#that was not just some murder plot it was a genocide

[sukibenders]

The way some people are reacting to the Oscar nominations, specifically in regards towards Barbie, and many other things surrounding it holds certain undertones, especially when they then start to go and deny America Ferrera's talent among other things, that are very concerning. Like let's not do that. Especially if you're writing an article for a newspaper (LA Times) that makes digs towards the other films and their nominees, mainly who were women, and say that that proves the point of Barbie. Even though the point of the film was that women have to work harder than men just to get their foot in the door, not about shaming other women, but I digress.

[seaweedstarshine]

RIP Krakoa 🌹 I can’t lie I’ve been kinda behind since midway through Fall of X I’m gonna catch up before my first SDCC this summer but I hear Vulcan didn’t see much action anyway. Anyway my hand slipped and I found myself looking into the eyes of my canonically psychotic son the best Summers brother who’s never done anything wrong in his entire life, (he’s done lotsa wrong things but I love him more for it)

[wiseabsol]

(Gets to the end of the most recent Worlds Beyond Number episode. Yells out loud.) FUCK!

[lighthouseborn]

this is kind of me still marveling at that i can make gifs that look like this now but also i am just. thinking thinking thinking about how Afraid of salazar henry is, is all. what a flinch. he didn't even see salazar kill anyone he just Knows that he did and the rest is the immense vibes of Bad coming off this thing that is entirely too far into his personal space at all times

[spacelazarwolf]

watched a video of a jewish israeli man crying because his partner was killed in a terrorist attack and when i looked at the comments it was full of people laughing, saying “what movie is this???” (mocking his crying and claiming it’s fake), saying they hope more people die, saying they hope he dies, saying they hope his partner is in hell, saying that they get satisfaction from watching him cry. and like. i dunno i just really don’t think ppl truly understand how little humanity is granted to jews, particularly to israeli jews.

this guy wasn’t a politician, he wasn’t a military commander, he was just some guy who was crying because his boyfriend was murdered. but because he was wearing a kippah and speaking hebrew, suddenly it’s “what do the ‘chosen people’ have to cry about????” israeli jews can’t celebrate jewish holidays bc people will spin it as them “celebrating genocide”, they can’t laugh with their friends because it’s “proof israelis aren’t suffering”, they can’t cry about their murdered loved ones because it’s “clearly fake/a plot for sympathy”, they can’t be angry because everything ever done to them is justified because of their ethnicity and nationality, they can’t be scared because there’s nothing to be scared of just ignore the thousands of rockets because they’re justified anyway yes including over civilian areas because there are no civilians in israel—

do you get it? there is nothing israeli jews can do to gain or deserve humanity in the court of public opinion because the court of public opinion has always always always from the beginning been weighted against jews. i’m not even israeli and i can still see the complete and utter lack of empathy for human beings that didn’t choose to be born jewish and israeli. i dunno. it’s 5am and i can’t sleep and i am just so fucking tired of watching people who claim to be progressive turn around and act like straight up nazis when it comes to israeli jews.

[fellthemarvelous]

It pisses me off to see the way some Star Wars fans are so dismissive of Reva, Third Sister.

She's complex. She's interesting. She's clever. She's intelligent. She's strategic. She's conflicted. She's traumatized. She's scared. She's angry. She's a survivor.

The Obi-Wan Kenobi series literally opens with her and her friends watching one of her Jedi mentors get gunned down by clone troopers during Order 66.

She was a FUCKING CHILD!!! They were in the middle of a lesson when the clones walked in and started shooting everyone!! These were Anakin Skywalker's troopers and they were executing every single Jedi around them.

These children had NO idea what was going on. They were scared and they tried to run to safety.

We remember this scene from Revenge of the Sith and we all immediately knew what it meant.

These are the same bodies that Obi-Wan Kenobi found when he and Yoda returned to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant after having to kill so many of Anakin's clone troopers just to survive.

These are children that the Jedi Council wasn't there to save.

Palpatine snuffed out the light of the Jedi in one swift act of terrorism and then blamed the Jedi for their own genocide after taking over the entire galaxy.

And in times of war, the weakest among everyone always suffer the most.

This is what Reva, Jedi youngling, remembers most about the end of the Clone Wars.

Anakin Skywalker, hero of the Clone Wars and former padawan of the great Obi-Wan Kenobi, murdered all of her friends and injured her.

She had to play dead amongst the dead bodies of her friends, and that's how she survived. She witnessed Anakin Skywalker murder all the Jedi in the temple with no one there to stop him because the other Jedi Masters were being executed in a war they had never wanted to enter into in the first place.

She blames herself for not being able to save her friends because she wasn't strong enough to fight back. No youngling was ever going to be strong enough to stand against Anakin Skywalker. She wanted revenge against Anakin Skywalker, and she was just as desperate to get to Obi-Wan Kenobi as he was. She wanted to kill Anakin Skywalker just as badly as Darth Vader wanted to kill Obi-Wan.

She was alone in a galaxy that tortured and executed surviving Jedi. She spent ten years plotting her revenge against Anakin. She was angry at Obi-Wan for not being there to stop Anakin, and rightfully so.

The Republic fell. Reva and her friends were left unprotected. She was the only person she relied on because everyone else failed her. She was only a child when she lost everyone.

And it's clear she was conflicted by her role as an Inquisitor. She doesn't have the training the other Inquisitors do because she volunteered to be an Inquisitor while all the others were tortured and terrorized into falling to the dark side. She only wanted access to Anakin so she could get justice for what he did to her and her family.

Unlike Anakin, Reva couldn't find it in herself to harm a child. She was seeking revenge solely against Anakin Skywalker. Luke and Leia are the same age she was when she watched her friends and family die in front of her.

Yes, she was prepared to torture Leia, but she consistently hesitated, and when Tala walked in, Reva turned away. She stopped. Yeah she was mad, but she didn't have to go through with it. She'd already planted a tracker on Lola. She was already planning on allowing them to escape so she could locate their secret base. She just needed to bait Obi-Wan. Her plan worked perfectly, and she didn't even have to hurt this child who was annoying the shit out of her (not realizing she was dealing with Anakin Skywalker's offspring).

She went to Tatooine to kill Luke, but she couldn't. She hunted him down without bothering to kill Owen or Beru. She only cared about one thing. Getting justice for what happened to everyone she had been unable to save at the end of the war. She was only a child, and when she realized she was about to kill a defenseless child just to get revenge, she couldn't do it. She saw her face when she looked down at Luke and cried when she realized she couldn't do it.

She was so horrified by what she had been prepared to do and returned him to Owen and Beru alive. She fell to her knees and sobbed because she thought she failed her family in the end.

Obi-Wan was there for her this time. He reminded her that by showing mercy, she was giving her friends and family peace. She was not going to become the monster that Anakin Skywalker was.

Obi-Wan helped her and reminded her that she gets to decide who she wants to be from this point forward. She refused to become Anakin Skywalker, and a weight was finally starting to be lifted from her shoulders. A weight she had been carrying for ten long years.

She did what she thought she had to just to survive. She had only been a child with no guidance because everyone she loved died. She survived by joining the ranks of the enemy so she could plot her revenge. Obi-Wan showed her mercy at the moment she needed it most. He wasn't angry with her. He was compassionate. She survived Order 66 just like he did, but she had been defenseless when they were thrust into a galaxy that tortured and killed Force sensitive individuals and those who helped them. He had failed Reva during Order 66, and he wasn't going to fail her this time.

She is getting a second chance at finding her path in life despite the bad things she did. Everyone deserves a second chance. She was robbed of her childhood and had to grow up overnight. She had to learn how to survive. And that's exactly what she did. Just not in the way she expected.

[supreme-leader-stoat]

Where does "turn the other cheek" leave Christians in terms of self-defense?

Alright, so, big asterisk up front: we've been arguing about this among ourselves for about two millennia and it shows no signs of stopping. A Quaker is liable to give you a much different answer than a raised-Baptist.

First, some context. The "turn the other cheek" verse is specifically part of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus takes Old Testament law and raises the ante. The law says not to murder, He tells them not to let their anger overtake and control them to begin with. The law says not to commit adultery, He says not to even look at people with lustful intentions (this is the poke out your eye, cut off your hand passage). The law says that a man divorcing his wife has to give her the legal protections of a certificate of divorce, He says that anything short of cheating isn't valid grounds for divorce to begin with (this has a lot to do with the protections or lack thereof for unmarried women at the time, but that's a whole tangent I won't go into here). The law says to keep your oaths, He says to be such a straightforward and honest person that you don't even need to give your oath to begin with. And so on.

Now, with all that in mind; "turn the other cheek" is Him upping the ante on the segment of Mosaic law that literally gives us the phrase "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." It was half legal prescription on the just punishments for certain crimes, and half laying down the rules and restrictions of what constituted acceptable proportionate retaliation. If someone punches you, you can punch him back. Someone kills your brother, you can execute him. What you can't do is go and slaughter his entire family, because that's how you get blood feuds, and that doesn't end well for anybody.

Looking at it from that angle, "turn the other cheek" is a commandment against retaliation and vengeance, and this is the interpretation I've grown up around most of my life. Someone hits you and you've got the opportunity to walk away, then you take your lumps and go, and you don't stew and think about what you're gonna do to get back at him the next time you see him.

Active and immediate self-preservation is another matter. To the best of my knowledge, there is no clear prohibition in the Bible against such actions; even "he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword" is immediately followed by "Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?" The rebuke isn't for acting in the defense of others, it's for getting trigger-happy when Jesus isn't in any true (immediate) danger and because it's ultimately a pointless fight; Jesus has to go to the cross.

If you'll pardon an older example, let's take a look at Esther Chapter 8. King Ahasuerus gives the Jews leave to form militias to protect themselves and their property against the lynch mobs that would be attacking them as part of Haman's genocide plot, and this is presented to us as an inherently just and sensible course of action.

So, to answer the original question, I don't believe that there's anything wrong with Christians practicing self-defense, "turn the other cheek" notwithstanding.

But.

There's one more thorny patch to consider in this whole argument, and that's the one bit of Matthew 5 that comes after "turn the other cheek": "Love your enemy, and pray for those who persecute you." The safety that Christians enjoy in the modern west is an anomaly both geographically and historically. Christianity is, at its very root, a religion of martyrs. Many and maybe even most of those martyrs have gone to their deaths, if not willingly, then at least peaceably. It's worth noting that we don't tell the story of Stephen, who made a valiant last stand against the mob that tried to stone him. We tell the story of Stephen the martyr. "Lord, do not hold this sin against them."

Honestly, I don't know that I'd have the courage to die like they did. If there's someone who's trying to hurt you, trying to hurt your family, I won't be the one to look you in the eyes and say you have to stand down; I'm already well aware of the decision I'd make in that situation. But from the moment we accept eternal life, our old lives here on Earth are forfeit. Any time that could be taken from us with our death is on loan to begin with. A hypothetical attacker in a self-defense situation isn't guaranteed that same benefit. They might very well have far, far more to lose than we do.

I don't believe Christians are forbidden self-defense, but I think we are expected to weigh the costs.

[66kenobi66]

Vivziepop Can't Write POC

TW/CW: Racism, S/A mention

Surprisingly Vivziepop's work actually has more POC characters than I first realized. And all of them are...less then splendid.

Valkyrie

Valkyrie...poor, poor Valkyrie...

Forever cursed to sit in the back, shut up, and only stand up and contribute when her white savior girlfriend either royally screws things up or needs moral support.

I've spoken about my strong feelings on Valkyrie many times before in previous posts so I'll only really give one new shred of criticism I've realized: Making your main POC female cast member a former genocidal murderer who spent supposed years killing her girlfriend's kind is...a choice.

Emily and Sera

My biggest issue with Emily and Sera (especially Emily) is that you can hardly even tell that they're meant to be Black. Their skin is a weird dark grayish brown, their features are stock and bland (both of them lacking proper noses), and their hair is some puzzling mix of straight and poofy.

And the writing of them both is also unimpressive. Emily is a carbon-copy, stock "Bubbly young girl" archetype who never really does much other than sing and move around. She acts more like a piece on a chessboard than a character, simply moving and doing what the scene needs her to do. Sera on the other hand, is a personality-less stick figure who just kind of does things because...the plot requires it. Also, great move Vivzie! Making one of the main villains a Black woman who endorses genocide and has to act like a babysitter/manager to the loud, obnoxious, hate-spewing white guy. How progressive!

Velvette (Kind of?)

I...actually have no real words to say about Velvette. Which sounded like a positive until I realized the reason I had nothing to say about her is because she does nothing. Like, ever.

She just kind of stands around being annoying and ignoring her fellow Vee's whining fits and sex crimes. Jeez, uh...that argument between her and Carmilla was stupid, I guess?

Velvette: She sure is one of the characters of all time!

Valentino

Not even worth mentioning, you already know he's terrible.

Alastor/Husk

Oh dear god, Alastor...

Words fail me at how much of an insane fail both of these characters are. One is a offensive caricature of Voodou that would make Dr. Facilier roll in his grave, who's also somehow whiter than snow despite being half Creloe. And the other is a constantly complaining douche and a hopeless alcoholic, who has a whole song devoted to calling a sex worker a loser for being abused/not having a proper coping mechanism. Oh, AND he's enslaved by the other "Black" guy! HOW PROGRESSIVE 😀

Oh and Carmilla is there too, but I've been awake for too long and also have nothing to say about her :/

[accirax]

Danganronpa: Despair Time Chapter 2 Episode 13 Dissection

Jesus CHRIST, the hits keep on coming (/pos). I don't think anyone could have predicted everything that came to light in this episode. But, hey, at least we're finally cooking on the murder method a bit more...?

SPOILERS for Danganronpa: Despair Time though Chapter 2 Episode 13! Also, CW: discussions of suicide.

Similarly to last time, I tried not to look at too many other people's major reactions/theories as to not influence my opinions as they were when I watched the episode. (Although I think I failed to do that more than last week...) Here's what this episode got me thinking about!

Genocide Jack, Junko, Mukuro, Peko, and Korekiyo:

On that note, though, this is... debatably relevant lore about Hope's Peak as it exists in DRDT? We know from Chapter 2 Episode 2 that Veronika (and likely all of the non-Terukos as well) don't remember Trigger Happy Havoc, and, based on this, it's likely that they don't remember much of the history of the old HPA either. Ace being so adamant that HPA wouldn't scout a murderer implies that the new HPA has fully regained its spotless reputation, potentially even more than the Tokyo school ever had.

I want you all to know that I tried to write out a little theory about whether or not Levi could have killed any plot-relevant characters here, but I came to a dead end at every venture. Levi killed Mai? No, he has no motive, and the murder happened before everyone attended Hope's Peak. Levi killed Elliot? No, Ellie was probably killed by dogs, and the timing is all wrong. Levi killed someone at the North C and Chariton incident? That didn't even happen. I was just getting that confused with my theories about what Xander might have done at that incident in FF's DRDT Milgram AU. Not even what actually happened in the AU. Just my theories on what might happen.

The only option I couldn't fully rule out was the idea that Levi killed some of the ~5 missing members of the altDRDT cast, but, holy shit, can you imagine how funny that would be? Teacher and the gang get to the sixth Class Trial and ask all dramatically, "so, what happened to the rest of our class that didn't make it to the killing game...?" and Monowhatever is just like "actually, Levi Fontana just straight up merced those dudes years ago." Hilarious.

Anyways. That goes to show that I do think these were just random guys, and the only specific relevance they would have is in the realm of Levi's backstory specifically.

RIP to the "Levi used to be an assassin" theory. I actually kinda liked that one myself.

(Also, hijacking this image to point out the background music here. You hear the ticking clock motif? Very suspicious indeed...)

Yup, even more confirmation that HPA highly valued having an incredibly pure and righteous image. Of course this HPA was also corrupt. Is it even possible to make an HPA without some level of corruption?

(Levi. My guy. I need you to use a different sprite; the quadruple image combo is starting to look ridiculous.)

What I find really interesting here is that, even in the realm of forgetting about murders, Levi remembers the three random guys before his father. Like, I know that Levi says that he kinda equally doesn't care about everyone (and I believe him to be telling the truth on that), but you would think that, just by virtue of having spent more time with his dad or the people around him's reactions, Levi would have remembered killing his father before offing three random thugs.

I don't know if this is meant to A) really drive the point home that Levi sees no difference between those he "knows" and those he doesn't; B) imply that Levi might have sustained some greater amount of trauma from killing his father that caused him to block that memory out more; C) suggest that killing the guys was more recent than killing his dad, which might lead him to remember it with more clarity; or D) some combination of the former three. However, I think it's an interesting detail to note.

The foils are foiling........

This was hilarious. And lowkey evidence that Nico was the one who tried to kill Ace.

You know, I actually almost made a theory once that the clauses "you're a murderer" and "you have no remorse" could be read as two separate secret statements! Not to say that Levi didn't have no remorse for the killing part, but that having no remorse was a state of being not solely tied to the murdering.

Alsoooo... just gonna say, Levi on Drawing Pins is looking better and better all the time...

Eden: But you're a good person. Why are you saying these things when it's clearly not true? You're so kind to everyone. You're always helping others out, even when it'd be easier not to. Like that time Ace almost died. You kept trying to help him, even if he always pushed you away. Isn't that what "a good person" does?

WE ARE BACK AT IT AGAIN!!! "GOOD PERSON" SPECIFICALLY IN THE LEVI/EDEN CONTEXT AAAAAAAAA

Beyond the further "good person" jumpscare, I found this line interesting due to how Eden describes Ace. Someone who "always pushed [Levi] away." Sounds a lot like Arei, huh? In fact, a lot of it sounds like Eden is applying it to herself.

"But I'm a good person. Why am I thinking these things when it's clearly not true? I'm so kind to everyone. I'm always helping others out, even when it'd be easier not to. Like that time Arei yelled at me. I kept trying to help her, even if she always pushed me away. Isn't that what "a good person" does?"

Obviously, I'm reading into this in the "Eden is the blackened" context, but I think that it's still an interesting read of Eden's mental state even if she isn't the blackened. We know that, to some extent, Eden blames herself for both Min and Arei's deaths. Therefore, despite likely feeling like she's fucked up, she wants to cling onto the idea that she's a good person so she doesn't lose faith in herself.

That leads into some super interesting parallels when it comes to this speech versus what Arei said, but I'll talk about that more once we get to the Arei monologue.

This week, acevi shippers take the L. Really, Levi x anyone shippers, but I think acevi shippers got the worst of it.

Except, they also took the W. "Ace lowkey confirms he once had feelings for Levi" was NOT on my bingo card. Or Star's.

(Also I LOVE this new sprite)

I saw some people talking about Ace's friend (Taylor?) but I do not remember and cannot find any information about this character (so I can't even tell if they're just fanmade :( ). If anyone knows what I'm talking about and has a link, please send it to me. Anyways, "insult to his memory" definitely makes it sound like Ace's friend is dead. I wonder if the way in which he died has anything to do with Ace's fear of horses/cowardice in general.

I want to see more Levi and Veronika interactions so bad. It's no surprise that Veronika was the first to pick up what Levi was putting down. Both of them don't have the "normal" way of processing their feelings and interacting with others, but while Levi has decided to try to be what society deems as "good" anyways, Veronika has decided to fully live by her own creed. I wonder if Levi could be at all convinced by Veronika to go back to his old ways.

Veronika: You're always guessing as to what a normal human would do in your situation. You're so awkward in social settings because you can't tell what other people want.

I'm excited to see Levi and Nico interact too, obviously. I suppose Nico is kinda like the midpoint of Veronika and Levi-- doesn't understand people and wants the world to work the way they perceive it, but also has been bullied enough to feel forced to play along with how others want them to be. Characters like these have become some of my favorite archetypes to discuss. I'm so glad that DRDT has so many of them!!!

The foils are foiling AGAIN...

Why the fuck are you so pressed about the secrets now??? I thought you were all about privacy?????

Well, thank you for "confirming" that swap, ladies! This talk of a pact is very interesting, though. I guess Hu must have gone to Veronika pretty early to ensure that her secret wouldn't get out-- makes sense, as without that there's a good chance Hu could believe that Veronika would reveal her secret at the most unflattering time to create drama.

It does slightly recontextualize Veronika's "A little mystery makes this Trial more exciting, don't you think?", though. I wonder if that was just straight up a lie, or if that was the rationale Hu used to appeal to Veronika. I doubt we'll get a flashback of this scene now that this moment's passed, but I'd love to see it. FTEs...? 👀

David you have to stop this right now or you're going to become my new favorite character. Dude's been dying to don the mantle of the comic relief character, apparently.

Is The Motive Scoreboard Accurate?

I'm including this because I've seen some other people say that it is, specifically on Teruko's front. I strongly believe that this motive board is incorrect, and Teruko and Xander's secrets are swapped.

The blaming yourself secret mentions parentS and siblingS. Back in Chapter 1 Episode 4, Teruko says that she never knew her parents (and therefore may even just be assuming that she has two), and she only had one biological brother. Furthermore, she has no idea if they're dead or not. On the parents front, she could assume that being sent to an orphanage is confirmation enough that her parents are dead instead of just not wanting her. Being sent there with her older biological brother is a further implication of that.

However, Teruko specifically says that her brother "left with some other family." She makes no mention of believing he's dead at all. Therefore, for Teruko to have the secret she claims to have, Teruko would have to be constantly mourning parents and an additional sibling that she never knew, and to believe that all of them are dead despite having no reason to believe that her known brother died.

Obviously, all of these things were said aloud to Charles and Whit, so there is a possibility that Teruko lied about or concealed parts of her past to keep her walls up around those two. However, what does this face from David mean if not "I've caught you in my trap?"

(DRDT sprites are SO GOOD--)

To me, this sprite clearly indicates that David knows that Teruko is lying about something, but has chosen not to bring it up to save it for later purposes. I don't know if he has something specific in mind or just wants to hold the potential blackmail over her head, but I strongly suspect that we'll come back to this someday-- either in later daily life or a post-Trial scene in this chapter.

It's also interesting to note that, while David knows that this is Teruko's for sure, Charles and Whit also have the opportunity to recognize the discrepancy. I definitely wouldn't be surprised if Charles kept notes about what he knows about everyone somewhere. We'll have to see if either of them ask her about it down the road as well.

Eden: I know that she's dead!! I know that she's dead and that she's never coming back. I know that I'll never be able to talk to her ever again. But even then... I have to know that when she was alive, she was still trying to become a good person. That if she lived, then maybe there'd be a world in which we would both be friends. If you really say that you lied about making Arei kill herself, then tell me the truth. Tell me that you didn't make her lose hope. Please! Tell me what happened last night between you and Arei!

Oh boy.

Can Eden Still Be the Culprit?

Look. I understand if you look at this and believe that Eden couldn't possibly be the culprit-- or at least, not without being a completely different character than we know her to be. Because I almost did. Zel's performance did a really good job of selling Eden's heartbreak in a way that makes it feel like she couldn't have possibly been the one to end Arei's life. However, upon further review, I do think that Eden's words could be that of the killer, with minimal levels of intentional manipulation thrown in.

If it would cause you emotional distress to listen to me continue to accuse Eden, I'll write the rest of this section in purple so that you can skip it if you'd like. I don't want to make anyone sad, so I fully understand if you want to avoid these bad vibes. However, for those of you who are still on the fence, and those who have stuck with Eden!culprit all along, here's my justification. I think it'll be easiest to break it down block by block.

Eden: I know that she's dead!!

Okay, well, maybe skipping this section a bit. More points for Arei truly being the one who's dead, I guess?

Eden: I know that she's dead and that she's never coming back. I know that I'll never be able to talk to her ever again.

Alright, so, this can fairly easily be read as the same thing as what Eden was doing back when she was talking to Levi: reassuring herself.

Well, maybe "reassuring" is the wrong word. Basically, she's repeating the same mantra that she told herself when she was trying to justify her decision to kill Arei. When making the decision to kill anyone, the killer (if they care) has to process that they will have to kill every other person in the game if they want to escape for themselves. Therefore, if Eden is the killer, she already had to grapple with the fact that she can't turn back time. ("You can't go back, no matter how hard you try.")

I think that Eden might have it in her head that, even if it wouldn't fully erase her wrongdoings, as long as she doesn't just forgive and forget the whole affair, it makes things slightly better. That's why she was yelling things like "You forgot about all the things you did just because you didn't face any consequences for them? That's incredibly selfish!" at Levi.

Feeling bad about things is her punishment to make sure that Arei is never fully forgotten. She knows that, if she goes through with killing, she'll never be able to talk with any of these people again. However, if there's something more important to her than these 13 lives that she has to escape the killing game to reach, it's a consequence she'll have to accept. She knows it's selfish-- but she at least won't be so selfish as to also forget everyone else's sacrifice.

Eden: But even then... I have to know that when she was alive, she was still trying to become a good person. That if she lived, then maybe there'd be a world in which we would both be friends.

This is probably the part that feels the most damning. Why would Eden care about whether or not Arei was trying to become a good person if Eden is the one who killed her? Wouldn't it be better for Eden if she wasn't?

Well, that's what Eden is trying to figure out, too. In Venus' Narrative Defense of Eden Culprit Theory, Venus says that Eden didn't believe that Arei actually changed and wanted to be her friend. And, it really makes complete sense if she didn't-- Eden had no idea that David and Teruko continued to talk so seriously with Arei after her departure, and Arei saving Eden from Arturo literally happened the same day that Arei had her breakdown. It had probably been, like, 4 hours since Arei chewed her out for her worldview being stupid, and then Arei's suddenly turning around and declaring that she wants to protect Eden at all costs. Of course Eden might just believe that Arei was setting her up for a fall! (Murder pun not intended.)

Venus also adds that, at this point in the Trial, David knew something that Eden didn't: namely, that Arei actually wanted to change, and saw Eden as her inspiration for doing so. Under the assumption that that revelation has been bothering Eden the whole time, it makes perfect sense that Eden would want to know more about what David knew about Arei. She needs to know exactly how terrible she needs to feel for doing this terrible thing.

I think the quote becomes a lot less defendable if you just swap out the "that" for an "if."

"But even then... I have to know if when she was alive, she was still trying to become a good person. That if she lived, then maybe there'd be a world in which we would both be friends."

Now, obviously, you could say that this is an unfair point-- Eden didn't say "if," she said, "that"! How can you excuse Eden based off of evidence that isn't actually real?

My point is that, even if DRDTdev didn't have Eden phrase it that way, it would be an incredibly easy swap to make. Thus, the only way in which Eden would have to be lying is to swap out one word. With that one word, "if," we see how she's still doubting whether Arei really was trying to be a good person, and can read into why she's bringing that up at this time. To disguise it, all Eden has to do is trade "if" for "that"-- she doesn't have to be some masterful lying manipulator to pull off a quick exchange that makes her look more innocent.

Eden: If you really say that you lied about making Arei kill herself, then tell me the truth. Tell me that you didn't make her lose hope.

Eden needs the truth so that she can know how despicable she actually is (in her opinion). She needs to know how bad she needs to feel for taking Arei's life, so that she won't wind up as "inhuman" as Levi.

I also think that "tell me that you didn't make Arei lose hope" could be interpreted in a killer-ish way. There is a rhetorical device in English that sorta turns words like that on their head. Like, if I said, "don't tell me you spoiled DRDT for all of your followers!," it's often interpreted as "I know that you did spoil DRDT for all of your followers, but I don't want to hear it." In this case, Eden might not want David to tell her that he made Arei lose hope because she doesn't want to believe that Arei had any hope in the first place. It's better than if Eden was the one to directly crush those hopes, sure, but if Arei approached David talking about wanting to be a better person mere hours before her death, that still means that Eden was killing a hopeful Arei. She doesn't want David to confirm her worst fears.

I don't know if I phrased that section exactly how I imagined it in my mind, but hopefully you understand what I'm getting at.

Eden: Please! Tell me what happened last night between you and Arei!

In the end, though, Eden knows that she has to face the music to figure out how she wants to proceed with this trial, whether that's sinking the cost of her fallacy or owning up to her crime. And that's how I think you can justify this outburst of Eden's within the context of her being the blackened, without having to fully corrupt her character.

What Arei Meant

This part isn't a theory, exactly; it's more of an analysis of the point I think Arei was trying to convey in this section. I've seen some people be sad about the new note that Arei's character is "going out" on, but I actually think that this is a pretty realistic, thematic ending for where Arei's story and the themes of the chapter are headed. Time to praise DRDTdev's writing for a bit!

Arei: I'm a manipulative, two-faced bitch. I pretend to be cute so that I can treat others like trash. I only care about myself, and I always hurt others for selfish and stupid reasons. Of course I wanted to change myself. [...] Still, for the longest time, I thought it was stupid to even try. I'm rotten to the core, and I might as well be a different species from saints like you and Eden. [...] No matter what, I'll never be a good person. And yet, despite all that... David, you... It turns out that you might be a total piece of shit after all. If even a perfect inspirational speaker like you turns out to be an asshole, then there's no such thing as "a good person." [...] And that makes me relieved, because it means I'm not too far gone. It's okay that I'll never be a good person, because no one else can be either.

I don't think that Arei is saying that the world is a lost cause.

Instead, she's saying that no one is a lost cause. She's applying that Syndrome logic: "if everyone is a bad person, no one will be." Arei thought that, because of her upbringing, there was no possibility that she could ever Be Good, because she'd already done too much wrong. Good People are perfect, unerring gods who do nothing but help others and reach out to wayward souls. However, David's manipulations proved that that wasn't true.

Good People fuck up. Good People do good things for bad reasons, and bad things for good reasons, and, hell, if David is a Good Person, then Good People do bad things for bad reasons sometimes, too! Arei confessed to us that she felt like her life was over because she was given an unfair start. However, now she knows that the bar has been lowered, and that being a good person can be done by anyone, anywhere, at any time. Perfection doesn't exist. Now that she knows that there was never any need to be perfect, the chance she sought for so long has finally been granted.

(Dipping back into purple for a sec to talk about Eden culprit stuff)

After this, I feel like the theme of this chapter has to be about deconstructing the myth of "The Good Person." You think that Nico is just a soft and shy bullying victim? No, they're just as willing to kill as anyone else. You think that Hu is a gracious motherly figure? No, she has an angry streak and talks over other people. You think that Levi is a softhearted giant who just struggles with what to say sometimes? His kill count is higher than everyone who's died to the killing game so far, and he doesn't really care that that's the case. You think that Whit is just a silly guy who cares about others? Fuck, even he's willing to stall out the trial in an attempt to fulfill his own agenda.

The main person who hasn't yet been proven so be not as good as they seem so far is Eden, who in this episode has been clinging to the idea of being a good person harder than ever. I know that some people believe that Eden needs to survive to fulfill the role of the optimist, but I feel like this episode proves that that isn't true. We don't need A Hopeful Person because anyone can step up to the plate and believe in hope if they want to do so. Eden isn't A Good Person, but a real person, who's just as capable of laughing and crying and living and dying as anyone else.

A good person is not gold. That's why everyone who tried to cling to the idea that they were being A Good Person-- Xander, David, Levi-- has always wound up hurting others in the end. Xander believed his actions were morally justified, and thus decided to kill Teruko, causing Min's death and lots of anguish for Teruko. David wanted to follow in his footsteps, and beyond his inspirational speaker persona causing damage to himself, he was also about to kill everyone else to do "what's right." Levi (Arei pending) hasn't killed anyone since trying to become A Good Person, but pretending to follow those guidelines without actually wanting to change anything about himself emotionally hurt Ace, who was set up with false expectations.

If Eden is so convinced that she's a good person, she's only blinding herself to the ways that she's inevitably not.

Back to Arei, while it is sad that her development was cut off just as she made this revelation, I believe that clarifying this additional bit of content is a way to allow her to rest in peace. Even if she didn't get to transform as much as she wanted to, she at least got to die knowing that she wasn't as wretched as she convinced herself that she was all these years, and having done at least one good thing-- saving Eden from Arturo-- before she passed. It's an amazing character arc to squeeze in for your second victim.

Phew, finally, a chance to talk about objective lore instead of heavy and divisive character themes! Except, uh...

WHAT THE FUCK???

Remember when, at the beginning, I said that no one could have predicted everything that came to light in this episode? This was the main point I was talking about. I don't think anyone saw this reveal coming, especially in this moment.

For starters, even though this CG does appear in David's memories, I don't think that he or Arei actually remembers whatever this was taking place. Beyond me attempting to debunk the idea that David had additional memories of Hope's Peak last week, Arei or David specifically referring to this moment means that they had to... be there? When whatever this was happened?

I say "whatever this was" to briefly create suspense before connecting the dots everyone's already talked about: that Eden was probably the one to scratch out Xander's eye. This would make Eden the "she" that Xander (er, I mean, "the guy with the bloody hands") talks about in the intro scene.

It also gives some more context to the clock with the fork stabbed into it depicted in LGI.

I don't know if "non-functional" and "I didn't expect her to" mean that Eden could have been brainwashed or otherwise broken down into not acting like herself when this happened, but it certainly seems out of character for what we know of Eden. Even her facial expression seems to suggest that she might not have wanted or intended to attack anyone with that fork.

Anyways, for Arei or David to know about the contents of that CG, they would've had to both be there when Eden attacked Xander and then also have regained/had their memories of it, which seems unlikely given how both of them treat Eden. Like, even if Arei is sure that Eden "did something to hurt someone in the past," this seems a bit extreme, and David probably wouldn't be so neutral on her if he knew that she attacked his man.

Another really clever point that I saw someone make (AND THEN COULDN'T TRACK DOWN WHO OR IN WHICH POST IT WAS--) was that Eden is wearing her current outfit in this CG. Interestingly, I looked back at A History of Hope's Peak and Visiting Graves to see what Min and Xander were wearing, and while Min was wearing her typical killing game uniform, Xander was wearing something different. Given that Min's scene takes place in HPA and Xander's doesn't, this could imply that Min was wearing the HPA uniform? That's fitting, for her.

We also know that the DRDT cast were all wearing these outfits believing that they were headed for the HPA entrance ceremony. Therefore, we know that Eden would wear this getup to school, but we don't know if she'd wear it elsewhere. Once again, assuming it was Xander who got forked, we can place this CG some time between Visiting Graves and the start of the killing game. I have a hunch that Visiting Graves might have taken place during HPA's spring break-- in A History, Min and Mai (er, I mean, "Unnamed Student") are at school studying for a test with "Spring Break next week" on the chalkboard, while in Visiting Graves, Mai and Xander have traveled elsewhere-- but that's not confirmed, so we can't lock it down.

Maybe we can get more information about this in Eden's bonus episode! Because, well, I at least do think that most of the mysteries of this CG could be solved within a bonus episode and/or other characters talking about her posthumously in later chapters. Again, I understand if you want to use this CG as evidence that Eden is important enough to need to stick around, though.

AREI I MISS YOUUUUUUUUUU

Also, I didn't catch this at all, but credit to everyone who noticed how similar this scene is to the "Diana Chiem" scene in LGI! Fascinating implications that I have no additional thoughts on at the moment. Mostly because we don't know shit about Diana, if that even is her who's portrayed in that CG. I'm sure I'll come back to this someday, just not right now.

Oh, and I don't think you can really argue that Ace made up this conversation anymore. Idk how much of it he stuck around to listen to, though.

See like why is she so pressed about it???

I'd like to say that this is a win for Whit not being the mastermind (because he doesn't seem to know what MonoTV is talking about), but he could probably just be going "why are you saying that at this time?" or something like that. Sigh (/j)

Why Does Whit Know So Much About Hanging?

Alright, so, obviously, this could be a super-suspect hint that Whit knows all of this stuff about hanging and therefore decided to use that knowledge to kill Arei. But, I don't care about that! What I don't understand is how Whit came to know all of this in the first place!

Well, after a quick review, there's one option that stands out more than all the others: Whit's mom was killed by hanging, likely self-inflicted. The only thing we "know" about Whit's mom dying (assuming that secret really is his) is that she is dead, and Whit omits it. It's phrased pretty vaguely. We also know that Whit thinks his mom is awesome, but that doesn't tell us anything about how she saw herself. Sadly, I think this lines up all too well.

Whit's main character flaw, as we've seen throughout the story so far, is ignoring things that stress him out or make him sad. He represses, and chooses not to get involved in others' fights because it's "not his business." It would make sense if the same extended to what he was like before the killing game. If Whit always chooses to ignore things that worry him, there's a possibility he blames himself for his mom's death via not paying enough attention to any warning signs that her mental state might have gotten so dire. Of course, if repression runs in the family, she might have been doing her best to not make it obvious as well.

So, even though he hates himself for not giving his mom enough support in her darkest hour, he still can't (yet) make any changes in his life because ignorance is the only way he knows how to cope. Yet, he still won't let himself pass up on helping another soul in clear need of support, like Charles panicking over the blood, or Eden suffering over seeing Arei's body. He can push himself to help others that are sad, as long as he never focuses on himself.

Or, he's the time loop mastermind who's heard Class Trials discuss hanging a billion times before. You never know with this guy.

CONGRATS TO FF AND BADJOE FOR BEING THE SMARTEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉 Man, even seeing Teruko explain this mechanism as the truth, I still don't know if I would've been able to come up with it myself. This fandom is so smart :D

(Also, why was Whit a dog? Goddammit, is this more MonoTV coding?! /lh)

FUCK YES, WE'RE ACTUALLY GOING TO GET ANSWERS ABOUT THE GYM MURDER IN THIS TRIAL? HALLELUJAH! IT'S ABOUT TO BE T A P E T I M E, MOTHERFUCKERS! (/j)

Phew, barely squeaked it within 30 images! I'm impressed and amazed that DRDTdev keeps managing to make such gripping episodes week after week.

Get it? Gripping? Like grippy tape?

I'd apologize, but you're almost certainly going to hear more of that from me next week. Until then!

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Is Eridan’s fake attempt for land dweller genocide just a manifestation of his guilt of orphaning all those trolls? He says he wants to kill them all so they will no longer have to deal the loss of losing their parent to some finned hipster asshole?

So Eridan's life pre-SGRUB is primarily concerned with one thing: it is his Duty as a violet-blood who is close to the Heiress to feed her lusus so that it doesn't throw a tantrum and Kill Everybody. It's a manifestation not of guilt, but of anxiety.

He describes the murder he commits in pursuit of this as "all i evver done practically," and we never see him participate in a hobby he enjoys - we learn he's a hipster because Karkat calls him one, he FLARPs to fill Gl'bgolyb's belly, and people have fought with me before, but I maintain that his "interest" in military history is also just a part of his posturing/something he reads like somebody would doomscroll, as it validates his anxiety, because he only ever talks about history twice, in the vaguest possible terms, and the first time, it's just part of him posturing at Kanaya, and the second time, he's literally just. Wrong? He's just incorrect?

CA: yeah go ahead and kiss us off but therell be blood on your hands CA: you could either play along as our auspistice and do a little mediating like you wwere fuckin hatched to CA: or wwatch she and me devvolvve into fuckin full fledged kismesisses the kind like you dont get once in ten thousand swweeps CA: you knoww thats wwhat it wwould be there wwould be rainboww rivvers runnin through star systems and all nebulizin like liquid firewworks CA: it wwill be beautiful and heartbreaking all at once CA: you should read up on your history instead of poring through that godawwfull sunny rubbish

CC: None of your plots to kill t)(e land dwellers ever work out, and every doomsday device you get your )(ands on turns out to be a piece of junk! CA: so CA: i got to keep tryin thats howw all the great military masterminds became great through upright persevverance

Like I just. Don't believe him when he says he's obsessed with military history when he doesn't seem to be able to name five specific battles, and thinks the main attribute a military leader needs to succeed is "persevverance". We know that Karkat's interest in romance is real because he brings it up more than twice and also starts infodumping about it to Vriska at one point, but Eridan only seems to mention it because he thinks he's supposed to care about it.

Which is pretty much, like, one of the biggest tensions in his character: how he feels he's supposed to act vs. how he actually feels about acting that way. He faces multiple pressures to be a certain person, which run counter to his actual feelings.

He has to be a murderer, because if he isn't one, then Gl'bgolyb will do a genocide on his entire species.

He has to be an unrepentant murderer, because they live in a horrible fascist murder-society where highbloods are supposed to kill lowbloods all the time for literally any reason.

He has to be the one getting his hands bloody because his ancestor, Dualscar, was also the Orphaner, and (especially highblood) trolls need to take up their ancestors' mantles.

He has to be rude and condescending to everybody else because that's how highbloods, and especially sea dwellers, have to act.

He cannot express compassion, sympathy, or pity, because sea dwellers and highbloods aren't supposed to act that way.

Magic has to be fake, because it's for shitty wigglers, and Eridan's not a wiggler anymore!

He has to be in a torrid pitch relationship because that was the most defining one Dualscar had, and he needs to complete Dualscar's unfinished business.

He has to be in a flushed relationship because Dualscar had an unrequited flushcrush on the empress, and he needs to complete Dualscar's unfinished business.

He has to hate the lowbloods because he's a highblood.

He has to hate the land dwellers because he's a sea dweller.

But wait! That's weird. He has to hate the land dwellers and lowbloods, but he's the one responsible for making sure they don't all die by keeping Gl'bgolyb full?

In truth, it would be all too easy to solve the land dweller problem once and for all. You'd just need to lighten up on the feeding schedule for a while. Maybe you'd be a little too busy to bother with that hassle for once? Or maybe you could happen to be off your game for a spell? It happens, even to the best sometimes. But nah. It would make her upset. More emotions. More problems. That's all you need.

And he has to be an unrepentant murderer even though he clearly feels more guilt for it than Feferi?

That should keep her happy for a while. And make a freshly orphaned troll somewhere pretty sad.

And you claim magic is fake idiot stuff for babies but you like it SOOOO much?

You also like MAGIC, even though you know it to be FAKE. Like a made up friend, the way wizards are. Made up make believe FAKEY FAKEY FAKES. It's still fun though.

So we can see that Eridan is basically being pulled two ways at all times.

On one hand, there's everything society says he needs to be: an unrepentant murderer, a military dictator, ruthless bloodthirsty sea-dwelling aristocracy, hater of all low bloods and land dwellers, Orphaner Dualscar's heir.

And on the other hand, there's the guy Eridan actually is: doesn't give a shit about the hemocaste, just wants friends and/or relationship partners, likes magic, like hipster stuff, kind of a tool, guilty and traumatized.

It doesn't help that the people he's surrounded by are the least likely to recognize his distress as distress - Feferi loooooves being a princess, Kanaya has never really voiced any strong opinions on the hemocaste because it largely doesn't concern her since she's a rare jade blood, and Vriska is doing a lot better than Eridan is at fitting the mold they were born into (not that she doesn't have problems, she's just doing better than Eridan, which is a low fucking bar). Even Karkat, because of his own hangups about being a mutant pariah, venerates the society he was born into, because he (wrongly) sees it as a means to gain validation so he can hate himself less. As a result, Eridan winds up with basically 0 support system, because pretty much every aspect of his life reinforces that the thing society says he should be is correct, and that there's something wrong with Eridan for being unable to meet that expectation.

Especially because, for at least all the "murderer" he's supposed to be, if he fails to meet that expectation, everybody dies. So it's not just that he's got a pushy lusus and a shitty society, like Vriska does, but that there's also the added weight that adhering to those expectations is literally, objectively, the correct thing to do, so long as he doesn't want literally everybody to die.

As a result, he's constantly trying to overcorrect his behavior and cognition to line up with what he thinks he's supposed to be. That's why he's constantly saying slurs even though he doesn't actually treat anybody differently for their caste. That's why he's constantly talking about murder and military history, even though he clearly doesn't enjoy doing either of those things. That's why he's always pushing this image of a big bad fascist wannabe, even though he actually wants to be a magic-slinging wizard.

The thing about genocide, for Eridan, is that he's already obsessed with genocide - the prevention of genocide. Keeping his species from being genocided is, without exaggeration, the most time-consuming pursuit in his life. BUT WAIT! He can't say, think, or believe that his actions are for the benefit of the land dwellers, because first of all, he feels kind of guilty about killing them, and second of all, because he's not allowed to express compassion to the people he's keeping safe. So between the stress, the cognitive dissonance, the anxiety, and the fact that Eridan doesn't really do a lot of introspection because he's so overwhelmed by emotion, his existing preoccupation with genocide is transmuted into something that's socially acceptable: "wanting all the land dwellers dead."

"[I]t would be all too easy." Indeed: if he ever slacks in his duties, they will all die. In fact, it's easier for him to let them die than to not. He clearly doesn't like doing all that killing, and it clearly makes him feel bad, and takes up a shitton of his time if nothing else, so it's probably occurred to him over, and over, and over, that maybe he should just... not! What if he just stopped.

Well, then everyone would die. Gl'bgolyb would raise her voice a little and it'd kill all the rust bloods, then the bronzes, the golds, the limes, the olives...

Wait! Is he feeling bad for them? He's not supposed to be feeling bad for the low bloods! Shit, shit, shit. Say a slur and then say something about how you WANT all the low bloods dead. PHEW. OKAY. SAFE. But that means you need to kill all the lowbloods. Because you said it, so it has to be true, and also, this is the way you're supposed to be. So, fuck, well, go commission a doomsday device. Okay, done. PHEW. It probably doesn't work, but nobody can say you didn't try! Hooray, you did it! You have performed a Sea Dweller Action! Oh it's time to go kill some people again. Damnit. Killing people sucks. It makes you feel bad, and it takes up so much of your time. What if you just didn't...

And we can see this with the way his lust for genocide is described. There's no mention of why he hates the land dwellers, no mention of how he believes society will improve with them gone, or even what they're doing that's so bad in the first place. He rambles at Feferi about "keeping the bloodlines pure" at one point, but this is clearly contradicted by him stating he wouldn't kill Kanaya, because what sort of friend would he be? (And the fact that he cares about Kanaya, Vriska, and the anon-blooded Karkat, who could be literally any blood color, at all!)

So yeah, like, the thing is, he doesn't want to kill them all. He even calls himself out for knowing his latest doomsday plot was a bust from the start:

You are almost starting not to care about this stupid doomsday device which probably won't even work. She probably KNOWS you know it won't work. She has probably put all the pieces together and knows it was an elaborate ruse to be in cahoots with her again.

And so does Feferi:

CC: None of your plots to kill t)(e land dwellers ever work out, and every doomsday device you get your )(ands on turns out to be a piece of junk! CA: so CA: i got to keep tryin thats howw all the great military masterminds became great through upright persevverance CC: I t)(ink deep down you stack t)(ese plots against you so you fail because you know it's wrong.

And here he is outright contradicting his stated goal of killing the land dwellers because, jegus, he'd never kill his friends:

CA: but somethin thatll kill all land dwwellers wwhat else wwould i be after GA: Can You Just For A Moment Entertain The Thoughts Of One Untouched By Megalomaniacal Derangement And Tell Me Why Id Want To Assist You With That CA: wwell CA: im not goin to vvery wwell kill you am i that wwould be fuckin unconscionable CA: wwhat kind of friend wwould i be

And a reminder that one of his closest friends at this point in time is Karkat, whose blood color is currently anonymous to his friend group, meaning he could be literally any blood color and Eridan wouldn't want him dead:

CC: You know, I'm not sure w)(y we never talk about our romantic aspirations. CC: We s)(ould more often. It is kind of -EXCITING! CA: shrug CC: Probably because you fill your gossip quota wit)( your nubby )(orned bro.

But Karkat also explicitly lumps himself in with the low bloods, so Eridan can't even use the excuse that Karkat might be nobility (but sea dwellers are still suppose to hate land dwelling nobility so that still wouldn't be a defense EVEN IF it was true):

CG: CHALK IT UP AS ANOTHER INFURIATING VICTORY FOR GUTTER BLOOD OVER ARISTOCRACY.

Because Eridan does not want to genocide the land dwellers. He's just anxious.

[powerpuffobsession]

It's been a while since that interview where Vivziepop said some vague things about killing off characters and wishing she spend more time with Adam. Instead of saying directly - "Adam will come back", or "Adam won't come back". There is no knowing what to make of it until we see the actual future seasons. Vivzie sounds like she's avoiding spoilers

And I'm kinda tired of people already jumping to negative conclusions and shoving them down the throats of anyone who hopes for Adam returning, all the while calling Adam irredeemable and saying he has no purpose in the plot anymore

Here are my thoughts about those points:

The fact that the fandom still goes on with "Adam is an irredeemable monster because he genocided defenseless sinners and enjoyed it", shows how much hazbin howl sucks at not sugarcoating it's setting and Charlie's radical ideas of forcing criminals into heaven

Like... boo hooo, poor little defenseless rapists, pedos, murderers, nazis, bullies, drug dealers, violent drug addicts, scammers, and other people anyone would normally be happy to see get hurt or die because they have hurt other people? Let me play the wold's smallest violin in their honor

Adam did the right thing and he had the right to enjpy murdering sinners, fight me about it

His actual sin is that he wasn't picky enough about who he was going after and that he attacked Charlie who is innocent

But you know what? We are literally being shown that decent people in hell are VERY few and rare. The majority is just a crowd of psychopaths who actively tell Charlie to f off with redemption

And if you spend your afterlife living in heaven, of course you are going to think that all of hell's population is dangerous

However, Adam has a potential to get redeemed if he interacts with Charlie in a more grounded way and learns that she's not dangerous, despite being a daughter of two people who stabbed him in the back. Sins of parents are not a child's sins, and Charlie's life has a big worth. As well as lifes of more decent sinners who make an effort, like Angel, Vaggie, Husk and sir Pentious

Through Adam other characters can be developed. There are a lot of them who have connections to Adam - Charlie, Lucifer, Lilith, Eve, Emily, Sera, etc... Showing flashbacks just won't be the same as having Adam himself in the plot

And do not get me started on how bringing Adam back is not logical and ruins the cartoon's quality. I've got a lot of not pretty things to say about hazbin hotel's "logic"... There are already a bunch of plot holes and lazily slapped on character changes. Finding a way for Adam to return won't be hard

Have you seen the way Stolitz and Sir Pentious, for example, ended up, compared to what they were claimed to be at the start of the series? Or the way fan theory about Vaggie being an exterminator suddenly got added into canon last minute after she had been a moth sinner for so many years and lot of people got used to it? I won't be surprised if Vivziepop will actually retcon the lore or come up with something to resurrect Adam

Maybe, "if a soul of a redeemed sinner gets into heaven, which is a rare occasion and didn't happen before the events of hazbin hotel, - the dividing system finds a sinful angel soul to take their place in hell". There you go. The lore about angelic blade murdering for good still stands, but now there is a loophole for Adam specifically to be lucky enough to survive

[octospace]

Arcane season 2 facts people overlook or maybe missed because they watched the show on speed 1.5 (silly joke sorry)

Act 1

- The council voted for a full scale invasion of Zaun, without hextech, but with all the enforcers invading the lanes to search for Jinx

- After the memorial attack things clearly changed and the tension was getting even higher, so Vi asks Caitlyn to find a way to stop the invasion (season 1 cool callback when after the failed council meeting Caitlyn tells Vi they will find another way to solve the Silco issue). Which Caitlyn answer she doesn’t know how to

- Another callback to season 1 when after learn everything there’s to know about Silco’s shimmer conspiracy Caitlyn runs straight to her mom to ask for help (nepo baby ❤️) except now there’s no councilor mom to run to so she goes to the family files and learn about the gray

- From Vi and Caitlyn conversation the task force was born and it kind of work. They stop the remaining chembarons and the whole of Zaun it’s not actually affected by it (we see the firelights concerned about more people seeking for a safe place because of the fight for Silco’s place not because 5 enforcers running around Zaun) even Jinx was surprised to see the task force and Vi with the enforcers because they were acting under the radar

- They find Jinx and things go massively wrong. When Vi caught Jinx she clearly was not able to handle it, even before Isha got in the way, she was hesitant

- Ambessa was ready to choose Caitlyn as the commander after declaring martial law, the meeting was scheduled while Cait and Vi were crawling in Zaun after Jinx

- Jinx colorful explosion just gave Ambessa a little more fuel but she was plotting Noxus invasion long before

- Caitlyn was caught off guard in front of all of Piltover’s houses having to choose to accept or to accept because since episode 1 every 5 minutes someone is reminding her that “she’s a Kiramman”

Act 2

- As someone who lied in the interview and got the job Caitlyn have absolutely no idea what she’s doing but she wants to keep an eye (no pun intended) on Ambessa and find Jinx, that’s her motivation all along

- We see Cait getting late or following Ambessa far behind when she’s clearly being sidelined (all the Singed hideout conversation was kinda funny because she was clearly uninvited to that party)

- Ambessa choose Cait as the face and PR person of this invasion, when she’s talking with Maddie in bed she shares she have a meeting with committee members to discuss complaints about Noxus (clever Ambessa didn’t spent one second with this bullshit), while she’s going forward with Noxus war agenda

- After Singed joined the party Caitlyn felt sidelined even more and she was losing the little grip she had over the situation

- Singed plan was to inject that serum on Vander and let him go wild over everyone in his path we saw how it would go in Stillwater Ambessa also saw and so did Cait

- She finds Vi out of the blue and realizes even more how crazy all of this is because Ambessa plan it’s actually invade the commune and kill everyone (not sure people realize that) including Vi and her blood thirsty murderous beast dad

- Genocide was where she drew a line, betrayed Ambessa and sided with Vi and, even without knowing, Jinx. They were able to survive after Isha left the show with a blast

Act 3

- War was coming with or without Viktor, Ambessa would kill Caitlyn in a public square anyway at this point and Caitlyn kinda know that

- Jinx was not in a prison she was locked in a bunker really similar to where the council was hiding after the memorial

- Jinx and Caitlyn conversation went like, I don’t like you but well we fucked things up

- Cait and Vi had the most clingy, desperate and goofy sex scene after all Ambessa will kill her anyway so let’s have some fun while we can

- Vi without her bandages and barefoot in front of the fireplace humming the same song from episode 1 while Caitlyn it’s searching for evidence of what really happened to Jinx it’s such a cute scene of both living together

As I said in an older post non Arcane related there are many reasons to dislike a story, but there are things people can interpret from a story and there are facts, this is list of facts feel free to dislike the story I don’t really care

[ajaxgb]

Okay so Murder Drones Episode 7 clarified a lot about what's going on, and I think I now mostly understand The Plot. Pulling my thoughts together into a rough timeline (warning, this is looong, major spoilers obv):

The setting:

Humanity is in the space age, having colonized other planets like Copper 9.

The company "JCJenson IN SPAAAAACEE!!!!" appears to have invented sentient robots, called worker drones.

Worker drones have no rights and are generally thought of as disposable slave labor.

Worker drones have a known "bug": if a dead worker drone's core is left alone in the body, it has a ~0.01% chance of coming back to life (a "zombie drone").

JCJenson has a fix for this, called "wdOS_606" (assumed to stand for "Worker Drone Operating System 606"). It's installed in dead worker drones to prevent reanimation, but in some cases the dead body can "reject" the update (even after lying dormant for up to five years!) so users are instructed to remove the core and destroy the body, too.

If a drone does reanimate, there's 70.3% chance that everything is fine and the drone is just alive again, a 29% chance of undergoing "terminal lockout", and a 0.7% chance to reboot with "potentially hazardous mutations".

So if you do absolutely everything wrong, there's a ~0.00007% chance of "potentially hazardous mutations".

That's probably fine.

The backstory:

Someone does absolutely everything wrong.

An improperly discarded worker drone awakes in a mass grave of other drones.

This drone is recovered by Tessa James Elliott, heir to the Elliott fortune, who names her "Cyn", after the drone's serial number.

Tessa has a fascination with worker drones, treating them like people and dressing them up as butlers and maids (much to her parents' annoyance). In addition to Cyn, she has three other worker drone rescues, who she has named "N", "V", and "J" after their serial numbers (Tessa is not terribly creative).

Unbeknownst to Tessa and the other drones, Cyn is one of the previously mentioned 0.00007%. She has a mutation (or something) called "Absolute Solver".

Exactly how much of the original Cyn is left in there isn't clear. Exactly what Absolute Solver is also isn't clear. (Personal theory: JCJenson didn't actually invent sentient AI. They found some eldritch alien technology, reverse engineered it, locked the original programming down under a giant pile of safeguards, and referred to it as "potentially hazardous mutations" in the user manual. But that's purely speculation.)

Whatever it is, Absolute Solver is obscenely powerful and dangerous. It can manipulate objects telekinetically with extreme force and precision, regenerate from virtually any injury, project expansive life-like holograms, generate massive bio-mechanical extensions to its body and surroundings, and create "null" zones capable of shattering a planet with the correct placement.

During this time J and Tessa regularly keep Cyn locked in the manor's basement at the request of Tessa's mother, who finds her disturbing.

Absolute Solver / Cyn spreads itself into N, V, and J without their knowledge and spends its time cloning and experimenting on them down in the basement, wiping their memories to prevent them from noticing.

Eventually, Absolute Solver / Cyn attacks a gala the Elliotts are holding, killing most or all of the guests and taking full control of N, V, and J.

Either at the gala or during the subsequent genocide, Absolute Solver / Cyn takes Tessa's body. It's not entirely clear whether AS killed Tessa and is wearing her body like a suit, or whether Tessa is still "alive" in some way (which would be even worse IMO).

Absolute Solver fully mutates N, V, and J into their murder drone forms, cloning them and using them as soldiers in the genocide of Earth. Their original personalities are mostly suppressed during this time, leaving them as mindless killing machines.

Earth is eventually fully destroyed, presumably by nuking its core with a null zone, and waves of murder drones start spreading out to other colonized planets.

The common worker drones on Copper 9 apparently never hear about any of this?

As the wave closes in, the JCJenson outpost on Copper 9 starts doing secret experiments on worker drones that are infected with Absolute Solver, under the code name "Cabin Fever".

For safety, the scientists stock the underground labs with anti-drone sentinels, raptor-like robots programmed to freeze and destroy worker drones.

Some of the worker drones they experiment on never gain any powers. The ones that do eventually become corrupted by Absolute Solver / Cyn and have to be put down. By the time of the final experiment, only two successful experiments remain: 002 Nori (Uzi's mom) and 048 Yeva (Doll's mom).

The scientists manage to develop a patch that can suppress Absolute Solver's influence. The patch is successfully installed into Yeva, but Nori has already been corrupted by Absolute Solver by this point. The scientists frantically struggle to install the patch into her as well.

During this final procedure, for reasons unknown, the intended lead scientist Dr. Chambers never shows up. His hazard suit and name tag are mistakenly taken by Mitchel, the world's unluckiest intern.

Absolute Solver / Nori is rampaging out of control. Dr. Ridley hopes that Yeva can subdue her with her powers, and due to the mix-up sends Mitchel to fetch her.

While Mitchel is gone Absolute Solver / Nori kills everyone in the cathedral lab (except for Dr. Ridley), gets rid of the sentinels, and projects a hologram to disguise the killing.

Mitchel returns with Yeva, but finds the situation seemingly under control and the patch already installed into Nori. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with Yeva in the first place, so with the danger apparently passed he leaves her outside and claims he never found her.

Mitchel leans down to pick up what he assumes is a spare copy of the patch (it's actually the original), and freezes as he spots Dr. Ridley hiding silently behind a pew. Absolute Solver / Nori kills Dr. Ridley and drops the hologram, then flings the patch USB at Mitchel's face to kill him too.

Yeva catches the USB before it hits him, having followed him inside, although the sheer wind force shatters Mitchel's visor and breaks his suit camera. She flings the USB back at Nori, successfully "plugging" it into her at last.

Before being fully suppressed, Absolute Solver throws the USB down a giant hole and generates a null zone in Nori's hand. Yeva slices the hand off and lets it fall into the hole, too. The null zone explodes, partially shattering the planet and killing all human life (rip Mitchel).

Nori and Yeva escape to the surface and join the newly forming worker drone society. One of the failed experimentees, Alice, remains below and begins scavenging parts from worker drones that have been killed by the roaming sentinels.

Nori and Yeva have children (however that works), Uzi and Doll respectively. Although it is not yet obvious, their children inherit the suppressed Absolute Solver.

The main Absolute Solver / Cyn construct was observing these events from Earth to the best of its ability. Faced with the threat of other drones that share its powers but are not under its control, it reprograms N, V, and J to wipe out all the worker drones on Copper 9.

Under the reprogramming, they mostly regain their original personalities (seemingly due to a twisted sense of sentimentality-slash-sadism) but are given false memories of being built by JCJenson as "disassembly drones" to suppress the worker drone "uprising".

Their abilities are "nerfed" to prevent them becoming a threat to Absolute Solver. This may be why they need to consume worker drone oil so frequently, although Uzi and Doll have that urge too. Their ship is also intentionally crash landed to prevent them from returning, and the radio is removed to prevent them discovering the truth.

It's possible that J's reprogramming was different, as she "was getting orders from someone."

In one of their early attacks, the disassembly drones "kill" Nori, but she manages to survive and escape as a core using her Absolute Solver powers. She returns to the underground lab to search for the dropped USB, never telling Khan she's alive. Presumably her goal is to use the patch to stop Absolute Solver / Cyn and the disassembly drones.

V also kills Yeva and her husband, apparently for real. The trauma awakens Doll's Absolute Solver powers.

Khan builds the doors to hide the remaining worker drones from the disassembly drones.

With her powers awakened, Doll needs to consume oil. She begins secretly killing her classmates to survive and training her powers so she can avenge her parents by killing V. Lizzy finds out and fully supports her friend's serial killing / revenge plan.

The present:

Uzi manages to befriend N, leading him to start questioning the corporate propaganda he's been reprogrammed with.

Uzi and N fight V and J. J is seemingly killed, and N confines V to the ship. In reality J's Absolute Solver awakens and takes control of her body, now reduced to a core. V could escape if she chose, but she pretends to be captured for now, seemingly conflicted.

Uzi's Absolute Solver powers begin to awaken.

Absolute Solver / J stalks and kills several worker drones using holograms, seemingly for materials to construct a new body. N and Uzi fight and eventually defeat it. N repeatedly stabs its core with his nanite acid, collapsing it into a small void that drifts away. It's not entirely clear whether it's dead or not.

Offscreen, Lizzy starts hanging out with V? While she's locked up in the ship, I guess?? and forms a semi-sorta friendship with her. Her intention seems to have been to mention prom to V, so that V would get the idea to go there for murder purposes and Doll could kill her. (The Promening is kind of a confusing episode and several characters have inconsistent unclear motivations.)

Uzi begins to notice the disappearances caused by Doll's killings, but is prevented from investigating by Khan, who attempts to distract her from all that creepy stuff with prom.

Doll attempts to isolate and kill Uzi, with Lizzy's support. As far as I can tell Uzi wasn't being targeted specifically, and was just another of Doll's victims. Uzi finds the bodies of Doll's previous victims and escapes. Lizzy goes to let V inside.

V escapes from the ship and heads to prom with the intention of killing everyone. N follows to stop her, joined by Uzi.

Doll crowns herself the prom queen, having murdered all the other candidates. I have no earthly idea why she did this, other than that the murderous psychic girl was crowned prom queen in Carrie (for different reasons) and this episode is a light Carrie reference.

V descends on the prom with murderous intent, but is suddenly distracted by the prospect of becoming prom queen. Lizzy declares that V is her friend and peer pressures the other students into forgiving V and declaring her prom queen. Lizzy eventually decides that V is "hotter than Doll" and warns her to run just as Doll attacks.

If this sudden shift in Lizzy's alliances confused you when you first watched it, don't worry! It's just as confusing in hindsight.

Doll and V fight, killing tons of students nobody cares about. Uzi and N enter the fray, finding themselves defending V instead of stopping her.

Doll and Uzi both attempt to convince the other to join them in taking revenge on / working with the disassembly drones, without success.

Lizzy helps V, cementing their weird semi-friendship.

Doll discovers that Uzi also has Absolute Solver powers and says she's sorry for her. She escapes, saying she's going to search for a cure and promising to help Uzi if she does.

Uzi's oil cravings begin to get worse.

Tired of waiting for the disassembly drones to finish the job, Absolute Solver / Cyn / Tessa (who I will now call Skyn) arrives on Copper 9 in person to do it herself. She is accompanied by a J clone. Their cover story is that Tessa is working for JCJenson to stop Absolute Solver. It's not yet clear whether this J is aware of the truth or has false memories.

At some point, Skyn and J meet with Doll and give her some information about operation Cabin Fever. Doll agrees to find the key they need to get into the underground labs if they take her with them.

Doll travels to Camp 98.7, a former facility used in the Cabin Fever experiments, to find the key. N and Uzi follow her there to try and figure out what's going on. They bring V and all Uzi's surviving classmates too because why not.

Uzi finds a green robot-bug which has the keycodes, though she doesn't know this yet. N finds a VHS tape describing zombie drones.

Uzi's corruption gets worse. She loses control and kills several of her classmates. V fights Uzi, addressing her as "Cyn", but N manages to calm them both down.

N has been recovering partial memories of his time in Elliott Manor. While at a not-sleepover at Uzi's, he and V collapse as their reprogramming tries to delete those memories, pulling them into a memory of the night of the gala. Interestingly, their screens display "Error: 606" during this time, suggesting a connection to "Worker Drone Operating System 606", the operating system intended to prevent zombie drones.

Uzi hacks into N and V's brains to protect their minds and to recover the memories in full. As she's doing this, Doll breaks into Uzi's home and steals the key-bug. Torn between saving her friends and letting the one clue she's found slip away, Uzi decides to help N and V.

Uzi helps N and V successfully recover their memories of the gala. Uzi sets herself as their system admin to prevent Cyn from tampering with them again.

They follow Doll to her rendezvous with Skyn and J, shocking everyone. While Skyn (pretending to be Tessa) explains her cover story, Doll runs off with the key and ducks into the office complex leading to the lab.

Everyone else follows her, fending off sentinels and Alice (that ex-experimentee from earlier) along the way. Skyn tells N that Uzi is infected and must be killed for the good of the universe, a half-truth meant to drive a wedge between them since Skyn A) is the Absolute Solver, and B) knows about the patch. Alice is killed by sentinels.

One sentinel manages to wound Skyn and goes berserk, probably due to the paradox of a creature that is both human and worker drone.

They find Doll seemingly frozen by the sentinels, but it's a trap. Doll uses the key to summon an elevator down to the labs, opening her own way and leaving them cut off, surrounded by sentinels. V sacrifices herself to let them escape.

Down in the labs, Skyn continue to push Uzi away from N, freaking Uzi out and leading her to accidentally collapse the tunnel, separating all three of them.

With "Tessa" missing, Skyn is free to return to her Cyn form. She torments N with illusions of V and his suppressed memories of the genocide on Earth.

Absolute Solver / Cyn attempts to further manipulate N's mind, possibly trying to wipe his memory again, but is unable to get around Uzi's admin override.

That attempt having failed, Cyn starts dragging N away into the tunnels. He is saved by Nori, who in an amazing coincidence has just today found that patch USB she's spent all these years searching for.

Uzi finds Mitchel's suit cam recordings of the final experiment, seeing her mother horrifically possessed by the Absolute Solver but not the moment when she was cured.

Returning to her Skyn-suit, Skyn accesses and deletes all the Cabin Fever team's notes, while new-J destroys the disassembly drones' ship on the surface, leaving Skyn and new-J's ship as the only way off the planet.

Skyn is confronted by Doll, who demands to know where the patch USB is, determined not to let Absolute Solver use her to destroy the planet (which was never actually its plan). Skyn does a funny Five Nights at Freddy's reference and fatally wounds her.

Nori catches N up on her backstory and the two try to figure out whether Doll or Uzi was the Absolute Solver that just attacked them, unaware of Skyn. Nori makes N promise not to tell Uzi that she's her mother.

Doll, bleeding heavily (a thing she can do thanks to Absolute Solver!) approaches Uzi and collapses. Skyn, re-disguised as Tessa (I swear she does like five costume changes in this episode she's so extra), follows Doll in and tries to kill Uzi, who is having the worst day of her life and is in no mental state to fight back.

N stops her and, determining that she did know about the patch and wanted to kill Uzi anyway, decapitates "Tessa". He tries to give the patch to Uzi, but she's already succumbed to Absolute Solver and destroys it.

N and Nori fight Absolute Solver / Cyn / Uzi. The fight goes poorly, and Absolute Solver / Uzi almost manages to eat Nori before N executes a flawless collective-embarrassment-jutsu, snapping Uzi out of it, but causing her to toss Nori into the giant flesh pit. N spills the beans about Nori and both of them freak out in each other's arms.

Skyn finally reveals herself, devouring Doll's still-living core and beginning to yank Uzi and N into the pit as she prepares to detonate Copper 9's core just like Earth's and kill every remaining threat to her expansion.

J gets hit by a bus, loses her car keys, and is accosted by teens.

Uzi sacrifices herself to toss N the keys and get him out of there.

Uzi is pulled into the pit and somehow ends up in space, looking down at a big hole in Copper 9? Presumably the next episode will clear up what's going on here.

Which brings us up to the present.

[content-d3leted]

Undertale is actually the best game of all time. (Prepare yourself for some rambling lol)

Its characters are so unique and loveable, and the plot and the universe its in has so much depth, there's so many easter eggs throughout the game, all the different AUs are so creative, and the soundtrack is AMAZING-the songs are so incredibly intertwined with one another with all the motifs throughout the music, it is just an all-round immaculate franchise, and I adore it.

I can't quite remember how long my interest in it lasted, maybe 2 years? But I first discovered it in September 2019, by watching jacksepticye's playthrough he did in 2015, where I became completely hooked on it! I remember learning all the names of the songs in Undertale's soundtrack by heart in chronological order, and also drawing the characters for hours on end!! Genuinely one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life.

My favourite character is Papyrus (NYEH-HEH-HEH!!), with Mettaton coming in at a close 2nd place. But to be honest, every single one of the characters are brilliant!!

For about 4 years I've been trying to kill Sans (unsuccesfully), but I can almost get past the last stage by now, so thats progress at least..but tbh it was such a horrible feeling to murder everyone else, especially Papyrus, on the genocide route- but it had to be done I suppose.

Undertale means ALOT to me, especially since it helped me get through some super difficult times back when I was in school, due to really bad depression etc. It also helped me make an irl friend too (who is now one of my best friends)! So yeah, undertale truly means the world to me.

And deltarune is just the same, completely incredible!! The battle theme (Rude Buster) is one of the greatest game songs I've ever heard, and I often listen to it on repeat. I had a short second phase of undertale/deltarune a year after my first one, where I became obsessed with Sweet, Cap'n and K_K. They are such good characters aaaaa I love them!!! I can't wait for chapter 3 of deltarune to be released soon!!

But omg the undertale/deltarune soundtracks are so fun to play on instruments (especially piano for me), especially fallen down, home, your best friend, death by glamour...the list goes on lol.

Undertale also introduced me to my first ever gay people so I have Undyne, Alphys and Mettaton to thank for making me realise I was in the LGBT+ community!!

So in conclusion, Undertale is the best game. Yes.

Why are you reading this surely you have better things to do

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

since zionists are coming to whine in my dms that I’m so mean for supporting Palestinians who “had it coming for being terrorists” (yeah, zionists are definitely not racist, huh?), let me make this very simple.

Let’s say your great-great grandparents built a home on some land. They built it by hand, and your family has lived there for generations, fixing it up as old things needed renovations or just stopped working or they just wanted to make it compatible with new things like electricity when that came out. You grew up there, your parents grew up there, and your grandparents grew up there, and now you have children of your own starting to grow up there too.

You loved that house, it’s the only home you’ve ever known and years of loving care had made it beautiful, it even has a garden that your great grandparents planted olive trees in, and of course by now it’s a flourishing orchard. Your family are the only ones who had ever lived in that house, but your family had become quite diverse throughout the decades as children grew up and married, some new family members looked and lived quite like you, and some looked and lived differently, and you thought little of it because, why would you?

Then one day a stranger comes by with a feed to your family’s home, claiming the government had settled a deal that since this stranger’s great-great-great-great grandparents first owned that land and were forced off of it by people who looked a bit like you. The stranger gives you an ultimatum to leave the land immediately because they consider it to rightfully belong to them, or die. Some of your family flees, you don’t blame them, but you stand your ground as best as you can, but the stranger has guns, and strong friends to supply them. They kill your mother, blind your father, kidnap many of your siblings and cousins and so you take your children and anyone who’s left and flee to the far side of the property, on the half still allowed to them by the government’s ruling. For a time it’s fine, but the stranger wasn’t satisfied, and finds you again in the new home you were building. See, the way the stranger sees it, their ancestors had originally owned ALL of that property, so they figured that was what they were owed. You plead with them to let you stay, or even just to not hurt your family. Your pleas are denied.

This time they killed your children. They killed your cousins. They killed most of your siblings. Your family and your home, all gone in front of your eyes.

Do you think you would still care whether or not the stranger was right about who owned that plot of land first, or would you perhaps care more about what they just did to everything you held dear?

Zionists like to say “well hamas should have never ever taken hostages” and feign ignorance as to why hamas is gaining support at an exponential rate.

It’s not that complicated. If your options are stand there and get shot or get a gun and shoot back, are you really going to pretend to be confused by most people going with the second option?

No. You aren’t. You want to spin the narrative that people calling for a free Palestine are terrorists who want to see the death of all jews and some nebulous “scary muslim takeover”, but I know you’re not that dumb. I know you've seen videos posted by the IDF’s own beating, kidnapping, and killing civilians. I know you’re not stupid enough to honestly believe those are all terrorists, even the children. I know most of you aren’t even under the delusion hamas is just like ISIS.

This is deliberate. Genocide is easiest when the aggressor plays victim to try to say it’s self defense, but here’s the thing—

It doesn’t matter how many times you claim otherwise, hind did not deserve to die. If she was the ONLY child the IDF killed intentionally, that would be unforgivable, but given there are tens of thousands of children that have lost life or limb at the hands of the IDF, it’s indefensible. It’s murder. A child trapped in a car with her family’s bodies after the IDF attacked being used to lure out aid workers and kill them all at once is just evidence you have lost your humanity. I hate that I even have to only talk about the children because you think every adult in Palestine is secretly an evil terrorist, it’s a lot harder to say that about a child with an age in the single digits, but many of you still try to anyway.

Racism is a hell of a thing, and some of you are a little too drawn in by the idea of killing all the brown people in a region so you can build beach resorts and theme parks.

If Palestinian land is so sacred and divinely promised to the Israelis to the point the Israeli government considers all rain fall to be explicitly property of israel, why are you taunting it with the blood of the innocent and desperate?

I don’t know, I think if anyone but a Zionist tried to justify bombing hospitals and dressing as aid workers to kill as many of an ethnic group as possible, people may be a bit reasonably against that, but for some reason it’s fine as long as the group committing the genocide has enough oppression points stocked up from previous incidents.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #6 – Exordia by Seth Dickinson

This is a book I have been looking forward to for quite literally years, from someone who is easily one of my favourite working authors. I also read the short story the book was expanded out from before I even knew it was going to be a book, and so went in spoiled on the broad strokes of what turned out to be the climax of the whole thing. All to say my opinion on this is unlikely to match that of the typical reader, I guess.

Anyway, Exordia is a glorious spectacular mess that has no right to cohere anywhere near as well as it does. It’s target audience is small, but I’m certainly somewhere in it. Please ignore all the marketing it’s so bad you have to wonder if someone at Tor just has it out for the author.

Exordia is a, well, a profoundly difficult book to give any sort of plot summary for. The first act involves Anna, a 30-something survivor of the Anfal Genocide now living a rather unimpressive life in New York City, until one day in the early 2010s she sees an alien eating the turtles in Central Park. Then there’s a cat-and-mouse hunt between terrifying alien snake-centaurs for the future of free will in the galaxy, and the plot jumping to kurdistan, and six more POV characters from as many different nations, and nuclear weapons, and oh so many people dying messily. The first act is an oddly domestic and endearing piece of table setting, the second is (to borrow the idiom of the book’s own marketing) Tom Clancy meets Jeff Vandermeer or Roadside Picnic, and the third is basically impossible to describe without a multipage synopsis, but mostly concerned with ethical dilemmas and moral injuries. It’s to the book’s credit that it never bats an eye at shifting focus and scale, but it does make coming to grips with it difficult.

This is, as they say, a thematically dense book, but it’s especially interested in the fallout of imperialism. The Obama-era ‘don’t do stupid shit’ precise and sterile form of it in particular – the book’s a period piece for a reason, after all. The ethics of complicity – of being offered the choice of murdering and betraying those around you or having an alien power with vastly superior destructive powers inflict an order of magnitude more misery to you, them, and everyone in the same general vicinity to punish you for the inconvenience – is one that gets a lot of wordcount. It is not an accident that the man most willing and able to collaborate with the overwhelming powerful alien empire in hopes of bargaining some future for humanity is the National Security Council ghoul who came out of organizing surveillance information for the drone wars. It’s also not a coincidence that the main (if only by a hair) protagonist is someone with a lot of bitter memories over how the US encouraged Iraq’s kurdish population to rebel in the ‘90s and then just washed their hands and let them be massacred (the book couldn’t actually ship with a historical primer on modern kurdish history, so it’s woven into the story in chunks with varying amount of grace. But it is in fact pretty thematically key here).

Speaking of complicity, the book’s other overriding preoccupation in (in the broadest sense) Trolley Problems. Is it better to directly kill a small number of people or, through your inaction, allow a larger number to die? Does it matter is the small number is your countrymen and the larger foreigners, or vice versa? What about humans and aliens? Does it matter whether the choice is submitting to subjugation or killing innocents as a means to resist it? What about letting people around you die to learn the fundamental truth of the cosmos? Does the calculus change when you learn that immortal souls (and hell) are real? This is the bone the story is really built around chewing on.

All that probably makes the text seem incredibly didactic, or at least like a philosophical dialogue disguised as a novel. Which really isn’t the case! The book definitely has opinions, but none of the characters are clear author-avatars, and all perspectives are given enough time and weight to come across as seriously considered and not just as cardboard cutouts to jeer at. Okay, with the exception of one of the two aliens who you get the very strong sense is hamming it up as a cartoon villain just for the of it (he spends much of the book speaking entirely in all caps). There definitely are a couple points where it feels like the books turning and lecturing directly at the reader, but they’re both few and fairly short.

The characters themselves are interesting. They’re all very flawed, but more than that they’re all very...embodied, I guess? Distracted with how hot someone is, concerned with what they ate that morning or the smell of something disgusting, still not over an ex from years ago. Several of them are also sincerely religious in a way that’s very true to life to actual people but you rarely see in books. The result is that basically comes as being far more like actual humans than I’m at all used to in most fiction (of course, a lot of those very human qualities get annoying or eye-roll inducing fairly quickly. But hey, that’s life). Though that’s all mostly the case at the start of the book – the fact that the main cast are slowly turning into caricatures of themselves as they’re exposed to the alien soul manipulation technology is actually a major plot point, which I’m like fifty/fifty on being commentary on what happens to the image and legacy of people as they’re caught up in grand narratives versus just being extended setup for a joke about male leads in technothrillers being fanfic shipbait.

Part of the characters seeming very human is that some (though by no means all) of the POVs are just incredibly funny, in that objectively fucked up and tasteless way that people get when coping with overwhelming shock or trauma. It’s specifically because the jokes are so in-your-face awful that they fit, I think? It manages to avoid the usual bathetic trap a lot of works mixing in humour with drama fall into, anyway.

Speaking of alien soul manipulation technology – okay, you know how above I said that the points where the book directly lectured the reader were few and far between. This is true for lectures about politics or morality. All the freed up space in this 530 page tome is instead used for technobabble about theoretical math. Also cellular biology, cryptography, entropics, the organization of the American security state, how black holes work, and a few dozen other things. This book was edited for accuracy by either a doctoral student from every physical science and an award winning mathematician, or else just by one spectacularly confident bullshitter with several hundred hours on wikipedia. Probably both, really. I did very much enjoy this book, but that is absolutely predicated on the fact that when I knew when to let my eyes glaze over and start skimming past the proper nouns.

The book has a fairly complete narrative arc in its own right, but the ending also screams out for a sequel, and quite a lot of the weight and meaning of the book’s climax does depend on followthrough and resolution in some future sequel. Problematically, the end of the book also includes a massive increase in scale, and any sequel would require a whole new setting and most of a new cast of characters, so I’m mildly worried how long it will be before we get it (if ever).

The book is also just very...I’m not sure flabby is the right word, but it is doing many many different things, and I found some of them far more interesting than others. I’m not sure whether Dickinson just isn’t great at extended action scenes or if I am just universally bored by drawn out Tom Clancy fantasies, but either way there were several dozen pages too many of them. The extended cultural digressions about the upbringing and backstories of each of the seven POVs were meanwhile very interesting! (Mostly, I got bored of the whole Erik-Clayton-Rosamaria love triangle Madonna complex thing about a tenth of the way into the book but it just kept going.) It did however leave the book very full of extended tangents and digressions, even beyond what the technobabble did. Anna herself, ostensibly the main protagonist, is both utterly thematically loadbearing but very often feels entirely vestigial to the actual, like, plot, brought along for the ride because she’s an alien terrorist’s favourite of our whole species of incest-monkeys. The end result is, if not necessarily unfocused, then at least incredibly messy, flitting back and forth across a dozen topics that on occasion mostly just seem unified by having caught the author’s interest as they wrote.

It’s interesting to compare the book to Anna Saves It All, the short story it was based on – quite a lot changed! But that’s beyond the scope of this already overlong review. So I guess I’ll just say make sure to read the book first, if you’re going to.