#imagine how conflicted she must have been as she stated

[mistress-light]

Forspoken • (dev. Square Enix)

[seeingivy]

i hate it here

phd student eren x f!reader

**part of my canary mate fic

previous part linked here

--

eren’s doorbell rings an hour early. 

haunting, considering the fact that gabi could barely bring herself to be on time in the first place. he noted that it was a particularly plucky habit of hers – one that took him infinitely long to get used to – but one that he found a very creative solution for. 

he thought it was a little bit dramatic at first, asking her to come pick him up from his apartment at six in the morning. it felt a little less dramatic when she still showed up at seven fifteen, just in time to drive the two of them to the hospital. 

when he swings open the door, it makes complete sense. it’s not gabi at all, which he probably should have been able to guess.

hell would have to freeze over before she made it anywhere on time.

“falco.” eren states. 

“good morning, eren! i brought you a coffee.” 

falco should have no reason to know where he lives, and maybe more keenly, no reason to be at the place that he lives. he notes that despite the absence, gabi’s beaten down honda civic is still half parked in the driveway – and if her tints weren’t so dark – he figured he’d be able to see her half asleep in the front seat too. 

the odd thing about falco was that he always seemed to be unwaveringly nervous whenever eren interacted with him. though he imagined that falco must feel like that most of the time, since he seems to be so overly attached to his tethers that it must have felt debilitating to feel alone.

eren figured it was why he was more antsy than usual. falco was far too attached to the comfort that you and gabi seemed to always provide him.  

“i didn’t realize you knew where i lived.” eren states. 

“gabi told me. she drove me here, she’s just in the car.” 

eren narrows his eyes. 

“let me rephrase. i didn’t realize you would invite yourself to where i live. at six in the morning.”

falco gives him an awkward laugh, sheepishly rubbing at the back of his neck, as eren sighs and gestures for him to walk inside. falco seems relieved in the slightest – his mannerisms irritatingly all too familiar – as he tries to wave at gabi from the car. 

“is she coming?” eren asks. 

“uh…yeah. she’ll… just..just give her a second.”  

eren pauses. 

“she’s just going to sit out there. alone?” 

“yes. she’s…having a weird day. and she’s on the phone.” 

eren shrugs. when is she not having a weird day? 

falco follows behind him, almost dragging his feet across the hardwood floors, before settling into one of the spare chairs at his kitchen table. 

“i wanted to talk to you about something.” falco states. 

“well, i gathered you weren’t coming here for breakfast.” eren jests. 

falco gives him an awkward smile, rubbing the palms of his hands against the length of his thighs, before he – what eren assumes – musters the courage to talk again. 

“i apologize for coming without any notice. i actually hadn’t planned on coming at all, but gabi kind of masterminded this whole plan so i could talk to you. you know how she is.” 

eren fights the urge to smile. 

“all too well. what is it?” 

“i wanted to talk to you again. about my brother.” 

eren sighs. he hated shooting people down like this.

“i already said what i did before. i would love to help you but…” 

“i brought his updated scans. and i cross checked all the materials that y/n gave me, he…he does qualify to participate.” 

eren notes that you had to be in on this plan to corner him. that it probably gave him zero points with you that he hadn't agreed on the first ask.

“i know that he does. my concern is a conflict of interest. i don’t want you to get your hopes up that your brother is going to walk again or not be as tired if he participates in my study, or something.” 

falco pinches his lips in a line. 

“he can walk. and he…he doesn’t get tired, he just doesn’t remember who i am.” 

eren pauses. 

“what?” 

“he got into a car accident almost a month ago. he was fine but they did some surgery since he hit his head. i don’t know if it happened before or after but he doesn’t remember anything from before. he can make new memories, he just…can’t remember the old ones. there’s nothing that they can really do for him.” 

falco places a manilla folder on the table, filled with sets of translucent scans, that eren’s keen to look at – for curiosity sake. 

there was no way that he could accept falco’s brother as a participant. not when falco was so deeply involved, which meant that gabi was too. by proxy, he was sure that some protective instinct would kick into your hard drive as well if you were as involved as he thought – which meant that any mistake that he made would be credited to him and him alone. 

and he would get caught in the crossfire from three directions. 

“it’s the one region that you have missing. and he’s one of the younger ones in the participant pool so it could give you more data regarding age and effects of the treatment.” 

eren squints his eyes. 

“how many times did gabi make you rehearse that one? 

“twice. i also wrote it down on my hand in case i forgot.” falco responds, lifting his hand to reveal the black ink on his palm. 

eren smiles, flipping in between the scans to the detailed report at the end. 

“i’m sure she’s waiting in the car to give me a lecture.” eren states. 

“as backup. she has one more card up her sleeve.” falco states. 

“i’m sure this is a great use of her time. spending her paid work hours to find ways to coerce me.” eren states. 

falco smiles. 

“she’s just very passionate about the subject. she really wants to see a patient in the younger age pool.” 

eren laughs. 

“i’m sure that she is.” eren states. 

eren places the scans back down on the table, utterly intrigued and somewhat hopeful, but able to cross the mark. 

he couldn’t give false hope to someone that he knew or irreparably break an interest in research that eren personally had no affinity for. 

“falco, i would love to but…” 

“can i ask you a question?”

eren leans back, crossing his arms across his chest, before giving him a nod. 

“do you really believe in your hypothesis?” falco asks. 

“what?” 

“do you really think that stimulating the neurons enough can get them to kind of kickstart and start functioning again?” 

“in theory. there’s promising research behind it. i certainly didn’t come up with it out of nowhere.” eren responds. 

falco nods. 

“i know it seems like i’m talking this very lightly. just suggesting my brother participate because i know that he qualifies for the experiment and he just got injured but…but trust me.” 

falco pauses. 

“erwin has a lot of faith in you. gabi knows how much work you’ve put into this, how you…you love to work with patients and people. even y/n vouched for you. the only reason i want him to participate is because it’s your study. and i trust you too.” 

eren restrains himself for asking more about the gleaming recommendations that everyone seemed to give him. though, he was curious about some more than others. 

“i appreciate that. and that you think the study will work, it’s...” eren starts

“i’m just asking you to give him a chance. i would never think to blame you when you’re the one doing us a favor by letting him participate. and even if it doesn’t work, i would only be grateful to you. i know you can’t might not understand what it’s like to have someone not remember you but…” 

all eren can think about is sweet golden eyes going cold. that the main thing that made eye contact or looking into the eyes of someone he loved warm was that they were softening to him in recognition.

unbeknownst to falco, of course, eren knew the feeling all too well. it’s the only reason that, on impulse, he was inclined to say yes. the despeate look in falco's eyes.

eren imagined that he looked the same when he feels so helpless too. 

“okay. i’ll bring him in for all the screening questionnaires and preliminarily accept him for now. if i see any glaring red flags that bar him from participation, i will remove him for his own safety.” 

falco’s eyes light up. 

“really?” 

“you made a striking case. gabi’s played her cards well.” 

“oh thank god. and she didn’t even have to use her last one. i’m going to go get her.” 

eren sits puzzled as falco basically jumps out of his chair, screaming out the window of the kitchen into the quiet calm of the neighborhood. his hollering is reciprocated with three honks.

and it makes complete sense to him what gabi had intended to do when she wounds up at the door. with falco’s brother on the doorstep. 

eren takes the quiet second that falco’s ushering him in to berate her. 

“you were going to guilt trip me by watching his brother not remember him in front of my face?” eren whispers. 

“you’re a softie. i knew i wouldn’t have to do all that.” gabi responds. 

“then why did you bring him?” eren asks. 

gabi gives him a peachy, almost innocent smile. 

“insurance! which speaking of…i have another proposition to discuss with you.” gabi responds. 

--

right on the dot at eight am, there’s three consecutive knocks on your cubicle. 

you look up from your laptop to find eren, accompanied with a set of glasses perched on the bridge of his nose and his red-rimmed eyes staring at you. 

the glasses were an abnormal sight; from the amount of time you’ve spent glaring at him, you’ve noted that he almost always gives preference to his contacts. the frames never become less unsettling, but it’s only because they’re almost always accompanied with the red eyes. 

like a vampire. 

your split second pause at his appearance causes him to knock again, but this time he opts to push his head closer to you as he looks over at your laptop screen in efforts to see what’s causing the delay. you can feel the slight edge of panic – of the canary mate website tab open all the way on the right – as you slam your computer shut and glare at him. 

“can i help you, eren?” you ask. 

“i highly doubt that you would have any special skills that i would need to request.” eren states. 

you pinch your lips into a line. so sharp, even in the morning. 

“then why am i being graced with your presence so early in the morning?” you ask. 

eren rolls his eyes, scrunching his nose up in the slightest, as he pulls out his phone. 

eren doesn’t have the same problem that you do – as he took his due diligence of keeping his online pen pal a secret very seriously – which in his case, included muted notifications every time he set foot into the research lab. 

connie was nosy, jean was irritating, and you were always around. his efforts were merely precautionary measures to protect himself and his sweet secret exactly as it was – a secret. 

“it seems that my horrendous car luck has passed on to gabi.” he states, as slides onto the screenshot in his images. 

you snort. 

“you’re like a virus.” you state. 

eren glares. 

“if only it had passed on to you instead of her.” he responds. 

you roll your eyes, before swiveling over to face him properly. 

“can you get to the point? you have a really roundabout way of talking. it feels like you can never get to your point, eren.” 

it was a low blow. the exact criticism that eren had received from erwin earlier this morning at the lab meeting. 

“something that must have rubbed off on me from you, i’m sure. next thing i know, i’m going to start leaving spelling errors in my grant applications.” eren seethes. 

you seethe. eren always knew how to dish it back. you were convinced that he only listened during lab meeting to hear the criticism you received – just so he could throw it back in your face later. 

and find a way he did. 

“can you just get to the point, eren?” you ask. 

eren hands his phone over to you, the screenshot of four pinned locations on the map. 

“i have been made aware that you have a preference for carpooling in the morning with either falco or sasha.” 

“that’s correct.” 

“between our research team, only two of us possess vehicles now. we marked out all the locations and it seems that it is more time and cost effective if falco arranges his ride with gabi and i arrange my ride with you. i live two streets down from your apartment.” 

you give him a sly smile. 

“i thought you highly doubted that there were any special skills that i could provide to you.” 

“driving is hardly a special skill.” eren retorts. 

“it is when you don’t have a car. and need to rely on someone else to give you one.” you goad. 

eren sighs. you swivel back towards your computer, slowly opening up the computer and quickly shutting the tab all the way on the right and pulling up the maps. 

“i suppose i have to oblige. and while it is time and cost effective, there is a third, and more superior motive, for falco and gabi.” you respond. 

eren raises his eyebrows. 

“there is?” 

you scoff. 

“are you blind? they like each other. riding together means they get more alone time.” 

eren rolls his eyes, as leans properly into your cubicle this time, hunching over the back of your chair to be level with your line of sight. you note that his cheek is inches away from brushing yours – that the smell of his cologne is very strong – as he offers the address to his apartment. 

“that’s hardly a superior motive. cost and time are more important than something as frivolous as that.” 

“it’s not frivolous to them. though, i understand it can be hard to relate to when you don’t understand the feeling.” 

eren scoffs. 

“and you do?” 

no you don’t. at least not right now. at least not in a way that people understood anyways. 

“i might.” 

“no you don’t. connie talks, far too often. if you had a partner, we’d all be aware of it. and knowing you, he’d be just as irritating as the blonde that sasha brings around.” 

you quickly type in the address that eren provided, as you note the route from your street to his. 

“niccolo isn’t irritating.” 

sometimes he was. 

“is he not the reason you spilled coffee all over yourself two weeks ago?” eren asks. 

“no. he wasn’t.” you state. 

according to sasha and niccolo, he was. 

“irritating is the wrong word for it. he’s an…acquired taste. i don’t wish ill towards him at all, it’s just that his demeanor can be a little much as time. as is sasha’s.” eren starts. 

you seethe. did he really think you wouldn’t report back to them with every word that he said? 

“they’re just –” 

“i doubt the sincerity of their enthusiasm all the time. can someone really be so lively at all times? though in my case, that most definitely reflects more on me as a person than it does on them.” 

you pause. you pause because you’d had that same exact thoughts – not once or twice, but almost on a daily basis. it’s just that it was coming out of eren’s mouth now.  

you pause because eren does, almost frozen at your side, inching towards brushing his cheek against yours, as he shoots up, standing straight behind you. eren clears his throat, entirely dismissing the comment that he just shared, as he sticks his hands in his pockets. 

“i can walk to your house so you can avoid the drive. i usually pick up coffee from play in the mornings so i can either compensate you for the gas through a latte or just cash.” 

you can’t help but snort. 

“are you offering to buy me coffee?” 

you squint your eyes at him. 

“were you dropped as a kid? you can’t just accept the offer as it is?” eren asks. 

there it was. he was back to normal. 

“i’ll take the latte. but i’ll drive you there. it’s supposed to rain. wouldn’t want you to look unprofessional.” 

eren glares. 

“that’s more time required together than necessary.” 

you roll your eyes. did he need to be so persistent in his hatred of you? 

“that’s more of a hazard for me than it is for you. because of your car virus. and your godawful personality, of course.” 

eren gives you a pinched smile. 

“i appreciate it, y/n. i’ll see you tomorrow morning.” 

there’s barely even a hint of earnestness in his voice. 

the message pops up almost the second he leaves. 

[busstopbilly]: I hate it here. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: so you’ll go to secret gardens in my mind? 

[busstopbilly]: That was a statement. Not a quote from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: did your sister like the album :D 

[busstopbilly]: She prefers the standard edition. I like the Anthology. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: because you are a poet trapped inside the body of a finance guy? 

[busstopbilly]: You could say that. 

[busstopbilly]: Except, I hate finance. 

[busstopbilly]: Not too keen on poetry. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: hilarious

[lizontopoftheworld]: but really. what is it? 

[busstopbilly]: My sister is visiting. It seems that I poured her micellar water (whatever that is) into my contacts case instead of the solution last night. It seems whatever it is, it has gone to my brain and caused me to overshare – particularly too much – with one of my peers. That and the fact that two of my peers showed up to my house at six in the morning with a proposition that I’ve hesitantly agreed upon, though I’m not sure if I did the right thing. 

[busstopbilly]: It’s definitely not water, by the way. It burned. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: OH EW 

[lizontopoftheworld]: GROSS

[lizontopoftheworld]: micellar water is like makeup remover. so it definitely had chemicals and stuff in it…

[lizontopoftheworld]: are you blind :O 

[busstopbilly]: Quite the contrary. I just wore my glasses instead, though my eyes are slightly pink still. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: glasses :O 

[busstopbilly]: ? 

[lizontopoftheworld]: I am slowly collecting an image of you in my mind based off of things that you have told me. green eyes and glasses (sometimes). that’s all i’m going on. 

[busstopbilly]: So close. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: and we all overshare. who gaf they probably won’t even remember. and i’m sure you made the right decision. 

[busstopbilly]: Oh trust me. She’ll remember what I said. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: wallflower…? 

[lizontopoftheworld]: :D 

[busstopbilly]: Shut up. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: remember when u had a crush on wallflower and stalked her entire life before she came to ur program 

[lizontopoftheworld]: lol 

[lizontopoftheworld]: heheheheheheheh

[lizontopoftheworld]: BRO RESPOND I SWEAR TO GOD 

[busstopbilly]: I don’t have a crush on her anymore. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: yes yes i recall im just saying its FUNNY 

[busstopbilly]: I don’t see the humor. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: i’m an acquired taste. 

[busstopbilly]: I’m well aware. 

[busstopbilly]: Just my type actually. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: lame. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: i basically set that one up 

[busstopbilly]: And you still liked it. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: true 

[busstopbilly]: :)  

--

focus group is the best day of the week. 

the focus group is simple; you, eren, falco, and gabi interview all the participants every week and monitor their baseline levels and compare them as you continue through the treatment.  

it starts out that way, but mostly ventures into all four of you staying late to converse with the patients. it’s outside of the parameters, but something that almost everyone – the group of you included – turn your nose away from because it gives the patients something other to do than just sitting around alone when you leave. 

“do you have a boyfriend, gabi?” 

nanaba loved to get up close and personal. 

it was something that you noted the first day you met her, when she lingered around after the focus group to ask you why you seemed to look at eren with such disdain. a rather polite way of asking why the two of you were glaring daggers at each other, but more keenly, something she was clearly nosy about but ready to soothe away with the age old wisdom she seemed and wanted to impart in every sentence. 

“the real question is do you want a boyfriend? i’m sure that we could find one for you tomorrow.” 

shadis loved to get up close and personal too. a nicer way to describe meddling, but you knew that he was always well-meaning at heart. 

and at least he was more in touch with your suspicions about falco and gabi then eren was. 

“are you going to go get me one from the store?” gabi asks, earning her a smile from eren, who was glued to the wall and finishing checking off all the signatures from the paperwork. 

“why would i need to go to the store? i have a perfectly normal one for you right here.” shadis responds, pointing to falco who goes immediately pink in the face. 

“oh, now you’re just embarrassing him.” marco states. 

marco bodt was the youngest of the group and the final edition to this pool after falco’s brother. 

he was barely twenty-one and with irreparable damage to the right side of his body that impaired most of his motor functions. a similar mechanism to colt, marco was crushed under the metal of his car on the way to the grocery store – he may have survived but he was never the same after. 

and seemingly because of it, filled with an over-exerting amount of kindness. but you have a hunch that he was just always like that. the pacifist. 

you walk over to the end of the table to where colt is sitting, rather stifly against the back of his chair, with his hands folded directly on the table. the first three focus group he had been to were admittedly overwhelming, but it felt like he was having a hard time adjusting to the dynamics there. 

especially after he failed almost all the diagnostic tests that were done after the treatment. he was always more receptive at the start, but a quiet shell by the time you were all done. 

falco didn’t take it very well. 

“hi colt.” 

he gives you a halfhearted smile, his eyes still trained on falco and gabi arguing a few feet away from the two of you, the fight being mediated by eren and his plastic clipboard. 

“hi y/n.” he responds. 

“how was the session today?” 

colt sighs. 

“standard.” 

“you know, if you would prefer to do this one on one, i can always arrange for you and me to discuss what’s been going on at another time.” 

colt shakes his head. 

“that would worry falco. if i wanted to hide something from him.” 

despite not being able to remember him, it seemed to be the only thing that colt cared about. and one of the only reasons that you were convinced that he was still in there – that you could get him back if you tried hard enough.  

“well, we’re not worrying about falco. my main concern is you and what makes you comfortable, so if you prefer to answer questions about everything that’s been going on without him present, i can work something out.” 

you pause. 

“without him knowing.”  you add. 

colt gives you a halfhearted shrug, but you can tell that the idea is simmering behind his almost hazel eyes. 

“i can tell he gets upset when i don’t get the questions right. i try harder than i should to remember but i’m unsure if that messes up things on your ends if i…i feel this pressure when i’m doing all your tests.” 

you look across the room, locking eyes with eren who seems to already be watching, as you gesture for him to join you. and he obliges, quick and quiet as falco and gabi are still being harassed by the lot of them, and crouches down. 

“i want to remember my brother. probably even more than him because every interaction i have makes me feel like everyone has something over me, but i just…i just can’t.” 

eren gives you a questioning look. 

“everything okay?” eren asks. 

“i was just discussing with colt here that maybe we could ask his screening questions in private. sans falco and gabi maybe.” you murmur. 

“i see. anything that makes you comfortable, colt.” eren offers. 

eren’s swift with it, leaning against the chair between the two of you, and with a surprisingly soft smile. 

“i want you to do this to the best of your ability. eren and i just want to do this in a way that makes you feel comfortable.” you offer. 

eren seems to give you a nudging look, green eyes beaming into yours, as he catches the hint. 

“every time it doesn’t work, it gives me a better idea of where to try next. i’ll get the right spot eventually and while it feels like the work is exhaustive right now, it’s narrowing down what’s going to work for you. please know that everything that you do, even the mistakes, tell me and y/n a lot about where we can move forward with this.” 

colt sighs, almost like he’s taking a thoughtful second to consider it over.

“i just hate disappointing him. he wouldn’t know…if i wanted to do it with just the two of you?” colt asks. 

“not a word.” you affirm. 

“don’t tell gabi either. they’re basically attached at the hip – i doubt she would be able to keep it in with the big crush she has on him.” colt jokes. 

you smile, reaching to elbow eren in the side. he rolls his eyes, giving you a steely glare, as you turn back to colt. 

“eren doesn’t see it. i have now proven him wrong by the majority.” 

“about falco and gabi? oh, it’s obvious. he’s like bright pink every time they talk to each other.” colt jokes. 

you turn to eren and smile. 

“eren’s just painfully oblivious.” you state. 

eren gives you a snide smile before glaring at you in full. you swear that he’s fighting the urge to smile when you laugh at him. 

“something the two of you have in common.” colt responds. 

you give colt a confused look, which finally breaks eren’s silence and makes him laugh, as he gestures for the two of you to join him back at the main group. eren can tell that gabi and falco are being teased enough, the two of them bright pink in the cheeks like colt mentioned, as he leans against gabi. 

“alright. we’re all done for the day.” eren states. 

“as if. we just started talking about this in seriousness. don’t be ridiculous, eren.” nanaba states. 

“don’t be a hard ass. you can stay for thirty more minutes.” shadis adds. 

eren gives them a smile. 

“while i would love to, i do fear the resident doctor will, for a better lack of terms, be a hard ass and make us leave.” 

they all groan. 

“not forester.” nanaba groans. 

floch forester was the resident physician on wednesdays. the only downside to focus group was making his acquaintance every week, checking through the charts under his jurisdiction and checking out with him at the end. 

it was hard to pick one thing about him that was irritating. he was exceedingly arrogant when he explained things to you and eren – always giving the impression that he believed the two of you were incompetent idiots who knew nothing about the topic at all. or just an irritating and agitating prick otherwise. 

“i heard him call y/n sweetheart last week.” colt mentions. 

there’s a resounding group of gasps as they all turn their heads to you, marco and nanaba’s eyes nearly boggling out of their heads as they basically gesture for you to confirm. 

“he was explaining the behavioral scales to me that we use in the grading. i told him there was no need and he responded by saying it’s not a problem sweetheart.” you offer. 

you shoot colt a glare, which he only responds to with a smile, as they all break out into their rather melodramatic responses. 

“we should have him fired, the prick why is he talking down to her like she didn’t have a job similar to this before?” shadis asked. 

“that’s inappropriate. you wouldn’t see him calling eren sweetheart. this is ridiculous.” nanaba adds. 

“if it makes you uncomfortable, i’m sure you could report it to someone, y/n.” marco offers. 

you laugh, waving your hands at them. 

“that would be unnecessary. i didn’t think much of it and i really don’t see him that often anyways.” 

eren turns to you and glares. 

“you see him every week. if he’s going to make weird comments, you don’t have to put up with it.” 

“i’d rather avoid the hassle.” you state. 

eren rolls his eyes, firmly crossing his arms over his chest. 

“it’s not a hassle. it’s borderline harassment. and with a guy like that, you have to nip things in the bud.” 

you roll your eyes. 

“it’s not that deep. every time i interact with him, someone is there with me. i’m a big girl and i can ignore it.” 

eren sighs. 

“you might be a big girl but you have to know you’re not the only girl he does that to. and if he’s not doing it to anyone else now, he definitely will later. you could just check him and put him in his place now. or better yet let me do it.” 

you shake your head. if there was one thing floch hated, it was eren telling him what to do. it would be better taste to nip that argument in the bud before it happened. 

“it’s fine, eren. if it escalates into something weird, i’ll tell you myself.” 

eren gives you a questioning look, almost like he doesn’t believe you, before eren turns back to the group of them. 

“i have a sneaking suspicion you won’t.” 

you give him a glare, before shaking him off and turning back to the group of them. eren seems to take the hint and follows your suit. 

“as always, y/n is a boring topic of conversation. i would love to go back to what we were discussing earlier. i was unaware of these predilections gabi and falco shared.” 

eren smiles, turning to where gabi is now giving him an irritated look while falco looks at you with pleading eyes. you shake your heads as shadis and nanaba return to talking about the beauties of love and relationships. eren waits for the conversation to get rowdy enough to the point where they’re arguing, which gives the two of you the time to slip away and turn in the documents to the front desk. 

“i can bring your stuff down if you want to bring the car around. i can also go get the car for you if you’re scared to walk in the dark.” eren offers. 

the kindness is strange. but you can tell it’s only transactional so he would have an excuse to fight with floch. 

“it’s barely sunset.” you state. 

eren shrugs. 

“there could be perverts in the parking lot.” 

the two of you note an unmistakable head of red hair walking down the hallway and internally groan. 

“i’d argue that they’re actually inside.” you murmur. 

you note that eren smiles as floch walks up to the two of you, his fists deep in his white coat as he gives you an almost synthetic smile. 

“jaeger. y/n. always a pleasure to see you. how are my patients?” floch asks. 

“requesting a new doctor. desperately.” eren states. 

you note that floch’s eye twitches, but still offers a fake peachy smile. 

“you have an interesting sense of humor, eren.” 

“i wasn’t joking.” eren deadpans. 

you can’t help but smile, as floch turns over to you. 

“and how are you, sweetheart?” 

“i’m fine.” 

eren signs, almost exasperatedly at your side, before talking. eren had an issue with keeping his thoughts to himself. but this was the first time that it worked in your favor. 

“it seems that we’ll be requesting a new doctor to work with too.” eren states. 

“and why is that?” 

“you’re borderline harassing my co-worker.” 

“harassing?” 

“she has a name. it’s y/n. it would be best practice for you to use it.” eren states. 

floch rolls his eyes, as he signs off on the paperwork at the top of the deck, that eren snatches from him just as fast. 

“she’s never corrected me.” floch states. 

“because i doubt you let her get a word in. she introduced herself to you as y/n. you should refer to her as such.” 

floch puts his hands up, almost jokingly like he’s guilty, and you can’t help but sneer at him. 

“sue me. i’m sorry, y/n. i will refrain. unless things ever change between us, of course.” 

you turn to eren, giving him a disgusted look, as he gestures for you to leave. you take the hint as such, hopping down the stairs and leaving the two of them to it as you rush towards the car. and two flights down, you feel the familiar buzz in your pocket. 

[busstopbilly]: I still hate it here. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: boo 

[lizontopoftheworld]: same lowk. everyday i become a bigger misandrist 

[busstopbilly]: Tell me about it. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: random tangent

[lizontopoftheworld]: how is your mom 

[busstopbilly]: The other day she was having a difficult time. Called me by my dad’s name.

[lizontopoftheworld]: ….

[lizontopoftheworld]: ouch

[busstopbilly]: Yeah. It is what it is. There’s some good days where she tries to tell me storeis she’s never told me before. It’s weird to think that they won’t be there at some point. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: yeah i’ve been thinking about that a lot. if it’s better if it goes all at once or if you…have to watch them go away

[lizontopoftheworld]: what do you think? 

[busstopbilly]: Biased, but watch them go away. It’s hard to have a good day sometimes and a bad day the next. My sister actually came to stay with me since she was having a rough time kind of dealing with the up and down. Emotionally. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: :( 

[lizontopoftheworld]: it’s hard when you’re a teenager

[lizontopoftheworld]: is your moms condition genetic? 

[busstopbilly]: Yeah. 

[busstopbilly]: It’s scary to think about sometimes. 

[busstopbilly]: I don’t want to forget you. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: lucky for us, every interaction we’ve ever had has been perfectly preserved. i’d read them all to you until you remembered. 

[busstopbilly]: You stole that from the Notebook. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: the thought still counts >:( 

[busstopbilly]: I can make an exception. Everything counts with you. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: i really hope you don’t forget me either. 

[busstopbilly]: Well, I imagine that it would be insanely hard to do that. You’re basically scored on my heart, you know? 

[lizonotopoftheworld]: you stole that from me before you 

[busstopbilly]: The thought still counts. 

[lizontopoftheworld]: yeah yeah i'll make an exception or whatever

[lizontopoftheworld]: i will note that your impeccable memory of all the cheesy movies i have made you watch is a great sign :) 

[busstopbilly]: Very hopeful but I’ll have to agree on this one.

you look up from your phone when you hear the crunching of gravel, accompanied by eren walking up to the car and greeting you with a wave. you shove your phone in the pocket and abandon the conversation. 

“any pervert encounters?” 

“just you.” you state. 

“I could say the same.” eren responds, as he walks around to the side door and crawls into your front seat.

--

next part linked here

an: this is setup. I also haven't written in forever so its bad. sorry.

taglist: @invisible-mori @multiplefandomthings @chericos @wheredidmycrowngo @chaoticpxnda @aizzon @stuffeddeer @butterfly-skinnylegend @najaemism @hellokitty-doll @constanciandrea @iblamesusy @jaegersdiary @f4irygard3n @misadear @fell-4-u @coyloves @sobbangchan @you-always-made-me-blush @th0tformikasa @yell0wdreams @itzmeme @elliesbabygirl @miniaturemartian @differentrunawayperson

[karuuhnia]

TF2 Chapter 7 - Karuuhnia's analysis

Christmas came early for the TF2 fandom this year, didn't it? (Well, it really came 7 years LATE if we're completely honest lol)

It was an emotional rollercoaster and had a happy, wholesome ending and conclusion for both the mercs and for us. Several mysteries from the past comics were resolved.

And you know me: I love to overthink and overanalyze every bit of lore and story that I can get my fingers on lmao

So here's my essay:

A) Solved mysteries

1. What the Administrator was planning

It turns out: There WAS no evil plan of world domination or whatever. Just pure hatred for a man who ruined her life - apparently. It's been so long she doesn't even remember the reason. But the thought of revenge was enough to fuel her every life choice.

And to think, it all could have ended in the 1850s already - if it weren't for smart-ass Gray Mann and his narcissistic tendencies to brag about his knowledge and plans. (How he himself figured this out is never explained.)

He was the one who introduced the Administrator to Australium in the first place, around 1850ish. If he hadn't told her that it could bring people back from the dead and prolong life, the senseless Gravel War would have ended with Blutarch's and Redmond's natural deaths.

Well, on the other hand we must be glad that the conflict didn't go on even longer.

Since Dell stated that none of his family members ever went into the room where Zepheniah was kept, the Administrator must have build all of that herself, right? That would certainly explain why it looks so crude and consumes so much Australium. I mean, look at this construction and then compare it to the one Dell built:

The Mark 5 machine gave her ~6 months of life for just a tiny flask of Australium. Imagine what would have happened if one of the Conaghers had improved Zeph's machine as well! She could have kept the zombiefied corpse in a living nightmare for many centuries more instead of burning through tons and tons of Australium so quickly. Good thing it didn't come to that.

2. Who helped the Administrator

Well, we didn't get a clear answer, but I think it's safe to conclude now that it was the Administrator's elite merc teams A-E that obtained all the Australium during the 6 months Miss Pauling and the TF2 team went off the grid. Which only further proves that the Administrator did not really care for Pauling at all and only came to her and her "team of rejects" as a last resort, after everything else had failed.

It's really heartbreaking how much Pauling admired her and wanted to be her trusted second-in-command while the Admin apparently never even invited her to the secret HQ. Nobody there even KNEW of Team Fortress after all. It was such a relief to see Pauling let go in the end and choose a free life instead.

3. Scout's second chance

Well, not really a mystery here, but I really like how Scout had an epiphany that there were other girls out there that would like him as he was and moved on from Miss Pauling. There was no heartbreak, no animosity, no rejection. They are still friends and support each other! I love it!

And then Scout even saved all of humanity by having sex with several women so that God wouldn't have to destroy the world! What a great, selfless guy he is!

I really love Spy and Scout after the time skip. No more bickering, no more annoyance, no more mean comments, just kindness. Spy is also so sweet to his grandchildren! ADSGFSDAF

I hope they all remain in contact and on good terms. Because let's not forget: Scout's health isn't good and he even has a confirmed death date. Which is only 8 years into the future of 1979.

All of his orphaned children would still be minors at that point. When it comes to that I hope Spy and Scout's Ma can take care of their grandchildren.

4. What Charles Darling and Maggie were planning

Darling stated he wanted to obtain Australium in order to make his rare animals immortal and in return he would get Saxton's company back.

The way Maggie always reacted to Saxton led me to believe she knew Darling was planning something ELSE and she felt bad for not telling Saxton and having to betray him in the end:

But turns out, I probably just misinterpreted Maggie's facial expressions. She looked so sad because she loved going on adventures with Saxton again and just hated the thought that he'd go back to Mann Co. afterwards.

I'm very happy that in the end Saxton let go of the company and spent the rest of his days punching wild animals with his true love! (Although he might have started a war again, now between Reddy and Bidwell lol)

B) Unsolved and new mysteries

However, as much as I loved the last chapter, I feel there are still a lot of things that were never cleared up or adequately explained.

So after re-reading every single comic and update page these are some other things I still find inconclusive:

1. Olivia Mann's mother

Not really that important to be fair, but still: Is she really the biological daughter of the 150 old mummy Gray Mann? If so, who is the poor woman who… mated with him and where is she now?

Or was Olivia adopted, abducted or grown in a lab? Well, at least she gets to live a happy and free life now and is provided for by the dad who stepped up. Good on you, Saxton!

2. Darling's knowledge

Back to Darling real quick: Why DID Maggie start working for her nemesis?

HOW did Charles Darling learn about Australium's properties and the Administrator's history?

There is also the fact that the Mann triplets' mother was a Darling!

These things were never brought up again! Whyyyyyyyy?????

3. What was all the set-up with the TFC mercs about?

The TFC mercs made several ominous remarks that made us believe there was more to them:

Both Virgil and Greg were trying to say something interesting, but then got cut off before the revelation. And especially TFC Heavy talked about dying as if it was an immediate danger to all of them. Sure, they were old, but they were still going strong, being able to kill all of the Admin's elite teams after all.

4. Fred's destiny (and identity?)

In Chapter 6 Spy disguised as Fred, trying to trick Virgil. After being found out, the two had this conversation:

Spy managed to impersonate Fred really well apparently. That means he must have studied Fred's personality, mannerisms and way of speaking before he went to Virgil. That also means he must have spent quite a while talking to and studying Fred. Did he and Sniper capture and interrogate him? But more importantly: What happened afterwards? Tbh, they probably just killed him off-screen after learning what they needed.

Because I no longer believe that Fred was Dell's father, as much as that sucks. It would have made for a great plot point and possible conflict within the team.

But Fred obviously had no idea about anything related to Australium or the immortality machines.

Since later on in Chapter 7 Dell says that neither his grandfather, his father nor he himself ever set foot in that basement, we can conclude that they all knew that the Administrator was hiding something nefarious down there. Which also means they WORKED for her and thus must have also worked on her immortality machine. So it makes no sense that Fred would not know anything about that if he really were Dell's father.

That still leaves us with the question: Why was young Fred in the photo with child Dell? Or WAS this guy even Fred?

I mean, a lot can happen in 40ish years between those two pictures:

But my new headcanon now is: These two are not the same person. TFC Medic had to replaced by our beloved Dr. Herbert Ludwig (still not over that name btw lmao), so who says the original TFC Engie wasn't replaced too at one point? TFC Heavy was very obviously worried about his friends dying one after the other.

Virgil said he knew Fred since before the war. So maybe after Dell's father died/left the team, Virgil told TFC Heavy about his old comrade Fred who also happened to be an Engineer. And only then Fred became part of TFC.

But as I said, that's just my headcanon. In reality it's probably just an inconsistency over the many years of convoluted lore. lol

5. Soldier's cave, covered in Australium

In A Cold Day in Hell Soldier and Zhanna have the following conversation:

First it's a stink-barn, then he claims to be homeless. But in Chapter 7 Heavy suddenly says that Soldier lives in a cave.

And it turns out there is tons of Australium in that cave! Now of course I wonder: When did Soldier move into that cave and where is it located? We were always told that Australium only exists in Australia. But I highly doubt this American patriot owns a cave in Australia. Also, how is it possible that the Admin and the elite mercs never managed to find this cave? Did they just not bother to look in America because all known Australium is in Australia?

So in return, does that mean that Australium is NOT exclusive to Australia after all? If so, there could still be hidden caches of the stuff anywhere on Earth. At least the Admin and Gray Mann are no longer around to collect it and Miss Pauling does not look for it anymore either. The only one who still has an interest in it is Charles Darling. Him again...

6. Soldier with the photo of the Mann family

Quick reminder: This is the only version of the family photo we'd seen up until this point:

But when Soldier and Merasmus are held by the mafia and the wizard asks him why he needed so much money, Soldier pulls out an intact, unteared photograph of the Mann family!!!

His thumb conveniently covers up the still unknown person standing in the middle. How did Soldier obtain this photo? How does he even know who everyone is, considering he's, well, Soldier?

Could he have any relations to the unknown person in the middle? And why DOES he need so much money (granted, it was only like 20 $ in the end, but still lol)?

Am I just overthinking this? Has anyone an explanation??? Is he and if yes, HOW is Soldier connected to the frigging Mann family??????

*cough* Anyway. This concludes my analysis of the TF2 lore. For now. If I come up with more things or if Valve ever decides to continue the story (That was a joke, haha, fat chance), I will come back to this. In the meantime, thank you for reading this and please feel free to share your own ideas and opinions! I'd love to read all of it! ❤️

[theannoyingurge]

Playing with the idea that none of the bg3 villains are fully honest with Durge. Everyone is hiding some piece of the puzzle and happy to abuse the amnesia situation to their advantage. 'Cept Kressa. She's psycho, but she's an honest psycho. In another life, we might have been friends.

Ketheric is the first, most obvious example of this. He doesn't even bother to inform the other Chosen you've reappeared. (Myrkul is the god of exhaustion, so this tracks.)

Balthazar also 100% recognizes you and also doesn't even bother. To him, your amnesia means no tedious reunions with annoying Bhaalspawn who are big mad that he stole their brother's name and rib bones.

The Emperor is sometimes overlooked when piecing together Durge's history, but he admits to knowing your past if you reject him in Act 3 (stating "I know everything about you" while threatening to turn you into a puppet like Duke Stelmane). Whether or not he's posturing, he should at least be aware of your past with Gortash, considering you helped kidnap him in the first place. For evidence, see Gortash's interrogation notes, which open with "When we captured you". (Sure, this could refer to Orin, but I simply do not see these two working as a highly functional team. More on this and the timeline below the cut.) Naturally, despite traveling together for months, The Emperor wouldn't want to fill any gaps in your memory that might cast doubt on his trustworthiness or help align you with his enemy.

The Absolute might be lying about respecting you/your plan and preferring you over your replacement. I am of two minds about this. If you were attacked immediately after crowning the brain, there should be no basis for a preferential relationship. In that case, the brain is just stroking your ego and need for approval. However, I have doubts about Durge being taken down during the initial raid.** I think some time must have passed after crowning the Absolute, giving it the chance to develop a working relationship with you that it lacked with the other Chosen, which caused everything to fall apart after you were tadpoled. This also buys us time to kidnap the Emperor and bring it under the Absolute's thrall as described in Gortash's interrogation notes.

**Some of Gortash's other notes claim Durge was lost during the first raid, but his journals are full of contradictions. He leaves the House of Hope out of his memoirs entirely. He seemingly retcons history to present himself in a more favorable light, which probably includes intentionally diminishing the work of his allies (or erasing the painful memory of his nearest and dearest). In any interpretation, the brain definitely hates Gortash the most, and that's good enough for me.

Orin and Gortash paint somewhat conflicting pictures of you pre-tadpole. The difference here might be genuine (the honest perspectives of a little sister vs a business partner or lover) or it could be a manipulative game of tug of war over your budding and impressionable self image.

Now, I like Durgetash - but I like every possible interpretation of these assholes, not just the mutually reciprocated and/or sexy ones. It's conceivable to me that Gortash may have discovered Durge's crush on him via the Prayer for Forgiveness and played up their history in Act 3 as a defensive measure. Maybe Gortash always knew of Durge's feelings and used them to his advantage (Orin outright tells you this, but again, nobody listens to Orin. Sorry sis).

It's also conceivable that he knew Durge was the first to be tadpoled, considering how close their pod was to his workbench. The brain was given orders to transform the party (that were resisted several times), so Gortash's surprise that Durge still lives makes sense, assuming he even knew Durge was with them (he doesn't seem to be checking the scrying eyes at all. What kind of loser tyrant ignores his own surveillance system? I digress). His general relief and preference for them over Orin is also still valid. (I imagine he feels something along the lines of Durge being the one who got away, you don't know what you've got until it's gone, etc etc. Cue hysterical bonding as the long lost love of his life waltzes into his coronation covered in blood to save him from their psychotic sister and the poorly housetrained Netherbrain they left him full custody of. Yes he wanted full custody, but still.)

Puppy eyes aside, Gortash is a blackhearted pragmatist (he will turn on Durge if they give him the stones) and progress is progress. The first True Soul was an incredible breakthrough, and the show must go on. So just imagine the bricks he's shitting in Act 3 if Durge comes back and remembers the Wrong Things from before the nautiloid. What if they want revenge on him? Nope, not good at all. Best to position himself as Durge's only friend and most trustworthy partner. Regardless of how well he treated them before, Durge was willing to piss off Bhaal to spare his life. That's an extremely useful vulnerability right now, because he's about to ask them to do it again!

Lastly, I have no proof, but I strongly suspect that Sceleritas is fibbing about Durge's past as well. Partly because the Slayer form is severely disappointing in-game and canonically excrutiatingly painful, despite Fel claiming you've always wanted it. It honestly sounds like a way to sell an unwanted used car back to it's amnesiac owner who failed to appreciate it before. Bhaal isn't a full deity any longer, so take what you're given (and you'd better damned well like it!) I also call bullshit on tossing a coin to a beggar being the "worst" crime Durge ever committed against Bhaal (*ahem* looking at you, Gortash). Some dialogue with the Oathbreaker Paladin suggests we've tried somewhat consistently to be good in the past, and Sceleritas has a vested interest in making Durge worse, not planting noble ideas in their freshly lobotomized murder-happy brain.

[katerinaaqu]

Finished Chapter 14 of The Song of Achilles and like you I already found one change that gets on my nerves. Why is Odysseus now the Prince of Ithaca? When he was already King by the events of the original poem? What was Madeline Miller’s purpose in demoting him from King to Prince?

This better have a payoff or else… without Odysseus being King I feel his 20 year absence from Ithaca has less serious consequences. I think without him being King of Ithaca, his wife’s suitors wouldn���t be so eager to replace him.

Well I will start with what me and other classics readers say, that Miller is extremely biased with certain characters and that shows in her writing (true she writes in a very beautiful way and has great expression but still...) so certain characters are depicted positively and others negatively (no surprise or news there) and she writes in a feministic way so certain characters in the background are bound to be disregarded or worse changed. However most people have come to know that her writing of characters is really inaccurate or that it comes straight from her imagination (see for example how in order to get her romcom aura we must see a "homophobic character" aka Thetis who acts almost as a villain, we see the stereotype of star-crossed lovers like Achilles and Patroclus (which is a trope she uses by combining elements from the original but ignoring the character development of others in order to fortify her message) etc.

That being said, Miller's style seems to me like she uses SOME elements of the original, blasts them out of proportions, altering it to be more simplified to fit a romcom setting and re-writes the rest to fit the characters. I am not 100% famliar with her books given how I haven't read them in the full but I have seen stuff around and read some passages so take this hypothesis with a grain of salt but this seems to be the case to me. So in this case it is clear that Miller doesn't see Odysseus in a very positive light (given what she goes with to her other novels as well) so yeah her trying to lesser his importance or the status in the story seems more than just a possibility to me.

So here goes my reply, sorry if this is long:

In this case she seems to take advantage of the fact that in translations there is no distinct difference in the text between the word "prince" or "king" in the homeric text (both are being stated by the term άναξ (anax->wanax, from mycenean greek as well) and is being used to speak on the ruler that has under his command the ships and the army. That is to be said some of the commanders of the greek army had living parents back home and Odysseus was included among them. It seems like Laertes was in a way retired since indeed Odysseus seemed to be a king in his own right, in fact Penelope even insinuates he had been so for a long time, given how she tells Antinous the story of his father who arrived to the palace begging Odysseus for his own life, possibly implying that Odysseus was a ruler of his own right more than 20 years prior, possibly before Antinous's birth or during Antinous's childhood or infantry. On the other hand some people seem to separate his father from Odysseus by naming Laertes "King of Cephallenians" and Odysseus "King of Ithaca" aka that technically Laertes is the king of the entirety of the kingdom (Ithaca, Cephallonia, Acarnania etc) and Odysseus's juristiction is Ithaca. Personally I do not fully support that last one given how Odysseus is the only one who seems to be in charge even if Laertes is still alive. It seems that the tradition in Ithaca was a bit more family-like in terms of ruling and the king retired from his duty because of age, letting the younger and more capable son to rule (potentially Laertes is an exception and gave the authority to Odysseus because he thought he was more capable ruler than himself. Odysseus possibly proved his worth during the internal conflicts with the Taphian pirates or in conflict in Messinia [when he received his bow in his youth as a gift])

It also seems to be backed up by how by n large they got married within the kingdom (Eurylochus is from the same kingdom, from the small island of Same and marries Odysseus's sister Ctimene, the suitors of Penelope all come from within the kingdom from different principates and regions). Laertes and Odysseus seem to be exceptions to the rule since Laertes marries Anticlea, daughter to the great thief Autolycus who lived in Parnassus and Odysseus who married Penelope from Sparta) So it seems that the kingdom is more like a "family business" than actually some kingdom with expansive or military construction (unlike Mycenae or Sparta) so it doesn't seem impossible that there is either a tradition for the old ruler to quit and pass the throne to the next generation rather than wait for his death to pass authority or that if one did it wouldn't seem impossible. It also seems that other kingdoms are not necessarily the same as modern kingdoms either. Icarius is still alive when the events of the Odyssey take place. We don't know if Tyndareus also is alive or not, from what I remember, in Homer's writing so it is not clear what kind of rules exist to that realm. Could it be also that the ruler is not only of age (able to grow a beard aka around the final 20s or early 30s) but also marriage that gets them ready to rule? Like Menelaus is a ruler of Sparta by marriage, Odysseus rules as a sovereign ruler because of his marriage? It could be although again the suitors of Helen were often called "kings" in literature, it doesn't seem to be the case given how most of her suitors are either young (Ajax, Menelaus, Antilochus was also mentioned or even Diomedes in some sources even if the two of them would be literal children at that time) or sons of existent rulers let's say Odysseus. So it is possible that marriage AND coming of age play their part in succession. It gets a bit confusing as well since Odysseus leaves order to Penelope that she has to wait till her son is of age (when his beard grows) to pass him the throne, if he hasn't returned till then. Does Odysseus imply that his son would rule if he was of age, regardless of his death or is he implying that they first have to confirm he is dead before Telemachus takes over? It is indeed an enigma but then again the case of Odysseus is complicated; he goes to a war that he doesn't know if he is gonna return from and according to some readings and traditions, he was repared to be off for a long time as well from an omen he heard so his case with Telemachus seems to be an exception rather than the rule given the extreme conditions they deal with.

Either way yeah it doesn't seem that Odysseus is not a ruler in his own right in any shape or form in the Iliad or the Odyssey despite the fact that Laertes was still alive throughout the entire process. Either because it was a consistent tradition or because Laertes made an exception, it seems that Laertes was not an active ruler by the time Odysseus left for Troy and as I said it seems that Penelope implies Odysseus was already a ruler capable of giving pardon to someone (Antinous's father) or command armies (Taphian pirate incident, Messina, Troy) so yeah it doesn't seem that Odysseus is considred "a Prince" like for instance his brother-in-law Eurylochus or the Suitors and their families but he seems to be a king in his own right; he is the one who has the duty to send away the suitors; he is the one to command the army and he is the one to call the counter-attack in the Odyssey against the retalliation of the families after the murder of the suitors and not Laertes.

So to close this already long answer yes among the many changes Miller imposes in her book to fit her narrative, it seems that she takes advantage of modern day perspectives of rule and succession (aka the sovereign ruler's death before the other takes over) plus the fact that there is no distinct word between king and prince in the ancient texts to call Odysseus "a Prince" possibly to decrease his status (similar to how ancient writers mentioned Odysseus not being legitimate son of Laertes but a bastard son by Sisyphus) so yeah it does seem like it as you said given how Miller doesn't seem to be fond of Odysseus as a character. But that would be my hypothesis. Either that or Miller simply doesn't want to consider a different rule of succession than the modern one she and her readers are familiar with aka a king becomes king only after his father's death. Which is ironic though given how many people mention Odysseus "a king" even if they know or possibly because they forget Laertes is still alive.

Hope this helps

[katyspersonal]

In defence of Shadow of the Erdtree + Getting my grudges with the fandom's bad takes off my chest

(! if you are seeing this caption it means the post was shared via queue feature, thus I must be STILL on my hiatus! will respond to comments when I am back online and thank all 5 of you for waiting for me! )

*deep, tired sigh* Allllright so... Ever since SoTE came out, it has been a rocky patch for me growing past initial shock, absorbing new lore and above all, dealing with some conflicts that transpired over it! In the end my grudges, as well as disagreements with popular attacks on this DLC accumulated enough to make me feel like smoking volcano, I swear.. You might have observed some anger already slipping through the cracks, but I've decided to place ALL of my opinions in one easily skippable post instead of turning my blog into a toxic pool with endless negative posts, so I'll just get to it!!

YEAH YEAH I know, a TRUE comedy genius remaking my DLC predictions bingo post to structure what I want to address fdhhdsf This is basically a 'so how is checking Elden Ring tag going today? :)' bingo but... it is easier to put it like this. I just need some way to simply vent my own frustrations because I hate everything featured in this image with THE burning rage. Putting my opinions and everything under cut but fair warning, not only it is going to be very long as if anyone who knows me is surprised dfhshfsd, but also very ANGRY! ANYWAYS!

1) "They excused genocide by giving Marika a sad backstory"

Sigh… Instantly off to a terrible start, and it is truly the most Tumblr take out of all Tumblr takes imaginable. So let me suggest something actually ground-breaking here… Giving your villain reasoning not only makes for a more realistic and interesting character, but is also crucial because nobody is just BORN evil.

sorry I had to I understand the temptation of wanting a villain whose sole drive is power control preserving privileges etc because it resonates more with the narratives proposed in real life and people's struggles, but not only even in real life things are FAR not as often as simple… but even if they were, Fromsoft is always dealing with more complicated matters that touch the nature of existence in general, and not just power and control over it someone could gain! Marika was not "just" evil even in the base game either, giving off the impression of someone wanting to build a perfect world of light, life, safety and abundance even at the expense of oppressing "potential threat" species (Omens serving as…. well, omens of the threat of returning to the primordial state of things or Albinaurics, creation of Nox, who angered the Greater Will itself once).

She waged war on the Fire Giants who had 'evil god of fire', caused natural disasters and whose fire existed as anathema to the Erdtree and declared her victory the start of the "better age"! That already spoke of a lot of complexity, without forcing the audience to agree with her motivations and actions but instead understand what weight they held in the grand scheme of things! Again: much like Gwyn who destroyed Dragons thus creating time, light and life the way it is known now and who for all his agenda against humans had a pretty solid reason to fear the darkness within them, which effects we've seen across the trilogy!

What DLC did add was simply a lore on Marika's origins as a Goddess, and what made her vulnerable enough for the Two Fingers to seek her! Divinity is further stated to not be a great thing via Miquella's whole arc, but the wish to change the world to the better hits harder when you personally were a victim of its fundamental corruption! She did not instantly become a good person over DLC lore, nor she was just evil person and nothing else in the base game! War against Fire Giants (maybe Dragons?) was the means to topple the current powers and establish her reign, oppressing certain species was the mean to preserve it. She searched not solely to take revenge on the Hornsent, but to build a different world where what they did would not happen, ironically ending up causing more injustice ANYWAYS! Miquella fell into this trap. Heck, GIDEON fell into this trap!

Even then, her machiavellian character does not explain why even after Hornsent were completely defeated that war continues forever through Messmer and his forces. Could this be just what Messmer insisted on and THUS she cast him away, or she lost any and all sight of what pusher her to it initially? In either case, even the game itself makes it very clear that Marika/Messmer are not heroes here in the SLIGHTEST!

On a more general note, detached from the specifics of this game: I do still find it more strange to be angry about villains being given sympathetic traits, as a concept. People who are just "born evil" are such a minority that they hardly can say anything about nature of men. Bad people, by proxy, are a combination of some sort of unhappy event (trauma, bad upbringing, faced oppression, mental illness that was not treated if not had its negative traits amplified due to environment, growing in propaganda and ignorance, abuse etc) and person's unwillingness or even inability to heal and stop the cycle of pain by refusing to cause more of it. It is not that simple, and often, people who were hurt so are past the point of not letting it make THEM evil, or lack resources to do so, or have their attempts to change if they WERE bad actively sabotaged.

This IS the true horror of existence: freedom of will itself being put in question. We might be not defined by our pain, but how we will respond to it might be defined by prior events, information we had, circumstances and society around us. How can ANYONE tell what they would be like if they endured the same? Can we be sure that we "endured the same but reacted differently" wasn't predefined by other, nicer factors? To be angry at the fact that a bad person who did bad things had a reasonable, even sympathetic explanation at the core of it all is to be angry that one's privilege to use "born evil" to mistreat and emotionally distance from those people is put into question!

In any case, 'explanation is not an excuse' works not only as a tool to still judge someone's sins, but ALSO to explain that writers making a character more elaborate is not a demand to like this character or excuse their actions! Everything has reason… This is why no one is entitled to declare they know what is good and bad for everyone. Not just people like Marika or Gwyn, but even us.

2) "Hornsent are dangerous and deserved extermination"

…okay, look, yes this is another heavy topic, and it does deserve a separate post which I did make already in the past ( x )! It is another topic that sort of transcends the boundaries of this story (another common Fromsoft W for making people question life and society themselves)! To put it down simply, of course no race is inherently evil, what is the reoccurring topic here is the culture! And what is on the surface is that Hornsent as culture and species, in many ways, are victims of its own oppressive religious institution and questionable traditions. Bonny Village's potentates are hostile, dangerous cult serving as a the weapon of """justice""" and """purification""" within Hornsent! They possibly go back-to-back with their religion but except they are extremist. We cannot tell whether general face of the religion, the Inquisitor hags, would do anything about it had they have more control, whether they tolerate it for convenience, or whether they encourage and utilise its existence. But what we CAN tell is that not only "impure races" are punished/killed, but even "unfaithful" Hornsent themselves!

Yes, definitely there are also Hornsent children who would have no choice regarding their upbringing, information, nor much agency over their actions, and we know they did not spare the children either from the story of Hornsent NPC that we follow! But even then, it is clear that Hornsent that were in disagreement about their culture's demands had to be quiet about it either, or else they'd likewise be persecuted!

"Why could not they just have started a revolution" is a very unfair criticism towards a culture/place oppressed by corrupt religious (and military?) institution on many levels! As someone from the country ruled by a tyrant feeding the civilians propaganda excusing genocide and promoting xenophobia, as well as very corrupt and oppressive religious institution that yet is hardly a HALFWAY as awful as some countries I could explain how hard (impossible) it is to reliably as much as gather enough people to rebel (with no results but legal troubles down to getting imprisoned). Let alone gather enough people to go an die for the cause. Especially when almost everyone with ANY power and weapons is already by the government's side completely rotten by propaganda. Feeling outnumbered, not having any resources because they're all in the hands of people who ARE corrupt, knowing even out of other people who disagree most would not risk leaving their children and sick relatives and alike in trouble rising up against the enemy they can't reliably take down is already a huge problem here. Even considering the (very idealistic) sentiment that dire consequences doesn't erase the blame that comes from not speaking up, it doesn't change that there are real and reasonable people who don't agree! Let alone the separate topic of how even people rotten by propaganda deserve a chance for rehabilitation! Propaganda is a horrifying tool and not having immunity to it should not be automatic death sentence!

Shadow Realm is already full of burn Hornsent spirits questioning what did they even do wrong and claiming they only wanted to live and didn't do anything, further proving that they might not even be much aware of what their Inquisitors and Potentates do, let alone not being a solid monolith race of those who agree with extermination of the "impure"! They are people, living in conditions of the culture held by the throat of those truly evil! It were a bunch of civilians burnt, as well as Hornsent's (NPC) wife and child who 99.99% didn't do anything. To think of it, it makes it very bitter that Bonny's Village and Inquisitors in the Tower clearly were able to recover and bounce back, when it were civilians who payed the price. Very grim yet clever remark about the real world as well, but I am sidetracking. In general, yes, a culture that considers itself holier than others with extremist forms of it deeming them unworthy of living should be stopped and criticised, but genocide can NEVER be the answer!

^^^ It fact, something already suggests there was a different answer, an even obvious one. Marika's "betrayal" suggests a long social game on her part, as well as the fact that Hornsent culture were trusting her! Maybe they knew she was a shaman and things were happening past the point where they stopped persecuting them, maybe they had no idea. Yet, in any case, Marika held enough social power to bridge the gap between the cultures, to let them evolve beyond their past, traditions and prejudice against 'outsider' cultures and instead learn from them!

^^^ In fact, the gap was bridged, since Crucible, THE Hornsent thing, WAS considered divine even as Golden Order was established! That was like… after getting Elden Ring instead of Dragons (whatever the reason was), war with the Fire Giants and murder of the Fell God and removal of Destined Death from the Elden Ring? Nonetheless, with the power to stop vicious cycle and to let the horrible practices and past be buried and dissolve in her new order of life and radiance, so-to-say "civilization", she chose the path of genocide and revenge that has not ended even to this day! As well as essentially became "the very thing she sworn to destroy" by keeping those like Omens and Albinaurics oppressed!

And to bring back the previous chapter of this post, it is not an invitation to say 'aww then it is fair that she hates Omens so much 🥺', but a pointer that what she did was wrong. And so, yet again, the cycle continues, take Vengeance-Seeking Hornsent that swears to kill not only her and her family, but everyone affiliated with her in any way even if they were innocent and simply were born under such order! He mirrors how she/Messmer did not simply stop at punishing those who WERE guilty, how violence and revenge will always only birth more of violence and revenge, until someone decides to stop it and chose to solve the situation the pacifist way to their best ability. Even when some people claim that within this option those who will want their power back can survive and ruin everything again: likewise, if culture is exterminated, victims will survive and come back with revenge. Either way suggests the risk, but only one of these ways has even a CHANCE of better future! What IS certain is that humanity could never be at better place unless we as species keep trying peace over and over, that won't banish all evil from the first try, but we must choose peace and not genocide over and over!

3) "Miquella's character was assassinated"

No, it wasn't.

OKAY FINE but it is one of the topics that are hard to approach seriously, when someone mistakes the arc of the character falling from grace to a complete rewrite of the character's personality! How falling from grace inherently suggests there was no grace to BEGIN with? Character assassination suggests Chloé Bourgeois from Ladybug that the character has been written a certain way, but then deliberate effort was done by the writers to damage their image and make the audience hate them or no longer care about them!

What we learned about Miquella from the base game was all information about him from the times long before we, player, arrived in the game, and before his departure in the Shadow Realm! He was kind, he cared about his sister to the point of creating a new school of magic and then creating Unalloyed Gold all to heal her, he wanted a gentler order than the Golden Order and created his own tree that welcomed everyone but first of all those oppressed by the Golden Order, he wished his brother Godwyn could die honourably instead of being a growing virus to all living past death. At the same time, he naturally needed military force to protect his Haligtree, as well as was able to bewitch people with his powers!

In Shadow of the Erdtree, nothing that followed erased that information! In fact, he still boldly stated that he wanted Age of Compassion! What we DID witness though were two things: 1) the fact that he had to get a bit machiavellian, something that already was obvious from the base game because kindness alone is not enough to survive in this world and you HAVE to do some planning as the leader up against the current order with its own fans, as well as people who hate the compassion as an idea and 2) that he has been leaving behind what made him the person that he was, including his feelings and attachments, which logically included caring for Malenia for example! So, the dearest sister is 'loyal blade', because he abandoned his love! He does not still love Radahn either, but Radahn was a part of the promise; a very pragmatic thing and memory that did not have to go as his feelings did. He simply was part of the initial plan to ascend to Godhood; Miquella sounded scared of the idea when he asked Radahn to be there for him, but abandoning his fears and doubts would not automatically erase the OATH. Effectively, a "contract".

Miquella was hyped up as that kind, almost perfect, noble person, for us to find out that he is not anymore. The 'anymore' part here is crucial! Fromsoft have previously did the trick with hyping a character up to be great but us finding out they were not with Vendrick and Gwyn (and very briefly with Artorias who didn't DO anything yet was hyped as THE hero when he was in fact defeated)! Miquella repeats the trend with reveal that he did charm Mohg back then (was not perfect in his actions, but I'll get to it later), but also has the story of further descent from that not-perfect-yet-GOOD person that we follow! He is effectively the most elaborate incarnation of the concept, and we know Elden Ring includes Fromsoft learning from their previous games a lot, polishing the concepts they want to use! Miyazaki confirmed that Elden Ring is "close" to the dark fantasy game of his dream, yet is still not it (someone stop this madman fhfdhs)!

To suggest that revealing him as complex, as well as adding the tragedy of repeating Marika's mistakes no matter how much he was running from this sad fate, equates the devs wanting us to hate him (that is what CA is) is ABSURD! He REALLY did not want to be Marika, he was AVOIDING it, yet no matter what, it caught up to him... How comes you equate tragedy and imperfection with suggesting that you should hate him according to the writers' intention? I will go further and say that if your expected reaction to finding out your fav was never perfect in the world where perfection doesn't survive, and had road to Hell paved with good intentions is 'oh devs made him hateable' it only speaks of your own lack of understanding and compassion. Miquella is as much of the victim of this wretched world as everyone else, where you die a hero, remain a lazy fence-sitter or try to do something but only drastic means to do it make a change. Really, this is just Fromsoft's world and Elden Ring is in no obligation to change their philosophy of existential horror!

4) "Fromsoft failed fans by not making it [insert a thing from a wishlist]"

It could be a bit subjective, but personally I think this is simply not how creativity works as a concept. This kind of criticism suggests that upon deciding on the DLC, developers were supposed to look at the fandom's discussions, determine what would be most emotionally satisfying for them, and go that route regardless of what their vision of the story was or what…? It feels like a very entitled kind of thinking for me. Creator's one task is to bring their own vision to life and tell the story and messages they want to deliver! Not to cater to the audience, not to tell them what they want to hear, not to do what sells well or, god forbid, fanservice. (and you can probably see in which paragraph I will need to touch this one too!)

Miyazaki has a rather grim vision of the world and humanity, that is not completely nihilist and devoid of hope, but never gives the coherent answer to what the better future IS either. Character Aldia from Dark Souls 2 (and vaguely in DS3) is probably the best personification of his philosophy. The world is wretched, but the means to change it are so terrible that one might question whether it is even all worth it and whether the new world built on sacrifices is truly better, toppling the corrupt power just replaces it with the other corrupt power unless you decide to straight up destroy the world, but there must be something, right? We just lack insight to understand what it IS, but how can we obtain that knowledge without losing our humanity? Happy ending or blunt message about how if you remove corrupt authority things will magically be good are not his style.

And… regarding smaller things, honestly? He had a right to throw in a random ship that didn't have any foreshadowing if he wanted! It is HIS story and HIS characters! Creator must not obstruct THEIR vision and preferences for anyone, but it is OUR choice whether to take it or leave it. Just because we gave Elden Ring that kind of popularity and influence with huge amount of support and bought copies of the game doesn't mean that now Miyazaki is under obligation to serve us and think about our reception and tastes as sort of "gratitude" or whatever… And on a relevant note, it is his choice which topics he wanted to explore in SoTE and which topics he was done with and decided to leave be.

Again I might be different, as the very moment we had a DLC confirmed I emotionally distanced from Elden Ring knowing that any headcanons and expectations could get jossed at this rate! Getting invested into series that is still in development suggests obvious risks! No one is obligated to ENJOY whatever choices he made, but what we should do is to remember that he had RIGHT to HIS choices.

5) *claiming all hinted that it obviously should have been Godwyn*

I've heard it often that base game all foreshadowed that Miquella was departing in the Shadow Realm to bring Godwyn back to life, Eclipse thing and all, therefore SoTE "betrayed" fans by not focusing on Godwyn. Everything was supposedly set up for him to be prominent or maybe to be a final boss instead, even if he'd be a through and through failed attempt of resurrecting him! But…

Even in the base game, it was suggested that 'Eclipse' was already attempted, and failed. Nothing to suggest that they would go and try again via different means. And, in fact, there is another piece of evidence that Miquella was not going to attempt another way of resurrecting Godwyn! 'Please die a true death' suggests that Miquella wanted Godwyn to not exist as Prince of Death, but to die fully; with his body too, not only his soul.

This is certainly not about resurrection, so it is safe to assume that Golden Epitaph was made as Miquella gave up the hope of returning Godwyn's soul to him! 'Eclipse' was attempted, and it failed! Moreover, 'Eclipse' is a thing associated with the Castle Sol / Mountaintops! Nothing to suggest that it is properly done in the Shadow Realm, it is very much Lands Between's thing to do. (could it be relevant that Fell God of the Fire Giants was killed, and even before Furnace Visage thing his fire was shaped like an orb, so like a sun? no sun to eclipse to begin with? now Erdtree is THE source of light? some fuel for interpretations)

This is not the only reason, as we have a more bold one, that is Fia's quest getting broken! One of the endings is Fia laying with Godwyn and bearing a Rune to bring Those who live in Death back in the Elden Ring, and one of the remembrance bosses is Fortissax fighting within his dream! If Miquella's goal was to go and try to resurrect Godwyn, that would already remove his body from that area by the very existence of the DLC! So, should have Fia's quest/ending and Fortissax battle been timed events only for pre-DLC era? Or, again, if you say that event would only happen if we followed the entire DLC story to the final battle: Fromsoft's DLCs typically do not have any significant effects on the base games, it is usually just some extra dialogues here and there. And what would be about Godwyn's "virus" growing in Stormveil, as well as on some enemies and deathroots in the ruins where Mariners resided? What is considered his body goes FAR beyond just Deeproot Depths, should they have programmed removing of ALL that to not contradict their own lore, then? It really doesn't feel like the case even from technical standpoint already!

From narrative standpoint, both Godwyn and Radahn should (have) stay(ed) dead for the story and emotional weight, however, elaborating Radahn didn't make his presence overbearing for Fromsoft's standards! On the contrary, he got more role besides kinda 'just being there' compared to other Demigods! Godwyn had a lot of impact and presence all over the story in the base game and one of the endings being tied to him! I will get to it in the paragraph about devs allegedly 'abandoning' some things that needed elaboration though!

Yet even then, devs still added Godwyn bits with Knights of Death getting sort of rebranding to still stand by him in death and the bit about Godwyn having custom-made medallions for his special knights! It is very clear that devs have not forgotten or forsaken Godwyn but instead keep reminding us how much he mattered for the idiots living in this fictional universe! However, they know where to stop so the character isn't devouring the story too much as they have their own style with balancing characters' presence! Saying that "only" adding Knights of Death going to protect what's left of their Lord like sort of fucked up plant culture in Shadow Realm is some sort of grave insult to his fans is just weird, because in fact devs were not supposed to add this EITHER!

6) "Scadutree fragments is a cheap way to force players to explore the map"

I don't think there is anything wrong about rewarding the players for exploring the open world map that is meant to be explored! And, yes, it is rewarding, not forcing! The bosses COULD be beat even without Scadutree fragments if you know what you are doing! Like, what surprises me the most is that this take typically comes from the gamers! You know, THE people who would know a thing or two about imbalanced builds or weapons, or have enough time and patience to memorise every single movement by the boss, let alone liking to challenge themselves!

Even then, Scadutree Fragments are supposed to be discovered naturally as you walk around, check niche places on the map, do platforming and search for optional enemies and bosses! If all you wanted from this DLC was to run very straightforward to just beat the boss already with ease so you check the remembrances faster, are you sure that you actually like PLAYING this game? Getting into an open world game when you don't want the 'open world' aspect seems counter-productive to me :/

Bonus mention: some people finding Abyssal Woods sequence frustrating and annoying! It is somewhat relevant to this complaint! Losing Torrent in this area perfectly adds to the sense of not being able to escape, and stealth game with Aging Untoucheable is straight up horror stuff! How are you supposed to experience getting into the forbidden area infested by the force that every living (and dead!) being in the setting fears, if you just can run straightforward to the boss willy-nilly without any buildup or obstacle! It feels like the same sort of complaint as Malenia being unfair boss when she should be hard as someone who "never knew defeat"! Fromsoft is very good at using gameplay elements to confirm what the lore says! This "criticism" just looks like straight up impatience to get your dopamine injection already instead of enjoying the process of learning this story like devs intended!

7) "Miquella has always been evil"

I suppose it goes as a sibling paragraph to 'Miquella's character was assassinated', except this time from the standpoint of those who either liked the "twist" or were indifferent to it… I think this is just a confirmation bias at play from the people who assumed this about the character from the start, often including but not limited to Berserk fanboys. I agree that the fact he has never been perfect was plain to see either, with Bewitching Branches being a sinister power as a concept and Haligtree Soldiers suicide-bombing being a bit too fanatical, but yet again: nothing erases the notion that he had good intentions!

Ansbach kind of reminds me of the same effect Kenneth once had; Kenneth described Godrick as pathetic and everyone agreed completely ignoring the bits that suggested otherwise, and now Ansbach described Miquella as a monster and this is what some people believe! Honestly, how do I develop this level of charisma to make people believe me uncritically fhfdhhfsd In any case, the "unreliable narrator" effect is very prominent in the game, and it is important to remember that developers make the character say what the character would, not give us the directions on what opinion to have!

Miquella's power is further elaborated upon in SoTE, as not inherently brainwashing one but a very strong remedy for someone's problems! Leda's fanatical murderous fixation, Hornsent's obsession with revenge, Moore's insecurities and Ansbach's fixation on avenging Mohg's "honor" (which is likewise a very questionable concept lol) all were muted, giving them peace and friendship instead of attacking each other OR himself! The key to them being pacified and happier being to fix their love on someone else doesn't make Miquella evil megalomaniac wanting an army of loyal dolls.. on the contrary, often caring for someone else IS the feeling that brings out the best in us humans!

Again, this one is subjective, and of course people can read the character any way they want! But I start to take an issue with this reading when people claim that it is canon and dig at the base game saying how he never cared for the compassion but just was sort of narcissist seeking the oppressed to make an army of admirers from or whatever… The DLC accentuates on how he has been abandoning the 'humane' parts of himself, that were making him vulnerable and as Demigod more human than God, so we meet him at his "lowest". Even then, he states his motivation to make a better world full of compassion and free of evil! He would make everyone hold hands in more peaceful ways if he could, but even from the base game his arc was basically trying and failing to heal his sister. Besides, Dane's last and only words are asking him to make a gentler world, without his spell in the effect-

Like, there are enough things that show he had enough reasons to make people see him as symbol of hope even without MAKING them to. With Radahn, we are repeatedly told that "he and Malenia helped him to cosplay Godfrey" stems from the oath they shared and Radahn agreed to! Whether you see Caelid battle as him wanting to die (to go to Shadow Realm) in a battle, or him rebelling against Miquella's world of shining flowers and kissing bunnies in the end as a warmonger but twins not having this "change" it still doesn't straight up speak of evil intent. Could be taken as despair and reaching that 'giving up' state! With Mohg we are not sure either. Maybe Miquella just wanted to "heal" his pain but his personality persisted and obsession/kidnapping happened, so he knew he was beyond help and TOO soaked in blood and sin! Or he was beyond help / didn't want help from the start, so EVENTUALLY (key word) amounted only to sacrifice in Miquella's eyes on his path to Godhood as he NEEDED one, maybe it was even seen as 'mercy'. Help is to build a better world as a honor and all.

He very likely wanted to make a better world for him too! Both their goals were connected to "love" after all! The reading of the character as evil is not as cut in stone and evident as some people make it look like!

(In fact, shortly after BASE game released, Miyazaki confirmed that Martin wrote some nice characters and Miyazaki wrote the ways to corrupt them. So, Martin wrote the kind guy, and Miyazaki put him through corruption arc. But I will get to it in due time -_-.....)

8) *views Messmer as just another (boring?) victim of Marika* (and variations)

This one I kind of saw in two forms: people who dislike the character or not care about him writing him down as "boring" for this one, and simps who kind of lift agency off the character in order to be able to like him! This is to put it roughly, as again, there are various variations but with the same sentiment at its core!

I do think that Marika having enough influence over his actions, and even having abused him emotionally in some way, is entirely palatable interpretation! The nature of Base Serpent, as well as supposed connection with the Fell God, is debatable and can vary from truly harmful thing to simply a force of nature that exists to ensure forces like Erdtree can't live forever. Regardless of interpretation, would a kind, loving mother truly allow for her child to hate himself so much?

Marika has….. a problem with fire. Waging war to put down the Flame of Ruin because it could burn the Erdtree and removing Destined Death that was fire-affiliated power already showed it; as 'Eternal', she of course wanted to live forever, same for her Erdtree! Messmer manifesting fire element would certainly be a problem for her, but was it though? Base Serpent is malicious but for this reason Winged Serpent exists, no? Can another side of universal balance be something that must be removed from the scheme of things? Can fire, or death, truly count as 'evil' things? Are not they simply forces of nature that Marika being the MILF Gwyn that she is did not desire personally, in her vision of a brighter, bountiful world?

My point is, even though she created many Divine Blessings to help him, she did likely inflict some sort of negative self-image on him anyways. Maybe it was not her intention, but she always feared him and eventually that brought her to hide him away!

So like, how does this NOT make Messmer just a victim? Okay, so here is the error that kind of started it all:

User drenched-in-sunlight explained it better in this ( x ) post, but the point is that taking up the Crusade that Marika wanted was Messmer's own initiative and not something she forced him to do like English localisation made it sound! So, she was still possessed with the wish for revenge, but Messmer was like 'hey no need to make your hands dirty, I can do it'! Like drenched-in-sunlight explained, Marika's 'wish' here is the same as in the description of her braid (same symbols), so Messmer sees what is hurting her, and ASKS to be the tool of her vengeance! I'd say that even without this bit, simply the fact that he is a grown ass man should give him agency and hold him up to proper judgement, but nuance is always important!

This does paint an interesting picture though: Marika has been trying to "heal" him (which is a debatable concept considering her character and what fire, save for Frenzied Flame, means in the setting, but I don't insist), he asked to deliver her vengeance FOR her, but also despite having sealed the Base Serpent within him she was still scared of him and sealed him away making everything connected with him heretical and warriors standing by him still shunned, and Messmer lived in hatred, begging her forgiveness before crashing her seal yet cursing her name upon his death! It looks to me as though she grew truly scared of him and decided she wanted him gone BECAUSE of seeing him in action during crusade! Him hating her for ditching him implies that was not something he expected, so maybe seeing him in Crusade made her go 'wow, my son is actually more scary than I thought'!

That speaks of Messmer as someone who can get carried away with cruelty in blind, fanatical devotion! (that also makes Queelign an interesting mirror into his youthful, more """innocent""" self but that's not the point fdhfhds) Marika might have been horrified by it, or horrified by her own ugly reflection in the monster she (unintentionally) created with her parenting, but nonetheless it describes Messmer's personality more. Someone whose reaction to his mother's trauma and yearning for vengeance was to not only take such terrible plan in his arms, but also to go too far with it, maybe even too far for HER. Not everyone would react the same way. A better person would've probably focus on helping his mother to heal and move on, or maybe even turn around and refuse to comply with such harmful intentions. But he, being a grown man who could think and choose, chose to commit genocide. He is evil! He is not JUST evil, either. He is NOT boring tool of Marika with no agency, though!

And on a relevant note, for the simps..

No but seriously fdhfhdfds I understand how that sentiment could have left a sour taste after SA Mohg truthers kept saying 'hey guys you aren't real fan of Mohg if you ignore what he did 🙄' (that certainly aged…….), but I still want to remind that a fictional character doesn't need to be stripped out of his agency to be found attractive! With Messmer what he is doing is a bit more direct, and it is NORMAL to simp for the characters you could not stand in real life! What is the fun of engaging in fictional worlds if you turn it into a morality contest and sort of a "practice" for what kind of endeavours and relationships you'd want in real life? It is for going wild and satisfying curiosity and dark impulses. No limits needed. This is just an advice if anyone needed one like this, because we just never know really.

9) *"corrects" people's interpretations (especially of Nanaya)*

Sigh...

This kind of behavior in the fandom is certainly not exclusive for the past-DLC era, but it really felt more relevant to address again and- yes, like I said, with Nanaya thing it is something I've witnessed the most! Not long ago I said that despite hearing people question why there are so many uncharitable takes on Nanaya I haven't really seen any? But yes, like usual, it happened because Tumblr bubble is often different and you need to catch updates from Reddit and Twitter to have full fandom picture! An example: not reposting the art of course, but here is a cute comic of Midra reuniting with Nanaya in spirit after death ( x ). And do you know why the artist had to add a caption to ask people to not correct their headcanons? …..because on Twitter, they got pestered with people "correcting" them that Nanaya was aKtUaly evil / Shabriri / etc. 🤡🤡🤡

Honestly, I approve of correcting people when they legitimately, objectively contradicted or missed something stated in canon! I disagree with the notion that canon is just a suggestion and the whole fun is to just use names and concepts from it to create one's own thing! I am one of the guys that wears the T-Shirt that says "Just make an OC then" because primarily fandoms are about studying and enjoying the source material! A good headcanon knowingly differs from canon, know rules to break them at the right places, all that. It is especially relevant in Fromsoft's games because the information in them is very scattered and obscured. You WILL miss something, and so communicating with the fans, double-checking wikis etc is crucial! Similarly with fanart: there is a difference between giving a character heterochromia and more interesting look to add flavor in design and drawing them incorrectly because you haven't SEEN their datamined face and need a pointer (looking at you, white Henryk Bloodborne fanarts all because not everyone checked datamined faces!)!

As I got this off my chest that I am not an absolutist with the 'let fans do what they want' because if someone doesn't need canon that much they can always make OCs or original settings…. …when something is not canon but simply a popular interpretation, don't "correct" people! Midra asks Nanaya to forgive him when he succumbs, and it is anyone's own choice whether they take it as her never having wanted him to succumb when she was still alive or her having been secretly lyinh and ensuring long endurance would made him explode into more "sufficient result"! Fromsoft's lore often leaves bits of information that can be used to justify any interpretation! And discussions, even debates, to prove why your version is better are very interesting! Fromsoft's lore community at its best feels like we are all academics defending our thesis before the audience! But the whole "well aktualy" + "there is no proof so your headcanon is bad" + "let me educate you media illiterate casual" + "but [popular loretuber] said this" attitude just isn't it.

The last example is important! This problem IS also often the result of latching onto what a popular loredigger says. Usually Vaatividya (video lore), charredthermos (wrote a popular Bloodborne interpretation document), Lokey's Lore (has whole website with his interpretation of Fromsoft games bits) and so. And I often see people hate these popular Youtubers too, but I think that the blame lays on the crowd! It is none of these guys' fault that the crowd decided to promote them to the fandom's idols and give them this sort of influence! They were not loredigging to gain this kind of power, they probably never expected the popularity, and they would sure be unhappy to know that their work is used to shun creativity and start fights in the community that they care about! Yes, even when they 'lokey' (haha geddit?) speak in the manner that suggests being close-minded to other interpretations, they are not forcing and CAN'T force fans to idolize them.

In the end, they were just doing what they loved, and popularity probably came from them being pioneers. But instead of spilling vitriol towards them and saying how they should be "dethroned" as if they damage the fandom, why not turn our anger towards THE people who idealize them? We are all angry when we are "corrected" and they use lore of someone popular as a "proof", but this is the fault of THE people who "correct". Discourage this behavior, encourage thinking like individuals and not like sheep. No one asked for the popularity or the power to stomp out any curiousity and creativity. Don't hate the big guy AND don't take the big guy's word as a gospel. In the end, we are all just guys looking for answers in the places where they were NOT given.

10) "Mohg beating allegations made the story worse"

Sibling paragraph to 'they've failed the fans by not making it a thing from my wishlist'. Themes of sexual abuse and incest ARE quite interesting and important, but not inherently THE most important, or more important than any other themes! The information about Miquella having put Mohg under spell opens up equally interesting things to talk about and look for! How did he end up like this? Was it an accident of him trying to "heal" Mohg and it no working, and then he decided to just use what he had when he followed his plan? Had he written Mohg down as only working as vessel sacrifice for that mad plan from the start? What was the backstory between Miquella and Mohg considering this? There are still interesting things to work with, regarding relationship of the two, but now with added spin of Miquella's fall from grace arc that starts with following the plan with Radahn. Because, I remind you, requirement for a vessel, so, someone powerful dying and being used, was part of it from the start! Since Radahn needed to die! It is dark, just in a different way, and divided between two characters instead of just clear stated victim and abuser without shades of grey or nuance!

I say 'divided between two characters' instead of 'they've switched' because Mohg didn't instantly become a GOOD person over this reveal! I praised him as a valid character to point out that not all victims of awful childhood and mistreatment are automatically good people, which is a good way to diversify the characters! Make things more realistic than black and white thinking. Similarly how Rykard or Dung Eater are evidence that not all people up against the oppressive system are automatically good people. That benefit of Mohg as a character didn't evaporate, he still serves that point well enough! Nothing in the DLC said that all the kidnapping of surgeons, corrupting people with the blood and bringing in sacrifices happened because of Miquella's charm. Ansbach, in fact, confirms that the blood cult madness existed before Miquella's charm! When we admit to him that we killed Mohg, he also states that such were understandable risks of seeking Lordship, implying that Mohgwyn Dynasty, so, attempt to insert himself into Golden Lineage through mad, violent means, was also already a plan before! To think of it, SA accusation is the one and only thing he beat x) Reminds me of this meme: ( x )

Again, the story allegedly becoming "worse" solely boils down to 'they've made it about a starter point in Miquella's descent from grace and not about sexual abuse' that is simply not true. It is still interesting and valid story, just in a different way! I would normally argue that as far as fandom life goes, it should have in fact improved things; whereas Mohg was never addressed and explored as a character beyond "mohglester" thing, now he should get proper respect and analysis by the fandom, right? …right? WRONG, now people do often simplify him in a different way and forget that he DID do all that other bad shit! 🤦🏻‍♂️

And I can imagine that complaint about this reveal is not limited to but INCLUDES fans being annoyed by how people simplify Mohg and make him a good guy now! But fandom's habit of selectively reducing characters to just one trait ("mohglester" before, "victim of brainwashing" now) is not the fault of writers. How exactly the fact that we, as a community, are too shallow and unprepared for complex story and characters Fromsoft offers to us, is the fault of Fromsoft? Creator should not simplify their writing or direct it a certain way just because of the notion that majority will lack attention span or insight to understand it! We are the ones who should do better! Mohg offered enough complexity in SA allegations era, he still offers enough complexity now, it is right there in the source material for those who seek and care!

11) "Why some people are still coping instead of admitting the writing is bad???"

Yeah very mature of me to single out this paragraph by making the headline sound like the speaker is having a fit, I know. 🙄 In my defence, this particular one also truly got on my nerves, but it lacks the same huge gravity as the topic of approving of Hornsent genocide did so it is just… it is certainly something right.

Certain kind of fans that I lovingly call 'Twins Cultists' (as opposing camp to 'Chadahn Simps') has been terrorizing the fandom with the attitude of singling out and shaming other fans for "wrong" interpretations, saying how they "disrespected story and characters" with the awful sin of not reading characters Malenia and Miquella deeply enough while at the same time reducing Godrick and Mohg to a bad punchline and insulting fans that read deep into THEM, trashing everyone outside of their echo chamber, putting characters/ships malicious ragebait takes in the TAGS and then playing victims of the "toxic community" and such and such. And you would expect this kind of behavior to get significantly humbled up and them to self-reflect on how they were treating fans when THEIR takes were disproven? And I am glad that some people DID!

Full respect to the guys who reconsidered the attitude of swinging their One True Reading at the heads of "heretical" fans like a bat now knowing Fromsoft always has some cards up their sleeves! Especially if they apologised to the fans they were rude to! But also enough people didn't and now not only hate differing fans harder, but also are furious that writers sorta took away their privilege to be mean to "media illiterate weirdos". I wish I had the patience to accept the fact that of course people are angry, because something so important for them was……. no, fuck that lol I don't.

Okay jokes aside, yes I am aware that it is not possible to care about something passionately without at least somewhat slipping into the territory of defending your understanding from "threats". All we can really do is to draw the line between getting too carried away by our passion and outright obnoxious toxicity in the fandom and TRY to not cross it. To CHOOSE to not cross it when we see it, and step back if we did cross it. I do, however, take an issue with people who refuse to try and even encourages the mentality of seeing fellow fans as "enemies" and gets proud knowing they angered someone or discouraged them to check the tag. In Fromsoft fandoms, it is almost exclusively Tumblr behavior, we are sure luckier than every other fandom in the internets, but I still want to get it off my chest. Like I said, this particular attitude developed a new form after SoTE released, attacking the fans who seek reasoning within the writing decisions they deemed badly written or fundamentally wrong.

And these instances are EXACTLY where I put "just caring passionately" as their motivation into question. Because if someone says it makes sense to say that Miquella and Malenia admired Radahn's kindness when they all were younger and thus he likely faced a negative character arc since then into becoming obsessed with war instead, and you get mad at them for "coping when calling a warmonger kind is dumb and makes no sense"…? Sorry, but who cares about characters MORE in this situation: the person offering proper thought about them given some new information, or the person who is mad that their one-dimensional vision got broken?

People finding creative, interesting and reasonable ways to incorporate new information into lore, in the ways that do not contradict the base game (!!!) is not "coping" or "seeing through pink glasses" or "refusing to admit their fav dev can do wrong" or whatever you choose to call it. It is simply using analysis and imagination, it is adapting and accepting. If you can't do it, you are welcomed to do rewrites of SoTE reveals and characters and ending, it is not illegal! But don't go and say that the writing is so awful and broken that everyone who accepts it "never actually loved Elden Ring" or other nonsense just because for YOU this writing didn't work! The one and only unforgivable thing the devs did starts and ends at the fact that Radahn thing was not foreshadowed, and yet even HERE his relevance is EASILY incorporated and developed into backstory if you are willing to put in effort! This retcon is such a nothing thing compared to what some other writers do glares at Ladybug retcons for comparison. Like, working with it is possible, and if you don't want to it doesn't mean others shouldn't.

And in fact, at first I saw a lot of enthusiasm regarding the rewrites, AUs, "fixes", dwelling on pre-existing lore ignoring SoTE and all that. I really did, and it was valid. But then what I saw, personally, was that flame dying down and amount of such posts shortening but out of those who left this brand of toxicity followed! My interpretation of this change is that when initial shock and frustration waned, more people started to notice SoTE was not bad.. and THAT made people who continued hating SoTE feel less validated, in a way. When people started to warm up to certain plot twists and decisions, to elaborate new information into their vision of the lore… people that still hated and disapproved of the thing lost the image of being "the saviors of the fandom from Miyazaki's garbage writing" and became simply people who do their own thing. And for people who are driven with negative impulses, 'just enjoying the things they like' is usually not enough. They need to be "right", they need to "contribute to the fandom", they need to be "better" and so on. It is a known thing about fandoms even aside of SoTE and Soulsborne fandoms altogether, and I feel like this situation is the return of it, personally.

Of course, this is all speculation and the dynamic I've observed. Maybe someone observed different processes entirely! I just think it is safe to assume as I've seen absurd level of toxicity even despite staying away from 'active' fandom (no 'cool kids' circles, no following popular creators, no open Discord servers, no checking tag or Reddittube etc)!

Still, "I'll fix awful creators' writing because I actually love and respect the characters unlike they" is already a very questionable sentiment, but to attack the fellow fans over this is beyond any patience and understanding! Eventually there is no "right" or "wrong" way to love the characters and story and to be passionate, even if we are naturally inclined to believe in our own vision the most! Perhaps you express your love by putting in a lot of effort to give the characters different writing entirely, to "save" them from decisions of creators you don't agree with. But it is an OPTION, not the One True Way, and… really, it is strange to be mad at people for being happy and satisfied with the story and finding a lot of valid things in it and call them blinded Fromsoft dickriders incapable of critical thinking or whatever! Bonus points when such sentiments come from EXACT same people who resent the Youtube bros that bash every other new TV series AND insult people who dared to enjoy such aaaaawful product or whatever… You guys really hate the type of YouTube "critics" who take personal insult in people who enjoyed a thing and even reasonably justified the parts that THEY declared disgrace to the series and disrespect to true fans? Yeah most reasonable people hate them. We all know at least one modern TV show whose fans got this sort of treatment. But don't you guys see how you've became exactly the same type of "critic" at this rate? Unacceptable behaviour, not justified by 'but it comes from place of passion'! I am passionate about Soulsborne as you could tell and I disapprove of it, no correlation!

12) "Fromsoft became woke" (and variations)

For startes, I have to wonder whether we've been playing the same games all along. Where was it when Gwyndolin was intersexual and affirmed himself as a trans man later? Seath is also blind and has what is a disability for his species? Where was it when Pharis/Evlana was a very GNC woman in Japanese original, but for you she looked a trans woman because English localisation made Pharis a he/him a removed Pharis' nametag from "female archer" in the woods? Where was it when our good friend intersexual trans man was literally killed by the church? Where was it when they had female doctors, church leaders and scholars in Victorian era? As well as strong female hunters like Maria or Gratia? Gratia and Rom are also confirmed intellectual disability rep via Japanese script? Or when both male OR female hunter could propose to Annalise? Or positive sex worker representation in Arianna being the only kind person to step in Oedon Chapel? Where was it in the BASE Elden Ring with Ranni being bisexual, Malenia representing severe physical and mental illness, Miquella being GNC at least and trans+neurodivergent-coded at most, Dolores being a return of GNC woman, Blind Swordsman, Niall being another prosthetic-using fighter and Marika/Radagon? Speaking of blindness there were also Maiden in Black, Firekeeper, Irina 1, Irina 2 and Hyetta? Where was it when through their whole games they never sexualized their female characters and the ONE exception in Gwynevere was not even on purpose? WHERE WAS IT WHEN TRANS COFFIN???

...okay, I can continue and I'd love to be reminded of more examples. But on the serious note, this complaint has two ways to go about it: 1) an understandable fatigue with writers and stories placing pseudofeminist agenda on bland unsympathetic female characters, retconning pre-established characters to pretend to care for diversity and generally hating the audience for merely being born cis/white/male and 2) people being upset at diversity in the cast to begin with and complaining about "forcing the politics in art". And in both cases, this just doesn't apply to Fromsoft.

In the first case, they simply aren't hating their "privileged demographics" audience through characters and narrative, and doesn't seem like they will. They write very compelling, nuanced and even sympathetic characters, as well as the stories that make you ask questions to yourself! They insist on messages against corruption of religious institutions and fascism, but even THEN they'll give sympathetic characters on that side (!), show that not all people who oppose them are good either (!!) and make damn sure to recognise at the start of it all were good intentions (!!!!!!). From this angle, you could argue they are not woke ENOUGH, actually, because of how merciful, open-minded and non-forceful their messages are! They deliver their points through characters who are actual people, rather than writing characters as bland plot devices that hate you!

In the second case... Yeah, as memey as the phrase is, but "they've always been woke". Just because Miyazaki loves motherly woman archetype and and Fromsoft games always had compelling married hetero couples doesn't mean they are your allies in "preserving traditional values"! Again, messages against religious corruption and preserving long-overdue order of things fearing change are plain. Elden Ring had a slight increase in diversity, but to think of it, Elden Ring is also a bigger game with bigger cast. I do want to point out though that the very concept of worrying that with more diverse characters somehow cis and white cast will no longer be a part of From's stories is strange. They'll never make it all about JUST one demographic because they cover nature of humanity in general, but if anything, adding way more angles than their staple Medieval Europe culture route gives them more power for TYPE of the messages they want to tell! Because their power is, and always been, showing the situation from different perspectives.

13) COMMERCIAL BREAK LOL

14) "Devs artificially increased difficulty instead of WORKING to make battles"

This is very unfair criticism already from the very concept! Players had two years to advance through the base game, and if you play consistently, it is enough time to become ridiculously overleleved! Overleveled to the point of not being able to enjoy playing SoTE at all, as all enemies would drop dead instantly! It was easy to sabotage the challenge and simply not let the devs give us the fun experience they intended. But, no! Devs cared to make things so that even if you are 300+ level and have godly build, you'll be down in two hits by the first Furnace Golem, let alone bosses! So, yes, you either need to run around and collect Scadutree Fragments, or seriously study your boss and come up with clever strategy! I am still proud of a really smart way to fight Rellana I invented x)

This complaint did have a period of initial shock when it was really blown out of proportion due to the comfort zone of being overpowered broken, but this opinion still lingers and I just find it strange! Why NOT make sure that players of any level physically can't be too strong to actually PLAY SoTE, instead of just running through it with ease? Even then, how comes they "didn't work on bosses"? Boss battles like Messmer, Bayle and Midra are absolutely wonderfully well done on every level! Romina, Rellana and Putrescent Knight are really great and have super interesting battles even if not as epic and show-stopping, aesthetic and moves alone are immaculate. Non-remembrance bosses who are also very fun and beautifully designed! There are annoying bits about Scadutree Avatar and Gaius, but you can't seriously say they did not WORK on them! The bosses are challenging not only due to artificial difficulty, because even at high Scadutree Fragments level you still need to give them thought! And while you do… right, you can admire the sound and the battle design!

I am just really confused about this complaint because it could only be applied to reusing Radahn for the final boss.. but even then he is not fully reused, and sure not so reused for Stage 2 where you can't see shit because of Miquella's spells. One "kinda mid" boss can't and should not eclipse all those awesome bosses! If anything, he feels more like a hard to get joke! Fans have been saying things like 'oh if only we could fight Vendrick at his prime', 'oh if only we could fight Gehrman at his prime' etc etc… now, as they ALSO did want to fight Radahn at his prime, they got an option to do so, and he is not all that impressive, right? :p Let's be real he only sucks because Leonard isn't here hgfhhhgb

15) *admiring how fanatical Leda is while hating other (male) characters with the same quirk*

Sigh... I will just leave this meme by the user wraith-caller here: ( x )

Yes, fandom does have decent amount of simps for this type of male character, I know. Lautrec, Alfred, and D twins. (Coincidentally, all women-killers x) Even if Devin is actually justified) I suppose Queelign would go here too if people didn't write him down as a joke character by proxy over a cursed cleric haircut? 🤔 skill issue btw So of course it is not to say that they are not given enough love/lust/other positive interest…..

…but for some STRANGE reason, people who feverishly admire Leda and simp for her or at least hail her as such compelling character that ALSO hate Alfred or D for being such horrid fanatics are almost a staple by now! Why!!! This problem existed to a smaller extent with people who hated Alfred while simping for Adella and even shipping her with her victim- and no, it is cool and based, one does NOT get into a media with dark themes to demand healthy characters and healthy ships, but why so many times gender defines it? I don't care if you are a lesbian; whether you give character a justice should NOT depend on whether you are attracted to them, or else you are no different from straight girls that would like a male character and hate female character with the same issues! And sure I don't care if you are a feminist and are inclined to give "pay back" for years of misogyny in the fandoms by applying double standards!!

16) "Why could not we have JUST ONE genuinely nice character?"

Alllllright so… apparently, I was wrong this whole time about SoTE. I was convinced that it had no impact on the base game beyond like, Leda greeting us in Mohgwyn Palace, but I suppose I was misinformed very much? Because turns out that this whole time I was not aware that SoTE removed existence of Roderika, Hewg, Boc, Melina & Torrent, Latenna, Albus, Thops, Jar Bairn, Millicent and Enia from the base game!

….fine, okay, sarcasm is not my forte at all, but what I said still stands from both subjective and objective standpoint. Subjectively, I don't think counting out minor characters does any good for enjoying and analyzing the story! Should anything only "really" count when it is a significant, major character? This reminded me of that time when someone said it was 'incredibly fucked up how Bloodborne only had 2 non-white characters' when in reality it has 13 but minor characters supposedly didn't matter much…?

I want to specify though how this bit is more about how I interact with fictional worlds; I take them as just fictional realms that I enjoy exploring and "living through", I do not put much emphasis on how much 'weight' characters representing certain demographic OR worldview in the story as someone able to love every other minor gremlin genuinely! Maybe it is autism, maybe it is the fact that I am naturally hesitant to interact with the 'big guys' anyways with real people too. I enjoy tending to flowers and I suppose for most people the point or representation they want to see should be visible from every angle, like Erdtree x) With major characters, I think Rennala and Godwyn are the closest we have to good people, yet they were not able to be 100% good conceptually due to their high status.. much like Miquella himself, which brings me to a more objective point!

Conceptually, it is already impossible to be fully good when you as much as hold a lot of power! Some people have to be neglected if not straight up stomped out, for your own safety or safety of others, and it won't be a good thing *regardless *of intentions! Some sacrifices have to be made because if you are nice to everyone while having a lot of power, bad people will try to use you! Some social games, if not straight up violence, have to be applied if you want to make a change in the world! The big, important person can't be perfectly kind, because in that case they will no longer be big and important! It is just cruel truth about how society works! And Miquella HAD to be big and important. He had huge plans for the world, and as much as keeping himself and what tribe he has built within the Haligtree safe implied some morally questionable acts, let alone making his path through the position where he can change anything!

Pacifist character with unyielding principles who has a say in the fate of the world can often be portrayed from a very unpleasant angle, like, 'hug and forgive war criminals with unreal body count :3' angle (Steven Universe comes to mind first of all). Like, such decision make you wonder how this is being a GOOD guy here! But at the same time, is taking down those war criminals truly good either? When the character combines being the force of good AND being the force able to effect fate of the world, they inevitably are faced with the dilemma of either getting their hands dirty, thus sullying their grace at the very least, or making a decision that would feel like betrayal for the victims… which, again, sullies that grace but in another way. Miquella was already conceptually doomed to act Machiavellian by the virtue of being an Empyrean who wished change, much like Ranni except more subtly so!

And this is why true goodness could only come through the little guys. They don't have to make morally questionable decisions with no outcome that spares their innocence; their field of influence is to just care about their closest surrounding and to do their little tasks! They can't change the world, but they can change just the lives of their friends and their own.

Malenia, one of the key figures in the story, was faced with the choice to either "abandon her dignity" and nuke the continent to deliver Miquella's plan in full (the route she did end up doing), OR to preserve that "dignity" but thus hinder their plan that I remind you was against the Golden Order, to build a better world (which is also sort of morally questionable decision in the grand scheme of things)! She could not win and with all information we were given, more suffering in the setting would ensue no matter what! Do a drastic sacrifice for the greater good, or forsaken that greater good to preserve more lives but doom them to live in the same bad conditions forever was her picture! Yet Millicent, effectively a 'little guy' version of Malenia, had the privilege to die with her integrity intact without any big consequences for the world and great scheme of things! True good, certainly, can only exist in the smaller scale.

When it reaches the higher plane and higher decisions there is no way to remain 'unalloyed'. So, yes, we could NOT have 'just one genuinely nice character' out of people with huge power and importance. Not because Miyazaki allegedly hates hope and hates you! But because he is a writer that seems to understand such fundamental things and philosophical dilemmas from the track record of his games so far. ANY mature, insightful writer knows that the idea of someone 'important' forever being good might be a thing the audience wants, but not a genuine thing. "No matter how tender or exquisite a lie will remain a lie" and all.

17) *hating Radahn's inclusion because "dudebros got validated" and not over the story*

To be honest, this IS something I am also familiar with. I won't play the "unlike you snowflakes I don't care about online discourse uwu" persona because I SURE do! I used to dread Mariadeline ship because fans of it were easily the most toxic and unbearable type of Bloodborne fans, choosing to remain willfully ignorant about Gehrman's character actual lore, showing near-biphobia regarding Maria, having era of acting personally attacked when their ship was implied to be anything BUT cottagecore fluff dynamics without corners, playing victims of hate and "misogyny" when they themselves maliciously rage-baited fans that were just enjoying themselves, and doing that ableist 'no reading all this get a life' thing when shown where they were wrong! I had a period of really disliking Leda because she was an in-universe manifestation of aforementioned 'Twin Cultists' who act very similarly to common Mariadeline fans with spreading the "us CORRECT fans with MEDIA LITERACY who RESPECT story and characters vs them WEIRDOS" toxic mentality, with the whole joys of echo-chamber stuff, playing victims when they knew they were PROVOKING anger and feeling attacked when anyone dared to as much as to look at their favs as anything but perfect. I dealt with both and enjoy the ship now, and like Leda now. These are just two recent examples, but I faced a similar problem often, in previous fandoms as well. And I will be real here:

What helped me every time was to distance from the 'vocal' fandom, gather around a few friends to private chats and bounce around the ideas on our own. Without any outside influence, without deliberately skewing interpretation to "spite" anyone, without any motivation in it besides trying to look at things with clear gaze. The cure against the sour taste that bad fandom experiences have left is not to have the writers to "validate" you or to "spite" your opponents or whatever. The cure is ALSO not to completely abandon the ship/character/concept/etc giving up on it as if it was rotten and "not worth the stress". The cure is to hide away from this negative influence for a time being and build your own vision, that might have only like 3 other fans but be immune to everything! Us very few people here who like Mariadeline the different way keep FAR distance from its more 'common' fans, and we are pretty glad that we grew a Halightree in the contrary to their Erdtree x)

I do not really see why could not the same be done with Radahn as a character. In fact, it feels like there is an unspoken DEMAND for it. For 'reclaiming' him, even! My friend heraldofcrow made a post ( x ) about why Radahn is not 'Chadahn' at all but actually a sad character in his own right and just LOOK at the notes! Clearly, he does not have to remain a "mascot" of those dudebros and remain associated with the dumbest discourse you ever had to read!

I think the fandom really has lost the objective when prior the DLC you guys started to hope for certain outcomes based on the fandom experiences! People hoping for Miquella to be kind to make 'annoying Berserk fanboys' shut up, people hoping for Miquella to turn out evil to be vindicated after his annoying fans were toxic over "wrong" interpretations of him, people hoping for Mohg to be confirmed bewitched so everyone who called them media illiterate could eat their words, people hoping for the answer to Caelid battle to invalidate Malenia haters from Reddittube…… Like, how comes that we have forgotten that the first priority is to hear what the writer has to say and try to accept it as fans, or at least to have objective, reasonable wishes for the story rooted in our knowledge about writing and NOT in fandom discourse? It should not be a matter what group of fans gets validated or screwed over, it should be a matter of what it does to characters! It should not be important that now Malenia haters will NEVER shut up, but it SHOULD be important that we now have a better context for her moral failing and can work with it. She is not THEIR to trash on, she is YOURS to cherish as the girlfailure now with extra information!

There is a Russian saying: "Мышки кололись, плакали, но продолжали есть кактусы" (literally "(the) mice prickled themselves, cried, yet kept on eating the cacti"). It is a figure of speech describing someone who keeps stubbornly doing something that only brings them suffering without a reasonable purpose to it. This is exactly what those dudebros have been doing thinking about Malenia within the context of their fav and what they have been doing complaining about how hard it was fighting her when no one forced them to. But this is ALSO exactly what Malenia fans have been doing engaging in bad faith "debates" started by those guys and checking Reddittube knowing full well no good takes exist there!

If what you wish from it is effected not by your knowledge and tastes, but by your bias stemming from fandom experiences… really, distance from the fandom and heal. Characters are their own entities, not your tools to own other people in the fandom. It goes to both Reddittube AND Twitbr, to both people who started it and people who merely developed negativity as reaction. Fans are NOT part of the story and should never be, we are all just people observing it and reacting to it.

18) "They clearly gave Radahn spotlight because he was popular in (western) fanbase"

It is absurd to assume that Fromsoft would turn the planned story around because a lot of people on Reddit and their YouTube lore influencers declared 'Chadahn' their king. In fact, judging by the merch they're offering, Malenia is recognized as equally marketable if not MORE marketable! Besides, had they cared about Western fanbase's reception specifically (which IS where Radahn is loved), they would have likely avoided the potential backlash by that type of fans regarding making their fav LGBT+! With half-brother, no less. I've also heard a theory that they included Radahn as the very last moment solution, but I doubt that baking in Freyja into the story with her and Ansbach's questline, as well as creating Gaius, could've been something done in the last moment! I am not a game developer so correct me if anything, but it looks like a lot of work to do. Besides, there is not enough cut content in SoTE to suggest the plans were far different! And we all know that cut content always still lingers in the game's files with Fromsoft!

They can care about marketing- heck, using Vargram, an existing character with his own lore, to portray the "Tarnished" in promo materials because his set is more catchy than Knight/Tutorial set, for example! Or how replacing an option to murder Orphan of Kos as an infant with 'shadowy presence' because it felt too grim didn't undo the option to kill Arianna's infant and other celestial children, nor it undid how horrifying Fishing Hamlet was. They also obscured the fact that Annalise's baby got aborted, but not the fact that Queen Yharnam's baby was stolen while she has a bleeding wound where a big belly used to be. These are examples of making posters more eye-catching and dodging potential scandals about promoting abortion respectively, but nothing about nuking the plans for the story!

You know what sells even better than Radahn? Big boobs! Yet over and over they make their female characters have smaller chests, even Marika, and the ONE exception Miyazaki ever made, Gwynevere, was done because the guy who drew her concept was too happy! Heck, assuming that Miyazaki included Radahn because his coworker wrote a Miquella x Radahn fanfic he liked is more realistic assumption than him wanting to "sell better" jggfggfhgn In any case, my point is, they follow the vision they like and don't sacrifice integrity of the story!

(+On the relevant note, back then there was a scandal with press calling them "homophobic" for Mohg supposedly perpetuating a negative stereotype with incest/pedophilia accusation….. but while they debunked that impression, they've added consort thing with Radahn that falls for the exact same issues potential lol!!!! You know the only reason "Radahn is a groomer" takes don't exist is because people who care about Radahn aren't the discourse-starters of the fandom. They didn't escape certain side-eyeing even when they COULD and it is funny)

There is another thing I want to address though!

The screenshot is from this reveal trailer, and the excerpt is from Miyazaki's interview ( x ). I assume that this COULD be used as a reasoning behind thinking adding Radahn and final Miquella cutscene in the "last moment"; like 'you see, there was an ending where he 'reveals' (?) the Scadutree, but they cut it, and offered that unfinished clip of Miquella asking Radahn to come with him!' ..okay, sure, but you know what else was in that interview?

The confirmation that there would not be an extra ending for Elden Ring, of influence on the main game! Right off the bat, right after this trailer! Miquella "unveiling" the Shadow Realm or anything like that would have had consequences on the main game, certainly! They might have animated this prior because they wanted to add a new ending but then decided to not touch the main game under any circumstances but kept it for the cool trailer, or they animated it for the trailer from the start (like if Miquella is unveiling a new location for us, metanarratively)!

19) *refuses to use information and lore from the base game while looking at the DLC*

Yet AGAIN, "Free my man Mohg from SA allegations (he did do all that other shit though)". XD True, when it is not that people reduce (?) him to just a victim upon learning Miquella's Bewitching lore for the sentiment alone… it is then because they sort of forget. :clown: Ansbach's entire existence and what information we receive from him confirms that Mohg's scary bloody cult existed before Miquella's spell! It is up to anyone to interpret whether 'love' theme about his cult also existed before what Miquella did, or was, in fact, a side-effect, but kidnappings and sacrifices definitely were not caused by Miquella!

Another example off the top of my head is Maliketh and even Hoarax Loux / Godfrey basically evaporating from Marika's backstory, as though nothing ever existed besides her time at the Shaman village, Messmer and Fell God. And the latter one makes it especially odd, because base game hammered it down in every other Fire of the Giants' incantation that the motivation to put that fire down was because it was capable of burning the Erdtree and existed as anathema to it altogether, but now it got basically forgotten, as if all that ever existed about it was Messmer's presumed connection to it! I even got """corrected""" once when I stated that war with the Fire Giants happened to establish and protect the Erdtree, with something along the lines of 'we don't actually know what the motivation was but very likely to help with the curse that he caused on Messmer'! Also seeing the turning point of Marika's story in her becoming a God through Divine Gate, when in reality it was first her being chosen as an Empyrean by the Two Fingers! So, first someone now qualified to create the new order, and then actually creating it by entering the Divine Gate!

There were also Miquella things such as saying that he abandoned Malenia when she described his absence as "he will keep his promise", or saying that him forgetting Godwyn was a weird decision when the base game already suggested he failed and gave up with failed Eclipse and Golden Epitaph with words 'please die a true death'! To be honest, with Malenia one I myself fell for it at first, but… yeah, base game suggested he was going to return to her after/if his plan succeeded. Romina "creating" Scarlet Rot I also found to be often disconnected from (Outer) God of Rot existing 🤔

I suppose this could be justified because many people finished Elden Ring significant time prior the DLC, so many lore details got blurred and only general impressions of specific fixations stayed! It is just how memory works, and revisiting the source material from time to time is necessary! Even then, SoTE is so full of new information that it is easy to just completely fixate on it! I just think that it is important to remember that SoTE is still not just a whole game despite its absurd side and saturation with the new things, and things in it add into the base game! Not always like missing puzzle pieces but sometimes in a way that makes the puzzle itself bigger, but still. Gaius existing didn't replace Alabaster Lord that was Radahn's Gravity Magic teacher and Ogha, but he was also a "classmate"! Radahn being stated as an important sibling for Miquella and Malenia didn't replace Godwyn, but rather is added as someone also important! Hell, maybe he even became so close with them after Godwyn's assassination, but I'll get to the "it doesn't contradict stuff" in the meantime! Dryleafs and Needle Knights aren't supposed to make anyone forget about Loretta and the plan to find "proper" Haligtree Knights but never finding a master for such sword! They are just people who put faith into him after Erdtree started to die and his police force respectively! (Also no if I saw that Needle Knights are police then so have to you all, fuck you)

20) "How could they abandon [insert a thing that had enough place in the base game]?"

This kind of happens frequently, and usually it is about Godwyn! Sibling paragraph to 'it obviously should have been Godwyn' I suppose! Godwyn is not the first character who is very significant for the story yet everything happened behind the scenes, through descriptions and dialogues of other characters. In fact, meeting him in "person" is already a luxury by Fromsoft's standards! He had enough of spotlight already with his death triggering the VERY events of the plot with Shattering, one of Miquella's failed plans being about 'Eclipse' to bring him back, being grieved for by other characters, making peace with Ancient Dragons and thus a whole type of incantations in the game being linked to him, haunting the environment via Deathblight and being core figure in the questlines of Ranni, Fia and Rogier who are pretty significant characters all! He had enough development and presence in the narrative, I'd say to the point where bringing him into SoTE would overload the story with his presence! Not making him a core figure in the DLC and limiting new information about him to his most significant Knights rebranding into Knights of Death to protect the places where Prince of Death "grows", again, not some grave insult to his fans because what was there to tell about him happened in the base game!

With Fromsoft characters, THE tragic culmination of their story often happens behind the scenes and we are intended to meet the character at their lowest point, or just dead! With Godwyn, that culmination did happen behind the scenes, with such beloved, important, enigmatic figure getting assassinated and sending Marika over the edge, and we have a second emotional culmination for the character that we get to experience where we DO meet him at his lowest - an abomination on all living and mockery of former self, knowing Miquella did not get the wish to either return his soul OR let him die a true death! He did not have enough screen time, but he had enough presence in the story and feelings!

A similar complaint could be made regarding 'Well, Miyazaki said that Miquella would be a focus of the DLC, but we only meet Miquella in the end and he just sits on Radahn's back instead of at least fighting us himself'! (no not me making up a guy, it was an actual claim towards Miyazaki allegedly "lying") First, you people take it BACK about a very clever Dark Souls 3 reference and Miquella's spells not letting me see shit. Second, like I said, his presence is all over the narrative! All core NPCs talk about him, we follow his traces and find flowers growing from his blood, we learn more about him and his past, Radahn's story is now connected to his and Mohg's story with him given some insight, Trina is inseparable part of him, Dryleafs and Needle Knights are HIS covenants, we see effects with and without his spell… How is all this NOT 'being focused on the character'? Fromsoft's style of giving character time and space is not specifically to show them on screen or let us battle them or have dialogue with them!

Personally, I also at first wrongly assumed that they forsaken Miquella and Malenia's connection for the sake of Radahn, but this is, again, the case of one not excluding another! His connection had enough weight in the base game: he started Fundamentalism with Radagon primarily as a sort of magic to heal Malenia and abandoned it when it was not working, she always identified as 'Blade of Miquella' and it is the only thing she holds onto as she is falling apart, her clothes, prosthetics and armor pieces are made of his Unalloyed Gold and it even digs into her very body, all which he created for her, Ephael is full of statues depicting their younger selves holding each other, she was the one to have his needle (different from the gold needle) and she awaited him to keep his promise since he was "the most fearsome Empyrean"!

(Cut Rico's dialogue in the base game's files ( x ) ( x )) The original intention seemed to give Trina less of a 'personality', making her more inseparable entity from Miquella or even straight up just his disguise like with cut Merchants' questline, so the plan to ascend Miquella to Godhood was already in the plans! They have changed the dream realm thing since, recontextualizing Miquella going to sleep to ascend into presumed dream realm into Godhood with dream Trina persona to Miquella departing into the realm where rather all dead drift to, but the POINT of him leaving for that mad plan rather than mysteriously vanishing and Malenia not knowing why was there from the start! Writers didn't just "randomly made him abandon her" - he ALREADY did so in the very early draft of the story!

In the interview ( x ) about SoTE, Miyazaki also confirmed how many things that were planned from the start were cut from the base game's story because it was getting too big:

Miquella also abandoned not just her but everything, and Radahn logically got special treatment because he was part of the plan from the start! Miquella, who left every feeling that made him the person that he was, did not need to love Radahn or care for him to remember that a God requires 'consort' (in this setting's lore). It is not outlandish to assume that he wanted Radahn to share that fate (a fate so bad that Trina begged us to rather kill him that allow it, mind you!) and not Malenia because she already suffered enough for him in his eyes, for example. She depended on him for everything, so why not ask the other tough guy rather than a person that never knew independency and true agency outside of his influence?

My hot take is that not asking her to hold his hand through horrifying ordeal further proved him caring about her with all the context! He maybe ideally would not have asked Radahn either but if you need the Second Guy as a God, who will you rather ask: a person that already never knew life besides self-identifying as your tool or a kind tough guy who was the second most reliable figure for you BOTH after Godwyn? And would Godwyn be interested in the idea to abolish the Golden Order anyway? Radahn presumably changed his mind later in life, but Godwyn was THE Golden Order guy since the start! But my interpretation is not so relevant, it is subjective and again saying 'there is no glaring problem that people think there is, it comes down to interpretation'. There was still nothing else to add about how Malenia and Miquella were connected in SoTE, it was already all said in the base game!

I might be talking from the standpoint of someone who very much used to the way Fromsoft reveals information; they are very minimalist and precise, they give as much of it as needed to understand the gist, and bringing up something not in one description of an easily missed item but several times across unskippable lore is generous for them! They said enough in the base game for everyone to get the point and decided to not milk the same thing in SoTE, nor they erased or contradicted the information from the base game!

Wanting more information for the sake of it is valid and natural for fans, but Fromsoft doesn't give it just for the sake of it! They didn't abandon these topics, they simply finished talking about them! Even so, Godwyn got now got confirmed to have his version of Cleanrots/Redmines, and Romina offered a fantastic narrative parallel with Malenia as someone unable to bring Scarlet Rot to blooming from the buds state yet cherishing it, when Malenia wanted nothing more but to get rid of Scarlet Rot yet it kept getting through no matter what! They added some extras without exhausting the point itself!

21) "Sote was a mistake" (and variations)

YOU take that BACK about Thiollier and Ansbach. You take that back about Leda and her potential of interacting with Loretta, about Freyja, about insight on how Tanith looked like before marrying Rykard, about Moongrum having a twin sister- heck, about RENNALA having a super cool badass sister! You take that back about Midra and Nanaya and the whole cool Abyssal Woods location, about cool Midra's Manse lore and the best fucking boss battle and soundtrack ever. You take that back about Messmer and the Fire Knights. You take that back about cool battle mechanics additions with many two-handed arms, hand/legs combat mechanics and throwing weapons mechanics. You take that back about Romina and super cool insight on Scarlet Rot. You take that back about Ymir and super messed up cool cosmic eldrich stuff with cosmic fingers and Metyr being a return of Ebrietas archetype no one could expect. You take that back about how everyone finally pays more attention to the Fell God and worldbuilding in general. You take that back about immaculate aesthetic and captivating lore of Hornsent. You take that back about meeting Trina. You take that back about how significant and important topics they managed to raise- no, honestly, how cool is that that they got us to discuss the topics of fascism and genocide, as well as cycle of revenge and dilemma of limiting free will vs accepting cruelty of the world so hard that we FORGET to simp for [choose Messmer or Rellana or both depends on you] during such passionate debates? You take that back about coolest fucking sets ever and ability to become a dragon. You take that back about Igon, Florissax, finally getting an explanation about why Dragon Communion was a thing if Golden Order made a pact with Ancient Dragons and BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYLEEEEEEEEEE! You take that back about Gaius- actually no screw that man, remove his battle lol

…sorry had to add that punchline.

My point still stands: you cannot objectively say that SoTE was a mistake. Subjectively, you can; if you were a fan that solely cared about Miquella only through a certain lense and nothing else, then sure, SoTE fucked your headcanons over and all the cool stuff won't make you shift your hyperfixation. For you, it would have been better if SoTE never existed, you would've been better off in previous state of things, endlessly debating Radahn's fans and bullying people with charitable Mohg interpretations and whatever. But people like this do NOT represent the fandom as a whole at all! Not even in relevance to the gaming-only part of it, I am talking about artists-writers part of it as well! Objectively, SoTE contributed a lot of interesting lore and characters without breaking pre-established lore; as I stated earlier, importance of Godwyn and Malenia did NOT get erased just because Radahn had a retcon to also be important person! SoTE answered some questions that required answers, like origins of the Formless Mother, Dragon Communion, Trina's nature, what happened with Mohg, what was the reason for Caelid and what were these darn weird crawling hands enemies!

No I am not rofling, I was seriously very confused about them and made at least three attempts to solve the mystery of their nature, but SoTE finally freed me from that torment!!

Adding more characters absolutely was not a mistake! None of these characters broke pre-established things, they are merely more 'dolls' to play with! Answering some questions was also not a mistake; whereas people might not like what the answers ARE, tying some loose ends of the story was a good call! It is not as if they've written elaborate document explaining every single bit of lore to the point no one can make interpretations or create new stories anymore! All they did was putting an end to some arguments, however new questions arose in their place; questions more interesting than who is "misogynist" and who is "media illiterate".

From the gameplay standpoint alone, I do not understand this claim either. How exactly SoTE would ruin base game, which is intact and still accessible map without changes? Shadow Realm's map exists separately from the base game, none of it breaks the main game's locations and bosses! I doubt that new mechanics and weapons from the SoTE completely ruin the main game and make it imbalanced either! For most of them, having a strong weapon doesn't automatically make you skilled and even base game's bosses could still kick your ass. And as for "imbalanced" ones, gamer bros of the fandom have been doing great so far self-regulating themselves to shame people who used Mimic Tear, Comet Azur, Blasphemous Blade etc 🙄 Their field of creating artificial "honor"-based difficulty and challenging themselves would not suffer because of the weapons from SoTE! They are able to make the challenges and PvPs what they want within themselves, encourage or prohibit anything. It is not as if Miyazaki is holding them at the gunpoint telling them to use mechanics introduced in SoTE that they believe "ruin" the playing process! Simply not use new weapons or not go in the Shadow Realm altogether if you don't want to - and Elden Ring will remain what it used to be for you!

I guess I can only agree with the notion that aside of SOME story loose ends, base Elden Ring was not lacking in anything. It was a very huge game, with many characters, many locations, many worldbuilding things to touch upon and discuss, many mechanics, very contained and packed with things for years ahead to dissect, discuss and create art and writing and videos for! SoTE just made it even bigger! We were mostly living fine without these characters and new information, save for the frustrating arguments I've mentioned!

Mohg fans against SA interpretations could disagree entirely because as SoTE aired they all said "the night, and the hunt, were long…" But, like I said before, fandom experiences should not define what we want from the story! Some questions remaining unanswered was bearable from the STORY standpoint, but it is objectively NICE that they did get answers! And… just adding more characters is definitely not a problem. Not characters that break the story, just MORE characters. There is a Russian saying, "Кашу маслом не испортишь" ("you can't ruin the porrige by adding more butter in it"), and it applies here very much. Unless some people, for example, hate Messmer and are frustrated that they have to remember about him when writing Marika's backstory or anything.. I would not get it either way because giving a character a couple of sentences of acknowledgement and tossing them away feels like the easiest thing to do in my eyes. Fandom is always doing it, they have always been doing it, so why NOW this is something so hard to do?

22) *blames Martin for all the parts of the story they hate*

As funny as the joke about Martin being responsible for the "incest ship" is, considering his track record, Miyazaki actually confirmed in the interview right after the first SoTE trailer that Martin did not have anything new to add to the DLC story! But then, just because he didn't turn in to add new lore for SoTE specifically, how could we tell that he didn't write these "plot twists" previously? For this, we need to dial back to when his contributions to the Elden Ring were discussed after base game's release!

(Start watching from 6:00 to 7:25)

“Elden Ring was going to take place in, let’s say the present of their game universe. But what they wanted me to write was what happened like 5,000 years before that,” he said. “So I went back and wrote a history of what happened 5,000 years before the current game, and who all the characters were and who was killing each other and what powers they had. They had these runes that were at the center of the game, and the rune got split into many pieces, and that’s what screwed up the world. I laid all that out.”

So, he wrote the base premise for the backstory - what happened and existed before the Shattering, and up until that point! So, how characters got corrupted, how their plans changed and what happened to them later etc was up to Miyazaki to create! Take the concept of the character - who, what power, what status - and put them through the arc and development! Not Martin wrote the events that unraveled after the Shattering AND unravel as we play the game! Miyazaki himself also confirms this, according to this ( x ) interview:

“So it was more up to us to interpret this and say, ‘how did they become such inhuman monsters? And how did the mad taint of the shattered shards of the Elden Ring and its power affect them?’ So that was our job to take these grand heroes and sort of misshape them and distort them into something they were not.”

"…if we get a chance to show Martin and if he gets a chance to see the game and see these characters, I think he might be a bit shocked. When he wrote them, he was really envisioning something a little bit more human, a little bit more traditional human drama and fantasy characters. So I hope he gets a kick out of that.”

I recommend reading the whole page, but this is the gist of it! So, not only what events we are following are Miyazaki's work, but also their fall from grace, their sins, their mistakes and everything you might hate ('you' mostly as in, people upset that Miquella was not as perfect and pure as you wanted) is ALLLLLL on him! YOU leave Martin OUT of this! we also all know he only writes hetero incest fsdhfdghsfdg

23) "SoTE contradicted the base game's lore [example that doesn't contradict it]"

This one is less focused than it may seem, because it is not just about Godwyn and Malenia! In fact, it is rarer about them as complaints about them mostly do the "they got abandoned" route that I've already ranted a lot about! god it feels so good to finally rant lol I've seen some instances of people JUST throwing the 'ohh my GoD this new info is SOOOOO contradictory to [thing]' and refusing to elaborate, pouting and playing victims of blinded fanboys when questioned, which is in itself very infuriating! Regardless of how you are frustrated with SoTE, how it screwed your expectations and preferences personally, you are a garbage critic if you just waste your emotions without any real argument to your point, there is no way to put it lightly! That being said, for this particular reason, it would be easier to address concrete examples that HAD some explaining behind them from the critical people! But, it NEEDED to be said!

Personally, I've stumbled into a couple of things, in which I managed to add my say! The first was a claim that the whole story of the base game was not supposed to happen because if Marika got driven by the impulse of revenge and despair, she was supposed to succumb to Frenzied Flame but she didn't! And this is NOT some groundbreaking discovery about how the story is allegedly fundamentally broken, but simply a huge overlooking of pre-existing information, if not confirmation bias! Frenzied Flame and Three Fingers are very interesting topic in general, that I've covered in a couple of lore posts already, but for the subject: whereas the sickness of Frenzied Flame, aka the 'become too sad and you will start to burn' illness, is the case in the Lands Between and started because of Shabriri's crime, the story of Marika and Midra's Manse logically happened before Shabriri! Abyssal Woods and Midra's Manse have the eyeballs that are evidence of being directly grasped by the Three Fingers as the only eyeball items, whereas the Lands Between has Shabriri Grapes as eyes scorched from within but being grasped by Three Fingers became not a staple but an exception (Vyke)! Marika was contacted by the Two Fingers, not Three Fingers, to have the power that she does. Even then, is not it logical to assume that even after Shabriri caused his curse on the Lands Between, a God would be immune, especially if the "counterpart" of the Three Fingers is their guide? Not to mention how Messmer did take a lot of burden off her by doing her wish for revenge by himself-

Alright, you got the point. It is very easy to logically conclude why there is no glaring contradiction at all, and you don't even need to dig deep into lore to find out why! This is the brightest case from my memory that is best described as 'if you WANT to believe that Fromsoft completely broke the story, you WILL find a backup claim for it'! But unfair criticism that doesn't address the possible counter-evidence is not the way to analyze! When you want to make a claim, you need to scan the overall volume of information for possible objections to your claim and deal with them! Explain why they do not work, or why they are not truly saying anything! Sometimes, as you deal with the potential counter-evidence, you find that there are things you cannot reliably argue against and it might make your initial claim appear less solid or lose validity altogether! And this is fine! As big as the temptation to "prove" something is, the true purpose of having a claim should be to make sure that it is valid all things considered!

Just because you are already too upset with the story and the writers to give it proper effort and analysis doesn't mean you can just toss a bold, easily debunked statement and expect to not have any objection! This is not in particular to the 'Frenzied Flame makes Marika's backstory impossible' person at all, but about a behavior in the fandom I've also noticed; where someone's response to the information that deconfirms their criticism is 'well, but I am already too hurt and disappointed to dig deep and analyze, so…' No, not how it works. You are making a claim about existing piece of writing and thus put skill of the writer up to scrutiny, not writing your own AU/headcanon, therefore be ready to deal with counter-evidence if there is any!

Another example off the top of my head was that existence of Gaius allegedly contradicted the pre-established lore about oppression of Albinaurics! I want to point out though that the person who originally made this claim was nice and never denied validity of the counter-arguments! But as for the subject, I will repeat that it is very easy to assume that there would be some double standards put in action! Like 'oh yeah Albinaurics are cringe, but this one is nice to me so he is an exception'! Or 'yeah we all hate Albinaurics, but this one is HELPING us in the Crusade against those spurned of Grace, he is paying the price for being an impure species himself, let's be nice to him guys :)' (🤡🤡🤡).

In this case things are easy to explain not through digging into information in the game further, but through putting into consideration how humans tend to work! Though Messmer, for one, has his more humane traits stated with how he respected the wishes of his Fire Knights when some of them protested against burning Rauh Ruins, and Gaius might be an extension of that sympathetic side of him! Opinion that saying Radahn was admired by the twins for his kindness contradicts the lore falls apart even EASIER; it is not hard to assume he maybe used to be kind! Miquella even specifically revived his younger version, and it is very telling!

All in all, the writers do not need to overexplain every single thing to prove that there is no contradiction or things make sense! Elden Ring is entirely written in such a way where by just digging deeper, connecting the dots or even applying your imagination and experiences you can easily explain why things work! I just want to really, REALLY accentuate it that before you cry 'bad writing!!!' or 'contradiction!!!', give it SOME extra thought! And if you are not willing to because of disappointment/weak attention span/anger/etc, then don't make the claim to BEGIN with! What is the point of making a claim when you are not in the right state of mind to make SURE it is valid? Bashing a story or a writer while willfully not being fair to them with your effort and research is something better reserved for private chats with the friends just to let it all out, but not for the public blog for all other fans to read and REACT at!

24) "If fans have to fill the gaps and think themselves it's a bad writing"

Sigh… This is relevant to the earlier addressed complaint about fans 'coping', and somewhat relevant to the complaint about 'they should have given more information', AND reverse complaint to how they've answered some questions in SoTE, I suppose. For starters, this argument could not be further from truth at all! Do you really, genuinely, want to say that instead of provoking you to think, to express creativity and curiosity, to apply your knowledge or experience for understanding, writers should have just spoon-fed you every single thinkable bit of information as if you are a toddler? For sure, the discussion about how writers treat reading comprehension of their audience cannot come without addressing the demographics that supposedly would benefit from "over-explanation", so I'll jump RIGHT into it, skipping through the normies:

As an autistic person, I do have my own problems with sometimes skipping through a subtext or an "obvious" clue in the writing, this is true, and maybe people who want to state this are also autistic, I can't know for sure. But.. do we REALLY want to have our intellectual abilities insulted, as a group? Accommodating to autistic people should come locally, like in teaching the society to be more patient with 'stupid' questions and explaining the 'obvious' social cues! It SHOULD be about society being better! It should NOT be about quality of fiction in videogames and movies and TV shows dropping! It should NOT be about writers sacrificing the amazing language of subtlety, nonverbal storytelling and speaking through assumption that our own experiences as human beings will fill in the gaps! We can understand subtexts and unspoken lore, even if it might be harder. When we cannot, autists that did understand the subtext explain it to us! When THEY cannot, there will always be the guy on Youtuber or elsewhere musing about what they liked or disliked in the writing, revealing the information that we might have missed, and we will go 'huh'. We can help ourselves and each other!

Instead of being mad at the writers for not giving more spoken information and evidence, let's place the pieces of the whole puzzle that we did find together to discover a full picture and teach others AND themselves to be patient instead of screaming "reeee media illiterate!!!" at every sneeze! I have insulted another autist's intellectual abilities over not reading the clue I managed to. I had MY intellectual abilities insulted by another autist over not reading the clue THEY managed to! We should strive to be better and kinder as society, AND we should have pride in the ability to do so and ourselves, instead of implying that complicated, subtle writing is "too hard" for our "tiny toddler brains"!

Aside of the general sentiment that the writing that provokes you to use your brain/heart/both to fully comprehend it and gives fuel for debates and discussion, I want to address specifically Miyazaki and how he approaches writing, and why he does so. I want to link the video by Zullie regarding the topic, too:

To paraphrase it: Miyazaki, in his youth, loved reading English novels, but because he didn't have as great knowledge of English language at the time, some words or even sentences evaded him and he had to use his own imagination to understand what might have happened in the parts he could not read! The experience of having general layout and understanding of the story, but details being missed here and there and left up to you to think about, is precisely what he wanted to emulate! You might guess "the words lost in translation" correctly, or you might end up with a completely different meaning than the actual one, but what matters is the fun of this process! To include YOU, an individual, into completing the story! Bloodborne was the first Fromsoft's story I've gotten into, and even before knowing this information I had the feeling like, 'ah, they've written the full story, but then dragged an eraser across random parts'… and so, the hunch was correct!

Miyazaki doesn't just lazily drop ingredients in your direction expecting you to cook anything from them and then praise it as though it was HIS brilliant recipe, that some writers WILL do to sorta take the credit for your creativity! Nor he just cooks the full meal and gives it to you. He removes some ingredient from it so you CAN eat it and enjoy it, but you are always tempted to add something! Something feels missing, but it is up to you WHAT spice you add to complete it! Yet this meal is coherent enough for you to have a hunch on whether you should add something sour, sweet or salty, it is not quite JUST anything! But if you don't think hard about it and add what YOU like, regardless of whether you think it fits the meal or not, the meal won't necessarily taste bad… There IS recipe that exists. He DID write the story. He just lets you choose your own experience!

^^^ It goes in line with how he creates the games; he stated they are not adding the difficulty levels so players can overcome the challenge in some way that suits THEM as a player. Whether you want to cheat, or to grind levels until you become a God, or to cleverly use the tools and items you are given, or to study every move until you dodge them all or whatever! There is no "right" way to beat these games, though we could conclude from levels designs and tools what was 'intended' way to beat them! A 'suggestion'! You might end up going just the 'intended' way, or you might not! You might just happen to guess the missing story bits 'correctly', but also not, and this is okay!

We are endlessly teased with this feeling that if we think just a bit harder we will discover that hidden "right" way, and we all want to believe that we did! Fandom has two extremes between people who DO believe in One True reading of the story and stomp out every alternative suggestion AND people that claim there is no story and you can do whatever and canon doesn't matter and doesn't exist and all. The truth is somewhere in the middle, and it is so frustrating, it is so torturous at the times… but also, so clever and beautiful.

This approach is why discussion about the meaning of Dark Souls and Bloodborne is STILL alive a decade later and even "apparent" lore questions constantly get revisited, and Elden Ring will meet the same fate! Every boss will be beaten but there is always a different way. Every lore question will be answered, but there is always a different answer. Isn't it much better than if we just cOnSuMeD cOnTeNt in a short time and forgot it all, waiting the next one?

25) *frankly unfair toxicity towards creators, down to racism against Japanese*

(Jeez.. I am REALLY paying a hard price by not saving the screenshots of the terrible takes I am referencing, aren't I. -_-" Everyone will just decide that I've made up a guy because a take like this sounds too awful to be real, doesn't it…..) Look- Some lines should NOT be crossed. Say all you want about the writing quality, but how DARE you to bring in this sort of anime fetishes into this discussion? I am just without proper words, and I will not tolerate this slander of Miyazaki! Everyone, EVERYONE knows…. that his fetishes are feet and dying in absurd ways.

sdfjfdhfdsh OKAY OKAY SORRY I HAD TO, but in any case! Did you guys miss the part where Miquella's ever-young body was a curse, was acknowledged as a curse, was a counterpart to Malenia ever decaying as inability to change at all, and something he transcended when he became a God? At NO point his curse was brought up as something quirky and attractive, at NO point Radahn or anyone was addressed as someone finding guilty attraction to him! We had one (1) guy suggested to do that, Mohg, and they confirmed that his behavior was result of enchantment, but even if it was not: without the new information, it already looked like a BAD thing. Like a HORROR thing, even! Miquella wanted Radahn to be there for him as a consort/king, by STATUS, that we know as much! Nothing is there to outright state any of 'that' brand of attraction! It can range from 'yeah they kind of pulled the dynasty-preserving incest thing, very authentic to medieval royal dynasties vibe' to 'it was innocent and not romantic or sexual in any manner, consort is just a status of the second person after a titular God in this setting that doesn't have to be a partner'. You know what is missing from this range? This being a "fetish" that you could flail around in that 'well what else to expect from jApAnEsE developers, you know jApAn has a problem with such things right??????' (🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡)

________________________________

*long, relieved exhale*

So..... yeah, I am done I suppose fhhfds I know I forewarned it as sort of super angry and rude rant, but in a way, it turned out to be more of a love letter to SoTE than a hate letter to a certain kind of fandomry that I just was not able to avoid..

It is funny how it turned out, as at first I've had strong negative reaction of shock, and Radahn consort reveal even soured the first days of playing this DLC for me, heh. That disappointment hadn't vaned yet.. I do not vigorously oppose weird, problematic ships of course, I still stand by what I said about creative freedom. But I guess I kinda did not want Miquella to have any "ship" in canon...? It is hard to explain why, since I do not insist that he is mentally a child too. Maybe I've fallen for the person he WANTED to be, a 'God' that 'loves everyone equally / no one', so him singling out someone disagreed with that "possessive" streak more than I disagreed with how random Radahn felt?

Even so, aside of this, I've been slowly understanding writers' decisions more and more! And those I did not understand I've found to be valid and not broken at all as well! But despite warming up to SoTE more and more with every day and becoming a fan, I was not able to avoid the "window" to VERY toxic and awful takes, some from very toxic PEOPLE, that was my (ex) mutual abundantly reblogging them and.. I guess when I've finally snapped about how strongly I disapproved of that behaviour and how it was all passive aggression all along, my very only inhibitor was just- *snaps fingers*

Moral of the story: if something rubs you a very wrong way, do not keep it in and ADDRESS it. Because if you hope that the alert factor will go on its own, all you'll end with is telling each other very unpleasant things. Pent up aggression ALWAYS breaks through.

In this case, I just feel relieved after having finally written all these thoughts down SOMEwhere. They were eating me from inside, reducing my HP by randomly appearing in my brain even when I was busy and I just could not help but rotate them. Venting is good and healthy. I have some bad troubles with both mental and physical health these days, but at least now there is one LESS thing to siphon my energy away. 🛏️

[donutwatches]

MHA 3.3 - Kota - part 1/3

This is a watch-a-long blog, so no spoilers past this episode please!

Didn't he already do that last season? Did I imagine that? I love that his training is creating the perfect bath temperature.

Apparently Midoriya's training is getting beaten up by a furry. I wonder what he is going to tell his Mom when she asked him what he got up to at summer camp? "Well...there were these park rangers dressed as cats".

What would class 1A do without Iida keeping it together 24/7? Everyone is dead on their feet, but Iida is like "Look alive people, we're about to make the greatest curry of all time".

HIS TINY SMILE. This was a small detail, but it was so moving. Just lighting a fire for cookin and making his classmates smile made him happy. In seasons 1&2 he was so shut off socially.

He is finding out that the part of his quirk that he rejected and hated for so long can help people, and that he can use it in a positive way.

Momo's power comes from food! She can make weapons from her body by eating cake, what a dream.

"It's like poo". Sero, noooooo! Why did he have to make it gross? lol

There is a full doozy essay incoming. I went ham. So don't click 'keep reading' unless you actually want to keep READING.

What Kota says in this episode got me spiraling into essay territory. Kota's point of view has helped a lot of MHA's themes click into place for me, but these thoughts have been brewing for me since season 1.

Categorizing people and placing labels on them can lead to dehumanization. The 'villain' label makes people who commit crimes less than human, and the 'hero' label elevates people into being more than human. Either way, dehumanizing people has consequences, and in Kota's perspective, it got his parents killed.

Someone labeled as a 'villain' can think, well I'm already called a villain, I might as well act that way. Someone labelled as a 'hero' is pressured to live up to being put on a pedestal, and that can lead to failure, or hypocrisy (like Endeavor's outside hero image conflicting with behind closed doors abuse).

The villains versus heroes narrative feeds a cycle where they are in perpetual competition with each other to negative results for the community. As if crime and justice are the same as competing sports teams, like red team vs blue team. This leads to what Kota says, "they're all showing off", and end up "killing each other".

I have had jobs where I worked with kids, and I saw social labeling play out. Some kids got labeled as 'trouble makers'. The kids saw that they got attention for challenging behavior, and it got worse. I have heard a kid state "I'm a bad kid" outright, and they internalized that as part of their identity. It is hard to undo the damage.

It reminds me of Shinso from last season, as an example of a teen being labeled a villain by his peers. He fought hard to reject being put in that category, but many real life teens don't escape the labeling.

There are also kids that get singled out as 'golden children'. These kids feel pressured to be perfect, and can struggle with their flawed human identity not matching their 'golden' reputation.

Bakugo is an example of an over-praised kid that develops a superiority complex. He is insecure about not being the best, because he was categorized as 'the best' at age five. I think 'troublemaker' versus 'golden child' is a small scale version of the 'villain' versus 'hero' in MHA.

These categories lead us to making blanket assumptions about individuals who fit the right image. All might is the symbol of peace, so he must be perfect, right? But the show reveals that All Might, while he is a good man, is a flawed human being. We see him struggling to upkeep the shiny symbol he has created, at the cost of his health and social life.

I wonder if MHA is going to explore a villain that could have been a good citizen, but got trapped by how society has cornered them into a 'villain' labeled box? I think this might be the major theme of the entire story. I've cracked it, I can stop here, I don't even need to watch anymore episodes, bye! ;p

"My friend", ok Deku, you're not fooling anyone.

The starry night backgrounds in this scene are beautiful!

This montage of Midoriya trying to force a quirk to happen almost killed me.

It takes me back to the 1st episode where Deku's opening line is "we are not all created equal", and the episode shows us both him and Bakugo being put into opposite social boxes based on their quirks.

Deku was labeled bad/useless because he was quirkless, and this flashback underlines how much it hurt him, but he was saved by how strongly he held to his ideals of heroism. That is the positive flip side of the 'hero' label. It gave Deku something to look up to and live for.

Kota isn't ready to accept that rejecting the realities of hero society is going to be more painful in the long run. He is too little, and trying to process so much grief, it breaks my heart.

What also breaks my heart, is that Deku is speaking from experience. He has lived quirkless in a hero society, and rejecting the reality of his quirkless-ness back then caused him a lot of hurt too.

This is such a great exchange. MHA doesn't do a lot of quieter character building moments, but this talk between Kota and Deku was so good.

Part 2 is here

Masterlist

TAGLIST

@jessiedead @blackaquokat @granny-griffin @champion-prism @bicheetopuff @setfiretotheshadows @hyperfixations-and-cringe

[tashigys]

ZORO'S FEELINGS FOR TASHIGI

(long, very long writing, so sit right down when reading it)

In the first instance we must dive in and go back to their first meeting in Loguetown. Where Zoro felt the need to run away from Tashigi, since, she triggered the memories of his best friend: Kuina.

Memories that made him question if he was really ever in love with Kuina.

To clarify this, in the Loguetown Novel, Zoro is tormented because Tashigi's mere resemblance to Kuina sparked feelings in him that he had never felt for anyone else:

"Struck by his resemblance to Kuina as by a punch in the face, Zoro , the feared pirate hunter, had panicked. Kuina had played an important role in his life, and her resemblance aroused in him an indescribable feeling. Because of this, the negligent style sleeper that Zoro was could sometimes show feelings. Did this mean that he was in love with Kuina? Certainly not, he was still too young at that time."

Does this mean that Zoro could have fallen in love with Tashigi in this first meeting? Yes and no.

Possibly, Zoro was always focused on becoming strong and being able to keep his promise to Kuina, i.e. he never had time to sit down and think about his feelings. Already in the Loguetown Novel, it is emphasized that Zoro never was and felt feelings of love for Kuina, she is and will be "His promise and goal to achieve".

As to whether there is the moment when a person meets someone and knows that person will be important to him, or simply in the case of "the soft side" that awakened Tashigi in Zoro at their first meeting, whether it revokes a large sentimental attachment. In the case of the actor who plays Roronoa Zoro in the Live Action: Mackenyu. He in an interview talks about his relationship with his wife and states the following:

"I definitely won the lottery in life. I've never met anyone as beautiful and cute as her in my life. I say that every day. The first time I met her, I knew I immediately wanted to marry her."

In his first meeting with his wife Mackenyu already knew that she would be his wife, real feelings from the first meeting do exist and this is a great example.

Something that Tatsuya and Oda emphasized very well when writing Zoro's feelings for Tashigi from their first meeting.

To conclude this first meeting, it must be considered that Zoro at the moment he met Tashigi for the first time, he felt something so strong that he had never felt for anyone else. Feelings that made Zoro himself question if he had ever been in love with Kuina.

Where, the magnitude of that feeling was so strong that he linked them with feelings of love.

But what happens next? We Zotash shippers know that the conflict of enemies to lovers arises in their fight in Loguetown (romantic fight in my heart, clashes of swords, challenging and provocative looks, under the singing of the rain) in this duel both Zoro and Tashigi were baffled by the implication that they were both unaware of each other's identity. Tashigi did not know that the man he cared about and helped pick out his Sandai sword was a pirate. And, Zoro didn't know that the woman who looked so much like his best friend and was an expert swordswoman was a Marine.

Zoro's thoughts and his unintended encounter that Tashigi was a Marine haunted him during their duel:

"I was a swordswoman, but I belonged to the Navy."

"So you used to be in the Navy…" Zoro smiled bitterly.

"I never imagined I'd ever meet that woman, let alone belong to the Navy." Loguetown Novel

Something that for Zoro himself the interest for her was great, that she is part of the navy is a surprise that should not be taken well at all, well the same author of the Loguetown Novel clarifies it with better words:

"Considering that he was a pirate and she was a Woman Marine…. Life was definitely full of surprises."

But it wasn't just Zoro who was stunned by his Marine/Pirate encounter. For Tashigi it was also hard to take in, although she in their duel was always questioning how someone like Zoro could have such a fair and righteous mastery with his swords:

"Impressed by her opponent's strength of conviction, the swordswoman could not say a word."

Although, it should also be stressed that for Tashigi, Zoro's words left traces, traces that even in Punk Hazard do not heal:

"But above all, he found it impossible to forgive that man who had dared to tell him that his existence bothered him."

The feelings of both Zoro and Tashigi in this duel were of coping and recognition. Zoro acknowledges that Tashigi is an expert swordswoman, just as her very existence makes him nervous, he stresses that her presence alone makes him feel nervous. On the other hand, Tashigi was upset at being teased, insulted and hurt, but even so, she maintains that Zoro is an expert swordsman, and will pursue him to catch him with her bare hands.

Zoro in Loguetown aroused romantic feelings for Tashigi, and in Alabasta in their second encounter we see that Zoro cannot face Tashigi, either because he was still not done unleashing those sentimental knots or simply because he was tormented by her resemblance to Kuina, we only know that Zoro himself states that Tashigi "is the only person he cannot fight" or by a more recent translation "she is the only one I am weak to". By Zoro admitting that Tashigi is his weakness, he is assuming that she is the only person for whom he can show affection, predilection, passion and love. Someone's weakness is always their most precious treasure.

Then, Oda emphasizes it again in One Piece Blue Deep, placing that Tashigi, itself, is Zoro's weakness in 2012.

The same year that the Punk Hazard manga chapters come out. Here we enter one of my favorite arcs, which according to me has many important panels for Tashigi's character development but that will be another story.

Zoro's feelings for Tashigi in Punk Hazard are different from those evidenced in Loguetown and Alabasta. In PH, Oda gives us an early Zotash moment, where we can see that Zoro cares and feels the need to know what Law did to Tashigi. A Zoro worried about Tashigi is both hilarious and beautiful.

But, in itself, then there is their first moment where they both find themselves in each other's presence. Subtly, Zoro in this part still considered Tashigi an "Imitator", but acknowledges knowing what Tashigi's rank was "Sergeant" and knows that she is now a "Captain" (the man pays attention to his girl's little details).

Why do you keep calling her an imitator and when she admits that she is no longer an imitation of Kuina? Easy to explain. At the moment when the G-5 sacrifices himself for Tashigi, their captain, loved and respected, Zoro is disturbed by what happened. At that time, the same Zoro could recognize that Tashigi is not a copy of Kuina, she is a woman worth having respect and loyalty to his men, men who gave life for her (something Zoro was going to be a time in Triller Bark to save the life of his captain). She recognizes that Tashigi in fact is and will be only her. In the Loguetown novel Zoro admits this:

"As their conversation progressed, he realized what made Kuina different. The bespectacled swordswoman was quiet and unassuming by nature, both in her manners and her appearance."

Then we have their reunion in the Cookie Room in Punk Hazard. Chapter 687 of the manga, which from the beginning screams that it was going to be a chapter dedicated to Zotash.

Starting with Sanji's panel where he admits that in fact Zoro "has a soft side" (2012) and that Tashigi in his hands will be protected. Something that already in the writings of the Loguetown Novel (2002) had been introduced stating that Zoro " Even in his sturdy heart there was a soft side capable of having feelings for another person". So yes, Oda used the same words written in the Loguetown Novel, to give Sanji that phrase that is nothing more and nothing less than linked to Tashigi in both parts: Loguetown Novel and Chapter 687 of the manga.

This confirms that Zoro has feelings for Tashigi, without admitting that Sanji himself may hint at them or have an idea.

In the official interview of Zoro's Ships released on the official One Piece Youtube channel, they stress that in fact, Zoro was all along aware of Tashigi. When she was hurt by Monet, his killer instinct was activated because he doesn't like her to be hurt. Besides, that the nickname he gives her "Captain Four Eyes" is a wholehearted nickname. Without obviating, that they claim that both were "fighting" but flirting.

Also, that in the SBS 70 Oda emphasizes that in fact, Zoro did care about Tashigi, as well as Tashigi's possible future feelings for Zoro.

Finally, in the SBS of One Piece Party 1 Oda again drops a very important clue to better understand Tashigi and Zoro's relationship. Stating that Zoro no longer considers Tashigi an "Imitator", to Zoro, Tashigi is "Captain Four Eyes".

I don't want to get too deep into One Piece World Seeker a game with a great functional trope between the relationship between Zoro and Tashigi. But yes, anyone who says that for Zoro, Tashigi means nothing has simply not understood everything Oda has built up since their first meeting.

[backjustforberena]

do you have any headcanons about how show!rhaenys discovered corlys's infidelity? i find it hard to imagine a scenario where she wouldn't at least try to confront him. so, the fact that she never mentioned it to corlys makes me think that how she found out must have played a big role in her decision to stay silent

No. That's the short answer. I don't have any headcanons, because I can't ascertain when she might have found out, and that seems crucial to me. So I'm unable to venture much further into the territory than that.

Although, on a broader point, I do find it reconcilable with Rhaenys's character to know that they've never spoken of it or Rhaenys has never "confronted" him. I can see a scenario in which that could have happened, especially if she finds out after the end of the affair or at a time in which she is either already emotionally vulnerable or Corlys is absent.

To me, that fits, potentially, because whilst she is unafraid of conflict, she is also unwilling to incite it if the outcome is only more pain - she doesn't go around confronting every hurt or slight or betrayal over and over again in a pointless and angry cycle. She doesn't bring up topics if there is nothing to be gained by it or if enough time has passed to make it irrelevant to her current state.

So, for example, she only brings up the paternity of Rhaenyra's sons when it becomes an immediate political problem and she can do something pragmatic or get something that she wants by engaging with those facts - ten years after it first becomes a reality with Jace's birth, and, again, with all of that, it seems that Rhaenys and Corlys have never spoken of it until the night of Laena's funeral.

She doesn't bring up Laenor's murder to Rhaenyra during Season 2 because the priority is to fight the war and to actually support Rhaenyra and be trusted by her because that is what is necessary. It would do them no good to clear the air when it could undo the relationship that both need for strength because all of Rhaenys's eggs (as it were) are in Rhaenyra's basket: Rhaenyra is Rhaenys's best hope and monarch.

Rhaenys, likewise, doesn't foster any consequences or rash acts as a response to Daemon and Rhaenyra's marriage. She takes Baela to ward and she keeps out of the drama, when she could have plotted and conspired or, at the very least, engendered a hatred for them in Baela as she raised her. None of that happens.

She disassociates from her own claim to the Iron Throne during Viserys's rule because, despite her prevailing feelings on the subject, she cannot change the past, undo the hurt, or rectify the fact that she was never crowned. She cannot rewrite anything and so stays in the present.

So there is a pattern there - to me. One of consistently putting some other goal before an emotional outburst. One of burying a hurt to save face or pride. One of being noble when to be otherwise would only make her base. One of putting the present before the past.

What would a confrontation with Corlys achieve? That's the question I'd ask, in order to make any headcanons. What would she be looking to get out of it, as opposed to what can be saved and controlled by her keeping the knowledge to herself? Can anything about the past be changed? Would it alter anything about the future, and if so, what? For good or ill?

Is it to stop the behaviour? What if it already has been stopped? Is it to shame Corlys? What if Rhaenys knows Corlys feels shame already? To prevent it from happening again? What if an outburst won't ensure that but some form of attentiveness would? Is it to find out everything - to what end?

Does the information she possesses feel bearable enough if left unresolved? Would the information she gains leave her worse off? I think one of the things Eve spoke to Steve about was knowing or not knowing how special this other woman was. Better to treat it as nothing, or her as nothing, perhaps, in order to minimize the importance or impact of her? Those could be possible schools of thought.

I also think that Rhaenys is a character who conceals her hurt to maintain her own power. Mystery as mastery. Confusing the act of being vulnerable with showing weakness. Giving voice to heartbreak and therefore giving power to Corlys. She could quite easily lose control of the situation and of herself, which is something I think she absolutely flinches away from. It could tear them apart - it could break what they have, she could hear and find out things she never would want to - heck, Corlys could leave her and, if nothing else, we know she doesn't like that.

But, by not confronting him, then the power and her own reaction is hers to determine. It's completely without him and anything he might say or do. It doesn't require his permission. She can make it what she wants. She has more awareness and more information and therefore more power. Even if she doesn't use it. She's got the loaded gun.

But those are unpolicied thoughts and potentially conflicting, depending on what the truth of it all was. The sad thing is that, with Rhaenys's death, we'll never really know. Unless something new comes about, or we get something in the BTS book that is coming, as far as Rhaenys's perspective goes, that's it. We have what we have to work with.

[photogirl894]

"Sun and Rain Part 2: Age of the Empire"

Chapter 30

"A Tense Rescue"

A "Bad Batch" fanfic!

Pairing: Hunter x fem OC, Echo (more best friend pairing)

A/N: Well, here we are again! Though after how things went last time, I'd imagine y'all aren't too thrilled with me 😅 Haha well, that might be the same this time...so strap in and enjoy the ride you're about to take through episode 9 of Bad Batch season 1 😜 Love you all!

Taglist: @the-sad-batch , @nimata-beroya , @intrepidmare , @cole-kenxbi , @tech-aficionado , @ladykatakuri , @d1n0-dan , @sammi9498 , @darthzero22 , @scarlettrose9901 , @thebadbatchscyare , @chxpsi , @ilikemymendarkandfictional , @4pplecider , @locitapurplepink , @l-lend , @nekotaetae , @eternalwaffle , @merkitty49 , @avathebestx , @idoubleswearimawriter , @techs-stitches , @fantasyproductions , @sverdgeir , @totallyunidentified

《 Chapter 29

》 Chapter 31

All chapters (Part 2) (Part 1)

Explanation: Tensions are high on the Marauder after Omega's capture and Kimber must answer to the Clones for her mistake. Will they forgive her easily or will there be division among them?

The Marauder zoomed through the sky, evading the gunfire of the Imperial shuttle tailing them. It didn’t take them long to realize that it was Crosshair’s shuttle chasing them and as predicted, he was not giving them an easy time. 

Echo had taken care of Kimber’s wounded leg first--at Hunter’s surprising yet also not surprising insistence--and had carefully applied what bacta they had to the wound before bandaging it. Her whole armor set had been removed and she was just left in her blacks. Then Hunter was dealt with; Echo had him remove the top half of his armor and sit in one of the chairs so he could bandage Hunter’s chest where he’d been shot. 

Just as Echo finished up with him, Hunter asked Tech, “Any sign of that bounty hunter?”

“The only vessel in our scanners is Crosshair’s and he’s right on top of us,” Tech replied as he continued to maneuver the ship. 

“It’s getting hot back here!” Wrecker cried out from the tail gun. 

Tech hit a couple of the buttons on the console and stated, “Prepping to jump.”

“Not without Omega,’ Hunter countered.

Echo turned back in his co-pilot’s chair and refuted, “The bounty hunter who took her is long gone. We’ll have no chance of finding them if Crosshair shoots us down.”

The Sergeant looked conflicted as to what to do. As Tech informed everyone that their rear deflector shields were failing, Kimber decided to speak up, even though she had a feeling her opinion wasn’t welcome at the moment. 

“Hunter, we need to go,” she urged him. “If we're going to save Omega, then we need to save ourselves first.”

He heaved a heavy sigh in response before telling Tech, “Make the jump.”

Without hesitation, Tech pushed hard on the lever that made the ship jump into hyperspace. Seconds later, the familiar blue tunnel engulfed their ship and they were finally free from Crosshair’s pursuit. 

Once they made the jump, Kimber sighed and let her head fall back against her chair, relieved that they had finally shaken off Crosshair. Her guilt at leading him to them was still eating away at her. Now that they were finally alone and away from the Empire’s sights for now, it was time to come clean about everything…if the boys even wanted to hear anything from her. 

However, Tech beat her to it by saying as he turned his chair around, “Now, Kimber, I believe we are owed an explanation behind your actions regarding Crosshair.”

She let out a small scoff. “You waste no time, do you?” she asked back.

Hunter, however, wasn’t amused. “Tell us the truth,” he demanded. “Why would you tell Crosshair where we were? What possessed you to do such a thing?”

“More than that, why were you sending him secret transmissions in the first place?” then added Echo.

Her stomach churned nervously as she prepared herself to answer their questions. “Look, lads, I'm sorry--”

“Sorry isn't gonna cut it this time,” Hunter cut her off, his stern gaze never leaving hers. “You need to do better than that.”

“Did Crosshair reach out to you first?” asked Wrecker, though his tone wasn't nearly as hardened as the others’.

Kimber fiddled anxiously with her braid. “N--no,” she said. “I reached out on my own. But I never told him anything and I used the encrypted device Rina gave me so he couldn't trace the transmissions!”

“How many times did you do this?” inquired Echo. 

For a second, she hesitated, looking down at the ground before answering, “Three times.”

“Three?” Hunter repeated, aghast.

“I cannot fathom as to why you would do this,” Tech stated.

“All I ever really said was I wanted him to come back; that I wanted to understand why he turned on us…and how much I missed him,” she told them, melancholy in her expression and voice. “Though, that was before we found out the truth about the inhibitor chips.”

Hunter heaved a frustrated sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What changed this time?” 

Her grip on her braid tightened. “I had thought to reach out to him about getting his chip removed like you guys did…but he actually contacted me  instead. I had no idea he would.” She paused for a moment and Hunter raised his eyebrows expectantly, indicating for her to continue. She went on, “It was just after Rex left that Crosshair reached out to me and given the timing of it, I just…got too eager.”

“Oh, Kim…,” Echo sighed, exasperated.

“So you revealed our mission and location to him,” Tech concluded. 

“It's not that simple,” she said back. 

Standing up from his chair, Hunter responded, looking down at her, “It seems simple to me. We tried so hard to stay under Crosshair's radar and the first chance you got, you told him everything we didn't want him to know.”

“It was only because of why we were on Bracca to begin with,” Kimber said. “I thought we could get his chip out, too, and then--”

“That's the point, Kimber: he still has the chip,” Hunter interrupted, his voice raised, “and he's still serving the Empire. He wouldn't jump at the chance to remove it if he's been led to believe otherwise. You left yourself open and he took advantage of that, which put all of us at risk. Do you even realize that? We trusted you! I can’t believe you would do something so selfish!”

Kimber turned away, ashamed.

Then she felt a large hand on her shoulder followed by Wrecker's voice saying, “Come on, guys, cut her some slack. She didn't know this would happen.”

“Wrecker, she endangered all of us by bringing the Empire right to us,” Hunter tried to argue. 

Finally, Kimber snapped and yelled, “Do you think I wanted this to happen? Do you think I asked for this? Crosshair lied to me and he used me! I know now what I did was wrong, but I was only doing what I thought was right at the time!” 

“A bit hypocritical of you to be angry that Crosshair lied to you when that's exactly what you did to us, too,” Hunter fired back.

“Hunter…!” Echo said cautiously. 

By this point, Kimber was not about to take anymore comments lying down. She forced herself to stand up by pushing on the arms of the chair and leaning her hand on the navicomputer next to her, clenching her teeth together as she pushed through the still lingering pain in her leg. 

Facing Hunter and the others with a hurt and mad look in her eyes, she cried back, her tone turning icy, “Well, maybe if I felt I could talk to you or any of you about Crosshair, I wouldn't have felt the need to keep this from you to begin with!” As all the Clones’ eyes went wide at her comment, she kept going, getting even more heated, “You guys won't talk about Crosshair! You know how many times we've talked about him in all the time he's been gone? Once! And even then it was a short conversation. How else was I supposed to cope with him leaving us when I felt I couldn't come to any of you about him? I miss him terribly and I have felt all alone in dealing with that since Kamino. I did what I felt was right for me and I know it was an error in judgment. I admit that. I don’t need you all berating me about it, especially you, Hunter!” Then she kept her focus on Hunter, who was staying silent, as she continued on, her voice rising, “I already feel guilty for leading Crosshair to us in my desperation! I know I betrayed your trust! I’m angry at him for lying to me and manipulating me! I failed to protect Omega from the bounty hunter and more than everything else, I nearly lost all hope because I thought you were dead!”

The way she nearly screamed the word “dead” made Hunter rear back and Echo, Wrecker and Tech were surprised to hear her raise her voice in a way they’d never heard before. 

“I thought not only had I lost Omega, but that I’d lost you, too!” she said as began to cry, her emotions spilling through like a broken dam. “I thought I was about to lose everything because of my mistakes! I’m sorry for all that I’ve done. I know you have every right to be angry, but please…understand that I never meant any harm to this squad. Never! I’m sorry!” 

Finally, she couldn’t bear it any longer and fell back into her chair, turned away from everyone and wept bitterly, her guilt, anger and sorrow tearing her apart. Even though she knew she deserved all of this, it still didn’t make it hurt any less. She wished to take back everything she had done. She should’ve known better than to reach out to Crosshair in the first place. Better yet, she should’ve known him suddenly showing interest in reuniting was too good to be true. Her foolishness and hubris had almost cost them so much so quickly. 

A few seconds later, Kimber felt someone’s arms slide under her and carefully pick her up off the chair. When she lifted her head, she found herself looking up at Wrecker, who said nothing to either her or the others and he simply turned and walked towards the back of the ship towards the bunk area. He activated the door to Hunter’s bunk and walked inside, closing the door behind him and then setting Kimber down carefully onto the bed.

She sniffled and brushed away her tears. “Thank you, Wrecker,” she told him shakily.

He knelt down in front of her, a sorrowful look on his face. “I miss Crosshair, too, you know,” he told her. “I’m sorry I never really talked about him and made you feel lonely.” 

“Wrecker…,” she said sadly, feeling even more guilty about Wrecker apologizing to her.

“I get why you did what you did and I’m sorry things went wrong. You didn’t deserve any of it,” he then added.

“Why…why are you apologizing? Why aren’t you mad at me?” she asked, puzzled.

The gentle giant of a Clone shook his head. “I was confused at first about why you contacted him, but I get it now. You didn’t know what was going to happen and you were only trying to help. You wanted Crosshair back…I know how that feels.” He then laid a consoling hand on her shoulder. “I think you need to take some time alone. It’ll give you and the others all time to cool down. We’ve been through a lot today.”

After smoothing away a couple more stray tears, she declared, “We need to focus on finding Omega.”

“We will,” he promised, “but I don’t want any of us to kill each other before we find her.”

She gave a nod, understanding his point.

“It’ll be okay. Hunter, Echo and Tech won’t be mad forever,” he reassured her.

“I would deserve it, though,” she replied, downtrodden. 

Wrecker wasn’t going to accept that answer. “Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself,” he said. “We’ve gotten through worse before. We’ll get through this. I promise.”

With a gentle grasp of her shoulder, he stood back up and left Kimber alone in the room. After he left, she held her face in her hands, inhaling and exhaling deeply to keep herself from crying some more. Her guilt over her actions weighed heavily on her heart and her mind, wondering how she would ever be able to atone for what she’d done. On top of that, she kept wondering and asking so many questions in her mind. What had happened to Crosshair back on Bracca? Who was the bounty hunter that had kidnapped Omega? Where had they gone? How were they ever going to find him? Was Omega still okay? Would Hunter ever forgive her for losing the kid they all had grown attached to?

They had to find her. Somehow, they had to. If anything happened to Omega, Kimber would never forgive herself. 

Around half an hour or so later, Kimber decided she wanted to go back out into the main cabin. Sitting in her room alone with her thoughts wasn't doing her much good. Though, the main area of the ship maybe wouldn't be much better, if the boys were still angry at her, but she'd take her chances. Either way, she just didn't want to be alone. Luckily, one of the boys had brought her armor and weapons back to the room when Echo had been tending to her leg, so she took up her sniper rifle at the end of the cot, stood it upright with the barrel on the floor and used it to brace herself as she stood up. She positioned the back end underneath her arm and made her rifle into a makeshift crutch. Even though any of the Clones could easily carry her around, she didn't want them doing that. Especially since some of them maybe wouldn't want to right now, so she thought of a way to take care of herself. After that, she took a step forward, testing it out. The rifle seemed to suffice enough for her to walk. The bacta, luckily, was working its magic as the pain in her leg was beginning to dull. Not fully, but enough to where walking would be just tolerable enough. She opened up the door and, with a deep breath, hobbled out into the ship. 

As she came out, she heard Echo ask, “What did the bounty hunter look like?”

Then Hunter's voice answered, “He was a Duros.”

“There are a few different Duros bounty hunters. Anything that can narrow it down?” Echo replied. 

Kimber clarified as she entered the cabin, “He had a wide-brimmed hat, if that helps.” 

She noticed Wrecker and Hunter were gathered around the navicomputer with Echo sitting in the seat in front of it. They all turned to face her once they heard her voice, looks of sad uncertainty in their eyes.

“Look, it doesn't matter how you boys feel about me right now,” she told them as she slowly made her way over to them. “What matters is finding Omega and we're going to have to work together to do that.”

For a moment, Hunter still appeared unsure, but then he lightly sighed and shook his head. “You’re right,” he relented. “We can figure everything else out later.”

Kimber gave him a grateful nod.

A few seconds later, after typing out some things on the computer, Echo pulled up an image and stated, “Your description of the bounty hunter is a match to one from the Republic's files.”

Sure enough, the image he’d pulled up was the Duros bounty hunter that both Hunter and Kimber had gone up against. His outfit was a little different with a long, brown overcoat and his hat had a much wider brim, but they both recognized him right away and confirmed it.

“Cad Bane,” Echo told them. “He had multiple run-ins with the Jedi and was responsible for attempting to abduct Chancellor Palpatine.”

“Well, now we can add child kidnapping to that list,” Kimber added, glaring up at the image of Cad Bane as she made sure to lock that name away.

“First the bounty hunter on Pantora and now this guy? Why are they after the kid?” Wrecker demanded in irritation.

Then Tech emerged from the cockpit with his datapad like usual and answered Wrecker’s question, saying, “Because she is more valuable than we realized.”

“What do you mean?” asked Hunter.

Tech clarified, “I further analyzed Omega's genetic profile and discovered she has pure, first-generation DNA.”

Everyone’s eyes went wide with surprise.

“Whoa! Wait. W-W-What does that mean?” Wrecker asked, puzzled.

“First-generation? Like Rex? How is that possible?” Kimber then questioned, looking at Hunter and then back to Tech.

Tech then went on to explain, “All clones were created from a host named Jango Fett. While our genetic structure was modified for growth acceleration and obedience, Omega is a pure genetic replication.”

“How many Clones like that exist?” Hunter inquired.

The answer Tech gave him was a curious one: there was only one other Clone in existence like Omega. It was another male Clone with the code-name of Alpha, but was later called Boba. Then Tech mentioned that Boba had disappeared near the start of the Clone Wars and that left Omega as the sole living source of Jango Fett’s raw genetic material…which could only mean one thing.

“The Kaminoans…!” Kimber deduced aloud.

Echo seemed to have come to the same conclusion as he said right after her to Hunter, “If she's vital to the Kaminoans' cloning operation, they must have put the bounty on her.”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” said Kimber.

Then Wrecker posed the question, “So how do we find this bounty hunter?”

Hunter told Tech to check with Cid and see if she had any contacts that could help while the rest of them could keep monitoring comms for any incoming signals. With that, he retreated into the cockpit and went over to the communications panel.

“I would ask the girls to help, but Irys told me that getting information on bounty hunters is one of the few things she can’t do. Anything within the bounty hunter’s guild is locked pretty tight, even for her,” Kimber told the others.

“That and most likely, they’re busy helping Rina by this point,” added Echo. “She and Kida should’ve made it back to Ord Mantell by now.”

“I’m sure they did,” said Kimber back, hobbling over to the chair on the opposite side of the cabin. 

Just as she turned around and leaned on her rifle to carefully lower herself down into the seat, Echo suddenly appeared in front of her and took her free hand in his, bracing under her arm with his scomp. He gave her a kind smile that surprised her and he helped her sit down, letting her use his arm to lean on more than her rifle. 

“Thanks,” she said timidly.

He sat back down in the seat across the aisle and said to her calmly, “Listen, Kim…I know dealing with Crosshair’s absence has been hard for you…but you should’ve come to us. You shouldn’t have kept secrets from us. We’re a squad; we look out for each other.”

She hung her head. “I know,” she said softly.

Then Tech put in his two credits by saying, “Echo is right. If all of us were to act on our own accord in all we do, then the synergy of our squad would be imbalanced. We all rely on each other, both in battle and in other matters. While loss is not something most of us are, indeed, too familiar with, it is still something we must now all endure together…and that includes you, Kimber.”

Kimber lifted her head and looked up at him, her eyes glistening slightly.

“I suppose it was a slight on our part to not have suspected your pain would be different than ours when Crosshair joined the Empire, seeing as you had a close connection to him…but we will no longer let you suffer alone,” Tech vowed.

“The point is: we should’ve been there for you more, from the beginning of all this,” said Echo. “Had we done that, maybe you wouldn’t have felt the need to resort to desperate measures.”

However, she shook her head. “It’s not your fault. Like Tech said, we’ve been dealing with things you guys aren’t entirely familiar with and therefore, I shouldn’t expect you to know how to handle it any better than me.”

Echo stood up from his chair and knelt down on a knee in front of Kimber, grasping her hand and saying her name to prompt her to look at him. When she met his soft gaze, he assured her, “We’re a squad and we help each other. All of us. Even if we don’t fully understand how to cope with some things, we’ll figure it out. That’s what we do.” He tightened his hold on her hand just a bit. “Don’t isolate your feelings just because you don’t think we’d understand. We do, more than you know. Please, don’t keep us in the dark or keep secrets from us again, okay?”

She stole a look up at Tech, as well, and he gave her a sincere nod. It astonished her how quickly Echo and Tech were to forgive her for this. Though, she wasn’t going to take it for granted. In response, she simply nodded and replied, “I won’t. I promise.”

Satisfied with that, Tech then declared, “Echo and I shall reach out to Cid.” After that, the two of them proceeded to start typing things out on the computer as well as the datapad.

Wrecker came up beside Kimber and said, laying a hand on her upper back, “See? I told you they’d come around.”

“Yeah…but there’s still Hunter,” she responded. 

“Don’t worry. He might be mad right now, but…he loves you more than anything,” Wrecker told her gently. “I know you guys will work through it. You always do.”

“I hope so…I feel like I’ve disappointed him more than the rest of you,” she admitted. 

He rubbed her back. “Love is stronger than disappointment.”

She snickered lightly and turned her gaze up to him. “It would seem love has also made you wiser,” she observed. 

The big guy said nothing, but smiled encouragingly. 

Then Kimber stole a look down the way to where she could see Hunter sitting in the cockpit, continuously pushing buttons on the console to monitor their comm channels. She could tell he was already determined to work himself to the bone until they found Omega, despite his injury. She knew she was going to have to keep an eye on him. Hopefully, once Omega was found, she'd have a chance to talk things over with him and make amends for what she'd done. 

If he'd let her. 

Not long later, Kimber decided to join Hunter in the cockpit. Not to try and apologize just yet; he was too distracted for that, but to see if she could help and perhaps keep him company…and possibly help him stay sane. 

When she limped into the front of the ship, Hunter was sitting there, his arm propped up against the side console and his hand resting against his forehead. Then he flinched a little and his other hand came up to his bandaged chest, sharply sucking in air through his teeth. Kimber’s heart ached at seeing him in pain, both physically and emotionally.

“I can take over if you need a break,” she spoke up.

He glanced up briefly over his shoulder upon hearing her voice, but then turned back to the console, stating through a grunt, “I’m fine.”

“Darling…you’re still in pain,” she told him.

“I’ll worry about that after we find Omega,” he simply replied, not even looking back at her as he resumed tapping keys on the console. 

She hobbled up next to him and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, feeling his body instinctively relax a little at her touch. “Neglecting yourself isn’t going to help us find her any faster, Hunter, and we will find her… but you need to pace yourself. We still need you here, too, as much as she does.”

For a second, his head turned her way slightly and she thought he was going to try and argue some more, but instead, he let out a frustrated sigh, his head hanging low. Then he reached over and grasped her hand on his shoulder, his grip tight with need, and she curled her fingers around his. It seemed that, despite how angry he was at her, he still couldn’t deny the comfort she was offering him. Not when he desperately needed it in the moment.

Then he said, his voice low and despondent, “I just hope she’s okay.”

“I’m sure she is,” she responded. “If it’s the Kaminoans that want her, I have no doubt that they’ll want her unharmed. Besides, she’s a smart girl. I’m sure she’ll be able to look out for herself until we find her.” She wanted so much to lean down and kiss his brow, but decided against it as he might not welcome such a gesture just yet. Instead, she just tightened her grip on his hand, which he returned. Though, he still didn’t look back at her.

A few seconds later, Echo came into the room, declaring with irritation, “Yeah, Cid knows all about Bane, but not how to find him. She said we're on our own.”

“Of course,” replied Kimber, rolling her eyes. Cid was never useful when they needed her to be.

Just then, they heard a faint, tiny voice come in over their comm channel, “Come in. Come in. Anyone?”

Echo, Hunter and Kimber all exchanged looks of shock. It was Omega’s voice!

“Omega?” Wrecker cried out, running in from the back with Tech behind him.

“Omega, are you there? Omega!” Hunter cried out into the communication panel, but there was no reply.

“It’s long-range. I’ll try to boost the signal,” Echo declared, darting back to the front controls. 

After putting in a few codes to boost the comm signal, they heard Omega’s voice come through, “Is anyone there?” Even though they could hear her, it was still staticy and hard to hear at first.

“Omega, do you copy?” Hunter asked.

They heard her gasp Hunter’s name with joy before saying, “I'm here. I got away, but you have to hurry!”

“I knew you’d find a way! Where are you, Omega?” Kimber then asked.

There was a glitch in the signal for a second before they heard her answer, “I don’t know where I am.”

“Hang on, kid. We’re comin’ for ya!” Wrecker cried out.

Echo was trying to trace the signal, but he groaned aloud and stated, “The signal's too weak to establish a direct connection trace.”

Tech then came forward and began instructing Omega over the comm on how to give them a relay on her position, asking her to create a power surge where she was. They all waited in anticipation for Omega’s responses to Tech’s instructions and were relieved every time they could hear her voice. However, at one point, Tech gave her another set of instructions and there wasn’t a reply. Tech spoke her name to get her attention and there was nothing but static and the sounds of a struggle on the other end.

“What’s happening?” Kimber questioned.

“I still can’t get a good read,” Tech answered.

Then they all jumped slightly as they heard Omega’s fearful voice suddenly cry, “Hunter, I need you!”

Hunter shoved Tech aside to get to the comm panel, yelling Omega’s name in a panic. Then the signal was suddenly lost.

“No!” Kimber cried out, slamming a fist on the dash. “The bounty hunter must’ve found her and cut off her communications.”

“Can you find her signal again?” Hunter asked Tech, urgency in his voice.

Tech shook his head. “It was still too weak for me to pinpoint her exact location.”

“We need to get it back,” said Hunter.

“Calm down,” Kimber told him, grabbing his arm. When he looked at her, slightly irritated that she was stopping him, she continued, “Like I told you, she’s a smart girl. She already found a way to get a signal to us, she can do it again. All we can do for her right now is wait, continue monitoring our comm channels and be ready when we hear from her again.”

He clenched his teeth together impatiently. They had finally gotten word from Omega and just as soon as they’d heard from her, they lost her again. Where could she even be? But the steadfast look in Kimber’s eyes directed at him gave him pause. He knew Kimber was right and he had to remind himself that Omega was indeed an intelligent girl. She’d managed to get away from the bounty hunter long enough to get a message to them without their help. If she’d managed to do it once already, then she could surely do it again. 

With a deep breath to calm his anxiety, Hunter gave her a nod of understanding.

Then, turning to Tech, Kimber inquired, “Were you able to get any sort of reading at all as to where she might possibly be?” 

He turned to his datapad and answered, “There was nothing substantial, but it seemed as though it was coming from somewhere in a system not far from us.”

“Then why don’t we just head that way and get a headstart?” suggested Wrecker.

“There are still several planets in that part of the galaxy. If we bypass the correct one, that could prove detrimental to Omega’s rescue,” Tech pointed out.

The four of them continued to debate on different possible options they could do until a few minutes later, they heard beeping coming from the main computer and Echo declared from the co-pilot’s seat, “I think I've got her. She's in the Lido system.” 

“Where in the Lido system?” Wrecker asked as they all rushed forward to the computer to see what it was displaying.

Echo pushed a few keys and stated, “I'm pinpointing the exact coordinates. Hang on!”

Within seconds, the Marauder was back in hyperspace, heading towards Omega’s location and all they could do was hope they’d be able to reach her in time. Not much time passed when they exited hyperspace and they soon ended up in an unknown planet’s red-orange and cloudy atmosphere. They were all searching out the viewport for any sign of Omega or any nearby civilization.

The ship’s proximity sensor began to chirp and Tech informed the others, “I’m picking up a nearby vessel, but it’s descending fast towards the surface.”

As they kept watch out the window, Kimber spotted what the proximity sensor had picked up: it was a round flight pod soaring downward through the sky.

“There!” she cried, pointing through the viewport. “It’s a flight pod. That must be her!”

“Tech, take over the controls,” said Echo. “I’ll prep the docking clamp.” 

Echo and Tech seamlessly transitioned as Tech jumped into the pilot’s seat and took control of the ship, angling it down after the flight pod, while Echo ran to the back of the ship and started getting the docking clamp ready to catch the flight pod. Hunter and Wrecker ran after him with Kimber limping behind them on her rifle crutch. After a moment of quiet anticipation, they heard the clang on the underbelly of the ship as the flight pod was caught on the clamp and the Marauder docked on top of it. Echo opened the docking port, gas releasing from inside the pod as it opened, and Wrecker knelt down and peered inside. 

“Omega! Are you in there?” he called down.

To everyone’s relief, they heard Omega’s small, trembling voice cry out Wrecker’s name from down below. They had found her!

Wrecker reached down and pulled her out of the pod, happy to have her back. Once she was safely inside, Echo released the flight pod from the ship and Tech flew it back up into the sky, preparing to exit the planet’s atmosphere.

The poor girl had her hands in cuffs and she looked so scared, which made Kimber’s heart ache. She grew even sadder when Omega turned and leaned against Hunter, making him flinch in pain. Kimber knew Omega probably had shared the same fear as she did, thinking Hunter had died back on Bracca and now, she was relieved to see he was alive. Ignoring the pain from his injury, Hunter still smiled sweetly as he looked down at Omega, just happy to have her back.

He knelt down and asked her, taking her gently by the shoulders, “Are you okay, Omega? Are you hurt?”

She sniffled and asked tearfully, “Why is this happening? Why are the Kaminoans after me?”

With that one question, the squad’s suspicions were confirmed. It had been the Kaminoans who had sent Cad Bane after her and she’d found out about it. 

“Hunter…you have to tell her,” Echo urged their Sergeant.

With a pained expression in his eyes and face, Hunter explained to Omega, “You're…valuable to them. More than all the other Clones, even more than us. You're…different.” 

Apprehensively, she asked him, “Different? How?”

The conversation Hunter and the rest of the squad had with Omega following her rescue was not an easy one. Explaining to her that she was a vital key to the Cloning process wasn’t easy for her to hear, but she held herself together surprisingly well. For someone that had just been through a kidnapping, she was doing better than they expected. Hunter soon ordered that everyone get rest once Tech found a spot in space to just let the ship hover for a while.

However, as Kimber tried to rest, she found it hard to go to sleep. Hunter had elected to stay out in the cockpit for a while, saying he would keep watch. Though, Kimber wasn’t sure she bought that excuse. There really wasn’t any reason for him to keep watch for anything, especially now that their ship’s signature was scrambled and the Empire couldn’t track them. No…she had a feeling it was because he still wasn’t happy with her and didn’t want to share the room with her at the moment. Not having him beside her was making it hard for her to sleep, not to mention the dull aching in her injured leg. After determining she wasn’t going to get rest anytime soon, she decided she was going to go out and finally speak to Hunter. He would be alone and he was the last one she needed to make amends with. The others were quicker to forgive her for what she’d done, but she knew Hunter would need more convincing. 

She took up her rifle again and made her way out of the bunk. Though, as she got to the cabin of the ship, she could hear voices from further in. She peeked around the corner and saw Hunter speaking to Omega in the cockpit. 

“If I'm as valuable as you say, Lama Su will keep sending bounty hunters after me,” she heard Omega say. 

Then Hunter responded with conviction, “He can send everyone in the galaxy. You have us.”

Kimber smiled to herself. Hunter’s determination to keep Omega safe honestly just made her fall even more in love with him. For someone who had never cared for a child before, he was doing rather well with Omega. Then she heard Omega tell him that he couldn’t fight everyone and she watched as Hunter got out of his chair, crouched in front of Omega, turned her chair to face him and lovingly told her she had nothing to worry about, vowing that she would never have to return to Kamino. Kimber could only pray deep down that he wasn’t making a promise he couldn’t keep. Of course, they all would do everything in their power to keep the kid safe…but would it prove to be enough?

Once Omega seemed calm enough, Hunter told her to go try and sleep, which she obeyed. As she walked towards the gunner’s mount, Omega caught sight of Kimber waiting near the back, jogged over to her and hugged her around the waist. Kimber lightly chuckled, touched by the young Clone’s affection, and softly smoothed her hair. When she pulled away, Omega simply smiled gratefully up at Kimber and then climbed up into her makeshift room in the gunner’s mount, pulling the curtain shut behind her.

When Kimber looked back towards the cockpit, Hunter was standing there staring at her. He looked a little startled to see her, but there was also still hurt in his eyes as well as yearning; yearning to just understand everything she had done. 

“Hunter…,” she simply said, beginning her walk towards the front of the ship on her rifle.

Though, after she took a couple steps, he told her, “Put that down.” Then he walked towards her and said, holding out a hand to her, “Come here.”

Timidly, she listened and set her rifle against the wall, bracing herself on one of the chairs as she did so. Then she reached out and took Hunter’s hand and he proceeded to guide her arm over his head and across his shoulders, letting her put her weight on him as he walked her towards the cockpit. Once they got there, he carefully eased her down into the seat Omega had occupied not minutes prior before sitting back down in the other chair as she thanked him. 

Still at least thinking he’d be cordial, he asked her, “How are you doing?”

Kimber wasn’t expecting him to be so at ease with her, but maybe getting Omega back had softened him up a bit, she supposed. With a light scoff, she replied, “Remember when we first met? I was so much worse than this. That and I’ve been shot and stabbed before, so this is nothing to me.” Then flashes of Hunter being shot by Cad Bane crossed her mind and tears began to fill her eyes at the memory.

Right away, Hunter noticed her tears and sensed her emotions were rising. “What's wrong?” he asked. 

Her voice cracked as she answered tearfully, turning away from him, “The pain of my wound...and all other wounds I've suffered...was nothing compared to the pain that grew in my heart when I saw Bane shoot you.” She turned back to him. “I thought we'd lost you, Hunter...I thought I had lost you.”

He reassured her, “I'm not going anywhere, sweetheart.”

Even though hearing him call her “sweetheart” seemed like a good sign, her fears weren’t put at ease by his words. “ You can say that all you like...but think about it: we both got shot and Omega was taken from us in nothing flat,” she went on to tell him. “You may not go anywhere willingly, but that doesn't mean it won't happen in ways that we don't expect. We're not untouchable, Hunter, and it's unwise to think we are if we simply promise to be, not in the world we live in now. The galaxy is against us and we need to take better care. I know you were protecting Omega, as was I, and I would never tell you not to, but you were almost killed...and I couldn't bear it. It was my worst nightmares coming true. I can't watch that happen to you again. I can't lose you.” Then her head fell as she felt her tears threatening to seep out of her eyes, squeezing them shut tightly to keep herself from crying and remembering the devastation she’d felt momentarily at seeing Hunter being shot.

A few seconds passed and she suddenly felt Hunter take her hands in his. When she opened her eyes, he was kneeling in front of her, looking up at her with soft sympathy in his eyes. “Kimber, I'm here. Bane didn't kill me,” he consoled her. Then he brought her hand up to his chest and held her open palm over his heart. “Feel me...I'm here with you,” he said.

Kimber nearly cried some more at this gesture. Normally, that was her tactic to calm him down when anything had nearly happened to her. This was the first time he had used it to help her. Feeling his steady heartbeat thumping in his chest gave her the comforting reminder she needed. Her nightmares were still only dreams; they hadn’t come true and Hunter was still with her, alive and well. She let herself fall forward until her forehead gently made contact with his. There they stayed for a moment that she wished would last forever, relishing in each other’s presence, as if to remind themselves that neither of them were dead and that they were still together. 

Then Kimber broke the silence by saying, “You’re here…and so is Omega. We got her back. All is well now.”

However, Hunter sighed quietly and responded, “Not quite.” Then he pulled away and sat himself back in the chair, a conflicted look on his face. 

This was the moment Kimber had been dreading and she tensed up, anticipating whatever Hunter was about to throw at her.

He brought a hand up to his forehead and rubbed between his eyes in vexation. “Kimber…I just…I have so many questions,” he said with a sigh. Then he looked back at her and continued calmly yet still with a hint of disappointment, “Help me understand…why you reached out to Crosshair. Why did you do it?”

Ashamed, she turned away and hugged her arms tightly. “I…I missed him…and I didn’t know what else to do. It was the only thing I could think of doing to help cope with his absence,” she answered.

“Does anyone else know?” he then inquired.

“Only Irys,” she told him, “but it was only because she overheard me sending a message and quickly figured it out.”

There was silence briefly and then he asked next, “When did this start?”

She released a breath slowly, preparing her explanation and readying herself for however Hunter would react. “When we crashed on that moon some time ago…after the one singular time we talked about Crosshair. I was emotional thinking about him and when I went back to our bunk to be alone…I just acted impulsively and sent him a message, just pleading to understand why he left us and to come back. This was before we fully understood the significance of the inhibitor chips.” She paused for a moment, waiting for him to say anything, but he kept quiet, his sights focused outside the viewport. When he didn’t respond, she kept going, “Then I messaged him again when we were first going to Ord Mantell and then shortly before the Imperial gala. On that subject…he was there, Hunter.”

That was what made Hunter finally turn and look at her again. “What?”

Giving him an affirming nod, she said, “Crosshair was there at the gala. I saw him as we were escaping…and I found out he saw me when he contacted me on Bracca.”

Hunter ran his hand over his face, exasperated. He had no idea things with Kimber and Crosshair had gone so far. He was confused, trepidatious and concerned, unsure of just how to react to any of this information. Then he said, his tone still composed yet with no less bite to it, “Even though you knew he has the chip in his head, you still told him where we were. How could you do something so reckless?”

She rubbed her arms for self-comfort. “I was only trying to help him,” she said in a low voice. “I know now I wasn’t thinking clearly, I was just…desperate. I thought we could remove his chip and he would return to us. I was….” She was about to say something, but then a realization came to her mind and she stopped herself at first. Then, with a defeated sigh, she admitted, “I was thinking of the squad, at first…but now I see that I was only thinking of myself. In doing so, I put all of us at risk.”

“Why did you keep all this from me?”

“I just knew, after what he did, you wouldn’t react well to anything involving Crosshair. I felt alone and didn’t know what to do.”

“Kimber, you know you can talk to me about anything.”

“Not about this.” Kimber turned back to Hunter, melancholy written all over her face. “You shut down when Crosshair is brought up, which was what happened on that moon the first time.”

Somehow, Hunter hadn't fully recognized the way he'd handled Crosshair's absence and betrayal. Whenever he was reminded of it, he didn't want to think about it lest it make him more upset…but he never realized that avoiding that subject affected Kimber so much. A small wave of remorse washed over him as his gaze drifted away.

Kimber added, “Though…I can’t really blame you. This kind of loss is new for you; for all of us. He hurt you and he hurt me, too”

“Guess we both haven’t been coping with it very well…and all of us not talking about him didn’t help things,” he commented warily.

“Not really,” she affirmed.

There was another moment of awkward silence between the two of them. Both of them were experiencing guilt over the days’ circumstances and just weren’t sure of what to say to each other. The tension was heavy and uncomfortable, both of them waiting for the other to speak.

Then finally, Kimber said, her voice quiet yet resolute, “Listen…I’m sorry for what I did. I never should’ve reached out to Crosshair in the first place and I definitely shouldn’t have told him where we were. I only ever had good intentions…but I know that isn’t a good enough excuse. Even Omega getting captured was my fault because I failed to protect her. I put all of us in danger and I messed everything up. I broke the squad’s trust…I broke your trust. You have every right to not trust me right now, but please know I would never intentionally endanger this squad. I made a mistake, I know that. I’m so sorry and I hope you can forgive me eventually. I’ll do anything to earn your trust again.”

At first, Hunter didn’t reply. His head hung down and he appeared lost in thought. Kimber supposed he was probably thinking of how awful she was or maybe he didn’t fully believe her apology. So many worst-case scenarios ran through her head that filled her with fear; fear of how her actions were ultimately going to affect her greatest relationship. Then a few seconds later, he stood up from his seat, knelt down on one leg in front of her and grabbed hold of her hands again, running his thumbs over the back of her hands.

“Can you at least promise that you won’t do anything like that again?” he requested. 

Immediately, she nodded. “I promise. Even though he still is being controlled by the chip…Crosshair still betrayed me a second time and I have no desire to try contacting him again. I've learned my lesson.” 

The corners of his lips twitched up ever so slightly with satisfaction. His hand came up and cradled her cheek ever so gently, making her instinctively lean into his touch. “Then I forgive you,” he told her.

Her heart leapt for joy at hearing those words. Her hands came up and grasped his that held her face as she turned her head and pressed her lips gratefully into his palm. She’d believed it would’ve taken a lot to earn his trust again, but she was relieved that her Sergeant was quicker to forgive her this time. 

Holding his hand against her cheek, she looked at him and said lastly, “I’m sorry I disappointed you.”

With a small shrug, he replied, “Well…love is stronger than disappointment.”

She blinked, taken aback at hearing those familiar words from earlier. “Wrecker said the exact same thing to me.”

“I know…I heard him,” he stated. Then he removed his hand and his expression turned sad and full of regret as he said, “And he was right. I reacted too harshly and in my anger, I said some hurtful things to you. What Wrecker said made me realize that that isn’t how I should treat the woman I love.”

“You had every right to be mad at me,” she said back.

Shaking his head, he countered, “But I accused you of being the reason Omega was kidnapped, even though Cad Bane being there had nothing to do with what you had done. That wasn’t fair to you and I shouldn’t have done that.” He heaved a loud sigh. “I hate it when we fight.”

She agreed, “So do I.”

He took hold of her hands again, brought them up to his lips and pressed a firm kiss to her knuckles on each hand. He then returned his apologetic gaze to her and said, “I’m sorry, Kimber. Can you forgive me?”

With a content smile of relief, she traced his cheek lightly and answered, “Of course, darling.”

Pleased that she too was willing to forgive him, he pressed a kiss to her palm. As her hand lowered back to her lap, he then said, “No more secrets?”

“No more secrets,” she repeated. 

With that promise now between them, Hunter leaned forward until their foreheads met, his nose gently brushing hers. “I love you, sweetheart.”

Kimber smiled again, her gladness almost overpowering her now. “I love you, too.” After a short moment, she pulled back and went on to ask him, “Will you come to bed?”

He released a tiny scoff and relented, saying, “All right. I will…but you're not going back to the room using that.” Then he gestured with his head back to her rifle still propped against the wall.

“What? It was the best I could do, given the circumstances,” she replied with a grin.

“There's no need for a crutch when you have me,” he said back. Then without waiting for a response, he stood up and pulled her up with him, draping her arm over his shoulders and supporting her around the waist. “But hopefully, your leg will heal in no time.”

Nestling her head into his neck, she purred, “I'll still choose to lean on you even then, my darling.”

She felt him kiss her hair and with all being said and done, they retreated back to their bunk for some much-needed rest after a long and stressful day.

[useless-catalanfacts]

A very interesting editorial by the journalist, political analyst and activist Vicent Partal. I've translated it to English for more people to understand:

The psychological impact of historical violence against Catalans

The time has come to consider the reparation of the historical violence committed by Spain against the Catalans. Because it's a mark that we carry every day and that defines our society and the behaviour of our oppressors.

I started Sant Jordi celebrations on Saturday going to Via Laietana [Spanish military police headquarters in Barcelona -capital city of Catalonia- famous for being the place where the police have tortured many people in brutal ways] to listen to some of the witnesses of the book Tortured. Via Laietana 43. Twenty-two women witnesses of terror (1941-2019) by Gemma Pasqual. They explained, with an exemplary bravery and dignity, how they had suffered in that horror house -under the dictatorship and the democracy. Since 1940 until nowadays. The attendees cut the street, we were carrying banners condemning torture and the torturers as we listened for half an hour to those women's narrations about what they had been through right there, behind those doors, one by one.

It was precisely in one of the most intimate and chilling moments when a man who was walking behind us, precisely through the door of Via Laietana 43 [the police headquarters], dared to shout insults to the protesters, and continued walking in front of the policemen stationed there. It's evident that he did not feel any respect nor interest for those women's experiences, and I assume that he didn't care about everything they went through, all the opposite. But behind his action there was the security and the arrogance of knowing that he would face no consequence. All the opposite: that, if someone tried to get back to him, he had the police there to protect him.

This verification reminded me of a book I read recently with a lot of interest: Caste, The Origins of Our Discontents, by the journalist Isabel Wilkerson. The book has had a great impact in the United States of America but also in countries like India, because Wilkerson explains how and why racism works not only in the USA, but also in more places -in the case of India, it talks about the dalit caste. And in what it explains there's a few lessons -because after all, she's talking about oppression and resistance- that are perfectly applicable to the Catalan case.

I'll start with this very Spanish man who insulted us on Saturday. How can there be someone so insensitive?, many of us asked ourselves after seeing his attitude. And Wilkerson's answer is clarifying: "The only way of keeping a group of intelligent people artificially oppressed, below others and below their own talent, is with violence and terror, psychological and physical, applied with the intention of stopping them from resisting it, even before they can imagine that they could resist to it." And she explains that this terror, that this violence, is not spontaneous at all, but is fabricated by the oppressors throughout history and they pass it down from generation to generation. She says: "Dehumanizing another human being is not only declaring that he's not human, and it doesn't happen by chance one day. In order to dehumanize a human collective, a very long process, a methodic programmation, is needed. It needs a lot of energy and effort, it needs resources, to accomplish such an antinatural thing as denying that another member of your species is your equal and, thus, denying that he has the same rights."

And with a quote by the sociologist Guy B. Johnson she explains that accumulated historical violence is the key to this oppression process: "To understand the conflict, you must understand that during the years of slavery white people got used to the idea that they could 'regulate' black people's insolence and insubordination through force, without consent and with the support of the law and the state apparatus." Exactly the same as here. And it's as simple as this: for the last 300 years, but very specially during the years of the Francoist dictatorship [1939-1978], Spanish people -particularly Spanish people who live in Catalonia- have gotten used to the fact that Catalan people's "insolence and insubordination" can be regulated through the use of violence and with the explicit support of a law that always is and always will be discriminatory against Catalans and favourable to them, Spaniards.

The security given by decades where this always happens like this, systematically, explains the arrogance and shamelessness with which a passerby is able to walk in front of a group of women explaining that they were tortured right there, in the building in front of them, and, even seeing they're accompanied by hundreds of people, he allows himself to confront them all, him alone, with an insulting shout. Simply, he's psychologically convinced that those insolents and insubordinates will be put in their place by the state's violence, as, in fact -and this is the maximum gravity of what happened in 2017-, the Spanish state did on October 1st [the Catalonia independence referendum, when the Spanish government sent the military police to beat up voters, kidnap votes, and close the voting places to avoid the referendum from taking place] and after the declaration of independence. If today we have the Spanish nationalists encouraged -and autonomists scared- it's because the Pavlov works. We have been beaten again.

In Isabel Wilkerson's book, a calculation catches the reader's attention. She asks in what year will the citizens of the USA have spent as much time having slaves than not having them. And the answer is 2111. In 2111, for the first time, African Americans will have spent as long in freedom -at least theoretically- than the amount of time they spent -and which weights on everyone's consciences, black or white- being slaves. In 2111 maybe African Americans will no longer feel the historical weight that they feel now and maybe -we'll see about that- white people will have gotten used to the fact that they're equal humans, with the same rights. By highlighting this number, Wilkerson explains to what point the past's weight is expressed nowadays and the importance of taking it into account. The way in which it's particularly important among oppressors, who continue thinking that they can do whatever they want with us -and that they have the right to it- and they are not afraid at all, because experience has proven that if someone gets hit, if someone gets arrested, if someone gets jailed, if someone gets exiled, if someone gets tortured, it will be us and not them.

The book has made me reflect and has impressed me a lot because of how it approaches such a deep psychological component of the relation between oppression and freedom. (...)

I'll continue with the example of Via Laietana. The torture witnesses in Gemma Pasqual's book range from 1940, when the Francoist troops had just entered Barcelona, to 2019, during the protests against the Supreme Court's sentence [jail sentence for Catalan civil society leaders, NGO members and democratically-elected politicians for insubordination to the Spanish government because of their involvement in Catalonia's independence movement]. That's 79 years. Assuming that from now on they won't torture again, until the year 2102 Catalans, and particularly those from Barcelona, will have lived as long without being threatened with torture and violence in the Via Laietana headquarters as they have lived used to -and scared of- this torture and violence. And do you think this doesn't matter? That it doesn't leave a mark? That it doesn't condition our behaviour and, above everything else, our oppressors' behaviour?

[muchadoaboutstartrek]

La'an Noonien-Singh in Strange new worlds - S02E03 "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow"

Listen, I will never be on board with Kirk/La'an but I do have to say that seeing her break apart like this was so heartbreaking to me because she's been through so fucking much and she kept it all bottled up for who knows how long. Having her travel back in time in an alternative timeline was taxing enough, but add the weight of carpooling through Canada only to find out that she must let the mass murderer live in order to restore the normal timeline on top of watching the man she just befriended die in front of her must have hit her like a truck. And yet she never even flinched, a true testament to just how strong she is. Her encounter with Khan left her absolutely conflicted and for a very good reason because she allowed the lesser evil to happen in order to prevent the bigger one from taking it's place. She had to kill in this episode, something she has probably never done before to an alien that isn't Gorn. And on top of all of that, the fact that she wouldn't be able to tell anyone what she has been through was a metaphorical cherry on a cake.

As I've stated previously, not a La'an x Kirk supporter but I can only imagine the tremendous relief she must have felt after realizing Jim is alive in well in her timeline.

All things aside, I'm super interested to see how the rest of the show is going to go forward.

[cyborg-squid]

i've been replaying ER (5th time) for like the past week. and while you have the upcoming DLC and big Lore stuff. you also just gotta stop and think. "What was going through character's head at X moment?"

like the Ranni and Godwyn synced death, Night of Black Knives. seems to have been intentional on her end, but how did she feel about it? sad? begrudgingly acknowledging it as necessary? or was Godwyn a guy that was pretty far away on the family line that killing him barely counts as fratricide?

or when you have to beat Radahn to continue her quest. how does she feel at that point, orchestrating the slaying another one of her brothers, one that she seemed to (potentially) have more of a connection to? at that point, the state Radahn was in, it could be considered a mercy killing, but no less tragic.

and then Radahn, him verses Malenia, what was going through their minds when they clashed for the first and last time?! i've seen it posited that Malenia may have thought Radahn was targeting Miquella, which is part of why she ended up pushed to the brink and unleashing the Rot. but then on Radahn's side, maybe you have him facing down his half-sister, yes, but the child of the union (Marika and Radagon) that just absolutely devastated his own mother, these children potentially doted on by his father, who abandoned Rennala. it's not hard to imagine that some anger at that could have manifested itself in that conflict.

And Marika. and the Shattering. what must have been going through her mind then, to shatter the Elden Ring?! i think the timeline places it shortly after the Night of Black Knives, so maybe it was out of grief for her dead son? but i find that rather unlikely, it's probably more so that, perhaps alongside Ranni, she sought to break free from the yoke of the Greater Will, and like Ranni utilizing Godwyn's moment of death, Marika used that same moment and ensuing chaos as either her own or humanity's chance to break free, depending on how you view things.

and then for! after all that, for Radagon to try to reforge the shattered Ring, what was he thinking?! in the very literal sense! how entwined are the two of them?! could he see what she saw? could he feel her intent? or did he just 'wake up', come to, and see a son dead and the Ring broken, and tried to do what he could to physically fix things?!

it's really fascinating to think about, the "what happened here?", not just in the Lore sense with all their big Outer Gods and previous civilizations, but also in terms of the personal relationships and conflicts that end up bring a really big driver of this.

[bluecatwriter]

That Unknown and Terrible Land (I know it's more like a chapter but the whole series would have been overwhelming)

Thanks so much for the request! When I first read the title, I was like, "What fic is that?" The title is almost always the very last revision I make to a fic, especially chapter titles, and so I totally forgot that I'd named that chapter that. XD 

The chapter in question, from the fic "When You Have Read Those Papers, You Will Know Me Better": "Mina reads about Jonathan's vow."

(Major spoilers, Christianity CW)

-Speaking of titles, the whole fic's name is my least-favorite title I've ever done. It's too long, and I always want it to be "these" instead of "those." Could I change it? Yes, but as the infamous Edna Mode said, "I never look back, darling, it distracts from the now." ;)

-Anyway, I am Not Normal about Mina spending the ENTIRE DAY by herself in the same place as she was assaulted immediately after the assault, and although this fic doesn't focus on it, it's the backdrop for her reading Jonathan's diary entry from that day. (In fact, I have in my drafts a fic that's an expanded version of this chapter, going through her whole day. It's slow going though because there's just. So much!)

-The immediate opening scene is a mix of domesticity and lingering terror. I put her in Jonathan's nightshirt because I imagine she only has one nightgown (which was ruined with blood) and no one thought to get her a new one during the day.

-I wanted to show that she knows intellectually that none of this was her fault— but she doesn't know it in her gut. Like many people, she struggles with connecting the two.

-Writing Jonathan through Mina's eyes is always interesting because I imagine her as being very attuned to how his manner changes over time. She can see the toll that the past few months have taken on him, and it's heartbreaking. Even so, he's doing his best to be calm and collected.

-It's a common theme in my fics to have a character unable to speak something emotionally difficult until they break eye contact, either by looking away or by drawing closer in a hug. This is inspired me yours truly, who can only talk about emotions when speed-walking without making eye-contact, or curling up in a ball like a pillbug.

-There are many different possible headcanons for when Mina read of Jonathan's vow to become a vampire should she become one, and while I like different interpretations, I think this one is my favorite, both because the Harkers have become very wary of keeping secrets from each other at this point, and also because it gives Mina a clear motivation for coming up with a plan to make everyone else in the group vow to kill her if she should be "too far gone." 

-In this fic I wanted to show that Mina is not relieved or encouraged by Jonathan's vow to follow her into the dark— but she is comforted by it. It's a complicated soup of emotions! Her faith and her salvation are still important to her— and her husband's faith/salvation as well, which he is jeopardizing here. I wanted to show that this is not a straightforwardly good thing here, but neither is it something she can entirely hate. She doesn't like the conflict it builds in her, and in this fic that turns toward outward anger at Dracula for forcing them into this situation, for putting their souls on the line like this. She doesn't blame Jonathan; she blames the one who put them into this mess in the first place.

-I liked the idea of Jonathan's vow spurring Mina on to make sure this is a choice he will never have to make (#Quinceycore). 

-Because I can never resist a Biblical allusion, I used this reference to explain her state of mind: "She must keep her faith and supplicate the Almighty to bring her back into His fold until He had to comply, like the parable of the widow regaling the unjust judge until he gave her justice." This is a reference to Luke 18:1-8, a parable in which a widow gets justice for her cause by simply pestering a judge who "feared not God neither regarded men" until he gets annoyed with her and gives her what she wants. Like all parables, this can be interpreted in myriad ways, but the most common interpretation is to compare the widow to a person praying and the unjust judge to God, which is fascinating to me. I wanted to show that the same framework that is causing Mina so much turmoil and shame is also giving her the tools for self-empowerment. (If I ever get around to finishing the expanded version of this chapter, there will be a lot more of this kind of thing.)

-At this point, Mina just kind of blanks out, which is what happens to me when I experience too many emotions at once. "All her wants and cares and terrors left her with the simplicity of a single desire: She wanted Jonathan."

-This fic is rated Teen but this may be one of the most passionate love scenes I've ever written.

Thanks again for the ask, I really enjoyed going over this one again!

(Ask game here)

[shingekinomyfeelings]

what you really are // installment 3

Reiner finds that his first sexual encounter with a girl he truly cares for brings up a lot of memories and conflicted emotions. Sure, he's an idiot, but she kind of is, too.

warnings: still none quite yet; explicit sex in later installments. does the implication of Reiner's mental state beginning to break apart count as a trigger? idk. Minors dni why aren't you out catching tadpoles or something?

notes: She is a little bit silly, but just a little. Bertholdt appears in this one and he's just as a joyful and carefree as Reiner. everything's gonna turn out fine for them I bet

I'm reposting this because I added a sentence to make Reiner a little more embarrassing I'm sorry

She’s happy that I’m just a regular person like the rest of them, huh?

Hands in his pockets, Reiner walks the old dirt path between the training grounds and the showers at an easy pace, his eyes shifting to her back now and then. She’s a short ways ahead, talking with the other cadets about something. She barely seems winded from the day’s exercises, but she’s taken off her jacket and from here he can really appreciate the way the muscles in her arms have become more defined in recent months. The thought crosses his mind that her thighs and stomach must look supple and toned, too...

That annoying heat prickles at his cheeks again and he stuffs his hands deeper into his pockets and lowers his head a little, like he’s hiding his thoughts from the world.

How many regular 18 year-old males falter like this when their girlfriend says she wants to have sex for the first time? he asks himself dryly.

She hasn’t said so explicity, of course, she’s just a little too shy for that; but she has told him, in a soft and adorably halting voice, that if he wants to go a little further with her, he can ask, and, well, she won’t say no...

He has to take a deep, deep breath when he thinks about that conversation. She’d sprung that one on him several nights ago when she was reclining serenely in his arms while they watched the reflections rippling on the lake, and... well, something else also immediately sprang up, and he’d spluttered some idiotic response that even he found puzzling.

"That sounds... like... a smart way to do things. I'll be sure to remember it!"

She’d been silent for half a minute and then said, “Huh. Okay,” and the conversation just hadn’t really picked up again since.

Really dropped the ball on being roguishly charming there, Reiner. He sulked a little as the memory replayed itself every three minutes, or every time he set eyes on her, sometimes imagining the bemused expression that might have been on her face.

That was the plan, right? Wait until just the right moment, give her a soft little smirk, maybe run your thumb across her cheek real gently, and say something irressistable like... Well, he hadn’t actually come up with that part yet, but he was sure it would come to him when the time was right and be so provocative and winning that she’d melt into his arms and let him take her on the spot. Who’d have thought she’d beat him to the punch with something so endearingly awkward and unconsciously demure? It was borderline criminal.

And why didn’t he look her softly in the eyes and tell her he’d be honored? Heck, the moment was so simple and sweet and honest, it actually made a bit more sense than his plan to find the ideal instant in which to throw the whole ‘gentlemanly lecher’ routine at her. Would she even have liked that?

He rubs his palm across his face, glad that she’s currently too distracted to notice him silently berating himself.

How the hell is it that she makes me feel so completely confident about some things and so damn confused about so many more?

He pulls himself together long enough to flash her a gawkish smile when she looks over at him and gives a tiny smile and wave before she ducks into the girls’ showers.

Hell, maybe other, regular guys are this awkward. He sighs as he walks into the boys’ showers to clean up. It’s not like I know much about being a regular guy...

“Reiner... You’re not a soldier, remember? You’re a warrior.”

Bertholdt’s voice was resolute and a little pained, barely above a whisper. They had been standing together on the deck outside the mess hall that overlooked the common grounds. Reiner was watching her down there, fending Sasha away from a bit of fruit she’d saved from breakfast. Sasha was hounding her to trade it for some unspecified future favor, but it didn’t seem to work, because even from a distance he could hear her voice turning into a whine. He didn’t even realize he’d been smiling until Bert’s interjection shook his attention away. He blinked at the taller boy for a moment as if confused, then looked somber.

“I know that. You don’t have to tell me all the time.”

Bert didn’t quite believe him that he doesn’t need to be told from time to time, but he knew better than to get into that right then. He watched the other cadets, too, allowing himself just a bit of a smile when Connie seemed to join Sasha unsuccessfully in her negotation attempts. Then Reiner had broken the silence with a a very thin, dispirited tone that Bertholdt almost didn’t recognize.

“And they’re not devils, are they? They’re regular people...” How long ago had she said those words to him? A week? Two? He’d lost track...

Bertholdt had looked at his friend with slight startlement. Of course it was no secret to him or Annie that Reiner had known that since they first came here and saw the undeniably human suffering and enduring will to live that inhabited this island, but hearing Reiner admit as much out loud for the first time was both unexpected and worrying. He paused for a long time before he answered, his own voice bleak and conveying an understanding he wished none of them had ever come to share.

“Yeah. They’re regular people. None of them deserve this. She doesn’t deserve this. But we don’t have a choice. We’re gonna have to finish what we started at some point...”

Reiner’s sun-gold eyes had dimmed a little, like he’d hoped for a different answer. He looked down at the others, at her chewing thoughtfully on an apple as she watched Sasha and Connie now bickering between themselves. She – all of them, really, but she especially – looked so warm, and so alive.

And since that moment, the racing, whirling deluge of contradicting thoughts in Reiner’s mind had become quite deafening.

[nochd]

I re-watched Howl's Moving Castle recently -- first time hearing the dialogue in Japanese instead of the English dub. It's a Japanese movie by Hayao Miyazaki based on an English book by Diana Wynne Jones.

Diana Wynne Jones was born in London in 1934; at the age of five her life was disrupted by the outbreak of World War II, and she was evacuated to Wales to escape the Nazi bombing of London. Hayao Miyazaki was born in Tokyo in 1941; the first four years of his life were repeatedly disrupted by the American bombing of Japan, evacuating from one part of Tokyo to another three or four times in a row.

I've seen Miyazaki's film twice but never read Jones's book. The film, and I gather this is different from the book, is haunted by war; the fantasy kingdom in which it is set is exchanging aerial bombing raids with a neighbour. Wikipedia tells me "Some of Miyazaki's earliest memories are of bombed-out cities," and you can certainly see it here.

The thing that really got me was: here's a story constructed by two people whose early childhoods were both thrown into chaos by bombing raids in the same war.

By the two opposing sides of the same war.

But this isn't actually a post about Howl's Moving Castle.

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

I've also recently become a fan of another Japanese movie: a sobering, but ultimately life-affirming, period piece about PTSD and survivors' guilt in the aftermath of World War II.

One of the many things I love about it is how it doesn't let you hate any of its characters. There's conflict, obviously, but the film takes care every time to make you see where both sides are coming from.

The protagonist is a kamikaze pilot who didn't go through with his mission. When he returns to the ruins of his home in Tokyo and his one surviving neighbour berates him with "Look what happened to us because of cowards like you! If you'd done your job, my children wouldn't have died!", you know this isn't objectively true, but you can see why it appears undeniable to her.

But this isn't a post about Godzilla Minus One either.

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

I've heard that the rationale in the Japanese Empire for sending kamikaze pilots to their deaths, the attitude that the military regime imposed on the entire population of the country, basically went "The Americans are going to kill you. This is a thing that is going to happen. The only question is how many of them you take down with you."

I'm given to understand that the rationale among the Western Allies for dropping two atomic bombs on Japan -- at least, the one they told the public and taught to children in schools in the following decades -- went "The Japanese are willing to kill themselves rather than surrender, as demonstrated by the kamikaze attacks. Only a show of overwhelming deadly force will end the war and bring peace."

And I would hope most people by now have heard how the United States government treated Japanese Americans during the war, herding them into concentration camps despite their protestations of loyalty. I imagine at the time the argument must have been "well, any one of them could be a spy", but that isn't an efficient way to screen out spies.

I think the real reason goes like this: Pearl Harbour was attacked by a collective entity called "The-Japanese"; we are now at war with the collective entity called "The-Japanese"; these people are also part of the collective entity called "The-Japanese"; therefore we are now at war with these people.

Hopefully you can see how the other arguments here equally depend on the existence of a collective entity called "The-Japanese" who would kill themselves before surrendering (hence the need for the bomb) and a collective entity called "The-Americans" who were going to kill every Japanese person (hence the need for kamikaze).

But this isn't a post about Japan and America in World War II.

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

In the other main theatre of the war, in February 1945, the Allies bombed the German city of Dresden. The attack was deliberately timed for winter, when there would be refugees from other German cities seeking shelter there; the intention was explicitly "to hit the enemy where he will feel it most".

But the enemy was the Nazis. They deserved to be hit where they would feel it. But the refugees weren't Nazi soldiers. This was a town full of civilians, including children.

But the Nazis had done the same to cities all over Britain. Yes they had, and that makes perfect sense as a justification if, and only if, you think of "The-Nazis" as a collective entity that subsumed the entirety of the German nation, including the children in Dresden.

Which, to be fair, is a way of thinking that the Nazis themselves eagerly dived into and tried to pull others with them. But maybe that's not a good reason to follow them.

But this isn't a post about World War II.

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

It's hard to remember now, but when I was a kid, if you heard a newsreader say the word "Irish" you braced yourself for the body count, the same way you did in the 2000s if you heard them say "Islamic".

I'm not a fan of the British government, and especially not the way it treated Ireland through the twentieth century -- to put it extremely mildly. But that doesn't mean I cheer for the Provisional Irish Republican Army, whose bombing campaigns killed civilians, including children, in numbers not much less than British military personnel.

As well as the bombings, the Provisional IRA and an opposing British terrorist paramilitary called the Ulster Volunteer Force spent roughly thirty years exchanging revenge killings, back and forth. Neither side cared much about hunting out actual perpetrators: the story was always "They killed one of Ours, so now We kill one of Theirs."

(It has become a truism in social studies that no violent conflict is ever about religion, but who counted as They and who counted as We was determined by whether you went to a Catholic or Protestant church.)

We've all heard Zombie, right? The Cranberries song? It's an angry song by an Irish woman, Dolores O'Riordan, about the conflict; but the target of its anger isn't the British, it's the Provisional IRA. It was written in the wake of a 1993 Provo attack that killed two children in England.

It's not me, it's not me, it's not my family. It's in your head. O'Riordan, in an interview about the song, described the bombers as "some idiots living in the past".

But this isn't a post about the Troubles.

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

It's not just that people are always people, and people have the right to live, and people don't stop being people just because their group has come into conflict with another group.

It's not just that this is still true even in the rare cases when there's an unambiguous right and wrong side to the conflict.

It's not just that belonging to a group or category does not make someone guilty of wrongful acts perpetrated by other members of that group or category, even if the perpetrators claimed to be acting on behalf of that category, even if that claim was officially recognised.

It's that, when you lump people together as a group and punish the whole group (or random innocent members thereof) for the crimes of its representatives, that creates exactly the kind of conditions that inspires members of that group to lump your group together and punish all of you for doing that to them.

And hopefully you can see how this creates a cycle, a feedback loop that can escalate alarmingly quickly into entirely avoidable mass killings.

And the only way out of the cycle is to do the thing that, in the heat of the moment, feels traitorous and despicable: acknowledge, and appeal to, the humanity of your enemies. Both sides have to do this or it won't work, but it also doesn't work if both sides wait for the other to do it first.

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

This has been a post about Israel and Palestine.

After some events that occurred during the writing of it, it's looking like also becoming a post about the United States.