#that having been said they can also appeal to his compassion

[lakesbian]

you know what. im going to follow my heart so we can move on with the wormread and just copy-paste what i said about danny in chapter 6.9 on discord with some minimal editing because it's not pretty but the general thesis is there and i don't feel like making it into proper paragraph form

okay so the thing thats fucking killing me abotu 6.9 is that danny is literally like. he tries to call taylor a nickname only her mom called her once he realizes he's fucked up bad and is trying to recover whichi s insane [because it's obviously going to be upsetting to her by reminding her of her mom being gone, and it also indicates that his fall-back for something going wrong w/ taylor is to try to appeal to her by poorly copying someone else's parenting style] and he also randomly tells her about how her mom wanted to move her a grade ahead but he wanted her to stay in school with emma to make her happy. and he's been Stewing On That despite knowing it's objectively not his fault (and i am reminded of how in his interlude he spends time Stewing about how he wishes annette were there to give advice) and he also cops up to the fact that that the whole thing about "being her parent and not her ally" (<- demented thing to say for obvious reasons) wherein he locks her in a room and demands emotional vulnerability from her even as she's becoming visibly upset & compares his actions to emma's was her grandmother's idea and then. here's the real kicker. once lisa shows up and prepares to take taylor away there are any number of actions a parent confident that they're doing the right thing for their child would normally do in response--not, like, Good actions, but things that a parent would be likely to pull. threatening to call the cops bc blah blah you're my daughter, wanting to speak to lisa's parents, any form of power move pulled over these two teenage girls but instead he speaks to lisa like she's an equal authority over taylor and seriously asks if she's "okay with this" (i should remind you of the concussion chapter where lisa is doing some insane power move shit over taylors dad covertly establishing herself as more competent at caring 4 her than him lmao) which is just like. it's so glaringly wildly obvious how this guy has Zero confidence in himself as a parent so he generally does nothing and then while he's doing nothing he oscillates btwn rationalizing it to himself as allowing her privacy/dignity, getting angry at himself/calling himself a coward, or getting mad at TAYLOR and blaming HER for not being the one to take initiation to be vulnerable with him and, like. he literally does make functional decisions prior to this for a bit! he's good and supportive at the meeting with the school board about the bullying!!! but it doesn't immediately solve literal years of distance between them that have led to taylor having to take decisionmaking for her wellbeing entirely into her own hands w/o being able to tell him about it [& having literally no route for human connection or support other than the undersiders] so he just completely crumbles on his own calls and seeks out/takes completely shit advice from taylor's grandma instead so i very much think what's insinuated here is like. especially given that he knows he has anger issues and never wants to Be Scary with them. he might have frequently leaned on annette for parenting decisions before she died and/or is really fucking haunted by the time(s) he didn't listen to her and it went wrong and now that she's gone he's just kinda floundering and trying to toss the baton for parental decisionmaking onto anyone else, including, at one point, the literal teenage girl who shows up to help taylor run away from his house. insane ! also. thinking about how taylor says her grandma (maternal) never liked her dad. that man would literally rather talk to the mother of his dead wife, who hates him, and take her advice than go 'yeah ithink im gonna keep using my own judgement for compassion towards my daughter' fucking worst anyones ever done it this guy has the spine of a twizzler it's great

...and then doing All That & severely triggering taylor's trauma from the bullying in the process completely shatters any trust he had built with her, catalyzing her realization that she wants to be able to have meaningful relationships with the undersiders & leading to her running away to leave with them! i don't think anyone can say for sure whether or not danny Not doing this would have led to taylor turning the undersiders in before realizing that she would regret it, but oh fucking boy does he make SURE she doesn't go thru with it. and it would be bad to call the cops on a bunch of systematically neglected traumatized teenagers regardless of how much crime they're doing so you know what maybe we should actually thank danny for his Shit Parenting stopping taylor from being a narc

[tenebris-lux]

You know, while we’re waiting for something to happen in Varna, I wanna gush (and I do mean gush) about an earlier entry and its performance in Re: Dracula: Seward’s diary, October 1, 4am.

First, a note on a detail in Re: Dracula. The part where all the guys said one after another that they all wanted to meet Renfield….

“May I come also?” asked Lord Godalming.

“Me too?” said Quincey Morris. “May I come?” said Harker.

The way Seward said “said Harker”, he sounds so annoyed! Like, “Ugh, FINE, everybody come. All of a sudden my patient is the most popular guy around.” The delivery for just that little line in Re: Dracula made me grin.

But onto to the meat of the entry.

Renfield pulled out ALL the stops in trying to convince Seward to take him out of the asylum. He did everything he could to impress on Seward that he was on the same page as any other guy, even ahead a little—intelligence, reasonability, culture, diplomacy, you name it. He took full advantage of the entourage that followed Seward. The pointed way Trench said the line, “By the way, you have not introduced me,” had the emphasis meant to put Seward on the spot—‘who appears less civilized here? In company?’ He then shows respect for everyone in the room named, displaying knowledge, grace, courtesy, charm, what have you. He was probably not expecting everybody to show up, so he had to improvise. But right off the top of his head, he was able to impress on each of them that he’s not “lesser”.

The pure charisma he displayed made a slight impression on Seward, kind of a knee-jerk reaction to go, “Yeah, sure, you seem perfectly fine, I’ll draw up the paperwork…” But then Seward catches himself. Unfortunately. Still, if Seward had been at all professional about Renfield in his treatment of him so far, him saying he’d talk to him more about it in the morning might not have been unreasonable. And if Renfield didn’t have an ulterior motive to leave the asylum right then, he could’ve possibly taken the opportunity to try to impress him more; not play Seward’s twisted mind games. Unfortunately, he could not afford to wait. At all. So he insists that time is of the essence and he has to go now.

“He looked at me keenly, and seeing the negative in my face, turned to the others, and scrutinized them closely. Not meeting any sufficient response, he went on:—

‘Is it possible that I have erred in my supposition?’

‘You have,’ I said frankly, but at the same time, as I felt, brutally. There was a considerable pause, and then he said slowly:—

‘Then I suppose I must only shift my ground of request….’”

“Brutally” is right. Jack’s voice was very blunt and short in Re: Dracula, and it was audible in Renfield’s voice that the wheels were turning; like, ‘how can I get through to this guy? I thought I was onto something there, but … Plan B then.’ His Plan B is a little more direct, less certain, and involves more crossing one’s fingers: appeal to Seward’s compassion, and try to tell him why he wants out so soon, which … ugh, isn’t much. That’s why he threw his all into plan A; plan B was extremely uncertain at best.

Still reasonably, he says he has reasons for wanting out, that it’s for the sake of others. But he can’t tell him why. Just … please trust him on this?

Unexpectedly, he just loses ground with Seward, but he’s got Van Helsing’s interest, and Van Helsing’s the type who tries to make a practice of giving the benefit of the doubt.

“He said to Renfield in a tone which did not surprise me at the time, but only when I thought of it afterwards—for it was as of one addressing an equal:—“

Which Jack found weird when reflecting on it later. Because why would Jack even consider Renfield being equal? But anyway, Van Helsing takes the initiative and overrides Jack’s authority by saying, ‘If you can state clearly why you want to go and convince me, he’ll let you and take responsibility.’ Which is kind of a weird gamble, if you ask me. Like, yeah, Seward would probably do it, because it’s Van Helsing, but it still seems odd to me. Van Helsing says later that he knows a lot less of “madmen” than Seward does (should we tell him?), so it’s a risk. But he was much closer to believing Renfield than Seward was. Whatever the case, Renfield couldn’t tell them anything. Van Helsing tried to persuade him to change his mind, because then he’d make so much more progress, rather than if he just kept secrets, right? But he wasn’t picking up that it wasn’t that Renfield didn’t want to say something, or was afraid to.

He literally couldn’t tell them.

“Dr. Van Helsing, I have nothing to say. Your argument is complete, and if I were free to speak I should not hesitate a moment; but I am not my own master in the matter. I can only ask you to trust me. If I am refused, the responsibility does not rest with me.”

The helpless way he says ‘I have nothing to tell you.’ And he’s DROPPING HINTS. He hears and understands Van Helsing’s arguments and if he WERE FREE TO SPEAK … but he is not his own MASTER…. Come onnn, Jack, you’ve heard that word before, right? I think somehow Renfield knows the guys are heading next door, so come on, Jack, put two and two together. Where else has Renfield used that word? And again, I love the added emphasis Felix Trench put on the word “master”. Like, come on, man, take a hint. Yes, Renfield’s addressing Van Helsing, but Seward’s hearing this. Seward’s the one here who knows his habits, his patterns.

Right?

…

No go.

“Come, my friends, we have work to do. Good-night.”

Renfield’s only chance is heading out the door. Reason and trust have both failed. Last ditch effort: pure desperation. Pleading, begging, on his knees, crying. Saying he’ll go under ANY circumstance Seward picks out, even if it comes to torture. Anything. Anything.

And Trench’s performance … oh god, the tears coming, the breathlessness, the way words warp when you talk while crying….

“Can’t you hear me, man? Can’t you understand? Will you never learn? Don’t you know that I am sane and earnest now; that I am no lunatic in a mad fit, but a sane man fighting for his soul? Oh, hear me! hear me! Let me go! let me go! let me go!”

GOD. He’s just so desperate to get ANYTHING from Seward. Is there anything in that man he can reach?

Still no. The way Jonathan Sims said Seward’s next lines—“Come, no more of this; we have quite enough already. Get to your bed and try to behave more discreetly.”—were PERFECT. Sternly chiding a lesser person who’s misbehaving, in tone, but with cold unfeeling words. Absolutely no warmth. No connection.

“He suddenly stopped and looked at me intently for several moments.”

The last check. Is there anything there? Anything in there at all he can reach or connect with?

“Then, without a word, he rose and moving over, sat down on the side of the bed.”

Just … the way he gives up. He’s out of options. Absolutely nothing will get through to the guy he needs to understand him. Or his friends, even the “open-minded” one. They all think he’s crazy and apart from them. He just needed one of them—preferably Seward, but any of them would do—to stand in his corner, and just relocate him somewhere. They can pick any conditions they want, just so long as he leaves now.

But Seward has never understood him. He made it a hobby to “try to understand him” and “know how he works”. And now when he actually needs to, he’s completely off-base. I won’t go so far as to say that if it weren’t for Seward, the attacks on Mina wouldn’t have happened, because it ultimately comes down to Dracula being the attacker. Still, it’s frustrating.

The final thing Renfield says to Seward as the doctor heads out the door—“You will, I trust, Dr. Seward, do me the justice to bear in mind, later on, that I did what I could to convince you to-night.”—was described as said “in a quiet, well-bred voice,” and it certainly was that in Re: Dracula, but it also came across as drained and defeated and … done. Just … ‘I tried.’

And he really did try.

He knows he has a weakness and is susceptible. There’s no telling when his mental fortitude might weaken next. But if/when it does, it wouldn’t be just him that suffers consequences.

….. anyways, that’s my gush.

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

I hope you don't mind me asking this, but why do you like Celegorm? I love that you're vocal about how stupid the Feanorian woobification in this fandom is because people who claim that they did nothing wrong or that they're not villains clearly hasn't read the Silm, but while there's still a level of sympathy to most of them, Celegorm is just genuinely the worst and I can't figure out what there is to appreciate about him lol. I'm sorry if this comes across as a bad-faith question, I really want to know how you like him while not ignoring, trying to deny, or worst trying to justify (which I have seen FAR too many people doing) his canon actions

you're totally good anon! i'd be happy to answer this. just want to preface, i perfectly get where you're coming from and why people hate celegorm, because he is, as you say, the worst. he's horrible. he's done awful things to countless people -- and by no means is he the only feanorian to have done that, obviously, but celegorm's actions in luthien's story make him a type of squicky that's unique even among the brothers. he, hm. how can i put this. he deserves nothing. and yes, people who try to justify him are just wrong. stop reading the silm if you want a mass murdering sexual predator to be glorified ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

that said! the succinct answer is that it's all about the vibes lol. all the feanorians are awful people, but celegorm is, imo, that particularly entertaining kind of awful. there's a certain interplay between his successes and failures that i find unbearably endearing (derogatory). he is canonically charming and magnetic and charismatic enough to sway people with his rhetoric, and i love that. i love that he's opportunistic, clever, and sly, and pounces on the chance when he spots it. the fact that his speech in nargothrond is explicitly paralleled with feanor's before the flight of the noldor says a lot. i find it compelling that while, in many ways, celegorm is the most distant from his family -- friend of a vala, a great woodsman and hunter which are two things that neither his father nor his brothers are ever even mentioned around -- he is the only one among the sons of feanor to be directly, textually compared to feanor, and feanor during one of his most pivotal and infamous moments, no less. the guy must be a force of nature when he really wants to be. yet at the same time, he's endlessly reckless, arrogant, and shortsighted, and he does not get to get away with his actions. his plans flop (just like he will continue to flop until his karmic and also really fucking funny death in about thirty years' time, i'll get back to that), his intentions are discerned, and he gets thrown out in disgrace for treachery with the embarrassing declaration "a maiden had dared that which the sons of feanor had not dared to do" following after him. it's that particular blend of hyper-competence followed hand-in-hand by prompt abject failure and humiliation that makes him so appealing to me.

oh and. another thing about celegorm is that he has the added charm of being a fucking sore loser and a petty bitch -- trying to kill luthien even though she spares his brother's life when she'd be justified throttling him and curufin with her bare hands and i just. he's sooo funny. what is wrong with him. so many things are wrong with him. tfw you kidnap and tried to rape this woman and she does you an untold, absolutely herculean grace and kindness that you know damn well you do not deserve and your reaction is to try to kill her for daring to show you compassion. he's insane.

then. then then then then. he gets chased by own dog and runs away "in terror." you know you've messed up when your dog finally has enough of your bullshit and runs you down because he's fed up with all the terrible things you've been doing. not to mention his dog also dies fighting next to a man that he hates, using his last opportunity of speech to say goodbye to said man. like. beren and luthien's story leaves celegorm, as skilled and magnetic as he canonically is, in absolute shambles and it's hilarious. how does one recover from that you may ask. and i answer one does not recover from that.

but that's not even all. after that saga of blunders he hangs around for about three decades doing absolutely nothing of note, then in his attempt to regain some relevancy winds up having the most mortifying death ever. my dude you were the "let's ambush doriath guys" spokesperson. you campaigned for that shit. this was your desire. this is what you wanted. and you walk in there and the guy who's *checks notes* THIRTY-SIX compared to your one-thousand-something KILLS YOU. elves are not developmentally matured until they're a hundred. your killer is like thirty. this is, generously speaking, about an eight year old by your standards. a fucking eight year old kills you. yes i know dior was not actually a child at the time but the fact remains that celegorm quite literally has more life experience than the entire human race and he's done in by the son of a human. then to add second insult to first insult to extreme injury, two of your brothers are also killed in this battle and in the end you all don't even achieve what the fuck you came there to do. THIS WAS YOUR PLAN. how do you lose that badly. holy hell. if i were him i'd stay in the halls of mandos forever out of pure embarrassment. you simply would never see me again. you think i'm walking out into society and showing my face around the block when an eight-year-old ended my life? nah. no sir not me

plus well. on a more serious note, dior is luthien's son. luthien, whom celegorm thought he could control, whom he saw as an object to further his aims and to lust after. he's killed by the son of the woman he tried to rape, and there's nothing more fitting than that.

so! there you have the basic rundown of why i like what's explicitly laid out about celegorm in canon. he's an objectively horrible man, it's just that i find the way he goes about being objectively horrible extremely funny. but i also think he is ripe for exploration in the realm of speculation -- and that speculation enhances what we do know about his actions during b&l and after until his death. aside from the kinslaying at alqualonde wherein all the sons of feanor participate, we see him and curufin acting unambiguously villainous a good bit before the rest of their brothers -- at the very least, they are clearly more willing to do horrible things at the point of time of b&l when compared to the likes of maedhros and maglor. like, they are out here committing actions that no sane person can rationalize as being anything other than abhorrent. it's clear that they've already given up on the idea of being "good"; they've already given up on keeping their hands clean and they've already shed whatever qualms they might have had in the past.

my thoughts on why? this is by no means canon, but tolkien does seem to like giving the legendarium's major villains some sort of arc and some type of insight into what they become (melkor gets history, sauron gets history, maedhros and maglor get history), so i don't see why celegorm should be any different. and for me, celegorm and curufin, especially celegorm, give the impression that they fell into despair and disillusionment far before the other feanorians did. and their response was to accept that they have no way of going back to the people they used to be, that they've already been rightfully damned, and if they've come this far they may as well do whatever they can to achieve what they fell so low for, because what does it matter anymore? it's part of why i think celegorm sees maedhros trying to look at beleriand and the war against morgoth from a larger perspective than just the silmarils, and both disdains and pities him for it. they've already been doomed and they already can't hope to make amends. they should do what they're here for -- and while, in celegorm's eyes, maedhros isn't willing to do what needs to be done, he is. i think that sort of mentality is fascinating. in a way, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy -- maybe if celegorm thought there was any meaning to him being better, or even just any meaning in not being nearly as awful as he resolved to be, then he wouldn't have stooped so low. but he did believe there was no hope for him, he did believe that he could never be forgiven -- and in believing that, he did go past the point of no return, beyond which he truly, legitimately couldn't hope to be forgiven. also, i just personally like the "well i'm a terrible person so i'm going to act like a terrible person"-type villains better than "oh no i'm a terrible person it makes me so sad and full of despair"-type villains (looking at you, maglor). again, none of this is canon, but it's my reading of celegorm's character, and i think it sheds some light on why he's so awful in b&l and afterwards. in his mind, it's already over for him anyway.

i hope this answered your question anon! i like celegorm, and i enjoy his character, because there are shades of a sad tale behind his descent to being the worst, he's entertaining while he's being the worst, and most crucially of all, he gets his comeuppance for being the worst in an extremely satisfying way. i definitely wouldn't like him (or the silm at all) so much if he'd been, like, successful in anything -- but thankfully he is written by an author who knows full well what an utterly reprehensible character he is. and boy does tolkien not spare him from that karma. he is simultaneously a singleminded and relentless fallen prince, a repulsive monster, and the story's laughingstock (one of them anyway). honestly, none of the feanorians tickle my brain quite like he does. i love him and i would beat him with a shoe

[stargazerlily7210]

I just rewatched The Day of the Doctor, and something clicked a bit more than it had before, regarding The Moment. And I honestly can't tell if this was the point all along and I just didn't make the connection because I was too caught up in the references and having Billie back on Doctor Who, or if this is just my new headcanon.

(Obvs, spoilers ahead if you haven't seen the 50th or finished Rose's episodes)

So, what do we know about The Moment?

-It's also called The Galaxy Eater

-It was invented by 'The Ancients of Gallifrey'

-The Time Lords are so scared of the thing that of all of the Forbidden Weapons locked away in the Omega Arsenal, it's the only one they've avoided deploying until now.

-The reason the Time Lords are so scared of it is because, according to legend, it was so powerful of a weapon that it developed a conscience.

-Not that it became conscious. That its AI woke up one day with strong enough moral compass to get angry at them for wanting to use it.

But I think it wasn't thanks to the Time Lords that it developed a conscience. I think it was very literally Rose as the Bad Wolf during Parting of the Ways.

Why?

Well, when we first meet said AI, it's taken the form of Rose as Bad Wolf (duh). Which gets played off as a bit of a timey-wimey joke, claiming it picked that look to appeal to The Doctor and just got the timeline wrong.

But now I'm thinking it's more than that, cause let's be real. If we're dealing with an AI smart enough to design its appearance to appeal to someone's preferences, it can make excuses for the same reason.

It doesn't know or care who Rose Tyler is. But even before it names itself Bad Wolf (which it has a VERY strong reaction to, for a weapon that has nothing to do with Earth or Humans, and wants nothing to do with the Time War or the Daleks) it still shows a propensity for Wolf imagery, telling The Doctor the noise outside was "just a wolf".

It also didn't do a copy of Rose, despite saying it chose "this face AND form" for the Doctor. Which I'd think it would have if it was truly just pulling an image from The Doctor's future memory (Billie having aged 7 yrs since we last saw her aside, because so had David and that clearly wasn't an issue to redesign his look around). Instead it wore its clothes and hair styled in a way that Rose would never have worn.

But it sure does appeal to the same aspects of The Doctor's character that Rose brought out in 'em. And laughs about The Doctor's comment that he could kiss her ("Oh, Bad Wolf Girl! I could kiss you!" "Yup! You will..") despite not knowing for sure who or when Rose Tyler was to The Doctor less than an hour ago.

So I suggest that when Rose absorbed the time vortex and was doing her 'gotta literally reshape matter and reality to protect My Doctor' thing, that included inserting her/Bad Wolf's consciousness into The Moment, way back when.

Like she did when she brought Jack back to life but had no control over how much life she shoved into him. Or how when she scattered the words Bad Wolf across spacetime as a trail of breadcrumbs, she also unknowingly named that beach in the parallel universe's Norway, Bad Wolf Bay.

"I bring life!" Sure did, and then some.

"I take the words. I scatter them across space and time." No kidding.

"The Time War Ends!" I mean, come on. Why would that be any less unintentionally accurate than the rest of her actions?

The Doctor says in Utopia that if a Time Lord had done what Rose did, they'd become a vengeful god. (Side note, when The Master finds out the Doctor had pulled the final trigger, he even says, "You must've been like God!") But he argues Rose's humanity having fueled her actions is what stopped her from succumbing to the same fate. Not that she didn't have the power of a God in that moment.

If I'm right, though. With the reality breaking power that Rose as Bad Wolf definitely had, and that The Moment is suggested to have; I think Rose literally rewrote the end of the Time War by putting her consciousness in The Moment. Fixed points don't matter when you're literally the Time Vortex channeled through a lovestruck teenage brain.

I think that until Rose went all supernova, The Doctor *had* used the Doomsday (hah) Weapon to stop the war. But as Bad Wolf, while she was seeing all realities at all times, she saw a way to "protect [him] from the False God (aka. him)" via inserting herself into said weapon.

It's not that he just didn't remember because crossing timelines. It's that he *had* done it until Rose went glowstick goddess on him.

Final bit of evidence? There's no reason for The Moment's trigger to have looked like that in the end. It doesn't even look like any other piece of Time Lord tech, that I know of.

But we already know that less than a day after Parting of the Ways, Rose will watch The 10th Doctor get really excited about a Big Red Button.

She went the extra mile and made the button shaped like a Rose. It even has petals.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

I was thinking about the multiple contradictory narratives Bedelia spins about herself in s3 part 2 - the way her public story completely excises her agency in collaborating with Hannibal, while the version of events she presents to Will, in which she gloats about having been “beyond the veil” when he has not, also completely excises her ambivalence and fear towards Hannibal. (Like, she confidently presents a narrative to Will in which she shared the perfect understanding with Hannibal that he craves, and wherein she has embraced the violent impulses in a way that his compassion has impeded him from doing. And yet she spends so much of s3 part 1 positively radiating stress and discomfort. And that contrast is fascinating to me in itself.)

And then I started thinking about the bird metaphor.

Bedelia uses the wounded bird example to frame Will as being held back from being a true killer by his compassion and concern for the weak. But in reality, it represents the appeal that violence holds for both of them. Will’s desire to protect the vulnerable is the source of not only his violent urges, but the pleasure he takes in hurting those who hurt others - this is most obvious in the social worker horse plot line, in which his care for Peter ignites his murderous anger towards Clark Ingram, and also comes through in his enjoyment of killing Randall Tier and his fantasies about killing Hannibal. The fundamental tension in his character arc - whether the righteous anger he feels for the vulnerable will overwhelm his compassion, such that the pleasure of violence swallows up its initial motivation - is reflected in the fact that many of the killers he can identify with do feel a kind of twisted compassion for their victims. Garett Jacob Hobbs, for example, his identification with whom Will struggles with considerably, is said to “love” his victims. For Hannibal himself, violence and love are also incredibly bound up.

Bedelia is different. Her desire to crush the bird tends to manifest as a sort of twisted mercy killing, as with Neal Frank and Sogliato. (Interestingly, her and Will’s violent impulses, at least on a surface level, feel like an extreme and twisted reflection of their professions - Will’s job is to bring justice, and hers is to provide medical care). Hannibal knows this about her, and explicitly sets her up to kill Sogliato (“technically, you killed him”). He knew she would flinch at his suffering and need to squelch it out. And while it’s not stated one way or another, it’s entirely possible (perhaps probable) that he purposely set her up with Neal Frank, because he was curious what she would do.

(In Tome-wan, Hannibal tries to push Will to mercy kill Mason Verger in the same way during the “he fed his face to my dogs” scene, possibly working from his experiences with Bedelia - but of course Will’s not built that way.)

The thing with Bedelia’s mercy killing, though, is that despite her being the one to voice the line about compassion being necessary for cruelty, her motivation seems to be nearly devoid of compassion. Rather, my reading is that she operates more from discomfort, and disgust. She’s repelled by weakness and suffering. When she sees a wounded bird, she wants to get rid of it, crush out its suffering so she doesn’t have to look anymore. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t get genuine pleasure from the violence, but the violence we see from her feels reactive.

And that’s possibly the biggest difference between her and Hannibal, and the source of the gulf between them. Because Hannibal relishes vulnerability. See the way he affectionately rubs his head against Miriam Lass’ as he chokes her unconscious, the way he keeps Gideon alive for an extended period of time so he can experience Hannibal’s work, the way he treats Bedelia herself with care despite their both knowing he’s working up towards eating her. It’s not just about the kill for Hannibal - it’s drawing the victim’s reactions out and enjoying the thrill of power he has over them, and it’s a process that in many cases seems to instill a strange, twisted tenderness in him.

This brings me back to Will and the wounded bird, because his desire to “help” the bird doesn’t just extend towards his penchant for violent punitive justice - it’s also the way he comes to see killing itself as a way of honouring the victims by making them into art. He wants to linger with their vulnerability, spool it out and spin it into something beautiful, and it’s through this that he can connect with Hannibal. But can you imagine Bedelia stopping to turn Chiyoh’s prisoner into a sculpture? Of course not. She can’t linger with her victims after their deaths - she panics after killing Neal Frank, and is sickened by Hannibal’s actions in Antipasto. She can’t see the artistry in death the way Will and Hannibal can. Violence compels her, but pain and suffering are ugly to her. To Will and Hannibal, they’re beautiful.

[umlewis]

Hamilton hails four-time champion Vettel as 'an amazing option' for Mercedes in 2025

Lewis Hamilton has given his backing to Sebastian Vettel as he fielded questions over who could replace him at Mercedes for the 2025 season, saying he would "love" to see the German make a Formula 1 comeback.

Vettel called time on his illustrious F1 career at the end of 2022, having made almost 300 starts and racked up four world titles, 53 wins, 122 podiums, 57 pole positions and more than 3,000 points.; however, following on from a recent endurance test with Porsche, the 36-year-old has admitted that a return to the sport could be "appealing," having also held general talks with Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff. Wolff is searching for another driver to slot in alongside George Russell from next year, with seven-time world champion Hamilton having deciding to make the switch to Ferrari, where he will replace Carlos Sainz. With the likes of Kimi Raikkonen, Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso all returning to the sport after sabbaticals, Hamilton was asked about F1's everlasting appeal and the chances of Vettel doing the same. "You're always going to miss it," said Hamilton. "It's the greatest sport in the world and it's the greatest experience in the world. It's the most amazing feeling to be working with a group of people towards winning something, achieving something. Probably there's nothing that's going to ever feel the same. I've not asked any of the drivers what they're missing, but I can just imagine. But I would love for Seb to come back. I think he would be an amazing option for the team, to have a multi-world championship-winning driver, someone who's got amazing values to continue to take this team forwards… I would love it if he came back." Hamilton was then asked how much thought he is giving to the driver who will replace him and whether it should be an experienced pair of hands such as Vettel, or potentially a newcomer such as Mercedes junior Andrea Kimi Anontelli, to which he also implied support for the latter. "I think the only thing I really care about is that the team takes on someone with integrity and values that are aligned with the team, where the team is going," he said. "Someone with compassion that's able to work with all these great people, continue to lift them up. As drivers there are some that are more selfish than others. There are some that are good drivers but perhaps not the best within team environments. I don't know, because I've not been in with all of them. They've already got George and he's perfect for the team. I'm sure they've got so many options. I do think it's always great to give an opportunity to an up-and-coming driver, so the idea of a youngster coming in I think, for me, is exciting."

[thistleation]

Hi lovely blog and art, just chiming in to say I also think Beatrice is ruthless and that she is portrayed as ruthless in warrior nun, she shot a tranquilizer dart in Ava's neck. Like I guess she expected the other to talk to her and convince her of going with them, but ofc ofc she's the one that not only thought about the scenario in which Ava resisted and tried to escape, she arrived there with a solution, mind you, a swift solution that removed agency from Ava. Also she she asks Vincent is removing the halo would mean Ava would die, she's talking about it like she's discussing the weather. Seeing as she was a nun, I was actually expecting her to be like 'but father Vincent we can't even consider that, because the value of human life bla bla, and this is a innocent human life that got caught in the middle of it all', instead cold as ice sister Beatrice's response to the possibility of killing Ava to retrieve the halo was: 'but the politics though' it actually made me laugh. I mean she was raised by diplomatics/politicians ofc she has concepts like 'optics, church PR' in mind. That actually made me realize that even before being a nun, she's above all, a devoted warrior. Above her supposed catholic ethics and compassion is her absolute, unwavering commitment to The Mission. Beatrice is ruthless and I love that about her. Because after Ava, that ruthlessness, that devotion, all of her skills have shifted and she's loyal to Ava with that same ruthlessness

Yes exactly!

I think all of them can be expected to have a certain level of cavalier attitude towards death as any of them who've been on more than a handful of missions can be expected to have killed in the line of duty.

Beatrice though has her upbringing that plays a role as well.

She's been taught from an early age that her feelings are wrong, and her coping strategies for that trauma are repressing her feelings and cold, emotionless logic.

I don't think S1 Beatrice means to be cold and callous, I think she's quite empathetic underneath, even then. It's just that she's so used to trusting the moral aspect of her actions to the church.

Again, her feelings, her judgement can't be trusted — she's been told as much since childhood — so instead she relinquishes those to a higher authority. And what higher authority is there than the church, the literal embodiment of God's will on earth?

And so Beatrice instead focuses on the tactics, the strategy, the logical breakdown of any situation as a problem to be solved, trusting that the problem that was put in front of her was put there by the church and God and is therefore morally right to solve.

Beatrice only focuses on the line.

And eventually, when the situation gets messier, when her love for Ava grows stronger and stronger, and she finds her personal priorities have shifted because she's finally, finally found something for herself to truly live for, that line is still there, and Beatrice can see it clearly.

I'm fond of saying that one of the sexiest things about S2 Beatrice is that she's prepared to turn her back on the mission and let the world burn if it means saving Ava.

There's this post I saw a good while back that said there's an appeal to being loved by a villain, because a villain can put you first, can choose you even if it means thousands of others die, where a hero can only ever put you second, after the greater good.

Beatrice will put Ava first. Before anything else.

I think she realizes that towards the end of S2. I think it scares her, and I think that's partly what led to the "would you come with me" scene.

But in the end when it comes down to it, she still makes the decision. Fuck the mission and fuck the world if that's what it takes, she puts Ava first.

And I love that for her.

[corellianhounds]

i think people are so focused on din being such a good dad (or daddy) that they forget that he really doesn't care about other people (not related to him in any way) in general. he saved villages and towns because he was paid to or he gets something in exchange, not from the goodness of his heart. this says a lot about his moral compass as a character and i love that about him. so many people think he's kind and caring because they only ever really see him with grogu but outside of that he's a cold and calculating individual who can be merciless in his job.

I do think the focus of the character skews in favor of those first two options in fandom like you said, but I’d disagree in saying he doesn’t care about other people beyond what transactions he has with them; the flashbacks he has of Aq Vetina highlight the fact the Mandalorians showed up to save people who couldn’t save themselves, and those are the people he was then raised by. They’re a community-oriented people, and though they’re wary of outsiders for good reason, supplemental SW material says they’re generally not openly hostile unless somebody else throws the first punch, and hospitality extended to friendly allies or strangers is encouraged. Mando says “Thank you” a lot and that speaks to more than just good manners to me. He builds relationships. If he didn’t care about people, he wouldn’t have formed a connection with or gone back for the kid in the very beginning, which I think speaks the most to his character because that kind of care isn’t born in a vacuum.

The longer answer is that though we know Mando specifically cares about his clan and covert, I think that sense of community and the desire to see other people safe extends to the Sorgan village and Mos Pelgo too, same as it does to the individuals he makes friends with along the way.

Peli had already fixed his ship by the time he got back to the hangar that night in “The Gunslinger” and if she hadn’t, there’s plenty of other mechanics on Tatooine; if he only cared about the kid, he could’ve shot Peli to get her out of the way the second he saw the three of them so he could get a clear shot of Calican. He also didn’t have to overpay her to make up for the trouble before leaving, but money is also one of the only ways he CAN smooth over the problems he causes people so that’s all he could do there by way of apology

He could have just killed Cara Dune when she attacked him first, but he didn’t pull his gun until she did and still retained the presence of mind to see if a truce could be found since she also didn’t shoot the kid the moment she saw him, nor did she use his own distraction to get a shot in

The guilt trip the Frog Lady invokes by appealing to his sense of family and holding him to the reputation of Mandalorians being honorable and keeping their word wouldn’t have worked if he didn’t care about her beyond what information he thought he already wasn’t going to get because their situation seemed hopeless.

He didn’t have to let the crew in “The Prisoner” live if he didn’t think everybody— even the people who betray him— deserved at least one chance. He could’ve killed Karga at the end of “The Sin,” but he specifically shot Karga where he knew for a fact Karga had beskar shielding him.

He’s sad when it becomes clear IG-11 is going to sacrifice himself in the finale, and he made it a point to give Kuiil a proper burial.

Part of the reason everything he does feels transactional is because 1. Trading and working have been his primary interactions with people as a lone hunter who spends the majority of his adult life working paycheck to paycheck, and 2. Mando shows his care for others by doing things. His abilities and actions aren’t just currency, but the loudest way he has or knows how to show his care or gratitude. He’s not big on words or physical touch (lone hunter/survivalist, emotionally reclusive, guarded Mandalorian), he can’t afford to spend time with people and likely knows the reputation and staunch refusal to remove his armor and helmet make it hard to connect on a personal level and be good company in casual settings (best shown in how he never eats around anybody, except the kid), and he lives a meager life with few creature comforts himself, so any physical gifts he can give or share are few and far in between, but are also practical and/or the results of the actions he took to acquire them (a better cradle and chainmail for Grogu, beskar for the covert, blankets for the Frog Lady, soup for Cara Dune in the lodge, dragon meat for Peli, heck even his willingness to relinquish the armor to Fett could fall under that category), and that same thought process tracks for gifts given to him or how he views them given between other people

Mando wanted to lay low on Sorgan long term and he asked after lodging in the farm village— If he didn’t care about the people when the job turned out to be bigger/more dangerous than anticipated, he wouldn’t have stuck around and risked his neck when he very easily could have moved on. He’s got a ship, he’s got fuel, it’s a big planet, and right now nobody’s chasing him. Instead he tells the village they have to pick up and move if they want to stay safe (which makes sense coming from a nomad whose own people, it’s implied, have had to relocate several times because of encroaching danger), which negates his whole purpose in coming to them in the first place if his regard of them is only transactional (if he really wanted to stay somewhere and needed their community to be that homebase, he would have started with the idea of telling them to cowboy up and fight so he could by extension stay there). He still could have ditched at any point, grabbed the kid and took off, but he didn’t.

Same could be said for Mos Pelgo. Those townsfolk were more capable than the ones on Sorgan, but their physical opponent is about a thousand times bigger than two dozen bandits and a Walker. Yes Din wanted the marshal’s armor, but realistically he shouldn’t have had to bargain with anything for it and would have been justified in fighting or killing the marshal and forcing him to give it up. The Krayt dragon is an absurd job from an outside perspective, and Din easily has fifty pounds on the marshal and would absolutely win in a close quarters fight; he didn’t have to agree to help the people of the town, and he never indicates that he’s going to double cross the marshal and take the armor while they’re out in the desert alone. Mando sees and respects how Vanth takes care of people and mediates between not just the townsfolk, but learns to mediate between the town and the Tuskens. Mando wouldn’t make it a point to be a mediator himself if he didn’t think the people around him were worth the peace, safety and cooperation he helps them find.

There’s a fine line the writers need to walk when it comes to characterizing him because he does have a resigned, realistic, occasionally harsh understanding of the world and how things don't always work out for people. He’s old enough in a dangerous galaxy to have experienced some of the worst it has to offer, and he can really only take things day by day without a guarantee of tomorrow— It gives him an objective understanding of the idea that you can’t save everyone, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Mercy often goes hand-in-hand with compassion. We have evidence of him stepping forward to protect people who can’t protect themselves (or spending valuable time and resources enabling them to defend themselves), and that typically doesn’t come from somebody completely detached from interpersonal connections.

His characterization and the writing start to break down a bit in Season 2 at a few different junctures; one of the biggest that comes to mind is “The Jedi” because they made Ahsoka the main character of that episode and didn’t tie Mando to anything concerning the main plot. His whole purpose in that episode WAS transactional because he was just providing backup for her to fight her own enemy so she’d take the kid as an apprentice. The writers didn’t connect him to the town or people or the plot happening there with the corrupt magistrate at all. (That's one of my big complaints with Season 2, the episodes where it feels like he’s being moved around instead of being the one driving the story). If Mando is the main character, you have to connect the plot of each episode to him in some way.

Why doesn’t Mando voice any concern over the citizens or situation in Calodan? Why are their interactions with civilians and the choice to save the people being tortured in the street relegated to barely a footnote within the plot? Why doesn’t he ask more questions about Elsbeth and how she got to be in power? Why doesn’t he voice any concern about being two people against a small army and a woman who— based on circumstantial evidence— must be a pretty formidable opponent if a Jedi has beef with her? What is Elsbeth capable of and should he be concerned?

If he’s only there to act as Ahsoka’s muscle and we don’t get anything about how Calodan affects him, then you as the writer have solidified that this whole chunk of story isn’t actually about him, it’s the third act in the samurai movie you actually wanted to make about this special new character who, in the end, you give an effective exit to go into her own show by having her go back on her word to the guy who should be the main character. (We as the audience don’t have to worry about that though because I guess Mando’s okay with it because he never says anything to the contrary. Another dead end with the barest flimsy offer of information sending him elsewhere. If Ahsoka can’t be trusted to keep her word, why should he believe anything she tells him after that? Mando should have been angry with her, and justifiably so.)

I guess my point here was that I’m picky about his interpretation when the writers/fans don’t quite strike the right balance between him being an intimidating, ruthless hunter as well as an intelligent person who can analyze each circumstance with a sense of restraint. They don’t know where to draw the line on his sense of mercy and end up making him a pushover as a result like in “The Heiress” and “The Jedi” and a few other S2 plot points (if not outright woobifying him).

Mando���s moral compass has a balance between justice and mercy, but because his character is hidden behind a mask and rarely speaks, we can only get so much from the rest of his body language and performance (and the aid of good cinematographers) alone, which means it’s up to the writers to have a clear idea of why he does everything he does in a scene. If they don’t have a clear sense of what this guy is thinking based on his character history up to that point, his actions aren’t going to convey the right story and it muddies the character for the audience in unintended ways, especially if that considerable change in his character is never resolved (see: same episodes listed above).

The second season opens with him going to Gor Koresh for information and having to fight his way out of a trap, but only after he gives the don the chance to back down. Gor Koresh doesn’t, and Mando’s retaliation is swift, just, and gruesome. Mando shouldn’t have put up with Bo-Katan manipulating him and changing the terms of their deal midway through the hijacking, and I think he should have jumped ship and left her to the consequences of her deceit as a result. I think the interactions he had with Ahsoka should have built in conflict because he should be at his most desperate, having finally found somebody he believes more capable than himself of caring for and protecting the child, and here she is refusing him (and in the end, breaking the terms she agreed to).

Both of those episodes push to the side how his character should be reacting in favor of getting to the right circumstances for Luke “Deus Ex Machina” Skywalker to show up at the end of the season as the Jedi who will train the kid (Oh hey audience, just ignore the fact Mando’s never met this guy, no one knows who he is when he arrives, and also he’s dressed like Moff Gideon when he shows up)

Not that I’m bitter. But I digress.

A good example of the writers actually giving Mando the voice to his change of heart concerning a conflict he started off with with another character is at the end of “The Tragedy” when the two of them discuss the armor and Fett’s claim to it. That interpersonal conflict has setup and meaningful closure given in a way that makes sense for Mando’s character based on what we know of him up to that point, where I think the other two episodes don’t resolve the characters’ conflicts in ways consistent with what Mando’s character should have thought and said once they broke the terms of their deals.

A lot of writers, showrunners included, sort of defang the justice side of him, and I mean justice not only in the sense of the law and him hunting down criminals, but justice in interpersonal conflicts too. The writers (and fandom) tend to neglect/overlook/not analyze the established characteristics of what makes him probably the best bounty hunter of that time: intelligent, analytical, observant, detached, patient, incredibly skilled, and efficient. He’s not gullible, and when it comes to people who are already criminals, he doesn’t have any qualms about tracking them down and dragging them back by any means necessary for payment (though if the showrunners had spent more time on that aspect of him, we could have gotten into how the justice system operates vis-à-vis who is declared a criminal by whom).

When he’s doing something dangerous with dangerous or more specific people in the monster-of-the-week adventure, he should be more intimidating, deadly, ruthless and capable, but at the end of the day he still needs to be the same person capable of soothing a frightened child. Finding the balance lies in the fact he shows innocent people compassion and gives guilty people mercy— And if that guilty party expends that chance, then we see the legendary bounty hunter who doesn’t stop until justice (his own or otherwise) is achieved. He wouldn’t give people those chances if he didn’t see them as anything more than what they’re worth in his pursuit of material gain.

[little-devils-advocate]

My Personal Experience With Neil Gaiman Here on Tumblr

So, I'm sure anyone who comes across my Blog will see from my Pinned Post that it was previously Deactivated here on Tumblr. I essentially used the Blog to discuss controversial issues: abortion, gun control, BLM, etc. & had done a lot of work there. I had been running it for years & talked about some pretty heavy stuff, catching a lot of criticism for my views, but I had never been Deactivated or even had anything taken down.

As you can see from what I have Posted here since restarting, I am a huge advocate for the homeless. I had been Following @neil-gaiman for a while as a minor fan, mainly due to my enjoyment of his stories Stardust & American Gods. I've read none of his books, because the writing style didn't appeal to me, but I have some of them & watched the Stardust movie & the American Gods show.

Anyway, I'd previously seen him Posting here on Tumblr complaining about his residuals & how little money he was making, which rubbed me the wrong way for obvious reasons, but I let it go, because it wasn't that big of a deal to me at the time. Everyone has scruples.

OP:

Months later I saw him Posting about the recent writer's strike & going on a tangent again. Everyone was patting him on the back & agreeing with him & it irked me. Badly. So, I Reblogged it with a picture of a tent city & a link to Sia's album Some People Have Real Problems. Obviously, it irked me that someone of his means was complaining about his residuals & how little writers make when people all over the country are struggling to make ends meet, many of them falling victim to homelessness. Like I said: some people have real problems. Writers also make much more than your average worker, but I digress.

He. Was. PISSED. He then proceeded to attack me on his Blog. I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of 'I'm famous, how dare you question me!' I was then attacked relentlessly by his mob of fans to whom I vehemently defended myself & my position. I even recall one fan telling me that 'One day [I was] gonna wake up & regret insulting Neil Gaiman.' I think it's safe to say that day never came. 🙄

I wish I had screenshots for you all, but, like I said, my Blog was almost immediately taken down after the incident, which I find crazy as nothing I Posted in regards to this was out of line in any way. I did have some questionable shit on my Blog due to my endless defense against trolls, but like I said before, none of it had ever gotten pulled until then, so I'm really not sure what happened. I checked his Blog, but I can no longer find the Post there.

My guess is that Neil has some very serious issues with women &, quite frankly, I'm not suprised. I feel terrible for cracking up at him being dragged through the mud when I first got online this morning. I just saw part of the Post on FB via Threads & couldn't read it all, so I wondered what he did this time. I could never have imagined that it had to do with a SA or I would never have cracked a joke. I will try to be fully informed before I Post from now on, I just really felt a sense of vindication & closure when I saw that, & now even more so. And to that asshole, I will never wake up & regret insulting Neil Gaiman; Maybe if he wasn't being an entitled piece of shit with a broken moral compass I never would have done it. It just goes to show you that we need to stop idolizing celebrities. "You don't know these people."

I hope any of his victims continue to come forward so he can get his just desserts. On a personal level, I am so, so sorry that this happened to you & I empathize with you.

-LDA

Context:

[clonehub]

it helps that andor is clearly writing towards a specific goal. having a distinct end really helps any creator know what they need to get accomplished and/by when.

the lack of a strict moral purity from cassian himself contributes to this. ends justify the means. he makes snap decisions, he panics or swallows his panic, he's in a whole lotta debt and he's a known flirt. since andor isn't trying to appeal to or be ideal for children the writers can add the depth they need to make him feel like an actual person with desires and fears. lots of disney and other star wars protags have a very firm moral compass that they struggle with in only a really shallow sense, if that makes sense. like yeah they sit there and weigh the options of helping or not helping but you know that in exactly 37 seconds theyre going to turn around and help (if they didn't jump in right from the start, that is).

and everything im saying ive already said before, but i also feel as though there's something that andor has that lots of other star wars media lacks. because imho opinion this is the best of star wars by far. but i can't quite name that "it" factor, as cliche as it is. the jenny saint quan. the panache ganache. the glam-wow thing that makes me excited for andor the way I haven't really been excited for any other part of star wars.

it definitely helps that it's a series that so far hasn't found a massive way to let me down. i have my gripes like any normal audience member, but this is the first recent star wars media ive seen that doesn't have an egregious and jarring flaw that totally detracts from what ever positives (if there are any) exist in the show.

(i could get into the whole Disney-morality-marketability scale i have in my head that affects everything D-wars has released so far, running the gamut from writing to plot to even setting and saturation. and fucking environmental cleanliness. but this is long enough)

[ask-team-galactic]

Idk if I'm alone here but when I first played DPPT I always thought the one book in the Veilstone library that mentions that Mesprit can erase the emotions of anyone who touches it was specifically meant to explain Cyrus's behavior and his hatred of emotion. Especially since he literally has Mesprit held captive at one point, surely it wouldn't be too hard for him to just go to the basement and slap it across the face or smth. That always kinda felt like a missed opportunity to me. Not that I don't like how USUM and Masters handled his character but it would have been interesting to see.

Sorry, but I don't think that would have worked as an explanation for Cyrus' actions and attitudes, nor would it have been a good direction for his character.

For one thing, Cyrus isn't particularly unemotional in the DPPT. He speaks with a lot of exclamation marks, fights you for no reason other than because your compassion for the lake trio annoyed him, and becomes very angry and promises to crush you after his defeat. In Platinum, he even goes on a tirade about how angry he is due to his incomplete spirit. Some of that happened after the capture of the lake trio, so he must not have touched it.

Even aside from that, though, Cyrus' actions aren't rational at all. It isn't logical or rational to want to get rid of emotions, because they're what cause living beings to do things like tend to their young, form communities, and avoid danger. If Cyrus was truly a logic-driven machine, it would carry the implication that everything he did was rational, which, considering that his actions include terrorism, self-isolation, and being a dick to his underlings, would either demonize logic excessively or worse, imply that human decency and connection isn't logical.

Finally, I don't like the idea of Cyrus being an emotionless husk because I find the psychological aspects of his character, such as his desires to avoid pain, make himself into his idea of perfect, and prove himself, to be more interesting than if he were just a robot with no real desires. Saturn really said it best when he said that Cyrus is fascinating for his will, passion, and hypocrisy, all of which he hates in himself.

For those reasons, I don't think it would be a good idea to do that in canon. However, it would be very interesting to look at in fanfiction, and that could go a number of different ways:

Cyrus does touch Mesprit while he has it captive. As he gradually loses his emotions, he finds it soothing but is also rapidly losing his will to do much of anything. Towards the end, he realizes that he only wanted to eliminate emotion because he was in pain, and his perfect world would be a nightmare. His final order before handing the commands over to Saturn is to stop the New World project immediately.

This wouldn't be the most compliant with canon or with what I think a cursed person would be like, but it would be interesting to explore what it would be like if Cyrus had actually been touched by a Mesprit as a child. Distractions like his rotom no longer appeal to him, abuse and exclusion no longer affect him, and he can do whatever his parents ask of him. Except make friends... or love them... or understand concepts like love or friendship in general... or conform to a standard understanding of morality... or understand why others are so irrational. But that's alright. Without distractions like that, he has a grander goal in mind.

Cyrus seeks out Mesprit to be cursed after his plan fails. Days later, his commanders find him lying inert on the grass and drag him back to headquarters to take care of him. It's tragic.

Thanks for the opportunity to ramble! Sorry if it's not quite what you wanted to hear.

[voxofthevoid]

Hello! First, let me just — hold your hands. See, you don't need to sit on them to not ramble. I'll always welcome authors' ramblings, in fact, I crave them like a man possessed, starved. So, please don't be cruel and deny a poor soul your ramblings. With that said...

I feel as if you opened a door inside my brain when you said Gojou is holding his own leash in "every version of the story". From the snippets you've posted about the story before, I feel as if Gojou wants Yuuji to hold it, and he's desperate for that sunshine boy to do it. Sure, he's canonically very dominant, very imposing, very against people telling him what to do, but even still... Well, I think he craves just giving up some control, especially to someone he knows won't "misuse" it, even though I think he wouldn't mind if, say, Yuuji did it. An ex. of that was when he was younger and Getou was practically his moral compass.

It's sort of ironic in "every version of the story" because Gojou needs to practically tire Yuuji out by any means necessary (cough sex, isolation, questionable life experiences, etc. cough) just so he can shove said leash on Yuuji's hands so they can become "equals". After all, to have some degree of influence on the strongest is power in itself, even if the other person doesn't realise it yet. It also makes for such a compelling dynamic, which he only got glimpses of in canon.

I guess I'm the one rambling now, huh? Anyways, I just want to congratulate you on your characterization of Gojou. It's exactly on point — a delicious sort of pathetic, obsessive, sadomasochistic and unhinged —, and one of my favourites across all the Goyuu verse.

Hope you have a good weekend. <3

Ah, if you're holding my hands, then I suppose I have no choice but to type away.

Ah well!

First things first, anon, you should know that I read "From the snippets you've posted about the story before, I feel as if Gojou wants Yuuji to hold it" and went You—You Get It.

The Gojou/leash thing (in the sense of how he's the only one holding it as well as how he might want someone else to) is something that now informs my approach to him in general, though the specifics vary depending on whether I'm writing teen!Gojou, post-Toji!Gojou, or adult!Gojou. And while Gojou's strength in terms of his self-control was something I was interested in from the start, every version of the story fundamentally altered my take on the whole thing.

Characterization breakthrough: Horror edition.

(Okay, everything I've written after it has been pretty tame on the Gojou end, but you should see some of my unwritten ideas...)

Back to the point, you're right! Gojou wanting very badly for someone—someone he has the luxury of trusting with himself—to hold that leash is a pervasive undercurrent in every version of the story. He wants an equal, and Yuuji's one of the people he identified as having the potential to be one; these are canon. And I've already rambled a lot about how one of the most appealing parts of Gojou's and Yuuji's dynamics is how they humanize each other from the beginning to the end. Combine the power aspects from the former with the emotional attachment engendered by the latter, and you get a scenario rich with potential for some wildly shifting power dynamics.

You've already seen glimpses of it in the WIP Wednesday snippets, and the full fic has a lot more it. A good percentage of the storytelling happens during and through the sex, and it's a zigzagging road overall. Where we start is starkly different from where it ends, and the path there isn't kind or pretty, but I hope to god that it's interesting.

Also, I can't tell you how delighted I am by you liking Gojou's characterization in that fic, especially because "pathetic, obsessive, sadomasochistic and unhinged" encapsulate everything I was aiming for. Thank you so much 💗

And feel free to ramble in my inbox anytime; your thoughts are *chef's kiss*

Have a good day!

[littlesparklight]

I am curious is Aphrodite the origin of all love and can people fall in love without the influence of Aphrodite because these verses

May pure Artemis look upon this band in compassion, and may marriage never come through Cytherea's (Aphrodite's) compulsion. -Aeschylus: The Suppliant, 1030ff.

May sovereign Zeus spare me cruel marriage with a man I hate, that very Zeus who mercifully freed lo from pain, restoring her with healing hand by kindly force. - Aeschylus: The Suppliant, 1062ff.

Seem to imply that you can fall in love without the influence of Aphrodite, In one verse it is asked that the band of women find marriage without Aphrodite's compulsion, and then a few verses later they are asking Zeus that they not be stuck in a marriage with someone they hate… which seems to imply that Aphrodite can force people to but she is not the origin of love itself

Hmm, I don't think that's what this speech of the Danaides implies or even outright says.

I am not (really, really not lol) going to claim I know/have read enough to say anything at all authoritative here! The question, especially, of the... degrees? of Aphrodite's possible direct influence is still very murky and confusing to me.

But.

For the Suppliant Women specifically, the situation for the play is that the Danaides are fleeing marriage with their cousins because they don't want to marry them. And, even their father doesn't want them to marry their cousins. Some scholia (to the Iliad and Prometheus Desmotes) say that Danaos was given an oracle that said he'd be killed by one of his brother's sons, though in addition there's also a quarrel with Aigyptos himself.

Throughout the play, the Danaides are appealing to Zeus as Zeus Xenios (they are suppliants and guests in Argos), and to Artemis, noted sworn virgin, so they can avoid marriage with their cousins specifically, but, given Artemis' involvement, also marriage entirely. Marriage is as much part of Aphrodite's domain (through, well, sex) as plain desire. "The pleasurable works of marriage" as Zeus says in the Iliad.

However, even with their rejection of marriage, there's also this bit in the middle of the speech you've quoted parts of:

"Yet there is no disdain of Cypris in this our friendly hymn; [1035] for she, together with Hera, holds power nearest to Zeus, and for her solemn rites the goddess of varied wiles is held in honor.

And in the train of their mother are Desire and she to whom nothing is denied, [1040] winning Persuasion; and to Harmonia has been given a share of Aphrodite, and to the whispering touches of the Loves."

Aphrodite also is in the single fragment we have of the Danaides play, arguing for marriage as a cosmic principle, and Gantz in his Early Greek myth suggests Aphrodite might have had part as the deus ex machina in the resolution of the footrace that will see the Danaides married to various Argive youths.

Then we have the fifth Homeric Hymn, too, the "big" one to Aphrodite. This hymn isn't straightforward, since Aphrodite is shamed as well as exalted, her power extolled as well as circumscribed (and once, by Zeus in this one instance, usurped). But aside from Hestia, Athena and Artemis, mortals, gods and animals are all tamed/broken/yoked by Aphrodite (damazo), like a husband tames/breaks/yokes a wife; there is no other (source of) power in love/desire but Aphrodite.

So no, I don't think there's an idea that Aphrodite isn't actually the source of all attraction, whether she literally "forces" someone into it or not.

That "force"/compulsion, too, is part of how Ancient Greek culture conceived of love/desire at all; the lover is "compelled" into love/desire, and the source is Aphrodite (or Eros, but that, again, means Aphrodite). You see it a lot in lyric poetry about desire/love, whether for a boy or a girl/woman.

[matchaflavored]

what was it abt trrd that makes u rly like their dynamic? what tropes do they hit on the viola barometer

OMG yani... u r seriously a real one. love u. I will talk in place of myself from three years ago, when I was in that weird period where I was testing the waters between character dynamics in twst. The very first episode with Heartslabyul absolutely hit me like a truck. I wasn't really expecting the writing to be as compelling as it was (despite being a Yana fan and being diehard for her work, the Disney branding made me not take it very seriously), and I was like, oh wow, realistic toxic relationships between teenagers with no autonomy over their emotions and circumstances?! This rules! And you can apply this to a lot of the dynamics in twst, but besides the fact that treyrid is the very first one you encounter, I find Trey himself a refreshingly unique character. I guess a lot of people enjoy more emotionally transparent characters, because it feels affirming and enjoyable to see certain dynamics expressed a certain way, but when there was only like four stories out for each character I was like 'Wow, for a guy who gets defensive about people questioning him about Riddle, a lot of the fundamentals of his character and motivations revolves around Riddle!'. 'But Viola! He's been openly exasperated, dare I say, even annoyed at Riddle! And not in the funny bickering yaoi way, also doesn't placating as a motivation make Trey's feelings towards Riddle artificial!' I was super surprised too when I read his stories (in a good way)! Can this man both love someone and resent what he's going through by proxy of that person's uncontrollable circumstances? The answer is yes! And so much material support these conflicting feelings that I feel like are attuned to more realistic relationships. That was, by far, the biggest appeal to me. Conflict in relationships can be more than just aimless bickering but "oh the bickering is actually because they totes have the hots for each other!". It's unspoken words, self-doubt... it's questioning who you are and who they are. Their relationship is imperfect, by account of something that is out of their control, but they choose to care and support one another unconditionally. Trope wise... treyrid was (is? it's more was) somewhat a codependency, in which Riddle used Trey as an emotional tether and Trey took advantage of Riddle's superficial vices in order to subdue his guilt over he and Riddle's shared trauma. A queen and her knight... but in the end, both of them know they're above those experiences and the influence they have in each other's lives is definitely a net positive. Omg I know you don't go here but even if this is like the baseline there's still so much about them that makes me go crazy... You know how Kircheis met Reinhard as a kid and went 'I, with my tiny child body, have decided that I will dedicate my life to support this other kid whose life sucks because I see that they are more than that.' That is literally what happened with Trey and Riddle when they were kids. Insane power tripped pretty boy with his kind gentle giant friend who acts as his moral compass for a majority of their appearances together. Said friend also challenged pretty boy's authority and pretty boy felt betrayed because they felt like the unconditional bond they had was breaking. Good stuff.

[yeyinde]

Hi! Hope you're doing well. I just have to say that you're my favorite writer and a huge inspiration to me. Everything you write, even the small little snippets, just make me so happy.

Are you by chance still doing the WIP snippets? Cause I go feral for Jacob Seed, and when I saw you had a WIP for him I can honestly say I almost fell out of my chair.

Hiya! This is so sweet!! Thank you so much 🖤😭

Jacob Seed is one of those characters who I'd very much like to chisel open. He's so intriguing. His ideologies are so unfounded but his conviction and his reasons for them are what I find really appealing.

This is quite a deviation from what I normally do—third person, technically no reader-insert (I kindaaaaa made an OC? Oops) a bit darker (dragging me back to my slasher roots), and pulls a lot from a pseudo-religious upbringing. It is really fun to write, in theory, but is one of those fics that is mentally taxing in the sense that every piece is part of a bigger picture. Despite that, though, I could probably talk about this fic more than any others because of all the weird influences it draws from—Siken (it was originally gonna be titled war of the foxes but I felt that was a little too on the nose so I changed it to wishbone which is even more on the nose), bible mythology (in particular, the warring interpretations of Abaddon, iyjyk but also??? Abaddon and Michael, though???? 👀), and um. Cult shenanigans.

Here is a little bit about it!

He's in her head now, a sickness polluting her grey matter until it's shaded the same colour as the burning auburn around his wicked mouth. The one that splits wide, and croons about her failures, her destiny, until the rasping slur of his words are skeined tight around her gyri. Festering like a cancer she can't clove. One that sounds more like a truism each time she hears it.

Jacob has his finger on the trigger of a loaded gun with the barrel pressed tight to her cerebellum. A tool, he said. One without a master. Until now. Until him.

She can't fight him. Can't get rid of him. 

She wonders if she ever even tried.

And for some Rook x Jacob (kinda sorta but in a weird and twisted way):

Jacob doesn't give an inch even with the barrel of her Whitetailer pointed at his heart. A beat, then, where the world around her seems to shiver at the smirk he sends her way, his own hand fixed, deadly and calm, on the butt of his garish rifle. Red. 

(Of course. Of course.)

He stands on his tower, a castle of rock in the middle of the Whitetail Mountains, surrounded by unfathomable wilderness, and the broken remnants of his wolf beacons, his fallen men. His Judges. 

They lay by her feet, discarded offerings to the man who vultured her sense of self, her agency, until the person she was before all of this was lost, collateral to a war she never agreed to. She feels it sometimes, the putrefying remains of idealism and hope clawing at her skull until the tissue shreds and bleeds. Feels it like a second degree burn, a scab she can't stop picking at, and then pushes it back into its sarcophagus. It's an effigial prison in which she's both a warden and cellmate. 

It rears, now, as her patent yellow boots sink into the ribcage of a man torn to shreds by her bullets, her fists, mourning the loss of who it once was—a person of empathy and compassion. Someone who would have recoiled at the sight of viscera staining her laces, bone crunching under the soles of her feet. 

But it's gone. All she feels is annoyance. Disgust. 

They rendered it out of her. All of them pulling and tugging until bits of herself ripped apart, left behind in their regions, in their hands. Faith holds her belief. John, her compassion. Joseph, her fear. And Jacob—

Well. 

She tries not to think about what she lost in his cages. The gaping hole where her humanity once sat is heavier now that it's empty. 

It doesn't matter. Not anymore. 

Everything has been culminating to this point. To this moment. She feels the weight of it, the truth, in her bones. Unlike John, unlike Faith, only one of them will walk away from this still breathing. Her fingers tense. A proxysm. 

She finds, as the sky fades back to an endless blue and the mournful call of a loon breaks through the coppice, that she isn't entirely sure she wants it to be her. 

"Everything, all of it, has been leading up to this moment," he calls down to her, answering the unspoken assertions that bounce around the bruised fibres of her head. Hunt. Kill. Sacrifice. She gets it. She hates that she does. Hates him, she thinks, even more for making her see, for turning her into his executioner so easily. "So, Deputy, what will you do?"

If it were Faith, there'd be something about the path. About choices. About submission and surrender. Giving up agency and self in the single-minded pursuit of devotion to the Father. John, maybe a taunt. A sotto voce about atonement and true self. Of life admit the torture. A baptism in pain. 

But Jacob is neither of them. 

"Are you gonna kill me, angel?" 

She thinks about it. Really does. Lets it grind down into her synapses as she imagines a world without him. A place in Hope County where they celebrate his death and burn his body on an altar, unwilling to let the cult take him back until he's charred bones and ashes. Sure, then, that he's gone. Forever. Always. No more. 

Jacob will burn. 

She thinks about it, and she shudders. 

It feels anticlimactic despite the effort he put into setting it all up. Moving beacons and men and cages and wolves. Tracking her down through the forest until she led them to the Wolf's Den, and put a bullet in the head of the only man who made her feel some sense of footing amid a crumbling world. A place that wasn't quite home but it was something. Purpose, maybe. 

It stands in sharp contrast to the dogfight between them. Jacob and his soldiers. A commander playing a game of war from the comfort of his sanctuary. They're gone, now, and she hates that she isn't, too. That no matter what she does, how open she leaves herself, he still lets her sneak up the side of his perch until she's crouched behind a log, until she can hear the weight of his footfalls as he searches for her across the blood smeared landscape. 

It's a fallacy. He knows where she is despite the engineered confusion in his tone. What was that? He asks. Come out and fight me, Deputy. You know I'll find you—

The red dot follows her, always just a few inches from where she's hiding. A farce. She hates it. Hates that he isn't really fighting her. A marksman, he said (hoorah), but the only bruises he gave her are in her mind. Mental scars. Stupid. She hates him. Despises him. 

(Hates herself even more.)

It feels like muscle memory when she peers over the ledge, her bloodied knuckles leaving smears of her fingerprints behind. He's there. Waiting. 

Killing Eli, killing phantoms. Killing men. Killing him. It all congeals in her marrow. Effortless. Easy. She's killed him so many times already that she's sure, now, she could close her eyes and find her mark. 

Over and over again, he turned to a nebula of dust when she jumped on his back, wrapping nimble fingers around his neck. Mocking words haunting her as he dissolved into the aether. The Father will protect me. You need me. Don't fight it. Just let go. You've served your purpose. Let's say you get out of this. What's next? You go back to running errands for a teenager and a housewife? You are nothin' without Eli. 

"Come out, come out wherever you are, honey," his crooning taunt makes her hackles raise. A part of her hindbrain prickles with unease. Jacob brings a certain terror out of those dormant depths—an atavistic fear coils around her jugular. "Let's finish this." 

She wants to end him. To kill and maim and bend and break until nothing is left but bones and tissue. She wants to ruin him. Wants him to ruin her. To end this conflict at the top of a precipice she never wanted to climb. 

She says nothing—not to him, to them—but scuffs her feet against the gravel for no reason other than to make him look. He whips around, hand steady on his rifle. 

"Finally done hiding, Deputy?" 

The red dot hasn't left her vicinity since she prowled after him, unleashing hell and gunfire on the men—his Chosen, his best—that tried to keep her away from him. Hiding, she thinks, and wonders if those words are a projection. 

The Whitetailer—the only anchor she's had since she found it laying behind in an abandoned cabin—hums under her fingers. Pulses with the blood rushing through her veins. It's always been heavy. An SA50 isn't easy to carry across a landscape she mostly ventured on foot (as the near constant ache between her shoulders can attest to), but it feels both heavier and lighter than before. Another contradiction of many since she walked out of the Den and into a world on fire. Since she slit his throat and watched him turn into cosmic dust. 

It's steady, though. Unwavering. There's a gash on her arm from one of his Chosen. A bullet in her thigh. The unhealed wounds—bliss bullets and arrows—twinge with pain when she tenses her muscles, breathes in deep. Her broken ribs scream. She feels like more like a throbbing contusion than she does an actual person, still caught in the tendrils of her conditioning where his voice echoes in her head, the last notes of a song that turned her world into ashes. Only youuu… he'd crooned.

Only you. 

Only ever you. 

She gets it now. 

Or, she wishes that were true. It isn't. It isn't because maybe she's known all along. Since the bunker. Since Pratt. One, two, three. One, two, three. And then he's got you. Since she blinked into cognisance surrounded by the fallen bodies of the militia who didn't survive the training, who had bullet wounds that matched the shots she took in Jacob's trial. 

Since she went back to the Grand View and walked through the rows of cages in the parking lot. 

She gets it. 

She knows what she has to do. 

Her grip doesn't falter when she aims up. Up. His stomach. His lungs. His heart. 

"You can't. You're done. You've served your purpose, and now it's time to accept your place, Deputy. Where you belong." 

She thinks of Tammy. Of Wheaty. There's nothing left for her. Not anymore. 

Nothing except—

She wonders if there's a flash of panic in his cerulean eyes. A brief flicker of fear. But all she sees is contempt. 

"If I die, you'll be lost forever—"

She pulls the trigger. 

[christian-perspectives]

The Lord's Promises Are Pure

The Lord's promises are pure, like silver refined in a furnace, purified seven times over. Psalm 12:6 The opening verses of Psalm 12 point to a godly society changing to godlessness. David clearly observed people moving away from the Lord. Help, O Lord, for the godly are fast disappearing! The faithful have vanished from the earth! Psalm 12:1 We can compare the experiences David wrote about with the growth of godlessness in our world today. Pardon the expression, but we live in a dog-eat-dog world. Neighbors lie to each other, speaking with flattering lips and deceitful hearts. Psalm 12:2

The Deceit of Flattering Lips

The phrase "flattering lips" means that someone offers lavish, insincere, and manipulative praise. The flattering person seeks some kind of benefit for themself. Flattery effectively appeals to our vanity. It also lays traps to snare us in our most vulnerable areas. Then, we believe these lies to feel loved and accepted, admired, and even envied. In reality, though, if we buy into that type of lie, we must act in ways that support a false self-image. Plus, we can come to a place where we don't need God. David may have written this Psalm during Saul's reign as king. Saul used flattery on David, trying to lure him in. David wanted to believe Saul's flattery but deep down felt its deception. Therefore, in the next verse, he asked the Lord to stop the flattering lips and silence the boastful tongues. He went to the Lord with his request because he knew it wouldn't stop on its own. They say, "We will lie to our hearts' content. Our lips are our own—who can stop us?" Psalm 12:4 We would expect an attitude like that from the world influenced by its sinful nature. I'm sad to say that I have seen that same attitude in the church.

The Lord's Reply with Promises

Thankfully, David stopped writing about the negative things going on around him. The rest of this Psalm focuses on the Lord's response and His promises. The Lord replies, "I have seen violence done to the helpless, and I have heard the groans of the poor. Now I will rise up to rescue them, as they have longed for me to do." Psalm 12:5 The Lord's reply begins with promises to two classes of people: the helpless and the poor. David often felt helpless; therefore he included the helpless in many of the Psalms. Helpless means not having the strength or power to do anything useful or to control or protect. This means helplessness could affect any area of our lives. Jesus identified the helpless like this. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Matthew 9:36 Paul also referred to the unsaved as helpless when he said the following. When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Romans 5:6 Secondly, the Lord's promises also dealt with the groans of the poor. The Bible mentions two types of poor. Those physically poor and spiritually poor. Being physically poor means lacking "sufficient money" to live at a standard considered comfortable or normal in a society. Even though God cares for the poor, Jesus said we will always have poor people. Maybe because of a choice or inherited choices of past generations. The church has a mandate to help its poor. They (apostles) encouraged us to keep preaching to the Gentiles, while they continued their work with the Jews. Their only suggestion was that we keep on helping the poor, which I have always been eager to do. Galatians 2:9-10

The Lord's Promises in the Psalms

We've come full circle to the verse we started with that talks about the Lord's promises. The writers of the Psalms mentioned the Lord's promises several times, including the following. - All the Lord's promises prove true. Psalm 18:30 - God is faithful to His promises. Psalm 71:22 - His faithful promises are your armor and protection. Psalm 91:4 - Your promises have been thoroughly tested; that is why I love them so much. Psalm 119:140 - The Lord's promises are backed by all the honor of your name. Psalm 138:2 - The Lord always keeps his promises. Psalm 145:13 In this Psalm, however, David reported that the Lord's promises are pure. As I found that description interesting, he continued by telling us how pure they are. He said pure as refined silver, not once, but seven times. Refining silver once leaves it fairly pure. But repeating the refining process seven times would make it wholly pure. I don't believe the Psalmist just picked the number seven out of the air. The number seven in scripture represents "perfection," "finished," or "complete," making God's promises flawless. According to the last two verses of this Psalm, the Lord's promises go beyond helping the poor and helpless. Even while the wicked strut around, God will protect all of the oppressed. Therefore, Lord, we know you will protect the oppressed, preserving them forever from this lying generation, even though the wicked strut about, and evil is praised throughout the land. Psalm 12:7-8 Thank you, Lord, for all of your promises. We can rely on you when we feel helpless and during our poorest moments. Like the Psalmist said, you always keep your promises. Check out these other related Posts on the Lord's promises. - How to Trust God in Difficult Circumstances - God Will Pour His Holy Spirit Upon All People - Are You Living Under The Shadow Of His Wings - God Keeps His Promises, Guaranteed - Abraham Intercedes For Sodom Read the full article