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djarinsbeskar · 4 years ago

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PREQUEL ARC: PART 2 - THE HOUK

A/N: Part 2 is here! First and foremost, can I just say thank you so much for the reception Part 1 received and to those who (gasps!) actually want me to tag them for updates??? I don’t know how to react??? I’m so touched??????? It’s so motivating and has reminded me why I love sharing my scribbles!

There’s a greater focus on world/character building in this chapter so if it feels a bit rambling or description heavy, I do apologise! Like I said, I’m trying to build some context to the reader-insert before we get to the smut, and I hope that I’ve kept her general enough that she doesn’t cross the line too much into OC territory and becomes unrelatable. As always, constructive criticism is welcome! My style of writing leaves much to be desired so I would love to know if something doesn’t make sense so I can improve and fix it. But enough of that, on with the show!

Pairing: Din Djarin/Fem!Reader

Word Count: 5.2k

Rating: 18+ (NO Minors)

Warnings: Language and slight injury detail.

Plot: You encounter Mando suffering one misfortune after another.

AO3 | Stitches Masterlist | Main Masterlist

8 ABY, Mynock, Dandoran.

The second time you met him, he had dislocated his shoulder after a nasty clash with a Houk.

Your dealing with the Mandalorian on Klatooine had moved to the back of your mind and you rarely, if ever, thought about it. It was merely another encounter with a rough character that needed some medical attention. You wouldn’t have been able to hazard a guess at how many similar characters you saw in a week while you worked at the clinic. Even more so when you’d left Klatooine after becoming disillusioned that the New Republic were actually trying to make a difference.

You had heard stories from the Core and Mid Rim planets. Stories of the investment and progress being made to rebuild after the tyranny of the Empire, of the billions of credits being poured into the development of new ship building centers on Corellia and large, extravagant residencies for government members on Coruscant. Things, you were sure, that were not actually urgent necessities as they were desires. Especially given that the funds you received from that same government to sustain the clinic thinned before drying up completely a few months after your encounter with the Mandalorian.

…Hemorrhaging more credits than is justified for the benefits we’re seeing in return.

The busybody politician with a colorful title and even more colorful robes waxed poetically, hiding the sentiment of disinterest in ways only a politician could. Half-heartedly trying to distract you by his explanations with empty praise and gratitude for your service during the Rebellion and your humanitarian work now, a true embodiment of what the New Republic stands for. He crowed like the colorful bird he looked like, dressed as he was with fine feathers lining the lapels of his robes.

You bristle at the memory of the hologram’s eyes flickering to look at anything besides you, running down the time you had spent weeks trying to get.

That was when the memory of the Mandalorian surfaced, surprisingly. How the day after you treated him you arrived at the medical center and saw a familiar pouch of credits sitting innocently behind the check-in desk. When you enquired with the receptionist, she told you it was sitting there once she opened up earlier that morning. The only note left being on one of the datapads behind the desk, the scrawling font reading; to help with your work. You had let out a chuckle to yourself as you checked your schedule, wondering if the brutish male you had treated last night really was as cold as he portrayed himself to be.

The memory had incited a righteous anger that a bounty hunter was more willing to support a voluntary clinic than the government that set it up in the first place was.

I thought the Empire were the ones who put a credit limit on what a life is worth. You had hissed in return, interrupting what you were sure was a well-rehearsed and well used speech, before hanging up. You pressed the heel of your hands into your eyes, taking a shuddering breath as you tried not to be nihilistic in thinking that you had spent nearly half your life thinking you could make a difference, when, you were just serving the Empire in different clothing.

It wasn’t a fair comparison; you knew the New Republic was neither as cruel nor as tyrannical and oppressive as it’s predecessor, but you had been made so dreadfully aware that in places like the Outer Rim, people would always be overlooked by those in power because they simply didn’t offer enough to be worth looking at.

The realization was a raw wound to your soul. You had lost brothers and friends to the fight for liberation, but it didn’t seem as though the grass was much greener on the other side. Maybe elsewhere in the galaxy it was, but where you were needed most, the grass was dehydrated and dying under the relentless sun.

With the clinic penniless, your meagre pension from the Rebellion was not nearly enough to keep it functioning. Add to that the reluctance of the other medics to run the clinic alongside you out of their own pocket and the intergalactic beacon for medical aid that alerted anyone in the parsec of where to go being disengaged, traffic stopped. The native Klatooinians preferred their own healers and very rarely, if ever, sought out medics from the New Republic.

For the first time in your life, your path wasn’t clear. If you even had a path anymore.

That was how you found yourself on Dandoran, flying off a week after the last of the medics left Derelkann to the first planet that was habitable to humans. But by the Maker, it was even rougher than Klatooine. The temperate climate and lush greenery were more comfortable for you, but the city you found yourself in, Mynock, was to say the least, undesirable. Having once been Hutt Space, there were still several illegal operations active that kept the city going and you learned early on what areas to avoid and to always carry a blaster with you. But at least where there was activity, there was work for you.

***

You met Biran Sonter the very day you arrived, asking directions to the nearest medical facility, hoping they could use another medic. He was an elderly Mirialan male with a wealth of history behind him, his facial tattoos creased with deep wrinkles and a kindly smile that reminded you of your grandfather.

You were flabbergasted to learn that during the time of the Galactic Republic, he acted as the royal physician to the palace on Naboo.

As you choked on the tea he had kindly made for you at that revelation, you couldn’t ask him quickly enough how he ended up here? On an Outer Rim backwater skughole of a planet and his tale had been sobering. When the Republic first fell, anyone who did not immediately surrender to the rising Empire was terminated. Biran had, at the time, only heard word of the death of the beloved former Queen Amidala and blamed the Empire vehemently. Escaping on one of the last shuttles from the Mid Rim planet before legions of clones descended, he arrived on Dandoran where no one, not even the Hutts cared enough to notice him. All they knew, was that he was an excellent doctor who charged little for his services and kept to himself. That was good enough for them. While he treated a vast number of criminals ranging from thieves to bounty hunters, he was not wholly merciful. He somehow managed to avoid or talk his way out of treating anyone in the organized crime syndicates or known traffickers and killers. It may have gone against a physician’s code to do ones best to save every life, but he like many, made their own code in the Outer Rim.

You fell into a fast and easy friendship with the Mirialan after that, your similar histories of working in the medical field despite being decades apart giving you plenty to talk about. The practice Biran ran in Mynock was always busy and he was only too grateful when you offered to take the weight off his old shoulders and gradually, his clients began to expect to see you most of the day and Biran for a few hours in the early morning. You were never short on work between cantina brawls, accidents and the downright attacks that took place in Mynock and the next eighteen standard months seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, Klatooine a distant memory, as was the Mandalorian you met there.

The night you saw him again, was no different to any other you spent enjoying a quiet drink before heading back to turn in for the night.

You had been in the process of leaving the cantina, recognizing that the later it grew, the rowdier and aggressive the clientele became. You could handle yourself as well as anyone who made their home in Hutt Space, but you knew better than to be blatantly reckless when you were on your own. It wasn’t like you had the squadron you stayed with throughout the Rebellion for backup as you once did, and your closest ally would probably break in half if you pushed him too hard. So no, you were not staying late with Mynocks newest resident of a Houk warlord and the company he seemed to attract.

The Houk in question was a cruel and belligerent brute, a former local warlord by the name of Gappo Teff. His reputation for inflicting punishment disproportionate to any slight committed against him or the Empire was one of the many echoes of the former imperial rule that was still being felt in the galaxy nearly three years after its collapse.

The stories of the chokehold he held over Sullust would make even a hardened soldier’s stomach churn. How he managed to escape the liberation of the planet without being dragged to the noxious surface of Sullust to suffer for the pain he had caused so many, was a mystery. But there he was, sitting like a king in the cantina you found yourself in, bellowing laughter ricocheting obnoxiously throughout the space, not a care in the world that he was a wanted felon.

It might have been to do with the fact that he was at least seven and a half foot tall, with a mass that could easily fit three of you side by side across him and still not be seen. It might have been to do with the cold, milky blue of his small eyes, sunk into a skull so large it could probably shatter ribs and rupture organs if one were to be headbutted with it. The last thing anyone wanted was those eyes focusing on them. It could have been the heavy artillery modified blaster he kept laying on his lap; the weapon more of a cannon for those of a more regular stature. Whatever the reason, very few bounty hunters and even fewer New Republic guards came to collect him. He was probably one of the most easily found quarries on all Guild registers and New Republic wanted lists and yet, he languished in Mynock as if the Empire had never fallen and his reign was still assured.

Making your way to the entrance, you came up short as someone walked in, your nose coming abruptly close to a reddish-brown durasteel chest-plate. Taking a step back, your eyes did a double take at the familiar unpainted beskar helmet. Subconsciously, you had stepped to the side, the Mandalorian continuing to walk without a word as if you hadn’t nearly walked into him. Mandalorians were a rare sight these days, so you could be forgiven for staring. Though, you were most likely staring for entirely different reasons compared to everyone else in the cantina.

The armor was the same, if not a bit more worn, as was the dark boiled woolen cape and pulse rifle strapped to his back. But it was the gait; how could someone walk both gracefully and arrogantly, almost cocky in his self-assurance that he was in control wherever he went. It explained why he was so determined not to let his injury be known by his walk the last time you saw him. Because you had seen him before, there was no doubt in your mind that this was the same irritable reek of a Mandalorian you met in Derelkann years ago.

He stood in the middle of the cantina, assessing the place as his helmet scanned the area. If you didn’t know any better, you say he was…

“Oh, you gotta be kidding me.” You muttered to yourself when the helmet stopped on Teff. When you said bounty hunters didn’t bother to come after him, you should have been more specific. Smart bounty hunters didn’t bother hunting Gappo Teff, which explained why the one you knew of was right there looking for him.

A choice lay before you. Leave now and lock your doors until morning… or wait. For what, you couldn’t be sure. But if the Mandalorian wasn’t killed tonight by Teff, he was going to wish he was with the injuries he would probably sustain.

You let your head fall back on your shoulders as you exhaled. Why were you so soft for lost causes and wayward souls?

The Houks bodyguards left much to be desired, crumbling to the ground before they had even drawn their blasters, smoke rising from the blaster wounds inflicted effortlessly by Din.

The bodyguards weren’t what worried Din. Their boss hardly needed protecting, and he wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

The groan and screech of the metal table being shoved away by Teff as he stood to his full height made Din grit his teeth, arms open as he boomed, ��Ah Mando, I was wondering when you’d try your luck at me. Your reputation is becoming rather infamous throughout the parsec.”

A guttural, wet laugh left the purple skinned quarry as Din remained silent and kept his blaster aimed. Damn, but the piece of bantha crap was big. He quickly scanned his peripheral, but it seemed the residents of Mynock had more self-interest than to trade blaster fire over one warlord, the barkeep casually making his was into the backroom of the bar to keep out of harms way.

“Why don’t you hang up that Guild work and let me make you a better offer.” Teff boomed, taking a swing of his drink, streams of the yellow fluid running down the sides of him mouth as those frosty eyes stayed trained on the bounty hunter.

Din rolled his eyes behind his helmet; negotiations by the quarry were his least favorite reaction to being caught but he knew better than to think he had captured the colossal male yet. Until Teff was either dead or frozen in carbonite, he was a danger. Luckily, the orders were to bring him in dead or alive. Seems the New Republic were fed up with him still breathing. He couldn’t say he blamed them.

“No?” the Houk pushed when Din didn’t respond, “Too bad, you’d have made an excellent addition to my collection.” And with more speed than Din had anticipated from the large male, he charged.

You had the good sense to leave the cantina as soon as the first blaster shot was fired, pulling the hood of your dusty grey jacket over your head while you made your way back to the practice to gather a few things. Things that would be completely obsolete if he died but you wouldn’t think that far. You were a realist, not a pessimist. The Houk might have had the advantage of height and sheer strength, but the Mandalorian was quicker, possibly smarter, and decked with enough firepower to make a starfighter pilot drool.

So, you put the odds about sixty forty in favor of the Mandalorian. Not that you would ever tell him that.

Teff roared in anger as Din rolled out of the way again, shooting his grappling hook to latch onto the Houks shoulder and yanked hard enough to throw the male off balance. Despite his large size however, Teff was able to slide his foot back to catch himself, putting him in direct line with Din.

He was on his feet in no time as the Houk charged at him, lowering his head so that on contact, Din’s left shoulder was thrown back into the wall of the cantina. His breath left him as the impact winded him, a dull but growing pain throbbing from his shoulder before Teff’s vile breath permeated even his helmet and a large hand wrapped around Din’s throat. He could feel his feet leave the floor and the weight of his body pulling downward made the pressure on his windpipe all the heavier.

“Oh well, at least you tried.” Teff gloated, his head leaning closer as if to peer into the visor and that distraction was all Din needed to lift his hand and engage his flamethrower, engulfing the Houk in flames. Din gasped in a breath when he was dropped, the squeals of pain coming from Teff disconcerting as he staggered around the cantina, desperately looking for something to extinguish the inferno his clothing and more vulnerable tissue had become.

Din waited a few more measured breaths before lifting the blaster and shooting the quarry in the vulnerable side of the neck, satisfied with the resounding bang the body made as it fell to the ground, flames still burning bright until he picked up the half-drunk tankard on Teffs table to douse the fire lest he be completely unrecognizable upon delivery.

Din looked around, the cantina was empty; the silence suddenly deafening as he looked back down at the body.

Now, how to get him back to the Razor Crest.

Din sighed.

“We have to stop meeting like this.”

You held up your hands unsurprised when the Mandalorian spun on the ramp of his ship, blaster raised and aimed right at you. He tilted his head slightly, taking you in and you tried not to fidget under the gaze you could feel raking over you despite not being able to see his eyes. What you could see though, was how limp his left arm was hanging to his side.

“The demon medic from Klatooine.” He muttered, finally placing your face and lowering his blaster slowly while you lowered your arms.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” You snorted before nodding to his arm, “And you’ll probably be calling me a lot worse when I tell you that that arm needs tending to.”

He shifted slightly, turning his body so you wouldn’t be able to see. You just crossed your arms across your chest and stared at him pointedly. He held your gaze and was still as a statue. You could play the silence game too if that was how he wanted to do this. It was only a matter of time before one of you broke and you weren’t the one with a dislocated shoulder, so you’d say that the odds were in your favor.

It seemed like time dragged on before, without saying anything, the Mandalorian sighed and turned towards the ship.

You bit down on a smile, but you could still feel it creeping upon your lips as you congratulated yourself on winning. Two nil, you tallied in your head, not bad girl.

The ship… well the ship was a fossil and that was being generous. But it was clean and obviously well taken of, if the tidy hull was anything to go by.

Apart from the charred corpse lying in the middle of course, but those were just details. Easily overlooked. The smell however… that was a different story, but you held back any comments. You still couldn’t fathom how he’d managed to drag a fully grown Houk through the town one-handed, but then you knew that the strength and discipline of the Mandalorians was unrivalled. He could have done it through sheer determination and honestly, you were lucky to have found him at all. But people in Mynock liked to talk, so following the rumors' had let you there relatively easy.

A sigh broke your train of thought, “Let’s get this over with.”

The warrior seemed resigned to his fate as he stepped over the corpse and you followed suit, mind instantly running through the correct procedure and treatment.

“We have to get the bone in the upper arm into the correct position before it slips back into joint, otherwise the force will just break your arm.” You explained as you moved to stand in front of the large warrior when he sat back on one of the many crates pushed against the wall of the ship. You could barely hear the short exhales coming from the modulator and you could only guess that he was holding back speaking, whether in pain or frustration that you had strong-armed him into accepting treatment again.

“But hey, look on the bright side.”

His visor tilted slightly to look at you.

“No droids needed.” You shrugged a shoulder and sent him a grin when he said nothing. When he looked away, you focused your attention back on the problem shoulder; it wasn’t immediately clear that it had been dislocated, the pauldron he wore hiding the jutting ball of the joint that was no doubt pressed uncomfortably against his flesh. What you could see was that his left side was hanging just a bit lower than his right, and the inability to move the arm was a dead giveaway.

“Are you just going to stare at it or actually do what you said you would when you barged onto my ship?” The rasp was closer to you as he turned his head, the rumble of his voice decidedly deeper than you remembered last time. Or perhaps it always had been, and you just hadn’t been paying enough attention, more focused on the very real threat of having a dead body on your hands as the poison spread. You rolled your eyes; or it was all the short and biting commands he only seemed to know how to give as opposed to actually speaking that made you forget the voice. The man could be attractive, if he wasn’t so frustrating.

“I can’t see it properly.” You replied, agitated with him again. He got under your skin too easily, and ruined your cool demeanor.

“You dealt with the problem just fine before.” He snapped back, pain making him cranky.

“You didn’t have a bone out of place last time!” You stopped yourself, sucking in a breath before releasing it to prevent yourself from snapping again.

“At least,” you bartered, “let me remove the pauldron. I can feel around the duraweave to get an idea. I won’t see any more of you than I did last time.”

He didn’t say anything again for a time and honestly, he was the slowest person you’d ever met at receiving emergency medical care. Half the men you treated during the Rebellion would yell until you’d taken care of the worst of their injuries before they even considered if it was what they wanted or not.

“Fine.” Was all he responded, making no move to remove the offending piece so you took that as your cue to feel around the curved metal cautiously, feeling where it attached to his duraweave and releasing it into your hands before placing it down on a separate crate.

“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” A warning growl echoed in the hull, turning you back to your task with a hum.

It seemed the joint had popped forward, no doubt from caving in as Teff collided with Mando’s shoulder. You leaned forward, your fingers feeling around the area as gently as you could while his breathing came out a little shorter. You sent him an apologetic smile.

“I’m going to have to ask you to stay still, okay? Usually I’d have someone to hold—”

“I can keep myself still, just do it.” He snapped finally, turning to look at you before he looked away again. You said nothing more as you took his gloved hand in yours, turning the forearm over and feeling the hand clench in yours when he hissed.

“Shh, nearly there.” You soothed, moving your hand under his elbow to lift it so it was aligned with Mando’s shoulder. You stood, keeping the arm in place and twisting yourself to stand facing his side.

You were definitely out to get him. There was no other explanation for why he only seemed to be seriously injured in your presence. Din tried to tell himself he was being over-dramatic and irrational, that you hadn’t even been on the same planet when he was injured the first time, but then you opened your mouth and he felt justified in his petulant thoughts.

“On three.” He heard you warn and all he could offer was a single nod; the sooner he got this over with the better.

“One…” You jerked the arm forward and slipped the joint back into place quickly with a sickening crack and searing pain took his breath away before it began to ebb immediately.

“DANK…. FERRICK!” Din yelled as his good arm reached across to grip his left, bending forward as he breathed through the flash of pain. You moved out of his way, waiting for him to look back up at you through the helmet, deep pants making his chest heave. You cocked your head to the side when his eyes found yours, a clear question there.

He groaned as he sat back, leaning his head against the hull, “It… doesn’t hurt as much anymore.” He admitted, thinking that the smile you gave him was somewhat worth the knock to his ego at having to admit such a thing in the first place. And like last time, before he could even worry about the concerning direction that thought had led to, you were fluttering about opening crates and bins as if you owned the place.

“What the hell—” he made to stand indignantly.

“Do you have any spare cloth?” You interrupted, “Your arm needs to be bound for a few days. If you have bacta it might reduce the healing time a bit but honestly, I don’t think dislocations can be rushed despite recent studies. Rushing back to heavily lifting or activity for at least six weeks is a sure way to hurt yourself again.”

You were rambling now as you set a pile of disused yet clean cloth you found on your lap, sitting across from him as he just blinked at this enigma of a woman. Giving him orders in his own ship, were you daft?

Your eyes sharpened and shot to his and he was suddenly glad you couldn’t see behind his mask. His eyes had widened guiltily at the thought that you had read his mind.

“You will do what you’re told, understand Mando?” You warned as your fingers tied a loose sling from strips of cloth you’d pulled apart without even having to look at it, deft fingers looping the material and strengthening it with several more layers woven in for good measure.

“If you insist on getting injured so often, you live with the consequences. And the consequences are doing what you’re fucking told and being happy about it, got it? Sulk if you want, so long as you keep the arm bound and don’t take on any jobs for at least two months.”

He opened his mouth a few times at the audacity, did she have a death wish? He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had spoken to him as if he were no more than a child and it made his blood boil. But just as quickly as the anger arose, it simmered as she muttered while watching her fingers tie off the sling,

“You don’t actually seem like a bad guy, and the galaxy can’t afford to lose anymore… not bad guys.” She seemed unsure of giving out even this level of praise but then again, she only had their first encounter to go by.

He grunted; not sure how to respond. And when Din was uncomfortable, he resorted to silence.

You got to your feet once the sling was suitably strong enough to support the weight of his arm without unravelling or breaking and you indicated to him, “May I?”

He jerked his head up in affirmation and you maneuvered the sling to sit correctly under his elbow and forearm, coaxing him to lift it slightly with a tap before you looped the tied end over his helmet, adjusting the length slightly to fit against him.

“You left Klatooine.” the statement rose from the warrior, his tone quieter than you’d heard him all day. Was he... trying to make conversation? Din told himself that it was merely out of curiosity from seeing you by chance on two totally different planets.

Blinking in surprise, you sat back on the crate in front of him, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back on one of your hands, “New Republic stopped funding the clinic and I realized that they’re all the same when it comes to the Outer Rim.”

He snorted in agreement, honestly, he wasn’t surprised to hear the New Republic had cut their losses on charity. It wasn’t in their nature to funnel money away from the Core planets.

“But it’s not all bad,” you continued, “I work with a doctor here. He’s old now so he should be enjoying his retirement. I’m kept busy and…”

He watched you while he waited for you to finish, surely there was more? But when you just shrugged and sent him a tight smile, he felt an uncomfortable niggle at the back of his neck, a familiarity that made him almost want to smile back even if you couldn’t see it. Almost. But not quite. He was unnerved at the… empathy he had for your situation. He too just… kept busy. It wasn’t towards any end beyond supporting the covert and the foundlings there. But for himself, he just kept working towards some translucent, non-existent goal, one job ended, and another began.

Something in your eyes told him you were doing the exact same thing. It unnerved him to think about.

“Echoy’la…” the word left him without knowing and you blinked,

“Hm?”

He shook his head and stood, grunting a bit at the ache in his shoulder when it jostled a bit, “Nothing. It seems I owe you my thanks again, demon medic.”

“I do have a name you know.” You snorted, letting the previous topic go as it seemed to just make him more awkward and grumpy than he already was. You packed away the medikit and replaced the unused cloth back where you found it.

“Somehow I don’t think it’ll be as fitting.”

“Whatever, sunshine.” You looked over your shoulder at him, the sling looking so out of place as he hooked a thumb in the utility belt he wore. It was amazing that he could still look as intimidating as he did. You gathered your things and started down the ramp leisurely. He followed you silently until he was standing at the entrance to the ship.

“Demon or not… thank you.” He called out as your feet hit the dusty ground of Mynock once again. You looked back over your shoulder and gave a single wave, calling something back to him that did make him smile behind his helmet this time.

As you disappeared into the streets of Mynock, he tested the name you had thrown back to him, rolling the syllables, and testing the vowels as he repeated it to himself.

Pity, he thought. He hated being wrong about anything, but somehow, your name was a much better fit than demon medic.

Not that he would ever admit that to you, of course.

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@geannad @ayamenimthiriel @sarahjkl82-blog

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vyeoh · 3 years ago

Note

this is your chance: wax poetic about an Empires or DSMP character of your choice to a fan who is new to both. Explain why I should love them. I need guidance in this new and meme-populated land.

okok this is a lot of pressure haha. Spoilers for EmpiresSMP and DreamSMP below, obviously. I wrote a lot so prepare yourself, anon

I watch a lot of empires POVs but the ones I most anticipate every week are Scott and Sausage.

c!Scott (I'll call him Smajor for the sake of simplicity) starts off the series chilling, not really getting involved with the rest of the server, and staying aggressively neutral. After all, he's an elf. He has lived far longer than most of the other rulers already, and will most likely outlive them for many years. So, the best thing is to stick to his mountains and not get invested in the dealings of mortal affairs, maybe sometimes causing problems on purpose and dipping because what's life without a little spice right.

But then, this demon comes to the server, Xornoth. He's going around causing havoc and wants to send the world into an eternal winter, but he doesn't bother the kingdom of Rivendell much so Smajor stays tentatively cautious but ultimately unbothered. But then, the puzzle pieces start falling together. The first thing that the audience noticed was was Xornoth sounded like Smajor, but we mostly thought that this was just due to cc!Scott voicing both of them and there was nothing more to it. However, then, the people the demon starts possessing start chanting in elvish. The demon hates mortals, and the elves are conveniently one of the two confirmed not fully mortal races in Empires.

This culminates when Smajor stumbles across a cave that contains the backstory of the patron god of Rivendell, Aeor. Basically, there's two opposing forces, Aeor and Exor, and both have a champion. In a previous life, those champions were two brothers, where Aeor eventually prevailed and banished Exor. In this life though, the champions are - you guessed it - Smajor, and the demon Xornoth.

So now Smajor is like. Well fuck. It's my literal god-given destiny to be responsible for defeating this demon who is technically my brother, and if I fail the server gets plunged into an eternal winter. And I have no fucking clue what is happening because I've just been here on this mountain actively trying to stay out of the issues outside my kingdom. We watch him panic and teeter on the verge of spiraling for an entire episode, and when the followers of Xornoth go to the End to kill the dragon, releasing Xornoth's full powers, he fails to stop him. Smajor is a character who was used to being the smart one, the prepared one, the one who has the least deaths on the server. But he's also a character who runs away from his problems and ignores them. Before and during the dragon fight, we hear the desperation in his voice, as he's thrown into a situation he is wholly unprepared for, and it's bigger than him going to the Cod Empire to kill their king, or assisting in other people's plans to kill the codfather. He can't run from this. cc!Scott plays this scene so well as well, as I've said before, one of the best parts of Scott's acting is how he's never super dramatic, but he's so effective in the little things like inflection to make you feel, viscerally, the panic and dread.

So after the dragon fight, Smajor realizes, I can't do this on my own. I've tried and failed. So he gets allies. We watch him, someone who has so strongly been an isolationist, learn the benefits of allies and watch him learn to trust others and watch him learn how to get that trust in return.

My favorite thing about Smajor's characterization is that he's an incompetent protagonist, but not in the way of the "plucky young adventurer". He's capable skill-wise, and fairly jaded and very pessimistic. However, his issue is that up until recently, he did not care about the rest of the server at all, and by the time he learned to, it was way too late.

Also, in 3rd Life, cc!Scott and cc!Jimmy were canonically married and they reference it sometimes in Empires. Like, Scott goes over to the Cod Empire every so often both in and out of character to kill and/or flirt with Jimmy, the ruler of the Cod Empire, which may develop as a secondary plot into the future who knows. So ty Scott for giving the gays what they want o7

Now onto Sausage: his is a story of Icarus, his hubris and ambition being his downfall. He's one of the two followers of Xornoth, who promised him endless power in exchange for his servitude. He started the series being eccentric, but not outright unhinged, but slowly gets more and more extreme as the series progresses, as he gets brought more and more to Xornoth's side.

One of the best parts of Sausage's character, in my opinion, is how his gradual corruption affects the people around him. Initially, he got into a conflict with the Cod Empire and was allied with two other people in the Witherrose alliance. They were allies, but also close friends. The fandom liked to joke that the three had sibling energy, and I'm pretty sure the ccs played to that even more lol.

It was painful to watch the other two members, Gem and fWhip, watch Sausage get corrupted right in front of them, and see them desperately clinging on to this old idea of Sausage in their head because if they faced the truth, it would mean that their friend was gone. Eventually, they do finally cut him out of the alliance, leading him to fully commit to the side of the demon. Sausage felt very clearly betrayed by this, and declared the remaining two Witherrose alliance members to be enemies.

He gets more and more possessed, and we even see the other Empires, his enemies even, slowly realize that something is very wrong with the ruler of Mythland. He starts doing more and more evil things, like killing people more, making sacrifices to the demon, and eventually helping to kill the dragon to free Xornoth. So things are good for Sausage, for a bit. He won, and is more powerful than ever. Then he finds out: he's going to die. Xornoth's possession is slowly killing his soul, and eventually, his body going to be fully taken over and he himself is going to be trapped in the spirit realm. So how do you react to this? Over the next few episodes, we watch Sausage struggle between "the demon is literally killing me" and "the demon has given me so much, and I love it", all while Xornoth takes over more and more of him. We hear him exclaim that "don't worry!! I'm still about 15% there!" while trying to downplay every time Xornoth completely takes over his body. We watch him willingly oppose anyone who is trying to end the thing that is killing him.

My favorite thing about Sausage is that he is undoubtedly evil and proud of it, but he's also undoubtedly human. If you like to watch evil characters go absolutely feral, he's the guy for you. He makes the deal with Xornoth in the beginning, knowing and fully embracing the evilness of the demon, but at the same time he knows what he's doing is detrimental to both himself and everyone around him, but he's gotten in way too deep at this point, and to be fair the demon has held up its end fo the bargain, right?

Also, I would be damned if I don't talk about cc!Sausage's editing. Every one of his videos is like a movie. The way he does camera angles and uses music is so skillful- every lore scene feels like something out of a high fantasy action saga (think: LotR). Every big lore event I always wait in anticipation for Sausage's ep because his editing truly takes lore to another level.

I'm just generally very excited to see where this series goes. Empires is such a good mix of talented builders and good lore. Part of the reason why the series is so immersive for me, beyond any other lore smp, is that they have the settings to back it up. There is a certain charm to the DreamSMP's objectively terrible builds (with a few exceptions) but in Empires, the settings help sell the plot so much.

Another part of why I love EmpiresSMP is how much the ccs are involved with the fan community. I'm sure you've seen the memes about Scott being on tumblr, and Sausage regularly goes through the EmpiresSMP fanart tag on Twitter and likes art, even ones not related to Mythland. Most of the ccs, in fact, have brought up tumblr content on stream at some point or another. Like, several ccs have said that they read tumblr lore theories and hcs and stuff and sometimes take inspiration from them. Fun fact: Rivendell's church was inspired by my pinned drawing; confirmed by Scott Smajor himself. It's just such a good cycle of ccs and fans being excited about each other.

As for DreamSMP, I'm gonna be honest here, the only person I really am invested in in Technoblade. I started watching when he joined the server, and he's the only person whose lore I keep up to date with.

Techno's fun to watch because he's like the Deadpool of DreamSMP. Virtually unkillable, very skilled and scary, but consistently cracks jokes and breaks the 4th wall during plot. His POV is just fun. Like, he does wild plans and gives speeches and some of the stuff that happens to him should be called deus ex machine if it wasn't for the fact that Technoblade is the one who's doing it, and all the stuff is grounded in the fact that cc!Techno is just that good at the game.

However, the fact that he rarely takes anything seriously makes the few times Techno is 100% serious so much more impactful. His whole character has a basis in being perceived as inhuman and being treated as such, and therefore in return trying to hide his humanity. So, when he shows that humanity, whether that's fear, anger, or genuine love for his friends, it really makes you go "oh shit."

Techno's often said not to have character development, but I'd argue that while he remains steadfast in his moral code, he develops leaps and bounds as a person. Like, at the beginning, he's brought onto the server to help Wilbur and Tommy overthrow a government; them knowing he's 1) an anarchist and 2) very very powerful. His character was more of a plot device at that point and was treated as such in the canon. Wilbur and Tommy straight-up lie to him about their plans to establish another government after they overthrow the current one, while he was led on to believe that they were abolishing all governments in the area. But he isn't a plot device. He's a person, as much as he only shows the terrifying, blood god side of himself.

After the establishment of New Lmanburg (the new government its a long story), his friend Phil joins. And for the first time, we see him be fully human with someone and we see someone treat him like a human. Like, we saw glimpses before, with Wilbur and Tommy in Pogtopia, but Phil is the first person we noticeably see he trusts 100%. Then Doomsday happens, and Techno essentially retires to the tundra. During this time, we see Techno learn to be more human, first with Ranboo, then Niki when he establishes the Syndicate. In fact, the two of them, along with Phil, canonically throw him a birthday party, which is a far cry from his treatment in Pogtopia.

Techno's development is one of a god learning to be human, and I just think he <3

#vio.ask #empiressmp #empires smp #dreamsmp #scott smajor #smajor #smajor1995 #mythicalsausage #mythical sausage #technoblade #to be clear i am not an apologist for any character #i fully realize that they are doing wrong and I like to watch it happen #minecraft roleplay got be in full character analysis mode #long post

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hermitreunited · 4 years ago

Note

Give us the spicy Ben takes. You know you want to. Like putting too much Sriracha on your eggs, you want to tempt this fandom. Tell me, Roo

You are either the worst influence, or the best. You are both. Both of those things.

Well shit, okay, it’s Spicy Ben Takes time!

So you know that thing in fandom where Ben gets credited as Klaus’ babysitter, the voice of reason that has managed to keep Klaus alive all these years? The viewpoint that Klaus is going to fall apart post-s2 without Ben there to help take care of him? I’m here to say that canon suggests the opposite is true.

Having someone watching you limits your freedom to make your own choices — or to put it another way, having someone watching you is an extra factor to weigh during the decision-making process. Unfortunately, people are complicated and messy and the Hargreeves are especially so, and so that extra factor is not always going to weigh in favor of making better choices.

And Ben and Klaus are siblings.

There might be nothing more powerful than sibling-induced stubbornness. There was some musical artist that my older sister liked that I said was bad, and then when I realized they were good actually, I kept pretending to hate them until some time after we’d both graduated high school. In turn, because I listened mostly to movie scores, my little brother declared that any music without lyrics was bad and all sounded the same. He had to listen to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 and the opening track to The Dark Knight and tell us that they sounded so alike that he couldn’t tell them apart.

He HAD TO do this. I don’t have a name as good as the Cain Instinct to describe it, but I submit that the inability to admit fault in front of a sibling runs as deep, if not deeper. It’s something to do with pride, probably, and more importantly the second part of this phrase: you can’t admit that you’re wrong or you’ll never hear the end of it. You aren’t going to fall out of touch when you graduate or whatever, this person will be around for the rest of your life reminding you of this fuckup whenever it benefits them, for forever.

(okay a read more because this is looooong sorrrrryyy)

So, to take a common fandom scenario, if Ben says Klaus should go to rehab and get clean? Klaus can’t just do that, especially if Ben has said it before and Klaus established that his side of issue was that he didn’t want to. If Klaus decides he does want to go to rehab after Ben has been on his case about it, then Ben can claim for the rest of forever that he’s the reason that Klaus is sober now, and that would be super fucking annoying when dealing with addiction is such deeply personal work. It’s a lose scenario however you slice it (which is very typical for sibling stupidity — it’s a fight that you lose as soon you decide it’s worth fighting over).

Now okay, let’s back up and be clear here. Klaus falling prey to sibling-induced stubbornness isn’t Ben’s fault. I’m not suggesting that Ben is actively standing in Klaus’ way, or that Klaus would have made the choice on his own to go to rehab had Ben not suggested it first. I’m saying that Ben’s presence simply makes it a harder thing to do, a larger mountain for Klaus to climb, on a journey that is already intimidating enough on its own.

And Ben is always there. There’s no space for Klaus to go off on his own and cool down and admit to himself that he is being stupid. Irritation can only build and build for years with no relief — irritation on both sides.

So, yeah. Very unintentionally, Ben advocating for Klaus’ sobriety may in fact be a hinderance to that sobriety being achieved in actuality. Klaus might have more motivation to make good choices and less inclination to make bad choices when he doesn’t have a brother constantly watching over his shoulder.

But don’t just take my word for it! There are a few spots in canon that bear this interpretation out. I first got this in my head when I compared the ending of s1 and s2 — instead of leaving Vanya alone, Klaus comes out to join her in s2, which prompts the others to come as well and seems to turn out better than s1. No moons are exploded in the making of s2. Of course Ben is not the only difference in the situation, and of course we don’t know if Klaus would have made a similar choice if Ben was there advocating for it. What we do know for sure is that Klaus is capable of making good choices on his own.

We also see a couple of times that following Ben’s advice is not always a great choice. In s2, telling the cult the truth doesn’t do anything useful, and going after Luther in 1x07 gets Klaus killed. It seems like the time that Klaus was living his most well-adjusted healthiest life was when he was in Vietnam, without Ben.

This is all to say that no, Klaus does not need Ben to be able to take care of himself. There’s more reasons to believe that Klaus will fare better without Ben’s constant presence. Surely there are aspects of his life that will be sadder, and emptier, without the brother that was such a fixture of his life for so long. But there will absolutely be parts of his life that are better, too. That’s one of those things that makes loss and grief so painful and guilty, isn’t it?

So actually maybe this is all to say, I would really love to see some more fandom takes that explore this complicated, flawed dynamic, and less of the one-dimensional ‘Babysitter Ben’ trope. Ben Is a Nuanced Individual With Flaws and Whose Actions Sometimes Cause Unintended and Unfortunate Consequences, and All of This Makes Him More Interesting and None of it Makes Him Evil 2k21!! (is that still a thing people do?)

#WOW see THIS is why I take uhhh. months???#to answer asks #or to make any posts at all really #tua #tua discourse #ben and klaus #asked and answered #yeah it’s just that I am incapable of saying anything in less than 1000 words apparently #long post #anyway I’m ready to be cancelled #it’s not like I’m all that active on here anyway #unpopular opinion #SPICY takes #tua meta #you are a menace to society but mainly to me sunrise <3 #sunriseseance #oh okay additionally though yeah it's not actually a TRUE thing that a sibling will lord a win over you forever #it's something that COULD be true and you are grumpy and fighting so you take it as proven fact #what I'm saying is that it's stupid. I really really really want that to be clear. no one is the winner in these scenarios #and you are doing a bad behavior by engaging in it and allowing your stubbornness priority over healthy communication

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shouldntcryoverit · 4 years ago

Text

a clone fit for a ball.

Commander Fox x Reader

I think initially I wanted to write this as a whole story, but it’s quite a lot and (because i haven’t been too active) I just sorted wanted to post something yk :) hope you enjoy! <33

———————————————————————

It’s a dramatised reality if you think about it. The idea of a gathering with the only intention being to appease the aching sore that is political pillow talk, is one that is so pompous it seems that those who benefit from the scheme are the ones who design it. It’s a drawn out, legislative, painfully particular game of charades disguised in lavish clothes and large hats. In almost every way, those garments are often large enough and sparkly enough to hide the deceit they cover, and persuade each mindless baboon that is gormless to fall victim to it to enter into the game themselves. It’s a repetitive cycle, and stupid though it may be; it does work.

Though there was beauty in it that you just couldn’t deny. The decorations were enough to mesmerise you entirely; lavishly hung around each bannister and archway of the senate hall. Bright colours of orange and pink were scattered across the flower arrangements that littered the walls and their accents. Whatever had been done to spritz life into the chandeliers and lighting had worked its magic, for the perfectly lit definitions gave luminosity and warmth all in one squeezing breath. It was inviting and spectacular; a collaboration of everything the senate appeared to be. Even as the floor beneath your heeled feet glistened with rich delight, the pit in your stomach still swallowed your joy.

Your hatred for all things political had always been your strength and your weakness, especially as a senator. You represented your home planet well enough to protect it’s people, but you would not stand for the same deceitful bulldozing that reduced planets and people to nothing more than pawns or money makers. It meant that you stood for nothing you disbelieved in, including ridiculously regimented senate balls.

Nevertheless, you needed a way in. Your planet had been overlooked for far too long; the cries of your people ignored. You needed a trade deal and you needed one that wouldn’t result in republic outposts and war dependancy littering your already fighting home world. A ball was a good opportunity for political match making, and it was one you couldn’t give up.

It was that reasoning that had led you as far as a blue, bejewelled dress that suffocated what waist you apparently had, and hugged each curve with malice. Even with the anger dripping from your rouged lips, you couldn’t deny it. You did look rather pretty. It was a small triumph, but one that gave you confidence enough to manage the heels that’d been handed to you. As you caught a reflection of yourself leaning heavily against the arm of a guard in a particularly shiny section of the wall, you realised just how pretty you did look. Perhaps there was something addicting in the madness of it all: perhaps there was something powerful about a low cut dress and tousled hair.

Your entrance was timely, a rushed manner donned after slightly too much time taken trying to find the dammed place. Typical of Coruscant, you muttered. Two guards in white and red nodded at your arrival, both seemingly emotionless under their plastoid helmets. It was something that’d always confused you about the clone army; all painfully identical, yet lightyears apart from each other. A brotherhood was one thing, yet could you even call it that?

The thought itself was fleeting, though one you were sure to ponder later. You passed those statues of guards within seconds and continued on your warpath to the ‘reception’. It didn’t take much for you to be recognised; the perks of being one of the only senators with detailed and beautiful facial markings. It was something you prided most. The rest was a blur, but you made it into the hall and straight into a chair that’d apparently been pulled out for you. The man to your left was a kindly looking togruta, the woman to your right your stern faced guard, who looked murderous in comparison.

“My dear, aren’t you cold?” The togruta asked with a genuine smile. The question made a small laugh sprout up your throat.

“Perhaps, though my heart is beating far too fast for it to be uncomfortable.” You replied with that charming tone in your voice you’d perfected.

Everything was an act; your shoulders perked up and back to lift your chin in power and confidence, the planned placement of your hands across the table, your silken voice as it left your silken mouth. Even the unplanned conversation would seem regimented, though the Togruta’s nature settled your mind with authentic care.

“Ah, now that I can understand.” He shuffled, uncomfortable or unsure you couldn’t tell. “I do apologise, but I cant seem to place you.”

You paused again with an unfaltering expression of tenderness.

“Oh well I know you, Governor Roshti. But I don’t blame you, I took over from Madame Liobrev shortly after she resigned from senatorial status. This is my first ball to say the least.” There was a hint of an exhale by the end of your scentence, it felt good to admit even subtly that you were out of your depth.

“Well it doesn’t show, I only hope my name hasn’t ingrained in your mind the way it has in so many’s.” The sadness that fell across his face was just as genuine as the smile that it had replaced. It made the compassionate side of you ache.

“You did what this god forsaken war made you do, I see no reason for shame to fall upon you or your people. Battle leaves us all defenceless.” The spite of your tongue was heavy; anger for the war too many fell victim to.

“Thank you, my dear.”

You smiled once again, before turning back to your guard. She was perched haughtily on her seat, weapon securely hidden but it’s presence obvious. Her attire was in contrast to yours; armour and garments all of dark colours and metal accents. She looked like a warrior, and you were momentarily envious.

“Taurin you really ought to relax. Senators aren’t that vicious. Or at least not when they’re sedated with flattery and shiny things.” You joked, desperate to take the edge of both her and yourself.

Taurin, the guard, bowed her head in humor, a distant smile forming over her pursed lips. It was one you were incredibly fond of, and one you had grown to recognise as endearment.

“M’lady, it’s not the senators I’m worried about.”

You laughed; a breathy laugh that corrupted your lungs and throat.

“What more could you possibly find challenging about a ball this compensated for. Perhaps it’s that my shoes will grow painful on my feet? Enjoy yourself!” You pressured with sweet intentions.

She turned to face you with a vindictive smile laced with sour belief. Her eyes trailed over your reeling eyes in silent conversation, seconds before they jolted off their steady trajectory just past your head. What had been childish remark soon freezed over to slight panic and question. You noticed the change almost instantly and frowned with creased eyebrows. As your head began to swivel to turn to her opponent, she screeched and forced you down.

The fall from your chair wasn’t high, but the adrenaline and shock of the direct hit made it seem endless. You hit the hard floor with a mind numbing crack, one that caused your eyes to widen before you realised it was only one of the many jewels that laced your back splintering; rather than something a critical. Nonetheless, the shot that flew past certainly was real.

The bullet soared over your head, frowning that it had missed it’s target. You couldn’t even process what had happened before Taurin fell to your level, teeth clenched in agony. You reacted as best you could with hands fumbling around her leaking wound; but she swatted you away and thrusted your head down once more. That one bullet, the one that had cursed your luck and gone for your guard in spite of it, had previously had a purpose. Your mind lingered on that fact for a second before you pushed past it. Searching eyes found Governor Roshti’s, who had copied your move and positioned himself just under the table.

You couldn’t hear much over your panting breath; nothing except the shouts and screams of senators whose useless lives felt threatened, so naturally, just like their entire life’s work, they do nothing except complain and wail. It was dark under the thick tablecloth, too dark for anything to be made clear to you. Taurin had wriggled further away and was holding her position behind your table, a gun most definitely in her hand.

Three shots. Four shots. Two. One. Silence.

Now really all you could hear was your panting breath. The blood rushing through your ears made a ringing sound, and the tingling in your veins made the fastness of your heart seem ordinary. Governor Roshti made no adjustments to his stance at the silence, but you were itching to unfold your coiled legs and poke you head up and out of the cover. Like most things you did, you did it without asking. The carnage wasn’t as bad as the screams foretold it to be, but as soon as your vision shifted you saw the agony splayed over Taurin’s face.

“Help! Medic!” Was the instantaneous shout from your lips.

One of the clone guards from earlier shot up. He wore a kama around his waist and his armour was weathered; something that told you he was rough without him having to speak a word.

“Ma’am sit back down, we don’t know where the attackers went.” He commanded.

“I can manage.”

His helmet tilted slightly in what you assumed to be annoyance. With two fingers pointing he signalled for a medic to step forward. The new clone looked significantly younger through the way he held himself and the shining of his uniform. With Taurin being led away, you finally let go of the breath you’d been holding.

“Ma’am-“

“I’d like to know who just tried to kill me.” The clone looked slightly surprised at the deadpan tone of your voice. “And who shot my closest guard.”

He grimaced from under his helmet and lifted his hand up to his visor to tap into his comm channel.

“This is Commander Fox, what’s our status?” He spoke; a velvety tone lacing the authority in his voice.

Fox. It wasn’t bad. Your mind shifted once again as his comm crackled back at him.

“Suspect... run... in pursuit... ty hunter.” Was all you could make out, but it didn’t take a genius to fill in the gaps.

“They won’t find the assailant while pampering senators.” You spoke, cringing slightly at the privilege you held yourself; here you were demanding Commander of his time, all because you have some morsel of perhaps undeserved power.

“I’m sorry” Perhaps an attempt to reconcile your blundering thoughtlessness would change the trooper’s aggravated stance. “I only meant that it would help if the senators uninvolved were to be sent home and out of your hair, it can’t be fun listening to them whine.”

His head tilted slightly in what you hoped to be a grin. “You’re not wrong, but I’m afraid I can’t keep you alone in protection. Not when we don’t actually know who was the intended target.”

“Commander, let me help. Before I was a senator I was a member of the guard. I’m afraid I can just about handle myself.” There was more than a hint of pride in your voice as you spoke.

Fox shook his head and lifted off his helmet. It would be far to say you lost your breath at the sight of his actual face. In the few seconds you spent mentally sketching his face into your brain, your mind fastened at his slightly too-long-to-be-neat mop of curly hair, and how it fell playfully over his deeply tanned forehead. His cheekbones were sharp enough to shut you up (which was, as he’d come to discover, wasn’t actually that easy) let alone the bite of his jaw.

But it was his eyes that made you most intriguing; deep and wise auburn eyes set perfectly amongst weathered skin. They watched you for a moment before the eyebrows above them lifted slightly in confusion.

You hadn’t meant to stare. Or maybe you had, it was unimportant.

“Fine, I’ll take you back to the office while the boys take the others to a safe space.” He wasn’t smiling, but he didn’t seem as begrudging anymore; a small victory.

“Thank you, although I may need a change in shoes.”

At this he did grin; and it was marvellous.

#commander fox #the coruscant guard #tcw #the clone wars #commander fox x reader #clone wars #fox x reader #fox x you #the clones #clones #the cw #incorrect clone wars

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astrojoong · 4 years ago

Text

Seonghwa’s Birth Chart

☉ sun in ♈︎ aries

aries is the child of the zodiac so honestly its no surprise that this is his first life

he’s just so full of wonder and excitement its truly lovely to see

so excited about learning and exploring the world around him

second decanate so his subruler is the sun

aries with a touch of leo flair

the sun subruler adds in just a touch more dignity and pride to aries

reigns in a bit more of aries’ impulsiveness and recklessness

instead it adds to his hunger to succeed

it also really brings out his showmanship and ability to perform

when he performs he is able to show both raw aggression and passion while also maintaining poise and grace

holds an intense drive which can sometimes be to his own detriment

has the potential to push himself too hard, and put too much pressure on himself

can have little to no patience or attention span, needs things to be constantly moving and changing, with new challenges arising or else he’ll become bored and dissatisfied

☽ moon in ♋︎ cancer

(ayyy i have a cancer moon too)

basically... a whole Mom

ok so the moon is at home in cancer

she’s right where she wants to be so that just means that she is That much more powerful

cancer is a feminine sign and she adds a very soft dimension to his aries sun

cancer is the middle child of the water signs, which means it can either take on a more parental role or a more childlike role-it has the versatility that the youngest and eldest signs lack (same goes for all middle signs)

in Hwa you can definitely see that its taken on the parental role

he is very in touch with his feelings and the feelings of those around him

super intuitive and really just a whole ass caretaker

so incredibly loyal and sensitive and protective

on the flip side this may also make him prone to nagging if he’s not careful, and it likes to team up with his aries sun and make him WAY too hard on himself

can be Incredibly self critical and have the potential to get stuck in ‘moods’ which can bring down everyone else around them (there are actually four fucking cancer moons in ateez idk how they survive if one- or god forbid- multiple of them get moody, my dad and I are both cancer moons and we engage in something I like to call vibe warfare in which we accidentally throw off the Entire balance of the household if one of us is feeling moderately shitty or In Our Feels)

☿ mercury in ♈︎ aries

mercury is pretty happy in aries so theres a lot of benefits to this placement

a wonderful conversationalist

there's that underlying fierceness that aries brings

witty, outspoken, and very original

very jovial in his speech, good at joking around

also very good at arguing.

watch tf if you get on his bad side he can go OFF

very lucky person

normally doesn’t put a Whole lot of thought or planning into decisions but they usually just work out for him

♀ venus in ♒︎ aquarius

maybe not the best at expressing love

I think his cancer moon is a bit at odds with this placement, he feels all these emotions and can seem like he’s great at expressing them, but he’s really only showing surface emotions

I think he is very good at hiding his true feelings, even if he doesn’t mean to, he keeps certain things very close to his chest

very magnanimous, a great socialite

personal freedom is very important

people with this sign are a little notorious for not wanting to be tied down, maybe having some commitment issues, we haven’t seen Hwa in a relationship so who knows

did I say freedom was important because freedom is Super important

really is able to satisfy his urges to travel and experience exciting new cultures and situations through his career. He honestly seems super well suited for the industry.

♂ mars in ♈︎ aries

ok mars is at home in aries so you know shit is abt to get INTENSE

much like how his cancer moon makes all his feelings super strong

this is all abt aggression

essentially if Win by Ateez was a placement

an absolute force of nature

definitely some major self confidence coming through here

very courageous and honest, but potentially a little blunt, especially if he’s worked up

that's when he starts to lose his filter a bit

the good thing is, he doesn’t seem to let his anger build up or fester, he deals with it when it happens

this is also the ✨sexy✨ sign so lets just say he is very Active and... depending on where his houses lie, it could definitely point to him being more assertive in the bedroom.

♃ jupiter in ♓︎ pisces

Jupiter is essentially the planet that tells you what you should do with your life

I am not surprised he’s in music

pisces is like Known as the soulful, artistic sign, so the fact that he found his way into a career where he can play to his aries need for passion and power while also expressing himself and his emotions in a creative fashion, and in a way to help others? fucking incredible.

He has a healing ability to him

Just being around him makes others more at peace

Very interested in/talented in emotional healing

♄ saturn in ♈︎ aries

jfc final aries

its like his chart is just Oops! All Aries

if Jupiter is the planet of good luck, saturn is the planet of bad luck

saturn is what stands in the way

its not too bad though

it just means that he will have a lot of obstacles that he must continuously fight against in his journey to success

but good news! while it may seem like they’re never-ending, the difficulties begin to let up as he gets older and gains more experience

saturn in aries means he’s ambitious and determined

it may place these obstacles in front of him, but it also gives him the strength to persevere

♅ uranus in ♒︎ aquarius

ok from here on out, up until chiron, its more generational so I’ll touch on uranus, neptune and pluto in my overall ateez analysis since they all share those signs

♆ neptune in ♒︎ aquarius

♇ pluto in ♐︎ sagittarius

⚷ chiron in ♏︎ scorpio

chiron tells us what our biggest wound is

Seonghwa’s has to do with his self worth and emotions

scorpio is a very intense sign, it doesn’t half ass anything, pain or pleasure

he will go through or will have already gone through something that will be catastrophic to who he is as a person.

it will/has cause(d) a great deal of emotional pain

in his life he has to learn how to love and accept himself, how to control his emotions and how to make peace.

the lesson that must be learned is one of renewal and transformation, of endings and beginnings

⚸ lilith in ♎︎ libra

lilith is meant to represent our innermost psyche

primal urges and base desires

it also shows our fears

Seonghwa’s deepest fear seems to be one of rejection

he needs to find a balance in his life, learn healthy boundaries

he’s very susceptible to other’s opinions and influences

I feel like it may not be as much of a problem because he has so many other fortunate signs to counteract this but it could be an issue if he isn’t careful

#seonghwa #park seonghwa #ateez #atz #seonghwa ateez #astrology #kpop #kpop astrology #kpop birth chart #hwa #bc its my first shot @ this its probably a little rough #im not used to analyzing charts for ppl who aren't like requesting it #so its weird to write them for an audience #anyway #i hope it aint half bad #hwa astrology #ateez astrology #seonghwa astrology #ateez birth chart

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nico-drives-badly · 3 years ago

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History 101: Devil Hunter's Edition

Yet another unnecessarily long worldbuilding post copied and pasted directly from my notes app. Enjoy!

Early History

Devil Hunters have existed for as long as human civilization itself, with the earliest examples of “demon warrior” soldiers dating back to the ancient city-states of Mesopotamia. Because of the sheer abundance of open Hell Gates in the millennia prior to Sparda's awakening, humans relied heavily on the protection of demon warriors — an early, militaresque form of devil hunter — to defend their homes and crops. As a result, these early fighters were highly revered in early societies and were ranked among the highest classes in political caste systems, second only to feudal lords and the royal courts. During this era, military soldiers were often recruited to fight demons just as often as they were to fight other humans, which is why the terms for “soldier/warrior” and “demon/enemy” were often interchangeable in ancient languages.

The Roman Empire had the most advanced and organized demon warrior system in the world, with Roman gladiators being regularly dispatched throughout the Mediterranean to defend the lands they had conquered. Although the military might of their demon warriors struck fear into the hearts of millions, it was what ultimately led to their downfall; after Sparda's awakening 2000 years ago, the need for devil hunters decreased drastically as the number of open Hell Gates around the world began to dwindle, causing the caste system in the Roman Empire to buckle. Some historians even argue that it was Sparda himself who jump-started the fall of the Roman Empire, with some comparing the fables surrounding Mundus to the evil emperor Nero.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, devil hunters continued to thrive, albeit at a much smaller scale. Some feudal lords began to hire individual devil hunters to protect their property, and devil hunters in turn began to advertise their services in exchange for money; this form of devil hunting became known as the competitive model. Other land owners began to defend themselves in the event of a demon attack, and they began to defend other people's property in exchange for mutual protection, rather than for profit; this form of devil hunting became known as the centralized model. Over the next two millennia, countries would widely adopt one or both of these models on a national scale, which would eventually evolve into the modern iterations we have today.

In countries with a modern competitive model, thousands of devil hunting businesses across the nation compete with one another for profit. Monopolization, backroom deals, and political lobbying are all major issues under this model. In countries with a modern centralized model, devil hunters are grouped into different “departments” that collectively serve each district, similar to a police or fire department, and are subsidized by taxpayers. Disorganization, poor leadership, and abuse of power are all major issues under this model. Both models are infamous for their corruption and their historically unequal protection of marginalized populations.

Devil Hunting in Nascita

Nascita was the first country in the world to adopt a fluid model for devil hunting — a modern approach that allows each city or district to choose which model to adopt, creating a “fluid” mosaic of both models throughout the country. Although the major issues surrounding both systems still exist under the fluid model, it allows cities to change and adapt their devil hunting model to fit their individual needs, and several countries have since adopted Nascita's fluid model as a result.

During national emergency events, such as the sudden emergence of Hell Breaches following the Qliphoth incident in Life Rewritten, the Prime Minister will coordinate devil hunting efforts in each district via civil defense radio. Although this method is effective for short-term emergencies, Hell Breaches will likely become a long-term issue in Nascita due to the Qliphoth having severely weakened the human-hell barrier in the country; this means that, although Prime Minister Hartman's emergency communication efforts are working well for now, he will eventually have to create a more permanent method for reporting Hell Breaches in the near future.

Districts in Nascita include:

Red Grave City District (Southern Nascita)

Capulet District (Southwest Nascita)

Tumult City District (Southeast Nascita)

Sapere City District (Central Nascita)

Montague District (Northern Nascita)

Impetus City District (Northwest Nascita)

Rural District (Northeast Nascita)

Island Districts (Fortuna + Mallet Island)

Devil May Cry

Devil May Cry is a special case in that, because of Dante's alleged relation to Sparda, people from all across the country will personally request his services by name. In contrast to other for-profit devil hunting businesses, which typically only work within their district, Devil May Cry has completed at least one mission in every district of Nascita; in fact, word of DMC has spread so far that it remains the only devil hunting business in Nascitian history to complete a mission outside of the country (Dumary Island in South America).

Despite this, however, Dante has recently decided to only take missions in the Red Grave City District, leaving the rest for Nero and the mobile branch.

Humans and Orbs

Because of their close interactions (and even closer near-death experiences) with demons throughout history, humans have naturally adapted to not only optimize their civil defense against demons, but to utilize any and all resources they can obtain from demon carcasses. Demon orbs are a prime example of this. Thousands of years before the dawn of modern medicine, humans were using demon orbs as herbal remedies for a variety of health conditions, and even modern studies have shown that certain chemicals found in demon orbs are analogous to the active ingredients in various over-the-counter drugs.

Here is a breakdown of each orb and their use to humans:

Red Orbs

As you can see, most orbs have medicinal properties in humans, which in turn makes them highly valuable. Red orbs, on the other hand, have no health benefit whatsoever — in fact, for centuries, they were considered completely worthless! The event of a demon exploding into red orbs upon its death was once nothing more than an annoying inconvenience, like a miner digging for gold only to find nothing but useless rock. But it was in this worthlessness that red orbs eventually found a new purpose among the devil hunting community, particularly weaponsmiths.

You see, weaponsmiths often reserved their best weapons for only the most experienced and worthy of customers; after all, you don't want some young punk breaking the finest sword you've ever forged! But it wasn't always easy to tell the newbie devil hunters from the experienced ones, especially when dealing with travelers from outside of the village. Because of this, weaponsmiths began to require proof of a devil hunter's skill before selling their wares to them, and because demon bodies instantly dissolved into red orbs at the moment of death, the most readily available evidence of a devil hunter's skill was — you guessed it — how many red orbs they had in their possession. The more red orbs a devil hunter had, the more experienced they were, and the more likely they would receive good-quality weapons from the weaponsmiths.

Eventually, this practice evolved into the red orb currency we know of today, where basic mortal weapons cost the least amount of red orbs while advanced magical weapons cost the most. Red orbs still have no real value in the “real world”, but for devil hunters, it has effectively become their tool for bartering.

Green Orbs

Green orbs are used as a natural alternative to pain relievers. It's active ingredients are acetaminophen and menthol. Green orbs can be applied directly to the skin to help reduce inflammation, similarly to an ice pack (menthol), or it can be crushed and consumed orally to relieve muscle soreness and reduce fever, similar to Tylenol (acetaminophen).

Green orbs should NOT be used on an open wound. A common misconception in the DMCverse is that it can be used as a substitute for Neosporin, but that simply isn't the case. Rubbing a Green Orb on an open wound will only irritate the skin and increase the risk of infection.

White Orbs

White orbs can be used as a natural stimulant, akin to green tea extract. “White orb extract” and “white orb powder” are particularly popular finds in the nutrition aisle of grocery stores, as well as a popular ingredient in convenience store energy shots. Recent studies have even shown that white orbs, when used in small dosages, are less likely to damage your heart compared to regular caffeine, making it a healthier alternative to traditional energy products.

But don't get too excited; more research still needs to be done before white orbs can safely replace caffeine in all of our favorite energy drinks. There's still a lot of concern among scientists about potential drug interactions with prescription stimulants and with artificial sweeteners such as aspartame.

Blue Orbs

Blue orbs are different in that they provide no immediate health benefit upon consumption. This, for the longest time, led for blue orbs to be disregarded as useless outside of the devil hunting community, just like with red orbs. However, in recent decades, scientists have found that blue orbs contain essential vitamins and minerals that can be taken as part of a daily regimen to promote long-term health. It's not uncommon, therefore, to see multivitamins and children's gummies touting “made with all-natural blue orbs” on their labels.

Despite having a plethora of essential vitamins and minerals, however, there is no concrete evidence that taking blue orbs as a supplement every day actually increases longevity. But given how many health benefits *do* come from proper vitamin intake, you can understand why this orb is so popular among pharmaceuticals.

Purple Orbs

While similar in color to blue orbs, purple orbs have an entirely different chemical makeup; rather than vitamins and minerals, purple orbs are packed with hormones, particularly testosterone and estrogen. While testosterone and estrogen are considered the “male hormone” and “female hormone” in humans, both hormones are readily found in demons regardless of gender, and when isolated in a lab, these natural hormones can be manufactured into drugs used for everything from hormone replacement therapy to safer alternatives to anabolic steroids.

Talk to your doctor before taking PURPLE ORBS. Do not drive or operate machinery until you know how PURPLE ORBS affects you. And please, don't be like that guy on TikTok who just straight-up swallowed a purple orb and had to get his stomach pumped afterward. Yes, that is a thing that actually happened in the DMCverse. Capcom told me everything about it.

Yellow/Gold Orbs

Yellow orbs — or gold orbs, depending on what region you are from — contain ammonium carbonate, an ingredient commonly found in smelling salts. When a yellow orb is cracked open, this chemical is released, forcing an unconscious person awake. Yellow orbs were commonly used throughout the Victorian era to treat fainting spells in women, and are popular among athletes in modern times for their ability to increase alertness.

While yellow orbs can be the difference between life or death for a hybrid demon, the effects of yellow orbs on humans are much less profound. While it can help increase alertness and prevent fainting, it does not truly “revive” a human being, and it is completely ineffective at treating serious injuries such as concussions.

The Origin of Style Rankings

The history of style rankings is a rocky one, for sure. No one knows exactly when the sacred tradition of taunting your enemies and showing off your skills through cinematic flair became prevalent, nor when the grading system for judging a devil hunter's style was established; no one even knows who coined the term “style rank”, exactly. All we do know is that the concept of style has been an integral part of devil hunting for at least the past 200 years, with the earliest mentions of the word “style” dating back to the late 18th century.

Historians believe that style ranking began as a friendly competition between fellow devil hunters, who would show off their best skills on the battlefield and then determine whose skills were the greatest. These competitions were particularly popular among veteran devil hunters, leading some historians to argue that this seemingly fun activity was actually used as a coping mechanism for PTSD, similarly to how the characters in M*A*S*H used humor to distract themselves from the horrors of war.

Over time, the popularity of these informal contests began to steadily increase, and various rules and scoring mechanics were developed by style advocates. Although no historian can agree on who invented the grading system for style rank, they all know who helped popularize it: Isabella Montoya Velasquez, better known as The Nightmare of El Diablo. Isabella's fiery presence on the field, coupled with her historical achievement as the first woman of color to become a devil hunting chief in Nascita, made her a popular favorite in style challenges, and people from all over the country would come to Tumult City just to compete against her.

In an effort to make things fair, Isabella incorporated the then-niche grading system to judge each devil hunter's style level, with D being the lowest rank and A being the highest. For undisclosed reasons, Isabella also added an additional rank to the scale — the S rank. In the event that someone outperformed another competitor who achieved S rank, Isabella would tack on another S and give them an SS rank. And if someone managed to outperform Isabella herself (something which was nearly impossible to do in her prime, might I add), Isabella would add yet another S and give them the highly-coveted SSS rank.

When asked one day how she came up with the letter “S” for the highest rankings, Isabella responded that it was originally supposed to stand for “Sparda”, but once she started adding additional S's to the rank, this meaning was no longer relevant, so it “could mean anything, at this point. [cackling laughter]” This is why the words associated with each letter rank change from game to game; they don't really stand for anything, so devil hunters in turn can make them stand for whatever they want.

#devil may cry #nico writes #nico’s concepts

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votederpycausemufins · 4 years ago

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Welp, this fic i thought i wasn’t even going to continue is now longer at 17 chapters than War in Hermittown which was 26 chapters. And I’m not done here yet! (WiHT ended with 56,719 words. SF was at 55,597 last chapter, and this one is over 3k words, putting it to at least 58k total)

tagging time! @petrichormeraki and @helleborusangel are you guys proud of me?

Xannes and Tommy turned their weapons on Theseus. “How’d you find this place bitch?” The hels copy just rolled his eyes before gesturing over to Dream. “What, you were tracking him?”

“He’s an admin using a console. Find the console, find the admin.” Theseus replied, which confused Tommy. “Right, you wouldn’t know about that, would you.”

Tommy glanced back to Xannes. “Any clue what he’s talking about?”

“Yes. Before command blocks, datapacks, plugins and autofill commands, a lot of admins would default to consoles. These days most people tend to ignore them, but there are some benefits. Though the negatives usually make it seem like the worst option.”

“Why’s that?”

“Admins have better control over everything else. A console is more powerful and capable of much more, but it’s disconnected from the admin. It tends to be stationary in the world and needs to be hidden, and while there are ways to make them moveable, it’s usually not worth the hassle.”

Theseus smiled. “Oh look who’s not as much of an idiot as they seem. Another question then. Why are you still getting in the way? You want those scraps of metal? Take them. He’s the one I’m after.” And he pointed at Dream.

“You haven’t fucking told us why though.” Tommy crossed his arms.

“You didn’t really need to know.” Theseus said before sighing and taking off his mask. “But if that’s the only thing that’ll make you let me through, fine. Nightmare’s dead in my world. I killed him myself. Used up his three lives.”

“You guys still have the three lives system? I thought everything in hels was… y’know, worse?” Tommy asked.

“Oh it is. Exactly why I want Nightmare back.”

There was silence save for the continued sound of weapons banging off each other. “You… you want to what?”

Theseus shrugged. “The bitch never really got what was coming to him. Sure it’s the NSMP, and it’s technically named after him, but his name is based on a concept. He’s not the one in charge, he just made a place where nightmares can become reality. He just never got that chance because he’s dead. And with how hels works, he can’t come back. That is… unless I can bring Dream back with me.”

“That seems like the worst idea I’ve ever heard.” Xannes spoke up. “There’s no guarantee how that will work, especially since he was an admin. You’re setting yourself up for a disaster for both your world and this one.”

“And so what? I die? If I can’t do this right, why bother sticking around.”

“Then I might die too bitch!” Tommy yelled at his copy. “And I definitely don’t want to go out just like that.”

“Plus there are other people linked here.” Xannes spoke, pulling up commands. “Now, you’re going to want to stop, or I’m going to have to attack.”

“Oh please, what can you do?”

“My brother is known as the best admin of all time. Which meant I needed to be the best hacker.” Xannes smiled behind his mask. “And with Prof and NPG around, I haven’t gotten to try anything out in a while, so I’m going to really enjoy this.”

Tommy could almost feel the danger that was Xannes before he moved. He swung his sword once, and even though Theseus was more than ten blocks away, it was like the blade had hit him. He then pulled out a crossbow along with his sword, managing to duel wield the weapons. And then even though the second weapon kept being fired, it seemed to always be filled with ammo, not giving Theseus any rest from attacks, not to mention the fact that it was also multishot.

Tommy used that as a chance to run over to the bots. “Alright you two, I don’t care what the fuck’s been going on with you two, you need to fucking stop before you kill each other.”

“He deserves to die!” Jrum shouted, not looking away from his brother.

“Jrum, I’ve told you about the guy that kinda isolated and manipulated me? The one Big G compared to Sam?”

“Yeah, and Grum’s just as bad!” Jrum said before attempting to attack again, instead just getting pulled back by Tommy.

“No! No he isn’t! That guy Grum’s been stuck with? That green bitch right there? That’s the fucker who was messing with me! And now he’s been doing it to Grum.”

“Yeah right.” Jrum crossed his arms, and Tommy slapped the back of his head, wincing as pain coursed through his body from damaging the vines. It caused the teen to flinch back, making the bottles in his inventory clank together.

Hearing the bottles made Tommy remember what he had on him. He had no clue how well the water worked, but right now it was better than nothing. He pulled them out and smashed them on top of Jrum’s head like a water balloon, the water covering Jrum and getting into his mechanics. It caused a short circuit and it seemed to fry the vines from within, but also Jrum. As the circuitry within him sparked, it damaged the vines, causing even more damage to Jrum, until it killed him.

“NO! JRUM!” Tommy yelled, freaking out about having just killed someone in his family. Beside him, Grum just stared at the place where Jrum had been standing a minute ago, the body having dissolved into smoke.

Life Counter active. Entity Check Jrumbot. Death: canon. Life counter: 1 life remaining. Commence respawn. Respawn complete.

Teleport Requested. Assessing. Assessing. Allowing Teleport. Entity Jrumbot Teleported to Deathpoint coordinates.

Just like that, Jrumbot reappeared. He wasn’t completely covered with the vines, but he still retained the single vine around his antenna and his screen was still a red color. “Oh thank goodness, I thought you might have had a single life left.”

“Well now I do, no thanks to you!”

When Tommy had yelled, Xannes looked away from his fight. Theseus was able to finally close the distance and attack Xannes without the helsmit protecting himself, but he didn’t need to, the hacks keeping him from taking damage. “He’s using a console…”

Theseus tried attacking Xannes again. “Yeah, we covered that already. Why’s it soooo surprising now?”

“Because the console is Grum.”

That made Theseus scoff. “Wasn’t it obvious? It’s a computer that’s always near Dream. It’s essentially a console with fewer drawbacks. Even more powerful than a regular console too.”

When Theseus said that, Tommy turned his anger on Dream. “Ohhh, I can’t fucking believe you. I mean, that is an absolute child. At least with me, I was older, practically an adult, but he hasn’t even had a birthday and you decided to mess with him! As if you didn’t have a death wish already! I mean, guess that’s why you got everyone blocked. What if I just asked Grum to unblock everyone, what then?”

“And what? Just let Phil and Techno back in? What would that help with?”

“Oh please, you know their dad would be the first one in. Doesn’t that scare you?” Tommy asked with a smirk, though it fell in a few moments. “Wait do you actually not know who their dad is?”

“Just because he’s supposed to be another one of your brothers doesn’t mean anything. They’re hardly something I can’t deal with.”

“Can’t deal wi- Dream! Their dad is Grian! You know, the guy who literally has the name Dreamslayer? Like that’s part of his legal name at this point.” Tommy could tell when it got through to Dream, because he pressed back in his invisible prison just a bit and started looking for some possible way out.

He ended up snapping his fingers at Grum. “Hey, get me out of here.” And then Grum processed the information and teleported Dream a couple blocks to his left, freeing him from the barrier blocks.

“Oh shit. Xannes! He got o-” Was all Tommy was able to say before he was pressed against a wall, feet no longer touching the ground and him left struggling for air.

“You know, I could kill you right here. It would be easy. But for all I know, you come back as a ghost. So I’ve got a better idea. Just to make sure that if you do come back, it hurts even more. Grumbot?” He looked over at the robot, who immediately made its way over to Dream’s side. He handed it a netherite axe with the word ‘Nightmare’ etched into the metal.

“No, c-come on Grum. You c-can’t do th-this.” Tommy did his best to get the words out. “Pl-Please… c-can you l-let everyone in a-at least.”

“Oh come on. He’s loyal to me. Why would you think-”

“That command is protected and requires a password to access.”

For a moment, Tommy lost all hope, but in a moment of clarity, he realized that Dream didn’t know Grum would say anything. If that were the case, there wouldn’t be a password. Yeah, Tommy could be wrong, but there was still a chance. “M-Mumbo for Mayor…” He choked out, and immediately Grumbot started processing the password, then accepted it.

“Blacklist disabled.”

“Kill Tommy!” Dream yelled in anger. And then Tommy was hit by the axe. Once. Twice. And then a third and final time.

Life Counter active. Entity Check TommyInnit. Death: canon. Life counter: no lives remaining. No respawn applicable.

No.

Commencing Respawn. Respawn complete.

Teleport Requested. Assessing. Assessing. Allowing Teleport. Entity Tommy Teleported to Coordinates X-3, Y-3, Z-3. Returning inventory contents.

Tommy was holding his chest, panting to catch his breath. He was so sure he was dead. But no. Here he was, away from Dream and still with all his gear. That had probably been Xannes saving him, and healing him as well based on his current level of health.

For a moment, Tommy wanted to rush back in there, but then he remembered. The blacklist had been disabled. People could get in. He pulled out the communicator and sent a message to Grian, hoping it wouldn’t take too long. Then he put it away and tried to go back over to the bots, but his legs were shaky, and in just trying to take one step, he fell to the floor.

Even though he wasn’t close to death, he could still feel himself fading while at the same time it felt like everything was happening at once. Every sound seemed louder, what little breeze there was felt like pins and needles. And he just felt tired. As his vision went in and out, he saw Jrum rush off. Then Theseus stopped fighting and went after Dream. Then the three of them were gone. Then he was up in the air, something picking him up.

Finally, he felt the buzz of his communicator, and everything went dark.

The moment Grian got the message from Tommy, Grian made a Watcher portal straight to the SMP. The others nearby were slightly surprised that it was to let them follow along, but they weren’t arguing. Tubbo was the first to go through, Phil and Techno following behind. Grian was about to be right behind them, but was stopped by a hand. “You’re not keeping me from going Mumbo.”

“I know that. I wasn’t going to.” The redstoner spoke before taking Grian’s hand. “You’re the one always jumping into things, and that’s mostly a good thing. But this is something I don’t want to be left out of, so whether you like it or not, I’m coming with.”

“What? Did you think I was going to leave you behind? I wasn’t going to close the portal behind me. I was hoping you would come too, I was just letting you decide.”

“Good. ...So, do we want to…?” Mumbo started to say before he was yanked towards the portal as Grian ran through it, dragging him along.

When they arrived on the other side, Phil was the only one nearby, sitting down next to the portal. “Hey. Before you ask, I volunteered to wait while the other two went off in their own directions. That was only a few minutes ago. Haven’t heard anything back from them.”

Grian nodded. “I’m going to try contacting Tommy. Mumbo, those coordinates Tommy forwarded to me before? Can you check them out?”

“Definitely.” Mumbo nodded, pulling out his own communicator and checking the coordinates and which was to go to reach them.

“I’ll see if I can find anyone who could give us information.” Phil offered before immediately leaving, leaving Grian alone.

Alright, if I were one of the kids or Tommy… where would I be?” Grian asked himself, looking around before spotting something red in the distance. “Oh hello there. What’s that?” He quickly got into the air, flying over instead of trying to cross the rough terrain. “Tommy did send something about Jrum and red plants, didn’t he?” Grian bent down to try and touch the stuff, but was surprised when it seemed to move away.

A voice spoke and then Grian was left looking around, trying to spot who had spoken. “What do you mean don’t touch it? I’m trying to find my kid and the best lead I have right now are these things.” Then he was left looking around again. “Oh, if that’s the case, then why not ditch the invisibility potion and meet me face to face?” Another short bout of silence and then Grian growled slightly, clenching his fists. “Then maybe I will.” And he started following the moving plants, the vines moving to almost create a path as they parted near him.

They snaked into an underground room and then down a thin tunnel. Grian had a little trouble getting through with his wings, not wanting to shift them away in case he ended up needing them suddenly. When he finally reached the end, he was greeted by what was obviously two teams of people fighting. One group was all in purples meanwhile the other group had a mix of colors, but there were a lot of reds and whites.

When it didn’t look like anyone noticed him, Grian moved forward a bit, cleared his throat, and then shouted. “HEY!” Immediately everyone froze and looked over at him. “Excuse me, I’m sure you’re having a lovely war and all, but I’m looking for my kids. The two of them are about… these heights and are adorable little robots.”

“Are you saying you’re one of Jrum’s parents?” Someone in a black and white cloak said, and Grian nodded at them.

“Yeah. Is he here? Or do you at least know where he is?” Grian asked, before the person attempted to attack him. Immediately his wings moved to act as a quick shield. “I’m guessing that’s a yes, but you don’t want me around.” Grian pulled out his sword. “Eh, I was expecting an ambush anyway.”

But before another attack could happen, the voice from before spoke, seemingly to the cloaked person. “So what?! He abandoned his kid! If that were true he would have shown up!”

“Hey, I tried getting in. Your admin just found a way to keep me out until now. Now, are you going to listen to your friend and tell me where Jrum is, or are you going to fight?”

The incoming sword worked as the answer to Grian’s question and he blocked it with a shield before attacking back. The person tried moving behind some vines hanging from the ceiling, but Grian just sliced them to the ground, clearing the area. “Wait, how are you doing that?!” The person asked before Grian flew up to bash their head with the end of his shield and knock them to the ground.

“Nooo! What are you doing!” A voice yelled out and Grian turned around to see a familiar robot running over.

“Jrum!” Grian landed, arms open for a hug, but he just pushed past his dad to run to the person now on the ground. “Wh-what?”

“Are you okay?”

“Nggh… yeah. Wait, now where have you been?”

“I got kidnapped and Grum was there and he attacked me! But now I’m fine!”

Grian looked between his son and the person he had been attacking. He had no clue why this was happening, so he looked over as some of the other people nearby, who weren’t sure how to answer him. “Oh come on, no one had any idea?” And then the invisible person spoke. “I mean I guess? He was built before the turf war, but he didn’t really take part in it. Why? Look, I just want to get my kid and leave. My resistance days are pretty much over.”

There was quiet before Grian sighed and his wings shifted away. “Fine, I’ll play along, but you better hold up your end.” And when he opened his eyes, they weren’t their normal color, nor even just bright purple from using his watcher powers. Instead, his iris and pupils seemed to be missing, replaced by grayish-purple sclera.

“Well at the very least it was a house.” Xannes grumbled as he attempted to brush off the layer of dust on the bed sitting in the corner for him to then put Tommy on. It was tough with him having to carry the unconscious teen and only really about to use a leg as a duster, which was just spreading the dust around. “Can this be any harder?!”

A door opening behind him made the helsmit groan. “That’s wasn’t a fucking request! What the fuck do you-” He turned around and saw someone familiar and thankfully wearing a red tie. “Fine. This works. You take the kid.”

Mumbo was handed Tommy and Xannes finally was able to just pick the covers up off the bed and shake them off. It left Mumbo coughing and Xannes instantly regretting it as an alert on his screen warned him about his filters, but he put the blankets back down. The redstoner set Tommy down on the bed while Xannes worked on cleaning out the dust that was now in his helmet. “What happened to him?”

“He got killed, but respawn brought him back. It didn’t seem to be the best respawn because it hit hard. From what I can tell, he wasn’t supposed to. Is this a hardcore world?”

Mumbo shook his head. “Tommy said something about them having three lives, but they only counted if they were important.”

“So he essentially just got revived instead of normally respawning. That would explain it. You should have seen the three that got revived this season.”

“That’s right, you permakill someone if they don’t return for a season, don’t you.”

“Yeah. Of course they can still exist elsewhere, but it's a type of ban in a way.”

Mumbo nodded before finally looking away from Tommy and over to Xannes. “H-Have you seen either of the boys?”

“Yes, though they’re not doing so well. You know what a console is, right?”

“Yeah.” Mumbo nodded again. “I had to use one when I was first starting out so I didn’t break everything when working with redstone. Came in handy a few times, but I’m glad not using one anymore. Is there one being used here?”

“Yeah. The admin here decided to have fun with one since he found a way to make it mobile thanks to your redstone.”

“My red- wait!” Mumbo jumped up from kneeling on the floor next to the bed. “Are you telling me he’s using one of the boys?!”

“Yeah, Grumbot. He’s extremely out of it, but Tommy was able to get him to remove the blacklist and I’m pretty sure he’s the one who revived him, so it’s not a completely lost cause. Meanwhile the other one got infected with something like crimson nylium. I’m not sure how bad your land war went, but ours got out of hard fast.”

“We had a bit of trouble near the end, but the minigame battle near the end kept things from getting too far.”

“Well, hopefully it doesn’t end up like helscraft. Most of us ended up possessed by the different nyliums for a good portion of the war. And looks like Jrum is in the same situation.”

Alright, I’ll let the others know and hope Grian notices the message.”

“How many came along with the two of you?”

“Same group that we visited with. They came from here in the first place anyway, so they’ve got a better chance finding what we need.”

“Hello? Ranboo? Are you in here?” Tubbo asked, carefully stepping into the house. They had been planning to set up the second floor for Michael when he disappeared, so hopefully Ranboo would still be living there at least a little, unless he had taken the ziglin elsewhere.

The place was dark, all the windows closed and no torches or lanterns there to light the place up. It left Tubbo fumbling around, trying to feel his way around and wishing he had brought something for light. He tripped on something and fell to the ground, rubbing his head and hoping he hadn’t damaged anything. Then suddenly, something lit up, and Tubbo froze.

He had looked behind him to try and see if he could tell what had tripped him. He could barely make out the outline of a foot. Following up, it led up to a glowing screen with a smiley face plastered on it. Just behind that, Tubbo could also see two glowing magenta eyes from an enderman standing behind the robot.

Before Tubbo could ask any questions, a voice came from elsewhere in the dark room. “You know. As far as everyone knows, you're dead. How about we keep it that way?”

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lore-of-the-silvereyes-rwby · 4 years ago

Text

I am power I am due process I will smite

We talked about Ironwood's personality, history, major theories, and his possible origins. Now we will discuss the prime and major aspect of his character that has impacted the story the most. His overall status, power, and abilities as the leader of Atlas Military, Headmaster of Atlas Academy and the major de facto Leader of the entirety of the Atlassian Government and how it has made him lose sight of what he was fighting for.

Status

As a general, Ironwood normally doesn't associate himself with the front lines of combat and usually orders his forces using his tactical know-how and military knowledge. However, when pressed, he is very adept in combat.

In "Remembrance", he has two seats on the Atlesian Council, assuming both seats symbolize as Headmaster of Atlas Academy and General of the Atlas Military, giving him a even greater amount of authority and influence over the Atlesian Council and the Kingdom of Atlas, allowing him to make unilateral decisions such as initiating a Dust Embargo, closing off the Borders of the Kingdom from the rest of the world and even initiate and enforce Martial Law should he deem it necessary.

Rank

This is probably the most difficult to point down and to make a solid argument since the writers haven’t really explored the command structure of the Atlas Military but since they’re claiming it to be the America of RWBY we will be using facts and details of the U.S. Army rank structure as a logical comparison as well as listing the potential base requirements for Ironwood’s current rank and overall status.

Takes 30 years average to achieve the rank of [a 4 star] General

Candidates for Flag officers (General ranks) must have over 22 years of service as an officer

3 years in grade as a colonel to qualify for flag promotion(Time In Service at best 25 years for earliest promotion)

Atlas equivalent of the US chairmen of the Joint chiefs of Staff (Must be a 4* Gen)

As well as the Secretary of the Department of Education

Most likely achieved the rank and status of General 1-4 years prior to his debut in V2 (Assuming his age is somewhere between 47-50)

With these facts for both his status and rank it's quite clear that potentially Ironwood hasn’t had much time or experience being a leader or General. As I stated before in the Chosen one section chances are that Ozpin or his predecessor have been manipulating Ironwood’s career in order to gain an inside man over what can be assumed to be the most unstable Kingdom on Remnant ready to wage war. Because of this It has led Ironwood to descend further down into his ego and narcissism as he would see his fast success as his own accomplishments that he achieved on his own with his power, instead of the truth that it was all handed to him by Oz. Because of that Ironwood has thought of himself better than Oz and believes in his own hype as his power increased.

The source of his power

With his rank and status aside let's now discuss the source of his power and how it solidifies Ironwood’s overall role in the plot. The source of his power being his complete and total authority over his home Kingdom of Atlas. This is the only reason why he is even the plot in the first place. He is the de facto leader of the world’s strongest and advanced Military that is allied with the main heroes. The main heroes didn’t come to him for a plan nor did they come to him because he has some special power, they came to him just to get access to his army. That is the entirety of his role. He is supposed to be the guy that is supposed to lend his assets for the heroes, specifically the assets of Atlas entirely.

Now, Atlas is a country with very strong military and technology, isolated and far away from all the other countries. Despite the strong military, it is limited in number, resources, and assets. Since Ironwood came to power he has hoarded almost all of them and gives the world the bare minimum. Not because it is limited or because he is preparing for war but because he believes that he is the only one that can win. He wants to be the hero. Ironwood’s overall power stems from the consent of the people to his authority, and their willingness to die for him and his cause.

He needs people to make his plans happen. He needs people to make his war machines. He needs them to supply his army with troops willing to die for him. But more importantly he needs people to validate him and his choices in order to fuel his ego and his “For the Greater Good '' mantra as well as to fuel his false sense of chosenness. He’s a barely competent General who genuinely wants to protect & win for the sake of others, but he is not a noble leader of his or any people who he will use to get the mission done.

Individual Powers & Abilities

His overall combat and abilities are pretty standard to $417 honestly. In comparison to other RWBY fighters I would have to say that Ironwood isn’t in the top 10 or top 100 of the World's best warriors. Decent skills maybe, but nothing new or special that would make him stand out from a regular joe combat wise.

Semblance

To start, let's discuss the key element of RWBY’s combat system that gives it its uniqueness; Semblances. Now this is actually a key factor and component to the RWBY lore and Universe as a whole.

A Semblance is the manifestation of one's innate and personal power as an ability unique to each individual, with the effects varying greatly from user to user. With the sheer number of people unlocking their Semblances, it can lead to unrelated people gaining similar abilities. The nature of one's Semblance is noted as representing an aspect of their character.

Basically it's a physical representation of one's soul

(Note due to the vague description of his semblance I had to browse through around to get a solid idea for what his semblance is in a manner that everyone can agree and understand)

Ironwood's Semblance is revealed to be Mettle, which strengthens his resolve and allows him to carry through with his decisions, helping him hyper-focus. His semblance is possibly “passive”meaning he has no control over it. It also gives him a surge in concentration and pain tolerance so that he can accomplish whatever goal he’s fixated on.

An example of its use on-screen was when he ripped his arm out of the hard-light construct Watts trapped him in during their fight in Volume 7.

It speculative if he does have any control over his semblance or if it works in the same manner as Qrow Branwen’s semblance(Always Active)

One argument saying that it is active is from the lyrics of Hero;

“Our enemies destroy, Mettle I’ll deploy, No chance that I won’t take, My oath to you I won’t forsake”

The words in bold help hint at the possibility that he has some control over his semblance but it does remain unclear whether or not if it's truly passive or not

To help summarize as to what his semblance does; Ironwood's Semblance, Mettle, allows for temporarily increased brain processing power. This can be utilized to help James hyper-focus, blocking out everything else to help him achieve his goals.

His semblance is also a manifestation of his tenacious character trait and allows for mental health to affect his semblance like everyone else. The changes here are slight, but meaningful and could probably still be worked on to make it sound better.

Also to help better understand here is the definition of Mettle;

A person's ability to cope well with difficulties or to face a demanding situation in a spirited and resilient way.

His semblance is probably ideal on the battlefield but not much in terms of Administrative and/or Political issues

His semblance isn’t exactly ideal or overall useful in most fights since it's possible that he can’t control it

As well as it does seem to be a self indulgent power that only benefits him in regards to his psyche and nervous system

With that in mind I think Ironwood would have to find other ways to enforce his power without a semblance in a world where it seems to be a common phenomenon.

Physical

Due to his lack of unique abilities or useful semblance Ironwood would have to focus his efforts on other forms of combat to compensate for his handicap.

One of them being his physical prowess.

Due to his status as General his individual combat efficiency has diminished to an extent due to basically being a military politician.

With that in mind it's possible that Ironwood hasn’t seen active combat on a regular basis since he was a Captain(O-3) which is the most common officer rank in any military as well as the most common rank to be seen on the field of combat in comparison to ranks above that.

In other words his combat experience has probably diminished during the later half of his career as the headmaster of Atlas Academy and later when he became The most senior leader of the Army

Given this Ironwood’s personal combat style has been reduced to the basics that he learned during his Basic Military boot camp training.

This is best seen during his fight with Arthur Watts who was possibly also a member of Atlas Military given his surprising combat abilities to be on par with Ironwoods. But this is due to the both of them relying on a mixture of their combat training from boot camp, and the experience from their respective career fields. In this case it's an administrative politician vs a scientific inventor both of whom are in career fields that are non direct combat orientated relying on their shared knowledge and training of basic military combat.

To further add to this an allegory example for the Ironwood vs Watts fight would be a Army mechanic vs Army Sniper. These are both non direct combat careers in the military and are less likely to see any form of close quarters combat that an infantryman would as one works with heavy machinery and repair while the other does stealth and ranged operations.

But if we put these two into a free roam boxing match to the death chances are these two would have to rely on their basic training as their current career paths don’t focus much on CQC or any direct combat. As such the sniper would most likely adopt a fighting style similar to an out-boxer given his light build and frame needed for the stealth part of his career while the mechanic adopts a slugger style given his greater body build needed to lift and operate heavy tools and other manual labor.

The mechanic will also have a need to be direct and end this as quickly as possible as he may be use to a finish by the time quota mentality while the sniper knows that he is physically out matched but uses the speed granted to him by his smaller build to his advantage and tries to tire out the slugger and wait for an opening while the slugger tries to end it all in one hit.

In the case of their fight Ironwood was the slugger forfeiting strategy for brawn and strong one shot finishers, while Watts was the out-boxer who knew he physically stood no chance and focused on tactics and unconventional combat via the terrain settings of Amity Colosseum to tire and weaken Ironwood enough for an opportunity to incapacitate him

Another key aspect of Ironwood’s physical prowess are his Cybernetics.

Now we don’t know when or how he got them but it's quite clear that they were made to enhance his strength evidence from the shockwave that shattered the ground when he and an alpha beowulf parried each other in V3 Chpt.10

So yeah his cybernetics probably have doubled maybe even tripled the strength of his right side.

But sadly these are probably outdated and old as again we don’t know when he got them but they seemed to have been on him for awhile which would make sense as his status would grant him cybernetics that would be advanced for their time but with the down side that he can’t replace them for newer and better models

Evidence for this is when Ironwood had a new state of the art arm made for yang when he probably could have had a new arm made for himself and equipped it onto him, but he can’t cause his cybernetics are permanent and non changeable

As such he’s stuck with prosthetics that can only enhance his strength and nothing else. With unchangeable cybernetics aside let's look at the non cyber part of him and how it may be failing him.

The downside of his human half is that it still ages and with age comes physical deterioration and later mental deterioration. After looking up some medical research human beings start to deteriorate at the median age of 50 and as such start to weaken physically, losing the abilities of their prime

If my estimation of his age is accurate his body is nearing or is already deteriorating and with the added amounts of stress and PTSD may as well caused his mind to deteriorate prematurely as well.

Also his semblance apparently allows him to tolerate pain and damage allowing him to have some form of berserker mode like wolverine(Basically an adrenaline rush)

Also remember its passive and only happens at random so yeah it's not really that useful in long drawn out fights even if it's active.

With these facts in mind Ironwood at present may now be aware of his physical limitations and as such would have to rely on a another form of combat where he would have to rely on others to do his fighting for him

Leadership

Now this is his most defining trait at present that has been explored the most in the show and the center of controversy for his character

As stated before Ironwood lacks any special powers that could give him the edge as well as that his physical body is starting to fail him due to age, greatly weakening his usefulness in a fight.

As such he is left with the only viable option that he has to enforce his will without direct contact.

His command and Authority over others, and their consent to die for him and his needs

In order for him to have this kind of power may have been a result of his leadership style.

His leadership style appears to be a mixture of 3 different types of leadership styles.

These 3 being Autocratic, Authoritative, & Pacesetting with Autocratic being the dominant of the 3

Autocratic

The phrase most illustrative of an autocratic leadership style is "Do as I say." Generally, an autocratic leader believes that he or she is the smartest person at the table and knows more than others. They make all the decisions with little input from team members.(Sound familiar)

This command-and-control approach is typical of leadership styles of the past, but it doesn't hold much water with today's talent.(Times of war maybe?/Times of peace, nope!)

That's not to say that the style may not be appropriate in certain situations. For example, you can dip into an autocratic leadership style when crucial decisions need to be made on the spot, and you have the most knowledge about the situation, or when you're dealing with inexperienced and new team members and there's no time to wait for team members to gain familiarity with their role.(He would be more suited as a mission handler instead of a strategic tactician)

Authoritative

The phrase most indicative of this style of leadership (also known as "visionary") is "Follow me." The authoritative leadership style is the mark of confident leaders who map the way and set expectations, while engaging and energizing followers along the way.( Basically him in V 2 & 3 before things went to $417)

In a climate of uncertainty, these leaders lift the fog for people. They help them see where the company is going and what's going to happen when they get there.(He may be a man of vision poor vision but had a some sense of direction just poorly showed, & executed for others)

Unlike autocratic leaders, authoritative leaders take the time to explain their thinking: They don't just issue orders. Most of all, they allow people choice and latitude on how to achieve common goals.( It’s a 40/40/20 split with this being the least)

Pacesetting

While the pacesetter style of leadership is effective in getting things done and driving for results, it's a style that can hurt team members. For one thing, even the most driven employees may become stressed working under this style of leadership in the long run.(Mantle, Vale and the Heroes are prime examples of that)

Ironwood’s Leadership is quite the mix bag of results

In some situations specifically Combat oriented ones it works and is effective to a certain degree

But for most of the time in situations like politics, commerce, and peace in general it can lead to the worst outcomes imaginable hence all of the conflicts plaguing rwby present

With this in mind it probably won’t take long to realise that Ironwood is an ineffective leader of and for the people

Remember most of the power that he holds now is through the consent of the people

Whether they be soldiers, scientists or civilians they are the only things that keeps him in power as well as make his position of power legitimate in order for him to plan and execute his plans.

Also as evidence from extended sources and media most of the progress and advancements of Atlas have been done through Ironwoods efforts ergo Ironwood has more or less become the main benefactor of the kingdom through their eyes

This however more or less makes him the de facto king of Atlas if you think about it and as most troubles that befall a king it's usually their own pride that can get the better of them especially if they surround themselves with enablers that paint them in a almost god-like light

Also with the added reveal of his semblance It does have a very heavy affect on his mind in terms of decision making but sadly it tends to happen on impulse and isn’t much suited for a political or administrative environment

Sadly he has done a poor job trying to keep the people on his side and as such has justified the revolution to bring down his ineffective & immoral leadership

Effectiveness

Depending on the situation the effectiveness of Ironwood's overall power and command is moderate to ineffective in all honesty

This mostly stems from the fact that Ironwood’s ego and overall favoritism of his kingdom tends to clash with the general idea of the common goal of peace that is shared with the heroes (Ozpin, Ruby, Oscar, etc) and the world as a whole

As such it has fueled his need to be validated to raging war, even though the results would be catastrophic in order to do so and completely unnecessary

The effectiveness of Ironwood's overall impact on the world is mostly done in self-indulgence as he believes his dreams and goals are what is best for everyone.

In a true totalitarian way unless something can further his power or goals it's good to him, while anything that threatens it is bad to him

This is first seen when he discredited Ozpin as he saw it his way of handling the situation was not ideal even though he is his ally. In doing so he became the head of the security force and further discredited Ozpin to the point that his position as headmaster was in jeopardy. Even though Oz is the leader of the group that is meant to keep the peace in secret as open conflict would result in heavy losses which is what the fall of beacon was. A preview on a small scale as to what could happen had Ironwood his way all the time and the results that it would yield.

By V7 Ironwood acknowledges his failure with the amount of power he had brought, except unlike most people he hasn’t learned anything from the ordeal and continues down a path of paranoia and warmongering. Instead he chooses to find ways that would benefit his power and goals.

Fear and rage aside Let talk about his overall planning and strategy

Most of his plans that have been shown and revealed so far have had a tendency to backfire

The first of his plans that took a turn for the worst was the P.E.N.N.Y. project during the Vytal tournament as well as his power grab at beacon which led to its fall

Okay this is speculative but I do believe Ironwood was field testing Penny for his upcoming war based on dialogue from her in V2 and used the Vytal tournament as a means to do so. Thus turning an event of peace that was meant to celebrate the end of war just to test new weapons for his upcoming war of change.

This accompanied by the army of robot soldiers that he insisted to have as security brought to question the practicality of Ironwood's methods. This is also brought into question as the people are unaware of salem' existence thus from the perspectives of the Vale citizens and the world in general, Ironwood's interference with Vale security would basically be needless foreign intervention, to them that would eventually lead to disaster. Which it did as both were used to portray him and atlas as the villainous force at the fall of beacon and has contributed to salem's plans.

The second of his plans to go off the deep end was the dust embargo and the closing of borders

Though granted with drawing from the rest of the world seemed like a good idea to ease tensions of war but overall it had lasted too long especially if you take into account that Atlas was Remnants source of Industry and main economic and technological center that the world desperately relies on to survive.

This would make it difficult to rally anyone to his side as from their perspective he and by extension his kingdom would only be seen as the ones who left them for dead and would think twice before trusting him with any plan especially one of war.

The third plan of his to go astray was his confrontation with Watts

This isn’t much of a plan but an overview of his strategy during that fight and it could have gone better honestly.

By the way that entire fight was essentially a capture mission for Watts. Which is self explanatory as to why Ironwood didn’t straight out kill watts when he can use him to his advantage so I’ll give credit for forethought of enemy interrogation but the means and execution as to obtain watts were very poor and half thought out

To start where it began to turn to s*** was how he essentially went in alone without backup. Remember he is a General during a time of peace, who at this point probably has very little combat experience to rely on for this fight. I really don't see the point of why he would fight the crazy mad scientist alone when he could have at least had winter with him or a squad of soldiers to assist .Hell even a sniper could have been beneficial. It's not like everyone, was needed to evacuate the city of mantle.

Which brings me to my second point of the fight; why did it have to be Ironwood to capture watts? From a fan perspective the answer was probably to give a character a good fight scene but in universe why did it have to be the general of the entire army to capture one cyber terrorist. Especially when there are other more qualified fights that have seen more action in a week than Ironwood has in his entire military career. That may be an over exaggeration but as I stated before Ironwoods career shifted from the battlefield to the political and administrative.

Meaning his combat experience has diminished since his 30’s? as he became more focused on running a kingdom rather than micromanaging the battlefield as he used to. So with that in mind Ironwood should have at least thought of someone more capable of capturing Watts than him. He could have sent Winter or Qrow or even the ace opts who probably are more qualified to disarm and detain watts faster and more effectively than how Ironwood’s fight went without complications.

Now we come to the fight itself where Ironwood for no reason drew out the fight longer than it should have been. For example we know that his cybernetics are possibly capable of doubling the strength of his right side. So once Ironwood had gotten within grabbing range of watts after depleting his Aura Ironwood should have at least tried to crush the bones of either of Watts arms thus disarming him and making it easier to detain. He also could have taken a page from Nora and broken his legs thus immobilizing him and limiting Watt’s options of escape.

Maybe Humans are more durable in rwby, than humans of our world but if you need to capture someone alive they don’t have to be in perfect condition. They just need their head intact to give info and the necessary vital origins needed to live. They don’t exactly need their arms or legs unless you want to risk the chance of escape from them

Here comes the standoff which is another point that's problematic given Ironwood's intentions. If Ironwood knew Watts was out of ammo why did he just taunt watts instead of making a move to subdue him. Instead of pointing out his enemy was out of ammo he could have shifted his gun a bit and put a bullet in his shoulder and making his arm useless and make the necessary preparations to capture watts alive without any further risk to himself and probably wouldn’t lead him to flay his only remaining arm to win

(Assuming he was out of ammo as well hence why he was taunting again he has cybernetics that can double his strength if need be which he could have used to break any part of watt’s limbs without further damage to himself.)

Now we come to the final issue of the fight that honestly could have been avoided or at least handled better. Ironwood didn’t necessarily have to sacrifice his remaining arm to get free. He could have tried destroying one or all of the rings that were keeping his arm trapped. I do believe he has the strength in his cybernetics needed to crush the rings no problem. If he couldn’t then he could have shimmed his arm out through the side instead of pulling it out and burning it.

Overall Ironwood had plenty of options to his plan to capture Watts but it was his narrow mindedness that led to the escalation of the fight and cost him greatly when it could have been avoided and ended quickly without much loss.

The only plan that seemed to have been ideal and would have benefited everyone was the Amity project, and restoration of global communications but it had its consequences the way he had led it.

Communication is a very crucial and essential tool needed for any society to help better coordinate and resolve the issues that happen during a crisis. Overall his plan for amity was probably the least Atlas centric that would have benefited the world but his intentions for it and means to obtain it were problematic.

His intentions for the amity project were not based on altruistic or selfless motives but were based on his desire to gain and gather resources for his war with salem. Ironwood wanted to restore global communications just to convince the people of the other kingdoms to rally to him and to fight for his cause.

The means of how he obtained it also lead to problems as he had to siffen off resources from the 2nd impoverished city in the world that needed those resources to help keep it safe just to gain a way to recruit soldiers and acquire more resources needed for his war

This is also furthered by the fact that he intended to reveal a world shattering truth that would cause a lot of negative emotions of disbelief grief and fear that will fill the remainder of the world. Meaning Ironwood knowingly and was willing to cause global panic and take advantage of the chaos that would follow just to further his needs for war.

That may be speculation but based on the latter half of the plan from A New Approach it pretty much highlights the Values and lengths of Ironwoods Motives and intentions for war and what he may be willing to do to get his way;

Ironwood: Yes, panic is inevitable, and panic brings Grimm. But I believe we are ready. Once Atlas has come to grips with the fight ahead, I'll use Amity Tower to spread the message to all of Remnant.

Weiss: But everything will fall apart. Grimm will be everywhere!

Winter: You're right, but Atlas is willing and prepared to assist.

Ironwood: Trying to hide the truth from the world will eventually kill us all.

So the highlight of his plan will eventually cause more problems and the eventual fall of the other kingdoms especially given their current states

Vale; Beacon infested with Grimm and the Main city on the brink being overrun by them

Mistral has Almost no Huntmen left to help with the kingdoms defense and already struggles with the criminal underworld that plagues the kingdom

Vacuo has no official structure or system of government besides Shade academy which is currently struggles to maintain order with the flooding of students going to it in order to train very much needed huntsman

This in all honesty will just wipe the slate clean and undo almost a century's worth of progress that will only leave what remains, fair game that can be claimed by anyone or to be specific to be claimed by Ironwood and Atlas.

Now I know that's a theory and it would paint Ironwood as a villain but it's not far from the likely truth and motives considering that Everything Ironwood has done has and always been in the best interest of Atlas and since he and the kingdom are synonymous at this point, his best interest as well.

Which brings us to his final and current plan

Abandoning Mantle and Raising Atlas

Okay we all know that this is probably one of the most talked about things that has divided the fandom the most in recent times sparking the debate of the morality and choices of RWBY’s characters. The most of those debates revolved around Ironwood’s current last ditch plan of survival. As it has been debated and analyzed over the last few months everyone has already discussed the pros and cons of the of this plan but I’ll summarize and give my thoughts of this plan as well as point out how it reveals Ironwoods hypocrisy and personal agendas

Pros;

Had everyone gone with ironwood on this plan and left Mantle to die this would at least give the heroes and the military some time to prepare for the next engagement should it come

while at the same time keeping at least 2 of the four relics away from the villains.

And the Winter Maiden as well

Cons;

This however would only be a short term retreat as eventually the city will need resources to sustain themselves as well as to gather even more resources to meet Ironwoods war demands.

But when it comes to getting those supplies the other kingdoms would have heard at this point how atlas abandon its own citizens and thus deny them the supplies needed.

This would also play into salem's hands as its not unlikely that she would spread the news of Mantles demise to turn the other kingdoms against Atlas

With this in mind and Ironwoods decent into extremism and desperation this would lead to atlas having to forcibly extort the other kingdoms for resources further playing into salem's hands and starting Remnants 2nd great war and all salem has to do from here on out is watch the world burn and wait for an opportunity.

If that outcome seems unlikely then lets cover another possible outcome of this plan succeeding but with this question; What happens to Remnant in the absence of Atlas?

Assuming that Atlas is self-sustainable as Ironwood said this would eliminate the need to make contact with the surface and need of supply runs.

However this also highlights the possibility that once Atlas is far and high enough Ironwood most likely won't return to help aid the rest of the world

As invoked by Oscar, raising Atlas will mean Salem will have free reign to slaughter the millions of people left on Remnant.

The truth;

Oscar says this not only to convince Ironwood not to abandon Mantle but not to abandon the world as well. When he said this Oscar is trying to convince Ironwood that it's not a lost cause and run away as that would only lead to further lost and the world ever closer to Salem’s rule should Ironwood run now(Like Raven did)

This is also given more credibility as when Ironwood abandoned his original plan for amity which was intended to reunite the kingdoms

Taking this into account and his plan there doesn’t appear to be any hint or motivation to return to or go to the other kingdoms for help or anything once Ironwood runs away.

This is an unintended byproduct of Ironwoods Paranoia and distrust for others as well as the unveiling of his hypocrisy and self survival.

This is hinted at in the V7 finale as Oscar tries to talk Ironwood down in the Relic Vault, where the latter blames everyone, from Robyn, to the council, to the Kingdom and even to Oscar, for not seeing the bigger picture and getting in the way of doing what he thinks is right, and not once does Ironwood stop to consider that he himself may have had a role in things escalating as badly as they did.

As I stated before Ironwood is probably the main catalyst for everything that has gone wrong in the current events of rwby as he was the one who ended up giving the villains more opportunities and ammo needed to get their way.

Results;

The volume also focuses on the heroes, Robyn and Ironwood all having different ideas about how to protect Atlas and Mantle.

When they finally come together to help evacuate Mantle, the truce quickly falls apart once Ironwood realizes Cinder is in town, Salem is on her way and Team RWBY leaked intel to Robyn. He orders the arrest of the heroes, the forcible extraction of the Winter Maiden powers, and the abandonment of Mantle to save Atlas.

As a consequence of his extremism and paranoia corrupting his judgement, he loses the Relic of Knowledge, the Winter Maiden, almost all of his allies, and stands alone when Salem arrives on his doorstep.

By the end of the volume everything that Ironwood has done has been for nothing. Every decision Ironwood has made in the last few chapters winds up being for naught. Ordering the heroes to be arrested gets his best agent Clover killed and allows Tyrian to escape custody. Neo takes advantage of his arrest order for the heroes to confront Oscar and get away with the Lamp of Knowledge. Sending Winter to claim the Maiden power led Cinder right to where Fria was being held and ultimately causes the power to go to Penny, who sides with the heroes due to Ironwood's extremist methods.

Also Salem was far closer than the general realized, so even if things had worked in his favor it still would have failed.

In earnest most of Ironwoods recent and current plans and ideas have had negative results. His individual powers and abilities aren’t as impressive or out of the ordinary as others in the series. As well as not as useful as they could have been. His semblance is pretty lackluster if I'm being honest. His status has only fueled his ego and arrogance and has left him blind to his purpose as a guardian for all of remnant, not just one aspect of it.

But what exactly was going on in Ironwoods head to make him like this? To answer that we need to know the practices and beliefs of his homeland as the Kingdom of Atlas has had more influence on Ironwood than anyone or anything else in his life.

The Altasien Philosophical ideals

Now we don’t really know any of the political, religious, or philosophical ideas of Remnant, or Atlas especially but we can make a guess and see how it might have affected Ironwood. As best as I could see Atlas seems to have a philosophy equivalent to Nietzscheism. Below are the facts, concepts and ideals of Nietzsche's Philosophy.

Nietzsche’s Big Ideas

Favored perspectivism, which held that truth is not objective but is the consequence of various factors effecting individual perspective;

Articulated ethical dilemma as a tension between the master vs. slave morality; the former in which we make decisions based on the assessment of consequences, and the latter in which we make decisions based on our conception of good vs. evil

Belief in the individual’s creative capacity to resist social norms and cultural convention in order to live according to a greater set of virtues.

The Will to Power

the drive of the superman(ubermensch) in the philosophy of Nietzsche to perfect and transcend the self through the possession and exercise of creative power.

a conscious or unconscious desire to exercise authority over others.

Master Morality

Nietzsche defined master morality as the morality of the strong-willed. Nietzsche criticizes the view (which he identifies with contemporary British ideology) that good is everything that is helpful, and bad is everything that is harmful.

Slave Morality

Slave morality is the inverse of master morality. As such, it is characterized by pessimism and cynicism. Slave morality is created in opposition to what master morality values as "good". Slave morality does not aim at exerting one's will by strength, but by careful subversion.

The übermensch

the ideal superior man of the future who could rise above conventional Christian morality to create and impose his own values, originally described by Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883–85).

After reading this you can probably agree that this is the default guiding philosophical mindset of the Atlasian people and Ironwood especially but in the extreme and toxic. Which suits Atlas given what we know of it. The Kingdom is filled with people who believe they are this superior race and that everyone else is below them. As well as the fact that they are willing to throw away morals to get their way and are willing to crush those that stand in their way. As for Ironwood he is sadly a part of this toxic mindset whether he likes it or not as it's the greatest flaw of his character that he is just simply an extension to enforce Atlas and their immoral ways.

Atlas as a whole, not just the military, perpetrates the whole no emotions thing. Colors, feelings, individuality are bad. Look at how Atlas is presented. It’s detached from the rest of the world, and is devoid of warm colors. It’s all the same color, that cold grayish blue. So while yes, the Atlesian military definitely does it’s best to crush all those things too, it’s not a foreign concept to Atlesians. I’m fairly certain that if you were born on Atlas, not Mantle, that you would already be conditioned to start thinking this way even before you decided to go to Atlas Academy.

The Atlesian Military is a huge part of the problem as well, but if Atlas is already crushing individuality and feelings, it makes sense that the military would just continue to do so. Considering the fact that the military is not separate from their government, it shows how Atlas just continues the cycle of crushing and indoctrinating their citizens.

Atlas is this poisonous mindset of destroying emotions and individuality. Which is why those who leave it become better people and change for the better. Weiss leaves Atlas and becomes a better person. She loses the Ice Queen persona and has fun. She makes friends because she likes them, not because their skills would be most effective in a battle.(V1 ep.4 with Pyrah) She embraces her quirks and they become her strengths. Penny learns about friendship and the joys of life outside of the mission. Robyn knows that there is more to life than to keep advancing ahead. She knows that there is good in protecting the past and that we cannot forget the old. Advancement and efficiency will only take you so far. If we leave the human part of ourselves behind, what we become is much worse than being less efficient.

It’s so heavily ingrained in Ironwood, to the point that when we first see him he is already this inhuman machine that will carry on the will of his home kingdom regardless of the truth that the world knows, and that truth is that it is evil and inhuman.

The Strain and Revelation of power and responsibility

“But although the cliche says that power always corrupts, what is seldom said ... is that power always reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, concealment is necessary. ... But as a man obtains more power, camouflage becomes less necessary.”

If you are unsure of what that quote meant, basically this section will explain the truth of Ironwood's character through the revelation of what his power has turned him into.

Though granted there is nothing wrong with power. However it becomes a problem when one gains too much that they can no longer control it. In Ironwood's case he had amassed too much that had burdened him with too much responsibility that he wasn’t prepared for.

As people began to rely on him which is actually part of his job as a General/councilman/Headmaster of a toxic government, the stress and burden had increased.

One could argue that his job as a general, who is under a lot of pressure, especially after the fall of beacon and people not understanding the true dangers of the real enemy. Ironwood lacks the skills needed to do his job as a protector and guardian. Which has led to him being this toxic and immoral person that keeps making mistakes, and the situation worse.

The strain of his power is having him make choices that has slowly made him break away from his human soul. But if Ironwood’s power has turned him into an immoral person who’s choices escalate the situation for the worst, why has he not been removed from this role of power and given the proper time needed to adjust and contemplate the understanding of his power and responsibilities of his assigned role?

Why toxic senior leaders survive — and sometimes thrive — in the military

From what I’ve found that has been able to determine, it comes down to three major factors: individual competence of the toxic officer; lack of personal accountability up and down the chain of command; and senior leader fear of loss of confidence.

The first major factor that results in the retention, and sometimes promotion, of toxic senior officers is intellect and work ethic. Most of the senior leaders in the military are highly intelligent with tremendous drive and ambition. While some senior officers have proven themselves unfit to lead others, there is a desire by some senior leaders to retain that intellect, drive, knowledge and experience to the benefit of the service.

Atlas and Remnant in general needs to fix the way it selects and grooms officers and people for leadership roles

Atlas is not designed to produce good leaders

Being in a leadership position does not make you a leader. Unfortunately, the Atlas Military officer system sees it differently. They talk a good game, but the system is seriously lacking.

The second factor contributing to the retention of toxic senior leaders is a lack of accountability and transparency by those who have sponsored the toxic leaders.

Leaders we can believe in

There has to be a demand to finding smart officers, but Atlas must do more to find good leaders and sideline the bad ones

Rationally speaking, this makes sense — if the offending people can still provide good service to the nation, why not retain them? After all, the service failed to properly prepare those individuals to lead and made the additional mistake of placing people unsuited to leadership in those positions. Before we judge toxic leaders in the military too harshly, we should remember that the institution failed them as much as they failed the institution. Unfortunately, the lack of explanation from their most senior leaders leaves the rank and file with the perception that there is a complete lack of accountability at higher ranks. They are not entirely wrong.

Atlas must do a better job of screening, educating and evaluating its officers, especially for grades O-6 and above(Col to General)

The truth of the role he didn’t understand

That being said. I do believe James has the best intentions. But as he accumulated more power, the tendencies to be in control - or be in control of every facet of a situation - as much as any commander of armed forces wishes to be, has clouded his judgement.

As a military leader, his word is law. That is how his men are trained. But as a politician ruling over the common citizenry, the common citizen is not indoctrinated into that lifestyle, thus presents random uncontrollable elements in his plans.

Ironwoods lacks the experience to deal with that entirely. He is surrounded by other like minded individuals who follow his orders unquestioningly. What he really needed and could have used the most of his career was a consultant. As to help better understand how his choices will affect those around them and how they will have to live with his decisions

A descanting (preferably civilian) opinion to counter his directives and provide the means for a more balanced perspective. The problem is Ironwood doesn't have the social skill or experience to handle dissenting opinions. Which is why he and Qrow clashed so damn hard in V3.

And why he was so shocked when the rest of the Ozluminati placed the blame squarely at his feet for the unrest in Vale during the second and third volume. He was astonished to realize that his views weren't universal in the group. He didn't comprehend the civilian mindset, let alone the foreign civilian mindset in a country that isn't militarized like Atlas is.

He was just simply not suited or ready to be in a position of power that deals with the responsibility of Safeguarding peoples’ lives and maintaining world peace. His ambitions and sense of entitlement have led him astray from his assigned purpose. Because of this he has become a man of War instead of Peace like the other heroes and Oz are for.

His Power had stripped him of his soul and made him more Machine than human that even if Salem drops dead tomorrow what's next for him?

(Note; The words in bold at the bottom are links to the next section)

I am Machine I never sleep I keep my eyes wide Open

#rwby #rwby ironwood #james ironwood #general ironwood #rwby7 #rwby analysis #rwby 8 #rwby 8 spoilers #rwby theory #rwby atlas #rwby mantle #world of remnant #Ironwood analysis

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starlightshore · 4 years ago

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Why do you think Toriel & Asgore barely speak about Chara? Asriel has been mentioned by both but Chara's just a throwaway line or two. I think the meta reason is that Toby wants Chara to be as mysterious as possible but in universe? I feel like maybe they didn't see Chara as their child

i want to state real quick, not directly at you anon but to anyone reading: chara dreemurr was a integral part of the dreemurr family and a caring child. they were asriel’s sibling and these are all facts, anyone who wants to fight can just leave

now that is out of the way, let me explain my two cents about this.

I think the main reason we don’t hear about chara too much from them is that asgore and toriel are characters we don’t see much of.

The most we see of Toriel is in the first section of the game, the tutorial section. Her status as ex-queen and the adopted parent of the other fallen children isn’t known yet! And as basic story telling, we wouldn’t hear about Chara this early when it’s a reveal for the end of the game.

Asgore is used VERY sparingly. (ba dum tish) He’s mentioned by a few people throughout the game as this lovable fluffy fool, but our first impression is how he SO wants to murder our butt. This is set up to show how he’s a broken man of regret, how he’s turned himself into a monster (figuratively) and he can’t stop being one or be redeemed without adopting you or dying. He’s full of determination to continue what he set out to do, out of obligation for this people. He’s a parallel to your determination to finish the game. There’s a reason we hear his voice when we’re brought back from death.

Because there’s only so many lines of dialogue between asgore and toriel, we don’t have time for them to be reminiscing about Chara or Asriel. NEITHER talk about EITHER sibling at all ingame directly. We hear Asgore mention his son, and it sucks he didn’t mention chara, but I think we miss some important context in that line.

“We could be like...Like a family...No. That's just a fantasy, isn't it? Young one, when I look at you...I'm reminded of the human that fell here long ago...You have the same feeling of hope in your eyes.”

Asgore offers to adopt you just as he had for Chara. But then he remembers his actions, how Toriel has been gone for a hundred years and 6 children he murdered. He thinks of you like he had Chara, but now he’s got clarity and the determination to “fix things.” Oh God I’m making myself sad because this is literally Chara’s plan but reversed.

“There is an ancient prophecy among our people...One day, a savior will come from the heavens.... I believe the one that was prophecied was you. Somewhere in the world outside...There must be a way to free us from our prison. It pains me to give you this responsiblity, but...Please. Take my soul... and seek the truth.”

This is good writing, Chara’s hope and the prophecy are connected by these paragraphs, directly explaining why Chara killed themself. Asgore, like Chara, feels it’s on them to die for the benefit of someone else’s freedom. It’s just a twisted reflection of it, Chara died so Asriel can cross and kill 6 humans to save monsters. Asgore killed 6 humans so monsters could be free, but now he’s killing himself so a human can cross instead.

But yeah back on topic.

“Ha... ha...I'm sorry...I couldn't give you a simple, happy ending...But I believe your freedom......is what my son......what ASRIEL would have wanted. You are our future!”

This is foreshadowing. This is bluntly telling the player that you didn’t get the good ending, and it hints that it’s Asriel who is going to be involved with getting it.

And here’s some conversation from before.

“I remember the day after my son died. The entire underground was devoid of hope. The future had once again been taken from us by the humans.”

I believe Asgore doesn’t mention Chara directly here because it would muddle the message. Humans are what killed Asriel, and regardless of what Asgore knows of, Chara is involved in that. Asgore thinks Chara died of natural causes, but it’s their death that set off the direct events to Asriel’s death. In the day after their deaths, Asgore vows to destroy humanity. It wouldn’t make SENSE to name drop or call attention to Chara being his child right here.

“I just want to see my wife. I just want to see my child.” This admittedly, is cruel to not mention children here. Chara was already called Asriel’s sibling and it was stated “lost two children in one night.” There’s no excuse for Asgore not to mention Chara here. I’ll admit, it’s an odd choice. We also see Chara’s bed is undisturbed, Chara’s chair at the dining table is still there. He clearly still mourns them just the same as Asriel. The only reason I can think of is that Asgore still feels pained by humanity and by extension, Chara.

As for Chara not being name dropped in the alarm clock? I think that’s more to do with keeping it vague like you say anon. I think it’s a little more than that though.

I think if we look at how their name and frisk’s are used in both the no mercy route and pacifist. Of course Flowey calls you Chara in both routes, but in the no mercy route he’s proven right. Chara looks at the mirror and says “It’s me, Chara.” vs. “Still just you, Frisk.” I think it’s cleanly: in the no mercy route Chara’s forcefully takes autonomy over Frisk and eventually gets their SOUL and is seen by the player. It’s the only route we really see Chara actively act within the world and make choices outside of the player (striking Sans twice in order to kill him, killing Flowey)

This is in direct contrast to the opposite, its only in the pacifist route Frisk is named and is directly called onto outside of “the human.” Frisk, only though completing the best ending, can be revealed as who they are. Chara doesn’t get grounded into the present, they’re exposed by their past. Chara is named only by Flowey and the tapes.

The game is ALL about the actions and reactions of Chara’s suicide, how it’s hurt this community and destroyed lives. Asgore is forever colored by the deaths, Toriel trapped in loneliness trying to fix things. Monsters mourn, they want revenge and hope. It’s a reflection of Chara’s desire for revenge, put onto the very people they wanted to save. It’s supposed to be ironic and a warning that violence -self hate, murder, killing innocents, is wrong. It warns to parents of kids having this pain, and how they need to be addressed and given extra care for. (not that Asgore or Toriel knew the extent of what was going on, I’m not implying it’s their full blame here, but Chara was a child.)

It’s through the act of a community coming together to protect Frisk that they’re able to break the barrier. While Chara didn’t have the same opportunity as Frisk, the situation is able to end peacefully out their new efforts of guiding Frisk.

Chara realizes that Frisk has to live their own life, and to let others move on. It’s important for them to not treat this world as a game, to let these characters be happy and move on.

Anyway that’s all to say that Chara’s active presence vs. to how they’re framed by the past and alluded to in vague terms (mainly directed towards how similar they are to Frisk) is kind of the point of how ghosts shouldn’t posses people and rule over other’s lives. (or, specifically how the player shouldn’t view themselves as Frisk) That’s how I read what the no mercy/pacifist contrast is meant for. While I’d prefer Chara to be name dropped and called their child NOW especially, it IS a step up from just comparing Chara to Frisk. I can only hope in the future they can be referred to more, that even ghosts deserve to live and be seen. ):

#Anonymous #sucide mention #ask to tag #long post

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i-cant-handle-change · 4 years ago

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I'm eager to talk about my Au’s instead of drawing them again-

’The Wired’ Au

Gotta love twisting reality to make up this Au.

This is a depressing Au ngl, besides all the mind fucks it has within it has a lot of desperation in it.

Izuku is trying to find his mother who has been lost within The Wired and there are people out there to get him.

More preferably The Knights and Nine and his gang. Gotta include Nine in too, loved his character in the movie and if you watched Serial Experiments Lain you might know who he’ll play as.

Oh, and Izuku’s dad wants to vault him

Nothing like good old DFO to add on to the already depressing Au am I right?

I’ll write and draw snippets of the Au soon enough but it’ll come off as strange and convoluted. But thats like the norm in the anime I based it on so once again mind fucks all around.

Bakugo is going to get ✨paranoid✨ in this Au. One moment he sees Izuku as a villain, the other as a cutesy extrovert wearing pastels, and the other as what he was after the fatal ’swan dive’. It's going to mess with him a lot and the fact that Izuku flat out told him he was the cause of all of this isn't helping him at all.

Does Inko ever get found by Izuku in The Wired?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This Au is like a pinata, I bash on it and possibilities pour out of it like candy. There are too many and some look the same yet are very different, I don't know, that's the Au in a nutshell.

Also white-haired Izuku. That's it just white-haired Izuku.

’Itch’ Au

Oh yeah, this one is my favorite, and all I can think about-

Izuku has the All for One quirk and he doesn't know that yet the quirk is sentient and slowly starts to take over Izuku’s life.

Some DFO sprinkled in because of angst.

I just love the idea of sentient quirks and by far the AFO quirk just radiates chaotic evil energy and I’m living it. Once it awakens, (it was kept at bay until Izuku finally activated it at the sludge monster incident where All Might and many people saw the event with their own eyes) it’s just dead set on causing so much chaos.

But with how adorable Izuku is the quirk can't just help but groom him into his ideals and make him his new vessel. This is middle school Izuku who just got his quirk and he's still young so the quirk has all the time he needs to shape him how he wants to be.

Izuku is scared, no kidding, he still doesn't understand his quirk very well and why it's sentient in the first place. All he knows is that when it’s near he gets chills down his spine and has the unfortunate hunger of taking more quirks. He's learning to control it though and the more he does the more he spends in this so-called ’landscape’ with his quirk.

It's strange, scary sure, but he feels compelled to know more about this quirk he’s acquired. It claims that it’ll help Izuku when he's at his lowest point and by the looks of it he is at his lowest point. Izuku could deny it but the quirk knows Izuku, it’s been with Izuku for so long that it might as well know more about the teenager than the teenager knows about himself.

It knows about his life. The unfairness and treatment he’s been through for nearly a decade because of his ’quirklessness’. The pain, the bullying, the mistreatment, the scowls, the pity, the unspeakable acts acted onto this child because he did not have a quirk.

”I can help you, little one.”

It said with that trademark toothy smile.

”I can help you make those who have harmed you bow and cower at your very feet!” It exclaimed, raising its arms for effect.

”You have the power to make them quirkless! You have the power to make them weak, pathetic, completely worthless to a society dependent on quirks for survival! You have the power to overcome all those heroes and villains that reign this small world!”

Izuku’s only fourteen, he can't handle all this pressure alone, let alone handle the guilt of taking away quirks from other people. Even if they hurt him in his past he could never forgive himself for committing such an act.

Izuku was too busy thinking to himself that he flinches when he's brought into a suffocating hug, two long arms wrapping around his body like snakes. He acts fast, bringing his now visible arms up to push the quirk away but it was too strong.

Its laughter rang through the landscape.

”You can make anyone follow your orders with the power you hold, little one. You have the power to make them all pay for what they all did to you. Don't you think it’s time that they get a taste of their own medicine?”

’No!’ Izuku wanted to say, still struggling within he tightening hold. ’I don’t want to hurt anyone!’

”But you’ve already had.”

Izuku paused.

”How many quirks have you taken so far because of your hunger? Two? Five? Ten?! All of them taken and it's barely been a few months, little one, and the consequences were just tragic!”

Izuku struggled some more.

’I didn't mean to! I didn't know how to use my quirk properly! I want to give them back but I don't know how to do it right!’

”All those delinquents sent to the hospital, I can't say that isn't normal for children like them but the others... People will start turning heads! They’ll start to look around, rumors will spread, people will talk, they will start to get scared, and soon all those heads will turn towards you...”

’NO!’

”Think about it, everyone will now call you a villain! It doesn't matter what you’ll say they’ll all just point fingers at you and screech out ’VILLAIN’ and run away in fear of your presence! Children will think of you as a monster, children your age will start to avoid you like the plague, parents will take their children and run away from you, heroes will arrest you for illegal quirk usage, and your mother...”

Its grip tightened around Izuku, if Izuku could he would be screaming by now.

”What would your poor dear stressful mother think of you? Oh, she would start to blame herself, she’ll start to think that she gave birth to a demon that only spreads bad luck wherever it goes! All because of your quirk...”

It losses its grip on Izuku who was opening crying by this point, he raises his hands to his face, trying to cover his reddening face.

The quirk before Izuku simply crouched down to the teenager’s height, its smile still hadn't gone away. It raised its broad hands to Izuku’s face, carefully moving his hands away to brush away his tears. It waits a few minutes for Izuku to calm down, its hands on the teenager’s shoulders so that he wouldn't run away. As for Izuku could run away, his feet still hadn't been formed yet and all he could do was either stand up or lay down for anything to happen.

”But you don't have to go through all of that, little one, you’re still too young and your future is still too bright. It only makes sense to tie loose ends that could damage your future so that it won't worry you anymore. For instance, that boy, Naito Susumu, he was the first student that you’ve taken their quirk away, right?”

Izuku nodded his head, the memory still haunts him.

”Well, I can tell he would want it back, for all anyone knows he’s having a fit much like all teenagers do as they grow. Not using their quirk is one of them and he is a delinquent so I can tell that his quirk is what earned him his place to be different from the others. He’ll want it back, of course, but standing around and waiting for something to happen won't do.”

”You have to come up to him yourself, Izuku, leave a note in his desk, make sure he gets it, meet him somewhere private and where you two are the only ones there. Look at him and I mean look at him straight into his eyes into his very soul and make him know that you’re not to be messed with. Because you are not to be messed with, Izuku Midoriya, you are stronger than anyone else in that hopeless school.”

”Make him feel worthless, make him know that you have the power to take and give away quirks with your bare hands. And when he begs, let him beg, let him drop to his very knees, hear his cries and shuttered apologies that are directed to you and only you, Izuku. Make him know you are better than him and after his little session, you make a deal with him, make him know that if you ever need help that he’ll always be there to benefit you in your troubles.”

”Then and only then is where you finally give him his quirk back and I know what you’re thinking ’how could I do such a thing if I don't know how?’ and I’ll tell you how. You have to place your hand, only one, on his forehead like this.”

It placed its large hand onto Izuku’s forehead, from his obscure blurry vision, Izuku could see the hole in the middle of his palm.

”Keep your hand open wide and your fingers separated, make sure you do this right, or else you’ll send him back to the hospital again. You focus, you calm down and look within yourself for his quirk and you’ll know the quirk when you see it, it’s like a shining star in the vast emptiness that is this plane of existence.”

“You breathe slowly and steadily and you grab onto that quirk and give it back to its original owner. You’ll know when the quirk is gone when the light fades and once it fades away you let go of his forehead and step back.”

It let go of Izuku’s forehead, its smile was thin yet thrilled.

”You’ll need to calm yourself down, you’ll feel a part of yourself feel empty, but you need to know how to get used to that feeling. That feeling will eventually fade away and once it does you’ll feel nothing but the satisfaction that someone else is put on your growing pile of supporters.”

”Did you get that?”

’Yes.’

”Good, that's very good, Izuku.”

Something stirred inside of Izuku, the air shifted as he felt a sudden rush of adrenaline course through him. It smiled even wider even when its form started to fade away alongside the landscape it resided in.

”Let us meet again, Izuku Midoriya, I wish you the best of luck.”

It reached out its hand and ruffled Izuku’s unkempt hair but before Izuku could swat his hand away he was already on his bed. Sweating from head to toe the young teenager quickly went off to write down what he could remember in the landscape and from his quirk. He went over the technique, his palms opening and closing for the extra effect he could feel the hunger of his quirk course through his veins.

Izuku had already gotten ready for school faster than he’d done before, he startled his mother by cooking breakfast for himself so that he could get ready faster. He apologized for not cooking for her and hurried to put his shoes on by the doorway and before his mother could ask why he was so giddy he turned and gave a gleaming smile.

”I’m going to make a friend today!”

Izuku left with a skip in his step leaving his still shocked mother beside the doorway.

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astranemus · 4 years ago

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There were some dreadful (reactionary) takes on the symbolism in an absolutely batshit animation about Jordan Peterson (I can send the link to those interested, it's actually quite entertaining) that I felt compelled to dispel, which resulted in an incredibly long comment which I will now share, since it's the first time I've articulated my issue with Peterson and his cult so explicitly or coherently (relatively speaking). I can't be bothered editing out references to the video or tidying up some of the sloppier phrasing, so here it is (sorry for the long post, mobile doesn't have a read more function):

"Some, ah, interesting analysis on the symbolism here, but I suspect some people have missed the point a little. As far as I can tell, this isn't an endorsement of Peterson's "heroic" early work and an indictment of his later "fall", it's a surreal representation of Peterson's shallow self-help philosophy obsessed with absolutist individualism and "natural order", and rife with unjustified axioms, logical fallacies (lobsters have a hierarchy, therefore hierarchy is good because it occurs in nature - hence the cow's horrific chant) and improper analysis (relying on the outdated socio-anthropological works of Joseph Campbell and arbitrarily misapplying Jung's archetypes), a self-help philosophy which ultimately proved insufficient for providing even the man himself with the psychological support necessary to keep his life in order in the way he suggests (i.e. under one's own power alone, without outside help, which is construed as weak or shifting blame - stop complaining, tidy your room).

Those who follow Peterson's advice slavishly are here represented as mere husks devoid of any ability to connect in a human manner (indeed, they are no longer even human) or live their lives spontaneously, outside of the neat rules which Peterson presents as a way to make order out of the apparent chaos of life ("he's telling me how to live"). To characterise Peterson's early work as heroic is to buy into the idea that all one needs to do to be happy is conquer the chaos (the inherent unpredictability of life) by actively and artificially imposing a predictable order (hence the fetishisation of hierarchy), an approach which, through its inherent fear of unpredictability (here branded "chaos", which is Bad) inevitably leads to utter sterility and an inability to adapt or live organically within within a world which is inherently messy - only our obsession with mental labelling fools us into believing that reality really does consist of discrete categories which we can manipulate at will to our own benefit (a child's fantasy - "this is my toy universe, it is at my command, nothing can hurt me here").

Peterson's entire spiel was that if you could simply pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and stop blaming the world for your problems, you'd live a happy life - unhappiness thus becomes a moral failure, a sign of weakness or corruption (such as being tricked by the evil, chaotic left into critiquing systemic issues), rather than a complex psychological issue which results from a vast network of interlinked causes, which includes but is not limited to one's own will and actions, as well as one's genetics, biochemistry, life circumstances and so on. The man's own life is a testament to the fact that the notion that to be happy all one need do is set one's house in order (literally and figuratively) is simply not true - we need community, and we do on occasion need help from others; we don't always have the capacity to solve all of our problems alone, and imagining that we do (or worse, should) is to foist the inherently fearful, fragile and selfish ego to the forefront of our lives and ask that this limited mental construct do far more than it was ever evolved to do; conquer the universe, or perish. Either we, the hero, forcibly /make/ ourselves happy (by subduing all chaos and uncertainty, thus killing the living universe and its inherent unpredictability), or we perish (the ego fails to overcome its fear of uncertainty, and collapses in on itself with all the force of a dying star, often taking those we love with it). It is a recipe for psychological meltdown, as Peterson has demonstrated quite aptly.

A healthy psyche acknowledges its interconnectedness with other persons and the surrounding world - it is only by constructing a false dualism between self and other, man and nature, that this fear of "evil chaos" and unpredictability arises, since it is only the being which feels itself to be inherently separate, alone and vulnerable that becomes afraid of the changing and shifting dance of the universe, and attempts to nullify that fear - first by inflating itself beyond all proportion to the imagined status of all-conquering cosmic hero, (the hero and order both framed as inherently good), and then attempts to kill off "chaos", that unpredictability of life which is seen by the ego-hero as inherently evil, since it threatens its felt sense of control by demonstrating there are forces at play in the universe fear larger than it, reiterating the painful truth - that the ego is not an all-conquering hero, but limited, and vulnerable, alone in a world it cannot control.

Life in its very changing threatens the cosmic hero's mastery, and thus must be slain - the order-obsessed ego, whose kernel is fear, attempts to pave over the universe with nice and predictable grey concrete. Rather than coming to terms with its own fear, trusting others, and learning to feel and live as part of a network of relationship extending beyond itself, the ego creates a fantasy whereby it is in control of everything - its entire life, and by extension, the entire universe - and wherein anything which threatens this fantasy must be ruthlessly exterminated. Since life is an endless supply of surprises, the neurotic cosmic hero thus wages war against life itself, to terrible effect for themselves and those around them.

By instead coming to understand that we are in community, that we can and should reach out and ask for help when we need it, that we are not some all-powerful cosmic hero but a very mortal and imperfect human person, we both see the truth of our own situation without "heroic"-neurotic ego-inflation, and open the door to receiving and providing the care and support that we and others need as human beings. Peterson has only recovered thanks to the diligent attention of those around him, a fact which is perhaps the most potent lesson to come out of the man's life. We are not alone, nor should we pretend to be - help is there, and it is okay to ask for it."

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bscully · 4 years ago

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About Griffith, Mozgus and Dreams

The remarkable thing about Griffith is that his take about dreams actually is agreeable. Who doesn't wanna pursue something great & have goals? But there is a red flag to it. His willingness to walk over the dreams & bodies of others to achieve his own is extremely concerning. He says men's savagery is a tool that can be used for something.

Charlotte here says how all his friends are attracted to his charme but Griffith just calls them troops and comrades. Then goes on to say that a real friend to him is someone with a dream (presumably someone who'd walk over bodies like he does for it too).

To me that always seems like a sign that while Griffith saw value in the Hawks for achieving his goals, he did not see any social, friendship value in them. His comments during this scene did not show that he actually saw the Hawks AS PEOPLE. I think that's why Guts was special to him. He was hard to recruit because he had no dream, so he was "immune" to Griffith's grand vision. He was independent & had the skills. But that's for another time... Griffith is not shedding blood for someone else or his loved ones (contrasting Guts who is fighting for Casca) or even for a good cause (e.g. improving humanity as whole). His actions always aimed to get that castle in the sky, to achieve more power & might.

If one dream is being pursuit at the expense of others, for the benefit of one, what goodness does it serve to a community, or even all of humanity...? That's the reason why after reading the Fountain Speech, I knew Griffith one day would turn against his own if given the chance So I guess we can say that Griffith had some agreeable views, but the fact he has a complete lack of regard for other people's well-being & lives is very concerning. The interesting part is that Miura did something similar with Mozgus!!! Mozgus' Speech towards Farnese is interesting. Having faith & trust in God can be perceived as a good thing. At the same time, he knows that he is bringing pain onto others and also hurts himself as a result (just like Farnese abused Serpico when she was at her lowest)

Mozgus is not only embracing the fact he has hurt others, but is also dwelling in it, actively participating in it. He isn't even doing it to help people. He puts God's will above everything else, uses the scriptures as his standard to judge others.

Also interesting he speaks of wounds as evidence of his faith. Didn't Casca accumulate wounds for Griffith, and Guts for Casca later on...? Because we have seen him deal with the starving refugees trying to get food and save their children at first (torturing her for trying to save her baby, what the fuck?) we know that he is just a religious fanatic capable of atrocities just like the heretics he's fighting against...

For Mozgus, it was all right and just because he was doing it for his faith, for God. It was all in God's grand scheme anyway and his feeble mind wouldn't God's comprehend divine plans anyways. Why even try be a better person? Humans are meant to savages, right?!

But Farnese started to think for herself. Was instantly shot down by Mozgus too. This is fascinating because Farnese is questioning his ways because of the hurt&harm he is causing. Consider that we established Griffith would walk over bodies (cause harm) to achieve his own dream

Farnese's concerns were countered with this story of a holy woman who was trying to help people, but got turned down by an old man. As if implying man has always been suffering & there is no point in changing that.

This is a (loose) parallel to the fountain speech here, actually. It's like the discussion with Mozgus here was Farnese's personal Fountain Speech that gave her space for further change If anyone knows about religious fanatism & its dangers, it's definitely Farnese. This is quite interesting constellation considering her FAMILY has close ties with the church & the goddamn pope.......

Now Guts on the other hand, instead of embracing his inner savagery he is using it to save someone (Casca) Farnese saw him do that. He also NEVER harmed Farnese when he took her hostage. Guts draw the line at harming others needlessly. It had her wondering! If Mozgus' driving force was his faith, what are Guts' intentions...?

I mean, Guts, he also not only saves Casca a couple of times, but also his companions. He made sure they arrived in Elfhelm ALIVE and WELL. The direct opposite of what Mozgus and Griffith have been doing. By actively resisting the Berserker Armor, Guts is not only fighting himself but also the God Hand by extension (IoE included, if you will, if we consider IoE = collective consciousness). Guts is changing the world by resisting his own inner savagery & starting with himself. The inner world reflects the outer world! Perhaps, if enough people do it, great change may happen through collective consciousness. Maybe that is the note Berserk will end in the finale... Either way I hope you enjoyed reading!

#berserk #griffith #mozgus #farnese #analysis

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chibimyumi · 5 years ago

Note

Kinda personal question but what makes Elisabeth special to you? (Trigger warning) And in your opinion, does it romanticise things like mental illness and suicide? I think that ‘Die Schatten werden länger’ is a pretty apt metaphor for how it feels to have depression and suicidal thoughts (depending on one’s interpretation of what Death is) or to be emotionally abused. I ask about the productions with Furuka Yuta as Rudolf and the recent one with him as Death.

Dear Anon,

‘Elisabeth’ is my ultimate gateway down the rabbit hole of theatre and story-telling. Before ‘Elisabeth’ I was mostly a passive consumer of media, but after, I started to consider mechanisms of story-telling, and saw how different performers can tell different stories using the same script. This taught me how actions (dictated by the script) are just that - actions; and before we can understand a character, we must delve into what the context is of those actions.

Of course, the music is also just phenomenal, and it IS a musical, after all.

TL;DR: But importantly, I love ‘Elisabeth’ because it’s literally written to be a “F*ck you, Hollywood.”

In this post I discussed how ‘Elisabeth das Musical’ managed to save crumbling European cinematic culture. I am very tired of the Hollywood conventions, and ESPECIALLY tired of the glorification of romance. ‘Elisabeth’ subverted both of these stale conventions for me, and I was able to enjoy an alternative to the popular tropes of: “the superhuman lover, the caged bird, lonely at the top” in a new context.

This post will be divided into the following chapters:

1. Elisabeth

1.1. Deconstructing romance

1.2. Wife- and Motherhood

1.3. No pedagogical message in yer face!

2. Rudolf

2.1. Deconstructing romance

2.2. Depression in children

2.3. Crushing expectations and grandness

2.4. Deconstructing masculinity

3. Der Tod

3.1. Villain?

3.2. Predatory lover?

4. Conclusion

Trigger Warning: The text below contains mention of depression and suicide.

Romanticising mental illness?

‘Elisabeth’ is admittedly a bit of a problematic fave to me; it does indeed romanticise mental illness. However! Contrary to mainstream conventions, ‘Elisabeth’s does not show that mental illness can be cured because of THE POWER OF LOVE! It unapologetically showcases the destructiveness of mental illness, and how it is a long and painful struggle without promise of success. And that is exactly what a mental illness can be.

1. Elisabeth

1.1. Deconstructing romance

Elisabeth herself is the clearest example. She was a happy-go-lucky girl who was not destined to become Empress (her sister was), and yet she was chosen as bride by the handsome and young Emperor, Franz I, against his mother’s will. It is the dream many girls are taught to have.

And yet, it was exactly after becoming part of a fairy tale that her life sank into hell. Not just because of Sophie, but also because of her husband. Her husband did not turn out to be ‘a bad guy’ like Hollywood will make you believe is the only reason a relationship will fail. No, Franz was just entirely ignorant towards anything Elisabeth needed. Franz’ failure as lover was not what he ‘did’, but rather, what he ‘did not’. I think it is very important to show how real relationships require compatibility AND hard-work, but that without both, it just won’t work.

1.2. Wife- and motherhood

In conventional media, a woman like Elisabeth’s journey would be to find ‘the love she deserves’, she would still be ‘someone’s romantic interest’, just not Franz’. But in the musical, her arc is preserving and exercising her autonomy, and make the best out of a terrible situation. Women are trapped in patriarchy, and usually there is just no escape. And therefore seeing the strength of a woman who makes the best out of her pain is inspiring, and more relatable.

Usually in media, if the woman is not ‘the wife’, then the way she is strong is her focus on being ‘the mother’. Elisabeth however, was shown to be a terrible mother! She was not callous, she was very loving in fact. But because she had so much going on, she simply did not have extra mental energy to spend on her son. I find it very refreshing that love is simply not enough to make human-relations work, whether it’s romantic or familial relationships. Saying that somebody fails in a relationship ‘because you don’t love x enough’ is shortsighted and backwards.

It is breathtaking for me to see a narrative that solely focused on a woman’s struggles without the romance, and without the shackles of motherhood. No, she was struggling because she could not be a person.

1.3. No pedagogical message in yer face!

I also absolutely love how Elisabeth is not an idol that we are supposed to learn from. It’s not: “women! Look at this woman and [be/don’t be] this woman!!”. No, ‘Elisabeth’ leaves its viewer alone, and does not try to impose onto any ‘how to be a woman’.

We are simply supposed to see her life, and sympathise with her as human. The story never justifies her shortcomings, and never glorifies her as the fairy tale Empress ‘die Junge Kaiserin’ would have you believe.

‘Elisabeth das Musical’ does not treat its audience as people that must be educated; instead it assumes the audience has a mind of its own, and can participate in the story as Elisabeth’s peer.

2. Rudolf

2.1. Deconstructing romance

Rudolf’s arc is likewise one wherein his mental illness is not ‘magically cured by romance’. The historic Rudolf was married and he was VERY unhappy in his marriage. However, his unhappy marriage was not the cause of his depression, nor did it really matter that much in making it worse. Rudolf did have a lover (Mary Vetsera), and they loved each other deeply. However, that was not enough to make his mental illness bearable for him.

This forbidden-love part of Rudolf’s life was so insignificant to his depression, that the writers left it out entirely in ‘Elisabeth das Musical’, and his arc was still perfectly round without it.

2.2. Depression in children

‘Elisabeth’ is an excellent example of how depression is not limited to certain groups of people; anyone can be haunted by it. Rudolf is able bodied, white, wealthy, the crown prince of an Empire, intelligent, etc. etc. And yet he had crippling depression, and it is NOT because he was whiny within privilege.

Just like with his mother, Rudolf is also not an idol we’re supposed to imitate. However, we are supposed to learn from seeing him. We first meet Rudolf as a young child, and because he was not given any help, his depression escalated into suicidal depression later on. Many people either don’t believe that children can be depressed, or simply don’t take it seriously. Rudolf however, shows everyone how depression can in fact destroy the lives of children, not unlike adults. Even better; he is a historic character who actually existed. Good luck denying that!

2.3. Crushing expectations and grandness

As discussed above, Rudolf’s struggle has nothing to do with romance, but crushing expectations. As Furukawa explained in this interview: “When Rudolf finally figured out what he wanted to do, he was faced with his country sinking into crisis. He was stuck in the situation where he did not have the power to say anything, and yet had the status wherein everyone expected him to act for the benefit of the state. If he did not act he would be a neglectful man, unworthy of the title of ‘crown prince’, but if he did act for the benefit of the state, he would be a rebel.”

I think it is very refreshing too that despite all the good qualities Rudolf has (2.2.), he simply could not live up to the crushing expectations. It is very important to see how failure is often not the inability of the person, but that too much was expected of ONE human being to begin with.

2.4. Deconstructing toxic masculinity

Rudolf performs a very refreshing form of masculinity that is a departure from Hollywood’s ‘male hero’ model. His entire character is centered on his vulnerability, but he is NEVER portrayed as the loser. Instead, we see a man admitting his vulnerability and looking his depression in the eyes, and never being ashamed of it. He never blames himself for ‘not being man enough’ to live up to social expectations. Instead of “becoming a proper man!!” Rudolf knows that what he needs is compassion, a person he can talk to (his mother), and a fucking break.

Death is almost always without exception ‘punishment’ in stories. However, with Rudolf there were clearly external factors that have nothing to do with his supposed inaptness. The perpetrator was active in the sense that LITERAL Death manipulating him into committing suicide. Rudolf was a victim instead of someone punished for a “sin of not being man enough”.

3. Der Tod

3.1. Villain?

I am very tired of the good vs evil dichotomous story telling of Hollywood. Another thing I love about this musical is how it is entirely ambiguous who the villain is. It’s easy to point at Der Tod, but is he really the villain?

The script of this ingenious musical is written so freely that depending on the performers/director, the villain is either ambiguous, or non-existent, WITHOUT the story being vague. Depending on the actor of Der Tod, he is either an actual entity who governs over life and death, or the product of one’s imagination.

3.2. Predatory lover?

Der Tod’s existence and his pursuit of Elisabeth’s ‘love’ is the main factor that plays in saying “‘Elisabeth’ romanticises mental illness”. But depending on how the performers of Elisabeth and Der Tod interpret these roles, the story either becomes:

a toxic romance that is self-aware of its toxicity,

or like how Furukawa Yuta and Manaki Reika in 2019 managed, into a heroic tale of preserverence and a battle of wits.

Most importantly, in (most) non-Takarazuka versions, after Elisabeth dies, she is not there anymore to ‘reciprocate’ Der Tod’s feelings. She is just gone. Only in the Takarazuka version (I believe) does she enter the Underworld and actively becomes Der Tod’s lover.

So outside Takarazuka’s version, Der Tod is never rewarded with ‘a lover’; he simply gets his prey as a predator. Whether this ‘predator’ is a lover however, is again up to interpretation. But otherwise, death getting a mortal is just a very natural phenomenon, not victory as Furukawa puts it.

4. Conclusion

In conclusion, yes, ‘Elisabeth das Musical’ does have many elements that may qualify it as ‘a romanticisation of mental illness’, but ultimately I think it is not just that simple.

We must consider what the message is that the musical sends, and it is NOT: “because Elisabeth/Rudolf are mentally ill, they embark on an epic journey.” If anything, the musical makes very clear that the mental illnesses of Elisabeth and her son are the main culprit that MAKES them miserable, and that Der Tod is the personification thereof, hence his predatory nature. In ‘Elisabeth’, mental illness ‘preys’ on its victims.

The romanticisation mostly (though not solely) comes from the consumers, because we are conditioned to read stories like ‘Elisabeth’ as a romance.

We see a man (???) claiming to love a woman, and he chases her and won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. He goes through extreme means to impress her, and the story even comes with a ‘love rival’ (Franz).

We see a woman ‘yearning’ for something, and that something can only be given by Der Tod, and finally she does find peace when she is with him.

But, we must pay attention to what Elisabeth says when she is dead. It is not: “I’ve been looking for true love, and now I found it,” or “I wanted freedom, and you’ve been kindly offering it to me, but I was too foolish to accept earlier.” No, the very last thing she sings is:

“I have cried, laughed, been disheartened and I have prayed. There had been days where I tasted defeat in my senseless battle.Regardless, I have entrusted my life to myself alone!”

“Winning Elisabeth’s love” is the term Der Tod set without Elisabeth having any say in it. The term she set for herself is staying true to herself and not giving up; which she NEVER did. As such, THAT ⇈ was Elisabeth claiming victory of always having stayed true to herself, and it has NOTHING to do with Der Tod. She does not need Der Tod, she simply needed freedom.

#Elisabeth #Musical #Mental illness #Romanticization #tw suicide #tw mental illness #tw depression #Furukawa Yuta #Yun #Furutod #Yuntod #Sissi #SHE IS THE VICTOR #Thank you Furu for pointing that out #Rudolf #F*ck hollywood #F*ck Hollywood - Das Musical

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