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anarchy2021 · 3 years ago

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PSA Day! (Rp etiquette)

{ID: A person standing next to a flipchart. They're thin, and have medium-length brown hair, pale skin, and dark brown ears. The ears are angled horizontally. They're wearing thin-rimmed glasses, and their expression reads as confident. Their hair is partially tied up in a bun. They also have a long tail the same brown as their ears, with brown fur the same color as their hair on the end. They're wearing black trousers, a black waistcoat with a white shirt underneath. Additionally, a black overcoat with gold edges is draped over their shoulders. The inner lining of the overcoat is red, and partially visible behind the person. They have their right hand on their hip, and with their left hand, they're holding a stick up to the flipchart, which reads "RP 101 :)". The 101 is underlined. END ID.}

Greetings! You may not recognize me (unless you were watching the debate perhaps, then, sup) as I admit I’ve been a bit…. Behind the scenes as it were (as secretary of VOID there is a lot of looking at the void, usual routine for me mhm mhm). Regardless, I’m Days (or Nights, either or) and for today’s PSA I’m here (along with some words from our recently freed from totally-not-prison president, Graphite, at a later date) to talk to you about roleplay! More specifically, rp etiquette and terms and how that relates to the DSMP and how it should be talked about.

Now now, you might be wondering “oh but what is your experience?” Glad you asked! I’m a long term text rper with over 5 years of experience- and my main avenues of rp are rps similar in structure to that of the DSMP- long term improv driven sandboxes that also have important events planned ahead of time in some regard but are often player driven most of the time. Now, let’s get into it!

Head writers/admins

Let’s start off with a pretty hot topic regarding the server, which is the existence of a ‘head writer’ (usually in reference to Mr. Soot). Now, mainy take this as meaning quite literally a writer- like in a show, but, with what information we have I think it’s safe to say he’s not really that and more along the lines of an rp admin/head. The admin’s main purpose is to keep things structured and organized, as well as putting together the events they’re in charge of. This is pretty much how everyone treats the man anyways, BUT, while an admin is in charge of a lot they do NOT have the final say over everything, particularly in regards to the characters and their players.

Players in an rp for the most part have full control over their characters (within reason and the confines of the rp setting) and an admin enforcing their will onto a character (such as enforcing certain backstory choices that don’t seem particularly wanted. For example, the fridge with c!Phil) is often frowned upon unless there is a good reason for it and discussed with the rper.

It is also notable that just because there is an admin, that doesn’t mean they’re the sole writer/organizer/etc. It is not at all uncommon for specific subplots and or other important events to be headed by players involved in it in this type of rp. This can be seen in practice with how the Eggpire plotline was headed by BBH and the prison plotline was mainly written by Dream and Tommy.

Summary:

- head writer/admins do not and should not control everything

- organise and structure events

- players might admin their own smaller plots within a rp

Narrative consequences

Now, another hot topic- especially in regards to character discourse (my abhorred personally). Narrative consequences. These are generally referred to when someone thinks a character is not getting the consequences for their actions in the story that they should, or (more rarely in my experience) when they feel a character is being punished too hard for their actions. While this is an understandable feeling to have, at the end of the day narrative consequences just aren’t much of a thing in roleplay, at least not to the same extent as a book or tv show.

This is for one simple reason, consequences rely on the character’s actions and how they respond to others around them, if a character does not feel like it’s fit to react or if it angers their character- it is 100% within their right to respond accordingly.

However, there is also an argument that can be made if a character responds to something in a way that doesn’t align with a character’s usual actions. For a personal example, one time in a rp I was playing a character who was intervening when another character was being hurt, however, my character was met with scorn from being somewhat aggressive regarding it- I felt that this was unfair as none of these character showed the same scrutiny to characters who did worse things, and none of these characters had been established as hypocrites.

This grudge lasted the entire rp until my character died. This is a point where believing that the consequences to a character are unjust is more or less fair, but, a character simply not getting immediately smited or a character getting scorn is not automatically a point against the character, especially since an rper cannot reasonably make their fellow rpers react a certain way.

Summary:

- narrative consequences are not the same in RP as in other mediums

- can't force characters to react, or force players to react in a way they don't feel is fit

- but can critique RP if things feel unfairly ooc/inconsistent

Retcons

Next up, retcons. What is a retcon? It’s short for retroactive continuity, in essence it’s when in a piece of media something is changed retroactively- such as a character’s personality, how an event occurred, etc. for an outsider audience perspective retcons are often looked upon unfavorably, as it’s changing something already established which can cause friction among those attached to certain ideas, but in reality retcons are both a neutral concept and fairly normal to occur in rps.

Rps are (generally) not professional writing, they’re things made up on the fly with perhaps a base to work off of (and depending on the rp, not even that. However in the rps I’ve done we generally had character sheets and the like for backstories and all) and thus sometimes mistakes happen. One of the main causes for minor retcons is when details are confused or left out that would have realistically affected the situation or how characters would have responded to it, unless in severe cases these usually happen on the spot and don’t cause much of a fuss.

Major retcons often fall along the lines of players and how they choose to present their character. This is especially common when a player is using a character for the first time or even if they’re just new to an rp in general, sometimes as we rp we simply decide to take things in a new direction and sometimes that direction may cause things already established to be retconned, even if not outright stated.

A good example of this is the enderwalk with c!Ranboo, the enderwalk as it was first introduced is very different than it is portrayed now, likely as a result of Ranboo taking a new direction with his character since then. More widespread retcons may happen if people are unhappy with a certain plot thread, in this case an example would be the canon status of SBI, Wilbur used to push it but Techno (and later Phil) didn’t want it to be canon, so anything about it previously said has been soundly retconned.

In my own case character retcons very often happen to me when I first use an oc, as the character takes a different shape than what I put on the paper in practice, even sometimes within the same rp (one of my first ocs was practically unrecognizable as the same character in the beginning of an rp as compared to even just a few weeks later).

So, retcons are fine and normal to occur, but, like I said- they’re neutral. A retcon can very well be done poorly and cause problems. This is mainly in issue with retcons made that affect highly established and built upon aspects without discussion with all those who’d be effected, this can cause confusion, plot holes and cause characters to be in a weird limbo if they don’t know how to have their character act without whatever was retconned. Major retcons need to be discussed in order to prevent these problems, and in some cases should be avoided entirely- instead it being better to work for a compromise and rework events rather than removing them.

Summary:

- retcons are normal and neutral

- small retcons happened frequently in RP to help keep things going in an improv heavy medium. Usually unnoticeable

- large retcons tend to have with new players, or if the story is taking a new direction.

- large retcons require a lot of communication, and sometimes whould be avoided, instead working to compromise and rework the direction of the RP

Metagaming and godmodding

Metagaming and godmodding are two very important terms to know for rp etiquette and if you’ve done any rping you’ve probably seen these words thrown around in rules lists and such already. These are both ultimately negative things that should be avoided at all costs. What are they? Metagaming is when you use information that you know OOC and use it IC even though your character should not have that information. Godmodding is when a character is taken over by another person for one reason or another against the player’s will- such as having a character react to something without letting the actual rper do it.

The former is a big issue when it comes to discussion of the DSMP and how people interact with it, mainly in the chat and donos. When you are trying to get a character to react to information that they shouldn’t have you are trying to get them to metagame, which is heavily frowned upon in an RP. This is also important to note in discussion, a character not responding to certain important events is not a mark against them if the character has no way of even knowing what was going on, or would not reasonably respond to it with the information they have.

Summary:

- both frowned upon

- god modding is taking over someone elses character

- metagaming is using out of character information to do in character acting

- Meta gaming is relevant to DSMP particular in how it relates to donos and chats. Don't encourage meta-gaming

All of these factors are important to consider when discussing the DSMP and it’s narrative, it’s not going to function the same as other forms of media nor should it- as once you go in that direction you’re competing with the big boys over at tv and at that point things would fall apart. Improv and it’s unique variables is what makes the DSMP, and anything else like it, special and interesting to follow!

#dsmp #dreamsmp #rp etiquette #mcytblr elections #anarchy2021 #mcytblr election 2021 #PSA day #art by Days #long post #editted by zaph :]#first post from yours truly #(thats days not zaph... i post a lot i will not shut up <3)

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pumpkinpaix · 5 years ago

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HI! I'm new to the MDZS fandom and I fell in love with Suibian, but you don't see it that much. I seen somewhere that it would burn out a weaker core and I cried cause I wanted to see that, and as far as I know it doesn't happen anywhere. I'm wondering if you could tell me anything and everything you know about Suibian. I'm starving for anything about it

hi anon! ahahah, it’s always a dangerous thing to ask me about “anything and everything” on a topic because I usually have too many thoughts, most of which are unorganized. but! if you’re interested in that, then here we go!

First, re: your comment about Suibian burning out a weaker core: I am not aware of this theory (or is it something from an interview?? if someone knows, please say so!), but if it brings you joy, then it’s certainly an interesting one to consider! Unfortunately, I don’t have much more to say on it because I’m unfamiliar with it, but I do have quite a lot to say on some other Suibian concepts!

ask and ye shall receive (a very jumbled heap of thoughts as i spiral further and further out of control):

[all rough translations are mine, and thus all mistakes are mine. I am using the version of the novel that is available on luoxia because I can’t be bothered to go flipping through my print edition ahaha.]

the questions about Suibian that interest me the most are why it sealed, when it sealed, when Wei Wuxian began to wield it again, and what that might all mean. I’m going to be talking about novel, CQL, and audio drama canon all together, because I think looking at each canon alone and in combination can raise a lot of very different points!! (I have not watched the donghua or read the manhua yet, so forgive me, I have nothing to say about them. /o\)

So! the one piece of information that we’re given consistently throughout all three of the canons is that Suibian was sealed after Wei Wuxian’s death and that no one but Wei Wuxian himself (and Jiang Cheng, by proxy) could draw it from its sheathe. Thus, Wei Wuxian’s identity is revealed and the golden core swap comes to light. Wei Wuxian is surprised by this, and asks Lan Wangji, “Did it really seal itself?” (novel, chapter 63; CQL, ep 42; audio drama, S2E15).

The novel and audio drama both include a line from Wei Wuxian that emphasizes Wei Wuxian’s surprise, implying that sword-sealing is very uncommon:

万中无一的大好事竟然让我给撞上了

Something incredible that happens less than once per ten thousand times, and I actually encountered it.

the irony, of course, is that this incredible thing is what ended up blowing his cover. rip Wei Wuxian.

but what I think gets really interesting is comparing different points at which Suibian sealed itself and what that might imply in conjunction with other information. Jin Guangyao says “shortly after” his death, but CQL includes a scene in episode 19 that implies that Suibian actually sealed itself much earlier.

[ID: Gif from episode 19 of the untamed drama. Lan Wangji attempts to draw Suibian after he and Jiang Cheng storm the Nightless City and retrieve their swords. He cannot pull it from the sheathe. /end ID]

(in case anyone is curious, it’s about 30 minutes in. I spent the effort to make the gif, so I might as well give you the timestamp lol)

this scene takes place during the period of time when Wei Wuxian is in the Mass Graves (aka the Burial Mounds) after Wen Chao cast him down and left him for dead, right near the beginning of Sunshot. I’m fairly certain it’s not mentioned in either the novel or the audio drama, so this is a CQL-only detail. (please correct me if I’m wrong; I get my canons muddled all the time //hides face)

CQL basically does nothing narratively with this scene other than giving us some sad shots of Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng (honestly, valid ;A;) but!! if we decide to accept this scene as our jumping off point, we can get to some interpretations about Wei Wuxian using information from the other canons!

take this exchange from chapter 57 of the novel (immediately prior to the massacre at lotus cove):

江澄道：“还不是又为咱们的剑的事去温家了。一想到我的三毒现在说不定被哪只温狗握在手里，真是……”

他面露嫌恶之色，魏无羡道：“可惜咱们的剑还不够灵，要是能自动封剑，那就谁也别想用了。”

江澄道：“你再修炼个八十年，说不定可以。”

Jiang Cheng said, “He’s gone to the Wen sect regarding our swords again, hasn’t he. Whenever I think that my Sandu might even now be in some Wen-dog’s hands, ugh…”

His face filled with loathing, Wei Wuxian said, “What a pity our swords don’t have enough spirit. If they could seal themselves, then no one could even think about using them.”

Jiang Cheng said, “If you kept cultivating for another eighty years, maybe.”

from the novel, it seems clear that sword-sealing is something that only happens when a person’s cultivation level is exceptionally high. if this is true, and we go with the CQL timeline of Suibian sealing itself long before Wei Wuxian’s death, it means that Wei Wuxian’s cultivation level wasn’t just high, it was leagues above pretty much anyone else when he was still a teenager. (In fact, Suibian had most likely already sealed by the time this conversation takes place.)

If we don’t go with CQL’s timeline, however, I think we could make a very different argument. It’s a bit of a reach, but I think it’s a lot of fun, if you’re willing to come with me on this journey!

Jin Guangyao says Suibian sealed itself “shortly after” Wei Wuxian’s death, but we don’t really have external confirmation of that. For all we know, someone only bothered to test it sometime after his death, and Suibian had been sealed for some indefinite amount of time. All we can say for sure is that by some point shortly after Wei Wuxian’s death, Suibian was already sealed and resisted being drawn by anyone who tried it.

We’re told over and over that one can only wield a spiritual sword effectively if you have a golden core/the spiritual energy to match it. Wei Wuxian stops carrying/using Suibian because he knows that in his hands, it will act as nothing more than an ordinary sword. His method of cultivation is no longer suitable for the sword. Suibian is tied to both Wei Wuxian’s soul and his golden core.

If sword-sealing only happens when the cultivator’s level is unbelievably high, then I think we can make the argument here that by the time of his death, Wei Wuxian’s core was likewise unbelievably strong – but Wei Wuxian is no longer the one developing his core. Jiang Cheng is.

I know it’s a ridiculous reach. To be clear, I don’t think the text actually intends this or supports this in any meaningful way, but I do think that it gives us some very tasty potential!! If Suibian sealed itself sometime after the core transfer (which, honestly, we wouldn’t know – after all, who’s been trying to draw Wei Wuxian’s sword?), but just if, I think we can plausibly make the argument that Jiang Cheng’s cultivation is truly extraordinary.

:DDDDDDDD

It’s fun right?? It’s a fun concept!!! Even if it’s nonsense, even if it’s not that deep, even if this was an unintentional coincidence, I think it would be interesting to look at this as being some kind of measure of Jiang Cheng’s accomplishments. On the flip side, I also think it’s very important thematically that Jiang Cheng’s value as a person has nothing to do with his cultivation, that he is, in fact, always second-best, but that doesn’t make him any less worthwhile or deserving of love. Maybe I’m just projecting lmao. Of course, being extraordinary doesn’t preclude him from still lagging behind Wei Wuxian–Wei Wuxian might have just been more extraordinary ahahah. We can have both!!

Now for a totally different thing! Interestingly, this conversation about cultivation levels and sword-sealing (the one with Jiang Cheng) also happens in the audio drama, S2E12 (about 15 minutes in, since I just checked), but Wei Wuxian adds an additional comment:

(don’t have the transcription of the original chinese, I’m just going to translate it as I hear it)

“But maybe you don’t need to cultivate to a certain level to have your sword seal itself. What if there were some other way?”

these two versions of the conversation actually imply pretty different things, I think! this addition opens the possibility to the audience that sword-sealing is possible even without an extraordinary level of cultivation, and I think lends credence to the idea that Suibian is just an unusually loyal sword, regardless of Wei Wuxian’s cultivation level. Whether that’s something inherent to Suibian’s “personality”, or whether this says something about how Wei Wuxian inspires loyalty wherever he goes, or whether it just speaks to the strength of their bond remains to be seen.

(obviously, this could imply any number of other things as well, but I find this to be the interpretation that makes me happiest.)

If we go with “Suibian seals itself after Wei Wuxian’s death” in this canon, I think this emphasizes the loyalty aspect with a touch of grief.

If we combine this with CQL and have “Suibian has been loyal since he was a teenager”, that also emphasizes the loyalty aspect – just in a different way.

Of course, doing meta combining unique details from different canons is largely pointless in terms of crafting any real “analysis”, so I’m mostly saying all of this because I enjoy the process of building the supercanon in my head that brings me the most joy! To summarize the varied interpretations I’ve brought up in this post:

CQL-only: Suibian sealed itself when Wei Wuxian was a teenager, at latest, by the time he was thrown into the Mass Graves.

Novel-only: Sword-sealing is very rare and achievable only through extraordinarily high cultivation. Shortly after Wei Wuxian’s death, Suibian is discovered to have sealed itself, so Wei Wuxian’s core, by the time of his death, was extraordinarily powerful.

Audio drama-only: Sword-sealing is considered very rare and achievable only through extraordinarily high cultivation, but might also be accomplished by other methods. Shortly after Wei Wuxian’s death, Suibian is discovered to have sealed itself. If Wei Wuxian’s core is not wildly and improbably powerful, this implies that Suibian has become an exceptionally loyal sword by the time of his death.

CQL/novel: Wei Wuxian was already incredibly powerful by the time he was a teenager.

CQL/audio drama: Suibian has been exceptionally loyal to Wei Wuxian since at least his teenage years.

Novel and audio drama-only have a much wider range of when Suibian could have sealed itself, as mentioned, so there are further variances within those interpretations.

there’s a lot of potential here!! with my personal feelings regarding the story, I like novel-only with Suibian sealing post-core transfer, audio drama-only with Suibian sealing post-Wei Wuxian’s death, or CQL/audio drama with Suibian sealing as a teenager pretty much all equally. I think the CQL/novel interpretation gets too close to casting Wei Wuxian as a hyper-special and innately noble individual in a way that undercuts the strength of his character arc, but that’s my opinion. (As an aside, this is actually one of my major complaints about CQL in general, independent from what I’m talking about here. But that is a topic for another day ahahaha. To be clear, I still love CQL very much, despite my many frustrations!)

As for what I think is the most “likely” to be the “right” interpretation (whatever that’s worth), I would probably say the one that emphasizes Suibian’s loyalty with Suibian sealing post-death, because I think it’s the most thematically cohesive and has the textual support to back it. (I think it’s a valid interpretation even using novel-only text; it’s just slightly less explicit without the additional comment from Wei Wuxian.)

A final detail:

We don’t get anything from either CQL or the novel that explicitly addresses when/if Wei Wuxian is able to wield Suibian again, but the audio drama’s rendition of the “Yunmeng” extra very subtly indicates that by the time that extra takes place, Wei Wuxian has cultivated a golden core and is carrying his sword once more. You only get it at a couple of moments, but Suibian sometimes clinks when Wei Wuxian moves or when he bumps into something. The two instances I can remember specifically are when Lan Wangji tosses the ring onto him (the ring hits Suibian), and when he’s rowing the little boat onto the lotus pond and the motion makes a sound. It’s!!! Extremely good!!! It makes my heart very full!!!!!

ANYWAYS, if all of my scattered rambling didn’t fill the Suibian-shaped hole in your heart, I would also like to recommend @zeldacw‘s wonderful WangQingSuiChen series of comics, featuring anthropomorphized versions of Wangji guqin, Chenqing, Suibian, and Bichen. I believe the most recent comic is here, and there are links to the rest of the comics in the post. If you just want her general tag for the AU (which is more than just the comics), it’s here!

If you have interest in listening to the audio drama yourself, you can purchase it through the MissEvan app (Mao’er FM). There are buying instructions linked in this post! If you need English subtitles, @suibiansubs is the group that does them. :)

I really can’t recommend the audio drama enough, tbh, it’s really really dear to my heart, and the team clearly worked so hard and cared so deeply for the story they were trying to tell. Consider this my regularly scheduled plug for the audio drama ahaha.

As always, my meta is my meta and if you don’t vibe with it, that’s chill! I change my opinions constantly (I think I changed them like three times in the course of writing this ahahaha), and I know some of my older meta has been making the rounds and every time I see it I think about all the ways my views have shifted since I wrote it rip. For this post moreso than usual, I want to emphasize that pretty much all of the meta included in this is meant to explore intriguing what-if possibilities, not for serious literary analysis purposes. I am aware that a lot of this is reaching/overinterpreting into implications that probably aren’t there. I just think they’re fun to consider!

so this was a mess, but I hope you or someone out there enjoyed it anon!!

(ko-fi, if you’re so moved)

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phantomnostalgist · 4 years ago

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Ethan Freeman Phantom interview

An interview with Ethan Freeman from about 1994 or 1995, printed in “Beneath the Mask” #8 (which I haven’t found my print copy of yet, but the interview was reproduced on our old POTO fan site).

Also of note about Ethan: at the time he was one of the two youngest actors to have played the Phantom - he and Anthony Warlow were both 28 or 29 when first cast in the role.

Are there any differences between London and Vienna - if so, what are they? The general tone of the production in Vienna was slightly more Operetta-like, probably due to the language, the sound of the translation and style of acting of some of the players. The tempo was also at some points quite different depending on who was conducting, and would undoubtedly feel strange to me now. The audience tended to be less tuned in to the humorous moments in the show in general, and some scenes like "Managers I & II" for example, simply run better and are more clever in English.

How did you get the role? I got the role of the Phantom after auditioning for Hal Prince and Gillian Lynne and the Viennese producer and musical staff. They appeared very excited about the audition. I'd sung "Music of the Night" which they praised in a friendly manner (Hal is always positive and encouraging), and they sent me off to learn the segment from the Final Lair "Order your fine horses... This is the choice. This is the point of no return!" When I came back the next day to do it (the Phantom candidates appeared by then to have been reduced to three) Hal said "OK Ethan I want you to scare me!" So I did the section with as much power and venom as I could muster (Id never seen the show - I think Id heard the record once or twice...) and after it was done, Hal just said "Great. You scared me!" and that was that really. Later that day they explained to Alexander Goebel and me what they would like and would we be willing to share, obviously with Alex, who was very well known, being the dominant of the two. So we split 5/2 which frequently ended up being 4/3 as the run went along.

How did you research the character? I read the novel finally, all the way through. Ruth Hale, my partner in "Cats" at the time, later to premiere as Mme Giry in the Hamburg production, gave me a copy as a present. I'd seen several of the films over the years so I knew there wasn't much to be mined from those - although Lon Chaney Snr did display some magnificent body language, and I've nicked at least one dramatic gesture from him. Principally though, I had several long meetings with Hal in New York to talk about the role and show. He instructed me to go watch Michael a few times then come back and talk some more. Crawford was magnificent, at the peak of his vocal power and still fairly fresh in the role and I was moved and impressed as I have not been since by a Phantom. (Though Dave Willetts, I must say, also made a huge impression the first time I saw him, for his power and well-delineated psychotic behaviour.) At first I thought boy, you've got your work cut out for you on all fronts. So, I would say my "research" of the role was principally based on my own discussions with Hal and also largely on my own thoughts and feelings. Obviously most of the physical manifestations of the role, make-up, costume, blocking, etc were predetermined so there wasn't much scope for change. To be honest, I feel some of the Phantoms I've seen tend, in an effort to be different, to stray from the basic line of the drama and weaken themselves as a result. Michael's acting was extreme, yet very clear and economical at the same time, and I also try to offer the audience a complicated and ambiguous character going through clear, unambiguous moments of his life - otherwise it's so easy for the audience not to "get" everything that's there - or to "get" things that aren't intended to be there at all.

How do you feel on stage? So varied in thought and feeling that I can't really give a concise answer. I feel quite differently now to how I felt 600 odd shows ago. I used to have to concentrate on staying concentrated - now it just happens. I know what to achieve and just try to let it happen. I'd say I'm both in and out of Erik at the same time and he in me.

Do you think it's based on a true story ie. did the Phantom exist? I doubt it - I haven't read this newer novel "Phantom" yet and don't intend to until I finish playing the part. However I've been to the Palais Garnier and in all senses of the word it is a 'phantastic' theatre, one which easily conjures up many stirring images - beautifully represented in the Phantom designs, I'd say!

What do you think of Erik? I wish he'd let me have a little more time to myself! Oh, I don't know. He's a sad, bitter, brilliant man. He has a great brain and can be a real bastard. I find him easy to understand - he's motivated by a terrible profound loneliness and has been forced to create his own universe which has its own laws. Anyone who has known some kind of loneliness or feeling of apartness when they were children or growing up can tune in to this crucial aspect of the Man, which is his great mythical attraction. He is so powerful, awesome, in control and yet so hurt and vulnerable. He must epitomise great beauty and great ugliness at war with each other, reason and insanity, God/Satan, Id/Ego battling it out. In the end, he learns about sacrifice, shows mercy and is redeemed by love - a great, archetypal Romantic drama - another reason why the story has always been so popular. I can't stand it when I see Erik played as a "nutter". Yes, he goes "crazy" a few times, but in general he is not insane in the pathological sense. I feel if he is played as a schizophrenic or a psychopath, the romantic ideal of the story is dashed, because both of those conditions would indicate a "determination" that makes any hope of redemption impossible, and would break with the "Romantic" style. He is very melancholy, angry, egocentric, neurotic perhaps, and goes off into rages of frustrated sexuality, but he is not insane. And I'll kill anyone who thinks otherwise!

What do you think happens to him at the end? That's our little secret! I think the different fan magazines have probably spent pages on that so I don't see I need to contribute. He goes!

Why do you think the show is so appealing? Some lovely songs, great orchestrations, a nice mixture of melodrama and light comedy, some stunning sets and a lot of good theatrical magic: and on the thematic side, many of the things I've mentioned before, which I suppose you could define as the archetypal Beauty and the Beast scenario which, if honestly portrayed, can tug the heartstrings of even the most urbane Japanese businessman.

What is your favourite role of those you've played? Obviously Phantom is the supreme role in my repertoire to date. I did however, really enjoy my stints in other Lloyd Webber shows as well. Che in "Evita" was very cool to play and Gus/Growltiger, while exceedingly 'uncool' thanks to the heavy knitted costumes, was a joy to play, despite being totally knackering, and one that I was surely born to do. I really enjoyed doing Hajj, the Poet in "Kismet" with the BBC Radio 2 last year, working with the composers, and would love to have the chance to do that again on stage someday.

What role would you like to play? I'd quite hope to have a go at Sweeney Todd somewhere down the line and would still like to play the Celebrant in "Bernstein's Mass" at some point. (I've nearly done that a couple of times.) Add to that a heap of great operatic roles I'd love to do but probably never will and whatever new, unknown roles lie lurking up ahead. We'll wait and see!

End note from me - Ethan’s wrong about schizophrenia, but hey, this interview was 25 years ago and actors can’t be expected to be experts on mental illness. But I really love this interview, the depth he goes into, and how his sense of humour comes through too.

#the phantom of the opera #phantom of the opera #ethan freeman #classic phantoms #poto #poto legends #phantom legends

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cowboyified · 4 years ago

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Below are some WIPs I’m releasing into the wild. They were all written at different times over the past two years so any mistakes/cliches you can blame on past June, I don’t know them.

Go, be free.

This first one I think is the one I’m most fond of. I had such a vision for it; bottlecaps in trees, river swimming, making out against the fridge, all that good stuff you get with weecest.

The summer Sam is seventeen they stay in one place for long enough Dean starts referring to it as ‘home’.

It’s an old farmhouse, miles from any other structure, bar an outhouse and hay shed. There’s a porch running the length of the front and back, the wooden boards pulled up from their nails, wavy with the weather. Weatherboard paint peeling, wallpaper inside torn and missing in most places.

They’re squatting, technically. The property owned by a family saved by hunters once, friends of friends of Bobby’s, too distraught by what they’d witnessed to raise their kids on cursed land. Dean had told Sam that Dad had been told by Bobby that had been told by Pastor Jim that it was chupacabras. A whole pack of ‘em, feeding off the lambs in the back paddock, tried to take a bite out of the baby girl and Sam had said, “As if man, those things are tiny, I’ve seen pictures, you could kick one and it would limp away like a fucking chihuaha, you scared of chihuahas, huh, Dean?” But Sam still hikes his sheet up under his chin when he hears scuffling under their window between sleep.

There’s remnants of the house’s past inhabitants still scattered around the place. Sam had stood and slid two inches on the wheels of a tiny replica car that had been jammed under the couch the second day they arrived, piffed it at his brother’s head, who’d caught it, exclaimed that it was Camero, dude, treat her with some respect and had sat it on top of the fridge.

The bookshelf in the corner of their shared bedroom holds mostly dust and tattered occult books stolen from libraries from all over the country, left by hunters who have found what they’ve needed and moved on. There are a few of the worst Stephen King novels shoved haphazardly on the top shelf and Sam finds something funny in that, the irony in enjoying bad horror when the real deal lurks behind the screen door.

Dean gives him a look when Sam pulls down and cracks open a copy of The Tommyknockers, snorts, “Haven’t you read that one already?” and Sam says, tucking himself into bed, “Yeah, it fucking sucks, King was royally off his head while writing it, that’s why it’s so good.” Sam finishes three quarters of it in one sitting while listening to Dean’s quiet snores from the other side of the room.

It’s a ten minute drive to the closest town, an off the highway, invisible to the outside world, kind of one-street community. No reason to take the exit if you don’t already know it’s there, one store, one gas station, one bar in an old brick post office building, unfitting, the carpet pulled up at the corners but home to the best fries Sam has ever had in his life.

Sam follows Dean out to the courtyard, neither of them are legally old enough to drink but there’s nothing else to do but to get respectably drunk in a place like this, anyone that has lived long enough in the true country is some kind of functioning alcoholic, so Dean orders a beer and isn’t asked for ID. In a town small enough for everyone to know every intricate detail in the threads of dirty laundry, they are foreigners. No one knows where they’re from or where they’re going and Sam knows that Dean likes it that way.

It’s never been a secret that Sam prefers to feel like he has a part in everyday normalcy. Dean thrives under anonymity, gets a kick out of it because it makes him feel dangerous. He had stopped accompanying Sam to school two states ago, a silent agreement with their father when Dean had come home early and helped John cut splits into the tips of bullets instead. Like hell I’m signing up for compulsory extra curricular activities. What’s the point in making friends with people whose biggest concerns are the answers to whatever bullshit test and who fucked who last Friday?

Finding comfort in a nine-to-five kind of community is a flaw Sam’s been burdened to deal with.

It’s early afternoon, the courtyard is empty and the table they chose rocks on its legs every time Dean slides his drink over for Sam to share. It’s bitter and Sam hasn’t had enough beer in his life to know if it’s supposed to be like that or if it has just soured from the long journey it took to get from the brewery to their glass. He drinks it and doesn’t grimace because his brother is looking at him through the rays of warm country sun.

“Tastes like piss, huh,” Dean says, leaning forward out of the light so Sam can see him clearly again. He takes back the glass.

“S’not that bad,” Sam replies, rubbing the leftover condensation into his hand, doesn’t look at Dean, finds it hard these days, twists in his gut all wrong. Sam knows why.

His brother hums, “There’s gotta be something else to do around here.”

Sam thinks, Dad’s left the car, we can go wherever we want, but doesn’t say it because his brother is loyal to a disastrous fault.

That’s a recurring thought. Sam in the shotgun seat, his brother behind the wheel, driving away. Just away, to someplace else and they’d be okay because they’d have each other and all Sam ever needs is his brother, like water. But John will be back in two weeks, term starts again in a month and he needs his father to sign the enrollment forms. Two more years.

“You see the old dredge outside of town?” Sam asks, remembers passing it when they arrived, all twisted, rusting metal, the bones of it against the setting sun.

“What did I tell you about respecting your elders?”

“You told me that they all smell like porridge and are easily susceptible to sleight of hand. No, Dean, Dredge,” Sam stresses. “Big rusty old machine that pulls minerals out of water.”

“Looking to strike big, Sammy?”

“Yeah, you see, my family is poor, brother at home too dumb to get a job. Our father went to get milk and never came back,” Sam sniffs for effect. “I can’t go home empty handed again, sir.”

“Ah, a real sob story,” Dean nods in understanding, tips his head back and finishes the beer. “Let’s get out there then, sonny. We shan't let that simpleton, downright fool of a brother go hungry.” Dean jabs Sam in the ribs when he stands, hard enough for him to gasp, gets Sam’s head under his arm before he can recover. Sam claws embarrassingly at his brother’s torso, face pressed warm into the side of Dean’s waist.

“I will pray for us young Samuel, for I too, dream of riches,” his brother is exclaiming, tripping them out and onto the street. “I only ask that we share whatever bounty dredged as I saw the most exquisite pony a few miles back and I simply must have it.”

And Sam thinks - with his flushed cheek hard against Dean’s skin through the thin sweaty fabric of his shirt, heart beating too fast against his ribs in a way that has nothing to do with exhaustion - you can have it all.

---

Sam’s brother’s perpetual state of being is ten miles over the speed limit; this can be applied to almost every aspect of him. Dean goes and goes and rarely stops. They’re pushing double that out of town, north of their property, into the forever stretch of flat land and Sam loses himself in it. That idea of away, of going and going and that Dean could take him because he’s an expert in the field.

The Impala blasts Born To Be Wild and Sam imagines the lyrics spreading out over the dry grass. He rolls the window down and throws his head out, trying his best to keep his eyes open against the road’s wind. The sun beats down, warmth soaking through and into his bones and Sam laughs as the cattle turn to catch a glimpse of them soaring.

Dean pulls him in, tugs at the back of his shirt, says something along the lines of, what are you, a dog? Should get you a shock collar for all the times you’re a little bitch, but Sam can’t hear him over the roaring of the open window and the look of transparent glee on Dean’s face, it’s loud and assaulting and Sam has to turn away because seeing Dean like that wobbles him dangerously from the nonchalant facade he has going on in relation to how he feels about his brother. But mostly his face hurts from smiling too wide.

Used as a warm up last year. Boyking!Sam

He thinks he’s in Louisiana, maybe. That he got here in the tray of a pickup and that he couldn’t feel the wind in his hair like maybe he should. The driver had stopped for a piss-break and Sam had snapped his neck without his hands.

He rubs them together now, tries to feel guilty but there’s nothing to feel guilty about because his hands are clean; he doesn’t have to use them anymore.

Sam thinks he’s in Louisiana because he stepped out of the truck and into a wet kind of heat. There’s a church with thick greenery growing over the roof and white wood that’s been mold-blackened by the humidity. He laughs to the darkness because it's very funny to him that he’s driven himself subconsciously to a place of grace.

He skips up the steps, two at a time, gleefully. The smell of the bayou and rotting wood has put him in a good mood. The lock snaps when he blinks, the chain unraveling and snaking into a coil at his feet. The doors open for him and maybe he did that with his mind too, or maybe they were just expecting him.

The church has been used recently, its interior better kept than the outside, bibles tucked neatly in the backs of pews, ribbons tied into plaits. The white of the moon falls in blankets through the windows, shadows of leaves moving over the floor like rippling water and the bust of Mother Mary prays for him at the altar.

Sam spreads his arms and addresses her, says to the room at large, “Shall I repent for my sins, oh Lord?” and it echoes, gives him goosebumps, a current under his skin. He has an audience here because God is omnipresent, this is a place of worship and Sam has always been good at that.

A church in Louisiana, standing before a plaster of his mother’s namesake in a church for a God he used to think could have some defying factor in a destiny that was always going to be concrete. It’s funny, blatantly. Sam puts his hands gently to Mary’s cold face, kisses her on her lips before crushing her head, spraying ceramic.

Sam stands behind the lectern, hands red with his own blood now, sticking the pages of the Good Book. He’s read it before anyway.

“Am I to be forgiven?”

Last is a casefic I had planned out in 2019. I didn’t get very far into the actual writing part of it, but I still think the setting is cool, less so the plot I had in mind.

Just outside of Bridgeport, Connecticut there’s a community built on a sandbar. A small secluded semi-island, connected to the mainland by a mile-long beachfront. A town of forty to fifty now abandoned, vandalised residences.

The police find the bodies of the boys there, bleeding out and into the sand, each other’s skin caught under their fingernails.

Sam watches as his brother pulls the sheet back from one of the corpses, laying blue on the steel morgue tray. He’s a kid, a boy, not even eighteen. Hairless, lanky, multiple stab wounds puckered around his belly and Sam thinks he does not look peaceful for someone who is meant to be at rest.

Dean is quieter than usual, his body language stiff. They’ve seen their fair share of dead kids but Sam thinks that this one might look a little too much like an adolescent version of himself. Shaggy brown hair, too long limbs, college on the horizon. Sam blankets the sheet back over the boy’s face and hears his brother exhale in what he thinks might be relief.

The coroner tells them that the other two are the same, besides the youngest one. He’d been blinded, thumbs pushed through his eyes until they popped like grapes. He asks if they want to see him too and Sam says no, thank you, we’ve got what we need.

Which is a whole lot of nothing, but they’ve only just arrived and there’s evidence that doesn’t involve corpses that needs to be checked.

“Pussied out in there huh, Sammy?” Dean says as they’re walking down the funeral home’s front steps, past the manicured roses and trimmed lawn. You see these perfect hedges? We’ll treat your dead mother with the same detailed care!

Sam pulls at his tie and scoffs because he knows he wasn’t the only one uncomfortable standing in the morgue; cases that involve kids always rub them both wrong.

#wip dump #wincest #my words

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the-writer-muse · 3 years ago

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Making Your Content Accessible

Introduction

On social media, being able to read and understand posts is essential. However, some sacrifice comprehension and efficiency for their aesthetic, which only hurts their audience. Content accessibility benefits people with disabilities most, but everyone and anyone can make use of it!

This is a noncomprehensive list of things you can do to make your account accessible. Feel free to add on in the comments!

Backgrounds

When you’re making a post, the text and the background must be 1.) different colors, 2.) contrasting, and 3.) not too bright or dark.

That should be pretty self-explanatory, but I’m going to elaborate on number 3. Don’t use pure white or too-bright colors in general for your backgrounds because it creates eye strain.

Maybe you have images as your backgrounds, which gives you a bit more to consider. One way to lessen eye strain is to put a layer between the background and the text. Another thing you can do is choose images that are not crowded or busy.

Text

Some people use fancy, cursive script for their post titles, which looks cool, but it can be hard to read. This doesn’t mean you have to remove it, though. Instead, use alternative text, which describes something that is inaccessible or difficult to read/see. In this case, you duplicate the post title in a more readable font on the cover slide. Good fonts for dyslexia include Open Dyslexic, Comic Sans, and most sans serif fonts.

Alt text should also be present if the original text has been manipulated in some way or has had effects added. For example, the titles of my posts are curved, so I add alt text.

Save cursive fonts for your post titles and headings. Cursive body fonts may sound great in theory, but in reality they are highly inefficient and make people people less likely to read through the entire post.

Also, if you type long paragraphs, you may want to separate it into smaller bulletpoints. People are more likely to skim (or just skip over) long sections of text. Make sure there’s enough space between the lines as well--reading crowded text can give some people headaches.

Alignment is also a factor in readable text. Align body text to the left, rather than centering or justifying it, because it lets people follow the lines of the text more easily. You can align your titles however you want because anything goes for them.

Screen Readers

Visually impaired people, dyslexic people, or people who get migraines may use screen readers, which read the text of a post to them.

One of the first things you’ll have to sacrifice here is aesthetic font. I know, I know, it looks cool, but screen readers don’t pick up on it, not to mention the more stylistic it is, the harder it is to read.

Hashtags are also difficult for screen readers to understand, because it might read the entire hashtag as one word. Instead, capitalize letters where a new word starts. For example: #WritersOfInstagram.

Another thing you can do is provide alt text for your entire post. Instagram lets you do this in the post but they only allow 100 characters, so if your posts run long you should just type them in the comments.

Descriptions

If you’re posting an image, for example, a meme, add an image description, or ID. When you’re writing an ID, include all details, even ones that might seem obvious. Consider color, position, shape, expression, etc.

For example: “ID: A blonde, curly-haired girl dressed in an orange T-shirt and denim shorts sits on a mossy log surrounded by pine trees. Her head is bent in concentration as she cleans a bronze knife with a gray rag.”

Closed Captioning

As a hard-of-hearing person, I really appreciate closed captioning on videos that require me to understand what someone is saying.

When typing out your captions, abbreviate closed captioning to “CC:” and then write your text after it. For example: “CC: These are my favorite tropes.”

Another thing to remember is not to censor swear words or leave out anything. Besides being annoying to people with hearing loss, it can also be patronizing.

In a video, keep closed captioning away from anything that might block it. Also, make sure the text is large enough to easily read. If you don’t want to type out what you’re saying, automatic captioning is available on Instagram, although like any automatic closed captioning, it can be unreliable.

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swiftlymoniquesblog · 5 years ago

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Nerdy Chicks Rule- Peter Parker x Reader

Requested by @fandom-princess-forevermore: How about Peter Parker being a tutor for a shy, nerdy girl and when he helps her get an A+ on a test, she kisses him. And at first, he's shocked but then the kiss becomes a make-out? 😉😉😍😍

A/N: Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Or as I’m spending it, Galentine’s Day since I’ll be heading out with one of my best friends! Remember to love everyone, every day, not just today.

Just as a side note, the title came up from an old tee-shirt I had as a teenager that had a baby chicken with glasses standing on a ruler and that’s what it said 😊

Oh, the description of the reader getting ready to graduate from college is how it was for me last year. Personal touch :D

Masterlist

Warnings: Anger, self-doubt, mostly FLUFFY FLUFF!

Word Count: 1699

It was your senior year of college; graduation was just right around the corner for you and you were working your tail-end off. Not just for this last semester, but your entire college career, you always put your best foot forward. It came with a lot of stress but you were at the top of your class and you were sure you were going to graduate with honors. Except, there was one thing that didn’t make you believe you were even going to make it to graduation. You were performing very well in all of your classes, minus the one online History class you were enrolled in. For some unknown reason to you, this professor was strict, and you never seemed to be able to keep up with the way she graded. You tried everything you could until you came to the very last idea you could think of; get a tutor.

Not that you ever needed one before in your college time, but you were desperate to pass this class and you had one month left until the end of the semester. Mustering up all the courage you had, you walked down the halls of the student center on campus and went to ask about tutors available for History.

“Hi, may I help you?” A young student asked from behind a computer at the information desk.

“Hi, I need a tutor for my online History class. The semester is almost over and I’m still failing the class.”

“Oh no, okay, well we have quite a few History tutors but the only one available for the rest of the semester. Um, Peter Parker is his name. He’s one of the best students of History so he’d be more than happy to help you out.”

You recognized the name; Peter Parker. He was well-known around campus, because of his internship at Stark Industries. Popularity was easy to come by for him because he learned from Tony Stark directly.

“Oh, um, okay. If he’s the last one.” You say, hesitant about asking him for help. You weren’t a very sociable person, mostly keeping to yourself, so this is a new and scary territory.

“Yes, he’s the only open schedule we have until the end of the semester. His next opening is tomorrow at 2:15. Would that work for you?” The receptionist asked, focused on the computer before looking up to you for your answer.

“Yeah, that would be fine.”

“Great, what’s your name?”

“Y/F/N, Y/L/N.” You say as the receptionist enters everything on the computer.

“And your student ID number?”

“983004.”

“Perfect, we have you down for tutoring with Peter Parker tomorrow at 2:15, right here.” She handed you a piece of pink paper that had all the info she just told you and bid you a nice day.

“You too.”

You were finished with your classes for the day so you decided to head home to try to figure out this class.

*************************************************

Today was an easier day for you, only having one class and then the tutoring session with Peter. Throughout the day, your mind kept wandering off to Peter and the session later on. You knew he was attractive but he didn’t know you existed; it was a big school. You thought about if he would be nice to you, or if you would even be able to focus. Yes, you hated to admit it, but you had a small crush on Peter. It didn’t matter though, every girl liked him; why were you different?

When your class let out for the day, it was just after two in the afternoon so you made sure you briskly walked to the student center. Can’t be late for your tutoring session since you were the one who needed it. At exactly 2:15, you arrived and checked in with the receptionist from the day before.

“Awesome, well Peter is running a little behind on another session but he’ll be out to get you soon. You may take a seat if you’d like.”

Doing as you were told, the bouncing in your leg would not stop, as anticipation began bubbling over. Every few minutes, you would check your phone to see the minutes slowly ticking by, until you heard,

“Y/F/N, Y/L/N?” Your head snaps up and at that moment, you were glad you were sitting; he was gorgeous.

You slowly stand to your feet and grab your backpack, walking over to where Peter stood. He was dressed in a rather nice dress shirt and dress pants, much fancier than you would expect someone to dress for classes.

“Hi, how you doing?” Peter says, smiling at you and extending his hand to guide you into the room. You set your bag on the floor and sit on one side of the large round table in the conference room, as Peter shut the door.

“So, Y/N, I hear you have a rather tough online History class. Tell me, what’s going on?” He asks, sitting on top of the desk, close to you but leaving good distance.

“Well, I can’t seem to figure out what she expects for her assignments. The discussions are long and difficult and I can’t seem to meet the professor’s standards.”

“Oh my, that does sound tough. Well, if you can pull up one of your assignments, I’ll give it a look and see how I can help.”

You pull out your laptop and open it to your most recent assignment.

“Here.” You say, turning the laptop to Peter who put some glasses on to see better, which made him all the more attractive.

After a few minutes, Peter had found some answers.

“Okay, I see what’s going on here. So, you’re not summarizing, you’re essentially writing what isn’t written in the text. What’s between the lines, like so.” Peter wrote up and example, only just a small part, and then showed you what he wrote.

“See how I’m using those questions she provided? Keep answering those because they’re not directly written in the text. What is the audience, who is this written for, why was this written, based on what you just read. Make sense?” He asked and you tired to let all the information sit in.

“Not quite. I’m not very bright.”

“Don’t say that, here, let me show you again.”

As much as it made you mad, you were glad to have the extra training.

“I think I get it now.”

“Okay, go ahead and finish this chapter and go back and make those changes and see how you do,” Peter said and you went ahead and followed his guide. Once everything was finished, he looked everything over once more and gave you his approval.

“Well, you turn this in, Y/N, and you’ll do just fine.”

“You think?” You grew more excited at the potential of you finally making a good grade, that you immediately turned it in.

“You got this.” He put his hand on your shoulder and smiled at you. You felt your heart rate speed up at the contact but decided it was best to push it aside.

*************************************************

After a few passed assignments, your grade began going up, all thanks to the advice from Peter. You two soon became friends too, after the first few sessions. Peter was your biggest support system and he was so proud every time things worked well for you. Yesterday, you had a test and today, you were receiving your grade. It was the first test since Peter began helping you and it was terrifying to see if it all paid off.

“Pete! I got my first test grade since our sessions started!” You burst into the conference room with your laptop under your arm.

“Oh, that’s great, Y/N! What did you get?” He asked, looking at you with wide eyes.

“I can’t look at it, you check it!” You shove the laptop his way and he opens it.

“No matter what happens, Y/N, I’m proud of you. You’ve been working so hard and it’s been showing.”

“Oh my gosh, Pete, just tell me what my grade is!”

His jaw dropped in the slightest way as he looked at the screen.

“Well?”

“You got a 100.”

“What?!” You asked, disbelieving him at first.

“See for yourself.” He passes your laptop to you and you see he was right. You got a 100 on the test.

“Oh my gosh, I did it!”

“I’m so proud of you, Y/N!”

“Peter, oh my gosh, thank you!” You jumped up and went to hug him. Pulling back to look in his eyes, you suddenly pushed your lips on his in a celebratory manner. He freezes so you take that as a rejection, pulling away from him.

“S-sorry, I, shouldn’t have just…”

But before you could say anything else, Peter pulled you right back to him, hands gripping your waist, and crashing his lips on yours once again. You held his forearms, making sure to keep him in place as his tongue found your bottom lip. He was asking for permission, to which you gladly opened your lips to allow him access, and his hold only grew stronger. You felt him back up, you follow his lead, as he backed you onto the desk. He lifted you up and set you down on the table, spreading your legs apart just enough for him to stand between. One handheld your head in place while the other traveled down to the hemline of your shirt. He lifted it, and slowly moved his hand to the bottom of your bra. Before anything could go any further, he pushed back, removing his hand and stepping away from you.

“I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting to do that,” Peter said, pressing his forehead to yours.

“I bet it was as long as I was waiting for it.” You joke and he pecks your lips again.

“How about I take you on a date and then maybe later, get back to this?” He wiggled his eyebrows causing you to laugh.

“You had me at a date.” You smile as you grab your belongings, him doing the same, and taking his hand in yours, rushing out to take you out.

Tag List: @forever-trapped-in-my-dreams @simpleboox @marvelfansworld @juju-la-tortue @67-chevy-baby @grace15ella @tloveswriting @damn-stark

#tom holland #peter parker #spiderman #nerd #nerdy chicks #peter parker x reader

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stillness-in-green · 4 years ago

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MLAWeek Coda: The Lore Post

Sorry this is a few days late! To the surprise of absolutely no one who has read some of my longer meta posts, I just don’t know how to shut the F up. (Spoilers: this post is only a few hundred words away from being as long as everything else I wrote for the week put together.)

Anyway, hit the jump for, in order:

A quick breakdown of the Liberation Army’s general structure.

A list of members, broken down by broad generation, including the ones we have gotten explicitly IDed in canon, the ones I based on figures we see in canon, and the ones I completely made up.

The basic tenets of the MLA and some discussion about their views on quirk supremacy. (feat. fandom salt)

An overview of the way the Advent shook up the political landscape in Japan and the Hearts & Minds Party’s place in that landscape. Pretty much the same material Trumpet’s victory speech from Day 4 covers, but modestly more in-depth, removed from the need to play well to a crowd, and with some added explanation about the structure of the Diet for readers who are less familiar with it than Trumpet’s audience would be.

A timeline (with only moderately arbitrary dates!) covering the birth of the glowing baby up to the first year of the manga. Mostly concerned with detailing the events the MLA would care about, but with a few other points of reference to contextualize things for the rest of us.

Bonus Fun Facts: discussion of the considerations that went into the timeline, a look at All For One’s actions re: the MLA, and some miscellaneous blurbs on terminology, worldbuilding and characterization.

A smattering of asides in the form of footnotes.

Note that while this material is based in and accurate to canon as much as I could remember at the time that I was doing my notes on my fills for the week, there’s a lot in here that is based entirely on supposition, interpretation and, at times, just plain-old guessing.

Thanks to @codenamesazanka and @robotlesbianjavert for their assistance in naming, brainstorming, and just generally putting up with me while the Liberation Army was completely devouring my attention.

@red-the-omnic Somewhat belatedly, here’s that list of MLA members you asked for back during the middle of the week. Sorry to make you wait so long!

Enjoy!

———– ———– ———– ———–

ORGANIZATION

Grand Commander: Destro and Destro’s line of descendants.

The First Families: Those who fought at Destro’s side and escaped to continue the fight, and their descendants. Veritably all high-ranked within the MLA, their tie to the original incarnation of the Army marks them as elites, whether or not their quirks would do so otherwise. The elders of the First Families do a certain amount of collective decision-making when and if the Grand Commander is unable to do so and has left orders otherwise.

Sanctum: “Sanctum” is a special position in the Army. The name denotes the person who’s tasked with remembering the MLA’s history, practices and lore—the position is considered contiguous, so even when someone is new to the name, they’re still considered “the longest-serving member of the Liberation Army.”. When they’re getting on in years, they select an appropriate protégé, to whom the name will pass upon their death/capture. The name must always go to a member of the First Families (though in truth, they’re only on their third one, so it’s more of a pattern so far than a hard rule).

Commanders & Lieutenants: People in charge of major operations, liberated districts, etc. Frequently, though not always, members of the First Families. Have discretion over their own assignments, but may not have much influence in the Army’s operations on the whole, depending on who they’re connected to otherwise.

Advisors: This title denotes those who are specifically tapped to give advice and aid to the MLA leadership. Levels of authority vary depending on who they’re advising. Advisors of lieutenants, if any, are a step above the rank and file, advisors of commanders are about on par with lieutenants, and advisors to the Grand Commander are considered commanders in their own right, regardless of any other rank they may hold.

Rank and File: Pretty much everyone else.

———–

KNOWN MEMBERS [1]

The original MLA—

Destro: Yotsubashi Chikara. Established the Meta Liberation Army in his mid-30s in response to the development of what he felt were overly restrictive laws on the usage of meta-abilities. Having observed evidence that meta-abilities grew stronger generationally, he was particularly concerned that no oppressive laws could be enforced by the generation that established them because the next generation would always be more powerful. Thus, he believed that establishing the use of meta-abilities as a fundamental right was the only way for society to avoid indefinite intergenerational strife. He was particularly incensed by the government co-opting the message that got his mother murdered to put a pretty, self-congratulatory sheen on laws that did the exact opposite of what she wished for. Allegedly committed suicide after some months in prison. The MLA is highly suspicious of this claim—they’re correct to be, but not for the reasons they think. His quirk, which his entire line would inherit, turns a key emotion into enhanced strength and resilience in the form of a characteristic ink-blot marking. While it would develop over time, the basic nature of the quirk remained the same. Chikara’s driving emotion was resolve.

Fathom: Destro’s lover, she dedicated a decade of her life after his capture to building up the survivors he’d left behind. It’s said her son got his drive from Destro, but his anger from Fathom. Had a large hand in raising her son to be the sort of man he was, particularly in her decision to commit what many considered to be suicide-by-hero when he was in his teens. A large part of that choice was wrapped up in her never-fully-assuaged grief over Destro’s loss (and, she believed to the end, his murder), but there was also a cold calculation to it—her making a big show of it would lead the police to believe that her attack was the last gasp of the Liberation Army, ending their investigations into MLA activities. It would also stoke the fires of her son’s rage, honing him into a stronger weapon against their enemies. Her judgement in both cases proved broadly on-point, though her death did serve to make her son more cautious than she might have hoped. Meta-Ability: Antennae. A pair of insectile feelers emerging from her forehead that give her a passel of sensory boosts, particularly in the taste and smell categories, and which also make her able to detect shifts in the air from quite some distance.)

Cascade: A man whose meta-ability lets him turn body parts into loosely controllable masses of water. Can’t transform fully. A quick-thinking type able to make hard calls.

Sweeper: A woman with a radio-scanning quirk. Caught by police in the same fight as Destro.

Sanctum I: The first bearer of the codename. Had a protective ability of some sort.

Sanctum II’s father: The same quirk as his daughter; see below. Known for getting some eight people safely out of a police raid by carrying them all out at once despite not actually having superhuman strength of any kind. (Probably tore several muscles in the process, but adrenaline is a hell of a thing.)

The Second Generation—

Destro’s son: Raised to deeply resent heroes and the government that put them in place, but he was also very cautious of them. He was profoundly aware that his death would mean the end of the dream that his father had begun and his mother had cultivated, so he was very meticulous in spreading the MLA’s influence underground, rebuilding their numbers before he even began to consider starting to make attacks again. Destro’s army had been a guerilla force; his son’s would be something much more dangerous. His driving emotion was anger, and he had two children before being killed by a cerebral aneurysm at 43. Was able to use his power to make his body larger.

Sanctum II: A woman with an unusual fondness for the traditional Japanese arts, particularly tea ceremony. Meta-ability: Stride. Teleport to any location she can directly see by taking a single step forward. Can take whoever she can carry under her own power. (First Families lineage)

Anchor: An advisor to Destro’s son. Prominent bull horns. Meta-ability: Immobilize. Similar to Lock Rock’s Lockdown quirk, except it only works on his own body. Very good at wrestling holds (and holding his breath), he tends to fight with backup that can deliver finishing blows to opponents once he has them pinned down. (First Families lineage)

The Third Generation—

Yotsubashi Kyouyuki: The elder child of Destro’s son. Deemed an unsuitable Grand Commander for his driving emotion of joy. Always presented a façade of being cheerful and upbeat, but the ever-present rhetoric that the MLA pushes about the ongoing suppression of quirks and the misery and injustice it leads to left Kyou always struggling with guilt. In college, it finally got so bad that he resolved to run away, enlisting the help of a friend with a swap-based teleport quirk to get him out of a party undetected. His fate thereafter is a secret that’s been taken to the grave by the MLA members involved in it, but given the typical reactions of illegal underground cults to members wanting to leave, it’s unlikely that he’s living somewhere in happy anonymity. (Name means Unyielding Happiness, following in his grandfather and nephew's patterns of having characters in their names meaning power/strength.)

Yotsubashi Yukie: The younger child of Destro’s son, and Rikiya’s mother. With a driving emotion of sorrow, and having been steadily losing family her entire life, Yukie wrestled with depression for most of her life. The presumptive heir to the title of Re-Destro, she spent considerably more time in training than her older brother, but she never much had the temperament for it. When her father died only a few scant years after Kyouyuki’s disappearance, she expressed her fears that she was incapable of being the leader the Army needed. This led to her becoming a mother at a relatively young age, continuing the bloodline rather than picking up the banner. For all her struggles with her grief, Yukie was very determined to at least be there for the son on whom the weight of leadership would fall. The world of My Hero Academia is a dangerous one, however, particularly before All Might established himself as Japan’s pillar, and Yukie was a casualty of the chaos of a villain attack when Rikiya was ten. (Name means Glittering Conqueror, ditto the note above about the family pattern for name kanji.)

Rampart: Guardian and general caretaker for Rikiya in his younger years. Hand-picked for the role by Yukie, who had considered him a close friend since their school days. Meta-Ability: An earth manipulation power akin to Pixie-Bob’s, though less powerful. (First Families lineage)

Shinseigi: Trumpet’s uncle, unspecified code name. Also in politics, though of a more local variety. Meta-ability: His speaking voice makes listeners suggestible. (The phonetic pronunciation of his name sounds like “New Justice,” but the kanji are “Sleeping Voice Technique.”)

The Fourth Generation—

Yotsubashi Rikiya: The current Re-Destro (42); CEO and President of Detnerat. He took up the former title when he was only 6 years old. With the succession of losses that were his uncle, grandfather and mother, the MLA has been fairly careful with him, grooming him with care and rarely leaving him without some form of supervision, be it Rampart when he was young or Trumpet in college. An extremely dutiful child grown into an urbane man whose good humor disguises a morose—and occasionally volatile—inner character. Always under a lot of stress (his MRIs are clear so far, though, haha!), but there’s only so much effort dedicated to mitigating that, since stress is his key emotion. The first in the family line to be able to separate his power from his own body, in the form of his Stress Bomb attack.

Trumpet: Hanabata Koku (44). One of Rikiya’s advisors and party leader of the Hearts & Minds Party (see below); has known Rikiya since their preteen years. The Hanabatas were a political family of old, but largely saw those fortunes crash and burn when they started manifesting quirks a few generations into the Advent. They’ve been clawing their way back into politics ever since and were an early target for the MLA’s project to infiltrate and/or start their own political party. It was decided very early on that Koku’s quirk and his family connections made him a good choice to groom for leadership of the HMP, so he and Rikiya bonded over their similar positions. They would go on to attend the same university, during which time they became romantically involved. In truth, Koku’s university was functionally chosen for him on the basis of which one Rikiya would be attending; the First Families were not about to lose another Yotsubashi to college life. Koku is more aware of this particular fact than Rikiya. Still a little wistful about their college days, his opinions regarding Re-Destro’s big starstruck crush on Shigaraki are borderline unprintable.

Sanctum III: Twice’s No. 1 advisor, the dude with the big imperial handlebar moustache and what looks an awful lot like a dress uniform for the Japanese navy. A few years older than Trumpet. (First Families lineage)

Curious: Kizuki Chitose (36). RD advisor and Shoowaysha Publishing Executive Vice President.[2] From a relatively small liberated district up near Sendai; the MLA connections plus her own profound ambition got her moving very quickly up the MLA chain of command. Daughter of a wlw couple; got her blue skin from her bio mom. One younger sibling, a sister. Masterminded the dinners we see the group having in Chapter 218, originally to make sure Rikiya was getting at least one well-apportioned meal a week and a chance to socialize with the closest thing he has to peers, but also because it proved to be an invaluable opportunity to swap information and rumors.

Skeptic: Chikazoku Tomoyasu (31). RD advisor and Feel Good Inc. board member. On the bottom end of the generation age-wise, a prodigy in every sense save his broadly terrible people skills. Recognizes Rikiya’s stress tells because he shares several of them himself, and is also the only person of Rikiya’s generation with the confidence to verbally push him around a bit. It’s regarded as borderline scandalous by their elders, but Rikiya himself finds it bracing, and anyway, Skeptic’s ability to organize a schedule for maximum efficiency is nothing less than miraculous. Got Rikiya onto fidget toys.

Toryu: Toryu is the family name of Galvanize (aka Taser Face aka Kaminari’s Dad). Mr. Compress’s No. 1, the dude who strolls out onto the lawn after Cementoss rips the hotel a new one and immediately gets his smarm repackaged and returned to sender by Kaminari and Edgeshot. Great for morale before that, though! In Rikiya’s age group, his mother’s side of the family (from which he gets the electricity powers) has been in the Army for at least as far back as her school days. (The name comes from the characters for leaping/rising and current/flow.)

Slidin’ Go: Tokoname Tatsuyuki (37). He’s Slidin’ Go! Skeptic’s No. 2, possibly because Slidin’ Go strongly resembles the puppets Skeptic is so used to barking orders at and there’s comfort in familiarity.

Aozono: Family name for another of Rikiya’s childhood peers, nothing is known but that green skin runs in the family as far back as her father. May or may not be related to Curious’s family.

The Fifth Generation—

Geten: Real name unknown. Family status unknown. Age unknown, but I’d peg him in the 18-23 area. Seems to be allowed to attend the weekly dinners without contributing anything but his incredibly terrible table manners. Can talk an impassioned game about the Liberation Army’s goals (though he pushes the quirk supremacy line a good deal harder than anyone else in the Army is shown to; it’s not even close), but it’s fairly clear that he’s more personally dedicated to Re-Destro than he is the MLA’s cause in and of itself. I’ll be honest; I have no idea what Geten’s deal is. My tentative headcanon is that he’s an orphan—the English meaning of his name, Apocrypha, refers to sacred writings of uncertain authorship/authenticity—who’s in some kind of Batman-and-Robin guardian-and-ward situation with Re-Destro, but I didn’t wind up writing enough about him to come up with much beyond that.

Nimble: Spinner’s No. 1, the woman with the weird paper-strip-esque hair who doesn’t seem to be in possession of a nose or mouth. (She absorbs air through her skin like a frog, which is why no one has ever seen her with that sweater covering both of her shoulders.) Nimble is a friendly sort, though she regards her outgoing good cheer as being a simple matter of social networking. Ambitious, but sensible about it. Meta-ability: Sky Write. Allows her to project letters and pictures into the air around her, giving her a way to communicate she would have otherwise lacked. She can create words in air she can’t see, but it takes some concentration, and the closer the better.

Scarecrow: Spinner’s No. 2, 21 years old. Born with amelia (see link in Day Two’s author’s notes) that disfigured his face and severed his arms in the womb. His quirk-based forelegs—a pair of spider legs emerging from his shoulders—can do a certain amount of basic object manipulation, but it tends to wig people out, so they push him to use his prosthetics like he’s “supposed” to (see Stray Notes section for more on this). He was viciously angry about it even as a kid, and his parents were frustrated, making them easy pickings for cult indoctrination. A family friend recommended that they look into Detnerat, where it wasn’t long before Re-Destro himself took an interest in their situation (or at least in making a good impression on them). Scarecrow joined the Army as quickly as he was allowed to—16. Meta-ability: Webbing. The bug legs can project silk like a webspinner (the insect on which he’s based), allowing him to do anything you might broadly understand Spider-Man to be able to do with his webbing, though he certainly lacks Spider-Man’s strength.

Red: Named in passing in the manga, he’s the laid-back dude with the fluffy hair who serves as Skeptic’s No. 1 post-merger. Probably invaluable in helping Skeptic maintain what bare vestiges of chill he can muster. (First Families lineage)

The Sixth Generation—

Every child currently under the age of 10 being raised in MLA households with a picture of Destro over the mantle. It’s not a small number, representing a group that neither the fandom nor the Hero Commission seem to have even realized exist.

———–

CORE TENETS & THE MATTER OF QUIRK SUPREMACY

Re-Destro is not (contrary to popular fandom belief) in favor of full-throated, might-makes-right, survival of the fittest Quirk Darwinism.[3] Destro’s will was for people to be able to use their meta-abilities as they saw fit to the extent that that freedom did not interfere with the freedoms of others. He was against the regulation of meta-abilities, but he was not—to the best of our knowledge—against the regulation of crime. His belief was that one murderer with a fire ability killing people did not justify barring everyone else with fire abilities from using those powers to fire clay, start campfires, engage in fire-themed performance art, use fire to char wood in artistic patterns for money, help park rangers set and direct controlled burns, coordinate explosions for the movie industry, light cigarettes in public, or any other of dozens of possible uses for a fire ability that don’t involve burning people alive.

The MLA do believe that meta-abilities have an impact on one’s personality, but they also believe that that’s okay; that it should be understood and accepted, not feared and repressed—Curious would not have wanted to turn Toga into a tragedy about the consequences of repression if she didn’t think that a spree of bloodletting murders was a tragedy. Their belief as an organization is that people should be free to use their powers as they see fit in the same way that they would any other natural talent or cultivated skill. They believe that people will, if free to do so, naturally gravitate to ways of improving their own lot in life via use of their meta-abilities.

Freedom from regulation and freedom from discrimination—these are the core tenets that the vast majority of the rank and file hold to. A great many of them are laborers, blue collar types who just want to be able to better support themselves and their families. Many others are those who suffered discrimination because of their quirks and want better for both themselves and their children. Of course, the further back their connections go, the more likely they are to both be higher-ranked in the cult (with attendant greater resources) and to have grown up soaking in generations’ worth of resentment, groupthink, and radicalism.

Geten, a particularly virulent and single-minded MLA attack dog, has parsed the tenets to mean that people with strong, well-trained meta-abilities will naturally be able to use their powers to do more and raise their status in the MLA’s ideal society, and thus that those who can’t or don’t choose to will not be able to live lives that Geten personally thinks are worth living. Likewise, Trumpet doesn’t fault Spinner only for his weak ability, but also for his anti-social tendencies. Of course a politician who’s deeply invested in a narrative of people uniting to throw off their chains and better themselves would be disdainful of someone who locked himself in his bedroom for years and emerged only to violently lash out at society. (Spinner’s right to call Trumpet a huge hypocrite on this, mind; terrorist cult members have no business lecturing other terrorists about the correct way to violently reform society.)

The MLA does have a problem with quirk supremacy, but it’s not quite the problem fandom thinks they do, and it’s certainly more nuanced than fandom thinks.[4] Frankly, I could write a whole post dissecting this, but rather than analyzing the canon at length in a post intending to be about my fanon for a series of slice-of-life MLA fics, let me just lay out some issues I think the MLA have. Note that these opinions may vary member to member, particularly as you work your way up the chain of command.

Many in the MLA believe that people with poor quirks are less capable of asserting their will and becoming whatever they want to be. They are not, notably, alone in that that sentiment—we hear versions of it not only from villains like Trumpet and All for One, but from the paralleled parents of Midoriya Inko and Shimura Kotarou, the would-be hero Bakugou, and even the iconic hero paragon All Might. While it’s not universal, My Hero Academia’s Japan is full of people who believe to some extent or another that people with weak or no quirks are inherently less capable of making their mark on the world. The MLA is just more blatant about it than most.

The MLA are, as a group, not concerned about the fate of the quirkless. My suspicion is that this is because they think quirklessness as a trait is on its way out—that the touted 20% of the world population that’s quirkless is hugely weighted towards the elderly, those who are from generations when quirklessness was more common. Think about it: 20% is two out of every ten people. Statistically speaking, that’s a huge portion! You only have to look at Deku’s middle school classroom in Chapter 1—thirty kids, exactly one of whom is quirkless—to begin to suspect that there’s something a bit off with the 20% figure.

Further, the MLA follows Destro’s beliefs, and we know from Destro’s manifesto that he believed meta-abilities were growing stronger over time. So to their mind, not only is quirklessness becoming a thing of the past, but so are weak quirks in general. While their clear disdain for both is damning—and certainly discredits them as a group suited to decide how society should be structured!—please understand that, “We’re not very concerned with the rights of the quirkless because we think that there won’t be any such thing as quirkless people within a few more generations,” is not the same statement as, “We are A-OK with 20% of the world’s population being second-class citizens for the entire rest of human history,” and it is really not the same statement as, “People with no quirks, or bodies that can’t handle their quirks, need to be proactively removed from the gene pool and we are actively advocating for a systemic, organized culling.”

That said, their disdain, if blown out to society at large, would absolutely lead to discrimination and, undoubtedly, incidents of the same sort of violence that the MLA themselves were forged from. That they haven’t thought or don’t care about this is one of many things that make them villains.

Further, there is an ugly strain within the MLA that still recognizes quirk marriages. Because the MLA values freedom, they’re not as ubiquitous as you might think (at least if you think the MLA is a bunch of quirk supremacists with no other goals or values)—“freedom” does nominally include the freedom to marry who you want rather than let your own meta-ability trap you in a life you hate. However, it’s equally true that in a group that believes very strongly in the value of quirks, the power of quirks in the future, and the necessity of fighting a war to bring about that future, there will obviously be members who support the practice. There are absolutely men and women who have been bullied and guilted by their families into loveless marriages for the sole purpose of producing children with powerful, desirable quirks. How likely this is in any given location mostly depends on the commander’s opinion on it, though it’s a very rare one indeed who would go so far as discouraging it entirely.

———–

THE HEARTS & MINDS PARTY

(Considerations on Japan’s political landscape.)

The current monolith of the Diet, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, managed to hold onto power for a full century after the Advent, but their grasp grew shakier and shakier over time. Initial measures to bar meta-humans from voting proved increasingly unpopular as the percentage of the population with meta-abilities grew both larger and older. People with easily-concealed powers gained office, sometimes being outed, sometimes not, but on the whole, decades of oppression and violence led to an ever-more-popular opinion that the LDP had mishandled the whole mess. They lost their supermajority in the Diet when their longstanding alliance with the Komeito party splintered, regained it again for a few electoral cycles, lost it again when Komeito itself fractured, and so on, their once implacable numbers shrinking year by year. Still, they managed to hold onto a coalition majority right up until Saneki Yuuichi was elected to the House of Representatives.

Saneki headed up a small party based almost entirely on the issue of meta-human basic rights. Like many meta-humans of the period, he believed that the best way for meta-humans to attain those rights was to live like so-called “normal humans,” to show that meta-humans were just like everyone else. His party advanced the ideology that meta-humans should only use their powers to help others or better society, not to advance their own self-interest. They pushed stringently for metas to be allowed equal recognition under the law as any Japanese citizen, but also supported measures such as requiring licenses for the use of meta-abilities and limiting those licenses to those actively engaged in assisting police. Deeply tied to respectability politics, Saneki’s party contained virtually all emitters, a scant number of transformers, and no heteromorphs, who the party felt were an impediment to reaching their legislative goals, but whose particular needs could be brought back up at a later, more receptive time.

Saneki’s politics gained him many supporters, but also drove many into the arms of the Meta Liberation Army, who vocally loathed him and everything he stood for. The confluence of public dissatisfaction with the spike in violence represented by the MLA, Saneki’s coalition gathering popular support among both metas and non-metas, and the rise of named, organized hate groups trying to roll back what few advances had been gained in meta-human rights finally spelled the end of the LDP’s majority.

The LDP falling apart prompted a scramble for power that would stretch on for nearly half a century. Old alliances whose only common ground had been opposing the LDP found themselves free to seek groups with more compatible goals. Young single- or dual-issue parties leapt at the chance to address their issues with more fervor. New parties sprung up across the country. Not only meta-humans, but minority groups of all kinds saw new avenues to press for substantive positive changes that had been dead in the water under the LDP. Voting numbers surged as they had not for decades.

The old, conservative elements of the Diet were not gone, of course—they remained a substantial powerhouse!—but no longer could they muster the undefeatable veto-proof numbers that they had once enjoyed.

Like everyone else, the remnants of the MLA saw opportunity in the new, ever-shifting status quo. With the place of metas secured for the time being, there was no longer a need for metas to form coalitions in the Diet merely to get their basic needs addressed. A single-issue party from its inception thirty years prior, Saneki Yuuichi’s party was fragmenting, unable to decide on a single direction now that their uniting issue had been resolved to their satisfaction. In recognition of meta-humans reaching population parity, the MLA launched a project to begin seeding the ideals of Liberation at the highest levels yet—the Hearts & Minds Party.

Beginning as a local party in a prefecture in which the MLA had gained significant underground support, the HMP campaigned on a platform championing individual freedoms and a wide range of improvements to Japan’s battered and overworked social safety nets. They made an effort to showcase diverse representation in their leadership and gave impassioned speeches promising to reach across party aisles in searching for nuanced solutions to the various difficulties facing the country.

It’s impossible to say exactly how large the Hearts & Minds Party is compared to the Meta Liberation Army, which is claimed by Re-Destro to have 116,000 action-ready warriors (the “warriors lying in wait, ready to rise to action” description presumably indicating that his count does not include uninducted children).

On the one hand, one can presume that everyone who’s a member of the MLA is voting for the HMP on every ticket they can, but not every member of the MLA—who induct combat-ready warriors as young as 16—is old enough to vote, and many probably live in districts or prefectures where the HMP has yet to establish a campaign-ready foothold. On the other hand, while the HMP certainly serves to funnel people towards the MLA, it doesn’t require membership—indeed, it’s far better for their goals for them not to do so. Therefore, it’s also probable that the Hearts & Minds Party has many supporters who are not (yet) counted among the Liberation Army’s number. Thus, for the purposes of ballparking estimates, I opted to simply suppose that the two areas lacking overlap (MLA members who can’t vote for the HMP and HMP supporters who aren’t members of the MLA) are relatively equal.

That established, we’re working with a party that has 116K voters/supporters/members. The closest thing to that number that I could find numbers for is the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), which counted 300K members as of 2017. Using their total membership compared to their representation in the Diet (as well as a willingness to viciously bastardize anything resembling reliable political math), I plugged in my estimate for the HMP’s membership and wound up with the Hearts & Minds Party holding four seats in the House of Representatives, five seats in the House of Councillors, and sixty-odd assembly members in various prefectural positions.

For some context to those numbers, the House of Representatives (more powerful, but more vulnerable to sudden electoral shifts) has 465 members, 233 of which are required for a majority, and 310 of which are required to override vetoes imposed by the House of Counsillors. The House of Counsillors (less powerful, but serving longer terms and unable to be dissolved for general elections like the House of Representatives can be) has 245 members, with 123 required for a majority.

As you can see, the HMP holding a handful of seats isn’t going to tilt the My Hero Academia world on its axis. Still, it’s more seats than any number of real-life Japanese political parties hold, and right up until the one-two punch of Shigaraki taking over the MLA and Hawks outing Trumpet’s allegiances to the Hero Commission, the Hearts & Minds Party was well on-track to continue growing its power and influence.

———–

TIMELINE

(For ease of calculation, most dates are rounded to the nearest five years.)

1980: A glowing baby is born in Qing Qing City, China, heralding the Advent of the Age of the Extraordinary. For almost two decades, meta-abilities remain rare and poorly understood—incidents are widespread and show huge variance, so most people write them off as anomalies or hoaxes. As the years go on, however, meta-abilities become more widespread, moving out of the realm of the odd headline that many people think is an elaborate hoax into an alarmed spotlight as it gradually becomes apparent that this is a thing that all humanity is undergoing. Most major technological development pivots to trying to understand, undo, document or control this new phenomenon.

2030: The child who will become All for One is born. By this time, society is breaking down into chaos. Across the globe, measures from outlawing all meta-ability use to internment are seen. Eugenics laws are discussed or put in place. Communities attempt to run out metas and, in response, groups of metas attempt to form their own communities. Infanticide rates are rising alarmingly.

2060: Yotsubashi Chikara and Ujiko (original name unknown) are born. Japan is in complete disarray, awash in mob violence, with organized groups of both metas and non-metas attacking victims indiscriminately. Developing an ability can get you disowned. Divisions among the meta minority are developing a noticeable strain of respectability politics rhetoric.

2065: AFO forces an ability on his younger brother, unintentionally creating One for All. Chikara’s mother is murdered by an anti-meta mob for attempting to speak out in defense of the normalcy of her child’s ability.

2085-2090: Saneki Yuuichi becomes the first meta-human to attain a seat in the Diet. Despite nearly a century of violence, meta-humans are becoming a larger and larger percentage of the population, and the people of Japan are tired. The prevailing sense is that it’s time to make peace; however, the peace that is being forged involves laws sharply restricting the use of meta-abilities for those who haven’t been formally licensed. These restrictions see markedly mixed reactions from metas. Chikara rallies the most vehement dissenters to create the Meta Liberation Army, calling himself Destro. Disagreement over how to handle the MLA finally finishing the job of rattling the Diet free of the death-grip of the LDP. Many years of fractious elections will follow as new coalitions form to try and seize majority power.

2095: Japan signs an international accord acknowledging the fundamental rights of meta-humans. This gesture begins to splinter both internal support and public sympathy for the MLA.

2097: Destro is captured by police and their newly designated Quirk Unit. Other surviving members of the MLA are hunted down or go into hiding.

2100: The term “Hero” is formally adopted, having been casually in use for some time. A Hero is one who is licensed to use their power to fight quirk-based crime in accordance with local and federal laws, assisting the police when requested. The Hero Commission is established as an agency with oversight in the licensing and regulation of Heros. Destro dies in prison. Though the matter is questioned, no proof of foul play is ever brought forward, and the death is ruled a suicide.

2110: Ujiko presents his paper on the Paranormal [5] Singularity Theory. The paper suggests that the power of quirks is continuing to grow with each generation and will, in time, become more powerful than the human body can control. His evidence is inconclusive, however, and his citation of some of Destro’s observations on the phenomenon becomes a particular sticking point. In a country that is finally beginning to get its feet back under it, no one wants to see another widespread panic. Ujiko is stripped of his position; having been living on campus at the time, he’s left functionally homeless and is approached by All for One not long after.

2120: The population of those with quirks and those without reaches parity in Japan. Seeing an opportunity, the MLA launches the Hearts & Minds Party as a local political party, intending to grow it over time.

(2125: Yagi Toshinori is born.)

2138: Yotsubashi Rikiya is born.

(2148: Debut of All Might.)

(2165: Shimura family tragedy.)

(2174: All Might “defeats” AFO.)

2175: Hanabata Koku is elected to the House of Representatives. He’s not the youngest party leader in the Diet, but he’s close.

2180: The events of Deku’s freshman year at UA lead the MLA to turn their attention to the League of Villains.

———–

STRAY FACTS

Why 1980/2180?—

It’s an even number for ease of calculation, triangulated between a few considerations.

Firstly, tasers are mentioned in the One for All dream, so the events of the dream (which themselves are happening far enough into the Advent that society’s had time to slide into all-out chaos) must post-date the invention of the taser, which was in 1993.

Secondly, Spider-Man’s silhouette is seen amongst the group of characters who represent the “fantasy” that became reality. If we assume that those media properties existed in-universe (since the narration is delivered by Midoriya) and were assumed to be fantastical at the time, they must predate the Advent—Spider-Man is the newest of them and his first appearance was in 1962, his material being translated into Japanese by the 1970s.

Lastly, technological and societal development crashed to a halt with the Advent. The world of My Hero Academia generally reflects a modern-ish Japan, so I wanted modern technology—and modern social reforms—to still feel modern to the characters. Thus, the point at which society stopped developing needed to predate the Digital Revolution, which really began to hit its stride in the mid-80s. Hence, 1980.

The opening period is, admittedly, fairly generous on my part, and does assume a certain amount of modern advances were probably underway, but then were lost, sidelined or rolled back as the chaos spread. You could probably trim off twenty years by stepping up how quickly quirks begin to appear and spread, but the very beginning is the best window to do so. I’d still peg the Advent at 1980 based on the calculations above (again, it has to fall somewhere between the mid-70s and 1993) but, for example, maybe All for One is from that first generation, and society only takes 30 years to reach the lowest point of its collapse instead of 80.

As to the 2180, the older characters introduce several requirements for the post-Advent timeline. Ujiko was 50 at the time that society was beginning to stabilize, while AFO dates to its days of utmost chaos. AFO also needs to be running on at least one anti-aging quirk prior to meeting Ujiko; if the only one he were running on was Ujiko’s own, then based on his appearance and the mechanics of Ujiko’s quirk, I’d peg AFO at merely 85, and he needs to be not only over 100, but far enough over 100 that he’s described that way rather than as “a century-old evil” or something to that effect.

Meanwhile, All Might can’t really be any younger than 50, and seven generations of OFA bearer predated him, even if they did all die relatively young. Destro’s mother was killed in those early chaotic days, while Re-Destro (himself no spring chicken) is told as a child that the MLA has been in hiding for generations. “Generations” implies at least two; I further suppose that Rikiya needs to be at least the original Chikara’s great-grandson for him to describe himself simply as Destro’s descendant, rather than use a more specific relationship term. All of this points to a fairly lengthy stretch of time, much more than is glossed over by Midoriya’s series-opening narration.

AFO and the MLA—

I mention in the very first story of this series that the MLA’s contacts all go “mysteriously missing” after the capture of Destro. While the police certainly did their own measure of work in tracking down the Liberation Army’s members and allies, there was another figure with a significant hand in the MLA’s downfall.

All for One, then in his early sixties, had watched the rise of the MLA in some interest. On a personal level, he admired Yotsubashi’s charisma and resolve, and, of course, he wholly supported the free use of quirks (well, his own free use of quirks, anyway)! On the other hand, All for One also sought to restore order to society, albeit order as he himself envisioned it. While he was confident that there was no one who could stand up to him no matter whose ideals won out, Saneki Yuuichi’s way promised a more stable society, and bribable and/or blackmailable bureaucrats seemed easier to manipulate than ideal-driven zealots ready to give their lives for the cause. Thus, AFO decided to help the police a bit behind the scenes, offering a few tip-offs and hints to guide their efforts to end the threat of the Liberation Army.

Of course, as long as Destro was alive, the cause of Liberation still had its focal point. And AFO was still a bit curious to meet this man, who’d inspired so very many loyal followers. It was an easy thing to arrange. An interesting man, and an interesting quirk.

Destro did commit suicide in prison. A man who had always embraced his meta-ability for motivation, and whose ability transformed that motivation into power in turn, AFO stripped him of in the same moment. Isolation from other contact, separation from his lover, his friends and allies, and his cause, a gap in his psyche like no pain he’d ever experienced--all of these piled up on one another into a fatal despair. After AFO’s visit, there was no need for anyone to arrange a convenient death for Destro.

(And if in later years, the monstrous Noumu, who are driven entirely by pre-programmed, single-minded resolve, are flint-skinned from head-to-toe, well—who would ever even think to connect those dots?)

The Mother of Quirks—

An interesting thing I observed from Re-Destro’s confrontation with Clone!Shigaraki is that, based on their exchange, it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge that the Mother of Quirks is the mother of the Meta Liberation Army’s leader? Re-Destro’s apology for assuming Shigaraki wouldn’t recognize the story suggests that it’s a matter of fairly basic historical education, but he then goes on to explain her connection to Destro at some length—if that connection were taught at the same time her story was, surely he’d see no need to do this? Clone-a-raki’s response backs this up—unlike the general existence of the Mother of Quirks, which was such basic knowledge that he was insulted that Re-Destro thought he wouldn’t know about it, her connection to Destro was unknown to him.

Re-Destro describes the connection as “an inconvenient truth.” This, in turn, suggests that the connection has been actively obscured. The MLA’s place in history is taught; the originator of the term “quirk” is taught, but the two are not connected to each other. Kids in school aren’t taught that the very child whose mother was murdered for her words hated what his country was using those words, that message, to do. It’s naked appropriation that continues to this day, and it’s no wonder that the MLA is furious about it.

The Quirk Unit—

An early term for the group that would, in relatively short order after their formation, officially be dubbed Heroes. Composed of both meta-humans already on the police force and vigilantes willing to remit themselves to legal oversight, they fought quirk-based crime in many forms, from the common mugger to the terrorists of the MLA, and even former allies in vigilantism. Well-regarded by history thanks to their efforts in reining in crime and disorder, but quite a controversial group in their early years.

MLA Age of Induction—

Being raised in the MLA means being raised with the goal of eventually being assigned a codename and tasked with supporting the Great Cause in whatever fashion your superiors think you best suited. The minimum age for this is 16, though 18, being the age at which students graduate from high school, is more common. At no point is there really a safe way to leave once you’re involved; they are, after all, a secret army. There’s no aging out of the MLA—it’s a lifetime tour—but disability, injury or general decrepitude can get you assigned to work that generally won’t expect you to see open combat. The Army is composed of a great many lifetime-of-service families, after all, which means they need teachers and caretakers; another option is dedicated work for the Hearts & Minds Party, who always have room for community organizers.

Liberated Districts—

Settlements that are at least 85% MLA-inducted. At their largest, they’re small towns; rural villages are far more common. Without exception, they’re isolated or out of the way. Tend to have unusually good access to city services compared to similarly-sized settlements. Deika was one of the largest districts the Army had, chosen for the Revival Celebration due to its combination of a sizable population and a particularly closed-off location. The MLA knew they’d need many warriors to fight the League of Villains, but they also needed a site that was not merely remote, but that had controllable points of access.

It can take well over a decade to hit the 85% saturation mark in even small villages; Deika and the MLA’s handful of other full-fledged towns are the work of generations. They begin by moving people into an area and setting up gatherings on some useful pretext or another, enthusiastically welcoming newcomers and very, very gradually indoctrinating people further into the ideology. Financial support, an accepting environment for difficult quirks or those with patchy legal histories, the odd homeless shelter or food kitchen, a robust presence in the foster care network—the MLA is very, very good at making themselves a warm, sincere, reliable presence in peoples’ lives, a group that encourages everyone under their banner to be their best selves. They think everyone deserves that kind of support!

They are also willing to shed quite a lot of blood to make sure that everyone can get it.

On the Intersection of Disability and Quirk Suppression—

There are a few factors contributing to why Scarecrow can’t use his quirk to do things others would. First, his quirk is the kind of off-putting that gets Gang Orca ranked third-most villainous-looking hero and leads Shoji to wear a mask because his face disturbs people. So Scarecrow’s quirk is already the kind of visible that makes people look at him askance. Compounding this, his prosthetics are obvious, visible to any old person, and people have a very ugly tendency towards bootstrap, “you can do it if you try” mentalities around people with disabilities. These two factors mean that people who are disturbed by his creepy articulate bug legs would much prefer that he use his significantly less-creepy prosthetics, to the degree that they’re willing to suggest that he’s being lazy if he doesn’t. They cite the quirk-use laws as a deflection tactic, but Scarecrow—whose pattern recognition functions just fine, thanks—is keenly aware of the underlying mindset.

Nimble is in much the same boat—she literally can’t talk without falling back on a visual representation of some kind (sign-language, a text-to-speech reader, etc), and why on earth shouldn’t she be able to use the fastest and most convenient one without people getting up her ass about it?

None of this is the kind of thing that would likely get either of them arrested (though Scarecrow’s creepy enough that the odds are higher for him, “villain quirk” bias being what it is), but the laws-as-written, nonetheless, are discriminatory, and that makes people justly angry. Angry people are easier to radicalize, and the Liberation Army has been working that angle since their very inception.

Re-Destro and Trumpet’s College Days—

RD’s an Engineering major with a focus in Manufacturing; Trumpet’s in PoliSci. They’re two grades apart, with Koku being the older. Those two years of greater experience shift the power balance between them significantly when Rikiya arrives for his freshman year, facing a new place, a new workload, an entirely new rhythm to his life. For the first time, Koku is not merely a friend in similar circumstances who is still—as they’re both reminded near-constantly—subordinate to Rikiya’s every word. Rather, he’s a senpai, someone with specific experience in every aspect of this new stage of life—and someone who’s had two years to become more eloquent, more well-studied, more confident, more mature.

Removed from the immediate supervision of the First Families for the first time in his life, Rikiya allows himself to lean on Koku in ways he never would have back home. Koku, for his part, has had his responsibilities here impressed on him by the First Families at some length, and has spent his entire life being groomed to devote himself to his Grand Commander. Having said Grand Commander looking to him with such glowing esteem in his eyes—well, there’s no denying that it’s pretty enticing. The two of them enter a romantic relationship that will endure for several years until Rikiya gets his head back around the idea that Koku’s ability to say no to him is fundamentally compromised.

The Bindi Connection—

I had no reason to develop them any, and thus I don’t have names to assign, but it seems that Twice’s No. 3, the smiling old woman with the gingham dress and the rough-and-ready attitude to combat, and Geten’s No. 2, the short-haired woman whose face is being devoured by her out-of-control sweater neck, are related. Note the bindi on both of them, as well as the similar hair color, particularly in the page introducing all the advisors. Mutual connection to Dabi’s No. 3, the guy who got into a fight with a hole punch and lost, is uncertain but possible based on the confronting-the-heroes page spread in which Hole Punch dude’s hand lays familiarly on Grandma Bindi’s back while Big Sis Bindi turns partly towards him as if to whisper some sarcastic observation about how lame Cementoss’s ponytail is.

———–

FOOTNOTES

1: Regarding codenames, the first generation of the MLA tended to have names that reflected their meta-ability in some way. From the second generation on, at the behest of Destro’s son, the codenames have become less literal, and thus less revealing.

2: Viz renders the job tile “Executive Director,” but having checked the raw, the Japanese term, senmu, is associated with a fairly specific level of executive authority, and it’s lower than I would peg “Executive Director,” which to my ear sounds synonymous or slightly below Chief Executive Officer. Executive Vice President is wikipedia’s translation; Google returns Senior Managing Director. In any case, she’s near the top, but not at the top.

3: At least, he wasn’t prior to meeting Shigaraki. Now he’s pretty much in favor of a very organized and coherent belief structure that can be summarized as, “Watch Shigaraki tear down the world ‘cause he’s beautiful and I love him,” and honestly, mood.

4: I’ll just come out and say it: fandom blew Geten’s words way out of proportion because a bunch of people got mad that he was being mean to Everyone’s Favorite Serial Killer Dabi.

5: An archaic term by this period. Even “meta-human” saw more use in academic parlance, while the term “quirk” had become much more widespread among the general population since its official adoption during the period of legislation twenty years prior.

#MLAweek2020 #meta liberation army #boku no hero academia #bnha #bnha spoilers #bnha meta #so much meta #my writing #my hero academia

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venmomejoy · 5 years ago

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The Lucky Ones

Idk if this has been done before but it's an actors au! All characters and relative plot belong to Nora Sakavic!!

Read it on Ao3 here

part two / part three / part four

Neil would never get used to the attention. The small amount of fame afforded to him as the lead character in the small town's production of Hamlet was stifling.

For him, it was instinctive to duck, to hide, to run at the first sign of recognition. Making himself unnoticeable was a habit beaten into him in childhood, his mother's fists compelling him into inconspicuousness when her warnings could not. Her lessons lingered in his mind even months after her death, urging him to grab the first ride away from here he can find and run every time he stepped onto the stage. He could almost hear her screaming at him, almost feel her phantom fists as she punished him for disobeying her. She had made him promise he would never act again, and he had broken his word.

If this even counted as acting. Theater was fine, but Neil longed for the screen. He had tasted screen acting as a child and fallen in love with it, and no matter how she tried, his mother could never entirely curb his craving. She would beat him black and blue every time she caught him taking a second look at a poster for a new movie or lingering when he heard people discussing a favorite show, but he could not help himself.

He hadn't planned on acting again, but when his mother died, he had felt stranded. He didn't know how to go on without her. Through all the years of running, of moving to a new city every few weeks, of fake names and boxes of hair dye, she had at least always been with him. Now that she was gone, he was entirely alone, and he did not know how to do it by himself. He found this town, got a new ID, and let himself drift. He knew it was stupid and reckless and all kinds of dangerous, but the acting was the only thing that felt real. So he let himself stay here for a few months, let himself audition for the play, let himself stand in front of the crowd and be seen. He promised himself he would be gone as soon as the show closed.

He hadn't anticipated that day coming so quickly. Despair started to creep in; he wasn't sure he was ready to let go of Neil Josten quite yet, although it seemed he had no choice. Tonight was the final showing, and all of the seats were full, although there couldn't have been more than fifty. Neil knew that most people in the audience had probably already seen the show- nearly all of them came to see family members perform or to "support the community"- but it still didn't lessen his nerves. He scanned the crowd for the tenth time, checking for any familiar faces, any sign he needed to bolt to the nearest exit. His father and his men hadn't caught up to him since they killed his mother, but that doesn't mean he is in the clear, especially since he's stayed here far too long. Yes, a move was overdue.

Neil let himself get lost in the performance, immersing himself in someone else's life, someone else's story. His eyes still constantly flicked to the wings, to the crowd, to the catwalks, anywhere someone could be concealed, waiting to catch him off guard, but he let his brain shut off beyond the basic actions to confirm his safety, so customary they hardly took a second thought. Adrenaline thrums through his veins as he recites his lines, as he contorts his features into rage and despair and grief. He morphs himself into his character, allowing himself a reprieve from existing inside his own mind for a few hours.

The performance ends far too soon. As Neil runs out for his bow, the cheers rise to screams. He knows he is a good actor, if a little out of practice. He smiles, taking it all in for the last time. He knows he won't be acting again. He already took too big of a risk by staying here this long.

Neil can't bear to see the set torn down, the theater cleaned and closed, so instead he sits in the dressing room, waiting for everyone else to leave so he can change out of his costume. The brutal scars marring his chest would draw too much concern, so every night he waited until the cast cleared out before changing into his street clothes. Some of his castmates tried to make idle conversation with him, but most knew he was not much of a talker and leave him alone. He watches them all leave, a couple inviting him to some sort of afterparty, which he promptly declines. If going up on stage was stupid, going to an unfamiliar location and getting engulfed in a large crowd was even stupider.

When his last castmate left, Neil basked in the silence as he quickly changed and then waited for the crew to finish as well. He needed to shower and brush his teeth before he went back to the house he was squatting in, but he did not need anyone to know he was utilizing the theater's facilities. It would raise too many questions.

The sound of the door swinging open had Neil raising his head, eyes tracking his director's movements closely as he strode over to him.

"That was a great performance Neil, one of the best I've seen from you." He took a seat on the couch next to Neil, causing every muscle in his body to tense. His director was one of the most even-tempered people Neil had ever met, but he'd seen enough aggression from middle-aged men to not trust a seemingly calm demeanor.

"Thank you, Mr. Hernandez," he replied stiffly.

"Your talent is promising. Would you ever consider making a career in the arts?"

Neil just shrugged, casting his gaze to the floor. Telling Hernandez that acting was not an option for him would open up a can of worms that Neil could not afford. He couldn't tell him that he would be leaving first thing tomorrow, taking his meager belongings and heading to another state, becoming another person, so his best option was indifference.

"Well, maybe this will help you make up your mind. There's someone here who wants to talk to you."

Neil's eyes shot to Hernandez, alarm bells sounding in his head. This was his worst nightmare. He had been found, he had been found, he had been found-

He pulled his duffel bag over his shoulder as he stood, already making his way towards the nearest exit when someone cleared their throat loudly from behind him. It was too late.

Neil turned around, hands still gripping his bag as he stood poised to run, and met the eyes of the stranger. The man was tall, likely in his late thirties or early forties, with honed muscle visible where his arms were crossed over his chest. His face was hard, but his eyes were searching as he scanned Neil from head to toe. He was unfamiliar, but that didn't mean he was harmless. Perhaps his father had gotten a new lackey. "Who are you?" Neil asked.

"He's a director, Neil. He wants to recruit you," Hernandez said.

Neil scoffed. "Please, the population of this town is barely five hundred. No one recruits here."

"He sent out an open call, looking for someone to cast in his show. You fit the description pretty well, so I sent him some videos of you during rehearsals. He came to watch you tonight, to see if you were good enough for the show. I didn't mention it to you because I wasn't sure anything would come of it."

Neil couldn't believe what he was hearing. He hadn't even seen anyone take any videos of him during rehearsals. His panic was steadily rising. "What?"

The man stepped forward, and Neil unconsciously stepped back. He noticed, his gaze hardening as he looked Neil over again, searching for something different this time. "I don't have time for this," the stranger said. "We start filming in three weeks, and the actor we had set up for this role fell through. You have talent, kid. All you have to do is sign the contract and your set for two seasons with us. If we get renewed again, likely more."

Neil did not know what to say, so he just stared at the man, assessing the sincerity of his offer. The director just stared back, unfazed by Neil's blatant scrutinization.

After moments of silence, the man sighed. "Look kid, The Foxes is a incredibly popular show. Signing with us could jumpstart your career.”

Deafening silence rings through Neil’s head as that name hit him. He thinks his heart has stopped beating. "You direct The Foxes."

The man- who he now recognizes as David Wymack- only nodded. Neil knew all about The Foxes. The first season of the show was a hot mess, barely scrounging up enough support to get renewed for a second season. But it did. And when esteemed actor Kevin Day joined the cast, the show started rising in popularity.

Kevin had been raised in Hollywood, adopted at a young age into the Moriyama family, one of the most powerful names in filmmaking. Tetsuji Moriyama was arguably the most famous director on the scene, so when he took in Kevin and his nephew Riko, he raised them to be formidable actors. The two were as close as brothers. Tetsuji gave Kevin and Riko small roles in his productions when they were children, and as they grew older, the two starred in almost all of his work. Most notably, the two were costars on Evermore, an immensely popular fantasy show. Riko played a young boy who was adapting to his new life as a vampire, while Kevin played his best friend, still a human, who helped him adjust. The show had a huge fanbase- it was easily the most popular show on television right now. But in the middle of filming the fourth season, Kevin and Riko vanished from the public eye. No one knew what had happened to them, what they were doing, but when they resurfaced, it was discovered that Kevin had shattered his hand in a stunt gone wrong. Tetsuji decided the show could not halt production to wait for Kevin to heal, and instead wrote him out of the rest of the season, saying he would return for the fifth season when he was fully recovered. Kevin all but disappeared, not saying or doing anything while he recovered. Until Kevin decided not to renew his contract. Two months ago, Kevin had announced that he would not be returning to Evermore, and was instead signing with Wymack on The Foxes. His fans were devastated. Many were angry at him, feeling betrayed at his leaving. Others were intrigued by this new project, his first apart from Riko. Either way, the move brought a lot of attention to The Foxes. Kevin not only brought a fanbase with him when he began the show, but he pushed his costars to work harder and hone their acting skills, making the following of the show grow exponentially.

Neil hadn't seen Kevin since he was ten years old. Neil had started acting lessons when he was four, had even been in a few small productions in his childhood. He assumed it was his father's attempt at getting him out of the house while he did his business, and Neil was happy to go- every time he was present during his father's dealings he ended up with a beating. One day, his father took him to rehearse with some kids. He had never met Kevin and Riko before, but Neil was happy to make some friends. He had never really been allowed to have any friends, so he was excited to finally have some kids to interact with. With the help of an older man who guided them, the three spent a few hours going over scenes, trying the lines with different emotions and figuring out how they all worked together on-screen. But their rehearsal was cut short when they were forced to watch Neil's father tear a man to ribbons. His mother had taken him and left the next morning.

There was no conceivable way Neil could accept Wymack's proposal. He had garnered too much attention as it is performing in a small town's theater production. The last thing he needed was his face to be broadcasted all over television, his name tacked on to a credit list. Beyond that, the media is up The Foxes's ass, what with Kevin on the cast. He cannot afford that kind of notoriety. His father would find him in an instant. And if Kevin recognized him? He could not risk Kevin giving him away.

"Please leave me alone," Neil said.

"We need to fly you out tomorrow if you're going to be halfway prepared when we start production. It would be best if you sign tonight," Wymack pushed.

"I'm not signing anything. I'm not working with you."

"Why?”

"I won't work with Kevin."

"Aw, hear that, Kev? The rookie doesn't like you," a sardonic voice drawled from behind him.

Every bone in his body seized at the implication of that statement. If Kevin was here-

He whirled around to meet the dark green eyes of Kevin Day. He was significantly taller than Neil, at least six-foot to his five-three, with a good fifty pounds of muscle over him. And he was blocking the only other exit. Neil had not noticed Hernandez leave the room until now, acutely aware of his compromised position. There was no way for him to escape. Neil just stared at his old friend, barely breathing as he waited for recognition to kick in, for the realization to dawn on him. But nothing came. Could it be possible Kevin didn't recognize him?

It made sense, he supposed. Neil had seen Kevin grow up, his face plastered on every magazine and television screen he saw, but Kevin had not seen Neil since he was a child. That, coupled with the brown hair dye and the brown colored contacts he wore may have been enough to slip under Kevin's radar.

"Jesus, Andrew, can't you be polite for ten minutes? We're trying to sign this kid and you're going to scare him off," Wymack's incensed voice sounded from behind him.

"Oh, come on, Wymack, he doesn't look like the type to be scared of little old me now does he?" Neil broke his stare with Kevin to look at his companion, only to find Andrew Minyard's eyes already boring into his own, a manic smile plastered on his face. He would have recognized the blond actor anywhere; he had made quite a stir in Hollywood.

Andrew was the first person to turn down a role with the Moriyama's. Riko and Kevin had found him, had seen his work in other projects and knew he had potential. When they approached him with a part on Evermore and a chance to join their little clique, they had never even considered he would say no. Working with Tetsuji was a straight shot to stardom. But Andrew instead signed a contract with Wymack, who had agreed to cast his twin brother Aaron and his cousin Nicky as well.

Neil turned back to Wymack. "I'm not signing anything. I'm leaving now."

"I'm going to let you reconsider." The first words Kevin spoke to Neil in eight years sent chills down his spine.

Neil turned towards him again. "I've already given you an answer."

"Why won't you sign?" Wymack questioned. "From what your directer said, you've got nothing keeping you here. In the three months he's known you, he said he's seen no friends, no family. Said your parents never answer his calls, something about them having a long commute to work, that they barely even see you. Why not join The Foxes?"

Neil couldn't very well tell him the truth, so he told him the first plausible lie his mind provided. "I'm not near good enough to work with Kevin. And I'm only used to stage acting, I don't know how to perform for television."

The first lie would have been reason enough, but the second one needed to be thrown in to keep his story believable. He had told Hernandez he had only done a few plays previously, not wanting to raise any suspicion. If Wymack had spoken to his director about him, he had likely been told this. And anyone who had only done a few plays would be concerned about switching to screen acting, so Neil played the part.

"Both unimportant," Kevin said. At Neil's surprised look he continued, "You may be inexperienced, but we saw your performance tonight. You have talent. Now stop wasting our time and sign the contract."

How had he missed Kevin Day in the audience? He must have been hiding in the back, trying to avoid being recognized by any fans. Still, the misstep unnerved Neil. "There are plenty of actors with talent who would be thrilled at this offer. Why not ask them?"

"Like I said, we've seen you perform. We knew you had talent from the videos your director sent us, but it's not just raw ability. You throw yourself into your role like it's all you have left. You don't just channel the emotions, you become the character. Actors with that kind of passion are rare, and are the only kind worth bothering with."

Neil couldn't stop the pull in his chest, begging him to accept, no matter how foolish an idea it was. He was not ready to give up acting, but pursuing it would bring him closer to the man he had spent his entire life running from. Signing with Wymack was as good as signing his death sentence. But it was a shot at living, at truly living for the first time in years. The acting was the only thing that felt solid now that his mother was gone, and he wasn't sure if he could survive without a tether.

If Kevin didn't recognize him, perhaps he could indulge himself, just for a little while. He didn't have to stay for the full two seasons; at the first sign of trouble, he'd run. Perhaps he could base his plan off of Kevin- at soon as Kevin started remembering, started asking questions, Neil would know it was time to go. Because if Kevin remembered, if he started digging into Neil's past, he would clue in the whole host of people after Neil on his whereabouts. If they didn't discover them on their own.

"An answer tonight, Josten." Wymack clicked the pen, holding it out to Neil in offering. Neil stared at the pen, every ounce of self-preservation screaming at him to be smart, to take his bag and get the hell out of this town, to blend back into the shadows. But another voice, a voice he had been repressing for far too long, was making itself heard: desire. Desire to act, desire to be settled somewhere, desire to be real.

He could always run. That's what he told himself as he took the pen from his new directors proffered hand. That what he told himself as he signed his name along the dotted line, the name of a person who didn't really exist, but was going to try to for as long as he could. That's what he told himself as he felt his throat closing in as he realized how he had disregarded everything his mother had worked for, died for, with the quick stroke of a pen.

"Perfect," Wymack said. "We'll pick you up here tomorrow so we can fly to L.A. and get started." Neil couldn't think of anything to say, so he stayed silent.

Kevin handed him a thick stack of paper with "The Foxes: season three, episode one" printed across the front. The script. "Start reading it now. We have a lot of catching up to do if you're going to be ready by the beginning of production."

With that, he strode from the room. Andrew followed him, stopping only to flash Neil that same grin, raising his hand in a two-fingered salute. Neil couldn't contain his eye roll.

After the two actors had left the room, Wymack held back for a moment. "You made the right choice, kid."

Neil almost laughed. If only he knew how wrong he was.

Notes: Hello everyone!! I’m not completely happy with this but I'm publishing it anyways because bad writing is better than no writing, or at least that’s what I’m telling myself :) I’m going to write more chapters on this fic, so I hope that someone likes it!!

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linkspooky · 6 years ago

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Synonyms or Antonyms: Dazai and Dostoevsky

From the moment they meet within Bungou Stray Dogs, Dazai and Fyodor are set up as foils.

Foil Definition. In literature, a foil is a character that shows qualities that are in contrast with the qualities of another character. The objective is to highlight the traits of the other character.

That is to say from the moment they are drawn in panel together, the audience is naturally meant to compare and contrast them. Their entire first scene plays their similarities and differences up. First, Dazai dresses as Fyodor not only as a joke but to draw the eye to how similar they are, both of them dark haired skinny males with pale complexions who wear overcoats.

Dazai explains he was able to predict where Fyodor would end up, because if he were in the same situation it was what he would do. When he says that, Fyodor shows Dazai the same smile he showed him earlier, like Dazai is looking in a mirror.

Dazai and Dotsoevsky are able to read each other so well, knowing the other like they know themselves. Which allows both of them to continually one up the other and predict the other’s movements. However their relationship extends far beyond ‘Being the same’, or just the fact that they’re both highly skilled manipulators who are able to pull off complex plans. It’s even much more than Dazai and Fyodor are just smarter than everybody else in a way that isolates them. They are each other’s inverse in almost every way while appearing to be exactly the same. I’ll elaborate in detail beneath the cut.

1. No Longer Human

First off, while Fyodor’s character, such as being referred to as a demon and his ideology for crime and punishment draws from Dostoevsky’s novels, the relationship between Dazai and Fyodor is a direct literary reference to No Longer Human.

The character Yozo (who Dazai is in part based off of due to his tendency towards buffoonery to use as a mask for his feelings, and his ability is directly named after the book) in the fourth Memorandum of No Longer Human discusses the antonym of crime with his ‘friend’ Horiki. Already from the way the narrator describes his friendship with Horiki you can see parallels in how Fyodor views his connection to Dazai.

The conversation starts when Horiki refers to Yozo as a criminal. Don’t be so cheeky, I for one have never been tied up like a common criminal the way you have.” After that the conversation turns into an antonym game between the two of them. Yozo turns it into a game to distract from the serious accusation that he is actually a criminal and he got away with not only committing double suicide with a lady who amounts to a stranger to him, but he’s lived his life so far stealing money from the other women he’s been in relationship in. The “joke” of the conversation is that while it sounds deep, the two of them are just playing a game.

Any of these two words could be set up as antonyms as long as you give enough justification. It’s a joke of binary opposition and dualism. In short, you can give justification that things are opposites, or you can give justification that things are actually the same, there is no universal truth there is only differing justifications.

[...]

At the end of the conversation Yozo relents to this point, he tries to think of antonyms of crime but they are all synonyms. Crime, and god, Crime and repetance, Crime and confession, Crime and punishment he finally questions whether the last is synonym or antonym but before he can finish the thought he’s interrupted. Just before then though, he believes himself having come to an understanding of the chaos of Dostoesvski’s mind.

Hence the relationship between Dazai and Fyodor. We are meant to question, are they synonyms, persons with similar meaning, or are they antonyms absolutely incompatible ideas as irreconcilable as oil and water. Note that in the original novel Yozo does not really come to a conclusion on this thought, and in all of my thinking this over I don’t think we are meant to see them as all the way one way or the other just yet.

Either way this conversation has already been referenced several times in Bungo Stray Dogs. “God, is the antonym of crime”. Then you have Dostoevsky who positions himself as the opposite of crime, and therefore sees it is his responsibility to become God.

However, the antonym of God is posited by Yozo not to be crime, but rather satan. Therefore we have Dostoevsky not only taking on the role of God, but also of a demon. Despite being referred to as “Demon Fyodor” several times, Dotsoevsky actually positions himself as both at once, he is both God and his Antonym the devil, and therefore they are synonymous because they are both him.

Horiki at one point in the conversation even references, that while talking philosophically about crime Yozo is also a criminal. What does Fyodor do, but get Dazai arrested and separated from the rest of the Detective Agency for the crimes he committed in the past, because despite which side Dazai is on in the eyes of the law he is just as much a criminal as Dostoevsky is. Even if they are on opposite sides of a conflict (antonyms) they will still be seen as the same in the eyes of society (synonyms).

Then there’s of course the scene from the movie Bungo Stray Dogs: Dead Apple which directly references not only this conversation with Horiki, but at the same time the novel Crime and Punishment.

Therefore in the original text Yozo may see them as antonyms, but Fyodor makes the argument they are synonyms. While he does so, both him and his shadow (his ability removed from him by the fog) are standing in juxtaposition of each other holding contrasting objects. A skull, and an apple. Apples can literally symbolize so many things, but here it’s just a symbol of binary opposites life and death. Or rather what is perceived as binary opposites. Life and death perceived as antonyms can also be seen as synonyms as Dazai explained to Chuuya.

Death can be viewed as something opposite and entirely alien to life. That is life cannot possibly exist within death, because death by its nature kills life, or death can be viewed as a natural part of life. Therefore it is impossible to understand the value of life without contemplating it’s perceived opposite death.

Poison and medicine can be seen as opposites, one kills and one saves, but if you overdose on medicine its easy to poison yourself with it. The more closely you examine them, the lines between supposed opposites begin to blur.

Then you have Dostoevsky, crime and punishment are seen as opposites. Crime is unjust, and harms. Punishment is justice, the opposite of crime, it’s foil and prevention. Except, Justice can harm too, it just harms criminals. Except criminals can just be innocent people falsely accused. It’s never as black and white as it seems to be. Therefore, Dotsoevsky’s belief that they are not enemies but rather friends, it’s impossible to punish crime without thinking like a criminal. To punish crime, Dotsoevsky becomes a criminal.

The apple, and the skull while seeming like opposite symbols can actually be the same thing, hence the title of the movie Dead Apple.

2. Dead Apple

As the movie is canon material I also think it serves as a great introduction to the psychology of Dostoesvky’s character especially in comparison to Dazai. There are two subtextual psychological components to the movie, drawing from both Freud and Jung.

In a brief summary of the movie itself, ability users are separated from their abilities due to a fog which causes their abilities to take form and attack them. This is really obvious Jungian shadow symbolism. Their abilities which always exist as a part of themselves and therefore a subconscious part of them are brought to the surface and they are forced to confront them.

In Jungian psychology, the "shadow", "Id", or "shadow aspect/archetype" may refer to (1) an unconscious aspect of the personality which the conscious ego does not identify in itself, or (2) the entirety of the unconscious, i.e., everything of which a person is not fully conscious. In short, the shadow is the unknown side.

Because one tends to reject or remain ignorant of the least desirable aspects of one's personality, the shadow is largely negative. There are, however, positive aspects that may also remain hidden in one's shadow (especially in people with low self-esteem, anxieties, and false beliefs).

For example among the three main characters of the movie each of them are confronted with a shadow version of themselves, Rashomon for Akutagawa, Demon Snow for Kyoka and Beat under the Moonlight / The Tiger for Atsushi. There are several Jungian symbols associated with this process already, for one it’s specifically a fog that allows these shadows to manifest. The fog of the mind is what allows us not to be aware of the subconscious. When abilities are stolen they manifest with crystals that appear on the forehead, which also happens to be where the brain is. Neither of the three main characters are able to win their ability back until they accept something repressed about themselves.

(Pictured literally a tiger in shadow, two Jungian symbols the beastial instincts that represent the unconscious mind, and also the shadow which obfuscates).

Kyouka that she does not want to hate Demon Snow even though the ability is responsible for killing her parents and also making her a murderer. Atsushi is the slowest of all to regain his ability back, due to the fact that he subconsciously rejects being an ability user. We see his flashback in the movie, first he blames the Tiger for his miserable life, he sees the tiger as the opposite of himself beast rather than man, an out of control monster. Then, when he realizes the tiger also protected him during life, despite being violent, Atsushi comes to the realization that his relationship is more complex than light and shadow, complete opposites.

People tend to deny their shadows, but the shadow is not necessarily the true self or more right than conscious mind, at the same time its still a part of yourself that needs to be acknowledged. Atsushi’s ability is even named “Beast under the Moonlight”, the moon is a classic symbol associated with Jung, because it represents the unconscious mind, the time of dreams, illusion, and when shadows are the longest.

In the climax of the movie they literally ascend a tower, directly underneath the moonlight.

Then there is Fyodor whose ability never separates from him and attacks him during the fog, and why is this? It’s because Fyodor already knowingly, willfully embraces his own shadow. He has no reason to deny what everybody else represses, because crime and punishment are friends.

In other words Fyodor already is his own shadow. He’s a walking Id.

The id, ego, and super-ego are three distinct, yet interacting agents in the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche.

The three parts are the theoretical constructs of how the activity and interaction in our mental life is described. According to this Freudian model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.

Why are both the protagonists and antagonists assembled in trios in dead apple? It’s because both of them are representative of the trio of the psyche. Fyodor, Dazai and Tatsuhiko are deliberately grouped as a trio, because they are Id, ego, and superego.

Id, or I desire is uncoordinated instincts similar to the shadow. Reading the movie through this lens, it paints an interesting psychological portrait of Dotsoevsky. Of the trio he’s the most straightforward with his desires, he’s the one who seems to be ‘evil’ only for the sake of indulging in it and enjoying it.

He plays the part of laughing villain the entire movie, and yet he also makes it clear this is an act to him. Therefore, when he claims that this is all for a laugh that’s not a statement that can be taken as a direct truth.

As the symbolic Id of the movie, as the one who embraces his shadow he also plays the role of bringing the repressed truth that Tatsuhiko hides. He’s the one who encourages Tatsuhiko to rampage at the end of the movie.

As he gives this speech Fyodor and his shadow overlap, because Fyodor is his own shadow, a walking shadow, he deliberately indulges in the worst of himself. That is why he sees himself as a demon, that is why he acts out on his god complex. That is the methodology which he chooses to bring forth his ideals, a world without Ability Users.

Therefore his actions in the movie make perfect sense with his established motive in the manga, to commit a purge on ability users. Dazai even asks if Tatsuhiko will be saved by an angel or a demon before Dostoevsky introduces himself as a demon.

It’s more binary opposite symbolism and the intention is clear. Dotsoevsky views himself as soemone who becomes a demon to save others, in line with his actions in his major introduction chapter in the manga.

Demons are also in the bible, the creatures in charge of punishing sinners. Despite the fact that they are seen as rife with sin themselves. Another contradiction, for Fyodor a demon is something he has to become in order to punish crime, therefore he walks side by side with his shadow, therefore he indulges his id.

Then, you have the other two serving as the opposing roles of the mind. Tatsuhiko is superego. Not only is he capable of controlling others to such an extent that he can make their abilities manifest against their will, but the extreme control he has makes him an utterly joyless existence.

The balance between the two, the ego Dazai is the only one of the three of them who seems to have found any reason to live at all. His reason being the opposite of Fyodor. [Death] and release of the yoke of sin saves the soul. In comparison to Oda’s words. People live to save themselves huh, how true...

Dazai is the only one out of the three who has any semblance of control or purpose to his own life, and it comes from following Odasaku’s words.

Ango’s summary of the three of them at the end of the movie shows that he does not quite understand Dazai, which makes sense as to why they never quite became friends. Demon Fyodor, Dazai “Disqualified from Humanity” and Tatsuhiko (turns into some kind of weird dragon) all three of them may seem inhuman but the moment you refer to them as aliens you fall for their illusion. All three characters are still undeniably and painfully human. They want to be seen as aliens to avoid being confronted by this, that’s the game all three play.

Here’s the thing, Dazai is the only member of the trio who is not alone and part of that is because he had a friend who just saw him as he was, a flawed human being.

3. The Demon Fyodor

For this final part I could list all the similarities and differences between Dazai and Fyodor, but that would just be a boring list so instead let’s analyze Fyodor who is currently the more mysterious character as to his motivations, using Dazai as a reference point.

Before anything else, I’m going to use Oda’s words on Dazai as a reference point, because Oda had the best read on him.

"Listen. You told me that you might find a reason to live if you lived in a world of violence and bloodshed. You won't find it. You must know that already. Whether you're on the side who kills people or the side who saves people, nothing beyond what you would expect will appear. Nothing in this world can fill that lonely hole you have. You will wander the darkness for eternity. (...) Be on the side that saves people. If both sides are the same, become a good man. Save the weak, and protect the orphans. Neither good nor evil means much to you, I know... but that'd make you at least a little bit better. (...) Of course I know. I know better than anyone. Because... I am your friend."

So, let’s define Dazai as a character who good nor evil means very little to, and is on the side of saving others simply by choice. He’s not motivated by lofty ideals. He’s not even a particularly moral person, willing to indulge in the unsavory sides of himself if it gets the results of ‘saving others’.

He’s someone who can commit crimes with little foibles. Though I would not say he does not feel any guilt at all because there’s a clear difference between his mental health when he was in the mafia killing people, and when he was on the side of the Armed Detective Agency. He also has the ability to feel attachment to others, because he was clearly sad over Oda’s death. He’s not empty of all emotion, but at the same time a lot of Dazai’s life is spent in contemplation of his own emptiness.

While Dazai moves pieces on a chess board and can see the bigger picture, I would argue that his motivations are much more personal and selfish than Fyodor, even though Fyodor is a cackling demon of a villain. Dazai is motivated by human beings and their individual stories, he leaves the Mafia not because of the hundreds of people he killed but because his one friend died. He is pushed to becoming a better mentor, because both Atsushi and Akutagawa need him to be. I’m not saying selfishness is bad, or selflessness is good the entire point of this essay is to deconstruct that simple black and white thinking.

Let’s say simply put, Dazai is a selfish character, lacking in ideals but still motivated to save others. He contemplates life and death similiar to Fyodor, and the same way that Fyodor finds punishment for criminals in crime, Dazai tries to find a reason to live in pursuing death.

Even that, is a personal motivation.

So then in comparison, Fyodor is impersonal and acts against his self interest. If Dazai is on a path of salvation, living to save himself, then Fyodor’s path is marked for self destruction.

Starting with his formal introduction in chapter 42, Fyodor is introduced as a soulless man, lacking sympathy for anybody else. However, I would argue the opposite the chapter clearly shows Fyodor sympathizing with the child he spends most of the chapter talking to.

Remember the entire chapter Fyodor is playing Ace for a loop, he’s only letting Ace see him as he wants to be seen. Therefore everything he’s described as to others “Something more awful, and heinous than a villain” is the act he puts on.

In the chapter we see a child honestly encourage and try to connect with Fyodor, only for his attempts to fall on deaf ears by the end of the chapter when Fyodor chooses to kill him as a witness. Fyodor gives the impression that he was not listening to the boy the entire time.

Yet, if Fyodor was ignoring him, if Fyodor did not feel a thing about the boy and was not sympathizing him in the least then why did he take the time to explain things and talk to him before sending him off at the end of the chapter? If Fyodor is able to kill him so easily so as to not see him as human, why does the boy feel like he is understood?

Rather than just ignoring him and treating him like a piece on the board, I argue that Fyodor did see the boy as a person. The panel shown afterwards does not display the emotion of a remorseless slaughter. The entire panel is shown as empty. Fyodor regrets this action, killing the boy in such a way.

At the same time he feels like he must do something he personally does not want to do. In order to punish evil he must become something even worse than evil.

Therefore you have Dazai, living to save himself, attempting to be a better person than himself when he’s really just kind of a self obsessed person, and you have Fyodor, who lives to save not himself but the whole world and therefore he must damn himself to demonhood and become the worst version of himself.

Dazai searches for life in death, hence why he constantly attempts suicide. In its own weird way, his suicide attempts, his getting involved with death, murder, it’s all him looking for a way to live.

Whereas Fyodor genuinely believes with all of his heart, that death is something that cures the sickness of life. Not only do we see him have the opportunity to save someone only to kill them as a witness, denying himself the possibility of redemption. We also see him manipulate a child into suicide in front of Kunikida.

Because as he currently believes it, the world as it is will never bring salvation to those children. His act of manipulation is just a symptom of what is currently wrong with the world. After all, Dostoevsky pretty easily got this man to agree to arm his little brothers and sisters to the teeth and put them into danger. A child who exists in this world as it is cannot be saved.

Every character who ideologically alligns with Fyodor is looking for freedom from the world, in some form. Fyodor’s style of manipulation itself is a paradox, he controls their every action even resorting to blatant mind control in some places, and therefore he frees them from the burden of making their own decisions.

Then, if Fyodor is actually an idealist who genuinely does want a better world, and not just a laughing demon then why does he specifically target Kunakida the idealist of the detective agency? It’s because he’s an idealist, that Fyodor wants to crush him. In other words he wants to break weak and faulty ideals that cannot save the world.

Yet, it’s also an act of self loathing. It’s not that Fyodor is necessarily evil, but rather someone who becomes evil for the sake of his ideals. The reason for that is ideals are so high and mighty he needs to become god to enforce them, he desires a world much better than this one therefore he carries the weight of the world of his shoulders. As a person, just like Kunikida, Fyodor is constantly being crushed under the weight of his own ideals. That is why he seeks to crush Kunikida, to prove that Kunikida is weak, and therefore he is strong.

If what he seeks is paradise, then it makes complete sense that he would see it necessary to become god in order to achieve that. However in the end, Fyodor is not a demon, nor god, nor alien, he’s infallibly human. He’s so completely obsessed with the bigger picture, with providing salvation to all, that he will never be allowed to moved by personal motivations.

He sympathizes with the child who is wearing Ace’s collar, but cannot allow him to live even if he wants to.

It’s not that he will never allow himself to be moved, it’s not in Fyodor’s own mind he cannot. If he were to cede to one personal bias then he would never be able to accomplish his goals that are so lofty that he would need to become god in order to accomplish them, therefore it’s better to become an inhuman monster rather than be tripped up by personal feelings.

Whereas Dazai is motivated towards good and saving others, almost exclusively by the fact that there are people in his life who he is personally invested in.

It shows finally even in the difference for how they use people. Both Dazai and Fyodor rely on trickery and manipulation to move people, and sometimes it can seem like they only view others as mere pieces on a board. They have a tendency to also assume they know what is best for other people and move them without their consent.

The difference being that at the end of the day Dazai still sees others as individuals. He always leaves the element of choice. While Dazai pushes Atsushi and Akutagawa together even though they hate each other, because he believes the two of them are what’s best for each other he always leaves Atsushi with the choice of how he wants to proceed.

Therefore they remain individuals, therefore they are still people in his eyes. Even if Dazai always plays with his cards close to his chest, his plans fundamentally rely on trusting others, and others trusting him. Even in Dead Apple, his plan involved knowing Chuuya would use Corruption and that Chuuya would trust in him to stop him.

So, let’s say Dazai is someone who generally needs other people to carry out his plans. This is in contrast to Fyodor who once again, takes the burden entirely on himself.

Fyodor’s allies are more akin to slaves who worship him.

He literally messes with their brains to free them from hardship. Which goes along with again the binary opposition, his brain is modified to feel unhappiess, therefore he is happy. Because by that black and white logic, unhappiness only exists as the opposite and antagonist to happiness. The extension to Fyodor’s extreme logic, that the absence of crime will therefore bring peace to the world. All of Fyodor’s direct subordinates are liberated in this way, if he takes on all the decision making for himself, takes on all the burden for himself, then they are freed.

Goggol explains what are probably Fyodor’s own viewpoints via foiling, and being allies very well. That it is easier to imagine all of them as inhuman monsters who cannot possibly have a reason behind their actions. It’s more comforting, it’s freeing.

To do what he needs to do to change the world, Fyodor must become an unfeeling villain and he does the same to his subordinates, he actually modifies them and removs them of their emotions.

So therefore it’s a paradox, his allies and servants see themselves as completely free in their devotion to him, yet at the same time Fyodor’s manipulation is the opposite of Dazai’s. Rather than leaving it to choice and trust, he removes their ability to choose, he removes their ability to disobey him. It’s as if the only way he can think of for people to be righteous, is to remove their ability to sin in the first place.

It’s even apparent in their joke question and answer session. Dazai tells Fyodor to just inspire his subordinates to be better people the way he does with Atsushi and Aktugawa, and it seems like the idea did not even occur to Fyodor. Fyodor tells Dazai the way to win a woman is to cut off everything else to the point where she becomes completely dependent on you.

So, in conclusion it seems a lot of Fyodor’s mindset is a result of him purposefully taking on the burden of saving the entire world on himself, because he cannot allow himself to view others as equals. In order to continue justifying himself, he needs believe that he is the only person capable of doing these things and therefore he knows better than anyone else.

Dazai and Fyodor are both smart enough to be aware of not only the emptiness of life, its lack of purpose, its senseless cruelty. Their reactions however are opposite, Dazai decided to live in spite of being unable to ever find meaning whereas Fyodor decided to dictate that meaning to everyone else and decide it for them, like his words are the word of god.

Bestowing sins is the work of god. If god god does not Exist, I’ll become him.

#bsd meta #meta #bungo stray dog meta #dazai osamu #OSAMU DAZAI #fyodor dostoevsky #no longer human #bungo stray dogs analysis #bungo stray dogs character analysis #bungo stray dogs theory #literature analysis

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violetsystems · 4 years ago

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#personal

The holidays are quiet if not a little more restful than usual. I facetime’d my dad and his wife and talked to my mom on the phone. Since I left my job way back in July I haven’t had much video contact with anybody. Everybody is too busy baking banana bread on YouTube I guess to check in. The final days of my employment had devolved into a virtual SCRUM twice a day led by myself on camera. It was exhausting at times to lead but kept people focused. That is when they bothered to show up. One of my employees was off making music with my boss half the time I was trying to lead those discussions. I’m beginning to sense a theme. People saying they are there but not really. Maybe the mic is muted. Maybe you can’t see behind the screen. All I know is the follow through lately with people is missing entirely. I spent a good hour the last two days trying to decouple a credit card from my old job’s contact info. I’m locked out of both the phone number and the email attached to the account. I got the run around trying to provide a US passport to confirm my identity. It was good enough to enter China alone. The first call that ID was sufficient. They had said they sent an email to follow through with the process to two different emails I provided. The email never came most likely because neither had been tied to the account previously. I called back on Christmas eve and suddenly the passport wasn’t good enough. Neither was an expired driver’s license. The woman actually asked me why I hadn’t renewed my driver’s license. I told the truth. My ex girlfriend stole my car. That didn’t really help the situation. I sent a passport photo to unlock my facebook but they never followed through. I had an easier time unlocking my Fortnite account with it although that took a full week. I ended having to call the police on Christmas eve to explore filing a report for fraud and identity theft. The police officer on the phone pretty much gaslighted me at the end of the questioning. “Nothing criminal.” he stated plainly. I didn’t get mad. I didn’t even complain. I simply said Happy Holidays and hung up. Much like I’ve hung up on the last twenty years of my life at this point. Nobody seems to want to answer the video call. The opening introduction if they did would be something like “What exactly have you done with my life?” Maybe they’re afraid to confront the truth. The media, the government, and even the police seem to not want to believe evidence that contradicts their narrative. I guess you could throw up your hands and revolt. But the holidays have been peaceful and quiet enough to simply roll my eyes and move on. I’ve had years of failures to connect. COVID has taught me a lot of things. I heard the mantra in all the mandatory corporate webinars. This pandemic has brought to light structural problems we were never aware of before. Sexual harassment in the workplace. Check. Organizational corruption. Check. The fact everybody is full of bullshit and will just mute the mic and pretend it never happened. Check. People feel invincible behind a screen and think they know it all. Check. Now that we’re aware. What do we do? How do we move on with our life now that we have all this space? How do I even care about participating in a broken process when I have no debt and fiscal maturity? How can I go back to being the old me when I’ve been completely erased and conveniently forgot about? Why would I even bother?

Mostly I take the time with this process to make sure my identity is completely secure. Which is why it’s not really fun to be locked out of twenty years of your own information in the form of an email account and forgotten about for six months. But this is just the structural reality come to light. Much like the rest of America is waking up to the reality of what greed really does to people. That was my Christmas present this year aside from the coffee that never came and that Cyberpunk game that I don’t really have the time or the subpar computer setup to criticize. I’m guilty of tricking myself into thinking people care about me. I have statistical data from the last six months that proves otherwise. I also have financial data that points to whatever hustle I have been hustling during that time has paid off and will continue to. But I don’t really have an answer to anything. I’m in the worst kind of limbo. I don’t get the sense these days that I should even remotely worry until July. Which is kind of like saying fuck you to the world for the next six months. I spent the last six waking up from a nightmare. The only times I look back is to clean up the mess. And a Christmas Eve call to the police is kind of messy. But the result is more of the same for me. An extravagant “I told you so.” I’ve been telling myself for awhile now a lot of things. Some of them were kind of unbelievable. Now those very dreams are all I really take comfort in. The limbo I’m in is more pointed to the light at the end of the tunnel than the void. But I can’t say the same for everybody else. I work for myself for the time being. It looks really nice on paper. I can even pay myself if it fits into my organization’s financial outlook. But none of this matters when you or your struggles don’t even exist to people other than to mock or judge it. All the work we do to survive. All the work we do to create art and to be beautiful in the face of chaos. All of that is negated by a loud mouthed jerk who can bark you back into submission. A mob of dumb ass fraudsters that talk over and mute any opposition without any warrant or merit. The press follows this mentality pretty clearly. Everybody has a hot take and a theory. But nobody wants to sit down and listen to the culmination of lies spread about people and situations. Everyone is too emotionally interested in sharing their recipe for banana bread to an invisible audience. I guess I could be guilty of that too. Except that I share actual human emotion and care with a community of people who pay attention week to week. For a person like myself who has no real need to worry about money for the foreseeable future what’s the value of care and attention? A lot. I don’t feed myself with vapor or fake sentiments. I take it all at base level as real as it gets. You can’t build a future on speculation. You can technically if you are in the stock market. But risk is risk. And money is money. No one can be me at the end of the day. Sometimes I can’t even prove I’m myself. My mom reminded me I had to provide ten pieces of documentation to renew my passport ten years ago. The reasoning was simple. The government did not believe I existed. No bullshit. A decade later nothing really has changed. I’ve been to Shanghai by myself and eaten McDonald’s. I read all these Republicans talk about how you put your identity at risk just setting foot in that country.

And yet when does the rhetoric and brainwashing fall flat on it’s face? When you can’t pass economic stimulus to not only save your own people but the fragile stock market all this bullshit is built upon. I could keep telling you I told you so. Or I could save my own ass. And largely I did without really owing much to this country whatsoever except taxes in Q1. Taxes billionaires don’t have to pay because they offer us so much relevant employment and benefits that fit on their bottom line. The real truth is that America would rather not face the truth. It hasn’t for years. It’s built on this kind of thing. It always has been. And the world gets bigger and the excuses get worse. And so what does anyone expect a person like me to do after you openly admit that there’s nothing criminal going on here. How does that sound when you’ve been treated openly like a criminal in so many unsettling ways that you just don’t want to participate in society anymore? Not that anyone really asks me to participate. They’re too busy signaling or whispering secret messages. Is it suggestion or valid communication? I’m the one that has to shift through it all and detangle the mess from what is real and what is some sort of mass hallucination. An alternate reality hunger game that the rich have been playing for years without any punishment or oversight. When you get caught up in the crossfire they expect you to know the drill. Keep your mouth shut if you know what’s good for you. None of this is good for me. You could argue it made me the beast that I am. But I am the one who had to actively make that choice to adapt and survive. But I’m not like any normal person these days. I refuse to admit it anymore. They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. I have a problem. One that it seems I cannot fix. And if you isolate and quarantine yourself from an entire twenty years of nostalgia what is left? Where are the texts of merry xmas from yesteryear. Probably pinging my old work number. I can’t access my facebook. Maybe that’s for the best. I can’t shut down lines of credit until I renew my state ID. I could jump on a plane and visit Shanghai Disney quicker than I could prove I’m alive to the US government. And when does the constant gaslighting break down? When do we realize that people gaslight to cover up an elaborate lie that has gotten out of control. That we are not all in this together. Not by a longshot. That the problem of connectedness is right there in front of our faces. We’re exhausted propping up entire infrastructures that keep a bloated empire alive. Family fortunes built on opioids and war strewn out across the landscape in trusts and elaborate tax schemes. Oligarchs that have generational wealth that buy our politicians and scam people into debt and forced labor. This is America. This is the systemic problem the pandemic brought to light. This shit was built this way. And like any fort constructed with shaky foundations, good luck hiding from the storm in that shit. At least I can still access my Epic account. What am I going to do for the next six months? Complain about something I can’t fix because everybody wants to consider me part of the problem? I don’t know what to do anymore except move forward and lead by example. There’s enough quality people who follow to keep me warm with those thoughts through the holidays alone. I won’t be drunk on a zoom call. I’ll be in bed watching Wonder Woman or something. When everyone you worshipped comes out of this looking fake, tired and exhausted you’ll know where to find me. Unlocking more accounts tied to an identity that doesn’t exist anymore. Nothing criminal. Hopefully people will stop treating me like one eventually. <3 Tim

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