#let characters have revenge every now and then it’s cathartic

[feral-sylki]

Sylvie really took the “you can’t take revenge on or kill the bad guy because then you’ll be just as bad” trope and went “NO I FUCKING WON’T because I won’t go around murdering trillions” bc like as much as I love be careful when you fight monsters lest you become one stories, they don’t all have to be that, and Sylvie literally goes: right. dictator removed. done. a moment to emotionally collect myself. now. time for McDonald’s. and done. She literally just?? Does that?? Goes and settles into her ordinary life??

[inkren]

Metroid dread has consumed my life for the past 2 days. Its now one of my favourite games ever made. There's a few problems with it mainly the world not being as memorable and easy to navigate as tallon IV in metroid prime but it doesn't matter given how amazing the game is.

I could rant about it for ages but I'll just talk about my 3 favourite things. Massive spoilers for merroid dread.

1. Whoever came up with the idea of letting Samus smack the shit out of your enemies and parrying them didn't get paid enough. Once you learn how to parry basic enemies basically become energy and missile dispensaries. Its so satisfying to parry something especially emmi's since its so hard to parry them. Its also extremely cathartic to parry a boss and start a cutscene where you can just pump missiles into them. Which conveniently leads into.

2. Spectacle. Most bossfights are so cool especially when you parry them and get a bunch of free shots in as samus in the curscene that plays does a bunch of cool flips or rides a massive monster and holds her blaster to their forehead to pump endless missiles into them while they writhe around trying to toss her off. The only thing that could make it better is if the music was more hype like metal gear rising revengeance (which is another game I have to get around to)

And how could I not mention the final bossfight too. The fight with Ravenbeak is so damn cool with it being like a dance with samus and him doing cool flips around each other. He summons black holes and stars and the climax as.... this actually goes with point 3 as well so we'll get to that.

3. Samus is portrayed so well in this game and conveys so much personality even though she says like one sentence in chozo near the middle of the game and at the end of the game she starts screaming madly.

When she meets kraid she is so clearly sick of him that as soon as he roars she shoots him in the mouth. Basically just saying "let's get this over with"

Her conversation with the friendly chozo in the middle of the game as we get a hell of a lore dump and the only words she says in the entire game being "don't worry I'll finish it" pretty sure i paraphrased that but it conveys so much. By having no other words in the game spoken by samus it gives these words so much power. She is legitimately concerned for this chozo and when he is killed she is genuinely sad but it has to wait. Because she has a job to do....and an annoying enemy to kill. (Seriously those chozo bots that jump you are so annoying. )

There's so much more I could say about her characterization in the game and that one scene alone but I wanna talk about the final fight again.

My jaw dropped when she was nearly dead as Ravenbeak choked the life out of her and then she just started screaming like a mad woman and drained the power from the flying fortress making it crash down onto the ground as she beat him up and continued to scream. It was so badass and yet so funny and I was just saying holy shit the entire time. Peak character.

And then the final bit against raven beak where he gets infected with the x parasite. And samus has her new metroid suit which looks freaky and organic and thats the point. She was pushed to this point and now she's basically an energy vampire. Also nothing quite like obliterating your foe with a massive fucking laser to the face.

Of course the cool escape sequence where I barely got back to my ship on time with like 10 seconds to spare. (BTW samus keeps hitting the self destruct button every planet has for some reason. Isnt this like the 6th planet she's destroyed? Why do they keep having to be destroyed and by what?)

Samus gets control of her metroid powers again before escaping and this actually brings me to a point i like about the game. It doesn't reveal there was actually more metroids because they're the series namesake. They stay extinct. All except for samus. And its revealed that metroid means ultimate warrior in chozo. So samus is the metroid now in all meanings of the word. She had metroid dna and is the ultimate warrior of the chozo. Taking the name if the franchise for herself. So next time your grandma sees you playing metroid and points to samus saying "that man's metroid isn't he?" She's half right now.

Anyway my three simple points ballooned way out of my control. Go play metroid dread. Go play every metroid game you can. Which isn't much if you only have a switch but the two metroid games it has are peak.

[beevean]

I noticed a stark difference between the endings of LoI and CoD, and how the fandom has received them.

LoI doesn't shy away from how tragic its ending is. Sure, Leon survived his encounter with Death, but how does he end the game? Utterly alone. He didn't save Sara in time, and was forced to kill her to spare her the curse of vampirism. His best friend Mathias used him as a pawn (and planned Sara's death to boot) for the sake of becoming a vampire, and he fled with only a broken heart. He doesn't have a title anymore, he doesn't work for the Church anymore, the only thing he has left is his vow of revenge (and, I suppose, he could keep in touch with Rinaldo).

The last we see of Leon is him walking away from the castle with a dead eyed look on his face. And I have seen fans trying to imagine how broken Leon would be for the rest of his life, finding a new woman to have children with but still grieving Sara, pushing his children and descendants to become vampire hunters to carry his vow. It's unambiguous.

By contrast, CoD's ending is happy... on the surface. After all his losses and traumatic experiences, Hector was saved by his suicide attempt by Julia, and the two end the game living together.

But as much as I'm glad Hector is finally smiling, he really has no reason to, considering every major character should by all means be as miserable as Leon.

Hector hasn't even begun to properly mourn Rosaly, because all he could think was killing Isaac, but now he's dead and he didn't even die by his own hands and if he did Hector would have become Dracula and anyway Isaac can't be fully blamed for Rosaly's death. That's a lot to take in, that is a lot of time and energy wasted for nothing, on top of the humiliation of being used as a pawn. And I think everyone and their mother has discussed about how unhealthy it is to grow attracted to Julia only because she looks identical to Rosaly: in-universe, it looks like he's nowhere near ready to heal. And let's not forget that he attempted to let himself die out of guilt and despair twice in the span of three years.

Julia has lost her brother, her pleads to save him all in vain while the man who wanted to kill him so badly simply willed himself to not be Cursed anymore - what kind of injustice is that? And she seems to be coping with that... badly:

Julia: Those hearts are yet filled with darkness. The cursed has reached deep inside of them. Its mark will not easily vanish. For my brother, only death could erase it. (saddened) Hector: Julia... Julia: (hopeful) All the same, people are not such fools. Their hope lies in one another. They shall realize that in time. Scars will fade and be lost to memory... Let us have faith in the morrow.

yeah right "hopeful" she's repressing so hard, the very second Hector starts to show concern for her she launches into a speech that boils down to "eh it will get better soon <3". girl is going to have the mother of breakdowns off screen.

And nice of her to also remind us that Wallachia isn't suddenly a paradise! The Curse had three years to seep deep into everyone. People will probably still steal, hurt and kill each other for a while.

And what about poor Trevor? The story unceremoniously kicks him out of the plot, but he has survived the events! And what's he gonna do once he heals (and assuming he'll recover perfectly from being stabbed from back to chest)? He'll return home with his tail between his legs, his mission a complete failure due to his own recklessness, he too was used as a pawn but didn't even get the cathartic moment of kicking the shit of Isaac and Death, and... you know, we meme on the stabbing scene a lot because it's. well. it's very CoD. but if you put yourself in Trevor's boots, being not only nearly killed and mocked but essentially molested, by being forcibly hugged from behind and kissed on the neck, it must have felt so gross and humiliating.

So yeah. In a way, all of this can be summarized as "the ending of CoD is tonally dissonant and kind of rushed, creating uncomfortable implications". But I believe the consequences could be eviscerated and deconstructed before being fixed with headcanons.

I wrote a fic about Hector "breaking up" with Julia after realizing that living together was only making them miserable. Or maybe they could have stayed together longer, but it would be clear that, as much as they genuinely like each other and can support each other in their shared grief, they are only clinging onto each other as poor substitutes of what they've lost. Or maybe Julia could grow to resent Hector for being alive in Isaac's stead (or, even worse, being constantly called the name of a dead woman :P)

And I wouldn't be opposed to reading a fic about Trevor readjusting again to his home life, but while three years prior he had come back as a hero, now he's ashamed and angry and jumpy, who knows for how long.

Of course this is all eventully fixable, they're not doomed to be depressed for all life. It's just interesting to think about, and I noticed few people seem willing to think about the post-CoD effects, unless it's to criticize the Helia romance from a writing standpoint.

anyway they needed to invent therapy in the 10th century

[mysticstarlightduck]

OC Origins Tag!

Thanks for tagging me, @kaylinalexanderbooks (here)!

Let's go with Valen Cassidy (from Scrapyard Boys) and Kye Thalax (from Supernova Initiative)!

Rules: talk about the origins of the names and personalities (and maybe even the design?) of a couple of your OCs!

VALEN CASSIDY

Valen is actually inspired by a couple of things! Firstly, I was thinking about making a Mutant Inquiries (one of my WIPs) spin-off for a while now, and I wanted the MC of this spinoff to feel different from the soft, gentle, easy-going, and introverted MC of Mutant Inquiries (Matthias Harke). So I kinda did a 180° and went with a more aggressive, brash, anger-prone, impulsive, extroverted character - kinda the antonym of Matthias. Valen was also, initially, inspired by some side characters from some of my favorite TV shows and movies, as I thought "Hm, it would be interesting to have a character like that as an MC rather than a side character", so here some aspects of Valen's initial design and personality were born and then developed into something unique. Valen's journey of learning to heal and grow as he learns to channel his energy onto more productive and healthy coping mechanisms rather than succumbing to his anger issues, and learning to be calmer, is also rather cathartic. I think that's one of the reasons why I love writing this character so much!

KYE THALAX

Kye originally wasn't in the first version of Supernova Initiative's first draft, like at all. However, as I started developing the final versions of an outline for this WIP, I started to realize this story needed a tad more internal tension in the main crew and that Artemis' character needed a foil since he is going to become more relevant later on in the story. So, I came up with the character backstory and personality for Kye. In some ways, his story mirrors Artemis' own, while also opposing it:

both were raised by their fathers and witnessed their brutal deaths as young kids, but while Artemis is somewhat at peace with his father's fate and doesn't actually want revenge, rather wants to keep his father's memory and legacy alive, Kye never got over it, and became a bitter and dangerous person whose mindset is almost completely zeroed in on revenge.

while Artemis' mother was actually caring and well-intentioned (she spent nearly a lifetime looking for him after she lost track of him as a teen and never intended to have left him, and eventually does reunite with him now as a grownup and spends most of her arc making it up for her absence), Kye's mother was actually a vain, cruel, warmongering woman who only cared about her political cause and destroying the Junction (she is also directly tied to the very much untimely death of Kye's father, and was a pretty toxic/abusive partner even before that).

Artemis's personality is withdrawn, angsty, sarcastic, brash, funny, overprotective, warm, and fiercely loyal. Kye's personality is dangerously seductive, emotionless to strangers, sharp but oftentimes too literal, awkward, unpredictable, cold/calculating plus his loyalty is weak and fickle. They are pretty much antonyms to each other in every way despite being similar in other ways.

Tagging (gently): @sleepy-night-child, @kaylinalexanderbooks, @smol-feralgremlin, @oh-no-another-idea, @littleladymab,

@winterandwords, @eccaiia, @sarahlizziewrites, @illarian-rambling

@agirlandherquill, @anoelleart, @ray-writes-n-shit

@the-golden-comet, @writernopal, @anyablackwood, @unstablewifiaccess, @forthesanityofstorytellers

@i-can-even-burn-salad, @cakeinthevoid

@lassiesandiego, @thepeculiarbird, @clairelsonao3, @memento-morri-writes, @starlit-hopes-and-dreams and OPEN TAG

[tweetsongs]

sss-class revival hunter altered my brain chemistry (and why you should read it too)

now that it's the holiday season, may i suggest that you spend your downtime not enjoying festivities, spending time with loved ones, or relaxing your body, but instead choose to treat yourself to a good cathartic mental breakdown via the power of narrative? that's right, today i'm going to tell you why you, yes you, should read sss-class revival hunter.

what is sss-class revival hunter?

sss-class revival hunter (previously translated as sss-class suicide hunter) is a webnovel by shin noah, and is completed at 400 chapters, though translations are in-progress at 238 chapters. there is a manhwa of the same name that is also in-progress, having just completed its second season.

what is sss-class revival hunter about?

kim gongja (name literally translates as confucius) is a young hunter in a world occupied by the 'tower', a large series of dungeons that people can enter if they forsake all earthly connections in order to challenge the monsters within. in this world, he is a failure, a f-class hunter with no special abilities, capable only of bitterly envying the #1 hunter: flame emperor yoo sooha.

one day, his envy manifests into an sss-class skill, the highest possible level skill- unfortunately, there's a catch. the skill stipulates that he can steal a skill from someone, but only if they kill him. despondent, gongja gets drunk and wanders the city, only to accidentally witness a crime perpetuated by yoo sooha, who immediately murders him to ensure his silence. in death, gongja is given a choice to steal sooha's abilities, and accidentally but fortuitously chooses an ability that allows him to wake up 24 hours earlier every time he dies, allowing him to make use of the combination of his abilities. he proceeds to hatch a plan to gain revenge and challenge the tower, discovering the secrets that lie behind its seemingly random challenges along the way.

huh...this sounds pretty grimdark and edgy, i'm not sure i'll enjoy something like that...

LET ME TELL YOU MY SWEET CHILD...i ALSO thought, when first reading, that this would be an incredibly boring revenge power fantasy featuring a grimdark edgelord protagonist. however!! the entire point of sss-class revival hunter is to subvert that character trope, and it does it MASTERFULLY.

let me explain.

while, at first glance, the plot of ssscrh seems to be setting up kim gongja as your typical edgelord protagonist who doesn't need any friends or emotions, the reality is...quite the opposite. in fact, despite his initial motivations, gongja's motivations are to gain recognition through authenticity, and to help people in ways that yoo sooha never did. fundamentally, sss-class revival hunter is a story about human connection and empathy, and more often than not chooses to showcase the best of humanity through having its protagonist giving people a chance to be good.

so it's about the power of friendship?

it's more accurate to say it's about the power of understanding, but yes, friendship factors heavily into it! gongja's skill allows him to steal abilities from those who've killed him, but there's a penalty - he has to witness the 'trauma' of those people, and understand why they've come to be the way they are. as his ability grows stronger, so does his immersion, and his ability to understand his opponents.

as you might expect, this leads to a lot of rumination on the ways that people are hurt by and become twisted from the world around them, and the book goes out of its way to point out societal and structural issues that cause suffering, rather than blaming individual events. the story isn't so sappy as to excuse every person who murders him, or every villain, but does make sure to show us how multifaceted they are.

not only that, but this book also has some of the most refreshingly reasonable character dynamics i've read in a while. everyone…is reasonable? unlike in other dungeoncrawler works, most people is ssscrh actually act in believable, human ways according to their characterization. the guild alliances, in particular, are refreshing in how reasonable and willing to cooperate they are - if you're sick of random people being made into incompetent scapegoats so that the mc can make an obvious point as if it's gospel, then this book will be a breath of fresh air.

how dark does it get?

i'm not gonna lie - very dark! this book touches on not only the titular theme of suicide and death, but also other incredibly heavy themes around oppression and trauma.

in my opinion, the author is never too heavy-handed or overwrought with the heaviness of its subjects, and handles them with an impressive delicacy that shows compassion towards its subjects without making them caricatures of victimization.

above its darkness, though, ssscrh is fundamentally a story about hope in despair, and holding joy in the same hand that you hold sorrow. the dark themes are not here to titillate, but to make readers understand how difficult and profound it is that there are people in this world that have chosen happiness, despite everything. this book truly has every kind of catharsis you can imagine, and will yeet you through the equivalent of years of therapy in every volume.

okay, that sounds painful, but are there any lighter moments in the story?

oh, plenty. ssscrh is not one to wallow, and for every moment it makes you weep with the tragedy and beauty of the world, it will also make you scream with laughter at how ridiculous the characters are. i've made a post with a scene that made me cackle, and the story delights in the absurdity of the world as much as it cares for everything within it.

more than that, this story also has one of the most hilarious and incredibly strong and stable romantic relationships you will ever read about. i'm not going to spoil things, because i truly believe that this is something to be Experienced, but trust me when i say that gongja and his eventual partner made me scream with laughter and say 'oh my god you guys are INSANE' every time they have dialogue together. if you like malewife/girlboss dynamics, or time travel shenanigans, or overwrought battle couple proclamations of romance, you will ADORE this pairing.

why SHOULDN'T i read this book, then?

good question! as much as i'm obsessed with this book, i can't say that it's going to be everyone's cup of tea. some caveats are about the incredibly heavy themes being touched on, including:

child abuse

bullying

poverty

famine

religious oppression

racial discrimination

cultural genocide

mental illness

slavery

...and more!

also of note that volume 4 of the webnovel centers around the development of an ancient society of various races aided by hunters having the deeply unfortunate name of 'race war'. i will say that it's not as bad as you're imagining, and handled with, if not grace, then clear thought, but yeah. yeah that made me wince too.

is there anything else that makes sss-class revival hunter worth reading?

if you're not convinced yet, here are a few notable quotes from the book that live rent-free in my head (no context or explicit spoilers but skip if don't want anything spoiled!):

People don't just decide who they leave scars on. They also decide whose scars to wear. The common people you are trying to save will never be good. The crowd you have saved will never be honorable. The one you love will never be perfect. Even so, if you want to be hurt by everyone. If you are willing to give them your bare skin- think about how they scratch you with their fingernails, how they will hurt you even if they hug you too tightly. Life is pain, but that is only human suffering.

If you mourn so much over accidental tragedies, you should celebrate accidental blessings just as much. The depth of one's sadness should be equal to the height of one's happiness.

There's a 99% probability that the lover you meet will be a bitch [...] Similarly, you are also highly likely to be a bitch.

Cynicism isn't childish in itself, [but] people who live while being cynical are childish. Fairness is childish, but the people who live fairly are not childish.

Congratulations on becoming Cinderella, bro

anyways, please consider dedicating your holiday season to another stupid long book. you can find translations here and the manhwa here. please let me know if you've read/enjoyed it i'm losing my mind over here.

[onewomancitadel]

I guess this painful small detail I love about V8, which I have remarked upon a few times, is the gesture of compassion Winter extends to I/ronwood - maybe thinking about her because of a post I wrote the other day - appealing to his better instinct... she still loves him very much, this sad almost-father of hers, still believes in him, uses the opportunity right before she betrays him, uses that trust he extends in her unilaterally, more than anyone else, to still be kind, maybe purposelessly - except for herself, except for the affirmation of this kind-strange-blooming hope in her.

Emerald snaps out of it when she sees what Salem is doing to Cinder - that we've clearly been show is what she was initiated into, as a little girl - and it's this moment of recongition and compassion that is, again, rewarded. It's a tender recognition of pain, that Emerald is to Cinder what Cinder is to Salem, that Cinder plays at being Salem in imitative girlishness, which is not to say just master, but mother, and yet Cinder is more of a peer than an authority, pretending at the latter, denying she's the former. And Salem is a complicated surrogate mother. She killed her last daughters. And yet to Cinder, the arrangement is clearly better, which is exactly how she would intellectualise her arrangement with Emerald. Mercury's mercenary, known all along what it was, because he knows how parents hurt, but Emerald was just an orphan girl in need of love at any cost, as orphan girls are in this mocking fairytale. And there's still allowed to be a tenderness. There's a tenderness for Winter, and a tenderness for Emerald, even amidst the pain, of realising who I/ronwood and Cinder really were.

I really thought that that sort of complexity wouldn't be in the story and just take the cheap way out, that people who are hurt immediately stop loving the people who hurt them because that's just how it should work otherwise you're complicit in your own pain, especially after so much discourse surrounding Adam. But even the treatment of Adam is really weirdly tender... Blake gives him so many chances to go, and he keeps chasing her, fixated on a shadow. I don't find revenge fantasies cathartic for their own ends, the simple, breezy archetype of how abuse is supposed to function: the victim hates the person who hurt them and the hurt happens removed from the breadth of human experience. The Abuser is not a malignant, external, compartmentalised entity so cleanly cleaved from A Community, more wandering Devil than human; the abuser is a man, and a woman, who do bad things, who walk amongst us in plain clothes. Violence is a choice made, and made every time. Adam is symbolically the wilting rose curse, but he is also a person, and maybe that's where the R/WBY thesis about fairytales-being-real works here against allegory so successfully: he is literally a pained man (his full name means first man-bull, from the earth), a pained Faunus, who crafts for himself a match from his rib. But that's not who Blake is, and Blake has to be a real person too, and so does he, outside the story bounds.

But Winter is also funny because she takes a last final snipe against her father (whom Weiss also extends a mercy to)... because to her, I/ronwood is the better daddy, will always be the better daddy, still saved her and saved Weiss, even though he betrayed her in the end. That there's still room for that after everything is... a really rare type of nuance. And maybe at a character-level, that's how I feel about I/ronwood; it's hard not to love him, and you can countenance that with what he is, what he becomes. Like, I did not expect this level of compassion for the experience of the suffering characters at all.

Yet there's a strange reversal of this sentiment in Rhodes' final head-caress of Cinder when she strikes him down. It always read as so condescending to me: he's told her that she'll run all of her life, and now, even as he dies, he's not let her forget what he was to her. It's supposed to be like forgiveness, and yet to me, he's the one who should be begging for forgiveness. It's a tenderness which wrecks her. Even the one who might have protected her didn't. There's a warped mirror between Rhodes and I/ronwood here, too: I/ronwood would sacrifice Winter into the gullet of Salem, and she has to swallow it down, knowing that she can't really be his daughter, but in a weird way, that's how he shows his love and what really is his familial and intense affection for her. Whom else would I/ronwood trust with the gravity of such an act? This is the path that Rhodes wanted for Cinder, and yet it seems like neither of them ended up truly happy. It took so much longer for Winter to figure out what I/ronwood was than Cinder did Rhodes, and these are the Maidens we're left with.

Salem tortures Cinder and then raises her up, structurally in the story, and then atomically, this is the pattern of their dynamic: fear and strength, fear and power. I really wish I had a .gif here to convey it, but the movement from her knees to this always struck me, taking Salem's offered hand... I don't know, this is the world to her, and the world crafted through pain, her body grafted with it, scars incised, and there's this appreciation what effectively looks like dissociation, watching the world through the eyes of the dead -

contrast with when Winter's magic shocks Cinder (off in the distance, like a blue ghost, more revenant than fairy), a forcible intrusive remembrance of the connection she tries so hard to deny.

Salem does to Cinder what was done to Salem. Endless, eternal torture, this sharing of horror, the worst sort of forced empathy. But Cinder exults when she feels Salem again through the arm, after Salem temporarily dispersed into the aether. She's a source of safety and harm at once. She's a nurturer who feeds her poison. Salem gets to re-enact the mother-daughter relationship she squandered, through this Four Maiden vessel all of her own, the girls who were like daughter surrogates to Ozma too.

And you can see this over and over in the story. These aren't outliers. The Yang-Raven relationship, mired in cruelty and neglect and abandonment, and care, magical voyeurism - watching her child grow up through the eyes of a bird, feeling a magical connection, forever bound to protect - never once is Yang punished for her anger, but neither is she punished for longing to find her mother either, and both are allowed to exist. And Raven loves her, and also hurts her, and also talks down to her, and then there's the strangeness of her grown daughter rising to the challenge she set and going above and beyond - growing beyond her - in the Ozlem conflict. This thing she denied herself because of it. It's all really complicated. Then once you get to the throughline of Ruby and Summer - the background pressure-cooker mounting and mounting - the heroic image broken down and made into a Grimm monster - you have what is the thread of our head protagonist, allowed to grow, and burst open. It doesn't victim-blame, it doesn't fall prey to so many bad stereotypes about the way abuse is "supposed" to work, the way abuse is reconstituted to fit social sensibilities, to fit consensus reality; it is just allowed to be experienced by the characters, for the story to evolve. Maybe they find healing and reconciliation, or forgiveness, or protection, or do what they must, the violence still marking them. Killing Adam doesn't come without pain. That the hurt and the abused - like Cinder - are forced into acts of violence is itself a betrayal too.

It gives me hope that it would be possible for an Ozlem resolution to be nuanced like all of this too. Ozma wants to preserve the memory of Lionheart - a good man, never a coward - and I think this kind of speaks to how he views his whole deal with Salem: people are written into history as ideals, as what they should've been, the matter simplified, Salem bad, the people who work for good, good. I/ronwood's fall complicates this, and makes us empathise with him, but I think challenges this binary too. He's so afraid of them finding out that he loved Salem once, in part, I think, because it disrupts the binary, the rewriting.

It's hard not to, now I've written it out, read it as an intentional thematic idea repeated. It's communicated so blatantly as much through Alyx, that all this can be held in tension, and appreciated, giving catharsis. That there is bad, and good, and bad, and the path to something like healing and resurrection is not binary, that healing is not the binary enforced on you through abuse either - hurt or be hurt -, that you can love and also hurt and still need to leave, that violence is not forever, that it is not right that a victim may be forced into a protective violence, that violence is not just bad because the wrong people do it, that moments of marked violence do not define anybody forever in a story like this, because it is a choice made, and must be made over and over, and could be rejected. A world without redemption is a prison. That's the prison Salem was locked in by the brother gods: to be lessoned by Ozma, to be tortured through eternity into submission. Given the experiences of the cast laid out, one can hardly think that this is the ultimate boon of this story. But then who could forgive the brother gods, too? I suppose their mother.

[hamliet]

Hi, I'm the last The Glory anon :). I just wanted to say, I get your point of drama's needing to be centered around restorative/preventative justice, I think they're valuable, but I think drama's like The Glory are needed as well. The background of this series was actually because the creator was horrified after reading all the bullying incidents and she actually interviewed a lot of victims in order to get a feeling of what she wanted to say and she ended up wanting to give a voice of those victims who were suffering in silence. The overwhelming sense that she got from those victims, was they they have not felt heard, helped or listened to, that they were gaslit into thinking that they were the ones in fault and that they deserved the horrific treatment. They didn't pursue any actions against their bullies either, out of fear of retaliation or they were coerced into thinking that it would destroy their bullies lives if they did. They wanted to let people know that they (the victims) know now, that it wasn't their fault for being bullied. To let people see how an entire system was stacked against them. The whole series through, the protag was okay into believing she wasn't a good person, that she didn't deserve love or friendship cause she knew taking revenge wasn't something a good person would do. So the drama never really glorified revenge either. What the series did do (for me, at least) was to validate a victim's feeling of hurt, pain, disappointment, abandonment and resentment. And I think that's fair. And powerful. So many times, a victim has to micromanage their feelings into pretty, neat, palpable things for others or have been gaslit into thinking the feelings of bullies and other peoples are more valid, more important. My bullies and my abusers for once, all came from broken homes/trauma's and they used that in order to keep raping/abusing me, a disabled woc. They made me think that the abuse I endured, was far less painful than the abuse they were going through/went trough and that I deserved the abuse because I wasn't worth anything anyway and they were patient /tolerant enough with me. Thinking my bullies/ abusers' feelings were more important than mines, literally almost killed me, but feeling wronged, feeling hurt and yes angry at what was happening to me, saved me. Nothing ever happened to my abusers/bullies and they never thought any wrong of their treatment towards me, either. The worst abuser and rapist were family members and I didn't want to end up with no family at my side completely. As an adult now, plenty of people feel okay to look down on my because of my disability and my race and I can't do anything about their treatment towards me, those little, unjust treatments cut like thousand paper cuts ever single day, but what can I do? I will have to swallow and deal with that every day, for the rest of my day. So yes, having a drama like the glory taking down entitled assholes down, is in some way cathartic, cause real life lets most of the bastards get away. I'm by far perfect, but I'm def not made of violent revenge plans, rage or anger. I can hardly even raise my voice towards someone. Cause I know what it is like to be at the receiving end of someone else's misery and I don't want any part of that anger and inability to see the humanity of someone else. I don't understand why someone would feel entitled to hurt another, who's usually weaker than them. Regardless of their pain or trauma's. Somewhere there is a line. Getting off from someone else's pain is not normal. And if you can't take responsibility for trauma's caused (and there are PLENTY of people who won't/unable to even see the their wrongness), I have even less patience for. I love me some morally grey fictional characters, I do. Redemption stories of abused people hurting others, only to realise they are not better than their abusers, can be powerful, I agree. Yet. If people can love and see the humanity of a redeemed bully/abuser, then I hope that people can accept the anger and resentment of a victim, too. Have a nice day.

Hi! I was worried about losing your ask in particular, so thank you for resending it.

"If people can love and see the humanity of a redeemed bully/abuser, then I hope that people can accept the anger and resentment of a victim, too"<--I do think this is incredibly important, and absolutely something worth remembering.

I’m also very sorry you’ve had to deal with all of this, for what it's worth. You shouldn't have had to.

I also wanna state that every story, even ones that I profoundly find irresponsible or bad, can help people because experiences are so very varied and everyone has unique needs. I’m definitely not pro censorship, so I am glad the story was able to help you. (Plenty of stories I like could be called bad and could upset other people... which is where critique comes in!)

For a larger point... I get a bit philosophical here, but that's because I honestly think systemic answers and individual answers don't always coincide. I'll explain a bit more below, and I hope to convey that my dislike of the show and labeling of it is absolutely not coming from a space of “you are a bad person if you liked it;” I don’t think that at all. I am glad this story offered you an outlet, and for others too. You deserve catharsis.

It's interesting what you note about the creator, because that does make sense. The ironic thing is that if anything I think her care actually contributed to the problems I had personally with the show—and keep in mind this is me personally, my own experience and opinion, bringing my own experiences and baggage to it which everyone does. I guess I am frustrated with the story because it seems like a case of best intentions, maybe, that still does harm. Yet there’s not always a way to prevent the worst effects of the best intentions, too.  So that’s not inherently the creator’s fault either. Just a reality, I suppose. 

As I said before, I genuinely think the show would have worked better had it framed itself with that self awareness that it was a revenge fantasy and an individual story, but it did present itself instead as something deeper than what it was, as drawing awareness in order to create an answer (hence the use of shock value graphic violence that while not unrealistic was still designed to provoke). And the consequences have been far beyond just people being aware of bullying or calling out people who were bullies, unfortunately. It has led to harassment campaigns and perpetuated myths about what causes bullying, which then makes it harder to actually intervene and stop the cycle. Hence I think that's why I consider it irresponsible to frame it as offering a solution when it does not; if it framed itself as escapism, that’d be different. 

That’s what frustrates me, I guess. I keep comparing it to 13 Reasons Why, because while that show also got people talking about suicide and assault and I know allowed people to feel empathized with in their pain, so I'm glad they have that, it also perpetuated myths about suicide that ultimately make it harder to actually intervene and prevent such things. This perpetuated several myths that make it harder to stop bullying, and actually has led to bullying because people online can become convinced that someone deserves to be bullied if they’re a bad enough person, but what that means is not generally as obvious as we'd think. That the director got caught up in the accusations and campaigns of was ultimately extremely ironic, but in a tragic sense: a real case of take out the plank from your own eye before looking for a speck in another’s. But he probably still has a career and a life ahead of him. The blowback will die down for him. But other people with far less money and less privilege, people who are not big name stars or idols or whatever, don’t have the same luxury, and that bothers me in this case.

It's also true that some issues are easier for each individual to see in a larger context and some that are more individual/personal, and it's also not necessarily linked to what someone has personally been through, and also, it's a lot harder for me to "zoom out" when it comes to other issues. And frankly? Your needs, and the individual needs in general, do need to be met too--individual and systemic needs both should be. So, I am glad this show could meet those individual needs, even though I hold that with my criticisms.

Sending you hugs, if wanted.

[bi-bard]

my predictions for what stories I'll write inspired by maisie peters' second album

**based on titles (and brief clips)

Also, I am not including the three songs that have already been released because those would be spoilers.

If y'all like this one, let me know and I'll make one for my predictions for the next Hozier album because I have thoughts (and I've been hiding my Eat Your Young idea for fucking ages and I need something to keep me from spoiling it).

---------

The Good Witch

I am leaning towards something Doctor Who related. Whether it's the Doctor or a companion is a decision that I haven't made yet. Granted, this whole idea is based on the two lyrics that we got to hear, so that might change.

2. Coming of Age

Maisie described this as being about redefining your own role in your narrative. The snippets did not give much, but the tarot card showed "if it was a first kiss, how come it felt like a snake bite?" For that reason, I am leaning toward some kind of villain/manipulation story with the reader getting revenge. Or the hero getting revenge on the reader??? Maybe??? Just to be quirky??? I'm not sure.

3. Watch

Maisie again gave us much more info with this song. To quote: "I wrote this song about watching someone forget about my existence at lightning speed. I usually try to use my own interpretations without letting the singer's intention interfere too much, but when I don't have a song to interpret, I take what I can get. Personally, something like Daisy Jones & the Six would fit this kind of story really well. Leaning towards Billy because I really wanna slander that man but might go with Graham. One of the two. Or even Daisy, honestly.

4. Want You Back

There are a million and one characters that this could be about. I might take this as a chance to write about a show/movie that I've never written about or haven't written about in a long time. Probably something relating to an Andrew Garfield character. That's my best guess right now.

5. The Band and I

Titans or Legends of Tomorrow or something in that vein. Something about a group holding onto each other for dear life. Grumpiness and love and admiration and badassary. That's what this story will give off... I hope.

6. You're Just a Boy (and I'm Kinda the Man)

I want this to be about a guy that feels larger than life to the point that he gets completely overwhelmed when the person he claimed to love outshines him in every way possible. Again, a couple of ways this could go. Leaning towards Daisy Jones & the Six because- again- I am desperate to humble Billy Dunne.

7. Wendy

I could just go back to my roots and use the Peter Pan-influenced song to write about Peter Pan, but OUAT is a show I kinda swore off of after I left Wattpad. So... I don't know where that leaves me. I do want to lean into the magic idea in a more literal sense though. I have a couple of ideas but nothing super concrete.

8. Run

Maisie described this track as being one for the girls who have quite simply had enough. I'm calling for a story set in some kind of battle. Revenge plotline. Girl gang (with my typical gender-neutral reader). Honestly, probably something like Shadow & Bone.

9. BSC

I'm thinking this will be a story of someone trying to win someone else back and ends up getting the most unhinged rant in response. I don't have a character in mind for it yet, but that story is probably pretty set in stone if this song is what I think it's going to be.

**The last three are really difficult because we have gotten no information about them. None. I'm working off of titles. This post was written on 5.26.2023. I'm just making assumptions.**

10. Therapy

This song is gonna go in one of two ways:

The first is absolutely fucking heartbreaking. Coping with pain or loss or personal issues. And I will make my fucking mission to drag you all down with me.

The second is absolutely pissed and this song being therapy in a angry cathartic sense or being about how a man needs to get therapy. In that case, I will humble somebody. It'll probably be Supernatural or House MD or any other show with a man that I can tear into pieces.

11. There It Goes

Break-up song?? Love song?? I don't know. This song is one of few where I genuinely have no idea what I would write. I don't have a single guess. I'm sorry.

12. History of Man

This feels like either a super angry song, a super empowering song, or both. And the character chosen will depend on that distinction. I personally think it'll be a supervillain origin story or just a really badass hero with men just getting in the damn way. So... probably DC related.

**Love you, Maisie... if you see this... if you're on tumblr. Not gonna lie, that thought kinda scares me.**

[quillyfied]

TOP 5 OFMD AUS (not counting yours which is PERFECT)

(Oh, you! Thank you very much!) Now, THIS is a top five I can sink my teeth into. In the GOmens fandom I did some pretty substantial fic rec lists back in the day, when I had things like energy and time, so picking just five is gonna be tough...I will do my best! There is such a wealth of creativity in this fandom!

First: Leda House and the Kraken 'Verse by @dragonmuse (Usually M, some E, some T). I got in on the ground floor on this one and have been on a beautiful emotional journey with it ever since. It's the drag queen AU that just won't quit. Running the gamut from screamingly funny to heartbreakingly poignant to quietly cathartic, there are even AUs within the AU sure to scratch as many itches as you care to manifest, all while maintaining a solid sense of character and voice throughout. Truly worth investing time and attention to, A+++++.

Second: adrift between the dreaming seas by teaDragon (M). Do you want a funky fairy tale vibe with talking animals, surprising curses, a Kraken with big doe eyes, and a deeply emotional journey to self-acceptance? Of COURSE you do. And you want some lighthouse imagery with that? YES. Put this in your eyeballs immediately, because trust me, TRUST ME, it's a keeper.

Third: The Nettles in the Garden Don't Go Away by JRaylin441 (M). Are you tired of the same old same old soulmate AUs? Just want something with a fresh twist? How about a side of the slowest burn imaginable, heaped with excruciating emotional growth and breathtaking poetic imagery? Don't skip out on this one, then, because if your goal in life is to Feel Things about your blorbos, it doesn't get more feelingsy than this bad boy right here. Drowning in the feelings, you might say. Still updating, just as a warning, but well worth the wait, in my opinion. You feel every second of these boys' growth arcs, and it does absolutely start at childhood and is taking us through canon--and hopefully beyond, but who's to say? A true gem.

Fourth: Catch Fish by Cesare (T). Let's get a little lighter with a series about catfishing and unraveling the plots thereof. Yes, this is less heavy than it seems, so far consisting of two fics covering the two sides of the story: first, Stede and Ed working through how Stede was tricked by someone using Ed's pics and catching some real feelings along the way, and then a prequel, showing Stede's emotional journey through his time being catfished. Funny and sincere and emotional, still updating both fics but a fantastic ride so far.

Fifth: A Minivan Called the Revenge by @duskoscrawl and @doctors-star (T). I am a sucker for kid AUs, and this one is the cream of the crop as far as "crew of Revenge is kids, Stede and Ed are their dads" flavors of kid fic goes. My only complaint is that I want more of it. Even without being super duper long, the emotional bonds between not just the dads themselves but the dads and their kids are really well-established and feel organic, and they don't pull any emotional punches either. Little bitty Buttons with his plush seagulls lives rent-free in my head forever.

(And a most honorable mention to saturday night lights by sometimeseffable (T), the American college football and color guard AU that tingles my brain in ways that just don't make sense for how much I don't care for real-life American football, but probably have to do with being friends with band kids for my entire adolescence and growing up in a football culture. Sweet and funny and going hard on the pining, which is what we're all here for! Still updating, but worth the read!)

There are so many more that are worth mentioning but I've already cheated with six recs so gonna stop while I'm ahead. Thank you!

[penelopelima]

Hey OP, were you trying to say that white women can oppress white men on the basis of race? Nah, you weren't. You just don't dare to say openly that you find the idea of women fantasizing about taking revenge on men repulsive. Because you are a coward.

First off, OP, I read the book and watched the movie for Gone Girl and I don't remember Amy pushing anyone down the stairs. If I recall correctly, she threw herself down the stairs. So you are plain wong there.

Secondly, you are comparing vastly different characters, so this whole thing is pretty much a moot point.

At no point that I recall did any of those characters use their white privilege against women of color, so you are just co-opting the term white feminism to disguise your misogyny, which is a disgusting practice that waters down the term and therefore actually harms women of color by taking away their ability to point out racism perpetrated by white women.

On the topic of Amy falsely accusing that man of rape, we only hear that from him. Every rapist claims to be falsely accused, and therefore his account is unreliable. Please learn to read. We also have a very obvious example of how even a woman like Amy can be predated upon by men, with Desi being obsessed with her and basically kidnapping her under the guise of saving her. Amy pretended to go along with it for her safety and self-interest, but he certainly expected to keep her as his own personal blow-up doll. I would argue that at that point killing him was really her only way out, even if it also happened to be convenient for her cover story to come back. She slept with him to kill him, but this was also coercive sex in nature. She couldn't really refuse for long, could she?

I do read Amy as a character who certainly has psychopathic traits, she is manipulative and cunning. She has no friends or genuine connections. She is extremely smart and knows how to influence the situation for her advantage and survival. She is shown to feel superior to others and to have little to no empathy. Does this make her a terrible person? It depends. In this story, I don't think it does. She basically fucks over people who fuck her over. Men have used and mistreated women for too long without consequences, and she refused to let him suck the life out of her, use her, and then abandon her once he's done. She enacted the perfect revenge, really, and then chose to not end her life but to actually improve it. The relationship had been unequal from the start, he held the power from he beginning and she said fuck that. If you'll never see me as your equal, then I'll be your superior. And she got away with it. It is awe-inspiring and cathartic.

Watching Dani send her shitty boyfriend to be burned is also cathartic, although soured because she now is not entering a position of power, but of submission to a patriarchal cult. But the movie allows us to feel how liberated she feels at that exact moment.

Amy is also her own brand of tragedy, in my opinion. She has resorted to this because she has staked her entire life on a man who betrayed her. She has lost everything of value other than her marriage because he used her financially and forced her away from the life she wanted to build. This is taken from her diaries, but it is not disputed at any point. He has held the driving wheel the entire relationship, and slowly drove her away from her life to fit her into his and his family's. She has become an accessory to him to the point where she has nothing of her own, no family (other than narcissistic parents who prefer a fictional version of their daughter), no friends, no money, in his town. He forced her to basically become a housewife and take care of his family and invest in his business. If they divorce, what will she have? A whole lot of wasted years, a writing career in stand-by, no money, half a house in a town she doesn't want to live in, half a dying business. She was desperate to the point of suicide when faced with that possibility. Her plan was to kill herself and make him pay for it. Her happy ending is to stay alive, with a man who hates her and she can't respect anymore, but she's holding the driving wheel now. And even that is an incredible victory, because she's free of pretense now.

Relationships with most men are 99% pretense. They have no interest in knowing you beyond seeing how you measure up to the idea in their head of the perfect woman. And she performed perfectly for him, for years, and she was still replaced. That's what the cool girl monologue was about. If you think those women in the cars she passed by were just living their lives and being themselves, you are demonstrating your poor critical thinking skills. The cool girl is the impossible standard men expect of women: sexy, unemotional, unselfish, undemanding, personality carefully curated around his, unthinking, without personal boundaries or agency; and most importantly, always sexually avaliable, the word no doesn't exist in her vocabulary. You want male love? Start becoming her.

I mean, at this point if you don't understand why women find Amy Dunne liberating, you just might think this woman actually exists.

i know this isn’t a hot take what so ever but what happened to gone girl and midsommar is what happens whenever you give white women a narrative about another white woman who enacts terrible acts of violence on other people. yeah, amy’s husband was a fucking asshole for cheating, but amy was consistently terrible to other people in her life—accusing people she didn’t like of rape, pushing down girls down the stairs, and even her whole “cool girl” speech has a vague undercurrent or misogyny under it in the movie as she says this whole speech driving by women who are living their lives and there’s literally no men next to these women. she uses the fact that she’s a white woman to her advantage so heavily in the book to be a terrible person.

in midsommar, christian is a grade A asshole who’s too much of a coward to break up with his girlfriend right before he leaves. and this is rewarded in the movie by having him be drugged and sexually coerced, and dani punishes him for this by burning him alive while he can’t do anything about it. it’s not a revenge fantasy in any way—just pure tragedy, but because there’s this existing idea that empowering white women means callousness, means fucking over everybody, both of these narratives get adopted and twisted into something that they are not.

through the lens of popular white feminism, gone girl stops becoming a story about a terrible woman and her terrible husband, and midsommar stops becoming a story about a cult that indoctrinates the emotionally vulnerable and enacts horrible violence. it’s how you get takes like “amy dunne did nothing wrong” or “the real villain of the movie was christian”. consuming media through the lens of pop and white feminism just…does this. like it’s weird and it’s irritating and i just wish people would STOP losing all sense of nuance when a white girl is involved

[dailyadventureprompts]

I want to set up a "what do you fight for" moment for my players, but I'm not sure how. Any advice?

Drafting the Adventure: The Ethos Moment

One of the beat pieces of writing advice I ever got is that every main character has a fundamental misapprehension about how the world works, and that most good character development is about challenging this misapprehension until they come to understand a truth about the world, at which point they now possess the right mindset to push past the thing that was initially holding them back and reach their ending.

It has a lot of different names depending on the type of story you're telling, and can very wildly in whether it's positive or negative for a character ( someone in a heroic story might find a deepest reserve of strength, where as someone in a horror story might fall off the deep end and become a nihilistic witness to the nightmares that unfold) but I like to call this "The Ethos Moment" because it aligns the character with the overall message of the work and comes to be a defining part of their character moving forward, signaling that they've "graduated" into their final state and are ready to face the challenges ahead.

Naturally this is way more difficult when you have 3-5 OTHER main characters who might have worldviews that not only contrast but contradict one another, in that something that might be actively harmful to one character (the reluctant berserker giving in to rage) may be tremendously cathartic to another (the putupon victim finally getting revenge against their wrongdoer).

Bringing about an ethos moment is a delicate process of characterization alchemy, one that I can't provide an exact formula for as it largely depends on the character, their player, their dm, the campaign they're playing, and the point in the story that the party has currently reached. That said, like all great works of TTRPG storytelling an ethos moment is best improvised half way through an ongoing story, making use of the character building the party has already done.

Regardless if a character started out as a blank slate or a fully realized individual, through the process of adventuring they've acquired experiences and expressed opinions, things they've liked, disliked, grown proud of, or been hesitant to do. These help you define the boundary of your ethos moment, which you can start writing into your story once you feel you have a sense of what really makes the character tick.

The key is figuring out what line the character in question doesn't WANT to cross, even if failing to do so hurts them in the long run. Will the apathetic character finally let themselves connect with someone else and in turn recognize the pain that made them put others at a distance? Will the nhilistic character realize there's good worth holding onto in the world? Will the control freak realize sometimes you just need to be in the moment? There's no point giving an already physically powerful character a hidden wellspring of strength at the 11th hour, we already know they're strong, just like it's not worthwhile to have a well liked and sociable character realize they were fighting for their friends all along. What the ethos moment gives them is a means to temper their character, mitigating one of their largest flaws and growing as a person in the process.

One of the secrets of engineering such a scene is that it can be equally character building if they FAIL to learn the lesson, suffering some setback because they chose to stick to their misapprehended worldview. Facing failure because they stuck to flawed convictions seeds cracks of doubt and regret through their mind, leading to questions and divergant actions next time the oppertunity presents itself.

As for what motivates these scenarios: mentor characters can be great for this, seeking to instill an ethos moment early as they set the character on the right path. Gods are also great motivations, with different entities laying claim to who the character IS and COULD BE with a narrative to decide who will ultimately rule. As for when in the game this all should be set in motion , I'd say about 7th level? long enough into the story that your party's had some development, but not so long that they're going to reach that lauded 10th lvl milestone as the same people they were at the start of the campaign.

Art

[smile-files]

okay okay i just finished watching camp cretaceous and i gotta talk about ben. like as a character is he just so funny

ben starts out polite and shy and sweet and afraid of literally everything. like all the other campers have no idea why in god's name he's here (which is completely fair, as he doesn't seem to want to be here either) - but then he befriends an ankylosaurus, which he names bumpy blongy scimbly scromplo. and then he gets taken by a pterodactyl :)

i think one of the strangest things to me is how you have apocalypse shows like this and of the main cast only one will realistically react to almost being killed. like ben almost gets killed by a carnotaur after being separated from the group and the second he finds cover he just instantly starts crying and like. finally. the fact that i should consider that cathartic is ridiculous lmao

no but seriously it's so funny he's gone for a whole season i think and the second he comes back we get an episode about every new trauma he's unlocked. now he's paranoid and jaded and really disconnected from his friends (and people generally)... this boy fears death. this boy will poke death in the eyes. this boy's first best friend is a dinosaur. this boy will commit arson in self defense. this boy thinks everything threatens him and so will continuously commit arson unprompted. this boy has just screamed for the first time ever and is now startled by how loud he was. trauma catharsis boy! get beaten up by the narrative and then beat up the narrative in revenge! let's go!!

it's been a while so i don't remember how this was addressed right after he rejoined the other campers but anyway his friends are so shocked and so concerned and ben's like shut up i need to blow something up or i'm gonna have a panic attack. y'know eventually he eases back into the group and gets to be an absolute dork again but he's always trauma catharsis boy from here on out. even if he gets barely any screentime later on lol </3

um but yeah it's sad how in the later seasons (especially the last) we don't get much ben-centric stuff... like there was the thing about him not wanting to leave bumpy on the island but besides that it's mostly ben being a dork who knows way too much about explosives.

it's hilarious, ben is like... gay with no gaydar (in a general sense). i'm skipping ahead a bit but yeah when yaz comes out to him - not to say that cishet people can't understand or sympathize with queer experiences altogether but idk his response is so earnest and thought-out that it just seems to me that this boy is queer in some way himself (trans icon? trans icon). and then it's really funny because in the season before ben completely missed a social cue (autistic icon? autistic icon) and thought that yaz was into him when she was just trying to third wheel for someone else. like ben do you even know what flirting is? are you sure?

y'know actually ben is scared of everything for the whole series, it's just that now he chooses fight over flight. if you cover his eyes to play "guess who" he'll shriek, and immediately turn around and stab you. ben surprise party incident 5 dead 13 injured. that's really funny to me because it's taking the timid -> brave pipeline to the logical extreme: still terrified, but now with weapons lol

ben is so funny. my beautiful, disturbed, beautiful boy (to quote darius). my guy who starts a battle whenever he makes eye contact with someone. my scrawny kid with a giant dinosaur. my will byers kinnie. my boy who's better at combat than conversation. ben really carried camp cretaceous and you better admit it

[ruby-whistler]

The continuous dehumanization of c!Dream in the Dream SMP fandom

[ All of the names mentioned in this post apply to the characters, not the content creators. This post will include repeated mentions of fictional abuse, self-harm and torture. Please take care of yourself. Your mental health is important. /dsmp /rp ]

This fandom has driven me to my limit. I think it’s time to talk about dehumanization.

First of all; if you’re going to tell me “it’s a Minecraft roleplay, it’s not that deep”, watch me say “c!Tommy deserved abuse” (he did NOT) and get swarmed by 500 people telling me how messed up that is. There are literal abuse victims in this fandom, and I personally know a lot of them relate to what c!Dream is going through (more on that later). Seeing this fandom dehumanize the character on such a large scale makes me sick and extremely worried for them, so shut up.

Let’s get back to the point.

What is dehumanization? Big word, right? Wouldn’t want to misuse it.

According to this article written with the help of a psychologist, “Dehumanization is a mental loophole that lets us harm other people”. Or perhaps justify these people being hurt, in some cases; “If you think of murder and torture as universally taboo, then dehumanization of the “other” is a psychological loophole that can justify them.”

Dehumanization is not a good thing, and it is never acceptable.

According to Wikipedia, “Dehumanization is the denial of full humanness in others and the cruelty and suffering that accompanies it. A practical definition refers to it as the viewing and treatment of other persons as though they lack the mental capacities that are commonly attributed to human beings. In this definition, every act or thought that regards a person as "less than" human is dehumanization.

“Dehumanization is one technique in incitement to genocide. It has also been used to justify war, judicial and extrajudicial killing, slavery, the confiscation of property, denial of suffrage and other rights, and to attack enemies or political opponents.”

Let’s see what this fandom does to c!Dream, and whether it matches up with the definition.

Justification of torture and abuse; revenge and “catharsis”

Since the very second c!Dream has started being tortured, the fandom exploded into discourse. About what specifically? Him “deserving it”.

That’s right, folks. People will genuinely get mad when others tell them “abuse is wrong, even when it happens to bad people”.

Twitter is filled with people saying this sort of thing, but Tumblr is not exempt from this - they just make longer posts about it and they get deleted faster because there are more Dream apologists on there. I saw people calling it cathartic, I saw people calling it “vindication”.

If you’re reading this post, you probably don’t justify fictional torture! That’s… good! Bare minimum, but good. However, the points explained here might apply to people you support/follow, and there are other, more subtle points that might apply to you explained later in this essay, so please read on if you’re still interested in the subject.

Now, I’m not strawmanning a small amount of the community here. Big accounts from all over DSMPtwt and DSMPblr were reblogging and posting things about how “funny” and “cathartic” the abuse was, or about how they didn’t care.

I don’t mind if you don’t care about the abuse victim in a story because you have a personal vendetta against him. I couldn’t care less about you hating c!Dream - he did terrible stuff! He hurt your favorite character! I get it! But making light of someone being terribly traumatized (even in fiction) and talking about how much you enjoy it is wrong and upsetting.

There will always be a couple of bad apples, but this is not a loud minority. This was the fandom’s overwhelming response to the prison arc as a whole.

People were calling seeing c!Dream in pain “narrative catharsis”. Dream SMP fandom learn the meaning of words challenge episode 226.

“Catharsis is the telos of tragedy, the end towards which [it] is functionally directed. In Aristotle's theory catharsis is part of. the definition of tragedy : an imitation of an action "with incidents arousing. pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions"”

Narrative catharsis is all about feeling pity, fear, and sympathy for someone going through pain, and then after you finish watching the tragedy, feeling emotionally refreshed.

What the Dream SMP fandom actually means when they say “it’s narratively satisfying” is that it’s a revenge power fantasy they can indulge in. They hate the character, and when they see him in pain, they justify the torture to themselves through dehumanization so they don’t feel bad for enjoying it, and the alarms of “hey, this is messed up!” don’t go off.

They’d be disgusted with themselves if they realized they actually just want to see a (fictional) human being be abused and find it entertaining. So they blame it on the narrative making it “satisfying” for them, and strip c!Dream of his humanity; down to titles such as “villain” “tyrant” “abuser”, when they’re actually laughing at a literal (fictional) Person going through abuse and there is nothing more to it; nothing to excuse that or make it better.

I once had a person say to me in a discussion “I don’t think anyone deserves torture, but c!Dream does.” A lot of people don’t put it this blatantly because then they’d realize what they’re actually doing is, well, flawed logic - but point is, it does happen. This is people’s thought process; they’re excluding c!Dream from the people who don’t deserve abuse, which they’d otherwise say is everyone.

This is dehumanization, case closed. But, hey, maybe you’re not saying what is happening to him is right. That means you’re not dehumanizing him, right?

I’m not done. Not by a long shot. You see, dehumanization is an inherently subtle thing.

Calling trauma responses and self-harm “manipulation”

Pandora’s vault is a traumatic experience. Isolation over 15 days is classified by the UN as torture, because of the negative consequences a lack of stimuli can have on one’s mind.

Such as the fact our brain will prefer negative stimuli over none.

Yes, we’re bringing up the fact (yes, the FACT) that c!Dream has been indulging in self-harm with the use of lava because of solitary confinement.

He throws himself into lava; “swims” in it and kills himself, sets himself on fire and lets himself burn for a very long while - and calls the pain of being burnt “fun”, calls it “exhilarating”. He laughs about it, says there is nothing else for him to do, and makes light of it. He has done this in almost every single visit. [link to only a few of the clips of him doing it] And if people paid closer attention to the streams, they would notice that he is constantly inching towards the lava, standing beside it, looking at it, running around it.

This is deliberate. c!Dream is hurting himself in prison.

Visitors told c!Sam about this, and he replied with utmost apathy, “yeah, he does that a lot. Usually it’s for attention.” He also could’ve easily stopped him from hurting himself this way by just putting up the obsidian barrier permanently. He did not.

Self-harm is not for attention. It is a sign that someone needs help. But even if - perhaps if someone is devoid of interaction and stimuli, which are essential for proper functioning of the brain, to the point when they hurt themselves over and over to get it - it’s their environment that is literally forcing them to look towards that as a solution.

c!Sam not only couldn’t care less about c!Dream’s health, but he is also negligent - starving him, only giving him one type of food (which he recently called “disgusting”, meaning that it was actually hurting him as well) and other things. c!Sam mentioned multiple times “breaking him” “breaking his will” as something he had hoped to achieve.

This is deliberate. c!Sam was hurting c!Dream in prison.

Why have you not heard of this sooner, you might be asking? ...Also dehumanization. This fandom couldn’t care less that a (fictional) human being is being abused because they don’t like him. Unlike pretty much everything else in the SMP, this information isn’t picked up, analysed, and most people show no interest in it.

They ignore these inhumane conditions - literal infringement of basic human rights - because they don’t want themselves or others sympathizing with c!Dream. They downplay these things, don’t talk about them, and it’s very obvious the majority of the prison arc before c!Quackity was ignored - by, like, the entirety of the fandom - because people didn’t care about c!Dream being abused, and (most of those people) deliberately stayed ignorant.

… Well, now that we’ve established that pre-Quackity conditions were extremely messed up, let’s talk about the trauma responses!

c!Dream goes selectively mute in one of the visits. He acts desperate to get out from time to time, while also insisting c!Sam is “treating him amazing” and he’s doing “great”. Despite purposefully hiding how much he’s being hurt, a lot of the things he does or says during the visits inspire pity.

And here’s where the dehumanization comes in; people saying that those who feel sympathy for c!Dream are being “manipulated” by his obvious trauma responses, and that either he has some “greater plan” (I saw someone say he is “acting” and “isn’t actually scared of c!Quackity, because he is “good at it”) or that it just doesn’t hurt him and he’s trying to seem pitiful to “manipulate” the visitors and the fandom.

(“They can’t feel pain the way we do.” Is actually classic dehumanizing propaganda that had been used against disabled people IRL. Please stop, it’s very uncomfortable!)

People also say they “don’t trust him”, which I would understand, if the thing they “weren’t trusting him” about wasn’t trauma we literally see the consequences of on screen.

I don’t think I need to explain how messed up this all is. The CCs are deliberately making him sympathetic via the prison arc, tackling serious issues like self-harm, torture of prisoners and systematic abuse, and you’re calling it a ruse, a red herring. You sound like that one screenshot from a TikTok of a c!Dream apologist that read “what if c!Tommy was actually manipulating c!Dream in exile”. AKA stupid and insensitive.

Talking about victim blaming, people are so quick to say that c!Dream deserves it or is getting retribution because he commissioned the prison and “was going to do this to c!Tommy!!1!1”, as if the main cell wasn’t only meant to be used for up to two weeks and as if he ordered c!Sam to be negligent and cruel.

Also, “c!Dream is manipulating c!Quackity and/or c!Sam!”. Stop :D You’re saying he’s manipulating/hurting his abusers even though they have control of literally every second and every inch of his life! What the hell!

All in all, If you say stuff like this, you are denying him the ability to be hurt and suffer, emotionally and physically, like a normal human being can - denying his humanity - hence downplaying his trauma and abuse because you don’t like him.

It’s dehumanization. Denial of human rights is about as dehumanizing as you’ll get. Time to get into widespread and controversial territory, so stick with me here.

An aggressive response to the debate and assignment of positive traits [ + ableism ]

It’s time to talk about the first thing that pops up when you search “dehumanization”, as well as the method most often used by war propaganda; depriving a person of positive human qualities. How does this apply to c!Dream?

People who dislike him, which are some of the most influential of the fandom, will do anything to erase even a smidge of humanity in the character.

Even though he has proven time and time again to care pretty deeply about his friends, even though his good intentions and motivation were literally confirmed by the CC, people will discard that to assign him inhumane qualities instead and make him a personification of evil, abuse, or tyranny; denying him moral complexity or “positive human qualities”. People will discard everything we know about him (which isn’t a lot) to claim he’s just “obsessed with hurting c!Tommy” (ah yes because everything is this story including all of the characters definitely revolves around him /s) even though it has no actual basis or solid proof.

I have seen time and time again people act outright aggressively to whoever assigns normal, positive human qualities, that could help us see c!Dream as a person to the character.

This is!! Not a good attitude!! Getting defensive towards someone humanizing a person whom the fandom has dehumanized, even if he did some vile stuff, is Not Chill! Not only have you convinced yourself that he doesn’t deserve a personality or to be seen as something other than a threat or a villain to be defeated, but you’re so convinced about it you are in fact attacking and pressuring others for not agreeing with you.

This, however subtle, wide-spread or normalized, is *whispers into the mic* dehumanization.

And when I say “do anything to erase even a smidge of humanity” I mean everything including *that one rainbow spongebob meme* blatant ableism!

AKA, assigning him personality disorders, saying he “can’t feel empathy” or “can’t care about people”, diagnosing him and then weaponizing that to dehumanize him further. This is sadly widespread on pretty much anywhere but Tumblr (especially Twitter and Ao3), even though I guarantee you people have been calling c!Dream a “psycho” on there as well.

This is not ok. Don’t be ableist because you dislike a character for the love of god.

You can hate him, though! He abused a teenager! He also killed him once! There are solid reasons why you should feel strong negative emotion towards the character; if you have dehumanized him in your mind, you know what, who am I to attack you?

I’ll do you one better; who are you to attack me for not doing the same?

A firm opposition to empathy, and the effects of peer pressure and conformity

This is less of a point rather than a closing note; an explanation of the reason why I wrote this in the first place.

All of the dehumanization mentioned before leads into a singular point; c!Dream doesn’t deserve empathy, and those who relate to him are wrong / I cannot understand them, hence I believe they’re wrong about the character.

This is, once again, common in the fandom. You might’ve listened to people dehumanizing him and you agreed and didn’t notice. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person for it. That doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.

There is a lot of pressure in this community to conform to the overall opinion that c!Dream is an evil no-good villain (rather than person) deserving of nothing less than death, and people who empathize with him are terrible or stupid people. This is what newcomers are faced with and expected to follow; since these other people were here before them, they’ll naturally think they’re right, and won’t challenge this status quo. Even if they wanted to, this entire place is an echo chamber, and they can’t escape it; so they’ll conform at some point, and dehumanize him as well, because everyone else is doing it, so they must be correct, right?

And while this is all fiction - a goddamned Minecraft roleplay - there is something that has to do with real people and the harm that can come to them as a result of this.

You see, my followers probably don’t remember this, but back in the day, I made a survey. It was called the Dream vs. Tommy apologist survey, with two simple questions for each side; why are you a c!Tommy/c!Dream apologist, and why do you think people are c!Tommy/c!Dream apologists?

I ended up getting a thousand responses, all catalogued and to be processed - I was supposed to do an analysis, but it was too mentally exhausting to get through.

What the answers showed was,, surprising, to say the least.

You see, when you think about “why are people c!Dream apologists?” you usually don’t come up with “they relate to him on a deeply personal level”, but here are only a few of the people who had this as their reply.

“i relate to a lot of his trauma / feelings.”

“I relate a lot to his fear of people having power [over] him and his situation in the prison reminds me a lot of my own traumas.”

“as someone from a colonized country and people I can't help but feel for c!Dream and his situation. Being villanaized just for wanting his server back to how it used to be is also painfully familiar.”

“I also tend to project onto c!Dream, as he does remind me of myself in some aspects like trauma responses.”

“I see so much of my mental illnesses and past self in him.”

"c!dream is a genuine comfort character for me as someone with c-ptsd myself"

"I can see a lot of myself in c!Dream, even the bad parts. Took a lot of guts to realize that “oh hey, I think like that, I should probably stop” and have been doing better since then."

People… relate to the character, and not for bad or insufficient reasons. (Not that there are “insufficient” reasons to relate to the character in the first place.) It’s usually got to do with repressed trauma and emotions, specific trauma responses such as cutting off the people around you and desperately trying to control your life, being abandoned or cast out by your family and friends, even having your country colonized, etc..

These people were anonymous, however I myself know quite a lot of c!Dream fans who are past or current abuse victims and see themselves in the character. Some of them because of physical abuse or being trapped in their house; some because of the dismissive attitude of others when they opened up about what had happened to them, similarly to how people who claimed to care about c!Dream don’t care about what happened to him in prison.

I am not using this to guilt trip anyone, but it is important to know the effect your words can have on people, and the constant hate and dehumanization is frequently sending many c!Dream fans (me included) into panic attacks and anxiety spirals.

“But I tag my crit!” Yeah, your 2k followers who are listening daily to you dehumanizing him very likely do not, and you’re contributing to the trend in the fandom either way.

With that in mind - meaning people take specific experiences c!Dream had (in canon) and specific experiences (often highly traumatic) that they had IRL and relate them to each other - what effect do you think it has, saying he is “irredeemable”, “doesn’t deserve to heal”, or “shouldn’t/cannot get better”? Calling c!Dream sympathetic people “abuse apologists”, “being manipulated”, or “thinking of the wrong character”?

(Side-note: the fandom also has an awful double standard. Characters who are also manipulative or abusive, such as c!Wilbur, c!Sam or c!Quackity, are deemed as “able to heal/be redeemed” while c!Dream is not. This is usually explained by saying, “well, x character has these positive qualities they can return to and that stayed with them, and c!Dream does not” - which is, once again, blatant denial of positive human qualities. I hope we all agree all people can and deserve to heal and get better - however, according to the fandom, once again, c!Dream can not.)

How do you think this affects people who have been on long roads to healing and becoming better people? How do you think this affects abuse victims, when you say c!Dream’s treatment is justified or that you enjoy watching it?

I am not using this to guilt trip you. c!Dream antis often pull out the “well abuse victims project their abuser onto him and you’re hurting them by saying people should be more sympathetic” card, however, so I feel like I should tell you that there are abuse victims out there who relate themselves to him and want him to get better for that exact reason.

It is a Minecraft roleplay, yes; but if I see something that is overwhelmingly common in the community continuously hurting a group of people, like hell I’m not going to speak out about it. And c!Dream’s dehumanization does that. Fighting anyone who believes he deserves empathy does that, because people see themselves in him (and once again, they are completely valid to do that) and you are saying people who have done bad things (which some of these people have, as coping mechanism or simply because they spiralled) but have also been hurt don’t deserve to be sympathized with or get better.

So, to summarize; don’t dehumanize c!Dream, and don’t villainize people who sympathize with him; if not out of understanding, then at least out of human decency.

If you have questions, want to ask for proof, or simply want to see what the more sympathetic outlook on c!Dream’s character looks like, feel free to send asks. I’ll definitely answer yours if you aren’t a prick - by which I mean I’ll let you stomp all over me, but if you send me into an anxiety attack by just sending hate, I probably won’t answer you.

[gingersnapdragonspice]

Watching scissor seven and i like it significantly more than I should. It's amazing how utterly silly it is yet on paper is incredibly serious.

Spoilers

A character i like way more than I thought I would is Dai Bo, and it's completely because of his backstory

While the cockfighting ring is comedic when said out loud, it's a pretty amazing stand in for prisoner fighting rings with the added threat of literally being eaten. Being a fighting chicken and winning is the only reliable way to keep yourself and your family from becoming food.

When Dai Bo's best friend Dai Fei is killed in a brutally demoralizing way, Dai Bo (the king of making others do the work) actually steps up when it would have been completely understandable to give up. Dai Fei fought for honorable reasons, to make his family line be seen as valuable in producing fighters so that his very young son won't be eaten as food.

Even when the friend won the fight according to the rules and worked hard, he was allowed to be killed because the establishment doesn't actually care about his life, win or lose. The chicken that was bet on is allowed to cheat, and the establishment is fully against any kind of status quo change. There's no honorable victory there, only bets and deaths.

It isn't Fair.

Dai Bo starts training, and signs up to fight the one that murdered his friend. Dai Bo surprised me multiple times in that fight.

What I THOUGHT he was going to do was get revenge using the techniques he learned from his friend, but instead, he takes the first chance he has to leap out of the ring and grab the ruler of the arena by the throat.

This is great! He realized more than his friend did, that winning the fight isn't the goal. He's the only one that realized that following the rules of your imprisoner is never going to get you unimprisoned, regardless of how well you follow them. He's the only one who realized his fellow prisoner isn't his enemy, even if they've been pitched against each other in a fighting ring. They're all just trying to survive. The reason they're in this cruel situation is because of the ruler, not their fight opponents.

Here, I thought he'd kill the ruler and escape in the carnage. No. Again, he realizes: Even if he was to escape, it would be a hollow victory. Killing the ruler wouldn't change anything either. The problem isn't one chicken's life being saved or not. The problem is that chickens will keep being killed unfairly.

He does the smart thing, and forces the ruler to free everyone imprisoned, or else he'll kill him. Even after the ruler agrees, he doesn't let go. "If there's one thing I've learned from you, it's that the world isn't fair."

As his claws go straight for the man's throat, the man who enslaved his species and forced them to fight for entertainment, the man who let his friend die for no reason other than supreme apathy to his life...

He hesitates.

He looks into the crowd watching, to the faces of his chicken brothers and sisters who want him to do it...

And one face that doesn't.

Dai Fei's son.

The son who lost his father, and has no one else except Dai Bo, watching with horrified eyes.

The eyes that watched his father fight earnestly to the very end are now watching his second father figure about to become a murderer. Yeah, the man deserves it for all he's done, and Dai Bo has every reason to do it...

But does he need to? The chickens are all freed. The fighting ring has collapsed. Killing the ruler won't make them any more free, he has no power anymore, it would just be cathartic revenge to everyone involved

Except to the little boy watching, who doesn't need to see any more blood.

Dai Bo weighs the good of the child over his own rage.

Dai Bo doesn't take the kill. He commits to a life raising the child, like his father would have wanted.

All of this done with chickens in a cockfighting ring, yet it was done so well

Scissor seven is really good yall

[mcdonaldsnumberone]

color it, a bit more deeply

kinda like a character study/writing practice?

gender neutral reader

Deuce is the same color of the night right before it’s darkest, the indigo of his hair smearing across the nebula and galaxies and the universe above him as it harbors all of his love, his hatred, his determination, his fear, every little emotion that has built this little soul into someone waiting to grow and fill up the shoes that have been placed before him.

Deuce is the same color of blueberries and breakfast in bed, omelettes waiting to be flipped and a pomodoro tomato signaling to him that he should pay attention before everything gets burnt! He’s sweet, an effervescent happiness suspended with the disbelief of physics, to savor the warmth that lingers in the sheets of his bed when you get up and follow him into the kitchen.

Deuce is the same color of morning glory flowers waiting to bloom. The same symbol of potential, of a dream and promise that he tucks into the furthest corner of his soul, words he repeats to himself into the fabric of his pillow to remind him that tomorrow exists. Deuce is hope and the future mixed all into one, splayed out against the world with the naïveté of a hero and the stubbornness of a villain.

Deuce is the same color of the spade stamped on his eyelids, the cerulean hue that stares back at him when he sleepily blinks against the mirror. Somedays you paint it on for him, and somedays he paints in on himself. It’s a sign, he tells himself, it’s a sign that I can amount to great things. He colors it firmly and proudly, and with a final glance, he tears away from the lull of the morning routine and throws himself into the adventures that the new day might present to him.

Jamil is the same color of the summer heat, a sweltering vow made in the shadows not to fall into the lazy ecstasy that many do in an attempt to keep the sun at bay. He’s determination and vengeance rolled into one, making full use of the cards he’s been dealt with while cursing the gods who play house at the unfair casino called life. Unlucky for the divine, he’s going to work with what he’s given, rebuilding over and over the grand ambition bubbling like a clear spring in his mind.

Jamil is the same color of cranberries and raspberries, a tartness that gives way to sweetness. You pucker your lips the same way you would do when you would kiss him, and the lingering sticky sensation that gives you the butterflies is a miracle that only his love could pull off. His soul is an array of colors so painful it’s nearly irreplaceable, a testament to life’s lessons that he had to learn too quick at too young.

Jamil is the same color as poppy flowers. A symbol of someone fallen, a symbol of someone waiting to bloom, a symbol of muted pain. When the crimson color spreads across the world and inevitably dyes his heart, will you be the one to reach out and paint the color over with a hue of your own? Or will you watch, letting him attain the cathartic revenge that you know he deserves most?

Jamil is the same color as the red of his dorm uniform, flames tickling his neck and arms, fireworks that celebrate him and tell him that he’ll find his place in the world. Damn right there is, he blinks to himself, if there isn’t, I’ll simply carve a place myself. But for today, but for tonight, but for now, his place is within your arms, where he keeps his exhaustion at bay and sinks into the passion of red.

Epel is the same color of apple flowers waving to him on the branches of the orchard he oversees. The delicate pink the same shade of a blushing bride’s, the pastel purple the same shade of his lilac hair, the ivory white the same shade of his acceptance letter to the prestigious academy. Epel lives for tomorrow, to become larger and better and stronger than where he was yesterday, and Epel refuses to be contained in the same way that the flowers seem to burst and overflow and turn into the crisp apples that have molded into his hands as the years pass.

Epel is the same color of macaron crumbs scattered across the kitchen countertop. You’re sure that he’s in for a scolding when Vil finds out that he’s been stuffing his mouth with sweets, but his giggles and the twinkle in his azure eyes when he knows he’s gotten away with his mischief for the time being are too good for you to deny him that joy. It tastes so delectable, to be by him and to live your truth, to step forward hand-in-hand with his youth and let the minutes tick by, until even the crumbs dissipate into nothing more than dust.

Epel is the same color of lavender flowers braving the wind. A mark of serenity, a mark of a zest that only comes to those who have the courage to face the world head on, a mark of a fragrant existence that’s sure to shape a legacy even larger than the mess he creates and fixes and creates again. Because that is what Epel is, both to you and everyone around him, a problem child with a grin that shines brighter than the North Star and with a desire to make a name for himself so that no one dares to challenge the light that rest between his lips.

Epel is the same color as the royal purple robes he slips into everyday, a ritual he once detested that he’s slowly grown to accept. There is so much more to strength than mere appearance, and he knows and learns that with each passing day. I’m going to become stronger, he vows silently as he ties the laces of his boots, I’m going to become so much more than they believe me to be. Beauty is lethal, and Epel is beautiful.

Lilia is the same color of the flickering northern lights, rich violets and sparkling greens dancing across the sky in a way that entranced the primordials and mortals alike, a display that toys with the border that spills from the logical into the illogical, from reason into magic. He enchants, and he makes use of folly, stirring myths from their slumber and adding in a cunning edge to the usual everyday that so many have grown too familiar with.

Lilia is the same color of young mint leaves fighting against the leftover frost of the winter. His kisses leave your mouth with a chill that no human would leave you with, yet no human could lead you further and further away from the clarity of the living world and into the fog of the fae world. Despite this, you follow him all the same, lured into a choice that you can’t—and you won’t—take back.

Lilia is the same color of the oldest oak leaves, the same trees that have watched millions of young wildflowers sprout from the ground and then slowly wilt away when their time is up. His wisdom and his altruism is built up from a millennia of heartbreak and healing, goodbyes and hellos, death and birth. He watches them all the same, taking them as they are, enjoying them as they are, loving them as they are.

Lilia is the same color of the emerald streak on his jacket. He is the same color of the curse that sent the sleeping princess into her repose, the edge of the moon when it swells to its fullest, the impassioned vow of loyalty to the one he raised with his own hand. Perhaps all of this will be worth it, he tries to fool himself, and perhaps all of this will not be vain when it’s my time to move above and beyond. And with that, he closes his eyes and leans into a reverie that takes him past everything he’s ever known.

[loquaciousquark]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E111 (Sept. 29, 2020)

@eponymous-rose‘s internet is out tonight, so I’m here late and without coffee! Let’s see how many typos we can fit into an hour and a half episode.

Tonight’s guests: Ashley Williams JOHNSON, oops!! & Liam O’Brien!

We open with Brian in light-up vented sunglasses and Henry at his side, as always. Dani is very excited to be back and has fun-buns in her hair tonight. So cute! Everyone talks about how much they’re Zooming these days for work, and Liam mentions he and Matt & Marisha did a digital cocktail night. He and Dani arrange on camera to have a distanced, masked meetup in the park so Dani can see Liam’s dog again.

No announcements! Tonight, we’re discussin’ episodes 110 and 111.

Starting with the end, Brian jumps right to it by asking how they feel that Molly is alive. Liam 100% thought we’d be back to him, but still wasn’t ready when it happened. Caleb doubted he was alive. Both Liam & Ashley marvel at the numerology that keeps cropping up throughout the show. Brian hates not being able to see it at the same time the show happens live; Ashley was biting her tongue not telling him spoilers. (He doesn’t want to hear spoilers unless Yasha dies so he can be there for Ashley if needed.) Brian says he has a little reality trauma from the night Pike died in the pre-stream game; it was the first time he’d realized how much it affected the players.

Ashley’s realized how much she misses unpacking the game with Brian when they get home. She just has to sit with it until everyone else gets to see it. Brian: “Instead she comes home and I have to fill her in on the Real Housewives of Amarillo, Texas.”

Reunion dinner with Trent! Liam talks about how the way things unfolded with Trent is not at all how he imagined it in his pre-game creation; he’d expected more of a fracas, more of an unexpected clash. “Caleb might have been a different person if he’d run into these people earlier in the story. The M9 changed him before [Trent & co] came back and got to him.” He’d imagined Astrid & Eodwulf to be complicated encounters, but says what Matt’s designed has been even harder than that. A fight on a mountain is one thing, but walking into a room with “what Trent dropped, is impossible to cope with.” It also means that if what Trent said is true, anything Caleb does now is effectively of Trent’s design, even killing him.

He doesn’t think Caleb would have gone anywhere near Trent & co without the M9. “The Mighty Nein--it took a long time--but they cracked Caleb open like a walnut.”

He thinks what Matt has done is much more murky than the simplicity of murder, such as the Briarwood arc. He can’t just exact his revenge now.

Liam says that the tempation to tinker with time is no longer as all-consuming as it was. He might still be tempted if Matt dangles a bunch of carrots in front of him, but he thinks that now it might be better to make sure that that kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore for anyone else (!!!). “It’s still a nugget in his brain and it’s still possible he could be tempted by the drug, but what he wanted in the beginning was entirely selfish, but now that the M9 are involved he owes it to them, to the people of the country, even on the Dynasty side--is so complex that if Caleb were to get that carrot and chase it, he would be risking everything.”

Ashley agrees that most of their choices are no longer black and white. Many of the situations feel more like real life. Liam agrees and says he’ll sometimes make decisions that he’s both really happy with and regrets at the same time. They both look forward to what Matt will reveal in Act 3.

Brian feels it’s tough to gauge how deep they are into what Matt’s planned for the campaign. Liam says that thanks to Matt’s skill, he really doesn’t know what Caleb wants right now.

Ashley agrees, and talks about how she created Yasha to have more to overcome than Pike. She loves what Matt’s doing in terms of allowing each of them to overcome more emotional hurdles than physical ones in this campaign.

Going back to Molly’s grave was very exciting for Ashley since she wasn’t able to be there when he died in the game & wanted to do what she could to honor him. Yasha, however, was very hesitant but knew what needed to be done. She’s not very open with her emotions, but both she & Ashley were stressed. They all could feel the energy in the studio & knew Matt was about to do something mind-blowing. Liam: “You could feel all the dust in the air coalescing around Taliesin.”

Brian trips over Eodwulf. Liam tries to help him find some pronunciation shortcuts. Ashley: “You say it so beautifully.” Brian: “Thank you.” Ashley: “Not you.”

Caleb knows how wickedly intelligent & ambitious Astrid is, and was heartened by the wavering he saw in her at the dinner. However, he can’t trust her until he knows why she’s where she is.

He really feels that if they’d had this dinner 60 episodes ago, Caleb might have tilted back along the evil axis and he would have had to retire the character. He had a playlist entirely for if Caleb turned evil and left the party.

The vision of Zuala was a huge deal for Yasha, even along every other instance she’s had of being mind-controlled, etc. “That’s guilt I think she will always carry with her, but at least she’s starting to forgive herself.” Losing the chains, sprouting wings again--Ashley reiterates that she didn’t know that was even a possibility, she just picked the skeletal wings because they were dope--were huge moments in the character development. Ashley’s glad Beau was there at the moment of the first flight; Ashley thinks of the quotation “Happiness is only beautiful when it’s shared,” and because Yasha tends to keep things very much to herself, having someone there to share it made it more impactful. “That was a cool moment. There’s been a lot of healing for Yasha these last episodes.”d

Ashley also says sometimes in that moment, when all eyes are on you in a one-on-one with Matt, everything goes muffled like Saving Private Ryan. “Wub wub wub.”

Dani feels that the only way she could even have the conversation with Zuala was to let her go in the first place.

Liam thinks one of the things that Yasha & Cad share is that still waters run deep. He loves how much Yasha hangs back sometimes, only to then reveal some new moment like the fighting pit. Apparently Ashley also has a knife collection, and uses that metal side of herself when she wants to let that new side of Yasha show.

Cosplay of the Week: Crystal Armstead (@riyuski on twitter) in a Reani cosplay. Beautiful!

How does Liam feel about the return to Rexxentrum? Very, very complicated. Caleb loves magic and lights up when he sees it, which is wrapped in the Soltryce Academy; he brought folks to the dance hall for the same reason, which was wanting the M9 to see the things that he loved about the city.

Yasha felt the same way about visiting the Chantry of the Dawn. It was a memory of a very traumatic moment (almost killing Beau), but given everything that’s happened between then and now it was cathartic to see again. There’s been a lot of healing in the past few weeks. It also felt like a physical representation of Yasha’s growth, the last time she was controlled against her will like that (or at least, until she was mind-controlled by Vokodo. Ashley sighs, aggrieved.)

Brian: “The tower really feels like a love letter from Caleb to his friends.” Liam: “It is, and a love letter from Liam to his friends.” When he looked at Caleb’s spell list, he remembered how amazing the mansion was in Campaign One and how many role-playing moments it led to and knew he wanted to incorporate it. However, he knew it could never be the same as Scanlan’s mansion because Caleb doesn’t have the same improvisational genius as Scanlan does. Liam has been “tinkering with this machine” for over a year, waiting for the moment to reveal it. He loves that he got a chance to see Jester’s room in time to have her tower room reflect reality. He’d discussed the tower extensively with Dani & Matt. Brian: “Hey! What am I, chopped--what’s the saying?” Ashley: “Chopped cabbage?”

Ashley marvels at the design of the dome. Liam talks about how Caleb knowing Caleb has been abused has been slowly getting better, but he also loves now being able to juxtapose that healing with his innate love of magic and how beautiful he finds it, how he loves to use magic as his artistry. The Soltryce Academy wasn’t “Welcome to DEATH SCHOOL,” it was the Sorbonne. It was amazing, everything he wanted. It was only one bad apple within that recruited him and turned it all bad.

Liam also points out how much it means in real life to be able to express his love and care for his friends in person too.

Ashley talks about how much she loves Yasha’s armor in a meta sense because it’s so cool and useful, and great for her armor class, but struggles with what it represents in game. She might not be able to let it go due to its sheer utility, and she may have to find an in-game reason to justify keeping it.

Ashley segues a moment into talking about her velvet top which apparently has a matching velvet scrunchie. She’s asked to demonstrate the scrunchie and ties her hair up in a way that I have never in my life seen someone do with a scrunchie before, and my hair’s been waist-length most of my life. I watch it again in slow motion. How did she DO that??

Caleb’s been looking for the right time to tell Jester about his past for a long time. She’s a good person and makes him feel like he might be capable of becoming a good person at the end, because that’s how she saw him. Liam knew from Laura that Jester wouldn’t condemn him, but Caleb put it off as long as possible. He also wanted to take the time to make sure Caduceus & Yasha knew the whole story too before they went to dinner with Trent.

Liam was also relieved to get it out, because he could never remember who knew and who didn’t, and now he doesn’t have to track it anymore. “Now we can move forward. Now we can heal wounds, maybe.”

Ashley feels Cad picks up a lot, more than most people realize. Yasha was really affected by Cad’s line: “Patience can be good, but it can lead to apathy.” She really feels it opened her eyes, and she appreciated the simplicity of him pointing out her hair’s growing back white again. Having a friend notice “hey, you’re changing for the better” really means a lot. She’s interested in seeing how this means things might change with Beau.

Dani points out that it also reinforced for Yasha that she can want things too--she can be patient and just continue to be with the group, as she’s wanted, but it’s okay to want more than that too. Ashley remembers Veth asking her what her purpose is. There’s a part of her that knows Yasha is still figuring that out, and she’s interested to see how Yasha will continue to change. She’s always spent her life serving somebody--the Sky Spear, Obann--and then even after she joined the M9, it was very centered on “what do you need, what does the group need, how can I help with our next job?” She’s going to have to take some time to figure out what she wants.

Fanart of the Week! Lovely Yasha & Beau flight art by @JMNP7888. The wings look amazing!

Brian: “One of the things we want to talk to you about, Liam, is about the Vokodo fight and the FUCKING disintegrate spell.”

Liam: “That was one of the most insane 60-90 seconds of gameplay that ever existed for the table, and definitely for me, in the entire history of the show. A lot of people think I just went, oh man, just bet it all on black. But what if I told you that...I Larkin’d the first 20 seconds of that fight and then at a quarter to midnight, I forgot that the reflection was a thing? I just forgot it was a thing! I spent that whole battle thinking I’m just here to banish things. I might buff my friends a little bit, maybe I’ll counterspell, but I’m just here to banish. And it didn’t work and it didn’t work and then it did! Finally it did and Jester made it work and then he was GONE. And then everyone got greedy and it was done but we brought him BACK. And it was a quarter to midnight and I’m not an animatronic D&D lesson machine, I’m just a guy playing D&D at 11:45 at night, and he came back and everyone started Goodfellas circling him and kicking him, and Beau & Yasha are gonna kill him, and then it’s my turn? Disintegrate! And then the room was quiet, and then time passed, and Matt asked, you really cast Disintegrate? And I said yes, of course, and Matt started rolling dice, and in the back of my head I started wondering why he asked if I was rolling Disintegrate. Oh no. In the back of my brain, I was like, well, just tell him that’s not what you did. Tell him you didn’t remember the reflection thing. But he’s already rolling dice! You can’t take it back now. Hold on a second. I’m going to take you on the journey I went through. I was thinking: you have a spell save of 17. This thing wasn’t that fast. +1, +2, maybe? Anything under 14 is okay. That’s 70%. 70%. That’s okay, right? And still no one said anything to tip me off that I was in ELDRITCH MADNESS at that point, no one said anything about the reflection! And then I realize it can reflect back on us, and I realize this is...disintegrate. And then I started becoming morbidly, macabre-ly fascinated at the puppet dance of death I had created. Well, this is a mess. I have made a mess. Let’s just sit in it. And somehow, nonsensically, spectacularly, it worked out in my favor. I went home that night and I got in bed next to my wife, who was fast asleep, and I stared at the ceiling going, dude. Duuuuuuuude. Duuuuuuuuuude.”

He apparently also told his therapist about this and how terrible it was and how close he “danced myself to the precipice like a crazy person!” Marisha (as told by Liam): “Epic roll, though.”

Matt told Liam that night that if it had been reflected, it would have gone back on him. “If a player throws an M80 in the middle of a room, it would reflect on that player who threw it.”

Ashley talks about how interesting that Yasha is not performative, and yet has been doing these public performances with the harp. It’s a great experiment for Ashley--Yasha doesn’t like the attention, but feels like she is making something beautiful for the world.” She’s trying to change something about how she views herself & her place in the world. She was raised to be a weapon for the Sky Spear, but she’s also extremely gentle and loves flowers & beautiful music, and the further away she’s gotten from the tribe, she’s falling in love with gentle, beautiful things. 

Liam also points out it easy (real, but simplistic) to make an entire character centered around a single personality trait: “I’m angry all the time. I’m sad all the time.” He thinks it’s more realistic to see nuance in personality.

Liam can see some paths for Caleb to find peace & do good. He doesn’t know if Caleb is conscious of those. He thinks it’s a huge step forward to admit he was molded in this direction at all and that it wasn’t all his choice, but doesn’t know if this is the same possibility as redemption.

He also mentions Essek in this answer: there was/is attraction there, both intellectual and physical--the forehead kiss was a big marker of that--and he’s interested in seeing where that goes because he’s invested in Essek’s redemption arc on its own, but Essek is not as high on the list as other things Caleb/the M9 need to work on. He loved the “high spy times” of the Essek arc and the tangled-up-ness of feelings getting involved at the same time as intense commitment to duty.

Liam always felt Matt would bring Molly back in some aspect, even though Caleb always demurred because he doesn’t believe in fate. Dani and Brian agree that this is the start of a new act.

Ashley cried at the Vilya reunion. She thought that was an incredible moment and was so glad to see Keyleth. Liam: “Keyleth as part of our story is everything to me. That story is really important to me, so getting just a glimpse of her again was so important to me.” They could all see how that affected Marisha & how special it was to her. Liam: “It was such a great note in her song or color in her painting. She achieved magnificent things and was powerful and great, but had a very heartbreaking and sad ending, so to have this sliver of joy go back in is so complex and beautiful and masterfully done.”

Aaaaaaand that’s all for tonight! Remember, no Critical Role this week. Talks will be back in two weeks. As always, don’t forget to love each other. <3