientists in a beloved children’s show. The point of a disneyrp is for the crossovers and this could be THE crossover.  AND if you use nick cage his could be us: https://thyla.tumblr.com/post/702286691264872448/pedrohub-the-unbearable-weight-of-massive-talent

2. Jackson Storm: i know he was voiced by armie hammer and that’s weird, but like pls. Join that Cars hive! I think he could be a fun addition. We’ve seen the mean girl trope before but let’s talk about a mean GUY! which….yeah we have also seen before, but since it’s being done for my personal benefit i think that’s totally fine and welcome and im giving you permission. I know the mean jock boy has plagued the world, but I ALSO KNOW that with the world that has been created here at swynrp, that the cliche could actually be fun instead of annoying.

3. Mike and Sully: putting them back on here because they have not left my mind since last year kids and at this point they probably never will. Only thing keeping me from getting one is that fact that they wouldn’t have their buddy and thankfully my brain won’t allow one to live while the other is not there. 

4. Eda Clawthorne: The only thing keeping me from getting Eda at any given point is that I would love to write with her, but like I would also love to WRITE her and fjdskajfdksl it’s a very frustrating position to be in you know. She’s just such a good character!! I love her! She adopts people left and right! She’s funny! She’s powerful! She’s got a funny little demon deal to grapple with! Her sister is here!! AAGHH! Begging someone to get her before I give in besties. 

5. Cruella de Vil: I just think she’s neat. And by neat I mean unhinged and possibly one of the worst Disney villains out there lmfao. but that’s what I like about her. I think more women should be able to be mean and evil and commit atrocities. We’ve had our time with the Order Boys (and knife girl) in the hunting ring, but I just think it’s time that a new villain clan takes the spotlight. 

6. Arawn Prydain: ….that being said, I also think we need some less than nice sorcerers hanging around. There’s a few in the open characters tag, but since we’ve got Eilonwy and Taran hanging out I think Arawn would be a good addition to the ranks. Plus with all our #spooky gang characters, a baddie necromancer would be fun to see adding to the mix.

7. Granmamare: I think we should have more merfolk in GENERAL so I’m going to advocate for a QUEEN because, like, come on now, how fun is that. An ethereal lady wandering the town and trying to find like minded people to bring back home to run off the poachers? That’s a fun plot. I like it. I think she should be here, being everyone’s mom. 

8. Scuttle: We’ve got a lot of business owners around town! Some new, some old, but who we do NOT have is the antique shop owner with all his little merfolk friends. I SIMPLY THINK it would be fun to have the kinda kooky, very fun, very well meaning, very bad singer, Scuttle come join us down in Swynlake Town. both because that’s my boss! he could have some really cool stories/shit to say about the stuff he sells! and another business owner to spice things up! what’s his perspective on everything? if he EVEN HAS ONE

9. Winnie the Pooh: I just think this one is really funny. COULD BE TRAGIC IDK, there’s always something a bit tragic about winnie the pooh but still. let’s get this cutie in here! a guy who used to be a literal stuffed animal?? must give the best hugs in town. and this town could use them. and if he doesn’t wear crop tops then idk maybe you shouldn’t be playing him actually. just a thought.

10. The Recess Gang: doing a 5 in 1! I really like the recess kids’ skeletons and think they should all be here, having a grand old time. Whether that be in secondary or even in the uni. There’s nothing like a core group of friends just making their way through life together despite the different paths that they came from to this point. They’re all different but that’s what makes their dynamic work baby!! 

[lumpsbumpsandwhumps]

Bad Things Happen Bingo - Forced To Hurt Someone

Ehehe, the first of many installments to the MAJ story! Now, full disclosure, all my prompts for this challenge are coming from a knock off card a friend and I made together, so I won't actually be tagging this in the BTHB tag

As always, if there's a tag I missed or anything you'd like me to specifically mark, please let me know so I can add it for future fics!

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CW: Graphic Depictions of Gore, Implied Violence/Torture, Blood, Minor Character Death, Threats, Choking, Videoing A Snuff Film, Creepy/Intimate Whumper

Word Count: 9.7K

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The term ‘Red Room’ wasn’t exactly what it sounded like. It was a room, yes, and there were most certainly various shades of red staining the interior, but the mental image it conjured versus its true nature couldn’t be further apart. Red Rooms were what most internet savvy people considered a myth, unless you knew how to navigate past the surface level of the dark web where the right amount of money could buy just about anything your vile heart desired. Urban legends came and went about their existence and purpose, though the general consensus remained that they were used for livestreaming torture sessions in which sick viewers could donate to make requests about what the victim should be put through next.

Turns out, that was a lie. And not in a relieving way.

As Jonas had unfortunately come to learn firsthand, both from witnessing Malik do his dirty work and from the offhanded explanations he would throw out here and there, there were a couple misconceptions about how Red Rooms worked. First of all, it wasn’t livestreamed, as that could be more easily traced, nor was the completed recording ever given out to multiple viewers. A buyer would pay for the private film; how deep they wanted to go into the directing role depending on how much they were willing to spend. They could go as far as to pick out what specifications they wanted for their victim, how long the duration of the act was, what tools and methods were implemented, or they could give a general concept and let Malik have full creative control. That seemed to be his favorite. 

Very rarely was there a request Malik ever turned down, and even then he was willing to reconsider if the buyer offered a better price. Jonas had been in the designated Red Room a total of three times and every visit made him want to shrivel into himself and disappear. They were awful, awful experiences. The things Malik did to him on a daily basis were mere child's play compared to the atrocities he committed to the poors souls that were essentially purchased to die. Ninety percent of the blame for these heinous acts could be put on Malik without a doubt, however it wasn’t fair to throw him under the bus alone. He was only doing what people told him to do. Who was more psychotic – the person requesting or the person committing? 

What nauseated Jonas the most was the fact he knew deep within his soul that one day, possibly very soon, he would be the star of one of these videos. That wasn’t an exaggeration; Malik had blatantly told him that a majority of his victims were former abductees whose ransoms weren’t paid on time. At that point, full custody was relinquished to Malik from the men who initially organized the kidnapping and, since he wasn’t going to get a share of the ransom if it wasn’t paid, he repurposed them for his second job. Really, it was a win-win situation for him no matter what, gaining a bloodsoaked paycheck one way or another. As much as Jonas hoped and prayed and believed his own fucking parents would pay off the bounty for his head in a timely manner, he knew they were dragging their feet while deadline drew near. 

While he figured his fate would eventually be sealed in the Red Room, front and center of Malik’s treasured DSLR camera, Jonas didn’t anticipate he’d be in the starring role so soon. He never knew why he was dragged into the room the rare times that he was considering he was still always bound and gagged in the corner to stay out of the way. Was he meant to watch, was he meant to learn? Did Malik want him to get a preview of what would be done to him if his parents didn’t sign a fat check, or was this supposed to be some weird bonding thing with him sharing his…special interest and wanting Jonas to keep him company? Either way, he was less than pleased when Malik coiled an arm around his bruised chest to drag the poor boy across the basement from one room to the next.

Jonas was expecting to be dropped in his typical corner, maybe not headfirst if Malik was feeling affectionate today, and left to his own petrified devices out of frame. That wasn’t the case when Malik continued to heft him over closer to the stolen cadaver gurney. It would be a lie to say Jonas’s heart rate didn’t skyrocket being so close to the stained metal, even more so when he was manhandled around in Malik’s grasp to be held up by his underarms like a doll. Rather than being lifted up and slammed down on the gurney, thankfully, Malik hooked his foot on one of the legs of a rolling stool to bring the seat over and plop Jonas down. Before he could catch his breath from the brief panic, the duct tape was ripped off from his mouth, eliciting a sharp gasp due to the sting left on his skin.

“Hi Jonie,” Malik said, as if this was the first time he’s seen Jonas today and not spent ten minutes in silence carrying him from a prison to a torture chamber. 

Licking the taste of adhesive and blood from his newly split lip, Jonas forced a very meek, “H…hello.”

Not one to idle on pleasantries, Malik gave a quick scan to the assortment of tools lying in wait beside the gurney, quickly picking an elongated knife with a serrated edge. Jonas’s wrists were seized in one hand while the frightening blade slipped between to snap the makeshift zip tie cuffs that were replaced almost daily. Not to worry, Malik had a concerningly endless supply. It felt nice to get some circulation back into his remaining fingers, rotating his wrists and rubbing the scabbed skin while Malik knelt down to cut through the ropes confining his ankles. What was the difference between using zip ties on one pair of limbs and rope on another, Jonas wondered a few times. Maybe because Malik didn’t need to replace the leg bindings often since he opted to carry Jonas around as opposed to letting him walk free range.

The fact that Jonas was not on the gurney was a good thing so far. The fact that he had full mobility while being in the camera setting up was alarming. If Jonas was a stronger man, he’d shove Malik with all his strength and knee him in the face. Then he’d grab one of the big, scary, sharp weapons and stab it into him a hundred times before running out of the basement screaming for help. But he wasn’t a stronger man, both in the physical and emotional sense. Malik could overpower him easily with the advantage of having ten fingers and not being simultaneously beaten and starved for the last few weeks. No flimsy attack against him would be worth the severe punishment he’d receive. 

“Wh-what are you…doing?” Jonas asked, unsure if he really wanted the answer. It was never a good answer.

“We’re making a movie today,” Malik said. He returned to his full height to put the knife back where it belonged amongst the other blades waiting their turn. Jonas didn’t like how he needed to crane his neck up to see the other, subconsciously bearing his throat to a dangerous predator. Even if he stood up as well, he’d only make it a bit past Malik’s shoulder, which was insanely unfair given that Jonas was already fairly tall himself. There’s always a bigger fish, he supposed.

The verbiage of the sentence confused him. Not I, we. As in two people. As in you and me. As in Jonas would be taking an active part in whatever film Malik was paid to make today. His blood ran cold, rapidly draining from his face as if it could store itself somewhere else to avoid being siphoned out with one of those wretched embalming machines Malik used on someone’s legs before. So, Jonas had been mistaken, evidently. He would be hoisted onto the multifunctional table after all to give the performance of the lifetime. It made sense that his limbs would be temporarily freed for this so they could instead be fastened to the leather cuffs added to the top and bottom of the gurney. His parents must have ran out of time, meaning Jonas had run out of luck.

Jonas gulped, finding it hard to meet his tormentor’s eyes. “We…?”

Malik hummed in agreement, taking hold of both of Jonas’s hands again and giving them a tug. “C’mon, up and at ‘em.”

His legs felt like jelly. A mix of fear and the still prickling sensation that made his toes curl as full feeling returned from so long of inactivity. Jonas knew what the price of disobedience was, but when one was about to be carved up on camera, did it really matter anymore? He shook his head and stayed firmly planted on the seat, trying to pull his hands free from Malik’s iron grip. If he really wanted to, he could yank Jonas to his feet and pin him to the gurney with no trouble. But Malik loved a good fight, loved a good struggle, especially when it was his favorite little Jonie wriggling against him. 

“N-no! No!” Jonas squealed, panic already pumping his weak heart with adrenaline. “No, Malik, pl-please, please, I don’t, I-I don’t–!”

“Relax, lover, it’ll be fun,” he crooned. The use of that sickening sweet nickname only worsened the gnawing anxiety tightening Jonas’s stomach. Malik was in a playful mood today, which normally meant Jonas could get away with a smidgen more than usual because his captor thought it was extra entertaining. Working him up into a panicked frenzy meant a few extra moments to savor his trembling form when it was time to get the show on the road. 

As predicted, Malik forced Jonas to stand by dragging him up by his arms. He squirmed, trying to twist his sore body in a way that might wrench his arms free, not that it would matter in the long run. Jonas was still locked in the Red Room, it wouldn’t make much difference if he had an infinite amount of space to flee. Malik’s long strides and superior stamina would be able to grab a fistful of his matted brown curls and drag him back wherever he wanted. While he might love a fun chase, his captor did eventually draw the line when the game grew tiresome, often leading to Jonas blacking out. From pain, from drugs, from lack of air – it was always a toss up.

When Jonas tried to lean back in the hopes gravity would lend him its strength, Malik countered the movement by yanking his arms (and therefore Jonas’s as well) down to his side, forcing him to careen straight into his tormentor’s chest. Once they were back to sharing a personal bubble, Malik let go of his wrists in favor of wrapping his arms tightly around Jonas to ensnare him in the world’s most uncomfortable type of hug. There was no way he’d be able to break free from the hold, but that didn’t stop him from trying to push against Malik’s chest.

“I said relax, Jonie,” Malik warned. Even with the use of the pet name, the bite was evident in his tone. The sensation of his voice rumbling in his chest vibrated against Jonas’s dampening cheek, almost succeeding in drowning out the rush of blood in his ears. “You always make things so much more difficult than they need to be.”

Well, maybe that was because Jonas didn’t want to be killed for some sick fuck’s amusement. Maybe that was because he didn’t want to be battered worse than the last time to take a pretty picture. Maybe that was because he didn’t want Malik touching him, or kissing him, or using affection as another weapon. Maybe that was because he never wanted to be kidnapped from a family that never gave two shits about him prior, much less after he already sacrificed a finger to try and expedite their dues. Honestly, forgive Jonas for having an ounce of self preservation and not wanting to die an excruciating death at such a young age at the hands of a guy who may or may not get freaky with his corpse afterwards. Necrophilia had never seemed like the type of thing to tickle Malik’s fancy in the numerous times he was left with a dead body after his filming, yet with how obsessive he was with claiming Jonas inside and out…

No time to think about how Malik might desecrate his mutilated corpse, not while he was still alive anyways. Jonas did stop his struggling, only because he knew it was futile to waste his limited energy right now and risk annoying Malik before the real torture began. The tears refused to halt their falling, however, clumping his lashes together and soaking into the thick fabric of Malik’s black sweater. If it weren’t for the arms squeezing against him, Jonas would be a hyperventilating mess as there was no other outlet for his meltdown. Yet even that was taken from him, forcing him to choke on gasps that were unsatisfying in filling his brain with oxygen, leaving him alone with his imagination to run amok of what was going to happen to him.

“Please, pl-ease,” Jonas whimpered again. “I d-don’t want to die, I-I, not l-like this, please, Malik, don’t kill me!”

“Who said anything about killing you? I said we were going to make a movie. You can’t direct if you’re dead.”

Jonas blinked away the fresh wave of tears that clouded his vision. Given the angle of the restrictive hug, he was unable to look up and gauge just how serious Malik was, though he was never the most expressive individual in the first place. Or perhaps he was and the bandana he wore concealed all his frowns and smiles and pouts. The world may never know considering Jonas still wasn’t convinced he’d live to tell the tale. 

“...huh?”

“Wait here,” Malik instructed, finally letting Jonas out of the suffocating hug and nearly causing the poor boy to fall on his ass. He stayed put as he was told, not daring to disobey, not even to secretly pocket one of the smaller knives with the hopes of using it for a half baked escape plan later. Jonas didn’t want to imagine what kind of punishment he’d get if he was caught stealing. Probably something that would involve using that very same knife to scar his bruised skin as a reminder to never try something so stupid again.

Malik didn’t go very far, only disappearing into a backroom outside of the camera’s range that functioned as a glorified supply closet. At least that was what Jonas assumed the tiny room was for. The weapons and cleaning supplies had to be stored somewhere in between filming. Every muscle in Jonas’s body, though sore and begging him to stop straining, remained tense while his captor knocked around a few loose items to find what was needed. There were a multitude of things it could be and none of them particularly pleasant. But…whatever it was, it wouldn’t be to kill Jonas, right? That was what Malik promised. And while Malik may not tell the full truth or warp double meanings into his words, he never lied. Not trustworthy, but not a liar. 

So, sure, whatever he was roping Jonas into might not kill him, that didn’t mean it wouldn’t severely mutilate him to the point of begging for the sweet mercy of death. Which his captor would withhold as he had already said he wouldn’t kill him like the cruel bastard he was. Just as there was no such thing as a free lunch, there was no such thing as Malik doing a kind gesture if not so the immediate aftermath would be a worse fate. Jonas gulped, his body trembling the more his muscles tightened themself, refusing to budge an inch after being ordered to stay in this exact spot. The anticipation was (almost literally) killing him. 

He needn’t wait a second more when Malik reappeared with another body similarly tucked under his arm the same way he liked to drag Jonas around. It was a young woman, maybe a little older than Jonas and with a much fuller body than his emaciated frame, with pretty blonde hair that concealed her face. She was nude, but given the lack of wounds on her skin and the way her blonde waves still had a voluminous bounce, she must not have been in Malik’s care for long, if even a full day. Despite the rope around her ankles and wrists, it was odd how little she struggled when Malik forced her along, not even turning her head to shake the hair out of her eyes to see where she was.

The order of staying put had to be abandoned when Malik stalked back to the gurney, Jonas scrambling out of the way so he could scoop the woman up and unceremoniously drop her onto the metal table. Jonas flinched at the dull impact and the woman moaned, but besides that, she put up no fight after her extremities were freed in favor of being individually bound in leather cuffs. He didn’t know if he was allowed to touch her, yet Jonas couldn’t help but take pity on the woman, reaching over to gently push her hair out of her face to finally get a good look at her. It was no one he’d ever seen before, or remembered seeing anyways. Her blue eyes were glossy and unfocused, though the sheer terror shone through the haze. Pink lips twitched like she was trying to say something, the words unable to make it past her tongue and only coming out as little whimpers stuck in her throat. 

She was pretty, and that was quite unfortunate, because that was exactly what Malik fancied. Pretty girls, pretty boys, pretty whatever. Not sexually appealing or hot, but cute with soft, round features. Those were his captor’s favorite which was the only reason Jonas was given the luxury of having all of his attention.

“Who…wh-who is this?” Jonas asked while Malik finished tightening the last strap over her right ankle. He didn’t take his eyes off of her own, trying to offer the only bit of comfort he could that hey, it’s alright, we’re both victims in this together, I’m not the threat here. Not that he had any hopes of being her savior either, but Jonas didn’t want her to associate him with being a sadistic fuck like Malik.

Said sadistic fuck shrugged at the question. “I don’t know, what do you want to name her? Let’s call her…Jess.”

“Is that her real name?”

Malik rolled his dark eyes. “Christ, it doesn’t matter what her name is. What matters is that Jess here is going to be your motivation for the movie.”

“My…what? L-like, we’re filming t-…together?” Jonas asked. He wasn’t following where this train of thought was going at all. Every time Jonas had had the displeasure of seeing how one of these ‘movies’ was created, it was a pretty systematic set up of ‘killer’ and ‘victim’. Not much room for a third role that he was apparently meant to play.

Satisfied that his latest kill was bound to her future demise, Malik returned to his typical spot of hovering mere inches away from Jonas. He tried to take a half step back, just for a breath of personal space, but his captor was quick to snag Jonas’s chin in a harsh grip. His breathing hitched, lips slightly puckered from how Malik dug his thumb and forefinger into his cheeks to force him make eye contact.

“Do you not listen to a goddamn thing I say?” Malik asked in a deceptively casual tone. “I told you, you’re going to be the director.”

“I…I-I don’t know what that means,” Jonas squeaked out from smushed lips.

Thankfully, Malik released his grasp to position himself behind Jonas, effectively caging him in between his larger build the the gurney. A shiver ran down Jonas’s spine and he wondered if Malik could feel it given how his chest was pressed into his back. One arm snaked around his waist, squeezing against the sore muscles of his abdomen, while the other gestured around between the woman and the assortment of tools as Malik spoke.

“So, it’s like this,” he started. “A girl reaches out to me, wants a video, you know how it is,” God how Jonas wished he didn’t, “but she’s got a special request. She doesn’t want someone like me doing all the work, it’s too…professional. Isn’t that nice? She said she wants to spice it up, let an amateur take the reins.”

Realization started to sink in as to where this horrible idea was going, making Jonas’s stomach roll with dread. He really thought he might dry heave when Malik used his free hand to tuck a few dirty curls behind Jonas’s ear, caressing his jaw and neck just to watch the muscles twitch.

“And I said, hey, I know the perfect candidate for that. I know a pretty boy who will do everything I say if he doesn’t want me to kick his ribs in again,” The soft touches to his face turned harsh again when Malik grabbed him by the jaw, forcing Jonas to look straight ahead at the red recording light of the camera in front of them. “This is your directorial debut, Jonie.”

No. No, no, no, no. No, he couldn’t do this, fuck, Jonas could barely stand the thought of what Malik was insinuating without a wave of nausea hitting him like a punch in the gut. Actually, Jonas had been on the receiving end of plenty of fists all over his battered body courteous of Malik, he would gladly take an hour of beatings than an hour of whatever fucked up game this was meant to be. His wide green eyes met the dazed blue ones of the woman, who in her strange haze appeared to have picked up what was meant to happen to her if it wasn’t obvious before. Jonas honestly wasn’t sure if she was really following along with the conversation or just reacting to the growing panic on his face.

Malik wanted him to torture this poor woman to death. Malik wanted him to cut and slice and scrape her up with a multitude of different weapons on camera. Malik wanted to film his first murder so he could sell it to another twisted individual who probably got off on the idea of one unwilling participant butchering another for twice the amount of anguish. Having watched Malik work before, Jonas knew he’d never have the willpower to soldier through the process of cutting tendons with kitchen scissors. For God’s sake, Jonas couldn’t even behead a garden snake with a shovel, much to their groundskeeper's amusement when he all but sprinted to the greenhouse for help as a child.

Jonas wasn’t a murderer. He wasn’t a cruel person, or at least he tried not to be despite the times when his cushy lifestyle made him a bit ignorant. He liked to think he didn’t have a mean bone in his body, whereas Malik had enough to create a few extra skeletons for companionship. This entire set up was sickening, yet a niggling thought in the back of his head snapped at him for being so ungrateful when it was mere minutes ago Jonas thought it was his turn to be strapped to the gurney.

The hand clasped on his jaw prevented Jonas from violently shaking his head in disagreement, but he still tried. “No. N-no, Malik, fuck, I can’t, I can’t–”

“You will,” Malik snapped, sliding the hand lower to squeeze around Jonas’s neck, adding onto the littering of finger-shaped bruises. “Or you’ll be taking her place.”

A sob ripped from his clenched throat, bobbing against Malik’s palm and forcing another breath from his lung. With his head free, Jonas shook his head again, causing tears to dislodge from where they clung to his lashes and cascade down his cheeks. He couldn’t, he wouldn’t. The physical strength that was needed to saw through bone was one thing, but the mental strength to handle the weight of what he needed to do wasn’t something Jonas possessed. He would be crushed before the deed was done. If this was a type of mercy killing, he might be able to justify his actions enough to only lose sleep on particularly bad nights. But this was to actively cause the poor girl agony for someone else’s pleasure. There was no rhyme or reason to excuse the horrible action.

“No!” Jonas repeated. He shoved at the arm still wrapped around his stomach in an effort to dislodge it, not that it would help against the hand still holding onto his neck. When his pitiful attack didn’t work, Jonas settled to wriggle against Malik as best he could, trying to arch his back and push away from the chest behind him. 

Malik grew tired of his tantrum quickly, tightening his fingers over Jonas’s windpipe until his nails bit into the tender skin. Without an intake of oxygen, Jonas was helpless to cry out any more refusals, much less fight against the hold. Only when his hands stop pawing at his fingers did Malik finally allow him to suck in a limited amount of air, though his hand remained as a warning. Jonas didn’t miss how two fingers curled to press over where his pulse was drumming wildly under his jaw. Any gulp that should have been utilized to calm down only came back out as a hitched cry, lost to the fear of what was to come. To be murdered or to be a murderer. Regardless, Malik was losing his patience while Jonas continued to burn through the camera’s battery.

“You realize the cost of this movie is more than your ransom, right?” Malik growled. Jonas tried to stifle his hyperventilating, but it was difficult to focus on his tormentor’s threatening words when his brain felt so fuzzy. “Killing you right now makes no difference to me if you want to act like this. You think Jane here would give two shits about killing you to save herself?”

Her name was Jess, Jonas was tempted to wheeze. He decided against it, though, not wanting to add more fuel to the fire when he was already halfway into the oven. Jonas clenched his eyes shut and whimpered, not wanting to look at her naked body still splayed out for him to get to work on. He knew if the roles were reversed she wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever Malik instructed if it meant she’d survive another day. It was the natural instinct of self preservation, to stay alive at all costs, even if that meant sacrificing a few limbs or sanity along the way. Yet, that still wasn’t good enough to convince Jonas to cut short an innocent life one broken vertebrae at a time.

“I think Jane would be a lot more grateful than you,” Malik continued. “I always thought you’d look so pretty on my table…”

He let go of Jonas’s throat to be able to grab a fistful of the girl’s blonde locks, jerking her head to the side so she’d be forced to look at the pair above her. Jonas coughed and rubbed at the new tender spots against his neck, glancing down at what was supposed to be his victim with watery eyes. She was moaning again, soft little whimpers that could do nothing more but beg.

“What do you say, Jane? Wanna swap places?”

The pleading look in her eyes was more than enough for Jonas to know her choice and he couldn’t fault her for it. It didn’t seem like she was capable of agreeing to the offer, verbally or otherwise, but it wouldn’t be hard to guess that she’d rather stab Jonas than have Jonas stab her.

“Stop, please,” Jonas sniffled.

“You’re the one forcing my hand here. I have a movie to film and if you’re not going to be my director then the role has to go to someone else.”

“Malik–”

“But,” Malik interrupted, untangling his hand from the girl’s hair to return to Jonas’s face where it had grown accustomed to residing. He cupped one wet cheek and tilted Jonas’s head back into the crook of his shoulder to look at his pale face. “You know you’re my favorite, lover, so I’ll give you one last chance. Who’s going to be the director: you or her?”

He knew what the moral answer should be, the decision to solidify himself as a martyr of pure kindness, willing to sacrifice himself for another. The act that should be worth fifty freebie passes into whatever afterlife was supposedly waiting for him at the end of this torture. But he couldn’t bring himself to offer up his life for a complete stranger, to suffer her painful demise when they both knew she’d swap places with him in a heartbeat to avoid the same cruel fate. It wasn’t a fair choice to force either of them to make. A fresh wave of tears sprung to Jonas’s eyes to drip onto Malik’s fingers, who idly wiped them away with his thumb.

“If it makes you feel better, she’d just be used in my next movie,” Malik said, as if that fun fact was meant to be comforting somehow. In a sick way, it kind of was. To know that his sacrifice wouldn’t have even saved her, just postponed her death for an extra week, lessened the guilt that Jonas was fully trading one life for another. “C’mon, you know what the answer is, you know what you want to say.”

His lip trembled, too disgusted to give the clear affirmation that Malik was looking for. Jonas wished this had been a day that Malik remembered to feed him just so that he’d be able to purge something from his stomach. Instead, he looked away in shame and gulped, finally accepting the deadly role he had been cast. Better than actually being on the gurney, but not by much. He couldn’t even look at the girl’s face again, hating the fact that there was no way to be her knight in filthy armor even if he was to offer himself up to hold off her equally brutal end. Perhaps she was really the lucky one between the two of them because after this, she would be free from Malik’s ownership. 

“I…I-I’ll do it,” Jonas whispered, like he could keep it a secret from everyone but himself.

“You’ll do what?”

“I’ll be the…director…” The words tasted like the same bile he was desperate to spit out. The girl’s breathing, still slow, stuttered in her chest and Jonas thought he might break down all over again.

“Good boy,” Malik crooned. “That’s why you’re my favorite.”

His favorite punching bag, his favorite toy, his favorite victim. None of these were genuinely rooted in affection no matter how many nicknames Malik tried to sugarcoat it with. The worst part was, to an utter sociopath like him, this really could be as sweet as he was capable of being with another human. Murdering a naked woman together might as well be downright romantic, maybe even intimate since Jonas wasn’t positive that he knew the difference between love and lust. If he even experienced either feeling to begin with. 

The hand resting on his face pulled away once more to rub down his scarred arm, the warmth of Malik’s skin leaving goosebumps in its path to grab hold of one of Jonas’s wrists. Unlike the grip on his throat, it was much gentler, guiding his hand over to one of the trays of tools. Immediately, Jonas was overwhelmed with choices between blades ranging in size and shape, some ribbed with teeth and some curved with a wicked point. At least they weren’t starting off with the cart full of power tools, though he was sure those would be coming into play later. He clenched his shaking hand into a fist, refusing to grab any of the weapons that were meant to carve up the poor girl.

“It’s okay, Jonie, I know it’s your first time. That’s why I’m going to help you,” Wow, if only that sentence could be taken out of context so that for one, shining moment, Malik might actually sound like a caring partner. Jonas shuddered.

Swallowing thickly, Jonas looked away from the threatening arsenal and accidentally locked eyes with the girl for a second. The moment he was struck by her fear, unable to be totally masked by whatever forced her into compliance, he felt his crumbling resolve weaken. He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t kill another person, let alone torture her for hours prior. A distressed whine escaped him as his wobbly knees buckled, only saved from dropping to the floor by Malik’s arm holding him in place against his chest. Jonas wanted to yank his hand out of his captor’s, but doing that would probably tick him off enough to take creative control back and force his two victims to switch positions. 

“You’re fine, you’re fine, stand up,” Malik half assed comforted, forcing Jonas back to his feet. “It doesn’t matter what you pick, they’ll all do the same thing. Just grab something and I’ll tell you what to do.”

Jonas hiccuped. “M-Malik, please, d-don’t make me–”

Fingers tightened around Jonas’s frail wrist and he couldn’t help but fear the joint might be snapped backwards. “Are you really going to start this again?”

“N-no!”

“Because there’s still time to throw your ass on this table.”

“No, no, I’m not, I-I-”

“Then grab a fucking knife before I let Jenna do it instead.”

Jess, her name was supposed to be Jess! It really went to show how little Malik cared for any unlucky soul assigned to be in one of his snuff films when he couldn’t even remember their made up name for longer than ten minutes. Jonas dropped his head, trying to find somewhere to avert his eyes, somewhere that didn’t have the naked girl or Malik or the weapons or any errant bloodstains in front of him. Full on sobbing would only continue to delay production and test Malik’s last nerve, so Jonas tried to compose himself to the best of his ability with a few deep inhales while blinking back tears.

“I-I’m sorry,” Jonas forced out, needing all the extra brownie points to win back Malik’s favor. “I…I don’t know what to do…”

Malik sighed, not unlike his mother who was often exhausted by Jonas’s existence after two sentences of conversation. The bandana muffled the exhale of warm air that would have tickled against his ear, a sensation Jonas was thankful to have been spared from.

“Look, I tried to set this up to make it as easy as possible for you. I even made sure she was nice and drugged so she wouldn’t freak you out with her fighting. All you need to do is grab something and start cutting, it’s not that hard,” Malik explained, as if this was meant to be understood by a child.

Jonas risked another glance at the girl, seeing a build up of tears in her eyes but unable to squeeze them away. Whatever Malik doped her up with had to be pretty strong if she hardly reacted to anything going on, despite being vaguely aware of her impending doom. 

“So she…sh-she can’t feel anything…?” Maybe this wouldn’t be as terrible as it needed to be, then. If she was already fully numb and barely conscious, she might not realize when she was passing, or what was even happening to her in the meantime.

Malik laughed. “Oh, no, she can feel everything, she just can’t do anything about it.” To demonstrate this, he dropped Jonas’s hand to pick up a scalpel from the tray. The thin blade pressed into the apple of her cheek, splitting open to release beads of blood when Malik dragged it just a couple inches across her face. Her eyes rolled upwards, breathing picking up and throat constricting to whine a little louder in a futile effect to voice her discomfort.

Oh no. No, no, the guilt was coming back to hit Jonas in the chest harder than Malik ever could. Every time he thought he had a speck of hope to ease his conscious, it was crushed under steel toed boots. Malik dropped the newly dirtied scalpel back onto the tray with the rest, sweeping his hand over top like he was a flashy salesman trying to entice Jonas with the possibilities.

“See? It’s easy. Pick something so we can get started.”

This was it. Now or never. No more hesitation or backtracking to buy them both another moment of peace before Malik stepped in to ruin their lives. Jonas needed to make a decision before his captor had enough of his antics and slit his throat out of spite. No, Malik adored him in some type of twisted fascination, there was no chance in hell he’d let him get off that easy. His torture session would easily be spread over the course of several days before he was allowed to perish. There wasn’t much Jonas could do but comply with Malik's demands, unable to delay the inevitable any longer. The girl was going to die, that much was a fact, yet maybe Jonas could still offer her a bit of mercy during her last moments on this mortal coil.

Hand shaking worse than if he was having a seizure, Jonas moved back to the tray of his own accord to pick the largest blade available. The metal was stained with dark circles and the handle felt heavy in his hold, making Jonas feel like a true butcher just wielding the massive thing.

“A cleaver, interesting,” Malik hummed. “Do you have something in mind or do you need inspiration?”

Jonas shook his head. He knew exactly what needed to be done, for the benefit of both him and the girl. A quick, merciful death. One fast chop to the neck and she’d bleed out within seconds, perhaps dying instantaneously if Jonas was strong enough to cut through the nerves of her spine as well. Probably not, given how his arm trembled with exertion just trying to hold the weapon up in one hand that was missing its pinky. For the last time, he looked her in the eye, heartbroken to see the resignation within. She must at least understand he was trying to give her the fastest way out of this hell with minimum pain. Better than what she would have gotten with Malik in control.

He raised the cleaver, aiming it just below her chin. “I-I’m so sorry.”

“N…” She clenched her teeth, squinting her teary eyes. “N…n…”

Jonas knew what she was trying to say, her last words meant to be a final plea for her life. 

“I’m sorry!” He swung the cleaver down.

The blade stopped inches from slicing into the girl’s flesh. Jonas blinked, confused until he registered the feeling of Malik’s hand wrapped around his forearm, preventing the blow from landing on its mark. He pulled his arm back, bringing the horrifying weapon away from the girl who shuddered in relief at being spared.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

That question and that tone did not bode well for Jonas. It meant he had royally fucked up and had about four seconds to rectify his mistake for a lesser punishment. Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, Jonas’s ass. Easier to ask forgiveness from a heavenly being than to expect anything remotely merciful from Malik. 

He wet his lips. “I, I-I was just, um…”

“You were going to decapitate her. You wanted to kill her in one hit.” Malik said.

“Is…w-was that wrong?” He asked, hoping to feign innocence for a bit of leeway in Malik’s anger.

Wrong answer. Malik twisted Jonas’s wrist around until the boy cried out, dropping the cleaver when his fingers spasmed. “You know that’s not how this works, Jonas. Movies aren’t five minutes long.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

“If you aren’t going to play the game right, then you don’t get to play at all,” Malik warned. With his wrist still bent at an awkward angle, his captor squeezed to grind the bones together painfully, earning another sharp yelp from Jonas. “You get to be the director or the prop and right now, you’re proving to be a pretty shit director.”

“Okay! I’m s-sorry, I’ll be better! I won’t do it again, please, let go!” 

“Stop fucking around and do it right. If she dies before a full hour is up, I’m going to use you to fill the air time. Got it?”

“Yes, yes!” Jonas sobbed, gasping when his arm was finally freed from Malik’s grip. The muscles throbbed underneath, a problem he was just going to have to deal with while butchering an innocent girl under a time constraint. 

Malik grabbed the tray of knives and pulled it closer, some of the blades rolling against each other from the force. The clang of metal rang in Jonas’s ears for a welcome distraction for all of two seconds, symbolic like the tolling of a bell. He sniffled again and held his smarting wrist to his chest.

“Hurry up and pick another knife before I make the choice for you.”

–

One hour, twelve minutes, and seventeen seconds. That was how long the poor girl had to suffer through her ordeal before blissfully passing into the void when her last viable ounce of blood seeped from one of her many wounds. As soon as he could no longer see her chest rise, as soon as he could no longer feel the faintest pulse fluttering against any of her pressure points, Jonas dropped the blade he held onto the gurney. He was a mess, nowhere near as bloodied as the carcass he carved up but still denched in a fair amount of red. His nightshirt and boxers were sticky from arterial sprays of blood, sticking to his skin underneath. Thick rivets ran down from his neck to his thighs, following his bony curves. Even Malik had been hit with some collateral damage, mostly on his hands and arms from reaching around to assist Jonas’s sloppy work. The black sleeves of his sweater soaked up and hid a majority of the fluids that actually landed on him.

It was maybe around the thirty minute mark that whatever horror and disgust Jonas felt was replaced with a cold numbness. His mind couldn’t handle the mental overload any longer, opting to shut down everything but basic motor functions in an attempt to preserve a shred of sanity. There was no doubt the weight of everything he’d done would come back to haunt him little by little, perhaps eventually claiming him if he lived along enough to choose suicide. Everything felt so far away, like he was watching himself from a distance brutalize this girl rather than seeing his hands make the cuts. The sound of a drill pulverizing her kneecaps was a noise he’d never forget. Blood coated the inside of his nostrils and throat from breathing in the bitter, metallic scent for such an extended period of time, hardly registering the stench of death anymore.

Jonas wished he could feel something about the situation, anything. He wanted to feel sad for the life that was just lost, he wanted to feel angry that Malik forced him to do this in the first place, he wanted to feel relieved that it was finally over and that he didn’t have to take her spot as a victim. He wanted to feel sick with himself, sick at the sight of her body, sick at the idea that there was full video footage of him committing a murder that a deranged freak was probably going to masturbate to or something. But he felt nothing. No shame, no regret. Not yet, anyways. These would be the emotions that plowed him down like a semi truck in the middle of the night after the shock of trauma wore off.

A few cracks managed to slip through his facade of emptiness, quickly being walled back up before the rolling in his stomach could snowball into vomiting and tears and screaming. Jonas wished he could close her eyes, or at least the one that was still in its socket, but Malik had told him to cut off her eyelids early on so she’d be forced to watch every incision made to her body. 

“Good job, lover,” Malik cooed, giving Jonas’s midsection a squeeze. “She looks stunning.”

She looked fucking mutilated, desicrated to the point dental records would be her only hope in ever being identified. Her body was lying in a pool of her own blood, marred with gashes reflecting the different shapes of the knives Jonas had to use. There were several stabs to her stomach in which Jonas had to dig two fingers in to fish out a coil of intestines. Her right arm had been bisected while her left breast was skinned. Jonas couldn’t handle thinking about everything that had been done below her waist.

“Are we done?” Jonas mumbled. He could barely move his lips or contract his throat to form the words. He didn’t want to do anything. He just wanted to sink into the depths of his own mind to avoid confronting the awful reality of what he just did.

Malik clicked his tongue, disappointed in him wanting to cut the fun short. “Fine, yeah, we can be done. For a kiss.”

Fuck it. That was the least disturbing request from Malik during this whole time. Normally, it would have made Jonas’s skin crawl and he’d rather go without whatever miniscule thing he’d asked for. Sometimes Malik didn’t give him a choice regardless. He was still unclear if the kisses forcefully given to him were because his captor felt a genuine attraction to Jonas or if they were just another psychological tactic to humiliate him. A bit of column A, a bit of column B. No matter, Jonas was ready to end this goddamn movie once and for all. 

Without a second thought, he craned himself around to face Malik to the best of his ability, seeing as he was still pressed into his front. It was a little embarrassing how Jonas had to strain himself to be able to reach Malik’s mouth, tugging down the bandana to plant his lips over the other man’s. It was a quick kiss, but Jonas made sure to press hard enough that his teeth hurt so his tormentor couldn’t pull the shitty excuse that it was barely a peck, swindling him for another kiss that Malik would eagerly deepen. His captor almost looked a tad surprised at how bold Jonas was, doing exactly what he had been told without hesitation. Over an hour of torture can ingrain that behavior into someone.

Like the asshole he was, Malik’s mouth, smeared from the droplets of blood that had clung to Jonas’s lips, twitched up into a crooked grin. “Thank you, but I was actually talking about her.”

Jonas’s eyes widened at that, instantly looking at the wreckage of the corpse's face. If such a thing could even be called a face anymore. The nose had been sliced off as well as both of her lips, making her resemble a bloody skull with her exposed nasal cavity and teeth. Her cheeks had been cut into a Glasgow smile while a hole had been drilled under her chin to pull her tongue through to create a Columbian necktie – all regional terms Jonas just recently heard of thanks to Malik. Where exactly was he meant to kiss her, furthermore why in the everloving fuck would he want to assult her remains like that. Hadn’t he disrespected her enough when she was alive? Was necrophilia going to be the main plot of the sequel to this accursed snuff film?

Seeing the fresh panic breaking up the shell shocked expression on Jonas’s features was enough to make Malik laugh while he wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. He had a nice laugh, and a nice smile, too. It was a shame he had to be one of the most evil sadists in the entire history of serial killers. That’s what they always say about mass murderers after they’re finally caught though, isn’t it, how charming they were? Malik could be charming in his own way, like when he carved his name into Jonas’s left arm so he’d always have a piece of him. Really, how thoughtful. It paired quite well with the multitude of  scars and discoloration on every other square inch of his body.

“I’m kidding. Not much left there to kiss anyways,” Malik's mood had certainly improved once they started getting into the groove of his favorite pastime. As Jonas started to heed his directions, his threats shifted from clipped to encouraging; he’d even go as far as to say delighted whenever Jonas made a wound without any prompting from Malik. He didn’t care that Jonas wasn’t actually enjoying himself the same way, he was just happy to see blood spill over soft, pretty features.

When Malik’s arm at last unwound itself from where it had been held firm around Jonas’s waist, it felt like he could breathe again. It was a miracle he didn’t collapse without his support to keep him upright, his fall sure to be broken by the discarded muscle tissue and oozing viscera that had leaked over the gurney’s edge. Jonas wanted to grab onto the gurney on the off chance his shaking knees gave out, but that would mean submerging his fingers into the still warm blood. Not that it made much difference given he was utterly drenched in her fluids, especially his hands up to his forearms. He’d just have to hope that his last nerve didn’t pop and cause him to careen onto the floor, more so because he knew Malik would just leave him to ‘sleep’ in the gore.

It was almost strange to not have the familiar weight of Malik clinging to him after having grown accustomed to the feeling over the past hour. That didn’t mean it was unwelcome, of course. Jonas was more than happy to have his captor remove himself from his vicinity. Frankly, he’d prefer if they kept the minimum distance of at least three hundred miles. Sadly, for the moment, Jonas was going to have to be content with a mere ten or so feet when Malik walked over to the tripod set up to end the recording. Seeing the ominous red eye blink off made Jonas want to cry out in something, an expression of emotion he couldn’t describe. It was over, it was done. He’d killed a person, maimed her for over an hour and forced her to endure every minute of it to save himself from being used as an early replacement. 

But the session had finally ended. There was no more blood that Jonas had to spill as almost all of it was drained outside of the cooling body. He had survived mostly intact on a mental level, though the same could not be said for the physical state of…what had they named her again? No, no, no, putting a name to a pulverized face humanized her too much, it brought back the feelings of guilt that he had just butchered a living person, he couldn’t compartmentalize her into something inanimate if he recognized her as another human being. Jane, was it Jane? Jane Doe. 

He was so, so fucking sorry Jane Doe. 

“Ah, damn. That sucks,” Malik huffed. He fiddled with a couple buttons on the camera with pursed lips, ultimately shrugging and powering down the device when it didn’t do whatever he was trying to achieve. “Bad news, Jonie, the memory card corrupted.”

Jonas didn’t have the slightest idea what that meant, having never been a very technically inclined person. He knew a memory card was what stored, well, the memories and stuff like videos and photographs, but what did it mean that it was corrupted? The only connotation he had with the word was how disgustingly corrupted Malik and his buddy Tucker and whoever else involved in the trafficking ring were that they were willing to trade innocent lives for a couple bucks. Although, to be fair, Jonas felt pretty certain Malik would happily do most of his illegal activities for free like a passion project if he had the opportunity. Memory cards couldn’t do that, right?

The lack of understanding must have been evident on Jonas’s red speckled face because Malik offered a follow up explanation. “It means the footage got all fucked up. We can’t use it.”

Can’t use it? What did he mean can’t use it? What the hell was the point of this last hour of violent torture if not a single minute of it was salvageable to sell as a movie? Malik had to be teasing him again, trying to get a rise out of Jonas who had yet to fully succumb to the knowledge of the atrocities committed by his hand. Yet, he looked mildly annoyed at the prospect of all that sickening footage being lost, no longer having the cherished memory of baby’s first crime against mankind. Disappointing to be sure, but not something that Malik would be hung up on for too long. Not like Jonas who was sinking into the realization that everything he’d just done had been all for nothing.

He killed a woman for nothing. A girl died in agony for nothing. The stain on his consciousness was for nothing. The blood dripping down his cheeks was for nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing, absolutely fucking nothing! Even if Jonas had managed to fully convince himself that he was in the right for murdering that poor girl, it wouldn’t have mattered because nothing had come out of her senseless end. The whole reason she was destined to be slaughtered was for some random internet sicko to watch, and now there wasn’t even a final product to honor her sacrifice. A part of Jonas had held onto the sliver of hope that maybe, somehow, the footage would be leaked between Malik and the buyer and end up in the possession of someone who might have recognized the girl. Someone who, even if they couldn’t bring anyone involved to justice, could at least give her family closure rather than live on wondering where their missing child or sibling went.

And maybe, with his own selfish hope, they would also recognize Jonas in the footage as the missing Belmont heir and scurry post haste to save him from the clutches of a man who was looking to soil the good family name. No way would his parents let such vile footage of their son exist to be seen by the common folk and investors, that would only tank their stock value. If they didn’t care about the psychological damage done to their child, they would at least care about their public image enough to make a big spectacle of creating a memorial park for Jane Doe, naming a scholarship in her honor, paying her grieving family more than enough to cover for a lavish funeral. It was all the least she deserved. It was all Jonas could hope to offer in repentance if he made it out of here alive.

He wasn’t sure when he started crying, but he was vaguely aware that his vision was blurring with the sting of new tears. Salty tracks cut through the red stains drying on his face, dripping off in pink splashes onto his ruined nightshirt. It still felt like he was partly outside of his body, knowing that he was crying and knowing why he was crying, yet unable to entirely connect with the crippling emotion that was forcing its way out from the mental barrier of PTSD. Jonas wanted to fall to his knees and scream, he wanted to hold what remained of the girl and sob for forgiveness from her body, he wanted to grab the bone saw still imbedded in her femur and slash at Malik’s throat until he was bled dry like the fucking pig he was. 

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Jonas was a murderer and there wasn’t even a profit to show for it.

Malik popped the ruined memory card out of its slot and pocketed it to burn later. What a waste of a day. Now he was going to have to clean up and dispose of this mess with no satisfaction of being able to watch the massacre over again later. Oh well, it happens, even if he was annoyed that he wouldn’t be able to play back all of Jonas’s little squeals and flinches every time he dug into the girl’s body. He walked over to where Jonas was barely holding himself together, looking like he was going to shatter at a pindrop. Red looked good splattered against his tan skin, though some of the splotches covered up the rainbow of bruises Malik had lovingly placed.

“Hey, don’t worry, it’s not a big deal,” Malik said, wrapping an arm around Jonas’s trembling shoulders to make the boy lean into him. “I’ll get a new girl next week and we can reshoot it.”

He let Jonas slip out from under the hug to crumble to the bloody floor and sob.

[writingwithcolor]

Arab Character Joining Corrupt Superheroes, Police Parallels

Anonymous asked:

I’m writing a story with a Arabian diaspora main character. The story is about corrupt superheroes, and how they affect an oppressed superpowered minority. The main character is one of these superheroes, naively joining them in his teens believing he’s going to help people. Doesn’t help that his parents are having money trouble. Eventually he ends up fighting a superpowered crook, and gets a bystander killed.

1)I know portraying an Arabian character committing violence is a pretty touchy subject, even if accidental. Is there any way I can write this that makes it clear to the reader that the action itself is messed up without the unfortunate implication that Arabs are violent? 

2)A large part of the story is the MC’s parents reaction. They are loving parents, however after this incident happens, they are confused and ashamed. While they still love him, they temporarily cut ties with him. Eventually they reconcile and start to be a family again. In my research (they are diaspora Saudi Arabians), Family is very important and tight-nit. Shame towards the family is to be avoided at all costs. However I’ve also read that disowning a family member rarely ever happens. Is there a way to write this kind of narrative with respect to this aspect of Arabian culture?

Let us begin with some terminology.

- If a person is from Saudi Arabia, they are Saudi Arabian, or more commonly, Saudi. This is their nationality.

- They may or may not be Arab. Arab is an ethnicity. Not all Saudis are Arab. Not all Arabs are Saudi.

- Arabic is a language. Lots of people across the world who are neither Saudi nor Arab speak Arabic.

- Arabian on its own is a word used to refer to a specific breed of horses.

If you are referring to humans, you want to either say "Saudi Arabian" (both words) or “Saudi” to indicate nationality, or "Arab" to indicate ethnicity. If you’re looking to describe your character’s culture, you probably want to call it Saudi culture. (While grammatically correct, talking about “Arab culture” doesn’t make much sense because Arabs are an incredibly diverse ethnic group and there is no such thing as a single monolithic Arab culture).

Now for the first question. In my mind, the issue is less about the character committing violence, and more about the premise of the story and how it mirrors real-life oppressive structures. You have an organized group of superheroes who think they are doing good by fighting “crooks” but in reality are enacting systemic oppression upon a marginalized group. This immediately brings to mind police violence, racial profiling, and the way that policing in North America is used as a tool of white supremacy while glorified in propaganda as a force for good. Essentially, you are telling a story about a character who joins an oppressive policing force, enacts violence upon a marginalized group as a result, and (I’m assuming) eventually realizes that they are not, in fact, the good guys. This is very close to being a “bigoted character learns not to be bigoted” story. I recommend re-examining your premise in light of the real-life parallels and asking yourself whether this is the story you want to tell. 

The issue is compounded by the fact that your character is an Arab teen, who in real life is more likely to be the one facing racial profiling from the police. Taking this character and making him the oppressor in your story makes the already flawed premise even more problematic, especially if the characters in the oppressed group are white.

As for your second question, it seems believable to me that a teen’s parents might reject him if they learned that he committed a crime. However, when the family in question is Arab, you are suddenly feeding into harmful tropes about oppressive and violent Arab parents. You are asking if there is a way to write this respectfully. I believe that there is, but it requires a great deal of care, nuance, and cultural awareness. While it is possible to write a Saudi Arab character grappling with the consequences of violence and familial estrangement in a compelling way, the way your ask is phrased leads me to believe you are not equipped to do it justice. 

- Mod Niki

Think about why Arab people committing violence is a touchy subject, and then think about the general propaganda narrative that came about from the act that made things so touchy. 

It’s going to sound one hell of a lot like what you have here.

Military and police use buckets and buckets of propaganda to continue hooking in young, impressionable teens to commit state-sanctioned colonialism and oppression. That propaganda looks suspiciously like “we have health insurance, we will pay for your education, you just have to do what we tell you even if that means hurting or killing others, but it’s okay because you get to be the hero in the situation.”

Now, propaganda is a very powerful tool. I was taught, in my media classes, that controlling the message means shaping reality. The media is built as a propaganda machine, and when you start to see who owns what media properties you start to see some really disturbing patterns (Rubert Murdoch owns a lot of right-wing sources across America, the UK, and Australia, and he’s too rich to investigate his culpability in spinning terrible narratives found in right-wing publications. He owns the big names).

As Niki said, this situation mirrors police violence and police-sanctioned terrorism. And the very, very unfortunate implications of making the target of police violence be in that wheel. But I want you to look at the media situation that has made the plot happen.

Because even if you swapped out ethnicities, you’d still have a reckoning to do with the American culture that their primary social safety nets involve killing people.

I am not kidding.

Some of the most well-funded unions in the country are police unions. These people have pensions. They have health insurance. It’s damn near impossible to fire them. They get overtime very well mandated, and it’s a known thing among defence lawyers that arrests happen right before a cop’s shift will end so they get the overtime of filing the paperwork. They absolutely go into poor neighbourhoods and recruit based off people needing an escape, and them having the money to provide it.

A similar sentiment is true for the military, except they push for college education a bit more and don’t really have overtime, but they do have deployment bonuses. So the way to get extra pay for yourself is to go out and do colonialism outside the borders. The military doesn’t necessarily like it when the economy is doing well, and don’t like the idea of college being affordable, because they rely so heavily on poverty and fear of college debt to recruit. 

The story you’re telling here goes so far beyond an individual’s actions and instead taps into America’s single biggest cultural investment: that oppressing others makes you a hero. 

The Pentagon funds most military media out there as a propaganda tool, including most superhero movies and a large number of video games. This is in their budget. They will also go so far as to literally commission the games to exist. Part of getting that funding is you cannot critique America’s military, basically at all (the only exception I’ve seen is Ms Marvel, but that’s set in the 90s). This turns any sort of military-using media into a potential propaganda tool.

And the thing is? Even if you fall for that propaganda and were part of the military or the police, you still have to reckon with the fact you put whatever your own desires were above a huge track record of those groups being terrible. You still have to reckon with the fact you didn’t realize they were wrong, and were complicit in a lot of crimes.

This goes very far beyond “the action is terrible” and goes into “the system is rotten to its core, and you chose not to believe it, or to believe you could change what was built with blood.”

“Good” police officers get fired. If you try to question anything, if you try to say this action is wrong, you will absolutely get destroyed. Military’s much the same. You need some degree of buy-in to the concept of white supremacy to sign up for the military or the police, because you need to see their actions as not deal breakers instead of actions that violate multiple international laws. 

In short: you need to see the people being oppressed as deserving of being oppressed to some degree in order to participate with police and the military.

Marginalized people can hold this belief, it happens. But that is a very sticky situation that outsiders shouldn’t touch. 

It’s possible but difficult for you to write a white person having this sort of arc, but it would be extremely challenging to have it not come across as a white guilt story. To not have a socially aware audience roll their eyes at how long it took. You’d definitely not be writing a story with a diverse audience in mind, because you’d mostly appeal to those who saw the propaganda as just fine and not that bad.

This isn’t even getting into the oft-cited adage that boys who bully others become cops, while girls who bully become nurses. And the more police atrocities become mainstream news, the less and less people can convince themselves that becoming a police officer is a good thing.

Which brings me to the point of: how well-documented is this oppression? Is this character walking around in an oppressive situation like, say, pre-social-media where there was no direct access to the oppressed groups and you could close your eyes and look away even if it made national news? Or is this in a media connected world where these oppressed populations have a voice in the narrative?

The former has an angle of the character slowly realizing the horror and it’s slightly more forgivable for their early ignorance. But in any sort of world where there’s access to the people getting hurt? Things get more and more “ignorance is indistinguishable from maliciousness.” And keep in mind, these stories are read in the real world, where police brutality and war crimes go viral, and a lack of knowledge is getting harder and harder to defend as a position.

Media plays a huge role in shaping our perception of what’s happening. Cameras on a situation makes different activism tactics work, as we can see with how activism changed in the 60s and 70s as tv reached the masses. Social media has made it possible for you to look up firsthand accounts of discrimination within seconds. 

This is a factor you are absolutely going to have to consider, when you want to look at how nice your hero is seen by marginalized or otherwise socially-aware people. If there is a way to find out how bad this superhero organization is before you sign a contract with them? Then that doesn’t look particularly good on the “hero”. You’d really have to establish them as super idealistic, super sheltered, super desperate, and/or just swallow the knowledge that they really don’t see anything that happens “over there to those people” as that bad. 

All of the above is more than possible. And they’d still be seen as complicit no matter what justification you gave, because they are.

Does this mean all corrupt organization stories are off limits? No. The reason these stories have such deep cultural resonance right now is because of the propaganda I outlined above. 

But you as the author are going to have to examine your own engagement with the propaganda narrative and do your own private reckoning so your own sense of guilt and compliance doesn’t bleed through the narrative too strongly, so you can tell a good story instead of an overt message story that’s you working out your own feelings.

By all means, write a story where police and the military are taken down, where propaganda is weaponized and the media is controlled (because that’s sure as hell the modern world). 

But know that stories where the hero discovers the corruption already have a ticking clock because we, in the real world, are slowly being faced with a mountain of apathy instead of ignorance. The knowledge of oppression is out there so much that marginalized people are tired of the ignorance defence. 

As the saying goes, “privilege is the ability to ignore the oppression of others.” 

Propaganda, centralized media, and strategic cultural investment made it possible for police and the military to have a chokehold on their public perception. But that’s changing. The chokehold is starting to fade, people are starting to question their beliefs. 

The past year has shown that knowledge isn’t the issue; it’s white supremacy. People don’t want to believe that any of this is that bad. People want to believe that oppression is justified, that if people just followed the law they’d be fine. They don’t want to question themselves. And marginalized people are tired of these narratives where, suddenly, people snap out of it. Because there was so much evidence to show it was bad, but it was only when you do one of the worst crimes imaginable that you realize this is bad? It’s only when it becomes personal that things are worth looking at critically?

No. And you need to examine where you are in processing your own complicity before writing a story where you’ve swapped around the ethnicities to try and distance yourself from the problem, where in the end you made the target the oppressor.

~Mod Lesya

[spockandawe]

Hmm. What if. An mdzs au (definitely the book, not the show) where timelines diverge when a small, angry street kid with a missing finger and a desire to watch the world burn makes his way over to the burial mounds, because fuck it, he’s going to learn from the yiling laozu or die trying.

I have put no consideration into this whatsoever, and I know coherent timelines are the hardest part of involving Xue Yang in anything, but I think that if Xue Yang is like, a preteen, the other parts of the timeline may still fit into place? Honestly, I don’t really care if they don’t, I’m just also too lazy to check this very long book for the specific empathy flashback with the details of Xue Yang’s jinlintai cameo. If he has to be a few years younger than canon allows, it’s all good, baybee, cql fucked the timeline so I wouldn’t have to!

But anyways, consider a young Xue Yang, who’s not really old enough to be making his way in the world as a rogue pseudo-semi-cultivator, but is old enough to survive the attempt and learn more cultivation as he goes. And he doesn’t have family or money to back him up (not that those would have made an impact on Wei Wuxian), but I think he’s aware that he has extremely grand ambitions for someone in his position, and is very cheerfully willing to take risks to achieve them, even knowing that his odds of success are low and his odds of dying are high.

I’m thinking that he reaches Yiling, however he gets there. He sees the knockoff Yiling Laozu apprentices (and is Full of scorn), he sees the wards Wei Wuxian has raised around the Burial Mounds, and he’s not all that trained and is mostly self-taught, but has just enough raw talent that he manages to bust in through the wards himself.

I don’t want to try sorting out the exact details of how he convinces Wei Wuxian to let him stay, because this idea popped into my head like, legitimately thirty seconds before I started writing the post. But I don’t think it would hurt the Wens to have another pair of helping hands, I think Wei Wuxian is weak against children in general (especially children who are trying to learn a thing), and I think he’s also weak against a street kid struggling on his own in the world (and Xue Yang is smart enough to lean into the look-pitiful-to-gain-sympathy-points angle)

Additional point one: Wen Qing can look at his hand and his health in general, and I think Xue Yang could benefit a LOT from having a big sister in his life

Additional point two: Xue Yang would think that Wen Ning is the coolest thing, and it would benefit me emotionally if he sees Wen Ning as his super cool older brother and not as a fascinating science project he wants to copy on Song Lan later ;u;

Exact events would vary based on when Xue Yang made his arrival (before or after Wen Ning wakes up? before or after Lan Wangji visits Yiling? etc), and I would have to consider that carefully because I do want canon to diverge, and Xue Yang dying with the Wens would be so fucking tragic (kind of in a fascinating way? we the readers know that it prevents future atrocities, but here, he’s a different person than the one who committed those atrocities, and it’s like giving him a family only to have it yanked away (so, canon), but this is a tangent because I have to emphasize I have not plotted out anything)

I don’t know how I would want canon to diverge is part of the trouble. But like... one of my first details on the book that really, really got me good is the way that Wei Wuxian is superficially cheerful but is also poised on the edge of having a really rough time early in the book. After he casually tells Jin Ling ‘lmao, what, you didn’t have parents to teach you manners?’ he goes off on his own to have Regrets. What really starts pulling him out of his funk is when the kids need protection and education. And he thrives! Even when he’s roleplaying Mo Xuanyu, he’s in his element as an experienced cultivator helping guide the juniors to a solution so that they learn for themselves, but also ready to be a safety net so they don’t die in the process!

A-Yuan plays a little bit of this role for him in the Burial Mounds, but like... he’s a toddler, and is both too young to be taught at the level and depth that Wei Wuxian adores, and is yes an adorable sweet kid, but also exhausting and demanding in the way that all small children are. You can’t just put away a toddler and lay face-down on the floor for a week, even if you want to. Yes there are other people around to help, but everyone is working really, really hard just to survive in the Burial Mounds.

So. Give Wei Wuxian a preteen! Give him a kid who is saying ‘take me as your apprentice, gege, i’m gonna keep studying demonic cultivation whether you help me or not uwu’ and let Wei Wuxian convince himself that okay, stupid adults are free to do stupid shit and he isn’t responsible for them, but maybe he ought to keep an eye on this kid to make sure he doesn’t accidentally die trying to learn Wei Wuxian’s methods. Xue Yang is smart, quick, and demanding, but also capable of independence. It’s ideal. Give Wei Wuxian a kid to teach, give me them passionately arguing about theory, give me Xue Yang reading all of Wei Wuxian’s manuscripts, and forcing Wei Wuxian to engage a little more with the world around him instead of sinking down into himself. Give me Xue Yang still young enough that he can be convinced to trust the idea of a family. Give me Lan Wangji accompanying Wei Wuxian back to the burial mounds and Xue Yang trying to be all ‘hey, you’d better step off if you know what’s good for you’ and being ‘!!! >:O’ when he finds out Wei Wuxian let this stranger hold A-Yuan and it being the cutest thing ever. It would be so good for my heart, but my god, am i unequipped to write it.

[jamlavender]

Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss: Mrs Coulter, misogyny and the His Dark Materials TV show

The show went hard on misogyny as a vital part of Mrs Coulter’s backstory, and I want to talk about how they did it, and why, and how it might have been done better. This is quite long (when is anything I write not, let’s be real) so it’s under the cut. Read on for thoughts on women, power and fictional villainy.

As a quick disclaimer, though: I’ve enjoyed the show a lot! I’m so glad they made it! Ruth Wilson is mesmerising as Mrs Coulter! There’s so much to appreciate about the show overall, including many aspects of Mrs Coulter’s portrayal. But the HDM team have also made gender politics and misogyny very explicit themes of the show – particularly season two, particularly season two, episode five – and I think it’s fair to critique that.

Let’s be clear: Mrs Coulter is a villain. She murders kids by tearing out their souls. She kills and tortures friends and foes alike without a second thought. She abuses her daughter. She upholds and advances a totalitarian regime. She’s a Bad Person, as confirmed by God himself with the unforgettable line: “You are a cesspit of moral filth.” She’s fucking terrible, but, in life as in art, many of us are fascinated by how such awful people are made. What drives someone to commit atrocities? I am keen to see such questions examined in fiction, because I don’t think exploring a character necessarily means excusing their actions, and because it’s interesting (I mean, of course I find her fascinating, I’ve written a novel’s worth of fic about her). However, after a few snarky comments (“What sort of woman raised Father Graves, do you think?”) and some subtler commentary on sexuality, gender and power (her unsettling MacPhail with the key in the bra in S1E2), S2E5 drew a weird line between sexism in Mrs Coulter’s professional and academic life and her vast and senseless institutionalised child murder, and the longer I’ve sat with that the more I’m like: what the fuck?

Look, Mrs Coulter doesn’t tear apart children to search for sin inside them and poison Boreal and break a witch’s fingers because she’s experienced sexism in the workplace and in her education. That’s… a very odd thing to imply. We have to remember that there are lots of women in Lyra’s world, all of whom will also have experienced sexism, misogyny and other forms of marginalisation (many in more expansive and pernicious ways than Mrs Coulter, who’s a woman, yes, but also white, wealthy, highly educated and very thin and beautiful), and none of them are running arctic torture stations. She will have experienced misogyny, absolutely, and that will have affected her in various ways that inform how she approaches her work, but to imply that being denied a doctorate is the reason she became a sadistic killer is frankly bizarre. Here are a few of the lines from that episode with my commentary:

“Do you know who I could have been in this world?” What does this mean? If she’d been roughly the same person in our world, the answer is: Margaret Thatcher, which is probably a step down for Marisa, all things considered, because the Magisterium is far more autocratic than any recent Tory government and would be a much easier institutional environment in which to enact her cruelty. What we’re supposed to think, clearly, is that she’d have been a different person: a scientist and a mother, and she’s had this realisation because she saw a woman with a baby and a laptop and had a three-minute conversation with Mary. This doesn’t make sense. We live in our world! It’s less repressive than Lyra’s world but it’s hardly a gender utopia. If Mrs Coulter had chosen the scientist-and-mother life (which, as I’ll revisit later, she could have done in her world but chose not to because of her megalomaniac tendencies), she’d still have been affected by misogyny here too. Our world is not kind to young mothers, nor young women embroiled in scandals, nor is the world teeming with female physicists. It might be a little better, sure, but it’s hardly as if those gendered challenges would have been solved.  

“What do you mean she runs a department?” This is just the show forgetting its own canon. Marisa, you ran a massive government organisation (the GOB), including a huge murder science research initiative in the Arctic. That’s a much bigger undertaking and much more impressive than running a university department in our world. Pull yourself together.

“But because I was a woman, I was denied a doctorate by the Magisterium.” This is the show flagrantly ignoring the source material to make a clumsy political point. In the books, there are women with doctorates (notably Hannah Relf, also a major player in the new Book of Dust trilogy) and at least one women’s college full of female scholars. Now, would that women’s college likely be underfunded and disrespected compared to the men’s colleges? Almost certainly. But saying that is different than saying “I couldn’t get my doctorate!” when women in Lyra’s world can. The show knew what point they wanted to make, and were willing to ignore canon to do so, which is frustrating. Also, given that there are female academics and scientists in Lyra’s world, and that Mrs Coulter is a member of St Sophia’s college, it’s clear that she could have lived that life if she so desired. But she didn’t want that, because being a scientist and academic at St Sophia’s imbues her with no real power, and that’s what she craves.

I’m not opposed, in theory, to exploring Mrs Coulter and misogyny in more depth, but I think doing so through an examination of the sexual politics of her life would have made a lot more narrative sense and been much more powerful. It’s better evidenced in the text – her using her sexuality to manipulate people and taking lovers for political sway is entirely canon, as is her backstory where genuine love and lust blew up her life – and it links much more closely with the most shocking of her villainy, which involves cutting out children’s dæmons to stop them developing “troublesome thoughts and feelings,” referencing sexual and romantic desire (and what Lyra and Will do to save Dust is clearly a big ‘fuck you’ to those aims). She even says this to MacPhail in TAS, “If you thought for one moment that I would release my daughter into the care - the care! - of a body of men with a feverish obsession with sexuality, men with dirty fingernails, reeking of ancient sweat, men whose furtive imaginations would crawl over her body like cockroaches - if you thought I would expose my child to that, my Lord President, you are more stupid than you take me for.” Don’t get me wrong, she’d have been a villain regardless, but I do believe that there’s a much stronger link between her sexual and romantic experiences and her murder work than between professional and academic stifling and child murder. It would have been a lot more interesting and a lot less tenuous.

However, the show is trying to be family-friendly, and digging into why this terrible, cruel woman might want to cut the ability for desire and love (and other non-sexual adult feelings, I’m sure) out of people could get dark. We know that the show doesn’t want to go there, because they’ve actively toned down her weaponising her sexuality: in the books, she has an established sexual relationship with Boreal, whereas the show made it seem like she’s been stringing him along all this time, and made it about potentially ‘sharing a life’ together rather than fucking, which was clearly the arrangement in the books. Also, I think Ruth Wilson said she and Ariyon Bakare filmed a “steamy scene” together, and given that only a single chaste kiss between them aired it must have been cut. I think they deliberately minimised the sexual elements of the text, particularly regarding Mrs Coulter (the mountain scene with Asriel, which I did still love, was also a lot less horny than in the book) and replaced that with another gender issue, that of professional sexism, as if the two are interchangeable, which they are not. This is a shame, both for Mrs Coulter’s character and also for the story as a whole, because the characters’ relationships with sex and desire are an important part of the books! (If this minimised sexuality approach means that they don’t use the TAS scene where Asriel threatens to gag her and she tries to goad him into doing it, I’ll scream). Overall, I think they missed the mark here, which is a shame because I also think it could have been done well, if they’d been bolder and darker and more thoughtful.

Why might this happen? Why might the show take this approach? Why might it be latched onto by viewers? Personally, I think the conversations we have about women and power are very simplistic, which leaves us in a tight spot when we see women seizing power for themselves (even in fiction) and weaponising that against others, not just other women but people of all genders, because we struggle to move past ‘women have overall been denied power, so them taking it ‘back’ is good,’ even if that immediately becomes a hot mess of white, corporate feminism and results in the ongoing oppression of many people. I think we are so hungry for representations of powerful women that we – producers and viewers alike – struggle to see them as bad, because it’s uncomfortable to be so intoxicated by Mrs Coulter effortlessly dominating the men around her, subverting systems designed to marginalise her for her own benefit, and generally being aggressive and intelligent and ruthless, and then realise that you are entranced by someone who is, objectively, a terrible, terrible person. It can be hard to realise that if you channelled the energy of someone who mesmerises you, you’d be the villain. So instead of sitting with that (more on this below), a lot of legwork goes into reworking her villainy into, somehow, a just act, a result of oppression, as her taking back power that has been denied to her, rather than grappling with the fact that for anyone to desire power in such a merciless way, even if they have to overcome marginalisation to get it, is really, really dangerous.

The joy, of course, is that Mrs Coulter is not real! She’s not real! Adoring fictional characters does not mean condoning their (imaginary) decisions, nor do stories exist for each person in them to fit neatly into a good or bad box so you know who you’re allowed to love. Furthermore, fiction can be a fabulous tool for exploring and interrogating the parts of yourself that, if left to bloom unexamined, might perpetuate beliefs or behaviour that cause harm to others. Mrs Coulter doesn’t need to be a feminist or taking down the patriarchy or a righteous powerful woman to illuminate things about gender, power and feminism for those reading and watching. In fact, it’s important that we explore what happens when women (most commonly white, wealthy women, as she is) continue to perpetuate brutal systems under the guise of sticking it to ‘men,’ because it happens all the time in the real world, and it’s a serious issue. Finding characters like Mrs Coulter so cool and compelling doesn’t make you a bad person, but it might tell you something about yourself – not that you want to be a villain or kill kids or whatever, but something about how you relate to your gender or women or men or power – and that knowledge can be useful! We all have better and worse impulses, and finding art that helps us make sense of ourselves, both the good and bad parts, is a gift that we should relish.

Anyway, tl;dr, Mrs Coulter doesn’t need to be sympathetic or understandable or redeemable to be brilliant – but you wouldn’t know that from how she’s been portrayed in the new adaptation.

[haleigh-sloth]

I have a question but why do you think so many people are against Dabi/Touya getting a redemption arc or getting saved? Like some are against him being saved but are all down for Shiggy and Toga to be saved? I usually see the same argument and it’s frustrating! Like before I explain myself just want to say I’m not hating on Shiggy or do I feel like he’s any less worth saving but I see these arguments that leave me baffled. So the arguments I have seen before is some people don’t think Dabi/Touya can be redeemed or saved because he has murdered 30+ people, but like Shiggy has probably killed the same amount of not more people so that logic doesn’t really cut it. So why does it make a difference? Like why are people so against Dabi/Touya being saved or redeemed?

Well, I'll start this by saying that Shigaraki has ABSOLUTELY KILLED MORE PEOPLE HOLY SHIT DUDE. It's not even up for debate 😂 that boy flattened two cities with the touch of a hand. Shiggy is my favorite hands down and I'll defend the boy til I die but he has done so much more damage. That's kind of the point to his arc--actually. But anyways~

Content Warning of abuse below the cut a bit further down--

So with that--I've wondered the same thing you're asking. Why is Touya getting so much hate? Why not redeem him? Well, there's a few reasons that I have seen:

Endeavor- This is the first and foremost reason I can see for Touya having so many antis. This is something I can't grasp or fathom--Why do so many people like Endeavor? Or more like--why do so many people want to see an abuser thrive and his victim be put down? I can understand wanting to see an abuser better himself AND wanting to see the victim thrive, and I can see people wanting the abuser to be put down and the victim to thrive. But to just want the abuser to come out on top? No. Fuck you. (not you anon). So for whatever reason that I cannot fathom, people can't stand the idea of Touya surviving, being saved and redeemed, because it means that Enji has failed (which he already has but--again I really don't understand that side of the fandom and quite frankly I don't want to). So yeah, Endeavor has a lot of ridiculous fans. Hawks- I've already talked about how ridiculous some of the Hawks-stans are. I'm sorry but---they're fucking ridiculous. Some of them need to step away from their computer, go outside, breath some outside air, and shut the fuck up. And let me tell you---we sometimes joke about how the hero-stan side of the fandom lacks critical thinking skills and can't read past the surface--but I want to disagree with to an extent. I can tell you right now, Hawks's stans saw THIS:

And they knew. Seeing Hawks remain in the dark while Dabi walked toward the light. They knew what this was foretelling. And they didn't like it. And then this happened:

And they DEFINITELY did not like that. And then Dabi went and made fried chicken out of him and they found more reason to hate him with all their being. Hawks was kind of set up to die heroically--and even though his arc is pretty bad right now, I still think that at this point that’s the best ending for him. For me, he’s gone too long without even remotely thinking of changing his ideologies, and has been backing Endeavor unquestionably for a bit too long now. It’s just not looking good for him survival-wise. And his stans either SEE this very clearly and are in denial and need something to hate in order to deal with it, OR they really just aren’t looking as deep into the story as they need to. Those panels I used above though honestly tell it all. That being said he very well may survive and not have any consequences from his low point at all--but then he gets thrown in the “BNHA’s shittiest written arcs” pile. But whatever. 

Also--shoutout to the blogs I follow and people I talk to who genuinely LOVE Hawks’s character but like--aren’t ridiculous about it and don’t harass people in their inboxes about it. Who also try to understand his character and not just make him out to be a uwu baby that never did anything wrong. TRUE Hawks-stans if I ever saw em.

Shouto--This is FAR less common than the other two reasons, but I have seen a few people who think this. They love Shouto (understandably--he’s a fluffy boy who needs a hug from his big brother Touya), but they think that Touya is going to be Shouto’s “final boss”, or his mortal enemy or something. Which--idk if they just refuse to read into Shouto’s awesome character on purpose or not, but he is not about to go out there and try to kill his big brother, who he never got to know, who he KNOWS suffered because of their father, and who is very very clearly in physical, mental, and emotional pain. Again--Shouto-stans are a  far less part of the problem. But I’ve seen this misunderstanding of Shouto’s character go around a few times. 

This next one is also big, and kind of falls into the same category with Endeavor up top--but it’s such a huge issue that I’m seeing that it needs its own paragraph: People don’t understand children’s behaviors, abuse, abusive family dynamics, and just child psychology in general. Child psychology is hard to understand--but also very simple. It’s hard as an adult to think back to how black and white the world was when you were a kid. Your parents were your safe place--they were your guardians. Or rather--they were supposed to be. This isn’t always the case though. And the Todoroki family exhibits a lot of realistic aspects of abuse. Even though the Todoroki backstory was very messily written--one thing is absolute: Endeavor emotionally abused his child. The issue is that Shouto’s and Rei’s physical abuse was shown FIRST in the story--and THEN we were shown what really happened with Touya wasn’t so easily identified as abuse (I mean it is--to me, but not to everybody). And people got stuck on comparing Touya’s and Shouto’s childhood instead of viewing them as two completely separate crimes Endeavor committed against his family. And they misunderstand Touya’s behaviors. Peep back at when I said that your parents are supposed to be your safe place--well, for Touya, Enji WAS his safe place, his guardian, his world. And then suddenly all of that disappeared without reason (good reason I mean). And that takes a serious toll on a child. I could honestly go on and on and on about this topic in particular but it’s not necessary for this ask. The point is---people don’t think Touya was actually abused or that he suffered as a child. They seriously lack an understanding when it comes to stuff like that. And they aren’t shy about showing it to the rest of the internet. 

The last reason which I think kind of encompasses all of these reasons: People don’t understand redemption arcs--because they’re not your run of the mill Heroes vs. Villains story. It makes it to where it’s not clearly obvious whose side you should take. I guess people don’t like that---but I love it. Why not take BOTH sides?

You get to have more fun this way imo. You get to watch and see how the two sides come together--rather than just stick to one ideology til the end. I think it’s because people don’t like having their ideals, beliefs, and values challenged. It may be personal for some people--but forgiveness is a touchy subject as well.  And I also think a lot of people very much think that the rules of our reality should exist within fiction. People forget that fiction exists for us to escape reality--I don’t know why this is so easily forgotten. But what’s cool about fictional stories is that everybody can have a happy ending--no matter how many atrocities they committed, people they hurt/killed, because guess what? NOBODY ACTUALLY GOT HURT! 

But anyway---these are the conclusions I’ve come to regarding why Touya has so many haters. Some are legitimate reasons (the last two I listed) and some are just outright ridiculous (the first three I listed). 

I’m not bothered though. I would LIKE to say that when these villain-saving chapters come out I’ll laugh hysterically at all the villain-haters’ reactions---BUT I already blocked almost all of them. 😂

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

The Voyage So Far: Paramount War (Part One)

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || whole cake island || wano (1 | 2)

the introduction of the celestial dragons really is just so brutally effective. this is the first time we see them, and before they even show up on page they immediately establish themselves as both absolutely powerful and absolutely despicable. everyone is watching them commit atrocities in broad daylight, and nobody dares say a word. 

i mentioned it back in the enies lobby post, i think, with spandam, but oda is very, very good at creating villains who it just feels so good and so deeply satisfying to see them get annihilated, and the celestial dragons are maybe the crowning example of it. 

i really like how none of the strawhats are really intimidated or impressed at all by the celestial dragons, in sharp contrast to how everyone else responds to them. some of that is ignorance, but you can’t tell me zoro would have acted any differently in this scene had he known charloss was a member of the world’s ruling class. all the power the celestial dragons have comes from fear; of course their greatest weakness is someone who just doesn’t care. 

obviously this moment is just excellent, no qualifiers needed, but one thing i really love about it is how all the bad shit that results from this does not detract from the sheer satisfaction of what happens at the auction house at all. like, even though this leads directly to the strawhats getting crushed by the pacifista and kizaru and scattered by kuma, i’ve never once caught myself thinking luffy shouldn’t have done this. 

i’m a huge fan of how rayleigh introduces himself. he knocks out the whole action house with conqueror’s haki, but luffy is completely unaffected, and the two of them just watch each other down the aisle for a moment as everyone else collapses around them. 

i don’t know that i’ll ever get over the fact that oda created and designed the supernovas as he was writing sabaody. they’re all such distinct and memorable characters, and almost all of them have fit neatly into the post-timeskip story one way or another. they really feel like a part of the world that was always meant to be there. 

i think the way roger as a character is handled is very, very cool, because we don’t really meet him as a person- when we first learn of him, on the very first page, he’s a myth, a story, a framing device. which is fitting, because that’s all the characters know him as. the rest of the world doesn’t know what roger was like as a person or why he did what he did, and so neither do our main characters and neither do we. 

and then we learn, slowly, by following in roger’s steps and meeting the characters who did know him, like rayleigh and whitebeard and garp. and through their testimony and memories, over the course of the story, roger goes from being a faceless myth to being a proper character.

i think this panel, where luffy says he just wants to be the freest person on the seas, might be my favorite luffy panel. if nothing else, it’s definitely one of the ones i think about the most in terms of his characterization. luffy’s been defining himself by his dream since the very start of the story- he’s the man who’s going to be king of the pirates! but it’s only here that we learn what that goal actually means to him, and what he actually really wants. he just wants to be free. 

the tone shift of sabaody really is impeccable. because up until a certain point, everything seems pretty par for the course. the strawhats make some new friends, get into trouble for their sakes, get into a hard fight where they all have to work together but eventually scrape out a win. 

but then kizaru shows up, and another pacifista, and kuma himself, and for the first time in the story luffy says this is a fight they can’t win- 

and then zoro disappears, and all of the audience’s expectations for how this is going to play out get thrown completely out the window. 

it’s not that we haven’t seen luffy upset before this- his fight with usopp in water 7 and merry’s funeral are the two obvious examples that come to mind- but we’ve never, to this point, seen him as crushed as he is at the end of sabaody. it really drives the abrupt tone shift of sabaody home, because we’re used to seeing luffy be generally cheerful, and if not that, at stubbornly determined to power through. but here, he’s just wrecked- and the paramount war saga is just getting started. 

every time i see hancock i’m reminded what a lesbian i am.

i’m talking a lot about character introductions this post, but a lot of really good characters get introduced in the first half of this saga, from the supernovas to rayleigh to jinbe. on that note, i really like hancock’s introduction, for reasons similar to what i said about roger earlier. she’s introduced as a cartoonishly evil one-dimensional bitch, and she leans hard into that characterization for the first half or so of amazon lily.

and then luffy narrowly keeps her and her sisters’ worst fear from being realized, and her facade starts to slip, and we get to know her as- still kind of a bitch, but also a deeply traumatized person who has very valid reasons for being the way she is, and someone who is overall a lot more complicated than she appears at first glance. 

one of my favorite things about luffy is his ability to always, always defy expectations. hancock is dead certain he’ll take her offer of a ship and abandon marguerite and the others, but he doesn’t even hesitate before doing the exact opposite. luffy is always turning people’s worlds upside down.

i have a friend who coined the term “conflict of interest arc” to refer to the arcs where a crewmate is forced to choose between the crew and some obligation or baggage from their past- arlong park for nami, whole cake island for sanji, etc. 

marineford is luffy’s conflict of interest arc- he has to make the choice, here, to prioritize saving ace over reuniting with his crew. where it differs from all other such arcs, then, is that nobody else can come to back him up. he’s well and truly on his own. 

i love how thoroughly expectations get turned on their head with jinbe. for the longest time, all we know about him is that he’s a shichibukai and arlong’s former captain, so given what arlong was like and what the shichibukai encountered thus far have been like, it’s a fair guess to assume he’s pretty awful.

and then we meet him, and he’s ace’s friend, sitting bloody and beaten in the deepest dungeons of impel down for refusing to fight in an unjust war.

bon-chan is really one of the greatest examples of one piece’s stubborn refusal to treat any character as disposable, and oda’s endless ability to find new and interesting ways to fit them into the story. in pretty much any other manga, it would be all but guaranteed that we wouldn’t see a character like bon-chan again after the conclusion of the alabasta saga. here, luffy straight up would not have made it to marineford without him. this is true for mr. 3 too- who would’ve thought his ability to duplicate keys out of wax, established and promptly forgotten some three hundred chapters ago, would be the thing that let luffy free ace on the scaffold?

magellan is a good antagonist. i’m not saying i like him- i don’t particularly- but he’s a great antagonist for a couple reasons, and one of them is that his powers are terrifying. magellan is essentially what might be called in video game terminology an advancing wall of doom- the only viable strategy for dealing with him is to run.

i had more i wanted to say here but it literally kept turning into a rant about one piece’s take on morality no matter how many times i tried to keep it short, so i’ll settle for just saying that magellan is an antagonist but not a villain and i think that’s interesting. 

the absolutely ridiculous, eclectic mix of people that luffy winds up gathering to escape impel down is possibly my favorite part of the whole arc. i just think it’s so fun and so characteristic of him that even when separated from his crew, he winds up attracting the weirdest, most powerful bunch of people around to break out of prison with. 

the relationship between luffy and blackbeard is a really interesting one. it’s been plenty clear for some time that blackbeard is almost certainly going to be luffy’s final opponent to become pirate king, and yet they’ve been mostly running on parallel paths through the world, only occasionally coinciding (such as here and in jaya) and generally seeming pretty unconcerned with each other. it’s a really cool way to handle the built to an eventual showdown, and i really like it. 

this is one of my favorite spreads just for sheer smile factor. i love it so much. i think we should get to see jinbe’s whale shark buddies more often, it’s a crime we haven’t seen them since this. 

[fluorescentbrains]

who are your favorite companions in pathfinder? 😊

i really went off about every single companion so putting my answer under the cut lol

i really like them all! i do think some of them are better written than others... for example i’d like lann a lot more if the game actually let you call him out on being a sexist lol. and i love arueshalae, but the way she’s written kind of exasperates me because she acts like such a naïf when i think she should be a lot more savvy, being a former demoness who has skinned people alive and such. i still like both of them tho.

i did NOT expect to like daeran but i ended up romancing him because his predicament intrigued me and i enjoy the drama. his personal quest is off the shits and i’m obsessed with him. i can’t wait to find out what exactly is going on with that.

similarly i thought camellia was boring until she started acting creepier and creepier and it turned out she’s basically a girl version of jack the ripper. now i’m obsessed with her even though the character i designed probably should have executed her for the atrocities djjdfskdfdfgfhh it’s such a shame she’s “straight” i want to have fuckd up homoeroticisms with her.

i think all the evil companions are great in general tbh they kind of span the whole spectrum of villainy/jerkishness/derangement. i’m SO sad i fucked up and had to kill wenduag because i didn’t pick the right dialogue in act 3. regill is a much more palatable evil in that he stays in his lane and only commits atrocities against his subordinates who willingly follow him but he’s still a very sinister guy. and sexy. i would like to have fuckd up homoeroticisms with him as well. i understand why he’s not a romance option but man....

i guess i find greybor and sosiel the least interesting but i definitely don’t dislike them. well i might dislike greybor a little bit lol i find his “i simply can’t be blamed for working as a hired killer i’m just the knife” schtick annoying.

as for seelah nenio woljif and ember, 10/10 no notes. woljif’s character arc really stuck with me because it would be so easy for a PC to give up on him for being a flake, but he needs someone to truly stick by him and keep believing in him before he becomes a loyal friend. ember’s philosophy of absolute forgiveness could have come off trite but i think it’s executed really well and makes her fascinating as a character. i love that the typically amiable seelah clashes with her over this philosophy. similarly, nenio is goes far beyond the cookie cutter mad scientist trope into being GENUINELY wackadoodle and i love that for her. i think arueshalae and seelah should kiss also.