#like you literally have no moral high ground you helped me kill hundreds of people to level up and get loot

[kinghlaaluhelseth]

i feel like i dislike modded followers that attempt to have their own moral high ground and will leave you or become hostile to you if you join the thieves guild/dark brotherhood/volkihar clan because it's really rich for someone aiding the dragonborn in slaughtering literally hundreds of people just because they're bandits like it's nothing and raiding and pillaging tombs and killing the already subjugated falmer like they're beasts to suddenly take a big stand against a little thieving/assassination/blood sucking. bonus points if said follower also already participates in something considered abhorrent/taboo like casual use of necromancy spells and the like.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 294: A Half-Assed Escape

Previously on BnHA: Mirio was all “SURPRISE I’M BACK THANKS TO OUR RESIDENT SEVEN-YEAR-OLD WHO RECENTLY EARNED HER BACHELOR’S OF BEING A TOTAL BADASS.” Kacchan was all, “you know what, Dabi’s been trending long enough, time to remind the fandom what a real G looks like,” and he blasted his little bleeding body back into the fray and was all “FROM HERE ON OUT CALL ME DYNAMIGHT!!” Mirio was all, “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... oh, you’re serious,” and Kacchan was all “!!”, and so that’s the story of how my son got murdered twice in one day. Meanwhile in the Todoroki Drama Zone, Deku was all “STOP MURDERING MY FRIEND” and Dabi was all “THAT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS” and fandom had a whole big debate about Whether Or Not Dabi Trying To Murder Deku’s Friends And Mentors Is Any Of Deku’s Business, which went exactly how you think it went. Anyway, so then Deku yelled at Dabi, and Endeavor was all moved by his manly words and randomly went to go uppercut Machia in the chin. And, seeing as how the Momoserum finally chose that exact moment to kick in, Machia is now down for the count.

Today on BnHA: The Miriosquad handles the Nearly High End Noumus, freeing up Jeanist to jasphyxiate (okay that one doesn’t really work so well) the rest of the League. Compress is all “TIME FOR THIS MILD-MANNERED SIDE CHARACTER VILLAIN TO SHINE”, except that by “shine” what he actually means is “use his quirk to punch a literal hole right through his own ass to free himself.” The rest of the chapter is basically just a back and forth between him and Jeanist, with Jeanist trying to recapture him, and Compress repeatedly thwarting him by chopping more holes out of himself because HE’S FRESH OUT OF FUCKS, AND THE ONES AT THE STORE ARE ALL SOLD OUT, MOTHERFUCKERS. Anyway, so with Compress basically dying and all, Horikoshi is all “you know what that means”, and delivers a freshly-baked villain flashback revealing that Compress is a descendant of Harima Ouji, a.k.a. the Peerless Thief, a.k.a. some famous guy whom Gentle mentioned this one time for like two seconds back in the day. The chapter ends with Compress finally demasking himself and dumping Tomura back onto the ground, a.k.a. The Worst Possible Place For Tomura To Be. ( •﹏•)

WHY IS CRUST HERE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD

-- OH WAIT, SHIT. OH

AIZAWAAAA you’re alive and receiving medical help thank GOD. HOW MANY EYES DO YOU HAVE. AND MIRKO!! HOW MANY LIMBS DO YOU HAVE, OMG

so is this Aizawa dreaming about Crust’s final moments, then?? jesus. with All Due Respect to Crust’s memory, does Aizawa not already have enough misplaced guilt on his conscience as it is?? “nope, we’re gonna keep piling it on. that’s all he is now. three limbs, an indeterminate number of eyes, sexy hair, and Guilt” well shit

motherfucker y’all really out here placing an oxygen mask on Gran Torino’s corpse. fucking shounen characters. each one comes with a lifetime warranty

DAMN YOU HORIKOSHI WHY DO YOU KEEP SHOWING THESE CLOSE-UPS OF HAWKS’S UNCONSCIOUS FACE ALL WHUMPED OUT AND EXHAUSTED. HOW MUCH MORE OF THIS ARE WE GOING TO GET. ARE YOU PLANNING ON KILLING ME WITH THE UPCOMING CONVALESCENCE ARC, BECAUSE IF SO, AT LEAST HAVE THE DECENCY TO TELL ME AHEAD OF TIME SO I CAN MAKE A WILL

for a moment I considered going back and checking my previous recaps to count how many times I’ve already made a joke about Dabi’s fire incinerating Hawks’s wings but not touching so much as a hair on his five o’clock shadow, so that I could calculate whether or not I could possibly get away with making that same joke one more time. but then I realized I could just do it in this kind of roundabout way I’m doing right now instead. so there you have it

FFFFFFFMT LADY AND MIDNIGHT NOOOOO

PLEASE BE ALIVE. PLEASE RESPECT THE SIGN ON THE FRONT OF THE BUILDING. THE ONE THAT SAYS “NO LADY CHARACTERS ALLOWED TO DIE”, WITH THE FINE PRINT AT THE BOTTOM “AT LEAST NOT UNTIL HORIKOSHI GIVES US LIKE TWENTY-SIX MORE OF THEM FIRST IF THAT’S THE WAY HE WANTS TO PLAY IT.” IT’S A GOOD SIGN, PLEASE RESPECT ITS WISHES!!

so anyway though, Jeanist is giving a speech about how god knows how many people all worked together to bring Machia down. and now RHA is getting in on those fabric puns too, I see. “A SINGLE STRAND MAY BE THIN BUT TOGETHER THEY FORM A STRONG ROPE” oh so you think you guys are funny eh? I’m a frayed knot

MEANWHILE EXCUSE ME BUT WHY ARE YOU FUCKING CRYING BLOOD, HOLY SHIT

fffffff. so much for him taking over as the Number One once all this is over. so let’s just recap real quick, because Horikoshi has long since made it clear that one of his plot goals for this arc is to wipe out every single member of the Billboard Top Ten. so how we doin?

Endeavor - was just figuratively eviscerated in front of the entire nation by his homicidal zombiepunk son. also burnt half to death and possibly down a lung. will almost certainly be forced to retire after this one way or the other

Hawks - lying prettily in a medical tent. wings status: gone. hair status: still perfect

Jeanist - WELL I THOUGHT HE WAS FINE BUT APPARENTLY HE’S OUT HERE DYING, JESUS CHRIST

Edgeshot - MIA, last seen fighting Re-Destro. I really want him to have kicked RD’s ass because fuck that guy, but realistically they probably fought to a draw at best

Mirko - alive but in critical condition and missing something like 1.5 limbs

Crust - dead, currently haunting Aizawa’s traumatized dreams. now he’s gonna be triggered the rest of his life by people giving him the thumbs up, THANKS A LOT

Kamui Woods - was set on fire which is His Weakness. thoughts and prayers

Wash - last seen floating hospital patients to safety as Tomura’s wave of decay descended towards him. probably dead ffff

Old Man Samurai - haven’t seen this fucker in a hot minute, who even knows where he’s wandered off to

Ryuukyuu - currently being treated for her wounds, looked pretty bad off. but it’s hard to tell how hurt she is since most of the injuries were acquired in her transformed state. SHE BETTER GET WELL SOON

anyways, so yeah. so much for the top ten. guess that’s another reason Horikoshi brought Mirio back now, huh

so there’s a big panel of everyone fighting the Noumu while Machia lies there all “blurgh.” good riddance my dude. it took like twenty chapters and a hundred people to stop this guy so I really fucking hope he stays down. you’ve had your fun

anyway so Jeanist is sending another steel thread towards Dabi! and he’s all “just a bit more!!” fklklj this is gonna go real well isn’t it

meanwhile Mirio’s fighting a Nearly High End with all of these weird rock formations jutting out of its skin. go on and kick his ass then, Mirio

“each of these guys is probably just as strong as the Noumu from Kyuushuu” hold on I thought Ujiko or Tomura or someone said that wasn’t the case? not that Mirio would know I suppose. anyways let’s just hope he’s wrong cuz if not these kids are probably screwed

kLSDKFHLSKHGLKLK OH MY GODDDD

IIDA FUCKING TENYA YOU’RE A PEACH. THINKS THE NAME IS OUTRAGEOUS, CHECK. USES IT ANYWAY, CHECK. “JUST BECAUSE I DON’T UNDERSTAND DOESN’T MEAN I CAN’T BE SUPPORTIVE.” WHAT A CLASS ACT

AND KACCHAN IS RESPONDING WITH AS MUCH DIGNITY AS HE CAN MUSTER

WOW, SON. IT’S ALMOST AS THOUGH YOU HAVE A HOLE IN YOUR TORSO, OR SOMETHING!! although listen up, real talk, the fact that Kacchan of all people can’t muster the energy to yell at someone questioning his ability to kick ass is HIGHKEY troubling and we may be in need of an intervention here soon :/

now Jeanist is finally turning his attention to the League! was... was it not already on the League. omg

ACTUAL SCREAMING AHHHHHH FUCK FUCKLK LK AHHLKHKFFFF

hey so um. what the actual fucked up hell. my soul left my body. imagine if you saw the reflection of this panel on your bedroom window. you would never sleep again

OKAY RHA TRANSLATORS ARE YOU HAVING YOURSELF A LAUGH AGAIN

THIS CANNOT BE WHAT HE’S ACTUALLY SAYING RIGHT. BUT IT’S RIGHT IN THAT UNCANNY VALLEY OF NOT BEING QUITE SURE, THOUGH... (　ﾟдﾟ)

(ETA: just a next-day clarification here, apparently my sleep-deprived ADHD word-skipping brain completely skipped right over the “a” in that last panel, so what I read was, “and Shigaraki’s limp noodle.” so yeah, the moral of this story is always read the speech bubble carefully before you start making running jokes throughout the rest of your post, folks.)

oh wow he’s really freaking out lmao

to be fair though, I’d argue that Dabi has gotten pre-tty close at this point :’) thrilled for him, really I am

but anyway, well then figure something out you big dramatic robot-armed fiend. didn’t you just say you could touch your own ass? can you not just Compress yourself to break free?? does it not work on you? or would you be stuck afterwards lol

(ETA: I was picturing him compressing his entire body at once, not just chunks of it. ghhhlkh.)

um

holy shit Jeanist. are you stupidly trying to cut off their air, or are you going for more of a sleeper hold (jleeper hold??) thing instead. the latter would be way smarter and faster and probably safer as well just saying

but unless Spinner is just being super dramatic, it sure looks like he’s fucking strangling them djslkjlk. this will certainly cement his popularity among the villain stans. good thing you’re not running for office any time soon bud

anyway so I have no idea what these guys are trying to do now. what is this

do you even have till the count of 5 at this rate. I mean

OH MY GOODNESS

HE’S REALLY FUCKING DOING IT!! HE’S COMPRESSING HIS BUTT!! OMFG. TOMURA HIDE YOUR NOODLE!!!

WHAT THE FUCK

DID YOU COMPRESS A PIECE OF YOUR OWN ASS. FUCKING WHAT. PUT THIS MAN’S PICTURE IN THE DICTIONARY NEXT TO THE WORD “LOYALTY”, HOLY CRAP

HOLY SHIT COMPRESS

“HOLY SHIT DID THAT GUY JUST PUNCH A HOLE THROUGH HIS OWN ASS IN ORDER TO SAVE HIS VILLAIN PALS. FUCK IT, HE DESERVES TO ESCAPE”

jeez, talk about... A HALF-ASSED ESCAPE ATTEMPT :D :D :D hahaha. but real talk though, Horikoshi has clearly never tried to leap twelve feet straight up in the air multiple times in succession with only half his glutes though. everyone, I regret to inform you that this panel right here on the left may be slightly unrealistic

also where the hell is he going to go?? did you pack a jetpack away in one of those little marbles sir. and what about Dabi?? and Skeptic too, I guess, but we don’t really care about Skeptic

(ETA: at this point I had to stop reading for about two hours because I had to go out and take care of something; that’s also why this is being posted later than usual lol. anyways so where were we.)

oh my lord

the existence of a translator’s note here implies that the earlier line about Compress being able to reach Tomura’s junk was not, in fact, ad-libbed. hmm. hmmmmmmmm

anyway so now he’s grabbing Compress again because OF COURSE HE IS, so now we’re right back to square one! except now Tomura and Spinner are secured inside of little marbles, and presumably Compress is the only one who can release them

oh nevermind he’s just maiming himself again instead, SHEESH

Skeptic a man is dying please have some goddamn respect

so, uh. is he gonna die, though??

I really can’t tell wtf is going on here, this is the most confusing the art has been in a while. Horikoshi put all of his spoons into that creepyass close-up panel earlier, that bastard

OMG WHAT ARE YOU SERIOUS

DON’T FUCKING TELL ME THE “COMPRESS IS RELATED TO THIS THIEF GUY FROM OLDEN TIMES” THEORY IS ACTUALLY TRUE WHAAAAAAT. OH SHIT

so apparently Harima was a Robin Hood type guy who stole from... heroes?? wtf. are heroes the 1% in this scenario. y’all didn’t have any Fortune 500 CEOs to steal from?

THAT’S THE BLOOD THAT FLOWS THROUGH YOU, OH SHIT. and in a related oh shit, the fact that we are getting a Compress flashback now of all times doesn’t bode super well for him. ffff

MEANWHILE THE TODOROKIS ARE STILL TODOROKI-ING

listen here boy if you touch one freaking hair on Shouto’s candy cane head I swear to god --

WHAT DID I FUCKING SAY!!!

SHOUTO NOOOOOO. WTF YOU’RE LITERALLY THE ONE GUY WHOSE WEAKNESS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FIRE. DABI YOU SHIT, YOU BETTER WATCH YOURSELF!! I’M PRINTING OUT A COPY OF THAT COMPRESS PANEL!!! KEEP AN EYE OUT ON THAT BEDROOM WINDOW YOU PUNK!!!

SO NOW POOR SHOUTO IS UNCONSCIOUS AND FALLING!! SOMEONE SAVE HIM!! WHO CATCHES THE CATCHER

COMPRESS LITERALLY HOW ARE YOU STILL ALIVE RIGHT NOW, WHAT IS HAPPENING

PLEASE DON’T CALL TOMURA LEADER OF THE “PLF” YOU KNOW I CAN’T TAKE IT SERIOUSLY WHEN YOU DO THAT. ARE YOU DYING. ARE YOU JUST A FUCKING HEAD NOW WTF

(ETA: “masks are removable, makeste” you know what it’s been a long day okay lmao. or I suppose Compress is really the one who is lmao.)

GASPPPPPP

okay. okay. looooool okay then

WHY WERE YOU COVERING THIS SEXY MOP OF HAIR UNDER THAT HOOD YOU TOOL. IT WOULD HAVE LOOKED SO GOOD WITH THE TOP HAT. I’M SO MAD AT YOU RIGHT NOW

as if it wasn’t enough for him to demask himself, he also had to get all shirtless and then do this weird attempt at a sexypose too huh

hard to say exactly how much of his torso is currently missing, but safe to say that’s proooooooobably not good. :///// fuck

on the other hand, Kacchan also has a torso hole and he’s still flying around like he just drank a dozen red bulls, so

this man lost his ass and he’s still out here monologuing like it’s the last two minutes of The Prestige. one might say he is monologuing his ass off

so he let Spinner and Tomura free, but is Dabi still trapped in his marble?? wasn’t he all on fire and stuff?? hopefully he can still turn off his quirk in there because if not that’s a pretty fucked up way to die. somewhere out there Snatch’s ghost is all “YEAH I’LL SAY.” oh how the turntables

last but not least, sooooooo. Tomura. back on the ground. that’s. um. ...shiiiiiiiit

[the-king-andthe-lionheart]

Babe, puritanism is a form of religious extremism that got women and lgbt people severely abused or killed. It’s not some teenagers or CSA survivors on the internet telling you your weird ass ships are weird, you're an old hag, grow up, children in real life can't bully you 😂 You won't be forced to perform a walk of shame or be publicly whipped because you read Wattpad fanfics about a 14 yo boy being sexually attracted to his 9 yo sister or fantasize about a 11 yo little girl being a rehabilitation center for morally repugnant adult men and drunkard rapists (you hate Sansa, why ship her with “honorable” male characters that you worship and prioritize lmao ? Besides thinking she needs to be humbled and wanting to put her in her place of course). Go to therapy or go ship Lolita and Humbert Humbert (who knows, him wanting to eventually get Lolita pregnant so he can rape his daughter Lolita the Second, and rape his granddaughter Lolita the Third may be a proof of his everlasting love), Daenerys zealots victim complex is so far removed from reality it’s not even funny, stanning that awful and boring white girl destroyed your brains, y'all sound like Polanski/Woody Allen defenders (whose attraction to underage girls was immortalized in his film Manhattan oops) or reactionary white men who said the #MeToo movement has lead to the spread of "man-hating puritanism.” 😭

Y'all want racial, feminist and lgbt representation in media cause representation matters but then turn around and romanticize pedophilia and incest and say that fiction doesn’t affect reality and fiction is created in a vacuum ? Make up your damn minds, which one is it. 😂

So let me get this straight, an obviously white Stansa, is trying to school me about oppression? Did you not even read my bio? I'm a bisexual, bi-racial indigenous woman. You do know that the Puritans persecuted Native Americans right? That they helped perform cultural genocide against Native Americans? That they were part of the reason why Native children were torn away from their families, their tribes, and shipped to abusive boarding schools in order to "civilize" them? Or how about when they imprisoned hundreds of Native American's on an island only for many of them to die from disease and starvation? So you need to shut your racist ass mouth. How condescending do you have to be to talk over me and to try to "correct" me. I have to say that it's very typical of a white girl who thinks they hold the moral high ground when they don't.

This whole message was downright deranged, but I highly suggest you go outside, touch some grass, reevaluate your sanctimonious, condescending bullshit, and grow the fuck up you literal child. I also highly suggest that YOU go to therapy. Obviously you have a hard time separating fiction from reality if you think reading and engaging with something in fiction will overwrite an adults moral code. I also highly suggest reading some books that are more your own speed. Obviously GRRM's material is too mature for you.

Pro-tip: If you don't like something in fandom, blacklist the tags and block the people you don't agree with. That is the sane course of action, but obviously your not actually sane if you think it's perfectly acceptable to instigate drama, to harass others, over fiction. Seek help.

[frosteee]

The Existential Terror of Asura [Soul Eater]

It's been a long time since I've thought about Soul Eater, but I've been thinking about it a lot recently and I wanted to talk about it. I've been thinking maybe a bit too much, which is relevant.

Asura resonated (sorry) with me years ago when I first got into the series, and he does even more now, for what he says about fear and its effects, and how the wrong response to individuals suffering from that fear can cause a spiral into even worse depths.

[LONG ASS POST UNDER CUT]

Lord Death created the first Kishin, Asura. Literally and figuratively. There's no two ways about it. Excalibur tells him as much in his final moments, telling him how wrong it was to create a being out of his own fears. Lord Death acknowledges that Asura, his own son, was created as an experiment, a means to the end of becoming a perfect god of Absolute Order. The quote from Voltaire's short story 'Memnon' comes to mind here: 'One day, Memnon conceived the insane idea of becoming perfectly wise.'

This foolish, if well-intentioned, effort was successful in Lord Death's case, but the consequences for those around him were horrendous. Early in the manga, Lord Death is unable to admit it out loud. Even the way he recounts Asura's fall into madness and betrayal, and how he dealt with that consequence, speaks to Lord Death's detachment, his lack of compassion and understanding at that time. He removes his relation to Asura entirely, removing the truth of the matter and placing himself on the moral high ground in the process.

When he is recounting Asura's downfall, Lord Death remarks that he did not know what lay in Asura's heart, pondering if it was fear. He does not seem to realise or take responsibility for the fact that Asura is literally his anxiety incarnate. He understood on some level that no being, god or otherwise, could stand such a condition, and was careful not to make the same mistake with Kid, but Lord Death (at that point) was unable to admit or think of Asura as anything other than a traitor and a threat.

Lord Death taught Kid that the real purpose of a Reaper was balance - conveniently forgetting to mention how he came by that particular titbit of wisdom - his eldest son, the most unbalanced creature to ever breathe.

I remember being in the car on my way to school with my dad. At the time I was suffering from an intense anxious phase where I was deathly afraid of bad weather - even something as harmless as dark clouds. I would cry when I opened my curtains and looked out. I didn't want to leave the house. I remember my dad saying to me: "You keep this up, and you'll be a nervous wreck."

That scared me, but I didn't know what to do to stop being scared. My fixation with the weather passed, somehow, later, but when I was in the grip of it I was powerless to do anything because I didn't understand, and neither did my parents. I was already a nervous wreck, and the prospect of a future where this continued, or became worse, only terrified me more.

Luckily, while my dad was never the best at handling my fears (more from his own 'pick yourself up' mindset and fear for me than disinterest or lack of love), my mum was always there to get me the help I needed and talk to me about my feelings. I still struggle today, but I have a good support system and am better equipped to handle and understand my feelings.

Asura had nothing and nobody like that. His father, Lord Death, created a fully mature being with full concept of his own makeup - the fears that Lord Death had discarded, the fears that made Lord Death flawed, imperfect, and wrong. Lord Death made a son of one of the the most corrosive and self-sabotaging emotions and was surprised when that didn't turn out well!

Lord Death saw a man, his son, so utterly terrified by the world, people, and himself, that he couldn't bear to go out without the protection of layers upon layers of clothing, a being so crippled by fear that he kept everything and everybody at arm's length, even his own partner Vajra, and spent his days in a state of constant introspection, barely paying attention to the outside world and mumbling incoherently.

Lord Death looked at that man, that firstborn child of his, and allowed that to continue. There's no indication he tried to ease Asura's anxieties, or help him in any way. Asura was a powerful member of his elite order, and that seemed to be all that mattered until it was too late. What kind of parent sees their child in such a state and does nothing?

Who looks at this and does nothing?

Lord Death created a nervous wreck of a man, and was both surprised and furious when that nervous wreck finally broke under the strain. Lord Death and others talk about Asura 'forgetting his discipline/teachings' and disobeying, like he was supposed to magically be able to handle being mortally afraid!

Being so helpless against the condition of his being, Asura sought the only thing available to him - the only thing he was valued for: power, and disobeyed his father.

Lord Death's response? To rip all of Asura's skin off his body and seal him inside it for the next eight hundred years, and doing everything possible to keep Asura there.

We all know that sealing something away and putting a rug over it never works, especially in fiction, so it was only a matter of time before Asura was freed, but in an emotional and moral point of view it was so, so wrong.

Asura had been gripped in fear for all his life, unable to healthily cope with it, and spent so much time in his own head his thoughts were coming out of his mouth as frantic whispers. The worst thing Lord Death could have possibly thought of as a punishment was to isolate Asura entirely.

I don't remember if this appeared in the manga, but in the anime (Lord Death and Asura's second/final confrontation), Asura tells Death of the things he thought about while in that sack of skin, because the only freedom he had left was to think. The worst possible thing for anyone, especially someone suffering from anxiety, is to do nothing but think. All this exercise does, and did with Asura, is exacerbate and breed more anxieties, and further embed them into the mind.

Left with nobody but himself to find a way out of the existential terror of his own thoughts, Asura came to realise that he had been an experiment, a tool, not a son. He refers to our heroes at puppets of Lord Death, as he once was, and regards Lord Death as nothing but a tyrant. Up until the revelation that he and Kid are brothers, Kid himself had never questioned Lord Death. Asura had eight hundred years to do that.

Eight hundred years in a stew of your own existential dread.

In the anime series, Asura concluded that it was the ability to imagine the future that was the source of fear. He who had spent so long terrified of the what if's and maybes, tortured by uncertainty, he sought to create a world where there was nothing but the immediate, static present, where nothing like that could exist.

Lord Death's response? "Sorry, I'll kill you for real this time" or "I've had enough of your rants!"

In either anime or manga, he never addresses or responds to Asura's thoughts or feelings. Even when Lord Death realised the error of making his eldest son the way he was, he never communicated this to Asura personally. To Asura he was flippant, dismissive and angry, acting as if Asura was solely responsible for the evil he did when Lord Death knew it wasn't. He'd sooner punish and hurt Asura than actually help him, a consequence of becoming 'Order' with no room for those who challenge or question it. It's like taking a young offender into a prison full of nasty criminals and violence and being shocked when they come out worse than when they went in.

His suffering son is a blemish, a shame, a threat. At one point, Lord Death even threatens to put Asura through the same existential hell again. Can people really blame Asura for hating him and turning on everything Lord Death cares about (more than he ever did his own son)?

In making his anxiety a person, Lord Death was obviously going to detach himself from Asura as an individual. Asura is everything he wanted to dispose of, only powerful and capable of taking out his enemies en masse. He was clearly only kept around and tolerated for that purpose, but never looked upon or valued as a thinking being capable of feeling and reacting to the condition of his birth.

Asura is Lord Death's biggest, most horrendous and reprehensible act. It's not a mistake, either. Lord Death intentionally created Asura to be the way he was, with no mind for the consequences until it blew up in his face. And when it did, not only was Lord death not humbled or sorry, but he pinned all the blame on Asura in a fit of rage and punished him - and punished him in the worst way both for Asura himself and for the world in general.

Lord Death treated Asura and his mental breakdown like a rabid dog to be locked away and forgotten about. That is not something a good parent does. A good parent acknowledges their hand in their children's problems, they talk to them, they help them out.

Lord Death may have been a good father to Kid, but he was the absolute worst Asura could have had. And Kid, aside from that flicker of doubt, doesn't acknowledge it, continuing to praise Lord Death and be the true Death God Lord Death had wanted.

Asura lashes out and sees everything in the world as his enemy, a thing to fear, a thing to hate, and he could not conceive of anything except terror. He was completely unable to understand a state of peace, harmony, bravery, in the face of all the fear life throws at you. He was a nervous wreck until he died, and that scares me. I don't want to become like that, but it's difficult to imagine some days when you're gripped by this unnatural fear of something, even if you know what it is, that you can get better and be truly content.

Asura was never happy and always afraid. He was fucked over by his parent like Chrona was, but nobody (including the narrative) gave a shit. Yes, his actions were wrong, he had to be stopped, he couldn't be allowed lash out against the world and others like he was, but I still see Asura was a tragic figure who was fucked over by the person he needed most.

I'm sorry this is so long, I have a lot of feelings right now.

[historic-old-guard-lover]

Does Boooker still loathe the English ?

TL;DR: Probably. The would-be French and would-be English have invaded, fought, and demeaned each other for pretty much the entirety of the last century (1066 CE to ~1914 CE). Even if Booker doesn’t really care about international politics despite being born during a time when the countries were actively fighting, he still would have been raised to look down on them as Protestants. And it’s not hard to find a reason to dislike the British *cough* destructive imperialism *cough* in the pursuit of spices that they don’t use *cough* and they made speaking their language globally important *cough*. (aside: France has a bad history of Imperialism, too, so Booker doesn’t have much of a moral high-ground) Let’s take the shortest tour through French-British conflict that I can give you. There will be a a few names, but please know that I already cut out hundreds of them.

What kicked off this epic mutual dislike? A literal bastard Frenchman with inadequacy issues. Beginning in October of 1066, the soon-to-be-famous William the Conqueror got tired of just being the bastard son of the Duke of Normandy (northernmost France) who secured the duchy for himself and decided to invade and conquer his distant cousin’s country. As you might have guess from his moniker, he was successful and had himself crowned King of England by December of that year. It helps to remember the distinctions between all those pesky pieces of the British Isles:

[ID: Euler diagram showing geographic (green) versus political (blue) labels.]

William conquered England, below, and then had the Pope approve of his new position by Easter. Yes, you heard correctly. This guy had such an inferiority complex that he became the internationally-recognized monarch of a neighboring country within a year. For the next hundred odd years, Anglo-Norman and not Old English was the official language of England. The whole British Imperialism thing starts to make a little more sense: they had it done to them first and they lost badly. Eventually, William’s (still Normand) descendants known as the “Plantagenet Kings” stretched themselves a little thin trying to claim all of France as their kingdom as well and decided to re-brand themselves as English and reinstate Old English as the official language to cope. And yes, this is those Plantagenets who will give rise to the Yorks and Lancasters who will cause the English War of the Roses where all the royalty kills each other for power and leaves the Tudors to come to power. But we’re not there yet.

[ID: picture of the British Isles and Northern France which shows the lands controlled by William the Conqueror by 1087 in pink. Notably, he controlled only England and not Wales or Scotland.]

Before the Normand royals of Britain all kill themselves, they have to stir up international drama. Edward I claimed in 1295 to the members of parliament that the King of France planned to invade England and extinguish the English language. Yes, this was a NORMAND king who was doing the same thing a generation or two ago. Then in 1346, his still-Normand grandson Edward III forged an ordinance from Philip VI of France calling for the destruction of the English and presented it to his parliament. This little performance kicked off the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453 CE). It’s towards the end of this major conflict that the royals decide to incite civil war, by the way, because they really were too dramatic to live. Just so you know, I skipped over TWELVE WARS between William the Bastard’s (yes, a real moniker) invasion and the Hundred Years’ War so that this article wouldn’t drag on forever. By the time that the Hundred Years’ War is over, the (Welsh) Tudors are on the English throne and, excluding that time the English invaded France in 1475, the two nations decided to stop trying to conquer each other. This is Europe, however, and they’ll continue to be fighting each other through proxy wars at least twelve more times before we get to the 1770s. A lot of this proxy fighting happens over Italy, in case you’re interested.

If you thought that 700 years of nearly continuous armed conflict (a decade or two doesn’t really count as a break in the long run) wasn’t enough to justify the hate between England and France, you’ve underestimated the power of religion. France hosted the (what we call Roman) Catholic Papacy in Avignon from 1309 to 1376. France is to this day a VERY Catholic nation, with up to 88% of its population belonging to the Church if you count lapsed members. Between William (1066) and the 1770s, a little itty bitty religious movement you might have heard of called the (Protestant) Reformation shook Europe when the German Princes decided they were tired of listening to this Roman Pope dude, so they supported this funky little scholar-monk-priest name Martin Luther whose students eventually said fuck it, the papacy is trash let’s start our own church. Christians, being Christians, took this as a new thing to hate about each other despite the fact that most of the doctrine is still the same and whether you were Catholic or Protestant became very important to people from the mid-1500s CE onward. In comes the man with many wives, Henry VIII. He was king while the German Princes were revolting and decided he wanted a divorce from his first wife. The Pope said along the lines of unless you give me a good reason, it’s a no from me and Henry replied something like the fact that I want to marry a younger woman is reason enough, I’m going to make up my own damn church and I get to have as many divorces as I want and then he established the Church of England. And then he went on the have six wives (and one mistress whose bastard he acknowledged) who were either beheaded or divorced except for the last one. I personally regret he never got to the full eight-piece set he must have been going for. Since 1534 when Henry VIII first flaunted papal authority by divorcing his wife, the French and English have also had the pleasure of hating each other over religious differences.

[ID: French corsairs with booty and British prisoners in 1806, depicted in a later painting by Maurice Orange from the Wikipedia page on French state-sanctioned pirates called “corsairs” that I didn’t have the space to get to in the article.]

Booker is born and grows up in a France that is funding the American Revolution and stealing from their trading ships (because fuck the British). This whole “America” decision destabilizes the country, leads to the popularity of the guillotine, and sets the stage for Napoleon Bonaparte (who, fun fact, was actually average height because the French decided to change the length of an inch for a while and if you think otherwise, it’s British propaganda). It helps to understand that the English and French had entered what we now call the Second Hundred Years’ War, this time started by the English trying to depose the French King, where they’d been skirmishing with each other from 1689 until Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815. When I say that the diplomatic strategy was “fuck the British,” this is what I’m referring to. There were very few rules that couldn’t be broken in pursuit of disadvantaging France’s island neighbor and vice versa. As a poor person, he definitely hated the French monarchy but he probably equally hated the English because, again, fuck the British defined the 1700s CE. Booker ends up conscripted in part because of the British (and in part because of Napoleon being a little too power-hungry). I think our depressed Frenchman has enough room in his heart to hate both the British and Napoleon...and neither has given him a good reason to stop hating them. UK-French relations arguably only normalized because of the increasing threat that Imperial and then Nazi Germany posed. Even during WWII, however, the British dragged their feet to begin helping the French eject the Nazis and let the Americans lead that front (which was only 200-something years late repayment for helping with their Revolution, but who’s counting?). I have no guesses as to what Booker thinks of the EU, but the Brexit debacle is just another reason to resume disliking the UK for someone who unabashedly disliked them for two hundred years. Oh yeah, and they’re God-damned Protestants to boot. (note: that’s from a Catholic perspective, not mine)

[sergeant-donny-donowitz]

Sonata for a Basterd (Hugo Stiglitz x Fem!Reader)

@owba-chan​ @inglourious-imagines​ @war-obsessed​

Let me know if you wanna be tagged in these! :)

You had one leg crossed over the other, your yellow dress draped just above your knees. The shine from the black buttons distracted you for a moment. Your head was lowered, your black felt hat tilted down. Your hands in short white gloves clasped together on the table in front of you, your cup of tea was a few inches away.

You watched the steam rise for longer than you cared to admit...

Eventually, your eyes wandered toward the window.

It was late. The sun had long dipped beyond the red horizon.

The train had stopped in a little town in the middle of nowhere, in nazi-occupied France.

Bougainvillea flowered around the posts by the benches outside, lit by a lone street lamp.

Very few people were boarding the train here.

You carelessly eyed the figures in the dark.

There were about ten of them, and that was as much as you cared to know at the moment...

It would turn out to be so much more important than you thought.

Thoughts.

Thoughts...they never left you in peace.

There was always so much to think about and so little time...

So much to fight for and so few ways.

The steam from your mug continued to float, the train drifted along the tracks, and the stars smiled on that night.

Your eyes happened to fall upon something unusual.

About ten people.

Ten men.

Soon to reveal themselves as ten basterds.

They were all standing around, looking to each other seemingly with signaling and speaking eyes, awkwardly holding uneaten croissants, and unsipped espresso.

You cocked your head, and followed their eyes.

You nodded once to yourself, understanding their glares "Ah...je vois..."  

'Ah...I see...' You eyed the car full of high ranking nazi officers in first class, drinking and smoking up a storm.

One of the ten men held up his hand when he saw what you saw.

A woman and a child walking through the tram to get to another one.

You all saw it.

A toddler giggling just a few seats away.

A few college kids hanging around getting a bite to eat.

Families.

All innocent.

All possible victims of a lost bullet.

The man leading the other nine, Aldo Raine, eyed his team, and gave a signal. "Hold your fire..." All they needed was to see the look on his face.

They couldn't start anything.

Not there.

There were too many innocent people...

But...the basterds weren't the only ones to notice something.

The nazis had caught on to the lingering looks.

And you had caught on to everything.

You walked back to find your place on the train, just a car away...

Just as you heard the beginning of a rising suspicion and the prologue of a tragedy, you raised your bow.

The nazis, the basterds, and the innocent heard the enchanting notes of a soulful sonata, from your violin.  The Devil’s Trill Sonata.

It was useful to everyone...A lullaby for the lagging toddlers, a pacifier for the nazis, and a saving grace for the basterds.

For you, it was practice.

You had a big concert coming up...

The Nazis knew it. It was being sponsored and held for them.  They quickly forgot their suspicions as they heard the notes, and we're drawn to you, like a siren.

They congratulated you, your talent, and expressed their excitement for the concert.

You brazen through it, and forced a smile. You walked through their tram. Each nazi smiled and tipped their hats to you.

You stepped into the next train car.

Ten sets of eyes simultaneously looked up at you, then darted away.

Each analyzing you and your intentions.

The ten basterds had dispersed to avert the nazis' suspicions.

One of them was sniffing tobacco, while someone muttered a translationto him: Hugo Stiglitz was telling him what the nazis had told you.

They couldn't wait for the concert.

The rest of the basterds were scattered around, pretending to read newspapers in languages they didn't understand.

They held their ground, pretending to be civilians. They fooled literally everyone but you.

They knew something was going on with you.

But for the sake of the real civilians on board, they didn't confront you.

You, on the other hand, made your move.

You walked past them to get to your seat, and on the way, you slipped an envelope onto the table between the man with the German accent and ice in his eyes, and his leader.

They stopped speaking for a moment.

You kept walking, made no other contact with anyone else aboard except smile genuinely at a baby that babbled on a few seats ahead.

You made it to your compartment. You left the door open, planning on going to the bar later that night and calm your nerves.

You knew what you'd just incited.

It might be nice to have one last drink.

... You held up your compact mirror, and reapplied your matte  red lipstick, the color of wine and blood.

You hardly looked up from the mirror when you responded to the somehow welcomed intruder "I don't suppose you're here to kill me, are you?"

The man froze, "N...no?"

You pressed your lips together to perfect the shading, shut your mirror, and placed in your pocket as you turned around to look at him.

Perhaps the most beautiful man you'd ever seen.

"You're a basterd, aren't you?"

Hugo wasn't much of a liar. "Ja..."

You nodded. "Well?"

"Well what?" Originally, Aldo was the one that was going to confront you, being the lieutenant and all...but Hugo refused.

Aldo didn't know why.

Frankly, neither did Hugo.

All Hugo knew was that he had to see you again, even if it was just for a moment.

You smileda little, noting his slight German accent. "You're Hugo Stiglitz, aren't you?"

He blinked, and though he was stunned with your deduction, he remained visibly stoic, "You know my name?"

You reached out, and he shifted slightly...still remembering his days in a nazi operated prison.

You didn't think much of his subtle flinch at the time. You gently closed the door to your compartment so you wouldn't raise suspicions.

"Look, mack..."

He noticed your french accent, and listened, desperately trying to find anything else to pick up on, " If I didn't spend every day of my life trying to piece things together about the only ones I know for certain are doing things right, well... I'd lose my mind."

As intrigued as he was, he still needed answers.

"Why did you give us tickets?"

You smiled a little as you sat with a little spring. "Don't you boys need a break?"

He noticed a slight cynical sway in your tone, and the shadow of a smirk on the edge of your smile.

As interested as he was...he still needed answers. He didn't have time for this.

He'd already spoken to you more in two minutes than he had to the basterds in a week.

"Why did you give us the tickets?"

You shrugged. "The train is full of innocent people. Real people. I know that, and you know that. But the concert is organized by and for the nazis. For the morale or whatever you want to call it. They'll parade in with their rags and patches. Do what you will with that, sergeant."

"And your friends?" He was wondering if the other musicians were not "real people" to you.

You sighed "My friends? They're at war."

Or hiding.

Or dead...

"The musicians." Hugo insisted.

"Sympathizers..." You didn't know that until about a month before.

Hugo sat across from you, "And you?"

He wondered if you were not a real person... maybe you were a dream. Maybe that was why he spoke to you so much...

Your response was short. And one hundred percent honest. "Ready."

It took him a second to process what you said. He wondered if there was something lost in translation, but then he saw the certainty on your face. "Ready?"

"Ready to fight or die. We're at war, after all."

Hugo raised his eyebrow.

It was at that moment, he felt something.

He felt something for the first time in a long time.

A combination of things, actually..

Confusion at first. Mostly rooted in the sorrow at your willingness to die, and admiration for your fearless demeanor.

He noticed you.

In that moment, he noticed everything about you. You were young. How young exactly, he couldn't tell, but you seemed to be just about Smitty's age... So young... And god help anyone who hurt someone that young while Hugo was around. He saw your eyes. The things you said weren't the product of an angry young person's bravado and false hope. You were perfectly competent. You were perfectly aware of what you were saying. There was no Smoky Mountain fire, and no Frankfurt winter fueling the light behind your eyes. Just awareness. You. He knew you in that instant. And he knew you were perfectly content with what you had just done... He wasn't. "Don't go." He spoke gruffly, the only way he knew to try and save you from a stray bullet in two night's time. You were a fighter, but not a soldier. You were a free spirit seeking to free France. Even if it cost you everything. You crossed your arms, "Don't tell me what to do, sergeant. I'm not one of your basterds.

Hugo Stiglitz commanded respect and fear from every single soldier he met, on either side of the war. He was stunned... No one had talked to him like that since before the war... He raised an eyebrow. Both at what you had just done and at his own internal monologue. He was worried...He was worried about you. He never worried about anything. This wasn't him... This never used to happen before.... You were right, and he knew it. You weren't his soldier, you were just a musician. A young French musician...nothing more, and nothing less. He really had no command over you... Just your dreams. That night, you arrived at your destination. You, the innocents, the basterds, and the nazis went your ways. You parted from the ten basterds, and shared a knowing glance with them as you turned away with your violin case under your arm. That night, in your room, you dreamed, for the first time  in a long time. And you dreamed of Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz... You thought nothing of it all the next day...or...chose not to. It happened all over again the next night. The day of the concert, you smiled. You'd done your country a service...rather, you'd done Free France a service. But in what may have inevitably been the last fourty-eight hours of your life, you did yourself a disservice, and fell in love... Still, you didn't mind so much. That was what kept you smiling as you filed onto the stage in the concert hall, and looked over the opera boxes housing hordes of nazis.

It was a glorious way to die, being in love with a basterd.

Hugo didn't see it that way. He thought it was just a moment of weakness, back on the train. But he couldn't stop thinking, no...worrying about you. You... He didn't even know your name until he saw Omar fanning himself with a program. He grabbed it, looked under the violin section... Y/n  L/n: First violin... He smiled.... It was a beautiful name...

He caught himself...He hated himself in that moment. He shook his head, and blinked once, centering himself. He was a basterd, and on a mission. He glanced around the seats, spotting each and every one of his fellow basterds seated, waiting for the signal.

The lights on distant chandeliers faded, and the stage was set. The conductor bowed. The nazis applauded. The basterds waited. Hugo listened... As much as he tried to focus, he couldn't. Every note reminded him of the sound of your voice, the sound of the train, the sound of the envelope sliding across the table. The light falling over you, your black dress draping over the stage, your hands holding the violin like a muse holding a lyre. As he watched you play with a soft, reverent, resigned smile on your face, he sighed...and smiled himself. For a moment, the only thing in his mind was the notes he was able to pick out that came from you. Time stood still. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was you. Suddenly, his eyes snapped open. He heard the signal. The beginning of Ride of the Valkyries. He looked over to spot the basterds beginning to take their places. "Scheisse."

He'd almost forgotten. He couldn't help but look at you in sorrow when he heard the first bullet. And he heard Donny's voice, "STIGLITZ, WATCH UTI." Hugo snapped back, and shot a nazi, saving the youngest  basterd... He took his place with his team, and took down each and every nazi in their way. Among the basterdized chaos, Hugo caught glimpses of the stage. He saw the sympathizers running or hiding. He saw you rise, clentching the neck of your violin and your bow in your left hand. Your pearl necklace just off center. The curls in your hair just loosened, strands beginning to fall. Your arm was raised, one eye closed, head tilted to the side. You pulled a trigger. Hugo's eyes followed the path of your gun, to a nazi aiming a gun at him....Or who had been. That nazi now had a bullet in his forehead. Hugo looked back at you, and you looked at him. You winked, and gave a smug grin. Hugo smiled softly and slowly, something he wasn't used to until two nights before, when he met you. In that moment, among the chaos, in the middle of war and loss, Hugo found something.. It made him smile, genuinely. 

It was the beginning of something. Something new.

Something more. Something beautiful... Something Hugo had never known before there was you.

[ariainstars]

Star Wars vs. Pride and Prejudice

Mr Darcy’s famous proposal scene from Pride and Prejudice, here taking place in the rain for further emphasis of his desperate love for her.

“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

Ever since Kylo’s clumsy attempt to convince Rey to stay with him, in the infamous Throne Room scene, I must have stumbled at least a hundred times across the above-mentioned quotation with the assumption of both scenes being parallel to one another, leading to the conclusion that Kylo and Rey also will be together.

How many times, to you think, was I confronted the parallel scene - the one where Elizabeth has to confess that she was prejudiced against Darcy, that she knew too little to judge him, that she felt superior to him although she had no actual justification?

…

…

…

That’s right. Not once.

“Did Luke tell you what happened that night?”

“I know everything I need to know about you.”

To me the revelation of Dark Rey in the second TROS trailer was not in the least surprising. The moment I heard Palpatine’s laugh at the end of the first trailer I guessed he was after her. (My husband’s comment was: “Of course Palpatine wants her, not Kylo. What is he supposed to do with that daydreamer?” 😊)

Honestly: I would have been surprised, even affronted, if Rey had never been tempted by the Dark Side. Every Force user is tempted to misuse his powers, in one way or another. And despite the many claims I have read and heard to this issue, though there were a few clues that might have justified calling Rey a Mary Sue, there were at least twice as much already indicating that she, like her equal in the Force, is fragile and immature.

But for some reason - naivety? Wrongly understood feminism? - for years it was widely assumed, in particular among female Reylo fans, that Rey would be the one the save Kylo (alias Ben Solo); that she is good and pure and flawless and that her love would redeem him, or at least push him to redemption due to his desire to be with her. Few seemed to consider that Rey has her own weaknesses to overcome, too.

Personally, I see nothing “romantic” in the idea of a woman redeeming a guy. I don’t know why a girl is naturally assumed to be better than a man and that it is her task to save or inspire him, morally. Nor do I believe that it is a case of “true love” if the man ends up doing everything the woman wants him to do. It would make her his pet, not an equal partner. I know, it is a mistake that women often make, believing they must “help” the man they love: but no one can be saved from himself.

I do wish Ben and Rey to have a future, and of course they cannot be together if they are on the opposite sides of a war: but that must not necessarily mean, as a matter of fact, that Ben just has to see the righteousness of Rey’s and her friend’s cause and switch sides for everything to be wrapped up. The Force needs balance, which meaning that both sides, each in its own way, have a right and a point to exist. The greatest weakness of people who believe to be - and are universally believed to be - “good” usually have a tendency to be in denial. Rey lived in denial almost all of her life, since her parents left her. When Ben confronted her with what she already knew, i.e. that they would never come back, it was very painful for her, but he immediately added that her being “nobody” did nothing to change the fact that to him, she is much.

Even the fans who called Reylo Reverse Anidala often did not want to see that Padmé had believed she could save Anakin with her love, and failed. Of course she failed: because for a balanced relationship, both have to learn from one another. They must influence one another and grow together. The relationship between Anakin and Padmé always was unbalanced because she was not aware of his inner turmoil, and he always felt inferior to her - an ex slave who had married a former queen. And in a dramatic context as the Skywalker family saga, people have to save one another. The team that was glued together in the classic trilogy always did so, that’s why things worked out.

Ever since The Force Awakens we have often been confronted with Rey’s aggressiveness and judgmental attitude. And she ends her last Force connection in The Last Jedi literally looking down on Ben.

There is no reason at all, except wishful thinking, to assume that Rey has nothing dark inside her, or not enough to make her evil. (Yes, in The Last Jedi she kills a few Praetorian Guards, but in self-defense.)

Even most of the fans who kept stubbornly pretending that Rey is secretly Luke’s daughter did not come to this conclusion. But Luke was never 100 % good and pure himself.

When he met Vader for the first time face-to-face on Bespine, he was welcomed with the sentence “The Force is with you, young Skywalker. But you are not a Jedi yet.” Luke immediately proved him right by igniting his light saber first, although Yoda had repeatedly taught him that a Jedi fights only in defense and that violence is not a solution.

Luke paid a high price for his conceit and sense of entitlement: on Bespine all hell broke loose. He came away barely alive, crippled and severely traumatized. But that terrible experience on the long run had done him good: he was much more calm and collected in Return of the Jedi. Luke had learned his lesson. Rey hasn’t, as of yet.

Now I am not saying that Rey is a bad person, and I am not trying to justify Ben’s atrocious deeds. But he was isolated, manipulated and terrified since childhood and then let down by the one person in the galaxy he would never have expected it from - his uncle, whose all-encompassing love for his father, forgiveness and pacifism had made him a legend before his nephew was even born.

Rey was in no position to understand the depth of pain and despair that made Ben kill Han, in an insane attempt to overcome the inner conflict that was tearing him apart. As they say, don’t judge someone unless you’ve been in his shoes.

Snoke, a powerful Force user, knew its mechanics very well: “Darkness rises and Light to meet it.” As Rey had “risen” from Jakku while Kylo did more and more evil, so it was to be expected that since he has freed some of the light that still was in him, she will now go down the opposite path.

I am positive that Rey will not remain in the darkness, that in some way or another she will find out again. But the plunge into the Dark Side is extremely important for her because she must understand that she has no right to judge the man who is her equal in the Force.

Ben and Rey have an important task: they have to bring Balance to the Force and thus lasting peace to the galaxy. But they can’t cooperate if they don’t have a common ground, and they will never have a common ground as long as one of them believes he has the right to make choices for the other. Both are convinced of doing right; which is why the darkness is all the more tempting to them. They have not yet matured the sense of responsibility a Force user needs in order to employ his powers the right way.

Though it contains many tropes, this is not Pride and Prejudice or Romeo and Juliet or Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast. It’s Star Wars. Like a royal family in former times, the fate of the Skywalker saga always echoes through the galaxy. They must find peace at last, and for good, for the sake of everybody. The saga won’t be done by Ben and Rey kissing and making up.

And apart from that: it was about time that the saga got its own female villain. I’m all for female empowerment - it must not necessarily be through virtue. *cough* 😉

[tanadrin]

@bpd-anon:

I think I agree on some points and disagree on others but mostly I would love an expansion of this part: "I don’t think he actually understands fantasy as a set of generic conventions as well as he thinks he does." Can you explain the parts that he is misunderstanding and what true understanding looks like?  

For some context, I have never seen GOT. I read the first book and it's tied for my favorite book ever but then college and its stress hit and I mostly stopped reading (same reason Blindsight is another favorite book ever but I haven't read Echopraxia). I mostly read science fiction books and I haven't even read the all-important LOTR (mainly because I hear there isn't any moral greyness, sounds boring). 

Martin has said things like this:

“I admire Tolkien greatly. His books had enormous influence on me. And the trope that he sort of established—the idea of the Dark Lord and his Evil Minions—in the hands of lesser writers over the years and decades has not served the genre well. It has been beaten to death. The battle of good and evil is a great subject for any book and certainly for a fantasy book, but I think ultimately the battle between good and evil is weighed within the individual human heart and not necessarily between an army of people dressed in white and an army of people dressed in black. When I look at the world, I see that most real living breathing human beings are grey.”     

“Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?” 

“By the time I got to Mines of Moria I decided this was the greatest book I’d ever read… And then Gandalf dies! I can’t explain the impact that had on me at 13. You can’t kill Gandalf… Tolkien just broke that rule, and I’ll love him forever for it. The minute you kill Gandalf, the suspense of everything that follows is 1,000 times greater. Because now anybody could die. Of course, it’s had a profound effect on my own willingness to kill characters at the drop of a hat.” 

Taken together, Martin is one of the people I’m thinking most of when I say things like “nobody reads Tolkien, only their caricatures of Tolkien.” About the only thing I can say for him is that he’s right on Tolkien being about an external battle of Good versus Evil a lot of the time; though for my part, Martin’s world doesn’t come off so much as Gray versus Gray as Evil versus Evil, and a lot of what he seems to take for “moral ambiguity” to me is perfectly unambiguous: they’re all (or mostly) villains, doing villainy things to each other. Sometimes for quite human reasons; but the best villains have comprehensible motivations beyond pure evil. Doesn’t make them not villains.

First of all, he’s simply nakedly incorrect that Tolkien never considered the difficulties of rule, or never looked at the practical aspects of his worldbuilding. They don’t come in much for emphasis, but they’re absolutely there (most notably in the scenes set in Minas Tirith, in the run-up to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields), and indeed the moral nature of the Orcs, and therefore the correct stance to take toward them, was of deep concern to him, and subject to a lot of later revision as he struggled with the idea of what we would now refer to as an Always Chaotic Evil fantasy race.

Tolkien certainly critically interrogates the morality and moral authority of rulership. In the Silmarillion, he has plenty of figures who cut heroic profiles but make bad (or at least ambiguous) kings, with much resulting conflict; and indeed, that ambivalence is something he’s in part borrowing from his medieval sources! To say that the medievals had a totally black-and-white view of kingship is to betray a lack of familiarity with actual medieval writers, who even (especially?) in the Early Middle Ages are adept at portraying leaders with powerful qualities that turn against them in the wrong situation. Beorhtnoth, the heroes of Njal’s Saga, and Beowulf would have all been extremely familiar to Tolkien, and are good examples I think. Tolkien absolutely understood that people come in shades of gray, and there are various admixtures of light and dark in almost all his characters. Even Frodo for Chrissakes puts on the Ring at the end--and Gollum redeems him. Like, come on! That’s one of the most memorable parts of the main trilogy! But from Galadriel right down to the Sackville-Bagginses, Tolkien is intensely conscious of the moral complexity of everybody in his stories, he just doesn’t need them to say “fuck” in order to express that.

What Martin seems to have confused for Tolkien is, like, the semi-mythic style of Arthurian romance (which... is still not always super black and white?), which is only a small part of the generic conventions Tolkien is drawing on. Tolkien is much more steeped in the conventions of the realist novel, with its penchant for psychological complexity, even as he’s borrowing the setpieces of older literature. I think that’s important because it’s what marks Tolkien out as a fundamentally modern writer, despite his sources; yet people skate over this and like to pretend he was some kind of reverse Connecticut Yankee who stumbled out of the 13th century with medieval sensibilities intact. Which is... weird.

The quote about Gandalf is especially telling. Gandalf’s death happens for extremely clear structural reasons: it provides a climax to Book II (if you’ve never read LOTR: each volume is divided into two “books”; the three-volume split was a post-writing publication decision, LOTR was originally written as a single continuous unit, and the “books” are like mega-chapters), much like, but stronger than, the Flight to the Ford at the end of Book I; it sets up the sojurn in Lorien (recovering from the trauma of the loss of their nominal leader); it helps the narrative transition from the low-stakes, bucolic setting of everything west of the Misty Mountains to the high-stakes dangers of the rest of the story; and it serves the conclusion of the story because without Gandalf’s sacrifice (plus many other events), the Ring never would have made it to Mount Doom. Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but Gandalf comes back, in a way that feels sensible within the world Tolkien has built, and which sets up further development of both the main plot and the the themes Tolkien is concerned with.

If Martin had written Lord of the Rings, Gandalf would have died to a random Orc arrow, would never have come back, and the Ring wouldn’t have made it to Mount Doom at all. And you’d be left feeling like Gandalf dies for basically no reason--and you’d be right. The suspense in Lord of the Rings doesn’t come from wondering who will die (the only major named characters who die permanently are Boromir and Gollum; both similarly serve important thematic and plot functions when they do, but by Martin’s standard, Tolkien isn’t even trying), or wondering how things will turn out--does anyone ever doubt that the good guys will win?--it comes from seeing how they get there, from wanting to experience the emotional and narrative beats of the story, wanting to see the narrative logic being brought to its conclusion. It’s why it’s a good story even if you know the ending! And all of Tolkien’s work is like that: a well-constructed narrative that is perennially satisfying is far better than a one-off surprise that can never be repeated. That’s a mistake a lot of modern media is making right now, which the rise of undue emphasis on spoilers isn’t doing anything to reduce.

More generally: there’s nothing wrong with high fantasy externalizing the conflict between good and evil. That is in fact one of its functions, as a kind of moral metaphor or moral proving ground in the same way that, say, science fiction often serves as moral and philosophical proving ground for ideas around technology or exploration or the alien. It’s not obligatory, but to cite that as an insufficiency of any work in the genre is to fail to understand the genre. Tolkien specifically provides some arch moral figures (Morgoth, Sauron, Manwe, Aragorn), but he also provides some much more mixed ones: Denethor, Saruman, Grima Wormtongue, Boromir, Gollum, etc. (also Thorin, Feanor and his sons, and in fact just like a huge chunk of the cast of the Silmarillion in general), and gives his characters plenty of opportunity to reflect that, even in a conflict with a literal evil spirit, there is room for ambiguity (cf. Sam’s meditation on the Haradrim in Ithilien). And the sum total of the effect in Tolkien’s work is that it actually feels like something is at stake. I don’t feel like that in Martin’s world. I feel like if the Night King were just to destroy all of Westeros that would make as much sense and be about as satisfying as any other outcome, because there’s nothing that feels especially worth preserving there.

In discarding everything about both the moral and narrative structure of high fantasy, Martin’s world leaves nothing for one to hang one’s hat on, nothing to use as a fixed point of reference when it comes to orienting yourself in it; he is writing a critique against many things, perhaps, but not an argument for anything. The result leaves me quite cold.

[argentdandelion]

Review of Kaitogirl’s Underfell

Plot & Other Details

Like many works that trace Frisk’s journey through the Underground, the plot is pretty simple and linear. Frisk rewinding time when killed slightly complicates the timeline, but Frisk has only died three times so far.

As Underfell works go, the work is mild. As expected, there's sometimes blood (though rarely in large amounts), and plenty of swearing. Despite the setting, characters are often mean, cynical, and aggressive rather than outright evil or murderous, and are easily pacified. Situations are also rarely very frightening or violent. Along with its simple, rounded, relatively well-lit style, it's much milder than HorrorTale or the famous Flowey is Not a Good Life Coach.

Characterization

Frisk

Given the situation, Frisk is rather bold, though still friendly and pacifistic. At first, they think they’re dreaming, explaining their unworried approach. However, when Toriel kills them in an escape attempt, they realize they’re not dreaming and break down, sobbing. Yet they quickly recover after dreadful realizations, fights and even death, becoming a happy camper once more. Literally: it's like Frisk is just an experienced camper lost in a bear-filled forest, rather than a strange land of monsters trying to kill them. They even feel safe enough for Flowey to read books and history plaques to them, despite Flowey’s reminder they’re in a hurry. (This might be explained by Frisk being too young to understand the danger they’re in, or realize their power makes them unkillable)

While friendly and forgiving, sometimes Frisk is insistent, such as yanking Flowey out of the ground to put him in a boot and thus carry him into Toriel’s house.

Flowey

In many Underfell works, monsters' morality is basically flipped: good characters are now 'evil'. Thus, the murderous, sociopathic Flowey is now a helpful companion, often carried by Frisk. Though that's true here, Flowey is not sweet or innocent. He is prone to anger, frustration, and indignant outbursts, and sometimes intimidates weaker monsters with a scary face. He says he "can't console people", and smacks Frisk to make them stop sobbing. Flowey knows "in this world, it's kill or be killed", but is sad and resigned about it. Overall, he might be as Flowey once was before choosing murder runs.

In this work, Asriel was once a jerk: he took Chara to his parents while eagerly asking about killing them. Thus, it's likely Flowey is only 'good' because Asriel was once bad. Notably, Flowey mentally calls himself 'Asriel', apparently only coming up with 'Flowey' when Frisk asked for his name.

Toriel

As expected, Toriel is meaner and more violent than in canon. Indeed, Flowey is afraid she'll kill him and Frisk if she spots the two of them, and is surprised when she doesn't. It's likely she outright kills monsters in the Ruins: Flowey notices one hallway is "dustier than usual", and afterward her clothes have dust stains. She’s more disdainful of Flowey than in canon, calling him a 'weed', threatening him, and initially refusing to let him into her house.

Her sadness and long isolation apparently damaged her social skills, or even sanity. Her pie is very burnt, and has so much cinnamon it makes Frisk cough. Having run out of butterscotch, she put in monster dust instead, which isn't at all reasonable. Though she would surely know how bad the pie was, she aggressively insists Frisk eat it and not even think of throwing up afterward. When Frisk tricks her to escape, she calls them ungrateful and burns them alive at the exit.

Yet, she can still be kind: she sheltered Frisk, gave them food, tucked them in and gave them a plushie as they slept. (Though she glares at Flowey for noticing the latter two) Frisk points out her kindness in the fight: they say they don't really want to leave, and that's she's not evil, just lonely and sad. Toriel is stunned. She breaks down, sobs, and says: "Why are you being...so nice to me?” However, she is so deranged she soon "realizes" Frisk's kindness is a trick, a prelude to greater horrors, and she chases them out of the Ruins.

Papyrus & Sans

Sans hasn’t actually changed much. He has a taste for meaner, darker jokes. Compared to other characters, he is uncommitted: he’s neither especially helpful nor harmful to Frisk, though a few of his actions could have gotten Frisk hurt or killed anyway. While he does kill Frisk with an electric shock from a joy buzzer, when Frisk reloads and refuses to shake his hand, he guesses that the buzzer would have probably killed them anyway.

Here, Sans definitely knows about Flowey. Though he knows Alphys had been looking for Flowey, he didn't report him: he found it more entertaining to keep seeing Alphys throw a fit. (Notably, he asks Frisk's name, unlike in canon.)

Papyrus is even more confident and egotistic than before, as shown by the even more muscular snow sculpture of himself. While canon Papyrus never dismissed others for his self-enhancement, this Papyrus does just that, calling Frisk a "pathetic weakling". He is still a skeleton with high standards: while more vicious, he insists on fair puzzles and fights. (despite talking about how much he'll benefit from capturing Frisk)

Art

Left: The first page. Right: A re-do of the first page, showing improvements in shading and lighting.

Though not as polished and precise as other comics, the art improves over time. Indeed, there's a big jump in quality on the last page of the Snowdin arc and later in Waterfall, too. The lineart is crisper, the shading better, and the colors richer. (if very purple) While the hand-lettering has tight and irregular spacing at first, it improves a lot midway through the Snowdin arc.

As appropriate for an "edgy" setting, characters are toothier and spikier, to the point even Moldsmal and Papyrus's house (using icicles) are spiky. As expected for Underfell, characters look scarier, with duller, darker colors. Red and black (unsurprisingly) dominate the work: not only are many characters’ clothes red and black, but even attacks are often red. (Except fire, oddly enough: that's blue instead.) Colors are changed to darker, duller, and redder shades overall.

The right image illustrates about half the colors in Snowdin.

Often, this results in shades one could broadly call "purple", especially reddish purple. For example, the walls of the Ruins are reddish-purple, and sometimes Snowdin's snow is purplish-taupe. The purple-ification is especially obvious with the Echo Flowers (once cyan, now phlox), Waterfall (once dark blue/indigo, now dark bluish purple) and the gratuitous purple Moldsmals. Indeed, it's so purple one could easily call this work "that purple Underfell".

Yet, one could also call this "that low-green Underfell". Other than Flowey's (often dull) green stem, there is practically no green in the Ruins. Things get greener in Snowdin, though the trees are a fairly dull shade. (Oddly so: the trees were actually blue in-game). In Waterfall, green becomes rare once again.

Yellow and orange are rare, too, if less so. Frisk's skin is not mango-yellow, but an only slightly yellowish beige. Monster Kid is mostly a washed-out orange (who gets even less yellow by Waterfall), and wears red-and-black clothes. Even monsters' outfits have less yellow, such as Papyrus, Shopkeeper Temmie and especially the Nice Cream Man. In some cases, though, the work adds yellow: Napstablook and Toriel have yellow eyes, Sans has a yellow tooth, and Undyne's armor has yellow accents.

One can get used to the limited color scheme over its hundreds of pages. But the bright, green-and-yellow palette of Flowey’s dream sequence in Page 126 and Waterfall’s yellow history-plaque flashbacks remind the reader of the limited colors.Even the comic itself lampshades its dark, limited palette: Papyrus's color tile puzzle is various shades of grey, black, and white.

Conclusion

For those who want something a little scarier and unhappier than canon Undertale, but aren't quite ready for darkfic or standard Underfell approaches, Kaitogirl's Underfell is a perfect middle ground.

[thelegendofclarke]

u might as well just say that u think jon is using her. saying no would be really easy but u wont do it, so u obviously think he is. ur entitled to ur opinion u can just say it.

OH MY LORD… 

a) “Because you aren’t saying no means you are saying yes” is not how it works. For sooo many things in life. That would be a good thing to just ponder and appreciate. Don’t be weird, don’t make it weird. 

b) I told you, multiple times, that I wasn’t comfortable answering the question publicly! I didn’t want to say ‘no’, or give any kind of definitive answer tbh, and have some little gremlin come after me with “Receipts™” about something different I said 6 months ago at 12:42 pm when I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast yesterday. And I DEFINITELY didn’t want to say anything even slightly resembling ‘yes’ and get blocked by 25 people and be called repellant, or dumb, or misogynistic, or a jonsalocker, or an anti, or a freaking rape. apologist., or told to just go ship Sansa with LF, or whatever it is this week and get generally condescended as people on this site seem to be real fond of doing… As LOVELY as that all is, I’m gonna have to say hard pass. I’m cranky af and I’m tried of it. 

But heeeyyy, you know what?! F I N E…

First of all, I think you are severely oversimplifying the issue and making it kind of ridiculously moralized and black and white when it’s not: you are implying that any motivation Jon may have that is not completely, 100% pure must therefore be malicious and ill intended. That’s not true at all… The entire point of forming political and personal alliances is for the accumulation and consolidation of assets, that’s how it has always worked. People entering into a generally (although sometimes uneven in terms of power) mutually beneficial relationship because each party has something the other wants or needs. Are we r e a l l y going to make every alliance that’s not made with intentions that aren’t 100% pure out to be something terribledirtybadwrong?? Because, like, that’s literally every alliance in the series ever! And also that sounds boring af and I would like to go on record with my formal objection to that bullshit right now.

Secondly, yeah I do think a big part of the reason Jon bent the knee is because he knows that they need the dragons, especially now that he knows there is a serious possibility the NK has a dragon himself. But no, I️ don’t think he did so with any malice aforethought or with the intent of “~just using her for her dragons~”. Those two things are not mutually exclusive at all, and I don’t see why they have to be, or are being made to be; and tbh it seems kind of, idk,  narrow minded I guess? Or at least every overly simplified. I’m honestly not sure why anyone is so ~shocked and appalled~ about other people thinking this, and honestly the intense, black and white, moralistic, collective outrage has been such a downright weird thing to experience. That’s how alliances have literally ALWAYS worked, this really isn’t new or revolutionary in the slightest. It’s why Sansa allied with LF, she needed the Vale army. It’s why Daenerys allied with the Greyjoys, she needed their fleets. And it goes even further back to pre-series: it’s why the Targaryens almost always had to form an alliance with Dorne through marriage. Dorne was an incredibly powerful entity, both in terms of resources and military power, and they never bent the knee to the Iron Throne. The Targaryens had to find a way to ally themselves with Dorne, who ended up being their most powerful ally, in order to utilize their resources. It’s also why the Starks and Robert Baratheon allied with the Lannisters in order to help defeat the Targaryens in Robert’s Rebellion (even though they probably had little to no desire to), because they knew they couldn’t defeat the Targaryen forces without the Lannister’s amry and funding behind them. I’m not sure why this particular alliance ~is and must be different and if you don’t think it is you are going to hell!~ that doesn’t make any sense to me.

In this case, Daenerys has always wanted something from Jon, and Jon wanted something from her. Daenerys has always demanded that Jon give up his crown, throne, and kingdom because she believes she deserves to be in power over others more than him, or anyone else for that matter. Jon has always wanted dragon glass and for Daenerys to help him fight against the NK, that was his motivation for going to Dragonstone from literally DAY ONE when he left. Daenerys is not getting fucked over and ditched on the side of the road with nothing but a corn chip and some tic tacs here. She is not walking out of this situation with nothing and acting like she is is just a clear outright misrepresentation of the situation. Jon gave up his title, his kingdom, and control of his ancestral home, and the freedom of the North from outside influences which he and his people fought for, to her. And that is all on top of what she ALREADY HAS at her disposal: and entire hoard of Dothraki warriors, a army of Unsullied soldiers who have straight up pledged to die for her, and two grown ass dragons who can, quite literally, disintegrate a whole goddamn army of hundreds and all their resources and supplies in about 7 minutes (give or take)… I think she’s going to be just fine. 

And finally, to be perfectly honest, I will bet you all my student loan debt that this alliance IS going to cause problems. It’s either going to cause problems between Daenerys and Jon or it’s going to cut Jon off from his entire family, those are basically the two options here. Nothing on GoT ever “just works out.” Robb seems to be gaining some ground in the WotFK, and then he gets murdered along with his wife and mother, by his own gd banner men at a wedding. Sansa finally got away from King’s Landing and being a Lannister hostage, and was put into an even more abusive situation in her own home. It seems like Cersei had finally met her match, and then she blew up the damn Grand Sept. It appears like the Dragonstone gang can’t be beat, and then Euron attacks and takes over their ships and the Lannisters take over High Garden and kill Olenna. We thought the dragons were the key to beating the Night’s King, and then Viserion gets shot out of the damn sky. Just when we thought it couldn’t possibly get any dumber than the Dorne Plot, there is a Wight Hunt with a literal FLAMING BEAR… Nothing ever just works out!

This has n o t h i n g to do with shipping, I am so damn tired of that and it’s such a weak, transparent argument. No, this has to do with the fact that Jon broke promises and betrayed obligations to his family and his people, the people who fought for him and made him king. You don’t want to think Jon would betray Daenerys? That’s cool; like you said, you’re more than entitled to that. Me personally? I don’t want to believe Jon would betray his family and his people and everyone who believed in him and trusted him to do what was best for them and made him their king. Your fave got what she wanted, and she got it at the expense of other characters and story lines that some other fans and viewers find important. Just because you don’t, doesn’t mean no one does… So good lord just go celebrate and leave the rest of us to be salty in peace! I’m tired af of getting told I’m a terrible person for the story lines and characters I care about. It’s annoying and exhausting and I’m kinda done with it.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Hi, I just recently found your blog and it's amazing! I'm so happy there are still people there are as invested as I am in the Animorphs series! I especially love your Adult AU and your analysis of the books. In fact I was reading one of your posts where you said that Cassandra Clare's book glorify violence - if I'm remembering correctly - and I was curious if you could expand on that. If you prefer you can message me privately since this is strictly an Animorphs blog. I hope I'm not bothering u

No bother at all.  I sometimes feel like I spend half my blog space whining about how every other book on the planet is inferior to Animorphs, which isn’t actually the kind of vibe I’m going for.  I SWEAR I LOVE YA SF.  Just… Not Mortal Instruments.  I’ve tried.  I tried so hard to like that series.  It is objectively well-written and creative.  I just… I can’t with Cassandra Clare’s work.  I can’t.

First of all: a confession.  I’ve only ever read City of Bones, City of Ashes, and about half of City of Glass, and then several different issues (the glorification of violence, the glorification of “slender” or “skinny” bodies, the way Jace’s Freudian Excuse gets used to let him get away with all kinds of bad behavior, the borderline-pathological worship of True Love in City of Ashes) conspired to drive me away from the series as a whole.  So I don’t actually know if Clare improves in the last 80% of the series.  Thus everything I say has that big honking grain of salt. 

However, I do take issue with the way that, from what I’ve seen, the Mortal Instruments series portrays violence.  Individuals are portrayed as all good or all bad (literally, they’re on the side of the angels or else they support demons) and—from what I’ve seen—there are literally no good demons, nor are there angels worse than “morally grey.” This Manichaeisan worldview (which I think is no accident given the overtly Christian overtones of the series) basically justifies pretty much any acts of violence on the grounds of “they are bad and we are good and therefore pretty much anything we do to them is good, regardless of the means we use to get to that end.”  One extension of this principle which pops up again and again and again with regards to the Shadowhunters is that Might Makes Right.  Clary is the best at coming up with new runes to kill demons, which is a sign she is the best good; Izzy is the best at stabbing demons very dead, which is a sign that she is good too.  Morality comes about by way of violence in that series.

It’s troubling because it glorifies war as “we are the good guys wiping out the bad guys” and utterly dehumanizes the bad guys in the process.  Given that we live in a world where pretty much any group can be potentially cast as “the bad guys,” and that we as humans have an implicit bias toward casting ourselves as “the good guys” no matter what group we belong to… It can reinforce bad behavior.  To say the least.  

Case in point, the first scene in the series is one of Clary witnessing a major fight between (apparently) several children her own age, who are using deadly weapons to launch all-out attacks against each other and (again, apparently) succeed in killing at least two individuals at the end.  The narration doesn’t focus on her shock or horror or utter terror; it spends a long time dwelling on how cute Izzy’s dress is and how nice Jace’s cheekbones are and how cool they all look swirling around with their magical weapons.  (And slender bodies. Can’t ever, ever forget to mention that every single one of them has a slender body.  I confess that’s the #1 pet peeve in the writing that drove me away from the series.)  I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that Clare has probably never witnessed a real fight, or even a video of a real fight, because this is not only unrealistic (real fights are short, chaotic, hard to interpret, and incredibly disturbing—kind of like how they’re described in Animorphs) but it also suggests that violence is cool. 

Meanwhile, I don’t want to suggest that Clare is by any means the only author with this problem.  There was a great article (which I have since lost—I’ll have to send a link if I find it) which pointed out that American Clinton supporters and American Trump supporters and American independent voters all cast themselves as the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars and cast their political nemeses as the Galactic Empire.  Because it’s easy to do: the narrative of Star Wars dehumanizes the stormtrooper enemy (although I could have cried with happiness when Finn took his helmet off in the latest film) while glorifying the individuated, special, blessed-with-magic heroes.  It literally says that there is “light” and “dark,” and that the light is justified in (for instance) blowing up a space station with dozens of prisoners of war and possibly hundreds of innocent sanitation workers on board, just as long as doing so advances the cause of the Light.  Avengers, Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, and a simple majority of sci-fi/fantasy suffers from this problem. 

I also specifically said that Clare doesn’t so much glorify violence and other troubling content as much as she fetishizes violence, which I do view as a problem specific to Mortal Instruments.  It leads to this attitude of “people did bad things to me, therefore I can do bad things to [totally unrelated individuals].” Clary nearly forces Alec to out himself to his parents (which, I admit, hit all of my own personal “NOPE” buttons when I was reading the series as a closeted queer kid) because she idly experiments on him without fully informing him of what he’s getting into, but she’s special and this is how they discover she has the best angel powers of them all and that means that it gets brushed over.  Jace and Clary are jealous and possessive jerks toward each other while also pushing each other away throughout City of Ashes and City of Glass, but this is portrayed as excused because They’re Doing It For (unhealthy, selfish, possessive) True Love.

The one that drives me furthest up the wall is the scene where Jace stalks into a bar, orders a Scotch (because Scotch is a Man’s Drink, never mind that the Man in question is a bratty 16-year-old), throws the Scotch at the wall because he’s Overcome By Emotion, shouts at the people in the bar, and then demands a replacement from the bartender.  This whole sequence gets portrayed as “look how much Jace is suffering” but I couldn’t get away from thinking about how much the bartender, the random patrons, and everyone else who has to deal with his temper tantrum must be suffering.  Seriously, that’s the kind of behavior that I would punish in a six-year-old, because I’d expect a six-year-old to know better, whether or not the six-year-old thinks that he’s in love with his sister and that their father is an evil demagogue (Luke Skywalker called and he wants his plot back, by the way) and whether or not the six-year-old has a Sad Hawk Backstory™. 

Anywhoo, I find Clare’s work… frustrating.  Obviously.  I have ambivalent feelings about most of the other sci-fi/fantasy for which Animorphs has ruined me forever, but Clare’s work is high on my personal “nah” list.

Quick inevitable aside to How Animorphs Did It Better: the kids view avoiding violence as the ultimate end for which they are fighting this war.  Any time the protagonists have to choose between a violent means and a nonviolent one, they struggle to find a nonviolent one.  There are good yeerks (Aftran, Illim, Niss), bad andalites (Estrid, Alloran, Samilin), and even bad Animorphs (mostly David, but to a lesser extent Marco and Rachel).  Even then, the good-bad dichotomy gets complicated and continuously questioned, such that the “good” guys do a lot of things that everyone can agree are “bad” and get condemned for it.  Marco acts like a jerk toward Tobias early on in the series, and the fact that he’s doing it partially because he’s (reasonably) terrified of dying thanks to what Visser One did to both his parents and partially because he’s whistling in the dark very clearly doesn’t excuse his behavior.  Visser One spends AN ENTIRE BOOK trying to argue that her bad behavior is the product of her having had a rough life, and at the end of it Applegate succeeds in getting us to hate her more, not less.  Predominantly “good” characters do “bad” things (Ax killing Hessian soldiers, Cassie letting Tom’s yeerk have the morphing cube, Jake flushing the yeerk pool), just as predominantly “bad” characters do “good” things (Visser Three helping defeat the nartec and helmacrons, Visser One protecting Darwin and Madra, Chapman’s yeerk agreeing to help Melissa), and the series doesn’t offer a moral dichotomy any more absolute than “try not to harm people, I guess.  Oh, and do your best to prevent other people from getting harmed, if they can’t protect themselves.”  The series shows that Tobias’s sad human backstory doesn’t make it okay for him to annihilate the mercora or even to snap at Rachel when he’s hangry.

I just… really love Animorphs.  And it ruined me for every single other book series on the planet. 

[rensfic]

Coming to Save You, Part VI

    “Are you serious?”

    “Yes, I’m serious. How d’you think I got into Avengers Tower in the first place? You ever seen anyone else scavenging that place?”

    “Where were you?”

    “One of Vault-Tec’s icebox vaults.”

    “Ohhhh, shit! They had one up here too?”

    “Yeah. We were supposed to be the superheroes and their families who got frozen for comparison to the Boston group.”

    “You the only one who came out? I heard the only one who came out of the Boston one is just tearing the Commonwealth up right now.”

    “Nah. I got everyone out okay. These raiders were letting people out of the pods one by one so they could kill them for fun.”

    “Huh. They’re in a cell somewhere, right?”

    “Yeah. A cell in the tower. Just like these guys are about to be, whether or not you help me.”

    The Duke stared at the two of them, who had suddenly become incredibly chatty. He’d never seen the red-suited mercenary like this before. He stood from his chair, letting out a low noise of disapproval.

    “You ladies just gonna stand there gossiping all day?”

    All Wade did was turn just long enough to shoot the Duke in the leg, then turned back to Spider-Man as though nothing had happened.

    “No, no I hear you. This is fantastic. I’ll help you round ‘em up. I can’t believe you’re back, Spidey baby! This is gonna be so cool.” And then he leaps back into action, feeling a warm bubble rise up in his chest. Hope is not a feeling he is used to, and yet here it is, swelling like a balloon that couldn’t actually fit in him. It’s a little suspicious, actually-- how long until it all collapses and he’s miserable again? But his other side tells him that he can at least enjoy this while it lasts, because hell, if two hundred years of misery would never turn to joy at some point, then it stands to reason that two hundred years of joy would never end, either. And he knows for a fact that joy ends eventually. And so must misery.

    Peter, on the other hand, feels a little cautious. He’s done the Wade dance before and was never fully convinced that he really wanted to go clean-- he always seemed to hesitate a bit, and if his role in the Duke’s court is any indication, he hasn’t tried very hard to give it up in the last two hundred years he thought Spider-Man was dead, either.

    “Go get them, then,” he says, standing there, wondering if Wade would actually turn on his employer for this. Then again, he had shot him in the leg. Oh, it is too much. He had to go back to his center. He closes his eyes. It is not Peter Parker’s job to fix Wade Wilson, he tells himself, trying to imagine his uncle’s voice speaking to him. If Wade Wilson wants to change, then Peter Parker can help him, but until he does and makes the effort for it, it is not Peter Parker’s job to do anything.

    When he opens his eyes, every member of the Duke’s gang is laid at his feet, tied in what must be at least fifty feet of rope that Wade got from God knows where. He wouldn’t put it past him to put emergency caches everywhere, so he supposes it makes sense.

    Wade himself stands just behind the mass of about fifteen people, watching Peter for his reaction. At first, it doesn’t look like there is any. He just stands there, looking at the pile. Then he turns, and it’s difficult to tell how he feels from his flattened voice, but Wade thinks he might sound a little surprised, and happy.

“Thanks. Let’s get them inside.”

It’s not a bad place to start. He knows what Peter is thinking and he’s right about it. Wade has let himself go too much. That ends today, he decides.

    When he steps into the tower again after all those years, Wade feels almost like he is being reborn. It’s funny to him that he never feels changed or reborn when he dies and comes back to life-- but just stepping into this ancient temple of Do-Gooderism has that effect on him. The dust is everywhere but he can still feel the half-beating heart of Nick Fury’s original vision for the building. Obviously, this is the perfect time to start cracking jokes.

    “Hey, can I try out the shield? I feel like it’s being wasted if it’s just sitting in here not being used.”

    “No, but if you feel that way, I’ll grab it and try it out for you.”

    “You know what? That’s even better. He’d have wanted you to have it.”

    “That… was an unusually sensitive thing for you to say, Wade.”

    “I have my moments.”

    Peter is quiet now as he steps through the high-ceilinged galleries toward the elevator that will take him down to the cells. The gaggle of rough-looking men behind him dodder along, looking around inside the tower they’d seen from the outside but had never managed to break into. There’s weaponry they could never even dream of sitting in stalls and on shelves and hangers. Colorful suits that look like they could stop a car. Cars that can probably both fly and dive into water judging by the fins.

Their captor pulls them along with unusual strength for just one guy who isn’t a super mutant toward a set of doors, chatting with their former employee as though they’ve known each other for years. Inside the doors they find a prison filled with more raiders-- not their gang, but ones that lurked around in the same area. Nobody dangerous enough for them to have gone after. The Spider had gotten to them first.

“Like one of those old pre-war comics,” Cutter says thoughtfully, before the guy yanks her and her boss and their crew into a cell all of their own. The man in the red and blue suit slams the door shut and puts his hand to a gel pad to lock them in.

“This is one of the pre-war comic books. I’m pre-war. I’m the Spider-Man they made those out of.”

Wade doesn’t think his dick can get any harder as Spider-Man walks away from them after saying that and closes the door behind him while they stare at him with faces full of shock. Once the door is closed, Peter slumps a little, sliding down the door onto the ground, looking like jelly. He takes his mask off and Wade’s heart jumps a little. He’s never taken it off in front of him before. He supposes the whole ‘they might kill my family and friends to get to me’ thing is a moot point now that all of that having-family-and-friends business is over for him. And if Wade’s a friend, he’s definitely not a friend that anyone can kill.

Peter scratches his head, which makes his hair floof up a little, and looks up at Wade. “Are there a lot of guys like that out here?”

“Just about everywhere you go. After the law fell apart people stopped giving a shit. With a few exceptions. Like you.”

“But not you.”

“No. Not me.”

“Why not? I thought you were trying to change when the bombs dropped.”

Wade fights the impulse to defend himself.

“I… forgot what it meant to try to be better. I used to know but I forgot. I was never really good at that stuff. I think my brain didn’t have the right part for it. Situations would come up where I’d ask, ‘what would Spider-Man do?’ And I’d have no idea. I know what you’d do if a guy was robbing a jewelry store or mugging an old lady, but what would you do if you had two guys who looked identical and both of them said the other was a synth and was trying to kill them? What about if you found out that an amazing life-giving program that could potentially help people by restoring crops and water had a side effect of turning its users into plant monsters? What about a paramilitary organization that opposed a huge empire of slavers who killed innocent people to prove their own warped viewpoint, but then turned around and took food from starving people under the pretense of saving them? What about an asshole who cuts off fingers from farmers who can’t pay him, but you know that he’s the only thing stopping an even worse asshole across the river in Jersey from taking over?”

His voice starts to get high and desperate, and the fidgeting of his hands says volumes about his vulnerability right now. “When you were around and the other Avengers were around, I could just copy you, or you know, copy what the hero is old movies would do. But I never had the thing where you can figure out what you should do when you have a totally new situation in front of you. So, that’s why I was happy to see you-- or, part of the reason, anyway. So you can tell me what to do again.” And his voice becomes hopeful again.

Peter stares at him for a few moments, trying to wrap his head around the idea that someone else depends on outside input for moral decisions. “Oh… kay… that’s… kind of a big burden, right? I mean, I can’t just tell you what to do.”

“No, you absolutely can. You should start with the guy across the river, though. Somebody has to do something about him.”

“Well, capture him? And bring him here.”

“What if there’s another guy after that? And the guy across the river is protecting people from that one?”

“...We’ll deal with him if and when he pops up. One thing at a time. Wow, this really is a mess. Nobody’s set up any defenses at all?”

“For who?”

“The farmers! The farmers who need protection from the raiders.”

“First we’d need to pick a spot to defend and put them there. That’ll probably involve killing some super mutants or ghouls or something.”

“Isn’t that literally your favorite thing to do?”

“Oh, hey, it is! Okay, Spidey baby, brave leader, where should we set up this camp?”

“Somewhere nearby so I can be there if they’re attacked. Central Park! It’d be perfect. There’s water there and plenty of land to grow food on. We could fortify it and probably have a pretty big community there.”

“Huh. Yeah, alright. I’ve been living in the Tavern on the Green for years now, so I’d be on location too.”

“Even better. The way those guys were talking, nobody would attack a settlement you were guarding.”

“Yeah, they probably wouldn’t. I haven’t had any problems so far. I’d need help setting up generators and water filtration and stuff.”

“Okay. You just… go to Central Park, and get rid of anything violent that would hurt people. Start building fences and walls. That kind of stuff. I’ll start going through the materials here. There’s probably some helpful things. Could probably even build some turrets or something.”

“That’s unusually violent for you, Spider-Man.”

“BB pellets won’t hurt them much, and it’d distract them a bit while I dealt with them.”

“Ohhh. Of course. So… you’d be moving in over there?”

“Yeah. Looks like it. It’ll be a lot easier to protect everyone in one location, I’ll tell you that much. Especially without police radio to listen to for leads.”

“But if they manage to crack the defenses there, they’ll have everybody in the area under their control and defenseless.”

“Oh. Right. So… an escape tunnel?”

“Sure, if you can be sure you can safeguard it against intrusion. They work both ways.”

“An escape tunnel into Avengers Tower, with a sealing mechanism that only opens from the inside or by one of us from the outside.”

“Yeah, that should work… that way if one of us gets knocked out of commission they can still get out when the danger’s gone. Sounds like we have some work to do.”

    “Yeah. I’ll get started on the drafting. You go out and visit some of the nearby settlements, see if any of them are interested in helping us start a community. The best defended one on the east coast.”

    “We’ll have to beat Diamond City for that. They set up in Fenway Park, something like a hundred and fifty years ago. Those big stadium walls do a lot to keep dangerous stuff out.”

    “That’s genius. Has anyone done the same thing with Yankee Stadium?”

    “Yeah, a big gang of raiders.”

    “We’ll have to look at digging them out and replacing them later. But for now, one thing at a time. I need you to secure the park and find farmers and supplies to help us start. Seeds, metal, concrete, anything you can find so I can build what we need.”

    Wade gives him a salute, and then pauses.

    “So… you finally took off your mask. What gives?”

    “Nobody here knows who I am anymore. The villains here target everyone on sight… it’s hard to imagine a raider getting pissed at me personally and going after anyone I’m close to. So there’s no point.”

    “I mean, I don’t recognize you either.”

    Peter laughs. “I was a photographer for the Daily Bugle. That’s why they always had those amazing shots of me.”

    Now Wade is laughing too. “No way! You must’ve had the highest blood pressure in the city, dealing with that editor.

“I might’ve! It was worth the cash though. Nobody could do what I did.”

“That’s still true.”

“Aww, thanks. Uh. My name’s Peter, by the way. Peter Parker.”

“Petey pie!”

“Oh, my God.”

“Petey pie, Petey pie, Petey pie…” Wade sings and dances his way out of the tower while Peter rolls his eyes and looks for his drafting supplies.

[annavolovodov]

Out of interest, how do you lose nine people on another continent?

Should be impossible, right? I mean, if I were taking pupils on a school trip to another continent I would be sure not to lose any. Alas the stupidity of man is infinite and not to be underestimated. 

Firstly, some background. 

The year: 2016, because when the fuck else would something like this occur?The location: New York, a city with a higher population than my entire country. The people: 36 pupils on a trip to NYC and DC with only four teachers accompanying. 

In retrospect it seems inevitable that some sort of chaos would occur but even so, I don’t think anyone expected this level of drama. And I want to highlight that this is only one of several incidents that occured over the course of this five-day trip.

It was our first full day in New York. The itinerary (which I had memorised) had us visiting Liberty and Ellis Island, meaning we had to get the subway through Manhattan at rush hour. That was as fun as it sounds. We also had these travel cards allowing four people through the barriers per card so essentially the entire group HAD to stick together. The final point I want to emphasise about the underground is how fucking complicated it is compared to the one we have back home. Ours is literally a circle meaning you can’t fuck it up and get lost whereas New York has a labyrinth of tunnels all leading to different places so you have to have a clear idea of where you’re going.

These details become important later.

(Side-note: when we were waiting on the platform a large section of the group and two teachers actually got on the wrong train and didn’t realise until they spotted our horrified expressions as the carriage pulled away. But that isn’t our main story here. It was hella funny though and felt like a dark prelude to the chaos that would occur mere hours from that moment.)

Anyway, eventually we all get to Liberty Island. We take pictures, me and my nine friends go up the plinth and get great views of the city, all is well.

After having a look around Ellis Island, we all queued up at the ferry terminal. My friends and I were at the back of the queue because we’d been the only ones who’d decided to go up the Statue of Liberty, which resulted in most of the group getting the first ferry back to Manhattan while we had to wait for the next one. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been on one of these ferries but they are unbelievably crowded (and the toilets are disgusting - avoid at all costs). Like if this thing had sunk we would all be fucked. Clearly health and safety is not a Thing in America because there is no way the volume of people on those vessels is safe, no way. 

There is most definitely not enough seats for everyone on board but our feet are killing us at this point so me, my friends and one of the other girls on the trip all end up sitting on the stairs. I can still see our accompanying teacher, Miss G, from my step and she could clearly see us. Or so I thought.

The stairs are near the back of the boat which means when the ferry docks so naturally, Miss G gets off before we even have a chance to move. But I’m not worried. Most of the group were on the first ferry and only a handful of pupils disembarked with her. Nine of us are still on board and there’s no way she’d leave without noticing such a large group of people missing.

OR SO I THOUGHT.

Cause when we return to dry land it immediately becomes clear that instead of waiting by the terminus to make sure the entire group is together like any sensible person would do, Miss G and the others have fucked off into the sunset and left us behind. We check all the nearby paths but nope! They’ve gone and left nine teenage girls alone in a park in one of the busiest cities of the world. Great!

I’m gonna use a timeline to explain how events progressed and I’m also changing names because I don’t have direct permission from those involved to put this on the internet.

11:30am EST: Miss G has most definitely left us. The squad concludes they’ll probably realise they’ve lost a whole quarter of the group and return soon enough. No one is too stressed and honestly I’m grateful to get a seat on a bench because my feet are on fire from all the walking.

11:40am EST: ten minutes and still nothing. Surprisingly, I’m not worried: the one good thing about anxiety disorders is that you gotta plan the shit outta everything. This being my first time away from home, I’ve decided to be extra cautious. I have full details of the hotel including address, phone number and email memorised. I have several hundred dollars in a bag stuck up my skirt. Most importantly, I have the moral high ground. We have done nothing wrong. This is not our mistake, nor is it down to us to sort it out. Me and my friend Rosa decide to kick back in the shade and keep hydrated till we see Miss G doing the walk of shame back to us.

12:10pm EST: stress is kicking in for some members of the group. Jessica is starting to get super-anxious and we’re all way too warm in this 30°C heat. Some of the girls wonder if we should head to the next stop on the itinerary (the WTC memorial) - it isn’t far from Battery Park and it’s most likely where one others are, but we immediately decide against that. If we move from this spot and the teachers come back they’ll use that to spin the blame on us, and we ain’t gonna let that happen. We can’t return to the hotel except as a last resort because we don’t have enough subway cards and we don’t know which station we originated from, so we’d need to get a cab and no one is keen on spending that much money.

The good news is that I also have the number of the teacher’s mobile memorised. The bad news is that we aren’t entirely sure whether the number needs an international code or not because who phones from their mobile when their abroad??? No one! In the end Ella, Melanie and I try to find a sympathetic-looking American to target for help. We find an old lady from Staten Island who tells us her life story - it was actually very interesting if time-consuming - but alas! She doesn’t know how phones work either! We’re back at square one.

Ella decides to bite the bullet, international fees be damned, and offers up her mobile as sacrifice. We text and call the teachers but to no avail. After several attempts I suggest we try ringing the hotel and seeing if they have any method of contacting the teachers but the receptionist turns out to be as helpful as a chocolate teapot.

This is probably not a shock but me and my friends were not what you would consider “popular” in high school. Most of the other kids on the trip either looked down on us or outright hated us. But thankfully there was one girl in the other group who Melanie was kinda friends with and was willing to help us, bless her. Ella texted explaining the situation, she texted back confirming they were at the WTC, telling us she’d explain everything to the teachers and send them our way… as soon as she found them herself.

Yep, that’s right. The teachers had in fact ditched the pupils in the other group at the Twin Towers memorial and had disappeared off themselves. They weren’t answering their phone and we had no idea where they were. Essentially, we were stuck waiting in this park until they decided to come back.

12:30pm EST: an hour into the abandonment with no end in sight. We’re severely questioning whether the teachers have actually noticed we’d gone, because surely this would be the first place they’d return to, but I do enjoy imagining them running around the city in a panic looking for us.

Obviously everyone within the group is handling the situation in very different ways. Let me do a brief recap:

Jessica is having a straight-up panic attack at being left alone without adult supervision in one of the busiest cities in the world. Her anxiety is exacerbated by what we’d later learn was heatstroke when she collapses in the middle of a Broadway show that night.

Holly is unsuccessfully trying to calm Jessica down.

Ella is pissed af, especially since she’s just spent a fortune trying to call for help. Genuinely she’s one of the funniest people I know but she is NOT afraid of confrontation and is very much preparing a rant she will deliver to whichever teacher comes to pick us up. 

Melanie is equally pissed but is overall staying levelheaded and trying to maintain order. 

Nathalie is ready to throw hands - she straight up HATES Mrs M and has been going on about it the entire trip thus far. At first I thought she was blowing things out or proportion but by the time I boarded the plane back home I realised that nope, Nathalie’s hatred was justified. She also turns out to have heatstroke and spends that evening throwing up.

Nicoletta’s method of coping is through humour. “Wouldn’t it be funny,” she says, “if we pretend Elise nearly got mugged when the teachers return to try and make them feel bad?” “No it would not be funny,” I reply, “because I can’t lie for shit and besides, I don’t wanna be the victim.” (In a shocking twist of events I WAS a victim of a scam in a separate incident two days later, but that’s a different story).

I think Isobel’s primary emotion at this point was “too warm to care” which was highkey relatable. 

Rosa is just plain hungry (we’ve missed lunch, after all). She can’t be arsed with the stress/arguing/ranting and the two of us decide to go over to a street vendor and purchase an overpriced Magnum each.

As for me, I was remarkably calm for someone with severe anxiety issues. The thought of confrontation was worrying me more than the actual sensation of being in my own personal recreation of Home Alone 2. I mean, none of this was our fault. We definitely had the moral high-ground here. I knew it, the teachers knew it, I knew the teachers knew and the teachers knew that I knew that they knew. The ball was very much in our court.

1pm EST: a whopping hour and a half after the arrival of our ferry, Miss G and Mrs M have finally thought to themselves “hmm, the group looks a bit small, maybe we’re missing a quarter of them?” and decided to have a gentle stroll back to Battery Park to test their hypothesis.

Not gonna lie, when I saw them coming my heart was in my fucking throat. Usually I love watching drama unfold but it’s less fun when you’re in the middle of it and you’re going to be spending all your time over the next few days with those involved. 

I braced myself for the worst but before any of us could utter a word, Mrs M shot right in there with “well that was a life lesson for you all, let’s move on!” It was the single worst thing she could’ve said because from that point we all knew that they knew they were in the wrong and were desperately trying to divert the blame. 

Some of the other girls made comments about the whole ordeal and conveyed that they were pissed off but I never spoke another word about it. I think that scared them, that I never really indicated my feelings, because Mrs M kept trying to make friends with me for the rest of the trip and it was kinda entertaining to watch her attempts to figure out whether I’d grass them in when I got home. 

In all honesty, I would’ve dropped the matter immediately if they had apologised straight away when they came back for us. But they never said sorry at any point, not even to Nathalie and Jessica when they ended up really ill as a result of being left in the park for so long. As the day went on it all got a big gaslight-y and they kept trying to spin the blame back on us, telling us we should’ve went and found them instead of waiting there, and that pissed me off even more because I had an abusive relative gaslight me a lot when I was a kid and I hate all that manipulative bullshit. But the real interesting thing is the fact they didn’t learn from their mistakes. I have so many entertaining stories from that trip due to the teachers leaving people behind or mismanaging things including four other occasions in the next three days where people got lost or left behind.

The best part is that although I’ve left, I still follow the school’s Facebook page that they use as their main mode of communication for parents. Apparently they’re doing another NYC/DC trip this year and I can’t help but wonder what would happen if I put a comment on the post announcing the trip’s departure wishing them a safe journey and hoping that they don’t lose anyone for two hours in middle of New York this time…

[mak23686]

Opinions about / views on The 100

Noone cares about what I post anyway, so that gives me the freedom to post whatever the hell I want.

If you feel the need to react to this post, feel free to do so. You can always point out flaws in my logic and give your own view.

If you just want to go “lol ur dump all heel bellmu bleik and pik petrun sehnts of ski krew and strehgt bois“, just don’t. Jacking off to Lexa’s death scene again is a more reasonable use of the calories you burn with that.

SEASON 1

Spearing Jasper was understandable. He cheered when they reached Mount Wheather. Combined with the superior technology (coming from the sky and the gun), it gave reason for the assumption that the 100 wanted to ally with the Mountain.

Was it over the top? Could the Grounders just have stepped out and confronted them? Sure, they could have. But I suppose decades of being at war with the Mountain Men gave them a “better save than sorry“ attitude in dealing with anyone possibly involved with the mountain.

(WARNING: ASSUMPTION FOLLOWING!) Also, based on the Grounder’s skill in stealth and use of weapons displayed in later episodes, they were rather lenient here. The kids didn’ bother being stealthy (since they didn’t know anyone was on the ground), so the Grounder scouts probably noticed and tracked them for a while before they reached the river to see what they were up to. They also probably could have killed the others, but they just attacked the one who crossed the river, and they didn’t use a bow or a throwing knife, they used a big ass spear for shock effect to send a clear “don’t cross this line” message.

Stringing Jasper up on the tree might have been a test of skill for the sky people. Would they be able to find their comrade? Would they be able to discover the traps? How are they dealing with the injury? The Grounders had Lincoln as a watcher near the camp. Gathering intel is important when dealing with an unknown force.

Also, no Grounder killed a sky person in the first five episodes. Up to then, it was two accidents (dropship landing), two acid fog deaths (Trina and Pascal), one mercy kill (Atom), one murder (Wells) and one suicide (Charlotte).

The first kills in the Grounder-Skaikru conflict were when the flares burnt down the grounder village (this can technically be blamed on Bellamy because he sabotaged every way to communicate with the Ark since the beginning and made the flares necessary, but whatever). Granted, it was an accident, but still, as Anya pointed out in the bridge meeting, it can be seen as an act of war.

Torturing Lincoln and the sky people firing the first shots at the bridge meeting certainly didn`t help either. And while at least a momentary truce may have been achievable, Anya had a point: Why agree to an alliance the Sky People could break as soon as they come down, especially since the kids have shown so much aggression up to now?

SEASON TWO

Absolute high time of the show. Great story with the Mountain Men as villains and Sky People and Grounders allying, hints of deeper Grounder culture (”My spirit will find the next Commander”) exploration of the value of “Good guys / Bad guys” in war. Bellamy was also at his high, courageous (the infiltration of Mount Wheather was his idea), smart (infiltration missions can’t be pulled off by a dumdum), at Clarke’s side during the irradiation ... honestly, I wouln’t have minded season two Bellamy and Clarke being together.

I don’t blame Kane for shocklashing Abby because it was a purely political move. She had broken the law (again) by freeing and arming prisoners. It wouldn’t have looked good to the general populace if one of the “elites“ had gone completely unpunished again. Maybe it was unnecessary to have them bang later, but well ... I’m neutral / slightly against when it comes to that ship.

Lexa haters sometimes say Lexa wouldn’t have needed to kill Finn. Seriously? Finn murdered 18 people, the call for his execution was literally the least morally questionable thing ever done on this show. When she first said it and they cut away all dramatically, I just thought “Yeah, reasonable request. Have him on a silver platter with a bow.”

The reaper cure proved Skaikru could be of worth to the alliance, but that still didn’t give the people of TonDC justice. Ask a lawyer if you’re allowed to kill a bunch of people if someone of your family made a medical breakthrough, I’m pretty sure the answer is no.

Finn used to be a great guy in season one, but then, he went crazy. Accepting his punishment and delivering himself to the Grounders gives him the status of “Fallen / Redeemed hero” in my book.

The battle of Mount Wheather should be considered from the Mountain Men’s point of view before screaming “Lexa evil, betrayal!”

The Mountain Men were facing annihilation. Their only hope was to break the alliance between Skaiku and the Grounders. Best way to do it? Take the motivation to fight from one party.

The Grounder Prisoners were worthless to them now that they had Skaikru bone marrow, so they could easily be traded. But do you honestly think they just went out and said “Hey Grounder queen whose people we’ve been bleeding dry for decades, here are your people, goodbye?” and Lexa just waived “Jus drein jus daun” and walked away? I don’t think so.

THEORY: They probably went out with guns held to the prisoners’ heads, making it clear that refusal of the offer would result in the death of every single one of them. How would that have sat with the Grounder warriors? It was clear from before (Arrival in TonDC / Quint) that the alliance wasn’t really popular with the Grounders, and if Lexa had sacrificed hundreds of them for the sake of 40 Skaikru prisoners? I very much doubt she would have survived that. Someone else (probably Nia / Ontari) would have seized power, and if the Grounders fighting at Mount Wheather wouldn’t have turned on Skaikru and slaughtered every single one of them along with the Mountain Men right away, the new leader certainly wouldn’t have been as open to an alliance as Lexa was. The death of the Grounder prisoners would likely have led to all-out war against Skaikru they wouldn’t have survived. Sure, the betrayal hurt, it led to another major emotional scarring for Clarke and Lexa never assumed the Mountain would fall and Skaikru would prosper, but as things are, the alternative would probably have been much worse.

The fact that it was never shown or explained from the Grounders’ POV could be seen as a sign the writers never cared about the Grounders as valid people.

SEASON THREE

First few episodes were good. Nia could have made an interesting antagonist. As badass as Lexa killing her was, she could have been more.

Pike ... don’t get me started on him. I get that he distrusts the Grounders after his experiences in Azgeda, but more than that, he invalidates the experiences the others have made that peace is possible (three months since Mount Wheather without an attack), is ignorant of the clan-based conflict-ridden nature of the coalition and simply considers all grounders the same and ignores the fact that an act can have different meanings in different cultures (comparing the Coalition Brand to branding cattle).

Pike was right there in the same room when Lexa ordered the Protection Squad to Arkadia. He could have brought up his issues with Kane and Kane would have brought it up with Lexa and then, arrangements to calm Pike’s fears could have been made (examples: more guards on Arkadia’s walls, ordering Grounder soldiers to lay down their weapons as soon as Arkadia comes into view, allowing Arkadia guards to shoot any Grounder who doesn’t). I wouldn’t be surprised if Pike planned his takeover from the second he saw Indra.

Kane also didn’t do good there. He and Abby were too confident that Kane would be the next chancellor, not considering the option that someone else could enter the election at the last minute.

If his “this land is ours now“ speech and the reaction to Monty pointing out there was a Grounder village right on the land Pike wanted to claim didn’t make you consider him a genocidal colonist ... watch them again.

Considering his part in defending Farm Station off screen during season 2, he could be called a fallen hero. During his on-screen time, he was an asshole.

You can explain Bellamy joining Pike with his grief over Gina (yay, plot device character!), but he still stayed loyal to him for an awfully long time. Gives me the impression that he simply latches on to the person with the most authority until they REALLY screw up. Bellamy is a good soldier, loyally following orders, but definitely not a leader.

I could (VERY grudgingly) accept the fact of Lexa’s death, but the timing was outright cruel and the manner was incredibly stupid. “Accidentally“ shooting her and then draw out her death scene painfully long with a nice shot of her still face and Clarke closing her eyes I mean what sadist wrote that?

Miller and Bryan do NOT even out Lexa’s death in terms of LGBT representation. Lexa was the most powerful person in the world, a badass warrior and her decisions were relevant to the plot for pretty much all her time on the show. Miller and Bryan are low-ranking soldiers with no authority of any kind and mostly just standing around next to someone.

“My spirit will find the next commander.“ in season two sounded like kind of a mythical thing. They still could have done that, with the AI making a mental evaluation who is most fit, but nope, just a bunch of kids killing each other. Make the Grounders more barbaric so people have less problems with them getting killed.

By the way, it’s very interesting that according to this post, Rhiannon Fish (Ontari) refused to wear Lexa’s cape when they originally wanted her to because she felt “it was like Lexa’s superhero cape”. Seems like the woman who played the bitch intent on killing Lexa and destroying her legacy (by murdering all the nightbloods Lexa raised) actually respects her more than the creators did.

The whole AI story was weird.

Letting Octavia and Pike hold the same room during the attack on the tower was pretty dumb. Let the girl fight alongside the guy who murdered her lover, what COULD go wrong there?

VERY satisfying to watch Octavia run Pike through in the end.

SEASON FOUR

Meh. Some interesting bits, but mostly ... meh.

Bellamy and his company blowing up the hydro generator to free the farm station survivors was a failure at third grade math.

People in Arkadia who will die in Praimfaya with the hydro generator: -400

People in Arkadia who will die in Praimfaia if we blow it up to free the slaves: +25

LET’S BLOW THAT SHIT UP!!!

Really, who in their right mind thinks that’s a good idea?

At least Bellamy admits he’s a dummy (”You have to use your head.” - “I’ve got you for that.”)

Ilian blowing up Arkadia seems a little bit like it was done to make that blunder irrelevant. Can’t have Bellamy (who broke the tie on the vote) be held accountable for a major screwup.

Also, what’s up with Kane (major advocate for the alliance up to then) telling Bellamy he just did what he thought he had to?

Loved the scene when Bellamy’s Rover got stuck in the mud and Bellamy was unable to save Peter and his father, mainly because of his “People die when YOU’RE in charge.“ line in season three. Sounded as if he would just save everyone. Well, you can’t.

Clarke is acting kinda welcoming of death the entire season. I mean, she didn’t put herself on the list (if it wasn’t for Bellamy), injected herself with experimental nightblood, tried to take the flame without knowing for sure if it will actually be compatible, volunteered to give up her suit for someone else although her nightblood is untested and actually accepted her death (“My fight is over”) before setting up the com system in the finale. I wouldn’t call her suicidal, but she doesn’t seem to mind the possibiltiy of dying if it saves others.

Can agree with Clarke, it’s admirable what Bellamy does for his sister. Family first.

Pointing guns at each other / almost killing each other is not romantic though. Neither is delivering someone to a ruler who’s likely to imprison or execute them.

Jasper killing himself after it was cut from season three because it was “too dark“ (BS) kinda seems like backpedaling.

Bellamy’s definitely gonna bang Raven or Echo (or both) during their time up in space though.

Season Five

What Clarke and Madi’s life was like on the ground during the last few years is the only interesting thing I can think of so far. How did they meet? How did they bond? How did they help each other through their emotional scarring (and I imagine Madi has a lot of that as well since she probably saw all of her friends and family die of radiation sickness).

Still thinking about how to watch that.

Possibilities I have come up with so far are:

a) Just read the episode summaries on wikipedia / The 100 wiki.

b) Get super-drunk every few episodes and binge them.

c) Watch the episodes one at a time and take a shot of 75% rum (strongest stuff I have in the house) whenever something stupid happens.

Not sure if option b or c will get me more drunk.

Feel free to add stuff / point out flaws. Just do so without getting personal.

[dirtyrottensocialist]

I Can't Keep Quiet: A Moral Divide

Political tensions in our country have been reaching an all-time high lately. I've been struggling to remain civil with those on the other side of the spectrum. I wanted to take a moment to collect and present my thoughts in a clear and coherent manner in hopes that at least one more person may truly understand why I fight so vehemently against the current administration.

Every single person deserves America's unalienable rights: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To me, nothing is more important than basic human rights for ALL people. I have trouble with our administration because it openly ignores the rights of certain people, based on their race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.

There's a quote that I think encompasses a lot of the disconnect. "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."

An example: All Lives Matter. This began in direct response to the Black Lives Matter movement, arguing that black people should not be singled out, and every life matters. But do they all really matter to you? Black people are literally being killed by police through no wrong-doing. None. They live their life in fear of militarized police. If all lives really mattered, there wouldn't need to be a movement for the outrage of black people being murdered, because you would already be outraged. Why weren't you outraged before people named the movement after black people? If all lives mattered to you, you'd be outraged at the people dying in the streets who can't afford a home because the rich hoard all the money and resources. If all lives mattered, you'd be outraged at the high percentage of trans people who are murdered every day due to irrational hate and fear of the unknown. You'd be outraged at the woman who dies because she can't afford the outrageous co-pay on her prescription medication, that is only there because the company that owns the drug decided to raise the price by 3000 percent, just because they can. You'd be outraged that the woman who had no resources to enable her to leave abuser was killed last night for refusing sex with him. You'd be calling your representatives yelling and screaming because you are so outraged that there are hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent on security for Trump tower, and billions on a border wall, but we "can't afford" to take in starving Syrian children fleeing their decimated homes in a war zone that we helped create. You'd be pushing back at every hateful word spewed by our acting president because you have paid attention enough to know that seeing the leader of the free world endorse such hate empowers people to act on that kind of hate. A gay man was beaten to the point of hospitalization the day after the election IN MY OWN HOMETOWN. Where was your outrage? Where was the protest for him? Were you waiting for a straight person to die? A Christian? A rich, white man? An innocent young girl in modest clothing? At what point do you actually give a shit about the lives that are being lost? So the next time you say "All Lives Matter," ask yourself if you really mean it.

This is why I get so mad. I see terrible things happening to people all across America due to the hateful rhetoric and policies of this administration. Everyone who voted for Trump has their own reasons for doing so, and many of them I can understand. What I can't understand is why you felt that those things outweigh human lives. Real people whose lives are either being lost, threatened, or devastated in some way. Somehow, that's not important enough to you. And I'm at a loss when I try to argue my point with you, because I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people. I can throw facts and statistics and personal stories at you until I'm blue in the face, but it doesn't matter if you don't care. I don't know how to find a common ground with someone who thinks that conservatism in policy is more important than my former middle school students being murdered for their faith or skin tone.

I've come to a clear moral divide with those who defend this administration's actions. I have no qualms with your politics. I don't have an issue with polite, civil discussions on the best way to increase employment and lower poverty rates. I lose all ability to converse calmly and respect your opinion when I have a problem with your sense of what is morally right and wrong. When your beliefs negate the struggles of human beings, you are no longer a friend with a difference of opinion, you are someone I cannot respect anymore. I can forgive you for your vote, but only if you actually regret the harm it is causing. If not, I'll see you on the other side of the line when the revolution comes. I will not back down. I will not let the rights of my fellow humans be trampled on. I can't keep quiet.

https://www.icantkeepquiet.org/thesong/