#idk you can justify a villain's actions without victimizing them

[imminent-danger-came]

i am so glad theres someone else who also thinks lmk executes its ideas and themes much better than toh. rip belos you will never be lady bone demon

TOH wasn't that strong in the themeing department in general (though I'm not well-versed in that show). I remember finishing the finale and being like....damn. What was the overall message of this show? ("Weirdos stick together" maybe?) Does toh have any consistent motifs or symbolism? If memory serves, not really?

Like, you rewatch episode 1x01 of LMK and MK goes "Well...I am invincible. *sigh* Anytime I try to do anything, I just gunk everything up!", and you're like. Woah. The Sun Wukong parallels are that strong from episode 1x01? Invincibility/Immortality and hurting the people you care about? No matter what you do, it leading to pain? Holy shit.

Contrast that with TOH where it's like, in episode 1x02 Luz learns she's not "the chosen one" and that the boiling isles are very different from the magical realms she imagined...which is kinda undone by the reveal that the Titan chose to show Luz the Glyphs. And while Titan Luz is very fun, it's not thematically sound—which is just kinda that whole show, you know? If you're not thinking about it that deep, then it's like "holy shit cool concept!" (which is totally valid of people), but if you do it's pretty empty. (Hi Hunter getting flapjack-based teleportation powers. What was the point of this.)

Which, I think this becomes super apparent with the Luz and Belos foil. Luz and Belos had a lot of interesting parallels (both of them being humans in the isles, each coming there wanting to fulfill a certain "role", for Luz being the "Great Witch Azura" and for Belos/Philip being a "Witch Hunter General", the whole "protecting the things you love" deal). And then, where does this all go?

It leads to Luz being told "no. You're the good guy and Belos is the bad guy! You could never be the same! Belos is motivated by his own 'need to be the hero'" (which was definitely what Luz was motivated by over the course of the show, even if it was more innocent, but whatever), and riding off of tdp s4's "In the name of love, you will do things so dangerous and vile—you will never be able to forgive yourself" and the lmk s3's "to pain" scene, it fell really flat for me—like it's not bad, it's just really mid.

(Post where I go on a rant about Luz's s3 arc being kinda lame)

And then, you have the LBD & MK foil. You have MK's s4 arc. The "to pain" scene is such a unique "you and I are not so different" moment—but it's also relevant to the whole show. And LBD is right, doing what you think is right does lead to pain. Like, even looking at MK's journey over the seasons, every action has had it's consequences.

Saving Pigsy and Tang in 1x04? Spider Queen snagged MK's hair and that let her dominate the city later. Stopping DBK in 1x10? That freed LBD. Stopping SQ in ROTSQ? That gave LBD access to the trigram furnace. MK trying to gain more power in s2? Well, "Now do you understand? From the start you never had what it took to defeat me. All your power could do was make me stronger." SWK leaving in s2? "You're the one always running off, trying to get more power or more sources of immortality." Trying to get the Samadhi fire in s3? Opps, now Mei has this uncontrollable flame within her. Monkey King running off to fight LBD alone so MK doesn't have to? He get's possessed. Freeing SWK from possession? Now LBD has the power to fulfill destiny. Attempting to free your friends from the scroll? Now Peng and Azure are also free. Trying to get SWK back? His scroll piece has been split in half. Stopping Azure from destroying all of reality? Now the Jade Emperor's power is without a host, flower fruit mountain is destroyed, and you can't help but feel they played into the puppet master's hands.

It's thematically consistent and banging. Like....anytime they try to do anything, they just gunk everything up. Like....sometimes you hurt the people who care about you the most. Like....whether you want to help people or not, everything you do can just make things worse.

AND MAYBE. Just maybe, you can also leave the world a little better than you found it. The pain that's been caused doesn't undo the good that's been done. And I guess I think that's more interesting that just like..."no! you're intent was good and theirs was bad!", you know?

[buckybarnesss]

Thinking about the conversation of Derek’s coercion/manipulation of his betas being perceived by him as full informed consent. He and Scott are in a fundamental disagreement over it because Scott sees the bite as a curse. Derek thinks he’s justified in what he’s doing because he’s giving them a choice, which Scott never had. He isn’t lying and he doesn’t have nefarious purposes. He wants them in his pack so that they can all be more powerful and the bite is the perfect solution to that. It's the one thing that he can offer people that he knows can be used for good. He saw these kids who were isolated and miserable just like he was and he had the power to change that. Idk how conscious he was of the fact that it was this volatile emotional state that made them more agreeable in the first place when he himself was just as desperate to not be alone. (I won't comment on his specific actions towards Erica bc that's already been analyzed with way more insight than I could provide). He informs them of the risks associated with being a werewolf and offers them a choice. This was essentially his first taste of actual authority in his life, and it can be really easy for him to justify his actions when compared to how others have treated him.

Look at Peter. Peter bit people without their consent and then manipulated them into doing his bidding for nefarious purposes all under the guise that he was justified because he also saw the bite as a gift. Derek grew up with this kind of behaviour. He was basically Peter's little prodigy aka manipulee #1. When this is how you learn to get your needs met, you emulate what you know. And for Derek, he thinks he’s in the right because even though he’s inexperienced and in way over his head, he honoured the Hale alpha spark way more than Peter did. He tries to build a dysfunctional little family out of sheer desperation with anger as his only anchor and ultimately faces the consequences of his actions (though lbr, I don't think even Derek could've predicted just how bad things got even with his knowledge of the alpha pack).

I can see why people so heavily criticize him for his villain era, but trying to empathize with him isn't an explicit endorsement of his actions. There's no such thing as a perfect victim. Everyone thinks that they're the protagonist of their own story.

you are correct.

i think people discount scott's extremely complicated view and relationship with being a werewolf and how much peter influenced derek. they're two important aspects in how they each operate and relate to each other. especially in in season 2.

like yeah, of course, scott does enjoy the benefits of being a werewolf but it's still a source of pain and issues for him. i don't think he sees it as a gift until riddled when it is something he can offer to stiles in the face that stiles may be ill with an incurable disease. also it's the bite that eventually does save stiles because it's what the answer to the divine move. season 3 really was a transitional season in scott's relationship with being a werewolf.

derek in seasons 1 and 2 is such a mess. he's trying but babygirl is a mess so he falls back on what he knows and what he knows are peter's lessons.

i think while derek was rightfully angry at peter for the things he'd done and feels torn about having to kill him (relieved, sad, guilty) i also imagine there was a part of derek that was relieved when peter returned.

not only was he no longer alone as the last of his family but in a way he and peter could return to their usual roles. a return to their status quo.

peter lurking about is familiar and thereby creates a sense of stability for derek that he didn't have all through season 2. peter stepping back into the role that he fulfilled since derek was a kid must've been a relief for him because even after everything between them there's still a part of derek that believes peter will know what to do.

these two have such a deeply complex relationship with each other.

[heretic-child]

I've found with Rhaenyra stans is that they know and acknowledge that Rhaenyra are those things like "manipulative, self-centred, tyrant, spoiled..." etc etc. They know it and love her all the same for being those things.

Cannot say the same for Alicent stans... they try to defend and justify her ever single unjustifiable action by shifting blame, victimising her and crying child bride.

umm i don't think she is all of those, i acknowledge the writing of eustace exaggerates it. it's deliberate. sure she is spoiled as all other noble children and she has a special position as the first woman heir so it's expected. be real, everyone would turn out like her.

she is self centered. why wouldn't she actually? how people expect her not to be when she was fighting for her position in a patriarchal society? as for tyrant, i don't care if it means i'm justifying it but yes they were in war and losing her kids hardened her. it also made her give questionable decisions like ordering bastards' heads since she was paranoid and brought her end too but i will never understand fandom call her 'maegor with teats'. i know people say 'these don’t mean she is allowed to be cruel!!' i don't care, i'm being realistic. humans are not robots, you can't expect a woman losing her family one by one and acting the most sensible way.

what i tried to say is i love rhaenyra because she is not victimized in the story, she actually has agency. she is not perfect and has mistakes like every other human being. she doesn't accept greens' traitor and fights for it. i'm sorry for those people that never experienced real life and don't know what it requires but it's cruel. you can't act soft in the fucking war. as i say this, i don't agree every decision of her, obviously. and i saw her flawed character. i acknowledge rhaenyra has both cersei's and daenerys's traits but her story drove her to be more cersei-ish (?)

i accept all of those coming from antis as insults (i describe rhaenyra with those too because somehow i don't see them as insults. to me it's what it is, being self-centered or manipulative (this is new one lol) aren't wrong considering rhaenyra's position) because yes, it can be read like that if you read everything as black and white. rhaenyra raising taxes, rhaenyra torturing tyland lannister = tyrant ? i don't think so. they can read different since we don't share the same values/opinions. if they see her as tyrant or whatever without really thinking then yes i love that rhaenyra.

as for rhaenyra fans accepting those, i'm not sure. i remember few coming for me because i said rhaenyra is a spoiled bitch. lol. they even said i'm favoring daemon and throwing rhaenyra under the bus because i said daemon died in a heroic way as he saved nettles and his family by killing aemond and rhaenyra died as a 'tyrant' because last thing she did was ordering bastards' heads for no actual reason since she literally went crazy. idk though, maybe it was because they didn't know how i approach rhaenyra.

so why i don't approach alicent as i approach rhaenyra? because she has no good trait. even one. she is the villain of the story. i love rhaenyra because she is not portrayed as the perfect and boring protagonist, i don't root for alicent because she is the clear antagonist. i respect alicent for not sitting still, for acting and being shrewd but that's all. she has nothing for me to take her side and 'justify' her.

alicent fans do that because they know what i say, she has nothing to be rooted for unlike rhaenyra. so they're whitewashing her as hotd does instead showing her as a nuanced character. it's as simple as that.

[chrkrose]

I have to admit I dont understand how Nettles/Daemon/Rhaenyra will play out on the show. Cause IMO the show so far portrayed Rhaenyra(+Alicent) as victims of the particracy, LGBTQ ally haha, even took some negative things she did to make her more likeable but Daemon has been quite dark. Is this show really going have their protag turn around and end her story as a Crazy, jealous, misogynistic, Racist Woman Scorned Queen (another lol) while Daemon gets to become a redeemed hero? :/ idk tho

Yeah, idk how they will do either. And you know, I don’t even think they needed to “redeem” Daemon either to do his arc with Nettles justice, because I think gray characters are supposed to be gray precisely because they have these contradictions where you can’t necessarily put them into a predetermined category. And even his “good deeds” when it comes to Nettles were in a way selfish since he fucked up his cause and left a queen that he groomed and goaded into war just because he fell for someone new. He’s definitely not a hero, and shouldn’t go down as such.

When it comes to your other points. I think my grip with this whole thing is that in their pursue of making Rhaenyra some sort of hero herself, they might end up screwing up Nettles’ story, which leaves a really bad taste in my mouth, a black woman having to lose some of the interesting bits of her arc because they can’t dare to paint the white monarch as she truly was.

Talking specifically about Rhaenyra. I really really hope the showrunners allow her to go down her dark path without trying to change it under the justification that if she’s dark and do shitty things it’s “because society wronged her”. Women are allowed to be all kinds of things: good, bad, heroes, villains, etc… To have those type of female characters is not “misogyny”. Why men are allowed to enjoy so many types of different characters that go from good to evil and we can’t have that? There are other female characters that can (and should) have arcs of heroism and goodness and cool action scenes with their dragons. They are there on the books for people to root for (Rhaenys, Baela, Nettles, Rhaena are a few examples). Rhaenyra is not one of them.

I hope they allow her to be the coward she was during the dance, allow her to make the bad decisions she made, let her be consumed by grief and paranoia, and most of all, I hope they don’t feel the need to justify those choices as “oh but she was wronged and that’s why she did it, deep down she’s good, deep down she’s justified”. No, she was an entitled person, spoiled, with zero head for politics, ambitious but that didn’t know how to handle the throne once she got to it, and that doesn’t cancel the fact she still was a victim of Westeros society and that had she been a man, a war wouldn’t have happened and she wouldn’t have had her throne stolen from her.

This is something that deeply frustrate me when it comes to ASOIAF adaptations so far. They ruined Cersei by justifying her villainous as “oh but she deep down is a mother who loves her kids and does what she does for them too and a victim of patriarchy that’s why she became what she became”. When in the books, Cersei was allowed to be an evil person from the get go, a narcissistic murderer from age 12, and STILL she was a commentary on Westeros way of treating women, she still was victimized by the same system she did nothing to destroy or change (the opposite in fact). And THATS what makes her such a great character and one of my favorite POVs.

I have hope they won’t fall for the same thing with Rhaenyra, even though I will certainly be smacked in the face again lol. Rhaenyra is not Daenerys. She’s not a “girlboss”. She’s not a fighter or a warrior and she’s not a generous and selfless person. And she should be allowed to display those colors.

[sladewilsonisanantihero]

The Original Intent of Terra and how Deathstroke got the bad end of the stick for it

Okay, Deathstroke Children (Idk what to call you guys because fellow Deathstrokers would end this conversation immediately), I found the time to do this, so let's get to it!

(Note: My original laptop broke with my comics, so I have no images to spare, so it will be sourced. Another note: Many words will be in bold. Partly so that for those reading will not lose track.)

But if tl;dr:

Cold Hard Truth: Everyone from Terra fans to Deathstroke fans needs to stop seeing these characters as real people.

Original Terra wasn't human trafficked or whatever sob story people want to label her with. The CREATORS intended her to be written as Evil without the mental illness and to die for the shock value. They had Raven, The Literal Empath, spell this out in Judas Contract. As for Deathstroke's involvement, he was shoved into her creation story, and Marv Wolfman himself recognized his mistake in doing that.

And for those calling Deathstroke a nazi, Original Terra had nazi-like beliefs where common people should fear and serve them or be killed off just because they're 'special'. Again, BLUNTLY stated in the Judas Contract. So if you're going to call Deathstroke a Pedophile, we'll call OG Terra a Neo-Nazi. (But I highly advice for Deathstroke Fans to not start that kind of war, but I had to say what I had to say.)

Don't get me wrong. (Hopefully all) Deathstroke fans know that their relationship was wrong just like Marv Wolfman, and we do not support pedophiles! But Slade isn't a pedophile! He was never intended to be written as one! It was a mistake made on many levels and should be rewritten like OG Terra's Evil Neo-Nazi-like personality, instead of being thrown into cancel culture.

Also for Deathstroke fans, don't get upset over their content and begin any argument emotionally. Just enjoy whatever good content we can get and support it if you can. Hopefully we'll get our Deathstroke movies and so on!

So I've briefly chatted with one of you over the matter with Terra/Tara Markov and how upsetting it is about how people refer to Slade Wilson as a Pedophile. That is a serious accusation that would make it very uncomfortable to argue about since it can easily make it seem like we justify the actions of pedophiles, and that we are part of pedophile culture that does exist in social media space.

AND WE SHOULDN'T, AND FOR ANTIS READING THIS WE WON'T.

But there was a time when I used to have a blog called friendlyremindersofsladewilson, where I defended Slade and put the blame all on Terra. I was 14 at the time, and looking back at it, I am not proud of it because I realized now as an adult how I defended it for most of the wrong reasons, but still stand with the fact that SLADE IS NOT A PEDOPHILE.

And since this took place when I was so young, it compelled me to write this post because I fear some of you are really young, too, and may end up in this regretful position.

So to make it clear, what Slade had been written to do is a crime, and we should acknowledge it, but not in the way as if it was a crime acted out in real life.

What I mean by that is that there's a clear separation between fiction and reality where one isn't real (Duh!). In this case, it's about the mistakes made between fiction and reality. In reality, mistakes made by the person responsible is on the person. In fiction, mistakes made is dependent on the creator's intent, and sometimes the creators can make mistakes themselves.

Most notably Terra's:

Tara Markov/Terra was created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez.

In Marv Wolfman's literal website, he stated in his online "What the-?" column:

"Which leads to Terra. That was easy. George and I wanted a Titan who betrayed the others. we also wanted to play against every reader conception of who characters are. George and I knew her whole story before we began and we knew she would die. We set the story up with her trying to destroy the Statue of Liberty to show she was the bad girl, but we knew if George drew her as a cute kid everyone would simply assume she would be ‘turned’ from the dark side because that’s the way it was always done which is why that wouldn’t be the way we did it. Tara was insane an stayed that way right until the moment she died. By the way, she IS dead. I don’t know what other writers will do with her – if anything – but if they want to honor the original series they will leave her dead. The Terra from Team Titans was – as stated – some kid the villain kidnapped and physically and mentally altered her into looking and acting like the original. But she was NEVER the real Terra."

And it should also be noted that he stated before this statement that:

"...Only mistake I think I made with him is having him have a physical relationship with the 16 year old Tara Markov. That was wrong."

So Marv Wolfman himself recognizes that what he did was a mistake, but his intent on Terra was never to write a victim.

And quick note: Insanity isn't written as a mental illness here. It's written like how many villains are labeled as insane for having skewed beliefs that deviates from the common good.

Terra truly had some nazi-like beliefs where she BELIEVED that everyone who wasn't 'special' like her and the Teen Titans deserved to be treated like shit because they weren't 'special' like them. She bluntly said it herself in the Judas Contract.

As for George Perez's comment in an interview I found in this website:

"GEORGE: Tara was just a cute little girl, although I based a little bit of that on my wife Carol’s sister, Barbara. A little upturned nose… Barbara does not have the teeth that Tara had. I wanted Tara to be a girl who looked normal. Which also means her death caught everyone even more offguard.

Tara, she was made to be killed; she served her purpose. That was it.

ANDY: You didn ‘t get any attachment to Tara?

GEORGE: No, because I knew we were going to kill her. So I deliberately used all the things to make her as likeable and cute as possible, so people would never believe we were going to kill a sixteen-year-old. And she was a sixteen-year-old sociopath. She was one of our cleverest gimmicks; we deliberately created her in order to lead everyone astray. So we couldn’t build any fondness for her, ’cause we knew full well what her whole motive for existence was. Her existence was basically to keep the stories interesting; we were tossing a curve that no one would have expected.

ANDY: You didn ‘t even love to hate her, huh?

GEORGE: No. I loved handling her, because she was such a good idea. But she was an idea. Not as much a person. She was there to show exactly how much their humanity can be one thing they have to be careful about, the Teen Titans have to be careful about. . . they can be too trusting, or their own weaknesses can be used against them."

Terra was supposed to be a representation of An Evil Betrayal of Trust and That Not All Cute Girls Are Good.

But they took it too far by making her sleep with Deathstroke because they wanted to truly make her look evil by literally sleeping with the enemy. Y'know because this was the 80s, and women having sex was an evil act back then, and that point of view has somewhat or barely improved 40 years later.

Deathstroke was just shoved into this idea, and Marv tried and perhaps failed at trying to undo this mistake with his talk with Beastboy (Tales of the Teen Titans issue #55) and before his confrontation from Wintergreen (Deathstroke (1991); Chapter 35).

So just as I had stated at the top in the tl;dr, it was a mistake made on many levels and should have been rewritten out just as many had done with OG Terra's true personality, and be done with it.

Random person: "He still slept with a 16-year-old."

And it's not that hard to make other heroes and villains do this mistake. Because again, it's all fiction. Deathstroke's fictional. As in Not Real, so we could literally undo the damage by rewriting this mistake. Or make it worse by making Terra the rapist by her using her Earth powers to bind Slade down and force him, and you can't deny that it's plausible. Because she's fictional. Anything can happen. So why didn't Slade tell Beastboy whether he slept with her or not, maybe it was because he really didn't want to but he was forced into it. And that's just something you can't dump on a very emotional man who was trying to kill you a moment ago.

ALL THE POSSIBILITIES BECAUSE IT'S FICITIONAL!

But ANYWAY, I went way too dark there.

Ending on a brighter note: Personally to all Deathstroke fans, please value your mental health, please don't start any arguments that'll compromise it, and continue supporting Deathstroke in whatever way you can!

[villainsandvictimsalliance]

At this point in the story, nor Tomura, Toga or Dabi can be shown as more irredeemable than they already are.

So I don't think Miss Kathy is dead. I would like it though, she's annoying as hell

Why irredeemable? Give me some arguments to work with. I want to see what you see to try and understand why you think like you think.

Also I too think Cassie is not dead. I think it'll be more of a Lady Nagant situation. Nice parallel from Horikoshi of course, once more paralleling Deku and Tomura, but yeah, I think it was a total waste to only use Lady Nagant and Stars and Stripe like that.

Quickly with the irredeemable thing.

During her speech about how she wants to see people smiling, Ochako thought about Toga crying.

Shoto had never talked about killing Dabi, but saving him. And the narrative has put in his own mouth the fact that he's the only one capable of stopping his older brother.

Deku said very clearly that he wants to save Tenko. He even used the same words he used when saving Bakugou from the slime villain at the beginning of the manga.

On the other hand:

Toga, Dabi and Tomura has been presented to us as victims. Pay attention to which type of light Horikoshi casts on these characters and think why he would do something like that.

For Toga, we have the idea that the villains want to make a martyr out of her, but she refuses. After Twice died, notice how Toga just wanted to go and talk with Ochako, not hurt her. Yes, she was violent before that, killing pro-heroes, but she doesn't hurt her friends anymore, she protects them. Toga has change a lot in the course of the whole series, she's more mature, more in control of her quirk and she's definitely seeing things from a better perspective (wondering what makes the heroes heroes and the villains villains).

When it comes to Dabi, there's a whole narrative of abuse and being unable to forget, buddy. Idk why people is so settle in "people can't change" and very specifically in "characters can't change". Dabi has heavy trauma, a chronic condition and most important, he has always been denied or erased. Dabi is asking people to see him, he's still obsessed with Endeavor recognizing him and what he has done to him. And even if he says that he doesn't know how to exists after taking his revenge on Endeavor, he doesn't want to die. I don't know how to explain you that his anger comes from his hurt, that it can only get better if people decide to help him. I really think his family wants him alive, they want to give to him what they couldn't before. And I think Dabi still loves them, he still shows affection. He just can't stand the hero narrative or to be in Endeavor's presence. The same as Toga and Tomura, Dabi can't be saved if society doesn't change, because what they have been fighting is that there's no place in that world for the ones who doesn't fit the expectations, the differents from the norm, the ones who need a lot of help. Also the idea that people has to do certain stuff to it be worthy for them to be alive... That's fuck up, buddy. There's a whole reason we have human rights in real life.

And omg sorry anon but I have made so. many. posts. about this. I invite you to check my blog. Because I don't know how people can say that Tomura is irredeemable with the amount of details and dedication Horikoshi puts into the context. He shows you how he was abused, manipulated, groomed, isolated from society, how he was practically brainwashed, how AFO has messed up his head so much that he doesn't feel physical pain like he should anymore, how he is hurting so bad that he doesn't want a future, only a present, that he wants to start over, he repressed his own childhood memories thanks to the trauma... And before you tell me that the backstory of the character doesn't justify his actions, let me tell you that it is true— but it can't be brushed aside and forgotten because there's no justice without context. Tomura has been LOUD about his opinions. He has been looking for interactions. Buddy, dear buddy, he's being manipulated by AFO. 80% or 90% his decisions are not his decisions. Not when he has AFO in his head, messing with his sense of morals and values. It's like trying to blame a child raised by wolves from being aggressive. Of course he is aggressive! He's been neglected! He hasn't live in society for so many years! You all repeat every time that Tomura has killed thousands of people, but no one mentions the situations that took him to release his quirk in massive destruction. Almost every time he wasn't thinking clearly. Against the Meta Liberation Army? He was vomiting, very very sleep deprived, dehydrated, almost allucinating, and he remembered the childhood trauma he had blocked BECAUSE IT HURT SO MUCH. In the War arc? He was not only Tomura anymore. Friendly reminder he was freshly awakening for a very painful surgery and AFO was already partially in his head. Like for real. Tomura died for a second in that instant, and his awaken trigerred the massive destruction. I know this is long, sorry for that anon. But please understand making him the only responsible for his actions is not a very smart thing to do. There's a reason why the series compare him to a child, because children are not totally in control of themselves, but there's a higher rank controlling them. Normally a parental figure. Irredeemable? Mate, Tomura is young, he's screaming to take control back, he is desperate to be saved, he has reach for help so many times, but no one wanted to listen to him, no one wanted to help, because when people becomes aggressive due to their trauma, society prefers to throw them away than give them help, because society prefers passive suffering like depression and suicidal thoughts.

Last thing: look at the parallels. Horikoshi tends to repeat them for the better, go correct past mistakes, etc. In this case, Tomura is so many characters that had been saved. Dabi is a parallel to Shouto himself and it was Shouto who realized it, that's how he knows his brother can be helped. And Toga is a parallel to all the girls being like martyrs, for all that heroes and villains who has been sacrificed for a cause, when they deserved to live. Read between the lines. Ask the text, search for answer. That would help you see how they can be redeemed.

I hope I explained myself correctly. Thank you so much for your ask anon and I hope you're having a wonderful weekend!

[piracytheorist]

A ridiculously needed defense of Mia Winters

(and I say ridiculously because I don't particularly care for her as a character. But I care for Ethan, and I care that he went through so much shit to save her and never gave up or even thought to, so by extension Mia needs to make sense to me so I need to have a clear image of her in my mind to justify Ethan's ridiculously brave actions in re7, and his devotion to her in re8. But also because my experience watching the show Once Upon a Time and engaging with its fandom has taught me to not hate on characters when they're not fully fleshed out and their bad actions are not adequately explained, especially when said characters are women written by men. And considering that Ethan himself is not fully fleshed out in re7 either, it's no wonder Mia's character is suffering)

So. I'm not here to tell people they're wrong to hate or even just dislike or distrust Mia. That's not my point. But if you do continue to read after the title, you're checking in on your own accord. And my main gripe with people hating on Mia is that they seem to dislike her character when the game itself didn't give much of a good basis on her character in the first place. So yeah, being a woman myself and having seen how fandoms work, I do tend to get a little pissed when people (no matter their gender) are so ready to hate on female characters for no good reason.

Now, I'm not saying Mia is a saint, far from it. RE7 makes clear she holds a lot of the responsibility for what happened, and she even accepts that. But she's also been given redeeming qualities, if you're willing to look for them.

The first glimpse we get of Mia is of her sending a happy message to Ethan, then immediately after we see her admit her wrong and warn him to stay away from her. There's a reason we even get the second video, and that's called setting. The writers wanted Mia to be shown as protective over Ethan while also accepting responsibility from the very first moment - and it's something that repeats itself when we do find her. She apparently has no idea she asked Ethan to come, she self-harms in an effort to stop hurting him, and even through Eveline's control she manages to tell him to leave her.

(like idk why people take lightly the fact that she fucking banged her head on a wall, giving herself a concussion, all in an effort to protect Ethan from what she knew she had turned into but leave it to a fandom to underplay self-harm I guess)

But that's only from the beginning, and from the confused POV of Ethan and a first time player. In Mia's flashback, we see that she'd been given orders that should Eveline get out of control, she had to be eliminated. Now, Eveline had grown fond of Mia, and she was super powerful herself. Taking a powerful being on your side and using them to be on top? That's a super villain origin story if I ever heard one. But Mia doesn't even consider it, from the first moment that civilians are getting in danger, she's ready to eliminate Eveline.

And that's when the first holes start appearing. For what kinds of wars did Mia know that Eveline was made for? How long had she been working with The Connections? Was it before or after marrying Ethan? How did they approach her? How did they know she'd be okay with making a bioweapon to assist in wars? And as herself, how deep was she willing to go in terms of human experimentation?

That's all stuff we have no way of knowing, and frankly any answer, from one extreme to the other, can be assumed. For all we know The Connections approached her, and before she had even realized she was assisting them in creating Eveline. So in general I feel it's kinda unbased to jump on the Mia Hating Train so easily when there's so much missing from the whole story.

Though again, I’m not here to tell people what to like and what not to like. It’s just that I feel there’s a bit too much focus on how Mia is such a horrible person and the true villain of the story and like, it’s getting super tiring, entering fandoms and seeing people being so fucking pissed at some characters. Like, ok. You can’t like everything. But it feels like some people are trying to make that everyone else’s problem.

And the victim blaming is not helping, either. People say all of what happened in re8 is Mia’s fault because she didn’t tell Ethan the truth about what he is, and like. Are we fucking serious. Like I see people call Chris dumb for not explaining the story to Ethan from the beginning, and how it could’ve made things much more simpler if he had, but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone call him the villain of the story (if anything because without him being cryptic we wouldn’t have had the story in the first place). He had his reasons to be cryptic, and if you pause your hate train for a moment, you’ll realize Mia had her reasons as well. We don’t know how long she knew that Ethan was all mold - she wasn’t even conscious during the moment Jack killed Ethan in the first place to see how serious the injury was. For all we knew she only noticed while being pregnant with Rose, or after she was born - so we can’t really blame her for not speaking up. If anything, considering she did realize it and still she stayed with him and knew he and his feelings mattered (”We matter, Ethan! You matter!”) is a big thing. She also seemed to want to tell him, but like, how do you even begin such a discussion? Ethan also saw that she was troubled; you can’t convince me that they were like this, with Ethan knowing she was holding something from him, and Mia knowing and knowingly having a child with him who would definitely be infected by Mold, for three fucking years.

Like at some point you start going like “They can’t have shown us such a fucking toxic relationship and expected us to feel sad for Mia at the end.” But like, people do believe that yes they intended them to be so toxic and Mia to be such a horrible person and for us to just shrug at it, so of course they would blame everything on Mia and not like, idk, Miranda, who was actually the one actively harming the entire Winters family. Or that Rose getting kidnapped was because Mia had been working with The Connections, and that’s how Miranda found out about her, and I’m like, y’all can’t separate butterfly effect from actual blame, can you? Ethan and Mia decided to have a kid two whole years after the Baker incident - when they felt they were safe, on the clear from whatever could be chasing them. They were on witness protection, the newspaper Ethan looks at in the beginning says that Ethan and Mia’s whereabouts are unknown; they were understandably feeling safe to move on with their lives, until someone from The Connections found where Mia was, and through them Miranda was able to learn about Rose. That’s an entirely different concept from Mia being careless or carrying the entire blame for Rose getting kidnapped or Ethan being self-sacrificingly determined to save her. But of course, let’s hate on Mia and then seriously ship Ethan with the villains because they have redeeming qualities and Mia doesn’t ig

I don’t know. Maybe I’m a bit too jumpy of people hating on female characters. But on the other hand, it says a lot that I don’t really care much for Mia or her character, so it’s not like I feel defensive because my fave is receiving hate. If anything, Ethan is my fave, he gets much more uncalled-for hate and I just shrug that off because who gives a fuck about them haters right. But with Ethan... I feel that the hate he receives is mostly because he subverted expectations; he’s not your average trained badass who knows what he’s doing and remains calm through anxious situations, he’s the exact opposite, and people hate on him for not being the former like... you’re missing the entire point of Ethan purposefully being clueless, panicking, saying cringy-ass quips, and honestly, your fucking loss lmao. With Mia, it feels like people choose to see the worst in her when there aren’t too many things to see. And knowing stuff about the world of gaming, it’s fucking telling. In the world of fandom, that’s just fucking annoying. I hate stuff too. But after a certain point you learn to not make your biases everybody else’s problem. Or at least you should. What would I know, being here hoping fandoms could be calmer places.

[thatsjustrwde]

For the RWBY character prompt thing: you gotta tell me about Ironwood for sure! And if somebody already asked, how's about Qrow? :)

OH BABEY A DOUBLE (I’m gunna put Qrow in a separate post to avoid making this too long) thank you so much!

Warning: This is a PRO IRONWOOD POST. I also go into team RWBY taking responsibility for their abuse towards Ozpin. Don’t read this if you don’t like it. You’ve been warned

My top three two ships for Ironwood

1) Ironqrow (Ironwood x Qrow) {Volumes 3-7}

I have loved the idea of these two since the fall of beacon. When they first interacted, I wasn’t too sure about them because it seemed like they didn’t really like each other.. but that scene where all the robots were turning on beacon and Qrow spotted ironwood, ran at him with his scythe, only to jump over him and save him from a Grimm, sold the ship to me. It was clear that they didn’t actually despise each other. Qrow wasn’t quick to point fingers; he knew that what was going on wasn’t James’ fault, and he even tried to add a little bit of comic relief to the scene. (When ironwood’s ship fell, and Qrow smirked “well, it won’t be much of a walk”)

My love for the ship was reinforced in v6 (yeah I know it was the fan service volume but I’m rolling with it anyway). Qrow knew that they HAD to get to ironwood in order to complete their goal. He trusted James, and he knew that he was a smart and capable leader who would know what to do (ah,, the good old days ;;)

And then in the early episodes of v7, their bickering that we once saw in v3 was non existent. They were happy to see each other, and James even initiated a hug. He was just so relieved to see him ;; it made my heart melt, I remember posting about this moment so much, all over instagram and tumblr. I loved them so dearly.

2) Ironwood x Glynda (idk if they have a ship name)

God,, I always loved them. that scene in v2 with Ironwood and Glynda standing together in the dead of night looking over the city of vale was so special to me. I love Glynda and her character, she is so dynamic. that scene with her and ironwood showed to us that she truly respected and cared for him and his well-being. She was worried for him as well. I just wish they had more interactions before his death. they would have been very sweet and POWERFUL together.

My three least favourite ships for Ironwood

1) Ironqrow {Volumes 7-8}

Oh boy. RT really knows how to take something good and just, ruin it huh.

I feel as though I don’t need to dive too deep into this (as I’ll be covering Ironwood’s fall from grace later) but yeah... The fight with Qrow and Clover was.. unfortunate. Everyone seemed to lose their braincells in that scene, and the moment it was over, Qrow was dead set on killing Ironwood for some reason even though he was the one who decided to side with a literal murderer, but go off MKEK you really did something there...

Yepp this absolutely killed the ship for me in canon (though I stilln love thinking about them out of the canon setting), I was an absolute wreck after this scene. they deserved better.

2) Ironwood x Winter

don’t worry I’m not about to pull the “IRONWOOD WAS AN ABUSIVE FATHER FIGURE AND GROOMED HER CAREERRHYUGGHR” no.

I always saw Ironwood as a POSITIVE father figure to winter, even before v7. We knew that winter was one of his best soldiers, and was most likely one of his students before then. I believe that Ironwood gave winter a chance at something great, to leave her actual abusive father and hone her skills as a soldier instead of becoming the heiress to a company that she did not want to be tied to. I believe Ironwood was a stellar father figure and role model to her, and that is the reason why I do not ship them. their relationship was so much deeper than that. it was found family.

3) Ironwood x Salem

What the fuck. Like actually what? This was a thing? What is it with this fandom and glorifying abusive relationships... I remember seeing a lot of people trying to justify it like “awh salem was so sweet with him she just wanted him to stop fighting. She would leave him alone after!!” Thats manipulation honey, we don’t fuck with that here. no. Absolutely not

My biggest criticism for Ironwood

See: the reason I made this side blog

It’s no secret to us in the RWDE community that his fall into the role of the villain was POORLY WRITTEN AND WE ALL HATE IT SO FUCKING MUCH. where the hell did this even come from? oh I know! TEAM RWBY LYING TO HIS FACE AFTER HE WAS NOTHING BUT KIND AND GENEROUS TO THEM. god I’m heated already.

I’ve talked about his stupid semblance before but it doesn’t even matter because his semblance wasn’t the cause of his descent anyway. We were all HOPING that it was but nope! it was him “losing his humanity” because he lost his other arm. How fucked up is that.

Shitty writing aside, I know James had flaws even before the shitshow that was v7-8, but honestly there was nothing he did that I can criticize harshly. He was a good and honest man with good intentions and a pure, big heart made of gold. Of course he made mistakes and of course he wasn’t perfect, but he was always trying to do the right thing to protect the people. He was a good man until MKEK decided they needed a reason to kill off another headmaster.

My favourite thing about Ironwood

his MUSCLES

His willingness to sacrifice himself to save others. During the fall of beacon he told the students that they didn’t have to stay, even though he could have used the help greatly. But he KNEW that they weren’t ready to handle a crisis like this, and he didn’t want to force them into a responsibility that could have left them emotionally/physically damaged, or worse.

During the Ironwood and Watts fight, IRONWOOD MANGLED HIS OWN ARM TO CAPTURE WATTS. He was so headstrong and brave and he wanted to do everything he could to prevent Salem, even if that meant hurting himself and losing another part of himself. God I miss him so much ;; I’m tearing up a little writing all of this...

A head canon I have for Ironwood

I love creating head canons for characters, it always makes them feel more real to me. one of my biggest head canons is that, in a peaceful world setting, he would enjoy sleeping in on the weekends. ;;. He is a headmaster AND a general which means he has to follow a strict schedule all the time. Maybe this is coming from my desire to take care of him and make sure he is happy and healthy and not stressed out.. But yeah, lazy Sundays, sleeping in late. pls let him sleep he needs so much sleep. What I would change about Ironwood if I were making a rewrite

Strap in kiddos I’ve been thinking about this for a very long time. I’m sure that someone has come up with a similar concept, but I will share my ideas anyway (: I am going to preface this by saying that for this rewrite to work, we need to have Winter receive the Winter maiden powers from Freya in V7.  To start, we will have to go back all the way to v2 when Ironwood was first introduced. I would have Ozpin and Glynda share their concerns to each other about Ironwood bringing all of his ships to look over the festival, but I would take that time to thoroughly explain his semblance. His semblance is stupid, so I would make some changes. To start off, I wouldn’t make it passive. The way it is now is just,, a weird way to give him a mental illness without actually giving him a mental illness. Activating it would have to be a decision that he made if he knew that he had to make decisions that would be hard for him. This way if his semblance caused him to do something actually horrible, he would be directly accountable for it, instead of blaming him for something that he couldn’t control. Semblances are a representation of the user, so with time and with more stress put onto Ironwood, I could see him falling victim to his own semblance if he were to abuse it too much. This will help as we lead into a better way to write his fall from grace. 

From there, I would keep pretty much everything the same until we get to v7. Team RWBY arrives in Atlas and gets arrested and brought to Ironwood just as they do in canon. This time, however, we have Oscar explain EVERYTHING. No lying. Salem cannot be killed. Oscar explains that Ozpin shut himself off after team RWBY forced the truth out of him, and while the truth is a lot for Ironwood to handle, he understands why Ozpin kept it a secret. He shuns team RWBY for their methods and explains why their actions were unnecessary and abusive, but agrees to help them anyway since he knows that they all need to come together if this is going to work. Hence, his arc kind of goes backwards. Instead of team RWBY having his trust from the beginning, they will need to work to gain it back. 

He takes Oscar under his wing to try and draw Ozpin back out. He greets Qrow, they fall in love, he also formally introduces the team to the Ace Ops. The Ace Ops take an IMMEDIATE backseat in the story. We don’t need more characters. For the sake of this rewrite specifically, they are barely around. We are focusing on Ironwood and his growth/relationships. I would explore more times to show the deep connection between him and Winter. As I said earlier, I see him as a healthy father figure for her, so I would definitely focus on that for a bit. At this point, Winter would not have received the maidens power yet, so we could have a scene of him assuring her that she is a perfect fit for the role, and encouraging her and just,, you know, solidifying that he wasn’t pressuring her into doing it. 

Carrying on with the main plot, instead of being left in the dark for the whole season, Ironwood is already aware that Salem cannot be killed. This gives him and the rest of the team a lot of time to work on a new plan to defeat her. They spend lots of time training, Ironwood takes care of them, offering his resources to them. Overtime the team do start to gain his trust little by little again, but this will all kinda fall apart when Salem arrives. 

With stress levels higher than ever, he activates his semblance. Team RWBY and friends KNOW about his semblance and they understand why he is acting irrationally. Maybe they have different ideas than him, but they would not directly oppose him. This completely fixes him from becoming a cartoon villain. Team RWBY and friends would work WITH Ironwood at a distance to fix amity and get global communications back up safely. From there, Ironwood could deliver a message to the world about Salem. Since people know who he is, it will make the message more impactful. Just like he did with his message to Mantle.

Qrow and Winter are positives in his life. They keep trying to ground him and bring him back to reality, but he will not deactivate his semblance. He is too scared of what’s to come with Salem. They support him in this, and do not turn their back on him. 

Winter receives the maiden’s power, and is told to open the vault to obtain the staff and raise atlas further into the sky to save his people. Winter agrees, why wouldn’t she? They have already evacuated most of mantle to atlas anyway. In situations like this it’s impossible to save everyone. RWBY could whine and bitch if they wanted to, but there is nothing they could do in this situation because, for the sake of this rewrite, they wouldn’t be as stupid as they are in the canon proper. 

The vault is open and the staff is vulnerable. It is in this moment that the ACTUAL VILLIAN comes into play. Watts took advantage of the security from behind the scenes, giving Salem the exact time that the vault was open. And thanks to him overhearing everything, he knows that all she needs to do is use the staff, and Atlas will fall. Salem appears in the room, and the big finale battle would occur. They weren’t ready yet. They hadn’t finalized the plan to stop her without killing her. Team RWBY Oscar and Qrow would do their best to keep Salem distracted while Winter and Ironwood speak to the staff. Meanwhile, Neo could breach Ironwood’s office and retrieve the relic of knowledge for Salem. 

The battle plays out, she keeps coming back, the team gets tired, Salem loses her patience and just PLOWS through them to get to the staff. She enters the realm and the mystical world around them begins to shatter and break. With that much concentrated evil in this place coming up out of nowhere, it would be sure to shift the balance. 

She goes head to head against Winter and Ironwood for the staff. She knows that using the staff will cause Atlas to come crashing down, so that is exactly  what she does. Since he is already out, she just gives him a command. It doesn’t matter what it is. Atlas starts to fall. She strikes a lethal blow to Ironwood (Keeping the theme of her killing headmasters) and flees with the staff. Qrow runs to his side, he and winter are crying, Team RWBY is upset, OZPIN IS UPSET. With his aura broken and his semblance down, he smiles at them all, says that he is proud of them for their work and he knows that they will find a way to defeat her. He tells them to get out and save themselves, save as many people as they can. They do that, but for further angst, Qrow stays with him, holding him and crying against him as Atlas falls. Team RWBY use the gravity dust keeping Atlas falling slowly to their advantage. They get as many people as they can into airships and send them to mistral. They then make their own way to Vacuo... Since global communications are back up, the world would know about this. This would give Shade academy a good chance to prepare. (damn I could write a fic)

What I think of Ironwood’s allusion and what I would change.

It’s dumb the way that CRWBY has portrayed it. In the story of the Wizard of Oz, the tin man doesn’t have a heart, but learns to love overtime. I used THIS aspect for helping my rewrite of Ironwood. He was hardened at the beginning, but managed to trust again and eventually smiled and said that he was proud of team RWBY and friends in his dying moments. It’s just more impactful that way I think. 

[ruby-whistler]

all /dsmp /rp /nm, a reply to someone bringing up some good points and some i disagree with in the replies of this post

tw // physical & mental abuse, torture, murder

@bellovebug

the point about consent and sacrifice is a good call - ghostbur really didn't want to die, but to be fair, neither did dream.

i think that's the main reason why both the attempts, whether successful or not, were wrong. you don't really have the right to take away another person's life, though dream's life was being threatened, while tommy couldn't be more safe from a man who was stuck being physically and mentally abused - granted, tommy didn't know that, but dream also didn't know ghostbur wasn't aware this was a murder attempt. the point, both tommy and dream were wrong, and their actions are understandable to different degrees.

one could argue it was never mentioned that ghostbur stayed behind, and wilbur slowly getting his memories could be interpreted as them merging (which, that would be a much happier ending than having to choose between the two, wouldn't it), but those are all theories, so let's look at it from the most widely-accepted perspective.

it is true that ghostbur never hurt dream, he's really the only innocent person in all of this (ranboo and tubbo standing by while tommy ropes him into all of this with lies, sam ignoring the danger he was in and dream actually killing him) but dream has been being subjected to giant amounts of psychological and bodily pain for almost 50 days now (exile lasted around 13-26 days in comparison) on top of prolonged solitary confinement, classified as torture (because it is) by the UN, for about 85 days now (i think? might be more).

sam and quackity put dream in a situation where his only escape from possible death and months of constant agony leading up to it was killing someone who seemed like they had just tried to get him killed, and i think that's the best way to describe the situation + tommy getting ghostbur into this position in the first place.

not considering the fact that ghostbur was a hostage and both sam and tommy acted the worst possible way you could in a situation like that (ignorance and aggression), both of which drove dream to believe reviving wilbur was the only way.

"Ghostbur never murdered him three times lmao." to be fair, tommy murdered dream two times as well, and unlike tommy's two initial deaths which were in war context where both had consented to risking them for their ideals, and the third one being a direct consequence of solitary confinement or "double-celling" (i encourage you to look that stuff up, very dark but also interesting), tommy's killings of him were after he had surrendered and followed all orders given to him, and besides that being a war crime (let's be honest dsmp doesn't have the geneva convention) it was very cruel. so i'd say that was probably more than enough payback for that already.

"It's not something tommy WANTED to do, but something tommy that he NEEDED to do for the safety of the entire server." *something tommy thought he needed to do. i think we all can agree he has a bad habit of blaming everything bad that's ever happened on a single individual. like the moment wilbur got revived he went "wilbur this was all because of you" and i'm like. oh cool you've picked a new scapegoat lmao

i know from tommy's perspective he was trying to kill someone who has hurt him, but looking from dream's perspective he was trying to kill someone who was in a terrible situation, never given a chance to be on the good side and slowly losing hope for recovery + ever getting out of the hell that his life's become.

tommy's perspective is the only one from which dream's threatening in any way, from any other pov dream is just miserable and desperate and clinging on to any hope he can find so he doesn't just let himself die to end the pain. that is incredibly dark, which is why dream being treated as "oh look he's a big bad villain again he never changed" because of this incident rubs me the wrong way. he did change, even if not for the better, he was broken and is actively being broken and no one on the entire server is there to help him, while people like sapnap tell him they'll kill him if he tries to escape from the situation and people like sam stand by.

"genuine proof and logical reasons to believe would break out and hurt him and others." but that's the point of ptsd. it makes you think illogically and be terrified of something without being given present reason to think it'll hurt you. so yeah, as someone who's going through that, i understand tommy in a sense, but i don't think there's anything logical to it.

"He can't feel safe while dreams alive" but tommy can feel safe! there is no reason to kill dream, there has never been any reason to kill dream. that's what recovery from trauma is; being able to move past irrational fears based on past experiences. that is not, and will never be achieved by causing further hurt and destruction.

"purely for self gain, where tommy tried to kill dream for the benefit of himself and others" tommy was acting irrationally and doing something wrong and unnecessary because of his personal feelings and beliefs. the only danger present from dream was him giving quackity the revive book, because oh boy that man would/will do terrible things with it. idk if i'd call getting away from an abusive situation "purely for self-gain", but i digress.

"an abuser killing an innocent to free himself from what happened as a result of hurting so many other people" dream in this situation is the victim. dream was an abuser for two to four weeks, and granted he did terrible, irreversible harm to c!tommy, but at the present moment he's the victim who is trapped with no means of retaliation against those who are hurting him.

he did hurt people, but never even close to such a scale as is being done to him, so you can't call it karma, and even if in some alternate universe he did, no one deserves that kind of treatment. so, to rephrase; "a victim desperate to get away from a hopeless situation and killing an innocent who seemingly tried to help kill him, because his ultimatum in the situation of not being tortured anymore was not met."

"I don't think that excuses tommy wanting to kill dream, but i think it's a lot more justified and a lot more reasonable" all in all, i don't think it's justified at all. from tommy's perspective, the motivation is there, but it's still not "understandable" because it's just plain wrong with no real positives for anyone. dream reviving wilbur and holding ghostbur hostage is justified, and him doing it against ghostbur's wishes is understandable considering his situation, but not right in any way, shape or form.

hope this didn't come off as too aggressive! i'm just invested in the prison arc, and i guess people's bad takes (someone said dream deserved to be tortured more because of this, prime give me strength) kinda got to me so i made that post to kind of contextualize dream's actions, but i appreciate the interest in civil discussion! :]

[aspoonofsugar]

This is dumb but could Eren be playing the part of the antagonist so that Paradis and Marley can join together to kill him?? Idk I think even if they worked together they would just go back to being enemies afterwards. While the conflict with Eren is big I'm honestly at a loss in figuring out how will the war stop since Marley will always view Eldians as devils.

Hello anon!

I have mentioned this possibility in this meta:

As far as your second point goes i.e. Eren’s  plan being more than just the destruction of the world, I think that  there are still two POVs which could give us additional information and  they are Historia’s and Eren’s. Up until the moment we are given them,  everyone can still be hopeful there is something we are ignoring. That  said, the only revelation which could partially change things and which  comes to my mind is that Eren is playing the part of the villain, so  that everyone can unite to bring him down and that he is acting this way  because he has seen Armin, Mikasa or someone else stopping him. This  could also explain why he has been pushing Armin and Mikasa away.  However, even if that were the case, I would say that, without anything  more, Eren would have still gone at it in the worst way possible. Why  couldn’t he simply be honest with at least his closer friends? If he is  playing the villain, why couldn’t he let Armin and Mikasa know? In the  best case scenario they might have been able to avert such a future and  in the worst case scenario they could have still helped him in his plan  in a more efficient way. A lot of victims could have been avoided if at   least a small group of the SC had known of Eren’s plan. They could have let him and Zeke touch each other immediately for example and in this   way Zeke would not have transformed all those people in titans and Levi would not have been wounded. Mikasa, Armin and the rest of the 104th   would not have felt betrayed and they could have acted without having to  process a lot of contradicting emotions.

I think that even with this twist, Eren’s actions can be justified just as much because it won’t explain why he kept all these secrets instead of openly communicating with his loved ones. Of course there could be some other additional explanation, but as for now I struggle to imagine it, so I am going to leave it at that.

I also think that it is important to underline that if this is what is happening, then some things should be explained differently.

For example, there is Eren’s reaction to the child in this chapter:

Eren recognizes him as a person who has gone through experiences similar to his. He has lost his home because of the war and is discriminated and insulted by richer people. Mikasa surprises Eren while he is looking at the child and crying and when she asks him what happened he says that nothing has happened yet. This line implies within the chapter that Eren is struggling with the idea that within his future victims there will be also that child and his family. However, if Eren’s plan is to simply play the villain, then the scene must be explained in a different way. For example, he might be sad for his future death and for the fact he will still have to isolate himself and to be hated. Tbh as for now I prefer the first interpretation of the scene, but I am open to have it revisited in future chapters.

In short, we should not forget that the one you are talking about is nothing more than a theory and that as for now the series is offering a different explanation.

That said, if we assume it to be true and for this plan to work and so for the series to have a somehow positive ending (tbh this could happen even if Eren is being completely straightforward in the chapter), I think that what Pieck says here will be important:

In the current battle we have been shown that Marley is starting to change. Yes, the change is very small and it is definately not enough, but we are clearly shown that it is still there. In the end the Marleyan army listened to an Eldian and acted to save two Eldian kids. They still want to destroy the island and presumibly the situation of the Eldians in the ghettos has not changed. Obviously these two things must change if a future peace has to be reached. That said, we are shown that at least one of the top leaders of Marley cares about his Eldian subordinates:

I am not idealizing Magath. All in all I think he is a person who has a lot of things he should be willing to atone for. He perpetuated a damaging system and let’s be clear he let the Liberio attack happen. If he wants to make it up to his Eldian subordinates who he clearly values, he should work to change their situation. I do not know if Magath will survive this war, but if he does, I think that should be his goal.

If Marley which has been presented as one of the most powerful and influencial countries in the world changes, then there is the chance for the whole world to change, at least a little. What is pratically going to be a global conflict might modify the current global situation. All that said, I agree with you that it is going to be difficult and we might very well have a bittersweet ending where even if some progress is made when it comes to some problems, other problems will still remain.

Thank you for the ask!

[janiedean]

www(.)slate(.)com/articles/arts/culturebox/2017/02/how_sensitivity_readers_from_minority_groups_are_changing_the_book_publishing(.)html This seriously worries me. Tumblr mentality spilling over real life

... yey.

okay, no rewind. first thing, I’m sad to say but tumblr mentality has spilled over irl a long time ago and at this point the only thing we can do is hoping this historical moment passes a long time ago (it had already spilled over the moment I had to read actual articles about people actually asking to remove Ovid from a ***classic literature*** curricula because there are rape scenes in the metamorphoses). whatever.

now about this, the problem is: I do think that if someone writes about X character that belongs to a minority they should do their research before touching the topic if they care to write a good book (if they don’t then it’s another problem entirely but let’s just assume they do), but it has to be a thing you do before you actually write that shit. I absolutely don’t agree with write what you know only because otherwise we wouldn’t be publishing a damned thing and honestly some people also write so that they don’t have to always rehash what they know, but if you’re doing a socially sensitive theme you have to try and do it right - if I decide I write a book with a trans character I can’t do it before I talk to a sizable amount of trans people and I don’t read more than a bit on the subject, same as if I decide to write a book set during idk the vietnam war where the protagonist is a ptsd vietnam veteran I can’t do it if I haven’t read a ton of lit/history books about the vietnam war and talked with a few psychologists or psych students or read something about ptsd. but that’s a thing that’s your duty as the author, if you want to do a serious book about a serious thing. if you just want to dick around it’s another problem entirely but let’s just say that I want to do that, it’s on me to do it, not on my **sensitivity readers**, and anyway a sensitivity reader (which once upon a time should have been called editor but never mind) shouldn’t have that much power, ie: once I read a tumblr post which basically said ‘white writers couldn’t ever write poc characters because they possibly can’t understand [now what POC meant in that sense is an entire other question that was left unanswered of course, bc poc doesn’t mean just black but nvm] but they have a moral obligation to because poc writers aren’t as popular/are hired less than white writers, and even at their best they will never get it right and they’ll fuck the poc characters up but who cares, they have to do it and take the criticism so they realize how it feels to be discriminated’.

now, I personally would never hear any advice from THAT above person if they were my sensitivity reader, because the concept that if I’m white then I can’t possibly get it right means that they already decided my work is going to suck ass even if it’s a masterpiece, and then... fuck that? I mean, I have no moral obligation to write anything I don’t want and with that attitude you basically make sure that someone is never gonna try to branch out. and where were the sensitivity readers when fifty shades came out, and all the subsequent YA porn books where it looks like your ideal man should be a stalker? we just don’t know, but no one cares to have sensitivity readers on ***that*** shit because guess what, it sells.

like, the problem shouldn’t be that you as a writer might offend someone with your writing because that can be because you’re actually offensive or because you’re nabokov and you wrote lolita and people who don’t get the point of it think it’s offensive and that it should be burned. you can’t start writing shit thinking of whether you’re going to offend someone or not with it because otherwise you’ll never get anywhere and you couldn’t touch one single sensitive topic (and on this, I’d appreciate sensitivity readers when it comes to atheist characters but NEVER MIND THAT XDDD /joking). what people should do is encourage potential writers who want to write socially sensitive stuff to talk to other people first and research their topic if it requires it.

What I mean is, let’s do a practical example: let’s take the basic lady chatterley plot (woman has a husband that neglects her both sexually and as a person and finds happiness with another guy who lives just under the husband’s nose). the original lady chatterly is already socially sensible because it has class issues and whatnot, but if you just want to write your torrid romance novel about the white suburban mom falling in love with the new white hot neighbor while her white husband doesn’t notice her existence and they have all the a+ sex in the world you’re perfectly entitled to and like, just get yourself an editor that will tell you if your porn sucks or not. there, this one’s easy.

but, let’s say that you want to have the white suburban mom being a victim of domestic violence instead of having the husband being just neglectful then you should research something about domestic violence and the effect it has on people. it has already become way more socially sensible, because you can’t just shrug it away and the sex she’ll have with her new guy won’t be the same as the sex she used to have with her husband, or alternatively, if the husband’s neglectful only you can have a difference between quick missionary and hot steamy long fucks with the new guy, if he’s abusive and he abuses her sexually you have to have nonconsensual vs consensual which is already a whole new heap of problems.

or, let’s flip it around: the domestic violence victim is a man, the wife is the one abusing him, he falls in love with the new female neighbor next door. this implies that you have to look into female on male domestic violence and research how frequently men aren’t taken seriously especially if the perpetrator is a woman, so you have the above plus this.

or, the victim is a man, the perpetrator is a woman, he falls in love with the male neighbor next door. in this case you have to make sure you know how to write a guy who has to get out of an abusive relationship and have a sexuality crisis if he didn’t know he was also into dudes.

or, all three are male, or all three are women: you have to look into statistics to see how male on male or female on female abuse works, on top of all of the above, on top of you have to know how to write an abuse victim. and, if there’s children involved? you have to deal with that too and you have to make sure the abuser isn’t a complete stereotype or some kind of boogeyman because that kind of story is effective if the perpetrator is someone who doesn’t look out of a twilight fanfic *cough*. if you make any of those characters trans then you have to look into it, too, if you make any of them not white or not your ethnicity you might wanna look into that too, and so on. and if you wanna throw in the lady chatterley class thing then you have to also think about what it means if some of the characters are rich, if others are poor, if they’re all middle class, if they’re all poor, all rich and so on.

what I mean is that the same plot, with some changes, can require zero research beyond what metaphors to not use while writing porn (example one) to a whole fucking lot of research and it’s on you to find people to discuss it with before and then to possibly proofread it before you send it to any publisher so you at least are sure you have a thing in your hands that doesn’t suck or has glaring inaccuracies. at that point your sensitivity reader should be able to give it a look and maybe give you advice which you should be able to reject if you don’t think it sound - for example, let’s say I write the above book in its most socially sensitive approach. like, dunno, let’s say the abuser is a cishet white man, the protagonist is a white ftm trans person who also can’t/won’t transition because of their abusive husband and the neighbor is, dunno, a black cishet woman. this would require a shitload of research should I try to write it. but then let’s say I do it and then I decide to write it from the pov of the abusive husband. which is a legitimate literary choice and I’m taking it with the entire intent of making him an abusive asshole without trying to justify his actions and to pull a less skilled humbert humbert in the world (because I’m not nabokov and no one is, but one could and should be able to write villains as a POV if they want to) and that I made sure to depict him as The Worst. if my sensitivity reader says that it’s offensive that I would write it from that guy’s POV in the first place and nothing else matters, it wouldn’t matter if I wrote the best book of the last ten years, it would still be deemed offensive. and that is a thing that shouldn’t fly - meaning, that if this is just a background check to make sure you don’t do bad representation (which you should have already done yourself anyway) it could have its usefulness, if it becomes a way to say that you can’t write what you want or problematic characters/villains shouldn’t be a POV choice even if you show them to be terrible then we’re straight into censorship land and that... shouldn’t be a thing.

tldr, you didn’t even ask for this entire rant but tbh I’m worried about that possible outcome (especially since that article mentioned roth which on this website is already hated as the champion of the white old man protagonist who wants to bang his students by people who don’t understand shit about either roth or writing in general) more than about checks on whether a thing is offensive or not, which anyway seems to me like is thoroughly ignored if the book sells (see: every other stalker seen as an ideal dude in YAs post-50 shades *sigh*).

[oumakokichi]

I think you've already answered a question like this, but idk. What are some examples showing that Ouma is an empathic person?

Thank you so much for asking this question, because this isright up my alley, honestly.

I always love talking about Ouma’s empathy, because I feelit’s part of what really sets him apart as a character. Of course, I love the “cold,strategic, chessmaster” aspect of his personality, too—but we’ve had manycharacters in DR who are cold and ruthless and terrifying. Junko, Kamukura,Komaeda, and many others all have those traits in common, or at least verysimilar ones.

What’s less common, however, is to have a character who hasall of those traits, and who is also so very human at their core. One of the most fascinating things about Oumain my opinion isn’t the fact that he’s a genius (although he certainly is) orthe fact that he can be absolutely morally grey and downright cutthroat when hewants to be. It’s the fact that he’s all of those things and yet never onceloses his humanity, that aspect of himself which can relate to and understandhis classmates’ thoughts even if he can’t excuse their actions.

Empathy is defined as the ability to understand and shareanother person’s thoughts and feelings. That’s all. It doesn’t necessarily meanforgiving the other person, or even completely agreeing with them—only that it’spossible to understand them and how they must be feeling. Looking at thisdefinition, I don’t think anyone can deny that Ouma is an extremely empatheticcharacter, given all the evidence.

Regardless of his mistakes, and regardless of his villain façade,throughout the entire game we’re provided with plenty of proof that he does understand his classmates, and thathe cares about them deeply in his own way. Unlike characters like Junko,Kamukura, or Komaeda, who were all marked by their inability to truly care orconnect with others, Ouma is someone who cares very deeply, and who inevitablylets it show despite his best efforts to put up a flawless routine.

When his classmates die, he mourns. When they’re in pain, hedoesn’t enjoy it. While I know quite a few people will disagree, I think manyof Ouma’s reactions to his classmates’ death, even the seemingly exaggeratedcrocodile tears, can be taken a lot more at face value than one might think. Often,even the crocodile tear reactions are, I think, his way of trying to mask thepain he feels. After all, his classmates expect that his reactions are a lieanyway. When no one is expecting those reactions to be genuine in the firstplace, it gives him a perfect opening to show how he really feels whilecovering his vulnerability with the usual “that was a lie, though!” routine.

I feel it’s worth noting just how quick he is to express hisemotions whenever they watch someone die, or discover a body. On pretty muchevery occasion, he’s generally either: 1.) extremely loud, shocked, anddistressed (usually with his more exaggerated, crocodile tears sprites), or 2.)very quiet and subdued, often looking either blank or depressed.

It’s clear to see how he sympathizes with the victims ineach trial—in Chapter 2, for example, he even goes as far as to demand the restof the group “apologize to Hoshi,” for letting the killing game continue againeven though they all acted like it was over. He acts really, truly angry, and calls the rest of them “abunch of liars,” though quickly reverts back to pretending to be fine whenKorekiyo turns the question around and asks if those are crocodile tears.

And in Chapter 4, it’s very clear on a reread to see howdeeply Miu’s death shook him, even though he was responsible for it. He looksextremely shaken up by her body discovery, even sweating and looking down as heremarks that “this is a killing game, and these kinds of things happen.”Clearly, no matter how much he tried to convince himself that her death was “necessary”in order to avoid either getting himself killed or the whole group gettingkilled, he couldn’t actually bring himself to justify it deep down.

This sympathy isn’t limited to just the victims, however. IfOuma truly had difficulty empathizing with others, then I think he would behavea lot more like Saionji, whose black-or-white mindset meant she empathizedpretty easily with people who she saw as “good,” but felt that those who were “bad”(usually the culprits) deserved no empathy or grief whatsoever. This mindset isdefinitely a child’s way of looking at things: the idea that sometimes goodpeople do bad things because of circumstances or factors beyond their controldoesn’t occur to someone like Saionji, and she has no interest in exploringthat train of thought.

However, Ouma has no trouble in empathizing with theculprits in ndrv3, either. While he can’t condone murder personally, he can atleast understand why the others do it, even if their inability to stopfrustrates him to no end, particularly when the killing game keeps snowballingbeyond his control. Nonetheless, he stops all his façade and gives Kaede a veryblank, forthright farewell, telling her that she “wasn’t boring.” Similarly,after Kirumi’s execution, he remarks that seeing her will to live on might have“changed his way of thinking about things a little,” and that the will to runaway and live on isn’t a bad thing in and of itself.

And, of course, there’s his reaction to Gonta’s execution, whichis the most notable out of all of them because of just how deeply Ouma was hurtby then. While Ouma’s actions are definitely inexcusable in Chapter 4, there’sno denying that his pained reactions at Gonta’s death were true. Everything,from his tears to his pleas to be executed with Gonta, was a reflection of justhow much it hurt him to throw Gonta under the bus as a sacrificial pawn.Although it was a plan of his own choosing, he very nearly couldn’t stick withit in the end—only Gonta’s request that he live on and “become friends witheveryone” was enough to make Ouma reluctantly agree to keep going.

Had he truly been lying about those tears or that pain,there was no need to keep up the façade in front of Gonta. He had nothing togain by crying in front of him, or by asking to be executed with him. In fact,if he had been even half the villain he pretended to be in the Chapter 4post-trial, he would’ve revealed his “evil villain act” a lot sooner, probablywhile Gonta was still alive to see it. After all, what could’ve hurt moredeeply as a betrayal and rubbed more salt in the wound than telling Gonta allthose things to his face, knowing that there was nothing he could do about it?

His attempt to send Gonta off instead with a “gentle lie”(as in, not telling him that their whole plan in the VR world to “save everyone”had been a ruse from the start) was done out of mercy, not malice. Many of hisactions in Chapter 4 make no sense unless looked at from the perspective thathe was faking his villain routine, and showing his honest reactions insteadwhen he broke down at Gonta’s death. His attempts to take on all the blame, thefact that he asked the others not to blame Gonta in the slightest, and, ofcourse, his dismayed, horrified silence following Gonta’s execution, all showthat he knew he was doing something horrible and awful to Gonta, and that heregretted it and hated himself for it.

This doesn’t only apply to Chapter 4, though. Many of Ouma’sactions in Chapter 5 also make no sense at all unless viewed through theperspective that he was actively trying to help the group, not hurt them.Unlike Komaeda, who made it clear as early as Chapter 1 that he would helpeither the rest of the group or the culprit at any given opportunity, dependingon which one “embodied hope the best,” Ouma exclusively helps the group fromthe shadows, providing hints, clues, and a trail of breadcrumbs, all withouttrying to make it look like he’s helping at all.

He says it himself, quite often: that he does what he does “foreveryone’s sake.” In Chapter 2, he even cheekily tacks on that even if he sayshe’s doing things for everyone’s sake, the others “probably won’tbelieve him, and will just take it as a lie, though.”

Where Komaeda wanted recognition and praise for being “thestepping stone for hope,” Ouma asks for virtually nothing in exchange for his assistance,despite being one of, if not the key reason why the survivors make it outalive. If anything, he often resorted to his villain routine in order to tryand mask his good intentions—such as in Chapter 5, when he handed the electrichammers out to the group, practically on a silver platter, then later hit themall with “the truth of the outside world” in order to try and get rid of theirdesire to go outside and stop the killing game completely.

Had Ouma lacked the ability to empathize with hisclassmates, he also would never have left the clues that he did for his ownmurder in Chapter 5. Absolutely all of those clues were things he verycarefully, deliberately planted, in order to help Saihara and the others reachthe truth. There was no need at all for him to leave Momota’s jacket stickingout from under the press, or tell Momota to flush his own shirt down thetoilet, or to hand the group the camcorder video which became the singlebiggest piece of evidence that a culprit-victim swap had occurred.

All of these clues were left to make sure that the otherswouldn’t actually be executed by Monokuma, if it came down to such a decisionin the trial. Ouma was a master at bluffing, but that’s all it ultimately was:just a bluff. He knew that although it was likely Monokuma wouldn’t be able toexecute anyone if he didn’t know who the culprit was, there was also apossibility that he’d go through with it anyway. And as someone who hated theidea of getting others killed, and who wanted to avoid repeating the samemistakes he made in Chapter 4, he absolutely refused to risk everyone’s liveson that chance, despite his and Momota’s expert bluff. Hence, the clues whichwere otherwise entirely unnecessary to making a real “catbox murder.”

Not least of all, there’s his speech during Momota’sflashback in the Chapter 5 post-trial, in which he reveals that he actuallyhated every single minute of the killing game and resented the people who putthem through it. Had his feelings of distress been limited to the frustrationof losing a game he really, really wanted to win, that would’ve been one thing—butthat’s not the case. Instead, Ouma explicitly says that he wanted to strikeback at the ringleader and the audience in order to “make them all taste truedespair,” and that it would be “perfect revenge for all the people who died.”This line stands out to me, because there was absolutely no reason for him tomention their deceased classmates here unless he really, truly did care aboutall of them.

Again, Ouma’s speech in Chapter 5 is just as genuine as hisbreakdown at Gonta’s death. There’s no real arguing this fact: his motivevideo, found in Chapter 6 almost immediately after, directly supports thisfact. Ouma and DICE were morally against killing; their most important mottowas “don’t kill people,” (just like any good phantom thief) and they wentaround pulling harmless pranks and crimes for fun. Ouma’s motive video isclearly intended as a clue to help not only Saihara, but also the playerthemselves realize that there was a lot more truth hidden in the midst of Ouma’slies than he initially let on.

All of these things truly set him apart as a character forme. He has so many similarities and parallels to a number of other DRcharacters—as I mentioned, Junko and Kamukura are also geniuses, experts atstrategizing and manipulating those around them. When it comes to these two inparticular, I feel Ouma has the added parallel of being highly implied to havesome kind of SHSL Analysis as his talent.

But unlike Junko and Kamukura both, who cannot trulyempathize with those around them, and who turn to inflicting despair on othersin order to seek out an escape from their boredom, what sets Ouma apart themost is the fact that he never actually does this.

Despite how much the word “boredom” is associated with hischaracter, despite the fact that he very likely has a variation of SHSLAnalysis, and despite the fact that Tsumugi wanted to deliberately set him upas an evil, “Junko 2.0” figure during the killing game, Ouma never once wantedto see others suffer or die. In fact, he’s the first character in the entirefranchise to take the idea of “despair” and try to turn it back on the peoplewho made him and his classmates suffer in the first place—the people who wantedto see that “despair” happen the most, in other words.

Ouma is strategic, brilliant, and absolutely cold at times,it’s true. But he’s also incredibly warm at his core, I think. He has achildish quality that the other characters similar to him generally lack (aquality which his official Famitsu profile and Kaede both note makes him “hardto hate”). His idea of seeking an escape from boredom isn’t by hurting others,or making them despair, but by seeking out fun, “interesting” things. Anythingthat surprises him, anything that surpasses his expectations, is automaticallyable to catch his interest. And that’s such a refreshing, interesting trait ina character who tries so hard to convince the characters, the players, and evenhimself that he’s actually ruthless and emotionless.

I’ve talked for long enough probably, so I’ll stop this now,but this was incredibly enjoyable to write. I hope I was able to answer yourquestion! There are so many little hints and clues that Ouma is actually an incrediblycaring and empathetic person; I’ve only just touched on the main points,really. None of this changes the fact that he can be an asshole, to be sure, orthat some of the things he does are inexcusable, but I feel that it’s importantto remember why he does what he does.

One of the key phrases in Umineko (yes, I’m bringing Uminekointo this again, sorry) is “without love, it cannot be seen.” All it means isthat your perspective on absolutely anything is bound to change drasticallydepending on whether you look at it “with” or “without love.”

If you want to view Ouma through the viewpoint of a villainand a horrible person, someone who toyed with everyone and felt nothing aboutit, it’s incredibly easy to do so—especially on a first playthrough. All youhave to do is dismiss all the evidence suggesting he’s a good person, andbelieve everything he or the other characters say about being horrible. But ifyou try looking at it from the other perspective, that he might not be sohorrible after all, your interpretation of the exact same scene can flip aroundalmost entirely, showing new insight into what he might have been thinking orfeeling.

Thank you for stopping by anon, and I’m glad I had a chanceto write about this particular topic!

[horrible-monstrosity]

p5 finally ends its first arc after like five million episodes and it's as weird, disappointing and disturbing as I could ever dream it to be. so they mindbroke the le evil bad guy, and after spending a few days presumably locked up in his house freaking the fuck out because he'd just been mindbroken he shows up at the school and blurts out a confession. Then he tries to "run" because he's completely just freaking the fuck out, and our main girl reeeees at him to not run from his crimes how dare he!! ... except that's exactly what he was just doing, not running, and instead dragging himself in terror to the school to call himself a horrible person in front of everybody because some unknown mind event scrambled his brain and made him like this against his will. And after all that you still feel the need to scream at him for acting like an actual human and being terrified by the actions and thoughts forced on him by an outside entity, even though he came this far on his own. I mean what's it even gonna matter if he runs anyway, everyone heard him confess, the police can easily still catch him- nope, beat him down even more for not acting like a perfect little punish-ee, make him call himself even more terrible, because we said so. I- I don't know.

Probably doesn't help that he was such a cartoony villain I can hardly bring myself to believe he's a human being who actually deserves a punishment for his actions. It's like someone created a strawman as an excuse to have some mental torture fantasy and feel righteous about it. It's the kind of villain you have around to get instantaneously brutally murdered, a death/punishment as equally ridiculous and shallow as the events that made him deserving of it. You can't just have some cardboard-y villain suddenly deserving a three-dimensional, thought out into every little corner of his mind meat-space punishment. Or rather, it's like I can barely believe this sort of ridiculous charicature of a person could exist and take these actions in the way this character did, so his punishment by mental torture and forced guilt ends up feeling paradoxically undeserved due to how "real" it is by comparison. It's just somehow unsettling. Also he's entirely repentant while he's freaking out. It's not like he's like "a ha, I can get away with the crimes I was just forced to acknowledge and confess to if I run now!", was he? I don't now, maybe my brain was melting too much after watching this shit and I missed him return to being a cardboard evil villain for a femtosecond there that totally justified this shit. fuck idk

Oh, and it doesn't get any better after that. For one we have the slurge of "look guys, game mechanics!" moments. First main guy meets the world's least interesting fairy, who looks exactly like any of the other generic fairy monters they've fought in the dungeon already but this one randomly decides it'z a perzona and it lives in main guy's head now. Okay, you expect this to be useful later, right? Nope, before the fairy ever sees a second of use it gets thrown into the succpot along with the super-cool, imposing and iconic-looking Arsene and turned into this useless, pointless little Pot of Greed-looking motherfucker. Which we're then visually informed is totally more powerful than any cool-looking monters we might have actually wanted to see on screen. Okay. It's a completely pointless and underwhelming piece of script but there's totally gonna be people defending it because le "it's in thu game!!!!". Blah.

Then they get the crown, and it... turns into a medal. Because the game had a very thoughtful table of items in it that had no connection to reality- probbly something like, there's a generic but impressive item used to portray treasure, but once you pick it up it has a specific but arbitrary name or description depending on whose it is, without any real connection between the two- and the anime just had to show off all that generic haaaaard work without actually putting in the work to make it actually make any sense. This brings up its own little logical conundrum until the anime uses another logical conundrum to shit itself and cover up the first one. The medal, the cat says, is something as important to evilteach as a crown to a king, or some shit, as though it's an important item to him- given what it is, it's something like a first-place prize he's very proud of winning. Something that was a wonderful memory, maybe something that inspired him on the path to becoming a teacher, before it all became corrupted by greed and ambition. Yeah, that'll really help him, to physically steal the one thing most precious to him that might be his last decent memory and sell it for cash like it's trash- oh wait, never mind, the cat said it's just a mindclone or something. W- what? Yeah, now they just... sold a counterfeit medal to a pawn shop for dough, that's all. Much better. The pacing of this is astoundingly fucked, too. First we're told the crown turned into the medal after the palace collapsed, then we're shown a flashback of that happening that adds absolutely nothing to what we were just told. Then, we're told the medal is some important thing as valuable as a crown so that's why the crown, which represented the thing at the center of the teacher's mind, represented the medal. Except then, after they sold the medal for god damn money, we're told the medal... also just represented the thing that the thing represented... ???? What a confused fucking metaphor. They keep saying one thing and giving it just enough time to sink in before saying it's something else. All that because the game allows you to sell the treasure as arbitrary vendor trash.

Oh yeah, and the kids went to a pawnshop and bought a fucking gun before this, because fuck you. Or rather, because the game has to have these sorts of useless extra attacks- weak early-game moves and support moves that probably use less mana or whatever, because using the impressive persona powermoves all the time while dungeon-grinding would devalue them and make them less impressive. But that's not the case in an anime. The time spent battling is cut down significantly and looks much better if you use it to focus on the reason the franchise exists, the Personas, rather than wasting any of it on ridiculous battle toys. There's a reason that the only part of this part of the battle system that survived in the P4 anime was Yusuke or whoever showing up with katanas and being made a joke of, because these things can go unscrutinized in game mechanics where it's an arbitrary sprite and name attached to whatever but is ridiculous and pointless outside of it. It's like in megucas where Sayaka brought a baseball bat to a witch barrier and Mami basically humored her by putting a shield magic thing on it, so Sayaka swung it around pointlessly while the shield that came out of it was the only thing really doing anything.

And then it adds another layer of stupid- the kids decide to look up a bit-time villain in the collectiveness consciousness palace, fine enough. There's already a fansite full of people begging the phantom thieves to fix problems for them, because uuuuuhhhhhhhhSo they start looking at crimes, read one that sounds not particularly like one they have reason to not respond to, decide to skip it, move on to the next one and OH WHOA WOW IT'S A SOMEONE BEING STALKERED BY THEIR EX! It's a MAN committing MAN-CRIME against WOMAN-VICTIM! Wow we'd better get on this one right now guys. So they go to the collective sewer-subway of the mind, encounter him; he strawmans himself out as le evil man who literally views his ex as property because any human being ever actually thinks like that; they take him out in one shot and he doesn't fight back at all but they try to make it look like it's totally impressive anyway, and he ends it by seeing the light and calling himself an evil man-crimer who should will respekt whammen from now on like it's a fucking Natty comic. What And then the group and the cat decide they'll only ever go after real big-time evil people, which is what they came all the way down here exactly not to do. Why

And thennn they look up Akechi's kawaii instagram feed on the internet because reasons, insult his detective ability for no reason, decide his interest in the Phantoms is totally not because he's detective and that's what he does and call him a stalker instead. Remember, like that stalker just before this that we decided was the worst possible most evil scum of the earth and we need to go take him out now? Except now nobody really cares, because... I don't know, because the target is vague and unspecified, and vaguely implied to be primarily the main guy because he's the leader and he's the one looking at Akechi's snapchats at that moment I guess, and that's not nearly as somethingorotherly as when the victim is definitely and exclusively le femlae. Except theennnnn the girl character says she feeeeels like she's been being stalked, and now we're supposed to care. Because feels. And it's clearly not even because we're supposed to have suspected before this point that someone was actually stalking her, because the "stalker" shows up like one minute later and it's some guy we've never seen before. ok. Why is every little thing just... like this?

And now this next episode starts off by turbo-frontloading exposition about how awfully terrible the next main villain is, and my brain can't take any more of this right now I'm done. bye

... Wait, if the next super-evil-palace guy is the guy who "stole" the stalker's girlfriend, doesn't that potentially... exonerate him? Like, he's keeping people in a dungeon somewhere making art for him, if your girlfriend got caught in that you'd probably be pretty frustrated and go try to figure out what happened to her, right? The request did say "Madarame", didn't it? Wait, if the girl is chained up in the art basement who posted the request? If it was her why the heck was she just whining about her ex and not about Madarame? What the FUCK is happening???