#to point to a single instance where i claimed to be poor. while in an abusive relationship i did have several instances

[mithliya]

why is everyone so obsessed with picking you apart??? I've never seen any of the other blogs I follow get so many asks saying they're lying about things. do people not have anything better to do with their lives???

people have ridiculous conspiracy theories about my life where they pretend i must be lying about random aspects of my life bc they intentionally choose to fixate on certain things ive said while ignoring other things ive also said. idk why besides the fact that ppl on here already think it’s super impossible to be anything other than american, canadian, or european + poc + gay.

[arttsuka]

TBH as much as I prefer Toothless' first movie design, the one thing ill give credit for is the fact that I think the movie producers stated some where that the reason Toothless doesn't have his markings anymore is because he's growing up. Toothless is around Hiccups age which is even something Valka points out in the second movie, so you COULD make the hypothesis that he's loosing his sub-adult/"baby" features. Hence why he's more solid black, has a wider flatter head, and doesn't really have much of his markings anymore.

As for his personality; Toothless has always had the silly side to him regardless of the snark attached. You claim his personality got reduced to this stupid, slobbering 'dog', by the third movie when need I remind you he FULLY acted like a dog even in the first movie. Remember him with his butt wiggles when hiccup woke up? Him bounding about jumping from the rafters. Him making dumb goofy faces and doggy grumbles. He's always been a dork and boxing up his personality to him being "out of character" because he's not as snarky is such an odd take since toothless can and HAS had the ability to be both, not to mention the whole fact that Toothless much like Hiccup is suppose to be maturing into an Adult, but even if that's so, they still have time to have fun and play around, so really you have both sides of the coin there.

As for the Lightfury, ill give you that, they could've done better with her. But to be honest I always look at LF's as being a subspecies to a NF, and even nature has often shown that not all subspecies look entirely similar to the dominant species, which in this case would definitely be Night Furies. I look at her design as a design built more for a life in the light then the dark. Toothless' darker bluish/black coat helps him blend in the night, while the Lightfuries almost pearlescence helps her blend in with the light of the sun. It's probably why she stands out so much at night with her sparkles, because she's not really BUILT for the night like toothless is, same reason as why toothless sticks out like a sore-thumb in the morning. Their both built for varying conditions! So in some instances i can forgive some of the Lightfuries design choices. What I dont like is how bland she looks in terms of lack of spikes or such, but thats neither here nor there

Well sure, they could be his 'baby' features but I do think they made his design way more visually interesting than the solid black he became by movie 3. His model already stands out from every other dragon in universe (his more realistic proportions and the lack of sharp teeth to go with his slender frame)* so these marks really helped him blend more with the designs of the httyd universe.

* there are, arguably, other dragons with round features as well but most of them are the 'fat and slow' archetype (even then there are a lot of 'fat' dragons with excessively sharp teeth)

I feel like the whole 'they're the same age actually' was kind of unnecessary but still, doesn't excuse the chance in face structure to that extent. He looks like he's from another species (what does excuse the changes is the fact that they reworked the model).

And yes he always had that dog side to him even in the first movie BUT his core inspiration and 'values' were cat themed. He retains his cat personality in the second movie too, for the most part (for example, at around 10 minutes mark, we see him 'groom' himself to clean his face). But in the third movie they completely removed all that from his personality. They deliberately made him more dog-like. Even the sounds he makes are made to resemble barking. As for the 'slobbering' dog part it's literally part of the movie (with the poor excuse that 'he's in love').

Idk in the third movie I can't recall even a single moment where he actually acted intelligent on his own volition (I can't remember him acting intelligent at all but let's just say I'm wrong).

In the second movie it was made clear that he's more domesticated but still capable on his own. He didn't need help to socialize with the other dragons so I don't understand why he was so incapable of acting remotely 'normal' to make the light fury like him. Yes, she was unapproachable and cold (*cough playing hard to get because they didn't know what to do with her personality and her as a character cough*) but it still felt ooc.

As you said, Toothless has to ability to be both, at least in the second movie. 2 sides of the same coin, up to the second movie. In the 3rd movie, throughout the runtime, we never see him showing 'his other side'.

I wouldn't say that he matured into an adult but still has time to play, I'd say they reduced him to a less intelligent animal than what he was in previous adaptations (he feels like a Disney animal companion). Again, his characterization in the second movie is how I'd expect him to be in the third. He's arguably way more mature there while also having time to play and have fun while also keeping part of his personality.

As for the light fury, she seems so, out of place in this universe too. At least the design of the night fury has scales and looks rough. She looks like they forgot that she's supposed to be a dragon. But it was obviously done to make her look more 'feminine' (a lot of her design can be explained if you keep in mind they only wanted her to be the 'female' dragon, the romantic interest). She's as stereotypical as it goes, the next level would be to make her pink (that would kinda work actually if they kept Toothless bluish undertones but by the 3rd movie they completely removed them to favor a pure black, a bit on the warmer side)

Her white color makes her blend into the sun, sure, but what does that mean? Does she fly all the time? Or is her natural habitat somewhere with snow? A pure white design is pretty sure, but not practical at all. She appears to be a dragon for warmer climates (and if she's indeed a subspecies to the night fury that would confirm it), so no snow. She just doesn't blend in. Her habitat is so colorful she stands out like sore thumb, both during the day and night time.

Her white skin also makes the choice to make her so smooth really weird. She's basically unable to blend in with her surroundings so one would expect that she'd at least have sharp features, claws or horns, to help her survive potential attacks. If they didn't want to make her look rough they should have made her have a defense mechanism to protect herself. maybe she should be able to turn invisible, maybe she lives in the water, something, anything.

Personally I can't forgive any of the decisions made to create the light fury. I can understand, sure, but I'm still left with so many 'why?'s.

[atopvisenyashill]

Because I like giving Jaehaerys a headache: Baelon goes to avenge his brother Aemon against the Myrish pirates. He ends up dying as well. Who is now heir?

Well in canon, Baelon runs off to kill the pirates, then comes back and is suddenly named heir. So if he runs off, and just doesn't come back, that puts Jaehaerys is a trickier position because he had never actually named Baelon as heir, plus Viserys isn't yet married while Rhaenys is married with a powerful husband and a dragon (I don't think Viserys nor Daemon had even claimed their dragons just yet).

So...I do think he'd use this opportunity to say "well I have two grandchildren who could be my heirs and given the rapid deaths of both their parents, I think the lords should help me decide between them" as a way of sort of kicking away any responsibility for the aftermath. However...so fucking tricky. Viserys hasn't already become entrenched as heir yet which is a lot of why he has so many votes in the GC 101. He also doesn't have his Targaryen bride yet nor even a lone daughter to point to - his heir would still be Daemon and Daemon isn't all that old yet. Now, Rhaenys doesn't have a son either but she's at least had a single child, is married, and again, has a dragon.

I think he'd go for a GC earlier because just straight up bypassing Rhaenys for Viserys is very weird in this situation; you can almost see the sense in passing up a granddaughter for another son because Jaehaerys is still alive (ie it's not inherently in his eyes, a daughter before an uncle thing - he's just passing up one son for the other). But this is just very clearly passing up Aemon's line for Baelon's and I do think there'd be some pushback here. And I also think he'd have to play politic a lot more here as well - yeah, he can definitely still rely on misogyny (that's what the greens did after all lmao) to back his claim up, but without having named Baelon as heir, he looks like a little bit of an asshole here. And unfortunately for him, while he's politcking, Alysanne is not only politicking to get Rhaenys the throne, she's also probably really fucking pissed off that he's doing this after their two oldest sons have just died. This is absolutely going to be a crazy Second Quarrel where the King and Queen are a) not living together b) on completely opposite sides and c) getting ready to duke it out via their Rhaenys/Viserys proxies. So for sure, Jaehaerys is having Viserys claim and probably Daemon claim a dragon immediately, marrying Viserys to Aemma immediately, and um. Probably things go badly for poor Aemma here.

Whatever way it goes, I think it's a really close vote. These men are not just going to vote in a woman without a lot of promises made to them. The main people Corlys and Rhaenys need to win over are the Lannisters, Tyrells, and Tullys. We don't know how the Tyrells voted but we do know the Tyrells and Hightowers clash a bit so it's possible they can sway their votes. I think Grover Tully is a nonstarter but Elmo might be able to sway some votes, along with the Blackwoods who are already voting for them. Who knows what's happening with the Lannisters - they side with Viserys, then the Greens, but that doesn't mean Tymond can't be swayed. Plus, with Alysanne actively campaigning for Rhaenys (she had died before the GC 101 remember), that might sway things in their favor.

It's really tricky to say! I think what way it goes just kinda depends on your read of the characters and Westeros as a whole - I think canon shows us that they'd still rather a man above all else in several instances, especially when the person sitting on that seat would prefer a man. Jeyne, for example, had the backing of the Royces against her male cousins. And Rhaenys has to wait until 94 AC for Laenor, but Aemon/Baelon die in 92, so the GC is probably held in 93 while she's pregnant again, so she's arguing on behalf of a theoretical child, while Viserys and Daemon are here and alive, and a living breathing man is always worth more than a girl's theoretical baby (regardless of whether Viserys has his own heir or not smFh). On the other hand, god wouldn't it just be fun if Jaehaerys' plans were all completely ruined because Baelon runs off and gets himself and maybe Vhagar killed as well because he's upset and Alysanne manages to out politic him and get Rhaenys crowned while she hasn't even had a son yet? That's my dream, their marriage would be completely FINISHED but it would be so fucking funny.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

Every single day that Hasan piker continues to spew his nonsense I laugh a little bit harder. And the reason is strictly because he talks out of both sides of his mouth and it's funny that his audience can't see it and continue to send money to him so that he gets more and more rich while complaining about capitalism.

But that's genuinely the point. He is using communism and socialism as concept ideas to profit from. He is the poster child of what the 01% would look like under either of those systems. Which is to say a rich elite who would be better than all of the rabble and who would demand all of the rabble donate all of their labor to him.

And there's one section in this, actually multiple, were you hear him talk out of both sides of his mouth. In which he will say that the government is constantly failing but we need to give the government absolute power to make things better. If the government with its current powers already can't fix the problem giving them more will not make the problem better it will exacerbate the problem. One such section that they talk about in this video is housing. If you disincentivize contractors from building homes and housing complexes then they will refuse to do so in the future unless forced to do so. Because there is zero incentive to do so.

And what Hassan knows but fails to talk on is the fact that if the government ran housing there would still be homeless people and all of the existing housing for all of the plebeian rabble would be bland ugly minimalistic shitholes. Because no one needs luxuries under the Communist Utopia that these idiots dream of. Because the ones dreaming about it think that they're going to be in charge and therefore think that they're going to be able to live lives of luxury while they can pretend to have solved issues by giving people less than the bare minimum in some instances.

And it's always wild to me that this rich, country hating, anti-Semitic, shit head, is somehow popular enough to have gotten to where he has with wealth selling an idea that literally he would not have been able to get rich off of. He has more than one car he's got a 3 million house and I'm pretty sure he probably has LLCs. And he probably exploited slave labor from other countries to sell the t-shirts and products that he sold to get rich. So not only has he participated in the system that he claims he hates he has helped propagate it.

And that's by design. It's always by design. Because these people are trying to sell you universal fairness as an idea so that they can profit off of you. Because at the end of the day they are the living embodiment of exploitative capitalism. Because realistically they do believe in capitalism. But only to their benefit. Not to the benefit of anyone else. And it is always important to note, that too many youth in our country are brainwashed by the idea of a universally equitable system when the real world cannot be and never will be fair. Communism and socialism are ideas that are fundamentally opposed to the morals of our country. They are contrary to the very foundation of our country. People like Hassan do not actually care about the problems. They will talk out of both sides of their mouth continue to profit and give money to charities whom they know do nothing. Because if you were to look into most of the charities that exist in the world today, you would see a bunch of people who are literally participating in cronyism. Because they get invited to all of the big social gatherings. The social elites love the idea of giving to the poor. And it also makes things a thousand times better when you consider the tax breaks that they get for it.

So they can look like they're actually helping the cause when in reality they're just lining their own pockets little by little at a time and living vicariously through the parties and functions and publicity that those charities receive. Because if the charities that did exist had goals of putting themselves out of business like should be so many issues that we have in the world might actually have gotten better thus far. Sadly however they get addicted to the lifestyle that they're allowed to live when they run these organizations. They get to live like the ultra rich even if they themselves are not. So they might not be the 1%, but because the 1% love having the ability to lessen their taxes they party with these people and they get to virtue signal as if they're doing the world a greater good.

[floraracoon]

Gems of Dupont - Rewrite

Since it's been bothering me these past few days, this is a list of how I would rewrite a fic I wrote last year, called The Gems of Dupont on Ao3 if I were to do so.

Spoiler Warning if you want to read the fic then read this

Premise: There is a group of students who while anonymous, are known to have a lot of power. Namely, they have a history of getting rid of unsavory figures in the school or associated with it. Their current targets are Marinette (stalking, minor abuse of power, and her actions towards her 'rivals'), Adrien (bystander, actions as Chat Noir towards Ladybug, etc.), Lila (obvious), Alya (misinformation, slander, and something else), Mme. Bustier (bystander, emotional manipulation, poor teaching methods), Mr. Damocles (fraud, neglect, etc.), and Fu (facing the consequences of his own actions)

Problems: A scene that I did not flesh out enough to show the reasoning behind it, too many characters involved in the takedown, illogical plot points, involving characters that make no sense, and moving too fast due to me losing interest but not wanting to go on hiatus or abandoning the work.

The Rewrite:

Establishing the Gems -

The sign of the Gems (a wreath of gems on Mme. Mendelieve's door) is shown, causing rumors to spread through the school

Adrien, Alya, and Lila ask what they are, giving them the full explanation

The Gems are a group of six that every year go through and gather evidence of people's wrongdoings, before giving them to those that would cause the most change. This most of the time results in someone leaving the school. When they are done, gems are left where the person sits. Each gem represents something, and while there are six Gems, there are more gems.

Chloe scoffs out loud while Lila internally scoffs. Chloe thinks she is immune, as she has never been hit before. Lila scoffs because she thinks she hasn't been caught, to begin with.

Cut to a group chat, where two people are arguing over the nicknames they have in the chat. "Eye candy" seems particularly frustrated and claims they bring something more to the team than their good looks.

Safety Measures -

We see a week pass, with people becoming more and more anxious waiting for something to happen. Some sign that this wasn't a fluke. The first week is always when it is that they send out the warnings, where are the warnings?

But one day, as Nino walks in, having not arrived with Alya due to her running off to record an akuma fight, he finds a note sitting on his desk. The note contains a list of numbers and timestamps. A small doodle of a gem sitting in the corner.

On another day, Rose finds a small slip of paper that has Prince Ali's phone number on it, also with a small doodle of a gem in the corner

Luka opens a note left on his bed. He finds the chords for a song, with no lyrics. Each page has small annotations of cherry blossoms in places where lyrics would be, and a doodle of a gem in the bottom corner.

Kagami is surprised when a note falls out of her locker, with a message in brail saying "He hesitates, where is his backbone?". A gem is engraved on the page

The first -

Alya is the first to go down. After a fight between her and Nino that results in their break up, she learns that her parents got a similar note to the one that started the fight.

The numbers and timestamps were coded for different videos on the Ladyblog. The one for Nino was instances where Alya endangered him and those around him. The fight was about her recklessness, and her want to get up close to akuma fights with little regard for her safety.

The one her parents got, however, was every single time she had endangered herself.

The two of them were busy with work often, so they only really watched the videos Alya sent them. Often those were the ones where she stayed safe for the most part or had a lot of views.

So they opened her blog, to investigate what these timestamps were, only to find their daughter once again throwing herself into situations she shouldn't have. Along with countless posts trying to figure out the identities of people who were trying to protect the city and a single post that had them questioning her integrity.

The next day, Alya was pulled into distanced learning. She was also grounded until further notice, with no blog posting for one day per timestamp listed.

Will continue this post tomorrow, as this is getting really long

[rosehippiefield]

Mental strength part 4: Keiji and Gin

The other posts on this topic:

Part 1: Sara and Nao

Part 2: Reko and Alice

Part 3: Kanna and Shin

Part 5: Kai and Q-Taro

Part 6: Joe and Mishima

This time around let's discuss our two definite survivors of main story: stoic ex-policeman that drowns in self-guilt and small kid that takes as much action as anyone else.

Keiji seems unfased by any dangers, his face is always in poker mode, his actions are logical. Weakness not detected, until trauma kicks in. And his tragedy is rough - manslaugther that is left unpunished. Mr. ex-policeman lets someone die partly because of memories of his own sin - definitely not a sigh of a healthy mental state. Even more, it seems he does not fully realise that untill second main game. Keiji's problem is a constant shifting of blame, for instance, onto Megumi who is shady but saved his life, and responsibility, for instance, onto Sara, whom he leads to conclusions but never takes the lead himself. I also believe that his choice with Kanna could be interpreted as "poor girl will not bear more deaths", seeing himself in her plight. And once again, while being broken with huge shadows under his eyes Keiji manages to advance through life. Not taking initiative, he still takes Sara under his wing. Moreover, the coffin situation actually opens his eyes about blaming the others, where he even thought he'd be better of dying there. But our sufferer was saved, and though evidently Mr Policeman-the-illusion still haunts him, he makes a plan to decieve Midori. In the banquet Keiji was ready to accept death if he didn't have some ace up his sleeve (which we don't know for now), and still he doesn't let Sara to kill Gin for him. No, he hasn't given up on himself, he remains undaunted. This man is capable of cold blooded actions, but he has nerves of steel and makes attempts to be a good person.

Gin is autistic 12 years old kid in a death game. Being there at such a young age seems traumatic enough, but he is exposed to danger every single chapter. Brave child explores just as much as adults, he is naive to the point of giving away tokens just to play, believing dealing with money is wrong for him to do. His desire to save everybody eventually leads to him becoming a challenger in the banquet, when nobody knew the rules and concequences. Not to mention him simply supporting his allies, especially Sara with her hallucinations. Like nobody can claim our boy is useless! By the way, he refused to wish to cure his autism when Midori offered, Gin just wanted to make his mom happy! The only downside of his selflessness is that it can be used against him, for example, token exchange ended in Gin being the target for poison shots. On the other hand, his naive faith keeps others from surrendering to their dark side. I wholeheartedly believe Gin is the only thing keeping group sane in logic route. So may our little protector continue to do so, sharing his strength with others!

[meg-moira]

I did the thing. Based on this writing prompt!

.

.

What am I, you ask?

It was a question I, too asked myself, once upon a time. I ask it no longer, because I don’t much see the reason in dwelling upon questions which have no definitive answers.

I can tell you what others think I am. Will that satisfy your curiosity?

An aged deity they call me. A minor one, of course. For they know I never laid claim to the vast domains of the Great Gods. War, Knowledge, Death are all grand pursuits, but they are not to my tastes.

Besides, I would never claim anything so specific. To those who live in the village beneath my humble temple, I am the warmth of a tended hearth, the safety of home - and the joy of returning to it.

It is a quiet village, you know. And I know my people by look and by voice. They take turns climbing the steep hill to tend my temple.

I settled here for a reason.

Did you notice my temple? It’s nice, is it not? Wooden, round, and short enough that the adults must bend to enter. Inside, two rows of candles illuminate walls lined with dangling shells dug from deep within the earth. Shelves are stacked with pebbles, feathers, twigs, and flowers. Gifts from my followers and requests I planted in the minds of my most devout.

At the center of it all, bathed in the candles’ butter yellow light sits a gleaming stone. It is opalescent and a pretty enough sight to behold. It was recovered generations ago, a layer or two beneath the dug-up shells.

The humans believe that I reside in the Everstone. That’s what they call it. Everstone. It’s got a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

I don’t. Live in the Everstone, that is. I don’t believe I live anywhere in particular.

Occasionally I sit in the stone, just for fun. I warm it sometimes when my followers’ reverent fingers brush the grooves. I like the sound of their surprise and delight. Other times I perch upon the temple’s roof, and drink up light from the first and second sun. And on rare instances, I expend the energy to make myself just corporeal enough to walk upon the hillside and feel the grass between my toes. I only allow my most favorite devotees to see me like this. It is strange and awkward to have limbs and take up space. I only do it because the sensation of touch is so entirely captivating.

Those who glimpse my walking form see someone who looks human in the same way that a painting of an ocean resembles the cold, untamable tides. I take up space, and within that space is the suggestion of personhood. They see a figure draped and hooded in ethereal white, brown skinned and with a face whose features are vague and changing. Human faces fascinate me, and I cannot always make up my mind about the features I want for my own. I-

Why would you interrupt me?

Did you not trudge your ugly boots up this steep hill to seek me out? And if you’ve come, as you say, from lands afar - why would you not want to make conversation?

...Could it be that it is not me you seek, but the one who, even now, lies crumpled and half dead upon my temple floor?

That is the truth of it. I can see it in your terrible war-bright eyes. You are no more human than the one who bleeds ichor on my nice wooden planks.

No. No. Don’t go lifting your ugly spiked weapon just yet. I’m not done talking. I can’t talk with the humans. At least, not like this. And the god currently bleeding in my temple wasn’t much able to make conversation.

He staggered up the hillside not an hour before you arrived. He had taken far more care in the crafting of his physical form than I, and I’d guessed right away that he was one of the visible gods. Likely in possession of both power and desire enough to parade himself about for his followers. To drape his body, wrapped in opulent cloth, across the velvet couch upon his temple dais.

Yes, I made the last part up. I don’t know that he liked to drape himself across couches like a subject waiting to be painted, but with his raven black hair, muscles sculpted by an undoubtedly delicate hand, and a pretty face which did not shift like mine was wont to do, he fit the part well enough.

His fine clothes were ripped and bloody when he staggered up my hillside. And his hair, which looked to have once been drawn back in a sleek braid, was mostly dragged loose, falling in wisps and tangles. His pretty face was cut and broken, and when he pressed a shaking hand upon my wooden walls, he left a smear of ichor, brutal and golden beneath the suns.

“Sanctuary,” he murmured, and his voice was cracked and broken as the rest of him.

I could have barred my door. He might have once been powerful, but it had been cruelly beaten out of him by something.

You, I presume.

No. Enough with the weapon waving. I said I was talking.

I let him in. Don’t ask me why. Maybe stripped of his power, he reminded me of my village devotees. Or maybe I just didn’t want his divinely made flesh to stink up my lawn.

He stumbled in as soon as I opened the door, and immediately collapsed, one hand clutching what was surely a severe wound in his side. If he was as human as he appeared, I’m sure he would have died.

No, he’s not dead.

It was touch-and-go for a while. But, as I’m sure you know, gods are not so easy to kill.

I helped him, pouring some of my own energy into his form. It was like feeding oxygen to a faltering flame. As I worked, he lay limp as a doll, lips half pressed to my wooden floor as his voice rasped, filling the room.

His people call him Praesaro. He told me of how you killed a great number of them, cutting a path so you might reach him. His tears of saltwater and gold dampened the temple floor as he spoke, and where they slipped between the slats of wood, wild clovers sprouted from the soil. His throat was dry and grief-wrung, but I did not need to hear him to feel his overwhelming, aching loss. He’d seen his followers cut down, all while he, their glorious protector, was powerless to stop you.

You smile. Does pain amuse you?

I see. It is not just any pain you seek, but a god’s pain. You cared not for the city you slew, did you? You only wanted the god who protected it. So are you the God Devourer of which the wind has been whispering of late?

I hear conflicting tales of you. The wind says that you came from the skies - or perhaps the heavens. The rocks deep within the earth say that you are not of this world. And the oceans say you smell of strange waters. But all of them are in agreement on this point: You come to consume. And you will not leave until your boundless appetite has feasted upon this world.

And now you do lift that monstrously spiked weapon. You intend to destroy my temple and crush the last of the divine life from poor Praesaro - I can see it in the set of your jaw, the way you bare those sharpened teeth.

You intend to devour me too. In my little temple on this little hill, I probably seem nothing more than a snack to you. But before you unhinge your salivating jaw, dear god eater, let me ask you this:

Do you know why I remain here, on this little hill, above this little village?

It is because I like it here.

Do you feel that? The way the earth trembles beneath your bloodied boots? Or perhaps you’ve noticed the wind and how it nips at your skin. And what about the clouds that darken, bearing down upon my little temple on this single, lonely hill.

I was not entirely honest when I told you that I do not know what I am. Or rather, I have a guess.

You see, I remember when oceans covered these hills, and I remember when tiny creatures filled the shells which are strung up in my temple. I knew where each had burrowed, because they were buried in my soil. The feathers collected for my temple were carried here on my wind. And the pebbles smoothed in my streams.

To these people, I am a minor god, because that is how I wish to be perceived.

But for you, Devourer of Gods, I will deign to stretch out, unfurl.

You came to feast upon gods, little one. I wonder, how will you contend with a world?

.

You can support my writing on Patreon!

[acourtofthought]

Ooh just saw that post you reblogged about Lucien vs. Azriel and finding out what was “wrong” with Elain, and imo anyone who took Azriel identifying her as a Seer to be example of Az besting Lucien in Elain’s diagnosis is not comprehending the text correctly.

Like I’m sorry if that’s mean, but it’s true. In regards to her powers/having a healer visit Elain, Lucien didn’t find anything wrong with Elain because there was nothing wrong with Elain.

She’s a seer. And Nesta stole something from the Couldren. They have powers, new and unfamiliar, and those powers are not the cause of any wrongness or ailment with them. It’s not like Cassian said “ah yes, Nesta’s power is death.” And she was fixed, is it? Feyre was actually the one to point that out. But it was Cassian who knew Nesta needed an outlet (training), and then that she also needed joy (music, dancing). Why? Because the powers weren’t what was wrong with her. Her trauma was.

Step one for Elain’s healing was sunshine. To get out of the HOW and go somewhere (community gardens, cooking with Naula and Cerridwen, etc). S/O to the love of our lives for knowing that. But it’s pretty blatant that not only is Elain’s healing & story not done yet, but she’s not surrounding herself with people who will pay her the attention and respect needed to figure that out, and help her on that journey.

Again, not trying to be rude. But when that instance is used as justification for that “true mates” theory…it’s giving poor RC skills

- not to start some mess 🧼✨

NTSSM! 🧼✨

I seriously love every single word and thought you just wrote and I couldn't agree more. I especially love how you pointed out that when they discovered what Nesta's power was, it was never something that was wrong with her. Sure they wanted to help train her powers so they didn't overwhelm her but not once did any character claim that she needed to be fixed because her Power was Death.

It's the same with Elain. Sure Lucien may have been confused by her riddles, but the reason he couldn't "sense" what was wrong was because her being a Seer was never a "wrongness" for him to detect. It was just a piece of who Elain had become, something she will always possess.

Az was basically a talent scout with her. "Oh look! I sense these riddles mean you're a Seer and we can profit from that!"

Lucien wanted to help Elain emerge from her depression so she didn't continue on her downward spiral while losing weight.

Az had a light bulb moment where he figured out Elain had some cool skill the IC could put to good use.

These two things are not created equal.

I hope you had a wonderful Sunday NTSSM!

[linkspooky]

Who is it who really needs saving? 

is the question Dabi asked when Tokoyami came to rescue Hawks in the middle of the raid war arc. Dabi asks this question just after Hawks stabbed twice in the back with the justification that it would save people, despite the fact that Twice was also a victim too, and also someone in need of saving. Dabi’s question is especially poignant because it asks who is hero society invested in saving, a question that is repeated by Twice who believes Hero Society only saves the good victims, and Himiko as well who asks if Heroes save people, then was Twice not a person. 

I bring this up because chapter 299/300 end on another parallel between Dabi and Hawks. Both of them have their backs being shown, however, Hawks is already healing due to the nature of his quirk, whereas the permanent burns on Dabi’s skin has already gotten worse. Hawks and Dabi also have opposite goals at this point, Hawks to support Endeavor, and Dabi’s ultimate goal is to bring him down. However, Rei’s words over Endeavor’s panel add another layer of complication to this. “Those regrets and guilt, the rest of those have borne that burden much more than you have.” Endeavor is suffering, but he’s not the one most in need of saving. I believe next chapter rightly, Rei is going to point out that the ones most in need of saving are the ones who suffered the most because of Endeavor’s actions. Endeavor was never the one in need of saving, and in need of redemption in the first place, rather it was Dabi. 

1. Started From the Bottom Now We’re Even Lower

Hawks and Dabi are seeming opposites even from their origin points. Hawks was born in a poor household the son to a minor villain, Touya a rich household the son of the number two hero. Hawks family name basically means nothing to the point where the hero commission easily erased it, whereas Dabi’s family name has dominated his entire life. Touya from a young age was given everything he needed to become a hero and his father even encouraged him, while Hawks was on the run from the law and couldn’t even leave his small house without getting yelled at. 

At first, Hawks was born with a quirk that both of his parents disapproved of as they constantly asked him what his wings were even for, and seemed disgusted by his mutation. While at the same time, Touya was born with a quirk that his father was happy with, a fire quirk even stronger than his own which Enji thought gave him enough of a potential that he didn’t need to worry about finding an ideal hybrid quirk. He could pass all his techniques onto his firstborn son who seemed eager to learn. 

The only real similarity between both of them was that for both children, Endeavor was clearly their favorite hero. Touya was eager to please his father and train with him in order to inherit his hero techniques, and when Endeavor captured Hawks father, it convinced Hawks that heroes were real. 

However, both of them experienced a sudden reversal of fate. This is where circumstances for both of them flipped. Touya’s quirk was in fact revealed to be a very harmful hybridization of his parents two quirks, he inherited his father’s flames but even hotter, while at the same time inheriting Rei’s sensitivity to fire which made th overheating flaw even worse on him causing his quirk to deliberately harm his body. Hawks however, is an ideali hybridization of both of his parents quirks. His mother Tomie has a quirk that creates eyeballs and seems ideal for searching, watching and locating things, while his father’s feather quirks on his arms that could sharpen into blades turned into wings on his back that were both capable of searching and detection like his mother’s eyeballs and sharpening into blades like his father’s. 

At first it seems destined that Touya was ging to become a hero, while Hawks had no hope for him, but because of the nature of their quirks the opposite happened. When Hawks was young he was able to save a busload of people from crashing which got him recruited by the hero commission. While it’s implied that Touya kept trying to train on his own even after Endeavor stopped the training and abandoned him in favor of Shoto, and because of that Touya had his training accident at Sekoto peek and burned to death. 

Dabi and Hawks are seeming opposites, but they’re actually quite similar if you think about it. Both of them grew up in abusive households that are intentionally paralleled, they have controlling and physically violent fathers, and mothers who are coded as mentally ill, Tomie was unfit to take care of a child, and Rei was eventually pushed to a breaking point where she was unable to anymore and then forcibly separated and institutionalized by her husband. Both, also experienced a separation from their mother, Rei was hospitalized around the time Toya finally died, and the Hero Commission promised Tomie support if she cut all ties from him. Both of them also dreamed of becoming heroes, and tried their best to, even Touya after his father rejected him kept training on their own. 

The only difference between them is circumstances, Hawks was saved because he was born with a useful quirk, Touya despite his father being the number two hero was never saved. 

2. We’re the Heroes, Who Don’t Do Anything

In fact it’s implied that Enji intentionally looked away and forced himself to forget Touya’s suffering. For instance, the first time Touya trains with Enji he’s shown wearing a sleeveless shirt. Every time after that, Touya has long jacket sleeves on. When he’s crying to Natsuo, when he’s pulling out his hair, and the last memory from before his death, every time Touya is shown hiding his arms. We also know that Dabi, has burns that go all the way up his arms which is exactly where his flames emerge from. It’s also the place where Touya burns himself when Enji remembers training with him for the first time. 

It’s likely that Touya was walking around with burns up his arms from the training he was inflicting on himself, and Enji simply didn’t notice because his unreliable narrator status, he forgets everything he has done to other members of his family, or intentionally downplays the severity of it in order to avoid the guilt and consequences of his actions. Hence why he can say things like “I never meant to neglect you” to Natsuo, when we saw him call Natsuo and the others failures from Shoto’s perspective, because in Enji’s perspective he’s just a good father who went wrong somewhere along the line, whereas from Natsuo’s perspective he never really acted like a father towards him at all.

Enji only ever sees his own intentions, and not the impact his actions had on others. He only saw his heroic ambitions, and not the way he taught Touya that his only value was his quirk, and then completely tossed him aside as a failure and ignored all his suffering when Touya kept trying to get his attention. That he intentionally neglected Touya until either an accident or a suicide claimed his life. 

Either way it’s a running theme that Endeavor hesitates when it comes to saving his own sons. Despite seeing himself as both a hero and a father, he completely fails in both roles to them. 

He froze when it came time to save Natsuo from Ending, and the second time when Shoto was begging Endeavor for help against Dabi, Endeavor chose not to do a single thing. In fact the only thing that moved him was Deku’s pep talk that exclusively stoked his ego and called him a good mentor, which caused Endeavor to finally move into action. 

Endeavor is a hero in name who has no interest in directly saving others, because his number one priority has always been to stand at the number one spot and feel like he’s accomplished something. He didn’t notice Touya was most likely continuing the training on his own, and was spiraling that badly until after Touya had died, and even after that happened he still continued the training with Shoto like nothing happened, even mentioning that Touya was a small mistake. 

When the wounds from Touya’s death were still fresh, it seemed like barely anything more than an afterthought to him. There are some people who even theorize that Enji only believed Touya was always alive because he had never truly faced the guilt of Touya’s death and his role in it, that it was a comfort to him to believe his son was still secretly alive out there. 

The signs were obvious that Touya was spiraling, but he was neglected so much that Endeavor the number two hero who prides himself on most cases resolved didn’t notice what was going wrong with his son until he literally burned himself alive, and even then that wasn’t enough to stop him from mistreating his other son and forcing him into painful training. 

Touya’s neglect is as much abuse as Shoto’s favoritism and training, that’s the point of the golden child / scapegoat dynamic, they are both being abused. Enji was the only parent in the household, and if his kid was burning himself, and injuring himself all the time and it got to the point where the child literally died because of a lack of adult supervision, Enji could be prosecuted for manslaughter in a court of law. There are cases where adults just, do absolutely nothing for their kids, and those kids sometimes die of neglect, starvation, because of their parents completely failing to take care of them. It’s just as sinister a form of abuse as physical abuse. In both cases a child’s needs aren’t being provided for by their parents. 

Dabi is someone who could have been easily saved by his father paying attention to him, and should have been saved by the man who prides himself as the number two hero, but he was left to rot. This is a running theme with Endeavor, he’s a hero who continually fails to save his family. 

Dabi’s situation is also a metaphor for hero society at large. Who are the types of people that Hero Society prefers to save? Those who are useful to it like Hawks. It intentionally turns a blind eye to cases like Touya, Tenko  or Twice. If Touya did have burns on his arms from training but was able to cover them up just by wearing long sleeves, and Natsuo was the only one who knew then that goes even further to explain Dabi’s specific obsession with discrediting Endeavor.

If Dabi’s father had just acted like a hero, or acted like a father then he would have been saved. If Dabi’s father had noticed the person most in need of saving was right next to him, the incident where he burned to death never would have happened. Which is why Dabi’s grudge is specifically against heroes who do not act like heroes. Heroes who, cannot save anyone because they are too self involved to perform the duty of saving. He shares Stain’s obsession with ideologically pure heroes, that only heroes who put saving others selflessly over everything else should be allowed to exist and the rest are pretenders to the title.

Notice how Dabi pulls on the scars on his face when begging the people to think about this, about who should really be allowed to call themselves heroes. 

Dabi’s entire arc revolves around this question. Who are the real victims? Who are the ones that really need to be saved? Dabi is a character of mystery and subversion who is constantly hiding his real feelings. 

Dabi is commented on being heartless about Twice’s death, but his actions contradict his words. Dabi goes out of his way trying to avenge Twice even after it’s already too late to save him, even burning up his own body to do so. He tried so hard we see literally there are new scars growing on his back the next time we see him Post-War Arc. 

I’d also like to bring up that while Hawks accuses Dabi of feeling nothing about Twice’s death, Hawks is the one who killed him, and who after the fact shows no regret in his actions because he’s completely justified it to himself. He even remembers Twice like he’s some kind of old friend he took inspiration from, and not a person he manipulated into trusting him then killed. My point is it’s a reversal, Hawks is set up as the one who cares about Twice as a friend, but really was only using him. Dabi claims he was only using him, but he’s the one who showed an actual emotional reaction to Twice’s death and made an effort to save him. 

If I were to say this is one more point of foiling between Dabi and Hawks. They both don’t see themselves as victims and because of that they deny the victimhood of the other. 

Dabi accuses Hawks of becoming a murderer because his father was a murderer. Hawks when he learns the truth about Enji, takes Enji’s side over Dabi’s, believing Endeavor being the true victim in need of help in that situation. This is because Dabi and Hawks both deny their own victimhood, and they project that on each other. Dabi denies his victimhood and pretends to be the villain instead, he’s the villain who is going to take down Endeavor and therefore he’s not suffering. Hawks denies his own victimhood and his abusive past and pretends to be a hero, he’s helping Endeavor become a better hero, so therefore all the abuse Endeavor committed is in the past so therefore he doesn’t have to think about it. Both deny themselves and therefore deny any similarity in one another. 

They’re also two people fatally wrapped up in their own circumstances they turn a blind eye to the suffering of others. Dabi assumes that Shoto is “good” and therefore, must have been raised with love and had it better than him and was raised with love. Whereas Hawks assumes that Twice is “good”, and therefore worthy of saving because he helps other people. In both cases, neither Dabi nor Hawks really understand Shoto or Twice, they’re just judging them by their own projected standards. Dabi only understands his childhood as Touya desperately trying to work for Enji’s attention, so Shoto who had Enji’s attention must have had it good. Hawks was saved because of the bus accident where he saved people as a hero, so obviously it makes sense he reach out to try to save another good person who just had bad luck. 

Despite the fact that both of them are pretty much emotionally dead and in deep denial of their true feelings. 

Dabi has also made a show of how little he cares about Natsuo, while at the same time his most famous line from the pro hero arc is “overthought things and snapped...” 

Dabi is also the only one who notices it’s dangerous to bring Tokoyami onto a battlefield. This is when he asks the question, who is it who needs saving. 

We learn at around the same time, the hope from the Pro Hero arc was intentionally a set up by Dabi to bring Endeavor down, and show everyone eventually that Endeavor hadn’t truly changed. 

These are all small details yes, but keep in mind we’ve really only gotten crumbs of Dabi’s characterization so far because his perspective is one that has deliberately been kept from us. We see his past through almost everyone else’s eyes but his own - because so far the focus has been on Endeavor.

Just like Dabi set up Endeavor’s earlier success only to bring him down, this might also lead to a reversal in the narratives. In 299, Hawks believed Endeavor to be the one in need of help. We are also as an audience set up to believe that the narrative arc will focus around Endeavor’s redemption. This is before the series revealed the circumstances of his son. 

However, Endeavor and Dabi are literal opposites. They’re inversions of each other. Dabi pretends he doesn’t care any more for his family and will go out of his way to hurt them, that all he cares about is revenge, but at the same his ideals are heroic. In his actions and ideals he’s the one calling for a better society. Dabi is the most independent and distant from the league it’s true, and so far he’s denied their friendship, but at the same time it’s Dabi who is the most idealistic of the league. Shigaraki wants to destroy the current society, Himiko wants a society that’s easier on her, but it’s Dabi who has the ideals for a society he wants, one where heroes are held to standards and act like Heroes. It’s dabi better than anyone else who makes the standards for mass appeal. Because, deep down Dabi still has heroic aspirations and drive even if it comes from Stain of all people he’s inspired by. He has some sort of ideals, a world he’s trying to create.

Whereas, Endeavor doesn’t have any heroic ideals at all. His idea of being a hero has always centered around fame, status and the ranking of number one. He’s a hero unconcerned with saving people, only defeating villains to prove his strength. Endeavor presents himself outwardly as someone who is trying to do what’s best for his family, and working towards being the best hero he can be but his intentions are revealed to be selfish, at the same time as Enji’s narration is revealed as unreliable. It may have been set up for an inversion all along, with the setup being that Enji is the one who needed to redeem himself, when Dabi was pushed to the background. Around this time Rei also tried to reassure others, that he was trying to carry his regrets with him. 

However, as soon as Touya’s identity is revealed, Rei’s stance reverses. Now she properly calls out that, Enji hasn’t been carrying his regrets at al.. Instead, he’s been forcing his family to carry the burden of it while he gets to go play hero in front of the public. 

As soon as Touya is revealed to be alive, it’s not Enji who is the center and focus of conversation but rather Touya. In 299, Hawks believes that it’s Endeavor whose in need of saving, but we’re shown that Endeavor only really seems to pity himself in this situation. 

It’s Rei who shows up to remind us, who really is in need of saving in this situation. Not Endeavor but rather those who have been burned the most by Endeavor’s actions. 

Which may be the ultimate parallel between Hawks and Dabi as well, Hawks can’t see himself as a victim so he can’t realize who the victims who need his help the most is. Whereas, Dabi in the future may receive the change of heart he needs to reopen his heart again and accept others, and therefore learn to accept himself. Dabi is set up for a reconciliation between his two selves, Touya the victim and Dabi the villain. While ultimately, Hawks will intentionally turn his back on Keigo the victim, because he can only ever see himself as a hero.

 I’m not suggesting that Dabi is good or Hawks is bad, or the other way around, not something as simple as that but that Dabi is open to change, and this will lead to him eventually opening up to others. Whereas, Hawks who is given practically every opportunity to change, and even escapes killing Twice with no permanent consequences, (his wings are growing back, and he even is freed from the hero commission) chooses to support Endeavor once again. It’s Dabi who calls others to think and reevaluate, and is actively trying to create a change in the world, whereas Hawks only interest is protecting other heroes and not the victims that heroes themselves create. Because in his mind heroes are good and that fact will never change. 

Because Dabi is the one trying to create change, while Hawks continues to cling to Endeavor I believe we’ll eventually receive a reversal for both of them. Just as the narrative around Dabi has changed from irredeemable villain to person in need of saving, we may see exactly what was foreshadowed in this panel happening. Dabi walking towards the light, while Hawks falls further and further into the shadows - because it’s Dabi who is looking for that light, while Hawks chooses to remain in the dark. Hawks was saved once, and now he believes that everyone who is good gets saved, unless they are unlucky like Twice. It’s Dabi who knows the truth, that there are heroes who don’t save people, and it’s Dabi who is at least trying to confront that truth head on and change it rather than just ignoring it. 

In a way Hawks is someone who has gone blind from looking too closely at Endeavor’s light, whereas because Dabi was failed by Endeavor and fell into the shadows he at least knows the truth about what it’s like for those who don’t get saved, and unlike Hawks can’t keep deluding himself that this is a world where everyone who deserves it gets saved. 

[cosmicjoke]

Levi and Zeke:  Their similarities and the Fundamental differences between Them:

I’ve recently been having a discussion with @ourmondobongo, and it’s spurred me to want to kind of analyze further the fundamental and philosophical differences between Levi and Zeke.  I know I’ve gone into this thoroughly already, but my discussion with ourmondobongo has really made me want to delve in even deeper.  First though, let me thank them for, as always, inspiring such insightful discussion among the fan base!

Some really interesting ideas were posted here, about Zeke’s experiences growing up in Liberio informing his world view and his views on the worth, or rather, lack thereof, in human life.   ourmondobongo suggested that, because of Zeke’s experiences with his parents, utilizing him as a tool for the Resistance, and his subsequent utilization by the Marlyean army as a tool of war, it ended up warping his perception, and influencing him to believe that all human life is inherently worthless unless it can be molded into a tool or a weapon to further some goal.  I agree with this interpretation of Zeke’s mindset and what shaped it.  This is undoubtedly how Zeke views the world, and humanity as a whole, and he’s deemed, because of his own suffering, brought about by his experiences affirming this world view, that life is not worth living.  Because he sees life as without value unless one can make themselves useful in some way, in his view, the suffering inherent in that makes life fundamentally pointless and meaningless and not worth the effort.

Now, where I diverge slightly from ourmondobongo’s view on this is in relation to Zeke’s influence upon Levi in the final arc, or rather, what they say about Zeke’s philosophy overriding or undercutting Levi’s own.  They said that Levi’s belief in an intrinsic value in human life is bombarded and undermined during the final arc of SnK, Zeke’s own belief in the worthlessness of human life being affirmed to him again and again by the chaos and destruction around them, the rightness of his philosophy and belief that this sort of destruction can only stop with the eradication of the Eldian people being confirmed.  But see, the thing is, I don’t think Zeke is at all showing Levi something new, or something which he hasn’t already known all his life.

Zeke claims that his experiences in life make him uniquely suited to understanding the conflict between Eldian’s and Marleyeans, and that his experiences make him uniquely capable of knowing how to solve that conflict.  But Zeke is nothing if not a unfailingly self-centered egotist, someone driven purely by selfish, egotistical viewpoints, unable and unwilling to perceive anything outside of his limited world view.  His life ISN’T unique, his experiences AREN’T unique.  They’re, first of all, shared by every single Eldian on both Marley and in other countries around the world.  Further, and more importantly to the point I’m about to make, they’re shared by Levi.  

Zeke grew up being treated and regarded as a second-class citizen, relegated to a limited area, an internment zone, which he wasn’t allowed to leave unless given direct permission by the powers that be, and regarded as something less than human by the people of Marley.  Well, these are all things Levi himself experienced growing up too, and, I would argue, to an even more extreme degree than Zeke.

Levi grew up in the Underground, a sprawling, subterranean city filled with the so called “dregs of society”.  A place where the poor, the persecuted, the sick, the dying, the deviant and the criminal were either forced to flee to, or more unfortunate still, were born into.  All this underneath the Capital of Paradis, Sina, the richest, most exclusive district inside the Walls.  A place where the elite of society lived and worked and raised their families in wealth and luxury.  The irony of the poorest, most poverty stricken area inside the Walls being directly beneath the richest, most affluent area inside the Walls can’t be overstated.  

Perhaps most relevant to note in this comparison between Zeke’s experience growing up in an internment zone and Levi’s growing up in the Underground, is that the people of the Underground were not only considered second-class citizens, but relegated to something even below that, considered not citizens at all.  They were literally denied citizenship within all areas above ground, within the Walls, and if they somehow managed to make it to the surface, and were found out, they would be promptly deported back to the Underground, where they would continue to be denied any and all rights given to the people up above.  And, it can be easily argued, that the people of the Underground were treated in many ways significantly worse than the Eldian’s inside the interment zone in Liberio.  The people of Liberio seemed relatively well provided for, able to find work, able to earn a living, able to have homes for their families and put food on the table, essentially allowed a sustainable and comfortable life, if one burdened by outside prejudice.  They weren’t made to live in squalor.  Largely, no doubt, because they were seen as an unwanted, but useful resource for the Marleyean government.  The people of the Underground were provided no such provisions.  They were viewed as simple refuse, society’s unwanted and unneeded surplus.  Poverty and depravation ran rampant in the Underground, a lack of resources and support from above resulting in high crime rates and desperation, to things like murder, prostitution, violence and other sorts of criminality.  Further, leading to things like rampant orphaning of children, likely due to starvation and disease claiming the lives of parents, etc...  It was a place literally cut off from the sun, a world of perpetual darkness, sickness, poverty and dire straits.  They received no aid or support from above, were not provided any of the benefits or privileges of the people on the surface, were not offered any sort of path to success, or betterment of their lives.  They were just plainly rejected and left to the whims of fate.  This alone makes it a more difficult and desperate place than the interment zones of Liberio, for even there the Eldian’s were given opportunities to improve their lives through the Warrior Unit programs.  

You might try to point out that Zeke’s experience differs from Levi’s in how he was taught that he, and on his assumption, every other Eldian, would only ever be seen and treated as a tool to be used for some greater gain, and that Levi, at least, had the love of his mother, and Kenny to show him the ropes of how to survive in a place as ruthless as the Underground, and so Levi couldn’t possibly understand what it means, the way Zeke does, to be seen as a tool, or to be deemed worthless outside of ones utility.  But I would counter this simply, by saying that Levi grew up, spent the first, several years of his life, in a brothel, where the very mother who loved him also worked as a whore.  Through this experience alone, it can be easily assumed that Levi was exposed to repeated instances of his mother being EXACTLY used as a tool, as an object who’s sole purpose was to give men pleasure.  From his birth, then, Levi was exposed and taught the brutal lesson that the sole most important person in his life, his mother, the one person we can assume was the only positive influence and relationship he had, for the first, several years of his life, was seen and treated by everyone else as nothing more than a tool for their basest and most perverse satisfaction.  I can scarcely imagine a more horrific or cruel example of a young child being taught the same lesson Zeke seems to think is unique to him alone, that people’s lives are worthless outside of what use they can provide for someone or something else.  Beyond that, Levi was again forced to face a situation in which he and his two, closest friends in Furlan and Isabel were used as tools by other people, recruited by Lobov to kill Erwin and retrieve from him an incriminating document, promised, if they succeeded, citizenship above and a handsome payday, only to find out later the entire scenario had been set up by Erwin himself to press Levi and his friends into military service, to be used as tools in the fight against the Titans.  Both of these are prime examples of Levi being faced with the lesson that he and those he cared about were seen by people above ground as nothing more than tools, to be used at their disposal.  So this was a concept Levi was already well acquainted with by the time Zeke showed up, a merciless lesson in the harshness, violence, brutality and suffering of life.  Zeke didn’t experience anything Levi didn’t in turn, and in many ways, with greater extremity.  

Anyone trying to claim, also, that Zeke had no positive influences in his life like Levi did would be wrong.  Zeke had Mr. Ksavar, for one, and his grandparents, for another.  Mr. Ksavar asked nothing of Zeke, merely showed care and concern for him, and a desire to spend time with him, playing catch.  It was Zeke who offered to inherit the Beast Titan from Mr. Ksavar, not something forced on him.  And while Zeke’s grandparents may have tried to enforce Marleyean history on him in regards to the Eldian’s, they did so out of love for him, in a misguided attempt to PROTECT him, because they cared, not because they were trying to use him in any way.  

My point in talking about all of this is to draw a parallel between Zeke’s life, and Levi’s, and then to demonstrate how, despite deeply similar life experiences, the two of them diverge in vital and fundamental ways which, more than anything, can only be attributed to their strengths of character and natural inclinations as people.

Essentially, the gist of my argument is this.  Zeke is a bad person.  Levi is a good person.  And there can be no excuses, or influencing factors found in either of their lives to credit for the way either of them turned out, other than themselves, other than their own natures.

Because Zeke let his life experiences twist him into a heartless, emotionless, unfeeling sociopath who murders other people without remorse, and regards other human lives as meaningless, worthless trash, expendable and disposable as a means to his own ends.  He let his experiences in life serve as an EXCUSE for his natural cruelty.  He chose to view the lives of others only through the prism of his own experiences, and cast a judgment upon the worth of those other lives.  The true reveal of Zeke’s megalomaniacal egotism is in how he finds himself unable to separate the lives of others from his own.  In how he’s unable to view the lives of others as anything other than an extension of his own existence.  Because he deems his own life worthless, then so too must be the lives of everyone else.

Levi, then, is perfectly his opposite.  It isn’t because of Levi’s life experiences that he’s turned out the way he is.  It is IN SPITE of his life experiences that he has.  Everything Levi’s ever experienced in his life, according to Zeke’s philosophy, should have turned him into a monster.  He should have come out of the Underground a sociopathic, unfeeling, brutally uncaring and violent man, ready to take from and use others for nothing more than his own, personal gain, because that was the lesson his life had taught him.  Because that was what he’d been shown over and over again.  That life is cruel, and ruthless, and uncompromising in its unfairness, and that to live is to suffer.  And yet, Levi came out of the Underground with a greater capacity for compassion, feeling, love and kindness than any other character in SnK.  He continually and routinely, throughout the series, demonstrates an incredible empathy, consideration, sympathy, generosity and understanding for other people.  He is immensely accepting and nonjudgmental, and always, always goes out of his way to express gratitude towards others for their own sacrifices and efforts.  He does his absolute best to protect the lives of others, constantly putting his own at risk to help others live, constantly putting his own at risk to save whoever he can.  Constantly and consistently, Levi places the lives of others above his own in terms of worth.

And here’s the thing that makes Levi most remarkable of all.  The thing which demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt the immense strength of his character.  Levi very well knows that life is cruel, that life is brutal, that life is unfair, and that often people die for no damned good reason at all, that they suffer for no reason at all.  He very well knows that people are breathtakingly cruel and terrible to one another, that people treat one another in unspeakably horrific and unforgivable ways.  He very well knows that the dream of a lasting and peaceful world, a lasting peace between humans, is nothing more than a pipe dream, an unrealistic, unattainable ideal.  A fancy only a child should genuinely be able to believe in.  And yet, once again, despite KNOWING this, despite every lesson and experience in his life impressing this awful reality upon him again and again and again, Levi still does everything within his limited power to ease the suffering of others, to improve their lives, to protect them and show them kindness, to help in any way he can, whichever way he’s able.  Despite knowing the futility of life, the pointlessness of suffering, the injustice of other people’s cruelty, despite knowing these things INTIMATELY, Levi still has in him an open, generous, kind and caring heart.  Levi still has in him a deep, unending well of compassion and an unwavering desire to protect and better the lives of all the people around him.  It isn’t even Levi’s own dream that he fights for, it is the dreams of OTHERS that he fights for.  He can’t ever fully embrace this notion of a peaceful existence, free of violence and deprivation and cruelty, because he knows too well the way of the world.  He’s been too mired in the indifferent reality of nature and the human condition to ever, really believe it.  But in spite of that, IN SPITE OF IT, he fights to protect that dream and belief that others carry, that others strive towards, that others commit themselves to.  He gives everything he has, every piece of himself, to protect a dream that he himself can’t even fully believe in, and for no reason more than that it is something which gives others hope, something which gives other’s a sense of purpose, something which one day, possibly, however slim the chance, might come to pass.  

It is all in spite of Levi’s experiences in life, all in spite of his weary and cynical understanding of the world and the people in it, that Levi commits himself to kindness, compassion and the chance to help others, in whatever ways he can, even as he knows deep down the ultimate futility in it, even as he knows his own, relative powerlessness in the face of nature’s unyielding and uncaring apathy. 

And that really is the fundamental difference between Levi and Zeke.  Two men who have experienced such similar lives, and who have learned early on their lives the cruelties of existing in this world, but one who reacts to those cruelties with defiance and courageous opposition, standing in the face of overwhelming odds, while the other yields to it and lets it excuse his cruelty in turn, bowing to its power and letting it consume him. 

[theyscreamjade]

Heyy can you do a Headcannon with Kirishima, Bakugou, Todoroki, and Midoriya; their S/O has eating disorder and they help her through kinda comfort, if it makes you uncomfortable you don't have to

S/O With a Eating Disorder.

Actually, My best friend had a eating disorder as well, while I dealt with my problems with self harm. I hope this makes your day and please keep trying. I know it may seem hard and it’s the best thing to do, it’s not. If you ever need someone to talk to my dear Anon, I’m here for you! I’ll Detroit Smash all those thoughts in a millisecond.

——————————————

Izuku Midoriya

* This poor sweet boy, he cares so much about you that when he finds out. He’s hurt.

* It takes him a minute to discover this and when he does, he’s heartbroken. You’ve dealt with this alone and he wasn’t there to help you.

* “Puppy? Do you have an eating disorder?”

* When he confronts you, he may be gentle about it. He’ll mention it when you two are alone and there’s no one else around. If you cry, he’ll hold you until you calm down.

* He’s usually observant of you and how you are, but he couldn’t see past that mask you often wore or how your weight decreased dramatically.

* If you decide to let him help, he’s standing beside you each part of the way. He’s throwing away every diet pill, laxative, or anything that’ll make you either sick or anything.

* From then on, he might learn how to cook or ask his mother for meals for you two.

* He’s going to be a lot more observant to you and your weight though, he might go a bit overboard but please understand he’s writing it down to keep you safe and healthy.

* His affection is going to increased to the max, if you stop and stare at a model during you two’s date. He’ll stop and look at the before kissing your cheek. “You don’t even compare to them, you’re way better than them.”

* God, He’s going to express himself through sex. Every mark, hickey, bruise, and more on your body will be a constant reminder of how much he loves you. Every time he touches it, your body just flashes that memory of him whispering every little amazing fact about you that he has in his book.

* Those anger bursts, depressive nights, the days when you can’t get up or even get dressed, just know he’s going to be there.

* I don’t doubt, he’d ask All Might what would he recommend for this situation or even recommend counseling for you so you can become that smiling beckon that kept him going again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Katsuki Bakugo

* He ALREADY knew something was up.

* The moment he brought you his shirt and it didn’t fit like it normally would, he immediately suspected something.

* His suspicions were confirmed when you, him and the Baku-Squad were out at a restaurant. Mina, being the observant gal she is, asked if you were losing weight. The nail was in the coffin when you didn’t eat either, claiming you weren’t hungry though he was with you all day and you hadn’t eaten a single bite.

* Once you two leave the restaurant and we’re walking home, he just asks.

* “Do you have a problem with eating or somethin?” He’d ask, making you freeze on the sidewalk.

* Don’t try to lie to him either, it’ll make him even angrier than he was already.

* He’s not angry at you, he’s angry at himself. He’s ticked that he didn’t avoid this from happening to you. Was his insults too much? What can he do to fix the damage he thinks he’s caused to you?

* Once you two are home, please expect to have THOROUGH CLEAN home. I mean everything, Laxatives, diet pills, magazines. YEP, MAGAZINES. They’re the reason for some of the issues.

* His insults will be less frequent and he might act like a softie more around you. He's going to be a bit more affectionate too.

* I FUCKING DARE YOU to TRY and say something negative about yourself.

* I FUCKING DARE YOU.

* You will experience the wrath of Ground Zero deep in you, you’ll become a whimpering mess underneath his hold until you cry out and say how great you are.

* He’s cooking every meal, no matter how tired he is. THIS MAN MIGHT HAVE A CAST ON HIS LEG AND HE WILL BE COOKING IN THAT KITCHEN STILL.

* He’s going to track your weight every night until he feels as if he can trust you a bit more. He never lost trust in you, he knows you were swallowed by the depression that blinded you and wants you to be better again.

* He’s going to try to be patient with you, but with him it’s a three strike system. Once you’re at the third, you’re going to have to make a sacrifice. Him or your problem.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shoto Todoroki

* Please know, Shoto’s not obvious to things. Of course, he noticed how different you were acting, how small your body was becoming, how you often were cold and many others.

* He just simply thought you were training harder to be better or something. He wouldn’t even bother you while you trained.

* That was until you just passed out. You passed out in front of him and his family at a family gathering and wouldn’t wake up.

* That honestly triggered the poor man.

* His brother discovered in your records, that the last normal weight you had was months back.

* His heart shattered into a thousand pieces as he starts to blame himself completely until his sister calms him down.

* While you’re still in the hospital recovering, him and Midoriya are cleaning up the home. Every last item that reminded you of the body you wanted to strive for or the imperfections that you thought you had was gone.

* When you were released, you were immediately placed on a strict diet placed from his brother and the family physician. Shoto normally doesn’t be the pushy type in these situations but..he doesn’t want to see you like that ever again.

* “I never...want to see you like that again, I thought I lost you.”

* He’s going to watch every item you eat, so you won’t either binge out or anything.

* ...the locks in the bathroom may be..gone. BUT JUST KNOW HE CARES OKAY?!

* Shoto might be a bit more affectionate with you as well, always holding you, reminding you every single day just how much you mean to him.

* This may include a SIGNIFICANT increase in sexual activities which includes him whispering in your ear about how much you mean to him and how amazing you are.

* This poor peppermint’s been through a lot.

* He’s going to be patient, All he wants is to see you well again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eijiro Kirishima

* This man’s attention to you IS ON FUCKING POINT.

* You have to realize, he dealt with confidence issues too. So when he notices how you degrade yourself in a joking way at first. He’ll try to boost you up with his love for you.

* But when he notices how much smaller you were and how your clothes seemed to be baggy items on your body. He’s going to push you right back into your home, holding your shoulders as he stared deeply into your eyes.

* “Don’t lie to me okay? Do you have an eating disorder or something? Are you sick? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

* The questions were frequently and blunt, very unlike him. Your silence was an absolute confirmation for him.

* He’s going to beat himself up and call him unmanly for not even being able to help you through this. He was so blind! So oblivious to you and your needs.

* He’s going to cry and hold you as tightly as he could, his arms holding you as tight as he could. He’s going apologize for all those nights you slept alone, those days you hid your feelings from him, those moments when you probably needed him and never called.

* After you two confided, he’s going through every item. Now, the difference with this. He’s making you trash every item you use. I mean every single one. Dumping each pill, rip each magazine and everything.

* Afterwards, he’ll lead you to a secluded area where he often came to when he was younger. There, you two pour your feelings out until you two are laughing at the insecurities you have from a different point of view.

* You two are going to switch when you make meals though. Like for instance, he may have one week and you have the other. When he feels as if you don’t have enough to eat, he’ll feed you.

* If you ever feel depressed, sad, or anything. Just call him, because he’s going to come as soon as you even dial his number. Before the phone can even ring, he’s at your door.

* He’s going to CONSTANTLY REMIND you of just how amazing, sexy, and everything you are. He’s expressing it in more ways than anyone can expect.

* Honestly, Kirishima would probably wait to see results. He won’t be over your shoulder to check your weight constantly but rather to see you gain some a bit.

* Just know he’s not going to give up on you. He’s going to be patient with you because you’re his Beauty Cool.

* Don’t disappoint him please, I’d hate for anyone to experience a distant Kirishima. It’s like having a day without sunshine nor rain.

[hello-im-not-a-possum]

18. Skeleton

Buddy and Sammy find the “goldfish room” as the latter calls it, AKA the closet where Joey keeps his skeletons, literally. And in the process, Buddy learns about a few of the skeletons in Sammy’s metaphorical closet. (Set during ink hell, pre loop, post Buddy befriending the lost ones/searchers.)

The Prophet was a strange ally.

It was weird to work alongside someone who worships the guy who tore you in half and is the biggest reason why you’re stuck in a nightmarish, inescapable studio, especially when it wasn’t the nicest or friendliest person before getting claimed by the ink. (Although, as he thought back on it, had he ever met Sammy before it was claimed by the Ink?)

But ANY ally was better than an enemy, especially when that ally knows the studio better than anyone else down here. Besides, it seemed like the Ink man was either unaware of their past or didn’t even know who they used to be, and even if it did, it wasn’t angry about their past issues.

At the same time, working on scavenging trips with the former musician was a nightmare; it was way too tranquil about the situation, and there were too many weird murderous monsters that the wolf and gofer were aware of.

“I do not need to run, little wolf. I can evade these creatures without issue through my Lord’s gift.” The Prophet calmly stated as Buddy gestured confusion about why it didn’t run when the pair heard something that sounded suspiciously like the projectionist’s screams. “Besides, running through these halls is risky, I would be heard by those… more unsavory denizens of this studio and get ambushed by them.”

He wished his typewriter was quieter in instances like this, being able to type out ‘But what if you get caught by your lord?’ and other messages to hand to him without risking alerting the Ink Demon would be great. Or just having his voice back in general.

“If my Lord decides to send me back to the puddles, then it is his right to do so to prove I have changed.” He answered the unspoken question. “But it does mean that I have to work harder to get him to notice how much I have improved, get him to notice me…” 

‘Please don’t read my mind unless I give you the “go for it” gesture. It’s creepy otherwise.’

“My apologies, little wolf, while your thoughts come in quieter than everybody else’s… they’re still noticeable, especially when it’s just the two of us.”

Buddy hesitantly nodded and just tried to lead the Prophet out of the ransacked room to look for more stray supplies.

A few more hours of searching lead the pair to a locked room, something that experience told him meant that either it was another dead end or a hidden treasure trove of supplies, and not wanting to go back to the safe house empty handed, he was ready to roll those dice.

Buddy gestured for the Prophet to stand guard as he picked the door’s lock, and as the door slowly creaked open, he was thankful that he couldn’t speak because the scream that came out from his mouth would’ve been loud enough to alert every monster in the studio.

The former gofer felt sick to his stomach when he saw them. Piles upon piles of rotting, mangled, corpses. Human Corpses, not toony corpses like the other Borises or the butchered up members of the Butcher gang. Most of them were unrecognizable, partly because he had never seen most of these people in his life, and partly because they had decayed so much that what remained was hard to figure out who was who and what. The oldest corpses were nothing but skeletons and clothes, and the freshest one looked like…

...Like his own body.

“The goldfish room...” The prophet muttered loud enough for Buddy to hear, startling the poor pup out of his skin as he didn’t hear him enter behind him.

The wolf shuddered and continued to scour the room for anything worth the hassle of all of this. Boris wanted to take a few of the bones, which Buddy unenthusiastically obliged.

“Don’t eat those!” The Prophet interjected so loudly and harshly that it startled both the former gofer and the wolf toon. The ink creature’s anger was so much scarier with how rare it was to see now. “Especially not him! He’s my-” The Prophet stopped itself by covering its ‘mouth’ with its hands as if it was about to reveal a big secret and just took the skeletal arm out of Buddy’s hands and put it back where he found it. Its voice went back to it’s normal calm tone that reminded him of someone who was on the verge of falling asleep, but Buddy heard somberness in the musician’s pitch. “...they’re unclean...”

‘Prophet?’ Buddy gave him the “go ahead, read my mind” gesture. ‘Prophet, what is this place? Who are these people?’

“...You’ve seen your own corpse among them, correct?”

Buddy nodded.

“I know you’ve met Joey, but tell me; ...Has he ever called you ‘Henry’ before?”

‘Yes he has, but what does that have to do with…’ he gestured at the bodies on the floor ‘this?!’

“Henry’s been gone for a long time now.” The prophet stated, but there was a hint of recollection in his tone that weakened the calmness, and the more he talked, the more broken (for lack of a better term) his voice became. “Do you think that you were Joey’s first replacement goldfish? That after Henry left the studio, you were Joey’s only other other Henry?”

Buddy’s ears began ringing and he heard music; it was loud, distorted, fast-paced, and all over the place, the type of music that makes your heart pound out of your chest and makes your hackles stand up, the type of music that tells you to run, but doesn’t clue you in to where or why. The prophet’s body started to shake and tremble.

“The first Other-Henry was actually named Henry as well. And like his predecessor, was an excellent artist who really connected with the characters...”

‘Sammy? What’s going on? do you hear this too?!’

“But unlike Stein, Ross was a very stubborn person who refused to let anyone push him around, especially by either Joey or myself. Surprisingly, I liked that man, but he didn’t last long...”

Fear kept Buddy’s legs frozen to the ground as he covered his ears in a fruitless attempt to muffle the music, it felt like it was being played directly in his head, and then it clicked when the whispers started up, whispers in their tone, but not in volume, they were loud enough to drown out parts of what the Prophet was saying;

‘Sammy help us!’

“The next one was more like you, a younger, less experienced and more skittish person, his first name was ‘Lawrence’ so everyone called him ‘Larry’ to avoid confusion...”

‘Sammy, where are you?’

“...But he was also too nosy for that poor boy’s own good.”

‘you’re too weak!’

“The one after that was a scatterbrained fellow, very passionate about his work but didn’t focus very much on one topic or another...”

The Prophet’s monologue was completely drowned out by the music and chorus of desperate and angry “Other Henries” at this point. Buddy knew he was still talking because of the musician’s gestures, but didn’t hear a single word out of him. 

‘Saaaaaammyyyyyyy....’ ‘You’re such a spineless coward...’ ‘Sammy please save us..!’ ‘Why did you let Joey kill us?’ ‘The ink... it’s so cold...’ ‘No wonder Susie hates you so much...’ ‘Sammy, please! It hurts!’ ‘Why did you let us die?’ ‘Why won’t you help us?’ ‘You’re no better than Joey.’ ‘Sammy, help us!’ ‘I thought you loved me...’ ‘Sammy, help us!’ ‘You promised me that you’d always be there!’ ‘Sammy, help us!’ ‘They were right about you...’ ‘Sammy, help us!’ ‘Saaaaaammyyyyyyy....’

He knew that the lost ones, searchers and Prophet could hear each others’ thoughts, but didn’t understand what that was like until now that he was hearing Sammy’s thoughts. No wonder most of them were always so depressed and on edge...

‘Sammy?’ the gofer shook Sammy gently, only to hear his own voice join the chorus of other Henries as one of the ones who sounded like he was mad at him. ‘Sammy, snap out of it!’ he shook the Prophet harder, still not waking the Ink creature out of its trance. ‘SAMMY!’ Doing the first thing that came to mind out of desperation, Buddy slapped the mask clean off of it.

The music and voices died as if they were a candle light snuffed out by the wind.

For a few seconds that felt more like hours, Buddy and Sammy stared at each other in silence before Sammy put its mask back on as if nothing happened and led the toon wolf out of the goldfish room, took a key out of its pocket and locked it behind them.

-----

Back in the safe house, Buddy started up a pot of bacon soup, the stuff tasted a little bit better when it was hot while Sammy tuned the banjo in the dining area and Dot tried to stir up conversation.

“So... how did the supply run go?”

“Fine.”

Buddy involuntarily let out a snort as he took the soup off the stove and took out his typewriter.

[It was the scariest one we’ve ever done so far.

While looking around for stuff, we ended up in this place S The Prophet called ‘the Goldfish room’ and it was filled with dead bodies. HUMAN dead bodies. And mine was in the pile! I couldn’t tell if it was haunted or if it was just the prophet’s thoughts going]

“Little wolf, I do not wish to think about that room again...”

[Sorry.]

The wolf sheepishly put the typewriter to the side and poured the soup into bowls. As the toon and lost one ate, the prophet mostly just stared into his bowl as if he was watching something in it.

“...Before my enlightenment, I was not a good person.” The masked musician stated unprompted.

“Huh?”

“I wasn’t an evil person per say, and I wouldn’t go as far as to call the man I used to be a monster.” He sighed and adjusted his mask. “But I was certainly a bad person, an asshole, a coward who hid behind physical strength, and I had more vices than virtues.”

[Prophet, what are you talking about?]

“I’m trying to answer the questions I know you have before either of you two pester them out of me. Maybe when you’re sated my Lord will allow me to forget again.”

[Are you sure? you seemed really upset back ...there.]

“Well look at it this way, maybe getting it off your chest will help you feel better about it?”

“I suppose...” The prophet sighed again.

“So what does you being a crackhead before finding the Ink Demon Religion have to do with a room full of dead bodies?”

“Dorthy!”

“...I’ll just listen before asking anything else.”

“Thank you.” It readjusted its mask. “Now where was I...” it hummed to itself for a bit before speaking again, with venom slowly but surly pooling into its words. “I had more vices than virtues, and Joey could see all of both, using my virtues to his advantage, and using my vices against myself, he did everything he could to keep me from leaving him too, and it worked.”

The prophet took in a deep breath to stabilize itself.

“Every time I tried to leave, he did something else to make me stay; ‘I love you’s turned to gifts, gifts to false promises, false promises to threats, threats to blackmail, blackmail to going through with it, and when he felt me slipping through his fingers he turned to taking advantage of my addictions... That... monster was a parasite in all aspects except physically... And I didn’t even notice until I might as well have been a walking corpse as I was seeing others march to my fate, but I couldn’t even so much as squeak out a warning without Joey swooping in on his behalf. Some Henries, heads of the art department, didn’t need to be warned by me as they found out what would await them and fled. But Joey didn’t like that... When I tried to warn the ones who needed to be warned, it was easy for him to dismiss me as a loon, a drunk, and an addict, until eventually I just gave up. I couldn’t even save myself, let alone anyone else... let alone the other art departments...”

“...I just stopped trying to keep Joey from leading the sheep to the slaughter, maybe they’re right to be angry at me for being such a coward...”

It then turned to face the wolf and put its hand on his shoulder.

“You’ve asked yourself if you’ve ever met me before the Ink had claimed me, as for that, I don’t know, nor do I think it matters, Buddy. I was nothing but a shallow and beaten husk of myself long before I even had tasted the ink. Even if you met me before then, you only met a ghost, not a person.”

The three then stayed in silence for a while before the clicks of Buddy’s typewriter caught the other two’s attention.

[Well, if it helps you any I think you’re not as bad of a person as you tell yourself you used to be.]

“And I don’t need to hear everyone’s thoughts to know that you’ve really stepped up to the plate when it counted. I don’t think a coward would try to do have the stuff you’re doing now.”

“Thanks you two” The Prophet’s voice cracked with emotion. “That... that really means a lot to me.”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How the Sacklers rigged the game

Two quotes to ponder as you read “Purdue’s Poison Pill,” Adam Levitin’s forthcoming Texas Law Review paper:

“Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen.” (W. Guthrie)

“Behind every great fortune there is a great crime.” (H. Balzac) (paraphrase)

Some background. Purdue was/is the pharmaceutical company that deliberately kickstarted the opioid crisis by deceptive, aggressive marketing of its drug Oxycontin, amassing a fortune so vast that it made its owners, the Sackler family, richer than the Rockefellers.

Many companies are implicated in the opioid crisis, but Purdue played a larger and more singular role in an epidemic that has killed more Americans than the Vietnam war: Purdue, alone among the pharma companies, is almost exclusively devoted to selling opioids.

And Purdue is also uniquely associated with a single family, the Sacklers, whose family dynasty betrays a multigenerational genius for innovating in crime and sleaze.

The founder of the family fortune, Arthur Sackler, invented modern drug marketing with his campaigns for benzos like Valium, kickstarting an addiction crisis that burned for decades and is still with us today.

His kids, while not inventing the art of reputation laundering through elite philanthropy, did more to advance this practice than anyone since the robber barons whose names grace institutions like Carnegie-Mellon University.

The Sackler name became synonymous not with the cynical creation of a mass death drug epidemic and a media strategy that blamed the victims as “criminal addicts” — rather, “Sackler” was associated with museums from the Met to the Louvre.

Handing out crumbs from their vast trove of blood-money was just one half of the Sacklers’ reputation-laundering. The other half used a phalanx of vicious attack-lawyers who’d threaten anyone who criticized them in public (I personally got one of these).

The Sacklers could not have attained their high body count nor their vast bank-balances without the help of elite legal enablers, both the specialists from discreet boutique firms and the rank-and-file of the great white-shoe firms.

I’m not one to take cheap shots at lawyers. Lawyers are often superheroes, defending the powerless against the powerful. But the law has a bullying problem, a sadistic cadre of brilliant people who live to crush their opponents.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/10/duke-sucks/#devils

To see the sadism at work, look no further than the K-shaped world of bankruptcy: for the wealthy, bankruptcy is the sport of kings, a way to skip out on consequences. For the poor, bankruptcy is an anchor — or a noose.

When working people are saddled with debts — even debts they did not themselves amass — they are hounded by petty, vindictive monsters who deluge them with calls and emails and threats.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/19/zombie-debt/#damnation

But it’s very different for the wealthy. Community Hospital Systems is one of the largest hospital chains in America, thanks to the $7.6b worth of debt it acquired along with 80+ hospitals, which it is running into the ground.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/18/unhealthy-balance-sheet/#health-usury

CHS raked in hundreds of millions in interest-free forgivable loans, stimulus and other public subsidies and paid out millions from that to its execs for “performance bonuses.”

It also leads the industry in suing its indigent patients, some for as little as $201.

Debt and bankruptcy are key to private equity’s playbook, especially the most destructive forms of financial engineering, like “club deal” leveraged buyouts that turn productive businesses into bankrupt husks while the PE firms pocket billions:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

For mere mortals — those of us who can’t afford to hire legal enablers to work the system — bankruptcy is a mystery. If you know someone who went bankrupt, chances are they had their lives destroyed. How can bankruptcy be a gift, rather than a curse?

Purdue Pharma presents a maddening case-study in the corrupt benefits of bankruptcy. When it was announced in March, many were outraged to learn that the Sacklers were going to walk away with billions, while their victims got stiffed.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/31/vaccine-for-the-global-south/#claims-extinguished

Levitin’s paper uses the Purdue bankruptcy as a jumping-off point to explain how this can be — how corporate bankruptcy “megacases” have become a sham that subverts the very purpose of bankruptcy: to allow orderly payments to creditors while preserving good businesses.

Levitin identifies three pathologies corrupting the US bankruptcy system.

First is “coercive restructuring techniques” that allow debtors and senior creditors to tie bankruptcy judges’ hands and those of other creditors, overriding bankruptcy law itself.

These techniques — “DIP financing agreements,” “Stalking Horse bidder protections,” “Hurry-up agreements,” etc — are esoteric, though Levitin does a good job of explaining each.

More significant than their underlying rules is their effect.

That effect? Thousands of Oxy survivors and families of Oxycontin victims lost their right to sue the Sacklers and Purdue pharma because of these techniques. In return, the Sacklers surrendered about a third of the billions they reaped.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-purduepharma-bankruptcy/sacklers-reaped-up-to-13-billion-from-oxycontin-maker-u-s-states-say-idUSKBN1WJ19V

Depriving the victims of the Sacklers’ drug empire of the right to sue doesn’t just leave the Sacklers with billions; it also means that no official record will be produced detailing the Sacklers’ complicity in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Levitin: “The single most important question in the most socially important chapter 11 case in history will be determined through a process that does not comport with basic notions of due process.”

The Sacklers are not unique beneficiaries of “coercive restructuring techniques.” The rise of “prepack” and 24-hour “drive through” bankruptcies have turned judges into rubberstampers of private agreements between debtors and their cronies, with no look-in for victims.

It in these proceedings that the law descends into self-parody, more Marx Brothers than casebook. Levitin highlights the Feb ’21 “drive-through” bankruptcy of Belk Department Stores, where the judge was told that failing to accede to the private deal would risk 17,000 jobs.

The trustees representing Belk’s non-crony creditors were railroaded through this “agreement,” upon notice consisting of an “unintelligible” one-page, one-paragraph release opening with “a 630-word sentence with 92commas and five parentheticals.”

Sackler lawyers were geniuses at this game, securing judicial approval of a deal where the Sacklers’ personal liability to the Feds went from $4.5b to $225m. The judge heard no evidence about whether the Sacklers’ voluntary payout was even close to their liabilities.

The corruption of bankruptcy is bad enough, as the creditors for finance criminals are often small firms and workers’ pension.

The Sacklers’ case is far worse: they don’t owe billions in unpaid loans — they owe criminal and civil liability for the lives they destroyed.

The next area of corruption that Levitin takes up is the inadequacy of the appeals process for bankruptcy settlements. This, too, is complex, but it has a simple outcome: once a judge agrees to a settlement, it’s virtually impossible to appeal it.

In those rare instances where people do win appeals, they are still denied justice, because the appellate courts typically find that it’s too late to remedy the lower courts’ decisions.

That makes the business of “coercive restructuring techniques” (in which judges rubber-stamp corrupt arrangements between debtors and their cronies) even more important, since any ruling from a bankruptcy judge is apt to be final.

The third and most important corrupt element of elite bankruptcy that Levitin describes is the ability for debtors’ lawyers to pick which judge will rule on their case, a phenomena that means that only three judges hear nearly every major bankruptcy case in America.

“[In 2020] 39% of large public company bankruptcy filings ended up before Judge David Jones in Houston. 57% of the large company cases ended up before either Jones or two other judges, Marvin Isgur in Houston and Robert Drain in White Plains.”

https://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2021/05/judge-shopping-in-bankruptcy.html

In other words, elite law firms have figured out how to “hack” the bankruptcy process so they can choose from among three judges. And these three judges weren’t picked at random — rather, they competed to bring these “megacases” to their courts.

This competition is visible in how these judges rule — in ways that are favorable to cronyistic arrangements between debtors and their favored, deep-pocketed creditors — and in the public statements the judges themselves have made, going on the record admitting it.

Levitin cites the groundbreaking work of Harvard/UCLA law prof Lynn LoPucki on why judges want to dominate bankruptcy megacases. LoPucki points out hearing these cases definitely increases “post-judicial employment opportunities” — but says the true motives are more complex.

Levitin, summarizing LoPucki: “[it’s more] in the nature of personal aggrandizement and celebrity and ability to indirectly channel to the local bankruptcy bar.. The judge is the star and the ringmaster of a megacase — very appealing to certain personalities”

Obviously, not every judge wants these things, but the ones that do are of a type — “willing and eager to cater to debtors to attract business…[an] assurance to debtors that…these judges will not transfer out cases with improper venue or rule against the debtor…”

Forum-shopping in bankruptcy is not new, but it has accelerated and mutated.

Once, the game was to transfer cases to Delaware and the Southern District of New York.

It’s why the LA Dodgers went bankrupt in Delaware, why Detroit’s iconic General Motors and Texas’s own Enron got their cases heard in the SDNY.

The bankruptcy courts have long been in on this game, allowing the flimsiest of pretences to locate a case in a favorable venue.

For example, GM argued that it was a New York company on the basis that it owned a single Chevy dealership in Harlem.

Other companies simple open an office in a preferred jurisdiction for a few months before filing for bankruptcy there.

Lately, the venue of choice for dirty bankruptcies is in Texas (if only Enron could have held on for a couple more decades!). Only two Houston judges hear bankruptcy cases, and any bankruptcy lawyer who gets on their bad side risks ending their career.

Once a court becomes a national center for complex bankruptcies, the bankruptcy bar works to ensure that only favorable judges hear cases there, punishing a district by seeking other venues when a judge goes “rogue.” The fix is in from the start.

Purdue did not want to have its case heard in Texas. Instead, it manipulated the system so that it could argue in front of SDNY Judge Robert D Drain.

It was a good call, as Drain is notoriously generous with granting “third-party releases,” which would allow the Sacklers to escape their debts to the victims and survivors of their Oxy-pushing.

Once Drain agreed to the restructuring, he ensured that the victims would never get their day in court, and no evidence — from medical examiners, auditors, and medical professionals who received kickbacks for every patient they addicted — would be entered into the record.

Drain is also notoriously hostile to independent examiners, “an independent third-party appointed by the court to investigate ‘fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, misconduct, mismanagement, or irregularity…by current or former management of the debtor.”

But getting the case in front of Drain took some heroic maneuvering by the Sacklers’ lawyers. Levitin tracks each step of a Byzantine plan that somehow allowed a company that gave its address in Connecticut to have its case heard in New York.

The key to getting in front of Judge Drain appears to involve literally hacking the system, by putting a Westchester County location in the machine-readable metadata for its filing in the federal Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system.

CM/ECF does not parse the text of the PDF that it receives from lawyers; only the metadata is parsed. The company listed a White Plains, NY address in this metadata, even though it had never conducted business there.

Purdue seems to have opened this office 192 days earlier for the sole purpose of getting its bankruptcy in front of Judge Drain (they were eligible for Westchester County jurisdiction 180 days after opening the office).

Their lawyers even went so far as to pre-caption the case filing with “RDD” — for “Robert D Drain” — knowing that all complex bankruptcies in Westchester County were Drain’s to hear.

The fact that the Sacklers were able to choose their judge — a judge who was notorious for his policies that abetted elite impunity in bankruptcy — is nakedly corrupt.

This move is how the Sacklers are walking away from corporate mass murder with a giant fortune. The art galleries have started to remove their names from their buildings, but they’ll have a lot of money to keep themselves warm even if they’re shunned in polite society.

A couple weeks ago, a Texas judge ruled against the NRA, denying its bankruptcy, on the grounds that it was a flimsy pretence designed to escape liability in New York, where it was incorporated.

https://apnews.com/article/nra-bankruptcy-dismissed-a281b888b64d391374f24539a820d60f

For many of us, the NRA bankruptcy was a kind of puzzle. We went from glad that the NRA was bankrupt to glad that they WEREN’T, because for dark money orgs like the NRA, bankruptcy isn’t a punishment, it’s a way to escape justice.

The NRA case is evidence that the corruption of the bankruptcy system isn’t yet complete. That’s no reason to assume everything is fine. The Sacklers are developing a playbook that will be used to escape other elite crimes with vast fortunes intact.

Image: Geographer (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Serpentine_Sackler_Gallery.jpg

CC BY-SA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[freckleddoll]

Reasons why Doll could still be alive

1. I’m still in denial

I compiled a list of reasons why I think that there is a possibility of Doll coming back in the future! Although I do think the chances are slim, given the fact that she hasn’t appeared in the Manga since 2009, which was 12 years ago. However, there is a handful of reasons from a story telling perspective of why it’s possible, and also a handful of inconsistencies between Doll’s death and all of the other Noah’s Ark Circus deaths. Very long post under the cut.

Starting with the most obvious, we never see Doll’s death actually happened, it’s ever only implied.

We don’t hear a direct command, it’s only implied that she died. This is “affirmed” a second later by Undertaker.

He laughs about how Ciel is hastily, and that he can not take back what he’s done, even if he regrets it later. However, this isn’t explicitly about Doll. We as the audience are made to believe that this is about her because we just saw the frame before, of Doll’s signature lollipop falling.

We have seen every other death on screen. We are certain to see each of their corpses, except for Joker, who’s death is confirmed by William T Spears earlier in the chapter.

This is placed conveniently, or dare I say, deliberately before Doll’s death. We see William and Ronald collecting souls only before Doll shows up. The only other Reaper we see in this chapter afterwards is Undertaker.

This is of course speculation, but I don’t believe that the death Undertaker is referring to here is Doll’s death. I think he might be referring to the massacre Ciel and Sebastian have basically just committed after being employed for this mission to save the children. This is something Ciel can not take back. But Undertaker never explicitly said Doll, in fact, he specifically chose the phrase “to hold each and every soul dear” which implies that multiple souls were lost. I don’t think he is actually talking about the Circus Troupe, Doll or Joker.

What could this mean?

I think we are purposefully being misdirected as an audience member here, and I believe that the decision to withhold the details of Doll’s death was deliberate. I believe that the narrative is purposefully withholding information that will much later in the story become important.

Another thing I’d like to point out is, why on earth is Undertaker here? His presence isn’t explained, other than to “affirm” Doll’s death. He is seen with a carriage, along with Charles Grey and Charles Phipps. Well this could tie back to R!Ciel, I think that it’s also possible that:

Doll is actually dead and the information being withheld from us is that Undertaker took her body to later use as a Bizarre Doll to mess with Ciel later in the series.

Doll was disarmed by Sebastian, and once they left, perhaps even believing Doll was dead, Doll was taken in by Undertaker and R!Ciel for revenge or something. I know this one is a lot more dodgy, but it’s the one I believe makes more narrative sense.

Now let’s move on to how this makes sense from a narrative perspective.

Obviously, Snake is still alive, and believes that his family is alive. He goes to Ciel’s manor looking for them.

Ciel offers Snake a position at the Phantomhive manor, under the guise that they are looking for Snake’s family. Snake joins him because Ciel is manipulating him here, telling him that Snake can essentially have a new family at the manor while looking for his old family.

I believe Doll is a big influence as to why Ciel makes this decision. 

Ciel sees Doll when he looks at Snake, which seems to be painful for Ciel. He then goes out of his way to affirm that they were, in fact, bad people (perhaps to justify his own actions in his mind) but then goes back on this and claims that he believes they were good people as to manipulate Snake.

He wants to help them achieve happiness and give them the chance to atone for their sins. The question is, is Ciel taking Snake in to atone for his own sins or to manipulate Snake?

Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked. A crucial character that is being played in this scene is of course, Doll. In every single memory that Snake shares, Doll is center frame, or the person who was closest to him.

Doll is either takes up the most space in the frame, or she’s the one who is standing closest to Snake. Not even Joker is this present in all of the images, but she is in all of them. While we didn’t see this much play out in the actual Book of Circus arc (given that Snake had very little screentime in that arc anyway), we can infer from these images that Snake felt the closest to Doll out of everyone at the Circus.

We also aren’t just seeing his actual memories normally, we are seeing his memories in an emotionally charged state. While he is feeling highly emotional, the person he thinks of the most is Doll. This is not just him remembering her as being the friendliest or most open person to him, this is who he was actually closest with within the Circus.

Doll’s relationship with both Snake and Ciel are very important parts of both of these characters. We see Ciel soften and feel guilt when he is reminded of Doll, and we see that Snake and Doll were presumably very close because of this scene.

Also just some fun images that I felt like pointing out:

Doll is featured in this image with one of Snake’s snakes. There isn’t much of a reason to feature one of these Snake’s snakes, unless we’re meant to infer a connection between these two.

I’m not quite sure where this image came from, but look! Doll and Snake are sitting next to each other, and Snake has a little smile on his face, which as we know isn’t very common for Snake in this series. There are very few instances of him smiling. However, this is obvious in the anime style so it likely isn’t manga compliant it’s cute though.

They’re featured together in another image!

Now for Doll and Ciel of course:

Doll and Ciel are seen here lying together.

These two images are very important to me and I feel they both hold a deeper meaning. Now it’s time to talk about Ciel and Doll.

Of course, there is the eye symbolism. Both of them keep an eye covered up, because both are hiding secrets that they need to keep covered up. Both wear a costume and live under a persona (Doll’s Circus persona that hides her identity of someone who kidnaps children and Ciel’s Smile persona where he is hiding his identity of the Queen’s watchdog). Yet, both of them are drawn to each other despite their secrets and form lasting connections.

We also see Ciel reaching out to Doll, and Sebastian taking the lollipop out of his hand. He is literally taking her away from him and blinding him from finding her. He is concealing the truth?

Despite what her family says, Doll refuses to believe that Ciel is with the yard.

She draws the parallels between herself and Ciel right here! She literally said it herself! Both of them are capable of holding secrets, and despite what appearances may suggest, people are still capable of hiding things. When she says “but we” she is acknowledging that appearances don’t always match expectations.

However, she still believes in him, up until the very end.

Even up until this point, she was still willing to listen to Ciel, and denies it until she can’t anymore. She reflects on their time together, having believed that their friendship was real.

Doll finally accepts it and feels hurt, betrayed and angry. She tries to kill him after this. Instead of anger, fear or hatred, this is the face we see Ciel make.

He looks sad and tired. This isn’t the face of someone who takes pleasure in the idea of killing her. We see him feel remorse for Doll even earlier, like I pointed out earlier in this scene

This scene is what compels him to take Snake in, being reminded of Doll. He looks sad here, he looks remorseful.

But most importantly, there is this image.

This takes place in the Green Witch arc, meaning that he is still thinking about Doll, she is still relevant up until this point in the story.

This image isn’t necessarily him leaving behind those who impacted his life who have since died, though that is certainly part of it. As we know, R!Ciel is still alive which O!Ciel at this point was not aware of. This picture does not reflect the complete truth.

His last obstacle could be interpreted as the Circus itself, but Doll and Joker aren’t positioned together like Rachel and Vincent are. Doll is a distance away from Joker in this image, and her image is a different size than Joker’s, implying that they are two completely different obstacles. In my opinion, Joker represents the Circus as a whole and himself. He represents all the sacrifices he had to make in Baron Kelvin’s manor. He could even represent his trauma while inside the cult.

But Doll is a completely different obstacle. She represents a personal obstacle. She seems to have impacted him greatly, being an influence in what compelled him to take Snake in. She is also one of the only people in this series we see Ciel feel remorse for. She is important.

At this point, this is supposed to give us the conclusion to all of these stories and ideas. But as highly speculated by the fandom (and practically canon) the first Ciel we see in the image is actually R!Ciel who O!Ciel left behind at the cult, who we know is still alive. The first greatest obstacle and his last greatest obstacle. That’s symbolism right there, right?

But I don’t believe that Snake’s story has concluded just yet. His family should still be a huge part of his character and his motivations. If his story isn’t leading up to something, than I think it’s going to be a rather poor choice on Yana Toboso’s part. But as we know, she doesn’t just do things for no reason, I believe that a lot of this was intentional.

TL;DR: Because Doll’s death is never specifically seen on screen, because Undertaker seems to purposefully mislead us after Doll’s death (and because of Undertaker’s presence in the first place), because the promise of looking for Snake’s family who is pivotal to Snake’s character, and because of the importance of Doll’s relationships with both O!Ciel and Snake, I believe that there is a chance that Yana Toboso is planning on bringing Doll back into the story.

This is all speculation, of course. I’d love for it to be true, but it is still rather dodgy given the fact that Doll hasn’t appeared in the Manga in twelve years. I could definitely just suffering from hopeful thinking, but I would love to see our girly make a return. Perhaps with R!Ciel? But the idea of her returning with R!Ciel is an idea for another day and I might make a separate post about it sometime! Thanks a bunch if you made it this far!

[chalkrevelations]

OK, y’all, I’m back, finally, with Word of Honor Episode 8, and I have … a LOT of notes on this one. I’m trying to figure out how to organize this. Buckle up, I guess, because this is kind of a long one.

First of all, the usual warning: SPOILERS. This is a re-watch, so there are spoilers not only for this episode, but for the entire show. Scroll away and come back later if you want to watch all 36.5 eps unspoiled.

So, this is an ep that’s really good to me, because the found-family dynamic is one of the things that sold me on the show, and a ton of the ensemble work that builds and enriches that dynamic is centered on scenes about food and eating together, on literally nourishing the body(ies) of the family, from A-Xiang’s repeated instances of cooking bread on a stick over a fire, to fish soup with Ye Baiyi, to Wen Kexing’s elaborate New Year’s meal, and all the various and sundry restaurant sit-downs in between. Feeding each other and eating together is how these characters form bonds. Alternately, inability to provide sustenance or rejection of food implies distance. The point at which Zhou Zishu is still denying Chengling’s request to become his disciple, he’s unable to cook a fish properly for the poor kid to eat. Cao Weining falls in love at first sight and immediately buys A-Xiang not one, but two dinners, because the first one gets cold and he’s going to spend the rest of his life providing the best (emotional) nourishment he can for her. Paying for Ye Bayi’s meal earns a favor from him. When A-Xiang is separated from Wen Kexing and Zhang Chengling and Zhou Zishu, she eats up the little corn family she sees as representative of them, as if she can keep them with her by taking the food that represents them into herself. Despite the fact that Zhou Zishu is losing his sense of taste (evidenced by his ability to suck down wine that any and everyone else spits out in disgust), he continues to fully participate in meals, sharing food and both accepting and providing choice bits to Chengling and WKX at Siji Manor, in a scene that is possibly the most heartfelt domestic bit of the show. Rejecting (dramatically so) the table that’s been set for him by Prince Jin is symbolic of Zhou Zishu’s rejection of their relationship. And as we ultimately learn from Ye Baiyi’s storyline, eating is what makes us human, with all of our messy, painful, gorgeous connections to the world, in contrast to the icy seclusion of immortality. Which makes me feel some kind of way about the facts that WKX started out by burning A-Xiang’s mouth on too-hot porridge before he learned how to take care of her and was saved by her in Ghost Valley and that A-Xiang and WKX, who are both trying to find their way back to the human world from the world of ghosts, become the primary physical nourishers in their relationships with Cao Weining, Zhang Chengling, and Zhou Zishu. It also makes me feel some kind of other (ambivalent) way that part and parcel of the immortality Ye Baiyi achieves for a time and passes on is predicated on being willing to only eat and drink ice and snow, and the symbolic ways that separates you from the rest of the world and from forming the various connections we see forged through food.

All of which is to say that I’m delighted by this ep, where one of the first scenes is an extremely awkward dinner scene at the restaurant with ZZS, WKX, A-Xiang and Cao Weining, which not only plays into a lot of that, but is also comedy gold, and possibly one of the best scenes of the ep (and I say that knowing we’re eventually going to be getting to Han Ying, My Beloved). It’s hilarious how irritated WKX is by the mere fact of Cao Weining’s existence (JunJun, your little pouty face, it’s amazing). And it is triply hilarious how much of a whole-ass troll ZZS manages to be when he realizes the opportunity this presents. I’m not sure we’ve seen ZZS this cheerful … well, yet, at this point in the show, as when he’s just realized how much WKX clearly disapproves of this character who’s after his baby girl and how much of a chance this provides to fuck with WKX. It’s such an asshole move, but at the same time, it’s so weirdly charming to see him willing to play like this. It gives us a great character grace note right in the middle of the comedy - it’s the sort of teasing we see from him with Jiuxiao over the hairpin in Ep 1, and at the same time, it’s also kind of subtle, I think, in the way it calls back to almost the entire ZZS-WKX relationship up to this point. ZZS has clearly been paying attention – almost everything he says to Cao Weining is him giving up with both hands stuff that WKX has had to pry out of him with a crowbar. And it’s blazingly obvious that it’s deliberate. When he compliments CWN, ZZS comments that “it’s our fate to meet each other,” directly echoing what WKX said to ZZS in Ep 2. He waves off the price of dinner, telling CWN that “money is just a possession” after making WKX beg for his wallet and deploy the Sadness Eyebrows before he was willing to hand it over in the last ep. He immediately volunteers his name (or, at least, the name he’s using, Zhou Xu), and asks CWN’s in return. He waxes eloquent about CWN’s sect and background. WKX’s entire face journey through all of this is a delight to watch. ZZS repeats that it’s their fate to meet, and WKX’s eyes almost roll out of his head. ZZS invites CWN to sit and have a drink together, and WKX’s mouth literally drops open. Finally, when WKX learns that A-Xiang is not going to make this interloper go away because he’s her ticket into Yueyang sect, he orders her to go find his wallet (presumably knowing that CWN will follow her when she leaves). As CWN leaves, ZZS reassures him that making friends is “mostly about resonance,” and the implication I presume, is that there is resonance between ZZS and CWN (and yeah, in more ways than one, as CWN will be the ZZS stand-in as these two relationships grow more and more parallel), in contrast to a supposed lack of resonance between ZZS and WKX. I … am not entirely sure that this is just to fuck with WKX, although it’s definitely part and parcel of that, or if it’s a little bit of ZZS trying to convince himself, particularly given a moment later in the ep, which I’ll get to later. In which case, sure, A-Xu. You keep telling yourself that. You didn’t get off at ALL on him staring at you like you’re the most gorgeous thing on earth. Uh-huh.

Outside, A-Xiang and CWN have a little foodie moment together, and if there ever was a fandom that needed a food-truck AU, it’s this one. I’m SO glad that after A-Xiang and Cao-dage got married, they settled down together and opened that little restaurant just down the mountain from Siji Manor. (Shut. Up.) Meanwhile, ZZS and WKX continue to drink inside, now that they’ve gotten rid of the kids. They discuss Mo Huaiyang (:spits:), with ZZS calling him a “cunning old fox” and wondering what a big rabbit like CWN is doing in his den (owowowoOW). WKX promises to get A-Xiang to check on ZZS’s disciple inside Yueyang Sect – he kind of emphasizes that your disciple bit, like he doesn’t really care at all what happens to Chengling, nuh-uh. OK, my dude, you keep telling yourself that, I guess. There’s yet another discussion about Philanthropist Wen’s real motives, which he claims are to empty out hell, which is metaphorically taken to mean saving the damned, although he probably literally means razing Ghost Valley and maybe the jianghu along with it, as he warns ZZS once again that “the fiercest ghosts tend to disguise themselves as human.” And because everything has a triple meaning in this show, this also, again, is also, again, a warning about himself – that he may look human, but he’s not, really.

Meanwhile, Chengling’s been delivered to Gao Chong at Yueyang Sect, where he’s undergoing the worst kind of family bonding. We learn where ShenShen gets his sparkling way with people, when Gao Chong’s first move is to frown at Chengling, feel his biceps and want to know if he’s sick, because he’s such a weakling. We also see where ShenShen gets the yelling and threats of violence. Both Gao Chong and ShenShen put the press on Chengling for the Glazed Armor, as he continues to insist he doesn’t remember anything about it, while Zhao Jing continues to be the “reasonable” one, tearfully telling Gao Chong to be nicer to the traumatized orphan for the sake of his father, oh, oops, I didn’t mean to remind Da-ge of the estrangement with Mirror Lake that’s mentally torturing him now and make him so emotional that this conversation gets cut short, no really, that was not my intention at all, my bad. Sure, buddy. Anyway, this gives us confirmation that Zhang Yusen hadn’t been interacting with his Five Lakes brothers for a while before Mirror Lake was targeted. But never mind that, you can trust us, Gao Chong tells Chengling, and follows up by asking him: Besides us, who can you trust? Which does not actually sound that trustworthy, my guy, and I begin to suspect that Five Lakes Alliance is running things because you’re the biggest bullies, as not a single one of you seems to know how to be the least bit politic. Except for Awful Yifu, who’s not so much adept at politics as at skullduggery. ANYWAY, when asked who he can trust, we can see Chengling thinking “MY NEW DADS” like it’s lit up in neon over his head. We also see him continue to press or clutch the place on his abdomen where we previously saw his injury, so that’s still bothering him, and I can’t imagine why it might do that any time he has to argue with one of these Five Lakes assholes about the Glazed Armor, amirite? I do also notice, though, that he calls both Gao Chong and Zhao Jing “bobo,” which I think is a more familial term for uncle? as opposed to “shishu” for ShenShen, which is martial, and I’m not sure exactly what distinction he’s driving home by doing so, but there you go. Chengling is sent away to rest, and on leaving the hall he immediately gets bullied by Xie Wuyang, one of Zhao Jing’s undercover Yueyang twinks, before being rescued by Gao Xiaolian, daughter of Gao Chong. She takes him to his new room, which faces right onto the training grounds, because no one’s told him yet how much he needs to build himself up, right? And we get to see a bunch of little Yueyang shits who acted like good boys and promised Xiaolian to her face that they would train with Chengling but who then immediately turn around and start mocking him as soon as she goes away, so WKX’s assessment of how the jianghu is full of assholes continues to look kind of correct. What is Cao Weining doing in this whole hive of scum and villainy?

We get a brief detour here to go with Xiaolian to meet Cao Weining and A-Xiang, and she agrees to let A-Xiang stay with her, before a disciple comes to get her to help set up for taking Chengling to worship at the Five Lakes Alliance memorial. Xiaolian helpfully lets us know that this is weird, because it’s going to be dark soon. A-Xiang sneaks away and informs WKX and ZZS that this is weird, because it’s going to be dark soon. ZZS and WKX also spot some of the Tian Chuang Action Lanterns and surmise that some “feudal lords” seen outside the city are up to no good, so they go and skulk in the bushes along the road to the Five Lakes Alliance monument.

This is getting super-long, so I’m going to get right to the next important part, which is the bit where Han Ying (My Beloved) and his Tian Chuang forces have laid a trap for Gao Chong and Chengling on the way back from the monument, and they try to kidnap Chengling. Han Ying continues to be cold, haughty, and capable at his job right up to the moment when ZZS jumps out of the bushes to foil the kidnapping with his signature Swiftly Moving Steps and a frankly ridiculous bit of gauzy fabric tied around the bottom half of his face as a disguise. Han Ying’s instant change of demeanor is something to behold – he can’t even notice that WKX has him by the throat around the hearts in his eyes as he recognizes ZZS. Which, let’s face it, he ought to, because ZZS spent a decade and a half running around with all of these guys with the bottom half of his face covered, so you’d think more of them would recognize him, but apparently the Cover Girl bangs throw them off. Anyway, WKX grabs Han Ying and they use him as a hostage to get Tian Chuang to release Gao Chong, Chengling and a bunch of Yueyang disciples. Once everyone else is gone, WKX and ZZS drag Han Ying into the bushes, where he hits his knees ten times faster than WKX has yet for ZZS, so maybe it’s WKX’s own fault that he’s left standing around, ignored and vinegary. Han Ying is back to the puppy-dog he was around ZZS in Ep 1, and interestingly, the way Zhang Zhehan is styled here makes ZZS look more severe than he has in a while – he’s got a lot of his hair up in the high pony that looks a bit like the topknot from the front, all the rest of his hair is back behind his shoulders, and his bangs are pushed back out of his face more than usual, making him look more like his Tian Chuang self as he talks to Han Ying. Who he calls Ying’er, and omg, fuck you subtitles, for not including this because HE CALLS HIM YING’ER AND I’M DYING. (Also, oh god, I just realized that the Ying of his name is the same character as “hero.” Which, just, the simple fact of it, of course, but also it was used in the “hero saving the beauty/beauty saving the hero” (overdubbed) lip-read from Ep 6, and now I’m dying on the floor, because that’s kind of a weird little link between Zhen Yan WKX and Han Ying already. It’s likely coincidence, but it’s potentially USEFUL, yes, all my fic writers out there?) Anyway, Han Ying is desperately worried - he knows something’s wrong, because ZZS isn’t bothering to disguise himself with that awful fake face anymore to keep himself safe from Prince Jin’s spies, and also, HOW IS YOUR INJURY, MY LORD? (DO YOU NEED SOMEONE TO TAKE TENDER CARE OF YOU?) WKX continues to look vaguely uncomfortable about this whole thing that’s going on right in front of his salad. Han Ying swears he’ll do anything for ZZS. WKX clears his throat loudly to draw attention and suggestively asks if he should leave for a while. (I am not shitposting here, this actually, literally happens.) ZSS literally huffs in annoyance and ignores him. He tells Han Ying that he saw signs of Tian Chuang at Yueyang and thought they were after him. We can see Han Ying thinking, “No, if I’d known you were here, you’d have found me on my knees by your bedside waiting patiently like a good boy.” We learn that Duang Pengju (that asshole) has had Han Ying looking for the Glazed Armor since the Mirror Lake massacre, probably to take credit for anything he finds. Han Ying reiterates that he’ll do anything for ZZS, and ZZS tells him to stay out of all this, saying that what Han Ying can do for him is stay alive (well, OW).

After this, we get a scene of ZZS and WKX still hanging around by the side of the road after dark. ZZS sincerely thanks WKX for his help, and says he owes WKX a favor. WKX asks him what’s really going on with ZZS and Chengling. ZZS says that he couldn’t stand around and do nothing while this kid was in danger, likely stirring some Zhen Yan feels in WKX that we don’t officially know about yet, at this point. ZZS asks WKX, again, about his Weird Thing about the Five Lakes Alliance and whether it was a coincidence that WKX was at Mirror Lake for the massacre. WKX goes vaguely Ghost Valley Master wild-eyed and says of course not! before laughing and saying, “I followed you, remember?” He gets friend-zoned and follows up by asking ZZS, “Why don’t you ask what I think of you?” ZZS – pretty unconvincingly, tbqh – says he doesn’t care and stomps off, leaving WKX to stare after him soulfully and call him zhiji. Much like that resonance thing earlier - you keep telling yourself that, A-Xu. The next time we see them, they’re at the marketplace, probably the next day, and you remember that thing I said about bonding via food? We’ve come back full circle to that, too. Zhen Yan WKX is 7 years old again, he wants some reassurance that he is ZZS’s super-special friend, and he works his way through the marketplace making ZZS buy him every sweet thing to eat that he can find. Every time ZZS has to pull out his wallet, he makes this pissy little face, but he keeps paying. ZZS is hopeless at cooking, but if you can’t make your own, store-bought will do, WKX is craving reassurance, and as uncomfortable as ZZS is with how close WKX has gotten at this point, he continues to provide it. I also want to point out another censorship dub here, thanks again to AvenueX on Youtube: As they’re figting over the way WKX is spending ZZS’s money in this scene, when WKX tries to grab ZZS’s hand, and ZZS is all ‘”Don’t touch me,” the voice dubbing has WKX say that repaying ZZS is no big deal, he’ll just let ZZS order him around, with ZZS’s response being to tell him to get lost, then. OTOH, lip-read gives us, from WKX, that it’s no big deal, he’ll sell the rest of his life to ZZS, with ZZS’s response as a threat to sell him to a brothel, then. :hands:

Quick wrap-up from there: They go watch some exotic dancers, only there turns out to be an unexpected pile of heads in the follow-up magician’s act, which turn out to be from the guys who were in the “bridal party” at the Ghost Valley “wedding” a few eps ago, and everyone swears vengeance against the Ghost Valley. WKX and ZZS go to visit Chengling, who is supposedly sick and can’t see them, but they get introduced to Gao Chong. Gao Chong and WKX are weird at each other, and ZZS is increasingly suspicious. He’s got his thinky face on, and we don’t get any literally pokey fingers, but I can’t help but think there are some mental pokey fingers going on, as he turns over all the info he knows in his head. Then some Yueyang disciple comes shrieking in about a dead body, omg, death, destruction, death, and Gao Chong is all, Seriously? In front of guests? before we’re out.

[theladygazingatemptiness]

ok one last thing about this actually and I’m going to try to be nice this time: Pro-Crime rhetoric is 1000000% Useless without addressing and acknowledging the roles that racism and white privilege play in the how the criminal justice system operates.

let’s say, in an instance where a black person steals a loaf of bread to feed his starving family, and then a white person in the same store steals a $2k worth of designer shit for their shoplifting blog, and they both get caught, the latter is, By Default, going to be given Much more legal leeway than the former and it doesn’t matter that the black person had a more Acceptable(TM) reason to steal. even if the white person Does get arrested and charged, it’s still less likely that they’ll be violently tackled to the ground and beaten - possibly even killed - beforehand. point is: the system was designed to target and fuck over people like the black person - poor people and people of color - it wasn’t made to target white people with communism tumblr blogs who reblog memes about killing the president or w/e.

and just fyi this isn’t about Which Race Steals More or w/e because it literally doesn’t matter. even if no black person Ever stole anything in history and every single person who’s ever shoplifted anything was white, we would Still be the primary ones to profiled and targeted by the criminal industry, because the legal system was built primarily on systematic racism and classism. it was against us from the start.

as a black leftist, I need white leftists on the internet who are loud about the “be gay do crimes” narrative to understand and realize that it’s Extremely Easy And Safe for them to be loud about it. as a white person, you’re Safely Able to liveblog about shoplifting luxury items without getting thousands of comments specifically about your race and how everyone who looks like you deserves oppression and death. as a white person, you are Able to loudly promote arson and vandalism and looting without being profiled and potentially tracked down by police. as a white person, you’re Easily able to claim that committing illegal acts is easy and fun to do and that people who won’t do them (aka, people of color who know that they’ll be murdered for it) are just weak.

as a white person, you’re Able to openly romanticize crime, as white crime in itself is heavily glamorized in mainstream media already. the online Serial Killer Fandom didn’t come out of nowhere; in mainstream media notorious real world white criminals are almost always painted as either sympathetic or Cool/Charming. on a similar note, media about a white crime mobs are treated as Epic Film Noirs With Villain Protags, while media about black people in gangs are more or less viewed as Freak Shows about how out of control and violent we are. so, in other words, being a white person bragging about committing crimes isn’t Nearly as radical or counterculture as so many of you seem to think it is.

in the past I’ve compared white “lifter” culture to white men posting selfies showing off their massive collection of guns, and there’s a reason for that; both are essentially at their core bragging about being white and having white privilege. both of them know that their whiteness is what protects them. and without acknowledging and discussing and prioritizing the role that racism plays in the criminal justice system, that’s literally all it is.