#it is always morally right to kill men. even if they’re related to you. especially if they’re related to you.

[tanjir0se]

It’s a good thing I didn’t get into Naruto until adulthood it would have diseased my brain beyond repair. I got into ATLA as a teen so my comfort character at 14 was fucking Uncle Iroh, I had a nice sweet Tea Uncle to gently tell me “in the darkest times, hope is something you give yourself. THAT is the meaning of inner strength.” 🥰

If I would have gotten into Naruto I would have inevitably imprinted onto Sasuke and my takeaway would have been DO NOT EVER LISTEN TO ANYONE WHO TELLS YOU THAT SEEKING BLOODY AND VIOLENT RETRIBUTION IS EVER A BAD THING. YOU DESERVE IT. DO NOT EVER LET ANYTHING GO EVER EVER EVER EVER YOU HAVE GOT TO START BITING AND KICKING PEOPLE. NEVER BE NORMAL EVER AGAIN and also get a pair of fingerless gloves. No that part’s not optional—

[xcreepypastaheadcannonsx]

🩸Eyeless Jack Headcanons🩸

~~~~~~

-You know it’s funny, you got the proxies who are human (with a lil slenderman strength). You have creepypastas like Jeff the Killer, Homicidal Liu, Jane, Clockwork, etc. etc. etc. who are also human (for the most part)

-But Eyeless Jack hands down, is probably the most human out of all of them

-And he’s THE DEMON GUY WHO EATS KIDNEYS

-In the past I would write Eyeless Jack as if he was totally removed from the human experience, and to a a small extent I still feel that way

-But now I believe Jack would be the type to always keep that part of himself from the past, and still behave sorta normal

-Jack is very quiet - he is not shy, he just does not talk when it’s not warranted or needed

-While he’s quiet, he is an extremely good person to have a conversation with - he hates small talk. If you’re interesting, he’s prolly gonna talk your ear off

-And man, is this guy fucking funny

-Just an extremely good sense of humor

-Not that anyone would be able to witness it though, he’s a recluse due to circumstance

-He lives in an old abandoned house, kinda dark and dank - BUT it’s not that bad

-It ain’t like the houses Jeff chooses to slum around in - filled with broken bottles, dirty needles and garbage in general

-He keeps it livable

-He’s a big reader, huge fan of Cormac McCarthy and Michael Crichton

-He can actually see through supernatural abilities - but it’s not the same as what humans see

-He sees through thermal vision, creating images through infrared light

-He hates eating people, he would much rather do anything else than that

-He hates killing, and he hates the other Creepypastas around him

-Especially the proxies, he lives in the same woods they reside in and could go without them

-He likes Hoodie though

-He could totally have a beer with him, they hold the same views and morals

-They do what they do because they have to, not because they want to

-But he’d take anyone pleasant, he doesn’t care, he’s always alone

-Jack does not like conflict, he actively avoids it

-Part of the reason why he hates most of the proxies is because they’re just as bored as he is and won’t leave him alone

-God, Masky is so god damn annoying. He’s that guy who constantly pokes in order to get a reaction out of people. He just can’t help but pick on people

-Jack rarely plays into it, he’s just like “Uh-huh, oh really? Okay sure”

-But on the inside he’s so irritated, like ‘dude just fuck off’

-But he is kinda a pushover too

-Like if they’re injured, he’ll patch them up

-It’s better to just do it and have them leave than to start trouble and deal with it

-Eyeless Jack’s jaw can unhinge, he has lines on the side of his face that open right up when his mouth opens completely

-He, of course, has multiple tongues that are used to shovel organs into his gigantic, demonic maw

-The tar that drips from his eyes is slightly acidic, and burns when it touches people’s skin

-I personally think he eats any human organs he can get his hands on, he’s not too picky

-He’ll just cut his victims open and just chow down on all of it

-Probably not the large intestine though, he’d rather not ingest too much bile

-But I’d think he’d like the kidneys and hearts most

-Jack would also quickly kill his victims in their sleep before he’d feed

-He doesn’t want any of his victims to feel any pain, just to pass away quickly and peacefully

-I feel he’d also be demisexual

-He just, doesn’t feel sexual attraction to random women or men like “Oh yeah, you’re hot as hell shawty🥵💦”

-He’d be the type where he needs to find someone relatable, familiar and safe to be around in order to even let someone see that side of him

-He sorta developed that though, before he became half demon he was just a hormonal dude in his 20s just looking to get a quick nut

-Now he’s become so removed from that that it’s his last priority

-He is very much capable of love though

-It’s sad, he finds his life extremely depressing and lonely

-He’s capable of all these deep emotions, he’s still empathetic, passionate, loving, inquisitive

-But because of this demon that he can not control, he’s unable to make basic, meaningful connections

-The only people around him are sociopaths with a never ending bloodlust who’s goal is to create chaos and pain

-And every time he’s forced to encounter them he can’t help but be utterly disgusted by them and their actions

-He can not understand the reason these monsters hurt people just to do it

-But at the same time he could never fit in with normal human society again - I mean he’s a grey eyeless cannibal for god sakes

-It’s like he’s in limbo, not being able to fit into neither heaven or hell and left to live aimlessly and alone

~Olive🐰

[cultivatedmemes]

Dragon Age II Starters feel free to change gender specific words, pronouns,  whatever you like to make it fit your muse better!

❝ Something about this place is unsettling. It's like... underwear that never quite sits right. ❞

❝ Oh, look at them! They're like kittens... who want to eat you. ❞

❝ Looking for a ditch to lay face down in? I can recommend one. ❞

❝ Come on, haven't you ever wanted to slap me? Just a little? ❞

❝ That would be a shame, wouldn't it? Everyone deserves a good smiting now and then. I could use one right this minute. ❞

❝ Family's not just the people you're related to by blood. There are other people who care about you. ❞

❝ Sometimes, I miss being that selfish. ❞

❝ The past's past. I learned that young. If it can't bring you gold or giggles, what's the point in dwelling on it? ❞

❝ I don't know how you live the way you do, blithely ignoring the consequences of your actions. ❞

❝ Justice is an idea. It makes sense in a world of ideas, but not in our world. ❞

❝ The difference between whores and courtesans is... well, they have nicer shoes. ❞

❝ You see, men are only good for one thing. Women are good for six. ❞

❝ Why? Why do you say these things? ❞

❝ So what's with that magical fisting thing you do? ❞

❝ It's not about who's dangerous. It's about having choices made for you. ❞

❝ You seem especially broody today. ❞

❝ You sort of... swagger when you walk. I've been trying, but I trip over my own feet when I do it. ❞

❝ Pirates only care about a small number of very specific things: the sea, strong drink, and booty. Both kinds. ❞

❝ It's frightening, isn't it, to realize you have the potential to be a better person? ❞

❝ If they really want people to be good, shouldn't they offer an afterlife with... lakes of wine and a dozen naked virgins? ❞

❝ There's no way. Impossible! I've had hundreds of those in my hands, and they're never that size. ❞

❝ It's "friend-fiction!" I do it out of love. ❞

❝ What's wrong with this place? Why don't they have one decent regular lock to pick. No, it's got to be all magic and blowy lights. ❞

❝ Try to do someone a favor and you end up trapped in a giant magical prison. There's a lesson here. Next time you ask if I want to help with something, I'm going to say no. ❞

❝ Someday I'll visit a place with no ancient evils, horrors, devouring plagues, or insanity. Maybe a beach. ❞

❝ Temporary insanity. A bout of foul morality. A horrifying fit of decency. It got better. ❞

❝ Your boots go on forever. I'd get so lost in them. I've dropped marbles in. They take an eternity to reach the bottom. ❞

❝ I'm helping you indulge in elaborate revenge fantasies. I think it's good for you. ❞

❝ You know, it's possible they're just scared shitless of you. That's my theory, anyway. ❞

❝ Once more I am falsely accused of whatever it is that I am accused of. Falsely. ❞

❝ Strange, I always thought I'd wind up arresting you some day. ❞

❝ Nobility is just an expensive lifestyle. I've already got one of those. ❞

❝ I'm a professional younger brother. Trust me, the center of attention's the worst place to be. When things go wrong, and they always do, that's where all the fingers point. ❞

❝ Friend, if your brooding were any more impressive, women would swoon as you passed. They'd have broody babies in your honor. ❞

❝ Opinions are like testicles. You kick them hard enough, doesn't matter how many you got. ❞

❝ You never know. You might need to tie a package up, hang a lantern, dress a roast chicken. It's multipurpose. ❞

❝ Does anybody else get the feeling that this is going to end badly? Just me huh? ❞

❝ Nobody said this was going to be happy story. ❞

❝ You can't even pretend to be interesting, can you? ❞

❝ I wouldn't normally say this, but—the shiny white armor? It works for you. Makes you look like a lacquered pilot whale. ❞

❝ You want help killing people like me. ❞

❝ It was never anything I had to work for. Other people always took the risks, to keep me free. ❞

❝ You've got a real chip on your shoulder, you know? ❞

❝ So we agree that it doesn't take a demon for someone to be a vicious killer? Good. ❞

❝ Do not bare your heart to me, unless you would have me rip it out. ❞

[artemis-pendragon]

wait if you have the time would you mind expanding on the parallels between achilles and patroclus and the ships you mentioned?

OH GOD YES I WOULD LOVE TO THANKS FOR ASKING!! The English Major in me jumped out so here's an absolute novel lmao:

Hannibal/Will:

Hannibal and Will are the easiest to draw direct parallels to because they are textually compared to Achilles and Patroclus in canon. Hannibal draws himself as Achilles and Will as Patroclus, then (because apparently he’s never heard of subtlety) shows it to Will.

Hannibal says that hiding and revealing identities is a major theme in the Iliad. Will asks Hannibal to reveal himself to Jack Crawford; in the same episode, Hannibal begins to suspect that Will has betrayed him, hiding his true intentions behind a façade to bait Hannibal into being captured by the FBI. However, Will isn’t even sure himself what his real intentions and identity is, and eventually betrays the FBI and runs away with Hannibal.

After Hannibal realizes that Will betrayed him (which is also the episode after he talks about how they’re like Achilles and Patroclus), he stabs Will in the stomach. Patroclus was killed after being stabbed in the stomach.

Hannibal and Will’s blurring identities is a major theme throughout the show. Just as Patroclus takes on Achilles’s identity on the field of war, Will takes on Hannibal’s identity in many ways—both intentionally, and unintentionally.

Patroclus dies wearing Achilles’s armor. Will is accused of being the Chesapeake Ripper, imprisoned, and could have been executed for Hannibal’s crimes if Hannibal hadn’t interfered.

Hannibal is a god-adjacent character, while Will is his more human counterpart. Will is Hannibal’s tether to his humanity, just as Patroclus is Achilles’s.

Just like Achilles couldn’t stand to be parted from Patroclus, Hannibal chose to let Will pull him off a cliff to their (probable) deaths. Hannibal would rather die with Will than live without him.

There is a significant amount of water imagery in this show. Will especially has a lot of ties to water: he likes to fish (his mind palace is initially shown to be a stream); he’s knowledgeable about boats and sailing (he sails across the Atlantic to find Hannibal); his dreams and hallucinations often include water and/or blood; he pulled Hannibal off a cliff into the ocean in a last ditch attempt to kill them both; etc. The story of Achilles also has lots of water-related motifs since Achilles’s mother, Thetis, is a sea nymph/goddess of water.

Hannibal didn’t become overtly vicious and violent toward the Great Red Dragon until he threatened to kill (and then actually stabbed) Will. Then he went totally feral and (literally) ripped Dolarhyde’s throat out. This reminds me of Achilles losing his mind and killing then mutilating Hector after Hector killed Patroclus.

Steve/Bucky:

Steve and Bucky have the “legendary beloved heroic superhuman soldier” and “childhood friend turned war companion” parallel down to a T. Steve is like Achilles: he is a born soldier who wants to fight for his country, starting out idealistic and becoming worn down and jaded by war over time. Bucky is far more reluctant to go to war but follows Steve back onto the battlefield because he believes in Steve and wants to keep him safe—especially from his own reckless righteousness. This is very similar to Patroclus’s desire to follow Achilles to war mostly out of a desire to protect and guide him away from his self-destructive, hot-headed tendencies.

Just as Patroclus put on Achilles’s armor to fight (and die) in his place on the battlefield, Bucky picks up and wields Steve’s shield just before he falls off the train to his apparent death.

Steve starts out saying that he doesn’t want to kill anybody, but after Bucky “dies”, he vows not to stop until every member of Hydra is either killed or captured. This is similar to Achilles’s reaction to Patroclus’s death, where he goes mad with grief and kills everyone in his path to get to Hector, who he then violently kills.

Additionally, after killing Hector, Achilles continues to fight recklessly until someone kills him. Similarly, Steve keeps fighting to stop Hydra but ultimately goes down with the aircraft carrying the bombs, allowing himself to drown/freeze. There’s probably ways he could have gotten out of that situation, but instead he kind of just gives in and lets himself “die” (at least that’s my interpretation).

The Captain America movies also have some interesting water imagery. Bucky falls to his “death” in a ravine, most likely falling into the frozen stream. Steve “drowns” after he crashes the plane into the ocean; in The Winter Soldier, Steve falls from the helicarrier into the Potomac, and Bucky jumps in after him. Again, the story of Achilles also contains water-related motifs due to Achilles’s mother being a sea nymph; I’m sure I could write an entire essay about these parallels before I figure out how to verbalize why this is interesting, but I’m too lazy to right now lol.

Arthur/Merlin:

Again, just like with Steve and Bucky, this is an obvious case of “famous royal golden hero of legends” and “less well-known but ultimately extremely important companion who follows him to war”. Like Achilles and Patroclus, Arthur and Merlin meet before Arthur is a famous warrior and become friends long before the “big war” that ultimately tears them apart.

Arthur and Achilles might be the famous warriors, but Merlin and Patroclus are the kind-hearted, brave, fiercely loyal companions who serve both as a fellow warrior on the battlefield, and as a moral compass. Just as Achilles looks to Patroclus for advice and as a tether to the humility and importance of humanity in the face of a great destiny, Arthur looks to Merlin.

Both Patroclus and Merlin seem at first to be ordinary men who (in the eyes of most casual observers) aren’t worthy of Achilles/Arthur’s friendship. However, they both become legendary figures of their own, without whom their legendary heroic counterparts would never have survived.

As I mentioned in the section about Hannibal and Will, the theme of hiding and revealing identities is very important in the story of Achilles and Patroclus. One of the biggest plot points in Merlin is that Merlin can’t reveal that he has magic; he doesn’t do so until the last episode, once Arthur has been mortally wounded.

Just as Patroclus always believed that Achilles would live up to his great destiny, Merlin always believed in Arthur. And even though Arthur didn’t know about Merlin’s true potential and role in his rise to the throne, Arthur believed that Merlin was one of the best, most courageous men he’d ever met. This reminds me o Achilles referring to Patroclus as Philtatos (in The Song of Achilles), meaning “best of men”.

In an inverted parallel, Arthur is the one who is stabbed and ultimately dies. Although Achilles does eventually die in war, it isn’t until after Patroclus dies. It is then implied that they will eventually meet again someday, just as Achilles and Patroclus would meet again in the afterlife after their ashes were mingled together.  

Dean/Cas:

In this relationship, Dean is very much the “reckless hero with a pre-ordained-by-the-gods destiny who is actually very flawed and carries a lot of self-doubt” and Cas is the “companion with a heart of gold who is almost embarrassingly devoted to the hero and will do anything for him”.

For Dean/Cas, there is also the parallel of struggling with a toxic parental figure who demands too much while also being emotionally absent and manipulative. For Dean, this is John Winchester, and for Achilles, this is Thetis. Cas also struggles with his relationship with his father (who is literally God lmao) and his desire to be a good soldier vs. his desire to do what’s right and to protect the man he loves.

Patroclus strives to help Achilles see that he’s more than just a weapon, and Cas and Dean both do this for each other: Dean helps Cas realize that he’s more than just another emotionless soldier of heaven, and Cas helps Dean realize he’s more than “daddy’s blunt instrument” (the phrasing of which I will still be laughing at in my grave. Thanks, CW.)

Dean’s godly destiny as Michael’s vessel is determined before he’s even born. Achilles’s godly destiny is also determined before he’s born, and neither one really has any say in it.

Patroclus ultimately dies in Achilles’s place, and Cas does the same for Dean many times. When Cas decides to help Dean escape heaven and try to save Sam and stop the apocalypse, he sacrifices himself to help Dean get away. Of the many times Cas puts his life on the line, it’s usually either to help Dean, or to save him. This is reminiscent of how Patroclus did almost everything not in the name of winning the war, or even the greater good (although he was obviously a good person), but to protect Achilles and keep him from getting himself killed.

Whenever Cas is dead, Dean’s mental health visibly deteriorates. He becomes more violent and unpredictable—a worse version of himself—just as Achilles did after Patroclus died.

Just as Patroclus acts as a tether to humanity for Achilles, Cas and Dean both act as tethers to humanity for each other. Cas pulls Dean out of Hell, restoring his humanity, and Dean helps Cas shrug off his emotionless angel identity and find some humanity of his own.

TLDR: Reckless blonde hero (or villain) with a legendary destiny/reputation and badass fighting skills + their viciously loyal brunette companion-slash-lover who's willing to die for them at a moment's notice = good shipping material

[cautionworks]

Okay, so I wanted to write some NSFW Headcanons for Hisoka. All of these headcanons I said are purely based on my interpretation. I have read some other Hisoka headcanons before but I forgot about them a while ago. Plus I know nothing about actual sex. So I'll have fun writing this. Here we go lol.

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex)

It depends on who's he with. If it was just a one-night stand he won't attempt to be comforting or try to care about the other party. The most He'll do is clean himself and nothing more. If he had a "significant other" that's a different story. He would cuddle the hell out of you. I imagine him as a clingy person (Which I hate). Once he's finished he just wants to fall asleep with you under his arms. He finds it relaxing to have your back against his chest. Especially when it's soft.

B = Body part (Their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

The back. I do not know why but I have the feeling that he would like a person's back. Especially if the person has slightly defined back muscles. Something about a person's back seems so vulnerable to Hisoka that he leans towards it whenever he’s behind someone he finds attractive. It's part of the reason why he likes to be behind people. Because he feels it's the most vulnerable place and he won't hesitate to take advantage of it when it comes to his enemies. Seriously don’t have this man around women with shirts that expose the backside. Or bikinis. He will not stop staring. Now I think about it I think he’ll like a virgin sweater.

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically... I’m a disgusting person)

Hisoka will eat it/swallow it. He's no stranger when it comes to being nude in his abode. So him being in his natural self, he won't hesitate to taste his own or his partner's bodily fluid. (Not pee you weirdos).

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self-explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Hisoka is a secretive man. It's literally what his name means. When asked direct questions he'll find a way to dodge them without seeming suspicious. And he's a liar. But when it comes to the bedroom. It's another side of him. He's not so secretive about it. It's just no one asks him about it and so he never felt the need to mention it. But when he did he will say it all. This man has done very risque things in his life. He once fucked a girl in an office building right after he killed her boss. There’s was a huge gathering of people including the girl's boyfriend. And he did it in one of those rooms where there's a glass that's see-through on one side and the other is not. Which the boyfriend happened to be there. You can guess which side he did it on. In the end, that girl was left with the time of life of her life and the loss of her partner and her job.

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?)

Extremely experienced. I'm sorry I'm a firm believer that Hisoka got laid many times by various women and men. If he's so strategic and calculated in fighting people then it's no surprise that he has skills in the bedroom. Plus he needs the release. I can't imagine how bored and frustrated he is when he can't kill anyone or there are no strong opponents. So it's understandable that he looks for partners to ease his stress. If there's nobody available at the moment. Then he will do what any man would do. Le master debate.

F = Favorite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual)

Again this one depends on who's he with. If he just with one of his late-night booty calls he would do the normal doggy style. If he's with someone he's heavily interested in. He will do all sorts of positions. His favorite position is where he can always see your face. Because one he wants to know if he's doing a good job. Two. He likes to watch your face morph into different facial expressions as he touches you in different ways.

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc)

He can be hella silly sometimes. If he's having sex with you for a while he will feel comfortable being playful. Of course, he can be serious if he needs to. But that rarely ever happens. The only times he would get serious if he was actively trying to get you pregnant for whatever reason. Which is not an issue. He uses bungee gum. It contains rubber and gum. Free condoms everyone. (Lol)

H = Hair (How well-groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.)

Oh hell yeah the carpet matched the drapes! You were surprised that it was the same hair color as his hair. You were so in disbelief that you considered that he just dyed it. Which was not the case. Let's just say Hisoka likes to keep things short. Normally you would find it to be shaved. Yet, sometimes he'll leave some hair to grow. A little hair never really bothered him.

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect...)

*sigh* This one depends. Ima skip this one because Hisoka is not romantic. Just kidding. Because I think he would be good in the bedroom, I think he CAN be a romantic partner. Romantic how? I don’t know he can be that’s all there’s to it. (Talk about laziness)

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon)

He does it more often than the average person. Like I said in my (E = Experience) Hisoka would do it if there’s nobody available at the moment. What I didn’t say is where and when he would do it. He’ll do it anywhere. This man has no shame. He will do it in a church, public bathroom, or hospital bed. Inside or out. It did not matter to him. Unless if it was raining. That would be his own little rule but he breaks it all the time. For some reason, many opportunities for sex happened to be on rainy days. When? He’ll do it even when he has a mission to do with Illumi. If he’s in the middle of a job and He's in horni mode. He’ll find a way to release without anyone knowing. He could do it right in front of a person without them knowing. Sometimes he just stands there with an orgasmic face on. The only way he’s able to masturbate in public is because he is using bungee gum. I know for a fact he’s use’s this ability in his sexual encounters with people especially for himself. This man could just stand there and you wouldn’t know if he was just being weird or he’s just doing it again.

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)

KINK SHAMING IS HIS KINK! I’m just kidding. Without a doubt, Hisoka would have one or two kinks. Bondage. Bondage. Bondage. As boring and well known this kink is. It makes sense at least to me it does. Hisoka bungee gum ability can grab, stick or even trap a person. So he finds pleasure in watching his partner's skin be wrapped in his bungee gum. He has so much control over it. How tight it can be. How rubbery or gummy it can be depending on the situation.Another thing I’d like to say. Hisoka is A SADIST AND MASOCHIST. He likes giving and receiving pain. That’s just how it is.

L = Location (Favorite places to do they do)

Anywhere that has a good spot to fuck you against something. Any surface that he can place you on. But if he were to have a “favorite place” it would be in places that are morally wrong to do or somewhere exciting like a carnival/circus. Hisoka hasn’t set limits to himself so usually, it's his partner that sets the boundaries.

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)

If he sees you in revealing clothing (Especially if your back is completely exposed) his wood is rising. You could just be lying on your stomach on the couch, scrolling on the phone. If you’re wearing a bra or nothing on and Hisoka happens to be there. There’s no doubt he'll find ways to lay his hands on you. It's not just the back that could turn him on. THIGHS AND HAMSTRINGS will have the man going. In particular, he likes it when it's Thicc/meaty. My man likes dem Thicc thighs. (Lol)

N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn-offs)

This one is only one of my most important headcanons ever. And I won’t accept anything other than this. Rape/Noncon. Hisoka does not find any joy in forcing himself on his partners. It’s not fun for him if his partner isn’t enjoying it either. The biggest turn-off for him would have to be anything related to bodily wastes like pee or poo.

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)

Oh, he likes receiving it more than giving it. But that doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy giving his significant other pleasure too. I would say his skill level is pretty good. Let’s just say when he does it, it's more than enough to please his partner. When he receives it expect lots of hair pulling and heavy groans.

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.)

Fuck! It depends on his mood. Normally he likes to do it slow and sensual. But on a bad day, he does it rough and fast. A Good example of this was after Chrollo told him he can not use nen. Hisoka kept his emotions to himself. The only face he allowed himself to show was his normal displeased face. But inside he’s pissed. Once he leaves the troupe he heads back to his partner's place and sleeps with them. At least he released his frustration without killing anyone. (Omg Imagine fucking Hisoka was the leading cause of people still alive) Other than that he just aggressively masturbates.

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.)

*Deep inhaling* Hisoka IS THE KING OF QUICKIES. He’s a master at it. While he’s patient for riping fruits he rarely has patience for sexual activities. He's on the go constantly. If he finds someone that catches his eye he’ll go after them. So a nice quickie is great and all but it doesn’t entirely satisfy him. Because it doesn’t satisfy him overall, a proper well spent “shagging” (This will be the first and last time I’ll ever write “Shagging”) He’s happy. Just happy that he can give his all. Which he can not do often.

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.)

Absolutely! Hisoka has his life on gamble all the time. Whether it may be life-threatening or a simple card game. Risking taking is his character. Even if it's too crazy. He’ll do it anyway. He's an exhibitionist for sure. He’ll let people watch as long no one touches his partner.

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last...)

To my knowledge. IRL men need a break after sex. In the show, Hisoka was able to clear the hunter's exam easily. So we know Hisoka has a lot of endurance than the average human. He’s stronger and faster. So that means Hisoka will not get tired after one round of sex. I think he can go at least 10 rounds. Of course, Hisoka would get tired at some point. He’s still human. Hisoka just has a lot of stamina. And that’s a fact.

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)

Yall are probably gonna hate me for this but Hisoka doesn’t own toys. If his partner wants it during their time together, he will not hesitate to get it/use it. He doesn’t feel the need to use it since he’s very confident in his ability to please his partner without the use of toys. For himself? if wants something inside him then he’ll just look for a guy that’s decent for his standards. But that doesn’t stop him from using a dildo/vibrator for himself.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

Hisoka is a sadistic devil. He can be cruel sometimes. One time he had this girl close to climax and he stopped in the middle of it. Or He would cause arousal to his partner and pretend it was all an accident. He’s a huge teaser. He likes to watch his partner be in ecstasy and switch to fits of anger.

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make)

He’s a fucking whale. (LMAO) He’s the reason why kids know what moans sound like. He’s hella vocal in his private moments. He so loud that almost every troupe member recognizes his moans every time they hear them. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be quiet. Contrary to popular belief, Hisoka can be dead silent when he needs to be. He can be quiet as a mouse. Even quieter than the mouse. Now, what does he sound like? Well, we all heard his moans his fights. But I think it's different. I think his moans in fights are different while masturbating/sex. Just a slight difference. His moans would be more intense and he's a heavy breather. His tone of moans is a bit feminine with a tint of masculinity. He has the best of both worlds.

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice)

He likes to have pictures of you. Like a lot. He has a private gallery full of pictures of you on his phone. That’s why this time he actually takes care of his phone. He’s prone to get his phone destroyed in his missions. So he’s much careful with it now. These pictures can range from cute photos of you and him together to butt naked pics of you not looking.

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture, or words)

Now you horny Hisoka Simps think he has a 12-inch dick but I don’t think that’s the case. (I mean come on) I know there are Chinese HxH fans who took the time to measure his length by looking at manga panels. Based on what I found. Hisoka is 5 inches long (aroused) and 6 inch Inches long (aroused). To make him above “Average”. He is 6 inches long (aroused) and 7 inches Inches long (aroused). Beyond that I don’t know how a female or male have can have a size like that fit in them. Or maybe I’m not educated enough on this topic. I don’t know and I don’t care.

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)

Very High. A lot of people who write Hisoka smut fics tend to make him a horny bastard. For me, I think that is the case. But my reasons are different. As I said in my E = Experience. Hisoka would look for partners to ease his stress. His obsession with finding/fighting strong opponents takes a toll on his mental and physical state. So once he can't think of another outlet for his tremendous amounts of energy, he'll use it to please himself with different partners.

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterward)

I'm going to say that depends on the person. If he only did 2-3 rounds of sex with an average person he's not going to fall asleep easily. Eventually, he will. Due to being bored and little tiredness. If he were to do it with a skilled nen user like Machi. He would get tired a lot more.

Oh woah that took forever to write! Let me just say it again this is purely my own headcanons. The questions are not mine only my answers. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!

[gayregis]

Hey! I love your opinions on the books :) I’m having trouble grasping some of the characterization of the book characters, so maybe you’d understand better xD. What would you say the main characters’ flaws are?

omg i love this... ok for context these “flaws” do not necessarily equate to “qualities that are bad to have, make them bad people, and need to be fixed” but rather “qualities that are their character flaws in the narrative and contribute to the story”:

main characters, like the main 4 characters:

geralt: geralt is defined by insecurity, self-doubt, and self-loathing which stems from him being abandoned by his biological mother when he was a child and becoming a witcher, which is a reviled profession and caste and makes others shun him and dislike his company. he is also affected by being a witcher because he is morally opposed to killing, but his job is to kill, so he carries a lot of inner guilt and more self-loathing from this. this cocktail of nsecurity manifests mostly in him leaving people who care about him a lot and need his presence, and also in him shunning the company of others who want and need to be with him (leaving and shunning are different in my opinion... in leaving, he’s already been with them for some time, in shunning, they are trying to join him). examples of this are things like leaving yennefer in a shard of ice, leaving ciri in the sword of destiny, and not wanting to accept dandelion, milva, regis, and cahir’s company in baptism of fire. he basically thinks that he can only bring misfortune and death to others, so by being around them, he puts them in danger... he’s self-isolating...

yennefer: yennefer is also defined by insecurity, but to her, she herself isn’t the source of peril - others are. because she suffered such horrible child abuse and really had no one to sincerely trust and form extremely close relationships with as she aged (sorcerers and sorceresses are infamous for their cattiness ... as we see with someone like sabrina, i feel like her life on thanedd island was more like a bad high school experience rather than a good one. thus, yennefer is hesitant to truly let people into her life, because she doesn’t want to be hurt. she has “a heart of ice” - of course, not really - it can be “melted,” so to speak, but she’s “frozen” it to protect herself. she as a sorceress also experiences some antagonization (and she can’t even often find comradery in her colleagues unlike geralt who can go back to his brothers at kaer morhen), so she’s kind of stuck. i would say both geralt and yennefer also suffer from a little immaturity, especially regarding their relationship, because they’ve just simply never really had a relationship like theirs before and so it’s difficult to understand how to make it work past the honeymoon stage.

dandelion: dandelion’s flaws are that he has no flaws ... or so that he’d like to think. it’s important to separate character flaws from generally looked down upon qualities when it comes to dandelion. he’s filled with qualities that are less than desirable in a person, but are comical to the reader: he’s a glutton, he’s lecherous, he’s arrogant, he’s liable to spend all of his money on beers and new clothes than paying rent (if he had... a place he rented). as geralt says in a little sacrifice, he’s a whoreson, a cynic, a lecher, and a liar. a more neutral way to summarize dandelion is that he seeks to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, he’s a hedonist. which isn’t of course necessarily a bad thing. earthly pleasures, those of food, alcohol, sex, dancing, entertainment, music, art, literature... it’s extremely human. and to avoid violence, killing, and death is only smart when you’re not skilled in those aspects. so, his love of pleasure is not really a flaw... more of just a neutral trait. his arrogance and raptness to make fun is one main character flaw, in the sense that he’s liable to go too far when he makes jokes. he gets into trouble mainly by teasing people so much until they get aggressive and want to strangle the life out of him. he gets torque to attack him and geralt in the edge of the world for precisely this reason, and he gets the foresters in four pines before a little sacrifice to attack him and geralt for this reason, too. this is classed as arrogance because he’s so self-absorbed that he doesn’t recognize the other person fantasizing about cutting his head off. he’s impulsive as well, which gets him into trouble with things like opening the amphora of the djinn. his other character flaw is flightiness, noncommitaliality, the inability to stay grounded or loyal. he develops over the course of the series in regards to this, as every main character does in regard to their character flaws. but the other way he gets into trouble is by cheating on his partners, cucking the partners of his partners, not upholding promises (not paying bills) ... he really just does what he wants and what he wants seems to change every day (asides from singing and writing poetry). this flaw gets him into trouble with mainly the women he cheats on or the men angered by him cucking them... as with vespula in eternal flame, and the duke and duchess of toussaint...

ciri: ciri has a few character flaws which develop with her over time. the first character flaw for ciri is arrogance. she immediately demonstrates this to geralt in the sword of destiny when she states that she is a princess and that she’ll have him beheaded... she believes that she deserves the very best and that no one could take her down, and this comes into play later when she joins the rats and bonhart starts on their trail. in her time with the rats, she actually does allude to her rank as a princess when she demands a jeweled brooch off of a girl, saying that they, as the wife and daughter of a baron, have no right to deny her what she wants. the second character flaw is vengeance, which i suppose is related to her arrogance. she becomes obsessed with getting vengeance for being abandoned by not only her parents, but her morals and virtues which she had ascribed so much to. when those leave her, she seeks illogical vengeance by cutting down innocents. then, she wants vengeance for mistle and the rats, as well as the way she was treated. this vengeance isn’t wrong, but it begins to consume her. by the end of the series, she learns how to control her thirst for vengeance and she gets her retribution.

hansa members because i like analyzing them too:

milva: milva suffers from insecurities related to her circumstance - from being a peasant woman. this mainly shows itself during her talk with geralt in baptism of fire, when she is torn up about being pregnant and tells geralt that even though he had thought different, it turns out that she’s no good for anything, “a typical bloody woman.” she has a lot of issues compiled from how she was raised and treated in her society which present themselves in insecurity, which she desperately tries to make up for through showing off her great skill. she feels like she has to compensate for being a woman and for not being educated, that she has to earn her place amongst the company or others, when it’s simply not the case sometimes in which she is loved just for being herself. milva is also quick to anger and impulsive, but these are not really flaws for her, they’re more neutral in relation to her character, they don’t really hurt her or others at all throughout the books...

regis: arrogance. i know i already said arrogance for dandelion and for ciri, but regis also has arrogance, and all of their types arrogance express themselves differently. dandelion suffers from arrogance in the way that he lacks self-awareness, that others might not love him as much as he thinks they do. ciri suffers from arrogance in that she feels the universe owes her. regis suffers from arrogance in that he thinks he’s always right. regis does demonstrate modesty and humility in the books, because of course he does, he’s been working on this same character flaw for 4 centuries, so i hope he’s improved on it somewhat. but he is still affected by the same character flaw which got him killed a century ago, which is that he believes he’s right and no one can take him down. in baptism of fire, tower of the swallow, and lady of the lake, he gives geralt some pretty stupid advice on various occassions, but he’s completely assured as to his own accuracy, so that he never actually intends to lead him astray, but just doesn’t think maybe he could be wrong. he advises geralt to pass through ygsith, which, if they did so, would have been incredibly dangerous. he advises geralt to go speak to the druids, who don’t help them at all and actually hurt them instead. and he dismisses ciri’s horse tracks on the sansretour pass, thinking that they’re unremarkable. in all of these times, he was wrong, but he never entertained that idea. his arrogance also demonstrates itself during conversation as he tends to speak like “a sage instructing small children” and interrupt people before they finish asking their questions, with the answers to their questions as well as the answers to their next questions. he’s always-omniscient. which he really isn’t, because he can’t possibly be. but he adopts the manner of acting like it, and that’s a flaw because it’s dangerous. his arrogance also leads him to impulsitivity and violence, especially when combined with when he is drunk. during the assault on castle stygga, he says that he thinks he could lay waste to the entire castle. he dies due to his arrogance - he could have chosen any other way of strategy to kill vilgefortz, but he chose to immediately rush him after swiping his face with his claws in flight. he should have bewared, but he thought he could kill him immediately because he was so assured of his powers.

cahir: cahir is an idealist and loyal to the point of detriment. he believed in imperialist doctrine for a great portion of his life, or rather was persuaded into at least following what imperialist doctrine wished for him to become, to please his family and the expectations set for him. he believes that he was doing the right thing, that he would bring honor to his family, even when he was sent to do something like kidnap a little girl. even though he thought the order was strange, he wanted the honor for his family, because he is loyal to them, more than anything. his idealism and loyalty also affect him once he joins the company. the fact that geralt told him to fuck off but he followed the company from a distance anyways, for miles, demonstrates his loyalty and his propensity to follow. he was guided by his ideals of setting things right with ciri. and he was guided by these ideals, unable to recognize the dangers surrounding him, right into stygga and towards bonhart’s blade.

angouleme: angouleme is a teenager. enough said... she is impulsive, violent... she gets the least screentime of all of the hansa so her true colors didn’t really get to show themselves as she didn’t get a lot of deep character development, but from my own ideas about her, i feel that she suffers from low self esteem due to the circumstances of her birth and is prone to distractions in the form of detriments. she agrees with the practices of crime and banditry because she was never told that she could ever aspire to anything better. she’s careless, she is quick with her knife, tongue, and powder, because she struggles to focus on the situation that is her entire life. she doesn’t want to face the hand that life has dealt her, so she makes the best of it by surviving and having fun when she can. i feel like her low self esteem affects her in that she doesn’t believe others can truly want to love and protect her, so that she is always looking out for herself and doesn’t accept goodwill for its face value. 

[emerald-amidst-gold]

Ohh maybe 1, 2, 3, and 28? 👀

*takes a sip from my can of soda* Ahhh~! Caffeine for the soul~ >:3

But you know what's better for the soul? Questions! Curiosity! RAMBLING ABOUT CHILDREN! >:D Let's GOOOO!

1. What would your Warden generally think of your Hawke and your inquisitor?

Rylen: 

Now, I kind of see Elise eventually meeting or at least, reaching out to Rylen after the events in Kirkwall. After all, she’s an Amell, and so is Hawke. They’re literally the only family each other has (that’s not ‘found’ family, that is.). So, I think Elise would reach out through a letter or somehow manage a visit to her cousin and...connect. She would see him as inspiring; Rylen always manages a smile and a quip. However, if they were to spend more and more time interacting with each other, Elise would see that Hawke isn’t very well put together, especially after the Chantry explosion. She would question why Rylen chose the templars, why he executed Anders who was a like a brother to her, but eventually she would come to understand the whys. Elise would see it as no different as when she decided to spare Loghain at the Landsmeet; they did what they believed to be right and what would be best in that very moment. Both Rylen and Elise sacrificed their own happiness for the benefit of others, and were still blamed for future complications and there’s something comforting in a finding another who can relate. :3

Fane:

So, I actually have some later fic ideas for a confrontation between Elise and Fane (after Trespasser, kind of Pre-DA4 shenanas~), and suffice it to say, these two have similar ways of thinking, but their methods are entirely different. Fane is rash, prone to barreling head first into conflict without thinking about those around him. Elise is analytical, always assessing and placing the pieces in her head to make sure everyone comes out alive. This isn’t to say Fane doesn’t care about his comrades; he does. There’s countless, countless times he takes a blow for someone else without batting an eye or thinking that he could die. He just doesn’t plan; he acts. Fane can get lost in the moment of battle, in the heady scent of chaos and blood. Elise, at first meeting him, would see him as any typical warrior; eager for battle and a garden of death. But if they were to sit down and talk...I think she might find him endearing and fascinating. More or less she would think, ‘He’s so mature for someone so young. I mean, he’s twenty-four, but...he speaks as if he’s older. His speech is manicured, measured as if decided upon carefully. And his eyes...there’s pain, a deep, deep pain. Like some of the older Wardens, those just hearing the Calling. But also...hope? Conviction? Who are you, Inquisitor? What has the world done to you?’

2. What would your Hawke generally think of your warden and your Inquisitor?

Elise:

Rylen would probably have the same opinion of Elise as she does with him. They’re family, split apart due the misconceptions and fear, and my Hawke cherishes family. He lost everyone else he could rightly consider family. Fenris, Varric, Sebastian, Isabela, and Merrill are the only people he can call family now. (Anders and Aveline are complicated. I won’t go into that can of worms. For now~ >:3) He would definitely feel a level of guilt for what he had to do in Kirkwall with Anders, with the mages, with...everything, but Rylen just tries to make it through another day. If he and Elise started to interact I think it would be extremely beneficial to Rylen. Elise is patient, sometimes stern, and not afraid to lay all the facts out. Rylen would admire that since he’s had to go through life wearing a mask, a smile, a facade just to placate someone else. He would see Elise as another sister and his opinion of her would probably be along the lines of, ‘I won’t let another member of my family be torn from me. Father, Bethany, Carver...Mother.. I failed them. I won’t fail her. I won’t fail her. She’s bright and she keeps her head held high. Heh, now I see how she killed an Archdemon and lived to tell the tale. ...Bet the lightning has something to do with that, too.’

Fane: 

Rylen and Fane, in my head, actually hit it off from the get go. They’ve both had to take mantles of power, even though they never, never wanted to. Though, for different reasons, of course. But Rylen would find Fane inspiring and wholly capable of doing what must be done. He’d be kind of put off that most of his well thought out jokes and pokes would fall flat on Fane, but eventually, Rylen would see why that is. (Draconic nature withstanding.) Also, once my Hawke found out Fane is dragon?  OHHHH, BUDDY. There would be yelling and screeching and cries of, ‘WHY DO I KEEP MEETING DRAGONS, FENRIS?! FIRST THE WITCH, NOW THE INQUISITOR?! ..I’m done. I’m putting my daggers down and stealing away into the mountains. Varric, you wanna come with? I know you’re fed up with this shit, too! Don’t lie! DON’T. LIE.’

3. What would your Inquisitor generally think of your warden and your Hawke?

Elise:

Fane would probably think of Elise as...interesting. Not in a bad way. Just...interesting. Fane isn’t comfortable with Wardens after Adamant. He learns that he can hear the corruption inside of them and that terrifies him. And confuses him. And makes him go, ‘What the fuck am I? I don’t even know anymore. Why do I try?’ But, if he were to get over that and, like I said with Elise, talk? He would have another perspective of the men and women that had let fear take them by the throat. It wouldn’t change his feelings regarding the Wardens entirely, but one level mind, one open mind, is enough to make Fane tap into his nature and consider other sides of a very, very large cube.

‘She’s more...quiet than the others. Maybe because it’s just her? No...Loghain was still loud as fuck when it was just him, so why? Ugh, I’m so sick of these puzzles. At least she’s more stable, but I can see the pain in her eyes; green like mine, but missing the gold. Maybe the Taint is stronger than she thinks? Perhaps, but still she fights, still she claws her way towards something that may be impossible. ...Hmph. How typical. A similarity. This world continues to confound.’

Rylen:

Fane respects Rylen after spending some time to feel him out, know his cues, and piece together which is his actual face. Once that happens, Fane can move into respect with my Hawke. These two have a fairly similar moral compass; pragmatism regarding most decisions. Again, they both have been thrust into a position without asking for it, so that would be a stepping stone upon the bonding path. All in all, Fane’s general opinion of Rylen would be, ‘He’s worn that mask of smiles and bright, grey eyes for too long. It’s cracking at the edges, wearing down to mere mortar. Then again, I have my own mask. I’m in no position to judge and condemn, but...it’s worrying. Even the strongest wings can be torn and all that greets is the earth below. I hope your wings don’t falter, Champion. It would be disappointing for the world to lose someone who cares when those who should are content to point the finger towards anyone but themselves.’

28. What is their favourite location within their own game and what would be their favourite in each others?

Fane: The Emprise du Lion! Snowwwww! Coooold! Ice dragooooon! >:3 ...minus the red lyrium. *snorts* 

Origins: Hmm, I think Fane would like the Brecilian Forest. He enjoys forests as much as he enjoys the cold, the ice, and the snow. He likes the animals, even though he tries not to interfere with them, and he likes the quiet. No chattering, no demands. Only trees, leaves, and the occasional whistle of wind. Also, Fane likes to investigate ancient ruins. He’s not interested in the history, really. He just wants to see if he can find any remnants about his kin that the elves may have left behind. :3

DA2: Probably Sundermount since again, wilderness. Fane doesn’t do too well in crowded areas and Kirkwall would make his heart rate sky rocket. Not just because of the people, but because of the size. Those cramped streets of Lowtown would just make him...eugh. *shivers*

Elise: She adores Orzammar! Especially the Shaperate! The dwarves fascinate Elise since not many tomes in the Circle went into depth about them! :D And if we want to with Awakening areas, I would saaaay...Amaranthine. She’s always like towns and cities due to not being able to experience them until the Blight! :3

Inquisition: Elise would adore the Frostback Basin. Like, really enjoy it! All that flora and Avaar culture and wilderness? MMMM!

DA2: Definitely the Wounded Coast. Hands down. My daughter enjoys the sea so much. The salt in the air, the feel of sand, and the pretty, pretty shells and rolling waves? Every Circle mages’ wet dream. *waggles eyebrows*

Rylen: So, if we’re not talking like open world areas in the game, I would definitely say Rylen’s favorite place is the Hanged Man. The man needs a drink to deal with Kirkwall. Just saying. It’s also where he can just...be himself with the people who know him. 

Inquisition: Hinterlands. He’s a FERELDAN. He wants his MABARI to RUN in native land! He wants to...go home. ;3;

Origins: I like to think the Hawke family went all over Ferelden before settling in Lothering. I mean, they kind of do, but maybe for more than a few months at a time? So, Rylen would enjoy Denerim. He likes to go where people are, where life is. He likes crowds because he can blend into them and not be tracked down until he wants to be tracked down. ...My Hawke just wants to live in peace with his glowy elf husband and run a mabari ranch. Is that too much to ask, Bioware?! Let Hawke REST!

Woo! That was FUN! It really got me thinking, too! X3 Thank you so much, friend! <3

[amostimprobabledream]

Why I hate Grace.

I was giving my thoughts on Peaky Blinders a few weeks ago and I danced around the subject of my dislike for this character but didn’t have time/room to get it all out. So here it is! Grace fans, you probably want to look away now. So to me, Grace is kind of symbolic of the bad writing on Peaky Blinders, which is especially egregious because usually the writing of the show is good. But right off the bat, her arrival creates a number of plotholes that don't resonate with Tommy's character. Just for a start, nobody seems to find it suspicious that an apparently attractive woman (seriously, people go on and on about how pretty Grace is and while it's not as though she's ugly at all, you can't help but wonder if the Peaky boys merely think so because she's the only woman of significance not related to them) is so determined to be a barmaid in The Garrison, where Tommy, upon seeing her, immediately asks her if she's a whore. Grace is understandably offended by the question, which again makes you wonder why she'd want to work somewhere where such a question isn't just an assumption, but the first thing Tommy asks - we know she's a spy, but the other characters don't.

Then, Tommy corners Grace and starts asking why she keeps being so nosy about the Blinders and their business. They go for a walk and Tommy asks Grace if she's a Catholic. She says she is, but when Tommy points out that no good Catholic girl would walk into a church without making the cross, he immediately exposes her as a liar and points out he also knows that she lied to him about what town she was from, because he asked around and nobody had ever heard of her. So what does he do? He...promotes her to being his secretary? What?

Okay, so you might argue that Tommy puts her in said position to keep an eye on her, or thinks she might be useful if she has the balls to lie to him, but she tells such an easy-to-unravel lie and her excuse is because she wants to "fit in". Again, he lets her off the hook but she covers up a lie with an even more obvious one  - if Grace cared about fitting in, she'd make more of an effort to do so, but she keeps demanding Tommy let her sing in the pub and asks questions above her station to Arthur, which got reported back to Tommy. Sure, it's her job to spy on the Peaky boys, but she's so transparent about it that it's honestly ridiculous that Tommy would ever put her in a position that close to his personal affairs. Not to mention, Grace is so inexplicably haughty towards Tommy, telling him, "You disappoint me" when he kisses her. You'd think if she was good at her job, she'd learn to shut her mouth and keep her head down like a decent spy, but she always acts as if she's better than Tommy because, like Polly points out, she's a spoiled little rich girl at heart and she does think herself above the Shelby's.

Then Tommy completely inexplicably chooses to give Grace a fucking gun and tells her some men are going to come in and try to kill him and he's relying on her to bail him out. I know the cops were meant to come in at the stroke of six and they fuck up, but WHY would you ever place that level of trust in someone you already know is a liar? Sorry, but I just don't buy that Tommy was blinded by "love". I can buy that maybe he was curious about Grace, possibly even fancied her a bit, but definitely not so stupid that he thinks it's a good idea to put his fucking life in the hands of a woman he knows basically nothing about. She could have fallen out of the sky for all he knows. Tommy even continues to trust Grace after she kills an IRA guy right in front of him because she sobs, "I didn't know I had it in me like that", yet she disobeyed his instructions and whenever Arthur or John do that, Tommy gives them a bollocking. He lets Grace off, again, for seemingly no reason other than she played the damsel in distress role and he buys it. This doesn't make Tommy look like a smart man blinded by love, it just makes him look like an idiot around Grace.

Also, there seems to be an uncomfortable level in Tommy/Grace of Tommy getting a kick out of using Grace to piss Campbell off. It's pretty obvious Campbell has a creepy crush on her, and Tommy exploits that for all it's worth when he explicitly rings Campbell to inform him that he's going to bang Grace. (Incidentally, their sex scene made me go, "Oh, I guess they're gonna fuck now. Yup." It was like they did it because the screenwriter said so.) He's basically cucking Campbell and I think it's a big reason why even Grace fans admit that she's "not as good" in Season Two - Grace just doesn't work without Campbell around. At least in Season One you can argue that every shitty thing Grace does to Tommy/the Peaky Blinders is partly because of her job as a spy and Campbell is her boss. In Season Two, there are no excuses for the way Grace acts. She's a selfish, self-righteous hypocrite. She jumps at the chance to go to Birmingham on the offchance it was Tommy who called, then acts all offended when he assumes she came to sleep with him, to the point she actually smacks him in the face. What does Tommy do about this? Nothing. When Grace complains they could have run away to New York together, all Tommy says is, "I had things to do", instead of asking Grace why she thinks he'd abandon his family, business, friends and country all to chase after the woman who sold him out to his worst enemy. Grace honestly expected Tommy to put her first after everything she did to him. I won't act like Tommy is a saint in this - he did nearly pimp her out to Billy Kimber - but at least he acknowledges it was wrong of him to do and he never acts like he occupies any moral highground like Grace does. When Grace admits she sold Tommy out, she sobs she "did a terrible thing," yet never tries to actually help him out in a way that would put her at risk - she quit her position, sure, but Campbell's creepiness had gone so far as to propose marriage to her, Grace was still looking out for herself when she left, because it got her away from Campbell. She asked Campbell to spare him, knowing full well that Campbell has wanted Tommy dead since day one. She plays the damsel in distress again and she's pissed when Tommy doesn't fall for it a second time. Then when she talks about her husband, she tries to rub it in Tommy's face how he's “a good, kind man”, but then quickly backtracks on that to fuck Tommy anyway because her husband is impotent - and Grace just can't deal with not getting what she wants. Tommy's rich enough to afford to buy a house for Ada and Polly by this point, he's running Birmingham and seeking to expand into London, so Grace pulls the oldest trick in the book and gets pregnant - then Tommy has to do the responsible thing and marry her, because the baby is his and it's literally the only piece of leverage she has over May. (May even points out that she's been stringing Tommy along and all Grace can do is throw the fact that "Grace's Secret" is the horse's name at her. Again though, did Tommy call it that to piss off Campbell? This was before Grace returned to Small Heath but after Campbell had, so I think yes.)

Then in Season Three, again, Grace is pretty much a pointless character, because she has no purpose anymore outside of being "Tommy's wife". Campbell is dead and so the conflict of her character in Season One, as contrived as that was, is gone. People complain about Grace being stuffed into a fridge and whatnot, (and tbh, you could say that about Freddie, but Freddie also served his purpose in Season One after he buried the hatchet with Tommy), but honestly I think that it was all they could think to do with her because Charlotte Riley was unable to pick up her role as May for Season Three, so they had to work around it. It's the only explanation I can think of about why Grace is just such a blatantly awful person in the Second Season - I've heard people say before that Tommy leaving the field after his assassination was prevented would have been the perfect ending to the season, but that scene at the end where he returns to The Garrison and announces he's getting married seemed really hastily tacked-on - I feel like it was added because they were forced to rewrite the drafts for Season Three and put whatever plans for May they had on the shelf. Not to mention, Grace's actress Annabelle Wallis has apparently stated she hates May because she's "annoying" and "gets inbetween Tommy and Grace". No, Grace got in the way of Tommy and Grace - she's the one who chose to leave Birmingham after she got exposed as a Mole instead of taking the consequences! And also, how is May the annoying one? At least she doesn’t whisper all her lines. It's just so immature of the actress to bash on the character and encourage ship wars, especially considering Grace comes out the winner of the love triangle, so what's the bitterness about? (I've not heard what her opinion is on Lizzie, but I doubt it's as hostile, because it's made obvious in the show that Tommy doesn't love Lizzie the same and the poor girl is constantly competing with a dead woman for her husband's love.) Plus, in Season Three, the wedding is all about not upsetting Grace, Tommy's family have to play nice with Grace's family, and Polly is once again the only person who knocks Grace's smug ass down a peg by reminding her that the family haven't forgiven or forgotten Grace's crimes against them - the only reason they're putting up a pretence of tolerating her is for Tommy's sake. Not hers. Not everybody in the world wants to accommodate Grace. Killing Grace was honestly the highlight of the entire Season, because I couldn't stand watching her smirking over how she got everything she wanted when she didn't pay for any of it. (Polly is also the only one who comments on how Tommy has conveniently forgotten all the shit she pulled on him and Tommy acts like she was a totally innocent bystander when she got killed and it’s like, no, Tommy, baby. Grace knew what she was getting into when she married him and he knew that - it’s pretty much common knowledge that everybody who is even tangentially associated with the Peaky Blinders gets hurt eventually, just look at how Ada was nearly gangraped even though she hadn’t been involved with the family business for two years.)

Come Season Four and Five and there's already a problem here - there is still more to talk about with Grace, even though she’s dead and Tommy spends most of Season Three rampaging over her death. But he just inexplicably won't let go of her. And again, this doesn't come across as Tommy being so in love with Grace he can't fathom a world without her, it comes off like her actress has dirt on the director or something. He constantly hallucinates the bitch, we hear her singing all the time, it's kind of implied that Tommy prefers Charles over Ruby because Charles a boy and has a saintly dead mummy while Ruby is the daughter of a former whore (not that Tommy doesn't love Ruby, obviously, because he absolutely does), and what really annoys me about Tommy hallucinating Grace is that she's the only character he does this with. He doesn't dream about Greta, his first love, he doesn't dream of Danny or Freddie or his mother. He doesn't even fucking dream about John! Remember John, Tommy's little brother he knew his entire life? Apparently nobody else does! No, it's always all about Grace, who keeps helpfully telling Tommy to hurry up and kill himself so he can be with her again. This doesn’t seem like an out-of-character, guilt-induced vision - it mimicks her attitude in Season Two, that nothing else in his life can be as important as she is.

And that's why I hate Grace. (Please don’t send me rude or hateful messages over this post, it’s just my opinion and it’s pretty much irrelevant anyway since I doubt Stephen Knight is going to stop using Grace up as some kind of martyred dead saint anytime soon. I just wanted to get this rant out of my system.)

[brockachu]

I really hope Travis green doesn't get fired I don't think he deserves it

imma be honest bout this — i’m torn. like, it’s a tough spot. on one hand, everything i’ve ever heard is that players love to play for him, especially younger guys & prospects. since green spent so long as a juniors & ahl coach + was a player himself who’d bounced around the league a bit, players have a lot to say about his relatability & approachability as a coach.

on top of that, i don’t think most fans or players ever expected him to stick it up as an nhl head coach this long tbh. when desjardins got fired, we all assumed travis was just an interim & that he’d prolly be at the helm for a season or two and then go spend some more time coaching in the a or at best get an assistant job to be promoted when one of these 31 other old farts finally gives up the ghost. the thing with nhl coaching & gm jobs is that they’ve been recycling the same guys since i was born (ie for 30 years). that’s why fans find any new blood at all fascinating. and then reinforced with the fact that green was actually an nhler himself, i think a lot of ppl were just happy to see him succeed, instead of the canucks pulling out the old coach rolodex. that is actually my biggest concern about if travis got fired right now — the guys who are seemingly available and expected to get hired the next second a job comes up are Not my cup of tea. and honestly, i think they’ve all kinda outstayed their welcome with their Very ‘oldschool’ mentalities (see: torts, quenneville, babcock; who have all been floated as potential hires when whichever team next pulls the trigger on replacing their coaching. worth noting that ppl were surprised that chicago didn’t hire one of these men recently, even given quenneville’s history with that team 🤢)

and then of course, there’s the fact that travis Really cannot be blamed for the roster he’s given. he’s been polishing diamonds out of Very rough stone for years now. he deserves A Lot of credit for keeping this team off the bottom of the league floor, since upper management has tossed him nothing but unwieldy contracts that leave no room for experimenting with new players (hello from development hell, our many prospects yell into the void) and also leave us out to dry when we get plagued with injuries (depth, you inquire? no none of that, just no trade clauses and cap hits that make it impossible to call up more than borderline 4th line guys the next time a linchpin players gets hurt)

all that said, here’s the problem: when a team is playing This Badly, and we know that it’s not necessarily the team makeup (again, we Are Not that bad on paper. our offensive lineup has been Staggeringly underwhelming. even the most skeptical of professional hockey talk men thought our offense would keep us afloat while we’d have to make do with our defense. demmer playing like his lil godling self would do Wonders if our forwards could buy a goal rn), it really drags the morale down in ways that unfortunately often requires Big Immediate Change. and while the players are fully aware of who their gm is and would have to have some feelings about a gm replacement, the coach is just a more immediate and closer change. and even as much as i like green personally (and i hope he keeps a head coach job, either with the canucks or elsewhere), there’s only so long you can hear the same things from the same guy and have a breakthrough.

this is where i admit some of the things i’ve always had trouble with about green, even tho my opinion of him is vastly in the positive — his line shuffling kills me. i know the players & coaching think it’s about trying anything in the hopes it’ll stick, but it often feels more like punishment & failure to build on their own practice. we know what lines they run in practice. we know what lines the players think they’re on when the game starts. shaking up the bag & drawing at random to build a line in the middle of gameplay sounds like extra chaos, if you ask me. next, travis is so wry & sarcastic to the point that sometimes it feels like he’s given up too. like i know, it’s all theater anyway — he really only has to answer to benning & since benning built this sad lil circus, he isn’t exactly gonna blame travis for attempting to pt barnum his way to a halfway decent show. but idk man, green’s lil sardonic laughs at bad calls & bone fucking dry press statements are starting to rub me the wrong way. you don’t actually have to accept that the ship is sinking quite this gracefully. you could go down screaming (not at the players) & scratching for a solution. (but then again, can i actually blame him for being tired here? prolly not)

ultimately, whether green gets fired or not is beyond my scope — the pros & cons are a bit even from where i’m sitting but maybe i’m a bit myopic. what i do think needs to be done (and we’ve all agreed on this point for Years, so sing it with me folx): Please Fire Benning. if travis has to go, it’s a shame, but i understand. but for all the tiny scraps of joy and hope left in this miserable lil meow meow of a fanbase, benning needs to go first. no one trusts that old ghoul, so it’s time to get our exorcism on.

[thekillerssluts]

Nostalgic For A Different Future: Arcade Fire's Will Butler On How His New Solo Album Finds Healing In Community

When Arcade Fire released their very first single, it came with a B-side that hit very close to home to brothers Win and Will Butler: a recording of a song called "My Buddy," credited to their grandfather, Alvino Rey. In fact, several generations of musicians line their family tree. While those historic echoes provide joy and solace for younger brother Will, the world tipping into pandemic and protests over racial injustice reinforced life’s darker cycles. On Butler’s second solo album, Generations (due Sept. 25 via Merge), he explores the ways in which we come together in community both because of and in spite of those ripples.

The video for early single "Surrender" represents that duality perfectly. The clip opens with studio footage of Butler’s band recording the jangly anthem, complete with call-and-response vocals and gospel falsetto. But much like 2020, things devolve quickly, with closed captioning-style subtitles mourning the deaths of Black men and women killed by police, calling for sweeping political change, and insisting on prison reform. Though written long ago, the album holds a special ability to tap into something boundless and timeless while simultaneously feeling entrenched in the tragic pain of the present.

Butler spoke with GRAMMY.com about the album’s similarities to Fyodor Dostoevsky, the ways in which songs take on new meaning over time, how Generations fits in with an upcoming Arcade Fire album and the healing power of community.

Did you have any hesitation about releasing the album in the midst of the pandemic?

I'm sad to not tour it. If I could wait four weeks and then tour the record... but that's not going to happen. It's actually kind of a good time to put out music. It feels morally good! People want music, so let's put out music. I've experienced that, where people put things out and it feels generous.

It truly does. You've compared this album to a novel and your debut before this to a collection of short stories. Is there a particular novelist that you feel would be in tune with your work? Do you take inspiration from fiction in that way?

It's not Dostoevsky. [Laughs.] But it is weirdly more inspired by Dostoevsky than it ought to be. It's the tumult of the 19th century, the next stage of the industrial revolution and the gearing up of socialism and anarchism. It feels related to the pre-revolutionary thing happening in Russia. [Laughs.] It's not a one-to-one comparison by any means, but it’s just the deeply human things happening in a context of the whirlwind.

Was there an experience that led you to the feeling that it was the right time to deliver such a politically driven album?

Partly, I went to grad school for public policy. I explicitly went as an artist wanting to know what's happening and why it's happening. I started the fall of 2016, which was a very bizarre time to be at a policy school. But I had a course with a professor named Leah Wright Rigueur, a young-ish professor, a Black woman, a historian. The course was essentially about race and riot in America. And since it was a policy school, the second-to-last week on the syllabus was talking about Hillary Clinton and the last week was talking about Donald Trump. It was a history class, but in an applied technical school, so it's like, "What are we doing with this history?"

We read the post-riot reports of Chicago in 1919 and the post-riot reports of the '60s, the Kerner Commission and after the Watts riots, and we read the DOJ reports after Ferguson and after Baltimore and Freddie Gray. And then Donald Trump got elected at the end of the semester. This course really trained my eyes at this moment of time, just being in that state of thinking about what's going on and why it's happening.

Right, and the album's title feels like it encapsulates not only the history that you were learning at the time but also your personal and familial ancestry.

Yes, very much so. My mom's a musician, and her parents were musicians. My grandmother grew up in a family band driving across the American West with her parents before there were even roads in the desert. Her dad got arrested a bunch of times for vagrancy or for not paying off loans. There's something very beautiful about being in the tradition of generations of musicians. That's a positive thing in this world. It's no coincidence that I'm a musician. There are, however, many more poisonous things that are also not coincidental that are rooted in both personal and political history. All of political history in America has been geared towards making each generation of my family's life better insofar as they're white men. It's been very good to my family, but that is as much of an undeniable generational heritage as music, which is this beautiful and faultless and glorious thing.

Do you see that musical tradition in your family as storytelling?

It's never been explicitly storytelling, though that is part of it. It's more about building community or building a society through entertainment. Entertainment is almost too light a word. My grandfather and grandmother did all these broadcasts during World War II, and some of it's jingoistic, some of it's incredibly moving, some of it's just dance music for people who don't want to think about the war for a minute. It's all these emotions, but still with this aim of trying to get us all in it together–which in a war context is fraught. But there's that element of always trying to make a family, make a community, learning how to bind us all together.

That reminds me of the call and response vocals you've got throughout the record. It has an especially gospel-y feeling on "Close My Eyes," which is such a clever way to paint a song about surrendering to something bigger than yourself, that communal feeling. What was the impetus for that narrative voice?

Part of it is just rooted in Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. [Laughs.] Years ago, someone mailed us the complete Motown singles on CD, just every single starting from day one. Even though there’s some garbage mixed in there, it just feels so human with those gang vocals and great singers that sometimes they just pulled off the street. You get the sense of humanity. Having backing vocals be so integral instead of just having my voice layered feels like having a community and feels very natural. It's hard for me to not just rely on that every third or fourth song. [Laughs.] It just feels like that's how it should be.

Those multi-part harmonies must be especially potent live in a room. Do you write in a way where you’re already picturing these songs live?

We played almost every one of these songs live before we recorded them. My solo band played "Surrender" live on the Policy tour for years. But even before we went into the studio last summer, I booked a weekend of shows. We did the Merge 30th Anniversary festival just to have us feel it live and have that communication. And then we went down to the basement to try to iron it out.

Speaking of "Surrender," that song took on an entire new life in the video. It starts out with videos of your band in the studio, but then quickly and powerfully gets replaced with messages mourning the deaths of George Floyd and Breanna Taylor and emphasizing the need for prison reform. You never know what life a song will have when you’re writing it.

That song is very nostalgic in a certain way. It’s looking towards the past, but not wishing to be in the past. It's wishing that we were in a different present because we had already chosen a different past. So when I was editing the video, I started it as a "making of" video. But the footage is from January of this year—five, six months old. There's this feeling of nostalgia, but also 2019 was not good enough to look back at. [Laughs.] 2019 was also horrible.

It's not like I want to go back to 2019. I want to play music with people. I want to be having fun with my friends. I want to be making a record. But I don't want it to be 2019. I'm nostalgic for a different future. And as I'm editing the video, there have been six weeks of protests of people trying to build something, and it just felt crazy to not acknowledge that. It was what people were focused on, at least the people around me.

Do you feel like you'll be infusing more overt social and political commentary into your music going ahead?

I think so. It's important that it's organic. It's part of the world I live in, part of my family and my friendships. Before the coronavirus hit, I was very much looking forward to touring and had vague plans to do town hall meetings and discussions. It felt like a rich time to do that around America, and around the world. I'm sad to not get to do that, but I think it will happen someday.

You produced the album yourself in your basement, so were you writing with the production choices already in mind or were you writing while in the studio?

I had the band come down and record for a week. And at the end of that first week, we had seven or eight songs that could be real. Some of them were clear. Some of them are simpler, like "Surrender." Others were trying to figure out where they would go. "I Don't Know What I Don’t Know" was more trial and error, trying something crazy. We'd turn everything off for two days and then come back to it and try something else. You try to be surprised by it.

I love revision. Well, I don't love it. I hate it. [Laughs.] I love the process of editing, of making a version of something and then finding something that's either better or worse. It's fun when you work with an editor that you trust, but when you're just doing it yourself, you drive yourself batty after some time. But I still love versioning it until it makes sense.

It feels like you're not too precious. You just want to service the song at the end of the day.

Yeah. I try to not be precious. I feel like the songs mostly came out with a fresh spirit. I didn't massage any of them too much. I'm very conversational in how I think of the world. Nothing is the final statement. You say something and then someone says something else and then you say something. And you have to finish what you're saying in order to hear what the other person says. So if that means putting it out into the world without rounding everything off, to me that feels right.

The record begins and ends on the same burning synth tone, like history ready to go around the loop again. What does that synth tone represent for you?

Not to get too mystical, but there's something about the bass that is so embodied. There's something about a really powerful bass that is fundamental, something that just gets to the core. I wanted that core to feel a little uneasy. It's not like the hit at the end of "A Day in the Life" where it’s this clear conclusion. It's a little bit gnarly. It's a little bit not in the right key for the song. It’s something disturbing at the very core of everything.

What has writing and producing this record taught you about yourself?

I found that while I still prize quickness and thoughtfulness and conversational life, this record took longer and took more effort than Policy. It was way less casual. It was not casual in a very good way. I realized this shouldn't be a casual undertaking—even though it can have lightness and humor and breezy elements. Even then, the whole undertaking can still be serious and grounded. It can even be quick without being casual. In the past, I've fallen into thinking, "Just do something first before you think about it too hard." But this was a reminder that you can do something more thoroughly.

Were you writing these songs while working on the next Arcade Fire album? Speaking about intention, how do you compartmentalize those two sides of your creativity?

Yeah, Arcade Fire is always very cyclical. We record for a year and a half, we tour for a year and a half, and then we're off for a year and a half. I was very conscious to do this in a moment when I wasn't distracted by something else. I wanted to focus on this.

I'm still figuring it all out. Right now I'm making a video for the song "Close My Eyes." I have children, two-year-old twins and an eight-year-old, so the spring was just complete family time—net positive, but total chaos. [Laughs.]

https://www.grammy.com/grammys/news/nostalgic-different-future-arcade-fires-will-butler-how-his-new-solo-album-finds

[codenamesazanka]

Geten (Part 2)

(Part 1)

Specifically, focusing Geten in Chapter 271/during this current ‘War’ arc:

Look at his face! Bloodshot eyes and a vein about to pop. Geten’s ferociously  livid and about to slaughter some Heroes. (also I wanna point out that they’re actually addressing him as ‘Geten-sama’ still.)

In the Paranormal Liberation Front, Geten serves as one of the nine Lieutenants, and with Dabi, they lead the the ‘Violet’ Vanguard Action Guerilla Warfare Regiment.

It’s a mouthful! Dictionary.com defines ‘guerilla warfare’ as: “the use of hit-and-run tactics by small, mobile groups of irregular forces operating in territory controlled by a hostile, regular force.” 

We’re aren’t told exactly what the Violet Regiment does, but I’m guessing they’re sort of first attacking force of the army - on the offensive; aiming at weak spots and key areas of Hero society; being quick, brutal, and unexpected to cause as much damage (to infrastructure, morale, personnel, etc) as possible to the Heroes. 

Which makes sense! Dabi’s fire can destroy a good part of a city, as can Geten’s ice. 

Making the two of them leaders, though. Well, it’s as one of the MLA member Sanctum said to Twice, they’re kinda figureheads handed their position (it’s true of the whole League save Shigaraki, really) - true for Dabi, definitely; and it seems true for Geten too, although he at least had some history of being a superior in the army. Still. 

Geten as a commander 

Despite being “central to the Liberation Army’s success” and being greatly respected, Geten never was given any leadership position that we knew of during My Villain Academia. 

It’s probably because he’s shit at caring about his fellow warriors. Mr. Compress notes this in Chapter 230. 

His massive ice attacks are indiscriminate, destroying whole streets and anyone unlucky enough to be there, friends and foe alike. It doesn’t seem to be calculated sacrifice for a larger goal - Geten is simply callous and reckless.

He’s still the same about three months later, despite having a regiment under his responsibility and in the middle of a battle where the army probably should keep as many of their numbers as possible. 

Here’s him essentially destroying what’s left of the mansion, tossing everyone - allies and heroes - into the air; and interrupting Dabi’s attack that would have at least taken out the Number 2 Hero. 

The irresponsibility extends off the battlefield - here’s Geten missing from a PLF meeting:

(Even Gigantomachia is there! idk, maybe he forced his way in and no one can make him leave, and I’m not quite sure the significance of this, but it says something that Machia is attending and Geten is just not.) 

So it’s safe to say he isn’t very leadership material; he doesn’t know or ignores what leadership entails, and if he keeps up his preferred method of destructive attacks, he’s not going to have anything to lead either. 

He does know how to “command” at least somewhat, however - or that’s what I think is implied in Chapter 271.

Breakout 

(Same image as above, except Viz translation + another panel)

Who could forget this awesome scene? Geten doing a signature ice explosion, wrecking everything - and there he is, on the battlefield, attention all on him, calling the Heroes “dogs of the state” and telling them they will not die peaceful deaths. Damn. He has correctly assessed the situation! He’s giving orders! Got a strategy! 

A sound strategy - and an actual one discussed in real military tactics: concentrate combat power on one location and rupture the enemy line. 

(info I found through googling here, here, and here.)

An encircled force attacks by using the rupture force to penetrate the enemy defensive positions in at least one location. The commander must produce overwhelming combat power at each breakout point... 

...The mission [is] to penetrate the enemy's encircling position, widen the gap, and hold the shoulders of the gap until all other encircled forces can move through.

It’s simplified here, and it’s kinda obvious, but it’s still exactly what one should do when they’re in a siege-like situation, i.e. surrounded, all routes, communication and reinforcement blocked and cut off. 

I’ve half-joked about him being dumb and maybe illiterate because he bragged about not going to school, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t taught things and given an education. (Like Shigaraki!) He’s obviously learned some military tactics and commanding along with his quirk training.

So yeah, Geten is doing everything right. 

The prospect of such a grouping of forces, placed in a confusing and desperate situation, makes unity of command and unity of effort absolutely essential. The most senior combat arms officer must establish his authority immediately. 

Especially in rallying the troops. It could be coincidental, he’s just angry and shouting at his soldiers to do finally something right; yet he’s still done it. 

And Geten does it alongside another action: he removes his hood. 

In a meta sense, it’s likely to establish Geten as a character - he’s not a faceless mook, he’s not creepy ‘two glowing eyes in darkness’ enemy; he’s a character with a name and a (very pretty) face, that we can relate to and maybe even like. (That he mentions Re-Destro, the only person we know he cares about, and shows protectiveness/concern, adds to that.) He’s portrayed here in a way to make him badass, in a defining moment where the PLF gains some control of the situation, for us to cheer on. 

In-story though, the reason is more unclear? to me, anyways. During his battle with Dabi, he never removed his hood then. Here, is it to literally face the Heroes, to show that he doesn’t care if his face is known, to go head to head with them? Is it to show his men that he’s here, let the sight of his pretty face re-energize them, he’s at the frontlines fighting too? His quirk makes it obvious who he is, he needn’t show his face. 

Despite his disregard for other soldiers of the army, I’ve got a feeling that this is some sort of symbolic gesture to motivate them. Get their attention, establish his authority, finally be a bit of a leader. Cuz, man, the situation really calls for it. 

The Ice

When the attack began, we see Geten running towards the frontlines (chapter 263):

(tiny note: Dabi is heading the opposite direction from everyone - going to help out Twice - but Geten, his co-leader, doesn’t pay attention to him at all. No ‘where the fuck are you goin’, nothing. Feel like they would’ve noticed each other, but no interaction here.) 

From what we can see, Geten doesn’t show up until Chapter 271, a length of time enough to have Hawks confront Twice, Dabi intervene, Hawks kills Twice, Dabi fanboys Stain, Tokoyami to the rescue, and a little more. Let’s say... 15, 20 minutes? 

So he’s missing from the frontlines at the start of the battle - I say he was probably trying to generate an absurd amount of ice during that time. This villa probably has a kitchen with some ice, but not enough. I’m guessing Geten went to find a water source (multiple of water sources?), froze it all, in preparation for the ice explosion. In preparation for him to create a battlefield to his advantage.

So it looks the ice has engulfed the mansion, going up several stories, as well as spreading out to the mansion’s surroundings. A bunch of people are surrounded by ice - like Gang Orca there, right next to a wall of it. 

We know Geten has fine enough skill to shape ice to whatever he wants, and his range of control (and sense?) is massive. Whoever is standing on or is close to the ice - they’re in Geten’s territory, he controls the very ground they’re standing on. 

Go get ‘em, Geten. 

*

Part 3 is next! Will be focusing on Geten’s relationship with ReDestro, and other miscellaneous details. Feel free to suggest anything too.  

*

I could very much be over-estimating Geten’s intelligence! So don’t my word here too much. I’m sure there are a couple reaches here to. Constructive criticism is always appreciated! 

Note: a friend pointed out a reach in Part 1, which will be edited:

I think the fact that [Geten] targeted Dabi as his opponent, despite the obvious weakness his ice has to Dabi’s high-temperature flames, means he was looking for a challenge. Trying to show off, trying to prove that he can go up against his greatest enemy (as in, heat and fire) and come out on top.

It’s more likely that ReDestro had assigned Geten on the Dabi-hunt, given the panel from Chapter 238 where ReDestro is telling Geten to be wary of Dabi’s long-range flames. If there was any strategy to having Geten target Dabi, it could’ve been the general plan, rather than Geten’s own thing. 

thanks for reading! 

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Disability and James

@zarohk asked for my thoughts on a Disability Studies/Media Studies perspective on the disability depictions in Animorphs.  [PLEASE NOTE: I am nondisabled, so if I err, please tell me so.]

I’ve mentioned before that James is one of my faves, and possibly my favorite minor character who isn’t a yeerk host.  His introduction pulls off a seemingly impossible feat through not only creating a likable Sixth Ranger, but creating a likable Sixth Ranger who comes after David.  James is also a complex, nuanced character whose disability is a feature but not a summation of his personality.  Plus, he’s a masculine boy who is all about about nurturing others, which always makes me happy.

A few places where I commend the depiction of James:

He leads a social community of disabled kids who help each other.  It’s a big part of third-wave progressivism to emphasize sub-communities and various identities helping each other out: women supporting women, queer pride, Latinx-American culture, etc.  That’s what we see with the Auximorphs, especially James.  James’s motivation is somewhere between 99% “help my roomies” and 100% “help my roomies.”  His initial response to Jake and Cassie explaining the war is “so what, a bunch of ableds are gonna get taken by yeerks, not my problem.”  It’s only when Cassie points out that the yeerks are eugenicists who murder disabled humans that he switches to “okay, I guess we’ll go fight in your stupid war.”  He insists on even the kids who won’t be fighting (Pedro, Tuan) getting the power to morph, and tells Jake that he’ll take suggestions but not orders.

He emphasizes his own and Pedro’s bodily autonomy.  James actually goes so far as to throw Jake onto the floor when Jake tries to grab his wheelchair — a move that emphasizes James has the right to move his own body around, and that that includes prostheses.  Everyday ableism too often involves random strangers taking charge of the bodies of disabled people, attempting to guide blind pedestrians or push wheelchairs around without asking permission to move a person’s body like that.  "My body, my business” is obviously a huge motif in Animorphs, and James pretty explicitly extends that to prostheses as well as fleshy limbs.

He’s nobody’s sidekick, and nobody’s fool.  When the Animorphs first tell James that they’re alien-fighting shapeshifters, he assumes that they’re here to prank the disabled kids who they think must be desperate for attention.  He barely gives them the time of day even when they prove themselves, and he doesn’t “play nice” even when they add him to the team.  James defies the cliché of the disabled kid desperate for the approval of nondisabled peers, and specifically calls it out.  He’s the leader of a semi-independent unit who has his own agenda, rather than being at the original Animorphs’ beck and call.  Like Toby and her hork-bajir, he’s here to make sure that his group and his loved ones don’t get left behind when the war ends and intersectional identities threaten their rights once again.

He kicks ass.  James is competent, tough, skillful, and self-confident with or without the Animorphs.  There’s a fairly realistic period where he has to learn the basics of morphing along with the other Auximorphs, but once he learns he’s highly effective.  He saves Jake’s life during the Air Force battle (#53), rescues the original Animorphs from Tom’s yeerk (#50), and helps Ax and Cassie escape a mob of morph-controllers who have them cornered in a subway tunnel (#52).  He’s agentic and powerful, something we don’t see enough of in disabled child characters.

He emphasizes that the more-privileged communicator has to be the one to do the work of meeting in the middle.  Cassie notes in #50 that James puts in a lot of work to communicate with Pedro (who is paralyzed) and Timmy (who has a speech disorder).  James is the one who can hear/speak in a fairly normative fashion, so James often “translates” for Timmy — but he always does so by letting Timmy finish a sentence rather than cutting him off by trying to guess what he’ll say next.  James is the one who can work the stereo in his and Pedro’s room, so he makes sure that he always lists genres and waits for a blink of confirmation before he changes the music.  James also defers to Pedro’s request for country western in spite of being a punk rock fan himself, because James remains conscious of the fact that if he doesn’t like the music he can always leave the room, while Pedro doesn’t have that option.

He’s thoroughly individuated.  James likes Blink 182 and dislikes reality TV.  He uses his morphs for agility — peregrine falcon, lion — more than firepower.  He spends a lot of time on his hair, and he treasures privacy as much as he values his friends.  He repeatedly calls Cassie and Jake on their bullshit, in spite of being visibly scared to do so as the new kid on the team.  One wouldn’t necessarily think that these are huge accomplishments (and to be clear, they’re not) but there are way way too many minor characters in wheelchairs, especially sci-fi stories, that don’t get characterized beyond their various emotions and thoughts that directly relate to their wheelchairs.

A few places where James falls into the common traps of implied ableism creeping into fiction, as written about in Narrative Prosthesis:

He gets “cured”.  The fact that James’s body is, however implicitly, depicted as a “problem” that must be “fixed” suggests that the theoretical ideal point is the nondisabled body he would have had if not for the car accident.  Like I said, it’s 100% fine if a disabled character gets written as preferring to be nondisabled, but if the series offers the unquestioned assumption that the “correct” body is the nondisabled version, then that’s... not great.

His disability is presented as a mystery that needs solving.  Like Loren, James gets presented with an implicit frame of “why are you like this?” that assumes his body is “abnormal” and therefore begs a question.  In James’s case, it comes in the form of Collette explaining why he’s disabled (a car crash) before we ever even hear from James himself.  Again, it’d be fine if this was the only time this happened, but the fact that the series “explains” almost all of the disabled characters (Taylor, Loren, Mertil, Kelly, Pedro) suggests that disability is something that needs explaining because it’s aberrant.

Some of the physical descriptions of James are a bit eugenicist.  After he first demorphs, Cassie says “standing over the group now, steady and strong, was James. He was taller than Jake, broader-shouldered... long and muscular” and describes how James helps to carry the other Auximorphs as they acquire battle morphs (#50).  James gets presented as a contrast point to the Auximorphs who remain disabled, because his body is presented as “correct” while theirs are not.  If it was just Cassie, that’d be one thing, but Ax says “unlike James, the others are physically helpless” (#50) and later Jake describes the contrast between James being strong and the other Auximorphs being “weak” and “faintly pathetic” (#53).  In the process, the descriptions tie together the ideas of being masculine, being independent, being physically strong, and being worthy of respect.  American rugged individualism, especially as it applies to white men and boys, has a dark side in that it often regards physical dependence on others as a sign of cowardice or weak will or moral failing.  That assumption underwrites some of the way that James gets described by the other Animorphs.

He gets killed.  By killing off James and his fellow Auximorphs, the series falls into the “kill or cure” narrative that Mitchel and Snyder trace throughout history for the overwhelming majority of disabled characters.  Disability is too often presented as being necessary to “solve” through death or cure, to the point where the Fries Test (designed to be a minimum threshold for disability representation, like the Bechdel Test for women) requires that disabled character(s) make it to the end of the story without being eradicated through cure or kill as the bare minimum condition that a story be somewhat less ableist.  Animorphs does not pass the Fries Test, because it eradicates its disabled characters through a combination of cures and kills.

Specifically, he gets killed to manipulate the emotions of a nondisabled character.  When Visser Three kills James, the moment is presented through Jake’s point of view, and it leads up to Jake’s decision to flush the Pool ship.  Maybe my biggest frustration is that that moment only serves to cause Jake pain and help push him off the rails.  It doesn’t change the plot of the final battle the way Tom’s death does, it doesn’t stop to give James a conscious choice the way Rachel’s death does, it just makes Jake sad and mad and reckless.  It’s the same dang dynamic as women in refrigerators: the less demographically privileged character becomes a prop for a more-privileged protagonist to have emotions about.

Anyway, to say it again: none of those individual elements of James’s story — death, cure, urgent backstory — would be necessarily problematic if there were equally-major disabled characters in Animorphs who didn’t demonstrate those elements.  It’s the fact that James demonstrates all of those elements and so do most of the other disabled characters that makes me wish the series had done better.

[razeluxe]

Razeluxe’s Top Ten Female Characters

Yep. It’s here. A list of my all time favorite ladies in anime/video games. This list was way harder for me than the male version, after compiling my favorites I had like 20 characters so I had to cut it down... I will shout them out somewhere further down towards the end...warning you right now that this is long...I have a lot of thoughts about these characters and I did my utmost to avoid outright posting spoilers - enjoy!

10) Bianchi (Katekyo Hitman Reborn!)

Once again someone from Reborn makes the list. What can I say, they have great characters and omg Bianchi is incredible. She’s Gokudera’s sister that I was harping about on the male list...she develops from this hyper focused girl to a true mother figure who helps care for her group as well as being a mother figure to some of the younger girls. Later on in the series she’s very attentive and always knows the right things to say...she gave some advice to some of the girls about men, especially in one particular episode that I will not mention but if you know it you know it - I was floored with on the nose she is about things...she can read people and situations extremely well and she serves as like this backbone to her group...there’s stuff between her and her brother that are extremely interesting too - this girl despite being there for others has this considerable weight on her that she tells her brother about at the end of the series - Bianchi is a complicated character who really deserves more love - she doesn’t fight often in this anime but she has proven time and time again that you don’t always have to be out on the front lines in an shounen anime to be a great character and also...she’s hot.

9) Emma Millstein (Trails of Cold Steel)

Emma in ways is similar to Bianchi here, being a mother figure as well as President of Class VII but what I find interesting about her character is what she’s hiding, as well as her insecurities. She spends a really long time hiding things because reasons I will not mention because you need to play the series - when she comes out with what she needs to say she really grapples with her feelings as well as her inferiority complex when she compares herself to her sister. She grows though..man does she grow...she starts to believe in who she is and stops doubting herself as hard and she really shines later on in the series. When you see what she can do... Like I said in the other list I have yet to play the fourth game in the series which is coming soon and I know she plays a major part. I also think she’s a great fit for Rean.

8) Velvet Crowe (Tales of Berseria)

Velvet is a character that has an extremely strong drive, comparable to someone that is yet to come on this list. Velvet is betrayed by someone who has raised her and her heart turns cold and she is motivated by hatred and vengeance for the sake of those who were massacred by this person. Velvet is a raw character whose type is rarely explored in this way, the way her personality shifted from being more upbeat and chipper initially to, post hell breakout, using people to get forward in her goals without giving an fudge. There comes a time when her resolution to revenge falters once something happens, anger and sorrow come together and she makes some interesting decisions...Velvet is a morally gray person whom showcases real struggles and real feelings that I’m able to relate to on a personal level...Velvet knows grief and in a world of black and white, she makes mistakes as a result of her PTSD, some more fatal than others and eventually, she learns. It’s ugly to see, but she learns. Her development is unpleasant to watch compared to a lot of characters, however as a result in my opinion she’s one of the most raw/realistic characters in the Tales of Series currently. I said it. Also she’s hot.

7) Rise Kujikawa (Persona 4)

Here’s a girl I wasn’t expecting to put here. Rise is a girl who is also known as Risette and decides to take a break from showbiz by moving to a small town, going to school, working at her family’s business, you know, doing what she considered to be normal girl things. She is very upfront when it comes to her flirting which I like to think is because of her position as a famous idol. She’s really bubbly and animated, but what made me interested in Rise was her voice and her eyes when you first meet her. She looked and sounded empty...and you learn it’s because she sick and tired of portraying this ‘Risette’ character and not being herself. What I like about Rise is after running away from this persona for so long she eventually acknowledges Risette is also her and she makes the choice to only bring her true self to the public. She’s sassy and just has this ability to brighten an entire room. Originally I favored Yukiko in P4 and while I still do like her a lot, after going through Rise’s social link, well...the rest is history. 

6) Milla Maxwell & ‘Fractured’ Milla (Tales of Xillia)

Yep. Both of them. I know they’re different characters however I acknowledge both of them equally and they’re both deserving of this spot on this list.

Starting with Milla Maxwell, what I love about her is her drive. She knows who she is and is willing push herself to fufill her duty. She’s not unlike Velvet who turns away from her emotions to do what she sets out to do, considering emotions to be a distraction from her mission. Made her instantly relatable to me. It makes her come off as uncaring towards other people but her mission is strictly to protect the people in the world. I’ve always imagined Milla as this literal pillar of strength, like when she loses mobility in her legs, she pushes herself even further, nearly killing herself in the process. Heck if you thought Velvet was crazy determined, I mean she is but Milla in my opinion is on a whole other level. What I love about Milla is that she isn’t portrayed as a character who has to second guess or experience things before resolving herself to a choice, she is born with this innately and she does not waver no matter what. She’s not a conventional Tales character who bonds super well with everyone. She has her mission and she’s out to do it. Milla isn’t perfect and her opinion on people is for lack of better word, immature, but she grows to understand people throughout her journey.

Fractured Milla...this character is rife with pain and guilt. This Milla is basically an Alternate Universe version of the actual Milla...on the surface level she’s very aggressive but she carries a different weight compared to the original Milla...she bares a guilt about what happened to another character and her world...she also bears a guilt when it comes to her comparing herself to the original Milla and.. inhibiting the original Milla Maxwell from existing... What I love about Fractured Milla is that she’s a completely different take on a character that I already greatly enjoy, she has her development and her vulnerabilities which the OG Milla didn’t need as much because spoilers, Maxwell stuff. I love her relationship with Elle and Ludger and definitely approve of the LudgerxFractured Milla ship.

Holy Crap this list is getting long, if you need to take a break please do! I’ll wait...you good? Okie doke! Continuing on...

5) Estelle Bright (Trails in the Sky)

I love Estelle so dang much. She’s such a glowing character and a breath of fresh air. She’s tomboyish, she collects sneakers, she’s incredibly headstrong and boy does this girl have a mouth on her lol. Like look at all my Estelle stuff on my tags lol. Oh, I should mention she’s Joshua’s ‘brother’ so you can imagine all sorts of interactions with her hotheadedness and his calm and collectedness. Estelle is such a caring character though, like out of everyone I know in the Trails series, I think Estelle ranks the highest in terms of kindess alone. She doesn’t hide crap for the most part, until...well...oh I’m just gonna say it: she develops and hides her feelings for Joshua. She knows it isn’t right but she can’t help herself...anyway Estelle has this naive outlook when it comes to the world, but when certain heavy things happen Estelle kind of...wakes to the realities of the world and she changes her line of thinking. She becomes more considering of her options during situations for starters and she really starts to become the Bracer she wants to be. I was kind of floored how she allowed her pain and her source of affection (Joshua) to empower her to become a stronger person without being simply lovestruck like how people tend to write ladies. She umm...has this scene with Joshua in SC...and I’m not saying anything more but it to me it’s probably one of her highest signs of development. I’m truly happy with what Falcom has done with this character and I think she’s probably the most developed character in the entire Trails series.

4) Rem (Re: Zero)

I never in my thought I would put a character I only just met this high on my list but wow this character blows me away. Rem is a character who has a major inferiority complex to her sister alongside guilt, yet as a maid she performs her duties and speaks very...proper even though that’s typically not how she truly feels. She’s also a very wary person...one reason she’s so high on this list is because of episode 18 how Subaru gives her a reason to live and fought to save her from herself literally. She becomes this incredibly devoted character towards this goofball Subaru with such tenacity that I have seldom seen. She also falls in love with him and not just because he saved her. Eventually she confesses her feelings at one of Subaru’s lowest points but not due to selfishness. She encourages him through her confession because he failed to stop to realize how much he’s worth to her. She displays a lot of strength in her confession and I think this is one of the most well done confession scenes I’ve ever seen period, even with her insert song playing in the background. That said I’ve only seen up to episode 18 because I honestly don’t know how much better Re: Zero can get from this point. I mean I’ll watch it eventually but I’m in love with these first dozen episodes so much I need an emotional break with all the heartache and the darkness .-. (Also please listen to her insert song omg its so precious https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV3Fu5csdcA  )

Before I list the top three, like my male list I want to at least some other ladies that also did not get into Smash but are still worth mentioning as characters I really like and enjoy, no order here except for the first character because she is hot. Literally. No pictures or additional text here sadly, I mean look how long this post is I don’t even know if all of this will fit ;__;

Lal Mirch (Katekyo Hitman Reborn!)

Athena Cykes (Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies)

Primrose (Octopath Traveler)

Midna (Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Winry Rockbell (Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood)

Makoto (Persona 5)

Sinon (Sword Art Online)

Akane Tsunemori (Psycho Pass)

Rikku (Final Fantasy X)

Ruiko Saten (A Certain Scientific Railgun)

Alisa Reinford (Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel)

Senna (Bleach Memories of Nobody)

                                                 Alright, moving on...

  3) Sara Valestein (Trails of Cold Steel)

Sara leads off the top three. She’s initially Rean’s instructor. She has a sense of humor, loves all things drinking, and is lax on her instructor duties...for the most part. There’s a lot of backstory involving this character that I won’t pile on here but I will say that despite her goofy nature Sara is ridiculously strong and it always amazes me how someone like Sara be so silly and not only be so stupid strong but also have her own moniker known around the world as ‘The Purple Lightning’. She was initially a top ranked Bracer before becoming a teacher. You eventually learn about her past through Rean and how it isn’t always all as happy go lucky as her personality...what I really like about Sara is how her strength is the culmination of all the things she went through. There’s one scene in CS1 where she tells some of her students that if they don’t like her assignments for a school trip, they’re free to team up and beat her to get her to change her mind. Needless to say they got their butts handed to them.

2) Garnet Til Alexandros (Final Fantasy IX)

Zidane’s other half. Considering I write Zidane I’d like to call her Dagger from this point on if you don’t mind .-. (Dagger is her own decided alias based on Zidane’s weapon)  I really love how she can break the norms of your stereotypical princess. When Zidane firsts meets her she’s chasing her down in her castle and she’s trying to leave her castle, something she mentioned had actively trained to do. And she’s leaving because she’s trying to resolve an issue with her mother... Dagger is a very strong character who has no issue taking matters into her own hands when it comes to issues. Holy crap what she does to Zidane at one point...she’s a bold one. She feels really strongly and she goes through a lot of crap, but she comes out stronger for it. She wasn’t one with much experience for the outside world but she takes to it at levels that the well traveled Zidane did not expect...I don’t want say much because of spoilers but she really finds herself as she journeys and goes from strength to strength, really owning her responsibilities. She’s also the main person who helps Zidane in one of his lowest moments... In my opinion these are just some of the many reasons Zidane falls for her more than any other girl...she’s also a Summoner and I love me some Summoners. She and Zidane also go great together and their relationship builds properly in a way that makes sense. Definitely one of my favorite ladies period.

1) Aurica Nestmile (Ar Tonelico: Melodies of Elemia)

Number one is this lovely lady. Aurica is a Reyvateil, Reyvateils are people who have the ability to convert sounds into energy...all Reyvateils are assigned a rank according to how powerful their ability is. Aurica had it rough, being out of her hometown when it was attacked and destroyed, and she took the blame herself, believing she could have made a difference, being a Reyvateil and all...because of all of this she became very withdrawn and her abilties suffered...she was ranked ‘D’ which is one of the lowest classes of Reyvateils. She was picked on and treated like garbage because of her rank...she did make a friend though, a friend that was also a Revytail, one that everyone liked and one Aurica looked up to, which only made her look like more of a shadow than anything else...which did not help her already lacking confidence and low esteem. She has a literal hole in her heart and is emotionally dependent.

I mention all of that because this character for me is extremely relatable to me, she’s had it pretty rough however in terms of development you see her grow like crazy...before she was so deathly scared of people she would instantly shut herself down and repress herself but with some help from her partner Lyner she gets better and starts to believe in herself more...it’s not easy for her though, as she gets stronger and Lyner trusts her with more responsibility she gets attacked through the hole in her heart and her newly built confidence gets shattered and she starts believing she’s defective, that only defective Revytail have these holes in their heart...what I love about Aurica’s story is how real her issues with building up confidence are, she starts from practically ground zero and over time, through a repeat of this vicious cycle I described, goes from being considered one of the weakest Revytail to the strongest 3rd generation Revytail all because someone believed in her. 

I think out of both my male and female lists, Aurica was the only one to make me burst into tears at random points. (not gonna lie Rem came close but she’s not number one here :P) This girl here is one of the firsts ladies I ever connected to in my earlier naive years and back then I didn’t even think it was possible for me to relate to a female this much...

If you got to the end, you deserve a cookie. -offers chocolate chip cookie- This took a lot of thought to write out, there’s so many great characters and I look forward to encountering even more down the road. I may eventually do a list for couples...here’s hoping I won’t have to edit this...

RIP 10/25/2020 I HAD TO EDIT TO ADD SATEN TO HONORABLE MENTIONS ;_;

[manlethotline]

I was going to write a quick analysis of what smoking in The Goldfinch means but like always I got very carried away and I think I found basically every time smoking gets mentioned in the book.  For the sake of my non tgf followers I’m putting this under a readmore, but here is an essay length examination of the thematic importance of cigarettes.  In The Goldfinch.  And in general.

A cigarette is one of the more thematically loaded props a character can have.  For years smoking and was used as shorthand to mean lower class, then turned into a symbol of decadence and vice as smoking became more common.  An air of bohemian intellectualism- intelligence with a touch of depravity- is not complete without a cigarette in hand.  For a while cigarettes were code for homosexuality, eventually loosening to general sexual promiscuity and eventually loosening even more to show a character was ‘cool’ with a touch of moral ambiguity.  And cigarettes will never shake free of the looming shadow of Freudian psychology- a cigar is never just a cigar, and neither is a cigarette.

Anyway, you could go on about cigarette symbolism for days, but we’re here, as per usual, to talk about The Goldfinch.  Because Theo smokes- we learn that on page one- too many cigarettes in his Amsterdam hotel room.  Now Theo isn’t exactly cool- though he is morally ambiguous, but more importantly later in the book we see who got him started smoking.  And as with all of Theo’s vices besides Pippa, it’s Boris.

Are cigarettes cool?  Oscar Wilde once said that a cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure.  It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied.  What more can one want?  Oscar Wilde was also sent to prison on indecency and sodomy charges- a sentence that eventually killed him.  Cigarettes were a key fashion statement in Dadaism, Decadence, and Bohemia.  Yet while smoking was adored by the ‘artistic crowd’ most upper class society folks wouldn’t be caught dead with cigarette in hand.  A pipe perhaps, but not a cigarette.  After all, cigarettes were first made by those who couldn’t afford tobacco picking up discarded cigar butts and retooling them thinner- easier to move with- a history still reflected in the name.  A working class activity.  In the late 1800s cigarettes were thought to cause insanity, among other forms of ‘degeneracy’- yet still people smoked.  The allure was too much to deny.  And by the advent of the silver screen smoking was accepted.  Cigarettes are cool.

So Boris smokes.  His room in Vegas reeks of Marlboros (gee Borya, why is your brand of choice the one most heavily marketed to rugged masculine sexuality), and that first afternoon Theo turns down the cigarette Boris offers him- though he does take him up on the beer.  So far this fits with Theo’s first impression of Boris as a homeless looking kid passing cigarettes back and forth, slotting Boris more in the morally grey badass zone of cigarette smoking.  Safe, familiar.

But this changes quickly- it is specifically pointed out that Boris lost his virginity to someone he’d bummed a cigarette off- a story he tells Theo while blowing smoke out of the corner of his mouth.  There’s a clear connection now between sexuality- specifically Boris’ sexuality- and cigarettes.  And not just sexuality, but vulnerability, Boris is smoking specifically as he admits that he doesn’t think she liked it very much, something a so-called Marlboro Man would be reticent to admit.  There’s also an obvious Freudian allegory here about phallic objects, but we’ll come back to that.

The next time we hear about Boris’ smoking, it is when he and Theo are lying in bed together listening to Mr. Pavlikovsky have sex with or otherwise terrorize two sex workers.  As if that wasn’t loaded with sexuality and vulnerability on its own, Boris has Theo light the cigarette for him, and they pass it back and forth as they listen to whatever is going on down the hall.  So somewhere between learning about Boris’ sexual history and becoming comfortable enough to share a bed with him, Theo has taken up smoking- though he’s obviously not completely comfortable with it since he mentions it makes him feel light-headed and sick.  And now we get to talk about sharing a cigarette!

So passing a cigarette back and forth, or lighting it for someone else has been used as a shorthand for intimacy and sexual tension basically as long as cigarettes have existed.  Back when the Hays code was in effect film-makers used cigarette sharing as a way to imply two characters having sex- especially same sex pairs who couldn’t even embrace on camera.  Along with sharing a drink (something else Boris and Theo do often) it’s an indirect kiss.  They lean in, breath hot on each other’s faces, and do a favor for each other with just a thinnest shroud of plausible heterosexual deniability.

Huh.  I promise we will get to phallic imagery eventually.

There are more scenes of cigarette sharing between the two in Vegas- after the night it’s implied they first have sex they share one, and there are a few other instances we don’t have time to touch on one at a time.  Suffice to say they’re intimate now.

But to say that cigarettes are sex is reductive.  When it’s Boris smoking, yes, it is sexually loaded, but Boris is not the only character who smokes.  Xandra and Larry smoke too.  And it’s not just that they smoke, but more specifically that they provide the cigarettes for Boris and Theo.  The night after the pool they aren’t smoking just anything, they’re smoking Larry’s Viceroys.  Boris steals Mr. Pavlikovsky’s lighter for Theo.  Their intimacy, their vulnerability, is stolen from beneath the noses of their fathers- it’s a secret, a transgression, something that they are getting away with rather than just doing.  Xandra actually calls Theo out for stealing her cigarettes.  It’s one of the few actually positive interactions between the two- after she promises to bring him and Boris some food for Thanksgiving, practically setting them up a date.  “Fine.  I’ll hook you guys up. Just stay out of my cigarettes.  I don’t care if you smoke.”  In fact it’s maybe the only time anyone besides the two of them acknowledges and accepts their relationship- implying she knows exactly what is going on between them.  For all the awfulness of Theo’s house it is something of a safe haven, especially for Boris, they aren’t taken care of, but they’re left alone, and the freedom of isolation is what allows them to find each other.  And cigarettes are not merely sexual intimacy, but emotional intimacy, and perhaps just a shred of domesticity, something that hints at a promise of a different life- the kind their father’s would never condone- together somewhere.

The beginning of the end of their Vegas safe haven is foreshadowed with smoking as well.  After Boris and Theo share a joint (not technically a cigarette but functionally the same act) Larry comes in, and not only remarks on the smell  “you reek a bit Theo” and that Boris is definitely involved “where are you boys getting this stuff?” but he goes so far as to take what's left of the joint out of the ashtray and pocket it.  Not only does he intrude on Theo’s private moment, he takes it away.  Metaphorically, he has stolen the safety of his home from his son- and when next he appears he hits Theo and forces him to ask for money- the final deconsecration of the Vegas sanctum.  But the damage is done as soon as he takes the butt out of the ashtray- Theo is no longer safe.

This has been a lot of talk about cigarettes as they relate to sex- but as with Theo returning to New York, we have to pry ourselves from Boris’ embrace eventually and talk about other characters.

Hobie smokes as well.  When Theo first meets him he lights a cigarette, and when he catches Theo staring says “Don’t tell me you want one too.”  Theo also specifically mentions Hobie smoking while cooking, one of the first times after his mother’s death that he feels safe, accepted once again.  So again cigarettes are an expression of vulnerability, not sexuality but rather a loving, compassionate vulnerability.  Theo and Hobie find each other after experiencing profound loss, and for Theo those days of healing, of first learning to put his hands to good use in the workshop, are entangled with the smell of Hobie’s cigarettes.  Cigarettes as safety, cigarettes as sanctuary.  Cigarettes as metaphor for emotional vulnerability, a way to feel close.  Common ground.

Hobie is obviously gay coded, he lives with another man, raises a child with him, cooks-he would fit right into the gallery of what gay characters looked like before gay characters could be explicit- and cigarettes are just another detail of that.  In some ways it’s another common ground between him and Theo- an uncomfortable conversation about men they have loved and lost that they skirt carefully around, yet to have a straightforward conversation about what exactly they felt for the men they shared their lives with, the men they lit cigarettes for and mourned bitterly.  Theo turning down Hobie’s offer of a cigarette in some ways exemplifies the opportunity missed by the both of them struggling to discuss their true feelings with one another.  Perhaps someday they can sit down for a smoke and finally talk about everything.

Neither Pippa or Kitsey smoke.  It’s another thing that makes Theo’s relationship with Boris seems so much more intimate than his relationship with either of them- even though has sex with Kitsey they still have each other at arms length, not sharing with each other, not even having this shared experience of vulnerability with each other.  In fact, Kitsey dislikes it when he smokes in her bedroom, slamming the door shut on one of the few ways that Theo actually can express himself, one of the few islands that occasionally crests over his waves of repression.  When he learns of her infidelities he grinds out a cigarette butt on her dresser- a passive aggressive note- he may say he’s fine but everything is not well, and all his rages and aches are compressed into a streak of ash on a Limoges box.  Doubt she’ll have anything to say about it.  Beyond that note of anger, there is barely any mention at all of Theo smoking in his adulthood- you could almost be fooled into thinking he was quitting.

Yet as soon as Boris reappears, so do cigarettes.  Just before he confesses to stealing the painting- one of the most honest scenes in the book- as he talks about how he was trying to have fun and be happy.  [Theo] wanted to be dead. and moments before broaching their relationship as teenagers, Boris is toying with a cigarette.  Not smoking it, not quite going that far, Theo isn’t ready yet, but reminding him that it’s there, that rekindling that sort of relationship is an option that he is more than willing to choose.  At the engagement party he appears with unlit cigarette dangling from his fingers- another promise he has yet to keep, a hint to Theo at what might come next, come along and find out, the only thing that’s made sense all night.  When he does eventually smoke a cigarette it is in Amsterdam, when he finally has Theo back in his good graces, ready to make the next move.

Also in Amsterdam, in their most triumphant moment, just having retrieved the painting and as Boris demands Theo ride alone with him, he lights a cigarette.  And now we can finally talk about phallic imagery, because as Boris puts this cigarette to his lips, he tells Theo that now we can go and get you a real blowjob.  It’s almost comical.

So anyway, cigarettes look like dicks.  Only a little bit off topic, let’s talk about Edward Bernays.  He was an ad executive back in the 20s, and the campaign he was most well known for was for Lucky Strike Cigarettes.  You see, most women at the time didn’t smoke, it was considered unladylike.  But Eddy knew that he was missing out on half the market, and decided what is considered one of the first great PR campaigns, series of ads with the slogan ‘Torches of Freedom’ that took advantage of the first wave feminist movement and branded cigarettes as symbols of rebellious independence, glamour, seduction and sexual allure.  It was insanely successful, and where many of our pop culture views on cigarette use stem from (along with the decadence art movement in the late 1800s).

But Bernays was more than just a lucky guy- he was actually working off of the ideas of his more well known uncle, a real piece of shit named Sigmund Freud.  And based off of Freud’s theories of subconscious desire, Bernays put two and two and realized that cigarettes are an obvious symbol for a penis- same as a gun or a paintbrush or maybe even a tiny sausage balanced precariously on a toothpick that your best friend has developed an odd taste for.  Bernays dove head first into the Id, because he was marketing to women, and it was safe for him to acknowledge that cigarettes are incredibly sexually suggestive without upsetting the delicate heterosexual identity of the smoking American male.  And the Marlboro Man, resplendent in his denim and cowboy hat, continued to be one of the most successful ad campaigns in history.   But cigarettes, unlike guns, don't penetrate others- they are delicately placed between your lips, held daintily as you suck and blow and taste the slightest hint of the Vodka aftertaste he left behind before he passed it onto you.  It’s intensely homoerotic- the man in the Marlboro ad puts a penis to his lips, adjusts his Stetson with a wink- don’t worry I’m straight.  Just like all the other cowboys.  Queer scholar Dennis Altman once put forward that because same-sex comradeship was particularly important in American life, there was a particular revulsion for anything that exposed the sexual nature of such relationships.

And my word, doesn’t that sum up Boris and Theo just perfectly.  An insistence that when Boris’s bloody lips met Theo’s raw knuckles they became blood brother’s, nothing more.  An assertion that it happens at that age sometimes, whatever, unfortunate mistake.  But in that moment, as Boris lets the cigarette touch the tip of his tongue, flicks a calloused thumb roughly over the edge of the lighter- so similar to the one he stole from his father and gave to Theo all those years ago- and lets his mouth smile around the promise of a real blow job- for a moment things are exposed, if only just in that secret Vegas language only the two of them know.  Rubbing his knuckles on my sleeve.  He insists on getting Theo alone- well and truly alone, come let’s get back to your hotel and then, well... who knows what he had planned.  What both of them were hoping for.  But he is smoking, he is making promises he intends to keep, inviting Theo back into that private little world of shared cigarettes that Larry tore them out of long ago.

And when they are interrupted by Martin and his goon squad, Boris- cigarette in mouth- stood frozen.  He has been caught with his hairpins down- interrupted in a moment of intimacy that was just beginning.  It is the same as Larry pocketing that joint- sorry boys, smoke break’s over.  In the fight he spits his cigarette in Frits’ face, defiant. Weaponizing what he feels for Theo- risking death to reclaim what is rightfully his because he WORKED FOR IT GODAMMIT.

Neither Boris nor Theo light a cigarette for the rest of the book.

Of course, we don’t know what exactly happens in Antwerp.

But, perhaps rather than meaning that that is a promise that remains unfulfilled, maybe they have moved beyond them.  They don’t need a Freudian stand-in anymore, because they can actually talk to one another.  Boris spat out his cigarette, showed without a crutch that he was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for Theo, and Theo sees a half-smoked cigarette in a puddle of blood and answers Boris’ question with a bullet in another man’s brain.  A thresh-hold is crossed, and when they reunite things are changed.  They can admit their importance to each other and perhaps, in Antwerp, though Theo draws the curtains on the scene quickly, perhaps things are not nearly so symbolic as before.

So cigarettes are communication, vulnerability, understanding and intimacy?  To smoke is to love, to feel fully and hope for a better world?  Sadly, no.  Because smoking kills.  And so far this analysis has had a massive hole in it in the very conspicuous shape of a dead mother.  Or at least the shape of a box of ashes and porny newspaper ads abandoned somewhere in Central Park.

It’s much rarer to see smoking on film nowadays.  Partially this is a reflection of real life- smoking rates have been on the decrease since the 50s, and since most public places now can smoking, you have to go out of your way to see a character lighting a cigarette.  Much of this, though, comes from external forces.  Cigarette advertising has been banned on TV for decades, and since the 90s there have been stricter and stricter rules on how smoking can be portrayed in media.  Smoking cannot be shown at all.  Smoking can only be shown if the character eventually faces consequences in the form of bad health and social rejection.  Smoking can only be shown if the character smoking is portrayed as irredeemable, undeniably the villain, and perpetrates other unforgivable acts.

The reason Theo and Audrey were at the museum the day of the bombing is because Theo got suspended.   And though he fears it was for breaking into houses, he is pretty sure it was because he got caught smoking.  Or rather, standing around with Tom Cable while he smoked.  Had Theo never faffed around with cigarettes in the first place, his mother might still be alive.  

Which he feels all the more guilty for because Audrey hated smoking.  Lung cancer killed both her parents- banished her to an aunt’s house the same way her own death sent her son languish in Las Vegas.  Generational orphaning, all because of smoking.  No wonder Theo turns down Hobie and Boris’ offers at first- it is one of the ways he betrays his mother.  His first cigarette kills her, and each one after that pushes him further and further away from the version of himself he thinks she would be proud of.  When he shares that cigarette in Boris’s bed- surrounded by smoke and spilled beer and the smell people get when nobody cares about them- he dreams about her.  What are you doing here?  Go home!  Right now!  He has let her down in the most fundamental way he can- letting himself indulge in a vice he knows she wouldn’t forgive him for.  Another way he has let himself become like his father, just as he prayed never would be.

And yet Theo smokes.  He melts into Hobie’s cooking, into the sharp curve of Boris’ smile, into the forbidden pleasures of street corners and friendly faces lurking in doorways.  Each drag buries his mother deeper, hacking at his leg to free himself from the trap of loss, of what he will never be able to become.  Sorrow inseparable from joy.  Theo burns and is lungs fill with museum ash and chlorine and to clear his throat he lights a cigarette.

And another cigarette

And another cigarette

And another cigarette

Or, as they call them in Europe sometimes, fags.

[farmerlan]

Farmer Lan’s Rewatch Guide to The Untamed - Episode 2

SPOILER CAUTION APPLIES.

Alright buds we are going to get right into it - no time to waste!

[WWX hangs out by a river/well with XPG (Little Apple aka Xiao Ping Guo aka XPG from now on), cultivator scene with the demon compass argument happens (cute), A-Yan gives WWX an apple and she’s clearly not mentally all there, mountain top A-Yan dance scene with her mom disclosing her tragic story and father’s death to WWX.]

Differences from the novel:

There’s some minor choronological and setting differences between here and Chapter 6. A-Yan was not the person who gave WWX the apple, it was a random girl. There were two separate scenes with cultivators trying to use the compass in the novel, but it was condensed into one in the drama.

WWX bumps into A-Yan in the town at the foot of DFS and hears of her story from townspeople. A-Yan’s story is essentially the same in both versions, but the novel also includes an additional story about how a slovenly/good-for-nothing oaf became seemingly wealthy and suddenly wanted to get married and settle down, except he died on the night of the wedding. This would later be used by WWX to further support his narrative of what’s behind the ‘soulless people’ cases when he explains it to the Gusu disciples.

[Cut to WWX in a forest, A WILD JIN LING APPEARS! Man, I forgot what a little shit he was when he first arrived <3. WWX and JL runs into each other, except JL thinks he is MXY, banter ensues, WWX traps JL with his paper man and drops that awful YOUR MOM line to JL.

Banter continues until JC brings his posse and incredibly sharp jawline to the scene. Seriously, damn. Things are about to get physical before LWJ arrives. Shade is thrown between JC and Gusu & Co., JC literally looks like he is in pain and why oh why does nothing ever work out for him as his subordinate reports that all the spirit nets have been destroyed. JC decides against picking a fight and tells JL he better BRING HIS A GAME TO THE HUNT before dismissing him. LWJ dismisses the rest of the disciples and walks away, leaving WWX alone. Cut to WWX remembering JC + JYL by the river and then he overhears JL’s true parentage and feels baaaaaaad man.]

In the novel, there is further discussion of the LLJ sect and especially JGS in Chapter 7. Seeing JL’s reaction to him as MXY, WWX then correctly deduces that MXY is actually the illegitimate son of none other than JGS, who was known for his philandering ways.

It was also clarified in the novel that locked within the ‘paper man’ WWX sic-ed on JL was the ghost of a man who had died from gluttony, hence why JL could not get up. He was basically being sat on by a really fat man.

A bigger deal is made in the novel of how LWJ is someone who “appears where there is trouble” – JL says this to him in a sarcastic way, but it’s a common theme that runs throughout the novel, that although he can be considered an extremely prominent figure, he takes the time to help or show up no matter how ‘low level’ the situation is. It’s a sign of his strong moral character that nothing is too beneath his attention.

The situation of the night hunt itself is also explained a little bit more in detail – JL is turning sixteen this year, and this night hunt at DFS is basically a debutante ball for him as you have to be past a certain age to participate in hunts. So, in order to make sure he claims the top prize, JC made sure to come with him and also set up the spirit nets. Aww, they ruined his present!

Fun fact: JC very nearly came to blows with LWJ in the novel but chose not to do so because a) he had to consider sect relations between Gusu and Yunmeng and b) he wasn’t sure he would win since they’ve never fought before. HA.

[Gusu disciples run into old man grave caretaker, these are Wen graves! He asks them to go visit the Tiannu Temple and they move on before he can tell them that the goddess statue moooves. Spoopy. WWX also happens upon the Wen graves. Scene between him and WQ and he realizes it’s the statue stirring shit and JL is about to step in the shit that has been stirred.

Scene in the temple with Gusu disciples and JL, shit starts going down, WWX and Gusu disciples gather outside. Gusu disciples realize they ran out of flares and WWX is all like haha prepare to be punished! WWX clarifies the difference between soul-eaters and the goddess status, links it to the ongoing issues with A-Yan. LJY calls him out – he’s only pretending to be CRAZY! ]

There’s no old grave caretaker in the novel and there’s no Wen graves scene. There are ancient tombs around the area that the Gusu disciples explored, but it was only mentioned in passing as part of the larger conversation around what exactly was plaguing the mountain. What happens in the novel is – WWX encounters a spirit dressed in fancy burial clothes, realizes something is wrong because that kind of spirit (the spirit of a corpse) should not be on DFS, puts two and two together and goes off to find JL.

The scenario of WWX explaining what exactly ‘it’ is to the Gusu disciples closely follows that of the novel, except he also adds the explanation around the slovenly oaf’s story. Basically, oaf prays to the goddess statue to be wealthy, the goddess granted him his wish but took away his soul on the night of the marriage. Hence why WWX encountered the wealthy corpse spirit - essentially the goddess split open his grave and gave the oaf the funeral/afterlife offerings that were buried within it, displacing the spirit in the process.

 Also the goddess statue ate some humans in the novel but this was probably too graphic for the drama lol.

[JL shows up with the statue hot on his heels, WWX is like but wait we sealed the statue off before! WWX then builds and plays a makeshift bamboo flute. LJY changes his mind – MXY is still crazy after all, and on top of that he’s also a garbage flute player, ha. WN shows up and WWX is all ???, illusion is revealed, WWX posits whoever did this wanted lure out WN, a mysterious man in black scuttles off in the background.

Men rush WN, WN is like, uhm, y’all ain’t shit. WWX then plays WangXian to suppress WN’s rage, draws him towards himself and then we have THE REUNION – eyes meet, lovey-dovey wrist-gripping scene ensues.]

Interestingly, the drama shows JL being thrown to the ground and trying to scurry away/flinching as the statue advanced on him. In the novel, he actually stood right within reach and thought, “If I can’t kill her right here and now, I’ll die – but so what?!” Basically, he was 100% ready to kill the statue or die trying before WN showed up.

In the drama, we weren’t specifically clued in to the fact that WN is currently unconscious due to the nails in his head. In the novel, WWX realizes this instantly because Wen Ning was not capable of sentient thought and had to rely on WWX’s orders.

The drama hints that the whole thing was staged by the mysterious man in black caught scampering away – in the novel, this is not the case. There was no other person ‘operating behind the scenes’, this whole incident with the statue was not an illusion.

The reunion scene is as it happens in the novel, gripping of wrists and all. Ha. I love you directors.

[WWX is outed as the person who summoned WN and JC is like well well well, Shady’s back. LWJ tries to protect WWX, WWX tries to run away but gets whipped and decides to play crazy as JC wonders why Zidian didn’t work.

WWX appears to faint and wishes to go back to the time to 16 years ago, when he was at Lotus Pier and we start our flashback arc. Cute scene where he gets a sugar rabbit (HA I see you) for JYL. They decide to rest in a tavern. JC bickers with WWX and grouses that JYL and JFM always defends him and is reminded that being free-spirited is considered a virtue by the YMJ sect.]

The confrontation between JC, WWX and LWJ follows the novel partly (the whipping, the face-off between JC and LWJ), but the novel goes into more detail.

For one, LJY is like, ‘wait didn’t YOU kill WWX? Why are you saying he’s back?’ to JC in the drama. In the novel, no one claims that JC was the one who killed WWX in the novel – only that he was present at the battle at Nightless City along with the Yunmeng Jiang sect.

Also, in the novel, someone in JC’s sect basically tells says that there’s no way MXY is WWX because WWX would have chosen someone cooler. WWX was flirtatious with girls and a good-looking dude and MXY is a gay lunatic riding a donkey. And also, his flute skills are so, so subpar compared to WWX. Ha. WWX secretly grouses that he would kneel to anyone who’s able to play a nice melody on a dollar-store flute after not having practiced for 13 years. Touché.

In an attempt to get both JC and LWJ off his case, WWX tries to disgust the both of them by going, “JC is NOT my type but you know who is my type? LWJ uwu he’s so attractive” but it totally fails because LWJ does not take the bait. Instead, he says “Well then, I’m taking this man back to the Lan sect with me.” And that’s the end of Chapter 10. See comments on the flashback/timeskip in the summary section below.

The last conversation JC and JYL shares is very interesting. It’s not in the novel, but it really plays into the narrative that “WWX embodies more of Yunmeng Jiang’s values than JC even though he is not a Jiang”, which is also a theme in the novel and kind of a sticking point for JC obviously. One can say that JC takes after his mom, and WWX takes more after JFM.

Overall Thoughts

This is where the divergence from the novel plot line begins to get a little more serious. The novel employs a series of flashbacks scattered throughout the book whereas the drama is essentially one long flashback from Episode 2 through Episode 33. It obviously makes more narrative sense to arrange it that way in a drama series in order to make it less confusing, especially since they’re using the same actors for past and present WWX/LWJ, but just keep that in mind.

With that said, I will stop at Chapter 10 for the purpose of comparing it to Episode 2. Chapter 11 and 12 have essentially both been removed from the drama besides for the cold springs scene, which was also modified. I will discuss these two chapters when we get to Episode 33 (wow, will we ever get there??). Episode 3 picks up at Chapter 13, which is the beginning of the Gusu arc. Chapters will start jumping around (in the novel, the Gusu arc is only Chapters 13-18, and then the Wen Sect/Tortoise of Slaughter is a separate flashback from Chapters 51-59)  so I am going to try my best to match them up lol.

Ending the summary on another cute note, in the novel LWJ’s presence is often described as being accompanied by the light scent of sandalwood, which is what WWX smelled before bumping into him in the novel.

[lordeasriel]

lord asriel’s quick analysis

Or why redemption isn’t always necessary.

Given that some people asked me to finish it and that I want to finish it, here’s my stroke over Lord Asriel’s arc. This is based on a post someone made it on reddit about the lack of redeeming traits on his part and this is my personal take on Asriel, so ok, here we go:

Let me get this out of the way: the thing about Lord Asriel is that he is not a redeemable character; that is not his purpose nor his story. He never seeks redemption, nor he sees his actions as a product of villainy or evil; in fact, Asriel believes he is quite righteous and he is willing to do whatever the fuck it takes to achieve his goals.

We never get a direct understanding of his motives: he does say he fights for freedom, he states his disgust with the Magisterium and the Kingdom of Heaven, and those who surround him believe in his cause and say, constantly, that his side is the right side, and that he fights for freedom and against the tyranny of the Church.

What is contantly overlooked is the fact Lord Asriel doesn’t require a redemption, this isn’t some sort of requirement a character needs every time they screw up. This, well, aversion to Asriel and the need to have him either punished or redeemed is solely based on the fact he killed Roger in cold blood, sort of, to wage his war for freedom. Was that fucked up? Absolutely! Does this means he requires redemption over that? No, and Philip Pullman himself explains why when Mary Malone says:

“I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.” (The Amber Spyglass)

This has a lot to do with the recurring themes of the books, about morals, ethics and the poor use of free will by some, and it personifies almost every character in the books, from Lyra to Iorek. Everyone has committed some sort of bad deed at some point, but that does not label them as evil, and the same rules apply to Asriel. This is a man who’s crossed the very limits of the multiverse to achieve his goals, by being good in looking after the destruction of the Kingdom, and by being bad while killing Roger (plus being a bad father, a bad uncle, a bad lover, but let us remain philosophical for now).

Asriel is relentless, ruthless and sometimes, even cruel, to Lyra, to Marisa, to anyone really. At Jordan, he walks in, puts the fear of God (unironically lol) into almost everyone, including Lyra and the Master, he takes control of the enviroment and sets on to do what he went to Jordan for: to get money for his plot, so he can tear the sky apart and defy the Kingdom of Heaven. Lyra fears him (righteously) and admires his fierceness, she respects strength and brute force, it is the reason why she is so drawn to violent figures or rude characters, being herself quite rude and arrogant because she mirrors her uncle/dad.

He is considered to be a passionate man by almost everyone, and he causes a great impression in everyone he meets, including the reader. He was written as a likable character at first, made from scratch to fit in the role of the aloof, sometimes austere but caring uncle, or the traveler who serves as the inspiration for the hero (Bilbo Baggins, for quite the literal example, or Professor Kirke in Narnia). Sir Philip describes him, in Northern Lights:

“Then Lord Asriel stood up and turned away from the fire. She saw him fully, and marveled at the contrast he made with the plump Butler, the stooped and languid Scholars. Lord Asriel was a tall man with powerful shoulders, a fierce dark face, and eyes that seemed to flash and glitter with savage laughter. It was a face to be dominated by, or to fight: never a face to patronize or pity. All his movements were large and perfectly balanced, like those of a wild animal, and when he appeared in a room like this, he seemed a wild animal held in a cage too small for it. At the moment his expression was distant and preoccupied.”  (page 13, Knopf edition).

He is, at first, compared to other men in Lyra’s life (the scholars, mostly) only to be extravangantly praised for being nothing like those men. Stelmaria, quiet and reserved, beautiful and pacifying, is the ultimate contrast for Asriel; together, they are one, and he is an aristocrat with wild temper, and she is a snow leopard, a predator, but beautiful and wise. These are the representation of Satan, as in Paradise Lost: forsaken and forgotten by history for fighting the Authority, Asriel and Stelmaria are the embodiment of disobedience and they are bound to rebel again because that is their nature. All that’s left to them is a reason and the Magisterium, oh boy, they’ve given them plenty.

Now, think about a man who’s had everything, then this rising power that was the Magisterium, comes and takes everything from him, from his money to his daughter over something, not trivial, but certainly something that didn’t require such harsh method of punishment; considering a lot of his wealth was confiscated and assuming he had to pay a lot of fees and taxes because of the Court Trial, he was very much not the man he was before Mrs. Coulter’s affair with him. He obeys the rules and stays away from Lyra, only to discover her mother is with the Church and that they intend to harm Lyra, even after he played nice. His friends in Oakley Street are trying to protect Lyra, but against the Magisterium, after witnessing how powerful they are, how far gone they are willing to go, things aren’t looking very bright for Asriel. He even says, in Northern Lights:

“They’re stronger than anyone, Asriel! You don’t know-”

“I don’t know? I? No one in the world knows better than I how strong the Church is! But it isn’t strong enough for this. The Dust will change everything, anyway. There’s no stopping it now.” (page 394, Knopf edition).

The Asriel we meet in La Belle Sauvage is younger and a man who’s just been massacred by the Church, as he reminds us of in Northern Lights; he is wounded after all that has happened, almost in a tender way, as if he had been softened by it. But he still is himself; proud, arrogant and scholarly, he risks Lyra’s safety and his own to indulge himself and be with her for a while, to spite the Magisterium and its distasteful influence. Under the moonlight, he loves her so immensely, in such a raw and fiery way, that for a moment Malcolm even thinks Asriel might leave with her, and so did I.

Everything Asriel does, everything that leads to his war in the name of the Republic of Heaven, has to do with Lyra’s birth and how he lost everything because of the injustice the Magisterium imposed on the world; how he had an affair with a woman he loved and how she could easily have gotten a divorce to prevent all of that; how they took his fortune and prestige because he was defiant. The murders, the oppression, his career as a scholar, his life as a whole, and then after the affair, his daughter’s, all was threatened by the Magisterium. It’s hard to say when he decided to fuck up the sky, but I like to think by the time he left Lyra at Jordan, he was already working on his revenge, because when he lost everything, that was his turning point. He doesn’t do any of this because he is a caring, loving person; he does out of hatred and indignation, two powerful tools that fuel his existence for the next twelve years, perhaps even before then, in small dosages. 

There’s constant evidence of his hatred for the Church and their dogmas, especially on chapter 21 in Northern Lights, when he monologues to Lyra about Dust and how the Church allowed such things as Bolvangar to happen, implying that as many others, including scholars, he knew about what was happening. There could be a number of reasons as to why he didn’t interfer, and the most obvious one is that he was in prison, so there wasn’t much he could in his position. A second, deeper reason, is Mrs. Coulter’s involvement with Bolvangar, and by involvement I mean leadership, basically. He was fully aware she was the one responsible for Bolvangar, even enlightening us:

“That’s why they had to hide away in the far North, in darkness and obscurity. And why the Church was glad to have someone like your mother in charge, Who could doubt someone so charming, so well-connected, so sweet and reasonable?” (page 374/375, Knopf edition).

He speaks of her work with contempt and distaste, but also in a tone as someone who once fell for her masquerade before fully understanding who she was and her ultimate goal. Being his former lover, he sees the fact she works with the very Church who ruined him because of her, as disgusting despite their weird relationship dynamic, (which I could write a whole essay on but I’m not, because I already did it in college and that essay took me to a very dark place lol) and he despises her relation to the Church far more than he despises the nature of her work. And, as we see in the Amber Spyglass, despite inviting her to come with him, he is not eager to be in her company because he simply doesn’t trust himself when it comes to her and neither does anyone who knows both of them.

But the main reason he didn’t interfere, it’s because Bolvangar’s action, however crude and in favour of his enemies, was something he could take advantage of and their cruelty simply didn’t concern his own work, even if it was a discovery of his own that allowed such a thing. While they were doing something awful, they were too busy to notice his domination over his own house arrest or his plans in general, giving him the time and space he needed to finish his work.

Cruel and straightforward, Asriel is too practical and indecent to say he cared about the children: he hated what they were doing because the Church was tied to it; La Belle Sauvage!Asriel might have interfered and cared about it (he saved gyptian children from a flood, restored Malcolm’s boat, was gentle and wise in a rough way), but Northern Lights!Asriel was simply far too blindsided by his wrath against the Authority and the Church to give a damn. The only moment we see him hesitate is when he sees Lyra in the North, and for a moment he is taken by the shock of thinking he might have to sacrifice Lyra to kill God and destroy the Church, who was trying to, you know, kill Lyra. An ironic and cruel position to put him in, and he would’ve killed her, make no mistake; he keeps away from her because he simply knows he would’ve sacrificed her, or anyone else, including himself, to destroy God and the Magisterium.

Understanding this wild, carefree and inconsequential man is a crude task. The thing is, redemption is an overused trope and not everyone that does something bad needs it (or wants it for the matter), Asriel being the person who least requires it, because:

He is not a villain. I have seen this a lot and it honestly confuses me. Asriel, if anything, plays the part of the antihero, and even then he does so very loosely. We are constantly reassured by him and by basically every third party in the book (Ruta Skadi and her infatuation, John Parry and his wise comprehension, Baruch and Balthamos and their first-hand experience of the Kingdom’s brutality, amongst others) that Asriel is the “hero” of the war, that he is righteous and the one with the right views. He is not your conventional saviour, in fact, he is human and flawed, self-centered and ambitious, but charismatic and knowledgeable; that blur our senses and the lines and we’re stuck thinking he is either a hero or a villain when Asriel is, in fact, neither.

His ultimate goal is clear, albeit readable only between the lines sometimes. He is a liar, arrogant and wrathful, but once we get to the Subtle Knife, his goal is more clear, at least from Thorold and John Parry’s points of view (Ruta Skadi too, but she is far too unreliable for being too infatuated with Asriel): he wants to kill God and take down the Kingdom of Heaven. He says it’s for freedom and blah-blah-blah, and although I believe he seeks that outcome in the end, the reason he is doing this is much more self-serving and closer to revenge rather than doing what is right. He is a spiteful man, whom has been robbed of his wealth and his life by a religious institution who serves God and does anything in the name of God. Asriel wants to take them down because it satiates his need for vengeance, alongside his scholarly nature, by being a pioneer and an explorer of multiple worlds. It’s an ego booster, something to pat yourself on the back for.

He is unapologetic. He never apologises, or seems regretful over his actions. He isn’t apathetic, but he clearly does not resent his own choices. Killing Roger was a tough decision, but one he was intent on making because it was what he needed to do to achieve his purpose (hence his hesitation towards Lyra; he would’ve killed her if Roger wasn’t there). That was by far the most beautiful and sensible death ever written by Pullman: he doesn’t extend it or makes it purposefully dramatic and that’s because Roger’s death was merely a switch for everything else: Lyra and Asriel’s journey. Sir Philip makes us believe that Lyra’s ultimate goal is to stop her warmongering father, then he dismantles Asriel’s portrayal as the endgame bad guy for things of higher nature and Lyra simply stop blaming him, instead blaming herself, and everything she does from them on, is to spite Asriel by always staying away from him and his Republic.

These three aspects of Lord Asriel’s character core are relevant because they exempt him of a redemption arc. He doesn’t need to be redeemed, he asks for no forgiveness and he knew, from the start, where things were going. Perhaps not on Lyra’s account, but the overall outcome of his war. He never backs down, nor hesitates and Ogunwe claims:

“We’re not going to invade the Kingdom,” he said, “but if the Kingdom invades us, they had better be ready for war, because we are prepared.” (page 210, The Amber Spyglass, Knopf edition).

Despite the Republic’s claims of being builders, not conquerors, Asriel was the commander of a massive force and he was, fully aware, that the Kingdom would not leave them be to mind their business. They wanted that war, he wanted that war, and everything he did was because of it. That is why he only is granted peace, in a sense, in death as they plunge down into the abyss; it was a price worth paying for wrecking Heaven. He never truly dies, but instead is forged into oblivion.

A villain can be redeemed, and so can a purposeless character, but Asriel is neither of these things. He has a clear purpose, and he has done good and bad things in his life, he never apologises for what he’s done and he doesn’t intend to. He mimics great rebels of epic stories, and he embodies all that is truthful and essential to human nature: knowledge, passion, rebellious mind, the apex of free will and the wrath against those who do us wrong. He is neither a saint, nor sinner: he is both, as are every person in those books, and he embraces fully his nature. Once again, as Mary said: he’s done bad things, but he isn’t evil himself. No one truly is.

And this is it, sorry for the essay, I have thing for academic men in linen shirts who want to tear Heaven apart lol  @laciefuyu this is for you hahah