#it's also become more weird because anti's are one thing. and their ideals sort of get mixed up in puritanical beliefs??
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larothoughts · 5 months ago
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anti-ship adjacent ships: liujiu and qijiu
so there's this weird thing that's happening in svsss of all fandoms that reminds me a lot of voltron's klance and sheith fiasco AKA the formation of what i like to call anti-ship adjacent ships
basically, when someone's favorite ship is more indicative of them being an anti-shipper of another ship.
i've had to start excluding liujiu in my ao3 searches because more often than not, the fics that come up are yqy-bashing and what?? this is svsss, right? mxtx's trashiest, most problematic, harem-bicycle-shen-yuan svsss? what is this moral outrage doing in my degenerate danmei fic space, and why are you mischaracterizing yqy just to make an excuse to hate on him??
i've had a few thoughts on the rising dichotomy of shen jiu sympathizers both validating sj's bad behavior and hating yqy for enabling the same behavior. and then shipping him with lqg because liujiu is 'less toxic.' As an old lady fanfic reader who's trawled through all the godforsaken dead dove ships of the old livejournal kink_meme, i'm writing these out because making sense of things helps me cope and i am too old for this shit
(this is actually more 'why anti-qijiu' word vomit than liujiu specific--it just so happens that so many liujiu fics are bizarrely anti-qijiu.)
narrative reasons for anti-yqy liujiu fic:
aka why an author finds it easier for the plot to bash qi-ge
accepting either romantic or platonic qijiu means trying to fix qijiu. this is hard. yqy and sj already have a proven history of failure, while sj and lqg (aka author's ideal white-knight love interest) would be the perfect do-over. making yqy a clear abusive villain sj must cut off ties with 'for his mental health' solves the problem without having to fix things. it frees the author to write what they thought qi-ge should have done to 'save shen jiu right.'
on the same note, liujiu have nearly no canon crumbs. the author can write them however they want without being constrained by their canon relationship.
why lqg over other possible ships? other than yqy, lqg is one of the few characters with any sort of previous relationship with sj. lqg is canonically hot, has strong (even if negative) feelings towards sj, and has no textual or subtextual canon ship (beyond a one-sided crush on shen yuan, with lbh getting in his way lol.) he is also the same generation as sj and thus avoids any age gap squicks like with sj's other ship partners (looking at you tlj)
yqy is the only person in cang qiong with higher authority than shen jiu. while other peak lords are antagonistic, all are ranked lower and can't get in liujiu's way the same way as yqy can as a sect leader. not even the old palace master has the same power because he's the head of a different sect. so if you really want to write a villain abusing their (implicit) power over shen jiu, yqy is the only one that fits the bill.
lbh, as sj's disciple, does not fit the same abuse of power trope even if he becomes an op demon lord. as for bingjiu, lbh's brand of diabolical stalkerish yandere is so over-the-top it's hard to equate him to any real relationship. it's easier to twist yqy's passivity to villainy because it's closer to reasonable human behavior.
if one is coming from the tgcf fandom, yue qingyuan is the closest junwu-adjacent character in terms of personality and rank (on the surface.) so it's easy to transfer any junwu hate to yqy by giving him all of junwu's worst traits and making him 'junwu-lite'
same thing as above but with mdzs and the lan xichen hate for his inaction regarding his own little meowmeow (jgy).
personal author-reasons for anti-yqy liujiu fic:
aka when the character himself doesn't matter
let's get a silly one out of the way: maybe the author only headcanons top shen jiu and most qijiu has sj being a bottom. lqg gives off better hot twinky bottom energy than submissive-but-still-tops yqy. this does not explain the anti-shipping though.
less silly: an author is projecting either themselves or other people in their real life onto their fic, and changing the character's personalities to match their real life projected counterparts (even if ooc). sj is a clear abuse-survivor insert, which shoe-horns other characters into roles that real people in the author's lives have. i think yqy is often seen as the insert for someone who 'could have helped but didn't.' there are many valid reasons why someone would be more mad at the person who averted their gaze rather than their actual abuser, but that doesn't change the fact that qijiu's relationship in canon is so much more complicated.
(it's easier to hate enablers instead of abusers, because hating abusers and inviting confrontation is dangerous. most of the time, enablers won't hurt you directly. they are the safer person to hate.)
an author thinks they could have saved sj better, that qi-ge had more than enough time to fix things and his failure not to do so must be punished by taking away his sj-simp-card and throwing him into the villain bin. this is similar to the phenomenon where an author hates the wife of canon anime couples b/c the author could clearly wife him better. and then writes a fic bashing said wife.
an author sees a messy relationship and equates messy with abusive. in reality many relationships can be messy but not abusive, messy but still fixable, but due to their personal experiences they see any attempt to do so as toxic. in this scenario yqy is often the abuser-insert and his ooc characterization takes after the author's own abuser.
specifically in fics where lqg has the personality of a cardboard cut-out: using liujiu to tell others they are still pro-ship, when in reality they dislike qijiu for their own reasons (and can't help but write it in their fic). it really reminds me of middle school lol like kids trying to find their identity by hating another identity. the whole 'ew pink is overrated, i hate preps which means i must be a nerdy rebel' and then two years later you realize you're not a nerdy rebel after all, you just based your entire identity on what you thought was the opposite of what you hated.
why i try not to read anti-qijiu liujiu fics:
aka write whatever you want, but sometimes i have to choose not to read
authors can write whatever they want. we're all doing this for free, so it's expected that a lot of fanfic have venting and some self-imposing onto a fictional character. i don't expect authors to NOT put themselves in their fic in some way. at the same time, however, i hope authors are self-aware enough to not bash another character just because that character reminds them of someone irl.
aka i get uncomfortable when i read a fic that has an author's obvious real-person insert. i'm not reading svsss fic anymore, i'm reading the author's version of punishing their abuser using fiction. i love transformative media that adds onto the canon! i love different interpretations even! but i'm here to read svsss? where are the svsss characters??
i'm not into character-bashing in general. i think the point of svsss and all of bingqiu's misunderstandings is the fact that good/evil is not a binary. sy spent the whole series fearing the 'evil' binghe despite the fact that post-abyss binghe was a complex person, causing a chain reaction of disaster. hell, shen jiu is the king of gray characters! he is a scum villain, evil and misunderstood, to be a sj-fan means to understand that no one is entirely good or evil. so it's even more cognitively dissonant when a pro-sj fic is so categorically anti-qijiu, as this often paints sj as good/misunderstood and yqy as bad.
(the only character-bashing i don't care about is the old palace master mxtx clearly wrote him to be bashed so throw him in a fire)
i don't mind liujiu actually, i think the dynamic has potential (see all the sj harem fic i've read lol) but qi-ge is such a big part of sj's character that vilifying/getting rid of him does sj a disservice too? sj has a shit ton of bad coping mechanisms, these aren't going to be magically fixed if yqy gets his limbs chopped off as 'just punishment' (??) for not stopping sj from abusing his own students (????)
in conclusion
there is no point to this rambling, and you don't need to agree with me on anything. these are just thoughts i had when trying to figure out why anti-ship adjacent ships even exist. the moral outrage is giving me war flashbacks of anti-sheith klance fans using their age gap as justification for their own ship, rather than liking klance for... being klance.
(I briefly considered going over all liujiu vs qijiu morality arguments, but if you're an sj fan i feel like morality arguments are pointless. he is an angry feral scum kitten who hits kids, no sj-fan has the moral high ground here.)
it's always unfortunate to see so much anti-shipping spilling into fandom, since by default most of us are living in the fringe minority anyway. further dividing us is just going to sink the whole ocean ala the death of livejournal and chinese ban on ao3. there's no point in ships if there ain't an ocean to sail in! aren't we all here because we are fans of these stories???
bonus
to make up for what must feel like a huge anti liujiu wall of text, here are some of my general thoughts on how their relationship would work. i'm more familiar with sj so most of these are from his pov.
while sj often has schemes upon schemes upon schemes, when it comes to anger/criticism/negativity, he's scathingly honest. lqg, a fellow honest asshole, is often on the same wavelength. once misunderstandings are cleared up and lqg realizes sj will do whatever it takes to protect big bro yqy (and thus the sect), they're able to work together as a ruthless team against cang qiong's enemies.
let's also assume fixing sj's emotional issues stops him from the worst of his scumminess aka whipping his disciples half to death.
teamwork -> enemies to lovers -> only one bed trope???
sj needs someone who will overtly believe in his goodness, and lqg, once he realizes the mistakes in his assumptions, is a loyal wall of support. unlike qi-ge who must always play diplomat, lqg blazes over all social cues. who cares if this looks bad on cang qiong, he'll throw down with anyone if his boo is insulted.
lqg is upfront and honest. there are no hidden plots for sj to be paranoid about in lqg, he's a Good Man through-and-through. if lqg has problems, he'll tell him. if he needs to apologize and sj tells him why, he'll do so. and if sj asks him a question, he'll always do his best to answer.
while lqg knows sj has trauma and a dark past, he will never truly understand what it was like. and that's exactly what sj wants. he likes how lqg knows him more as he is now in the present vs. someone who has lived through the same past. being with him is a reminder that he is now a powerful peak lord, not the starving street rat he once was.
for lqg, sj is like a complex puzzle box. an enigma so outside of his understanding of how the world works, he can't help but be drawn to it. he used to equate scheming with evil, but once he realizes much of sj's scheming was for the good of the sect, he lets himself be impressed by sj's intelligence. the fact that sj became a peak lord from nothing shows a certain type of strength-- and lqg has always appreciated strength.
a big roadblock in their relationship was sj's antagonism towards yqy (their sect leader whom lqg respects.) once qijiu reconcile (or sj stops being so disrespectful to yqy in public) lqg is better able to see him as an ally vs. an enemy.
sj rewards this loyalty by taking care of lqg's hidden enemies, because straightforward brutes are especially susceptible to devious snakes like that. sj would know. whether or not he tells lqg can go either way. he tells lqg if only to stop lqg from hearing it elsewhere and assuming the worst; or he doesn't tell lqg because he knows lqg trusts him and confusing his mind with schemes would just make him grumpy for not understanding.
...even if he's cute when he's grumpy.
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watatsumiis · 1 year ago
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hey! ty for liking my tsaritsa so much!!! i'd love to hear more of your thoughts on her, if there are any!
omg of course, she's absolutely stunning, your art style does her so much justice (and honestly is just an awesome gorgeous style in general!!) and tbh your design is how I picture her in my head now !!
I have a lot of thoughts and ideas about the Tsaritsa, a lot of them are just kind of ~vibe~ based and hard to convey, but i'll toss them beneath the cut!
I really like the theory that her 'ideal' is love, like it's such a fun and interesting concept
like, to begin with i imagine she was a very kind deity, not in a familiar way, but in a general sort of .. benevolent to her subjects and open to those that sought an audience with her. Not exactly 'warm', but not entirely shutting them out either
though i imagine that sort of hollowed out as time wore on and she realised that even being an actual deity didn't give her the power she needed to be able to make any real tangible changes to things or help those who were doomed from the start (which is probably a big part of why shes so anti-celestia or whatever)
despite her despair and attitude towards romantic love sort of withering, she places a heavy emphasis on familial love (including found family) and on forming bonds that will stand the test of toil and time
she comes off very aloof, especially to those beneath her, and will actively try to avoid being around others if she can help it. She dislikes forming close attachments
this isnt to mean that she doesn't care. she just cares so much that the only way she can deal with it is by distancing herself, or else she's just setting herself up for repeated heartbreak when her loved ones inevitably die.
the exception to this ? pierro.
pierro is cursed with undeath, and even before that he was someone with a fiercely loyal (and stubborn) streak.
they both told themselves theyd never allow themselves to become attached to someone else after all the losses theyd been through, but in making this pact alongside one another they basically sealed their own fate
there are no simple words for the kind of intertwined, codependent, epic-spanning love-hate they have for one another.
their bond was one forged in the fires of loss and hardened by the ice of grief. despite what they both may say, they're in it for the long haul. Tsaritsa has slowly become accustomed to this idea. Pierro has not and will still vehemently deny it.
i guess to really shave it down id call it a queerplatonic relationship. something unholy and gorgeous. two flowers holding onto a cliffside by the tips of their roots and growing around one another.
the second 'exception' is columbina. i imagine she's like a weird nibling to the tsaritsa. she was picked to be amongst the harbingers because of her ability to light up any room she's in (i imagine tsaritsa secretly has a nickname for her that's somewhere along the lines of 'songbird' because of her voice ngl)
outside of this, the tsaritsa is cool and aloof and works very hard to maintain her composure, especially when under scrutiny. she is brilliant at keeping this facade in place.
until she's no longer in the public gaze, that is.
i like to think she's a tiny bit of a goofball, she has a soft spot for 'dad jokes' that make pierro roll his eyes and rub his temples, and she quite enjoys wine (im sorry but if she were a facebook mom her page would be minion memes and posts talking about how its wine o-clock)
she also rather enjoys slapstick humour - there are a few dottore clones running around who have perfected it enough so that she has to cover her mouth with a hand to stop her subjects from seeing the way her lips twitch upwards as she holds back her laughter
she's also really, really petty. not that she'd ever do anything about it, but more than once pierro has found himself in her chambers late at night, watching as she paces back and forth, her sixth glass of wine in hand, and complains about how that 'brick-brained geo archon just won't sign the damn contract! isn't that his entire shtick?!'
she also has a soft spot for kids, or people who have a youthful energy about them. it reminds her that maybe not all is bad in the world, and that she's going to change it for the better for their sake.
I like to think she's extremely good at various sports - i love the idea featured on the asker's blog about her having an elk instead of a horse. that's so cool and lives in my brain rent free and forever tbh. her and pierro on their steeds racing through a snowy forest on a rare free afternoon
i think she would've once been the type to enjoy prosey, flowery words, long poems, romantic tales of star-crossed lovers, that kind of thing. she read a lot and even wrote some. not any more though.
she has a very stern and strict air about her and won't hesitate to play into that if she feels like she needs to, but honestly she's got a good sense of humour on her. things that pierro scolds the other harbingers and such for are often things that she secretly finds really funny
though ALSO she's a stickler for good manners. i like to think that has extended to the snezhnayans , who are, when dealing with those outside of their immediate familial circles, are super duper polite (even if their tones may come off as abrupt). there's also a very heavily laid-on vibe of 'respect your elders' in snezhnaya.
she has such motherly vibes, but in a really standoffish way. she wont tell someone directly that she cares about them or what happens to them, but it'll be rerouted through like three other people like a game of telephone. like, yeah, that one person she caught shivering while on guard is gonna get a nice new pair of gloves but it will be from an anonymous donor (or just shoved into their hands by pierro with an annoyed grunt)
honestly now ive started im kind of finding it hard to stop but i just adore the tsaritsa so much and i love love love how you draw her so much, she's just so amazing and feels so like.. real, y'know? thank you so much for this ask, i really enjoyed rambling and thinking about the tsaritsa some more. i think your design and ideas should be canon actually
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kirua9 · 1 year ago
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My silly hcs on phantom blood au 😮‍💨
Phantom Blood seems to fit in my top 3 fav parts since it has young Dio haha. That's the reason I'm so inspired to create smth in that timeline...
♡ So the relationships between Dio and Jonathan are kinda obvious in canon, but I'd like to see more of their interactions at the younger age when Dio's personality hasn't fully formed yet, so he'd probably be able to hesitate about his *evil* actions towards Jojo. Yeah, in canon he's been treating Jonathan badly from the very beginning, hasn't even hiding it, but according to his immaturity he could feel conflicted sometimes? Maybe thoughts like : "and what if I just leave this plan of destroying Joestars' lives and try to adapt to this new "better" family which surely gives me opportunities to reach high places or gain authority in the future???" Although then I'm missing Dio's maximalism.
If only who could have some thoughts of embracing new reality and Jojo as the brother? Jojo is the best option to u know.. comfort ppl? Literally, there are all conditions to make a gentle human being out of Dio, huh.
Also I just want to write more double-meaning situations between these two. When from Dio's side it's not obvious wether he's a pure evil creature (from his early teens) or he's just so traumatized that he acts violent unintentionally and is silent about seeking some help (because of pride or fear or stuff) from the outer world (aka Joestars family). And Jonathan who doesn't want to believe that Dio sincerely hates him but can't justify his actions and also hesitant to explicitly explain his step bro's behavior. The "dumbness" of Jorge Joestar is kinda fitting, since the trope of parent who devalue one of his children's words towards other child's wild actions is perfect. Haha.
So it works like a psychological horror because everything is unclear and weird
♡ The figure like a true-ally for Dio. We've seen Pucci as this type of faithful follower, in Diego's case it was Hot Pants, although she's more independent, but still. And Part 1 Dio had some... weird minions lol. So another Italian catholic person would fit in perfectly, tho it's better to make a reasonable circumstance why these two will work well together. At first I thought about Hot Pants alter-ego, still the reason behind this thing is meh. Love? Certainly big no, it's meaningless for both of them. A common aim? Well Dio's was to become the richest man in the entire world, destroy the Joestars, then denial of his own humanity. And hers, who's a religious person? What would that possibly be what also crosses Dio's interests? Idk. Maybe another pov on religion or Christianity itself and fanatism of Dio? Supporting him at this rate? Boring. I'll fuck this shit up immediately.
♡ Demons. Yes we have vampires there, yes some magic things like stands, hamon, saint corpse, those freaking arrows, the mask... Demons isn't something which isn't suitable 🤧.
So Dio's ancestors were dealing with demons, kings of Hell. And maybe Dario owes something to a greedy demon even after his death, so the debt goes to the son. I want to use the image of King Paimon (because I love Hereditary lol). And Dio learns some weird stuff from this demon before becoming a vampire, so this creature becomes his new ideal, since he didn't have any role models. Tho, Dario aka anti-role model. And here's this demonic great king of Hell huh. So they'll have some sort of contract, after their interactions Dio has ambitions of becoming as great as this demon. And also reject the humanity because of demon's influence. Also King Paimon will tell him about his own origins aka Heaven and this funny story how Lucifer and Paimon and other rebellions were banished from there. And THIS will be the motivation for Dio to think about reaching heaven himself, since you need to have almost a God power to reach it, although even the strongest creatures like Lucifer and Paimon (aka former high class angels) couldn't fight for it for a long time huh and were defeated by God's army.
♡ About King Paimon. Originally I wanted him to be a spiritual demon who chooses the body to reincarnate in Hot Pant's alter ego in Phantom Blood universe. And in this case it'll be her ancestors who were dealing with demons to become rich etc etc, so the girl tried to wash away her sins by praying to God, BUT it didn't help huh🧐. So King Paimon found her and made her his vessel. However he didn't like the body as it was female and the demon prefers to be in male one (stolen from Hereditary I don't even hide it.) So HP would be partially (?) possessed and somehow Paimon choose Dio as his male vessel — tho I didn't make up why Dio and how. If Paimon sees "evil origins" of Dio's soul it's too naive, huh. And then, since Paimon chose Dio's male body he'd like to stay with HE'S female head since he likes her feminine face. It's from description of Paimon – "he's a man woth effeminate face". That's funny and cooperates woth canon story where Dio's body was destroyed by Jonathan, so there was only his head. As the result, it turns out that Paimon is kinda faceless, because he prefers human's appearance.
But idk why I felt conflicted about it. So I manged to make him a proper look as a demon, his true appearance. Guess he'll be a tall young-looking man with greyish skintone, but he'd look more like middle eastern person and would wear some south eastern clothes. The main colours are black and golden, his eyes would be completely white and shining in his demon form – in human they'd be jet black to make his gaze soulless. Also dark lips and eerie smile. Most of the time he'd be calm. I'd like to imagine him and his dromedary are wearing crowns. Armenian ones are just perfect! Paimon would have dark long hair which are covered with his headdress. I don't want to show his hair much, it's like I want to define his face with headdressing and loose scarf around his neck. Also he'd wear a lot of golden eastern jewelry, the ones which look like coins on chains arounf the forehead. Also earrings and rings.
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mwolf0epsilon · 2 years ago
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Whumptober Day 8: Everything Hurts and I'm Dying
Prompt: Back From the Dead
Summary: On Abafar there were old macabre tales. Ones depicting the bereaved getting desperate enough to walk out into the Void with a coffin in tow. Upon returning from those cruel desert wastes they would be accompanied by lost loved ones, now returned to them living and breathing once more... But something would always be wrong...
[In which Gregor experiences ableism and isolation and it's as lonely as it sounds.]
THIS STORY IS ALSO ON AO3
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On the day that the medics prescribed him his medication, Gregor had been besides himself with excitement over finally having something to help slightly control his unpredictable mood swings.
Getting the right tools to sort out a problem was always a great feeling. Be it being handed a small bottle of anti-depressants, or a pint of anti-grease dish detergent that actually got the plates clean of all the horrid gunk.
Nothing could quite compare with progressing a task. The influx of serotonin was pure bliss. It made his tired bones almost seem like they ached less.
So of course he was happy that he had a way of sorting his fits. Mostly because while the giggling was manageable there was no denying it caused him a little bit of frustration (and embarrassment) when he got caught off guard. It also got people staring which made him a little uneasy.
That said, the news that he was on meds to help with the side effects of his TBI didn't seem to bring as much joy to others as it did him...
It was funny really (in a tragic sort of way) that he could find similarities between the so called natborns and other clones. Where both kinds of people only seemed to focus on the obvious differences, Gregor could very easily tell where they met on the same terms. And it wasn't the good sort of commonalities.
Natborns and clones alike seemed to have the same kinds of taboos against mental illness and mental disabilities. Mostly that they were frightened by them due to lack of understanding and lack of education on the matter. To the point where any sort of reminder of their existence made them act a little weird.
Misinformation was a terrible thing. Finding common ground on misinformation was even worse. Especially when you were at the top of the food-chain so to speak...
The medics, bless their souls, were at least trying. They were only ever trained to treat physical ailments and not ones relating to the intricacies of the mind. But they were out there actively learning about TBIs and psychological disorders so that they could help their fellow clones. Because Gregor wasn't alone (there were others like him and others in even more difficult positions).
The commandos on the other hand... Yikes...
Gregor held no ill will towards any of the 212th commandos. He knew they were still adjusting to his (the shadow of a clone '39 had become) unexpected return. Still he couldn't deny that their behavior towards him wasn't... Ideal.
They spoke in hushed tones whenever they thought he couldn't hear. Tried to avoid being around him outside of any assignments they were forced to partake with him. Looked incredibly uncomfortable when he broke out into a sudden grin, or began to fret over things they couldn't understand.
Afraid that somehow he might be contagious.
He was the double terror. Damaged goods and civilian talk. The most un-clone-like clone in all of the GAR.
Another commonality between natborns and clones was their fear of what they couldn't understand. The commandos, as specialized and elite as they were, had never been trained to deal with anything that wasn't fixable with a bit of surgery and a slap of a bacta patch. Therefore he was as alien to them as the most alien-looking and sounding of species.
On Abafar there were old macabre tales. Ones depicting the bereaved getting desperate enough to walk out into the Void with a coffin in tow. Upon returning from those cruel desert wastes they would be accompanied by lost loved ones, now returned to them living and breathing once more... But something would always be wrong...
Back then (when he wasn't aware of his true origins), Gregor hadn't really paid that much mind. He wasn't a fan of horror stories. Preferred the really sappy stuff or a good action holo. Maybe a combination of both sometimes.
But now he couldn't help think about those tales...
Someone you loved coming back from the dead acting wrong. He supposes that to these unquestioningly frightened men that that was what he was.
The commando who returned from the dead acting wrong.
'39 had died in the sandy hellscapes of Abafar, his men equally consumed by the Void. And then the corpse of the captain had risen and become someone that would never belong in the GAR. Never belong with his kin. At least not in the way that their memories of a dead man told them he should.
He wore the face but he carried not the personality of their brother.
As he takes his meds and considers his reflection in the mirror of the all too empty 'fresher, Gregor muses that his little horror story has a rather vague tragic ending. One born of misconceptions and Kaminoan propaganda.
For all the galaxy cares he'll end up alone one day, and not by his own fault. It's how these sorts of stories usually end.
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hamliet · 4 years ago
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What Does It Mean to Save?
I keep seeing it said that Deku, Ochaco, and Shouto will “save” Shigaraki, Himiko, and Dabi, but that there will be no redemption and/or no survival for them. I’m truly not trying to vague these posts and everyone is entitled to their opinion, but literary criticism is fundamentally responsive so I’m writing this anyways.
I personally think that’s not BNHA’s definition of saving nor of redemption. So here, have a deep dive into literary tropes related to redemption, genre, and character arcs as they pertain to BNHA and the question of: what does it mean to save Shigaraki, Touya, and Himiko?
Before we begin, let me say that while we might be personally uncomfortable with redemption (there’s a redemption arc in BNHA I am personally quite uncomfortable with), that doesn’t inherently mean the narrative won’t go there. The key principle I’m operating on here is BNHA’s message that heroes save people. It’s held up as the highest ideal. 
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So let’s talk redemption in BNHA-verse. With this guy, whose redemption arc I dislike in principle but accept as part of the story so don’t come for me stans and/or antis. I’m analyzing because it shows us what redemption means in BNHA-verse, whether or not that is satisfying to you personally as it fits/does not fit with your own morality/philosophy.
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If Endeavor can be redeemed and live, and he’s Bakugou’s negative foil, I highly doubt Shigaraki and Deku as well as Touya and Shouto and Ochaco and Himiko will be any different. Why? Because Enji is an adult character. The others--well, Himiko’s age we don’t know, but we do know that Shigaraki and Dabi are technically adults. But does the story consider them adults?
(It doesn’t.)
Child-coded characters are generally more likely to survive a redemption, which I’ll explain more later. First I have to define what I mean by child-coding, because I DO NOT mean this in the way it’s often (mis)used in fandom wank. Child-coding is a real thing, but it is not done to infantilize and it has nothing to do with shipping.
Child coding frames the character as a child for a few narrative purposes to convey a story’s theme or purpose. For example, if it’s a coming of age story coding a character as a child even if they legally are not emphasizes their journey to an understanding of self-actualization, or a true understanding of self with self-awareness and an understanding of self-value. An example of an adult coded as a child is The Kite Runner, wherein Amir is a legal adult for half the story, even married for fifteen years so we’re talking 30s-40s, but he does not truly become an adult until he returns to his homeland and takes responsibility for a childhood sin. In Attack on Titan, the main characters are now nineteen, but are still struggling to take responsibility as adults and have only started doing so now that their mentors/parental figures have started dying.
Along those lines, in any kind of story, you can code a character as a child of someone, regardless of biological relationship, to convey the type of relationship they have (usually a mentor one). For an example of this, see Bungo Stray Dogs’ Dazai and Akutagawa. Despite their two year age difference, Dazai recruited him to the mafia, abandoned him, and Akutagawa desperately seeks his approval. Usually in these stories a character will “overcome” their parental figure. This can be done through overcoming their need for the parental figure’s approval in stories where the parental figure is kindly (such as in Harry Potter, when in the final book Harry, Ron, and Hermione leave the Weasleys to find the Horcruxes despite Mrs. Weasley’s please) or through like, killing/stopping/leaving the parental figure when they are abusive (see fairy tales like Rapunzel and Cinderella). The parental link to self-actualization is because it is childlike (and a part of actual psychology that is reflected in literature) to see yourself as a part of your parent; self-actualized person would see yourself as a distinct person from your parent, but also acknowledge the ways in which they’ve shaped you.
So, how do you code a character as a child? BNHA isn’t subtle about it, because Horikoshi seldom is subtle about anything. The villain trio are all coded as children.
Shigaraki Tomura:
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Who cannot achieve self-actualization so long as AFO has access to his body, as he’s literally trying to possess him. He’s trying, but it’s not gonna work because Shigaraki can’t keep AFO and become an adult at the same time. It’s a choice the narrative is setting up: your dream of destroying, or your freedom? (To get the latter, he’ll probably have to destroy AFO).
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Todoroki Touya, who is repeatedly emphasized as a small child when compared to his siblings, and yes, I know he’s now tall. Specifically he’s spotlighted as the child of Endeavor:
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And he’s the least self-actualized one in a lot of ways, contradicting himself constantly. I’m not Endeavor, DUH! But these are Endeavor’s flames! He’s gonna have to choose one or the other, because the tragic irony is that the more he takes out his rage on those around him, the more like Endeavor he becomes.
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And Toga Himiko (who might well literally be a legal child), who is actually the most self-actualized one thus far, because she rejects Curious’s child insistence (Curious holds her in a Pieta pose, based on Michelangelo’s statue wherein Mary holds a deceased Christ):
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She’s still got, like, a way to go though:
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Because Himiko also wants to be like the people she loves to the point where she loses her own identity in them, which is er, not self-actualization. So she’ll have to choose whether or not she really wants to be like the people she loves or whether she wants to live her own way, which she herself tells us how that would end (death):
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Deku said it himself: it’s good to focus on what someone is doing now. And look, I have issues with this statement and how it’s framed. I’ve talked about it at length and it was doomed to fail because Shouto himself told us long ago that it was annoying to hear a righteous speech by a stranger when you hadn’t gone through the same, plus Endeavor kinda failed by choosing being a hero over a dad here. But, the principle is that if the past doesn’t preclude Endeavor from seeking a better self, why would it preclude three characters coded as children, one of whom is literally somewhat the product of Endeavor’s sins? BNHA doesn’t think the past keeps someone from a better future. 
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So what about Dabi’s counterpoint, which is indeed valid? Well, redemption doesn’t mean the past forgets, either. It’s complicated and nuanced, and we can debate how well Horikoshi strikes this nuance (it’s got its flaws), and admittedly I don’t know how this will go down in the future. But it is asking Endeavor: how do you redeem yourself to the people you’ve hurt? And we have Endeavor asking this question to Touya’s shrine. I mean, the foreshadowing is obvious. Endeavor has to redeem himself by trying to save Touya. However, it will still probably come down to Shouto to save Touya.
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For our three villains, it’s a little harder to predict... well, sort of. For Shigaraki it’s extremely obvious: he has to help take down AFO. Dabi probably has to do something to help his family (siblings probably), but it’s vague. Toga needs help and not condemnation, but presumably she’ll help Ochaco with something.
So, is this redemption? I’d define it as redemption in the eyes of the narrative. To address what makes a redemption is another essay unto itself, but if we bring in the oft-compared Star Wars example: did Darth Vader get a redemption? Did Ben Solo? Everyone says yes to both. However, only Luke witnesses Vader’s redemption, and only Rey Ben Solo’s. So the rest of the galaxy? Doesn’t think so. When I say they’ll be redeemed, I’m defining it as their role in the eyes of the narrative, not whether or not society will accept them or even whether their victims will forgive them (of note, in canonical novels, Leia never forgave Darth Vader despite learning he was her father and obviously knowing Luke’s account of his redemption was true).
So, redemption in a narrative doesn’t mean all of society has to forgive and accept them. Dabi has still like, murdered 30 people--many of whom were thugs, but he himself acknowledges they didn’t deserve to die. Additionally, he himself also acknowledges that the families left behind--their feelings matter:
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But why does that mean they have to die? Why even does it mean they have to languish in prison forever? (If there’s even a safe prison at the end of BNHA which I kinda have doubts about.) Heroes have also killed: see Hawks as Exhibit A. In fact, some people want revenge on the heroes precisely because they arrested or killed their loved ones (jail isn’t held up as a rehabilitative place in BNHA’s world. In most countries it isn’t in real life, either, but again that’s for another essay). So why don’t the League’s feelings on Twice’s death matter just as much as the feelings of unnamed and unseen (and thereby less important narratively) characters?
Additionally, regarding death... the villains routinely get called on their death wishes. Himiko’s determination to decide how/when she dies is called out because this is right  before Twice overcomes his trauma to save her, and the next arc they appear in is when Twice dies trying to save her again. Dabi’s suicide wish keeps him from getting close to others, and it keeps getting thwarted. Shigaraki’s obsession with destruction and death is clearly not a good thing, and his rejection of his family’s desire for them to join him in death this past arc is growth.
In other words: what Dabi said and what Snatch said about families and how they feel matter for the villains too. The villains are their own weird found family (Dabi as the deadbeat prodigal brother of both his families). Their deaths--Magne’s and Twice’s thus far, and I’m not ruling out further deaths in the future--affect the others. People’s feelings on losing loved ones matter. The villains are people, as Himiko said herself this arc:
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Their feelings about each other matter:
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How would Touya dying affect the Todorokis? At least they saved him spiritually, I guess, but that’s absolutely lame narratively, and if you have Enji eventually do a sacrifice to save Dabi (pretty likely, even if I personally think Enji will survive said sacrifice) then what’s the point of Dabi dying? How would Himiko dying affect society? As a martyr like Curious wanted her to be, even a redeemed one? A tragic warning story? What even is the point of Ochaco saving her if that’s the case? If Shigaraki dies, well, who would mourn besides Deku? How would Shigaraki dying affect the surviving members of the league? He just couldn’t be saved physically? 
It’s not impossible some of this happens, but it doesn’t seem like great writing, especially with panels like, oh, these that show us BNHA’s perspective on death:
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Sacrificing something is a type of death that occurs in stories; this should happen in a redemption arc, which is why I’ve been saying Enji needs to sacrifice his hero reputation to help save Touya and even then it’ll still be Shouto imo who does the saving. But physical death?
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If you want further analysis of the latter two panels and how they relate to the ending, see here.
We already have another villain who will definitely die redemptively (Kurogiri--an adult coded character--because he’s already, like, dead), and Spinner and Mr. Compress aren’t coded as kids so I hold them with anxiety towards the end. But again, this isn’t me being ageist or saying this is the way things ought to be in fiction or real life: it’s me looking at writing tropes and saying that child-coded characters tend to survive their redemptions. See: Zuko. Why? Because the death of children or child-coded characters is a tragedy. When a child-coded character dies redemptively it doesn’t feel like a happy ending and if framed as such, it’s often criticized for bad writing (see: Ben Solo). Curious even called this out in her fight with Himiko. I would hope Horikoshi doesn’t end the story being like yeah Curious was right that’s the best use of Himiko’s/Dabi’s/Shigaraki’s arcs:
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Additionally, as for the believability of a character getting a new chance after so much destruction and murder... well, it’s kinda a thing in shonen and even in seinen? For better or for worse, it’s a thing. We have Vegeta in Dragon Ball Z and Kaneki Ken in Tokyo Ghoul (Kaneki, by the way, is absolutely an inspiration for Shigaraki). We can debate how well-written these redemptions are (I personally have been quite critical of Kaneki’s despite wanting it to happen narratively), but it can be done. BNHA’s Japan especially isn’t as harsh a world as Tokyo Ghoul’s Japan, so it would make even more sense for something like Kaneki’s ending.
The reality is that the cycle of revenge via hurting people and then leaving hurting families and loved ones has to stop somewhere. Someone has to be the bigger person and step up and be like “naw.” That’s heroic. That’s brave. That’s sacrificial itself. Justice itself doesn’t really exist in its purest form without mercy.
There’s another genre-reason I don’t see death or jail as likely (I could see, like, maybe a mental health ward like Rei’s? But it’s too soon to speculate).
If saving is considered a good thing for the story, if it’s truly the highest ideal, then saving someone should be rewarded by the narrative. The characters who save should have a positive result to show us this a good thing.
This is why it doesn’t work for the heroes’ end journey to be accepting that some people cannot be saved. The notion of just accepting that you cannot do something, you cannot save everyone, you cannot, cannot, cannot, is called out as a flaw of society. Determination, on the other hand, is rewarded.
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We see it with Deku as well as with Mirio.
So, what if they save them and the redeemed characters then go on to sacrifice themselves in their redemption and die (come to the same end)? If saving changes absolutely nothing for the saved person, if it’s too late for the saved from themselves to change and/or do anything that matters besides die, then the narrative theme of saving as important is left unemphasized at best and undermined at worst. Simple intrinsic knowledge that the kids “did the right thing” doesn’t cut it for a story with so much focus on physical saving when the kids are already doing the right thing; moral struggles about whether to choose to be good aren’t really Deku, Ochaco, or Shouto’s arcs. It works for Aizawa’s arc with Kurogiri, but not for the kiddos. If BNHA was more of a philosophical/spiritual text, that would indeed make sense, but it is not. Genre-wise, BNHA is a fantastical superhero optimistic story, not a gritty real-world set drama.
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willowcrowned · 4 years ago
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Okay but has anyone considered Obi-wan/Cody/Satien (is that how its spelled?) Regardless, hes got two hands for his two mandalorians, the au where this happend is gotta be top notch ridiculous ye?
Okay thank you so much for giving me a reason to think about this, because this AU contains three things I adore: polyamory, ships where everyone is frighteningly competent, and Obi-Wan
In this AU, Ventress is somehow even less well-adjusted (bear with me). What this means is that, instead of taking a gap year and finding herself after her family is brutally murdered, she decides she needs to get revenge even more now. What does this mean? In the short term, she still becomes a bounty hunter, but in the long run? She’s looking for a Sith lord team up so she can punch Dooku (with a lit lighstaber) in his stupid, elitist, backstabbing face.
So when Maul invades Mandalore, what happens? Ventress comes right along, ready to give her ‘I know we hate each other, but consider teaming up to kill someone we both hate even MORE’ space TED talk. And though Maul may be terribly annoying, a closet theater kid, always in a tits out kind of mood, and denying his gay awakening, he’s not stupid. He knows Sidious is coming for him, sooner rather than later, and he knows he needs more people on his side than his (impressively beefy) brother. He and Savage agree to the team-up.
Cue Obi-Wan showing up, ready to save his sort-of girlfriend, and finding Pre Vizsla, who got REAL sus the second ANOTHER lunatic with a red lightsaber showed up, occupied by capturing Maul, Savage, and Ventress. 
Obi-Wan saves Satie, who convinces him to call Cody for a quick evac, and they’re running away, flirting, and arguing over shooting things (as usual), when they spot Ventress, Maul, and Savage, about to be executed.
Oh, they both think, hell no. And then, because they have a stupid moral code that makes them do stupid moral things, they go save them.
A little background on Obi-Wan at this point: He has been fighting in a war for over two years. He is exhausted, close to a breakdown, and seriously questioning his place as a General. Next to him at all times, supporting him, helping him, and saving him, is Cody, who is clever, kinder than he has any right to be, and is, of course, devastatingly handsome when he does his special, unique-to-Cody half-smirk.
Obi-Wan, to put it mildly, is totally gone on him. Obi-Wan also, to put it less mildly, is his commanding officer in an army that Cody can’t leave on pain of death. To do anything— make any advance beyond the flirting that he engages in with most people— would put Cody in a very uncomfortable position, whether or not he returns Obi-Wan’s feelings. So Obi-Wan watches him from afar, hoping against hope that his affections are returned, and that one day, after the end of the war, there will be a future for both of them.
A little more background on Obi-Wan at this point: He has always respected Satine. Their correspondence fell apart just a few months after the end of his mission with Qui-Gon, but he’s been keeping up with her professional accomplishments for years. Over time, the love he bore for her faded, leaving him with good memories and an enduring appreciation for her courage, her cleverness, and her ability to deliver devastating blows to someone’s confidence with a few well-placed words.
Until he sees her again. And yes, alright, he might be angry that she’s choosing to stay out of the war— he knows what good she could do— but he understands her fears, understands the very real possibility that if Mandalore gets embroiled in yet another war, they may never recover. The thing is... well, she’s still very beautiful, especially when he’s yelling at him, and as slowly as his feelings had faded then, they come back in a rush now.
He has very much fallen in love with Cody, and he is very much still in love with Satine.
Cut back to the present— Obi-Wan and Satine rescue the three most annoying Sith in the galaxy and get the heck out of dodge. Cody, because he’s Cody, comes swooping in with a last-minute rescue.
At this point, two things are occurring.
The first: Obi-Wan is stuck in a room with four people he’s periodically flirted with over the past few years, two of whom he’s desperately in love with, one of whom he had a weird encounter with that he can never tell Anakin about when she and him got trapped in a middle school auditorium, and one of whom is definitely wearing no shirt and all that jewelry for a reason. It is Supremely awkward for him.
The second: Every single person in that room, each of which is (barring Savage) deeply attracted to Obi-Wan, is realizing that Obi-Wan is dressed in Mandalorian armor, and while Obi-Wan in three layers of tunics and a cloak is an absolute knockout, Obi-Wan in Mandalorian armor may very well kill them (and he won’t even have to touch his lightsaber to do it).
For one single moment, everything is absolutely still as they all stare at each other.
...And then Maul starts on the ‘I will rend your flesh from your bones, feel my wrath, Kenobarrgh’ spiel, and Satine stuns him. Oh, and Savage. Ventress agrees to watch the two of them if they don’t stun her, and Obi-Wan agrees.
Which then leaves him, Cody, and Satine in a room alone.
A word on Cody at this point: He has been bred from birth to be the perfect soldier— loyal, clever (but not too clever), and rigourously adherent to protocol. Yet, within three months of knowing Obi-Wan, he’s, well, calling him Obi-Wan in his head. Even just that is a gross breach of protocol, but he’s compromised in more ways than one. He talks to Obi-Wan, now, not just as a subordinate, or secondary advisor, but as a friend, as a councilor. Every time Obi-Wan touches him— never for longer than a brief second— his skin lights up under his armor. One time, Obi-Wan fell asleep on him for half an hour, and Cody’s was sure everyone would hear his heartbeat. 
What he’s doing— how he feels— he knows it’s putting Obi-Wan in danger, knows that if the Kaminoans had wanted to the clones to be equals to the Jedi, they would have told them so. And look, he knows what the natborns would call the way he’s feeling, but he can’t feel that way. He’s a clone— he’s expendable by definition. Even if, on some off-chance, he makes it out of this war alive, there’s nothing for him. Obi-Wan couldn’t care for him like that, couldn’t care for a man with the same face as millions of others, born and bred only for war. So it doesn’t matter how he feels.
A word on Satine at this point: Obi-Wan, when he left, was a gawkish, bumbling thing of red hair and freckles and the sweetest smile. Obi-Wan, when he came back, was graceful, eloquent, and very, very handsome. He is also infuriating. (This does not change how attracted she is to him in the least.)
She’s not a romantic, really, but she is a realist, and she knows she’s loved him in some form or another for over twenty years. She knows she can’t ask him to return it— knows that asking him to leave the order for her wouldn’t just be for her, it would be for Mandalore, and while the politician in her cries for her to claim him, the person in her who loves Obi-Wan could not abide tearing him away from his culture for her own purposes. She still loves him, deeply and irrevocably, and she knows he still loves her. (Maybe, she thinks, after the war... But she can’t afford to be sentimental).
What do Cody and Satine have in common? They’re both extremely competent, both instinctively ruthless, and they both love Obi-Wan. Oh, and they’re also both immediately jealous of their counterpart.
They know they shouldn’t be. They know it’s not fair, not when Obi-Wan isn’t theirs anyways, but it doesn’t change the surge of envy and dislike that happens when they see Obi-Wan use the soft voice he only uses for the people he likes best on the person across from them.
Cody knows he can never compare to the Duchess, who is beautiful and well-spoken and has held Obi-Wan’s heart since they were fifteen. Satine knows she can never compare to Cody, who has been at Obi-Wan’s side every second since the war’s beginning, who is so much closer in ideals to Obi-Wan than she is, however it might appear on the surface.
Fortunately, they don’t have to deal with it for long, because Ventress comes in with Maul and Savage and proposes a team up, at which point Maul reveals the identity of the Sith Master.
Obi-Wan swears a string of words that Cody and Satine are both very impressed by, and agrees to the team up. Cody and Satine, who are both going to Coruscant anyways, agree to it too.
What ensues is a good deal of scheming, during which Cody and Satine avoid each other like the plague, Obi-Wan is repeatedly told to get some sleep, and Ventress cuffs Maul to a door on multiple nonconsecutive occasions. When they get to Coruscant, Satine has already told Padmé, who has in turn told her group of anti-war (and anti-Palpatine) senators, Cody has given Rex a heads up, and Ventress, Maul, and Savage have been metaphorically sharpening their lightsabers for ages.
(It occurs to Obi-Wan, at one point, after he’s woken up from his enforced 25-hour nap, that Palpatine must have created the clone army for a reason— must have a failsafe in place— and he asks Ahsoka to pull all the data the Kaminoans have on the clones. They find out about the chips, and Ahsoka immediately immediately holds the Kaminoans at laser sword point until they reprogram every order into a command that dissolves the chip.)
The thing about organizing a coup together is that it makes it very hard to avoid each other. Cody and Satine are forced to work together, and, what do you know, it turns out that even with seething jealousy at work, they end up respecting each other. (Note: Obi-Wan comes into a room at one point to see them both bent over a commlink, heads together and hands nearly touching. He short circuits.)
In any case, coup, Palps dies, Republic fixed, whatever.
What’s important is that Obi-Wan gets really, really injured— so much so that he might die. Cody and Satine have dealt with him being dead before (Deception arc anyone?), but this? Watching him slowly fade, knowing there’s nothing they can do about it? That’s worse.
One night, when Anakin has fallen asleep, they have a long conversation in low voices about Obi-Wan, darting from fond to furious to devastated over and over again. If he wakes up— if, not when— they agree to say something to Obi-Wan, to let him know that they love him. It’s a meager consolation after all they’ve been through, but this is the end, in one way or another, and they deserve to be honest with him.
(Cody thinks, privately, that he will be— well, not tossed aside, because Obi-Wan isn’t the sort of person who does that, but there won’t be a place for him by Obi-Wan’s side anymore. Obi-Wan is a Jedi, a negotiator, a peacekeeper, and Cody is a soldier for a now-ended war. He is already steeling himself to accept Obi-Wan’s polite rejection with equanimity, to not cause more pain to the man. (It will be easy, he knows, to wish him every peace, every happiness. Cody has only ever wanted to see Obi-Wan happy. This does not mean it will not be painful.) Obi-Wan said once that he would have left the Order for Satine if she’d asked— she will ask, now, and Cody knows Obi-Wan will leave, can see the love written in his face, in his spine, in his hands, whenever he is around her. Satine will ask, and Obi-Wan will leave, and Cody will be left to look for a place in this new galaxy.)
(Satine thinks, privately, that Obi-Wan’s feelings for her must be long faded, replaced by his obvious ones for Cody. Obi-Wan is a warrior, a Knight, and Satine is a diplomat who foreswore violence long ago. She is already steeling herself to accept his rejection with grace. (It will be easy, she knows, to wish him well. She has only ever wanted good things for him. This does not mean it will not be painful.) He said once that he would have left the Order for her if she’d asked, and whatever he’d felt then for her pales to what he feels now for Cody. Cody will ask, and Obi-Wan will leave, and Satine will rule as she always has.)
And then Obi-Wan wakes up.
Cody and Satine let him have his long talk with Anakin first, partially because they know how important it is to him, partially because Anakin wouldn’t let them if they wanted to, and partially because they are dreading their own coming conversation. When Anakin has finished, and Obi-Wan is asleep again, they go in, hand-in-hand, and wait for him to wake up.
When he does wake up, he sees them holding hands and immediately comes to several wrong conclusions. Wrong Conclusion A: Cody and Satine are in love. Wrong Conclusion B: Cody and Satine are going to try to break the news that they’re in love to him gently. Wrong Conclusion C: This conversation is about to break his heart.
Then they speak.
At the end of it, Obi-Wan has some Thoughts. Thought One: alkdfjhskhsgjljlbhkgkjbjvnab,gkjvn;qlerghjsv?????!!!!fwbfwlkrehwogwhuwrijvhfdbhkf!!!! Thought Two: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Thought Three: Oh, we’re all idiots. Fantastic. 
He then passes out, because being on the edge of death for days and then having a shock to your system this big tends to do that to you.
When he wakes up, he is mildly more coherent. Then he sees that Satine and Cody are asleep on each other, and the coherence is lost, but he does manage to wake them up and get across three things:
Thing One: He is desperately in love with them both.
Thing Two: He’s leaving the Order for a multitude of reasons, but they are a Significant Bonus.
Thing Three: He would very much like if they both held his hand while he falls back asleep.
Cody takes Obi-Wan’s right hand, Satine takes Obi-Wan’s left hand, and the three of them stay like that, fingers intertwined, for a long, long, while.
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dexi-green · 4 years ago
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Okay so wrap up thoughts for ep. 4:
Where is Zemo? Do not let this man loose. Also bless marvel for releasing the longer cut of Zemo dancing earlier 🙏🏽
We love the Dora. However I wonder if the arm thing was a gag or if it’s going to come back. I could definitely see Buck having some questions and beginning to wonder whether they actually freed them or just put him under Wakanda’s control with a longer leash. He obviously has reason to be skeptical about people’s intention with him (see; how Zemo used him) I can definitely imagine them explaining that it was impossible to wipe out the WS controls but rather they just changed them and just never intended to use them, making him a sort of unintentional sleeper agent White Wolf for Wakanda. He is clearly very thankful and grateful to them, and is very close to the Dora, especially Ayo, so I could see that distrust being a good future character arc. But I stand by that with T’Challa in charge they would never seek to take advantage of Buck in that way. Also I was never a HUGE fan of Stan’s acting, I felt he got too hyped up for just brooding, like he was good but not Oscar worthy as some on here tried to say (you can just say you think he’s hot, you don’t have to lie about his acting to justify your adoration of him and watching his whole filmography, it’s okay I promise), but that scene at the beginning was actually amazing. I love the change between fear to relief and realization. Chef’s kiss.
As I mentioned several times, I love that this show is carefully exploring warring ideals, and actually saying them pretty plainly. It’s giving me what Civil War could’ve been. In Civil War there was just too many blatant misunderstandings and things that could’ve been cleared up if the Avenger’s didn’t share one (1) brain cell and it somehow ended up with Peter Parker who had homework to do. In this show, the ideals come from very understandable different perspectives, different lives lived. I know I want a conversation, but that alone won’t truly solve this like it would’ve in Civil War. It comes from very real criticism of our very real govt and society which I thinks helps cement this so much more in reality in a way that isn’t boring to watch like some other comic things that try to be gritty and realistic. The only part that has taken me out so far was the so very subtle cop scene in the second episode, which leads me into my next point
ISAIAH BRADLEY! Loop his story back in, let’s get some backstory and information and all that good stuff. Obviously Isaiah has made it pretty dang clear he wants nothing to do with any of this but obviously that’s not gonna happen, and it’ll be a tremendous waste of an absolute amazing and groundbreaking story to just bring Eli in at the end in some shoehorned way or something. Isaiah needs to be a part of whatever solution this story/season comes to. I’ve seen a theory floating around about either Isaiah being Wakandan (either like killmonger with one or both of his parents being from Wakanda, or more distantly) or perhaps Erskine’s secret ingredient for his serum was derived from the heart shaped herb (which would’ve made Cap White Panther 😬) which I think would be an interesting way to completely tie in Wakanda but perhaps a little unnecessary, specifically the first theory, we don’t need every future black person in the MCU to be secretly Wakandan. I just need his story to be more prominent then it has so far. It’s very important and not something that should just be a basically D grade side plot at this point.
I feel like we have shifted away from much focus on Sam. But I feel like the focus has pulled more on Zemo, Karli, Walker and Buck. Like Sam is doing what he needs but we aren’t getting as much insight into him as we did in the first episode. Which is why I think I liked his talk so much with Karli. We went back to his history of counseling and got to see how it uses it, how he calms down a situation, and his own insight into Karli’s ideals, he agrees but wants to go about it in a different way. We have constantly seen him offering help to others, but hasn’t really received much in return. I feel like now every time the shield comes up it’s just Bucky being all pissy that Sam gave it away which really turns me off his character. Sam already explained that maybe he made a mistake, but also Buck is so set in his way and his ideation of Steve that he can’t for a second consider Sam’s side. Like at this point it’s getting kind of annoying how Buck is being with Sam about it. I want more insight into Sam’s feelings about Steve, and Cap, and all that. Hopefully these last couple episodes with shift the focus back. At this point I feel I know more about Karli and John as people than I do Sam and that’s not great considering the title of the show. This was one of my earliest concerns for the series when it was announced, that it was going to focus too much on Bucky who has had his story almost front and center for almost all of the Cap films, they almost all in some part revolve around Bucky. Perhaps I need to rewatch and there has been some bits of Sam’s I haven’t appreciated enough, but it feels unbalanced, not in favor of him.
Sharon is being sketchy I fear. I do kind of like the idea that she is the power broker, but it’s hard to wrap my head around her threatening Karli like she has been. I mean she obviously has changed a lot, but if she is the power broker her motives have to be something different than what she is trying to lead people to believe. I think what’s more possible is her working for the power broker or perhaps working for/as the power broker as a cover for Fury or some other person/organization. She’s worked undercover for Fury before, she is obviously loyal to him, which might’ve changed since she talks to much about being abandoned by everyone, but I don’t know. It’s obvious something else is going on with her character, and while I love if she had just pivoted to this crime lord role, I just think of her speech at Peggy’s funeral and her loyalty to Cap and Fury in TWS. It’s possible she flipped on a dime like that because everything done to her and what she’s been through, and it may be too predictable for her to have the exact same storyline as TWS but who knows... that or she’s a skrull, always a possibility, can’t be too careful.
John Walker is clearly becoming the actual Anti-Cap. They are getting storybeats to line up. A ‘good’ soldier, turned propaganda tool, turned govt lap dog, serumed up, best friend dies, then what? Switched on by society? I love the moment with him and the flag smasher. It brought me back to when I was in the theater watching Civil War and I swore Steve was going to chop Tony’s head off with the shield. Steve just smashes the arc reactor of course, but John straight up murders this guy. And people are watching, the world is, people were recording. Definitely some purposeful similarities to our very real recording of police brutality irl. Which makes me think what will the govt response be? Will they spin it and try to get him out of this (which will feel really...weird? With the trial going on rn) or maybe will they abandon him completely and leave him high and dry? Hopefully we will see whoever the current MCU president is (prolly maybe Thaddeus Ross??) speak on it as well as the flag smashers and GRC. Walker is obviously not a good person at heart. I theorized before that he had already been given the serum, which clearly isn’t true so he has just taken it but there is something about his background that needs to be revealed. It has to be more than just “‘we did bad stuff while we were deployed” like... yeah it has a profound and damaging effect on people, but I feel like when he was talking to Hoskins it felt like they were remembering what went down slightly differently. I don’t know why, I’ll have to rewatch the scene. Either way, I think there is some stuff we still don’t know about Walker, something so terrible about him that made the serum change him like that. He was already clearly on edge, feeling insecure about people not giving him the respect he thought he deserved just from putting on the suit and carrying the shield, feeling that same imposter syndrome Sam did/does, and his pride was clearly DECIMATED by the Dora. He has this seeming obsession with super soldiers... he’s just giving weirdo vibes.
One thing I noted is that I think this series is taking apart Steve/Cap and spreading him out over several different people, and having them all pick at and dissect what makes/made Captain America the symbol he was, and what happens when you dig a little deeper. Karli seems to be the embodiment of the kindness/concern for others. She is fighting for the people, to protect them, as Cap was. But she is not holding back and is willing to put everything on the line, but where Cap was putting himself in the line of fire to protect people, Karli is putting others. Buck may be the classic idealism and Steve himself, I’m not 100 sure, but he seems to embody the kind of idea that people need something to put hope in, something to lean on, the idea of true good. He always brings up what the shield means and represents, doesn’t ever actually get specific though which is interesting. This may be because Bucky has a hard time separating Steve from Cap, since he saw the two grow up, when he talks about the shield and Cap he IS talking about Steve, there is no symbol or hidden meaning, just the Steve he knew. He conflates it all together. So I guess he represents whether or not the classic ideals can survive, the idea of hope, and Young Steve. Sam I think could be change. Where change is unwavering, like Cap’s fight for freedom never changed, but also where it is inevitable, in Steve and Cap’s place in a time that isn’t their own. How the idea of Captain America needs to be updated for modern times, or whether it should be thrown out altogether. I don’t know this is all ramblings. I though I had something but it’s almost 5am 😩
I believe we have 2 more episodes left so it’ll being interesting to see what they do with it. Fingers crossed 🤞
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zhansww · 4 years ago
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Hi. Thank you so much for replying. You gave me so much good information. I respect that you treat XZ and WY like people and not as fictional characters as I see so many people doing. I'm still reluctant to join this side of the fandom because from what I've seen so far, it's a mess. Tell me if I got this right: xfx= solo XZ fans who think WY and his team sabotaged XZ's career so he could be the top actor also hate cp fans because they support both XZ/WY. mtjj= solo WY fans.
Acknowledge that WY could be in love with XZ but think XZ doesn't care about him, hope WY moves on. They don't seem to like cp fans for not ruining XZ/WY's friendship? bjyx=cp fans. Some of them are supporters and, some of them are fetishizers. Want the solo fandoms to combine??? ( I still don't know what V/JK is) But is that the state of things?? Way more complicated than the CQL/MDZS fandom. I am enjoying your blog, your pinned post is the best introduction to the fandom imo. Are there any other analysis type blogs like yours that you could rec? Thank you. ( Sorry for the long ask)
oh my... smh your reluctance to join this part of the fandom makes you so endearing to me. If I wasn't as socially inept as I am, I'd ask you to be friends 🥺 Gonna put this all under a cut~
Let me start with the easiest thing to answer. V and Jk are two members from BTS whose relationship is shockingly real to me. I avoided writing their names or their cp name out cuz I didn't want my pinned post to show up in those searches. Unlike with ggdd, I never got the impression they'd be okay with speculations about them, though. So I don't ever feel the need to analyze or discuss about them. I just quietly believe in and support them.
You got xfx and mtjj right. Xfx is the official fan name for XZ's solo fans. Mtjj is not an official fan name, though, i.e. Yibo or his company never made it official, as far as I know. It stands for motojiejie which means motorcycle sisters, there's also mtgg = motorcycle brothers but you'll mostly see mtjj. Bxg is what ggdd's cp fans are called. It stands for BoXiaoGirls/Guys. It can also stand for baixiangguo which means "passion fruit". And there's a third meaning which I don't know but has something to do with turtles and which is why you're likely to see bxg refer to themselves as turtles. Bjyx is ggdd's main, fanmade cp name. It was coined back in April 2018, after XZ and WYB only just got confirmed as the actors who get to play WWX and LWJ. One of the rules in the bjyx supertopic on weibo is that you can't switch their "roles". And those were solely based on wang/xian but I suppose once fans realized that ggdd is actually real and their dynamic is vastly different from wang/xian, they came up with different cp names for different dynamics. There's also zsww and lsfy. (Sidenote; if I remember correctly, bjyx means “to make your special someone smile”. Zsww means “lord over a district/castle” and lsfy means “chain reaction”) And as far as I know, zsww fans are called little bandits and lsfy fans are called baby lotus. I apologize if me explaining this makes you feel weird in any way (cuz this fandom separation is dumb af) - I just wanna give you any info I have cuz you might come across some of this, at least. Anyway, the most common abbreviations you'll see; bxg = ggdd cp fans and bjyx = ggdd's cp name. There's also bjyxszd 博君一肖是真的 which means "bjyx is real" or bjyxszd 并肩于学山之巅 which means "side by side atop the snowy summit" and is a phrase that bxg use to hide the first phrase in plain sight, so to say.
I don't know what it's called but there's actually also a supertopic on weibo for XZ and WYB solo fans who believe that ggdd is real but are still only solo fans. So truthfully, you can't really generalize that. Some solo fans do believe in ggdd and are supportive but not necessarily openly. I (like to) think most solo fans are just dedicated to their idol and don't care about anything or anyone else and that's it. The rest, though... yeah, those are the obnoxious ones. Who made up ridiculous conspiracy theories about how Yibo and his company are responsible for what happened last February to gg. Or who make up theories about how XZ only got as successful as he is because he copied Yibo. They really want to believe that ggdd aren’t special to each other or that they even hate one another. So they come up with the dumbest bs to e.g. vilify XZ. Like, about a year ago, mtjj got mad at gg cuz they thought he, as dd's boyfriend, must have forced dd to sell one of his motorcycles. When Yibo uses kadian, they think he just does it to bait cp fans. But when XZ uses kadian, he's being the worst, most careless boyfriend and how tf could he put Yibo in danger like that. And yes, I've seen the same hateful mtjj spout such contradictory nonsense. It can be quite hilarious, ngl. I only follow decent solo stans so I truthfully don't know what the newest sh-t is that antis/solos have come up with.
When it comes to bxg... yes, there are a lot of supporters but also way too many who seem to be unable to separate ggdd from novel!wang/xian. They so badly want only bjyx - that dynamic - to be real that they constantly feel the need to "change reality" to make it happen by e.g. misgendering gg, drawing him smaller than dd and/or more feminine, making assumptions about him and his character that are simply untrue but fit their preferred dynamic so they keep spreading those assumptions. They way they view XZ is wrong and beyond disrespectful and yet, they call themselves fans. I genuinely hope you'll never even have to see any thing of the sort. I don't actually know anything about bxg, wanting to combine the solo fandoms xD I guess, ideally that would be desirable but I wonder if that's even possible.
Thank you so much for liking my pinned post... That and a lot of the posts that I linked in it are what I keep hoping may make more people believe in and support ggdd and it makes me so so glad that it could be of use to you! About recs, I could recommend you some twt accounts or on here, gif makers and fanartists that I like and follow but I don't follow any ggdd blogs that make a lot of text posts. And just to be clear, I don't make many text posts myself either. I stay away from rumors (unless they become more than that) and from stalker info and from all the reaching, too. You might find it interesting, I don't know, but me, I see no point, mulling over any and every minute connection between ggdd that may or may not even be real. It gets too invasive or ridiculous imo. I actually also stay away from all that recent behind the scenes footage of ggdd because I highly disapprove of the way it was acquired. I only comment on things about them that I consider reasonable and possibly noteworthy and that preferably come from the men themselves. And occasionally, I gush about how cute and perfect they are together. Sorry I can't be more helpful with this last question >.<
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cruelfeline · 5 years ago
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The Hordak Bleatings Masterpost
The new and improved Masterpost! All of my ridiculous bleating in one place! Now with categories to allow you, dear friends and neighbors, to better marvel at the utter nonsense I get up to in my spare time. It shall be updated every so often/when I remember. 
some of these categories may overlap or perhaps not be perfect; I tried; there was... a lot
Enjoy!
Biological/Medical Musings
A Fairly Comprehensive List of Hordak’s Clinical Signs
I Wrote Too Much About Hordak’s Arms
And Then Someone Asked About His Elbows So Voila
Someone Else Asked About His Eyes
Yes; I Did Measure Hordak’s Ears via Fuzzy Math; You’re Welcome
A Brief Word About Dentition
Some Sad Thoughts About Clone Lifespan
I Like to Headcanon that Clones Have Naturally Different Eye Colors
Counting Hordak’s Ports
Thinking About Terrible Ways Prime Could Institute Biological Control
Doing Very Fuzzy Math And Wondering Just How Young Hordak Could Be
Spending Way Too Much Time Figuring Out Whether Hordak is Left or Right Handed
Why Tiny Food is Probably Ideal for Hordak (a joke ask I essentially took Seriously)
Discussing Hordak’s Temper
Considering Whether Hordak Needs Oxygen
Discussing Whether Prime and his Clones are Genetically Identical
Hordak in Relation to Other Characters
Entrapdak
Hordak Can Get Close to Entrapta Because He Needn’t Fear Her
Discussing Entrapdak Age Discourse
Bit More Regarding Hordak’s Maturity vs. Entrapta’s
Hordak Didn’t Manipulate Entrapta… But Catra Did
Assessing that Unfortunate Moment When Hordak Snapped at Entrapta
Further Assessing Hordak Snapping at Entrapta by Noting When He Doesn’t
On Hordak’s Wardrobe Change
Entrapta Shushing Hordak is One of My Favorite Interactions
The Entrapdak Scene Was Also One of Self-Love
I Really Like How Entrapta Talks to Hordak About Failure
Hordak Tells an Actual Lie and Succeeds
Entrapta’s and Hordak’s Social Differences Help Them Connect to One Another
I Would Have Appreciated A Scene Where Entrapta Learns About What Happened To Hordak
Hordak Takes Strength From Realizing That Entrapta Came For Him
Hordak and Entrapta Just Like One Another, and I Enjoy That
There is a Huge Difference in How The Alliance and Hordak React to Entrapta Being on Beast Island, and it’s Jarring
This is Mostly About Catradora But Kind of in the Sense of Why Entrapdak is Better, so Here it Goes
Entrapta Didn’t Teach Hordak How to Love; She Taught Him How to Be Loved
The Soup Scene is a Condensed View of Why Entrapdak Works in Light of the Rest of Hordak’s Arc
Hordak and Entrapta Search for One Another Alone, and it Makes Me Sad
I Love How Hordak Scooches Over for Entrapta to Join Him on his Throne
Catra
The How-Catra-Manipulated-Hordak Masterpost
Watching Catra and Hordak Switch Roles in Season Three is Fascinating
Hordak and Catra’s Low Points Indicate Their Core Problems
Did Hordak Abuse Catra? Did She Abuse Him? The World May Never Know
Comparing Hordak and Catra in Terms of Consequences and Agency
Hordak and Catra’s Apparent Ages Likely Affect How People Judge Them
Why Doesn’t Hordak Subdue Catra?
Losing and Regaining the Will to Fight is Another Hordak/Catra Parallel
Sometimes I Wish The Show Would Focus Less on Catra and More on Hordak
Why Catra Besting Hordak Isn’t As Satisfying As Catra Besting Shadow Weaver
Hordak Exhibits Some Level of Trust in Catra Even in Season 2... and She Betrays It
The Difference in How Hordak and Catra Handle Relationships followed by Why They Are Like This 
Some Brief Words on the Differences Between How Hordak and Catra End Up Driven to Destruction in Season Four
Musing About What I Actually Would Accept as “Hordak Abusing Catra”
I Think It’s Kind of Funny that Some Expect Catra to be Suspicious of Hordak Post-Canon
Two Scenes That Look Distressing Side-by-Side
Discussing How Catra and Hordak Start Off as Parallels but Later Deviate Due to Character Differences
Adora
How Adora and Hordak End Season Four Differently
Hordak and Adora Parallels
I Wonder if Adora Recognizes Some of Herself in Hordak
Other
This is Actually About Shadow Weaver, but Compared to Hordak, So…
Hordak Doesn’t Seem to have a “Rule the World!” Moment (compared to Shadow Weaver)
On Hordak’s Weird Interactions with DT
Watching DT Circle Hordak is Interesting
Let’s Compare the Circling Scenes, Shall We?
What Wrong Hordak’s Arc Teaches Us About Clones and Hordak
Wondering if Hordak Actually has Control Over the Etherian Horde (could he have stopped the war?)
Prime
There Is A Huge Difference In The Standards Prime And Hordak Hold Others Two Versus Themselves
Hordak and Horde Prime Handle Their Own Vulnerabilities Quite Differently
The Difference Between How Prime and Hordak Use Anger
The Moment Prime Touched Hordak’s Face is the Moment I Truly Knew That Something About Hordak’s Backstory was Very Wrong
Clone/Origin/Prime-Related Sadness
The Clone Thing
More Distressed Bleating about The Clone Thing
Hordak’s DMV Photo Disturbs Me
Hordak Isn’t Actually an Idiot About Disease Transmission
On Hordak’s Bodily Autonomy, or Lack Thereof
How Much of Hordak is “Hordak?”
I’m 99% Certain That Hordak Sucks at Lying Because he Literally Couldn’t
You’d Think Hordak would Think Things Through, But…
Hordak isn’t Really Proud of “Hordak” (with a bonus Adora mention)
Hordak Provides Excellent Fridge Horror
Hordak’s Behavioral Pathology Isn’t Actually Pathology
So! That Purification Ritual was Really Something
Despite Erasure, Hordak Remains Himself
The Clones Are Essentially Trapped By Prime And It Upsets Me
I Get Annoyed That The Clones Aren’t Discussed More By Our Heroes
Again, I Wish The Show Acknowledged The Clones A Bit More, Wrongie Edition
Wouldn’t It Be Swell If Prime Really Did Manage The Clones Like Livestock? 
It’s More Emotionally Poignant That The Clones Are Individuals Rather Than Drones
Prime’s Doctrine Ensures Hordak Blames Himself, and it’s an Awful Control Measure
Hordak Probably Isn’t Dumb for Using Uninsulated Cables; Rather, Clone Sadness is in Play
Why I Can’t See Hordak and the Other Clones As Colonizers (unlike Prime) (also a whole convo thread)
Thinking About Clones and Self-Care
Each Clone Will Have to Realize That They Were Victimized
Wondering if Horde Clones Might Feel Anxious Sleeping Alone
Why Prime Might Encourage Some Autonomy in His Clones (spoilers: for cruelty)
Completely Arbitrary Classification of Clones Post-Prime!
Prime is an Actual God to the Clones and it is Terrifying
Canon Plausibility of Blanket Burritoing Horde Clones!
I Appreciate That, Despite Their Devotion, the Clones are Portrayed as Legitimately Suffering due to Prime
Catra and Adora have Happy Memories; do the Clones?; does Hordak?
Morality/Punishment/Redemption Related
Morality is (sadly) not a Universal Thing
Don’t Talk to me About the Reset as “Proper Punishment”
Why Hordak Doesn’t Just Become a Good Citizen
I Think About Hordak’s Choices a Lot
Hordak as an Abuse Mimic Rather Than Pure Evil
Looking at the Horde Child Soldier Thing From a Certain POV
Emotional Support is a Necessary Part of Healing
Hordak Was Forgiven Without Redemption, And I’m OK With That
Hordak’s Arc Speaks Directly to People who were “Raised Wrong”
I Wonder if Hordak Would See anti-Princess Propaganda as Propaganda
Semi-Intelligent Plot/Story Observations
Hordak’s Portrayal is a Function of Character Lens
Hordak Gets Very Legit Development in Season Four
She-Ra Isn’t a War Drama and Here’s Why
Hordak Suffers From a Distressing Lack of Agency
Hordak is a Weirdly Unenthusiastic Lord
The Season 4 Finale Reframes Hordak’s Vulnerability 
Untangling Hordak’s Backstory in Light of What We Now Know
Why Hordak Getting Possessed is Narratively Good
Hordak’s Rebellion and Subsequent Possession Essentially Summarize His Story
There Are Big Differences Between Hordak and Prime’s Etherian Wars
It Is Pretty Unlikely That Hordak Would Have Pulled The Portal Lever
It Occurred To Me That Hordak May Initially Ignore FO’s Tech Because It’s Just Really Old
An Assessment Of The Villain Intro Cards, Focusing On Hordak
I Think It’s Silly To Blame Hordak For Everything - Especially When Considering Prime
Literally Just a Thread Explaining Why Hordak is Sympathetic
Some Words On Exactly How Terrible DT’s Reveal Was For Hordak
The Escalation of Hordak’s Situation is Really Something
An Anon Asks a Normal Question and I go on a Tangent About Hordak Compensating for his Inability to Innovate via Entrapta and Catra
There are Monumental Differences Between the Galactic and Etherian Hordes in Terms of Brainwashing and Agency
Thinking About Why Chipped Etherians May Not be That Sympathetic To Clones After All
Random Bit of Logicking About Why Hordak Calls the Princesses a Rebellion
Figuring Out Why I Find Hordak So Much More Sympathetic Than The Princesses
Brief Musing on How Hordak Might Face Antagonism From Both Sides Post-Canon
Hordak’s Story Touches on the Concept of the Imperfection of Authority
Someone Asked Me if I Found Hordak’s S5 Arc Satisfying
Discussing Whether Or Not Hordak Planned on Leading Anything After Conquering Etheria
Taking Apart an Abysmal Twitter Take Because It’s Fun
Talking About Prime’s Clone Troops v. Robot Troops
Talking About Hordak’s Emotional Age
Hordak’s S3 Backtory Being Part-Delusion Helps Emphasize the Inequality in Attachment Between the Clones and Prime
A Few Not-So-Nice Acts Hordak Commits That I Find Justifiable
Random Headcanons of All Sorts
Stupidly Cute, Pointless Headcanon #3825 (ears covered)
Stupid Pointlessly Cute Headcanon #4853 (yawning, with appropriate artwork)
Stupid Pointlessly Cute Headcanon #2938 (snoring)
Stupid Pointlessly Cute Headcanon #1423 (REM sleep)
Stupidly Cute, Pointless Headcanon #7845 (blushing)
Random Hordak-Related Thought #2935 (forearms)
I Like to Think That Hordak Does Cute Things in his Sleep
I Like to Think That Hordak’s Eyes Dim While He Sleeps
Literally Me Just Having Emotions
Thinking About the Stress of Maintaining His Image in the Horde
Why Hordak’s Trauma is Particularly Disturbing To Me (compared to Catra/Adora)
Catra Overcomes her Fear of her Abuser; Hordak Does Not
All of my Emotions over the S4 Finale
Hordak’s Goddamned Smirk Lied to Me
I Have Feelings about Hordak’s Enforced Self-Care
I Need Hordak to Know that He is Loved
Hordak Goes Pew Pew and It’s Cute
Watching Hordak Lift Things Makes Me Smile
Hordak’s Unreasonable Expectations Make Me Sad
Please Just Let Hordak Rest
A Sassy Post About People Complaining the Hordak and Catra are Forgiven
All My Words About That Hordak/Adora Scene
Hordak Taps the Asphyxiation Lever With Two Fingers And It Makes Me Happy
I Wonder If Individuality Felt Blasphemous To Hordak
Please Don’t Stab Clones In Their Ports, Thank You
Hordak Clasps His Hands And It Makes Me Anxious
Hordak Shaming Catra Mimics the Purification Room And It’s Disturbing
Watching Hordak Give Up Is Heartbreaking
I Worry About Hordak Handling Anxiety
People Being Considerate of Hordak Makes My Heart Smile
I Wonder If Magic Was Frightening to Hordak at First
Thinking About Hordak Progressing in Terms of Self-Care
Prime Never Calls Hordak by Name, not Even Once
Just Being Sad While Realizing the Sort of Life Hordak had to Look Forward To
Strange Fic-Like Things No One Should Read
Please Consider: A Concept Masterpost
Hordak Practices Eyerolling
Imp Hacks Up The Worst Color of Hairball
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readingaccountability · 4 years ago
Text
snow crash - neal stephenson
my playlist (because of The Way That I Am)
final thoughts:
okay, im going to be honest right out of the gate- i cant decide whether this is a book id recommend or not. it was really fun for the most part, but personally there was a lot more exposition than id like. the early portions of the novel have exposition which feels completely fair, mostly things relating to worldbuilding. stephenson creates his own vision of future america, and some places online referred to it as cyberpunk, and some as post-cyberpunk. id be more in the latter camp, mostly due to the way he plays with tropes, leaving the reader unsure of which will be subverted and which wont.
the use of language was really fun, and i enjoyed the worldbuilding a lot. his vision of a futuristic capitalistic earth feels surreal in its immediacy and recognizability. the back jacket blurb ends with "a future america so bizarre, so outrageous, you'll recognize it immediately." which, yeah. a texan info-tech magnate? two competing corporations owning the highway system? suburban city-states? this was another enjoyable thing- everything was colorfully named, and names treated totally normally, which kind of poked fun at how we have everyday things named very ludicrously and for the most part we are totally blind to it.
one aspect i really enjoyed was that the author often doesn't make certain things clear to the audience, until he does, and then it becomes necessary to reassess the entire story and setting. this goes to underscore the theme of the importance of information and the ways we take it in and perceive the world based upon it. for example, we don't learn that y.t. is fifteen until maybe 75 pages in, at which point a lot makes sense in retrospect. the same thing occurs in the worldbuilding, as suddenly a detail is given in passing and the reader must incorporate it into the setting, which by default we assume to be similar in many ways to our idea of america. it keeps the reader on their toes as well as furthering the worldbuilding. for the most part, the tech stuff didnt feel outdated to me, despite being a future projected out from '92.
however, aspects of the book are definitely very 1992. id put these into two camps: the first, being that the book does at different times use slurs. the main character is black and asian, the n word is used a few times by racist side-character/antagonist types, as are a few other racial slurs. there was also the occasional usage of the r slur, within the narrative prose itself, rather than usage as an insult within dialogue.
the protagonist, who is named, unfortunately, hiro protagonist, is a great character and felt very fleshed out to me, though at times he reminded me more of dirk strider than normally would be ideal. (its obvious that stephenson and andrew hussie are of a similar type of writer, and play with similar tropes, lmao.) hiro is a man of many worlds. he seems to shift between them easily, though never fully existing in any of them. this is reflected in his background, both in his biracial identity and in having been raised on a myriad of army bases. this is layered further in his fluidity in interacting with both reality and the metaverse, yet remaining slightly, consistently aloof. fascinatingly the first moment i sensed this drop was when we meet juanita- aka where his real and meta realities coincide. the description of them as the adam and eve of the metaverse is both insanely romantic and thematically key (good god i wish we had more than like, two conversations between them). juanita designed the facial component to metaverse avatars, doing the majority of this work when the two were together, and hiro can see echoes of both their facial tics in the face of every avatar in the metaverse. in a way, by having done this work juanita is positioned by the narrative as one of the gods of this digital realm. she is also hiro's call to action, being aware of the coming trouble and alerting him to it, as well as connecting him to the informational database he needs to prepare.
y.t., the secondary protagonist, fucking ruled. i loved that she was just a fifteen year old punkass kid whose mom doesnt know how crazy this part time job is. y.t. being worried about her mom was a great thread throughout, and a really good balance to how obviously independent y.t. is. i do wish there had been a chance to explain more about her background (she has a dad who left who is mentioned in a throwaway sentence, and a boyfriend who is mentioned near the beginning but never again.) i really enjoyed how obviously hyperaware y.t. was at all times about her own place within the insanities of the setting, while also consistently writing her as a teen maybe in way too deep who thinks about things in typically teenage ways. but like, that wasn't ever held against her? the narrative meets her where she is. it was honestly awesome. HOWEVER,
i absolutely hated the raven and y.t. scenes. how creepy!!! he basically statutory rapes her!!! we know hes at least late 20s early 30s, because hes the same age as hiro. if this sort of content is upsetting to read for you, i definitely do NOT recommend this book. (if you want to avoid reading these bits: ch 47 y.t. meets raven, ch 50 they are in a bar eating, ch 52 things happen that result in y.t.'s anti-assault device activating- she did not activate it on purpose, but forgot it was there- and raven is knocked out.)
please PLEASE dont take any of the following analysis as like, trying to be apologetic towards this scenes. because again they were awful and hard to get through and really gross. but im also cognizant that the author was obviously trying to convey something by making the choice, like the way it was written is obviously not condoning this sort of thing.
i think maybe what stephenson was trying to get at with that, was that we see hiro internally negate any potential for anything untoward with y.t. basically immediately, since he kind of senses that she might have a small crush on him (though this doesnt last more than a fleeting moment, especially from her perspective). vs raven, whose 'poor impulse control' warning tattoo eventually elicits a sarcastic remark from hiro after he finds out raven and y.t. were "a thing". i really dont think hiro knew how far it went? like it was just suuuper weird, but i figured it was meant narratively to 1. execute the chekovs gun of y.t.'s anti-assault device, 2. contrast hiro and raven (especially considering the bike-racing argument where theyre telling the story together, which is supposed to parallel them, while contrasting the differences in how they ended up?), and 3. just to get raven unconscious, i guess. but good god it was weird and i hated every second of it, why couldnt the device have like, activated way earlier?? gah. fucking upsetting. moving past that!
honestly i was really frustrated by how little screentime juanita got, because the way she was introduced was so fucking interesting and then shes mostly off doing her own thing. the bits of explanation she gives at the end about what she was up to on the raft are so sparse and im like damn, can we get a little bit of her pov in here? please? that would have ruled. additionally, shes supposed to be hiros love interest, but we see so little of them interacting outside her intro scenes. a huge portion of why hiro is getting into the sumerian mythology is literally framed as something that will help him understand juanita, but we dont get to see him talk to her about it barely at all.
the supporting characters were quite fun, i particularly liked the librarian. big surprise, i liked the overly literal ai information-dispensor, lmfao. watching him and hiro interact reminded me SO hard of geordi laforge having honest to god conversations with the computer where he tries to coax information out of it, aka one of my favorite little aspects of tng.
and lastly, the major plot themes themselves. i adore the way stephenson approached action, it was very entertaining. usually i cant really visualize action scenes written out, but his use of language was really really effective and engaging. the plot itself was absolutely fascinating, though i found the premise pretty contrived. which isnt bad in itself, i was fully suspending my disbelief until the last hundred pages or so. which for a 550+ page book, isnt too bad.
i did like the approach of linking the ancient to the modern, that is always really neat. and i think ultimately stephenson did it in an interesting way, not how i would have done it, but definitely interesting! creating these ideas about information infrastructures, and there being words that can access those and be used to control people, was wild. not sure if i agree about the equating of religion to a virus, though he did specifically establish that it was more the approach to religion, than religion itself. (maybe if juanita had been more goddamn present in the narrative that could have been elaborated on a little more. literally her perspective would have been perfect in balancing that out!!)
ultimately what did me in was the very very very long winded MONOLOGUE where hiro re-explained the whole premise, in ways that didnt really neatly organize into a cohesive argument. a lot of the scenes where hiro talks to the librarian, which are interspersed throughout the book, are really exposition heavy, because stephenson is rooting his ideas in historical concepts that need to be explained to both hiro and the audience. and i thought all that was fine, because it was a conversation where hiro was grappling with the information, and he was figuring it out along with the reader, and most importantly it was a conversation between him and the librarian computer program.
howeverrr later on we get a full rehash of all that, where hiro makes clear some stuff that was just implied for the reader, and hes literally just telling these important men whats up in this big long monologue. utterly worthless. i kept reading it and going YEAH, we KNOW, we know this we know this. and the important men barely interjected. it added basically nothing to our understanding of the situation, other than reframing it. but everything added was already an implicit thing, and didnt really need to be said again.
the resolution to the book was stellar, the last 30-40 pages, once hiro is onto the raft, were great. ultimately after reading and giving some time to digest it, i think it was a solidly great book with a few big drawbacks near the end, but which dont carry through and sully the ending.
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uncloseted · 4 years ago
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hi! i really love your thoughts on feminism and anti-intellectualism because that's what i've been thinking for the longest time but haven't been able to articulate as well as you have. while we're on this subject, what are your thoughts on plastic surgery being touted as "empowering"? i am not speaking about plastic surgery for reconstructive/health purposes but body modification. i get that women having greater autonomy over their bodies is definitely a step forward, but if you're (1)
(2) going to modify your body in ways that men find appealing- bigger breasts, wider hips, especially the new trend of "bimbo bodies"- isn't that just sort of feeding into your insecurities? getting bigger boobs would be nice, yes, but the idea that big breasts = sexy again, stems from misogyny and conventional ideals of sexiness (though it does have an evolutionary basis). i feel my most controversial view is that i hate plastic surgery, even when celebs are "open" about it haha i mean even if
(3) you admit to modifying your body you're still kinda selling the notion that there's only one "desirable" body type. Thanks a lot for answering! i love your blog so much
I think it’s... complicated.  There are so many different reasons that people get cosmetic surgery and so many different outcomes that people have from them that I feel like it’s not fair to label all cosmetic surgery as “empowering” or “not empowering”.  At the same time, I also feel weird about drawing lines about what can and cannot be empowering when it comes to cosmetic surgery. 
Beauty is something that’s both culturally prized and culturally powerful; we’re taught from a very young age that people will like you if you’re pretty, and that beauty = good and ugly = evil.  Disney princesses are pretty; the villains are ugly.  Nobody likes Ursula, but they sure like Ariel. This impacts our lives as adults.  People who are conventionally attractive are assumed to be healthier, happier, more trustworthy, and more moral.  That translates to real-life outcomes- people who are conventionally attractive make more money and on average have better outcomes in court cases than their unattractive counterparts.  Although we don’t publicly admit it, beauty is a privilege, the same way being thin is.  As a result, we live in a culture that prizes beauty highly and where our self-esteem is tied up in looks.  As humans, we crave validation, and the easiest way to get it in this system is through being attractive.  So I think it makes sense that a lot of people are willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that beauty, and why internally, it feels very important to us to be beautiful. 
However, although women are expected to be beautiful, they’re belittled for caring about being beautiful.  Women are supposed to be naturally beautiful, with no need for makeup or skincare or haircare or fashion, otherwise they’re considered superficial and vain.  It’s an impossible standard, and one that’s becoming more and more difficult to meet with the rise of Facetune and widely available cosmetic surgery.  Plastic surgery is kind of a way out of the “natural beauty” catch-22.  You can fix all your perceived “flaws”, and then you can claim that you are, and always have been, naturally beautiful.  As long as you never admit to the plastic surgery, you can absolve yourself of the guilt that comes along with being “vain” for putting time and effort into your appearance.
Coupled with those beauty standards, we’re constantly being bombarded with all of the ways we’re failing to live up to that cultural beauty standard.  The beauty industry exists to create insecurities in people that weren’t there before (like stretch marks or hip dips) so that people will buy more products to “fix” those insecurities.  We’re bombarded with images of people who don’t appaer to have those same flaws, and so those flaws get emphasized in our eyes.  And then we “fix” those flaws ourselves, through Facetune or Photoshop or other beauty editing apps, which only makes us notice those flaws more frequently.  I think a lot of people, especially now, are getting cosmetic surgery with the goal of looking like the person they pretend they already are.
The sad thing is that cosmetic surgery by and large doesn’t actually make people happier.  It won’t completely change your relationship with yourself or your self esteem; only you can do that, by changing the way you think about yourself.  At worst, it can start a cycle of cosmetic procedures where you’re constantly trying to fix aspects of yourself but are never satisfied with the results.
Where does that leave us?  I’m honestly not sure.  By feeding into beauty standards through plastic surgery, we’re in some ways being complicit in our own oppression.  And yet, becoming more attractive has tangible results that allow us to be more powerful and influential, which can in turn help us to change the way our beauty standards operate, or to get rid of them entirely.  I think some of the concrete actions we can take are to follow and elevate beauty icons who don’t conform to traditional beauty standards and to stop prizing beauty among all other things.
So can cosmetic surgery be “empowering”?  At this point, I’m not even sure what that word means, and I suspect it’s lost its meaning entirely.  I think getting cosmetic surgery is negatively contributing to an oppressive system.  But I also would never judge someone who chooses to do it, and I know I would do it myself if I had the opportunity.  I think where I land is that the choice to have cosmetic surgery or not is feminist; female bodily autonomy is important. The procedure itself is questionable.
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harrowscore · 3 years ago
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Mikasa Ackermann, Levi Ackermann, Amane Misa, Aeron Greyjoy for the charactet ask :3
SOMEONE HEARD MY PRAYERS AND NOW MY TIME HAS COME, tysm!!!!! <3
okay, let's start with levi (my beloved):
general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life (THEE little feral anime man after my heart)
hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang (Dark, Tall and Snarky + piercing grey-blue eyes and chronic insomnia? clearly my type ❤)
hogwarts house: gryffindor (maybe....?) | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff
ugh, the hp sorting house system is way too reductive. he has qualities of gryffindor, slytherin, and hufflepuff - brave, astute, loyal to a fault, etc. so it's a hard choice. but if i really have to choose, i'd go for gryffindor. i know that his Bad Boy facade shouts slytherin, but while he has larger goals (killing all the titans, then saving the world etc.), he's got no actual ambition for himself. hufflepuff would also be a good option.
daemon (from the his dark materials series): (because i've just decided that's just way more accurate than the hp method) some kind of big feline. maybe a panther - a black panther would be the ideal - aloof, predatory, dangerous, fiercely independent.
best quality: besides his obvious strenghts as a leader and warrior, the way he cares for his comrades-in-arms. it's very hard to gain his trust and respect, but once you have it, it's forever. he's pragmatic and ruthless, yes, but he also has a huge capacity for compassion and friendship. not that he would be effusive about his affections, of course.
worst quality: none, he's absolutely perfect ❤ jklsdfhjk jokes aside, he really struggles to open up (a serious understatement), idt he ever talked about his traumatic past with anyone. i mean, maybe he mentioned it to hange and erwin (erwin knew him when he was still an undergound thug, so...), but... he's not great with feelings. despite his apathetic, intimidating mask, he feels and cares deeply, but he has a long history with losing the people he loves, so he tries to not personally care about his squadmates, which can be both a strenght and a weakness. of course, he spectacularly fails at this.
ship them with: well, it's not a secret that i'm a huge rivamika fan, this ship is almost literally consuming my waking thoughts lmao. imo they're perfectly compatible: very similar personalities (stoic, the strongest warriors, absolutely terrifying on the battlefield but with a soft underbelly), very similar pasts/experiences, so many parallels that it's actually ridiculous, etc. i love how they're both each other's equals and likeness (yes, i took it from jane eyre. no, i don't regret anything lmao). a lot of tropes i love, too: Terrible First Impression (the Pride and Prejudice vibes are so strong with these two, you have no idea), Kindred Spirits/Mirror Images, Veteran/Young Prodigy, The Last of Their Kind, even Height Difference lmao. i could write a whole rivamika manifesto, but this is already too long. (maybe for some other time 👀) i would've loved for their dynamic to be more explored in canon but alas, isayama clearly didn't give a shit about the ackerman legacy, he just used it as a plot shortcut to give them conveniently unique powers, since they never really talked about it 🙄 (and before some troll comes into my askbox shouting "you iNcEsT fReAk!!!!1!!", they're only very distantly related. we know shit about the ackermans but we know for sure that they've got at least several generations between them. biologically their shared DNA is 0%, obviously they don't see each other as family, all the eldians have a dead ass common ancestor from 2000 years ago so they're all basically ⁓related anyway. if you really wanna scream about i.ncest, go watch got/dark/the borgias and shut the fuck up please. or alternatively go outside and touch some grass) sorry for the rant, uh. anyway, i can also see levi/erwin. idk if i'd ever care enough to read a fic about them (i'm usually a huge multishipper, but for some weird reason not when it comes to rivamika? same with braime and kastle tbh), but still, i can see it.
brotp them with: hange and erwin, obv. veteran trio >>> ema trio, sorry not sorry (at least h. and e. died before yams had the chance to ruin their character arcs)
needs to stay away from: ...uh, filth, i guess? lmao
misc. thoughts: besides the stupid teenage fangirl crush i have on him, i'm genuinely fascinated by the man himself. he's a huge mess of a contradictions, and yet somehow it works: he's violent and brash and kind of an asshole, but also has a strong moral code and integrity; he's obv very skilled at all the killing/torturing stuff and yet he has a huge respect for life; he's got a potty mouth to say the least, and yet some very aristocratic manners/tastes (the way he sits, his preference for tea and usually refined clothes); he comes from what's supposed to be an illustrous bloodline, he's methodical and very precise, and yet he was born and raised in the underground, he's been used to filth and blood and poverty since he was a child, kenny of all people was his father figure, and probably has known no other life than a perennial survival mode existence. he's "humanity's strongest soldier", but while well-built he's also small, the david to the titans' goliah, and probably not what people would assume a born warrior looks like. he's also one of the few characters who stayed true to himself and his original characterization until the end, bless you smol king ❤
(okay, this is getting long!)
mikasa:
general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them (so much. she deserved better ❤️) | actual love of my life 
hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! (stunning lady ❤) | 10/10 would bang
hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff
this is actually easy: mikasa belongs to hufflepuff and no, i won't take criticism (just joking lol). enough with this "hufflepuffs are fluffy puppies/Cinnamon Rolls <3" thing: mikasa values loyalty and duty more than anything else. she's also hardworking... and fierce, strong, lethal. yes, hufflepuff and lethal are not mutually exclusive concepts.
daemon: (finally the better option) a she-wolf, fiercely protective of her pack.
best quality: loyal, brave, incredibly strong (alongside her more fragile qualities). practical and level-headed on the battlefield, at least when eren is not included in the picture.
worst quality: struggles to let go of the past (understandable, considering her trauma). tunnel-vision when it comes to eren, obv. extreme levels of delusions ("if only i spoke openly about my romantic feelings for him - as if i didn't made them abundantly clear in ⁓6 years - he wouldn't kill 80% of humanity :(((" lmao okay. just. okay), but that's more on the writing. she's sadly more static than any other main character throughtout the whole series.
ship them with: see above :) but recently i've also started to be intrigued by mikasa/annie and mikasa/sasha. also, i'm sympathetic to jeankasa fans, though i don't actually care for the ship.
brotp them with: EMA trio, especially armin+mikasa. their friendship is so beautiful and special. also sasha.
needs to stay away from: ...... eren, at least romantically. again, that's more on the writing than anything else, but e.remika unfortunately encompasses many tropes i loathe with all the strength of my old shriveled heart: childhood friends-to lovers where the (male) childhood friend doesn't acknolewdge/is completely indifferent to the other (female) friend's romantic feelings, she hopelessly pines for him for years without anything more than a cold shoulder... until in the last chapter it's revealed that he loved her all along and doesn't "want other men to have her!!! :((" (then why did you have no reaction whatsoever to jean's years-long crush on her while she was jealous of any vaguely female-shaped human being you were friendly to, including hange? are you that dumb, man?); the female character's development and entire arc 100% revolves around the male protagonist - she has no goals, no dreams of her own except staying with him forever and ever; the romance is based on an idealized childhood dream, therefore reaffirming those childish illusions would make the character regress, not actually grow up (and nope, epilogue!jk doesn’t count; that also lacks build-up - i would’ve said the same about rm as well, so it’s not about shipping, guys, it really isn’t - and mikasa needed an inner change; getting married to another man but still praying to eren’s shrine is not substitute to actual development lol). post-time skip she's never really frustrated/angry with him, they never get a confrontation about him becoming a, y'know, mass-murderer of gigantic (pun intended) proportions; she puts him on a pedestal, and never stops idealizing him/never sees him for what he actually is (the narrative framing him as some kind of tragic martyr/saint eren from paradis with zero agency and basically... no clear motivation for the abovementioned mass murder, and not the actual complex tragic anti-hero/villain motivated by revenge and righteous fury he deserved to be, does not help). it lacks a good or even decent build-up - it's basically all tell and not show. now, if they'd actually been childhood friends to enemies to lovers/mutually co-dependent... it could have been interesting. sadly, it's not my cup of tea. of course this is just my personal preference, no hard feelings to the shippers.
misc. thoughts: enormous potential. she's been my fav female character since s1 - and ah, i miss s1!mikasa, when she had actually other stuff to do besides mothering eren. i love that she's the strongest warrior (second only to levi, obv), that her skills are never called into questions despite her gender, i love how she stands up for herself and the people she loves, that she may seem cold and stoic and yet has a such a huge heart, that she's not perfect but also sometimes awe-inspiring. sadly, she never really gets out of eren's shadow; what she lacks is an arc focused on herself. that's why imo getting deeper into the ackerman lore would've helped (also, you cannot make the main female character and the most popular male character descend from the same Unique Bloodline or whatever, and never really make them acknowledge it out loud; as a writer, you just can't lol). my spite is so strong that i'm currently writing a ridiculously pretentious fic that's 70% development for her character, to give her a voice, and 30% ackerthirsting. (yes, that's the fic i'm always vagueblogging about lmao, rip @ my brain). if any other rivamika fan is interested… mind you, it’s in italian tho, and idt i have the skills to translate into english.
misa:
general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life 
hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang
hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff
daemon: mmh, maybe some kind of butterfly? beautiful, colorful, and short-lived.
best quality: glorious fashion sense, more inventive and ingenious than fans actually give her credit for.
worst quality: shallow, impulsive, and obv her dependence on/obsession with light (which stems from trauma btw, but still… the very opposite of a relationship between equals).
ship them with: rem, kinda (monster/human ftw!). also weirdly enough mogi, a little bit? she deserves someone who actually respects her… though she’s far from being a perfect angel. she may actually be crazier than light on some aspects. but in this house we stan evil ladies anyway, so i have no problem with that <3
brotp them with: uh, idk, maybe matsuda?
needs to stay away from: obv light. also takada.
misc. thoughts: a tragic victim of sexist writing. she may be… unhinged to say the least, but she didn’t deserve the abuse she got from light (and from the fans). the female characters’ writing in dn is so bad that idk if it’s on purpose, to kinda mirror the reality of women in a patriarchal society (dependent on men, housewives whose life entirely revolves around their husband/boyfriend etc.), or just casual misogyny lol. it’s even more baffling since we don’t know the author’s gender (they may be a man, a woman, nb, anything really). i tend for the latter option tho.
aegon greyjoy (now, i wasn’t expecting him lol):
general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life 
hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang
hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff
i’m so sorry, i haven’t the slightest idea lmao. maybe gryffindor? mind you, it’s been a long time since i’ve re-read the books, so i don’t have many thoughts about him.
daemon: maybe it’s cliché, but some kind of fish/squid lmao
best quality: ugh, i really can’t remember much from his chapters :(( he’s not a coward, i guess? (lame answer, sorry!)
worst quality: definitely his religious fanaticism.
ship them with: no one.
brotp them with: uh… his family, ig? except euron.
needs to stay away from: obv euron. brr ://
misc. thoughts: i genuinely like the greyjoys chapters, though i vastly prefer the martells (with the exception of theon and asha, bcs i love them). yes, they’re deranged. yes, victarion is… well, victarion lol. but the drowned god religion is actually interesting, grrm knows how to write trauma - every time aeron mentions euron and that freaking door i’m like… :// - and the tragedy of it all… just great writing all around.
okay, that’s the end lmao. thank you so much, love!!! ❤❤
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incorrectly-quoted-queers · 4 years ago
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Star Trek: Discovery "That Hope Is You Pt. 2"- And So It Begins
How wonderfully fitting so that my personal blog needs can match the Star Trek episode I wanna talk about! Serendipitous, right? Anyway, here we are on a Thursday to begin a new weekly thing I want to do for my sanity: Star Trek Thursdays! I know that isn't the satisfying alliteration that people might want, but Thursdays have been my least favorite days of the week since I was like, 6. My theory is that Monday is dreary, but fine, Tuesday you start hitting your stride, Wednesdays are neat because they're like the sweet spot of getting your act together, Friday is the last day of the work/school week, and of course the weekend is... the weekend. But Thursday is this weird spot where my excitement for the week is running out of steam and it's like, a lame tease for Fridays. So I've always hated it. But as my career has been doing better, I made a quality of life decision where I will go to work slightly later (sorry if that's flexing my freelancer privilege) and extend my morning tea drink and watch the most recent Star Trek. And with the final episode of Star Trek: Discovery's third season, I will start by doing a little writing warm-up each Thursday! So, these new Thursday blogs won't quite be reviews or personal blogs or just reactions, but a sort of blend of the three depending on the week. We got the gist? Okay? Okay. Now I'll get to talking about the actual episode and WE BETTER because I really liked this one. Let's start with the bad just to get it out of the way. I am bummed and concerned about the implications of Saru leaving Discovery. At the very least, it didn't feel clear that he'd be coming back to the ship and that greatly upsets me. Doug Jones is arguably one of my favorite actors and Saru was the anchor that made me adore Discovery even at its weakest points. While I know people come and go (like we always knew Pike was temporary) the thing is that Saru felt so... integral to Discovery. I can understand wanting to finally make Michael "Captain Burnham" finally, and she definitely deserves it. I'm just v stressed about possibly losing my favorite lanky alien. What I liked about a lot of this season was a decrease in the Kelvin inspired action-bonanza. Yes, Trek always had some action going on, but I appreciate more episodes that focus on societies and ideals and curious science. While the rest of the season was better than others, this final episode was pretty hardcore action-y and it was... fine? I just don't prefer it. I think Osyraa might've been the best Discovery villain so far and her death felt just sort of... anti-climactic. Like, I think a charm of old Star Trek villains is how the captains would run into them and then some time would pass, they'd evolve or become scarier, and they'd find new ways to tackle them. I was kinda hopeful that could happen with Osyraa & the Emerald Chain. But alas, she's just... dead. I'm meh on the new uniforms. I've always been a big fan of the old ones, though. NOW TO THE GOOD! Disabled super-genius is *chef's kiss*. Give me that sweet, sweet representation. The b-plot of Tilly and the crew trying to blow up the nacelles felt really older Star Trek and I like it. Owo+Keyla always makes me happy, but also Owo+Keyla is not confirmed either so 0_0 The baby family unit of Adira, Stamets, and Culber makes me very happy. Also making Gray a real character over time also makes me happy. He's probably going to end up a hologram and I am very okay with that. I want to see more of them. I think after all the trials she went through this season, Burnham absolutely deserves this captain's post. I also am so happy that a captain gets a love interest. It's good comeuppance for all the BS struggle she's had to deal with. Not just this season, but the past 3. It feels like we got a weird 3 season prologue to how the proper captain got their chair and it's kinda weird but I also kinda like it? But maybe I'm at a point where I'm attached to the crew enough to be like "yep, this is good". So, as Captain Burnham's adventure begins, so does my Star Trek blogging. (As well as a couple other secret things I hope I can talk about more in the future). But for now, I'm settled. Next week (until  I am graced with a new season of something something Trek), let's start at the beginning of TOS and go from there. ....And yes, that means we're gonna get real gay. 
PS: Anyone else get gay Kelpian vibes from Sokal and Saru?
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arecomicsevengood · 4 years ago
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I’ve been trying to slow down the pace of my anxious brain, to move it away from the obsessive unsatisfying masturbatory procrastinating of clicking refresh. I want the presence of mind that comes from focused reading, I want to heal the destroyed reward mechanism of my brain. Absent the structure to days that comes with leaving the house, quarantine conditions have exacerbated these problems. I sought out older newspaper strips, because they have a leisurely pace. While no one would actually read a book-length collection a day at a time, in recreation of how they were originally read, the guiding principle that they be taken in as a diversion while doing other things is worth keeping in mind, as it runs opposite to current directives to binge-watch TV shows. Theoretically, having these narratives exist in parallel to the procession of days would be a nice respite from quarantine’s time-warp effect. However, when reading older newspaper strips, especially if you’re paying attention to the news at all, one is frequently jarred by the presence of racial caricatures.
I really try to avoid being someone offended by work that comes from a completely different cultural context. I’m a white dude, and while I don’t want to be quick to forgive anyone’s racism, I also don’t want to be one of those people that rush to condemn things as a way to posit myself as some sort of enlightened authority. Trying to “cancel” someone who’s long dead really only makes you into someone dismissive of history, which only works to one’s detriment.
Still, when the protests against police violence turned to easily-communicated gestures of symbolic speech, and iconoclastic energy was directed against statues of historical colonialists rather than the more immediate threats presented by police cruisers, conservatives defended such statues arguing their historical importance. This argument is extremely disingenuous. We can choose the historical narrative we want to present to ourselves. While the majority of opinions enshrined in law throughout the course of American political history were those slave-owners and genocide-justifiers, there’s nonetheless a vast cultural history it would serve as well to look to and posit as who we are. Every decision made was the result of argument, the losers of the arguments unaccountably brave. Ever since reading Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke, I’ve been convinced that if any woman should be preserved on our money, it’s Jeanette Rankin, if only so her story would then be taught in schools. The work of a historian is to make an argument by collecting threads of a narrative out of the collective chaos of ongoing time before it’s all lost to entropy and rot.
Much credit is due to comics historian Bill Blackbeard, who edited the Smithsonian Collection Of Newspaper Comics, for what it is now clear is the considerable effort he must’ve made to avoid including too many depictions of racial stereotypes in his survey. He did so because he was arguing for comic strips being an art form, and avoiding the laziness of racial caricature helps that argument be made. He doesn’t bypass them completely: They’re in a Herriman strip, Baron Bean, albeit only for a few panels. They’re also on prominent display in the McKay Little Nemo strips. Maybe they’re somewhere else I didn’t look at too closely, it’s a large book.
But imagine my surprise and mortification when I bought a big collection of Polly And Her Pals Sunday strips and encountered these “mammy” caricatures in the depiction of servants. And then, when I bought a collection of Walt And Skeezix dailies, there it was again. These strips are well-regarded, considered the best of their day, and the comic strip as a whole was regarded as intellectually superior to the comic books that followed. When Gary Groth wrote his introduction to the first issue of Love And Rockets, these strips were the works he cited as the historical apex of the form.
(Apologies may be in order for my not wanting to actually include the relevant imagery of racial caricature here, and this post being all text. I would definitely need to apologize if I did include them though.)
The thing about the racial caricatures is they demonstrate the limitations of their artist’s ambition. The most charitable reading I can afford to give is that the caricatures exist within a larger context where all of the characterizations are burlesques, intended strictly for laughs, and somewhat thin. Gasoline Alley, currently being reprinted as Walt And Skeezix, is meant to evoke some sense of feeling, and while there are some melodramatic plotlines, the bulk of the work it does to accomplish that end is by being low-key and gentle. If you view the strip not as a light comedy historical piece, and admit you are meant to project your feelings onto the white main characters, you kind of have to concede that maybe Frank King didn’t really see black people as human. You know black people read these strips! It ran in a Chicago newspaper. If you lived in Chicago at this time, you would see black people living their lives, which would surely include the buying and reading of newspapers. It seems really weird to then depict black people as dumb and superstitious, even if the depiction of them as working as servants was primarily how the cartoonist would have encountered them in the middle-class milieu he lived in and depicted.
Herriman is a fascinating complicating factor. Because he’s black, and he’s arguably one of the best strip cartoonists of this era, and was respected by his peers. But he was also white-passing, in all likelihood because he knew his racial background would create problems, including with his peers. I think there’s a strong case to be made for the case Ishmael Reed basically implicitly makes with his Mumbo Jumbo dedication: That Herriman is one of the great artists of the twentieth century, and his art is informed by his blackness in the same way that blackness informs the great American art form of jazz. That his identity was denied to his peers doesn’t make his own art any less great, it simply complicates the ways that art works. But if you think of Cliff Sterrett being one of the guys who called Herriman “the Greek” and then drew this comic strip that features these horrible stereotypes, it just hurts your soul.
Sterrett is even I think someone whose work gets called “jazzy,” because there’s a certain modernist verve to it, a visual inventiveness. While the limit to King’s work is in how well-written you can really view it as being when you’re considering the racism, the limit to Sterrett’s is in how well-drawn and actually wild it is, considering that every strip  has the same gridded layout, when contrasted against the more inventive architectures of a Feininger page, or Charles Forbell’s Naughty Pete, or a Garrett Price White Boy strip. (I haven’t actually read the White Boy collection. The people who have read it and like it cite how it’s beautifully drawn, and how not-racist it is in the depiction of Native Americans, as being the things that credit it.)
Here’s something: I’m not even reading the strips drawn by conservatives! I’m not reading Chester Gould, or Harold Gray, or Al Capp. Each of these cartoonist is their own weird thing, with effectively different forms of conservatism, who I don’t wish to dismiss. I can get down with some Dick Tracy strips, whatever. To a certain extent, being an adult in dealing with history means seeing the virtues in people you probably disagree with in many ways. But it’s seeing the weird unconscious attitudes of people you would like to genuinely admire that makes you want to throw the whole project in the trash and start anew, because it displays evidence of such a deep taint.
Racism is basically America’s original sin. Comic strips are, along with jazz, the great American art form. It basically follows that you can’t talk about comics in any sort of accurate historic light without talking about racism. (There’s also racial caricature in Winsor McKay’s Little Nemo strips, obviously.) Reading the supplemental essays in these books of reprints, or critical reviews of them, you realize the desire to distance oneself from talking about the racism in the work is similar to how the conservative view of “American exceptionalism” goes hand-in-hand with a refusal to acknowledge the racist premises at the heart of its founding: People arguing for the exceptional quality of these strips are not addressing the elephant in the room, or only address it in the most cursory and hand-waving way imaginable. They are trying to paint a portrait without blemishes, without flaws, and in so doing depict a platonic ideal that does not actually exist.
These strips are not the work of Robert Crumb, where the racist imagery being employed has ostensibly an satirical end. It’s not Huckleberry Finn either, where the use of racial slurs is commonplace to set up a default mindset that then becomes undercut as a common humanity is realized. I’m actually unclear on if you could print such racial slurs in the newspaper at this time, or if it would be avoided as strenuously as any other profanity that couldn’t run in a “family newspaper.” What you see in these strips is the soft racism of paternalistic attitudes in the twentieth century American North laid bare for what it is. The volume I have of Walt And Skeezix collects the strips from 1923 and 1294, the Polly And Her Pals collection collects work from 1928 to 1930. This was an an era where black people could be reliably counted on as Republican voters, in the era before the realignment in politics that came with the Great Depression and the New Deal.
The current ahistorical posturing of Trump’s Republican party has them occasionally downplaying their overt anti-black racism to claim the “party of Lincoln” banner. So these strips are relevant, essentially, for depicting the sort of status quo the Republican party seek a return to, prior to FDR-instituted social programs, where black people exist primarily as servants and their concerns or agency, beyond how they exist in service to liberal white people, who address them from a place of charity, while conservatives would theoretically exist in all-white enclaves, are dismissed. The racism in the world depicted in these strips is inarguable, but the hope exists, in the eyes of conservatives, that liberals will see the way it flatters them, and wave it away as basically acceptable.
The alternative, as ever, would be in Herriman’s Krazy Kat, “the future liberals want,” where race and gender are forever up for debate in an shifting desert landscape. The issue there, of course, is the basically true argument that the strip doesn’t make any sense, and the more-up-for-debate point that the unique language of the strip is the result of repression of identity and internalized self-loathing. It’s also notable that the strip lacked popular appeal but was allowed to continue existing because it won the support of a wealthy benefactor. Maybe one day we’ll all learn to vibe with it, but I don’t really see that happening.
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redbeardace · 5 years ago
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Asexuality Activism Report Card
[This post is a submission for the October Carnival of Aces, hosted by @asexualawarenessweek, on the theme “Reaching In, Reaching Out”]
Every year around Ace Week, I tend to give encouragement and suggestions about the type of outreach or activism we can do.  This year, I’m going to do things a little different and instead give a report card on where I think we are in terms of various kinds of activism/outreach/visibility.
These are solely my opinions and my categories and are based on my experiences and not any kind of exhaustive research or survey.  Please feel free to provide your own grades and suggest other areas I might have missed.  I also want to note that these grades are not an indictment or attack on any particular group, person, or project.  If you’re working on any of these things, you’re part of the solution and your work will make these grades improve over time, so keep at it!
And if you’re doing any of these things, please plug your projects, so people will know about them!
Intra Community - A
We focus an awful lot of energy inward, and that’s a good thing.  Extending a helping hand, providing resources, hosting chatrooms, making podcasts, organizing meetup groups, writing lengthy blog posts, hosting conferences and unconferences, selling t-shirts...  We’re doing a pretty good job supporting each other from the inside.
Queer Community - B
There are quite a few mainstream LGBTQ groups who openly support us.  We often hold our meetups at the queer community center in town.  Many aces are involved with LGBTQ organizations.  There’s an ace group who goes to Creating Change every year.  We’re an obligatory part of many organizations’ Pride messaging.  Lots of groups now deliberately use the “LGBTQIA” variant of The Acronym, and make it clear that “A” isn’t for “Allies”.  The ace group in the NYC Pride Parade this year (likely the biggest pride parade ever) was deliberately selected to be the 10th contingent, which is a huge deal because the parade was literally 12 hours long.
There are obviously challenges.  The uninformed who don’t understand why we’re at the table.  The deliberate trolls who relentlessly hound us online.  But those people will become irrelevant over time.
Unfortunately, this year marked the first time where I saw Rainbow Capitalism set its sights on us.  (With a big name ace group complicit in the exploitation...)  So that’s not good.
Everyone Else - D
We are not doing well in this area.  There are a few people out there who have heard of asexuality, but not many.  Most people use the word wrong or as the insulting punchline to a joke.  There isn’t a single household name who has come out as asexual and put themselves out there as an advocate.  It’s better than it was 8 years ago, but we’re still mostly invisible.
I don’t really have any suggestions here (except that if you’re famous and asexual, COME OUT), because most of the suggestions I’d have are covered in the other areas.
Direct Outreach - F
By “Direct Outreach”, I’m referring to deliberately trying to find people who are asexual but who are unfamiliar with the term or that do not recognize that they’re asexual for whatever reason.  It’s sort of a subset of a lot of these other groups.  (And it could probably use a better name...)
I’m calling this out explicitly, because I think this can have the most impact, if we can figure out effective ways of doing it, and I don’t think anyone’s really doing this.  (I sort of tried, but it didn’t really work out...) Basically, it would be able getting information about asexuality in front of the people who need it.  Taking over the search results for “Why don’t I want sex?”.  Writing articles about how some guys just don’t care about that sort of thing for a men’s magazine.  Maybe even a direct person to person conversation with that friend who never seems to date.  I don’t know, exactly.  If I knew, I’d be doing it.  But I think it needs to be done.
Fiction Media - C+
There are books with ace characters now!  Pretty much entirely YA, though.  And either a love story focused on the asexual character being asexual, or where asexuality is a tangential inclusion token with no real value.
There are TV shows with positive ace characters now!  Huge step forward from lows of Better Half!  Three shows, in fact!. Two of which have been canceled, and the third of which is about to have its final season.  And none of which are anywhere close to the popularity of House.  And none of which are anywhere close to the popularity of another show which completely erased a main character’s canon asexuality.
There are movies with ace char-  Oh no, no there aren’t.  Never mind.  Same with video games.
While some strides have been made, and having productions actively consulting with groups like Ace LA is a huge step forward, we’re still largely living an area of headcanons and unverified conjecture and Word Of God retcons.  There’s so much more than can be done.
Most importantly, we shouldn’t fawn over and praise any little scrap of hope.  Demand better.
If you’re in a position to make things, make them.  If you’re in a position to influence things to be made, influence them.  If you’re in a position to boost content that is made, boost it.
Non-Fiction Media - C-
There are starting to be articles about asexuality that go beyond the typical sensational “There are some people who claim to be asexual, can you believe that, isn’t that SO STRANGE” or the blandly informational 101 interview featuring a picture of sad grey people in bed.  Not many, but they’re there.  But, at the same time, there are blazingly dismissive assholes hiding behind Ph.Ds, writing things like “’demisexual,’ an unnecessary new substitute for the word ‘human’ ” in articles that are published in 20-fucking-19.
There are a number of podcasts and YouTube videos talking about asexuality, but I don’t know how much reach they have outside of the ace community.
There’s one documentary that hasn’t aged well and I think has been removed from most streaming services, and another that hasn’t been released yet and is phenomenal and you should all see it.  So that...  Two documentaries.
Taking a quick look on Amazon, there are about seven books of substance on asexuality.  Three are academic queer theory textbooks with a very specific audience.  Two are self-published.  One is a weird collection of essays, half of which have little to do with asexuality at all, written by someone who isn’t ace and who didn’t seem to bother even talking to aces for much of the book.  That leaves one book about asexuality for a general audience written by an asexual that had a real publishing run.  Just one.
Same with the fiction media, don’t go around hyping any article that mentions asexuality.  Some of them are REALLY REALLY BAD.  There was one a few months ago that said in an infographic that “Girls working part time have a 33% chance of becoming asexual”, yet it was being uncritically passed around by some high profile aces.
So, y’know, Cs get Degrees or whatever, but we can do soooo much better in this area.  Someone go write a book about asexual dating.  Someone go write a book about asexual history.  Go.  Do.  Now.
Education/Schools - D
Well, it seems like it’s getting at least mentioned occasionally, and groups like Asexual Outreach have put some work towards this.  But we’re still left out of sex ed in most places, and when we are included, the information can be confused, inaccurate, or even ridiculed by the instructor.  Tackling this area will, over time, help out every other area on this list, because the next generations will all know and understand what asexuality is, and we won’t have to start from zero in order to get anything done.
Political/Legal - F
Earlier this year, I did a cursory review of anti-discrimination laws as they pertain to asexuality.  Where asexuality was protected, it was often by accident.  Only one state explicitly mentioned asexual people.  Many states which did have strong LGBT anti-discrimination protections have defined “sexual orientation” in such a way to exclude asexuality.  Even the “Equality Act” that the Democrats have made a lot of noise about this year has that narrow definition.
We need to start making connections with politicians and political groups, and we need to start leveraging our connections with queer organizations to get them to push for better language in these laws.  (Many of the non-discrimination laws were deficient or bizarre in multiple ways, so we’d all be better off with improvements.)
And I should note that it’s an F--- as far as protections for aromantics…
Health Care - D+
Well, we managed to get parts of the DSM-V rewritten.  But even those parts are less than ideal.  There are some therapists and doctors who are well versed in asexuality, and others who, as I mentioned above, hide behind their Ph.Ds writing horrible things and going unchecked.  There’s a raft of sex pills with marketing that explicitly targets people who are probably asexual but don’t know it yet, trying to sell them worthless junk that will make them suddenly black out randomly or permanently change the color of their skin.  We’re still not an option on the clipboard the doctor hands you to fill out.  We’re still forced to take unnecessary and invasive tests for no practical reason.
I think we need to be showing up at health care conferences.  We need to be reaching out to local providers.  We need to be telling people how they should be treating us, instead of letting them fumble around and hopefully get it right on their own.
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veliseraptor · 5 years ago
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1: What are your favorite Loki and Steve quotes? 2: If they were properly characterized, what side do you think Loki and Nat would be on during Civil War and why? 3: What hogwarts houses do you think Nat and Steve would be in?
1. I could have sworn I’d already written lists for both of these. But apparently I have not. I feel like…I have a separate ask for Loki in my inbox right now so I’m going to use that for him (because it’s going to end up, in me fashion, involving a lot of extra commentary I don’t want to put just here) and I think I’ll do a separate post for Steve as well. Again, a lot of commentary. And I can try to find gifs, or whatever. So yeah, stay tuned on this front.
2. Assuming we’re talking specifically about with respect to the Sokovia Accords…
I think Nat’s characterization in Civil War makes perfect sense, actually. I talked a little about how her actions don’t have anything to do with ideology but with what will best keep her people together. She perceives that they are inevitable, and just wants to make sure that they all stick together and look after each other. That’s what she wants. 
When it becomes clear that isn’t an option, and is actually putting peoples’ lives in danger, and she has to make a choice between staying on the ‘side’ she’s chosen or taking action to protect a friend (with the understanding and/or assumption, I think, that Steve probably has good reasons for what he’s doing)…she goes with the latter. Because ultimately, what’s important is getting everyone out of this whole mess alive.
Loki - I’ve talked before about how I quite firmly cannot see Loki ever being in line with anything that would mean someone having any authority over him, whatsoever. I wrote more about this in the context of Remember This Cold specifically here. Loki is pretty much…well, I wouldn’t say anti-authoritarian, but he definitely chafes against authority a fair amount, and any universe where he had to operate with the Sokovia Accords in place would not be one that would be very comfortable for Loki.
3. I actually do not usually have a lot of opinions about Hogwarts sorting! I don’t have strong opinions about most character sorting, except for the fact that I care a weird amount about how Loki is an INFJ. But if I were to choose…hmm. 
I feel like there was a post at some point that made a compelling argument for Natasha being a Hufflepuff, but I’m torn between Hufflepuff and Slytherin. Slytherin is the obvious one that I think is probably...most clearly arguable? But I think there’s equally compelling - and honestly I think more clearly cutting to the core of who Natasha is rather than who she’s been trained to be - arguments for her as a Hufflepuff.
(Here’s one such post making that argument.)
I could really go either way on that one, though, personally speaking. And as a self-identified Slytherin obviously I want her for my own, so. And I think there’s more in common between the two than people generally think.
Steve is…hmm. I think he is probably a Gryffindor. I consulted with my Harry Potter expert on this (@ameliarating) and she agreed with me, which is very validating. He’s someone who puts a lot of weight on ideals which is very much a Gryffindor thing. His orienting toward truth and justice is very Gryffindor, and the whole “no, you move” thing (while not spoken by him in the MCU, still a very Steve line and it is spoken by him in comics) is also very Gryffindor. 
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