#that was not why he wanted to kill her. he saw her fundamental existence as a threat to him

[shoechoe]

I find it funny people seem to be interpreting the poll as "which one *looks* the best". You can choose based on that but I just meant which one is your favorite generally (though I guess the distinction is otherwise minimal for everyone except for me skfjsjfj)

[thewertsearch]

AG: I used to really like him and always wanted to help him get stronger, so that he might stand a fucking chance to actually make it on our world.

It's honestly tragic. You probably did like him initially - but, as a consequence of your worldview, your genuine attempts to make him stronger were warped into abuse. He was never going to internalize your lessons, because the manner in which you were delivering then were far too cruel to be effective.

AG: 8ut he was just soooooooo weak and indecisive. He wouldn't change!

Due to her cruelty, Vriska completely failed to impart the lessons that she was trying to - and, of course, she blames Tavros, for refusing to be bullied into changing.

The more he 'failed' her tests, the angrier she got. The angrier she got, the more deliberate her abuse became.

Until the cruelty was the point.

AG: And when he tried to change, it was too little and too l8. Always l8. L8ey L8ey L88888888. AG: Too l8 to kiss me. AG: Too l8 to kill me. AG: He couldn't do it when I really needed him to. So when I saw he was actually serious a8out trying to kill me now of all times… AG: I just got SO AAAAAAAANGRY.

Anyone with a brain could tell you Tavros isn't a killer. He's a gentle troll, and cold-blooded murder would traumatize him.

So Vriska trapped him in a situation where not murdering her would also traumatize him, and got angry when he chose the wrong trauma. This scenario was unwinnable by design, just like their last FLARP game.

Don’t kid yourself, Vriska. You were screwing Tavros around until the end.

AG: I know our races are completely different. And I really h8 the idea of you thinking worse of me 8ecause of this. AG: 8ut I don't have anyone else to talk to a8out it!

Holy hell, Vriska’s really going through it.

The worst part is, John is the only confidant she has. She's incredibly lucky he's as easygoing as he is.

EB: i bet karkat would listen. EB: or what about terezi? she's pretty nice, isn't she? […] AG: For one thing, they would pro8a8ly just 8e pissed off at me for killing Tavros. AG: And more importantly, there's no waaaaaaaay I could tell them how I really feel a8out it.

I think I'm starting to understand why Vriska's begun to change.

So far, Vriska's life has been very simple. She killed because she had to, and she's convinced herself that it's the only correct way to live. A brutal life makes you strong, after all, and a peaceful life is a burden.

Alternian culture validates this worldview, as every troll is expected to take part in the Empire's conquests. Her nation wouldn't want her to stop killing - it'd just want her to switch targets. According to the world around her, Vriska's way of life is correct. She's never been meaningfully challenged on her beliefs.

Until today.

Today, Vriska has been confronted by a species who don't want to kill. A species seemingly populated by wimps like Tavros, who all watch ridiculous movies and believe in lame nonsense like friendship.

A species of weaklings, who weren't blessed with an upbringing as violent as hers.

And a species that succeeds anyway.

I think humanity, and John in particular, have called into question some of the most fundamental truths of Vriska's existence.

And something inside her has just said ‘w8 a second........’

[notmeowse]

Solavellan ending and why I hate it

Major Veilguard endgame spoilers under the cut.

I beat the game two days ago and I haven't been able to stop thinking about that ending. I'm not going to get into the rest of the game's flaws. They've been covered at length. But all of those issues aside, the one perfect, untouchable thing I thought I had left as the game drew to a close was the Solavellan ending. After all, Trick wrote the original Solavellan romance and the incredible continuation of it in Trespasser. As lead writer, they were directly responsible for making it happen. I thought we had this in the bag.

So on one hand, my favorite Dragon Age romance finally reunited and disintegrated off into the sunset.

On the other hand, he did not choose her.

This is what ruined it for me. I know a lot of people have issues with her sacrificing her life to join him in the Fade, but that was really a secondary issue for me.

What was the point of their entire relationship if, in the end, when it REALLY counted, he was never going to choose Lavellan over tearing down the Veil? Why did it take Mythal, who he actually killed in the last game in order to take her power, to convince him? Where's the romance in that?

This literally just turned into the story of Lavellan and the elven god who did not love her enough.

Okay, yes, the gamified reason it takes Mythal to convince him is because Lavellan was tacked onto an existing avenue of dealing with Solas rather than being given her own separate option, right? At the end of the game you have the choice to either fight him, trick him, or (if the Mythal-related criteria is met) invoke the essence of Mythal contained in the statue. No Bring Out The Big Guns, Lavellan option.

In my opinion, she should have been the fourth option, only available to players that have an Inquisitor that romanced Solas and encouraged Lavellan to reunite with him mid-game. It would have required about as much effort to do this as it did to have him turn her down once again (which, I maintain defeats the entire purpose of the story being told here). That would have been the absolute easiest fix to this fucking mess.

I understand why Lavellan wasn't counted among his regrets and therefore wasn't in the Lighthouse murals (because he doesn't actually regret falling in love with her) and I acknowledge that getting real closure from Mythal is important to Solas's story, and that it did have its place in that ending scene. Whether she was a lover or a mother to him isn't really the issue here -- it's the fact that she holds sway over him where Lavellan apparently does not. Despite the fact that, again, he killed Mythal in the previous game, despite the fact that he couldn't bring himself to kill the Inquisitor for the anchor, despite the fact that Lavellan was the one single thing in the world that made him really want to walk away from his plans.

(Why wasn't the "I release you from my service" a conversation had between him and Flemythal back in Inquisition? And why is that essence of Flemythal (who now exists in Morrigan) suddenly so chill and pro-Veil? Do we not remember the reckoning that will shake the very heavens? The She was betrayed as I was betrayed, as the world was betrayed? I will see her avenged? No payoff? None? There's so much wrong and bad writing to unpack there, but this is still a Solavellan post.)

Back to him wanting to turn away from his grand plan. The fundamental difference between Mythal and Lavellan, in my opinion, is the way each of them saw him. Mythal asked him to change for her, to leave the Fade, to commit atrocities with her out of love and service. Lavellan only ever loved him as a man, never once asking him to change for her, never asking him to be anything other than himself. In the time they were together, he was able to be the person he wanted to be. It took a very specific set of circumstances and a very specific person that had to fall into place for that romance to happen, which is arguably what made her so special, and what made their time together even more so. It followed, especially with what we know now, that he would want to drop his grand plan to be with her.

In comes Veilguard, which introduced a parallel between Solas/Mythal and Solavellan. In the second memory, we discover that Mythal never once chose Solas over her duty to elvhenan (even when he begged her to lay it down and run away with him) and dragged him along with her to commit unspeakable atrocities (in her words, she broke him). Solas (at that point in the game, when we were witnessing the memories) had yet to choose Lavellan over his crusade, but quite literally loved her too much to bring her along with him. He would not let her do that to herself, he would not do to her what Mythal did to him.

Here's where I feel like I'm losing my mind, because I thought the point of that mural was to foreshadow him eventually choosing Lavellan, as he is very much not Mythal, and is very much looking for a reason to lay it down, to be proven wrong. I also thought the blurb in the Inquisitor character creation menu (who did you romance) was foreshadowing it, as well as the mid-game choice Rook can make to encourage her to reunite with him and change his heart.

So why didn't it happen? I can only assume because they didn't actually want to have any of our choices carry over, let alone the Solavellan option (which they should have realized from the start was a bad call and also fucking impossible to manage given that the game is a direct sequel to Inquisition). The fact that Lavellan is tacked onto an already existing scene rather than being given her own is evidence of this. However, even if she had to be tacked onto the Mythal scene and not given her own, a simple reordering of the events would have fixed the fucking ending. So it could have gone two (very easily manageable and not too much extra) ways:

Remove the part where he turns her down. Remove the entire thing. Morrimythal could have flown up to him before the Inquisitor even arrived on scene, we could have had our statue moment, and just when he thinks he's going to be all alone behind the Veil, Lavellan shows up, they reunite, and she goes with him. (Easiest way for Bioware to fix it imo)

Lav acts as the ace up our sleeve, a fourth option (and a second option to make him lay it down) instead of using the statue to redeem him. Mythal releases him from her service AFTER he chooses Lavellan, thereby releasing him from his guilt over her. I prefer this one. It should have been this. They could have walked away, they could have tied themselves to the Veil, either way works.

Now, I am among those that think the Veil should have come down, which would have rendered this entire thing moot, had it happened. But since Bioware is dead-set on maintaining the status quo in Thedas, it should have been this instead.

In writing this I wonder if I've been completely delusional over their relationship, but going by the reactions to this ending, it seems that what we got was not at all expected.

[todorokistheories]

Rei's Abuse Saved Shouto

This sounds batshit fucking crazy but hear me out.

tw: abuse, domestic violence, child abuse, everything that comes with talking about the todorokis

I've been thinking about this a lot.

Touya exists as a cautionary tale for "the abused becomes the abuser" (something I don't really believe in all that much but horikoshi has done some weird shit with the todorokis so we're going with it) in the sense that he never truly learned empathy and/or denounced it for the sake of his revenge. Everything was for him, always about him, and that was his life until he suddenly faced the trauma of realizing he wasn't a masterpiece in his father's eyes. That's a horrible life for a child, it obviously broke him. He was praised an applauded until he wasn't, believed to be cast aside and thrown away.

This obviously had a HUGE impact on him (literally his reason for everything). The fact that he attacked Shouto, a tiny little baby, only further proves my point that Touya never actually learned how to think outside of himself. He never needed to, and he wasn't shown how to. He was stuck perpetually searching for value that was given to someone else. He still cared for people, but as a child he wasn't given the chance to learn how to empathize.

Empathy is taught, it's not an innate skill. It can be cultivated over time or initial empathy can be smothered, but it is something you work on whether consciously or subconsciously.

Fast forward to Shouto who, yes was also heavily abused, but additionally witnessed the abuse of the only person at the time who was allowed to show him kindness. Touya grew up with his dad loving him, Shouto did not. Touya was told that he, as a person, was special. Shouto was not.

We see throughout the series that watching his mother be abused fundamentally changed the way Shouto saw everything. When his mother disfigures him he immediately blames his father and wants her back. He knows what it's like to be Endeavor's punching bag in a world where you have no support and no way to escape.

He wanted to protect his mom before he even understood what was happening. She was all he had, and all he needed was for her to be able to be there for him. Endeavor never let that happen.

In juxtaposition to this, Touya redirected his anger towards Fuyumi and Natsuo. This is interesting because in the series, Natsuo does a similar thing with Shouto but that could be an entire analysis in and of itself. Touya blamed Rei wholeheartedly because Endeavor was still perfect in his eyes.

Everyone was enough and he just somehow didn't cut it.

Flash forward into his time in the League and it's obvious that he wasn't given the opportunity to change his thinking. It's uncertain throughout the series and that is the biggest unfinished thread in my opinion when it comes to Touya's character.

His willingness to kill, regardless of former or current relation and his obvious joy in enacting pain and suffering is just a hallmark of low empathy. It's why Shouto's character is so intriguing as a foil, because he SHOULD hate Endeavor he SHOULD want him dead. But what Shouto wants more than anything is to be the hero that could've saved his mom. She has been a central part of his development, present or not.

This is in no way saying that Rei's abuse was the only thing that could've saved Shouto from following in Touya's footsteps, but it's the only thing from the series itself that explains it.

[lucyav13]

The Tribe of Darkness

(Image credits to whom it may concern)

Nolrem and others like him are the descendants of these strange, ancient people. A very, very long time ago, they splintered off from the Tribe of Ancients and lived by themselves. I heard that they were so prideful that they avoided interacting with those outside of their tribe. They lived in secrecy, so we have little idea where they might have lived. Some say that they lived quietly in a castle deep in a forest where no one came. 

1. The tribe definitively separated from the ancients 1500 years ago, before the events of spm. After helping them create Flopside, apparently some members of this tribe remained in this city. 2- Surely, the castle being talked about here is Castle Bleck, (As seen in the part I wrote previously).

The founder of this tribe, as my theory says in the “Timeline” part, could be the son of the creator of the Pixls. Seeing that he brought the Dark Prognosticus with him after the Pixl War, he fled with the prophetic book, creating this infamous tribe. Although, a Japanese translation of one of Carson's stories suggests that before they split up and even before the Pixel War, there was a group with great magical power within the Tribe of Ancients, that is to say, this tribe was establishing itself in a time before we had imagined.

They stole it in order to research new magic and curses based on its contents... While others believe that they stole the book in order to keep it from those who wished to misuse it.

Blumiere's father were one of the main members of the Tribe of Darkness, or so it is theorized. One fact is that, in the Super Mario-Kun manga, you can see his silhouette, this being a corpulent figure, with a big mustache and wearing what looks like a bowler hat.

Count Bleck is the last surviving member of the tribe itself, having destroyed the rest of the tribe after his father seemingly killed his loved one, a human descendent of the tribe of Ancients. In addition, it is hinted that Nastasia was originally a bat that was transformed into a member of the same species as Bleck, whom she had fallen for, which would make her a member of the Tribe of Darkness as well.

Their xenophobia is said to be based on pride at one point by Carson, although they were also concerned that their magic would become diluted if they married outside of the tribe. The japanese translation says: 

 "It seems that they were a tribe within the Tribe of Ancients that possessed exceptionally powerful magic. And it's said that they forbade marriage outside of the tribe out of fear of losing it. It seems that the Tribe of Darkness saw their magic as something to use for a "very important thing". Just what was that "very important thing"? Nowadays, we will never know."

My theory: This is where my theory comes in. After separating, the Tribe of Darkness continued to examine the Dark Prognosticus, finding the prophecy imminent. Blinded by power, they wanted to start it (Dimentio being a fundamental part of this). That's why he knows so much about the DP and the prophecy—things that not even Count Black knew about them. But they saw the great danger that it brought with it—that, instead of creating new worlds to rule, the prophecy was about the destruction of all worlds, all of them would reduce all existence itself until everything was erased as if it had never existed. That's why they prevented any member from opening the infamous book and forbade marriage outside the tribe. Up to the present: The events of Super Paper Mario. Didn't it seem suspicious that Count Bleck had always known about this macabre ending?

[ipsen]

Kamishiro and Kirishima: Ends of a Spectrum

(Alternatively: Women Too Pretty to Ignore So I Wrote About Them)

Thanks to @just-another-tokyo-ghoul-fan for unlocking a part of my brain I didn’t even know existed. It’s definitely not like Touka is tied for 2nd place for my favorite character in TG. No, sir.

As always, I’m using the official translations because of my monolingual curse.

Under the cut.

Let’s get this out of the way first. Rize and Touka are not friends. I doubt they could ever be friends due to their opposing philosophies. They are fundamentally different people who should not be left in the same room together. Why?

(she hates her so much)

Besides the obvious, it’s because they view their common circumstance-- being born a ghoul-- very differently.

(TG ch3)

(TG 46.5)

Touka blames her status as a ghoul on the reason why she’s had to run and hide her whole life, especially after losing both her mother and father. Rize prides herself on her ghouls powers because being a ghoul in the Garden meant a lifetime of imprisonment, and she wanted out. Touka is tethered down by her identity, while Rize flies around using it.

Ironically, Touka becomes “free” at the end while Rize remains trapped and dies. Let’s tackle that next. Why, in the context of the overall story, does Touka live, and Rize die? It’s pretty straightforward, fortunately.

Rize doesn’t confront her problems, instead electing to always run away. Whenever she gets bored, she leaves. Whenever someone, in her view, tries to tether her down, she leaves. Because she doesn’t want to return to anything resembling that helpless womb in the Garden. Watch:

(TG 46.5)

(re 64)

Running away isn’t a bad thing in a vacuum. Personally, I think you should try to run away when you can afford to. But the thing about Rize’s brand of running away is that she forces the consequences of her actions onto someone else. Like Banjou, who was forced to take over the 11th ward because she killed the last one. Shachi as well, who takes the fall for her and gets imprisoned in Cochlea.

And as a result of her constant running and tendency to leave behind no trace, any chance at a meaningful connection is lost. No one really helps her, because she’s already disappeared. She literally cannot be helped. One of the positive themes of TG is the achievements people can achieve together. Rize, embodying the opposite of this, does not achieve anything substantial. And in the end, she is reduced to someone else’s plaything with no mind of her own.

(re 119, featuring the tip of Touka’s head.) ("Tip of Touka.” “Touka’s Tips.” Someone should use those. She offers very sound advice.)

It’s sad.

Meanwhile, Touka reaches out to people (when the story wants her to). Because unlike Rize, who does the leaving, Touka is the one who is left behind. She deeply understands the loss and hurt that comes with it, and she has tempered that helpless feeling into a kind hand to reach out to anyone.

And I mean anyone.

(re 69)

Even the brother who, when she last saw him, violently tore out her kakuhou. She doesn’t blame him, only supports him when he needs her.

(re 120)

Even the daughter of the man she killed.

God, she’s so cool. Peak big sister. I wish we saw more of it; her contributions to Goat would have changed the tides if the story just let her.

Sorry, focusing. Okay.

But it’s because of this willing to work together with people, seek peace through proactive methods, that she succeeds and lives through the horrors of the world. She uplifts those around her and is lifted up in return. Kindness begets kindness, and I’d say kindness is one of the best parts of living.

It’s nice.

... “What about their relationship to Kaneki?” What about their relationship to Kaneki.

--

Anyway, hopefully this made sense and you got something out of it. These lovely ladies are such a joy to talk about.

Thanks for reading!

[fledbeast578]

Lostbelt Servants Often Don't Work as Chaldea Servants

I've reached a conclusion on why I dislike servant x Ritsuka pairings so much, and ended up spending a few hours thinking about some other thoughts.

When it comes to the gacha game format, you don't have enough time to develop every character equally, and certainly not the way fgo goes about it (Oh boy another lb6 centered event? You really shouldn't have Nasu...). As a result, oftentimes servants only ever get interludes (and sometimes events, but even those are shaky) to develop their bond with Ritsuka, and this is even worse for lostbelt/singularity villains, because they have to shed an entire dynamic and replace it with a new one. Sometimes this can work fine, or even improve the character, such as with characters like Cu Alter, Hessian Lobo, Jeanne Alter, Jason, and even arguably Avicebron, but oftentimes they can sort of... flounder.

Cu and Jeanne Alter succeeded because fundamentally there was that initial gap that comes from an enemy, not only because they were a villain but because we simply haven't developed a bond yet. So they showed us it, they showed Cu Alter learning to trust and rely on us in his interludes, we saw Jeanne do the same across multiple events. They didn't just abandon their old identity they had to built a new one off the corpses strewn by their old one.

Characters like Anastasia... don't get that, they get a facsimile of a bond developed because they don't want to restart from the very beginning of the relationship pole or be obligated to use all of their lostbelt characteristics.

So rather than showing Ritsuka and Anastasia growing a close bond and her developing a crush on him, we get one dream sequence where Anastasia confided in him that she kind of hates the people who killed her parents. Then it's just... "oh my master is utterly adorable" from her and then "Why don't you kiss her, master?" from Medea

None of this was earned or developed, at best it was implied because other people say similar stuff about Ritsuka, but notably, none of those scenes include Anastasia. They're writing this interlude like it's an alternate timeline where Anastasia was a main servant who watched you grow and develop similar to Mash (Thanks to @300iqprower for making me realize this). There is no unique relationship, there's no event where they were forced together, we just have to assume that at some point Anatasia and Ritsuka hungout a bunch and she got a crush on him.

It feels more like a filled in template for a servant-master relationship than anything actually developing. Why does Anastasia like Ritsuka? Because he's nice, trustworthy, and strong. Great, the same applies to Mash, Ushiwakamaru, Melusine and so so many other servants. There is nothing to me that says she would love Ritsuka for any reason unique to Anastasia, in the same way I can look at her and Kadoc and see why they love each other in the crypter manga. There's no Ritsuka discussing how he can relate to having his opportunity to grow into an adult ruined, there's no Ritsuka having to fight by her side for an extended period of time, there's no Ritsuka helping her come to terms with her family's death, it's just... nothing. It's Anastasia having a crush on Ritsuka because it's Ritsuka.

And like... we have to see this this with so many servants. As much as I love Barghest and find Melusine interesting, to a massive degree they were made worse after lb6. The desire to protect Fae Britain and Aurora respectively was an intrinsic part of their character, and when none of those exist, there's just a big hole in their motivations and relationships. But rather than write elaborate depictions of what changes in their personality there is, Melusine decides that Ritsuka is their lover and Barghest does... cooking? And also wants to fuck Master sometimes.

Worse than remaining stagnant a lot of lostbelt characters actively plateau. Stuck in a hell where all their characterization is dependent on the unique setting of a lostbelt, but also being physically unable to do anything with that setting because then they have to deal with the baggage associated with it.

This is to the point where the only characters who become better or remain well written after their lostbelts are overwhelming the ones who completely sideset this issue. Yu Mei-Ren and Qin? Popped into throne of spirits. Percival, Habetrot, Aesclepius, and Gareth? Literally completely different characters. William Tell, and Odysseus? Lostbelt fuckery. So they develop a new character from scratch and are forced to deal with that.

But a lot of servants don't get that. We know Melusine's past and generic character traits, the game implies (doesn't show) how they grow to like Ritsuka, so we don't get to see any more of that develop. Rather we get to see whatever they decide they would fit best for the present, which typically is uninteresting and repeated.

[coraniaid]

Last post on this topic for a while, I promise.

I saw that somebody tagged my recent post about Helpless as ‘anti-Giles’, and – while I can see how you might get that impression (I mean, to be fair, I did use the phrase ‘unambiguously evil’) – it’s not really what I was trying to drive at.  My problem is with the way that particular episode depicts Giles (and to a lesser extent with the broader fandom attitude towards Giles) not with the character of Giles more generally.

What I mean is: I think the version of Giles that exists in Helpless is basically impossible to reconcile with the character we’ve seen in the first two seasons of the show. The Giles of Prophecy Girl who was so appalled by the thought of Buffy dying that he wanted to “defy prophecy” and fight the Master himself surely wouldn’t have taken so long to stand up to Quentin Travers.  The Giles of Innocence who told Buffy that “all you will get from me is my support and my respect” certainly wouldn’t repeatedly drug her and lie to her face about it.  The Giles who spent all summer chasing down possible sightings of Buffy across the country after she ran away at the end of Becoming would not be so willing to risk her life again just to follow orders from a group of people he openly despises. 

And – because the show doesn’t ever come back and address what he’s shown to do in this episode – it’s also impossible to reconcile Helpless with subsequent episodes.  Nobody ever talks about it, at all, and so the impression is that it either didn’t happen or just wasn’t a big deal.  Giles was unfairly sacked, for some reason, by the Bad Watcher’s Council, and that’s all there is to remember.  (The fact that Giles worked for years for the Bad Watcher’s Council and would’ve happily kept on doing so if they hadn’t fired him goes similarly unremarked on.)

But I don’t think a Buffy who had been betrayed by Giles this fundamentally would go back to trusting him as quickly as she does.  If ever.  I don’t think that only a few episodes later she’d be in any hurry to talk to him about the manslaughter she’d unwittingly been involved in, or that she’d so readily listen to him as her unofficial Watcher when Wesley arrives.  As it is, she spends more time being upset by the fact Giles had sex with her mother this season than she does caring about the fact he almost got her and her mother killed.  That just doesn’t make any sense to me.

And, just to be clear: I really do like Giles a lot.  He is one of my favorite characters in the show.  I think the evolution of his semi-parental relationship with Buffy is really well done; I like his connections with Jenny and Ethan and the way he gets to play off of other characters like Snyder and Joyce and Wesley. I think he is generally a very good deconstruction of the trope of the wise and patient mentor.  I think that ASH’s performance as Giles in Season 1 is probably a large part of what got the show renewed for a second season.  I am, in fact, firmly pro-Giles.

What I don’t like is the collective willingness of the fandom to overlook all of his faults. To strip away everything that makes him interesting until he’s just “Buffy’s Nice Dad”. To afford him a level of tolerance and understanding that somehow never seems to extend to any of the women in Buffy’s life. To pretend that Joyce Summers is being ridiculous or unreasonable for blaming him for her daughter running away, even though it is explicitly Buffy’s calling as a Slayer – and the fact that Giles himself insists she keeps this secret from her loved ones – that makes the events of Becoming possible.  [No, Buffy doesn’t just run away because of what Joyce said to her: if that was the only reason, why did she also cut off all ties with Giles and Willow and Xander and her other friends?]  And, yes, to act as if the fact that Quentin Travers, of all people, tells us that Giles has “a father’s love” for Buffy is the only takeaway from Helpless, and to pretend that his actual actions in that episode don’t undermine that reading at all.

Joyce Summers can tell Buffy not to come back home if she leaves the house without permission – in the heat of the moment, during an argument, clearly regretting it the second she says it – and twenty-five years later the internet is still full of posts calling her a bitch and a terrible mother and claiming she wanted Buffy to leave.  Joyce can be compelled to burn Buffy at the stake because she’s possessed by a demon and this is still a running joke in the fandom two decades later (nevermind the time the season before when Giles was similarly possessed by a demon that tried to kill Buffy: that one doesn’t count, apparently).  Buffy can literally tell Giles that she doesn’t “see the point” of living in the world anymore after her mother’s gone and you all act like it’s a complete mystery why she might be depressed after The Body.  Buffy tells her mother she loves her every season, starting from the third episode of the show – the first episode we see her tell anyone she loves them – and you all pretend that it’s somehow a huge retcon when she still loves her mother four seasons later and that she misses her when she dies.

But Giles goes along with a plan that seems all but designed to get Buffy killed, hypnotizes her, drugs her, and lies to her face about it – not because he’s possessed, not because he’s not in control of his actions, but because the people who employ him tell him he has to – and … nothing.  There’s no outrage at all.  The fandom and the writers alike all agree to pretend it just never happened.  I look for any discussion of this, but you’re all just talking about how much more consistently written a character Giles is than Joyce (which … no, sorry, that’s obviously nonsense; the Season 2 Ripper retcon alone is evidence enough of that), and how he should’ve gotten to adopt Buffy after Joyce died (when … uh, Buffy was legally an adult??), and writing  fanfic after fanfic in which Buffy tells Giles he was more of a parent to her than Joyce ever was (nevermind that she says almost literally the opposite in Season 6, or that she didn’t even meet Giles until she was sixteen, after Joyce explicitly uprooted her whole life to try to find somewhere for Buffy to have a fresh start) and … honestly, I don’t get it.

I just don’t get why you all hate Joyce this much, or why the fandom collectively seems to judge her by standards it never ever applies to Rupert Giles.  When did we decide that the times Joyce hurts Buffy are a fundamental part of her character and that the times Giles hurts her can be safely hand-waved away and ignored?  Why was I not at that meeting?

Like I said, I don’t know.

But what I do know is that Joyce is practically the only recurring character on the show who was played by a woman in her forties.

[For reference, Buffy’s recurring female cast includes two centuries old vampires, a thousand year old ex-vengeance demon, her friend the still-active vengeance demon whose exact age we don't know but was active in the 19th cenutry at least and probably for centuries before that, an ancient and immortal hell-god from another dimension and a centuries old ball of green energy that takes human form.  Not one of these characters is played by a woman over 35.  In fact, only one of them -- in-universe, quite possibly the youngest one of them -- is played by a woman over 30.  

The adult woman with the most screen time after Joyce is Jenny Calendar, who is played by a woman who was 27 years old when her character was killed off. A year later, Giles starts a relationship with another woman called Olivia Williams (who the show and the fandom are both profoundly uninterested in: at the time of writing there are more fics on AO3 shipping Giles with Oz than there are fics shipping him with Olivia.). Olivia is played by a woman who was also 27 years old in the only season she appears in, the same season that ASH turned 46. She's also introduced by Giles as an "old friend", which is probably something it's best not to think too hard about.

The one other woman over forty to appear in more than one episode of Buffy was Lindsay Crouse, who plays Professor Maggie Walsh in Season 4.  She appears in eight episodes, anticipates fandom by calling herself an ‘evil bitch’, then dies in an incredibly stupid and pointless way.  That’s literally it.]

So maybe I do get it.  And frankly, it sucks.

[galsinspace]

Dwarf lore snippets I found combing through dialogue from Cole and Solas:

The dwarves fundamentally do not remember what they were and where they came from. In The Descent we see the remains of an ancient society that seemed structured around the titans, they lived in vast lyrium-illuminated cave systems around one of their hearts, their heroes gave their life to its service. But in the present day, no one even remembers the existence of the titans.

First of all, rude! I love these moments where Solas talks with the arrogance of a god, it's so interesting. He has this vastly different perspective from anyone else because he's the only one who knows what was lost.

So what was it like? We see the titan calm down when it connects with Valta. The dwarves are its children, its severed arm. The titan needs the dwarves. And Valta seems to find inherent peace and purpose in this connection, a connection her ancestors lived with. She's returning to the forgotten origin of her people, to the Stone that is her family, and it feels right.

But does she lose something too? And what would it be like for other dwarves?

Valta searched for this and found it, she reached out and remade the severed connection. This seemed very right for her! It seemed not like control or a hivemind but like she found this purpose and chose it. But what would happen if, say, Varric remade the severed connection? He wouldn't want that. Is he more free without it?

Solas seems aware of this potential problem. The lost connection is a huge loss but it might be that it wouldn't be right for everyone. And this is a big theme in Inquisition that different characters struggle with: Bull tries to submit himself to an ideology where he cannot be himself and hold his own values - maybe that's why he understands Krem? Sera who doesn't want to fit into any system or conventions, no plans or greater purpose, she just wants to hang out and do her own thing! And Bull wisely notes that there wouldn't be space for someone like Sera in a system like his...

And Varric himself, a surface dwarf who doesn't want much to do with Orzammar and much less tradition. Doesn't seem like he'd want the call of the Stone.

And Solas, proponent of freedom and being your own person, calls this wise.

So what severed the connection?

Was it the ancient elves? In Trespasser, we see a vast cave system with ancient elven architecture with statues of Mythal and lyrium ripe for mining. Was this an ancient mining operation, did the ancient elves mine lyrium for magical fuel (titan blood magic) and the titans fought them via the dwarves? Did Mythal sever the connection?

This super interesting notebook entry provides us with an ancient elven song and an approximate translation which is interesting for so many reasons. For one thing, Mythal doesn't give dreams! Dreams just come from magic/the Fade, Mythal didn't invent magic. Was this part of the propaganda of her god image?

But also, clear reference to interaction between Mythal and the dwarves! Is it as the writer of the notebook suspected and Mythal sought to make sure the dwarves would never see the sun? Were they just enemies? Hindrances to her mining operation?

And the use of the word "solas" is pretty suspicious! Is it refering to him, was he involved in this? What does he know about the sundering of the Song?

It's a pretty ambiguous song though. Let's check out another ancient bit of writing -

Well that sounds pretty bad.

Mythal and her servants wanted to hunt and kill titans and saw the dwarves as mindless worker drones to obliterage.

There's still the interesting question of what Solas would have to say about all this. He himself says he doesn't actually know a lot about dwarves:

Is he saying he just didn't know a lot about dwarves (he was probably pretty busy with his elf rebellion) or that he used to believe they were mindless drones and understands now that they just don't dream? When he was in uthenera he only saw echoes of the world through the Fade so dwarves remained a mystery. But what did he know before? Was this part of his complicity, part of Mythal's injustice that he saw? The complex relationship between Solas and Mythal is really worth its own post. Solas refers to the titans as "mighty heroes" and he's so curious about the dwarves...

But was it even Mythal who ultimately severed the connection? I mean, what else could it have been? It must have been her!!!

What do you think?

[melonteee]

First I really would like to thank you for your amazing work, it’s thanks to your videos that I finally kicked myself into catching up on OP. I don’t regret it the slightest, thank you for dragging me back into my life-long mad obsession, it really feels like coming home lmao.

Your Law video in particular really punched me in the guts, your analysis really shed a new light on him for me and now I’m obsessed with him. I was thinking about the potential place of guilt in Law’s quest of avenging Cora, especially survivor’s guilt and it's something that is worth mentioning I think. I noticed that Law blames himself a lot in his flashback, saying at several occasions that Cora’s been hurt because of him, and also in the light novel, where he loses himself in “what if”, where guilt eats him alive to the point of having nightmares and even telling himself than if he hadn’t met Cora then Cora would still be alive. That’s such a sad thing to think.

For survivors who suffer from this kind of ptsd, the mere fact of being alive is a constant source of guilt and anxiety. Law probably doesn’t feel worthy of living over the sacrifice of Cora, feels responsible for his death and overly blames his whole existence for it. His already existing feelings of worthlessness (induced by Doffy’s teaching methods, the internalized rejection due to amber lead and the emotional neglect he suffered from) and this overwhelming guilt definitely feed into each other in a vicious circle. This leads him to this need of constantly trying to make sense of his survival and his existence, like trying to pay penance and justify being alive. This is why he came to overburdening himself with the responsibility of avenging Cora’s death, and why he was so self-destructive while doing so. Because there’s also a strong process of identification to the deceased, as a coping mechanism. The survivors have this need to mirror the suffering the deceased went through, it’s a way for them to feel closer to the dead, like if they want to join them in death. It’s the survivor’s attempt to regain his own identity and to reduce the guilt and the psychological distress. I can definitely see that in Law, in how he made Corazon his whole identity, and how he was very willing to die to achieve his quest. There’s definitely a martyr complex going on there. He launched his whole-ass plan at 26 years old, same age Cora died, and I refuse to believe this is a coincidence. It's like he was forbidding himself to live longer than Cora did. And to think that he had all this simmering in him for basically half of his life...that's insane.

Anyway to me this guilt plays a lot in Law’s dedication to Cora and his obsession in avenging him. I also think about how he felt responsible for dragging Luffy into his mess and how he was willing to die as a penance. For me it is also one of the things that definitively separate Law from Doffy on a fundamental level. Because Doffy never has shown the slightest amount of guilt for everything he did, and while he might feel regrets for having killed his brother, regrets are different than remorses.

I’m sorry that was a long one. Told you I was obsessed. I hope the read was interesting anyway!

This is an amazing read anon! I don't have much else to say other than I totally agree! Law's character totally explores survivor's guilt, even if not said outright. It hits double hard considering not ONLY has he gotten this guilt from Corazon dying, but from being the ONLY survivor of Flevance town as well.

Robin was similar in this case, thinking her life was somewhat expendable and 'allowing' herself to die. The only thing is, Robin very much DIDN'T want to, she just saw no way to be ABLE to live. Her mother told her she must live, and Robin only found the will to KEEP living and being ALLOWED to live due to the Strawhats.

Law, on the other hand, was seemingly ready to die from the get go. At 10, he accepted his death from white lead poisoning - expecting to die at 13. Then, after Corazon saved him, Law fully expected to die at 26 with his fight against Doflamingo.

Law has never been able to grasp his own life in his hands, it feels as if he's had this idea he SHOULDN'T be alive and - since he IS alive - he must be alive for SOMETHING. Which is why when Sengoku tells him that ALL Corazon would want is for Law to LIVE, the way LAW wants, it was a big thing for Law!

Law's never had the thought that maybe he can just...exist. Maybe he doesn't need to be alive for a reason. There's truly an aspect of survivor's guilt in such an idea.

BUT now, thanks to Luffy and the people around him, Law's managed to break away from this line of thought. Law is truly starting to live for himself now, and it's wonderful to see!

[midnightshade]

Geto Suguru's Downfall and the True Scope of His Plans

I've noticed a lot of misconceptions surrounding Geto as a character, specifically considering his goals. I've seen some people say his plans weren't very well thought out, but I couldn't disagree more!

Geto's plans were a little more refined than just, "kill everyone," and we even see evidence later on in the series that shows his plans were a lot more refined than people give him credit for.

Before I begin, as always I'd like to provide a disclaimer. This is a discussion on Geto's plans and the depth and thought behind them. This is not a defense of his plans.

Let's begin with a recap of Geto's downfall and what led him to his current beliefs up until his death.

Geto originally believed that the strong existed to protect the weak. He clung to those ideals so resolutely that when he came face to face with the ugliness and unfairness of the system he was working within, it broke him.

Riko's death was the catalyst that sent Geto spiraling. He was one of the Strongest and yet he couldn't even protect a scared girl right in front of him. Haibara's death broke him further, as his Junior had given him some hope: to keep doing what he could because it was something he could do, only for him to die tragically on a mission.

Finally, Geto snapped when he saw Mimiko and Nanako in a cage, beaten and sentenced to death by ignorant, hateful humans.

Geto wasn't born evil. He was struggling and desperately clinging to his ideals in a system that saw him and other sorcerers as fodder. He was right to break away from the system and right to call out the ugliness of humanity. By all accounts, shaman are an oppressed minority and humans are the oppressors.

Minorities are well within their right to be angry at their oppressors, but Geto's mistake was turning to genocide and hatred rather than finding other methods of changing the system.

So, what exactly was Geto's plan? Kill all non-shaman, yes, but it's a little more refined than that.

If you look back at his conversation with Yuki, you see that she mentioned how a mass cull might force the survivors to develop Cursed Energy, much like how birds developed wings. Suguru took that idea and ran with it, and to his credit, it's implied to be a possible route

A good route? No, but a possible one

We learn this thanks to Kenjaku. Shoko is the first to mention a connection between the brain and the Cursed Technique, but Kenjaku later confirms this connection: the brain of a Shaman and Non-Shaman are fundamentally different, but it's possible for the latter to become the former.

Kenjaku himself does this. He used transfiguration to transform a handful of modern day people into Shaman and we see Mahito do the same with Junpei, altering his brain for Jujutsu.

It's just that, unlike Kenjaku, Geto lacked the scope required to perform a mass-evolution on the scale he likely wanted.

But why would anyone join him? Even if his plans could work, why would anyone willingly go along with it?

Simple. Shaman, as mentioned, are oppressed. While Geto's methods are cruel, it's no surprise that those who have been continuously hurt and disenfranchised would side with him. Unfortunately, Gege doesn't give us much to go on with his family, but Mimiko and Nanako are good enough examples.

They were children, only 6 years old when their parents were murdered and when they were locked up and tortured for the crime of being Shaman. Considering Nobara sees similar behavior in her own town, it's safe to assume that the Countryside (and many humans in general) have not improved with their bias towards Shaman.

The narrative is against Suguru's methods, but notice that it never says he's wrong in his core beliefs that the system is flawed. We see this with characters like Gojo and Nanami, who each react differently to similar pressures. Nanami leaves Jujutsu Society and even goes so far as to say he understands Geto and what he's doing. Gojo, meanwhile, is trying to change the system gradually from the inside. Regardless of their methods, they're in agreement: this system isn't fair and it isn't working.

Geto Suguru is considered a genius through effort, compared to a natural born genius like Gojo. His methods are cruel and very clearly wrong, but they're more thought out than people give him credit for, and there's a good reason why people follow him.

[jelly-as-in-grape-concord]

48 + 50!

48. OC who is a perfect cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pure

no one in either story is textbook "perfect cinnamon roll" but sasha ramirez and gigi (gianna crane (shes from cannibalistic pigeons, the project partner i mentioned)) are close contenders. Sasha is a nice person, but not like the pure and innocent variety yk? gigi on the other hand, does start out in cannibalistic pigeons as like 100% cinnamon roll but eventually unfurls completely as the forest begins to call her into it. kinda like how you unfurl an actual cinnamon roll, the sugar and cinnamon and sweetness is still there, it is fundamentally still a cinnamon roll, however it is now a strip of what it once was. or something like that idk the metaphor got away from me

50. Give me the good ol’ OC talk here. Talk about anything you want

uhhhhhhh this is really long so

the gloam started out as bnha fanfiction LMAO

from the basic idea i had written in my notes: "Izuku is accidentally taken to a different universe where the prototypes exist (yu takeyama=uraraka, that version of bakugou that was blunt about everything, other weirdly designed people like kaminari and toruu). The world is kinda in an apocalypse state thats overrun by creatures called aberrants. there’s “heroes” but they’re treated like pest control than celebrities (people still did hero gimmicks for the fun of it)

he ultimately made friends with the other versions. he was forced back home after katsuki was killed by aberrant and yu wanted revenge

when he wakes up back in the regular mha world, aberrants start entering the world and hes the only one who knows how to deal with them"

which in short: alternate universes or whatever. the reason why i abandoned this idea though was because it sorta molded izuku and several other characters into something that they werent. so i saw a post that was like something about fanfics turning characters into basically OCs and i was like. wait a minute. I CAN DO THAT

and so:

the first original idea used to be about 7 teens going on a big camping trip after graduating from high school. the main couple (sylvia + guy i forget the name of) get into an arguement, its super awkward so theyre all like ok ig lets just go home, so sylvia goes in the car with isaac and sasha and in this version, theyre not rlly besties, just people who are friends with each others friends kinda deal yk. but BOOM on the way back they get into a car accident. Sasha and sylvia r badly injured and cant get out, so isaac goes to get help but gets replaced by another person(same as happens in the gloam 4.0 (yeag there is a 3.0 im gettin there)). the rest of the group catches up, get out of the car, and get eaten by a monster. then the whole plot after that was that sylvia and sasha wanted to find isaac as the replacement admits that on the other side of the forest, theres an alternate universe that they could travel to find him. i have no idea what was so supposed to happen after so i scratched the idea.

gloam 3.0 was something similar, adding in the spiciness that the inside of the forest WAS the alternate universe and everyone in it was fighting for their lives. and also sylvia got a gun. what!!! then i scrapped it because i still had no idea how it would be ending or how the story would start because i kinda hated the car accident thing. i could never imagine it quite right.

then theres the gloam 4.0, where you BECOME this alternate version of urself by becoming a sick monster. and also i aged up the main three because i dont know how to write teenagers. im hardly one myself sometimes but i have hanged around both middle aged and old people for my entire life.

i did keep the original ig crossing a threshhold into an alternate universe thing as a seperate idea (anti-glory) but its not something im thinking or working on

(theres a lot more detail that i coul write here but im currently typing this in a moving vehicle and very sleepy)

[trans-pickles]

To clarify, this post isn't about the misconception thrown around by clickbait online listicles that "Peter kills the Lost Boys when they get too old"*. Any real horror that comes from the story, IMO, is about Peter as a VICTIM. His very existence is a tragedy.

Peter, like a lot of mythological fairies and fae folk on which he's based, is stuck in a sort of eternal childhood not just of body, but of mind. While to another child this would obviously be a dream come true it becomes VERY clear over the course of the story that he's deeply suffering under the surface. Peter Pan was written partially as a critique on Victorian and Edwardian ideas about childhood innocence. JM Barrie, when describing some of the fundamental traits of children, calls them gay, innocent, and heartless. Peter being morally grey is text, not subtext.

I'm not saying a more adult-oriented retelling shouldn't exist, I'm a grown-ass man who still loves this very story. But shouldn't it touch on a topic less shallow?

You exist in a state of eternal play. No parents to tell you what to do - or take care of you. You have all the friends you want, until they start to grow up, and you stay the same, no matter what you do, and you don't know why. Finally one day you bring home a "mother" who isn't a grown up, and it's so much fun! It's amazing! But she starts getting scared because she's forgetting things, forgetting the way her own mother looked (her real, grown-up mother, the thing you never had, the thing you hate and want most of all), so she leaves you, and you let her go, because you have to. And maybe she comes back, but every year she's more and more different until suddenly, you don't know her anymore. But that doesn't matter, because she has another little girl, so you can have another mother, so why not start again?

And you do. And thus it will go on. As long as children are gay, and innocent, and heartless.

* That's basically a throwaway line that he tells Wendy as a sort of brag, and imo I think we're supposed to take it with a grain of salt, since Peter is established to be a habitual liar and mis-rememberer of events, especially when he thinks it might make him look cool. The Lost Boys we meet in the original 1911 novel go home with the Darling children and are adopted into the family, something which you might not know if you only saw the Disney movie, so we know they aren't "actually dead and Neverland is heaven" and Peter didn't kill them after the Darlings left. In the official sequel, Peter Pan in Scarlet (yes there is a canon sequel, it was written in 2006 by Geraldine McCaughrean after she won a contest put forward by Great Ormond Street Hospital, the owners of the Peter Pan IP, it's amazing and everyone should read it right now) we actually meet some of the OTHER Lost Boys who were banished by peter for "growing up" and are still stuck in Neverland, and they still know Wendy (she comes back every year for the spring cleaning until Peter just... forgets about her). So there's no real evidence that Peter really did kill any of the Lost Boys, and in fact more evidence to the contrary - the closest we see him come to that is when he believes Tootles has accidentally shot and killed Wendy. When it's revealed that Wendy is fine, Tootles is forgiven entirely.

you don't need to write a dark deconstruction of Peter Pan where he's willing to kill people and his state of eternal childhood makes him morally ambiguous, JM Barrie already wrote one and it's called Peter Pan

[beardedmrbean]

Ugh great now racists, are saying any type of black Mc means diversity hires

But here the issues like yes we can have more black rep in like in fantasy stuff

But there are fundamental difference between how I handle it vs they do

Okay it not rocket science, but as you know tumblr have the idea of diversity is middle schooler one

Also how people use my culture and people struggles to demonize white people…wait.

When these people learn about the dark side of American history? Are they blind to the several dark jokes we have towards Thomas Jefferson or why black Americans often have their ancestors slave owner last names?

No to mention most Congressmen got their slaves from inheritance

But the black characters are so UGH

Also why they all act like rootless urbanites? Yes I understand orphans was often used in stories (but anyone who a writer knows it for easy storytelling)

Also where the family? Like a black fantasy character man who struggled under his family shadow? Of course they exist and such. But like a black man and his son having a falling out but they slowly patch up

“But that says you want people to stay in their toxic families!” My brother in Christ my father and I have a complicated relationship

BUT I use our relationship to created a Jrpg scenario where a BLACK male Mc at 16, accidentally get his girlfriend knocked up

WAIT DO BREAK THE SEVEN SEALS YET- the mc named Darius decided to settled down and raised his son named Cyrus.

Now this is the first act of the game, Darius gf then wife named Maria leaves in the middle of the night when Cyrus is 4. Now 3 years after that, Darius decided to go on a quest and he bring his 7 year old son along with him.

Yes I can hear the new god of war similarities between my ocs and Atreus and Kratos. But the thing is that they are very different execution. My OC was standard Jrpg adventurer that accidentally became a father and still in his 20’s. Kratos was a Spartan who became a god and well we all known how he was in the og gow games.

But Cyrus is mainly a mage who overtime because a marksman as he get older becomes there a Industrial Revolution going on in this fantasy setting and Darius think that giving his son a long range weapon (Cyrus get taking around 9 or 10) suck as rifle would be easier for him to use for offensive

Also a gameplay mechanic that Cyrus gave a magical backpack that actually like your moveable inventory. You known how parents used your book bag on field trips?

Though as Cyrus getting older and level ups. He picked on the tactic and after a big boss battle when you try to put an item into his back bag. He goes “HEY!” because his magic is also develop so he needs room too.

But think about my fantasy idea, I’m subverting the deadbeat teen dad stereotype AND using the father and son roadtrip formula as inspiration.

Wouldn’t you want to play a Jrpg where you fish with your son, watch as his skills grows, loot powerful dungeons together, teach him how to unleash plagues on bandits. And then how to loot their corpses for money or items.

What we already kill them, let take their shit

Oh wait I can control my daddy issues, so something fresh and rare like my Jrpg idea wouldn’t work

Ugh great now racists, are saying any type of black Mc means diversity hires

Not sure if that was the plan of the people pushing forced diversity or not but it's the outcome most people with sense saw coming, Justice Jackson that biden appointed is gonna have that hanging over her head forever too, regardless of the fact that she was (is) very qualified to have the job.

When these people learn about the dark side of American history? Are they blind to the several dark jokes we have towards Thomas Jefferson or why black Americans often have their ancestors slave owner last names? No to mention most Congressmen got their slaves from inheritance

Several of them freed their slaves too, at least to the extent that they could,

But the black characters are so UGH Also why they all act like rootless urbanites? Yes I understand orphans was often used in stories (but anyone who a writer knows it for easy storytelling) Also where the family? Like a black fantasy character man who struggled under his family shadow? Of course they exist and such. But like a black man and his son having a falling out but they slowly patch up “But that says you want people to stay in their toxic families!” My brother in Christ my father and I have a complicated relationship

I'm enjoying how you're covering my side of this too here.

Hey writers, maybe try writing and working out a solution occasionally, like, as said, patching up a familial relationship issue.

That doesn't work as well for the YA dystopian fantasy novel and those are what's cool now I think.

Maybe Stephanie Meyer can work some of that in to the Twilight thingy she's supposed to be working on......

BUT I use our relationship to created a Jrpg scenario where a BLACK male Mc at 16, accidentally get his girlfriend knocked up WAIT DO BREAK THE SEVEN SEALS YET- the mc named Darius decided to settled down and raised his son named Cyrus. Yes I can hear the new god of war similarities between my ocs and Atreus and Kratos. But the thing is that they are very different execution. My OC was standard Jrpg adventurer that accidentally became a father and still in his 20’s. Kratos was a Spartan who became a god and well we all known how he was in the og gow games.

lol

But think about my fantasy idea, I’m subverting the deadbeat teen dad stereotype AND using the father and son roadtrip formula as inspiration.

I'm enjoying the progression here, be fun to see Cyrus with a firearm too, even if he never uses it, not after teaching his kid at least, good father and son bonding time over learning gun safety n such.

Wouldn’t you want to play a Jrpg where you fish with your son, watch as his skills grows, loot powerful dungeons together, teach him how to unleash plagues on bandits. And then how to loot their corpses for money or items. What we already kill them, let take their shit Oh wait I can control my daddy issues, so something fresh and rare like my Jrpg idea wouldn’t work

Ahh you beat me there on all of that then, lmao.

This all sounds like a good start on all of this.

[vincentpriceofficial]

A while ago I saw some YouTube guy compare Viserys hotd to ned stark and say he’s an example of a ~good man~ in this morally grey universe and my initial reaction was like No!!!!! Excuse me!!! but I’ve continued thinking about like WHY this is wrong

I guess I think that ned and viserys function as characters to illustrate very different but complementary things about this fictional universe. Ned really is a good and moral person and his death shows that a person like that can’t survive in this world, that their goodness makes them vulnerable and will be exploited

Whereas Viserys’s defining quality isn’t that he’s good so much as that he’s just incredibly normal. he is Just Some Guy he wants to collect adult action figures and he means well but doesn’t know how to parent his kids and he hates his job and never wants to do it. I feel like it’s extremely likely he reminds you of at least one middle aged man you know irl if not several. He’s incredibly fundamentally regular and yet the values of the culture he exists within and the pressures placed upon him externally cause him to commit absolutely bloodcurdling crimes

(#misogyny cw #csa cw)

like this man killed his wife and then replaced her with a child. He fucks his 15 year old daughter’s best friend. Alicent is a kid, she’s a high school freshman!

This is all utterly heinous shit and the point I’m making is that it requires absolutely zero pathology or abnormality on behalf of Viserys as a person bc it just literally is that normal to use and abuse women in this society. Viserys is sympathetic but he’s not good because it’s almost impossible for him to be good after living the life he has. If he was good he would be Ned Stark. If he was good he would be dead

[bigskydreaming]

Compiling a Top Ten List of Things I Wish Non-Nightwing Fans Knew Weren’t True About Him (pre-Flashpoint and ten only because I’m using a panel example for each one and just linking to longer essay-proofs I’ve made on literally all of these lmao why am I like this).....I need one more though. Thoughts?

1) Dick didn’t hate Jason, treat him badly or ignore him when Jason was Robin

2) Dick’s iconic jerk moments towards Kory, Donna, Alfred and others in NTT #18-22 don’t actually say anything about his character because they exist as part of a narrative showing he was brainwashed, and no, it wasn’t a retcon

3) Dick and Kory’s breakup had EVERYTHING to do with Mirage, they were fighting about it literally the page before he proposed, and you can’t claim not being ready to get married was the problem unless you acknowledge Dick only wanted to get married to prove he loved Kory in the face of everyone doubting that because of Mirage

4) Your view of Dick’s feelings about Jason upon his eventual return, and him killing people, absolutely needs to factor in the fact that Dick once beat the Joker to death because he mocked Jason’s death to Dick, and no, Bruce reviving the Joker doesn’t change anything this says about Dick’s feelings here

5) What happened with Tarantula was not the de facto worst thing to happen to Dick at that time, it is just as significant if not MORE significant that Blockbuster targeted and killed everyone close to him in Bludhaven specifically BECAUSE of Dick himself, from his apartment building, Haly’s Circus, etc. In fact, given that Tarantula wasn’t the first time Dick was raped and the fact that even as it happened, Dick - who had already taken responsibility for her and her training - told her not to touch him not just because he didn’t want it, but because he was poison....its highly significant that his thoughts were focused on him being WHAT ruins everyone who touches him....including his own rapist. He saw himself as the common denominator, and I don’t think there’s anyway to divorce this from his first rape, which was also at the hands of someone he worked with in a superhero capacity. Finally, all of this was ultimately compounded by the destruction of Bludhaven itself, and that....really....can’t be stressed enough. As well as the fact that all of this took place at the exact same point in the comics as Tim’s losses of Stephanie, Conner and Jack Drake.

6) Dick was never Slade’s apprentice. Ever. As Renegade in the comics, he worked WITH Slade, as part of an attempt to infiltrate the Society of Super-villains, but the whole time he did so, he was at Slade’s request training his daughter Rose himself. He was never Slade’s subordinate or student. That just fundamentally didn’t happen. Furthermore, he outwitted Slade, in retaliation for Slade subverting his attempt to tell Clark he wasn’t really a traitor and making Clark actually believe he was.....and it was him outwitting Slade and getting Rose to turn on her father that led Slade to have the Society destroy Bludhaven as its example to the world, despite Slade having previously promised Dick that Bludhaven would be protected. You can’t unlink any of the links in this chain of events. Bludhaven was only destroyed BECAUSE Slade and Dick never once interacted as student and teacher, master and apprentice. It was a cat and mouse game where they both played both roles, knowingly, the entire time. As equals. As all their interactions between them have gone, going all the way back to their earliest encounters in the Judas Contract. Please stop erasing this aspect of their comic book dynamics just to warp it into something where Slade is a predator who hopelessly outmatches Dick, his chosen prey. Slade’s preoccupation with Dick isn’t because of his potential, its because Dick’s the one who keeps fucking up Slade’s plans AS HE ALREADY IS. Constantly reframing things so Dick is hopelessly at Slade’s mercy or desperately in need of Slade’s help or protection says nothing about their actual dynamic, it's just using them as interchangeable props in your preferred dynamic. Which I mean, you can do, its just. Know that isn’t actually them?

7) Dick didn’t fire Tim, kick him out of Wayne Manor or Gotham, ever think he was crazy, threaten to throw him into Arkham, refuse to believe him about Bruce’s death, pick Damian over him, or any of the dozen other rabbits people have pulled out of the top hat that is Red Robin in order to depict him as the absolute worst person to ever live and who should totally just go to Hell.

8) Dick is actually the ONLY one of the Batkids who has had the experience in Arkham that people like to say Jason has had and blame on Dick himself, as he went undercover for Bruce in Batman R.I.P. in a manner that necessitated allowing the Black Glove Society to capture him, hold him prisoner in Arkham for a week, straitjacketed and drugged up to the gills and about to be lobotomized when he was finally able to fight back and free himself. While Arkham was actually full of various Rogues, unlike the time Jason actually spent in Arkham, being bored, and subjected to nothing more than psychological evaluations that said he was fine, all because Dick wanted to PROTECT him in a way that he knew wouldn’t be possible if Jason was in Blackgate, after POLICE arrested him regardless of what Dick did or didn’t want.

9) Dick absolutely 100% WAS adopted by Bruce when he was an adult, he isn’t the only one who wasn’t adopted, just the one who wasn’t adopted before adulthood. I have major issues with HOW the adoption went down, and think it should have played out much differently and would love to see a million fix-it fics tackling the WAY it played out and doing it better, but it is just flat out, categorically untrue that it just didn’t happen at all. And to be fair, Dick Grayson stans are just as guilty as perpetuating this one in the name of angst, and personally, I think that is counter-productive and just enables the perpetuation of treating him/viewing him as something ‘other’ than one of Bruce’s kids himself.

10) I have a few ideas for the tenth, but nothing definitive, so.....thoughts? Any other major topics I’ve ranted on before that anyone thinks should make an appearance here or doesn’t get acknowledged enough, or perhaps a topic I haven’t covered yet?