#it literally does not matter and still I feel the need to defend a fictional character??? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

dootznbootz · 9 months ago

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Literally just found out about you today and I'm already follow in you. As fellow tele-GONE-y hater, I absolutely stan with all the hate we have for that stupid fan fiction. Circe used to be one of my favorite books, I still think the writing is good. But when you look at the original source material? Yikes- I don't get why Miller chose CIRCE out of everyone. If she wanted to write a feministic story that's fine. But why chose a female character whom you have to make better and corrupt all the other characters in the source material so that Circe is more sympathetic? Why couldn't she write a TRUE feministic story about some other character?? I personally would've loved a story about Nausikaa. Which would make more sense considering she is a character who is often forgotten in most retellings of the Odyssey.

Circe isn't a sympathetic character, she was never supposed to be one. To make her sympathetic is to make everyone around her terrible. I'm so angry when people use this book for insight on Circe character because it is so different to actual Circe.

I'm also so very salty about what she did to my boy Hermes because what.

Thank you so much!!! Sorry this took a while to answer! Thankfully most folks are not a fan of the Tele-GONE-y either :'D it's mostly the "well, actually" folks who talk about it. >:(

"If she wanted to write a feministic story that's fine. But why choose a female character whom you have to make better and corrupt all the other characters in the source material so that Circe is more sympathetic?"

This right here, is exactly how I feel with so many of these "feminist retellings". Feminism is about lifting each other up. If you have to make everybody else "worse" to make your main character better, then...that's just not good storytelling.

This goes along with the whole "all men are bad no matter what" that happens all the time and I hate it so much. Even if the system may be sexist, that does not mean that every single male agrees with it.

You put everything into words well but I like to ramble so Ima say shit too but it's basically the same thing lol

With the whole "every horrible thing Circe has done is done fo a reason. she's defending herself, she was wronged, men are so evil uwu" is just fucking lazy and SUCKS. >:( LET WOMEN BE FLAWED, COWARDS!

I actually really love Odyssey Circe as a character. She's morally gray and does whatever she wants as a goddess. Yes, she terrifies Odysseus but she's COMPLEX. Why does she need a reason to turn men into pigs? Why can't she just do it "for funsies"?

I think it takes away from her as a goddess to always have a reason for her to do the things she does, you know? Immortals are fickle and don't have the same morals as mortals. I think Miller changed so much as "to have a morally gray protagonist?? No, that's wrong!" which BORING!!!!!!!

I fucking love Penelope. But I still have her a lil mean and even a bit snooty sometimes as her and Odysseus are like-minded. Hubris would be her downfall as well. She is petty and holds grudges like no other. because she's a PERSON. Not "bland empowerment in a can for everyone to consume". Ofc, she has her wonderful qualities like her intelligence, devotion, determination, and yes, she does have her kind moments (she goes 0 to 100% real quick. She takes the "Do no harm, Take no shit" phrase to the extremes. lol)

But honestly? I think there's a real problem in writing in many YA books and especially in fandom where people treat female characters as goddesses (which yes, understandable) but then they can't...make her human you know? Almost like they cannot see any of the woman's flaws or even WANT her to have flaws because "woman doing a bad thing that isn't done 'cutely' ("endearingly clumsy", "quirky chatterbox", etc. traits that are usually not the greatest are "cute" now simply because she's a woman. Maybe a love interest sees her that way but those traits would probably be considered annoying to many others.) regardless is antifeminist"

And even then, so many things that I want to write about are what many would consider feminist when...She's just existing. And I'm getting silly with it. Penelope is athletic and a naiad (75% but you know. with her parentage) but I don't write her that way TO make it feminist. I'm not doing it for that. I just like tiny but mighty wife ¯\_(��)_/¯

I don't plan to write other women as "lesser" for not being athletic for example. Anticlea doesn't understand why Penelope likes doing that stuff but she's still supportive and they enjoy weaving together. I am NEVER putting down another female character for not being "girlboss" enough.

I really hate that this book has made people constantly bring up the Tele-GONE-y AND Shittalking all of them. I don't like looking at retellings and seeing "a new feminist take". Usually goes against the entire story to begin with. Often portraying good male characters in the original as "bad and horrible".

Also no hate to those that enjoy Circe the Book, but to me, it sounds like trauma porn. adding rapes that were never there, making the victim of the situation the PERPATRATOR because, clearly, a man cannot be a victim. I heard about her hating being a mom despite her literally having servants and she's a GODDESS in the Odyssey. She could literally have a nanny/nurse if she wanted.

Fun fact: I was watching a video essay about villainesses and how to write them well and as soon as it started to talk about historical villainesses and how Circe was a "femme fatale", I exited the video. She's an "antagonist", she lets them stay there but she's still...Not GOOD. To be a femme fatale means to usually seduce. She does not seduce Odysseus. He was literally commanded to by Hermes and her.

#Hope you don't mind that I'm all over the place :P this is just how I am honestly #ask #Mad rambles #shot by odysseus #tamaruaart #save me morally gray circe #anti madeline miller #anti circe #<-I like her in the odyssey. She's a good antagonist.#essay

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fanganfessions · 5 months ago

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vent !! drdt chapter 2 ep 15 spoilers

people very rarely ever talked about ace before these last 2 episodes. and most of the time when people talked about him, it was to express how they didn't like him. it just feels like such a personal attack to me because im literally him. not only does the cast hate him but so does most of the fandom too. its so sad that people are only just now talking about him while before this the focus was mostly on david, teruko, and xan(teru)vid.

another thing as that ace's death probably wont be important at all the way xander's and min's is. nobody fucking likes this man and its not fair! god just imagine if ace was a real person. i mean the closest yall get to ace markey is me because of how similar i am to him but damn.

this feels like a breakup. this feels like a real death. the pain in my heart is real and i have no idea how to publicly express it wihout sounding pathetic and stupid. im such a fucking loser for crying this much over a fictional character. i just want him back. ive already accepted that hes going to die and i hate it so much.

hearing the mean things that the cast kept saying to ace just breaks my heart. even if they were right for what they were saying, it just hurts so bad. "So what? Ge over yourself." "No matter how you feel or what you think, nothing will change." "What have you contributed?" "Otherwise, shut up and stop wasting everyone's time." "Defend his dignity? Not like he had any in the first place. It's Ace we're talking about here." "Isn't Ace too stupid?"

why does nobody care about this man? why is he going to die the most tragic way possible? he grew up miserable and hes doing to die that way too. ace can never rest no matter what.

honestly who gives a fuck if ace isn't the nicest person?? take a look at david, veronika, arei and teruko! people love them but yet ace still gets shitted on. ive always loved ace but now im just loving more than ever. literally his #1 defender. maybe i defend him so hard because i wish someone would defend me that way too. my life fucking sucks just as much as his. nobody likes me, i dont trust anyone, nobody trusts me, im impulsive and wreckless when i dont mean to, im always getting told im too loud and that i need to shut up, everyone always thinks the worst of me. seeing people attack ace in any way just reminds me that i will never be a loveable person if nobody even loves him. if nobody likes ace then its no surprise that everyone hates me and wants me dead. (SENDING IN MULTIPLE PARTS BECAUSE IT KEEPS SAYING "We’re sorry. There was an error processing your post. tumblr")

#drdt #fanganfessions #danganronpa despair time #ace markey

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stoat-party · 2 years ago

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My Joshua Graham take (alternate title: stop beingng mean to him!!!!!!)

Now I’m not a Joshua-did-nothing-wrong girlie (I mean, if you can’t recognize his flaws then you get his bad ending, so there’s that), but I gotta defend my boy for a minute. I’m gonna try to tie things back to the facts of the game, but there will obviously be Themes and Context that I can’t even begin to get into, and your mileage may vary.

Mitigating factors

We’ve gotta keep in mind that this guy is in severe and continuous chronic pain. Now, that doesn’t make you a bad person — one of the most loving and giving people I know is disabled with chronic pain, and of course everyone starts dealing with some form of it as they get older. But it can definitely affect how people relate to the world, and the preoccupation of being in constant pain means it takes more effort to act the same as they used to, (assuming they were a good person even then). I’m just saying that I would be a little more prone to anger if I had to tear off and replace my skin every morning.

Also, he and Daniel are both in grief — the Wiki places the sacking of New Canaan in 2281, and while it could have been earlier than that based on the minimal evidence we have, that’s still an extremely fresh wound. Joshua implies he either has or had family in New Canaan. With their numbers reduced to about thirty, he’s undoubtedly lost multiple people, in a violent and traumatizing way, while also dealing with the guilt of having (indirectly) caused it. He’s not acting totally rationally here.

Claim: He spent thirty years acting as a warlord and committing total cultural annihilation in service of a maniac

Hey, granted. That did happen. He doesn’t offer much of an explanation for it, except that he first did it to survive and then kept making compromises until he’d completely lost his sense of morality. And explanations aren’t excuses, we know this, but they do make redemption arcs more palatable. Personally, I don’t understand being against redemption arcs in fiction. They’re my favorite thing.

It’s important to note that the narrative does punish him for his actions — the guy he committed all the atrocities for betrayed him, he has the aforementioned chronic pain and disability now, and then the war machine he created to destroy cultures destroyed his own. So if you’re the type to think redemption needs to include suffering/death, there you go.

Claim: He is racist

The most literal form of this claim can’t be accurate, because everyone in Honest Hearts is GECK-coded as Caucasian (except the caravan company). The tribals actually have races created specifically for them (to account for their tattoo styles), but they're still white. They weren’t all supposed to be white, but that’s how it turned out in the game due to extremely limited production time. The Sorrows are descended from American schoolchildren, the Dead Horses are descended from Germans and Native Americans, and the White Legs are descended from Shoshone, Latin-Americans, and Americans (they’re also the palest of the three, not that it really matters).

Claim: Stereotype of the “white man’s burden”

This is a bit more Doylist than Watsonian, but it wasn’t intentional. Daniel was supposed to be Asian, but again because of short production time he ended up white. I interpret him as biracial.

Claim: He’s culturally elitist

He does believe his religion is the best one, though IMO everyone should feel that way. But he doesn’t think of himself as above the tribals — he considers himself a tribal, and shows distaste for “civilized” places. Daniel is actually worse about this one.

Claim: He’s Mormon

Well, yeah. I take issue with this being considered a punishable offense on its own — unless it’s combined with anti-blackness or child marriage or something, it’s just a religion, and there’s no evidence of the Future Mormons practicing anything like that.

Claim: He’s a missionary

As above, judging based on this without any specific evidence of wrongdoing is a little bit ignorant. Most modern missionaries are basically aid workers with a religious motive, and they make an effort to culturally assimilate with the host community, if it wasn’t their country to begin with. (Are there horror stories, sure. Like I said, Themes and Context.) Based on Joshua’s (and Daniel’s) responses when you openly mock their faith, there’s no coercion going on.

Claim: He’s committing cultural imperialism against the Dead Horses

He did do this as Legate. He visited Dead Horse Point to prime them to join the Legion, teaching them warfare and allowing them to basically worship him. Follows-Chalk says he saved their tribe from extinction, but obviously he did that intending to wipe them out. However, Burned Guy Josh came back to prevent them from joining the Legion, and his track record since then shows a pretty high regard for their culture.

In Follows-Chalk’s quest, Joshua is concerned about influencing them more than he should. Follows-Chalk says he’s the tribe’s leader, but Joshua actually explicitly denies it, the implication being that he’s a little uncomfy with being more than a military advisor. He even says that there are better role models than him.

Claim: He wants to commit genocide

There’s one big misconception I want to correct: The White Legs don’t live in Zion, they live by the Great Salt Lake. The group we meet are a war party. At worst, they had a support staff of non-combatants.

They were trying to commit genocide against the other three factions. You can be on Daniel’s side in the big debate, but the Sorrows absolutely had a right to defend their homeland from people tasked with killing then all, whether or not it was a good idea in practice. (The Dead Horses are also visitors; they originate from Dead Horse Point.)

He does hate them, hence the racism accusations, but according to Ulysses, they really are violent raiders (he and Joshua both call them mongrels, actually). Again, they kinda burnt Joshua’s family to death. His prejudice comes from their collective actions and their affiliation with the Legion, not their race or lack of technology or anything like that. He calls Salty an animal, but he also says that he relates to him from his days in the Legion. His brutal tactics were wrong and that’s the point, but he didn’t want to commit genocide.

Claim: He’s a hypocrite/He uses religion to justify doing bad stuff

Yeh! That’s the idea, and getting him to admit he’s wrong about it is one of my favorite scenes in the game. It’s especially poignant if you’re religious, because you’ve undoubtedly seen others commit this sin and maybe struggle with it yourself. Admitting the motives you’re hiding from yourself, accepting responsibility for your actions, and forgoing revenge on someone who’s seriously hurt you are all really potent character moments, in the game and in real life.

Claim: He extorts the Courier by trapping them in the valley until they do a bunch of dangerous quests for him, then makes them pay for medical care and weapon repairs due to said dangerous quests, and oh whoopsy doo there’s no way of making money in the valley except collecting stuff and selling it to the general store, but MAMMA MIA GUESS WHO RUNS THE GENERAL STORE??

Okay, I’ve never actually heard anyone say this, but it’s true. It’s all true.

#fallout #new vegas #fallout: new vegas #fallout new vegas #honest hearts #joshua graham #daniel fallout #daniel new vegas #fnv #f:nv #fonv

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grandhotelabyss · 1 year ago

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If you haven't already, I highly recommend Philip's Against Self-Criticism in the LRB. It's one of my favorite essays written in the 21st century. The piece explores Hamlet, Freud, Lacan, etc. (All of which, as you've persuasively argued, emanate from mind of Shakespeare.)

Thanks, just read it, a literally perfect essay, and, re: a previous post, one of the best defense of Freud ever made: the way it begins with Hamlet and ends with Don Quixote to start and finish at the origin of modernity, the way it connects Freud to the tradition of liberal jurisprudence and the thought of Mill, and above all, most movingly to me, the way it defends overinterpretation (metatextually, given Phillips's own close readings):

After interpreting Hamlet’s apparent procrastinations with the new-found authority of the new psychoanalyst, Freud feels the need to add something by way of qualification that is at once a loophole and a limit. ‘But just as all neurotic symptoms,’ he writes, ‘and, for that matter, dreams, are capable of being “over-interpreted”, and indeed need to be, if they are to be fully understood, so all genuinely creative writings are the product of more than a single impulse in the poet’s mind, and are open to more than a single interpretation.’ It is as though Freud’s guilt about his own aggression in asserting his interpretation of what he calls the ‘deepest layers’ in Hamlet – his claim to sovereignty over the text and the character of Hamlet – leads him to open up the play having closed it down. You can only understand anything that matters – dreams, neurotic symptoms, people, literature – by over-interpreting it; by seeing it, from different aspects, as the product of multiple impulses. Over-interpretation, here, means not settling for a single interpretation, however apparently compelling. The implication – which hints at Freud’s ongoing suspicion, i.e. ambivalence, about psychoanalysis – is that the more persuasive, the more authoritative the interpretation the less credible it is, or should be. If one interpretation explained Hamlet we wouldn’t need Hamlet anymore: Hamlet as a play would have been murdered. Over-interpretation means not being stopped in your tracks by what you are most persuaded by; to believe in a single interpretation is radically to misunderstand the object one is interpreting, and interpretation itself. In the normal course of things, tragic heroes are emperors of one idea: they always under-interpret. Hamlet, we could say, is a great over-interpreter of his experience; and it is the sheer range and complexity of his thoughts – his interest in his thought from different aspects – that makes him such an unusual tragic hero. ‘Emerson was distinguished,’ Santayana wrote, ‘not by what he knew but by the number of ways he had of knowing it.’ Freud was beginning to fear, at this moment in The Interpretation of Dreams, and rightly as it turned out, that psychoanalysis could be undistinguished if it had only one way of knowing what it thought it knew. It was dawning on him, prompted by his reading of Hamlet, that psychoanalysis, at its worst, could be a method of under-interpretation. And to take that seriously was to take the limits of psychoanalysis seriously; and indeed the limits of any description of human nature that organises itself around a single metaphor.

If I have a pedagogical rather than just a literary vocation, it is to teach the art of overinterpretation, an art that testifies to the abundance of the universe. How does this affect me as an artist? Wallace Stevens's second criterion for "Supreme Fiction" is that "It Must Change." I believe that means that the greatest art makes itself maximally available to overinterpretation (while still retaining its discrete form). It therefore presents itself variably to different audiences and epochs.

#adam phillips #sigmund freud #william shakespeare #psychoanaysis #literary criticism

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for-a-home-that-once-was · 10 months ago

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Writing stories that depict racism and misogyny is different than an author actively being those things.

Stephen King has always and will always use the horrors of humanity, the everyday struggles, violence and oppression inside his stories to make them complex, rounded stories.

When you are appaled by the things the characters and narrater say and do then that is the whole point. Then King is doing his job! You are supposed to feel sick and disgusted by it, that is the point of the genre and what King always wanted to evoke in people. You are allowed to critically think about those things in the context of the story.

Fiction is not reality but fiction needs to feed from reality to be immersive and complex.

The Dark Tower is actually really reflective and even pretty meta about those topics inside the story. (I recommend the Kingslinger Podcast that is an extensive literary analysis of all the books)

It's also not hard to find out King's real opinions on those matters.

Is he a perfect moral human being? Of course not and he'd never claim it either. But I'm pretty tired of people taking up books by an author who works with and around those topics and then complain about it without reflecting that it has a purpose.

Ok look, it really seems that we have two different options and while you're here to force me to believe yours (which i won't), i won't do the same because you sound like bitch mother (full offense) and i know where this would all lead anyway.

I'm just gonna say, Stephen King DOES hate women. This is actually a fact. He hates and fears women. Like literal fear. And so that transforms into what he writes, all of his female characters are negative and painted in a negative light. The ones that aren't (in an obvious way) are portrayed like some mysterious creatures that need to be feared. And I'm not the only one seeing this, there are a lot of people who like fantasy and dislike S. King just because of this. Again, if you don't see it then it really tells what sort of person you are and it also tells that we have different views on this and there's no need to argue. Now about racism part, look, I'd be ok if S. King would be black and use n slur for whatever reason in his writing because that would be cultural appropriate. But when a white person does that it's not appropriate and especially when it is in a negative context then it's not acceptable. I am from country where sadly many white people use n slur to describe black people and they don't understand why it's wrong to call them so because they don't hate black people but it's still not ok. Maybe King didn't know any better (just like with mental disorders because Odetta has DID not schizophrenia).

I've read enough of him to know stuff and i am allowed to criticize stuff. If you dislike it, well that's your thing. And i can understand how you feel, if someone would criticize Tolkien in front of me i probably will go and try to defend it (just like you do with S. King) but i know and i can see when there are two options that might be true and i know when to not even bother going into a discussion if someone is like that.

One last thing, if you have read The Witcher series and see nothing wrong in those books then we really have different views and there's no point to discuss anymore because our view will clash no matter what.

#Stephen King #anon #answered

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ichayalovesyou · 3 years ago

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Star Trek is A Life Raft

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the nature of my hyperfixation with Star Trek the way I tend to do with most of the things I feel like I might be obsessing over “too much” because my self hypercriticality never sleeps even if my body does.

I’m always afraid, however rightly or wrongly, that I will develop an unhealthy relationship with a piece of media that’ll somehow consume my life and alienate me from my peers. Even though it never actively sabotaged my life, nor alienated me from anyone I felt was worth keeping in it.

Still, I keep asking myself “Why can’t I let this one go? Why won’t it let me go? Why can I not talk about it, even when it’s not immediately relevant? Even around strangers who have no clue what I’m talking about? Why is it always in the back of my mind even when I’m hyper focused on other things?” even though I know part of that is me being neurodivergent, I know a lot of it just… isn’t.

I don’t associate Star Trek with the feelings I associate with my normal hyperfixations, I wouldn’t even call it a special interest, my love for it is derived from the same place my creative passions come from. The same place where my desire to create gives me, not to be dramatic, but my will to live comes from. That everpresent spiritual need to write and to analyze and to draw and to sing and to make videos comes from the same emotions I associate with this fictional universe.

I was writing fanfiction (poorly disguised as original material) for this universe before I even knew what fanfiction was (let alone accepting the fact that it was okay to write and to love it). I have an incredibly distinct memory of the summer between elementary and middle school, right as my best friend and I were getting a little “too old” to play pretend. We were basically role playing TNG in his backyard, or more like, I was being a bit of a control freak and infodumping and drawing about it. I realized he wasn’t having fun, so we stopped, and I told him how important Star Trek was to me and how I wanted to make something just like it. It was then, at the ripe age of 12, that I realized I desperately wanted to be a writer. It is a dream I have not let go of since, that has Star Trek inherently baked into its core.

Looking back on it, there is no part of my life that hasn’t been touched by Star Trek in some way. I literally don’t have memories of that show not being at least in my peripheral. (Time to get VERY EMOTIONAL under the cut!!)

I could hear my parents watching Voyager after I was sent to bed when I was really little. Janeway and Chakotay’s voices are almost as familiar to me as my parents’ voices. No matter how long the bouts between me trying to finally finish the series are 😅

I first watched Star Trek myself (instead of it just being on in the distance while I was in bed) when I was about 5 or 6 years old. The first episode I watched was Yesteryear, I watched Spock get bullied and feel like an outcast who just wasn’t normal, and imprinted on him like a duckling long, looooong before I watched TOS.

I got introduced to TNG right as my parents separated and my mom got together with a more… unpleasant, partner. I would stay up late or hide in my closet watching TNG through the Netflix app on my iPod to drown out their disagreements and to stave off my nightmares. I would pretend and theorize that maybe I was an Android like Data when I couldn’t figure out social situations in elementary school. I even auditioned for my high school’s drama class using Picard’s closing defense of Data from “A Measure of A Man”. I couldn’t think of anything else more powerful than that that I could possibly deliver, even if we were technically told to do one from a play. I took the L of getting a couple points taken off for that because it was inherently, extremely important to my 15 year old self to say those words out loud on stage to my peers even if I couldn’t articulate why. As if, through emulating Picard defending Data, I was advocating for my own personhood.

I watched most of DS9 (and a bit of Voyager) with my earbuds in to tune out the overstimulation I didn’t know I was experiencing through middle and highschool. Like the rest of my life, I was using Star Trek as a life raft to cope with a world that would not accept or accomadate me as I was. The inherent (if accidental) transness of many of the characters in DS9 helped me cope and understand when my sibling came out as non-binary to my family and our mother had a very hard time accepting it (as did I, who doesn’t inherit their parents misgivings). I got attached to Julian very quickly, and YEARS later, during the pandemic, I realized why the gender complexity made me so uncomfortable. Bashir, in all his awkwardness and half-earned cockiness, in all his rebellion against what his parents designed him to be, he would help me realize that I too was trans. 🏳️‍⚧️

When the pandemic hit, I got very, very isolated very quickly (as did we all). I also quickly, violently learned “do not kill the cringe inside of you, kill the part of you that cringes” which made me finally stop acting like I had any pride to lose and to actually watch TOS. Returning to Spock after many, many, many years of deliberately avoiding The Original Series. Not only did I discover the shocking amount (to me at the time) of excellent, timeless social commentary therein. More important than that, more than exploring the unknown, more important than knowing the right thing, more important than anything else, is the power of friendship. The triumvirate is the beating heart of that series. Most especially, the bond between Spock & Kirk. It is an incredibly rare thing for a relationship to bend reality, break time, transcend labels, and even transcend death the way that theirs does. To reach for someone who seems to be farthest from you. It’s something I continue to be in awe of, transcending brotherhood, transcending friendship, transcending romance, there’s something strange, even queer about it 🏳️‍🌈. I may even be so bold as to say, that after ten years of defiantly durable friendship, I may have realized I have a t’hy’la of my own. ❤️

Then, again, like it always does, as huge changes for better and worse in my life rock me to my core. As I wade into the waters of becoming an independent young adult, Star Trek is there to hand me a desperately needed life raft, and yet I need it more and less than I ever have. Characters like Spock, Data, and Julian Bashir were touchstones of my figuring out who I was as a kid. My sense of connection to Captain Pike (and the shows in which he’s featured) is something new. A life raft based in the things I know I am, and striving to become.

I could, and have already as much followers can attest, go on and on about the many facets of this character that I recognize in myself. He has given myself (and I’m certain others who identify with him) a great many gifts. This is the first time in my life that a male character in a position of power exhibited the same kind of masculinity I identify with the most, and that it was received by fans and in-universe as something overwhelmingly positive. The mere notion of it gives me an overwhelming sense of gender euphoria. As a trans man who doesn’t quite fit and never will, visually or in personality, the typical expectations of masculinity.

His struggle lies in allowing others to help him, when he builds himself around supporting others, something I also relate to. His struggle with impending disability is one with which I’m achingly familiar. The questions his sacrificial destiny raises regarding the religions he grew up influenced by. That innate desire to foster others and a need to be needed. Being unable to prevent himself from throwing his entire being into the work he is passionate about. He’s even given me an avenue through which to heal from some of the more, intimate, ways I was abused. I can’t put into words how much that means to me. Nor how healing it has been to let myself be so unashamedly attracted to someone and willing to explore that in a written, creative way.

The best part is that Pike really is just some guy! He’s a good one, but his strengths lie in the balancing act of knowing he is unremarkable while also understanding how valuable his personhood is to others. He is content with who he is, he doesn’t need to make history in a tangible way. He just needs to focus on being alive, and being kind, and knowing he’s not alone. Pike becomes (like I have) somebody who can reach out to those characters that are convinced they are completely alone in the universe (like Spock) and tell them it’s okay, and that they’re gonna be fine even if it doesn’t feel that way right now. His relationship to Spock and to his crew, that sense of compassion and paternity, at this point in my life I live in the between space of serving as a paternal figure and desperately needing (and even finding!) one. Realizing you’re not the center of the universe, but not alone in it, and being okay with the person you’ve become is a quintessential step across the threshold of childhood into being a happy adult. Captain Pike has, and still is, profoundly helping me do that.

People always talk about transformative works but, how are you supposed to feel when a single universe transforms you three, four, five times and still counting? How are you supposed to be normal about something that you can contribute most of your most personal moments self-realization to? Why would you EVER want to be normal, when a piece of fiction has done so much for you that not even one of the longest social media posts you’ve ever made hardly scratches the surface of how you feel about it? That every social media post, text, discord comment, or rant you’ve ever done about the topic doesn’t break the surface of the depth of your obsession? Of it’s meaning for you?

And I’m sure I’m not the first, only, or let alone the last person to feel this way about the franchise. I mean, just look at us!! Look at what we’ve done! What Star Trek and it’s insane, beautiful, unhinged Trekkies have done for the world! We reach for the stars, pull beautiful love stories out of the woodwork, save whales, create elaborate fanzines and costume culture. I couldn’t be more proud to be just one part of it in its 55 year legacy! Couldn’t be happier to be a Trekkie, there really isn’t anything else like it.

So maybe I should be okay, maybe it’s okay to find myself unable to stop talking about it. It deserves to be talked about.

LLAP 💚🖖🏻💚

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wisteria-lodge · 4 years ago

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Archetypes: Sorting Hat Chats

I’ve been asked about my rationale for naming different primary/ secondary combinations. I did this originally as a tool to help me sort characters - I wanted to see how these types tend to be used, so I could more easily see what subversions looked like. I'll run through my thoughts, but know there’s a lot of variation within each category. But even WITH that variation, I do think that each one has its own specific energy that makes it interesting to talk about. An explanation of the terms I'm using.

DOUBLE LION “THE REVOLUTIONARY”

Pretty straightforward. The Lion primary knows something is wrong, they know it in their bones even if they can’t articulate it, and they’ve got to go out and do something about it. Probably charging at whatever power structure is directly in front of them. It’s unlikely you find a character leading a revolution who isn’t a Double Lion. These guys are intense, inspirational, single minded.

The villain version of the Lion primary tends to be the person who “went too far" or "became the monster they were trying to fight.'' But I think that the much more interesting Lion primary villain trope is the Traitor. Since Lions work from their feelings, and their philosophies can’t necessarily be articulated or linked to individuals outside of them - they can definitely have their head turned while still feeling moral about it.

One of my favorite examples of this Revolutionary archtype is actually Christian Bale‘s character from Newsies. He’s the spark that starts the unionizing revolution, but 100% needs his Badger and Bird lieutenants to keep him focused and keep him from defecting

LION SNAKE “THE ROBIN HOOD”

These guys are similar to the Double Lion - they will recognize a cause or injustice revolutionary style - but Robin Hood doesn’t go up and bang on wicked Prince John’s door. His move is the snake secondary one: confront the problem indirectly. Undermine the regime by stealing tax money and re-distributing it to the poor. Be simultaneously Robin Hood the outlaw and Robin of Locksley the noble, infiltrating and getting information. The Lion Snake is more likely to work within society (or deliberately separate from society) versus just breaking everything down.

LION BIRD “THE LAWMAN / THE VIGILANTE”

The fact that the Lion Bird can either be the Lawman or the Vigilante shows off the very clear hero/villain split you get with Bird secondaries. We also see this with the Snake Bird (simultaneously the Mastermind and the traditional Villain) and the Double Bird (either the Scientist or the Mad Scientist.) This is why I think I had such trouble naming the Badger Bird. I wasn’t leaning into the duality of the Bird secondary enough. The Badger Bird can be the King Arthur, or he can be the Mob Boss, and he’ll look kind of similar either way.

The Lion Bird also has that Lion primary conviction and drive, but they want to follow up on it with investigation, evidence, and plans. I actually think there need to be more stories about Lawmen turning into Vigilantes and vice versa. Because Lion Birds are their Cause no matter what external alignment gets attached to it.

LION BADGER “THE LINCHPIN”

This is my own sorting - although when I came up with this name I still thought I was a Double Bird. The linchpin is the pin-axle thing at the center of a wheel that prevents the whole thing from falling apart, and I think it's a good way of talking about the energy of this combination. The Badger secondary means they’re a lot less single minded than the other Lion primaries: their power comes from being part of a group. They become the emotional “heart” a lot, and have a way of quietly keeping things together just by existing. They can be leaders, but a Double Lion will lead from up front while a Lion Badger will lead from in the middle (if that makes sense.)

I do think it’s really funny that this is a common sleeper villain trope. Peter Pettigrew, Prince Hans, and Randall Boggs of Monsters Inc. all became integral to a group, and then exploit their position within it. They’re kind of the evil bureaucrat. Maybe that's a good trope for children’s media

DOUBLE SNAKE “THE TRICKSTER”

This is another straightforward one. Double Snakes are in it for themselves (and maybe like three other people.) They're going to be clever and tricksy about how they get what they want, and will not mind doing things backward and unofficially. And they won't mind if you know that's what they're doing. There’s something very unapologetic about the Double Snake which makes for very attractive characters. They are consistently voted the sexiest... and when they’re villains they’re fun villains. You know what they want, and what they want is not that complicated. I think that’s a big reason for the appeal of Snake primaries in general. They’re the easiest primary to understand and explain.

SNAKE LION “THE LANCELOT”

I used to call these guys “The Rebel,” which... is too generic, doesn’t really mean anything. So I started thinking about the Lion secondary as the Knight secondary, and I liked that. Double Lions are the Crusader Knight, riding for their Cause. Bird Lions are Grail Knights, riding for their own personal truth. Badger Lions are Champion Knights, here to help the helpless and defend the innocent.

And if that's that case… Snake Lions have to be the Knight Errant, the knight who rides for his lady. It is that simple. Lancelot might be a Knight of the Round Table, but he’s riding for Arthur the person, not Arthur the King. And for his lady, Queen Guinevere. I feel like his dilemma is one that’s common to a lot of Snake Lions: what happens when they’re forced to split their loyalty? It’s tragic, but Lancelot can’t have Arthur and Guinevere simultaneously.

(At least not until my awesome Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot OT3 which I will totally write at some point :)

SNAKE BIRD “THE MASTERMIND / THE VILLAIN”

The classic. We see a little more of the Bird Secondary split, and well… this is your stereotypical villain. They want power. They’re going to use an elaborate plan to get it. There’s a lot you can do with this sorting, but I actually do think it’s fun that whatever you do, this slight undercurrent of villain and/or mastermind… never quite goes away.

SNAKE BADGER “THE LOVER”

The Love Interest sorting. Chances are very good that if there is a love interest (who does not serve some other role in the story...) they're going to be a Snake Badger. Devoted to one person, solving problems by caretaking. This is the Badger secondary who is likely to have the smallest group, which is just going to make them look excessively devoted to their friends. This type is pretty gender neutral, which is fun. A lot of female love interests, but also your Mr. Darcys and Peeta Mellarks.

One of my favorite things about this trope (mostly just because I think it’s funny...) is that if you write a character who is not supposed to be a love interest, but who is a Snake Badger... subconsciously I think people are going to read them as a love interest anyway. Looking at you Jaskier, Horatio, and even Captain Barbossa.

DOUBLE BIRD “THE [MAD] SCIENTIST”

I think that (especially if you aren’t a Bird Primary yourself) your response to hearing a fictional Bird Primary’s motivation is kind of …huh. That seems random. Or oddly specific. You get your Hannibal Lecters, whose entire motivation is... wanting to eat people while drinking nice wine.

Double birds seem especially unusual, just in terms of society. They are Bird secondaries and they interact with the world through gathering data, but their Bird primaries mean that data can literally lead them to any conclusion, no matter how potentially wacky. These guys consciously build themselves from the ground up, and that can make them kind of detached - either in a logical way, or an unmoored way. They're written as either really stable, the rational mentor figure. Or really... not. And that’s how you spot a Bird villain. They’re not after money/power/safety, they’re after something weird.

BIRD LION “THE GRAIL KNIGHT”

This is the trope of Perceval or Galahad, questing after the Holy Grail chalice... which is really just meaning, and truth. It’s a personal quest. Grail Knights tend to ride alone, and a lot of the things that concern them are metaphysical, to do with identity, purpose, things like that. You can have extremely different Bird Lions, but I do think there is a sort of spiritual core there. Doctor Harleen Quinzel sees freedom and truth in whatever the Joker is doing, and then once she recognizes his hypocrisy, has to go build her own meaning.

I actually think these guys are pretty easy to spot because of that Lion secondary. When they change direction, they change direction, and there’s probably a period of despair between the direction changes. I’ve talked about how Bird Lions having a habit of falling apart pretty dramatically, and that’s where this idea comes from.

BIRD BADGER “THE SURVIVOR”

A rare sorting, but an interesting one. I call this one “the Survivor” or “the Last Man Standing” because, well, they seem to be. They seem remarkably stable. This is the Bird primary least likely to be a villain, and maybe the sorting least likely to be a villain. I think what’s going on is that they are grounded and integrated in whatever community they happen to be in (because of that Badger secondary), but they can define themselves and rebuild themselves in the Bird primary way. This makes them uniquely suited to building a new version of themselves for whatever situation they happen to find themselves in.

Maybe a better name for these guys would be “The Adapter.”

BIRD SNAKE “THE ARTIST”

Like all Bird primaries, these guys are inspired by their own projects and their own worldview, but because of that Snake secondary, Bird Snakes have a more easy-going ‘take the world as it comes' kind of energy. They are “the Artist” because everything they do is art: they want to use themselves and the world around them, put all of that towards whatever their Bird primary happens to be interested in.

You can have villains like the Nolan Joker, or the Talented Mr. Ripley, who kind of turn the world into their own personal philosophical social experiment. Or Scotty from Star Trek whose meaning is solely the well-being of the Enterprise. Maybe they just like traveling, and that's all they need. (It's a way for the Bird primary and the Snake secondary exist very happily together, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was pretty common.)

DOUBLE BADGER “THE PEACEMAKER”

Badgers are interesting, because while I think they’re generally regarded as “correct,” they’re also seen as kind of boring. That’s the case with both Badger primaries and Badger secondaries, which means it is doubly reflected in the Double Badger. They often get written as simplistic, the sweet Jane Bennet type who loves everybody and caretakes everybody and just wants everybody to get along.

They are often the targets of what TV Tropes used to call “Break the Cutie.” What could be more interesting than making this character, who wants to be happily part of a community, be forced to build protective models, be all tortured and angsty? I actually think we’re seeing a return of the Double Badger as an interesting character in their own right, with people like Aziaphale, and I'm here for it.

BADGER LION “THE PROTAGONIST”

What can I say? There are a lot of protagonists that are Badger Lions. They want to help the group - so we know they're the good guys - and then they charge and make stuff happen. Lion secondaries are very useful in fiction - you drop them into a situation and stuff just happens. I also think of this as the Starfleet officer sorting - because if you’re a Starfleet officer, either you are the sorting, or can model it really well.

I will say that this is kind of the stock Protagonist sorting, the way that the Snake Badger is the stock love interest and the Snake Bird is the stock villain. There’s just something sort of generic good guy about this one, which is why I want to see it used as a villain sorting more. Badger villains - mostly people who define ‘human’ very narrowly - are insanely terrifying.

BADGER SNAKE “THE ADVISOR”

Possibly “the Power Behind the Throne.” This is another one I had difficulty pinning down. I called it “the Politician” for a while, which unfortunately came off as a little bit more negative than I meant it to, since I think this sorting has a lot in common with Lion Badger, the linchpin of a heroic team. The difference is that Lion Badger takes on that role kind of unconsciously, while the Badger Snake does it very consciously.

Their loyalty is to the group, but their skill set is all about subversion and different ways of going around the group, which is why there’s an interesting contradiction at the heart of Badger Snake. A lot of real life Badger Snakes struggle with feeling like “bad people" and it's too bad. These guys are ridiculously powerful and competent when they are sure of themselves, and I love seeing them in action

BADGER BIRD “THE KING / THE MOB BOSS”

Another difficult one, despite (or because) I really like them. I was calling them “the Architect” because “The City Planner” sounded too boring… but that’s what they do. They’re all about the community but they problem-solve the way all Bird secondaries do, by prepping, and gathering knowledge. I talked more about this in the Lion Bird entry, but Bird secondary seems to have this villain split going on, and that’s what I see here too. This is a controversial love-them-or-hate-them sorting, and I think that’s why. There’s a lot of room in whether or not you see this sorting as villainous.

#sortinghatchats #masterpost #wisteria sorts #archetypes #writing #long post

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bigskydreaming · 3 years ago

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Okay, not to get into the TW discourse again today, because I am so done with that, but I do have to say one last thing about yesterday’s posts, because the ones I made really didn’t sit well with me in hindsight.

For years I’ve always stressed that I will never even try to defend Scott’s actions with Isaac in 3B, because they were flat out wrong and don’t need to be defended. I should have just stopped there. Every single other point I made in regards to THAT specific argument was irrelevant, because that’s the only thing that matters there.

The scene was bad. Scott was wrong. It doesn’t need to be defended.

HOWEVER.

(C’mon, its ME. You HAD to know there was a but coming.)

We are now willfully shifting gears to engage with another aspect of this entirely, the one we should have been focusing on all along:

The thing is I fell for one of the more obvious but effective discourse tactics, the shell game (hide the real argument behind a bunch of smaller arguments JUST tangential enough to the original topic that its easy to claim no derailment is happening - its basically the online equivalent of bigger law firms drowning their opposition in so many minor suits and filings that they eventually just can’t keep up).

Okay, because see.....here’s the problem. ‘The other side’ of this argument keeps trying to make it about that singular scene in 3A, and attacking Scott’s actions in it so obviously people are defensive....but we keep responding by trying to defend Scott’s overall CHARACTER rather than justifying a single scene. And we should be focusing on the scene, not the character. Because their fundamental argument has always been ‘well how can you defend THIS scene?’

And the actual answer to THAT has always been.....uh....we don’t?

There’s not a SINGLE Scott stan I know that likes that scene. It wasn’t something we wanted to see repeated, something we celebrated because Scott was exercising his primal Alpha power and right to rule or whatever the fuck. At no point have I EVER seen a Scott stan try and justify that scene as it being something RIGHT to do. Some people try and create a context for it to make sense of it in terms of why and how Scott could do that at all, but that is still aimed squarely at disavowing that scene as something we REJECT as an example of his characterization. We flat out DO NOT WANT IT.

Now.

Try and tell me the same can be said of Stiles and Derek stans defending THEIR abusive moments. Claim that nobody’s ever argued (extensively) how Stiles was JUSTIFIED in that hospital hallway scene in 5B. Imagine for a moment, what fandom would even look like if huge swaths of people hadn’t gone to fucking town defending Stiles for his actions in Lunatic, saying Scott deserved it and it wasn’t that bad, honestly. Same with Heart Monitor. Say people didn’t laugh and hope for more scenes like that instead of being eww why the fuck are they acting like this is normal BFF behavior. Pretend there weren’t YEARS of arguments justifying Derek’s violence with Scott and his betas by saying oh Scott did bad things too and also he said mean things so he deserved it and Derek was just teaching them how to survive and it was his right as their alpha, they knew what they were getting into, etc, etc, etc.

No but seriously. Go on. Make those claims.

Y’know. So I can laugh at you for being dumb and saying dumb things.

See, THAT’S the difference here. THAT’S the ACTUAL issue constantly getting shoved behind endless attempts at obfuscation.

Yeah, Scott’s actions in that scene in 3B were bad. We’ve literally never disagreed on that point. Show me a single post from my blog or any of the Scott meta blogs, where one of us ever tried to argue that Isaac DESERVED what Scott did. Said ‘well Isaac did kiss his ex-girlfriend, what did he think was gonna happen?’

And the nerve of some people to habitually - for YEARS - harass Scott fans and hone in on that ONE Scott and Isaac scene like they actually give a single FUCK about abuse or abuse survivors, and like that scene has ever had anything to do with them not liking Scott.....

Because the truth under the right shell is the reason they never let the arguments focus on Derek and Stiles’ most abusive scenes at all....

IS BECAUSE THEY DON’T THINK THERE’S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THEM.

They’ve ALREADY spent years justifying that shit. We’ve seen it. Endlessly.

And like I’m gonna take deep thoughts on abuse from people who claim that taping up your friend and throwing lacrosse balls at him, getting him beaten up, treating him like an actual animal to humiliate him.....that all of that is normal, acceptable behavior between friends? People who have so little conviction on these matters that you just KNOW they would be screaming about how abusive it was if the roles had been switched and it was STILES being physically punished and it was SCOTT filling up a dog bowl and treating Stiles like a dog as payback for something?

Nope.

This farce has gone on too long, and fuck your bullshit tactics of trying to weaponize issues you know some of us actually truly care about just for the sake of turning people against a fictional TV character. Why are we acting like you actually give a shit about what was actually wrong with that scene in 3B? You don’t! We have a literal decade of proof! Of you being willing to go to any lengths to defend not just Stiles and Derek’s actions....no, but their RIGHT to be physically abusive with the other characters. Saying that the other characters DESERVED this behavior, that they were JUSTIFIED in the HOW of their specific interactions.

You’ve never tried actually defending Stiles and Derek’s worst moments because you don’t think you have to. You're fine with them.

And then you turn around and act like you actually give a shit about what Scott did to Isaac, when you know damn well that none of us have EVER tried to argue that he was RIGHT to do that, or that Isaac somehow deserved it.

Like. LOL. Fuck off.

Anyway, I’m done with this particular discourse for good, there’s literally nothing more to say because its actually always been really simple all along....but like, free soundbite for anyone who does still run into these assholes and have them try and pull this shit per usual. They raise this argument again, just say this:

“Scott shouldn’t have done that, agreed. And we can talk about that.....after we talk about whether or not you think Stiles and Derek were justified in their worst actions in Heart Monitor, Lunatic, Ice Pick, etc. Otherwise we’re just not on the same page here and never will be, so bye.”

The End.

Anyway, I am literally done with this forever and ever, that is henceforth the only thing I have to say on this subject, everyone feel free to do whatever you will with this post, @ me and I’ll just smile and wave at those in the rear view mirror, its been a long road but at least we’ll always have Paris, etc etc etc aaaaaaand scene.

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immaturityofthomasastruc · 4 years ago

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#1: Chloe’s “Damnation Arc” That Was Totally Planned From the Start

Time to talk about one of the most infuriating anecdotes of Astruc, and it shows how chaotic the production of Miraculous Ladybug is.

Chloe Bourgeois the resident mean girl you see in a lot of cartoons and shows with a school setting in general. She's the daughter of the mayor of Paris, so she tends to get her way a lot. And her callous personality has left several people emotionally vulnerable, which is how Hawkmoth creates his minions of the week, Akumas. Of the 26 Akumas in the first season, Chloe has contributed to 12 of them becoming akumatized through bullying, insulting, and publicity humiliating them.

In the first season, Chloe was the kind of character who you loved to hate. She was someone who served as a minor threat in the civilian lives of the main characters, and she would usually get her comeuppance at the end of the episode.

There was effort into giving Chloe character development, don't get me wrong, with six episodes between Seasons 2 and 3 dedicated to it. But for every moment of heroism Chloe got, it was always negated by the end, having her go back to her old self and learning nothing in the process. This was because of a strange idea Astruc has. For some reason, he wants the status quo to be the same so new viewers can jump in at any time. While that may work for a show like SpongeBob SquarePants or The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, but not for a story driven show like Miraculous Ladybug. So Chloe's “character development” was an unfortunate case of one step forward, two steps back. This ended up disappointing fans, who were really hoping for Chloe to get a proper redemption arc. What's important to remember was that Astruc claimed that he planned for everything that's about to happen from the start, when you'll see that it couldn't be further from the truth.

Even after getting an entire trilogy of episodes focusing on her “development”, Chloe didn't really grow as a person. The only thing that changed was Ladybug would occasionally loan her the Bee Miraculous because of how good she is as Queen Bee. They tried mixing things up in Season 3 when Ladybug said she couldn't be Queen Bee anymore because her identity was public and it would be too dangerous... rather than how rude she is to everyone she meets, and is overall irresponsible with her powers (In her first appearance, she sabotaged a train so she could pull a Syndrome and save it herself, and it was quickly swept under the metaphorical rug). So throughout the third season, we'd get snippets of Chloe saying “Queen Bee could handle this if you let her!” whenever she was on screen. This culminated in the season finale, where she got fed up of waiting, and willingly sided with Hawkmoth to get back at Ladybug.

And when fans were naturally miffed at all this time wasted on a character arc that went absolutely nowhere, guess how Astruc responded?

I find it ironic that Astruc is saying fans shouldn't insult the writing team or other fans because they didn't like the twist... while insulting fans who didn't like the way Chloe's character arc went. Astruc could have easily turned down the idea of a Chloe redemption arc, or find some way to compromise instead of whatever we got. But even if he didn't, why does he have to be so callous about it?

Even if you don't like Chloe, this still screams bad writing. Why focus so much on a character's development so much if you're going to just throw it out the window? There were several times where Marinette was scolded for saying she couldn't change, and that she needed to see the good in Chloe, and now you're just turning back on it? If she was irredeemable the whole time, why dedicate so much time to her “damnation arc”, as Astruc puts it? Why not focus on getting to know other characters and their relevance to the story like Master Fu? Why not focus on writing more interactions between Marinette and Adrien? You know, the two leads whose relationship is the main focus of the show?

And it wasn't just here. Before the season finale, whenever people talked about how they loved Chloe and fanfics showing her growing as a person, Astruc just shut them down. If someone tries to reason with Astruc the importance of being kind to others, he'll just say something like “That doesn't matter, Chloe sucks!” Because that's a good lesson to teach kids, right? People can never change, so why bother?

It's not just those characters either. The last decade we got characters like Weiss Schnee, Pacifica Northwest, and Amity Blight. These were all mean girls who weren't just one-note caricatures of bullies, but characters who actually grew as we got to know them the longer their shows went on.

The thing is, Chloe has all the pieces necessary for a redemption arc, and there are fans and writers alike who want her to get a proper one. But because of Astruc's own stubborn beliefs, he refuses to let anything interesting happen. Change is possible, some of the most interesting characters in fiction are those who genuinely want to be better (Just take a look at all those examples I used earlier, and I'll show more if I need to).

And when someone pointed out that character development is a thing?

I mean, it's not like there was any evidence in the show that made it look like Chloe was trying to be a better person—OH WAIT.

And then, that same person pointed out the redundancy of having two mean girls to antagonize Marinette in her civilian life, relying on the stereotype that all girls do is fight over cute boys instead of actually finishing the redemption arc the writers set up, as well as showing a screenshot of a Tumblr post that perfectly summarizes my feelings on Chloe's character development.

What does Astruc have to say in response to these valid criticisms? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

That's literally all he said to this person. He didn't refute anything that person said, he didn't defend any of his writing choices, he basically plugged his fingers and his ears, and went “LALALALALALA, I'm not listening! I'm not listening!” Dude, you chose to open this Twitter account and take questions, so expect a little criticism thrown your way. But what should I know, according to him, he already planned this for years!

But the main question remains: If you didn't want Chloe to develop or grow as a person, Astruc, why did you even get our hopes up in the first place?

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books-letstalkaboutem · 4 years ago

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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue Quotes that I Loved

This is just a list of quotes or excerpts that I highlighted while reading the book- literally all of them and there are a lot. I’m going to go ahead and say spoilers below just because there are so many quotes and while I don’t think the quotes actually spoil anything, I don’t want to accidentally spoil something for someone.

Some of the quotes might seem a little weird out of context but these are quotes that hit close to home, made me say “Hell, yeah, Addie!!!", quotes that made me laugh, and then basically all of the other quotes that I loved while reading.

I know that I didn't completely fall in love with this book like so many other people did, but it was still so beautifully written and there were so many amazing quotes in this book.

And just a heads up, I read this on my kindle, just in case the page numbers I list don’t match with your copy of the book.

Spoilers Below:

Quotes that Hit Close to Home

“Three and twenty, a third of a life already buried.” Page 39

“The day passes like a sentence. The sun falls like a scythe.” Page 41

“[...] and when she dies it will be as though she never lived.” Page 42

“I am so tired of not having choices, so scared of the years rushing past beneath my feet. I do not want to die as I’ve lived, which is no life at all. I—” Page 46

“[...] she swears sometimes her memory runs forward as well as back, unspooling to show the roads she’ll never get to travel. But that way lies madness, and she has learned not to follow.” Page 61

“His parents meant well, of course, but they always told him things like Cheer up, or It will get better, or worse, It’s not that bad, which is easy to say when you’ve never had a day of rain.” Page 97

“But then a night would go long, and a day would start late, and now he feels like there’s no time at all. Like he is always late for something.” Page 119

““I see someone who cares,” she says slowly. “Perhaps too much. Who feels too much. I see someone lost, and hungry. The kind of person who feels like they’re wasting away in a world full of food, because they can’t decide what they want.”” Page 140

““Life is so brief, and every night in Rennes I’d go to bed, and lie awake, and think, there is another day behind me, and who knows how few ahead.”” Page 167

““I mean feeling like it’s surging by so fast, and you try to reach out and grab it, you try to hold on, but it just keeps rushing away. And every second, there’s a little less time, and a little less air, and sometimes when I’m sitting still, I start to think about it, and when I think about it, I can’t breathe. I have to get up. I have to move.”” Page 177

““Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”” Page 179

“It was such a lovely jar she had kept them in. But the glass is cracking now. The water leaking through.” Page 215

“Moments of joy register as brief, but ecstatic. Moments of pain stretch long and unbearably loud.” Page 225

“[...] you’ve never felt called to any one thing. There is no violent push in one direction, but a softer nudge a hundred different ways, and now all of them feel out of reach. Page 226

“[...] in wanting to live, to learn, to find yourself, you’ve gotten lost.” Page 226

“He lets it ring, holds his breath until it stops. He tells himself that if they call again, he’ll answer. If they call again, he’ll tell them he is not okay. But the phone doesn’t ring a second time.” Page 229

“He misses the structure, misses the path, misses the purpose. And maybe it wasn’t a perfect fit, but nothing is.” Page 257

“That he’d blinked and somehow years had gone by, and everyone else had carved their trenches, paved their paths, and he was still standing in a field, uncertain where to dig.” Page 283

“And those first two years, he was happy. He had Bea, and Robbie, and all he had to do was learn. Build a foundation. It was the house, the one that he was supposed to build on top of that smooth surface, that was the problem. It was just so … permanent.” 283

“Choosing a class became choosing a discipline, and choosing a discipline became choosing a career, and choosing a career became choosing a life, and how was anyone supposed to do that, when you only had one?” Page 283

““The vexing thing about time,” he says, “is that it’s never enough. Perhaps a decade too short, perhaps a moment. But a life always ends too soon.”” Page 333

“He is all restless energy, and urgent need, and there isn’t enough time, and he knows of course that there will never be. That time always ends a second before you’re ready. That life is the minutes you want minus one.” Page 421

“The world is wide, and he’s seen so little of it with his own eyes. He wants to travel, to take photos, listen to other people’s stories, maybe make some of his own. After all, life seems very long sometimes, but he knows it will go so fast, and he doesn’t want to miss a moment.” Page 438

Quotes that Made Me Laugh

“Henry loves his sister, he does. But Muriel’s always been like strong perfume. Better in small doses. And at a distance.” Page 120

““Sorry, Book,” she mutters, lifting the cat gingerly onto the back of the old chair, where he does his best impression of an inconvenienced bread loaf.” Page 248

““It’s Halloween!” defends Robbie. “It’s the twenty-third,” says Henry, but Robbie treats holidays the way he treats birthdays, stretching them from days into weeks, and sometimes into seasons.” Page 274

Quotes that made me say “Hell, yeah, Addie!!!”

“If she must grow roots, she would rather be left to flourish wild instead of pruned, would rather stand alone, allowed to grow beneath the open sky. Better that than firewood, cut down just to burn in someone else’s hearth.” Page 31

“[...]from this moment forward, her life will be her own.” Page 48

“There is a defiance in being a dreamer.” Page 117

““It has only been two years,” she says. “Think of all the time I have, and all the things I’ll see.”” Page 132

“It will take time, but time is the one thing Addie has plenty of. So she opens her eyes, and starts again.” Page 192

“But then Addie straightens, lifts her chin, smiles with an almost defiant kind of joy. “But isn’t it wonderful,” she says, “to be an idea?”” Page 261

Quotes that I Love

“[...] never pray to the gods that answer after dark.” Page 7

“What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?” Page 15

“The things that last, even when memories don’t.” Page 16

“As if you couldn’t like one place and want to see another.” Page 23

“Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.” Page 35

“The kind of place where time slips and blurs, where a month, a year, a life can go missing.” Page 39

“[...] attraction can look an awful lot like recognition in the wrong light.” Page 56

“The rise isn’t worth the fall.” Page 56

“Being trapped, buried alive, these are the things that scare you when you cannot die.” Page 57

“Funny, how some people take an age to warm, and others simply walk into every room as if it’s home.” Page 58

“Déjà vu. Déjà su. Déjà vécu. Already seen. Already known. Already lived.” Page 66

“[...]a lifetime of knowing brushed away like a tear.” Page 73

“[...] and it is sad, of course, to forget. But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten. To remember when no one else does.” Page 77

“[...] ideas are so much wilder than memories, that they long and look for ways of taking root.” Page 77

““These days, everyone’s looking down,” muses Sam. “It’s nice to see someone looking up.”” Page 101

“Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered?” Page 103

“If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?” Page 103

“Dreamer is too soft a word. It conjures thoughts of silken sleep, of lazy days in fields of tall grass, of charcoal smudges on soft parchment.” Page 11

“She considers the cut of their clothes, the absence of bone stays or bustled skirts, and thinks, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, how much simpler it would be to be a man, how easily they move through the world, and at such little cost.” Page 129

““I remember you.”” Page 135

“The darkness claimed he’d given her freedom, but really, there is no such thing for a woman, not in a world where they are bound up inside their clothes, and sealed inside their homes, a world where only men are given leave to roam.” Page 163

“She watches these men and wonders anew at how open the world is to them, how easy the thresholds.” Page 165

““I think there are many ways to matter.”” Page 179

“But ideas are so much wilder than memories, so much faster to take root.”” Page 210

“He is full of roots, while she has only branches.” Page 212

“Easy to stay on the path when the road is straight and the steps are numbered.” Page 229

“Outside the window, the day just carries on as if nothing’s changed, but it feels like everything has, because Addie LaRue is immortal, and Henry Strauss is damned.” Page 235

“[...]I didn’t want to live forever. I just wanted to live.”” Page 236

““There’s this family photo,” he says, “not the one in the hall, this other one, from back when I was six or seven. That day was awful. Muriel put gum in David’s book and I had a cold, and my parents were fighting right up until the flash went off. And in the photo, we all look so … happy. I remember seeing that picture and realizing that photographs weren’t real. There’s no context, just the illusion that you’re showing a snapshot of a life, but life isn’t snapshots, it’s fluid. So photos are like fictions. I loved that about them. Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.”” Page 239

“God, it feels good to be wanted.” Page 256

“[...] And ideas are wilder than memories. They’re like weeds, always finding their way up.”” Page 261

“Homesick—Henry knows that one is supposed to mean sick for home, not from it, but it still feels right.” Page 262

“Dressing up, he thinks, is just like watching cartoons, something you enjoyed as a kid, before it passes through the no man’s land of teen angst, the ironic age of early twenties. And then somehow, miraculously, it crosses back into the realm of the genuine, the nostalgic. A place reserved for wonder.” Page 274

“Bea always says returning to campus is like coming home. But it doesn’t feel that way to Henry. Then again, he never felt at home at home, only a vague sense of dread, the eggshell-laden walk of someone constantly in danger of disappointing.” 282

“He doesn’t know what he believes, hasn’t for a long time, but it’s hard to entirely discount the presence of a higher power when he recently sold his soul to a lower one.” Page 284

““You can’t make people love you, Hen. If it’s not a choice, it isn’t real.”” Page 290

“He has asked the wrong god for the wrong thing, and now he is enough because he is nothing. He is perfect, because he isn’t there.” Page 290

“A life reduced to a block of stone, a patch of grass.” Page 299

“The present folding on top of the past instead of erasing it, replacing it.” Page 306

“She knows the paint will fade, rinsed off by a puddle, or simply wiped away by time, but that’s how memories are supposed to work. There—and then, little by little, gone.” Page 307

“Without the bells, the organ, the bodies crowding in for services, the church feels abandoned. Less a house of worship and more a tomb.” Page 311

“God is so large, why build walls to hold Him in?” Page 311

“Once you know about a thing, you start to see it everywhere. Someone says the words purple elephant, and all of a sudden, you catch sight of them in shop windows and on T-shirts, stuffed animals and billboards, and you wonder how you never noticed.” Page 314

“There is a freedom, after all, in being forgotten.” 325

“Memories are stiff, but thoughts are freer things. They throw out roots, they spread and tangle, and come untethered from their source. They are clever, and stubborn, and perhaps—perhaps—they are in reach.” Page 327

“They’ve been lucky, so lucky, but the trouble with luck is that it always ends.” 329

““You said it yourself, Luc. Ideas are wilder than memories. And I can be wild. I can be stubborn as the weeds, and you will not root me out. And I think you are glad of it. I think that’s why you’ve come, because you are lonely, too.”” Page 332

“She closes her eyes, reminds herself there are many ways to leave a mark, reminds herself that pictures lie.” Page 337

“She may not feel the years weakening her bones, her body going brittle with age, but the weariness is a physical thing, like rot, inside her soul. There are days when she mourns the prospect of another year, another decade, another century. There are nights when she cannot sleep, moments when she lies awake and dreams of dying. But then she wakes, and sees the pink and orange dawn against the clouds, or hears the lament of a lone fiddle, the music and the melody, and remembers there is such beauty in the world. And she does not want to miss it— any of it.” Page 342

“Luc’s smile darkens. “Because time is cruel to all, and crueler still to artists. Because vision weakens, and voices wither, and talent fades.” He leans close, twists a lock of her hair around one finger. “Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end,” he says, “everyone wants to be remembered.”” Page 351

“It is a sign, when even gods and devils dread a fight.” Page 367

“And this, he decides, is what a good-bye should be. Not a period, but an ellipsis, a statement trailing off, until someone is there to pick it up. It is a door left open. It is drifting off to sleep.” Page 419

#the invisible life of addie larue quotes #the invisible life of addie larue #the invisible life of addie larue by ve schwab #ve schwab #quotes #my favorite quotes #addie larue #henry strauss #luc #bookish quotes

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signorcerullo · 3 years ago

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how can you nate with jenny when she manipulated him into kissing her without his consent (then invalidated his feelings about it) and got him drunk and tried to take advantage of him 🤕🤕🤕🤕🤕🤕

Wow, the way I literally knew this would happen! I reblog a couple of jenate posts and suddenly the antis are on me. And so quickly too, I'm almost impressed. Who had two hours on their bingo card?

How come people constantly preach death of the author and f*ck canon but as soon as I wanna ignore bad problematic writing because I like a ship's potential I'm a bad person?

I already went over this shit the last time I reblogged a jenate post and an anon immediately came after me, so I'll link that for ya here (also talked some more about how I like Jenny/Jenate here). But I would like to add onto it a bit because I hadn't watched the show in a long time and didn't remember the events exactly.

What Jenny did was wrong, OBVIOUSLY. Like, I never have and never will say anything different. I f*cking hate that storyline in general and think it was ooc.

Also, like I said in the first post defending this ship, the situation is so much more nuanced than y'all like to pretend it is. Jenny is going through emotional hell, she literally has no one and nothing expect for Nate. She wants him back literally because he is the only one whose seen her at her most fucked up and still helped and retained respect for her, and she needs something like that right now because her life fucking sucks!!! Then Chuck sees this and manipulates and takes advantage of her to get her to break Nate and Serena up! The whole get him drunk and take advantage of him thing was literally Chucks idea, Nate's supposed best friend. Does this excuse Jenny's actions? No! Of course not! But, like, can you at least spare her some sympathy? Geez.

Now, can I understand that despite this the ship might still make you uncomfortable? Of course, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if you don't feel comfortable seeing jenate stuff just block the tag instead of coming after me for liking them.

And now the obligatory citing @natearchie in my defending Jenny post. Here's a link to a post that I feel is relevant. This is literally fiction! Nate and Jenny are not real! No matter how problematic a ship is I can still find the dynamic interesting without condoning those problematic actions in real life. Like, I ship samruby from Supernatural and she's literally a demon that manipulated him into freeing the devil and starting the apocalypse. That's bad! But I don't ship them because I think they're some role models for healthy couples, I ship them because I think their dynamic is interesting as hell (ha! get it?) and Ruby could've had such an interesting redemption arc if the writers weren't misogynistic assholes who killed off any female character they actually took the time to write.

This is the last time I'll talk about this crap. If I get any more hate I'll just delete it or link them these posts. I'm so tired of defending myself with this one.

#and can people f*ck off with using those emojis they feel so rude and condescendingI just wanna strange someone when I look at them #strangle*#anon hate #gossip girl #jenate #otp: nothing is wrong with you #jenny humphrey #jenny humphrey defence squad #mal answers

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itsclydebitches · 4 years ago

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The thing that feels disingenuous about Miles answer about Ironwood is that he was part of the writing staff that framed the general as a cool character to start with. I do think that the signs about Ironwood's evil were clear since V2 and in V7 he was an outright dictator from episode 1. Nonetheless, he was still consistently framed as a cool character, someone you can trust and rely. You don't get to blame the fans for liking a genocide if you was the one framed him as cool in the first place.

I actually don’t think being cool is the problem. If we’re satirizing and/or making a statement about the toxic masculinity that leads to something like a dictatorship, then being “cool” is a crucial part of that. People don’t leverage the power they have by looking lame, they do so by appearing desirable, enviable, awesome. Being in the military is supposedly “cool.” Being a white guy with a giant gun is supposedly “cool.” Having power over an entire nation is supposedly “cool,” etc. If you only make such characters look revolting — even when they are — then you miss one of the main recruitment tools for this kind of rhetoric. Any version of Ironwood that’s meant to make a point about the dangers of following someone like him needs to make him look “cool” and then deconstruct that, pointing out the ways in which this cool veneer is a lie meant to pull you in. To do otherwise is to claim that evil people are always easy to spot. Making your villains “uncool” implies that the people who do appear cool in real life must be fine then. That good looking, charismatic leader is great. Why would I look critically at his actions? He’s too cool to be evil.

My personal problem is not that “They made the dictator look cool and we can’t possibly expect the audience to tell the difference between someone who is truly good and someone who is just using various Cool Points to skate by” because that would be the point of such a character — the work the show needs to do. My problem is that RWBY didn’t do that work. At least, not to the extent they needed to. Rather than making Ironwood a truly heinous character (prior to Volume 7 ‘s shooting, I mean) and allowing the audience to learn how appearing cool can’t hide that, they just made him good person. Straight up. Flawed, absolutely, but no worse than any of the other character on screen, particularly post Volume 6 when our heroes are frequently putting people in danger, seizing power, telling lies, keeping secrets, and generally acting in the ways we’re supposedly meant to condemn Ironwood for. Since talk of Miles’ vid last night I’ve seen three separate “Ironwood was always bad, idk how people can miss the signs” posts and those people are half right. There 100% were signs we were meant to pick up on. The problem is RWBY then went and deconstructed those signs. Ironwood didn’t just bring an army to a peace festival, he brought an army to an event he had good reason to believe wasn’t peaceful — and he was right. Ironwood didn’t wrest control from Ozpin (using a series of checks and balances that exist for this very purpose...) because he has an obsession with being in control, he did so because he honestly believed Ozpin was putting people in danger — and he was right. Ironwood didn’t step up post-Fall because he arrogantly believes he’s the only one capable of saving Remnant, he did so because he’s actually the most qualified: a fully trained huntsmen leading an Academy (like Ozpin) with an army and knowledge of this secret war. What, was Ironwood supposed to read the script and wait for the group of dropout teenagers to arrive and save the world instead? To say nothing of how his power and responsibility are framed as sacrifices, not something he sought out. Ironwood doesn’t want to be the sole ruler here. His desperate relief at having allies again proves it. Good setup for the rise of a dictator would have been Ironwood being cagey with his information and exerting control over the group... not telling them everything, not giving them more power, not letting them keep the Lamp, not taking arrest off the table so as to keep them in line, and generally doing the opposite of everything he did do to share that responsibility and power. RWBY got very good at giving us the first half of these red flags — he has an army, he’s stubborn, he’s hurting Mantle, etc. — but then time and time again introduced a context that changed that flag dramatically: they are fighting literal monsters, he’s no more stubborn than our title character, hurting Mantle is a consequence of a plan he thinks will help the whole world and our heroes back this. Those who insist that Ironwood was 100% a villain in the making (or a villain already) prior to shooting Oscar are working from their assumption of what his archetype represents, not what RT actually put on screen. Because RT is just really bad at writing a dictator character. They didn’t have the skill to manage someone who only appeared good on the surface, let alone a character with the complex nuance of wielding “coolness” to their advantage, which is why in Volume 8 they had to resort to cartoon villainy with literal, evil spotlights. It’s not that the audience is too dumb to pick up on those red flags, it’s that RT couldn’t manage to plant them without continually introducing valid justifications. You can’t say, “Bringing an army is a bad thing. Look at this dictator coding!” without me going, “Yeah, except in the fictional world you created an army does not represent the problems it does in our real life societies. This isn’t a guy amassing soldiers to go after oil, he’s trying to protect people from monsters. Not even metaphoric monsters acting as stand-ins for a minority group. Literal, evil monsters!” RWBY ignores its own context and a good chunk of the fandom ignored it too.

The problem with that (besides the general frustration of someone ignoring parts of canon to forward a particular reading) is that the fandom’s go-to claim is that everything is meaningful — and it’s a reading the writers very much support. Fans do not, as the above attests, push for a simple reading of, “Don’t think too hard about it. Just take the surface reading and run with it” which, while still frustrating, would have at least been a valid stance. Rather, they insist very strongly that nuance and depth are what drive the show. From the song lyrics to a tiny detail in the opening, everything is important and if you don’t accept that then you can’t appreciate RWBY’s complexity.

“Okay,” I said. “Then in that case Ironwood coming around to Ozpin’s position is meaningful too? Glynda — one of our best and most faultless characters — supporting him is meaningful? Flipping his gun, defending Weiss, Qrow writing to him, the group working with him for months on end... all of it is meaningful to his characterization? You said so yourself.”

“No, no, no,” comes the reply. “He’s just bad. But he’s also nuanced. He’s tricked you into thinking he’s a good person by acting kind sometimes, by getting support sometimes, but none of that is true. His actions are what matter and his actions are simplistically bad.”

“Ohhhh. So then does that mean this story is really about the creation of a villain?”

“Huh?”

“Well, Ruby. She’s ‘nuanced’ in the same way. She acts kind sometimes and gets support, but her actions are terrible. She endangered an entire city because she couldn’t wait to see if Ironwood got his letter. She condemned Ozpin for keeping secrets about Salem and then kept those same secrets just two days later. When the kingdom was under attack she sat around drinking tea, crying on a staircase, just hoping someone would come fix things for her — all while actively sabotaging the one person who was trying to save people, even if that action seems silly to us (let’s fly really high). So if we’re looking at the impact of someone’s actions outside of their intent, as we just did with Ironwood, then she’s a bad guy too, yeah?”

“No! She’s the hero!”

“... these characters don’t know she’s the hero from a meta perspective. If we’re supposed to judge the meaning of RWBY based on these details — ”

“But it’s not just the details. It’s also the allusions. Everyone in RWBY is based on another person or character. It’s very complex and that inspiration drives their story, so if you don’t have that information it’s no surprise you’re confused. For example, this is why Penny had to get a human body. That’s what happened to Pinocchio!”

“Oh! So then Ironwood is destined to be a good guy!”

“What?”

“Well, you just said the allusions drive their stories, right? The whole point of the Tin Man is that he always had a heart and just needed to realize that. So clearly — “

“No! He’s supposed to be a classic dictator, he’s only bad!”

And ‘round and ‘round we go. RWBY’s writing is atrocious yet the fandom pushes this narrative that it’s all a complex, multi-layered story that requires taking every part into account to understand the “real” message... but when you try to do that with certain characters like Ozpin and Ironwood it’s, “No, actually, they’re just simple archetypes of Bad Men.” Nuance exists for the bees, but not other ships. It exists for the characters fans like, but not the ones they don’t. And RWBY’s inspirations have to predict the ending for this character... but not that other character. It’s a nonsense grab bag!

Fans are right that Ironwood had a lot of red flags to set up this downfall. Fans are also right that those red flags were severely undercut, thus reversing their impact. Fans are right that Ironwood becomes a 100% bad guy who kills because he can and threatens to bomb a city. Fans are also right that this characterization feels absurd for Ironwood, both in terms of his morality and his intelligence (how does bombing Mantle help you now??) Ironwood is badly written. He was badly written in 7 and 8, if he was always meant to be a dictator in the making then he was badly written in 2-6, and he’s conclusively badly written when it comes to lacking a backstory and a canonical semblance — two things are are supposedly driving all of this characterization. That’s the answer: not that he’s good, or bad, but that RWBY can’t write a consistent character, let alone a nuanced one, so it’s no surprise the fandom can’t decide on anything. What’s there to decide on? It’s that nonsense grab bag. In a different show I think making the dictator appear cool would be a crucial bit of commentary, but RWBY doesn’t have the skill to pull that off.

#rwby #rwde #mymetas #Anonymous

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renegadewangs · 4 years ago

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Van Zieks - the Examination, part 4

Warnings: SPOILERS for The Great Ace Attorney: Chronicles. Additional warning for racist sentiments uttered by fictional characters (and screencaps to show these sentiments).

Disclaimer: (see Part 1 for the more detailed disclaimer.) - These posts are not meant to be taken as fact. Everything I’m outlining stems from my own views and experiences. If you believe that I’ve missed or misinterpreted something, please let me know so I can edit the post accordingly. -The purpose of these posts is an analysis, nothing more. Please do not come into these posts expecting me to either defend Barok van Zieks from haters, nor expecting me to encourage the hatred. - I’m using the Western release of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for these posts, but may refer to the original Japanese dialogue of Dai Gyakuten Saiban if needed to compare what’s said. This also means I’m using the localized names and localized romanization of the names to stay consistent. -It doesn’t matter one bit to me whether you like Barok van Zieks or dislike him. However, I will ask that everyone who comments refrains from attacking real, actual people.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

It’s time to take a close look at Episode 2 of the second game, The Memoirs of the Clouded Kokoro!

Episode 2-2: The Memoirs of the Clouded Kokoro

Remember how in the last episode we vaguely got Barok on our side near the end of the trial by proving Mrs. Garrideb was actually involved in the crime? … Yeah. Forget that progress. It's being undone. Case 2-2 is the first case of the second game which features Barok, which unfortunately means he needs to be 'reintroduced' to the audience and it takes him back several steps in his growth. It makes sense, I suppose, it would've been weird starting a new game with him already being lightly on Ryu's side. Even so, it's a bit insulting how this case acts as if the chronologically previous one accomplished nothing.

So anyway, this case flashbacks to something which supposedly happened right after the first game's fourth case. The day after Soseki's acquittal, even. Turns out, Soseki awoke to find one of the other tenants in his building dead and asked Ryu for help, but (S)Holmes tagged along. Gregson is at the crime scene, keeping an eye on the place and on Soseki in particular since he's suspicious. (Sure, Gregson. Sure. Has nothing to do with the Reaper's curse, probably.) After some investigation with (S)Holmes, Gregson has enough evidence to actually arrest Soseki, which definitely feels like a step backwards. A bit later, it turns out the victim is Not Actually Dead Yet. Again! The Great Ace Attorney really enjoys throwing us for a loop by pretending we're in for another murder case.

Anyway, during the course of the investigation, I found two mentions of Van Zieks. The first is when you investigate the broken glasses and bottles in the victim's room. Susato is immediately reminded of Lord van Zieks.

And when examining Garrideb's old army uniform, Susato points out it might suit Lord van Zieks.

Haha, as if his usual outfit isn't ostentatious enough already. So we learn that Susato doesn't have a very high opinion of him at all, and I should hope it's not still related to that time he called detective novels pathetic. It's fun of them to refer to him in an investigation that he's not involved in in any way, especially when they don't know yet that he's the prosecution again.

Speaking to Soseki in the gaol, we're once again told that he's had a dreadful time in England so far. He sees foreigners everywhere and he's sure they're all laughing at him. He's been so on edge the past year that he's moved 'more times than he can remember'. So once again, we're reminded that racial prejudice in 1900s England is a focal point of this game's story. Once the conversation is over, Gregson appears to let the gang know that the victim has regained consciousness and is accusing Soseki of poisoning him. We're going to trial for an attempted murder charge, y'all!

The next day, in the defendant's lobby, Susato comes bursting in with the dreadful news that Barok van Zieks has once again taken on the prosecution. It's definitely safe to assume now that either Ryu or Soseki is the reason he's taking on these not-really-murder trials when he normally wouldn't. As I mentioned before, this is his reintroduction in the second game and so the game feels compelled to remind the player of what went down in case 1-4:

He sure did! The game also once again reminds us what the Reaper's Curse entails, and that perhaps that's the reason why Soseki is on trial yet again. He's doomed, perhaps. Susato also informs us that (S)Holmes is running late, just as he was two days ago, and Ryu thinks that's a good thing because if the Great Detective were there, Ryu might come to rely on his help.

… I suppose? He already relies on Susato for help and I feel like that would warrant far more 'preying' from Van Zieks than relying on a male, adult British detective for help. Though knowing (S)Holmes, he'd end up stealing the show and taking the words from Ryu's mouth, but that doesn't seem to be what Ryu's worried about here. I suppose the main point to take away from this remark is that Ryu wants to do as much as he can by himself. He wants to appear strong in front of Van Zieks to avoid presenting an easy target, and I think this might actually be the first time we see a sentiment like that from him. Is he afraid of Van Zieks? Does he actually care about the man's opinion? Anyway, he swears to show Van Zieks what a Japanese lawyer can do.

Inside the courtroom, Van Zieks does the usual prosecutor spiel about how the defense needs to be ready for defeat. Ryu thinks to himself that Van Zieks has a particular animosity towards Japanese people for some reason.

Good thing we got a second game in the series, eh? So because the defendant was on trial only two days ago, the same jurors were chosen where possible. The only juror not returning is Mrs. Garrideb, who's too busy being in prison. Her spot is now taken by a very fancy lady we later learn to be the wife of the Altamont Gas Company's owner. She may as well be the CEO herself with how she's acting, though. Anyway, Van Zieks addresses the jurors directly.

“However, the innocent verdict afforded to this eccentric Nipponese before... has had dire consequences. Did the accused repent for his wrongdoing in that affair? Far from it. Instead, he used his freedom to perpetrate a most blood-curdling crime!”

Van Zieks makes record time by taking off his cloak immediately after this line. He's gone straight into overdrive. The witnesses summoned this time are Inspector Gregson and... Soseki? It's very irregular for the defendant to be testifying, especially this early in the trial and especially by the prosecution's request. I can't really make much of it. It feels like the only reason Soseki is testifying is for this joke:

Also found when examining the testimony is a remark from Van Zieks that I honestly found shocking in how ferocious and scummy it is.

Unnecessary, that remark. It didn't need to exist at all in my opinion. So after Ryu shatters the testimony and scatters Gregson's fish 'n chips, Van Zieks calmly pours himself a glass of wine. I have to be honest, by now whenever he does this I'm left wondering what he'll do next. Will he crush the chalice? Will he throw it? Will he actually take a sip? The versatility of the action and unpredictable nature of Van Zieks add a bit of suspense. Turns out, his mind wandered during the testimony.

And then he ends up crushing the glass in his hand anyway. Alas, poor chalice. We knew it. So after a bit of debating back and forth about whether Shamspeare drank the supposedly-poisoned-tea after Soseki left the room, Van Zieks suddenly falls silent. We get three different, consecutive frames of him going “......” and when the judge asks what's wrong, he says this:

Supersonic hearing, this one. That is, unless the carriage entered the courthouse and literally pulled up in the hallway outside the room? Haven't we learned our lesson from the last time a carriage was driven into the Old Bailey?! So Shamspeare was apparently subpoenaed by the prosecution and has shown up to testify (with his doctor's permission). Bad news for us, since he's the one accusing Soseki in the first place. There's also a second witness to support Shamspeare's insistence there were no other visitors to the room and therefore only Soseki could have poisoned him. After that testimony is over, Van Zieks gets his wish and all the jurors vote guilty.

Van Zieks really seems to think that Soseki is a terrible person deserving of justice, huh? He was right there during the previous trial, saw Ryu prove without a shadow of a doubt that Soseki was innocent and still insists that justice will be done “this time”. Calm the heck down man, you're the one who sided with us when Mrs. Garrideb needed to testify, remember? And here comes another example of the game pretending the previous trials didn't leave an impact; when the Summation Examination is brought up, it's with disdain and this remark:

Bro, we used the Summation Examination successfully like five times already. Sit your butt down and watch the show. The jurors once again give prejudiced reasons for their decisions:

And unfortunately, instead of changing their minds by proving Soseki is a morally upstanding, innocent citizen, Ryu instead gets through this Summation Examination by basically proving Shamspeare is a worse person than Soseki. That's... not the direction you should be taking here, narrative. After convincing four of the jurors that Shamspeare is a fishy liar, Van Zieks flings another chalice of wine in frustration. The judge still thinks he could technically pass a ruling on the trial, since the new information didn't exactly disprove that Soseki is the culprit, but the jurors have been influenced so thoroughly that they can't let this new info go ignored. Testimony from the Altamont Company is allowed! Van Zieks thinks it's a waste of time, of course, and if this were reality it would be. Since it's an Ace Attorney game, we know Shamspeare's gas thievery is bound to somehow be related to the incident. Van Zieks flings yet another chalice after hearing the testimony (how many has it been already? Five?) and very shortly after, he tosses the entire bottle over his shoulder. Susato points out that he seems to be in a violent mood. I feel like someone must've pissed in his oatmeal that morning, because I've got no real explanation for why his character regressed this badly in the course of what chronologically was only two days.

Van Zieks flings two more chalices as the testimony progresses to prove that Shamspeare made fake coins to fool the gas meter. At the end of it all, he supposedly 'throws his hand up in despair and happened to catch his hallowed bottle along the way', flinging yet another one of those into the gallery. I'm starting to feel very bad for the people seated behind him now. Is the game overdoing these quirky animations to compensate for his regressed attitude? Because I'm not sure it's working... Van Zieks continues to insist that the situation hasn't changed and only Soseki could have poisoned the victim, so he calls for immediate adjucation. The game gives Ryu the option to either object or wait and see, and I have to be honest, this gave me pause. After what happened with the penalties in case 1-4, I was sure Van Zieks might dish out more punishment for waiting and seeing. Turns out, he doesn't. Ryu points out that Shamspeare likely used the tea to make these fake frozen coins of his, meaning there's still tea left at the scene of the crime which can be tested for poison.

Head in my hands right now. Again, I get it, they basically had to reintroduce Van Zieks to newcomers of the game (however few there might've been) so they had to regress him a bit, but I really don't like this. He honestly felt like he'd grown at the end of 1-4 and the game's not only undone it, it feels like they've made him even more of a scumbag. This line and this gesture honestly doesn’t quite correspond with the character established in the previous game. Anyway, court adjourned till the next day so the police can test the tea for poison.

During the investigation segment, we get a conversation that I'd quite honestly forgotten even exists. Turns out, (S)Holmes and Van Zieks are acquainted! ...or are they? (S)Holmes says he 'must pass the time of day with Mr. Reaper again, as it's been too long' and when asked whether they're acquainted, (S)Holmes replies that there isn't a person in the world who doesn't know his name, expertly dodging the question. Naturally, a new conversation topic opens up about it, so we can still attempt to needle more details out of him.

He explains the history of the Reaper's curse a bit more. Previous defendants found not-guilty would 'disappear from the capital' by falling under a passing carriage, drowning in the Thames, succumbing to a sudden fever... Etc. Susato points out that if those rumors are true, then surely the obvious conclusion would be that they were killed by Van Zieks's own hand. (S)Holmes points out that's impossible, since Van Zieks was already investigated on the matter before and for every single incident, he had a solid alibi. (This... doesn't disprove Van Zieks had anything to do with it, but okay (S)Holmes. Sure.) (S)Holmes also rubs it in yet again that Van Zieks retired from the courts five years ago and didn't return until the day Naruhodo arrived. I honestly don't know why they keep bringing that 5 year hiatus up in every single case, because as far as I can recall it was never fully explained or relevant.

I love how “foul smell” is wedged in-between those two topics as if it's also related. Anyway the conversation continues when Ryu brings up that Van Zieks seems to have a particular disdain for Japanese people. Susato demands to know whether (S)Holmes knows a bit more about it and while he's silent at first, he relents and tells us a tale (which will apparently be forgotten by Ryu and Susato in case 1-5). Van Zieks “chose to enter the legal profession ten years ago, but before that time, the man's closest companion hailed from the empire of Japan”. Which is a wording that baffles me, because it implies that Van Zieks chose to enter the legal profession at the same moment that Japanese person betrayed him, which we know is not the case. He was already in training to be a prosecutor before that, otherwise how could he possibly have prosecuted the Professor trial? Ryu is shocked and asks to know more, but (S)Holmes says the veil on the events from the past will be lifted soon enough. I'll get back to the implications of what this means for Van Zieks's backstory when we hit this exact same reveal in case 1-5.

Van Zieks is mentioned very little in the rest of the investigation segments. We only learn that he tasked Gregson with finding new clues, much to Gregson's dismay, as there isn't much to be found. The Inspector does immediately leap at new information when we uncover it, which implies he's eager to either please Van Zieks or avoid being scolded by him. I'm assuming the latter, but it's also possible Gregson feels guilty over the whole Reaper thing and Klint's autopsy, and is now compensating by working his hardest to fulfill Van Zieks's requests.

At the very end of the investigation, when evening falls, (S)Holmes reminds us that “it'll be hard to escape the grip of our friend, Mr. Reaper”. The next day, in the defendant's lobby just before the trial begins, Ryu thinks to himself that he doesn't believe in the legend of the Reaper any more than he believes in the convict's curse Soseki keeps mentioning. What's interesting here is that Ryu isn't dreading the confrontation anymore. After the McGilded trial he seemed genuinely intimidated by the concept of going up against Van Zieks (not because of the racism but because of what happened to his first defendant), but now he's not so hesitant anymore. He's beginning to see that Van Zieks can be defeated, that the Reaper thing is nonsense and that protecting his client is a fight worth fighting.

Into the courtroom we go for day 2 of the trial! When the judge asks about the results of the tea test, Van Zieks is silent for a moment. He pours himself a glass of wine, asking for a moment to “savour a liquid of a more sanguine hue”, then refers to Gregson for the full report. Gregson confirms no poison was found in the tea remains, but the prosecution wouldn't be the prosecution (and the game would be pretty boring) if they didn't have a backup plan. When Ryu proclaims Soseki is innocent, Van Zieks accuses him of jumping to conclusions, “a typical Nipponese reaction”. It's also a typical prosecution reaction to be hypocritical, no surprises here. He throws his chalice (first one of the day) and summons Shamspeare back to the stand to testify about how Soseki's unpoisoned and undrank cup of tea had been used to make the ice coins.

There's some lines here that I thought I might as well include:

“Yet on occasion, tedium distracts me and I pour more times than I intended until the bottle is dry.”

You know, it occurs to me that this drink is pretty much confirmed to be wine. He's very extra when talking about it himself, but he had his silly little wine analogies in the previous case and Susato referred to his glasses as “wine glasses”. And you would think it's obvious that it's wine, but we know Ace Attorney's long history with 'grape juice'. Either way, this dialogue leaves a pretty harsh implication that Van Zieks drinks alcohol simply to distract himself from troublesome moods. Sure, he says “tedium”, but this is a stoic prosecutor in the year 1900. They referred to depression as “melancholia” back then, and since he doesn't appear to have any friends, I expect he experiences “tedium” quite often outside the courtroom. He apparently set a rule for himself not to fill his glass more than seven times during a trial which, in turn, implies he's aware any more would cause problems. All of this is moot, of course, since 80% of the wine he pours for himself ends up on the floor between shards of glass. Still, though... Zieks, are you okay?

I don't think he is, because he pulls a very dirty trick here. Ryu proves Soseki drank all his tea and therefore it couldn't possibly have been used, so Van Zieks insinuates to Shamspeare that perhaps he misremembered using the tea from Soseki's cup and instead used tea still left in the teapot. An excuse Shamspeare happily takes, of course. Not gonna lie, I got angry, not because it's a dirty trick but because it's inconsistent. This is the very same character who all but dragged Mrs. Garrideb down from the juror bench to testify when it became clear she likely threw a knife out the window. And now he's feeding slippery excuses to a man who's very clearly lying about all sorts of things? What??? And remember this incident, because I'm going to be referring back to it later.

He crushes another chalice, removes his cloak and continues to insist that we should believe this thieving liar at the witness stand. The jurors for some reason buy the baloney served to them on a tinfoil platter and even twist Ryu's sentiments around, with some bloke going as far as to interpret the situation as 'the lawyer lad believes anyone who steals gas deserves to be poisoned'. Summation Examination gets very funky this time around, with the outcome being that Shamspeare probably blew the gas pipes (s-snerk) and the poison was laced on the pipe.

Van Zieks pours himself a glass of wine and pretty much immediately flings it, saying these are all empty assertions without a shred of proof. When Ryu presents the picture with the skin prints, Van Zieks once again breaks the rule of the prosecution staying silent during Summation Examination to point out that skin prints cannot be used as evidence, since that method is not recognized by the court (yet). Aaand he crushes yet another chalice in his hand.

Susato claims it was never meant to be used as official evidence, it was only a tool to demonstrate a new possibility to the jury. Jumping through some loopholes here, we are, since the picture is clearly in our Court Record as evidence. But, well, the prosecution cheats too so what's the harm? Some jurors vote not-guilty, but there's still one more that needs convincing on order to keep the trial going. Ryu says he has a witness who's already testified that the pipe-blowing incident did indeed occur that night, as Soseki stated the other day before the court that his stove went out in the dead of night. (Hang on, is this why the narrative made him testify alongside Gregson?) With that the majority of the jury votes not-guilty and the trial has to continue, but Van Zieks is extra rattled now. (Another bottle goes soaring.)

He once again reminds the court that skin prints aren't admissible evidence and therefore, there is no real proof Shamspeare put his mouth to the pipes (ghghhh I'm sorry this is such a silly thing to have to type out). Ryu asks for an investigative team to test the mouth of the gas pipe for poison, but since it would've evaporated by now, that's a no-go. Also, Van Zieks says that “what appears to be simple is my Nipponese friend's mind” and that's a scumbag point. Ryu attempts to turn the trial around by claiming that Shamspeare attempted to kill Soseki, making the defendant the victim, but Van Zieks ain't having it. The aggrieved being the accused is an interesting notion, but doesn't change what actually happened. In fact, if anything, it establishes a motive for Soseki to lay a trap for Shamspeare. Because who else could have known about the gas pipe trickery and put the poison there, right? Why, the true culprit, of course.

Our man Van Zieks really doesn't like (S)Holmes, huh? A tidbit which the games will never bother to explain! Either way, Ryu raises the name of Olive Green, the victim of the previous case. And I gotta say, I do genuinely like the way they integrated these two Clouded Kokoro cases together. The chronology of everything that went down is very fun to decipher, but long story short, Olive Green was at Briar Road the day she was stabbed for a reason and knows more about the 'convict curse' Soseki and Garrideb kept mentioning, so let's drag her into court! Van Zieks agrees to subpoena Miss Green in order to 'see his Nipponese friend's farce through to its conclusion'.

So during intermission some more evidence is handed to Ryu and when trial resumes, Van Zieks continues to be his usual self.

“The prosecution has tried to extend every courtesy to this amateur newcomer from dubious Eastern shores.”

Ryu sweats bullets as he meekly thanks Van Zieks “(for his backhanded consideration)”, but once again the judge is the one to call Van Zieks out on his attitude.

Amazing. It's so refreshing to see a judge who actually disagrees with the prosecution's haughty attitude problems and acknowledges it has no place in a courtroom. Nothing against Udgey, because we all love Udgey (and his Canadian brother), but this man actually grows and learns. So Olive Green takes the stand alongside Shamspeare (maybe not the best idea since Ryu just accused her of trying to murder this man) for dual testimony. When Green brings up what a dreadful ordeal the knife to her back was, Van Zieks says this:

Hang on, empathy? He's giving her advice? This reeks of humanization! Green seems taken aback and thanks him for his words, so the sentiment was genuinely accepted. This in itself is a very nice scene to see in action, similar to Van Zieks allowing Roly Beate to keep his job. Unfortunately, Van Zieks's character is in a wild rollercoaster of moral inconsistency during this particular case which sours the experience somewhat. Case in point:

YOOOU hypocrite! This actively angered me, because at the very start of this same trial day he was personally feeding lies to Shamspeare. Now he's warning Green not to lie? It gets even worse a bit later on when Green gets cornered about stealing the note, she asks him whether it could all be some sort of misunderstanding, and he says:

ACTIVELY FEEDING SHAMSPEARE A LIE. THE VERY SAME DAY. I'm all for prosecutors using dirty tactics. It helps to juxtapose them further to the honest defense attorney we play as. However, it needs to be consistent. Either a prosecutor condones a witness's lies to help their case, or they feel that they're above it. The third, most used option is for them to start off condoning it, only to learn that truth takes priority over victory. This sloppy back-and-forth morality that Van Zieks has going on here is insanely frustrating, so it's no wonder some players end up disliking him. It honestly feels as if they rewrote this case so many times, they screwed up the exact growth trajectory Van Zieks has.

Anyway, it seems Van Zieks is suddenly fully on our side now to help Ryu prove that Green was in Shamspeare's room and laced the gas pipe with poison. And I mean help help. When the judge points out that if Green had laced the pipe the very same day she was stabbed, the attempted murder would have happened six days ago. Van Zieks is the one to say “Perhaps not, My Lord” and explain Briar Road was full of police at that time. At this point, Van Zieks and Ryu (and also Susato) actively start to take turns to explain the proper chronology of events. So the defense and the prosecution are in perfect sync right now, working together to explain the whodunnit. This is the ideal outcome to any trial, usually not seen until the last case of the game, so it's curious that this dynamic abruptly shows itself in a case like this. Van Zieks does still have one moment of gaslighting when he claims Ryu may have inhaled some dubious gas, causing his judgment to be clouded, since there's no motive behind Shamspeare's attempts on his fellow lodgers. A matter that's very easily resolved, of course. Once the name of Selden is brought up, Van Zieks continues our little game of back-and-forth-truth-reveal until (S)Holmes shows his face.

“Your usual haunts are the filthy backstreets of the capital, are they not?”

To which (S)Holmes replies that it's been too long, and Van Zieks's complexion has worsened since last they met. Alright, so Van Zieks and (S)Holmes definitely have met in person before, some undetermined amount of time ago. You'd think that going by (S)Holmes's friendly attitude they might've even been friends once, but our great detective is like that towards everyone. This is evidenced by an earlier encounter with Gregson where (S)Holmes insists they're friends and Gregson says that they're not friends, to which (S)Holmes quietly agrees. So really, this little exchange tells us nothing about the history between the great detective and the Reaper.

Some shenaniganry, a breakdown and admittance to guilt later, the court is finally ready to deem Soseki innocent. Van Zieks once again has some interesting lines here:

“And one I certainly didn't envisage walking... with you.”

Considering he attempted to trip us up for most of this walk up until the very last stretch, I don't like this remark very much. It feels very unearned. This is another one of those things that would've been more suitable in the last case of the game, but instead it's being crammed into a messy mid-game moment with the pretense that Van Zieks learned a lesson about being our ally.

In the defendant's lobby, the game basically gives the exact same dialogue as at the end of the original Clouded Kokoro case; that Soseki is returning to Japan and hopes to pen his own literature there, with the rest of the cast pointing out that the Reaper's Curse must factor into his decision to some degree. So we're still holding onto that question of whether Soseki will escape an untimely death or not. Anyone who's already played the last case of the first game will know the answer, of course.

So to summarize... I genuinely didn't enjoy Van Zieks's portrayal in this case. It really feels as if something went horribly wrong and they got some notes mixed up about where his character was already headed in the previous game. It's a crying shame. There was a lot of potential for a case set between 1-4 and 1-5, but they really dropped the ball when it comes to consistency and I've no doubt that it reflected badly on people's opinions of him. Though I think when we return to the first game for The Unspeakable Story, everything will right itself out again to some degree. Stay tuned!

#dgs #dgs spoilers #tgaa #tgaa spoilers #barok van zieks #MAN I got frustrated with this one #what happened here???

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