#me? NORMAL?? who’s that
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Kind of a continuation of this post, but I want to talk about fascism in Skulduggery Pleasant and how it’s handled, especially since it’s so relevant to our world at the moment (escapism through books? Never!) and because my interest has been captured by the way that this series clearly lays out impacting factors, where everything comes from, how it gets worse, and so on. Lot of stuff to handle, and I’m actually going to try and organize this beforehand instead of just vomiting words into my phone. I’ll also give you all the text cut of mercy.
I might have mentioned this before, but phase 2 (and by the looks of it, phase 3) depict and focus on fascism within their societies. There are several examples of this in phase 2 alone.
For example, Mevolent is introduced back in Kingdom of the Wicked, but the reality of living in a society ruled by him is most properly shown in Seasons of War. His society seems almost perfect for the sorcerers that live within it, but that’s only because those who didn’t fit the mold perfectly were killed. He has thought police and is personally able to track what his subjects are thinking about. And, of course, the Leibniz sorcerers dehumanize, oppress, and enslave their mortals because it’s all they’ve ever been taught to do. This particular flavour of society is probably least reflected in our current society of all the examples that I’m going to talk about, so I’m not too stressed about this one.
There’s also Martin Flanery, the very unsubtle stand-in for Trump. I’m mid about him as a character, but I think the series did a good job showcasing the difference between Creed, who’s calm and calculated and takes advantage of his follower’s rage, and Flanery, who feels and acts upon his rage just as much as any of his followers, while also showing that Flanery is still a threat. His lack of calculation doesn’t make him an easier opponent to defeat, it just makes him more of a wild card. And his soldiers are very much a reflection of this as well. Flanery’s soldiers use Splashes to become stronger but often have roid rage as a result, and they constantly get into fights and kill each other, causing incredible collateral damage in the process. The cops who worked under Creed, on the other hand, tended to be a lot colder, sneakier, and all-around more strategic, reflecting the climate that they’re thriving in. This isn’t just limited to Flanery, but this series also does a really good job at depicting the sheer idolization that these literal fascists are regarded with by their subjects and how it effects others.
But enough of that, I’m now going to talk about the whole reason I decided to write this stupid thing: Roarhaven and sorcerer culture as a whole.
Roarhaven post LSoDM has a whole bunch of factors impacting it and it’s social development, but one of the more major ones is sorcerers finally being given a place to be themselves and develop their own culture as opposed to just adopting whatever the mortals are currently doing. Sorcerers didn’t really have much of an individual culture for hundreds and hundreds of years because they intentionally repressed themselves so that mortals wouldn’t find out about them and possibly try to fight them. There was some slight amount of culture in places like when Roarhaven was a tiny village or those streets that are entirely owned by sorcerers, but those places were often bitter and in poverty in order to make themselves go under the radar, and so would only have offered comfort to certain kinds of sorcerers who just want others that they feel understand them.
But although the Sanctuaries may agree that silence and repression of diversity is the correct way to go about their lives, it’s extremely clear that there are many sorcerers who disagree with that (see Mevolent and his followers) and it’s clear that the Sanctuaries never bothered to stamp these disagreers out entirely as Mevolent did to his, only punishing them if they tried to reveal themselves to the mortals. This left these people alive to spread their ideologies to others.
And as I said earlier, the war that covered nearly the entire planet and was somehow kept from mortals for hundreds of years is also a huge factor for sorcerers. Between that and the inter-Sanctuary war, nearly the entire sorcerer population is a war veteran who was stood witness to or even committed absolutely sickening acts that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. They have nearly nothing resembling actual functional therapy and PTSD is probably incredibly common among the population. The Corrival kids, the ones too young to have been in war, have had to grow up in these environments and being raised by these people, and we see so clearly in phase 2 just how much generational trauma impacts people and ruins uncountable numbers of lives. Sorcerers also pretty much never die of old age. A select few of them live to be old, yes, but even they always die violently. There is no peaceful or happy ending for sorcerers, their lives are dark from the beginning through to the end, even to the point where the knowledge that they’re going to die acts as a comfort instead of a curse.
The sorcerers have also watched mortals commit countless genocides and acts of horrific discrimination and destruction and have been unable to do anything about it due to this idea enforced by their governments that they cannot interfere with the affairs of mortals, and that the mortals must simply learn to be better on their own. Hell, a lot of sorcerers have probably been directly impacted by these genocides, and their friends were probably tormented by the fact that they could do nothing about it. And due to their lack of culture and overall opportunity to do these things over the years because of the war, many of the sorcerers (especially the students who weren’t soldiers) start to feel just a little too good about themselves and their people, pointing out that they’ve never done things like that while failing to realize that the reason they’ve never really done that is because they’ve never been given an opportunity to do so.
And of course in modern times, there are issues like climate change, impending war, and increasing discrimination that sorcerers still aren’t allowed to do anything about despite living in the same world and still being impacted by, leading to a sort of “I wonder if things would be better if we were in charge”, as discussed often by Corrival kids and sometimes the Sanctuary workers. They’ve all heard of Dimension X of course, but those who don’t straight up agree with what Mevolent was doing either justify the thought by claiming that they’ve seen his mistakes and could do it better (introspection, anyone?) or, in the case of people like Valkyrie, just shake off the thought and tell themselves that it would never work out in practice.
And how sorcerers view mortals, even the supposedly good sorcerers, is also an important thing to consider here. There are, of course, sorcerers like Nefarian who have a cartoon villain view on mortals and think of them as little more than cattle, but there are more nuanced ways of thinking about mortals that are still not actually that great. In HBL, Ghastly talks about how he’s worse than mortals because he’s been given this gift that elevates him to some status above them, and yet also chooses to compete in wars for seemingly no end. And that’s the thing, this way that he subtly thinks of mortals as simple creatures who don’t understand the glory of the world as he does, who’s actions are understandable because how could they ever know better?
I also think that Valkyrie’s perception of mortals is fascinating because of how we get to see it evolves over time. When Val is fourteen or so, she actively rejects the term “mortal” because she sees it as dehumanizing and elevating of the sorcerers to a higher status. But as she grows older and becomes more attached to sorcerer society as opposed to mortal society, she stops complaining about the term and begins to adopt that mindset that so many other sorcerers have of almost being a shepherd. Instead of protecting mortals for the sake of keeping other people safe, it sometimes feels more like a duty to keeping the livestock alive more than anything else, and she actively refers to mortals as bumbling fools who get themselves killed unnecessarily in HBL.
Now, this is where Roarhaven as a city actually starts to come into play. After all, it lends sorcerers an entire city away from the prying eyes of mortals, and there’s nothing that actually makes them go back to interact with them. They can just live in the city forever and have all the resources they need. But spending so long away from and never interacting with the mortals they’re supposed to protect leads to disconnection with them from the sorcerers. The sorcerers see their city as cleaner, nicer, more organized, and overall better than anything the mortals could possibly create. Sorcerers live longer lives, are more open-minded, are stronger and capable of doing more, and so they must be better than those foolish mortals who become more close-minded as they get older.
And of course the Sanctuary is supposed to disagree with this sentiment (emphasis on supposed), but it doesn’t really matter because the Faceless Ones worshipers who have been saying this for hundreds of years and haven’t been stamped out by the government get to spread this idea around to their fellow citizens, who refuse to go back and actually reconnect with the mortals. It’s like how fast transphobia spreads among those who don’t actually know any trans people; the lack of ability to disprove the information and ideas you are being given causes them to become real to you.
And now for the children, who have less life experience and even less memories of mortals than the adults do. The students are easy to leave imprints on, and we’ve already seen how even the best intentioned kids express some anti-mortal sentiments. They know that their world is dying and it’s the mortals faults. They’ve grown up in this world being told over and over that they are better and wiser than mortals, and have been taught by their parents and by each other to view mortals as mayflies. Nothing more than insects. Even people like Omen wondered if maybe things would be better if they simply took over. Quietly took the world off the mortal government’s hands and into their own, where their everlasting wisdom can lead them to a better future. Because the kids don’t remember what the war was like, and it leads them to be disconnected from their parents. And that leads them to find affirmation among each other instead, at a boarding school where they almost never see their families and where even the teachers will indulge in anti-mortal sentiments. It’s such an easy rabbit hole for them to fall into, especially since Roarhaven hasn’t developed any sort of system to keep the kids up to date with the world and politics outside of Roarhaven, and so they just learn from each other.
And the reason that Roarhaven’s government isn’t able to do much about the children turning towards fascism is because the government kind of sucks. They have this idea that they don’t need things like lawyers because they have mind-readers and lawyers are a measly mortal invention while failing to consider the fact that lawyers exist to make sure that rights are being followed. Except that I’m not actually sure that the sorcerers have anything like rights outside of loosely following what mortals have, since police brutality seems incredibly common and the cops seem allowed to just do whatever they please. They also have nothing like a democratic system and their top governors can be easily put under influence by someone with money (e.g. China and Damocles).
There’s definitely more I could say to point this out, but I think it’s already clear enough (hell, it’s even discussed in the series itself) that the Sanctuary’s current government system is corrupt, outdated, and leaves room for dictators and fascists to take over and for the people to continue harming each other with no end in sight and needs to be replaced with something that would allow sorcerers as a whole to grow from the trauma that has brought them ruin for hundreds of years and maybe even finally help to create a better world for everyone.
#hey where’s that meme from its always sunny with that guy and the conspiracy board#I am so sorry for writing this lmao#not checked for spelling I’ll do it later#surely this could have been worded better in some places. so sorry if I say something stupid by accident#skulduggery pleasant#i am once again skulduggeryposting#me? NORMAL?? who’s that#I need to check how many words this is#TWO THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED SIXTY WORDS YOU GUYS#I AM SO. FUCKING. NORMAL
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i say i like tragedies and everyone’s all like ‘why do you like sad stories? are you depressed?’ and never ‘how was the catharsis? was the catharsis fun?’
#i don’t know how to explain this to normal people 😭😭#for the record my coworkers didn’t directly question me on this#but i think i have vastly overestimated the amount of the population who is aware of like. Films.#NOT claiming that i have seen a lot - but i’ve mentioned three *REALLY* well-known films in the past four days#and got blank stares each time#the one of them was a REALLY good reference too… someday my top-notch association skills will be recognized#my first act as Mansion Acquaintance of the [redacted] Director will be to force everyone to watch a 40s romcom i didn’t even like#i’m getting off the point#the POINT is that It’s About The Catharsis
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One of my favourite mundane weirdnesses about Edinburgh is that we set the big clock visible approaching the station to be 3 minutes fast to make sure people are on time for their trains. My Favourite mundane weirdness of Edinburgh is that we check this by firing a cannon.
#im so used to it that genuinely hand on heart sudden loud bangs just make me hungry now#everyone that lives here is like. yeah lunchtime cannon thats normal. everyone who doesnt is so bewildered by it. i love it.
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Dungeon Meshi, or as I like to call it, Marcille's-increasingly-difficult-to-ignore-revelations-that-her-endless-devotion-to-Falin-may-in-fact-be-more-rooted-in-lesbianism-than-she-originally-thought
#dungeon meshi#delicious in dungeon#dungeon meshi spoilers#delicious in dungeon spoilers#dunmeshi#dunmeshi spoilers#farcille#marcille donato#falin touden#falin x marcille#let's go lesbians let's gooooooo!!!!#listen I fully respect those who ship farcille starting from their school days it is very good#but I find it FAR funnier to think that Marcille does not realize her feelings are super not-platonic actually until WAY late lmao#let's pretend i can draw#I. genuinely don't know if this needs a mature label or any cws or not. I never draw anything that normally toes that territory lmaoooo#tumblr please don't get mad at me if I tagged this wrong!!! T_T
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(looks at upcoming card releases)
I'm in danger :)
#art#twisted wonderland#twisted wonderland spoilers#stage in playful land#stage in playfulland#smoking#my favorite horrible crime guys are back!!!!#(my hot take is that glomas had a better story but these goobers were just SO fun)#(they should be allowed to kidnap and murder(?) at least a few dozen people. as a treat.)#man i knew there was probably going to be a fellow card and yet i still did a bad job of saving my keys#and there's this year's halloween to think about too!#normally i try to avoid leaks and spoilers but i did accidentally see some stuff and if it's real then holy SHIT#on the other hand fellow attacks by basically throwing gidel at people and i desperately need this on my team#regardless of whether or not the card is actually any good#(if they change the animation to remove gidel i am going to RIOT it needs to be either exactly the same or EVEN SILLIER)#actually it would be hilarious if their stats were terrible. just the worst. and yet...#grown man and his kid with a hammer vs a bunch of teen wizards who can shoot fire#the results may shock you#(if they do the same duos-with-the-last-release as they have been with the staff cards then i will absolutely lose it)#(please twst. it would so useless to me but SO funny)#fellow: it's showtime rollo! :)#rollo: who are you
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AU where Mostro Lounge launches it as an official sporting event, because Azul smelled the business opportunity (featuring @raven-at-the-writing-desk's Miss Raven with Jade)
(Continuation of the book 4 mystery)
Bonus of the nefarious opportunistic octopus:
#twisted wonderland#twst#my art#floyd leech#jade leech#azul ashengrotto#twst yuu#twst mc#oc#shiokawa mayu#floyd leech x yuu#floydmayu#ace and deuce bet on different players just to cover their bases#you can guess who picks who#grims on the shore with them#go go yuu go get that prize money#you have 1 cat mouth at home to feed#im trying so hard to resist pulling for mermaid fin floyd#bc jamils bday is coming up soon#i dont pull floyd normally but that groovy is so good#i put 1 ten pull in and got 3 jamils in it so im like#alright ALRIGHT ill stop#hes mad at me...
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Don't ask how it got into his room
#listen my comics don't have to make sense OR have good craftsmanship. they just have to be stupid#in the daytime i'm Ms. K. just a normal kindergarten assistant teacher who tells her kinders not to scribble scrabble when they draw#but there's something about me that they don't know yet. because i have a secret. i scribble scrabble when i draw all.the time#мой пост#мой рисунок#london special#london special spoilers#miraculous ladybug#adrien agreste#miraculous#ml#ml comic#real talk though every time i post i apologize for it being so messy. but do i ever change? no. I'm like your toxic ex
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it's so funny how da2 is widely considered to be the disgrace of da games and was also made like in a year or something but it still managed to create one of the most popular characters in the franchise. varric literally became da's in-game official narrator. anders has a wikipedia page with a controversy part highlighted. everyone is talking about solas now and for a good reason but his importance to the lore & plot is literally off the charts and he's also a god. fenris made people go crazy like that while being just a guy from a side optional quest you can accidentally skip
#im not dunking on solas but please. this is so funny to me#there are people who never met fenris. it's such a wild idea to me and im not even a fenhawke girlie. i just like him a normal amount#kirkwall squad you will always be famous. quite literally#miss them every day. my little freaks. my silly buddies.#dragon age
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i love normal guys doomed by the narrative
#either that or hilariously dysfunctional or both#tf one#orion pax#d 16#megop#megatron#optimus prime#my art#saw one post pointing out in the trailer that a like5 frame shot of megatrons cannon that was snuck between their mahoushoujo type transfor#mations and like.messed up deeply messed up u see how goofy best friends orion and megsy are theyre just silly guys but in every telling of#their story they always end up enemies ok like in a meta multiverse hopping way think about it.like oh my god prewar tfp megop was already j#juicy and earthspark divorced-remarried megop is like.RGHFH tf one is going to destroy me bc this is what they had Before do u get me#before the war before they fell apart before friends became enemies and hands were stained before the beginning of the end im so so normal#like ok.this silly tight goofy buddy dynamic thats shown in tf one so far is.is what they had before. its what they could have kept if only#if only things turned out differently. but in every world optimus prime and megatron end up leading opposite sides of the bloodiest war ever#ok.its a universal fact and everyone who knows any transformers knows this BUT THE CHARACTERS DONT THEYRE POWERLESS TO PREVENT IT#ill clean up these tags in the morning but like im so.so normal about fictional robot guys#anyway i was intending to draw a background for this but i got lazy and also spent too long on the hands!!!!so whatever
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the baldur's gate 3 experience when you accidentally trigger an unintentional romance because you thought you were just being a really supportive friend
#rbs turned off bc ppl kept being annoying. be normal abt this game or die by my sword.#baldur's gate 3#bg3#shoutout to anyone who had to turn down more than one companion & they got really sad abt it#EDIT: this was always about karlach for me. went to talk to her & was met with the 'i want to be with gale' option#without ever triggering a romance scene bc i hugged her like any regular friend would
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I can't stop thinking about the relationship between Jon and Helen as perhaps one of the most important ones in the entire show. They are narrative parallels for each other, and they both know it. They've both known it from the very start!
Helen walks into the Archives, paranoid, unsure of who to trust, and Jon sees himself in her. And he thinks "If i can help her, maybe there's hope for me too." Then he can't save her. The next time they meet, she's a monster. They're both monsters. There was never any other way their stories could have gone, their fates entwined from the very start.
And Helen answers his original thought with one of her own: "Maybe if we can help each other, there's hope for us both." But Jon looks at her and sees everything that he fears becoming, and so he turns her away, and refuses to accept that their stories are still one and the same.
Helen went to the last person who was ever kind to her, the only person who both knew her as a human and had the context to understand what she'd become, and he hated her. He hated her because he liked Helen, and told her that she couldn't be Helen.
So she stopped trying to be Helen, and embraced being a monster. Reveled in it even. Then Jon wakes up from a six month coma, more monster than person, and tries so hard to cling to the things that mattered to him when he was human. Even with no support, even with the entire archives staff against him, he chooses humanity and compassion over and over again.
And this is a direct threat to Helen's world view. Their stories are entwined. If Jon can continue to be a person even after everything he's been through, then she could have clung to her humanity too, if only she'd tried a little harder. And that terrifies her! She wants to conceptualize herself as someone who was completely overwhelmed by forces beyond her control, who never had a choice but to become a monster. She want's to be an innocent victim. But Jon argues with his actions that they'd both had choices.
And, Jon, in turn, holds out hope that she might make better choices until the very end.
This is the conflict between them for all of season 4 and 5. Jon wants to prove that they can both be decent people, and Helen wants to prove that they were never going to be anything but monsters. This is why she's so devoted to trying to goad Jon into enjoying his newfound godhood. She knows that they are the same, and wants that to mean that he has a spark of evil inside of him, and not that she was always capable of doing good.
When Jon kills her, she loses her life, but wins the argument. Helen is nothing but a dangerous monster who needs to be killed for the good of everyone, and in the moment he decides that, Jon dooms himself to the same fate. Their stories are one and the same. "If i can help her, maybe there's hope for me too." he thought. But he couldn't help her, refused to, even, in the one moment when it actually mattered. And thus, there was never hope for him.
#the magnus archives#tma#jonathan sims#helen distortion#my rambles#i am not normal about them#helen did nothing wrong in her entire life#(aside from being a real estate agent)#Her story is just so tragic to me#She could have been better#she had choices#thats the entire point#but the choice was between a thankless attempt at retaining her personhood#with absolutely no support and no one who cared about her#or giving into the comforting lie that she never had a choice at all#She had choices and she made them but i don't think anyone could reasonably expect her to have done any better
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i've been looking everywhere for you!
#zelink#light dragon#zelda#link totk#totk#botw#loz#loz fanart#(not pictured) me sobbing at my ipad screen because i havent tried colouring/rendering anything in Literal Years#SO IF IT LOOKS ROUGH.... it is <3 i was born in a wet cardboard box all alone so whenyoure being mean to me thats who youre being mean to#anyways im very normal about them i promise.#my art
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When the unerringly loyal right-hand men are referred to as dogs in the canon text
#ouughg&gh;:$+hejs--#hoiwauwvhwgwauwawowowwawa#there is something about it. to me. okay. i don't know what it is but there is something.#this is about. gu xinzhi. s7 bdubs. s9 bdubs. izzy hands. god find me more of these men ill be So normal about them.#it's also ONE thing if the peopel who call them that are the mocking teasing group its ANOTHER if the one who calls for them#is the one they're unfailingly loyal to OH GOD#GRRRRRRHRHRGRHEGRGERRRRR
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i think every queer (whether they've realized it already or not) kid should have to go through an emo phase, let's force them to listen to nu-metal while they skip school to cry about a broken heart
#i swear this isn't personal experience or anything#surely not#i was very normal and not dramatic at 12 years old#me and my bestie definitely weren't the scary emos who just talked to everyone about death all the time
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sometimes u just gotta. mini itfs. to cope.
#my art#jujutsu kaisen#jjk#jjk fanart#jujutsu kaisen fanart#itafushi#fushiita#yuji itadori#fushiguro megumi#megumi fushiguro#jjk spoilers#jjk manga spoilers#i sketched the pose intending to draw them normally but then i thought. nah i wanna draw real Chunky shapes today im keeping them small#i dont usually break out the chibi style fr anything other than .scribbles#u know canon is in a state when tumblr user hinamie starts drawing chibi#i dont even really know if calling this chibi is accurate tbh . its chibi compared 2 what i normally draw but still#who cares honestly . they r Squishy and drawing them made me happy
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l only recently got into this damn podcast
#my art#artists on tumblr#the magnus archives#jonathan sims#🫵🏼 the one who caused me to “oh I'll just try one episode and see if I like it” I SEE YOU. 🫵🏼🫵🏼#trying my damn hardest to shut up about it around normal people
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