#the least good racial commentary of all of these and that’s saying something since one of them is a victorian british woman

[truthwatcherblog]

My top 10 books of all time in no particular order:

1. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

2. Babel, R.F. Kuang

3. Harrow the Ninth, Tamsin Muir

4. Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng

5. Rhythm of War, Brandon Sanderson

6. All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks

7. Blood Over Bright Haven, M.L. Wang

8. The Rage of Dragons, Evan Winter

9. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

10. Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado

Honorable mention for Stormcaster by Cinda Williams Chima, which is objectively bad but has a very special place in my heart

[leovoid]

No one understands Attack on Titan

Been struggling with getting my thoughts on paper with how busy this new job is making me. Looking for another job and got a 2nd interview today that is remote so I can have more time to dedicate to these videos But anyway... I wanted to share what I have so far to see if what everyones thoughts were? Anything I should add? Missing any points? I'd love to see your thoughts ^^

************THE VIDEO STARTS HERE*******************

More than a decade has passed since the release of Attack on Titan, a manga and eventual adapted anime that epically impacted anime culture globally by and large.

For just as much as an intense and emotionally stirring series Attack on Titan was and continues to be, that same inspiration reverberated into the many hearts of its fandom.

Spawning cosplay free of racial or ethnic limitations, A story in which its setting takes place in what most considered at the time a post apocalyptic world similar to the popular series “The Walking Dead” which landed Attack on Titan and in turn anime as a whole into the western lime light and in even more countries around the world, with characters and ideologies so meaningful and captivating that fans globally could not help but take the very same stance as our heroes, dedicating their very hearts to the Scouts cause and for 10 years heavily anticipated what the story would bring next.

Unfortunately however, it is within those 10 years where Attack on Titans characters, themes, and its very creator has always been and continues to be heavily misunderstood for reasons in which I can only define as misguided, projecting, and entirely foolish

Whether that is due to the possibility that I have surrounded myself in a conundrum of echo chambers of the naive, and ignorant is up for debate, (Show a faded icon of Twitter) but the fact that these misunderstandings happens by and large by both side lined spectators and fans of the show inexorably reinforces the topic this video discusses.

Despite being a story which expresses a tragically beautiful message meant to juxtapose itself within reality, no one TRULY understands Attack on Titan, or at least very few people do and with good reason.

What started as a young boys endeavor for the freedom of his species would eventually find himself caught in the complex webs of the machinations of human corruption.

Peeling layer by layer the extensive history of humanities cruelty, and the horrifying realization of the commentary Attack on Titan has tried to impose from the very beginning. Creating a rift within the fandom from the drastic change of how easily relatable its story used to be into how difficult of a question the story imposes towards its conclusions.

Leading people to accuse Attack on Titan for being anti-semetic and harboring fascist and imperialist subtext, that Eren Jeagar is a useless cry baby, a totalitarian tyrant and most importantly a god damn simp with the story's conclusion being heavily criticized as ruined, clumsy and just straight up bad.

But all of these statements couldn’t be any more wrong, most of their arguments set on such a fragile foundation that all it takes is a simple thought to topple it to the ground, which is exactly what this video sets out to do.

For those that the fandom has labeled as “Yeagerists” “Zekists” or even “AOE speculators” I ask this of you…

Instead of pondering what could’ve been, what your idealistic perceptions of how Eren should’ve acted in his final moments, or what was the right choice in the end, I ask of you, what do you think Isayama is trying to say with Attack on Titans story? Is it hopelessness and futility or is it something much more behind the futility?

Put your theories and ships aside and ask yourself, what is Attack on Titan asking us?

Attack on Titans asks of us a horrifying question, a question that remains integral and consistent within the story through out. But due to its uncomfortable nature, most people can’t help but shy away from it and instead criticize it narrow mindedly.

After all, how can most people empathize with acts of cruelty and oppression? How can most people not be upset at the social stratification the series presents? Its barbarous, its inhumane, but its horrifyingly real.

As the story begins with a hopelessly naive young boys idealistic perception of the world caught in the apex of mans cruelty eventually warped into a desperate man crushed by the viciousness of the world.

From the casts original objective to preserve mans existence, a fight for species survival eventually flipped on its head to something much more complex, rooted in self interest and strikingly real to events in our real lives.

Attack on Titan was never a story that avoided imposing a difficult question, an unavoidable question with no escape or unrealistic solutions that our main characters would have to face, where no hope or dream would survive as Isayama gives us an answer that we could never see coming.

Play: and on that day humanity received a grim reminder, that we lived in fear of the titans…

Oppression

A common complaint I often hear in regards to Attack on Titan is that it promotes anti-semitic and fascist ideals. 

Antisemitism is the act of hostility or prejudice against a specific race, while Facism is a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and cannot be disobeyed without severe consequences.

And while these descriptions are extremely apparent within the story, the detail that most are missing is if Isayama himself promotes such principles.

From a power hungry tyrannical king whose only goal is territorial conquest, to a corrupt nation which promotes anti semitic propaganda to succeed in the very same ambitions as the evil king before them, to the once prominent king hailed by many stands alone in his passivity as he traps his subjects in multi layered ignorance condemning them to an inevitable death, to the world which fervently yearns for your death simply for what you are.

What we can draw from this is that the setting in which Attack on Titan takes place in clearly represents anti-semetism and fascist principles, but just because it does should not mean that Isayama himself supports it which can clearly be seen when you look at the ramifications the story presents to us of said principles

To the lone man who walks the path of a devil implanted with the wanten desire of freedom bred from the oppression that surrounded him at a young age, to the many Eldians who were ignorantly held captive beyond their understanding as they lay helpless only to die, to a nation who reclaimed their land and liberty from their oppressors and to a lone fragile young woman who constantly finds herself in awe at the sight of what a slave can never have.

Eren Jeagar and the Scouts are the antithesis to the very principles that people accuse Attack on Titan of supporting, with their symbol representing wings soaring towards freedom; they fight for liberty against the monsters that condemn them within the confines of the walls, seeking to eliminate that which prevents them from their birthright, even going as far as dismantling the oppressive government power that had systematically oppressed the nation for over a century until eventually with their backs against the walls, they are forced to fight against the world.

Attack on Titan while again being a story surrounded around the idea of anti semitism and facism was never a story that supported it but instead adamantly opposed it.

Eren Jeagar personifies this ideal, from his early youth Eren came to the realization that freedom was a given right to all people who are born into the world, and slowly began to realize that everything that surrounded him, the walls, the titans and even his own people prevented that and this knowledge enraged him.

Throughout the story, Eren continues to fight towards this ideal until he eventually came to realize the significant amount of sacrifice it would take to see his dream a reality.

And yet in spite of that, people often misconstrue Erens intentions, the foundation of his motivations, and the very contents of his dreams.

Eren Jeagar is the sole character who encompasses a majority of the themes and messages Attack on Titans demonstrates, however, its partly due to how heavily misunderstood Eren is that leads most people to fall short when it comes to recognizing what it is that Attack on Titan is trying to say…

Erens actions towards the end of the story is highly controversial, polarizing the fanbase into those who empathize with his decisions vs those who simply can not.

And all the while, people who are stuck on the topic of whether Eren was right or wrong is simply irrelevant The Rumbling, while undoubtedly able to stir a moral dilemma to the viewers, is but a rather large piece to an even larger picture.

Attack on Titan does not focus on the idea of what is right or what is wrong, at least not on an individual level, but instead offers us layers of dark gray circumstances that shows us who the true enemies are.

*Play Erwin: “That was a weird question” scene*

The enemy of Oppression: Dreams

When one is completely surrounded by sorrow and strife, what lays dormant inside of us all is the constant struggle to persevere towards attaining a state of being which provides us the greatest feeling of contentment.

However, most of us if not all of us fall into the trap of completely romanticizing our dreams to the point where we become blindsided to the effects in which our endeavors may bring as a result.

And the more dogmatically we substantiate our dreams, the heavier the weight becomes when reality plunders what we had desperately hoped for.

Mention how the cruelty of the world twists those dreams into malicious ambitions to persevere

*Play the scene between Erwin and Levi “Is this more important than the fate of humanity? Yes.”

[jewpacabruhs]

ok well. i didnt post til now cuz i wanted to rewatch and try to understand better. turns out a rewatch didnt help. 

im seeing a lot of people say that was a rlly good episode... i thought it was very sloppily written and subpar. south park’s always been so good with satire, especially when they’re calling out something/someone shitty by exaggerating them into something so ridiculous that nobody can take it seriously. with this kanye ‘satire’, they didnt do that, at least not effectively, and if they were trying to do it, it didn’t turn out well. at all. this is a personal belief, but i find parodies of kanye now that we know he’s legitimately mentally unwell to be very cruel. it’s hard for me to condemn him fully when i don’t know what’s his actual beliefs versus what his unmedicated mental disorder is resulting in him spouting (and ive seen people say ‘ive had manic/psychotic episodes and it never turned me into a bigot’, well that’s you, psychosis can result in all kinds of beliefs and, fact of the matter is, it can result in bigoted beliefs brought on by paranoia and delusions. psychosis can have you believing anything. and ofc mania can also result in acting like a person you’re not.) however we can condemn him for not choosing to take time during lucid periods to denounce the things he says. but i can’t definitively say if that’s indicative of him actually believing those things, and his episodes simply result in him lacking a filter and airing that information to everyone. so overall i just sorta pity him and find the situation regretful.

now, trey and matt could’ve fully come for the more extreme sect of the black hebrew israelite movement (though i think that’d be a very very very slippery slope), or, alternatively, for people/celebrities who believe and promote antisemitic conspiracies in general. but they focused on kanye, and i just felt it was too narrowly focused and unsuitable for effective satire. 

they could’ve put more focus on cartman as a white kid trying to stir shit between a jewish kid and a black kid, as jewish and black relations have always been very layered and complex. and it seems like it’s a relevant topic, too, as a handful of high-profile black celebrities have recently been in the news for antisemitism. (although as i highlight that, it’s important to also admit there is a fair amount of anti-black sentiment among some jews too.) there’s a lot to be said about the unfortunate reality of minority groups resenting each other rather than unifying with each other. more so to be said about white people encouraging that divide. they could’ve also focused on the utter irony and peculiarity of kanye as a black man praising nazism, a ideology which hated people of color as much as jews. i think the whole topic’s rough, really, but hell, they coulda gone after farrakhan! i think farrakhan’s worthy of getting satirized; he’s a big figure representative of all those beliefs. he’s been promoting violently anti-jewish ideology since the 80s, and similar pro-hitler stances. or they could’ve done something more in line with ‘with apologies to jesse jackson’ from season 11 (which i just went back to rewatch and the satire in that one is sooo good). but whatever they were going for just... missed. there wasn’t even truly commentary. it was disappointing. 

although, i also think it’d be rather hard for two white guys who value honesty and acerbity but who are also conscious of staying in their lane to comfortably parody hypocritical ignorance out of anybody who’s not a dumb white person. you know? like it’s trickier, for sure. because it’s jarring, honestly, the way white people calling people of color out on things almost always gets racial, or can be read that way, even if that’s not the intent. and i think that could happen with a south park ep that tried that, considering how that fairly recent episode about trans people in sports went down. like, they couldn’t satirize a trans issue without being transphobic - could they parody a race issue without being racist? i personally don’t think anything should be off limits for satire, i have an interest in the history of comedy and especially jewish comedians and one of the leading ways jews in comedy in the 1940s-50s coped with the shoah was by parodying the nazis - but in the case of satirizing current events or prevalent concepts, it’s hard to parody something when you’re not in it, or when you don’t get it. because there could very very easily be a misstep that paints YOU as the asshole.

anyway. but i know a lot of people just value the boys interacting and if thts what ur here for, more power to u and im glad the ep fed you well in that regard. 

considering the lack of well-written satire and social commentary, the other thing i’d be interested in would be cartman, who definitely... was going through something in this ep. but the cupid me arc was also sloppy as fuck. i was so confused by the end. for a while i was theorizing and trying to understand what it all means for cartman’s character and his mental health, but at this point (a couple hours of brainstorming and a few rewatches later) i can’t even settle on a conclusion to draw. so idek.

legit like a 3/10 ep. here’s hoping next week’s ep is better

if anyone has thoughts, either on the topic of satire or on cartman and what’s going on with him, please feel free to send me an ask or a DM, or to reblog or reply. i’d love to hear what you think.

[fellowstrangetownappreciator]

Curious and autistic-coded

Hello there! April draws to an end and with that I think it’s high time to hurry up and write this. What does April have to do with anything, you ask? April is the Autism Acceptance Month. So what better month to do this?

Unfortunately I didn’t make it. I failed. It’s already 1. 5. when I’m posting this. But at least I tried to deliver on time.

In this mini essay I’ll present my case about why I think the Curious brothers from TS2 Strangetown display autistic-coded traits and my personal takes on it.

It’s basically your average headcanon post but with a funny top hat!

0: Preface: What do I mean by “autistic-coded”?

When a character is coded as something, it means that they have traits that are associated with the demographics in question to make the consumer knowingly or not link the character with the demographic, although the character's "label” is never explicitly disclosed.

In the nutshell, it means that there are canonical reasons to read the characters as autistic, although you won't find the word "autism" anywhere in the game nor in the developer's commentary.

In this particular case I do believe that the developer may not even be aware of the code, as there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. If there is, I’m not aware of it and I would be happy to learn.

So, let’s start!

1: “The white male who is very good at science”

Unfortunately autistic representation in pop-culture has a long history of being rather straightforward in which traits the characters often have. This stems from the belief that autism is “a boy’s disorder” (that’s why some autism charities to this day use blue in their symbols). Among popular examples of autistic-coded characters are Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper and Death Note’s L and Near. I’m sure you can think of more but you’ll find that most of them are men and either explicitly white or racially ambiguous white-passing. They also tend to be gifted in tech, logic or other science-y activities.

There’s nothing wrong with that! Nothing wrong with being an autistic with those “stereotypical” characteristics and there is nothing wrong with people being represented. What is wrong is the monotony and afab people/people of color being underrepresented which leads (among other factors) to harder access to diagnosis and resources for those people in real life. But! That’s a topic for a different day. (and not for a simbrl, mind you)

Back to the Curiouses! I just wanted to say that autism in media is traditionally associated with characters whose gender presentation, race and interests align with theirs. Those characteristic thus make a very convenient template for autistic-coding.

2: Inconsistent performance, huge gaps between strengths and weaknesses

Pascal, Vidcund and Lazlo are very skilled Sims by default, extraordinarily even for their age. Pascal has a skill maxed while his younger brothers both near maxing theirs.

But as you can see in Pascal’s default skill panel, apart from Creativity, all his other skills are extremely low, 0 points for Mechanical, Body and Charisma, 1 point for Cooking and Logic and his second best skill, Cleaning, has only 3 points. The same situation can be observed in Vidcund’s and Lazlo’s, except their strong suits are Logic and Cooking respectively.

Huge discrepancies within performance in different cognitive areas is a common trait found in those on the autism spectrum. We’re often talking extremes here and the scale of the difference is the defining factor. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, it’s just in neurodivergent people those tend to be unusually noticeable.

I think that skills, simplified as they are, are the closest The Sims has to possibly simulate that because they track the character’s performance and expertise in different areas and allow comparison. In real life, of course, this comparison is not nearly as possible and exact, nor desired, but for all our analysis-loving enthusiasm, here we’re still talking fictional characters.

3: Struggle with social cues

It is widely known that one of autistic traits are difficulties with processing social situations, picking social cues and successfully replicating socially desired behavioral patterns.

But these three are Sims, are they not? They cannot possibly display this trait, since they’re programmed the same way as others.

Yes and no.

It is true that there is no specific in-game feature that would allow Sims to behave with explicit neurodivergency in mind* but with the right combination of traits they can simulate behavior that really hits close to home for neurodivergent players.

*at least not in TS2, TS3 has traits that simulate some possible neurodivergencies but their names tend to be rather... ableist unfortunate and they’re not relevant to this post since they’re not autism related, and even if they were, we’re focusing on TS2 exclusively

Let’s take look at Lazlo here. He is, indeed, a playful soul. He likes to goof around, tell jokes, make others laugh. And since he’s very close to his brother Vidcund, close enough even to Tell Dirty Joke (an interaction that needs quite a high relationship to unlock), he autonomously does just that.

And oh boy, does Vidcund disapprove.

From my personal experience playing them, their relationship usually takes quite a hit from every cheeky joke Lazlo throws Vid’s way. They usually autonomously repair it very quick but it happens often.

But that’s a standard behavior. Vidcund’s very serious, he doesn’t take well to jokes.

No. I mean technically yes, Vid is definitely a grumpy old plant dad but, at least in my game, he tends to accept Lazlo’s jokes. All kinds of them, actually, except for the dirty ones. And Pascal, who technically has even lower Playful points (0 in comparison to Vidcund’s 4), doesn’t seem to mind Lazlo’s poor attempts at grown-up humor.

But! What is it that makes Lazlo try still? What drives him to attempt to make Vidcund laugh with a dirty joke over and over again? (and fail?)

I my interpretation, Lazlo doesn’t do that on purpose, he is just really poor at evaluating “dirtiness” of a given joke and frequently misinterprets Vidcund’s cues. The animation of a dirty joke being rejected even supports that as Vid doesn’t signal his discomfort with any exaggerated easy-to-read facial expression until Lazlo gets to his punchline.

No only that but as I mentioned, the invisible lines between spicy and too vulgar are often hard to thread. I can recall many times I thought I was saying a witty quip on an “adult” topic and was met with awkward silence or someone shushing me because “that’s not how you speak in public”. I can well imagine myself in Lazlo’s shoes.

A situation of social cues being misinterpreted or ignored can be observed also in Vidcund. Programming-wise, those are just his low Niceness and extreme Shyness showing but combined they again paint a picture of a very neurodivergent-looking behavioral pattern.

He often behaves like the concept of politeness or social rules doesn’t exist because the combination of the aforementioned traits makes him come off very blunt (lecturing and shoving telescope-peepers with no warning whatsoever) and distant (having a high chance of rejecting simple small-talk socials).

(That’s Jasmine Rai casting the “Summon Vidcund” spell.)

Yes, I am fully aware that it makes a stronger case for him being an a**hole than autistic but... there’s no reason he can’t be both. Not all autistic people are sweet cinnamon buns, all personalities you can think of can be neurodiverse and, for some their neurodiversity can even amplify their inconsiderate ways, as I believe it is the case with our dear grouch Vidcund.

4. Their bios

“No matter what happens, Pascal believes there is a logical explanation for everything. In his free time, he practices home psychoanalysis and collects conspiracy theories.”

(that’s how I imagine practicing psychoanalysis looks like, sorry Freud)

“Serious and exact, Vidcund strives to fit the universe into a nice tidy package. He has an unnatural fondness for African violets.”

(let’s collectively pretend those are African violets)

“Not as studious as his older brothers, Lazlo got his degree in Phrenology. He likes to call phone psychics and spends hours trying to bend forks with his mind.”

*error: screenshot of Lazlo bending forks not found*

(but here he is hanging out with Erin Beaker, the closest thing to “calling phone psychics” you can actually do in-game)

Both Pascal’s and Vidcund’s bios point to a pattern-focused worldview with a strong emphasis on rationality as the center-point that anchors the way they understand the world around them and build their principles on. This “pattern-ization” of thinking is a common autistic trait, with rationality being a popular theme because emotions tend to be difficult to access and asses for many of us.

Lazlo’s biography is an outlier. But it still has something significant in common with those of his brothers: All three of their bios allude to a potential special interest of sorts.

Special interests as an autism-related term are very specific, in-depth and long-term hobbies or areas of expertise that make an autistic person happy and they tend to go to seemingly exhausting lengths, often at the cost of other areas of knowledge and most likely the person’s ability to talk about anything else for a long enough time. (a loving hyperbole, no disrespect meant) Mine are my characters and cats. An even more intense but a short(er)-term passion is called a hyperfixation.

Them potentially having a special interest is yet another possible autistic-coded feature.

5. Wait. Why does it matter?

Right. What does it matter if a Sim (A SIM) (or two or three) is autistic? What do I hope to achieve, pushing my autistic Curiouses agenda down your throats?

I got to write a long rant-piece about some of my favorite TS characters and I feel like I can finally die satisfied.

Apart from that and me sharing my happiness of finding some good pixels I can relate to, it is a matter of representation.

Remember by the very beginning I wrote how most of the representation our community gets in media tends to be just a one specific type of character?

And how the Curious brothers seem to fit the stereotype to a point?

There is something I omitted, something I saved for the last on purpose.

The role. The role in their story, the role in the society the piece of media portrays.

We often see neurodiverse, autistic or autistic-coded character as children, students, villains, lone savants, victims in distress, comedic relief sidekicks, either very vulnerable and needing protection, or detached and having their role defined only by their academic prowess or their special interest/profession.

What we rarely get to see them as, are... parents.

That’s what many of us autistics are or plan to be someday in the future. The dogma around autism has started to dwindle relatively recently and there are little to no examples of autistic adults being the care-givers for once in the media around us.

The Curious brothers are just that. They are chaotic, they are eccentric, they can be a little too much... but they are dutiful and loving fathers/uncles to their little aliens they raise.

They make it work. Even if they face difficulties, even if they don’t exactly fit the standard.

“Sometimes, a family truly can be three brothers raising alien babies, and it’s beautiful.”

It encourages us to define family by love rather than traditional structures and it shows us that portrait of a functional neurodiverse family we need to see.

And goodness, is it a powerful sight.

[otnesse]

Commentary on Peace Walker’s lionization of Che Guevara

Well, guys, as I promised earlier, I’m going to do coverage on a particularly infamous aspect of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, and quite frankly if you ask me, one of its worst elements. Sorry for the delay, didn’t realize that Peace Walker was actually released on April 29 in Japan and not the 30th. I’m basically going to cover the game’s lionization of Che Guevara in the various briefing files, and in particular Big Boss and Kazuhira Miller’s lionizing of that monster. For a bit of background, Peace Walker was the second canon PSP entry into the Metal Gear series, after Portable Ops (yes, Portable Ops is in fact canon, and if you ask me was a superior game to Peace Walker in terms of story and characterizations at least, but I digress…). The game has some controversial elements, namely it being very overtly anti-American even by its usual standards, not to mention pushing left-wing values to a far greater degree. One of these values is in the blatant promotion of Che Guevara in the briefing files (in the main story itself, ie, strictly going by the actual missions you undergo, the Che love was at least limited to the Sandinistas and to Vladimir Zadornov, with it being left ambiguous as to whether Snake and Miller actually were fond of him, and while you could argue that the Sandinistas’ sympathetic portrayal could point toward a promotion, Zadornov’s promotion was definitely meant to be a negative since he was planning on having Big Boss reenact Che’s well deserved execution after successfully changing Peace Walker’s target to Cuba in a disinformation op. The Briefing Files, however, aside from obviously Amanda and Chico, members of the Sandinistas, they also had Big Boss and Miller singing praises for that jerk.).

My commentary is on how Big Boss and Miller’s promotion of the guy was a complete and total betrayal of their characters, and also a betrayal of the explicit themes of the game, and also how it’s just one sign of Kojima just being a hack writer, not to mention was extremely poorly done even if we were to assume Kojima intended for Big Boss and Miller to be seen as the villains.

Out of character

For the first part, I’ll cover how the gushing for Che Guevara was completely out of character for Big Boss, and especially for Kazuhira Miller, aka, Master Miller from MG2 and MGS, not just going by past entries, but even when taking into account Peace Walker itself and any supplementary materials. I’ll give separate sections for the two of them, since it’s going to be lengthy.

Big Boss

For Big Boss, I’ll acknowledge that he was meant to be the main villain in the MSX2 games, or at least the main antagonist. However, his singing praises for Che Guevara even knowing that tidbit still didn’t make any sense at all, for a variety of reasons. First off, the games, namely Metal Gear Solid 2, strongly implied that Big Boss adhered to a more, for lack of a better term, right wing outlook. For starters, the New York Mirror review for Nastasha Romanenko’s book gave brief coverage on the official reports of what went down on Shadow Moses. In particular, as you can see with the screencaps down below, they specifically called the Sons of Big Boss a “radical right-wing group”, and the group itself for all intents and purposes, was modeled after Big Boss (even Liquid, despite hating his father, nevertheless was influenced by his ideology).

And then we get into the character Solidus, who unlike Liquid, or even Solid Snake, practically idolized his “father” (I put it in quotes since Solidus is a clone of Big Boss, as are Liquid and Solid), to the extent that he was practically ecstatic that Raiden shot out his eye and made him look even MORE like his dad. Aside from that, as you can see below with these screencaps, he was also depicted as a proto-Tea Party type, heck, a proto-MAGA type even, basically wanting America to return to the way the Founding Fathers envisioned it. There’s definitely no way Solidus would have been the type to sing praises for a scumbag like Che Guevara, knowing that, and considering his idolization of Big Boss, it’s also unlikely Big Boss would have sang praises for that creep either.

There’s also the fact that in MGS3, he wasn’t fond of Communism at all, and had already interacted with a guy similar to Che in many respects (well, other than maybe in terms of sexuality), Colonel Yevgeny Borisovitch Volgin, as both were renowned sadists, and even directly attempted to cause nuclear war. In fact, even before the torture, Big Boss, more accurately Naked Snake at that time, learned a bit about Volgin’s past, in particular his involvement in Katyn, and presumably Bykivnia and Kurapaty as well due to EVA’s references to similar massacres occurring in Western Belarus and the Ukraine, as you can see below:

His reaction in that conversation with EVA, in particular Volgin’s personal role in executing those guys, had him downright horrified. Bear in mind that Che Guevara actually DID do several of those things himself, shot innocent and unarmed people, and if anything, unlike Volgin who at least allowed Snake to have weapons on hand to fight him, Che outright dithers when confronted with people using guns, even if they’re his own allies based on his interaction with Jorges Sotus, and to a lesser extent Jesus Carreras. It says a lot when even someone like Volgin, a psychopathic mutant, had more honor than Che Guevara. Plus, in Peace Walker, Big Boss when recalling the Cuban Missile Crisis implied that he blamed that event for his ultimately having to kill The Boss (with Miller even noting it was uncharacteristic of him to get into hypotheticals), as you can see in these screencaps below.

The reason that ties in to Che Guevara is because, believe it or not, Che is the reason why the CMC nearly caused the Cold War to become hot. He and Castro even attempted to launch nukes at the United States, and it actually spooked Khrushchev enough that he had to muzzle Che and agree to end the standoff with the United States via the Turkey Deal (or retrieving Sokolov). Knowing that bit, it’s extremely unlikely Big Boss would have been particularly fond of the guy who essentially set the ground for Operation Snake Eater and his having to kill The Boss. And that’s not even getting into how he tried to stop a nuke being launched not just once in the game, but TWICE, and the second time was a perfect opportunity for him to emulate Che Guevara and succeed where Che failed. When Paz hijacked ZEKE, she revealed that she intended to nuke the Eastern Seaboard and pin the blame on MSF under Cipher’s orders, and yet Big Boss fought her in an attempt to stop her. That definitely wouldn’t have been something Che Guevara would have done, and if anything, he bragged to the London Daily Worker that he WOULD have launched the nukes at America preemptively had they been allowed to remain.

Heck, in Portable Ops and even Peace Walker, or at least the backstory for those games, Big Boss specifically served western interests after Operation Snake Eater. In the former, Big Boss was revealed to have participated in the Mozambique War of Independence, and a comment made by Null, aka, Gray Fox, aka, Frank Jaegar, after being bested the second time around, implied that Big Boss had fought alongside the Portugese during that time (Jaegar at that time was siding with FRELIMO), as you can see from the following screencaps:

And in the tape detailing how he and Miller met (not to mention the extended version included in the Peace and Harmony Blues drama tape that was later included in the Japanese version of Ground Zeroes, specifically chapters 1 and 2), it was mentioned that Kazuhira Miller at the time was a mercenary operating with an implied communist rebel group in Colombia, while Big Boss was clearly siding with the Western-backed government.

I think the events proper for Peace Walker was the first time Big Boss explicitly sided with Communists (not counting Portable Ops, since it’s implied the Russian soldiers renounced their Communism after being abandoned by the Soviet government), and even there, he did it more out of his own personal motives of getting closure regarding The Boss’s true motives after learning she may have somehow survived Snake Eater than out of any liking of Mena/Zadornov’s objectives.

Besides, Big Boss is former CIA, and grunt or not, he'd still need to have at least some degree of knowledge about Che, namely stuff like how Che tried to commit to the Cuban Missile Crisis and make it a hot war, among other things like his instituting gulags in Cuba. And let's not forget, when Gene in Portable Ops tried to pull a similar stunt, Big Boss was genuinely horrified by what he was planning to do.

Kazuhira Miller

Now we get to Kazuhira Miller, aka, Master McDonnell Benedict Miller. Unlike Big Boss, Miller was consistently up to that point depicted as a good guy (probably the closest he got to engaging in villainy was in MGS1 regarding manipulating Snake into arming REX, and even there, he was dead three days before the events of the game, and that had been Liquid who did so). He was also shown to be a huge Che fanboy, and if anything he was depicted as being an even bigger fanboy than Big Boss himself in that game. And Peace Walker also retconned his origins by revealing he was in fact born in Japan with bi-racial ancestry (Japanese and American Caucasian), as he originally was third-generation Japanese American. He was made clear to have more love for America than his own home country of Japan, and only recognized the meaning of peace when talking to his hospitalized mom. He also was mentioned to have been influenced to get into the mercenary business by Yukio Mishima’s suicide, though he does imply that he wasn’t on the same political spectrum as him. Him singing praises for Che Guevara doesn’t work well at all, especially considering that he repeatedly stressed that they not allow another Cuban Missile Crisis to happen, and going by his comments in these screencaps below (in the same briefing file as Big Boss’s uncharacteristically going into hypotheticals, and if anything happened immediately before then), he was fully aware about how Japan itself was almost nuked again thanks to that event (with the only difference being that the Soviets were more likely to nuke them), as you can see with the following screencaps.

Having him sing praises for Che Guevara, whom as I pointed out earlier actually attempted to launch nukes and jumpstart World War III, comes across as ESPECIALLY distasteful knowing that bit, since it comes across as him basically cheering for the guy who tried to wipe out his fellow Japanese, to say little about the Americans, whom back then, he idolized. It would be the same thing as a Holocaust survivor singing praises for Adolf Hitler after narrowly surviving being killed by him. It also doesn’t match up at all with his characterization in MG2 or even MGS1 (and believe me, Liquid posing as Miller or not, his statements to Snake would have been what Miller himself would have said since Snake didn’t seem suspicious at all about him.), the latter regarding the bit about Meryl after she was captured. Even his not being fond of Japan doesn’t cut it, especially when, ignoring that he put that to the side after his mom was hospitalized, the character Sokolov ALSO wasn’t fond of the Soviet Union at all, risked crossing the iron curtain alongside his family to get away from it, and would have been free as a bird had the CMC not happened, and almost got away again until The Boss interfered. Even THERE, however, he still retained at least some degree of love for Russia itself, as when Gene decided to try to nuke Russia (or at least, that’s what Gene led everyone to believe at the time), he secretly went against Gene and adopted the alias of Ghost to aid Big Boss specifically to prevent a nuke from being launched there, being THAT against harming Russia despite hating the Soviet policies. I would have expected Miller to not be fond of Che Guevara at all for that reason.

Overall

The whole thing also didn’t work since if they were meant to be seen as heroes, it ticks off a whole lot of players who are fully aware of some of the crap Che Guevara caused and know his true nature, and regarding painting them as a villain, the problem is that the story DOESN’T depict them as villains for that. Heck, they don’t even STATE any bad things Che did other than maybe dying, and if anything, the way everyone was talking, you’d think he’d walk on water. If Kojima wanted to depict Big Boss and Miller as villains by having him sing praises for Che, the very least he could have done was make sure to specifically reference Che Guevara’s role in nearly causing the Cold War to go Hot by the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and his being upset at the nukes being removed.

Apparently, if Kojima’s secretary is of any indication, the reason the Che love was in the game was because Kojima himself tried to force in his socio-political views into the game in blatant disregard for the narrative and characterizations therein, as you can see below with links (screencaps will have to be in an addendum post since, unfortunately, I've hit my limit regarding screencap postings):

https://twitter.com/Kaizerkunkun/status/900937994143649792

https://twitter.com/Kaizerkunkun/status/1179860611297153038

https://twitter.com/Kaizerkunkun/status/1190763430497542144

Themes

The Che praise doesn’t work too well with the themes either, since he was not a peaceful man, even called himself the opposite of Christ, and tried to start a nuclear war. It definitely goes against the stated themes of the game, which was peace, not to mention the anti-nuke themes of the overall franchise. Heck, if anything, specifically referencing Che’s attempt at nuking the US and causing Nuclear War, and by extension outright condemning him for it would have worked much better with the themes of anti-nukes, especially considering that they made sure to reference Vasily Arkhipov’s actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis at one point, not to mention referenced both Katyn and the fact that the Turkey silos were already rendered obsolete even before the Turkey Deal made removing them required due to the advent of nuclear subs in Snake Eater earlier. And without the references to that, or any other bad stuff, you’re literally left thinking that he must be a good guy. I’d know because I fell for that myself, especially after getting the game (I didn’t follow the briefing files, but I did follow the cutscenes on YouTube back when it was still in Japan, and I also was baffled as to how people were talking about Big Boss and Miller were Che fanboys since the cutscenes never even pointed in either direction, and if anything, Big Boss nearly being killed by Zadornov would probably point to him NOT liking Che afterwards due to nearly being forced into Che’s fate).

The only thing it did was just have Kojima force in his political and social views, and I’ll be blunt, that kind of crap is something I have distaste in, I hate having propaganda pushed onto me. Ironically, Kojima or at least the Benson books for MGS1 and MGS2, instilled that view onto me. So my anger at Kojima doing that, after learning what Che was truly like in one of the Politically Incorrect Books (either Vietnam War or the 1960s one), is very much personal as well as political and social.

Aftermath

Well, as I said, I did buy into the narrative around the time Peace Walker was released, but then I learned I was being tricked by Kojima after reading the PIG books. I’d argue that event definitely was a watershed event for me. Not only did it have me lose any respect I might have had for Kojima, it also influenced my outlook on life, left me becoming distrustful the second I started picking up how they’re trying to push an agenda instead of, say, actually teaching the material in college. It also may have influenced my later views on Star Wars and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (specifically, George Luca’s open admission to basing the Ewoks/Rebels on the Vietcong, and especially modeling the Galactic Empire after American soldiers; and Linda Woolverton admitting that she was trying to push a radical feminist agenda in Beauty and the Beast, the same one she tried to push in that awful Maleficent movie. Though I also was becoming disturbed with Belle for reasons other than that bit due to researching the French Revolution, though I will acknowledge Big Boss and Kazuhira Miller’s fanboying of Che Guevara, and in particular their reference to Sartre and his infamously singing praises for Che as “the most complete human being of the century”, certainly worsened my views on Belle, thinking that she may turn out like Sartre and throw her lot with the Jacobins and other groups.). It also left me distrusting of whatever Metal Gear had to say, may have also led to my not liking Chris Redfield after Resident Evil 5, or heck, some of the more anti-American commentary in 5 and other games, and also Dead Rising. It also influenced my decision to become a Dead or Alive fan (especially when before, I wasn’t particularly fond of the game due to the fanservice stuff), and in particular a Tina and Bass fan. May have also influenced my later distaste of Greg Berlanti’s writing of Arrowverse shows, in particular Supergirl starting with Season 2 (though that also had Heroes Redemption as a factor, which predated Peace Walker, thanks to how it changed Claire Bennet).

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

so i am back on the grima train and i was reading through your posts (absolutely quality, for which i can only thank you !! 💓) and you mentioned in one about his use of magic that you have a Lot of Feelings about grima in relation to gender and plz i need to hear them!! (if you want to share? 👀)

LOTR: Grima & Gender 

Oh man, so Grima and gender. My favourite topic. Other than Grima and magic - but they’re linked! So, that’s a bonus for us.

I want to thank you so much for asking this question. I have wanted to rant about this for Forever.

This became incredibly long, but the long and short of it is that Grima undermines social expectations of masculinity in Rohan through his disdain for martial achievements, his occupying a more private/passive role within the king’s household rather than the expected “masculine” public/active, his use of spells and potions being an “unmanly” and “cowardly” approach to problem solving, and his reliance on language and soft-power approaches to politics.

All of this works to position Grima within a more feminine role and character - at least within the context of Rohan’s hypermasculine performativity of manliness.

[It does allow us to read Grima as trans with greater ease in terms of fitting into the canon than the usual favourites, other than Eowyn. So, you know, do with that what you will. Eowyn and Grima both want to be queen. Let them be in charge! I’m going to get my ass bit for this.]

-

Grima’s gender performance needs to be quickly situated within the broader context of masculinity in Middle-Earth. Gondor’s ideal of masculinity is the gentler masculinity that everyone focuses on when they talk about men in middle earth being good models of what masculinity can look like. It’s a nurturing masculinity, it’s gentle, it’s healing-focused. Aragorn and others try and take the first off-ramp from violence or conflict whenever they can. There is no enjoyment in warfare or soldiering. It’s done because it’s necessary. Dick-swinging is limited to non-existent etc.

Rohan is different.

Faramir touches on this when he speaks to Frodo of how Boromir was more like the men of Rohan and how he thought that wasn’t a good thing as it meant he was seeking glory for glory’s sake, relishing war and soldiering as an occupation rather than an unfortunate necessity.

Of course, Faramir was also making (some very dubious) racial commentary, but race and gender are often bound up together (e.g. hyper-masculinization of black men and the feminization of East Asian men in the North America).

As R.W. Connell says, “masculinities are congurations of practice that are constructed, unfold, and change through time” — and, additionally, masculinity must be defined in opposition to femininity but, also, other masculinities.

For Rohan, there is a strong, militarized hyper-masculinity that threads through their culture. One of the reasons Theoden was seen as a failing king was his physical decline and inability to continue being a physically strong king. His aging emasculated him, more so when compared to Theodred and Eomer. (Something Theoden believed of himself and Grima capitalized on.)

For this, I’m going to speak of masculinity of the upper classes, since that’s what we see for Rohan. Masculinity, and how it’s to be performed, is contingent on social variables such as, but not limited to: age, appearance and size, bodily facility, care, economic class, ethnicity, fatherhood, relations to biological reproduction, leisure, martial and kinship status, occupation, sexuality etc. and as we never see lower class Rohirrim men it’s impossible to say what the “acceptable” and “expected” forms for a farmer or cooper would be.

Upper class men of Rohan are expected to be militarily capable - ready to ride and fight when called by their king or marshal. They are to be men of action over word, and when language is in play, it’s to be forthright and plain. No riddling. Marriage/Husband-ing is an expected part of manhood. Being strong minded, and capable of taking charge and making decisions is important. Fatherhood is also clearly prized, especially fatherhood that results in son(s).

(Theoden only having one child could be read as another “failure” in living up to Rohirrim ideals when compared to the older kings of his family who were far more prolific.)

The appearance of an “ideal” man is tall, fair, and handsome. Physically strong and capable in all ways (martially, sexually, fertile etc.).

Men should be able to demonstrate that they are capable of being in charge, taking control, defending and protecting families and homes. This slots in with more generalized expectations around bravery, honour and glory.

[Eomer: And that, in summation, is how you are to Be A Man.

Grima: Well that sounds utterly exhausting.]

-

So, with all of that in mind, let’s talk Grima.

First, let’s address the name and character construction as this is the least bound up in how he acts and its tension with Rohirrim ideals of Being a Man. It’s also interesting in that it can give a glimpse into Tolkien and the possible thoughts he had when constructing Grima.

Grima’s Name & Beowulf Stuff

Grima’s name is from old Icelandic Grimr, which is a name Odin takes during the Grimnismal saga.

Here are some lines from Odin in the saga:

I have called myself Grim,

I have called myself Wanderer,

Warrior and Helmet-Wearer,

[...]

Evildoer, Spellcaster,

Masked and Shadowed-Face,

Fool and Wise Man,

[...]

Rope-Rider and Hanged-God.

I have never been known

by just one name

since I first walked among men.

Not only is Grima’s name from Odin, more importantly, it’s the feminine version of that name. No man in the eddas or sagas goes by Grima. Only women. And most often they were seidr-workers or healers/magic practitioners of some kind.

"Other healers include Gríma from Fóstbræðra saga and Laxdæla saga and Heiðr from Biarmiland in Harald’s saga Hárfagra." 

- “Hostile Magic in the Icelandic Sagas,” Hilda Ellis-Davidson

And

"There was a man called Kotkel, who had only recently arrived in Iceland. His wife was called Grima. Their sons were Hallbjorn Sleekstone-Eye and Stigandi. These people had come from the Hebrides. They were all extremely skilled in witchcraft and were great sorcerers." 

- Laxdæla saga

This is most likely something Tolkien was aware of — I would be flabbergasted if he wasn’t. However, did he fully appreciate the implications in terms of gender and subversion of masculinity? Impossible to say, of course, but he certainly knew he was giving his male character a name that has only been used by women in historical texts.

It would be akin to naming your male character Henrietta instead of Henry. It’s a deliberate, explicit decision. And while I don’t think Tolkien expected most readers to track down the origin of Grima’s name, the --a ending, to most anglophone readers, signifies a feminine name, more often than not. At least, it rarely, if ever, signifies masculine.

So the name alone brings in, at a subconscious level to readers, feminine qualities.

Alongside this, Grima is loosely based on Unferth from Beowulf. The entrance of Gandalf et al into Meduseld directly mirrors Beowulf’s into Hrothgar’s hall (complete with Grima lounging at Theoden’s feet the same as Unferth at Hrothgar’s). Indeed, it was clearly Tolkien’s intention to make a call back to Beowulf with that scene. (He was being all “look how clever I am. Also these are Anglo-Saxons on horses. As a general fyi”).

Unferth is a fascinating character in his own right ,and there is much scholarly debate around his role within Hrothgar’s hall, as well as the text more broadly. While there isn’t enough time/space to get into Unferth, I will quickly note that he is another character who subverts his society’s ideas of manhood and masculinity — particularly with regards to expectations of heroism and bravery. Yet, at the same time, Unferth is noted for being very intelligent, cunning, good at riddling, and overall quick witted (also, a kin-slayer. Dude murdered his brothers for Reasons).

Unferth’s contrary behaviour that flies in the face of Anglo-Saxon norms and ideals of masculine bravery is clearly reflected in Grima. Particularly in Grima’s fear of battle and lack of interest in taking up his sword when called by his king.

This leaves us with a character who was given a woman’s name and who is loosely based on another character who is known for his inability to follow through on his society’s expectations for masculine behaviour. 

Grima, from the first moment we meet him, clearly reads more feminine than masculine - this is amplified when he’s contrasted with the likes of Theoden and Eomer. And, not only is his aligned with traditional femininity more than other male characters, he is specifically aligned with the more negative tropes of femininity (i.e. lack of bravery, unreliable, dubious morals etc.).

-

That is a brief overview of the bones of Grima’s construction: name and inspiration. Now for actions and characterization within the text. This will be subdivided into comments on his use of magic and how that interfaces with Rohirrim masculinity then we’ll get into power and language.

Grima’s key point of power is his ability to weave words in so powerful a way he could convince Theoden of his own infirmity and weakness thereby securing control over the king. Alongside this, we know that he was using certain “potions and poison” to further weaken Theoden. Most likely to amp up the king’s physical weakness so it coincided with Grima’s mental magic games.

Magic for Anglo-Saxon and early medieval Scandinavians was heavily rooted in the power of the spoken word. Runes were probably used but the historical support of this is vague. Which is to say, we know they were used, we’re just not certain how and to what extent.

We do know that rune staves were a thing. They were most often used to send your landwights after opponents or wreck havoc on enemies from afar. To make one, a magic-worker would carve the prescribed runes onto a large stave and position it in the ground facing the direction of their enemy. On top of the stave was added the head of a horse. (Lots of horse sacrifice happened for early medieval Scandinavians, alongside some human sacrifice.)

But, the brunt of magic for Anglo-Saxons and early medieval Scandinavians was spoken word. Which makes sense as their society was, like Rohan’s, predominantly illiterate or, at least, para-literate (though, there has been some recent archeological evidence that is starting to call that into question, for what that’s worth).

In particular, Grima’s spellwork aligns most closely with seidr, a fact I’ve gone about ad nausea. And, again, something we can assume Tolkien was aware of, which means he was also aware of the gendered implications of a man practicing the craft.

The mainstay of seidrcraft is, but not limited to, the following:

making illusions,

causing madness and/or forgetfulness,

brewing of potions and poisons,

prophesying,

channeling the dead,

channeling gods,

removal of elf-shot, and

recovering lost portions of someone’s soul.

The first three bullets are things Grima does to Theoden. That kind of magic — the kind that fucks with your mind and your sense of self, the kind that is subtle and quiet and lurks beneath the surface so you don’t know it’s happening, that’s cunning — that kind of magic is what women do.

It was considered unmanly/effeminate for a man to partake in it as it undermined the hypermasculine militarized culture of the time. Winning a battle or a fight through spells and poison was cowardly.

Therefore, in Rohan where we have this hypermasculine culture that so prizes military glory and grandeur and martial might, Grima pursuing his goals through spellcraft and potions/poisons is Grima pursuing distinctly unmasculine, effeminate modes of action.

Indeed, within Rohan it could call into question the entirety of his masculinity. It would make him ragr (adj. unmanly) because his actions are the epitome of ergi (noun. unmanliness).

"In the Viking Age, homosexual men were treated with extreme disdain and a complex kind of moral horror, especially those who allowed themselves to be penetrated. Such a man was ragr, not only homosexual by inclination and action, but also inhabiting a state of being that extended to ethical and social qualities. This complex of concepts has been extensively studied, and in the words of its leading scholar, "the unmanly man is everything that a man should not be with regard to morals and character. He is effeminate and he is a coward, and consequently devoid of honour". [...] What we would call sexual orientation was, in the viking age, completely bound up with much wider and deeper codes of behaviour and dignity, extending way beyond physical and emotional preference." -Neil Price, Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

Though Price references specifically homosexuality in this passage, a man could be considered ragr for more than just that — and one of the other ways was through practicing seidr.

We see this with Odin, who learns how to do seidrcraft from Freyja, and is then mocked by Loki for how emasculating the practice is for Odin to undertake (as if Loki has any room to talk). Odin’s made himself effeminate, he’s made himself unmanly, he’s allowed himself to learn spells that could enable him to take a cowards way out of a situation, to be dishonourable etc.

Which is a neat tie-back to Grima’s name being one of Odin’s names, particularly when he is in disguise and using seidrcraft and wily ways to escape various unfortunate situations that he ends up in during the Grimnismal saga.

(As Odin says: I have been called Evildoer, Spellcaster, Masked and Shadowed-Face, Fool and Wise Man.)

It also mirrors him to Gandalf - another character who bears an Odinnic name. Gandalf very much represents the masculine, “acceptable” aspects of Odin. Grima embodies the darker, more dubious, and more effeminate, aspects of the god. As I’ve said in other posts, they are two sides of the Odin coin.

Though both are temperamental as fuck.

-

Alongside the spellcraft and potions, Grima’s performance of power does not align with Rohirrim traditions and ideals. He relies on his wits and his skill with language to navigate the world. Succinctly captured in the epithet bestowed upon him: Wormtongue. This is the modernization of Wyrmtunga, or, Dragon’s Tongue.

Wyrm can translate to worm, sure, and we see Saruman doing this on purpose when he refers to Grima as a worm, a creature that crawls in the dirt. But Wyrm, of course, is actually a form of dragon. And in Middle Earth, wyrm is used interchangeably with dragon (Smaug is called both wyrm and dragon), rather than denoting a specific species/categorization of dragon as it does in our world.

Grima’s approach to power is that of a gentle touch. He speaks softly, but doesn’t carry a large stick. He’s not Eomer or Theodred, who are much more traditionally martial, aggressive and forthright in their responses to a situation. Grima is clearly all about influencing those around him either through persuasion/use of words, or through spellcraft. He manipulates, he uses linguistic trickery.

-

Additionally, how he undertakes his role as advisor to the king places him more within the private world of Meduseld and the king’s household than the active, public world of marshals and thanes. And, of course, the private world of households was traditionally considered the woman’s domain while men were expected to occupy the public spaces of the world.

Of course, being involved in court politics is a public role as opposed to existing within a wholly private space (such as Eowyn. Who, in the books, takes a mostly private role until she is required to rule in her uncle’s stead while he and Eomer are off at war, and even then it is clearly considered a temporary situation and part of her duty as a woman). But the manner in which Grima occupies that public position is a more “feminine” one.

We can assume that if Eomer or Erkenbrand or Elfhelm occupied the role as advisor to Theoden, they would have a very different approach to the position. A much more aggressive, active and probably military-focused approach. Less carrot, more stick.

A quick note on his appearance in the film, aside from being entirely in black with black hair in a land full of blonds because he needed to be visually distinct as the Bad Guy. He is dressed in longer tunics and robes compared to Eomer and other Rohirrim men (aside from Theoden, but as soon as he is “healed” of his possession(?) he returns to the Proper Masculine shorter tunics than the Weak and Effeminate longer robes and tunics of before). Grima’s hair is longer than Eomer’s and Theoden’s, he wears only a dagger and not a sword, the furs and quilting of his clothes indicate wealth and status, of course, but also decadence and effeminacy.

-

All in all, Grima’s performance and actions undermine and subvert Rohirrim expectations of masculinity. If not outright transgressing gender norms. He uses spellcraft to achieve his ends which is cowardly and effeminate. When it’s not that, he relies on language and manipulation to ensure his position and rarely, if ever, willingly takes on an active, martial role that would be expected of a man who is in the king’s household and serves as an advisor and a quasi-second-in-command.

Here is a man, occupying a man’s role, but doing it like a woman. Subversive! Scandalous! Underappreciated by fandom!

Grima lives in a liminal, marginalized space that is at once gendered and ungendered but is absolutely Othered.

-

As for my note on Grima and being trans - absolutely a trans woman. Grima suffers from that thing of “I want to be you and sleep with you” re: Eowyn. That’s my hot take. (Similar to me and Alan Grant from Jurassic Park - I want to be him and sleep with him.)

But no, in all seriousness, a strong argument can absolutely be made for Grima being not-cis, however that might look for Grima. Grima and Eowyn are the two, within the trilogies, that have the strongest arguments to be made for not being cis.

(Grima is a bit of a foil for Eowyn, I think, while also being a foil for Gandalf.)

[katribou]

Maybe its not supposed to be a racism allegory. It still works for the story and worldbuilding. Just like Beastars, where attempts to compare it to real life won't work since the problems the characters face are really specific to their own society and their own nature, so the story wouldn't make sense if you replaced them with humans. But if the allegory really was the author's intent, then you're right and it was poorly done.

alright. i want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but there is a bit of ignorance to what you say. so i’ll be as thorough as possible about my thoughts.

authorial intent is really powerless when it comes to what a piece of media says or does. if a piece of media harms, but the author did not mean it to harm, does that make the harm any more less? 

content creators and content consumers alike are likely familiar (and if not, should be) with the notion of ‘death of the author.’ from tvtropes’ summary of the concept:

Death of the Author is a concept from mid-20th Century literary criticism; it holds that an author's intentions and biographical facts (the author's politics, religion, etc) should hold no special weight in determining an interpretation of their writing. This is usually understood as meaning that a writer's views about their own work are no more or less valid than the interpretations of any given reader. Intentions are one thing. What was actually accomplished might be something very different. The logic behind the concept is fairly simple: Books are meant to be read, not written, so the ways readers interpret them are as important and "real" as the author's intention. [...]

Bottom line: A) when discussing a fictional work with others, don't expect "Author intended this to be X; therefore, it is X" to be the end of or your entire argument; it's universally expected that interpretations of fiction must at least be backed up with evidence from within the work itself and B) don't try to get out of analyzing a work by treating "ask the author what X means" as the only or even best way to find out what X means — you must search for an answer yourself, young seeker. Writing is the author's job; analyzing the work and drawing conclusions based on it is your job — if the author just gave away the answers every time, where would the fun be in that?

>interpretations of fiction must at least be backed up with evidence from within the work itself. okay, fine. so i argue brand new animal is a racism allegory. let’s look within the show to find evidence of this.

from episode 9: “But Nazuna wants to give a glimmer of hope and dreams to the beastmen who’ve been persecuted and suffered for so long.”

'the beastmen who have been persecuted.’ what exactly does that mean? persecution as defined in mac’s dictionary function (which cites new oxfords english dictionary): hostility and ill-treatment, especially because of race or political or religious beliefs. 

the beastmen are not oppressed because of who they believe in, so not of religious beliefs or political beliefs, with the exception of believing they deserve rights, which plays into... that they are persecuted for race.

i dont really think i need to back up that statement, but for the sake of a sound argument, this is from episode 1.

it’s clear that this human dude has a distaste for michiru here because of what she is, a beastman, which is essentially what she is, her race. hence racial persecution, or, racism.

in your own words, “attempts to compare it to real life won't work since the problems the characters face are really specific to their own society and their own nature, so the story wouldn't make sense if you replaced them with humans.”

is the above exchange really so displaced from real life? this kind of thing really does happen; being targeted and even beat up simply for existing as you are is not something that is so specific to only the world of bna. 

sure you may argue that replacing humans into the whole story would not make sense and well sure, yes. it is indeed a work of fiction so it won’t be a perfect replication of the human experience. but there is enough situations like the above to argue it mirrors racial prejudice in real life.

the evidence is there, so with the philosophy of “death of the author,” it is arguable this piece of media exists as a racial allegory, whether or not trigger wrote it to be that way. if they somehow did not have real race/minority relations in mind when writing this, which i would find very hard to believe, than it has still become bigger than them. because people who face racism will relate to scenarios such as beastmen being the target of hate crimes like the above, and nothing the authors meant to do really changes that feeling.

when such a scenario as above is set up in the very first episode to give you a picture of what this persecuted group experiences, while simultaneously likening itself to what minorities in real life experience, the treatment in following episodes of said group will reflect back as commentary on real life groups whether or not the authors intended that.

in bna’s case it’s rather damaging with implying this minority group is prone to rage and destruction because of their nature or dna:

episode 9: “Beastmen are easily influenced by their emotions. When their frustration builds up, the slightest thing sends them into a fury, causing confusion.”

episode 10: “The stress from multiple species invading your habitat accumulates subconsciously. In that situation if there is a powerful mental shock, the enrage switch in beast [dna] is set off, and their fight instincts take over.”

this is where you may argue in your own words “the story wouldn't make sense if you replaced them with humans.” which, yes that is true, but again this is fiction. the dynamic they establish in that first episode with beastmen being persecuted by humans is one founded in real race relations so the show at large becomes a vehicle to which it addresses race relations.

ep 10: “They’re [the drug vaccine that cures beastmen of being animals] made to subdue beastmen who have turned savage.”

goodness this almost becomes about eugenics! which is another movement founded on racism and other -isms!

the word “savage” generally refers to wild, violent unconfined animals, which, fine, i suppose, after all these ARE animal people in the show. but the show has established this animal people group as a targeted victim minority. historically in real life, the word “savage” has been a label used to describe many persecuted groups, like indigenous peoples or african americans, in a way to dehumanize them by comparing them to animals and force the idea that they are uncivilized while making the people in power feel more justified about their rough treatment of the targeted group.

i suppose arguably they are using the word “savage” to describe animals as the word originally was intended, but after establishing the framework of these animals as being persecuted peoples, do you understand the implications? are they basically saying yes, targeted minorites, are savage? admittedly i will say that that idea is a big jump, but even if you stick to the world of the show, basically this establishes that everyone is at the mercy of their genes turning them bad... not a great message.

i kind of went beyond the scope of what you addressed in your message, but wanted to show an example of how i think it is very important to consider how a piece of media can very easily become bigger than its creators, and that you cannot hide behind authorial intent saying otherwise when media expresses potentially damaging ideas. 

to reiterate the line from tvtropes: Intentions are one thing. What was actually accomplished might be something very different.

[jadelotusflower]

Roundup: August 2021

This month: Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Don’t Call it a Cult, The Secret Garden, Showbiz Kids, Masters of the Universe: Revelation, Lucifer.

Reading Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) - I’ve been meaning to read the Wide Sargasso Sea for a long, long time, but first I thought I’d revisit the source material. I find my opinion hasn’t much changed - I still love the prose, still love Jane as a character, and still find Rochester extremely unappealing. The section with Jane at school is the most engaging for me, and her early time as a governess at Thornfield, but as soon as Rochester shows up I just find him so irritating I have no idea why Jane loves him so much (other than he was the first man to ever show her a scrap of attention). I mean, I know to an extent - I've read the Takes, and part of fiction is accepting what you want for the character as a reader and what they want for themselves can be two different things, and that's not the fault of the text. I can be satisfied by the ending because Jane gets what she wants, I just can’t help but wonder about a Jane who was found by John Eyre before she went to Thornfield, or who took her inheritance and made her own way after Moor House. Byronic heroes just aren't my thing I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys) - The first Mrs Rochester of Jane Eyre strikes an uneasy tone to a modern reader; she does not utter a word in the novel, is depicted as animalistic and almost demonic, her story only told in a self-serving manner by Rochester, and conveniently disposed of so Jane can return to claim him. Rhys reimagines Bertha as Antoinette, a “white Creole” of Jamaica in a postcolonial take on the racial/social prejudices and hierarchy only hinted at in Eyre, where Bertha being Creole primarily an aspect of her Otherness, and in which Rochester describes himself as being desired as a husband because he was "of good race" . In Sea, although Antoinette is white (passing, perhaps), he sees her "not English or European either" and this contributes to his rejection of her (and perhaps his willingness to believe she is mad). The novel is surprisingly short - it skips over the meeting and courtship of Antoinette and Rochester (tellingly unnamed in the novel) entirely, jumping directly from her childhood/coming of age to the couple already married, and over much of Bertha's (renamed by Rochester) sad life in the attic. Still, there's a density to the writing, much is implied beyond the sparse use of words and recurring imagery - subjugation, reflection, and of course, fire - when freed slaves (Rhys changes the timeframe to after the passing of the Emancipation Act of 1833) set fire to Antoinette's family plantation, a pet parrot whose wings have been clipped by her English step-father Mason, cannot flee and falls to a fiery doom, in a grim omen of Bertha's fate. It did, however, leave me wanting more - I understand Rhys' stylistic choices and restraint, but in her effort to give voice to the voiceless, Antoinette/Bertha remains somewhat an enigma. Don’t Call it a Cult: Keith Raniere and the women of NXIVM (Sarah Berman) - I continue to be disturbed but intrigued by the NXIVM case, not only because of my abhorrence of MLMs/pyramid schemes, but my bafflement as to how this thoroughly unremarkable man was able to hold sway over so many women. My mild criticism of the two documentaries on this subject was that they tended to jump around in time so you never really got a good idea of what happened when. This book provides a well researched, detailed summary of events and linear chronology of Raniere’s perverse pathology reaching all the way back to childhood, and so is both an excellent supplement to the already informed, and broad overview to those new to the case. Berman is a Vancouver-based journalist who was present at Raniere’s trial and gives insight into witness testimony, supported by her own interviews and extensive research. There's less of a focus on the sensationalised celebrity members, with greater emphasis on the lesser known victims - including the three Mexican sisters who were all abused by Raniere, one of whom was kept confined to a room for years. It's difficult reading, consolation being the

knowledge that Raniere is rotting in prison and that his crimes finally caught up with him. Watching The Secret Garden (dir. Marc Munden) - Spoilers, if one needs a spoiler warning for a 110 year old novel. One of those stories that is adapted every generation, and generally I have no problem with this, since new adaptations can often bring something new or be a different take on old material (see Little Women 2019). But a part of me can’t help feel why bother with this when the perfect 1993 version exists. There is an Attempt at something new with this film, moving the setting forward to 1947 (Mary’s parents having died during the Partition), and turning the garden from a small walled secret to a mystical, huge wonderland full of ferns and flowers and endless sun. But in doing so, the central metaphor is lost - rather than Mary discovering something abandoned and run wild, gently bringing it back to life with love and care, she merely discovers a magical place that requires no effort on her part. There’s also less of a character arc for Mary, remaining unpleasant far into the proceedings, forcing Colin to visit the garden instead of it being his true wish, and generally succeeding by imposing her will on everyone else. In many ways she’s more like Burnett's other child heroine Sarah Crewe - the film opens I’m with her telling stories to her doll including Ramayana, which is eerily reminiscent of Alfonso Cuaron's (also perfect) 1995 adaptation of A Little Princess. But I suppose a sliver of credit where it's due - Julie Walters' Mrs Medlock is less of an antagonist, with Colin Firth's Lord Craven being Mary's primary obstacle. There's also a subplot with Mary's mother's depression following the death of her sister being the reason for her neglect (and Merlin alum Rupert Young shows up briefly as Mary's father) but like shifting the time period, there just doesn't seem to be a point to it. The climax of the film involves the Manor burning down (writer Jack Thorne stealing from Rebecca too, lol), with Mary and Craven have a very calm conversation as fire and smoke surrounds them. It’s all very bizarre, but also…rather dull? Don't bother with this, just watch the 1993 film again. Showbiz Kids (dir. Alex Winter) - a really interesting documentary on the titular subject - Winter was himself a child actor on Broadway before his film career kicked off in The Lost Boys and Bill and Ted, and has been able to assemble a broad range of interview subjects - Mara Wilson, Evan Rachel Wood, Wil Wheaton, Jada Pinkett Smith among others - former child actors, those still in the business, and some up and comers like Disney star Cameron Boyce (who I was sad to see in the coda has passed away). We also follow two young hopefuls - Marc, attending acting classes and auditioning in pilot season, yet to book a job but his parents are invested in "his" dream, and Demi, already established on Broadway but having to start to make choices between a career and a childhood. There's no voiceover, no expert opinions in this, letting the actors speak for themselves, but there is a telling juxtaposition of Marc returning home, jobless but having fun in the pool with his friends, while Demi has to cancel the summer camp she had been so looking forward to because she has booked a new role. The film is fairly even handed, but ultimately I took away that there just seems to be more harm than not in this industry, and abuses of many kinds. It does make you wonder about the ethics of child acting, at least in the current system where the cautionary tales are plentiful. Masters of the Universe: Revelation (episodes 1-5) - Mild spoilers I guess? I was never really into He-Man as a kid, other than the Secret of the Sword movie, so most of the in jokes and references in this went over my head. I have to admit, it was actually seeing all the outrage that made me want to check this out and see what all the complaining was about. I actually…really enjoyed it?!? I’m sympathetic to the complaints of a bait and switch (creators really need to learn to say

“just wait and see”), but other than that in my view the rest seemed completely unfounded. Adam/He-Man being killed in the first episode and the impact that has on Eternia and those left behind is actually a really interesting premise. This isn’t a TLJ situation; in contrast everyone (except Evil-Lyn) is always going on about how much they miss Adam, and the whole point of the first arc is him coming back. There’s also a nice little detail of Adam in Preternia (heroes heaven) choosing to remain as he is rather than as He-Man where all his predecessors have chosen their “ultimate” forms. I love him and his Magical Girl transformation. As for Teela - female characters can’t win, it seems. If they are perfect, they’re Mary Sues, if they have flaws, they’re unlikeable. Teela is Going Through things and is on a journey, but I often feel (and it seems the case here) that people confuse a character arc with author intent. No! Just because a character says/does something it doesn't mean you're supposed to agree with them! Some of Teela's actions may be petty and her demeanor less than sweet, but people make bad choices as a response to grief, and I actually thought her anger over Adam never telling her his secret and how that manifested was a pretty interesting take. I'll be interested to see the next half of the season, and ignore the ragebait youtube commentary. One more thing - Evil-Lyn (perfectly voiced by Lena Headey) was an absolute delight. Lucifer (season 5 part 2): They’ve basically given up on the procedural side of things by now and are leaning heavily into the mythology, which works for me since the case of the week is always the least interesting part of any show. It also struck me this season that there’s gender parity in the main cast (Lucifer, Amenadiel, Dan and then Chloe, Maze, Ella, Linda) - and actually, that’s more women than men. How often does that happen?!? I can’t say I’m particularly engaged with the Lucifer/Chloe pairing, but am happy to go along with it since that’s where the whole plot revolves. The best scenes for me this season were with God’s Dysfunctional Family, even if the lead up to the finale felt rushed (I understand the need to wrap things up in case of cancellation but still). I would have liked to see more of the sibling dynamics between the angels and less romantic drama, but hey. The character death got me, as well. I didn't see it coming and I didn't realise how much I had enjoyed that character until they were gone and well...it got me. I see the last season is coming soon, I'm not exactly sure where they can go from here, but looking forward to it nonetheless. Writing I was actually quite sick this month with a throat infection, so wasn't in the best frame of mind to get anything finished like I had planned to. I'm going to hold off posting the word count this month and roll it over to September when hopefully I've actually posted things.

[augustheart]

Unchained is an Important Episode

A few days ago we watched Unchained (or Unchained Melody), and it turns out I have a lot of things to say about it. I’m going to assume everyone who reads this has a passing knowledge of the bare bones plot of Quantum Leap, but to refresh your memory if you haven’t seen the episode in awhile or if you haven’t seen it for whatever reason, the basic plot is that Sam leaps into the body of someone working in a chain gang and has to save another inmate there, Boone, who is falsely convicted and serving a grossly inflated sentence due to racial profiling. The premise is ostensibly based off the 1958 film “The Defiant Ones,” though it only practically translates so far as it is also a movie about two prisoners from a chain gang (one Black, one white) who are shackled together, even if Boone and Chance (the man who Sam has leapt into for the duration of the episode) aren’t directly chained to each other for large pieces of the story. 

A disclaimer before I start talking about it: I am not at all an expert on prisons, jails, and the United States carceral system—especially not the justice system of the 1950s, when the episode is set. However, I’m the child of someone who works in the criminal justice system, specifically in immigration law and with people who have been wrongfully convicted, so the issue is close to my heart and is the reason why I was looking forward to watching this episode for the first time.

The first thing I want to say about this episode is that it’s good. Even when the episodes we watch aren’t good, I still generally have fun and enjoy myself. But Unchained is good. Really, really good, thanks in large part to how much Basil Wallace destroys his role as Boone. I don’t think I’ve seen him in anything else, but after watching him perform for only forty-something-odd minutes, I’m comfortable saying he’s a powerhouse of an actor. Boone is the heart of this episode in a way that not every person Sam is there to help is. The entire episode, you root for him to be released. And he is, but not in the way I was expecting.

A lot of times when media is set within the prison system, strides are taken to reassure the audience that there are good people working in it, and all you need to do is find one sheriff who isn’t corrupt or one warden who doesn’t want to watch you burn to line their pockets. While Unchained starts to go that route, with a warden on the work site appearing somewhat sympathetic and listening when Sam accuses the actual perpetrator of the crime of framing Boone, this ultimately leads nowhere. Every person there is making money off of these people being incarcerated. That’s why Chance is serving literally years longer than his nine month sentence for petty crimes, and part of the reason why Boone is serving fifteen years for a crime he never committed. The justice system has no incentive to release its prisoners, innocent or not. Even if there was, magically, a good-hearted warden or prison guard or anyone who will care enough to help free someone like Boone, who is an innocent victim of racial profiling, they still won’t be effective, because the system is designed to keep people cycling throughout it in order to break them down and make them more likely to reoffend, something that was as true in the 50s (and the 90s, when the episode was released) as it is today. And while the system may keep its hold on white people like Chance (and by extension, Sam), it is far more designed to lock up and destroy Black people like Boone, another thing that has been constant about prisons since their foundation was laid. 

So how do Boone and Chance get away? Through escape.

There is no way for them to be released through legal means. Boone’s life may have been saved within the very first segment of the episode, when Sam stops him from being executed for escaping (because that is what an extrajudicial killing like that is), but the prison system has already started to destroy him, even if he hasn’t given up hope on being able to make it out. Nobody cares and is going to help them at a higher level and unfortunately nobody will help them legally from the outside. The only way to break free is to quite literally cut their chains and make a run for it. And, shockingly to me, this is presented as the correct course of action—because it is. It’s the only way they could’ve gotten away and it is better to break laws to escape than to die in prison praying that someone will notice and take pity on them, at least in this context. I won’t say that every person should immediately start trying to escape, because it’s incredibly dangerous for them to even try and can make things so, so much worse for them, but I will say that Sam helping Boone escape was absolutely the right note to end the episode on and it is exactly as hopeful as it is presented, even before Al tells Sam that Boone would go on to essentially have the life he always wanted to.

I do have some things I wish they’d done, though, the largest of which is that I wish they had spent some time humanizing the other prisoners. While at the beginning they’re helping Boone and Chance escape, which is something I really liked seeing, at the end they seem to have completely switched around on them and now are happy to watch them kill each other. While this could’ve been commentary on how the prison system encourages a crabs-in-a-barrel mentality of constant violence and infighting, it unfortunately wasn’t. I think it also would’ve been easy to put in a brief scene of Sam as Chance talking to more of the prisoners, or listening to Boone talk to them, or something like that, where we find out more about their sentencing and realize as an audience that these people are likely serving time based on false or incredibly inflated charges (especially if they aren’t white), and while some of them did legitimately commit larger crimes, they’re still being treated like they aren’t human and are simply expendable objects, which is something they don’t deserve. Sadly we don’t get a scene like this, though at least the time was devoted to showing Boone as a tragic hero who deserves what he gets in the end—a life away from a chain gang doing something he loves. 

Prison workforces have only superficially changed from then, and I mean that in the sense of all three time periods—when the episode was set, when it was released, and now. They’re still essentially just as abusive to their “workers” and are designed to destroy the people who are “employed” by them, no matter what work they force them to do. Personally, I think Unchained is an episode that absolutely holds up, even if I do have some things I would change. I recommend people watch it if they think they can handle it despite the heavy subject matter, even if they don’t have much context, because most Quantum Leap episodes are fairly self-contained and this one is no exception. It isn’t perfect, but considering the time it was made and how well it holds up, it’s still a damn good episode about an abusive facet of the United States prison system. 

[tomeandflickcorner]

Falcon and Winter Soldier Episode 1- My Thoughts

Under the cut due to potential spoilers:

Sam’s plotline:

So, despite Steve’s obvious endorsement of him as his successor, Sam is feeling unworthy to take up the mantle of the new Captain America.  So he donates the shield to the Smithsonian, where it is placed on exhibit.  But he’s still apparently doing work for the military/air force as Falcon in stopping terrorist hijackings and the like (which leads to a pretty amazing areal action sequence.)  I’m guessing the stupid Accords were put through the shredder after the events of Infinity War/Endgame?  At least I hope so, because that was a mess and a half.  Also, he’s now got a friend and ally, Joaquin, who is working to stop some other terrorist group called the Flag Smashers that apparently thought Thanos had the right idea, and that things were better during the five years where all those people were dusted.  But Joaquin’s attempt at putting a stop to this group’s attempt at a bank heist(?) ends pretty badly, as the guy who I guess orchestrated the bank heist is apparently super strong and effortlessly kicked Joaquin’s butt.  My first thought was that this guy was one of the other Winter Soldiers, as we know Bucky wasn’t the only person Hydra turned into a brainwashed pawn.  But I then read something abut how they were all essentially unceremoniously killed off.   If that’s true, I don’t remember that particular detail, but it’s been a while since I watched the movies.  So I’m hoping they eventually explain who this tough guy is.  Did the Flag Smashers manage to get their hands on their own version of the super serum, or is there another explanation?  Looking forward to seeing how this will develop, as I imagine the Flag Smashers will be the main Big Bad in this series.

Meanwhile, Sam’s got some normal civilian drama to deal with, as we meet his sister and two nephews.  (Can’t remember if it was stated, but was Sarah Sam’s younger sister?  If so, that must be awkward since Sarah might be older than Sam now. It’s heavily implied she and the two nephews remained while Sam was among those lost in the Snap.  They have a family-inherited fishing business that Sarah has been trying to keep afloat (no pun intended), and Sam was supposed to be assisting with it, but he’s been gone for the past five years (through no fault of his own).  Now, the family fishing business is having some financial issues, and they could even lose the house if they can’t make ends meet.  Sam has an idea on how to save the business and the house by starting up a boat charter business on the side.  But they have to get a loan from the bank in order to make it happen.  And even though the banker is clearly a fan of Sam (or rather his Falcon identity), he can’t give them the loan they need, because.... some explanation involving how Sam didn’t have any form of income for the past five years. Which, again, wasn’t his fault because he literally didn’t exist during those five years.  Not like that matters to the bank, though, as there were a lot of people who were wiped out of existence and then came back, so the banks have their hands full with those cases.  Here, we get some social commentary on how difficult it is for Black-owned businesses to get an advantage.  Rather bold of the MCU series to go there. I’m impressed.  There’s also even more social commentary on how military veterans can get the shaft.  Because that’s exactly what Sam is.  He served in the air force for a time.  And he still has some government contracts and whatnot.  Plus, he was one of the Avengers and literally helped save the world on more than one occasion.  But despite all that, the government doesn’t properly compensate him financially.  Meaning he gets all these people thanking him for being a hero, and even posing with him for selfies.  But that’s pretty much all the thanks he gets.  When he needs help getting back to everyday civilian stuff, he’s more or less on his own.  Again, rather bold of the MCU to address that.  

And of course, we get the final scene, where it’s revealed that the American government has decided to select a new Captain America. Of course, you get the feeling that they just selected him to be a mascot for the public to rally around rather than an actual hero (which is kinda what they were using Steve for in the beginning.) Even so, I do agree with people who see this as rather scummy. Because when Sam turned over the Shield to the Smithsonian, they told him that he was doing the right thing. And now they just take the Shield and hand it over to some random White guy? Even if you ignore the whole racial aspect, it still is practically spitting on Steve’s legacy, considering Sam was his chosen successor, not this guy. Of course, this new guy is apparently John Walker, who did appear in the comics as someone who briefly held the mantle of Captain America. But it’s too soon to tell how closely the MCU John Walker will resemble his comic book counterpart. That being said, I fully expect the series to lead up to Sam realizing he does deserve to be the next Captain America and take back the title.

Bucky’s Plotline:

Interestingly, even though Bucky and Sam share equal billing with this show, Bucky’s plotline was more of a side note in this first episode.  Not that it wasn’t important to his characterization, of course. Since the events of Endgame, he’s received a full pardon from the government for the things he’d done as Hydra’s brainwashed assassin and is now trying to adjust to living the life of an ordinary man. He’s even going to therapy!  Which is a really good thing, as goodness knows he needs it.  But I don’t much care for his therapist.  She seems like a pretty crappy therapist, to be honest. Personally, I think Bucky should find a different one, but I think it was mentioned this therapy was mandated as part of his government-issued pardon.  So maybe he doesn't get a say in who his therapist is.  Anyway, Bucky is still haunted by the things he was forced to do as the Winter Soldier.  And he’s trying to make amends for the things he did during that time. Because even though none of that was his fault, he still remembers everything and feels guilty because of it. In this episode, we see him forging a friendship with this old man.  At first, I was slightly confused on who this old man was.  I briefly wondered if this was supposed to be one of the other Howling Commandos who Steve and Bucky fought alongside in WW2.  But as the episode progresses, it’s revealed that the old man was the father of a young man Bucky killed as the Winter Soldier.  And Bucky has been trying to figure out how he can make amends to the father, who is clearly haunted by the loss of his son.  Man, that is really dark.  Not to mention messed up.  How does one make up for something like this?  Especially since the dead son wasn’t even the Hydra-appointed target.  He had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.  (And yes, the fact that the dead son and grieving father are Asian makes it slightly more uncomfortable due to the recent events down in Georgia. Though I don’t think we can blame the show creators for that. They could hardly go back and refilm everything with different actors in those roles. Not without pushing the show back who knows how long.) Anyway, I’m curious to see how Bucky continues on from here, and if he can find the peace of mind he deserves. Oh, also, he does go on this impromptu date with a woman who works at a sushi restaurant. That was rather cute, but also a bit awkward since Bucky is still a bit closed off, for understandable reasons. And this woman clearly doesn’t know who he is and how much he went through. She doesn’t even know about his metal arm. Still, props to Bucky for trying to adjust and move forward. (And I literally laughed out loud when he tried to stop the beckoning cat statue from moving). On a side note, the flashback/nightmare he experiences about the night he killed the old man’s son was both chilling and well done. Especially with the inclusion of the Winter Soldier theme that is playing throughout the scene. The fact that you also can hear it when Bucky is listening to the old man talking about his son was a really great touch. Anyway, I just really want to see Bucky get the hug he deserves.

[gascon-en-exil]

A Game of Thrones 10th Anniversary Season Ranking: Part 2

Link to Part 1

Time for the bottom half of the list. The four seasons here will surprise no one, but the order might.

#5 Season 6

You can tell what I most what to talk about here...but there's an order to these things.

S6 actually has a bunch of great ideas, but they drown beneath the most slapdash plotting and character work the show has seen yet in order to set the stage for the narrower conflicts of the last two seasons. It's notorious for bringing back characters who haven't been seen in a season or longer only to kill them off (Balon Greyjoy, Osha, Hodor, the Blackfish, Rickon, Walder Frey) or awkwardly graft them back into the main plot (Sandor Clegane, Bran). There are plot threads that ought to be compelling but are too rushed in execution, like the siege of Riverrun, Littlefinger's hand in the Battle of the Bastards, or Daenerys's time back among the Dothraki and then finally getting the hell out of Meereen. Arya hits on the only interesting part of her two-season sojourn in Braavos - a stage play, of all things - only for it to stumble at the end with a disappointing offscreen death and some incomprehensible philosophy ahead of the start of her murder tour of Westeros. There's also so much cutting off the branches, enough to be conspicuous; the final shot of Daenerys leading an armada of about half the remaining cast she assembled partially offscreen says that better than anything else. Well, not anything....

Highlight: Without exaggeration, the opening of S6E10 is easily my favorite sequence in all of GoT. The staging, the music, the mounting suspense even as it becomes increasingly obvious what's about to happen, the twisted religious references particularly in Cersei's mock confession to Unella, Tommen throwing himself out a window because he can't deal with the reality of how terrible his mother is, how Cersei gives absolutely no fucks whatsoever about murdering hundreds of people at once in a calculated act of vengeance largely prompted by her own poorly thought out actions - I love it all. It's the single most masterfully-executed act of villainy in the whole show - Daenerys torching King's Landing probably has a higher body count, but the presentation there is all muddled - and if I had any doubts about Cersei being my favorite multi-season major character they were silenced in this moment. The explosion of the Sept doesn't sit perfectly with me, because I liked the Tyrells and because of what I said about deaths like theirs and Renly's in the previous post under S2, but I think that unease only cements the strength of this sequence. It's an overused phrase in fandom these days, but GoT at its best is all about moral greyness that gives its audience room for multilayered reactions. Cersei nuking the Sept and making herself the sole power in King's Landing, which in a sense is just a more overt example of the kind of character/plot consolidation elsewhere represented by Daenerys's armada, is one of those events that's impossible to approach from a single angle if you care about any of the characters involved. And hey, it's not in the books (yet, presumably), so unlike Ned's death or the Red Wedding the GoT showrunners can take the credit for realizing this one.

Favorite death: Even leaving aside the Sept and related deaths there's a lot of good ones to choose from in S6. Ramsey is cathartic but too gory for me, Osha's was a clever callback but a little delayed, it's hard to pin down specific deaths when Daenerys incinerates the khals, and Arya only gets half credit for Walder Frey and his sons when she saves the rest of the house for the opening of S7. I'm thinking Hodor, not so much because I enjoy his character or the manner of his death but because it's a clever bit of playing with language (that must have been hell to render in other languages for dubbing) wrapped up in some entertainingly murky consent issues and some closed time loop weirdness. It's all very...extra? Is that the word for it?

Least favorite death: Offscreen deaths continue to be mostly letdowns, in this case Blackfish and the Waif. Way to botch the ending of Arya's already near-pointless Braavos arc, guys. Speaking of Arya, this spot goes to Lady Crane, whom the Waif somehow kills with a stool or something. It's a dumb way to send off an entertaining minor character.

#6 Season 8

I swear that I'm not putting S8 this high solely because of Jonmund kind of sort of happening. I've never been very interested in either of them and the sex would be far too bear-on-otter to suit my pornographic preferences, but even so the choice to close out the series with them is hilarious.

I really don't need to elaborate on why S8 is down here; everyone who's ever watched the show has done as much in the nearly two years since it wrapped up. I do however need to explain why I've ranked not one but two seasons below it. My biggest argument here is that I don't believe it's fair to critique S8 for problems it inherited from earlier seasons. A non-comprehensive list:

Mad Queen Daenerys: unevenly built up beginning from S1 and continuing in some form through every following season

The questionable racial optics of Dany's army: also seeded as early as S1 and solidified by S3 with the Slaver's Bay arc

Cersei only succeeding because she makes stupid decisions and then lucks out until she doesn't: apparent from S1, directly lampshaded by Tywin in S3, fully on display with the Faith Militant arc of S5-6

Jaime not getting a redemption arc or falling in love with Brienne: evident with his repeated returns to Cersei throughout the show as one of the most consistent elements of his character, particularly in S4 and during the siege of Riverrun in S6

Tyrion grabbing the idiot ball/becoming a flat audience surrogate mouthpiece: started in S5 around the time the showrunners ran out of book material for him and wanted to make him more of a PoV character and his arc less of a downward spiral, although I've seen arguments that changes from the books involving his Tysha story and Shae set him on this trajectory even earlier

The hardening of Sansa's character: began in earnest in S4 and never let up from there

The strange ordering of antagonists: set down by S7's equally strange plot structure - the Night King had to come first with that setup

CleganeBowl and the dumber twists: from what I've heard the whole thing of writing around fans on the internet guessing plot twists started pretty much when the book content ended, so S5-6 maybe?

Yes, there's plenty to criticize about S8 on its own merits...but just as much that was merely the writers doing what they could at that point with deeply flawed material.

Highlight: This may sound cheesy, but the better parts of S8 are almost all the cinematic ones, whether that's E2 being a bottle episode with tons of poignant character send-offs before the big battle, a handful of deaths with actual satisfying weight like Jorah's and Theon's, and an epilogue that incorporates both closure for individuals and the broader uncertainty of messy socio-political systems that GoT has always been known for before working its way back to the Starks at the very end for some tidy bookending. Even imperfect moments like the Lannister twins' death and the resolution of Sansa's character felt weighty and appropriate based on what had come before.

Favorite death: Forget about the audio commentary attempting to flatten Cersei's character; Cersei and Jaime Lannister have an excellent end. Cersei especially, as the scenes of her stumbling her way down into the catacombs as the Red Keep crashes down around her really show off how her world is abruptly falling apart and how she retreats into her own self-interest at the end in spite of her demise being at least partially of her own doing. There's some stupid moments associated with these scenes, like Jaime dueling Euron to the death and CleganeBowl, but I can excuse those when the twins end up dying exactly where you'd expect them to: in each other's arms, in a ruined monument to their family's grand ambitions that, like Casterly Rock itself, was taken from another family.

Least favorite death: Quite a few dumb ones in S8 have become forever infamous. Missandei sticks out, and for me Varys too just as much because of how the writing pushes him to do the dumbest thing he could possibly do purely for the sake of killing him off ten minutes into the penultimate episode. But no one belongs here more than Daenerys Targaryen, killed at the height of a rushed and uncertain villain reveal by a man who takes advantage of their romantic history (who is also her family, because Targaryens) to stab her in a moment of vulnerability - pretty much only because another man tells him that Daenerys is the final boss. Narratively speaking that might be the case, but even so this is the end result of multiple seasons of middling-to-bad buildup. Not even Drogon burning the symbolism can salvage that. Also Fire Emblem: Three Houses did this scene and did it better.

#7 Season 5

...Yeah, we're going to have to go there.

Sansa's rape is not a plot point that personally touches me much. It's terribly framed in the moment and the followup in later seasons is inconsistent at best, but it's not a kind of trauma I can relate to. On the other hand, in the very same episode Loras is tried and imprisoned for homosexuality, and Margery faces the same punishment for lying for her brother. That hits much closer to home, not just for the homophobia but also for the culture war undertones of the not!French Tyrells persecuted by a not!Anglo fanatic who later reveals himself to be the in-universe equivalent of a Protestant. The trial is just one part of Cersei's shortsighted scheming, just as Sansa being married off to Ramsey is part of Littlefinger's, and both of them get their comeuppance in the end...but it's unsettling all the same. I especially hate what the Faith Militant arc does to King's Landing in S5, swiftly converting it from my favorite setting in GoT to a tense theocratic nightmare that only remains interesting to me because Cersei is consistently awesome. What's more, pretty much everything about S5 that isn't viscerally uncomfortable is dragged out and dull instead: the Dorne arc, Daenerys's second season in Meereen, Arya in Braavos, Stannis and co. at Castle Black. The most any of these storylines can hope for is some kind of bombastic finale, and while several of them deliver it's not enough to make up for what comes before, or how disappointing everything here builds from S4. S4 has Oberyn, S5 has the Sand Snakes - I think that sums up the contrast well.

Highlight: S5 does get stronger near the end. As much as his character annoys me I did like the High Sparrow revealing his pseudo-Protestant bent to Cersei just before he imprisons her, and there's a cathartic rawness to Cersei's walk of atonement where you can both feel her pain and humiliation and understand that she's getting exactly what she deserves (and this is what leads into the climax of S6, so it deserves points just for that). The swiftness of Stannis's fall renders his death and that of his family a bit hollow, but it's brutal and final and fittingly ignominious for a character with such grand ambitions but so little relevance to the larger story. The fighting pits of Meereen sequence is cinematic if nothing else, and even the resolution to the Dorne arc salvages the whole thing a tiny bit by playing into the retributive cycles of vengeance idea (and Myrcella knows about the twincest and doesn't care, aww - no idea why that stuck with me, but it's cute all the same). Oh, and Hardhome...it's alright. Not great, not crap, but alright.

Favorite death: I don't know why, but Theon tossing Myranda to her death is always funny to me. Maybe because it's so unexpected?

Least favorite death: Arya's execution of Meryn Trant is meant to be another one of the season's big finale moments, but the scene is graphic and goes on forever and I can't help but be grossed out. This is different from, say, Shireen's death, which is supposed to be painful to witness.

#8 Season 7

I can't tell if S7's low ranking is as self-explanatory as S8's or not. At least one recent retrospective on GoT's ruined legacy I've come across outright asserts that S7 is judged less harshly in light of how bad S8 was. If it were not immediately obvious by where I've placed each of them, I don't share that opinion.

Because S7 is just a mess, and the drop-off in quality is so much more painful here than it is anywhere else in the series except maybe from S4 to S5 (and that's more about S4 being as good as it is). The pacing ramps up to uncomfortable levels to match the shortened seasons, the structure pivots awkwardly halfway through from Daenerys vs. Cersei to Jon/Dany caring about ice zombies, said pivot relies largely on characters (mostly Tyrion) making a series of catastrophically stupid tactical decisions, and very few of the smaller set pieces land with any real impact as the show's focus narrows to its endgame conflict. As with S6 there are still some good ideas, but they're botched in execution. The conflict between Sansa and Arya matches their characters, but the leadup to that conflict ending with Littlefinger's execution is missing some key steps. Daenerys's diverse armada pitted against Cersei weaponizing the xenophobia of the people of King's Landing could have been interesting, but there's little room to explore that when Cersei keeps winning only because Tyrion has such a firm grip on the idiot ball and when Euron gets so much screentime he barely warrants. Speaking of Tyrion's idiot ball, does anyone like the heist film-esque ice zombie retrieval plotline? Its stupidity is matched only by its utter futility, because Cersei isn't trustworthy and nobody seems to ever get that.

And how could I forget Sam's shit montage? Sums up S7 perfectly, really. To think that that is part of the only extended length of time the show ever spends in the Reach....

Highlight: A handful of character moments save this season from being irredeemable garbage. As you can guess from my screencap choice, Olenna's final scene is one of them, even if Highgarden itself is given insultingly short shrift. S7 also manages what I thought was previously impossible in that it makes me care somewhat about Ellaria Sand, courtesy of the awful death Cersei plans for her and her remaining daughter. The other Sand Snakes are killed with their own weapons, which shows off Euron's demented creativity if nothing else. I like the entertainingly twisted choice to cut the Jon/Dany sex scene with the reveal that they're related. And, uh...the Jonmund ship tease kind of makes the zombie retrieval team bearable? I'm really grasping at straws here.

Favorite death: It's more about her final dialogue with Jaime than her actual death, but again I'm going to have to highlight Olenna Tyrell here for lack of better options. She drops the bombshell about Joffrey that the audience figured out almost as soon as it happened but still, makes it plain what I've been saying about how Jaime's arc has never really been about redemption, and is just about the only person to ever call Cersei out for that whole mass murder thing. There's a reason "I want her to know it was me" became a meme format.

Least favorite death: There aren't any glaringly bad deaths in S7, just mediocre or unremarkable ones. I still think the decision to have Arya finish off House Frey in the season's opening rather than along with their father at the end of S6 was a strange one that doesn't add much of dramatic value.

[pass-the-bechdel]

The Good Place full series review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

96% (forty-eight of fifty).

What is the average percentage of female characters with names and lines for the full series?

49%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Forty-four.

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 50% female?

Twenty-eight.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

Positive Content Status:

Good - you might even say, strong - in the sense that it’s all there, pretty much all of the big representation bells are ringing, particularly the ones for women and racial diversity. That said, the show is generally content to sit pretty and not push the envelope on inclusivity, so if you’re looking for inspiration in-text instead of just in casting, you might be disappointed. At any rate, it’s a solid feel-good time, and not likely to make you mad (average rating of 3.01).

Which season had the best representation statistics overall?

The numbers stay pretty consistent across the whole series, but if I had to call a winner, it’s season four, which has the highest percentage of female characters and the only above-average positive content rating (though that was awarded somewhat cumulatively, and so doesn’t feel particularly well-earned by that season above the others). 

Which season had the worst representation statistics overall?

It’s such a close call, but season three must be the loser here by virtue of the lowest ratio of female to male characters; it also had one of the series’ two Bechdel fails. Like I said, it’s...a really close call.

Overall Series Quality:

There’s so much about it that is fresh and original and interesting, I wish I could love it more. After a magnificent debut season, the show suffers immensely for a lack of pacing and the absence of coherently-planned plot, and at times the stagnating characterisation and pointless filler caked into the cracks in the storytelling can be frustrating and/or tedious. I’m only as disappointed as I am because the potential for greatness was so strong. That said, even at it’s worst The Good Place is still entertaining, and most of it is better than that. It’s irreverent, it’s fun, it’s surprising, and sometimes it’s even as poignant as it is remarkable. I have my gripes, in droves, but that doesn’t mean this show is not worthy.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Imagine. Imagine a version of this show where the first season is basically the same, and the second season is...somewhat similar to how it is, but with more focus and direction, less time-wasting; a second season where figuring out that some fundamental change to their circumstances is necessary comes early, and instead of faffing about with ethical lessons in the fake neighbourhood again while Michael pretends he can get everyone to the Good Place, we get down to business with going on the run and into the Bad Place to find the judge and petition for help. Imagine this show, but the third season has none of that return to Earth crap, and instead, is the neighbourhood experiment from season four, properly fleshed out. And then season four is all about going to the Good Place and solving the problems there, addressing issues with the concept of utopia and the ineffectual bureaucracy of obsessive niceness (used for comedic effect in the actual show, but c’mon, there’s a whole untapped reservoir about morality there). Each season could have (gasp!) a properly-planned and plotted arc, dealing with a different school of ethical considerations, and I dunno, maybe the characterisation could have trajectory too, and the characters could vitally shape the storytelling, and maybe not get their personalities and experiences erased and rebooted over and over again, nullifying large swathes of the narrative which came before? Ideally, they could be reset zero (0) times, or at least have all their reboot experiences dumped back into them in the first few episodes of season two, so that they could proceed from there as whole people. Rebooting everyone’s personalities is not actually necessary to the plot in any way, and is, actually, incredibly detrimental to storytelling and especially, character development. Imagine this show, but just chilling out and actually telling a coherent story? 

I am all the more annoyed by how things turned out on this show because I know that the four seasons were planned for, rather than being the result of cancellation; the idea that the creators sat down and ‘plotted’ (using that term loosely) to make this mess drives me a little wild. The (attempted) avoidance of the dreaded ‘stagnation’ seems obvious, and it leads to major narrative shortcuts and jumps and instances where the show spends an episode or two on what should have been a half-season’s development, minimum, and yet at other times all momentum grinds to a halt for a bizarre bottle-type episode where the characters just talk about a concept for a while or work on some unimportant romantic subplot. The various ethical concepts that the show heavily incorporated as its bread and butter in the first season start to stick out like sore thumbs in season two, seemingly wedged into one episode or another for no real reason other than just to be there, and the fact that the show lets go of the idea of moral choices in the life mattering at all in the end leaves the backbone of the show in a very strange shape. I said in the season four review that I didn’t expect the show to come up with some One True Answer about how people should live their lives, but that I was baffled by the fact that the show side-stepped that altogether; what I expected them to conclude was something in the line of ‘we recognise that life is complicated, not all situations are created equal, and it can be hard to know how to proceed ethically or even to access ethical options within one’s circumstances. Still, it is important to do your best, not only for yourself but for your community, because the more good you put into the world, the more there will be to go around and come back to you. What matters most is that you are doing your best with what you’ve got’. The fact that the show distracted itself with fixing how the afterlife rewards people within the afterlife means that it suggests no incentive to perform moral actions in life, and frankly...who gives a fuck? The real world is the place we’re all living in, and there’s no point starting a conversation about morality in real life if the conclusion is just ‘guess we’ll straighten out all the fascists and bigots and the other pieces of shit after they die, so don’t worry, everyone gets to Heaven eventually!’

Anyway, if that seems like just a reiteration of what I said in the season four review, well. I’m still baffled by it. The other thing I was going to talk about in the season four review but held for the full series instead was that one big thing that I have railed about all the time since season one, and that’s PACING. For all ye wannabe-writers out there, please understand how important pacing is. Even vital plot or character beats can seem like meaningless filler in a poorly-paced story, because your audience’s mind is hardwired to try and follow narrative cues that are being incomprehensibly muddled. Standard structure can be played with, but if you toss it out in favour of ‘stuff just happens, ok? Except when it doesn’t’, you just end up with a soup of disconnected story ideas, and nothing threading it together. Character interactions and especially developments can help to create the through-line you need to keep the story functioning despite itself, but as variously noted with The Good Place...initial characterisation? Strong, excellent. Development? Not so much, not least because they kept getting deleted and rebooted. Also, time skips kept happening, and that’s a great way to fuck over your narrative coherence even more: remove the recognisable constant we call time! It’ll be fine! As with all things, it is perfectly possible to play around with this stuff, but you have to know what you’re doing and be doing it for a good reason, and that’s not what they had going on here. This was narrative soup, and when you have a soup, the pieces all kinda meld together and lose any individual purpose, meaning, or power they may have had. The result in this case was not bad, but it really could have been so much better, and literally all it needed for that was some attention being paid to the story structure via pacing.

So. The good news is, I think I have pretty well exhausted all of my complaints by now, and that leaves us with the good stuff, of which there was no paltry amount. The show was not a hit by accident (even if I do feel that it’s success had a lot to do with people sticking around after the spectacular first season, and not because it stayed strong throughout), and even if there was a lot of soup going on, what comprised that soup was all really fun and unique, and this made for a wonderful piece of light-hearted television that could be as hilarious as it was insightful. It still had a lot of great takes on things, the commentary was strong (even if it pulled all its punches towards the end), and whether the storytelling was ebbing or flowing, it was always delightful. The show also managed to pull a miraculous finale out of its hat, and that’s a rare thing in television; however the story wobbled over the course, the ending provided enough satisfaction to forgive just about any sins, especially if you don’t happen to have been watching with a deliberately critical eye. Do I wish that Eleanor got to hook up with a chick on-screen some time instead of just making a lot of bi remarks? Yes. Do I consider the show to have queerbaited instead of providing genuine rep? No. Is the underselling of the queer content my most significant representation complaint? Yes, it is, and that's good news considering the world we live in and the dearth of quality representation that the industry has brought us to expect. 

There's an important distinction to be made there, regarding the tokenistic representation that is very common these days in tv trying for brownie points and good publicity, exactly that kind of 'political' inclusivity that conservatives are always bitching about. It should not be surprising that I support that tokenism over the alternative of having no representation at all, but it can still be quite disheartening to feel like your identity or the identities that you value are being referenced as nothing more than an opportunity for some shitty producer to perform wokeness for attention, praise, and the almighty dollar. I bring this up because - even though The Good Place never really worked up much of a boost to its content rating - one thing I felt that it did really, really right was providing representation without it feeling tokenistic at all. Eleanor's bisexuality wasn't as prominent as I might have preferred, and as noted through the course of the show, there were times I feared it was more bait than real rep, but reflecting on it at the end, the way it was included feels organic, it never gets in the way in order to ensure the audience notices and is dutifully impressed. The number of women around and the multicoloured casting plays out even better; I never once felt cynical about the gender balance I was seeing, and I've said it before but I'll say it again: the fact that the show was packed with names from across the world gives me so much life. I'm still a little salty about Chidi's Senegalese origins getting the shaft (and we won't talk about 'Australia'), but the nonchalant diversity of naming goes such a long way to embracing the idea that this is a world for everyone (and an afterlife for everyone, too). And where anything else might fall apart or lose its way, that is an affirming thing. If you want feel-good tv, it’s here. This is the Good Place.

[pip-n-flinx]

Long-Post-No-One-Asked-For

Because I am Tired of seeing Mass Effect Andromeda hate. We’re gonna do an analysis of why its a beautiful successor to the Mass Effect Trilogy under the cut.

Oh also spoilers. Just.... In case that wasn’t clear....

Mass Effect Andromeda definitely has a more ME1 classic RPG vibe to it, so most comparisons will be drawn from ME1 to MEA. However... MEA has the best combat system and character customization of any Mass Effect game. This isn’t entirely fair to the trilogy since its a newer game. But the addition of the jump jets, evades, and the vertical integration of the maps? Stunning. The ability to not only research rare items from the shop, build them yourself and install modifications at creation? Masterstroke. You’re telling me I can start incorporating alien tech into Initiative tech? AND VICE VERSA? Brilliant. You’re character customization can impact other characters in your family/you can customize your twin? I love it!!!! Phenomenal addition to the story telling bits the trilogy was working with.

On to Ryder, and their relative youth n such. They’re a relatively young whippersnapper with family ties to the Alliance. All these are available as options to Shepard. Wishing you could have your colonist background instead? F!Ryder has experience working on digs and can be played to be estranged from her family, in a brilliant parallel to Liara from ME1. Want to be a hardass/bootlicker mission comes first type MC? Take either Ryder twin’s time in the Alliance Military and make them nostalgic about it. Make them angry Alec ruined their career. And here, we have a beautiful Ashley Williams parallel. Want a more tragic backstory yet? Just wait til you finish Habitat-7. If two dead(sort of!) parents and a comatose twin doesn’t strike your fancy, I’m not sure how much more Bioware could have done! Also, unlike ME1 they didn’t break the show-don’t-tell rule of story telling. Shepard’s backstory is buried in the codex, while Ryder’s is out in the open. Shepard themselves is startlingly young to take commando of the SR1 at only 29 years old, replacing Space-Dad Anderson who would’ve been about 46 y/o during the events of ME1. Much like Ryder, Shepard is thrown into a position of leadership that they’re only nominally qualified for (because what could possibly prepare you for the beacon and the Reapers?!) And now both Shepard and Ryder have something of incredibly value stuck inside their head. SAM and the beacon are the initial plot drivers for MEA and ME1 respectively.

You’re first mission, while the game is still teaching you the mechanics, you lose a squadmate, as well as several side characters casualties to a bewildering and alien threat. Bioware didn’t pull any punches with those opening scenes, but I would argue Andromeda does a better job of setting up the Pathfinder team so that it hurts when you lose Kirkland. Certainly I was more attached to the Pathfinder team than I was to the 212 (Sorry Ash! Wish y’all had gotten more screen time!) But it really does a good job setting Ryder to struggle with their command. We know Sole Survivor was traumatic enough to require a pysch write up for Shepard, and certainly losing two members of the Pathfinder team (one of which is your Dad) and with Hayes and Fischer as casualties while also having the worst possible first contact will set you off kilter mentally.

Now let’s get big picture, thematic if you will. Where the Trilogy has set up AI or technology (Reapers) as the climactic extinction-event-messianic-death-cult-supervillain, Andromeda has set up the perfection/genetics-obsessed Kett as your new extinction-event-messianic-death-cult-supervillain. Which is both timely given the resurgence of racist xenophobic rhetoric all round the world (yea political commentary!) but also a classic story telling reversal. Flip the script on the original trilogy, don’t just rehash the same old shit!

Both the Trilogy and Andromeda do a reasonably good job of muddying the moral-tale. Only some of the Geth wish to worship the Reapers and extinguish organic life. The Quarians certainly didn’t give the Geth a fair chance before trying to destroy their creations. Similarly, while the Initiative relies on the SAM’s and the Pathfinder team more broadly, the Fire Fighters are more than willing to destroy their own tool, even when survival is uncertain, based solely on Knight’s experience with Project Overlord. Racial tensions abound in all the Mass Effect games, but Andromeda frequently goes out of the way to expose them as out of date. While the Trilogy does occasionaly subvert racial stereotypes Andromeda has a laundry list of characters who do so. Vetra Nyx, Nakmor Kesh, Sarissa Theris, Nilken Rensus, just off the top of my head. Kallo Jath is a Salarian haunted by the past, and Peebee is finally a good look at a less stoic Asari Maiden. Cora Harper is a great example of a xenophilic human, a stark contrast to the Ashley from ME1 (thank god that girl got some character development. her banter on the citadel doesn’t win her many fans...)

I’ll also never understand why people complained about the update to the Paragon/Renegade system. Bioware has long fallen into the trap of the false dichotomy, especially in their sci-fi games. With the Star Wars games, it can be forgiven because George Lucas and Disney have positioned the Lightside and Darkside as comical caricatures of a black and white morality. Space Opera. We get it. But finally getting and update to that model? I know Americans are brainwashed into binary choice by our two-party system, but surely gamers from parliamentary governments should be able to see that four directions is better than two? Only complaint is they have little in-game impact. And you know what, you got me there. At least ME1 provides in-game rewards for character behavior.

So when some butt-hurt fan says they still don’t like Mass Effect Andromeda, what they’re really saying is they hate how it defied their expectations. I know it exceeded mine. Bioware set out to make a spiritual successor to the Trilogy and I’ll be damned if Andromeda isn’t my favorite Mass Effect game yet. I really hope we get a second game in Andromeda. All of this is not to say I support crunch in the game development sector or that a AAA game released by one of the largest game developers should have visual glitches upon release. If you charge AAA prices, it shouldn’t need a patch for the VFX. I do think people who make that criticism overlook how wonky some of the old graphics in ME1-2 were, but I totally agree we should hold EA at least to higher standards on game release. The whole game industry dropping the ball (I’m looking at you Bethesda) doesn’t excuse it.

[clairebeauchampfan]

Simple Racism? Maybe it’s more complex than that

Looking at the abuse Caitriona Balfe receives on a daily basis from supposedly ‘feminist’ women (′sisters’!? don’t make me larf ) because she has apparently married the ‘wrong’ man, a man who doesn’t fit in with the kind of man they wank over: outrageously handsome, six-pack, boyish charm, outward personality, lots of PDA, financially successful......someone like Sam (aaaaaah.....),  it  puts me in mind of the great Meghan/Kate debate.

 I know a lot of people, particularly Americans  and Persons-of-Colour, had an understandable knee-jerk reaction to the way Meghan, an American citizen AND a woman-of-colour, has been treated by the British Press and some of the public. However the way in which she was (unfairly) compared to Kate has more to it than simple racism. Here’s an interesting article from The Atlantic Magazine, 16th January 2020 that explores the issues: 

Meghan, Kate, and the Architecture of Misogyny

Policing correct female behavior keeps all women in their place.

HELEN LEWIS

Are you Team Kate or Team Meghan? If you’re anything like me, you don’t want to pick a side—and you don’t think there should be “sides” at all. Yet ever since Meghan Markle married Prince Harry, parts of the media have pitted the former actor against her sister-in-law.

Where Kate Middleton was once depicted as a dull social climber, she is now presented as the epitome of female virtue: a respectable, silent, discreet, and selfless mother. Meghan must therefore be her opposite—a political, manipulative, “woke” careerist.

Essentially, the two duchesses have been assigned to opposite sides of the culture war. All kinds of seemingly unrelated items have become symbols of one side or the other—quinoa, avocados, the English flag, attitudes toward the death penalty—and now Kate and Meghan have been conscripted too.

Kate is held up as an icon for traditionalists, metaphorically baking cookies (as Hillary Clinton once said stay-at-home mothers do), while Meghan has become the emblem of modern womanhood, outspoken and socially progressive. Never mind that they might just be following their own personalities and interests; they have become representatives of two distinct political positions. By carving up the messiness of female lives into a stark binary, the choices open to all women—not just Meghan and Kate—are limited.Women’s lives provide a particularly vivid arena for the clash between traditionalism and modernity because we love to interpret women’s choices as commentary on other women’s choices. The Meghan-versus-Kate clash has echoes of the “Mommy Wars,” the feminist shorthand for how every decision made by a mother is interpreted as a rebuke to other mothers who choose differently—breast- versus bottle-feeding, C-section versus “natural birth,” stay-at-home mother versus “supermom.” (It is notable that Prince William and Prince Harry, despite their own different temperaments and approaches, are not being turned into cultural avatars in the same way.)

There is a long tradition of regulating female behavior by defining women in opposition to one another. It is a familiar pattern in the coverage of American first ladies too: Think Laura Bush versus Clinton or Melania Trump versus Michelle Obama. While researching my history of feminism, Difficult Women, I was struck by a pattern in which “good girls” are promised an escape from misogyny, as long as they are docile and conformist—a pattern that has race- and class-based overtones. When Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney staged the first suffragette protest, in Manchester in 1905, a newspaper article about the ensuing court case condemned their behavior—they shouted and spat at policemen—saying it resembled that of women “from the slums.” The report added: “It was regrettable that such a charge should be brought against persons who ought, at least, to be able to control themselves.” The aristocrat Lady Constance Bulwer-Lytton, another suffragette, wrote in her memoir that upper-class women were inculcated with “a maiming subserviency … so conditional to their very existence that it becomes an aim in itself, an ideal.”

Kate has now been anointed as the standard-bearer of that ideal. Tabloid headlines about her have become noticeably kinder since Prince Harry’s relationship with Meghan was announced. She was once deemed vulgar and hopelessly bourgeois, a schemer who chose to study at the University of St Andrews in Scotland precisely to ensnare Prince William. She and her younger sibling Pippa were the “wisteria sisters”—“highly decorative, terribly fragrant and with a ferocious ability to climb.”

How times change. Kate is now the woman against whom Meghan is judged and found wanting. “Of all the pictures published in this tumultuous week for the Royal Family, one stood out for me,” the Daily Mail’s Amanda Platell wrote on January 10. “It was of a smiling mother-of-three in jeans and a jumper … No tears or tantrums here, just a woman happy with her lot and who understands how to behave as a royal.” (Platell, like many other columnists in British right-wing newspapers, is a recent convert to Katemania, having previously condemned her “wardrobe malfunctions,” long hair, approach to parenting, and flight-attendant mother.)

This new valorization of Kate is racially inflected, because Britain’s most durable template of respectable womanhood—the “English rose”—is much less accessible to anyone foreign or dark-skinned. The language used to indicate Meghan’s blackness has been noted by some writers, even as it fails to register with many white Britons: She is “exotic,” “urban,” “straight outta Compton.” The author Afua Hirsch told NPR that mixed-race people see in the coverage of Meghan “very colonial narratives about how we should be so grateful that we were allowed in.” But this “English rose” framing is not an unalloyed benefit for those anointed as the “right” kind of women, either. If minority and working-class women are attacked for being unruly and ungrateful—for not knowing their place—their wealthier white sisters are, in the feminist theorist Catharine MacKinnon’s description, dismissed as “effete, pampered, privileged, protected, flighty, and self-indulgent.”

The pro-Meghan side has also embraced the culture war. She has been presented as a symbol of change—the first person of color in the royal family, an avowed feminist, a divorcée, and a woman with a successful career of her own. But as Nesrine Malik, the author of We Need New Stories, has argued, the radicalism of an actor marrying an aristocrat has often been overstated as a marker of progress. “When black and brown voices heralded the Meghan-Harry wedding as some sort of watershed moment on race it was, to use a problematic word, problematic,” she wrote. Inevitably, there are those who argue that any criticism of Meghan must be driven by racism. Although some of it undoubtedly is, Britain also has a long tradition of deeming royal women unsuitable— yet pointing this out is taken as denialism and white obliviousness.

As a result, much current commentary reads less like scrutiny of the specific situation at hand and more like artillery barrages in a proxy war. The real subject is anxiety over female emancipation and women’s roles in public life. In this framing, any praise for one duchess must be a negative commentary on the other. To be pro-Meghan is to be anti-Kate, and vice versa. Everyone is invited to pick a side, as if choosing a sports team. It is part of a broader trend where political discussions morph into something closer to battles between fandoms.

The trouble with a culture war—the reason there’s never a cease-fire—is that everyone gets what they want from it. One side prides itself on “defending traditional values,” speaking the plain truth about snowflake-Millennial duchesses and sticking up for the Queen (What did she do to deserve this?). The other sees itself as championing diversity and progressive values, standing up to racism and calling out the excesses of the media. Television and radio programs get inflammatory debates; participants burnish their in-group membership; big political arguments are thrashed out on-screen alongside pictures of attractive celebrities in lovely clothes.

But all women lose when women’s lives are boiled down to these simple binaries: selfless mother against ruthless careerist. Meghan is a mother too. Kate has political interests, such as mental health and early-childhood education. Both have nannies and live in homes worth millions. Not everything they do is “sending a signal” or “making a statement”; some of their personal choices are just that: personal choices. By focusing only on the differences between them, we lose sight of the institutions—the royal family and the architecture of misogyny—that constrain them both.

HELEN LEWIS

is a London-based staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Difficult Women:  A History of Feminism in 11 Fights

[For the record, like most people here, I was delighted when Prince Harry married Meghan, not least because she was a woman-of-colour, thus making the monarchy at a stroke more inclusive for people-of-colour  who might otherwise feel excluded. Which is why I am so disappointed - indeed, pissed off- at them for apparently cutting and running. Britain has made huge strides in the last 60 years to being a more inclusive country, to the point where the second and third most important government ministers (Treasury and Home (Interior)) are people of colour. In a f*cking Conservative government, mind you!   A point conveniently overlooked by certain NYT/Guardian  journalists who have made a career out of ‘proving’ how racist -and sexist - we Brits are. And yes, I know, much, much remains to be done. We’ve only had two women Prime Ministers, for example...so far.]

[jcmorgenstern]

@superohclair oh god okay please know these are all just incoherent ramblings so like, idk, please feel free to add on or ignore me if im just wildly off base but this is a bad summary of what ive been thinking about and also my first titans/batman meta?? (also, hi!)

okay so for the disclaimer round: I am not an actual cultural studies major, nor do I have an extensive background in looking at the police/military industrial complex in media. also my comics knowledge is pretty shaky and im a big noob(I recently got into titans, and before that was pretty ignorant of the dceu besides batman) so I’ll kind of focus in on the show and stuff im more familiar with and apologize in advance?. basically im just a semi-educated idiot with Opinions, anyone with more knowledge/expertise please jump in! this is literally just the bullshit I spat out incoherently off the top of my head. did i mention im a comics noob? because im a comics noob.

so on a general level, I think we can all agree that batman as a cultural force is somewhat on the conservative side, if not simply due to its age and commercial positioning in American culture. there are a lot of challenges and nuances to that and it’s definitely expanding and changing as DC tries to position itself in the way that will...make the most money, but all you have to do is take a gander through the different iterations of the stories in the comics and it’ll smack you in the fucking face. like compare the first iteration of Jason keeping kids out of drugs to the titans version and you’ve got to at least chuckle. at the end of the day, this is a story about a (white male) billionaire who fights crime.

to be fair, I’d argue the romanticization of the police isn’t as aggressive as it could be—they are most often presented as corrupt and incompetent. However, considering the main cop characters depicted like Jim Gordon, the guys in Gotham (it’s been a while since I saw it, sorry) are often the romanticized “good few” (and often or almost always white cis/het men), that’s on pretty shaky ground. I don’t have the background in the comics strong enough to make specific arguments, so I’ll cede the point to someone who does and disagrees, but having recently watched a show that deals excellently with police incompetence, racism, and brutality (7 Seconds on Netflix), I feel at the very least something is deeply missing. like, analysis of race wrt police brutality in any aspect at all whatsoever.

I think it can be compellingly read that batman does heavily play into the military/police industrial complex due to its takes on violence—just play the Arkham games for more than an hour and you’ll know what I mean. to be a little less vague, even though batman as a franchise valorizes “psychiatric treatment” and “nonviolence,” the entire game seems pretty aware it characterizes treatment as a madhouse and nonviolence as breaking someone’s back or neck magically without killing them because you’re a “good guy.” while it is definitely subversive that the franchise even considers these elements at all, they don’t always do a fantastic job living up to them.

and then when you consider the fetishization of tools of violence both in canon and in the fandom, it gets worse. same with prisons—if anything it dehumanizes people in prisons even more than like, cop shows in general, which is pretty impressive(ly bad). like there’s just no nuance afforded and arkham is generally glamorized. the fact that one of the inmates is a crocodile assassin, I will admit, does not help. im not really sure how to mitigate that when, again, one of the inmates is a crocodile assassin, but I think my point still stands. fuck you, killer croc. (im just kidding unfuck him or whatever)

not to take this on a Jason Todd tangent but I was thinking about it this afternoon and again when thinking about that cop scene again and in many ways he does serve as a challenge to both batman’s ideology as well as the ideology of the franchise in general. his depiction is always a bit of a sticking point and it’s always fascinating to me to see how any given adaptation handles it. like Jason’s “”street”” origin has become inseparable from his characterization as an angry, brash, violent kid, and that in itself reflects a whole host of cultural stereotypes that I might argue occasionally/often dip into racialized tropes (like just imagine if he wasn’t white, ok). red hood (a play on robin hood and the outlaws, as I just realized...today) is in my exposure/experience mostly depicted as a villain, but he challenges batman’s no-kill philosophy both on an ethical and practical level. every time the joker escapes he kills a whole score more of innocent people, let alone the other rogues—is it truly ethical to let him live or avoid killing him for the cost of one life and let others die?

moreover, batman’s ““blind”” faith in the justice system (prisons, publicly-funded asylum prisons, courts) is conveniently elided—the story usually ends when he drops bad guy of the day off at arkham or ties up the bad guys and lets the police come etc etc. part of this is obviously bc car chases are more cinematic than dry court procedurals, but there is an alternate universe where bruce wayne never becomes batman and instead advocates for the arkham warden to be replaced with someone competent and the system overhauled, or in programs encouraging a more diverse and educated police force, or even into social welfare programs. (I am vaguely aware this is sometimes/often part of canon, but I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s the main focus. and again, I get it’s not nearly as cinematic).

overall, I think the most frustrating thing about the batman franchise or at least what I’ve seen or read of it is that while it does attempt to deal with corruption and injustice at all levels of the criminal justice system/government, it does so either by treating it as “just how life is” or having Dick or Jim Gordon or whoever the fuckjust wipe it out by “eliminating the dirty cops,” completely ignoring the non-fantasy ways these problems are dealt with in real life. it just isn’t realistic. instead of putting restrictions on police violence or educating cops on how to use their weapons or putting work into eradicating the culture of racism and prejudice or god basically anything it’s just all cinematized into the “good few” triumphing over the bad...somehow. its always unsatisfying and ultimately feels like lip service to me, personally.

this also dovetails with the very frustrating way mental health/”insanity” or “madness” is dealt with in canon, very typical of mainstream fiction. like for example:“madness is like gravity, all it takes is a little push.” yikes, if by ‘push’ you mean significant life stressors, genetic load, and environemntal influences,  then sure. challenge any dudebro joker fanboy to explain exactly what combination of DSM disorders the joker has to explain his “””insanity””” and see what happens. (these are, in fact, my plans for this Friday evening. im a hit at parties).

anyway I do really want to wax poetic about that cop scene in 1x06 so im gonna do just that! honestly when I first saw that I immediately sat up like I’d sat on a fucking tack, my cultural studies senses were tingling. the whole “fuck batman” ethos of the show had already been interesting to me, esp in s1, when bruce was basically standing in for the baby boomers and dick being our millennial/GenX hero. I do think dick was explicitly intended to appeal to a millennial audience and embody the millennial ethos. By that logic, the tension between dick and Jason immediately struck me as allegorical (Jason constantly commenting on dick being old, outdated, using slang dick doesn’t understand and generally being full of youthful obnoxious fistbumping energy).

Even if subconsciously on the part of the writers, jason’s over-aggressive energy can be read as a commentary on genZ—seen by mainstream millennial/GenX audiences as taking things too far. Like, the cops in 1x06 could have been Nick Zucco’s hired men or idk pretty much anyone, yet they explicitly chose cops and even had Jason explain why he deliberately went after them for being cops so dick (cop) could judge him for it. his rationale? he was beaten up by cops on the street, so he’s returning the favor. he doesn’t have the focused “righteous” rage of batman or dick/nightwing towards valid targets, he just has rage at the world and specifically the system—framed here as unacceptable or fanatical. as if like, dressing up like a bat and punching people at night is, um, totally normal and uncontroversial.

on a slightly wider scope, the show seems to internally struggle with its own progressive ethos—on the one hand, they hire the wildly talented chellah man, but on the other hand they will likely kill him off soon. or they cast anna diop, drawing wrath from the loudly racist underbelly of fandom, but sideline her. perhaps it’s a genuine struggle, perhaps they simply don’t want to alienate the bigots in the fanbase, but the issue of cops stuck out to me when I was watching as an social issue where they explicitly came down on one side over the other. jason’s characterization is, I admit and appreciate, still nuanced, but I’d argue that’s literally just bc he’s a white guy and a fan favorite. cast an actor of color as Jason and see how fast fandom and the writer’s room turns on him.

anyway i don’t really have the place to speak about what an explicitly nonwhite!cop!dick grayson would look like, but I do think it would be a fascinating and exciting place to start in exploring and correcting the kind of vague and nebulous complaints i raise above. (edit: i should have made more clear, i mean in the show, which hasn’t dealt with dick’s heritage afaik). also, there’s something to be said about the cop vs detective thing but I don’t really have the brain juice or expertise to say it? anyway if you got this far i hope it was at least interesting and again pls jump in id love to hear other people’s takes!!

tldr i took two (2) cultural studies classes and have Opinions

[psyga315]

"What if Volume 7 was about Post-9/11?”

This is another V7 rewrite of mine, but rather than just tweak scenes, these are gonna be full on alterations, with the overall aim being to make it more clear cut at Ironwood’s dictatorship, but also showing a half-full view of his actions.

See, until we get a commentary on what the intent was for Ironwood, we’re of two camps: One, RT always intended Ironwood to be a dictator who lost his grasp on reality or two, they meant for it to be one of those “you guess who’s in the right” but people instead memed the “RWBY’S ALWAYS RIGHT/WRONG” angle too much.

However, a Twitter post by Ruby Rose talking about how people despised RWBY for being too political has got me thinking: “The problem isn’t that RWBY is too political… The problem is that RWBY isn’t political enough”.

Okay, let’s take a look at this: Ironwood has a whole 1984 angle going with TV Screens showing his face everywhere, androids recording people, and the ability to declare martial law when he feels like it. The problem is that we don’t really get to see enough of that angle. It’s a set piece to show how bad Mantle is and nothing more.

While that would have been okay back in the day to convey how dystopian and how much a dictatorship is for Atlas, the problem is that with the ease of access to information, we actually see just how much more they could have went. Even rumors how bad certain dictatorships are manage to be much more threatening than “cameras, cameras everywhere”.

And this is supposed to be the reason why Ironwood isn’t to be trusted with Salem’s immortality truth bomb. At first glance, I see where people are coming from, but looking closer, it just feels wonky. “You want to keep an eye on people in case things go horribly wrong and want to unite the world against Salem? Too bad, you’re not getting any info outta me” and it makes Ruby come off as an entitled brat than a paragon.

And so, I propose this solution:

What if Ironwood wasn’t aiming to unite the world against Salem? What if he really was freaking paranoid at the sky falling? What if, instead of re-enacting 2016 like some people have joked, we dial the clock back fifteen years and instead re-enact 2001. Some of you may see where I’m going with this, but for those who don’t, I feel like these two words will manage to convey the intent I have for Ironwood’s character:

Patriot Act.

For those who don’t know or need a refresher, back in 2001, there was a terrorist attack involving the destruction of the Twin Towers that killed almost three thousand people which placed the USA in an ongoing state of national emergency that still goes on to this day. Sound familiar?

The Fall of Beacon has a few comparisons to 9/11, namely how it was charged by terrorists of, at the time, undeterminable origins (which translates to RWBY as multiple fronts attacking Beacon at once), was responsible for a lot of deaths and destruction of at least one tower, and punted the world (namely the heavily militaristic one) in a state of panic. You could even interpret the Atlasian Soldiers being hacked as a nod to the accusations that the USA planned 9/11, but that’s a bit of a stretch.

During the fallout, the USA, in response to this and an ongoing anthrax attack at the time, decided to, almost as quickly as 9/11 happened with a month and some change in between dates, passed a very lengthy Patriot Act, which, to put it to the simplest of terms, allowed the government to have due process in searching through people’s information with the intent to put a stop to terror attacks before they even begin. However, this is how it’s used in practice. In execution, its uncertain wording and possible violation of the base Amendments caused the bill to garner skepticism or outright criticism.

And what do we see in Volume 7? Ironwood quickly passes a system that enables him to keep a closer eye on the people of Mantle and tighten imports and exports, as well as people going in and out of Atlas, not unlike how the Patriot Act was potentially harsher towards immigrants. So, we have this source of information to draw from now, make parallels and basically show this controversial subject through the lens of your Saturday morning cartoon that put on the big boy pants a couple of years ago.

So, with that in mind, let’s go back to Volume 7, Episode 1, and change up what exactly we see that would make RWBY and co go “this is horrible!”

By the point where RWBY and co get to Atlas, the border patrol shouldn’t be the first sign of danger. Weiss was there when she overheard Ironwood’s plans for increased security and they had to steal an aircraft because of said tight security. Nor would they react to Ironwood’s “Go Home. Stay Home.” speech.

What they would react to are the Paladins forcing people back to their homes, with one threatening to open fire when one of them tries to resist. Cries of “this isn’t right” are uttered when they see a human instantly attack a Faunus right after they see them and accusing them of being part of the White Fang. The moment a cop gets involved in abusing the Faunus, that’s when Blake blurts out that the city is awful, much to Nora’s chagrin.

Weiss throws the cop into the trash bin as we hear a sickening crunch (as he has no aura) as Weiss just looks in remorse. Already we get a good idea that this place is pretty fucked up without looking at a screen of someone saying “we are here for your safety” and going “this is awful!” and it evokes feelings of the racially-charged attacks that followed 9/11.

The rest of the show follows like normal, but the moment everything changes is Episode 2 when Ironwood tells them all why he’s called everyone back. It’s clear that the video has Ironwood at his strongest. As his beard is patchy and his hair greasy now comes the “you look tired” comments. Ironwood has no plans to stop Salem. The reason for his embargo and calling back his troops is to stockpile Dust and men and prepare for the inevitable war, not knowing that Vale and Mistral are hardly equipped to take on Atlas and Vacuo is… Vacuo.

He’s also paranoid that Salem will strike next. Without any reports from the other Kingdoms, he’s effectively put his head in the sand. He’s not even thinking of counterattacking, just staying and believing the best offense is a good defense… Or so RWBY assumes… Ironwood reveals soon that, as he dwelled upon the failings of Beacon, he came to the conclusion that Salem couldn’t be beaten. The most that Ozpin did was put her at a stalemate and even then, all it took is one bad night to change the tide. He is scared.

He finds a small semblance of hope in seeing Oscar and the Lamp, but he assumes that the questions are used up or if there were, the team used it to ask if Salem could be beaten. Ruby neither confirms nor denies it. With his mind clearly submitted to despair, he tells RWBY that the Winter Maiden is spending her twilight years in isolation to protect her from the villains after what happened to Amber. Weiss asks if this is a little much, only for Ironwood to snap and remind her how Cinder was able to destroy Beacon and kill Pyrrha thanks to Ozpin’s poor handling of Amber. The comment stings Jaune, since he partially blames himself for what happened. He then asks RWBY to wait until the Winter Maiden passes on so that the fresher Maiden can handle the Vault and chuck the Lamp in.

That’s when Ruby brings up the Relic’s Grimm-attracting properties. The sooner it’s in a Vault, the better. This does not bode well for Ironwood and he tries his best to compose himself with this bombshell, then permits Ruby and the others to keep the lamp, as they’ve managed to handle it on their own. RWBY then come across the Ace-Ops, who apologize for their antagonism. Weiss raises an eyebrow as she has never heard of the Ace Operatives before and Marrow jabs on about how they’re a secret police force before Harriet shuts him up with an elbow to the rib. Note that he doesn’t call themselves “the best of the best”. If anything, the name is to harbour goodwill, since anything alluding to a shadow police would just send fear and panic.

Of course, the implications of there being an Atlasian secret police flies over Ruby’s optimistic head, but the others start to feel a little suspicious with them. Clover, realizing this, tries to ease tensions by offering the rest of his team to train RWBY and JNPR. Instantly, Ruby accepts, seeing as they scraped by their victories by the skin of their teeth, glancing over to Yang’s broken arm. Clover takes note and says he’ll commission Pietro to construct upgrades for their equipment.

Episode 3 is a simple, light-hearted episode that lets us breathe from all the crazy stuff that went on. It’s also a bit more serious, though, as the gang confront Ruby on omitting the information they learned to Ironwood. Unlike my previous tweaking of Volume 7, this time everyone, Ruby included, feel like they should at least tell Ironwood something, especially after Weiss compares his attitude to when they were affected by the Apathy.

However, they have no good news to share. Even the news of having the Relic of Knowledge comes with the weight of having to tell him how they got the Relic, with Yang feeling just as guilty for omitting Raven’s Spring Maiden powers. Seeing something is off, Clover decides to have the team test their mettle against the Ace-Ops in good fun. When asking if he’s to join in, Clover decides to stay by the sidelines. JNR choose to stay out too. Qrow asks Clover, if he’s the Ace-Ops leader, why doesn’t he join and that’s where we have him casually reveal his Semblance, which causes Qrow to admit that he has the opposite kind of Semblance. Clover chuckles and ponders if being next to each other would cancel the Semblances out.

To make a long story short, the Ace-Ops defeat RWBY, even with their upgraded weapons, but it’s clear they only did it through brute strength and not through teamwork. Regardless, Ironwood is brought out of his shell and sees the battle unfold. He has the common decency to tell RWBY that they shouldn’t spend what may be months cooped up in a house (both a jab at V5 and a poorly timed joke for 2020), he graduates them on the spot so that they can do missions. Ruby takes this time to tell Ironwood that they can beat Salem, though doesn’t she clarify if this was something she learned from the Relic. It leads to Ironwood assuming that she had and is elated. The episode ends with Robyn and her Happy Huntresses having saved a Faunus from getting lynched before they notice Ironwood making an announcement, his beard and hair now trimmed and combed.

Episode 4 begins with Ironwood telling Mantle (and Atlas) about Beacon being attacked by a faceless coward and declares that Remnant will be defended. He doesn’t announce any plans, but the first thing he immediately does is lower the amount of guards in Mantle, something that gives them room to breathe. The episode introduces us to Robyn’s team and gives them some sort of depth in contrast to “is just a background character who sometimes will have a tweet telling us info like J.K. Rowling doing a Harry Potter info dump”.

Only one of them gets flashback, though. Fiona sees some kids being escorted by Jaune Arc and remembers back when she was a teacher, reading a book to the kids before they were told of the Battle of Beacon and its subsequent fall, sending the kids into fear and panic and summoning the Grimm. We don’t see the end result, but Fiona’s thousand-yard stare and hyperventilating are a clear indicator that it did not end well.

May comes across Henry, who was taking advantage of Mantle’s lower economy to buy groceries on the cheap, and we get confirmation that not only are they cousins but that May had a transition as Henry fails to recognize her. True to form, as soon as he finds out, he has a bit of a freak out before he’s decked by May.

Joanna is the first to encounter Ruby and Weiss, who are out on a routine mission to help stabilize the barrier with earth Dust (remember that’s a thing?), though questions Weiss’s presence. It’s here we get some infodump on what Jacques was up to during her escape. Willow had leaked a recorded video of Jacques hitting Weiss, which earned him some much needed bad press and sinking the SDC stock down to where other Dust Companies are vying to buy it out. It sets up a small character arc for Weiss that’s hopefully more fleshed out than V7’s: should she rescue her father and save the SDC or leave it to crumble and forge her own name? Eventually, she’ll decide on a middle path, preserving the SDC with the help of Ironwood, but making Whitley the one who takes it over, realizing that she can’t worry about the SDC when the world’s at stake.

But more on that later. As for Joanna herself, she speaks with an odd whistle lisp and a smile reveals that her two front teeth had been broken. When Ruby asked what happened to her, she shrugs and says that “I got a dose of reality from a former friend.”. A later scene of her helping out the Faunus gives a bit of an implication that she was one of the kids that Ilia was friends with, namely the one who got the broken teeth.

The biggest character depth moment comes when Robyn sets up a rally, only for hecklers to come and joke at her insistence for Mantle to be its own Kingdom without Atlas watching over them, having had enough with Atlas’s jackboot. One of the hecklers gives a reason that shows a darker side to Atlas: When Mantle lost the war, a chunk of the continent decided to levitate itself away to disassociate with the nation and that chunk became Atlas. It became unanimous that Atlas would rule over Mantle as punishment for causing the war.

Robyn’s desires to make Mantle its own nation once more invites a lot of skepticism and accusations that she’s a Neo-Mantlean, wanting to take away all forms of expression and burn art. Robyn wants none of it and asks Joanna to boot the heckler out, which only solidified his views. Nora sticks around to listen to more, as does Forrest. A small scene also happens where Clover and Qrow experiment with their Semblances before Clover realizes Qrow can’t control his. He then tries to work with Qrow and train him to be able to control it, something that isn’t going to be fully realized until the endgame. We then end the episode on Forrest being killed in the dead of the night, but we don’t see who kills him, just a hint that it may be Tyrian.

Episode 5 is a Weiss-heavy episode. After training with the Ace-Ops, Weiss is called by Winter for a special one-on-one. In reality, she wanted to tell Weiss that Jacques has fallen ill since she left and Willow has had one too many blackouts from her drinking. The Schnee family is falling apart and she gives her the ultimatum of either staying in Atlas to properly take over the SDC, bringing up that she and Ironwood can prove Weiss is sane enough to keep her title of heiress, or stay with RWBY and let the SDC be taken over by a third party that will ultimately be revealed to be Robyn and her Happy Huntresses (i.e. stealing from the rich to give to the poor).

Weiss asks why she doesn’t take it over, to which she reveals that she’ll be the Winter Maiden. Weiss is a little uneasy, remembering what Jaune had told her about Pyrrha (he’d probably either tell her off screen like everything else or bring it up when arguing with Ironwood about keeping the Maiden under lock and key) and asks if she’s okay with it. Winter give her a deadpan look and tells her “if I wasn’t, my name wouldn’t be Winter, now would it?” revealing that this was a name she picked herself and one that had been used for so long, that Weiss has no memory of what Winter’s real first name really was…

But I’m just gonna roll out the charming plot twist and say it’s Whitney. She joined Ironwood before Willow gave birth to Whitley and so he got her name, albeit masculinized.

We cut to Jaune and his team as they go on a mission to help the Ace-Ops clear out a cave. Blake and Yang join too, if only to showcase their new weapons in more detail, with Blake’s weapon upgrade actually having something to benefit it beyond just gorilla glue. Namely, the golden strip is actually a dust crystal and can be used for electrical attacks as a tribute to Ilia. We could even have a small flashback that has Blake specifically request this. It’s kinda ironic, as they’re in the mines where Ilia’s parents died in.

This is the third episode of RWBY basically, though it ends with two scenes. Qrow and Clover talk about the recent killing of Forrest and how Qrow brings up that this was the third person who spoke against Ironwood that had died in a row, having done research on the news when he arrived. They both believe that someone is setting Ironwood up, but Qrow mentions that what’s unnerving him more is his removal of troops. The last time something like this happened, he moved them all to Vale and caused fear for people. Clover says nothing, but reassures Qrow that Ironwood is making a big play.

We end the episode on the air patrol, now with notably fewer ships. One flies towards them. We see people at air control seeing a blip on their radar and just as they’re about to call it out, it disappears. They pass it off as a glitch as we cut to the plane in question…

It’s Watts and Tyrian, the former of which chuckles and notes that, while Ironwood has made an effort to change the code, it just took a bit more brute force on his part to crack and that, with a few more crackings of the code, it’d be easy for him to hack back in. They then notice a second plane flying in. It doesn’t take long for Tyrian to notice that the plane feels “off”, as though this plane isn’t “normal”. Watts just shrugs and hacks the system to let the plane in. As the second plane flies in, we get a zoom in through the windshield and see Neo and Cinder, smug as hell in thinking their disguise was foolproof.

Episode 6 focuses on Ruby and Penny. I’m not going to go into too much detail, but it’s basically the much neglected “hey, Penny, you died. I cried. I missed you.” Bit. Ironwood has recovered much better and he’s looking like he did on the videos now. He even gives the crew a night off, to which Yang and Blake get an invite from FNKI.

Things start to take a turn for the worst when Ren, of all people, asks Ruby how they’re going to beat Salem. Ruby confesses to Ren that she just told Ironwood that to give him some hope. Ren just gives Ruby a cold warning that the man had lost everything, even the will to keep fighting. Giving him hope, only to take it away would only destroy him. Nora can’t help but agree, comparing his situation to how they were given hope of beating Salem only to be told that she’s immortal.

RNR are enroute to a rally: the anniversary of the Fall of Beacon, just to fuck with the fans keeping timelines. I’d play it safe though and say it’s a two-year anniversary. It doesn’t matter, it’s basically to commemorate the fall of Beacon and honor those who have fallen. However, the rally is run by Robyn of all people and Robyn has quite a few things to say about Atlas’s handling of the situation, things that the public would rather not want to hear. Things like how they plotted to attack Beacon once Penny won the tournament but had to accelerate their plans once Pyrrha killed Penny, or how they created the White Fang for the explicit purpose of having a scapegoat.

Obviously, all of these are pure bullshit to which Ruby calls out. The one thing she can confirm is true is the hacking of the robots. While the crowd cheered at Ruby calling Robyn out, they go quiet when she talks about the robots. She makes it clear that it was a third-party that hacked the robots, but it didn’t stop the crowd from trying to get her off the stage. Robyn takes her to the backstage and asks her to shake her hand and tell her exactly what happened at Beacon. Ruby painfully recalls the Fall before shedding tears, though her words ring true for Robyn’s Semblance, prompting to ask about whether Atlas planned on attacking Beacon and being truthfully told no. Robyn has a moment of clarity, but that is halted by screams from the rally.

Meanwhile, Ren and Nora bicker about what to do regarding Ironwood. Nora wants nothing to do with him while Ren just wants to help him the best they can. This eventually goes into the conclusion that Ren has been emotionally distancing himself since they found out about Salem’s immortality and Nora tries to kiss him, only for the lights to go out and the massacre to begin. People try to take out their phones but are quickly taken down. Penny rushes in to try and fight, but she gets out maneuvered, and Marrow also tries, but the assailant purposefully avoids him. By the time Robyn and Ruby get involved, the massacre is over and the lights turn back on as its revealed to be Tyrian, claiming the responsibility for the killings under the White Fang’s name. Before Robyn can attack, Tyrian scurries away and announces to the surviving public that war is coming. Panic maximum is hit as Grimm attack.

Episode 7 is kinda like the Episode 7 of my other rewrite, Grimm attack interrupts FNKI and there’s a large angry mob, but this time, it’s more akin to pandemonium. Not only does the Huntsmen have to fight the onslaught of Grimm, but stop the crazed civilians from lynching the first Faunus they see: Blake and Neon. This leads to a bit where one of them tries to brand Blake with an SDC branding stick and Yang snaps, kicking his ass and, thanks to his lack of aura, crippling or outright killing him. People suddenly remember who Yang is (remember, the whole world saw her injure Mercury) and so they team up on her, beating her up and stealing her metallic arm.

Similar outbursts happen with the other Huntsmen, showing them the worst of humanity encapsulated in a single night and reacting negatively to it. The only person who is above it all is Weiss, who learned her lesson after she snapped at that Trophy Wife, and, as a nod to that, she summons a Boarbatusk when she sees someone making off with Yang’s arm and has the Boarbatusk not gore the person, but take the arm from them and bring it back to Weiss.

I don’t want to make it as dark as the other rewrite’s V7E7 where Penny gets torn apart limb from limb, but I do want to at the very least show just how desperate humanity is when the chips are down, so perhaps crippling Neon with a gunshot to the leg. Just as things are about to get worse, Ironwood personally intervenes with his army of robots as he quickly handles the situation by having those robots subdue the rioters. At first, it seems like he’s being the reasonable authority figure that we all know and love… Then he looks to one of the rioters, the drunk man that Weiss would have tossed into the bin, and tells him “With all the negativity you’re showering onto others, the Grimm are only interested in you right now.” Then, as coldly as the robot he commands, says “Cast these rabble out to the cold.” They comply, much to Ruby’s dismay, as some of the robots throw about a dozen people out of the wall and lock them out. They beg to be let in as we end the episode with a person looking in horror as he sees a Manticore swoop in and we get one of those shots where the monster eats the camera.

Episode 8 begins with a long, silent moment with all the members of RWBY, JNPR, the Ace-Ops, and Qrow in Ironwood’s office. It’s obvious what has to be said, and Nora is the one to say it.

“You sent them out there to die.” She grumbles.

“The longer they remained in Mantle, the longer they caused trouble.” He replies.

“That doesn’t mean you should have killed them!” Nora shouts.

“Would you rather I had my robots shoot them right there? In front of everyone? I’m a general, not a dictator.” James said.

“Well, you certainly acted like one back there.” Nora retorted. We see Clover is a little unnerved with Nora’s replies.

“One of my highest-preforming Huntresses is unable to walk without mechanical equipment because of them and if I had let them stay any longer, I feared that I wouldn’t be able to save her or anyone for that matter. I shouldn’t have gone lenient. Because of that, we now have one of Salem’s minions hiding out in Mantle, ready to strike again and make everything worse.” Ironwood says.

To make a long conversation short, he orders the Ace-Ops track down Tyrian and execute him on sight, along with any other suspected members of Salem, as that’s what they do. Meanwhile he confesses that he hasn’t been truthful to them about something out of fear that the plan would be leaked. He plans to have a satellite built on Amity Arena and hoist it up, using it to reactivate the CCT. There, he will tell the world what Ozpin neglected to tell them: the real cause of the Fall of Beacon is Salem and they must unite to kill her. He labels it as Operation Unifying Freedom. The crowd goes pretty silent as Weiss asks if this would even work, as people may believe it to be a lie. That’s when Ruby gets the idea to bring Robyn into the picture, as she realizes what her Semblance can do.

Ironwood explains that Robyn refuses to work with Atlas and he fears that her stance against Atlas would only make things worse. While he has a point at first, he then continues to spout off how Robyn can’t be trusted in a manner that screams paranoia, thinking that she too could be a spy for Salem without realizing that she has nothing to gain from rallying the citizens of Mantle with conspiracy theories they don’t believe. Oscar calms him down and asks him about Atlas’s Relic, since he wonders how it can be involved in OUF. Ironwood complies and we’ll get a later scene.

From here, we have people assessing the newly found situation. Ruby and Jaune talk about whether she should tell Ironwood about Salem not being able to die. Jaune is pretty insistent that they do before Ironwood steps into matters he has no idea about, reminding her that Pyrrha never found out about Salem when she died.

Ren and Nora confront each other about Ironwood, to which Ren explicitly spells out that they’re doing jack and shit while Ironwood is trying his hardest to help. Nora brings up her “you’re not the one struggling” speech, but with a heavier coding that implies she knows more about Mantle than Ren realizes. Ren ends the conversation by guilt-tripping Nora. “The sooner we beat Salem and place her back in the sludge from which she came, the sooner we could prevent another Kuroyuri from happening.”

Blake visits Neon in a hospital bed, who is bummed out at being told she’ll never walk again with her injury. They have a touching heart to heart where Blake tries to take the blame for the bad things that happened to her, saying that she should have helped improve relations everywhere, only for Neon to tell her that she’s done enough. While at first, it comes off as rude, Neon explains that Blake can’t just change the world on her own, especially with something as deep-rooted as racism. The most she can do is make a change in her area. Neon cites herself as an example. Before, no Faunus were allowed at Atlas or if they did, they have to hide their traits. Neon gave them the middle finger and wore what she wanted, though this earned Ironwood’s respect enough to use his two seats and allow more Faunus in. Marrow comes in as well and we have what we’re going to get in V8, now without the awkward “but they’re enemies now” moment.

Weiss talks to Yang about her family and asks her what to do about it, as she knows too much about abandonment issues from both parents. Yang sits Weiss down and tells her that even though Taiyang didn’t raise her and Ruby for most of their lives and Raven was too busy murdering innocent people to care, they’re still her family. She’s this close to revealing that Raven is the Spring Maiden, but stops herself short. Unfortunately, Weiss hears enough to draw her conclusion later on.

Ironwood and Oscar talk about the Vault and its Relic of Creation.

“So… What? Can it create stuff?” Oscar asks.

“Ozpin knows more about the relic than I do. The most I know is that we can’t use it.” Ironwood said.

“How so?” Oscar asks.

“Because the person that came before Ozpin used the Relic to hoist a chunk of Solitas in the air. He says it’s to be a beacon of hope…” Ironwood then takes a moment to remorsefully look down at the floor. “If only that were true.”

Oscar asks what he means and as we see Weiss go to her father’s house, Ironwood goes into more details about what happened. After the Great War, the people deciding on the Vytal treaty wanted to blame Mantle for kick-starting the war and as such, charged them with repaying for the ten years of damages and severely cripple their military to prevent another war from happening. It was unanimous, but before the charges could apply, the King struck a deal with the nobility of Mantle that, provided they share their newfound technological knowledge with the rest of the world, he would create a loophole by making the Kingdom of Atlas and prevent them from getting caught in the inevitable punishment of Mantle.

Oscar’s clearly distraught that Ozpin would do something like that, since this meant that the real people who were responsible for the war got away and let innocents take the fall. Ironwood, however, sees it as a chance for Mantle to start anew. “Besides, I can’t do anything about it now… If I were to remove the Staff, then this entire place comes crashing down…” We end with Weiss entering the house as Ironwood reveals that one of the nobles who fled punishment were Gele and Schnee, Jacques and Willow’s ancestors respectively. We see that Weiss isn’t alone, as she had brought RBY with her.

Episode 9 is another Weiss-centric episode, as she is brought up to speed as to what happened. Klein got fired and replaced with Faunus servants (if you want to go the extra mile, all of them are rabbit Faunus). Weiss is found by Willow and they have a small chat about the situation at hand. Willow has sobered quite enough, but the damage to her liver is done and she doesn’t expect to live long. Jacques had it worse though. The bad press and subsequent embargo have stressed Jacques out so much that he’s shortened his life expectancy to about a few months, now on his death bed.

Fiona is there too, having an arm in a sling after surviving a lynching from a mob. When asked what she’s doing here, she explains that she’s to oversee the transaction and ensure Robyn has full ownership of the SDC. This puts the cast at an uncertainty because, while they might fully trust Robyn, it’s clear that the supply of Dust that the SDC can provide would bolster the project by tenfold. Penny is also there, since Winter has been her partner since she was rebuilt and thus, is welcomed into the family.

Knowing that she can take over the SDC, Weiss goes in to confront her father. It’s clear that he’s seen better days. His body is bony, his hair is now a full-on toupee, and he’s coughing irregularly as a monitor beeps, acting as a timer for his remaining life. Jacques sees Weiss and glares at her at first, then melts into a serene glance. Weiss doesn’t buy it, but they have a pretty deep conversation about what happened since Weiss ran away, paired with a piano medley of all of Weiss’s theme songs, starting with “The Path to Isolation”, then both parts to “Mirror Mirror”, followed by “It’s My Turn” However, there’s no “This Life Is Mine” anywhere during the chat…

Jacques reveals that business has plummeted since the embargo, though leaving out that smaller tier dust companies that he hasn’t bought out managed to flourish and keep the minimalist economy of Mantle afloat. He talks of all the people he ruined with his practices, starting from recent cases where he reduced people’s wages to the point where they’re working with less than minimum wage, but then dialing back to before the events, where he talks about the unfortunate explosion that claimed Ilia’s parents as well as “a rowdy Faunus I personally had to deal with… I had a hot branding iron, Weiss, normally to brand my property… And…” Blake instantly knows what he’s talking about and runs off. It’s clear that Jacques is having death bed confessions and while Weiss is ready to tear them down, she can’t. She realizes what Yang meant when she said that they’re still family.

However, Jacques then goes back to his old self and calls Weiss out for being the reason his company went under, practically going all “why did you make me hit you” and the harassment causes Weiss to yell at Jacques, telling him that he is everything that’s wrong with the SDC and that the world would be better off without him. She then runs off and Yang tells Ruby they should go, but Ruby insists on staying with a cold expression that scares Yang. She leaves as Ruby just gives him the business.

“You struck my partner… You turned someone into a monster that maimed my sister and haunted her partner… You’re responsible for these radical attacks from Faunus… And yet you never once thought that it’s people like you that are to blame for the problems of the world? Another Great War could happen very soon and you care more about your bottom dollar than the well-being of others… And yet, I’d rather you live, to see us turn the world you and everyone else have corrupted into a better place than what anyone had thought of 80 years ago. I want you to live and see your daughter take your company and use it in ways you can never imagine…”

“… Well, I hate to disappoint you then…” He coughs and flops onto his bed, having gasped his last, the long beep confirming his death. Ruby is shocked as Weiss comes in and sees this. This is where a somber piano rendition of “This Life is Mine” plays, as Weiss breaks down into tears. She wanted this to happen for so long, to take over the SDC from her father, and yet, this wasn’t what she had in mind. Ruby comforts her, but then says this:

“He told me what he could never muster the strength to tell you… He loved you, truly, but he had a funny way of showing it and he apologized for all the pain and torture he inflicted onto others…” She says it in a way that convinces Weiss, but Yang leaves the room, being very shocked with the fact that Ruby straight up lied. Before, telling Ironwood that he could beat Salem and not telling him about the immortality was acceptable since she never once said he could kill Salem and they all understand that delaying her plans counts as “beating”. Now? She pretty much lied to Weiss’s face about what her father said and the worst part is, she can’t properly call her out on it.

Blake and Yang then have a chat about whether this was for the best as the piano song shifts to “Nevermore”, with Yang breaking down and telling Blake: “I lied too! I lied about the Spring Maiden!” However, Blake doesn’t get upset with this, namely because she has no idea what the Spring Maiden fiasco was all about. She notes that they have changed since the Fall of Beacon and this is where Penny comes in, escorting Winter so as to help comfort her when she inevitably sees her father’s cadaver. However, Winter insists she’ll be fine and goes ahead as Penny joins in on the conversation, only to be told by Yang that, no. It will not be like Beacon again. It will never be like Beacon again. They’ve changed so much from the past few months/year that they are barely the same person. Blake even confesses to having taken a life. Penny begins to cry, yet she doesn’t understand why yet, though it’s implied that she is the only one of the characters that hasn’t “grown up” due to her situation.

The piano medley returns to “This Life Is Mine” as Weiss and Winter, taking time to set up an interview, attempt to announce that Weiss is to inherit the title… Only for Weiss to refuse. She makes a speech on how she needs to improve the world and that she will do it more as a Huntress than she would as the owner and so respects her father’s wishes for Whitley to take over the SDC and having Ironwood financially back the company in trade for helping them with a project to reboot the CCT. Ironwood sees this and has a freak-out when she reveals the plans for the CCT, telling Clover that she’s leaking plans.

We see people react to the news unfolding as the song becomes much more sinister and twisted. Cinder and Neo don’t give two shits, but Cinder decides to figure out a means to take this to her advantage. Watts just smirks and mutters that there’s no use as he cracks the code to Mantle’s heating grid and shuts it off. People then begin to freak out as Robyn sees the notification that the SDC will not be bought out by the Happy Huntresses. As May asks Robyn if that’s a problem, she sees people go into a riot before she smirks. “No, no I don’t think it will.” As she says that, the piano makes a full transition to “When It Falls” as we see people raid shops, throw trashcans at TVs, set up huge fires, and toss the robots into the fire, all while Grimm begin to raid Mantle.

Episode 10 kicks off with a large raid alarm as RWBY, JNPR, and even the Ace-Ops and Happy Huntresses try to stave off the raid. This is where things mostly stay the same with the exception of no Ironwood telling everyone his plans. However, Ironwood does take his weapons and goes to the Amity Arena, knowing that at least someone would interfere in his plans. He expresses a bit of shock that it’s Watts who is there, but he doesn’t mind it one bit.

“Thought you died.”

“I did.” He gives a smirk and doesn’t give much detail until…

Episode 11, where a battle causes Watts to get injured and reveals that he’s a robot with his aura implanted into it. “I finally saw what the fat bastard was talking about when he talked of preserving life.” The fights remain the same, but the change begins when Watts has the last laugh, taunting him that his attempts to stop Salem will be fruitless and that he finds using the CCT to rally the world together will only end in pain. Ironwood, determined to stop Salem, drops Watts into the pit of lava, though not before Watts deactivates his robot body and turns it into a conduit to hack into Amity Arena and thus hijack the CCT built inside.

Tyrian is soon beaten and it’s discussed what they should do with him. Robyn wants him to stand trial while Clover wants to execute him. Robyn protests, calling Clover a bootlicker for doing what Ironwood has told him to, but Qrow shuts her up and tells her that Tyrian is a dangerous fucking serial killer that has done far more harm than good. Robyn scoffs, then leaves as Clover prepares to execute Tyrian with his fishing pole (the first time he actually reveals his weapon) and as we see the bob and hook, people might be able to connect the dots…

However, before then, RWBY, having evacuated the people of Mantle (save for the few stubborn ones that they can’t do anything about) and Weiss seeing a homeless Klein and almost sacrificing herself to save and evacuate. Robyn sneaks aboard while RWBY and the Ace-Ops report back to Ironwood over the chess piece he found. Unlike in the original, he is a lot more stable with how he handles it, telling RWBY to go track down Cinder while he prepares the transfer to Winter. This makes Weiss upset though, since this means killing Fria. Ironwood tells them they have no other choice in the matter, since they can’t risk Cinder taking another Maiden power. Ruby manages to convince Ironwood that, they wouldn’t need to do the transfer if they find Cinder first and take her down. He gives them that benefit of the doubt at least.

Meanwhile, inside the craft, Robyn tells the people that this is exactly what Ironwood wants, to corral Mantle and make them dance under his strings until they do what he wants. This actually gets through to the people who are finally fed up with Atlas stomping on them and Robyn enacts a full-blown revolt. Making matters worse is that Salem uses the hacked CCT (in which the virus is basically a digitized Seer) to broadcast herself onto Atlas and Mantle. This is where the scene where Salem appears comes in, but recontextualized because here, she’s talking to everyone, not just Ironwood and RWBY.

She shows just how real she is by commanding some of the Grimm to stop attacking Mantle and return to the tundra, saying how she’ll make the Grimm never bother Mantle again provided they give the Lamp and the Staff to her. Ruby interrupts using her phone and tells her that they’ll beat her, with Ironwood adding that they will destroy her. Salem just laughs, knowing that Ruby has slipped that she knows about Salem. Gives her the famous “your mother” quote, but with the added quote of “None can really kill me… Isn’t that what found out from dear old Ozpin?”

“What is she talking about?” Ironwood asks Ruby, she stammers.

“I… I mean what I said. We can beat Salem-” Then Yang interrupts her.

“But we can’t kill her. We don’t know the full extent but… Ozpin in a past life asked if there was a way to destroy her and he was told that he can’t. So…” Yang looks to Ruby with a disappointed look in her eyes.

Ironwood slumps into his chair as Salem broadcasts her intent to invade Atlas to grab the Relics and that they’d make things much more pleasant for themselves if they handed them over. She gives one last parting remark before she logs out. Now, we can have Ironwood react one of two ways, which would impact the rest of the story.

Either he nuts up and decides to go nuclear on Salem’s ass, stubbornly believing that there has to be a way to destroy Salem and goes all in on having Winter become the Maiden so they can have Atlas go down rather than up. With people comparing this scene to Sokovia, might as well just go all in with the plot, right? Ruby and the others protest that this would end the world with the force Atlas would have, Ironwood goes “with us or against us”, Ruby makes an announcement and calls him a bitch ass motherfucker, and we get the same conclusion as before where the Ace Ops turn on RWBY.

Or

He sits calmly. Ruby can see the lights in his eyes fade as the Ace-Ops panic. Even Weiss and Blake are afraid. Ruby then tells Ironwood that they have to do something, only for Ironwood to smile and say “Ruby… There’s a solution here you’re not seeing…” Before he pulls out his white gun and puts it at his head, ending the episode with a literal bang.

Either way, the Ace-Ops turn on RWBY, either by following orders or because they blame Ruby for filling Ironwood with false hope, with Harriet calling it a disease and that Ruby spreads it around like a plague.

If we don’t end the episode with Ironwood’s suicide, then we end with Tyrian musing and commenting on how Ironwood has picked a new attack dog. Qrow is confused at this before he remembers all the murders that were caused. At first, he suspected it to be Tyrian, but as Clover looks on, he puts two and two together and asks:

“… No… You didn’t…”

“Sometimes, you have to pull a few bad weeds to keep your clover patch alive…” He coldly says.

Episode 12 picks up right where the last episode would leave off, with Clover and Qrow having a stand off, with Clover explaining that the Ace-Ops aren’t called that because they’re the best, far from it, but because they’re willing to do the things no normal person would do, and that includes killing certain people to keep the system alive. Qrow tries his hardest not to fight Clover, but unfortunately for him, Clover concludes that he is to die alongside Tyrian, who has healed. Like in the previous fixing Volume 7 thing I did, the fight becomes more of a proper melee a trois where Clover, Tyrian, and Qrow battle each other equally.

Tyrian, in the middle of this, says how he used to be Ironwood’s attack dog before his destructive nature caused Ironwood to fire and arrest him before said behaviour stings his metaphorical froggy ass (remember that old fable he’s based off?) and notes how Clover takes after him with how the bob and hook look eerily like a scorpion stinger, hence how he put two and two together. The fight gets pretty brutal before Qrow ends up finally managing to control his Semblance by figuring out where to target. He ends up targeting Clover and cancels out the good luck he has, putting him on an even level, then slipping the bad luck over to Tyrian to trip the both of them up. It ends the same, with Qrow punching Clover’s aura. Clover tells Qrow that he’s willing to die for his Kingdom and asks if that’s something Qrow would do. Tyrian stabs Clover, leaves as he hears the cops come, and Clover, in his last words, just tells Qrow “you and your entire team… you killed us all!” Qrow then closes his eyes and cries, saying “Yeah, I know…”

Like in the previous rewrite, we have Neo take the relic from Oscar, but she’s stopped by a mob of people that are raiding the base. JNR find Neo and Oscar decks her in the face, but it’s clear they’re outnumbered… Only for the mob to remember the four and help them, one of them telling Neo that if they mess with one with them, she messes with all of them.

RWBY vs the Ace-Ops… goes the same. But now we don’t have the “they’re the best of the best but then they trained RWBY” BS.

Episode 13 has the crowd mess with Neo, but even so, she outmaneuvers them and kills a few of them. In the chaos, she takes the Relic of Knowledge as guards come in and gun down the crowd. Jaune runs, only before seeing one of the kids getting shot as well. Jaune just freaks out, then rushes in and kills one of the guards. A robot catches footage of this and he’s suddenly on the wanted list. He tells Ren and Nora to run with Oscar as he holds off the guards. Robyn helps Jaune out in taking out the guards last minute.

Everything with Penny, Winter, Fria, and Cinder are the same. The ending, however, depends on what happened to Ironwood.

Ironwood Lives Ending: He orders every intruder to be killed on sight, prompting RWBY, Nora and Ren to flee to Mantle. Oscar stays behind and talks to Ironwood before he gets shot and Ozpin comes back. This is the most in line to V7’s ending.

Ironwood Dies Ending: The crowd easily overpower the military and take over, but now have crippled themselves as Salem’s forces arrive. Robyn does not care though, as she tosses Ironwood’s corpse out the window and towards the icy depths below before taking over his position. “Headmaster Hill… Has a nice ring to it…” RWBY and JNPR reconvene as they bare witness to Salem’s forces arriving. Blake asks Ruby:

“What do we do now?”

To which Ruby replies:

“Now? Now we save the world.” Before we end with her cocking her rifle.

The Stinger would be Ozpin coming back to Oscar and telling him that the fate of Remnant is not for him and his faction to decide on anymore. That it now rests in the new generation. He passes on and it’s Oscar who becomes the dominant as all the memories of Ozma’s lives come back. Oscar is now filled with determination.

And with that, that’s how I’d do Volume 7 if the Mantle subplot was more akin to the post 9/11 environment than it is 2016 Elections, with bits of modern-day politics and even a bit of Stalinism involved. The Penny Subplot can either be in this Volume unaltered or to be decided upon next Volume.