#instead of the contradictory meta

[getvalentined]

I saw another of these floating around that was...wrong, so I'm putting this together so people can keep characters' ages straight more easily. I'm not listing everyone, obviously, but characters whose ages get misstated most often.

Does this match up with the wiki or the Ultimanias? Absolutely not! The Ultimania says that Lucrecia was pregnant for three years! The wiki says that Vincent was shot after Sephiroth was born, even though Lucrecia was still pregnant when it happened! The source material, however, is 99.99% internally consistent with regard to the timeline, so I go with that, and that's what we're going by here.

Jenova Project S (1977 · [ μ ] – εγλ 1977)

Vincent: 26-27 (October 13, 1950)

Lucrecia: 27-28 (July 22, presumed 1949 or 1950)

Hojo: 32 (born 1945)

Pre-Crisis Core (2000 · [ μ ] – εγλ 2000)

Genesis: 23 (born early 1977, see first link below)

Sephiroth: 22-23 (born in late 1977, probably Christmas)

Angeal: 21-22 (born late 1977/early 1978, see first link above)

Zack: 16 (born in 1984)

Cloud: 14 (August 11, 1986)

Aerith: 15 (February 2, 1985)

Nibelheim Incident (October 2002 · [ ν ] – εγλ 0002)

Genesis: 25

Sephiroth: 24-25

Angeal: 23-24

Zack: 18

Cloud: 16

Aerith: 17

The Crisis (December 2007 · [ ν ] – εγλ 0007)

Genesis: 30-31

Sephiroth: 30 (physically ~25)

Angeal: 29-30

Zack: 23

Cloud: 21

Aerith: 22

Vincent: 57 (physically 27)

Lucrecia: 57-58 (physically ~34)

Hojo: 62

Advent Children (2009 · [ ν ] – εγλ 0009)

Genesis: 32-33 (physically ~30)

Sephiroth: 32 (physically ~25)

Cloud: 23

Vincent: 59 (physically 27)

Dirge of Cerberus (2010 · [ ν ] – εγλ 0010)

Genesis: 33-34 (physically ~30)

Cloud: 24

Vincent: 60 (physically 27)

Lucrecia: 60-61 (physically 34)

Hojo: 65 (physically nonexistent)

Edited April 2024, when Hojo's age was canonized by the Rebirth Ultimania.

[bemusedlybespectacled]

proposing what I'm going to call Gaylor's Razor, which is: never explain normal shit as being part of a secret message that can only be decoded by over-analysis.

"These Taylor Swift lyrics are actually coded messages saying that she's a lesbian and is forced to stay in the closet! Any lyrics that are clearly about being attracted to a man are just to throw us off the scent!" Sometimes people, like Taylor Swift, are straight and write about being straight, because they are straight.

"The fourth series of Sherlock was deliberately bad because it was actually a coded message to us fans that there is a secret fourth episode that will make Johnlock canon and will actually be good!" Sometimes writers (even experienced writers who are normally good at their jobs) will write something that's not good, because no one is perfect. They're not going to waste everyone's time and money and energy creating something terrible on purpose as part of a grand master plan.

"Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, the Canadian Olympic ice dancers, are secretly married (with kids)! Their public relationships with people who are not each other and them repeatedly saying 'we dated as kids and now we're just friends' are just to hide the truth! Which they need to hide for some reason! Their relationship is obvious just from their physical chemistry when competing! JUST LOOK AT THIS TWO SECOND CLIP OF HIM BLINKING AT HER!" It seems counterproductive to put all that thought into hiding a relationship that doesn't need to be hidden but then also telegraph that same relationship in front of millions of people through planned choreography.

"But BB, what about times that people really are speaking in code or hiding something due to outside influences?"

If it requires huge leaps in logic, like adding all the letters in a sentence together and dividing by seventeen and that number matches the binary sequence for the color yellow so YELLOW MUST BE SIGNIFICANT, it's not a secret code.

If it requires focusing on teeny tiny details but discards huge ones, like analyzing someone's micro-expressions but handwaving away what the person is actually saying out loud with their mouth, or focusing on one specific line instead of the entire scene or song or whatever, it's not a secret code.

If both supporting and contradictory evidence are used to come to the same conclusion (ex: when Taylor says something that I interpret as gay, that means she's gay, and when she says something that I interpret as straight, that still means she's gay and just hiding it), it's not a secret code.

Trying to apply fandom meta analysis techniques to real life is a really good way of fall into conspiratorial thinking that can be easily exploited. You can totally try to predict what's going to happen in a story or choose to interpret a scene in a specific way; you can't do that in real life with real people. That way lies the kind of nonsense that leads to shit like "this image of pizza on a children's toy is actually subliminal messaging by The Cabal™ that proves that Pizzagate is real."

[youvebeengalindafied]

This is all @polyarmy and @fiyeroba ‘s fault for making me sad about Glinda again so now I’m posting my whole Glinda Meta here (originally an obnoxiously long dm sent to @gamorahww who is a patient saint)

You’ve asked for it, and now you get……The Glinda Meta™

First: I have been obsessed w/ Glinda's character for like 15 years. She is my roman empire. But I also really LIKE her as a flawed character - something that the fandom has always seemed to be a little uncomfortable with.

She is, to me, what Jane Austen once wrote about Emma:

“I am going to write a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.”

Full meta character analysis under the cut. Uh. Strap in.

(This gets a lil long sorry, but PLEASE HEAR ME OUT -)

To me, the interesting thing is what actually - ACTUALLY - motivates Glinda to act the way she does is so much greater and deeper than a simple desire for success/fame/popularity.

Like obviously in literature/critique of narrative, we have this idea of protagonists vs supporting characters. Supporting characters might have philosophies or goals that drive them (think Nessa and Boq) but those philosophies and goals are usually not developed into self-contradictory nuance the way a protagonist's motivations are. They’re just facts about the character.

And in my option, a big problem in the wicked fandom is that everybody seems to treat Glinda as a supporting character whose motivations are easy to digest. To most fans, she's either the girlfriend who is there to support Elphaba's story by being "loving but conflicted." Or to critics she's entirely selfish and cruel (even as she's fun and interesting), and therefore a semi-antagonist

But if you step back and treat Glinda as a true antihero protagonist of Wicked (for the sake of the mental character study), you see that she's not actually motivated by love or popularity or even success....what drives her is desperation.

Glinda sees her world as a place that cannot be changed and will only work to destroy those who cannot correctly operate in it. And she is SO DESPERATE to avoid that. Elphaba's fate is actually her worst fear - she cannot break away from society and leap to a new fate, because she is the ultimate cynic who thinks there is no way that could possibly work. In fact, it's an enormous testament to her love (however you want to intepret that) of Elphaba that she's even willing to consider leaving during Defying Gravity. For a brief moment, her immense, incredible faith in Elphaba is almost enough to overcome her complete desperation to survive the horrible world she thinks she's in.

And that obviously means that she's not as noble as Elphaba or as brave as Fiyero as a character - she cannot make the choice to leave when both of them do at different points - but that's because she's the most "human" character in the story. Most people are not brave enough to become international terrorists, even in the face of great evil. We might join in a developed cause, but to knowingly walk towards what is likely one's death to change a system you know you’ll actually have very little effect on...that takes a very special kind of person. And while Glinda is a GOOD person, she is too much a cynic and too desperate to survive her crazy world to become that impossible standard of the Rebel or the Hero. She's just a flawed, scared girl, in circumstances she never dreamed she’d be in.

And then the craziest thing happens:

Rather than showing Glinda that she should have been brave and done what E and F did, the narrative instead goes and basically confirms all her darkest fears: Elphaba rebels...and her revolution fails, and Glinda loses her best friend to bitter hatred and insanity for most of Act 2. Fiyero decides to leave and do the right thing by going with Elphaba....and he is almost immediately murdered in a horrible, violent way as punishment for it. This can only reinforce for Glinda that the State/the System/the World is all-powerful, and she must bow to it.

But that's the most fascinating moment for her character, because the very moment she realizes the absolute overwhelming power of the system (March of the Witch Hunters) is also the very moment that chooses to die rather than perpetuating it. She leaves the City to approach Elphaba - whom Glinda thinks POSSIBLY WANTS TO KILL HER - and BEGS Elphaba to not die. Begs Elphaba to stop her self-sacrificial madness. Begs Elphaba to allow Glinda to sacrifice herself instead ("Then I'll go, I'll tell everybody the truth!" "No! They'll just turn against you!" "I DON'T CARE!" - this girl who is entirely motivated by survival is straight up throwing it all on the line ready to walk to her death at the hands of a mob with wide open, unblinking eyes)

And obviously, in doing so, she is making the same choice that Fiyero did earlier in the story, But the huge difference is that Fiyero is a classic case of a "dead from the beginning" character, and he does not have the same motivations as her. He starts as a nhilist already embracing death in Dancing Through Life and his character is not somebody who is desprate to survive - his character is driven by a desperation for a faith. And Elphaba (and her cause) is his faith that he happily martyrs himself for.

By contrast, Glinda is terrified of the system that is trying to kill her, and she is desperate to survive it. She sees the way it takes everything form her, again and again, destroying everything she loves - Elphaba, Fiyero, her own sense of goodness…

(And she is extremely genre-aware that she is in a tragedy: her world isn't fair, and she knows that Elphaba will fail. She knows this will all go wrong.)

But Glinda still has such strength of character that she - in the end - overcomes all of her fear, all of her weaknesses, and humbles herself at the pyre to join the people she loves so much in their fate. She both offers to die for Elphaba and she takes up Elphaba's work and dedicates her entire life to it, consequences be damned. And that comes from a place of ultimate love and goodness, despite all of her flaws and all the temptations dissuading her.

Because Glinda is not Elphaba or Fiyero - she isn't a starry-eyed optimistic rebel or a man with a obsessive, loving faith. She is just a girl. Just Emma. And she is extremely flawed, and has so many fears that push and pull at her in a way the other main characters do not experience. But despite being so painfully, humanly defective, her goodness allows her to do the right thing in the end.

tl;dr - the greatest thing about Glinda’s character is that she is flawed, and she is weak and makes all the wrong choices. But in the end, she humbles herself completely - to the point of offering her own life for Elphaba and taking the whole weight of the world on her shoulders despite all her fear - because she is ultimately good.

And thus in the end, she becomes the person that Elphaba so clearly sees her as throughout the story: good, caring, and able to make real change in the world. She will now try desperately to fully live up to Elphaba's incredible faith in her. And it's so heartbreaking and tragic, but also one of the best character arcs ever.

So I guess it's less "wants to stay safe in her bubble" and more "she sees no option other than to stay safe. The State/System is all-powerful and there is nothing she thinks she can do to change that. But the beauty of the character lies in her decision to step out of that bubble anyways."

—

BONUS: Glinda’s flaws in relation to her relationship with Elphaba

(Or why Gelphie is a devastating ship (romantically or not) but not in the way you think)

This section dedicated to the SJB/AA performance that just BREAKS ME.

Elphaba basically sees Glinda through some WILDLY rose-tinted glasses (which is just. such a fascinating insight into elphaba’s character). Which is why a good chunk of the fandom accepts it as fact that Glinda is ~not actually all that flawed~ or is somehow being forced to make the decisions she is (she is not. the narrative point of Fiyero’s character is to prove that lol)

Glinda is very much complicated and does make some truly terrible decisions. Elphaba just sees and believes the good in her, despite everything she does (because it’s also a fact of the story that - either platonically or romantically - she’s clearly a little in love with Glinda. (The passes she gives that girl…)). I don’t think her weird thing about Glinda is particularly rational, but it is undeniably all-consuming.

And that makes their relationship feel VERY human. Their flaws don't make them unworthy of each other’s love and respect and friendship. Elphaba's love of Glinda is pretty crazy in light of how much Glinda’s morals and choices differ from her own, but that’s the kind of love that real, sometimes illogical people have. Anybody trying to prove the logic or compatibility of the characters is kinda missing the point - it doesn’t make sense, and THAT’S how you know it’s love.

(Brief aside: similar to Elphaba’s obsession with Glinda, Fiyero is also irrationally obsessed with Elphaba. I mean, she kinda sucks at the whole revolution thing (she's trying!!) and he's clearly starry-eyed ignoring a LOT of her flaws lol. In contrast - for better or worse, Glinda does see Elphaba's flaws and calls them out, just as Elphaba sees Fiyero's flaws and calls him out. It’s a nice little circular relationship)

But…but….is it gay???

Sure. I think so - but I’m a lesbian who has shipped it since I was a preteen lol. But that’s also NOT THE POINT, and focusing on only the romantic angle of their relationship REALLY ignores just how layered and complex it is.

Taking off my squee shipping glasses for a minute: they’re fundamentally just two people in some version of an EXTREMELY intense relationship. I honestly think Glinda reads as a little terrified of how insanely intense her relationship is with Elphaba. She fears walking down that road and fully falling into that intense, all-consuming love. (And we literally learn why later through Fiyero’s ‘death’ and Elphaba’s insanity - love makes you do some crazy things, and Glinda can’t afford that in this world.)

Regardless of whether you interpret them romantically or not - it’s clear they’re very intense about each other and Glinda is very afraid that Elphaba is her weakness. Unfortunately, Elphaba is also her soulmate and the love of her life, and she’ll always come back again. That fact will ruin Glinda’s life in the end, but it will have been worth it for all the love that was there

[pastorfutureletthembe]

So, before the last episode airs, I want to share a theory.

I think the Yingdu chapter is actually Qiao Ling's point of view on Lu Guang's memory she got from Li Tianxi.

It looks a lot like us right? (In less hysterical)

And actually, it could explain why the show looks like different timelines merged. Because, the whole season would be like an optical illusion. It would work like this:

Basically, the brain needs to make sense of what you're seeing. That's also why, if at a significant distance from two distinct dots, your brain will translate what the eyes see as: there is one big dot, instead of two small dots close to each other.

This being said. What if she has memories from a chain of events, but those memories are contradictory? Because they would be plural and superpouse each other, Qiao Ling's brain would still give a linear plotline for her to understand what she's witnessing.

After a while, she would put everything together and understand what Lu Guang actually did and what happened in previous timelines.

Also,

She seems to have a WHITE eyes power.

While CXS was taking the math test, we saw someone near Cheng Weimin using white eyes power. I actually don't know if it means that this was Qiao Ling or if there are other occurrences of white eyes in YINGDU. But I do think there are some hints of a WITNESS.

For the first time in the history of the show, we hear Lu Guang's thoughts. And yet, it gives away very little about his past. I think it's because Qiao Ling "hears" the memories in a specific context (Lu Guang's trauma) but not what is anterior to it. We also get Lu Guang's perception of the three new characters: Liu Xiao, Vein and Xia Fei. The PV are probably hinting on that as well.

The Yingdu Chapter and the PVs gave a very different storyline and perception on these characters. It is my opinion that it's because Lu Guang has an opinion on each of them but those are not reflecting reality.

Everything is about perspective, after all.

The fact there is a wink at the broken fourth wall could also eggs us on that but this will be a meta for another day.

[fieldofheathers-stuff]

The Silco Saga, Part Two*: Vander and Silco haunt the narrative (and are kinda gay for each other)

*This is the second (well, actually third) post in a series I’ve lovingly dubbed “The Silco Saga, a retrospective after Season 2”. It’s halfway between flow of conscience, meta, headcanon and review, spawned from my Arcane brainrot (and recent S1 rewatch) and vaguely aimed at trying to reevaluate the entirety of Arcane with a focus on my Main Man™ Silco. Here is Part 1 (on how S2 handled Silco and Jinx’s relationship) and Part 1.5 (miscellaneous thoughts regarding timeline issues and Silco’s actions towards the kids in S1ep3).

Please feel free to comment! I love hearing different perspectives on this show.

Also, quick disclaimer (just in case it wasn’t clear from the title of this post): I ship them. Don’t like, don’t read. And I swear to God, if I hear anyone say “but they’re brothers!!!1!”, know that I’m going to curse your entire genome until the thermal death of the Universe. Bye.

——————————————————

Vander’s original sin

The portrayal of Vander that emerges from S1 and S2 is that of a man who is trying to do good by his people, but is plagued by guilt and shame due to the horrific acts of violence he committed in the past. S2 clearly shows us that the events of the Day of Ash and the subsequent attempted murder of his best friend/comrade/homoerotic situationship (I’m looking at you, Brokeback Mountain jackets) were intensely traumatic not just for Silco, but for Vander as well. I’ll admit I didn’t much care for him in S1 (mostly because of his goody-two-shoes aura which most of the fandom seemed to latch on to), but I think the elements S2 added to his backstory turned him into a wonderfully complex and contradictory character. It cements something I already kind of sensed about him in S1: that there’s a distinct layer of hypocrisy in Vander’s strict adherence to pacifism (to the point of inaction), which is not really a byproduct of a deeply held personal belief about the ethics of non-violence, but instead a way to cope with his guilt about Silco and the other victims of the Day of Ash revolt. Vander chooses to “atone” for his sins by suppressing all forms of violence, both internal and external, thus generating a safe but stifling environment in which the Lanes survive, but arguably cannot thrive long-term. And in line with Arcane’s tragic narrative, he gets ultimately punished for it: he’s forced to loose all that he holds dear (Silco, the kids and his peaceful little world) and to ultimately embody what he hates and fears most about himself (being a violent monster only capable of destruction).

During my first watch of S2 I couldn’t really figure out whether I liked or not the fact that Felicia’s death was the reason for Vander’s “betrayal” of Silco (it felt a bit contrived and love-triangle-y), but after giving it much thought I have decided that, in fact, I quite like it. It plays heavily into the theme of guilt being central to Vander’s character, and how this guilt really ends up snowballing into something completely unmanageable. Guilt about Felicia (and probably many others that died on that day) leads him to turn on Silco; and later, guilt about Silco ultimately makes him give up all violent means of revolution because he’s too afraid to harm the people he loves. Guilt also becomes a motivating factor for his adoption of Vi and Powder, since we now know he’s not just selflessly picking up two strays, but acting on a promise done to a dear friend who’s just died because of him. The fact that the details of his “betrayal” of Silco are kept pretty much a secret also reeks of guilt and shame. There’s this layer of selfishness and cowardice to his actions that I find very refreshing for a character that’s introduced to us as the closest thing to a paragon of virtue in all of Arcane.

It’s deeply tragic how his inability to properly deal with his past impacts the rest of the narrative; perhaps, had he told Vi the real reason for his unwillingness to rise against Piltover, and not the wishy-washy “violence bad, be responsible” speech, she would have been less rash and black-and-white in her thinking.

I wish S2 spend more time on the two sisters reflecting on Vander and Silco’s relationship. While it’s natural for us to draw parallels between the dyads Vi-Jinx and Vander-Silco, in reality their situations are quite different. There was no ‘betrayal’ between Vi and Jinx, just two grief-stricken children unable to handle an immensely tragic situation; but, due to the ‘lessons’ imparted to them from their ‘parents’ (lessons which themselves were distorted due to their own inability to deal with their past), they are led to believe their situation is as hopelessly unsolvable as it was for Vander and Silco.

The letter

I still haven’t decided on whether the letter would have worked on Silco or not. I think timing plays a big factor. The Silco we meet in arc 1 of S1 probably wouldn’t have been swayed; he’s already too set in his “rebirth” mentality, and the new man he has become doesn’t care about Vander’s sentimental platitudes. A younger Silco, with less time to crystallize into his new identity… maybe. I think the Best Timeline of S2ep7 (yes, that’s what I’m calling it) sort of implies that Silco got the letter almost immediately, given the state of his wound (and the absence of Shimmer).

I wonder if we are also meant to implicitly understand that his use of Shimmer in the Worst Timeline (a.k.a. Arcane, the Netflix show) had some kind of negative influence on his psyche. After all, Shimmer does seem to impact the emotions of its users; if it did influence Silco’s radicalization, it would make his story doubly tragic. I’ve always found his use of Shimmer an interesting tidbit in S1, and the fact that the show doesn’t explain it very much beyond using it to show the amount of trust between him and Jinx has always been very intriguing to me.

Anyway. I think that, in any case, the letter would have been only the first step in Silco and Vander’s trajectory towards reconciliation. They both have a lot of issues to unpack; I love the headcanon going around that one of Silco’s prerequisites to their “peace treaty” is for Vander to rejoin the political fight for Zaun. It sounds just so… in character for Silco to demand something like that; it acts as both a justification and a shield, preventing him to expose himself too much at the beginning, while ensuring that he and Vander remain close.

I think it was already clear in S1 that they both secretly craved to be close again, especially Silco, given how hard he still tried to convince Vander to work with him in S1ep3. (Which is kind of insane of him, if you think about it, but I guess working closely with the man who tried to murder you — and almost succeeded — kinda fits into his whole “almost dying turned me into an Übermensch” philosophy?) Now, with Vander’s letter in S2, we know for a fact the feeling was mutual. Which is, again, horribly tragic for them both, because they’re both so set in their respective ways that actual reconciliation is made impossible.

And they were miners (oh my God they were miners)

Since we’re already kind of on the topic of whether or not Zaundads is real (or just the fruit of our collective hallucination), let’s give to Caesar wha belongs to Caesar: I don’t think the writers meant for them to turn out that way. Their dialogue doesn’t particularly strike me as hinting to anything beyond a very close friendship.

… The animators, however? Those French fucks (affectionate) knew what they were doing. The imagery of the jackets stored one inside the other cannot be a coincidence. There’s really no other cinematic parallel I can think of that doesn’t ultimately lead back to Brokeback Mountain. They were insane for that, and I’m deeply thankful to their perverted French minds (extremely affectionate) that they had the balls to just… put it there. No further comment. Just a glaring nod to the gayest movie ever.

(Also, Brokeback Mountain’s most iconic quote — “I wish I knew how to quit you” — perfectly applies to Vander and Silco. They just can’t seem to let each other go. Silco is still harping on about Vander years after he died. Vander can’t even bear to mention Silco in S1, and the moment they meet again the first thing he blurts out is “I’m sorry”, right after Silco murdered his friend — RIP king Benzo, you didn’t deserve it — in front of him. They match each other’s freak so well, I tell you.)

And then Silco’s scene in the Best Timeline. Just… the touching. The tenderness. The affection. Benzo going “ack!” at them while they gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes. It’s just… chef’s kiss. No further comment. Is it, perhaps, self indulgent? Yes. Is Silco’s line about forgiveness cheesy and a bit out of left field? Yes. Do I wish Ekko had more time to ask him what he meant by that, and get in on their backstory (since it would have been deeply meaningful for him too, given how much he idolizes Vander)? Yes.

(Someone please write me fanfiction of this scene. I beg you. I would do it myself but I lack the talent.)

Would I also watch 10 seasons of them being gay married and doing the most irrelevant domestic nonsense? Shamelessly. My poor blorbos deserve it.

[fellthemarvelous]

Aziraphale's talk with the Metatron

Another unhinged meta post for the Aziraphale Defense Squad. I will continue to defend him hardcore until fandom starts recognizing him as his own person and not a prop for Crowley's character. Welcome to my opinion on the Final Fifteen!!

Hell came to Earth.

Aziraphale blew up his halo while surrounded by Hell.

Aziraphale declared a war on Hell at the exact moment Crowley was in Heaven uncovering Heaven's secrets.

There was a door to Heaven opened through the bookshop and who knows what in the Discorporated Demon the guy at the other end of that door was getting.

Enough to get The Metatron's attention and for him to witness Aziraphale declare war on Hell while his demon boyfriend breaks into Heaven's top secret files and learns that Heaven is holding their rebellious angels hostage.

He doesn't give Aziraphale a chance to say no to Heaven, and Aziraphale is pissed off about it.

Aziraphale DID NOT SAY YES EITHER. It is so very important that people understand this. The Metatron did not give Aziraphale a choice. Aziraphale had to choose the best way to handle a hopeless situation.

I think Aziraphale is waiting for Crowley to get the hint.

Crowley broke into Heaven. He broke into Heaven. He uncovered secrets. Saraqael showed him the trial. He knows the truth.

Aziraphale almost started a war to protect Gabriel.

The Metatron had to intercept that last transmission because Crowley and Aziraphale are powerful enough to shield Earth from both sides.

Remember that during the Bullet Catch scene, Aziraphale asked a group of soldiers to raise their hands if they had experience using firearms. Crowley is the only one who did not raise his hand because he had never fired a gun before.

Now we get to the present, and The Metatron is basically telling Aziraphale that Crowley is not only a threat but there is evidence of the fact that they have been working together for 6,000 years and that he prevented Crowley's arrest by Hell in 1941.

As far as The Metatron is concerned, Aziraphale just committed an act of treason because it helped Crowley get out of Heaven safely with highly classified information.

He didn't know Crowley was in Heaven. Crowley never came back and it made him fear the worst, but then he's showing up with Heaven right after and that only makes it a bigger problem.

Aziraphale chose to keep the peace instead of allowing one side or the other to arrest Gabriel and Beelzebub. He let the former Supreme Archangel and former Grand Duke of Hell escape from their duties. He gave them a choice. They were never supposed to know those choices existed in the first place.

The way that The Metatron said "so predictable" when Nina told him that no one ever asked for Death. The invisible choice. The name of the coffee shop is used as a threat against Aziraphale.

Aziraphale's choice in this situation involved how he chose to present it to Crowley.

Crowley was asking to get his flat back after Shax made the plan to go back to Hell. He was already planning to take Aziraphale to the Ritz to celebrate by getting really drunk. He was fine.

Nina and Maggie's last minute interception got him all hyped up to finally make a love confession.

But please FOR THE LOVE OF GOD can we please try to remember that AZIRAPHALE NEVER SAID YES EITHER.

He seems to be turning himself in and trying to protect Crowley, and only realizes at the end that the Metatron plans to use him against humanity.

Crowley and Aziraphale were not having the same conversation. They were not having the same conversation. They were not having the same conversation.

Aziraphale is terrified. Look at the nervous smile and the way he is so confused as to why Crowley is mad at him. He's trying to tell Crowley he needs helps because he's in trouble.

He said he didn't want to go back to Heaven. He made this clear when he was speaking to Crowley.

He knows the things he is saying are contradictory to what he's learned, and he's needing Crowley to pick up on that. He's trying to tell Crowley that he can't protect him from Hell this time anymore than Crowley can protect him from Heaven because The Metatron knows they've been working together for 6,000 years and are now in a position to reveal Heaven's institutional problem.

Stop getting mad at Aziraphale for not saying no and start asking yourself why some of you refuse to acknowledge the fact that Aziraphale did not say yes to the Metatron either.

Especially knowing that Crowley did not say "yes" or "no" to Hell's offer in The Arrival either.

This isn't an angel who is happy to go back to Heaven. This is an angel begging his best friend to help him because he doesn't have a choice, and not understanding that Crowley thinks Aziraphale is rejecting him and Aziraphale is telling him he no longer has a choice.

He no longer has a choice and now Crowley is upset with him and he's still trying to figure out what just happened.

Aziraphale is going to get up there and cause some trouble though.

[vm-haunts]

Crossover Headcanons: Worldbuilding Edition

A collection of DPxDC headcanons from myself and various posts, in no particular order.

Green stuff

Dionesium is, or is one of the main decay byproduct of, ectoplasm. It is the defining element in Lazarus water.

Lazarus water is a naturally occurring compound that amplifies certain effects of ectoplasm. Concentration of ectoplasm in the waters is surprisingly low despite the appearance.

College trio as the Doctor Three. Who lead the study on dionesium in Gotham University at some point.

Talons created by the Court of Owls are a special type of liminals, and communicates within themselves via a dialect of ghost speak.

Realms stuff

Infinite realms, or pockets within it, had been observed and accessed before, by different civilizations under numerous different names.

The Kryptonians used the realms as a means of banishment, which they called the phantom zone.

GIW stuff

GIW is operating under All Purpose Enforcement Squad (APES), headquarters in mount Rushmore.

Anti-ecto Acts is a set of old laws dating back to civil war era, only brought back into practice in recent years.

Liminals have significantly higher chance of activating metagene. May or may not be causing the metagene mutation in the first place.

Anti-ecto Acts might be intentionally exploited as a backdoor to meta protection acts.

Ring stuff

Pariah Dark's ring of rage turned into the phantom ring after Danny officially claimed it. It enhances all emotions of the owner equally.

Danny lost his ring at some point and it became known to the lanterns as the phantom ring.

In the hands of realm ghosts the phantom ring glows green regardless of the emotion it is enhancing, as ghosts are beings of pure will. Otherwise it is black with a faint white glow. (Can't believe this one matches up, I love lore stitching)

Balance stuff

Danny bears both Life Force and Death Force in equal amounts. His only way to accessing them is channelling a mixture of the two to power his ghost wail.

Ghost Wail infused with both acts like a simple sonic attack. But if powdered only by death force it's functionally the same thing as Void Wind, which 'negates the power and immortality of the gods. Enabling it to shut down any form of arcana used against it'.

Dark Danny only process death force as he no longer have a human side for balance. His death infused wail could be how he destroyed the world without much interference from magic users.

Danny's Wail can be infused with only life force instead, which would eviscerate ghosts. Possibly only possible when he is in human form.

Glitchy stuff (not really DC related)

Dark Danny's attack on Clockwork's tower created some pretty severe glitchs in time (ha) across all of the living realms.

As the clocktower take damage some universes collapsed together, and some timelines became contradictory and paradoxical (typical comic reboot am I right?😅)

After Dan finally calmed down he becomes the ultimate errand boy for clockwork. Showing up an fixing things he broke under the guidance of the ghost of Time.

Stranger stuff

Dan got sentenced to Life (literal) in an alternate ending of glitch in time, which capped his destruction and eventually calmed him off.

Reformed Dan is doing social services as penance, in the DC multiverse he goes by the alias of Phantom Stranger.

[crooked-wasteland]

Stolen from @pinkandpurple360 anonymous ask.

"Blitz still has a long way to go with character development”

That's great. I can't wait to never see it.

This was an issue I tried working into my Fizzarolli Dissection but it kept feeling less about the character and more an overarching writing issue, so let's just take it here.

Every bit of character development in the series is inconsistent or entirely spontaneous. Stolas being in love with Blitz seemed like a slow burn until out of nowhere in Ozzie's he is so head over heels for Blitz in specific. Asking why Blitz only now is asking him out "after all this time", like he has been waiting on and expecting it despite that never being a thought towards their dynamic before. Going from being entirely obsessed with their sexual contract and seeing Blitz as a sex object to suddenly wanting cuddles on the couch with no strings attached?

That change was never shown in the series. It was never developed. There is no character growth, they merely are different to suit the new direction to the plot.

So again, I'm so glad Blitz has more character development to go through, can't wait for it all to be implied off screen like every other ounce of character we've been gaslight into believing has "grown".

If you never show it on screen, the dynamic, the relationship, the change, it never happened. Loona at the end of Queen Bee seems to get closer to Blitz but the next time we see her she's trying to assault him. We never saw any moment of change following the end of Queen Bee where we felt her character actually develop. Even after calling Blitz dad in the episode, she ignores him in favor of strangers at the party. She expressed clear disgust with Blitz before leaving with him, and her mild softening towards him at the end could just as easily be seen as nothing at all as it could be a character growth.

However growth requires reinforcement. If you never reinforce that moment meant something, it isn't growth, it's a cheap emotional scene to get a reaction from an audience. A short scene of Loona simply telling Blitz good morning to show some kind of change was all that was needed, but it was not as important to establish change in the characters as it was to have the most cringe scene in existence. Priorities.

One of the biggest issues with the series is how blatant the meta agenda of the writing is. They never allow the space to establish characters or change, instead citing these one off moments as “proof” of story when they do not amount to anything at all. There is unfortunately a distinct difference between a story and a scene, and it is painfully obvious by how Medrano and Nylan utilize these scenes that it is entirely for a superficial effect.

The relationship between Fizzarolli and Blitz similarly is extremely vapid and has no foundation to establish what their dynamic actually was growing up. Additionally, the two scenes of them being younger are fundamentally contradictory. Younger Fizz from The Circus is assertive and confrontational. He threatens to punch Blitz for being annoying and not playing the way he wants to play. He's bossy without necessarily being mean and not only knows he's popular, but also how to utilize it as manipulation, seen in how he draws attention to himself to spare Blitz the embarrassment of his failed joke. This Fizzarolli actually lines up also with the Fizz from Ozzie's. It's hard to claim that Ozzie's Fizz was "just an act" when as a literal child he has all the same traits

Then in the Special he is insecure, timid, has very little self esteem and is an anxious people pleaser with a mousy voice. There is nothing to establish this as the same person at all, and all the narrative context clues around his popularity does not support the direction of change this character has experienced. Fizzarolli has only gotten bigger between being what appears to be six years old and what I can only assume to be thirteen based on his cracking pubescent voice and gangly limbs. All we can go on is context clues and extrapolation, but arguing of a non-existent event that humbled Fizzarolli to this extent, while maintaining his stardom prior to ever meeting Mammon, is founded on nothing, when there is a much simpler answer.

His whole personality has taken a 180 turn for the sole purpose of the episode’s narrative. Fizzarolli being the pathetic whump he is in the episode is not founded anywhere else in the show, but we need that so people feel bad for him. There is no confidence in this writing. It shows that instead of believing the character is likeable as a whole for a complex personality, the only way anyone will like him is if he is just the softest jellybean in the bunch.

It is only this way because it suits the episode right here and now. And when his character changes, it isn't founded on any concrete narrative of growth and actions having consequences, but on what the writers need to get the audience to feel a certain way. So I say it again:

That's nice, I can't wait to never see it.

[thethiefandtheairbender]

Sometimes in fandom — usually after a fandom has gone from near universal adoration within the fandom, and then had something happen (a season release, a ship goes or doesn't go canon, etc) where it's more broadly criticized — there'll be an according shift in how canon is widely discussed.

Before, where things only would've been discussed with enthusiasm and excitement, there becomes a distinct lack of... any of that without conditions or caveats at most intervals. 

It no longer becomes "I loved the this thing here's why!" but "Yeah the season had flaws but I liked some of it," or "You can ship this thing but you have to admit it has—" or "yeah it was interesting it just could've been written better." 

The criticism is constant and it is vague. It's assumptive. If there are explanations as to what is meant and why, it is once and often not based in wanting to understand why the text would also do XYZ thing. This is not necessarily 'bad' criticism (just personally, occasionally annoying, although it's not as though I've never participated in it myself), just sometimes underdeveloped. Nor is this vein of fandom criticism all fandom criticism by any means.

After all, sometimes fans complain with long winded specifically ad nauseam until the critique becomes so far removed from any spectre of reality, it's like they're watching a completely different show (this is the worst kind). Other times, even once the emotions have died down, people step back and write metas about how there was structural buildup but lack of payoff or how, even though is character may be acting in line with previous characterization, this specific situational response felt OOC for [inserted reasons here] (this is the best kind, because you can actually see where people are coming from, they're acknowledging the constraints/desires/intention of the and therefore working with the text, and you can sometimes change your mind or have a better understanding of what, alternatively, worked for you). 

The problem, I think, with assumptive criticism is that it assumes a viewpoint is universal... when it's really, inevitably, not. For example, in like the 10/11 fandoms I've heavily been in, MY critiques of the thing are Different than what others in the fandom(s) critique, and it is for those exact reasons that I do my best not to engage in assumptive critique.

Because that's the kind of critique where, although short, it can shut down conversation about what might be some people's favourite parts of canon into something that feels loaded, or pointedly contradictory/contrarian, instead of just... "I liked this thing and here's why" that just got to exist freely before critique became more mainstream in the space.

In a similar vein where proship spaces say "I don't have to give a disclaimer that I know a ship is 'problematic' when I make a ship post about them," assumptive fandom critique creates a similar catch 22. Cause I think we've all seen ships broadly labelled as problematic with wildly varying degrees of validity, and ones where we sat here like "It's not problematic at all???" Subjectivity means that sometimes "X thing is flawed and I like it anyway" isn't necessarily true; sometimes it means "I like X thing and don't really think it has flaws" which is also equally, subjectively, true.

Because if I like a thing, I don't have to offer caveats; I don't have to do anything, especially if coming from me they'd be untrue. That thing is not objectively flawed and I don't have to act like it. The things that are flaws to you are oftentimes the things I like, that I think the story had good and/or interesting reasons for, or personally greatly enjoy, or are sometimes even the Best part of that story (to me). (Maybe some of the things I think are flaws are parts you like. That's awesome! All the power to you.)

If what I like in canon aligns with what the creators seemingly enjoyed or were trying to go for in canon, that just means that I'm more in alignment with the text, and 'correct' in ways we usually associate with correctness, but not all by any means (not necessarily intelligence, for ex, the same way critiquing a text in a negative way also doesn't say anything about intelligence).

I ship all the ATLA canon ships and I think they're good, and important, and interesting; I like the EIP conflict for Kataang, and I don't think I'd ship them half as hard without it / is one of my favourite pieces of characterization for Katara and her internal worldview(s). I like all the seasons of TDP's second arc, especially S4 (one of my faves) and including S7. I don't like the main ship that JWCC went for (they're even kind of a notp) and it bogged down early S4 for me, but with S5 in mind I think it was a smart, interesting choice even if it's not my personal preference (personality wise for the characters due to their similarities in mindsets and drastic differently long term goals), and I think the execution could've been eased further in, but those are nitpicks. That doesn't mean it's Bad.

A story doesn't have to align with all my preferences to be good; the story just has to align with itself, and I can be along for the ride. And if I'm no longer down to be along for the ride, I'm going to be specific as hell about why while still acknowledging all the (probably good) reasons the show did those things Anyway, because that's where criticism intersects most strongly with critical thinking, tbh.

[lectorel]

Fiction fragment of the moment: DCxDP, liminal edition

An extract from the pamphlet The Anti-Ecto and You

[ . . .

What is a liminal?

liminal (noun)

A person, animal, or object which has transitory or contradictory elements inherent to its nature.

Someone or something which exists on a threshold between two mutually incompatible states.

That which has been touched by death, but still lives.

Why does it matter?

Because a few years ago, the federal government of the United States issued a series of regulations, colloquially known as the Anti-Ecto Acts, which classify most liminals as legally non-persons, enjoying none of the protections granted to metas, aliens, or clones under the Metahuman Rights Act

That can’t possibly be legal

It is. In fact, the Metahuman Rights Act itself is the basis of many of the Anti-Ecto Acts most troubling laws. Within the MRA, sections 3a through 3j, legal definitions of several common metahuman abilities are set. These include duplication of self and others, external manifestations of power, mental projections, and possession.

The AEA are built upon these legal definitions. Liminals, by the terms of the MRA, are postmortem power expressions, a meta ability effect which did not cease with the death of the metahuman.

How? Why?

The most common way to identify and external power expression is Ichor Radiography, which measures what percentage of a structure is only locally, instead of universally, real.

. . . ]

[jackoshadows]

Just saw a couple of posts where someone was insisting that there is no way Jon Snow would remain friends with Tyrion or how it would be 'bizarre' if Jon is still friends with Tyrion on account of the marriage to Sansa.

It wouldn't be 'bizarre' if one actually read A Dance with Dragons and the many chapters GRRM devotes to Jon Snow agonizing over Arya Stark's marriage while not even writing one line where Jon is concerned over Sansa's own marriage.

Especially when Sansa's marriage is actually brought up in conversation as a reason for why Stannis does not want her getting Winterfell and Jon doesn't say or think anything about her marriage to Tyrion preventing her from getting Winterfell other than go

This is what happens when the Asoiaf material one consumes is all Tumblr metas and Jonsa 'theories' instead of actually reading the books. This is what happens when one homogenizes the canonically diverse Stark sibling dynamics into uniformity and apply what Jon Snow thinks of one sibling to all the siblings.

In canon, in the books, in ADwD, when Stannis mentions how Sansa Lannister is never getting Winterfell while he lives, Jon Snow's thoughts or concerns is not for Sansa being forced to marry the enemy. No, what he thinks about is the news of his friend Tyrion being a kinslayer and Jon having a hard time imagining the kind man he shook hands with killing his own father.

Tyrion Lannister looked beyond class barriers and even political barriers (Given the enmity between houses Stark and Lannister) to help and advice Jon Snow when even his father and uncle don't warn him about the NW's current status. Tyrion supports Jon against the likes of Alliser Thorne - he had no need to do so - simply because it was the right thing to do and carries home messages for Jon and helps Bran - simply because Jon asked him to do it. And Jon Snow is a character who values his friendships.

And for that matter, Jon Snow never ever turns up in Sansa's nostalgic memories of home and family - contradictory to popular fanon/fanart they probably hardly ever interacted - and she admits to forgetting about him until Myranda Royce mentions Jon and then wants to see him because now all her true brothers are dead and no one else is left.

In fact when Sansa considers her options of where to flee from the Vale she thinks of going to Tyrion if he was still alive while never even thinking of Jon at the Wall. Sansa is also imagining kisses with the Hound - a man who Sansa knows killed Stark men, including Vayon Poole, her friend Jeyne's father.

As the boy’s lips touched her own she found herself thinking of another kiss. She could still remember how it felt. - Sansa, AFFC And Littlefinger was no friend of hers. When Joff had her beaten, the Imp defended her, not Littlefinger. When the mob sought to rape her, the Hound carried her to safety, not Littlefinger. - Sansa, AFfC

Jon does not judge his relationships based on how they interacted with Sansa no more than Sansa judges her relationships based on how they interacted with Jon because these are two characters who have never interacted on page and have a distant familial relationship off page. Jon and Sansa don't consider each other important in the narrative as Stark siblings because GRRM does not consider their relationship/dynamic important enough to devote page time to it.

[theweeklydiscourse]

Baghra was always a terrible mentor and we were gaslit into thinking she wasn’t.

I was scanning Ruin and rising to find a few passages for a Darkling meta I was in the process of writing and I happened upon a very interesting conversation between Baghra and Alina. In this conversation, they discuss merzost and its potential consequences as Baghra scolds Alina for seeking the firebird. Baghra’s argument is both contradictory and unhelpful, serving only as a condemnation of Alina’s efforts to defeat the Darkling. There is no wisdom in this exchange, only judgement from an old woman who has no idea what she’s talking about.

So let’s break it down.

Alina confesses that she dabbled in merzost and Baghra responds in her usual ominous and vague manner, grabbing Alina’s wrists for dramatic effect. She warns Alina that merzost can only cause misery, citing the creation of the fold as an example and seems to imply that Alina might journey down a similar path. Baghra gestures towards the inherently corruptive nature of merzost and expresses concern for Alina’s potential. Interestingly, it was exactly her use of merzost that allowed Alina to thwart Aleksander at the end of Siege and Storm. Alina also contradicts herself: “I didn’t do it myself” but “I used the connection between us, (…) to control the Darkling’s power.” she creates a disconnect between herself and the use of merzost as a way of softening the blow. She claims that the merzost was involuntary, but at the same time uses words that signal her activity as opposed to the passivity she initially professed.

This is a small example of Alina’s tendency to claim helplessness and deny her agency. Truthfully, she did use the merzost to save her friends and try to kill Aleksander, a sacrificial act to defeat the big bad. It almost worked, it was effective at warding him off for a time while they regrouped and recovered from the ambush.

Now THIS is what really set me off. Alina argues that she may not have a choice in wether or not she uses merzost to defeat Aleksander and honestly? She’s right. At this point, the narrative has told us that negotiation is not an option, Aleksander is on the war path and the consequences of not fighting him could cost thousands of lives. All of this is presumed to be true and yet, Baghra still takes up this aggravating “holier than thou” attitude towards the pursuit of the firebird.

Baghra: Wow Alina… you’re going to sacrifice the life of this INNOCENT animal for the sake of your own power? This poor innocent bird? I can’t believe you would be so cruel.

Alina: People are dying Baghra.

Baghra’s framing is so manipulative. She’s straight up accusing Alina of being a power hungry villain who would gladly sacrifice an “ancient life” for HER own power. Bitch, since when has this been where we draw the line? Baghra acts as if killing the firebird for the sake of an amplifier is a testament to Alina’s greed but Alina HAS NO OTHER CHOICE. She clutches her pearls at the notion of Alina killing an old bird to save the country as if she hasn’t ranted at length about how dangerous Aleksander is. Baghra has spoken of Aleksander as the apocalypse personified, and yet when presented with the most viable option of defeating him she cries: “but think of that poor ancient life!”?

In the same exchange, she completely dismisses Alina’s peaceful resolution of being merciful to the stag and mocks her for suggesting such a childish idea. But notice how she suggests no other alternative? If she’s so passionate about protecting this ancient creature, why not propose a plan to defeat Aleksander that doesn’t require killing the final amplifier? Instead she scolds Alina for her greed and derides her for doing what is necessary to save the country. Alina tell her that no one is strong enough to stand against an army of shadow soldiers and Baghra STILL dismisses her efforts to do the right thing.

It is here that Alina acknowledges her intentions to seek power and uses sound reasoning to do so. She is the only person strong enough to stand against Aleksander and NEEDS the amplifiers to win. “Abomination against abomination” but I don’t see you offering any alternatives Baghra. If this hag cared so much about preventing an all out magical war maybe she should’ve been proactive during the centuries where she witness Aleksander’s rise to power.

Baghra’s “warnings” are complete nonsense and devoid of reason. It is her reacting to Grisha power with disgust and expressing contempt towards Alina for giving a damn about the country’s welfare. But what do we expect from Baghra? She’s always been more concerned with preserving decorum and her own moral purity than taking a stand against injustice. She does not offer sage advice, only condescending and vague bullshit that validates her self righteous martyr complex.

[12pt-times-new-roman]

Another thing I find really interesting about Ludinus' plans here is that showing the Bells Hells this really isn't likely to change their mindset at all in regards to himself, and he knows it.

Showing them the destruction of Aeor by the gods might well change their opinions on the gods. Whether they like it or not, as Ludinus has pointed out, the gods did commit a genocide here. They wiped out an entire civilization along with nearly all of its people, its technology, its culture, and its sole geographical territory. As far as we, the audience, know right now, that's history; that's fact. And regardless of what Aeor did, it could be argued that that was an objectively wrong thing to do. There are could be circumstances that complicate that, but arguing that the indiscriminate destruction of Aeor was wrong is a defensible (and, imo, correct) position.

But that's not really the point. Ludinus, I think, understands the fact that even if the Bells Hells change their tune on the gods themselves, even if they agree that destroying Aeor was wrong or evil or unjustified, they would still oppose Ludinus and the Vanguard. They've agreed on that over and over again by now -- whatever their disparate opinions on the gods, they all have deeply personal and interconnected reasons to want Ludinus dead and the Vanguard stopped. They know by now that the gods are complicated, messy, contradictory, and morally gray; they know that the gods have done bad things, and that they have done good things. But they have also, extensively, seen the consequences of what happens when the gods' connection to Exandria is disrupted.

So because of that, I think what Ludinus is hoping for here is for the Bells Hells to recognize him as a parallel to the gods and his efforts as a parallel to the destruction of Aeor, which is fascinating. In essence, he wants the Bells Hells to believe both that the gods are bad people (for destroying Aeor), and that the gods had necessary ends (to end the Calamity or preserve their own life); because if they believe that of the gods, then surely they can believe that of him. Surely they can see that he is a bad person (for the death and trauma he caused them and so, so many others) with what he sees as necessary ends (to free the world from under the thumb of the gods) too, and side with him in those ends.

He's not trying to convince them of the goodness or justification of his means; at this point, that's not possible. He is never going to convince them that he was in the right, and he knows that. So instead, he's trying a different tactic: he wants to convince them that even though he has done terrible, indefensible things in the name of his cause, in that aspect he is no different than the gods they align themselves with. And if they can align themselves with the gods, then because of that parallel, they should be able to align with him, too.

Of course, all of that hinges on two things: that the Bells Hells can be convinced of the same goodness, righteousness, or necessity of his ends that he believes, and that they can be convinced that Ludinus should be the one to shepherd those ends. And I think the latter is already a foregone conclusion, to be honest; it should be clarified, I don't think that this plan would ever work. With other powerful people, maybe; but not with the Bells Hells, or at least not with all of them. But him going for this instead of other things explains a lot, I think -- namely why we're getting a divine perspective in Downfall (so that Ludinus can better compare himself to the gods), why he's not interested whatsoever in the stasis bubbles (excellent meta about that here; tl:dr Aeor is more useful to him as a fossil he can use as propaganda than as a culture to revive), and why Liliana is still trying to convince them not of the justification of Ludinus' actions, but the righteousness of his ends.

[asha-mage]

WoT Meta: 'Salvation and Rebirth'

One thing that is fascinating to me about The Wheel of Time is that, despite the fact that the two of the biggest influences on Robert Jordan's cosmology are traditional Hinduism and Protestant theology (in general but especially American Protestantism), as near as I have been able to determine on my 20+ re-reads his world has neither a concept of karma or heaven.

Karma- the belief that your deeds in your current life will impact your rebirth in your next life (to vastly simplify)- is very Big Deal in Hinduism (and several other related religions, such as Buddhism- another big influence on Jordan's cosmology) and yet it is entirely absent from anyone's belief system in the WoT. No one seems to attach strongly to the idea that terrible deeds in your past life might be the source of your misfortune in this one, or that the reason to do good things in this life is to ensure a better rebirth next time. People hope for rebirth into a better life all the time, but they treat this as a capricious whim of fate, not something their actions might reasonably impact.

Interestingly though, some characters do subscribe to semi-related idea, not from Hinduism, but Christianity: Godly living. This is the idea that all troubles are self inflicted, and that if you just work hard, live virtuously, and embrace God ('walk in the light') nothing bad will happen to you ('you wont attract the Dark One's attention'). But their is no serious suggestion that this might be tied to past or future lives, and also the series takes great pains to demonstrate that it's wrong. Bad things happen to seemingly good people all the time (including Our Heroes), and if their is rhyme or reason to be found in it, it's usually the result of a working of fate so vast that the characters involved can not perceive it with their limited knowledge and view. This is one of those central themes of the series that I find so compelling and one Moiraine lays out in TDR (and during her confrontation with Logain in the show): The Wheel itself is not good or evil, it just is, and it weaves fate to a design so intricate and so massive that the human lives pulled about within it are given as much care as....well, as the loom gives to a single strand in a tapestry.

In the same vein the idea of a heaven- an enteral paradise, even just an intermediate one between rebirths, is also absent from Jordan's world building. Their is a belief that your soul will return to the nebulous 'Light' upon death if you where a good person and be taken by the Dark One if you where a bad, but no one seems to equate the 'returning to the Light' with being rewarded for good actions with a paradise where all their desires and needs will be meet, and where they get to chill out until, presumably, its time to be reborn. The idea of Heaven- that earthly suffering being rewarded after death with eternal salvation is a Big Deal in pretty much all Christianity but especially Protestantism, which fundamentally is/was about the idea that salvation could not be gate kept by earthly institutions and was solely the providence of God to deny or grant. The closest you get in Jordan's world any kind of afterlife is the World of Dreams, where the Heroes of the Horn (and only the Heroes) await their rebirth. But that can't properly be called a Heaven- not when nightmares walk it, and the conflicts of the living world can easily, and frequently do, seep inside. Not to mention any mortal can reach it without having to die- by just going to sleep.

And which, on that note, the very idea of the Heroes of the Horn is contradictory to the idea of an eternal salvation. In a system where their is salvation after death, the Heroes would be rewarded for their valor and heroism with eternal peace. Instead their reward is endless lifetimes of adventure, which means endless conflict but also endless legends and stories, as well as the chance to keep making the world better, righting wrongs and putting fate back on track. In this way the Heroes of the Horn are clearly inspired by the idea of the Dashavatara from Hinduism- mortal incarnations born specifically right the ship of cosmic order when fate/the world is getting out of whack. But interestingly, in Hinduism the Dashavataras (and the other avatars) are all Gods taking mortal flesh, and so inherently divine. This is an idea, once again, that many people in Jordan's world believe to be true (most notably the Prophet and his followers) but isn't- Rand isn't the Creator in the flesh, or a vessel of the Light. He's just a person, one whose heroic nature and kind heart earned him a place as a Hero of the Horn, but still mortal beneath all else that he is. And that fallibility, that reality that he isn't a God, that he can bled, be hurt, die, even turn to the Shadow- is a core part of understanding Rand's character arc.

One final thought on this (and the thing that started me thinking on the subject to begin with since The Fires of Heaven is where we are introduced to this idea for the first time in the books): there is something incredibly fascinating to me that to the characters in Jordan's world, the highest and most sacred oath you can swear is on 'your hope of salvation and rebirth'- which taken in the lens of our world are two fundamentally opposed ideas. For Christians salvation is eternal- the salvation of the immortal soul in Heaven free from earthly suffering. In Hinduism, rebirth by definition means continuation on earth, a chance to redeem past mistakes, to better the world, to make new good karma that will enrich your fate.

And yet, the characters in Randland don't view them as contradictory (or if someone does we never hear them voice that thought). Which makes me suspect that salvation and rebirth refers to the Prophecies of the Dragon and the hope they will come true. Salvation in this context is not the salvation of the soul, but the salvation of the world, the wheel, the pattern, fate- saved to continue on into eternity. Rebirth refers the hope you will get to be reborn again- which would only be denied to a person should the Dark One triumph and remake the world....or maybe even the hope that the Dragon will be reborn to save the world, to bring salvation to earth.

That would mean the oath came from a time when the Prophecies where fresh and new, before False Dragons tore countries asunder in wars and before hatred and fear of the Dragon had time to embed itself.

But by then, as often happens we are told, the origins, the why, where forgotten, even the tradition remained, and so no one realizes that, to this day, the most sacred of oaths, including the Three Oaths of Aes Sedai, are sworn in the name of the Dragon and on the hope of his coming.

[case-of-traxits]

I’m sure you’ve probably talked about this before, but how do you think reeve’s inspire works?

So funny fact here: I've never actually formally meta'd about this publicly. I'm pretty sure. I've talked to a few individuals about it, but never in like, a definitive, "This is definitely how I think it works," sort of way.

Maybe it's time to change that?

First though, let's talk about why I use the Inspire ability at all, because a lot of that leads into how I think it works.

An Argument for Why I Use the Inspire Ability

I would love to start with Reeve's original bio, but of course, as we know, Reeve didn't get a bio in the original game manual. So instead, we're forced to rely on his Ultimania bio:

The head of the Urban Development Department. Involved in the construction of Midgar from the very beginning, he watches over the town’s development like that of a child. By utilizing his special ability, “Inspire”, he is able to cause inorganic things to emit life; his “child”, the “cat”-shaped robot, Cait Sith can be controlled from a great distance. After Meteorfall, he became the director of the World Regenesis Organization (WRO), which is devoted to the purpose of restoring life to the planet.

For what it's worth, Reeve's bio has been shockingly consistent with including his Inspire ability. I go into that a little bit over in my WRO Reeve + Heartbreak meta.

Now, I know a lot of people don't like the Ultimanias. They find them confusing, or contradictory, or whatever the current "I don't use them," reason of the day is. That's fine! Let's take a look at Cait Sith's original bio from the game manual:

Cait Sith rides on the back of a huge stuffed Mog he magically brought to life. Megaphone in hand, he's always shouting orders and creating dopey attacks...

So there you go. Mog and Cait Sith cannot simply be robots, since it's stated quite plainly that Cait Sith brought Mog to life magically.

(As a side note, Cait Sith in the OG comes equipped with the Manipulate materia. This is a fun multi-layered reference, don't you think? Pokes a note at him being a spy and kind of gives you a thing to consider about how he possibly controls Mog.)

(As a second side note, Cait Sith also has one of the highest magic/spirit scores in the OG, so he's clearly meant to be your caster.)

Now, that said, Reeve clearly did build Cait Sith as a robot. His Ultimania profile clearly refers to Cait Sith as a robot, and in BC, Cait Sith has a controller of some kind in his back, and he gets damaged and broken into pieces and the Player Turk has to put him back together.

(As a side note there— and I swear, I'll stop doing these soon— if I recall correctly, the pieces the Player Turk has to collect are the body, the head, and the crown, implying that Cait Sith's crown is in fact an important part of him, and not just a cute fashion accessory.)

In addition, it is worth noting that Rufus Shinra is well aware of Cait Sith and that Reeve "controls" him, and yet, Reeve is able to directly communicate with AVALANCHE during a board meeting where Scarlet and Heidegger are talking Rufus into loading up No. 26, the rocket from Rocket Town, with huge materia and crashing it into Meteor in an attempt to save the world. Reeve not only does this, but Rufus gives no outward indication that he's aware of it. So however Reeve "controls" Cait Sith, there must not be a visible component to it.

My point is that Cait Sith, from what canon shows us, appears to be a robot that Reeve can control directly, without need for any sort of external control system. And, based on some thoughts that Cait Sith has during BC that cannot reasonably be attributed to Reeve, Cait Sith is still somehow independent of Reeve himself.

So why don't I go with Cait Sith simply being a learning AI of some kind? Well, mostly because of Mog. If we go back to the original bio for Cait Sith, it reads very similarly to Reeve's Ultimania bio. So Reeve grants life to Cait Sith, who can, in turn, grant life to Mog.

Functionally, Cait Sith is a mini-Inspire of his own.

Canon Exploration of the Inspire Ability

Now that I've written out my premise for why I go with Inspire Reeve, let's get to the heart of the original question:  How do I think it works?

Well, let's look at what we have to work with:

[Ultimania Bio] Reeve causes inorganic things to "emit" life.

[Ultimania Bio] Reeve sees Cait Sith as a child.

[OG Game Bio] Cait Sith inherits the Inspire ability.

[OG/BC/DoC] Cait Sith is capable of acting autonomously.

[OG/BC/DoC] Cait Sith can be directly controlled (to some extent, at least) via Reeve.

[OG] Reeve can speak through Cait Sith without other people in the room noticing.

[OtWtaS] Multiple Cait Siths can be 'active' at a time.

[DoC] Reeve and Cait Sith can move in sync with one another.

[DoC] Even if Cait Sith 'dies,' he can somehow convey information he learned right up until his death to Reeve/other Cait Siths.

How Does the Ability Actually Work?

So, with all of this in mind, here's how I usually go with Reeve's ability working:

The short answer is that I see it as a low-key, always-on mental connection between Reeve and Cait Sith.

A longer explanation starts with the fact that I see Reeve's Inspire ability as sort of... it has both passive and active modes for me.  Basically, in the passive mode, Reeve is always influencing inorganic material around him.  It's more noticeable when his emotions are heightened, but things like his phone and his car develop... quirks.  His car isn't really conscious, exactly, but it does read his intent, and to some extent, it basically functions as a self-driving vehicle when Reeve is the one behind the wheel.

Now, for my Reeve in particular, this is in no small part because the car was his father's, and he has worked on it extensively over the years.  It's a classic car, basically, and it gives him an outlet for fiddly work that's outside and not in a reactor or tied to Shinra.  If you're going with a Reeve who doesn't love his car as much, then obviously, that probably would be a bit more odd.

A more common variant on this, I think, would probably be that I usually roll with Reeve having... partially Inspired the reactors.  All of them.  All of the ones he has access to.  And in this case, it's less because he wants them to be alive and more because he wants to have that access to them.  He wants to be able to check statuses and know what's going on with a reactor at any given moment, and no matter how advanced the tech is, nothing will be faster for him than a direct mental connection.

Of course, that can have some less than stellar side effects when, say, a reactor explodes.  @ladykf-writes wrote me some amazing ficlets that feature my headcanons about this after much rambling with her about them. So I highly recommend checking those out if you're interested in this idea.

Then he has the active mode of his ability. I've written a ficlet (Heritage and Legacies) about the process of actually Inspiring Cait Sith (and it makes mention of Reeve's first disastrous accidental Inspiration), but in short, it involves more or less willing the inanimate object to life.  I usually go with the explanation that Reeve is literally feeding the object a bit of his own personal lifestream (or soul, depending on how you want to talk about it) until it starts circulating it on its own.  This gives me a built in explanation for why he doesn't animate hundreds of things at once and such.  I do like to have caps on things.

But because it was his personal lifestream that he used, he can basically retain... think of like a narrow, unseen string between Cait Sith and Reeve, no matter how far apart they get. And across this string, they can send thoughts, memories, and sensations.  That's how Reeve knew what happened to Cait Sith when Nero ate him with shadows.  Cait Sith had immediately connected with Reeve and told him.

Now, I do a few hand-wavey things for my own sanity when writing.  I assume that when a Cait Sith dies, all of their memories get imprinted in Reeve's mind, and when he Inspires the next Cait Sith, they get a copy of all of those memories.  This can create a bit of a jarring dissonance within the memories for a new Cait Sith, as they might remember being Cait Sith 1 and being Cait Sith 2 in the same conversation.  But for the most part, it works.

The other thing I usually do with Cait Sith specifically is that I say that when he was first Inspired, he was very much like a baby or a toddler.  He needed to learn a lot of things.  I don't have any fics currently up featuring this (I will after the holiday events though), but basically, I go with it having taken Reeve a while to get Cait Sith to talk at all for example, and that he had to learn a lot of things on his own rather than relying on Reeve's memory of the things.

Now, because of the hand-wavey memory thing I already talked about, new Cait Siths don't have that same initial problem.  They basically just get imprinted with everything Cait Sith 1 learned before he died.

(And for what it's worth, since Cait Sith's accent is supposed to be based on Reeve's parents, I always go with Cait Sith not speaking at all for a few months after he was Inspired.  Reeve tried everything, from toddler help books to reading books to trying to bribe him, and couldn't get a single word out of him.  And then, finally, Reeve was on the phone with his mother, trying to discreetly ask her for advice without admitting to his abilities or to what he'd done, and when he hung up the phone, Cait Sith looked up at him and spoke for the first time.  In the accent Reeve hadn't realized he'd slipped back into with his mother.)

The other hand-wavey thing I do is that I usually have Reeve and Cait Sith share the ability to communicate mind-to-mind, no outward dialogue needed.  I mostly justify this with it being a side-effect of them sharing the same personal lifestream rhythm.

I will say though, something I do that I don't know that I've seen anyone else do (I don't have any fics left up featuring this either, actually) is that I say the control can go both ways.  So Reeve can reach for Cait Sith and speak through him, but so can Cait Sith.  Now, I usually say that Reeve has to let Cait Sith do this, whereas Reeve can just take control from Cait Sith, but I  chalk that up to Reeve being the one who did the initial Inspiring.  Following that suit though, it would make sense that Cait Sith could do the same thing with Mog, if he wanted.

Now, I also headcanon that Reeve does his absolute best to let Cait Sith have whatever autonomy he can.  My Reeve, in particular, didn't exactly have the happiest of childhoods, and he has spent a lot of time being told exactly what he can do and when, so he tries to give Cait Sith the childhood he never had.

If you read all the way down here, oh my goodness, but thank you.  It's... a lot.  Like I said earlier, the short answer is that I see it as a low-key, always-on mental connection between Reeve and Cait Sith.  And I kind of flex it around, depending on what exactly I'm doing with the fic in question.

[aihoshiino]

After reading the latest chapter, I found it intriguing that right after the panel where Ayumi says that "Back then, Ai was 8 or 9", the next panel has her state that "Ai had grown up to be a woman", despite her being still just a child. No one would call someone that age a grown woman. It's seems like she didn't view her daughter as a child at all (and neither did her creep of a boyfriend) and only saw her as some sort of love rival who's an adult like her even when she wasn't. Ai's mom clearly wasn't fit to be a mother at all since a good mother would've broke up with her boyfriend instead. And even in the way she speaks of herself in this chapter, it's as if she wants Aqua (and the readers) to feel sympathetic. Ayumi truly is an awfully selfish woman and unfortunately she had to be Ai's mother.

anon i literally woke up this morning cooking ayumi meta on exactly this topic in my head and then logged on to see this ask....... you and i shall have a spring wedding

That said, you're right on the money. What I loved so much about the writing of this scene is how intensely real Ayumi feels as a toxic mother. I feel like a lot of people were kind of expecting her to be this over the top cackling Mother Gothel type but like I said in my ch 131 initial writeup, the unfortunate reality is that this is how a lot of abusers look. Like normal ass, regular, pathetic people.

In particular, I really love how deep of an understanding we get of Ayumi's messed up, contradictory headspace just over the course of the four pages we spend with her. She recognizes that she did something terrible and hates herself, but she has surrendered to this sort of self-enforced helplessness with regard to her own issues and fucked up behaviours. She knows that she needs to improve but is self-defeating about her ability to do so and the whole thing turns into a self fulfilling prophecy where she refuses to put in the work because she believes she can't change to begin with but BECAUSE she doesn't put in the work, nothing changes, which reinforces her belief that she can't fix anything so she doesn't try and... you see how the snake starts eating its own tail?

At the same time, though, this surrendering to helplessness is a safety net for her as much as it is a mental trap. By framing her behaviour as something she is powerless to resist or to stop, she essentially frees herself of agency in Ai's abuse and neglect. Being violent towards her daughter is not something she frames as an active choice, but as something she would "wind up" doing, as if by accident or compelled by forces completely out of her control. Not only that, but it allows her to rewrite the narrative for herself with regards to her abandonment of Ai – since she is so helpless to stop her abuse of Ai, the daughter she loves so much, she just had no choice but to stay away. But she was totally going to go pick her up someday, definitely! Never fucking mind that Ai was left there for so long that she aged out of the system before Ayumi ever came back.

It's once Aqua challenges this assertion, though, that the cracks start to form. Though even before that, an attentive reader will obviously have some red flags up – after all, if Ayumi loves her daughter as much as she says she did, then why does Ai describe herself as a person who has never been loved by anyone? At age twelve, no less? That is not even REMOTELY close to a thought a well adjusted and cared for kid should be able to express, let alone sincerely think.

There's always been a theme in Oshi no Ko of Ai being pulled in all directions, in trying to be everything that everybody asked her to be, succeeding and being punished for it anyway. In my CH131 thoughts, I coined the phrase 'adultification' to describe the way adult agency and expectations are enforced on children who are too young as a method of abuse, a direct inverse of the way infantilization happens to adults. Part of the impossible expectations enforced on Ai were having these twin opposing forces of adultification and infantalization inflicted on her in a truly maddening way.

Specific to adultification, though, we over and over see other characters inflict adult agency and sexuality on Ai way before the point that any reasonable person would rationally think to do so. When describing her falling in love, Kaburagi says that her face, which had been that of a child, "turned into a woman's" at a time that we know she can only have been fifteen at the oldest.

45510 seconds this, with the narrator describing how this adultification is inflicted on many young girls in the industry;

"At the time, younger age groups were all the rage, but girls in their formative years could undergo rapid changes as they matured. Once they outgrew that youthful phase, they were evaluated the same way as "ordinary" women."

... only to turn around and do the same thing to Ai:

"Right from the beginning, she exuded a maturity beyond her years, and in the end, she retained a fresh-faced, youthful allure."

With all that in mind, it's not at all a shock that this echoes all the way back in time to the starting point of Ayumi's abuse of Ai. It's reprehensible, but it's also unfortunately deeply real – it is heartbreakingly common for victims of CSA to be blamed for their abuse, as if being victimized by adults is something they have any agency in.

In this instance too, Ayumi distances herself from her own agency and culpability in Ai's abuse. Look at how she frames things and the issues that she centers; it isn't her own insecurity, toxicity and violence that ruined things. It was Ai's beauty. Ai growing into a woman. That she can say such a thing without blinking betrays so clearly that for all she insists she loved her daughter, Ai was never really a child to her. And the moment she realized Ai was attracting the attention of a man, Ayumi didn't see her as a child being victimized but as a woman posing a threat, a romantic and sexual rival who needed to be beaten back into line and shown her place. Even her anger at Ai's stepfather is so, so telling – the framing makes it clear that her anger is not that of a woman raging against someone who posed a threat to their child, but as a woman resenting a man who was unfaithful to her.

For all that she cries and self flagellates, Ayumi basically lays it all out in her own words without even meaning to. She doesn't take responsibility for her own actions, nor does she even really frame them as being central to the chain of abuse that destroyed not just her family but robbed Ai of her life. Even through her tears, she pushes Ai to the forefront while framing her abuse as a thing that just "ended up" happening, that she was powerless to stop. When talking to Aqua about how she can't make amends, the word she uses in the Japanese text is actually 贖罪 – Atonement, the same character used as the chapter's title.

But the thing about atonement is that you can't atone for a sin you don't take responsibility for. And Ayumi makes it heartbreakingly clear that for all her regrets and her pain, she has not come close to taking responsibility for the harm she inflicted on her daughter. And even if she did? It's too late. Ai is gone.

It's just as Akane says. There's nothing here anymore.