#where all the main characters are mass-murderers and/or psychopaths

[darkfire359]

Once again reminded of just how baffling it is when people criticize the woobification of characters by saying it’s something that fans disproportionately do with men. Just…huh?

Call it whatever you want. Babygirlification (where do you think that word comes from?). Poor little meow meow-ism (remember that the most literal and canonical poor little meow meow is Catra from She-Ra). The practice of looking at a character who is mean/evil/villainous and going “aww, cute little person just needs some love” is ABSOLUTELY done more with FEMALE characters.

Look up the TVTropes page for “High Heel Face Turn” or “Females are more Innocent”. The idea that women can’t be villains without some kind of trauma that excuses their actions is SOOO common. As is the idea that they can be fixed if they get a love interest.

Look at the concepts of “tsundere” and “kuudere”. These are some of the most common archetypes in anime—the girl that is mean or cold to others, but who is soft and sweet on the inside, just unable to express affection properly.

Part of OFMD’s entire premise is that the idea of looking at a scary guy in a villainous profession and going “he’s a sweetheart deep down” is *unusual* in our culture. Now, Tumblr is a specific slice of culture, and there are certainly no shortage of male characters here who get the poor little meow meow treatment. But it’s definitely not a male-specific or even male-leaning phenomenon.

[evellynssocbrainrot]

This is mostly to speak in defense of this post made by @starsandscars81

First of all, my intention isn’t to gatekeep anyone else’s take or opinion on this subject matter. If you think differently that’s completely fine. It’s none of my business. 

Anyway, on to the analysis.

Kaz and the Darkling are, without a doubt, two of the most flawed characters in the Grishaverse. They’ve both done bad things and certainly aren’t good people. Even so, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: comparing Kaz to the Darkling is still… extreme. And just not it. By comparison, no matter how much awful stuff Kaz has done, it’s no joke that he is over a million times better than the Darkling. 

The Darkling definitely didn’t start off as an evil character, and all his intentions aren’t horrible either. His main motivation is to help the Grisha, his people who have faced years worth of discrimination. He worked hard and built the second army and the Little Palace, which became a kind of haven for Grisha to come together and exercise their gifts. And coming from someone who dislikes the Darkling, I can tell you now that that is wonderful. I’m glad that he’s doing his best and defending his people. That is great. But even then, you can’t deny that some of the things that the Darkling has done on that path are borderline disgusting. The first being massacring hundreds, if not thousands of innocent people. Even if he’s doing it for the sake of his people, killing so many people who are not at fault is not an act of a selfless hero, but pure villainy and cruelty. And what’s worse is that he did this several times. Not just once, and without second thought. Reminders that these innocent people included harmless children.

The rest of the horrible deeds he’s done all come down to his treatment of Alina Starkov (and a bit of Genya Safin, as well). Whether you like Darklina or not, never forget or sugarcoat the idea that he ABUSED her. He may have loved her, he may have understood her, but he hurt her. Over and over again. He lied to her and hid his true intentions. He placed a collar on her and touched her without consent. He stole her power and claimed her as if she was nothing but an object. He was possessive of her and emotionally tormented her even after she ran away. He killed the only mother figure she had and completely destroyed her childhood home. He was absolutely disgusting. There is nothing at all to forgive and redeem. He was already beyond redemption when he created the Fold. And once again, IT DOESN’T MATTER if he loved her. It doesn’t matter at all when he did nothing but hurt her to such extreme amounts and would have continued to if he ever won, or if Darklina actually became canon. 

And what makes the Darkling even worse is that he doesn’t regret any of it. This is where he truly can be labeled as a heartless and cruel monster. He doesn’t express so much as even a sliver of remorse over his inhuman behavior. He doesn’t feel bad. He doesn’t reflect on it or think about it. In fact, he still believes himself to be in the right. He doesn’t even realize how awful he is. Doesn’t show any sign of improving himself. I mourn the person he could have been. I mourn Aleksander Morozova. But I will never defend the person he is today. I will always believe that the death he was given was far too light and SHOULD have been worse. It’s what he deserves. 

He didn’t start evil, but he became evil. He had hundreds of years to rethink his actions but never did. He wanted to defend his people, but you don’t do that by expanding the Fold and causing further destruction. You don’t do that with pointless mass murder. He loved Alina, but you don’t express that by ruining her life. Once upon a time, he was a young hurt boy, but now he’s nothing but a revolting, monstrous and horrible psychopath.

With that said, now I’ll move on to Kaz.

He is not a good person. I’ll tell you that now. I’m not at all defending the bad things that he’s done. Neither am I ignoring his bad qualities. He is manipulative, cruel, and violent. When he freed Inej from the Menagerie, his intentions weren’t to save her, but to temporarily make use of her skills. I know this, and I’m not dismissing it.

But here are some things that set him apart from the Darkling.

The first being that almost everything Kaz does has reason. There is ALWAYS a reason. His rage is targeted at hyper-specific people. People who deserve it. He killed Oomen, but because he hurt Inej to the point that she nearly died. He dropped a man from a tower, but because that man blackmailed a Zemeni sex worker. He destroyed Van Eck and his empire, but because Van Eck was a bitch. He spent all his life trying to crush Pekka Rollins, and he did, but because Pekka ruined his life. “Kaz Brekker always had his reasons.” The Darkling had no reason to commit mass murder and hurt Alina. 

The second thing is boundaries. The Darkling didn’t have fucking boundaries. Kaz, on the other hand, no matter the amount of violence and destruction he commits, never crosses some lines. He never ever raped or sexually assaulted anyone, he never hurts innocent people, he never hurts children, and never actually spread firepox around the city of Ketterdam. 

The third being awareness. This is a big one. The Darkling, in his path of vengeance, hardly considers his environment, the people around him, who he should get mad at and who he shouldn’t. And even after the horrible deed is done, as I said before, there’s no remorse and regret. For Kaz it’s the opposite. He is hyper aware of where he is. Who he’s with. He’s careful and considerate. And for some of the horrible things he’s done, despite how understandable and trauma-inflicted they are, he regrets them. He feels bad. He knows he’s not a good person. He knows he is awful. He knows he isn’t worthy of Inej. When he was drowning in the waters of Fjerda, it wasn’t himself he was thinking of. It was his crew, Inej. He was worried for them. He blamed himself for the positions they were in and vowed that no matter what, he would save them. He would fix this mess. The same applies in the next book, when they were all trapped in the Geldrenner hotel. It’s himself Kaz blamed, nobody else. 

We don’t even need to tell Kaz that he’s awful. Because he already knows it and wholeheartedly believes it. And unlike so many other similar male characters in YA fiction, Kaz desperately wished that he could change. Perhaps he doesn’t say this openly, but you know deep down that he doesn’t want to be this way. He doesn’t want this life or the trauma. 

Speaking of the trauma, so much of what Kaz does is because of it. Does it excuse his behavior? Certainly not. But it does help with understanding why. And even now, the consequences he suffers from the trauma are bad, but still don’t excuse what he does. Kaz himself thinks so. 

Kaz was a boy who was hurt, like the Darkling was. He lost someone important, like the Darkling did. But the way he responded to that was immensely different. Even the desire for money is understandable when you realize that the lack of it was what made him and his brother end up on the streets. And the money he got, he literally spent a large portion of it to buy Inej a ship and remake the Emerald Palace into the Silver Six. And before that, he gave up the last of it he had left to pay off Inej’s contract.

AND, speaking of Inej. Only someone extremely stupid would say that the way he treats her is the same as the way the Darkling treats Alina. The dynamic is messy and flawed, but they are young. It’s understandable if they fail from time to time. But overall, Kaz respects Inej. He adores Inej. He’s devoted to Inej. He’s loyal to Inej. He wouldn’t betray or abandon her for all the gold in the world. He’s protective of her, but not possessive. When he sees other people get close to her, he’s jealous. But not because he wants to keep Inej to himself, but because he wants to be able to get close to her like that as well. He realizes the wrong ways he treats her, and then proceeds to claim that he isn’t so bad that he can’t pull himself together for her. He spends a good portion of Crooked Kingdom going out of his way to make up for his behavior and it shows. It doesn’t make him any better a person, but it does make him a far better lover. A worthy book boyfriend <333.

Outside of Inej, you can see how much he cares about his crew. He protects them, he the Parem from Nina, he refuses to give it to Jesper, he gives Wylan advice like a big brother, he gave them all time to rest and recharge in the Geldrenner hotel while dragging his aching body all the way to the Slat to gather more people for his plan. He gave his crew every single resource he had left and even then, contributed alongside them when putting his plan to action. The Slat and the Dregs themselves have become a safe space for young people who don’t have a family or a place to go. He may be selfish with the world, but with them he’s nothing but the most selfless person to ever exist. 

The list is endless, honestly, but this is why it doesn't make any sense to compare Kaz to the Darkling. If I were in a life and death situation, and I was forced to put my trust in one person, Kaz or the Darkling, I would choose Kaz in a heartbeat.

Damn, this took way too long.

[twistedtummies2]

Gathering of the Greatest Gumshoes - Number 27

Welcome to A Gathering of the Greatest Gumshoes! During this month-long event, I’ll be counting my Top 31 Favorite Fictional Detectives, from movies, television, literature, video games, and more!

SLEUTH-OF-THE-DAY’S QUOTE: “The world will look up and shout, ‘Save us!’ And I’ll whisper, ‘No.’”

Number 27 is…Rorschach, from Watchmen.

A lot of you are probably surprised to see a character as iconic as Rorschach – arguably the most famous character from one of the greatest graphic novels of all time, “The Watchmen” – so low in the ranks. Well, trust me, as iconic as Rorschach is, there’s a good reason I place him where I do, but we’ll get to that in a bit. For now, let’s focus on the character himself.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock nowhere near a book-and/or-magazine-vendor since the mid-80s, then the chances are good you’ve at least heard of “The Watchmen.” This was the arguable masterpiece of English comic book writer Alan Moore. This man is something of a strange legend in the world of comics, responsible for such titles as “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” “V for Vendetta,” and “From Hell,” as well as being the author of “Batman: The Killing Joke.” However, many agree that when you hear his name, “Watchmen” is the first of his works that seems to come to mind. This graphic novel was a hyper-dark deconstruction of the superhero genre as a whole, and set the groundwork for a lot of comic book stories that would come after it. The idea of “superhero deconstruction” has sort of become a sub-genre within itself, to be honest, and while parody and satire of the genre did exist long before Moore whipped up this piece, “Watchmen” is almost universally agreed to be the place where the idea of taking superhero fiction and giving it a psychological and sociological bend, and showing that superpowered beings in the world aren’t necessarily the end of all problems, became REALLY popular.

The main protagonist of “Watchmen” (at least ostensibly) is Rorschach. Most of the characters in Moore’s book were based on pre-existing comic book characters, sort of blending original elements with older concepts to create recognizable figures and play off of established tropes. Rorschach is sort of a conglomeration of Batman, the Shadow, the Question, and a much lesser-known character called Mr. A. The story of the graphic novel focuses on Rorschach – real name Walter Kovacs – trying to solve the murder of his former superhero teammate, the Comedian. The adventure grows increasingly more bizarre (and thoroughly messed-up on MANY levels) as Rorschach uncovers a vast conspiracy and plots to commit mass slaughter, leading to many of the former Watchmen banding together again to try and figure out how to stop the chaos. Without going into too much detail, for those who don’t know already…yeah, it doesn’t exactly go how Rorschach – or, indeed, anybody – really planned. Rorschach is a fine sleuth, and the visual design of him – a noir-style detective’s getup combined with a bizarre, shifting inkblot mask – is certainly one of the most striking in all of comics, many would argue. However, what truly stands out about Rorschach is his philosophical viewpoint: Moore created Rorschach as a sort of satire on the strict objectivist policies many of the characters I mentioned earlier notoriously had. These were characters who seemed to see the world in a strictly black-and-white perspective, where good is good, bad is bad, and there’s basically no gray moral ground in-between. He does what he feels is right based on this ideal, but the problem is…that’s a REALLY hard ideal to put into practice in the real world without seeming like a complete idiot or semi-psychopathic. Rorschach’s steadfast nature, his determination to stick to his ideology, is both his greatest asset and his greatest failing: it’s an asset because it’s what allows him to get through as far as he does and keep focused on the case at hand. But it’s his greatest failing because his inability to cope with the gray area, and reason out anything beyond his basic, fundamental viewpoint, leads to a lot of personal problems, and ultimately to his own downfall. This is actually why Rorschach ranks as low as he does. To put things in the simplest terms possible: while I love the deconstruction and homages present in Watchmen, I feel like I prefer other takes on these concepts more, and I also prefer some of the characters that inspired Rorschach over the Watchmen's chief sleuth himself. Still, he's more than worthy of placement in the Top 31: when I think of comic book detectives, he's one of the first I imagine.

Tomorrow, the countdown continues with Number 26!

CLUE: “Truth brings closure.”

[kevinsreviewcatalogue]

Review: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

Rated R

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2023/03/review-assault-on-precinct-13-1976.html>

Score: 4 out of 5

Assault on Precinct 13 was the second film in the long career of John Carpenter and the first to really bear the hallmarks of a "John Carpenter film", his first movie Dark Star having been more of a hippie comedy than anything. It's a very rough and uneven film where you can tell that Carpenter was stretching his tiny budget to the breaking point, and that the film's ambitions as a contemporary take on the basic plot of Rio Bravo may have been just a bit too ambitious for a guy working with just $100,000 (adjusted for inflation, still just over half a million dollars). And yet, despite the clear and visible limitations the film is working under, everything important just clicks. The shootouts had me on the edge of my seat even as the film kept the bad guys offscreen, hiding in the shadows. The cast was very uneven, but the three main characters all grabbed my attention. Carpenter's penchant for doing the score to his movies himself elevated even the slower moments between the action sequences. There were a lot of scenes where I thought the movie was spinning its wheels, but far more where it roared back to life. Its take on gang violence bears little resemblance to the reality of such then or now, but does feel terrifyingly prescient of today's wave of spree killers. And the low budget forced upon the film several creative decisions that lent it a measure of grit that sold its urban ghetto setting. It's a perfectly imperfect movie whose faults are plainly visible, but still managed to knock my socks off in spite of them.

The film takes place at a police station in the crime-infested South Central Los Angeles slum of Anderson, where a skeleton crew, comprised of the officer in charge Sgt. Chaney, the secretaries Leigh and Julie, and the highway patrol officer Lt. Ethan Bishop who's been newly assigned to the station for its final night, is keeping the lights on for one last night before the building is shut down and they're moved to a new station. A prison transport containing three convicts, Wells, Caudell, and the well-groomed psychopath Napoleon Wilson, also arrives at the station that night when Caudell falls ill. Meanwhile, in the rough neighborhood outside the station's walls, a gang called Street Thunder is on a rampage, and when a father who witnessed them murder his young daughter in cold blood comes to the station searching for help, Street Thunder responds by putting the station under siege. As Chaney and the prison guards are taken out and the power and phone lines are cut, and with the surrounding city blocks largely abandoned as anybody with any sense moved away long ago, the remaining cops and criminals must band together in a fight to survive the night with whatever weapons they have on hand.

The main idea of Street Thunder bears almost no resemblance to any real idea of how gangs operate, then or now. It's explicitly stated and shown that they're a multiracial gang, and they don't have any particular community ties, either. They don't seem to care about money, instead committing horrifying crimes like murdering children simply for the thrill of it. They have rituals that are almost akin to a cult. They're not a gang as we would recognize them, but they are a scarily prescient portrait of mass shooters, people who generally do engage in the behaviors we see of them, the main difference being that, instead of one lone man with a gun, it's a whole mob of them united by a common cause of chaos for its own sake. They are practically a zombie horde that can think and use guns, a portrait of urban decay as it was seen and thought of by people living through it in the '70s, and they make for a terrifying threat to the protagonists. Carpenter knows when to keep their attacks offscreen and use gunfire as the calling card of their presence, most notably in a scene where the station's lobby is trashed in a hail of bullets that feels like it lasts several minutes, and also when to start having them trying to raid the station in full force, providing some epic shootouts. There are long lulls in the action where you know they're hiding and watching behind the bushes across the street, waiting for the protagonists to let their guard down as they argue with each other and count their dwindling ammo supplies. As a personification of crime in the '70s, Street Thunder is a hell of a villain, dehumanized by design and simply coming for the heroes out of little more than a hatred of civilized society.

The main characters are an uneven bunch, but the three big ones were fortunately my favorites. Austin Stoker plays Bishop as a "boy scout" of a cop from Los Angeles' wealthy Westside who's clearly not prepared for the chaos that officers in South Central routinely face. Wilson, meanwhile, is played by Darwin Joston as a prototype for Hannibal Lecter, a guy whose on-screen behavior, routinely attacking officers while remain calm, cool, and collected throughout, leaves us to wonder what kind of horrifying crimes he committed to get himself sent to prison. As Bishop and Wilson butt heads through their teeth-clenched teamwork, I got the feeling that one of them might turn on the other once all this was over, if they even waited that long. Laurie Zimmer's Leigh was more of a supporting character, but she still got a lot to do in the action scenes and came off looking and feeling like a badass even after getting injured by the bad guys. The weaker characters fortunately got less screen time and were mainly used for cannon fodder, but I still found myself wishing at times that the film could find more to do with them, especially given the focus many of them get in the lengthy opening. In particular, I didn't like how, after arriving at the police station, the father went catatonic like Barbara in Night of the Living Dead and spent the whole movie hiding, especially given how he was such a major focus of the first act. Given what the villains did to his daughter, I would've liked to see him get more to do fighting them, perhaps with a nastier edge as it's personal for him. Instead, for long stretches I almost forgot he was still around, only occasionally being reminded of his presence just to establish that he's not dead yet.

The Bottom Line

Assault on Precinct 13 is a grimy, mean, and vicious action thriller that strains under its low budget but otherwise makes for a hell of an introduction to John Carpenter, who's proven himself to be one of the best there ever was at this kind of movie. Check it out.

[arale2126]

[Analysis] Elle (2016)

WARNING: This analysis contains spoilers. 

Elle is directed by Paul Verhoeven, based on the French novel Oh by Philippe Dijan, starring Isabelle Huppert. Watching the film gives the feeling of listening to an atonal piece of music. You may think you can predict where the piece would go but then it does not. The same can be said about Elle. It bamboozles the audience with swerve after swerve of genre: it starts as a thriller, which then gives space for a familial comedy; at a later point, more elements of a detective mystery are written in; sandwiched in between are a psycho-sexual drama and a melodramatic slice-of-life. This film could easily become a convoluted mess but it does not since at the center holding everything together is Michèle, the film's charismatic main character. 

Even though the film incorporates plenty of genres, the film still has a central theme: without the masks they put on to seem well-adjusted in front of others, humans are all monsters - a gorgeously misanthropic outlook on human nature. Indeed, the film spends most of its runtime exploring the monstrous, shameful things every character does underneath the facade they put on. A snippet of a conversation between Michèle and her mother, Irène, sums up the movie’s theme really well:

Irène: He’s just a man. (about Michèle’s father, who is a mass murderer)

Michèle: Who happens to be a monster.

As the film's main character, Michèle is the one who helps the theme transpire. Michèle is a fascinating multi-dimensional character and Huppert embodies her effortlessly. She manages to bring out the contradictory aspects of the character with a breeze. Huppert’s Michèle is full of flaws and shameless but at the same time, charismatic and fascinating. Although she first appears powerless, throughout the film, she exudes nothing but control and power. Her actions make the audience gasp due to its controversial nature but they cannot help being captivated by her, admiring her and as the result, rooting for her. You can love her or hate her but one thing for sure, she will keep you interested from beginning to end.

It can be said that Elle is a character-driven film. It keeps the audience hooked not by the story, but rather, the larger-than-life personality of its main character. They have to keep asking: What will this woman do next? How will she fascinate us next? Therefore, to understand the film, one must analyze its main character, Michèle. Her personality is shown through her interactions with other characters. Towards men and her mother, she showcases her dominance over them and distrust in them. She treats them with quiet exasperated toleration. With the men around her, she has the extra task of handling their emotional needs and fragility. In return to being the shepherd for others, Michèle treats them as objects, to be manipulated and exploited for her own good. 

Irène: What would you say if I remarried?

Michèle: It’s simple, I’d kill you. No need to think.

 In Michèle’s eyes, Irène - her mother, is a burden. Her mother uses Michèle’s money to give them to her lovers and plastic surgery. She also sees Irène as an emotionally manipulative person, and distrusts her as Irène used to dramatize things for attention. When Irène actually has a stroke, only until Michèle hears the confirmation from the doctor does she believe her mother is not faking it and actually faces death. In addition, Irène disregards Michèle’s thoughts and feelings. Michèle only tolerates Irène because it is her mother. Overall, the relationship between the two women is tense. 

Georges Le Blanc is Michèle’s father. He is a mass murder who went on a killing spree in the neighborhood, murdering 27 people. Afterwards, he returned home and burnt everything with Michèle, who was 10 years old at the time. In the aftermath, reporters snapped a photo of Michèle with empty eyes and ever since, she was considered a psychopath, just like her father. Michèle considers her father “a monster” and herself as a victim of Georges. She has spent her entire life fearing him and getting away from his haunting shadow. One of her fears is becoming like her father so she puts great efforts in distancing herself from him, both physically and mentally. She is not much of a Catholic. She cares for her son and does not treat him like how her father treated her. She does not resort to killing people uncontrollably even though she can injure them gravely. 

However, as the curse of blood goes, she still takes after her father’s lurking violence and immorality. She would do whatever to please herself, even if it was at the expense of others. She seduces her married neighbor and sleeps with her best friend’s husband. She is abrasive towards other people and has a tendency to treat them as disposable; however, at the same time, she is possessive of them, be it her ex-husband, her son or her best friend. This contrast creates a really toxic dynamic in which Michèle tosses and turns others as she pleases. 

The relationship between Michèle and her parents provides an explanation and insights into Michèle’s personality. It seems that her nonchalant facade and closed-off personality are her defense mechanisms for self-preservation due to the actions of her parents. The two figures who should be the ones to protect betrays her, only bringing her trauma and problems. Because of her father’s murders and its aftermath, Michèle grows to distrust authority, police, reporters in particular and people in general. She builds a wall around herself to hide everything about her, her light-hearted side, her dark impulses, and especially her vulnerability. She is obsessed with being in control because she needs to build herself up after the tragedies brought upon her. 

There is a discrepancy of empathy for Georges between Irène and Michèle. Irène still regards him as a human while Michèle sees him as a monster. Her mother continuously pressures Michèle to go visit Georges as he grows old and ill, completely refusing to see things from Michèle’s point of view. Eventually, Michèle decides to go visit her father in prison. However, against her mother’s wishes, it is not to forgive and reconcile with him but to “spit him in the face”. She also prepares nine bullet points to talk to him and given their relationship, those words cannot be nice. At the prison, the warden tells her that her father had committed suicide and Michèle asks him when he was told about her visit. The answer reveals that he killed himself because he knew his daughter would come. The last thing Michèle says to her father’s body is: “I killed you by coming here.” She delivers the line with her usual nonchalance yet it is filled with quiet triumph. At the end of the film, Michèle does not erase the profanity on her father’s plaque and only puts flowers on her mother’s. This shows that she does not forgive and forget. 

To other men in Michèle’s life, she is the one who takes care of their emotional needs and fragility, as well as material needs. However, given that the one who takes care of you is who has power over you, she still asserts domination over them. It can be said that through caring for others, Michèle dictates their lives. This dominion gives Michèle free range to treat people as disposable and toys to play with, knowing no matter how badly she treats them, they still need her. At the same time, Michèle is also really possessive to those same people. It is like how a tyrant needs subjects to rule over. 

The first example is Richard, Michèle’s ex-husband. He is a writer with a lack of self-esteem and in need of validation. The film hints that Michèle has a background in publishing, which means that she must have helped Richard with his career. Later in the film, Michèle also appoints an employee to hear Richard’s pitch of a new game. Although they are divorced due to Richard hitting her, Michèle is still jealous of his new relationship and seeks revenge by putting a toothpick inside his new girlfriend’s food. 

The second example is Michèle’s male staff. Michèle is the head of a game company with a majority of male staff. They are intimidated by her and prone to be defiant to her criticism due to her being a woman in a male-dominated field. One of them, Kurt, hates Michèle because she constantly and mercilessly criticizes him, even if she was right. He casts doubt upon Michèle’s professionalism in game design even though her company has released successful games before. Kevin, another employee, insults Michèle in front of the entire company even though he shows his likeness to her. The male staff, whether they love her or hate her, still harms Michèle in one way or another. However, with a simple compliment, she keeps Kurt under her thumb. It is only that vindictive after being berated so often. Kevin is allowed to stay but only when he agrees to submit to Michèle’s authority. As mentioned, no matter how badly she treats them, they still need her. 

Nowhere does this duality of carer - controller more clearly shown than the relationship between Michèle and her son, Vincent. She is the one who pays for his expenses such as rent, car, and so on, as well as giving him jobs. She still has to placate Vincent’s irresponsibility and childishness. However, she is obviously not happy doing so. She tolerates her son like she tolerates her mother - he is a nuisance that she cannot shrug off. 

Michèle: You realize having a child is all about suffering. Vincent’s birth was sheer hell. Torture. Three hours of agony. 

Michèle is not maternal towards Vincent. She views motherhood as neither joyful nor meaningful. She does not pretend that it brings her happiness or fulfillment. Michèle openly despises Vincent, criticizing him to his face, sometimes in front of others. He is the summation of everything she dislikes. Vincent is a retail worker who has dubious work ethics while Michèle is the head of a successful game company. He is rather dumb and an airhead while Michèle is cunning and calculating. He is a carpet for people to trample on while Michèle dictates and makes people submit, him included. 

Though Michèle berates Vincent often, she is still possessive of him. When Vincent was born, Anna - Michèle’s best friend, also gave birth to her own child. However, Anna’s child died at birth. Anna then asked to breastfeed Vincent and Michèle agreed. As he grows up, Vincent has a better relationship with Anna, which makes Michèle jealous. She harbors that jealousy then as she does now. 

It seems that Michèle savors how Vincent always runs back to her, no matter how harsh she is towards him. A lot of reviewers only focus on how incompetent Vincent is but in the end, he is actually the one who saves Michèle. The relationship between Michèle and Vincent mirrors that of Michèle and Irène; though Michèle is harsh to her mother, she does not abandon Irène when the latter is ill. It is true, as Irène says, “Some bonds never break.”

Michèle’s duality of carer - controller is taken to a satirical extreme in her relationship with her and Patrick - at first, the married neighbor whom Michèle wants to seduce and later revealed, the masked rapist at the beginning of the film. The depiction of this relationship is the most controversial aspect about Elle. Taking it as literal, it is easy to label the film misogynistic. However, that claim stands up to a lot of challenges. 

The first counterpoint is that men are not depicted favorably in Elle. The film shows that, “See, all men are rapists.” All the male characters in the film are under suspicion for the crime shown at the beginning of the film. All of them are shown as the potential perpetrator because they have motive to do so to Michèle. The men around Michèle are either pathetic, fragile and childish like Kurt, Kevin, Richard, Vincent or downright monsters, like Patrick and Georges. They are all just disappointment and Michèle treats them all like disposable trash. They are only allowed to benefit from her so long as they submit to and serve Michèle.

The second counterpoint is that the dynamic scale of the relationship between Michèle and Patrick tips to the former flavor. After Michèle is raped, she remains composed and resumes with her everyday life as if that incident did not matter, was a mere trivial inconvenience. She does not let it define her or dictate how she would live her life. Michèle is completely nonchalant. 

Later, Michèle buys a bottle of pepper spray, an axe and later a gun to protect herself. She is also determined to find who the rapist is, even using illegal means. She is out to seek vengeance and this is the closest to anger she shows.

Michèle then enters a cat-and-mouse game of seduction with Patrick. It is critical to remember that Michèle already has eyes on Patrick before discovering that he is the rapist she is looking for. Her continuing with the game despite the revelation of Patrick’s true identity shows that she may be surprised and accept that she is rather fascinated by someone who can usurp her sexually, something which many of her lovers fail to do. Even so, in this game, Michèle still holds the knife. 

Michèle manipulates Patrick into recreating the rape. When she successfully baits him and shows her willingness, Patrick instantly wilts. He does not know what to do with a woman who owns her sexuality. 

Later, when Michèle gets into an accident, she calls Patrick for help. This shows that he has no power over her whatsoever, despite what he has done. 

Near the end, Michèle has an epiphany: there may be other victims of Patrick. She considers going to the police and puts an end to their relationship. 

When Vincent kills Patrick, Michèle covers her son with the police, not disclosing the cat-and-mouse game they played. In her eyes, a piece of trash is swept out. 

The third counterpoint against the misogynistic claim is that Michèle preserves her bright side for another female character - Anna, her best friend. Anna is the only one who can tease a smile out of her. When Anna finds out that Michèle slept with her husband, she dumps him and remains best friends with Michèle. Their relationship is intact and the ending implies that it may turn romantic. 

Overall, Elle is an intricate film. The more you think about it, the more fascinating it becomes. Tinged with cynical satire and worldview, it is brilliantly acted and compelling. Different genres are seamlessly sewn together and do not clash or become convoluted, an impressive feat. 

[varpusvaras]

I mean...technically, Fox isn't portrayed as a villain, and neither is the Coruscant Guard. The right word is antagonist. Villain is someone who is doing bad things with malicious intent, and Fox is not canonically that. What Fox's canonical role is, is to show how the clones and the indoctrination they go through can manifest when they have no positive leading examples around. Fox is rigid and goes by the rules and uses power heavy-handedly at times, because that is what he was trained for and what he is told to do time and time again. He and the Corries are an opposing force to the more free-spirited main characters who have character arcs about bending the rules and whatnot. Thus, he is an antagonistic character at times (not always, as he is on the same side as the main characters after all).

This post wasn't about "boohoo, my blorbo is not portrayed as a sweet cinnamon roll by the fandom!". No, it is about the fact that you really, really cannot go outside of tumblr without seeing masses of people saying that he is an absolute evil psychopath and deserved to die. No matter where he is mentioned, these are the majority of things said about him. People are 99 percent of the time happy about the fact that Vader (someone who is actually a villain) killed him.

Yes, darker interpretations of Fox are a healthy part of fandom, as well as are the portrayals of him as a more nuanced character. That's fine and cool and honestly very great. Also yes, he does a lot of mistakes, but I do think that you are being a bit unfair here towards him (no offense, okay? I just wanna talk). Like, yes, he used too much force when dealing with Ahsoka. But then again, Ahsoka has just broken out of the prison, after she had been caught murdering someone on record, and she is a suspect in terrorism and is apparently on a murder spree again. Fox, canonically, deals with terrorists and other security threats on a daily basis. He is most likely approaching this like every other job he has. Not saying he didn't do anything wrong, but again, he is supposed to be antagonistic here and a nuanced character, who has been dealt with an equally of a shitty hand as all the other clones, but who doesn't have a Jedi telling him to be mindful and patting him on the back when he does something correct. No, he is supposed to deal with threats efficiently. That's his job. A job he didn't choose, and in which he has no room to grow freely as a person. That is a nuanced take on him based on canon.

Also...Anakin has a reputation. He was acting aggressive and threatening towards Fox. Fox didn't attack him, and neither did the Guards there. Fox flinched, and the Corries escorted Anakin out. Anakin is not above the rules, and Fox did correct by the rules there. We can argue if the rules are correct or not, but not really fault Fox for following them.

So yeah. He is sometimes an antagonist in the storyline, someone to oppose the mindset of the main characters. He is not, canonically, a villain, and has never been portrayed as such, and it gets really fucking tiring when you cannot have any positive discussion about him outside of small circles on one single website.

Let's talk about he unwarranted Fox hate.

I often see that a lot of people tend to hate on Commander Fox, often portraying him as a villainous kind of character or very cold and selfish compared to the more heroic and beloved Commander Thorn.

I see these two characters portrayed as "the good commander" and "the bad commander" of the Coruscant guard, when in reality they are both pretty much the same character.

But just for the fact that Fox killed Fives, the public decided to label him as a "bad guy".

But that's not the case, in fact if we changed characters and placed Thorn hunting after Fives and Fox on the diplomatic mission, chances are both situations would have ended the same way: with Fives dead at the hands of Thorn and Fox dying heroically for the republic.

Why is this?

Well for starters we need to understand what a Coruscant guard is.

These were clones that were raised and trained differently from common clone troopers as their assignment was to act as a security police force for Coruscant. As a result, they dealt with different threats than normal troopers.

Clone troopers knew what their enemies looked like, the separatist forces were easy to recognize in the battlefield. But for the Coruscant guard the enemy could take many forms. They would not see battle droids on the streets attempting on the lives of the senate. They would have to deal with terrorists, dressed as common folk or unconscious work droids. They had to be more alert and more skeptic of their surroundings 24/7 as the fate of the republic laid in their hands.

One false move could cost the lives of the chancellor and the senate and with them the Republic would fall. That is the weight these clones carry on their shoulders. This is the responsibility that both Fox and Thorn carry along with the other commanders in red.

Both Fox and Thorn are very similar in canon.

Fox appears more than Thorn and we can see from his canon(and legends) appearances that he is a fiercely loyal clone to the republic, hard working and honorable like many of his brothers. He is the first to charge into battle, leading his troops with bravery and has little patience for criminals.

Thorn seems to have a similar sense of duty, loyalty and bravery that Fox has, as he also stands his ground during battle, refusing to surrender til the very last second. We sadly don't see more of Thorn beyond his one and only appearance.

So why do people hate Fox so much, when he and Thorn are not that different?

Well, he killed Fives.

But I don't think he should be hated for it.

To explain this, join me to see things through the fox's eye, and learn the other side of the story.

We as the audience know Fives since he is a Shiny, and we see him grow up, level up, become an ARC trooper and survive many perils. We see him discover that one plot that we know causes so much death and destruction and even tho we know the ending of the story, we want to root for him and we get frustrated when we see no-one hears him out. We also, as the audience, know that Palpatine is the bad guy, he is playing chess against himself and ruining the lives of countless people for his own sick pleasure in his path to rule the Galaxy.

But Fox doesn't know any of this.

He doesn't know Palpatine is secretly Dath Sidious. He doesn't know there is a secret plot to destroy the Jedi and that he and his brothers are just pawns in a greater scheme.

As far as he is concerned, the Chancellor is the head of the Republic, and if anything happens to him it might mean the end of the Republic and the death of not only him but all his brothers. It's his duty to protect Palpatine from harm. And there are a lot of people trying to hurt him.

He also doesn't know Fives.

He might have heard of him as Fives is a respected ARC trooper from the 501st. But he doesn't know him personally like we do, like Rex does. He has no real connection to him other than Fives being another Clone like him.

So when he hears that there is this erratic clone that tried to kill Palpatine and is now on the run, of course he would see Fives as a threat.

Remember that the Kaminoans covered the whole inhibitor chip thing by saying it was a behavioral regulator, that kept Clones from becoming aggressive and erratic. The Kaminoan even took the example of Tup's chip malfunction as proof that without the chip the clones turn irrational and unpredictable. This is the information the characters have. The ONLY ONES that know the truth are Palpatine, the Kaminoans and Fives.

So in Fox's eyes, Fives turned erratic because he also has a chip malfunction. He became irrational, unpredictable, erratic and has attempted to kill someone before. He might try to do so again and is now on the run. It's his duty as head of the Coruscant guard to find him and stop him before he hurts someone.

When he finds Fives, he has Anakin and Rex as hostages and is talking nonsense, acting erratic and paranoic. He could hurt Anakin or Rex, two very important and prominent figures in the GAR and their deaths could result in disadvantage against the Separatist forces. Fox cannot afford that. And yet he doesn't enter shooting, he points his gun at Fives and orders him to raise his hands and surrender. He gives Fives a chance to go peacefully, to de-escalate the situation. And when he sees that Fives looks at the blaster on his side he even yells at him to stop, he asks him not to do it, not to take the gun and make things worse. But Fives doesn't listen, he takes the gun yelling and Fox has to make a split-second decision.

In a moment like that, when you are a second away of a disaster, when you, your brothers or the hostages could get killed by the shot of a unhinged person. You don't get enough time to think.

Fox reacts and shoots Fives to stop him from harming others.

Sure, we could argue that Fox could have used stun instead, or that he could have shot Five's hand, anything to not kill him.

But we need to understand that in situations like that, when tensions are high, then it's life or death and you have to take a split-second decision, you don't usually have time to be rational.

Even the most trained people can't always take the most rational option, and often choose the best option they can.

Fox took the best option he could in that situation.

And I don't think that Thorn, Thire, Stone or any of the other Shock trooper Commanders would have done any different, any better.

They all would have been faced with the same dire situation, and they all would have had to take the split-second decision.

One could argue that the fact that Fox was not present in the circle of Coruscant guards taking off their helmets as they mourn Fives, could imply that he was indifferent to his death.

And maybe? However I don't think that's the case.

Remember that Fox tried to stop Fives, he tried to give him a chance to surrender and in the end he couldn't stop. He had to shoot a fellow clone. A clone whose face he sees in all his brothers, the companions he trained with, fought with, work with everyday. He did not wanted to kill Fives.

That has to be very haunting.

I like to believe that Fox is not the mourning circle, because he had to take a step back to come to terms to what he has done.

Fox has been proven to be an honorable man. How can he stand a join the mourning of a man he just killed? How can he see into Rex's eyes as he cries for the close brother he has lost? Maybe he felt like he had no right to be there.

Then again this is just my speculation, considering what little canon we have of Fox.

In general I don't think we should hate on Fox for Fives' death. Sure, Fives is easily my second favorite clone, way above Fox in my raitings, and I suffered a lot when he died. But I do think that the situation was way to out of hand and Fox did as best as he could to keep everyone safe.

Fives was not at fault either. Remember he was drugged, and he was feeling frustrated, paranoic, confused, he was panicking and not thinking clearly.

The only one at fault here is Palpatine and his schemes.

That said...

I'm not saying that you should stop portraying Fox as a cold and ruthless character.

Hell, I myself like to represent him as a more stoic and sarcastic person compared to his brothers and I've seen many different portrayals of this character, with many different personalities that I love!

You are free to a enjoy the fandom as you wish after all!

Just keep this post in mind and please don't hate on people who like Fox as a character.

We all deserve to enjoy Star Wars and it's wonderful characters that inspire us.

┕━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ━━━━━━━━━━━━┙

Well, this has been my Rant! If you reached all the way down here thank you for reading ♥

And may the force be with you.

[jdramastuff]

End the bullshit once and for all... by killing civilians. Sure.

Even if we say him murdering the riders is okay the moment he involved civilians he has become a mass murderer.

You say that the amount of time he hesitated got to you, you literally called Keiwa the loser when he died. You reveled in the fact that your blorbo murdered, gloated, and rubbed the cheated victory in Keiwa's face before saying "why dont you become the fuel to my happiness"

Yeah no Michinaga is not nice.

Seems like we're watching completely different shows. Come on, the way the main trio fought to keep the dgp going and played jamato baseball or whatever as the civillians were dying left and right was some outrageous mess. You can't just put all the fault on Buffa when there's psychopaths from the future arranging shitty games and people stuck in it think they can outplay the masters while following the rules, which is quite cringe. Plus, the cost of life and death in this show is 0 as anyone can be resurrected once the world is reset. Geats played to find the secrets, Keiwa played to resurrect the dead people. Too bad that plan is meaningless if the games go on and people die again, so what's the point. Buffa also picked a stupid wish, as getting rid of kamen riders is not how you end the psycho games either. Now we're finally at the point where all the characters saw through the dgp bullshit and have a chance to come together and bring back some fairness to this world. As for the line you mentioned, it wasn't gloating, it was stating facts. Those who play the games agree to the idea that the winner gets to remake the world according to their own wishes by taking others' happiness away. As long as one proceeds playing to win, to die for winner's ideal world is what they consent to.

[romanianwilkinson]

MONSTER CAMP QUOTES STARTERS

A collection of sentence starters from the game Monster Camp. Feel free to change words and pronouns as desired. CONTENT WARNING(S) FOR: Monster Prom/Monster Camp spoilers, suggestive, cursing, crude content

“ I just have it here because [NAME] insisted that I offer it, as a marketing stunt. ”

“ And lastly, super-horny-type players no longer get a charm buff against tsundere types! ”

“ War machines don’t turn me on or anything! ”

“ I don’t wanna be weird, but do you mind if I climb inside of you and play around with your main turret? ”

“ A wine to DIE for, you say? Well, darling, don’t threaten me with a good time! ”

“ This one just says ‘ hmu with that reaper dick, daddy ’. ”

“ You on your phone, as always! Probably making blogposts on your Tik Tok page. ”

“ Yeah, you really don’t want to witness a repeat of the last time [NAME]’s diehard fans went without a selfie for fifteen minutes. My tailbone still hasn’t completely healed. ”

“ Now hold still, this will only hurt for a moment --- ”

“ Yay! You found a shenanigan! ”

“ My poems all have two or three emotions in them, AT LEAST. ”

“ CRYING IS OBVIOUSLY A COMPETITION TO SEE WHO CAN SQUEEZE THE MOST WATER OUT OF THEIR EYES! ”

“ No way, really? The way to WIN at poetry is by LOSING at life? ”

“ I dunno, maybe fall in love with someone who’s married and develop an opioid addiction? ”

“ HELL YEAH, SPEEDRUN! ”

“ It’s morbid, but... kind of romantic? ”

“ GASP! Google+? Are you kidding me? The psychopaths behind that global tragedy are here?! ”

“ Prison has changed me, [NAME]. Would you like to trade me some cigarettes in exchange for my fundamental dignity? ”

“ Undermining the laws of reality, subverting life and death, that’s the kind of stuff my followers expect. But CHEATING? No way. ”

“ Though we are imprisoned in chalk jail, we are free in our hearts. But our hearts are also imprisoned in chalk jail. ”

“ Um, no, I am NOT groveling. I am posing a dignified query to [NAME] that just so happens to be performed on my hands and knees. ”

“ I didn’t know you condoned playing the friend card to get free labor, [NAME]. ”

“ Ah, but saving the world doesn’t put avocado toast on the table. We indie seancers and necromancers need to pay our rent too, you know. ”

“ And as you know, I am illustriously Internet-famous, so if you could shower me with adoration and give me the pizza that would be fabulous. ”

“ Do you wanna fuck the pizza or not? ”

“ Are you ready to go swimming? I must admit, darling, I’ve always wondered what you would look like while... wet.”

“ Did you turn this date into an orgy without consulting me? ”

“ Gosh, I love it when you insult me! Please do it more! ”

“ Now who wants to make a baby? ”

“ What if she puts a curse on me that makes me magically forget the location of the clitoris?! ”

“ Hey, don’t knock wacky decisions that endanger us all! That’s how I always manage to stay a step ahead of my nemeses! ”

“ Oh gods, I’ve killed so many monsters, just for being monsters. This is making me question my entire moral foundation. I NEED MORE THERAPY. ”

“ I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: fish give better pedicures than people! ”

“ You’re not tricking me into parenting a stupid egg. I’ve never fucked even ONE chicken! The egg is not my son! ”

“ You came to visit me at camp, Daddy! ”

“ Don’t be ridiculous, I know your brand of horny, [NAME], and this ain’t it. ”

“ I thought we both agreed to be nothing but vague and haughtily aloof about our past dalliances. ”

“ Point EAST, compass! EAAAAAAAAST! You dumb fuckboot!!!! POINT! EAST! ”

“ One time I was told a soul’s worst fear was bugs and I inadvertantly sent The Beatles. It happens to the best of us... And the worst of us. ”

“ SOMEDAY I SHALL DEFEAT YOUR FIVE STRANGE FEET! ”

“ Why do you keep suppressing your monster half? Embrace your true nature! ”

“ Wow. I didn't think this was possible, but I guess I was... wrong? About social media? Oh dear God, is this how grandparents feel?!?! Am I a GRANDPARENT?! ”

“ I don’t know! I was relying on my friends to cover up my bold and idiotic statement! ”

“ ... I ate the oars. ”

“ PSYCHE. The ocean can eat my ass. ”

“ So pucker up, [NAME]! I'm about to declare mouth war on your FACE! ”

“ YOU FOOLISHLY FOOLISH FOOL! You're showing our inexperience! YOUR HONOR, THE ENTIRE LEGAL TEAM PLEADS THE FIFTH! ”

“ That's right. I'm talking about a classic Transylvania Hot Tub, a Seth Brundle, and a REVERSE Reverse Romanian Wilkinson. ”

“ Sorry, I was in your ribcage seeing if I could use it to cut strips of crepe paper into confetti and then I got lost in your kidneys. ”

“ There's nothing sexier than a doomed romance between a dating sim player and a hot fictional character. ”

“ That's right! I secretly replaced one of you with a bear while no one was looking, to teach you a valuable lesson about the art of disguise! ”

“ Enchant my armor. I’m going into the lake. ”

“ For VIOLENCE REASONS! ” 

“ This stupid lake monster called me short the other day, but I was too low level to crush him like he deserved. ”

“ That dumb wet dinkhole won't know what hit him! But it will be me! I will hit him! ”

“ No, YOU'RE a fuckshark! Also, what does that even mean?! ”

“ You seriously didn't notice the enormous needles those interns jabbed into your veins as soon as [NAME] got here? “

“ It all makes sense! The Camp Dome is just an elaborate ploy to distract us from the giant mouth that eats campers! “

“ This is the BEST show I've ever seen in my life, which is now at an end! “

“ Am I high, or did he just tell us EXACTLY how to foil his evil scheme? “

“ What, like a few severed heads and visions of my grandpa screaming in horrendous pain are gonna freak me out? Where I'm from, you can buy that stuff at IKEA. “

“ ERROR: Due to the sixth mass extinction, the slaying of leprechauns is inadvisable. “

“ Then why do I have half-finished scarves, decoupage, pot-holders, friendship bracelets, and a taxidermied rabbit in my skeleton? “

“ The wang elemental. ”

“ I also have an uncle who works at Nintendo as a copy machine! “

“ What flavor of ice cream AM I?! Now I gotta know. HA! You know what I should be? 'Pistachio.' Because my outside is HARD, but I'm full of NUT. “

“ I mean, life is a bit like... this sandwich! No, stay with me, I'm going somewhere good with this. “

“ A survival situation without any sexy fun time isn't worth surviving in the first place. “

“ Rut the RUCK?! ”

“ The ' ambulance of the heart ' is just a regular ambulance! Ambulances treat all organs! ”

“ Yeah, that's why I made sure that my so-called ' emotional armor ' was also ' actual armor '. “

“ And being yourself is the key to living your dreams, which is the key to self actualization, which is the key to being really good at sex! “

“ So hot I'd buy that even without free shipping. 10/10, call me some time. “

“ Hi, quick question: does it count as kidnapping if I'm abducting you so you can help me do a thing you already agreed to help with? “

“ I could be wrong, but are you just upset because you DON'T have a skeleton that's inside your body? “

“ I'm gonna get SO FUCKING RELAXED MY HEAD WILL EXPLODE! “

“ Whoah, whoa, hold up. You're fucking my grandma? “

“ No, [NAME], that is a popcorn bag full of more dynamite. Put it down. “

“ I hear that at least 70% of people on Patreon aren't murderers! “

“ If you want cash, just rob banks like the rest of us! “

“ Did it work? Do you feel any less horny? ”

“ FUCK YEAH, LET'S PUNCH THAT MOUTH IN ITS MOUTH! “

“ Yes... incidentally, we are no longer allowed to enter Italy. “

“ Is anyone else turned on right now? ”

“ Yes! Yes! I know what you're feeling! I suddenly see how marrying a corpse isn't okay! “

“ JUST LET ME IMPROVE YOUR SELF ESTEEM, MORTAL! “

“ Look, choose whatever you want, but I'm not responsible for whatever you put in your mouth. ”

[velvet-vox]

(This reblog is as unpolished and rough around the edges as the main post in question.

This isn't an analysis, if this was an analysis, I would have given it an analysis tag, but I didn't, because these are just my general opinions on my last rewatch.

Despite Murder Drones being the main fandom I'm immersed in at the moment, I actually have done very few "true" Murder Drones analyses. A lot of the stuff I did is somewhat outdated, and I consider the Rebecca centric post to be the best work I've ever done in that field. Other things that I consider proper analyses are my "V and Doll: trauma, mental disorder, and low empathy" which is outdated because I've recently learned that sociopath and psychopath are not real medical terms, and that diagnosis can only be done by professionals (which I'm not) and on adults of a certain age (which I'm unsure if V and Doll qualify), and the post where I compare N and Po, which although it has minor analyses incorporated into it, it mostly is a comparison post.

I think that a lot of my best works are my most recent Wakfu stuff, specifically the two Nox's posts and part 3 of my Oropo series, and some of my Kung Fu Panda related things.

I'm still far from perfect, I'm still learning, but I'm willing to improve and accept constructive criticism, the road ahead of me to become a reliable source of knowledge is still a long one and I'm absolutely going to mess up a lot more on the way, but I'm optimistic that I could get there eventually.

I don't do just analyses, but that's admittedly a fault with my intro post and something I need to clear up as soon as possible. Thanks for letting me notice.

I specified that I didn't think Uzi was going to become an "evil all along" type of antagonist, and I specifically compared her to Goultard from Wakfu because Goultard isn't a twist antagonist in the same way twist villains usually are, though to get what I meant you'd have to watch Wakfu, and even then I doubt I was explicative enough to get what I was exactly referring to with her.

About the Uzi's insults... Yeah they are bad. I could try to excuse or explain myself, but the simple truth is that I'm just that cold and heartless in real life, and when I don't actively pay attention to censor the things I'm saying, these are the takes that come out of my mouth from time to time.

I usually only do research when I'm making an analysis post, which is something I never did for Uzi, hence why her character still doesn't fully click with me, I'm a very busy individual, so if you have any interesting analyses to show me, please send them to me.

The pilot (maybe) being the best episode is my subjective opinion, and I still stand by it, unless episode 8 blows me out of the water or Mass Destruction solidifies itself as my favourite.

What the heck are you on about the Cabin Fever episode? I just said it was good, and that I've noticed a couple of new details useful to me and that's it. I never said what those useful details actually are, for all you know, I was referring to the order in which the campers die or Final Girl having the same hair cut as J.

Like, comparatively, I considered Rebecca's facial expressions when V shot one of the campers to be a useful detail for my analyses.

I don't have enough confidence to criticise you, since you seem pretty sure of yourself, and you have a lot of interesting stuff to say sometimes, but the entire Cabin Fever's rebuttal is just flat out wrong and disingenuous.

I still stand by everything that I've said in the Cyn segment, and believe the things that I've said about Uzi at the start to be far worse.

I also stand by Alice and the Sentinels being the two best antagonists of the show, even if I personally prefer Doll and Cyn myself, but I'd rather give them their own dedicated post to defend this point.

And lastly, while I don't think a lot of people can relate to this opinion, me, personally, I laughed like a maniac during my latest rewatch of episode 7, it's the hardest I've ever laughed at a Murder Drones related content, and it filled me with so much life.

One thing that your constructive criticism really helped me come to understand is that my words and actions actually do affect others as a matter of fact; I always considered myself to be too unimportant and unremarkable to ever possibly impact the life of those around me, but now I understand that from now on I should choose my words carefully, because I'm not a ghost and what I say actually does have an impact on others.

Thank you for your precious feedback and helping me self-reflect buddy, hope you have a wonderful day ahead of you.

Notes of my final Murder Drones rewatch before ep 8

(These thoughts are uncollected and unrevised, proceed with lowered expectations)

Originally, I was about to make a three-part long post before episode eight comes out.

In the first part I would have analysed Cyn's character and showcased her possible depth and ties to N's character arc.

Then in the second part I compared the Doll, Cyn and J trio to Uzi, N and V, showing the parallels between each member of their respective squad, which would then lead to the final part.

Part 3 is my defacto theory on how certain elements of episode 8 would have played out, with J as a main focus in it, due to her being the V parallel, but then, as the day passed, I realised something:

I'm an analyst, not a theorist, and while it could be fun to make a theory on episode 8 to see how right and wrong I was in retrospect, it's not an activity that I'm particularly fond of, plus, while my opinions on Cyn have changed with time (I'm going to get there), the reason why I kind of like her now completely hinges upon head canons that hopefully are going to be confirmed, because otherwise, my opinion on the character could get even worse than what it once was.

One of the main reasons as to why I wanted to realise this project was to see if I could get invested into Cyn in the same way I got more invested into Rebecca with the analysis I've made on her, but why bother doing that when I'm sure episode 8 is (hopefully) going to fill me in on her character?

I'm not finding the time nor willpower that I wished that I had to complete any projects lately, and due to my constant need for perfectionism (need that it's being deliberately ignored in the writing of this post), I just keep shooting myself in the feet.

Anyway, let's just skip the intro and directly segway to the important stuff:

Uzi:

Uzi is a complicated character for me. She was my favourite character in the Pilot and dropped down massively after that, and I never understood why: I came up with a bunch of explanations for myself, such as "her development isn't engaging" and "she doesn't get challenged in interesting ways that isn't just plain torture" and "she's the most enigmatic character in the show, her actions don't make any sense to me", and I was particularly sure of that last one, not in the sense that Uzi was evil all along, but in the sense that Uzi was being written as a twist villain in the same way Goultard from Wakfu had been coded as such before the third season of that series revealed us why;

But this last rewatch finally made me understand what my problem with her was.

Aside from the rushed development, which is something the entire series struggles with, I've realised that there's an extremely subtle layer of complexity to pilot Uzi that her show's self lacks: see, despite Uzi acting like a gremlin at various points in the pilot, one thing that really surprised me about how Uzi was initially characterised is that, aside from her moments of emotional impulsivity, Uzi... is actually relatively chill?

The best way I could describe it is that serie's Uzi to me is a child to take care of; I would act nice, kind, patient to ep 1 through 7 Uzi just to get on her good side so that she wouldn't bother me as much as she bothers her peers, hopefully helping her grow up as an individual and stop acting so horribly, and help her find someone else who appreciates her for who she is, so that I wouldn't have to deal with her any longer, while pilot Uzi is someone I would genuinely like to spend time with as she's secretly a pretty chill gal, even if I would still be afraid of her, just like the rest of her classmates.

The pilot makes it extremely clear that Uzi's angsty teen persona is just that: a facade. It's not the real her. This added a layer of intrigue to Uzi in the pilot, where it felt like there was so much more to her than what we were shown at first;

But nope. The rest of the show comes out and Uzi is just that: a wild, emotionally unstable teenage gremlin-girl, who isn't even at the centre of the story despite all of the screen time that she has.

I always thought that Liam didn't want me to sympathise with Uzi, as I thought his modus operandi was "Make the character interesting, don't make them sympathetic" but as the show went along and it fell down even further into a classical good versus evil plotline (something that requires is own post), it kind of became harder to shrug off how genuinely unlikable she is to me. I like N a lot, and I kinda like V whenever her fans are nowhere to be seen, but I don't really sympathise with either of them, I just find them to be engaging.

I like the Murder Drones cast because they are interesting characters, not because they are good people. Yet, from the way Uzi is written, it feels like I'm supposed to consider her the hero, when in reality, she feels more like an unwilling plumber forced to take out the clog (Absolute Solver) unwillingly.

(Also Doll is a much better foil to Pilot Uzi than she is to canon show Uzi, but that's a discussion for another time)

But that's enough of that. Let's talk about the episodes:

Episode 1 through 3:

I plan to do an in-depth ranking of all 8 episodes of Murder Drones once the ending comes out, so consider these my rapid fire opinions on each and every single one of them.

The pilot is the best aged episode of Murder Drones to me even if a lot of its elements have been decanonised, and it could as well end up becoming my favourite episode of the show when it's all said and done.

Episode 2 is as weak as ever, but one thing that always bothered me about this episode is the ending where Uzi just decides to go back into the colony with Khan.

Now, it's no secret that Murder Drone's everything is extremely rushed, but for most of its runtime, this episode gave me the impression that Murder Drones was going to be a slow burn, long running mystery series, only for the ending to come along and leave me dumbfounded by what the pacing of the show was going to turn into.

Heartbeat is also the only episode where my opinion hasn't changed since first watching it. I thought it was mid at first, and I still consider it to be so.

My thoughts on it are a little bit more complicated than that, but I'm reserving them for the future.

You can slice it however you want, but episode 3 has aged HORRIBLY, it's not even in my top 5 best episodes anymore, and yes, it's exactly because of the focus character of this episode turning out the way she did in episode 7.

Say whatever you want, but to me, the third episode is not an Uzi episode, it's not an N episode, it's barely a V and Lizzy episode and partially a Nuzi episode, and it's certainly not a Khan episode.

For the most part, The Promening is a Doll episode; she's the character the episode is wasting most of its runtime on, introducing her, her parents, making her a mysterious threat; in comparison, the Nuzi and V stuff is mostly secondary, and could have definitely been developed further if the episode didn't have someone else as it's main focus.

Doll:

I never wanted Doll to survive the season; I never wanted her to live, I never wanted her to die, I never wanted her to be redeemed, nor did I want her to stay evil till the end; all I ever wanted, was for Doll to be well-written, and as it stands, I don't think Doll does enough or is explored sufficiently as a character to justify her relevance or existence, especially since a lot of other characters could benefit from some extra screen time, and while a lot of people might think that just bringing her back to life would fix some of her problems, I don't think they really understand all of the underlying issues that come with such a choice:

If Doll were ever to come back, she for sure would get a redemption arc, because what else is there to do? She lost all of her screen presence, she's no longer even remotely threatening, her story is so divorced from our current one to be straight up disposable, a lot of people see her as just a joke after the seventh episode, and in general, she's no longer a credible villain to see on screen.

And yet, I don't think a redemption arc would work for Doll at this point. Her character wasn't built up enough aside from being mysterious for the sake of it, I don't think a redemption arc would work, because it would require too much time for it to work, and time is the one thing Murder Drones always lacked, what makes you think a second season, let alone one episode would even fix?

I'm pretty pessimistic about episode 8, unless it's all one giant ruse and there is, in fact, a second season. The math just doesn't add up, episode 8 can't possibly be a satisfying conclusion or an unsatisfying conclusion done right, I fear it will be one giant clusterf##k.

Cabin Fever, Intermission, and Home:

Episode 4 is about as good as I remember it to be, and aside from noticing a couple of new details useful for my analyses, I don't have much to say about it.

I got the chance to watch @ghoulinfuschia 's Murder Drones Intermission together with the other episodes this time around, so now I finally have the chance to praise it a little bit.

Murder Drones Intermission is a fan made episode of Murder Drones set between episode four and five, made entirely by a crew of fans.

It's an amazing product for what it's worth and by how it was made, and while it's not perfect and I consider it far from possibly being canon, it does fill in nicely into the show's timeline, and improves a lot on some of the weakest story beats of the series. It was definitely a nice break from me while rewatching all of the episodes, and I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who wants to check it out.

It's pretty ironic how episode 7 retroactively managed to worsen episode 3 and improve episode 5, but that's genuinely how I feel about Home now:

I'm about to be real with you, Tessa being dead all along was the only tid bit of major character's death that wasn't wasted, as now that I know why Tessa's wasn't the episode's protagonist, I'm much more accepting of the way in which episode 5 played out; it's clear that Liam never wanted us to get attached to Tessa beyond any simple "she's a nice, abused, teenage girl that treats N nicely" type of feeling, also the tradeoff for her death and humanity apparent extinction was well worth it in my opinion, which is something I can't say for V or... her.

But now it's finally time to talk about the actual main character of this episode:

Cyn:

I'm about to say something that I've never thought I would end up saying for real:

Did you know, that Cyn, is an actually interesting character in her own right?

I never did.

Quite frankly, I kind of heavily hated Cyn up until some time ago.

To me, at the start, Cyn was just a cool visual threat that would have hopefully been fleshed out in the future, but then, not only is she still remaining just a one note villain at this point of the show's runtime (aka the "finale"), but she also ended up killing a far more nuanced and slightly more fleshed out antagonist, while also not really doing anything to fulfill the compelling character void left by the aforementioned character.

Hot take: the fandom's portrayal of Cyn as this unbelievably silly creature of pure autism ruined her character, as well as the general discourse surrounding her.

To me, mass murderers should only be blorbified once their first major focus arc in a story has been concluded. It's why I'm fine with the blorbification of characters such as Qilby and William Afton, and I'm not with Cyn.

The thing about blorbifying is that, you are actively distorting canon for your weird fantasies, which is something that I'm fine with, but only once said characters have received their narrative catharsis.

I don't really view Cyn as a serious or heinous threat at this point in time, and that's all due to how much the fanbase ended up babyfying her to no end, giving her the Jax treatment with the main difference being that Jax has had is funny blorbo illusion already shattered, while Cyn still has it at this point in the show's runtime where she should be at her most evil and intimidating yet.

But that's enough of that; as I've already stated, now that we know that adult Tessa was Cyn all along... Cyn has just become such an interesting character to me, not for the mystery and creepiness surrounding her, but for the ways in which she could end up paralleling N.

... If that's actually what's going to happen.

It all hinges upon Cyn actually being worth the hype and the rushed developments, because otherwise, she could go from being my third favourite character to my absolute least favourite.

Episode 6 and 7:

I appreciate the Jurassic Park section of this episode for being a break from everything going on and for setting up the plot twist in the following episode.

Although her section bores me a little bit, I'm just gonna come out and say it: Alice is in my opinion the best humanoid antagonist in the entirety of Murder Drones, and unless that changes in episode 8 (which I doubt, sorry Cyn but I don't have a lot of faith in you), I'll make an entire post dedicated to her detailing why that's the case.

As for who or what I think is the overall best antagonist of the show...

It's the Sentinels, and it's not even close.

I'm still as emotionless as ever when it comes to V's demise. I believe it was stupid, but there are more passionate V fans to talk about it.

And last but not least, I can finally agree with what everyone else has said: Mass Destruction is the best episode of Murder Drones, and for me, it's all due to how genuinely funny it is.

I've become pretty apathetic to Murder Drone's horror elements due to how excessively prevalent and misused they are throughout the course of the series, so now the comedy actually hits harder, and this episode is extremely funny and comedic, even Doll's death is now hilarious to me, even if for other reasons, and the pacing finally feels appropriate now that the show has completely given up being a mystery adventure and fully embraced the end of the world battle shenanigans.

The episode did feel too fast paced when I first saw it at release, but it was mostly because of how slow the previous episodes were, now after a while the pacing finally feels normal, even if the episode is just bombarding me with lore left and right.

Ah.

.

.....

We're doomed.

[a-secret-bolton-vampire]

Been wanting to do this one for a long while. Thinking a lot about Fire and Blood because House of the Dragon is coming up, and there are quite a lot of parallels between the Dance of the Dragons and the main ASOIAF series. More below...

The Dance of the Dragons happened, in part, because the legitimacy of Rhaenyra's children was in question. Jacaerys, Lucerys, and Joffrey (how fitting, two bastard children named Joffrey) had brown hair instead of the typical silver-blonde hair of Targaryen and Velaryon children, and their father was not Laenor Velaryon, but rather Harwin Strong. Because of this, Rhaenyra's claim to the Iron Throne was contested, since her heirs would be bastards.

Not too dissimilar to the beginning of the War of the Five Kings, where Cersei, the beautiful queen of King Robert, fathered three bastard children in secret with her brother Jaime, all of them with the golden blond hair of the Lannisters. Then when Robert died, Joffrey ascended the throne, and Ned backed Stannis, who was in truth the rightful heir to the throne... we all know how that went of course. Also, while Rhaenyra's Joffrey was the youngest of the three, Cersei's Joffrey was the oldest of the three.

Rhaenyra and Cersei are very strong parallels. Rhaenyra was secretly involved in an affair with a family member (her uncle Daemon) whilst Cersei was involved in a secret affair with her own family member (brother Jaime). The difference, of course, being that Rhaenyra ended up marrying Daemon because Targs do Targ things, and Cersei just kept her affair with Jaime secret because they weren't Targs. In addition, Rhaenyra ended up losing all three of her children, becoming more and more bitter and distraught, becoming prone to paranoia.

Meanwhile, Cersei has thus far only lost Joffrey, but the valonqar prophecy states she will lose all three of her children. Like Rhaenyra, though, after the death of Joffrey, she does become more prone to paranoia and is increasingly bitter. Rhaenyra was eventually fed to Sunfyre by her half-brother Aegon. If Jaime is truly the valonqar, then Cersei might end up being killed by her brother as well. Eventually, Rhaenyra did end up becoming estranged from Daemon, and currently Cersei is estranged from Jaime.

However, a better Dance parallel with Cersei and Jaime is Rhaenyra and Criston Cole. They were lovers, a future queen with a member of the Kingsguard. They later suffered some sort of estrangement (the nature of which is a source of conflict in terms of what is real) that led to Criston eventually siding with the greens over the blacks during the Dance. Criston also was made Hand of the King, while Cersei presses for Jaime to be made Hand, but he refuses the position.

However, Rhaenyra isn't the only Cersei parallel. Alicent Hightower is another. Like Cersei, she supports her eldest son in claiming the throne against its lawful heir, and is the dowager queen of the former king... And she is the daughter of the Hand of the King, who is a member of one of the richest, most powerful families in the kingdoms. However, Rh

But the parallels run even deeper than that. It shocked me to see how far these go. The story of Aegon III and Viserys II as children is not too dissimilar to both the story of Daenerys and Viserys after Robert's Rebellion and some of the Stark children. Like Dany and Viserys, Viserys II ended up spending a lot of time in the Free Cities, specifically Lys, although he was captured in battle and returned as a hostage, whereas Dany and Viserys spent time in Illyrio's mansion as guests. Arya also went to Braavos, a Free City, but that's about where the similarities end so that isn't very intentional, I think.

Nonetheless, both Aegon and Viserys spent the majority of the war separated from each other and only reunited after it ended. Likewise, the Stark children were separated from each other for the majority of the war as well, and seem poised to reunite after the initial War of the Five Kings is over. And speaking of Starks, Aegon III does have a slight parallel with Bran.

As confirmed by George, Bran will be the King of Westeros by the end of the books, and there is a moniker given to him in the show that actually does appear in the books, of Bran the Broken. Meanwhile, at the end of the Dance, Aegon is now the King, and he is known as the Broken King, because of his extreme PTSD and depression from his traumatic experiences during the war.

Doesn't even end there. Now we get into some of, in my opinion, the biggest parallels with the Dance and ASOIAF proper. We all know about R+L=J, and the Dance has not one, but two big nods to this. First is the story told by Mushroom of when Jacaerys visited Winterfell. Supposedly, he fell in love with Cregan's bastard half-sister Sara Snow, and the two secretly wed before the Winterfell heart tree. Regardless of the validity of the story, Cregan and Jace did end up agreeing to what was called the Pact of Ice and Fire, wherein Jace's firstborn daughter would marry Cregan's son Rickon... son of a Targaryen king marrying the daughter of Lord Stark? Hmmm....

However, the other one is a lot more significant, to me anyways, and that would be the relationship between Crown Prince Aemond One-Eye and Alys Rivers. During the Dance, when Aemond took over Harrenhal, he took Alys Rivers as his paramour. The mysterious Alys was said to be a witch who was a bastard of House Strong, a House that has strong ties to the First Men. So, Valyrian crown prince and a First Man woman in love... but don't worry, it gets extremely apparent afterwards.

Aemond impregnates Alys and leaves her in a tower to go fight Daemon, during which Aemond is killed, leaving Alys all alone. Rhaegar impregnates Lyanna and leaves her in a tower to go fight Robert, during which Rhaegar is killed and leaves Alys all alone... then, years later, during winter, the Hand of the King Tyland Lannister tries to get together a force to retake Harrenhal, as it is held by brigands and thieves and broken men, only to find Alys there... with a young child she calls her and Aemond's trueborn son, and the rightful King of Westeros.

If that isn't enough for you, there is a very distinct similarity in the armour of Rhaegar and Aemond. Rhaegar's armour is mentioned to have been;

Seventeen and new to knighthood, Rhaegar Targaryen had worn black plate over golden ringmail when he cantered onto the lists.

And:

The day had been windy when he said farewell to Rhaegar, in the yard of the Red Keep. The prince had donned his night-black armor, with the three-headed dragon picked out in rubies on his breastplate.

Compare this to Aemond's own armour.

Vhagar had come at last, and on her back rode the one-eyed Prince Aemond Targaryen, clad in nightblack armor chased with gold.

It seems clear to me that George is trying to tell us something. I think Aemond and Alys are a sort of dark mirror to Rhaegar and Lyanna. Rhaegar was considered a very noble, chivalrous prince who was well loved by the smallfolk, and Lyanna had a strong sense of Stark justice (as seen in the Knight of the Laughing Tree story). Meanwhile, Aemond was a narcissistic, psychopathic mass murderer who seems almost Ramsay-esque in his demeanour. And Alys seems more power hungry and eventually took over Harrenhal as its witch queen. But the fact they have what Alys claims to be their trueborn child and true king of Westeros does strongly suggest Rhaegar and Lyanna did eventually marry and Jon is their trueborn son, not a bastard.

I hoped I would be done by now, but there is still even more parallels. Cregan Stark and Eddard Stark are parallels and foils. Ned becomes Hand of the King and travels south to uncover who poisoned the previous Hand of the King, before the War of the Five Kings starts. Meanwhile, Cregan travels south and arrives at King's Landing after the Dance was over, then becomes Hand of the King to uncover who poisoned the previous king (Aegon II). However, while Ned was cautious and not really a big player of the game of thrones, Cregan was ambitious and knew what he was doing, even if his actions weren't always the best (attacking Storm's End, Oldtown, and Casterly Rock after the war was essentially over? Not a good idea, Stark).

The Regency of Aegon III in and of itself is a metacommentary to the writing process of ASOIAF. Originally, after GRRM finished ASOS, he decided to do a 5-year gap between that and what was to be ADWD. However, that ended up not working out, so he scrapped it all together. During that time, Tommen would've remained king, and his reign would be under a regency. So thus, Aegon III having a 5-year regency (from 131 to 136 AC) during that time alludes to that.

And then you get to Unwin Peake, my least favourite character in Fire and Blood. He appears to be a combination of Mace Tyrell and Randyll Tarly. Personality wise, he is very much like Randyll. He is a very outspoken misogynist, a very proud man, and a noted warrior wielding a Valyrian steel blade (that he likely stole from Tumbleton since Orphan-Maker was from House Roxton originally). He also changed out Aegon III's master-at-arms to be Gareth Long, who was a very harsh taskmaster, who routinely engaged in abusive tactics with the boys he trained when they didn't meet his expectations, including days without sleep, doused in tubs of ice water, being beat, and having their heads shaved, which is very reminiscent of Randyll's abuse of Sam as a child.

Unwin and Randyll also dealt with lawful punishment in very harsh ways, as seen by Randyll's treatment of those who break the law at Maidenpool, and Unwin's clearing the Red Keep cells during the Feast of Our Father Above. However, Unwin has a lot of similarities with Mace Tyrell as well. Mace is on the small council, and has routinely tried to engage in nepotism by implanting allies and family members of his into positions at the council and at King's Landing, including marrying Margaery to the king, becoming Hand of the King, having Paxter Redwyne be the lord admiral and Randyll Tarly the lord justiciar, try to bring his uncle Garth to become the new master of coin, and Garth's bastard sons to join the gold cloaks, not to mention the Conclave nearly sending his uncle Gormon to become the new Grand Maester (something Mace will surely approve of), Mace having his son Loras join the Kingsguard, and even try to betroth his heir Willas to Myrcella.

Meanwhile, Unwin engaged in much more rampant and unchecked nepotism. He was Hand of the King and Lord Regent, had Ser Gareth as master-at-arms at the Red Keep, since he was master-at-arms at Starpike, while his widowed aunt Clarice Osgrey was put in charge of Queen Jaehaera's household, Lord George Graceford (a member of the Caltrops that Peake himself was involved in) was appointed as the Lord Confessor, and Ser Victor Risley, the other surviving member of the Caltrops, was appointed to the position of the King's Justice.

He even dismissed Septon Eustace and replaced him with Septon Bernard, another relative of his. He also had his nephew Amaury and his bastard half-brother Ser Mervyn Flowers put onto the Kingsguard, while his uncle Gedmund was made the master of ships. Not to mention his attempted marriage between his daughter Myrielle and Aegon III. So basically the Peakes are the Tyrells of their day, trying to take control of the Seven Kingdoms and the Iron Throne.

And that is all that I can remember! I'm sure there is a lot more, but it's striking to see just how many parallels there are between the Dance and ASOIAF itself.

[love-a-little-less-archived]

So I decided that for my day nine, I’d do a list of some of my favorite fics to give the fandom authors some recognition. Of course, all of our fanfic authors are amazing and I’m so grateful that they do what they do, but these are just a few of my favorites. 

I tried to tag any authors that had a tumblr account, but it’s entirely possible I missed some, so if I did, sorry

This post isn’t super long but it’s pretty damn long so all below the cut

(also do note that my interest in bellarke is only a few months old so I have a lot more clexa fics than I do bellarke sorry)

Bellarke

Canon AU

Set The Dark On Fire by @talistheintrovert (complete)

Okay okay so this is a pretty dark fic, but god is it beautiful. After waking up from Cryo, Clarke and Spacekru try to figure out what to do about this new planet situation, but Clarke isn’t handling it very well and attempts a suicide. Like I said, pretty dark and serious, so if that isn’t your thing don’t read, but it’s amazing

Three Lives, Three Loves, One Face by @these-dreams-go-on (complete)

This fic has a ton of my favorite themes all mashed together and it’s amazing. Basically it’s similar to the Josephine!Clarke situation of s6, but Wanheda is an actual manifestation also inhabiting Clarke’s body so when Josie gets put into Clarke, Wanheda takes over and goes mass murder on Sanctum. Phenomenal fic, I’ve read it so many times and I adore it

Into The Anomaly by @fuckitup-in-style (WIP)

Time Travel AU!!! Starts after s6, but resets back to s1 canon divergence. The hundred all wake up on dropships and they all remember up until their deaths, and then it’s this thing where the mains all take charge and start herding up their crew. Just- if you like time travel fix-its, this is p e r f e c t please read it

And Now You’re Home by @asroarke (complete)

I just read this one recently and g o d is it amazing. After being left alone during Praimfaya, Clarke finds herself becoming desperate after being alone for so long. Until she finds out there’s been a grounder watching her the whole time. Grounder!Bellamy AU, with some accidental pregnancy that just makes it even cuter

Modern AU

I Found Peace in Your Violence by @eyessharpweaponshot (WIP)

I just found this fic a few days ago and holy shit is it a piece of art. I finally went through and read the entire 80k fic last night, it’s absolutely enthralling. Basically, there’s this gene called HTS and Clarke ends up having it, and so does Bellamy, and it’s just a beautiful story from both a romance and a plot standpoint. Such an interesting concept

our stars came in a packet of two by @millipop (WIP)

This isn’t a super long fic, it’s 20k right now and hasn’t been updated in a few months but what’s there is amazing. So the delinquent group is desperately trying to get Bellamy and Clarke together since they’re constantly denying their chemistry, but what the delinquents don’t know is that Clarke and Bell have actually already been together in secret and it’s such a fun fic, highly recommend

Don’t Wake Me, I’m Not Dreaming by grumpybell (complete) (I can’t find their tumblr sorry)

A very interesting AU where Clarke can see into other people’s dreams. She’s been meeting Bellamy in his dreams for years, him being the only person who could actually see her. Guess what happens when they meet in person? Probably not what you expect. Read the fic to find out, you’ll love it

reelin’ through the midnight streets by @detectivebellamyblake​ (WIP)

I haven’t finished this fic yet, but what I’ve read so far is wonderful. Basically Clarke, Bell and Octavia all grew up in a trailer park together, and eventually Clarke has had enough of her mom’s bullshit and decides to get out. Bellamy and Octavia go with her

Clexa

Canon AU

Broken Body, Broken Spirit by @vmplvr1977 (complete)

I love love love this fic!! It basically mashes together the worlds of The 100 and Deus-ex, and if you don’t know what the latter is don’t worry too much, the fic gives all the backstory you’ll need!! Basically Clarke gets severly injured and ends up with augmented limbs, and Lexa, thinking Clarke dead, has some pretty severe reactions to it all. Kind of an enemies-to-lovers, but it’s set after the s2 finale

Clarke Kom Azgeda by FMLClexa (WIP)

This fic combines so many of my favorite ideas it’s amazing. Coming back after a long hiatus, basically Clarke gets sent down to Earth alone and ends up in Azgeda territory. She’s tortured and trained into Nia’s top assassin for years, and eventually gets the order to infiltrate Polis and kill the commander. You can guess how that goes

A Riffle and the Sea by Follower_Of_Mania (complete)

I will say it’s been a while since I read this fic but it’s amazing. Another Clarke gets sent to Earth alone AU, but she gets adopted by Floukru and trained to be a seriously badass killer grounder, like even Lexa is pretty put off by her. Clarke and Lexa develop this really interesting relationship where half the time you can’t tell if they love or hate each other and it’s amazing

Ascendants by whiteleopard1124 (WIP)

So this isn’t entirely clexa, it’s also clarke x luna but it’s clexa enough. Basically Clarke and the hundred get injected with this solution before being sent to the ground, and it causes certain people to develop supernatural powers. But Clarke gets injected with a special serum that causes her to be extra-OP but like in a very very good way

doing the impossible (with you) by snowandwolves (WIP)

Another Time Travel AU where Clarke kills herself and, after having a discussion with the goddess of death herself, wakes up back in time. She (and her accomplices) work out how to rewrite their story and make everything go better than it did last time. One of the best time travel fics, in my opinion

Healer on the Ground by Owlmemaybe (WIP)

This has long been one of my favorite fics, I love AUs where Clarke turns grounder, and that’s exactly what this is. Basically Clarke has a healing talent, so she can heal herself and others on command, and during s1 gets separated from the 100 and ends up with Heda. Another fic that isn’t likely to get updated, but it’s 100k of goodness that you h a v e to read

Whispers In The Dark (Lead Us To The Light) by JadelynDeath (WIP)

This one also hasn’t been updated very recently, but it’s still 50k good words to enjoy. Wanheda!Clarke AU where Death is a real being and takes a liking to Clarke before she even touches the ground, and once on Earth Clarke is an absolute badass in leading the delinquents.

(my) Destruction Within Your Mouth by @entirelytookeen (WIP)

It took me so long to actually finish this fic once I started reading because oh my god the angst, it was actually too much for me. This is a beautifully written story, so many emotions, can’t recommend it enough. Basically, Clarke gets separated from the 100 and ends up temporarily mute while she’s taken in by Heda

She’s a maniac by ChocDog (complete)

Another big-time favorite, this has badass commanders Heda and Wanheda. The grounder culture is different in this fic, but in such a good way. They’re much more tribal than is portrayed in the show, preferring not much clothing, bloodthirstiness, but it’s amazing. Also Bellamy comes in and makes a fuss of things

Through the Looking Glass by RhinoMouse (WIP)

Role Reversal AU where Lexa comes down with the 100 and Clarke is a BAMF Commander of the grounders. It’s been a really long time since I’ve read this one but I remember loving every second of it. Faintly follows the s2 plot, but it’s different enough that not a second of it is boring

Can you See Me? by clexawarrior (complicated)

Okay so basically this story was discontinued, but the author left a summary of how it would’ve played out at the end, so it’s... complicated. But this is another one of my favorites!! Lexa was at the explosion on the bridge and got injured, Clarke brings her back to the dropship to care for her. A lot of sexual tension ensues

From The Ashes by ArchonsVoice (complete)

I love love love this fic!!! So basically the dropship landed in the sea rather than on land, the ship explodes, leaving Clarke stranded alone in the middle of the ocean. She’s rescued by a clan called Tseekru and after years of living with them, has a run-in with our one and only Heda and sets this whole thing going. Amazing fic, so many twists

Returning to Hell by ElseworldKara, littleraider99 (complete)

If you haven’t read this fic what have you even been doing honestly. Set two years after the s2 finale, Clarke leads the coalition beside Heda, and she’s returned to Arkadia to finally tell them to get their shit together or suffer the consequences. Very dark, a lot of character bashing on Abby, Bellamy, and others. An inspiration for many of my own fics

Then There Were Two by TheWorldNeedsMoreOctaven (WIP)

I haven’t read the most recent chapters of this, but it’s phenomenal. ABO universe where Clarke is the only omega sent down in the hundred (later followed by Raven), and they have to deal with the grounders and nature. It’s a lot more interesting than I make it sound, promise. Also very octavia/raven based too

Doctor on the Ground by @underneaththecovers-au (WIP)

Very angsty, very smutty fic. Clarke finds an injured Lexa while out of camp and takes her to the bunker to help her heal. Lexa pretends she can’t understand English, but even with the barrier, things get heated very quickly. You can imagine the chaos when Lexa’s secret gets out. Must-read

Modern AU

Vantage Point by thatoneloser_kid (complete)

This is pretty short, only 16k words, but god is it good. If you like dark!clarke, this is the story for you. Clarke, Lexa, Octavia, and Raven are all a bunch of criminals who run around- saving people?? That makes it sound like a superhero story but no, they’re all badass. Clarke is literally a psychopathic ex-assassin. It’s just an amazing fic

Are You A Kidnapper? (Because You Abducted My Heart) by 707 (complete)

This isn’t normally the type of fic that I like to read but I’m so glad I picked it up. So Clarke and Lexa have this hatred going on between them that’s actually just hidden attraction, and they’re finally forced to address it when they get kidnapped and locked in a room together. This fic has it all, fluff, smut, angst, an amazing plot, it’s just all around wonderful

Make Two Halves Whole by awkwardrainbow, Lexawoodz (WIP)

This one I also don’t remember all that much about other than that it was amazing. It’s been years since it was updated, though, so I doubt we’ll get any more, but what’s there is 80k worth of goodness. Clarke and Lexa meet online through Twitter, living on opposite sides of the US, but still manage to fall in love with each other

breathe into my lips the life i do not have by @ur-the-puppy (complete)

So this is another long-time favorite of mine!! It’s a 36k oneshot where Clarke moves into a house that ghost Lexa haunts but instead of being creeped out Clarke just starts chatting up the ghost and they become roommate buddies. Such a good fic, I highly highly recommend this one

You See the Smile That's On My Mouth (it's hiding the words that don't come out) by heartshapedcandy (complete)

Another fic I need to go back and reread, but I remember being absolutely absorbed in this fic!! Childhood friends to lovers AU, with a fuck ton of angst and confusion and oblivious pining dorks that you can’t help but love it to death. Also a lot of ‘’’’platonic’’’’ kissing

Other AU

Storm of the Heart by @cruellanita-bby (WIP)

Mermaid AU!! Clarke lives on an island where they grow up hating the mermaids that attack their fishing ships, and she hates them too until she finds Lexa the mermaid washed up on the shore, injured, and starts taking care of her. They fall in love and try to mend the relationship between their people. I’ve been keeping up with this one for a while, it’s so good, please read it

Hold Me Till The Stars Dim by @ur-the-puppy (complete)

I’m putting this one down here rather than in modern AU just because of how different it is from most modern AUs. Lexa goes camping with her friends out in the woods, some shit happens, and she meets what’s basically grounder Clarke, with a twist. This fic is so captivating, I loved it

You’re safe with me by I_am_clexa (WIP)

ABO modern AU where omegas are sold as slaves to alphas. Clarke is an omega who is bought by Lexa’s father as a gift to her, but Lexa doesn’t like the way omegas are treated and goes out of her way to give Clarke the best life she could possibly have

Other Pairings

Canon AU

Three Loves (Pieces Of Us) by @kendrene , @bae-in-maine (WIP)

Clarke/Lexa/Anya fic where Anya takes Clarke back to Lexa as a kind of prize, Clarke ends up making an alliance with the Trikru and maybe also falling in love with the commander and her general along the way. I’ve read this fic so many times, but it hasn’t been updated in years. It’s still 150k worth of amazing fic though

Twisted Steel by Steelehart (complete)

A clarke/raven fic where an explosion on the Ark leaves Clarke with two prosthetic arms. Follows fairly closely to the s1 plot once you get into it, but deviates in the later chapters. It’s an amazing fic I promise, please read it

Modern AU

and four makes home by @dreamsheartstory (complete)

This is over 300k worth of Clarke/Lexa/Octavia/Raven, which seems like a lot but I promise you it’s perfect. It’s been a bit since I read this, but from what I remember it’s your typical fall-in-love modern fic, just with the added angst of figuring out a four-way poly relationship

[holdinghandswithastatue]

my thoughts on the lorien legacies reborn series [spoilers]

i think it sucked

sorry

i loved most of the characters to bits and they all deserved better (in terms of characterisation, plot)

nigel. oh my god nigel i love him so much

ran takeda deserved SO MUCH BETTER im still mad

the way they hinted at a whole bunch of romances but only made the one i dont give a shit about canon

i really really hate white girl taylor cook

yes, having a white american girl as the main character IS diversity :))))))

isabela is cool as shit and i wish i was her

i love their fleshed out backstories but i wish i couldve heard more

THERE WAS LITERALLY NO DEVELOPMENT IN MOST OF THEM (personally i think the series was cut short bc they all had so much more room to grow)

(it gave off percy jackson movies energy)

it hurts me how the writing hinted that nigel would get his heroic moment but he literally never did 

and then nigel was left with what? his only best friend dead, his parents corrupt assholes and him still not having healed from his trauma- still the underdog

ALSO: NIGEL WAS THE ONLY CANONICALLY GAY CHARACTER (except for maybe daunphen but still that doesnt really count bc its only implied) but they just like. didnt give him a love interest. 

nic was literally right there- that homoerotic moment really hit me and i just read it over and over

ran’s death was really well done but also COMPLETELY PREVENTABLE

if isabela had just told einar to stfu and shoot lucas it wouldve all been over and ran and five would still be alive 

speaking of which, ran and five were a super cute couple/friendship i cant tell but i like their dynamic a lot

five saying that he “actually likes” ran is essentially a confession of love in his terms

caleb. i liked him. but he was so boring and straight. i think his development wouldve been great if they just DID SOMETHING WITH HIM

also idk whether to ship isabela with caleb or daunphen but personally i like to think of daunphen as trixic which is unrelated

caleb literally. had potential. troubled home life. not as bad as the others but he never really stopped being an uptight little bitch

if he had, i think he wouldve been great

I LOVED EINAR’S GROUP’S DYNAMIC

do they have a name? i feel like they do but i cant remember

like... what a mix of characters, i love how they work together

personally i think theyre just the gay friend group

on the topic of einar,

i KNOW i shouldnt love him the way i do but if you didnt want me to love him you SHOULDNT HAVE GIVEN HIM REDEEMING QUALITIES

(same with five)

literally einar’s final monologue hurt me so much even though he nearly did drown nigel in gen 1 but still

“will you- will you finally listen?” yea kill me now 

i really hated how they brought the villain in in the final book. the fuck. who even gives a shit about lucas. no one remembers him

also it feels slightly political to make the main villain a radical christian who wants to convert the earth garde by killing them

listen i could talk about einar all day

i think he and isabela were a great friendship... of sorts

i mean did einar ever really let anyone close enough to him to make friends

but hes just so... S O F T

no hes not 

but he is to me 

ew

kopano really deserved a better gf than taylor

god 

also i wanted to see more of miki

again i will reiterate i think nic and nigel wouldve made a great couple

i keep forgetting theyre all just teenagers and thats kinda painful

einar was just a kid bro 

SO MUCH NUANCE TO HIS CHARACTER THAT WAS NOT EXPLORED

so much potential

hmm am i forgetting anyone?

lets talk about john smith

that man has a hero complex and its really annoying and part of me is really glad he wasnt the one to save the day this time but also i didnt want ran to die so

i think it wouldve been fitting if einar just ended it all since he kinda started the whole fiasco

fuck bea barnaby and her homophobic (and also mass-murdering) ass

the john and marina thing shouldve been forgotten completely no one ships them pls 

they had their one true loves just let them be without an s/o thanks

ella deserved to have more screen (? its a book) time bc she was my favourite character in the original series

OH MY GOD I HAVENT TALKED ABOUT NINE YET

hes the loml

also the part where lucas (in the body of john) rips off his cybernetic arm really hurt me

i kinda wish taylor died instead of ran

kill off the heroic white girl instead: the fifth wave style

john is such a stupid selfish bastard honestly but having a hero complex a valid flaw but still. i cannot deal with his bullshit all the time

writing one line on john and nine reuniting was cruel when you know most of the fandom ships them

also i like einar’s softening up near the end, and treating the group like they were his actual friends 

i wish we couldve seen more of them

i love myself a found family ragtag group situation

even though 2 of them died 

and the other has an inhibitor in his head, gets shocked every 3 minutes and took the fall for everyone

AS HE SHOULD THOUGH, MOST OF IT IS HIS FAULT

but hes just a kid

my thoughts are so scattered

omg stop i think i relate to einar... no..... not the literal mass murderer “terrorist” psychopath

he’s uptight and always needing to be in control

but he feels the pressure of having to be perfect to everyone else, and thus falls apart on the inside

gosh i wish i didnt love einar the way i do

final thoughts (but i’ll probably add even more): ran :’( nigel :( taylor >:( caleb :| einar :’( isabela >:) daunphen :D john :|

i hope no one reads this

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Jason Voorhees

(WARNING! He’s back! THE MAN BEHIND THE MASK!)

...ki ki, ki, ma ma ma...

The slasher subgenre of horror has plenty of villains, but the key to any great slasher movie (aside from quality kills) is having a memorable slasher who sticks in the mind of those who watch the film. You can’t just have some generic evil guy and expect the killer to be cool and memorable; you need to give them a fun gimmick. And in the scores of slashers who populated the 80s, there are few out there who are quite as legendary and iconic as Jason Voorhees. Jason is one of those few villains who, even if you’ve never seen a single one of his movies, you’d know on sight.

Even now, with him being absent from cinema for over a decade at the time of this writing due to legal disputes (though not from other mediums such as video games), Jason is still a household name, still remembered as one of the coolest, creepiest horror villains to come out of the 80s. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say Jason might be the greatest slasher villain of all time. So let’s take a look at the man behind the mask and see what we’ve got here.

Motivation/Goals: Jason as a villain is motivated by two main factors: a desire to make his mother proud, and a desire to get vengeance for how he was treated. The first few movies are all Jason taking out his anger over his mother’s death on anyone near Camp Crystal Lake. In earlier movies, he’d really only kill anyone who invaded his territory, but later sequels had him expand his killing range by going to Manhattan, Springwood, and even outer space. Basically, Jason is motivated by revenge against a world that persecuted him, and a desire to impress his mother. The simplicity of his motivations is actually a great strength, because it means there doesn’t need to be constant time in each new film adding on to Jason’s lore like they do with Freddy, Michael Meyers, and so on. Jason kills kids who have sex, that’s it. Simple, clean, effective, and a vehicle for cool kills.

Performance: There are a LOT of people who have put on the hockey mask throughout the franchise, but perhaps the most well-known name is Kane Hodder, the hulking actor who portrayed Jason in the seventh through the tenth films. He’s certainly the Jason that will spring to mind when thinking of Jasons, but he’s the obvious one. His actor in Freddy vs. Jason, Ken Kirzinger, was chosen because he had kind eyes and could tower over Freddy, and amusingly he actually appeared in Jason Takes Manhattan as a huge chef Jason tosses aside. Then of course we have Ari Lehman, the man who cameoed as Jason at the end of the first film in the Carrie-esque jump scare, most notable because he is so proud of his role that he named his punk rock/heavy metal band First Jason.

And these are just the few I wanted to highlight here; the original continuity is ten movies worth of actors playing Jason, and he even has multiple actors in some films.

Final Fate: It depends on the movie. His mortal life is ended by a young Tommy Jarvis in The Final Chapter, but then he comes back in Jason Lives as a zombie, a zombie who is only incapacitated until Jason Takes Manhattan where he is seemingly killed off for good by the nightly flooding of the Manhattan sewers with radioactive sludge (likely a safety measure against C.H.U.D.s). But then he comes back in Jason Goes to Hell where his original body ends up obliterated for most of the movie until the ending, but soon after he’s dragged right down to, you guessed it, Hell. But then comes Jason X, and he’s brought to space where he finally ends up obliterated for real by falling through the atmosphere of a planet and burning up. And this isn’t getting into the numerous deaths from games, comics, and so on; Jason is a man who is very hard to kill.

Best Scene: What does one pick for the best scene? His sleeping bag kill from VII? The liquid nitrogen kill from Jason X? The numerous amusing scenes he has when he actually reaches Manhattan in Jason Takes Manhattan? It’s a tough choice, but honestly. I might just have to go with his corn field rave massacre in Freddy vs. Jason. It’s just so damn cool.

Final Thoughts & Score: Jason Voorhees is one of the great early slasher villains and, most impressively of all, he managed a remarkable level of consistency until the very end, at least compared to some of is peers. Compare to Michael Meyers, who had to constantly be rebooted because filmmakers kept trying to find ways to humanize and explan his motivations to the point that franchise has a fractured timeline to rival the Zelda series, or Freddy Krueger, who deteriorated from a terrifying psychopath who treated killing like a game to a non-stop quip machine that spent more time slinging one-liners than kills. Jason, while certainly going through some odd phases – recall the time he was a weird demon worm that could surf between bodies, or the time he went to space and became a cyborg – never really lost sight of the things that truly made him effective as a character.

Yes, Jason is a silent antagonist, but he says a lot with his deeds and actions. He’s a killing machine, but he certainly isn’t mindless, and he usually seems to have some sort of ethics that perhaps we don’t understand, but Jason certainly does. For instance, in later films Jason does not hurt animals, and once he’s a zombie he doesn’t kill children either. A lot of this likely stems from Jason essentially being a child in a deformed man’s body, and this goes a long to making him an interesting, tragic figure. Jason almost certainly doesn’t understand what he’s doing is wrong, and if he does, he’s almost certainly too blinded by rage to care, especially after becoming a zombie.

I think the underlying tragedy of Jason simply being a monster who only wanted to please his beloved mother and violently lashes out at those he sees, through his warped perspective, as the ones to blame makes him an interesting and complex character… and here’s the great thing! Unlike other slasher villains, this is all established very early on, and rather than continue piling on more and more backstory, the series decides to throw Jason into interesting situations. This is a problem that befell his slasher sibling Freddy; as cool as Freddy managed to be, every new film added more and more convoluted backstory rather than trying to put Freddy into an interesting scenario he could have interesting kills in. And the less said about Michael Meyers, the better. But Jason? They gave him all he needed in the first two movies, made him a zombie in the sixth, and then spent the rest of the series getting weird and creative. Jason is a villain effective because his simple characterization and motivation means he can slip into any sort of situation, be it fighting a telekinetic girl, going to Manhattan, fighting Freddy Krueger, fighting Ash Williams, slaughtering camp counselors en masse, or going to space.

It should be incredibly obvious Jason is an 11/10. He’s a testament to what makes a slasher villain great and memorable: he has a simple yet flexible mindset that allows him to be thrust into a variety of situations, he has an iconic outfit, he has an awesome weapon of choice, and he is parodied, referenced, and known throughout the world to this day. He has killer video game appearances in the likes of Mortal Kombat X and his own Friday the 13th game, he has tons of comics including ones where he takes on Freddy, Ash Williams, Leatherface, and even Uber Jason, and despite the obnoxious legal battles currently keeping him from appearing in any media to any great extent, you’d be hard pressed to find a person without even passing knowledge of Jason.

Here’s a few interesting notes, though – a lot of shout outs to Jason have characters using a chainsaw, which as we all know is the tool of Leatherface. Jason uses a machete for the most part but is very versatile, but even so the closest he ever came to using anything remotely like a chainsaw was in VII, where he used a weed whacker. Jason also didn’t gain his iconic look until the third film; in the second movie, Jason wore a burlap sack over his head. And finally, there’s a bit of trivia I’m sure most are aware of by now: Jason was not the killer in the first or fifth films. In the first film, the killer was actually Jason’s mother, Pamela Voorhees, and the fifth film Jason was still kind of dead so a copycat killer named Roy Burns took his place. So hey, while we’re here, let’s talk about these Jason adjacent killers:

Pamela Voorhees is one of those rare female slasher villains, and the fact she is so absolutely amazing makes you wonder why there aren’t more. She’s basically to Friday the 13th what The Boss is to the Metal Gear Franchise – an all-important female figure whose actions completely and totally changed the course of history. Her quest to avenge her son’s death led to her slaughtering people at Camp Crystal Lake, which led to her death… but then it turns out her son had lived all along, and her death served only to make him into a violent, vengeful monster. Add on the fact that Pamela was using the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis on her son to empower him (supported by Jason Goes to Hell and Freddy vs, Jason vs. Ash), and Pamela is indirectly responsible for every murder in the series. Or perhaps even directly, if it really is her voice Jason hears in some of the movies and the Friday the 13th game. Betsy Palmer absolutely kills it in the role (pun intended), and it’s a shame she was annoyed by the role for years, though she apparently did eventually come around and embrace it. As one of the great ladies of horror, Pamela definitely earns a 10/10.

But now let’s take a look at the opposite end of the spectrum with Roy Burns. The idea of a Jason copycat killer is not entirely without merit, and for the most part, the movie is incredibly solid, with good kills on Roy’s part. The issue comes with the ultimate reveal of his identity, which turns the entire movie into an utterly convoluted mess that makes absolutely no sense. The lack of buildup of any kind, save for two brief scenes prior to his unmasking, makes the twist lack any sort of punch, and his reasoning for killing people is just absurd. Hell, he isn’t even targeting the one person responsible – that guy gets away with a jail sentence while Roy butchers innocent people!

 Basically, Roy fails at being an engaging replacement for Jason due to the film’s finale, which goes out of its way to undermine him and everything you just watched. It should come as no shock that he’s a 1/10. Still, unlike most villains with this rating, he does have a little bit of redemption due to being playable in the Friday the 13th game. You’re just controlling him as he kills without any worry about stupid backstory, so hey, I’ll give Roy that at least, and I can’t deny his mask is pretty sick.  

UPDATE: Ok, I was way too hard n Roy. Yes, his motivation is stupid and poorly explained, his killings are absolutely ridiculous and make no sense with his motivation, I still stand by all that... and yet, I’m watching this movie for creative kills, right? And boy does our boy Roy provide. He slaughters his way through these oneshot characters with gusto! I think I’m just still bitter he’s not Jason, but I like Season of the Witch even if Michael Meyers isn’t there, so maybe I’m just too harsh on Roy and his movie in general. I think his dumbass motivations hold him back, but I think the correct score for him is a 6/10. He is most certainly not abysmal enough for a one and I was really foolish to issue a score like that. Sometimes even I have trouble overcoming my biases.

It’s interesting, though, that both of these characters tend to be forgotten, overshadowed by Jason. In the intro of Scream, Drew Barrymore’s doomed character accidentally says Jason is the killer of the first film, rather than Pamela. And I think that while that is likely a common misconception, it’s less because Pamela is forgettable but more that Jason is so overwhelmingly cool that he overshadows anyone else in these films with few exceptions. Jason may very well be the greatest slasher villain of all time, and if you disagree, well, who won in Freddy Vs. Jason again, hmmm?

And more importantly, what slasher villain has an Alice Cooper song dedicated to him?

I rest my case.

[delayedcritique]

JOKER REVIEW

“Outlets declaring this as controversial clearly missed the whole message of it all.”

BY COLLIN DELADE

You can’t review the latest DC Comics adaptation, JOKER, without addressing the controversy. This R rated drama about the origins of the most psychotic comic book villains has been dogpiled with so much controversy and criticism for its criminally inspiring behavior. Having actually seen the movie and understanding the whole point of the character, all this controversy is incredible misguided. 

JOKER is a character study of the socially unaccepted Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) as he tries to cope with life’s hardships. All Arthur wants to do with his life is to bring laughter to others. Unfortunately, his mental condition and society’s neglect of the mentally ill is causing him to struggle. At the root of it all, JOKER is a cautionary tragedy on the result of reduced funding and support to the mentally disturbed. Where the controversy comes in is how the film successfully makes you sympathize with the mass murderer. 

More than any other film in the sub-genre, JOKER is the definitive representation of an origin story. From beginning to end, this movie is a character study of Arthur’s descent into madness and chaos. Every second of the runtime is focused on Arthur. His aches to be seen and heard in this society that abandons people like him. Describing an actual plot that the film follows takes away from the overall point and suspense of this dark tragedy. 

Many comparisons will be made between Phoenix’s portray of the character and the late Heath Ledger’s performance eleven years ago. Ironically, with all the finger-pointing at Phoenix’s interpretation as encouraging mass shootings and violence, Ledger’s Joker is way more controversial and dangerous. 

Without giving any spoilers away for JOKER, Phoenix’s Joker is shown to have a bit of logic and focus as to who he is going after. Ledger, on the other hand, is a mysterious evil with zero humanity that can’t be figured out. If any Joker portrays were to inspire mass shooters, it would be the critically praised and adored Ledger version. 

Based on the actor’s performance, though, Phoenix is right up there with Ledger as giving the best interpretation of the character. I adored Phoenix and his performance in the film as he balances an incredible amount of sympathy with an uncomfortable level of disturbing moments. For the vast majority of the film, I really felt terrible for Arthur and aches to see his life turn around for the better. 

Arthur doesn’t start off as a violent psychopath that clearly belongs in an insane asylum. Instead, he begins as a simple struggling comedian who’s harmless enough to attempt to make a kid smile on the bus. All the praises you have heard about Phoenix is absolutely right, as he deserves to be nominated, if not win, the Oscar for Best Actor.

While I walked in expecting to be blown away by Phoenix, I was really surprised by the fantastic direction and filmmaking with Todd Phillips and his creative team. Just a simple sweeping shot of the gritty Gotham streets look like a work of art. This is a perfect showcase of how a great director and cinematographer can make any setting look beautiful. 

With the fantastic cinematography comes my favorite element about the film; just how disturbing it is without the need for an uncomfortable amount of violence. Right from the very first frame, everything about the psychological mindset of Arthur is established. As the film continues, Phillps perfectly captures Phoenix’s chilling performance with long, drawn-out shots that appropriately makes the audience uneasy. Aside from a violent moment on the subway, all of the violent imagery is saved for the film’s climax, where the Joker comes out to play. 

Until then, you get sucked into Arthur’s journey for acceptance that beautifully sets up for the main event of Joker revealed to the public. The element that makes JOKER such an incredible film is how it doesn’t portray anyone as completely good or bad. Everyone is a mixture of sinister intentions and human beings that deserve a chance to live. You will sympathize and root against all the characters as they truly reflect the flawed human nature. 

Even though I absolutely love JOKER, I can completely understand why some people will not enjoy it. Take away audiences that would reject it merely due to the controversy, JOKER really is an unconventional character study that isn’t much of a crowd-pleaser. If you can’t see yourself enjoying a two-hour movie where you need to get sucked into the mindset of a twisted character, then this is not the film for you. 

JOKER is definitely one of the best movies of the year that takes so many risks and deep turns that will leave you on the edge of your seat. While it has it’s problems that involve its revealing information, it still is worth checking out in theaters for adults only. Please, do not take your kids to see this movie; it is very much a mature and deep movie that they don’t need to see. 

9/10

[onf-headcanons]

ONF IN PSYCHO PASS AU (part 1)

Setting : angst, murder (influenced mass murder), futuristic society, you can read the introduction post prior reading this AU headcanon (for a better understanding cos some keywords will be slightly difficult for non anime audiences)

And warning long post and shipping hinting (I wont write it over explicit but if you are anime audience you can get the hint of which character I based so its suggestive should you integrated anime counterpart to ONF couterpart) if you are uncomfortable with that just kindly ignore it. Only adding it not just because to follow original series but also for the AU/headcanon storyline conflict purposes

Theme song (if you really want to)

Opening : The Realist by ONF

Ending : FLOWER by XIA Junsu ft Tablo

*Special recommend (from original anime) :

Abnormalize by Ling Toshite Sigure (season 1)

Namae no nai Kaibutsu by Egoist (season 1)

Below is the known situation when the story starts in Yuto's POV

Yuto - Inspector

Changyoon - Inspector

Hyojin - Enforcer

Jaeyoung - Enforcer

Minkyun - Analyst

Seungjun & Minseok - dead

And again sorry if its messy (Cos mainly I just want this AU to exist and making it to a birthday gift for myself XD)

The whole structure is followed the anime,but I will fast paced-ify to focus on main storyline. Also I will tweak my words/wordings to a more simpler format so that I wont cause you all headache.

1-1

(loosely based from episode 1 and 2)

Its first day for Yuto joining CID as an Inspector, he is under Changyoon. Changyoon, who has already read the profile of his new subordinate/partner, lets Yuto to omit the self introduction as they head off to crime scene at a second tier city nearby.

(He is the first foreigner in the team? why not?)

Before they left, Minkyun comes over to hand Changyoon a briefcase mentioning that there is bit of queue. Yuto thanked Minkyun in a hurry.

On the way, Changyoon guided Yuto to login into system with Dominator gun, just coldly confirmed with Yuto if he knows how to use it. Once Yuto got everything checked, Changyoon went back to his silent mode.

They need to hunt down a man who has escaped (same reason as anime or whatever reason you felt convenient).

At the place its rainy and its already night, Inspectors arrived along with another wagon/van where Enforcers are inside. Yuto thought they are back ups, which is not entirely wrong.

Changyoon shortly briefs Yuto about Enforcers. Quote, " Those inside are beings where their Psycho Pass readings are not of accepted range". Its more like Changyoon is trying to set Yuto a mindset that don't think Enforcers as an ally/ same being as us.

As the door of wagon opens, 2 Enforcers steps out, they noticed new member standing beside Changyoon. Due to documentation's wording and Changyoon's words, Yuto thought Enforcers would be people who looks menacing and tough, those by 1 glance you could immediately tell they are used to be/potentially to be psychopathic criminal...

But to Yuto surprise, both Enforcers in suits looks pretty like decent normal person, just like him. One with red hair who is slightly shorter and another with black who is taller.

Both Enforcers approaches to Changyoon with smiley face. While Changyoon just look at him expressionless. The one in red hair with a friendly tone goes, " Glad you are not working alone now Changyoon." But Changyoon only just give him the "Whatever you say" look. And the Enforcer with red hair seems to used to Changyoon's coldness.

Meanwhile, the Enforcer with black hair approaches Yuto to introduce himself and his colleague. He is Jaeyoung while the other one is Hyojin. Yuto responded politely. And Hyojin smiles at Yuto brightly to the extent Yuto slightly questions if looks really are deceiving? Then just how scary these decent looking person's Psycho Pass were when they are actually friendly?

But Yuto's distracted thought was pulled back to reality when Changyoon starts to brief on team missions. Hyojin is assigned to Yuto while Jaeyoung follows Changyoon instead.

While searching for the escaped criminal by checking the area's alleys and back alleys, Hyojin being friendly and tried giving Yuto mental security by offering to answer his doubts because he was once a rookie like him too. Yuto being the good student, has go through documents and manuals so he does not have much questions, but only worry on if he could do good on practical events.

Hyojin's advise was those manuals and what Yuto has learnt prior joining only serve as a guide and reference, so better don't over rely as case by case are all different. However, Hyojin ensures him by saying. "Don't worry, it is us Enforcers who do dirty work. for most of the times"

Out of curiousity, (and with Hyojin's permission) Yuto armed Dominator gun towards Hyojin to check/confirm on Hyojin's Psycho Pass. And it is higher than society acceptance range. Seeing the truth, Yuto inhales a bit of air, he could not help think and compare Hyojin to those physical attributes/vibes gave of by criminals he seen from TV.

Jaeyoung's voice could be heard via bluetooth earphones, mentioning he and Changyoon has found the criminal but the criminal has escaped towards Yuto and Hyojin's direction, along with a hostage. Jaeyoung and Changyoon are now attending the abandoned hostage. (Initially there are 2)

Changyoon approves of Enforcer to shoot should situation calls for that move.

As Jaeyoung's sentence finishes, the criminal dashes out from the corner and Hyojin immediately rushes in front of Yuto with Dominator armed and ready, his friendly vibe are gone and totally different, his emitting aura that are spiking with alert and defense mode.

Since the place they are standing is a dead end, for sure the criminal will back off and escape again. And before Yuto could make a quick decision, Hyojin fires precisely at criminal with Lethal Eliminator mode. It all happens too quick but Yuto grasps the situation fast enough to rush towards the hostage.

As Yuto gotten the hostage in his arm, he softly tries to calm the hostage down. But while doing it, he could the red haired Enforcer behind him coldly requesting Yuto to move away from the hostage.

Yuto immediately understood that the extermination of criminal in front of hostage's presence moments ago triggered the raise of Psycho Pass of the hostage, and now the hostage's stress level is high enough for Dominator and system to see the hostage as threat to fire. One relieving point was, Hyojin's gun is not in Lethal Eliminator mode, so Yuto could tell that there is not really a necessary for Hyojin to fire just yet.

"Wait, ..." Yuto tries to convince Hyojin but the hostage took the opportunity to run. Hyojin chases the hostage and yells at Yuto to catch up.

And Hyojin informs the others through bluetooth that the hostage's Crime Coefficent has went up.

Yuto, wants to change the situation, hurriedly stands up and followed Hyojin. While running and convincing Hyojin that the hostage is only a victim of crime, Yuto realised the object he is holding and quickly plans.

As Hyojin chases the hostage to another dead end, the hostage start to break down and cry as they noticed its dead end. Their stress level are not coming down and they clearly knew what fate lies ahead as the police is chasing them.

Seeing that, Yuto know he cannot wait to explain or persuade Hyojin, so instead of firing at the hostage, Yuto paralyses Hyojin from behind using Dominator trying to save the hostage. The hostage calms down seeing the possibility to not being executed/treated as a criminal.

When Changyoon and Jaeyoung arrives to the spot, they are confused if the hostage assaulted Hyojin. And Changyoon checked the hostage's Crime Coefficient, it is now back to normal. However, as procedure for victim of crime to get treatment and assessment, Changyoon still fires at the hostage to paralyses them.

Hyojin and the hostage are to be hospitalized for the time being. And since Yuto confessed that Hyojin was not assaulted by hostage but paralyzed by Yuto's Dominator, Changyoon demanded a report from him to explain his actions.

The next day Yuto woke up worried if he had ruined his career by the first day. Feeling apologetic, he goes to the hospital to check up on Hyojin after settling a case with Jaeyoung, and he has to oversee the victim to be sent to hospital.

Jaeyoung reminded Yuto that its the same hospital Hyojin and yesterday hostage were in. Yuto then Jaeyoung to return to van while he will check on Hyojin quickly.

Hyojin, who is now numb and paralyzed, lying on the bed with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling and walls blankly.

Hyojin's hunch made him asked Yuto what was Changyoon's response towards Yuto's actions. And Yuto told him the truth that he will need to submit a report. Hyojin only laughs at Changyoon for being a stuborn head and stiff, just like old times.

"Have you done the report then?" Hyojin asks, Yuto only shakes his head replying that he does not know how to start and what to write.

Hyojin, with a playful tone, teased that should Yuto did not paralyzed him, he could write the report on his behalf as a welcome to the team gift, but since he is now paralyzed, Yuto will need to do it on his own.

Yuto felt a bit bad about that, but Hyojin assures him that Hyojin can let it slide should Yuto buy him lunch once he discharged.

"HAHA, should Changyoon ever finds out you drop by to check on me, he might sulk even more." Hyojin mutters in a playful but weary tone.

"Eh?" Yuto gets a little panicked, "Inspectors should not visit or come contact with Enforcers after office hours?"

Hyojin denies Yuto's speculation and mentioned that he does not blame Yuto for what happened, and asks Yuto to check the hostage as well, hoping the hostage can control their stress level well so that they can discharge soon. And Hyojin also jokingly say that hope the hostage won't bump into him in the future, even though unlikely since Enforcer lived a very controlled life.

"Don't be intimidated by Changyoon, give him a bit of time to get used to your presence. Also keep in mind he means no harm." Hyojin adds

Yuto could tell Hyojin is not someone that cold and mean. And he starts to smile back a little again.

Yuto feel like asking if Hyojin and Changyoon knows each other way back, but he had to do that the next time because he still has a report to submit.

Yuto then starts his life adapting and learning how things operating in CID, he is a quick learner so Changyoon is quite content about it. Not long after, he assigned Yuto to head off to crime scene inspection with Jaeyoung while waiting for Hyojin to discharge.

1-2

(loosely based on episode 2 and 3 but I omitted most details of the crime case)

Yuto and Jaeyoung are working on a night time shift. The monitoring system alerts them of a potential area stress level rising/ potential target stress level rising so they had to head out.

As Yuto is still a bit inexperienced, Jaeyoung was the one who identified the target. After handling potential threat target, Jaeyoung talked about him being Enforcer for a long time, even longer than Hyojin and telling Yuto not to feel bad about it because experience will grow as time pass.

And also Jaeyoung hinted that it is also because he is "different" than Yuto, thats why he can intuitively know by first glance when someone's looks fishy.

Yuto felt inexperience is just sugar coating his incapability, and that thought shows on his face. So Jaeyoung told him that : " Don't think that you are useless for the time being. "

"Enforcers can't walk around outside without an accompanying Inspector. Your job is also to monitor Enforcers too, so that they won't slack off escape or cause society trouble. Even if that's all you can do for now, that is all you need to do." Jaeyoung continues.

That did not leave a good after taste for Yuto even it is the truth.

As days pass, Yuto did good handling on cases now as he gets the hang of it. Jaeyoung sees leading quality budding in Yuto and sometimes praises Yuto in front of Changyoon. And even with Minkyun, they both teased Changyoon to soften up a little so that he would stop scaring Yuto.

Yuto and Minkyun did to have a bit of get to know each other time when Changyoon and Jaeyoung head out to patrol. Yuto and Minkyun are back up support.

its lunchtime and Minkyun invited Yuto for lunch. So they get know each other for a bit.

Minkyun was glad to have Yuto joining the team because Changyoon and Hyojin are both quite uptight. But Yuto said he did not see Hyojin as the strict character. Minkyun laugh it off by saying that is because Yuto did not know Hyojin long enough.

It later surprised Minkyun that Yuto actually Sibyl system's judgement/assessment towards Yuto, were exceedingly excel. He got A ranking for a number of ministries and agencies and a couple of companies.

Minkyun exclaims as he nearly choked on his food : "Seriously,then why CID?"

Yuto repies him with a wearily smile while handing him a glass of water : "I think that was because for all other jobs there were at least 1 or 2 people beside me that got the same ranking."

"And I was the only one who got an A ranking for the Bureau. Out of 500 students in whole country." Yuto continues while Minkyun looking at him unbelievingly.

"So you just come over thinking there might be something you can do here?" Minkyun makes a guess and Yuto nods.

"That was incredibly amazing Yuto, even if it was assessed and chosen by the system for you, " Minkyun exclaims for the second time. "You could've chosen any kind of life!"

Yuto again can only nod at Minkyun's words, knowing that most people can did not have the luxury like he does. For most people, judged by the system only get to live the lifestyle set by the system and has to follow it . And he, Mizuguchi Yuto gets to choose. Which explains Minkyun's reaction to Yuto's experience.

"You know there are people who get identified as potential criminal at young age and never get to live a happy life ever since." Minkyun murmurs but Yuto did not get to catch it.

When Yuto asks for a repeat, Minkyun just brush it off saying Yuto's experience is so out of the world and he wish he could live as Yuto for once in a lifetime.

The lunch session ends as Changyoon and Jaeyoung notify them that the patrolling team is heading back to office and there are some evidence that need Minkyun's help to analysis.

(slight time skip in between, case of episode 3 happened. Changyoon critiqued on Yuto for being naive to put trust on Enforcers and Yuto gets to know that Hyojin is super reliable even though sometimes reckless. And this is where Yuto starts to look up to Hyojin.)

This happened later back in office when Yuto was out delivering documents to other department and Jaeyoung brought up topic of Yuto catch up really fast when he is handing his report to Changyoon. Hyojin is at his desk, doing paperwork.

They all know Changyoon well enough that Changyoon does not hate Yuto but only dislike the fact that Yuto sees Enforcers as a colleague and maybe even equal as human being. In Changyoon's point of view, naive and innocent. Which in Hyojin's point of view, Changyoon's stereotype is childishly selfish.

"Everyone starts as a rookie though." says Minkyun "But he is fast learner."

Hyojin, adds comment that Yuto is still a bit naive but with Changyoon giving the best guidance, Yuto will excel and might be the best Inspectors ever to exist.

"I mean, you know that better than we do right? You are the one who went through Yuto's profile." Hyojin's tone sound confident about Yuto's capability.

Changyoon is scanning Jaeyoung's report and he raise his gaze so that his eyes met Hyojin's gaze. He is not happy that an Enforcer backs up and siding a newbie.

"That's if he understands what a fool he is to treat Enforcers like a human being." Changyoon stares at Hyojin with a bit of anger in his eyes while saying this. "As long as he still does that, I don't see him qualify as a sensible and independent Inspector just yet."

"Same goes to you, Minkyun." Changyoon adds. "I don't get it why you can even get so awfully comfy with him."

Minkyun and Jaeyoung's face went soulless when Changyoon finishes his words.

The room went into grim silence instantly, and Hyojin's smiling expression changes to a straight face and he did not back off from Changyoon's words.

"Hey, I know you hate me but don't lash it out towards Minkyun." Hyojin retorts. "Keep in mind that you are the head of the team, and behave like one."

"And you think I wanted to be the head of the team to begin with?" Changyoon responds immediately and he puts down Jaeyoung's document on table with a thud, making the aura even tenser.

Minkyun want to say something to ease the situation but Jaeyoung pulls Minkyun's arm to stop him.

Coincidentally, the office door opens and Yuto steps in, he has returned from his errands. His seniors quickly act like nothing has happened and return to their work. But it did not fool Yuto for he could feel there is tension in the air.

Yuto's instinct knows best that it is better to act like nothing happened because he realized he does not understand a whole lot about his colleagues.

1-3

(loosely based on episode 4 and 5. Timeline is episode 4 and 5, but I will keep it simple.)

The team has to find culprit behind a murder case. It is found out that the victim was a member of a virtual community, and the account activity is still active until recently. But since the corpse already been some time, the team have perfect reason to doubt that maybe there is someone pretending to be the victim.

Even though it is not like that in the anime, I will tweak a bit here. Yuto has to take the role to "infiltrate" into community (potential enemy quarters) because most users are Japanese. Yuto managed to get some information. And the team comes up with a plan to catch their potential target/suspect.

The plan did not go well, and the suspect escapes. But little did the team know, that the whole case of this murder is not as easy/plain as it seems. It was just the beginning of a larger happening that will shake their lives.

Changyoon and Jaeyoung head out for another potential suspect's residence but returned fruitless. With Minkyun's data, Hyojin raised a possibility that maybe the murder is in the virtual community.

Luckily for the team, even though took a while but thanks to Hyojin's observant trait along with Minkyun's provided data+search of database, they are able to pinpoint the identity of murderer. Changyoon and Jaeyoung as Team A while Yuto and Hyojin as team B.

The criminal flees but Team B is able to wound the target badly. Team A chases, and then only to find the criminal has their Psycho Pass is contaminated badly compared to the first statistic number shown in the team's Dominator. The target is executed on spot as per instruction of Sibyl system.

The case was settled like that and no one ever got a clue how deep the water was.

After several team ups (including this one) with Hyojin, Yuto finally realizes that he might have been a tad naive and he is amazed how Enforcers are able to grasp what the target is thinking and able to foresee target actions.

Maybe when Yuto is taking a breather, Changyoon whofinally soften up a bit towards Yuto after the amount of time working together, comforts the junior that he did good recently but he should just simply fulfill duties as an Inspector so that things wont be overly complicated for Yuto. And for another time, Changyoon advised Yuto to draw a borderline with Enforcers, but not in a harsh tone, more of a pure advise.

"I am advising you based on experience." Changyoon says. " I could not stop him, so I thought I might prevent you to be like him."

Yuto just go by his hunch and ask the reason Changyoon draw that borderline and wishes other people to follow suit. Then Changyoon reveals that he has lost a few colleagues who are also his friends during his days in CID.

All loss are painful for him but none is more painful when his former head of division/chief of team,

Someone Changyoon used to look up to, who also used to be an excelled and brilliant Inspector "falls from grace" after the loss of their mutual friends.

" I don't want you to make the same mistake." Changyoon mutters out his words towards Yuto. He was expressionless when he says that but his worried eyes were exactly what made Yuto empath and felt Changyoon's pain

And the next reveal gives Yuto a shock but the puzzles finally fits together, "It was Hyojin."

"What?" and that's the only word Yuto exhales out of disbelief.

Changyoon let out a sigh and briefly explains, "He lost his brother and his best friend one after another. His brother was executed while his best friend which is also our former colleague, committed suicide."

Yuto only listens to Changyoon quietly, and unconsciously holding his breath. Hyojin? Who would have thought someone who is bright and kind towards Yuto has gone through such tragedy?

"Wait,..." Yuto found a point where he is in doubt. "You mentioned Hyojin's brother is executed, not murdered..."

Changyoon's slightly frowns and averts Yuto's gaze. "Yes, that is exactly what I meant. His brother was executed by the system. And his best friend watched that happened then later committed suicide a few weeks after the funeral."

The details of the story only emerged a bit but it is already complicating enough. Looking at Yuto's perplexed expression, Changyoon gave Yuto 2 files document's number for Yuto to look up to.

"I hope that from reading the file you can understand my point." Changyoon give a light pat on Yuto's shoulder before he continues, "I do understand that no one is a 100 percent saint. But, I do believe that you can choose not to fall by stepping away from all temptations. I kept my stance but he did not. He failed us, Me, his brother and his best friend."

Before Changyoon left, he advised Yuto not to stay up too late as they need to be early tomorrow.

The moment Yuto reached his apartment, he logs into the Bureau's database and search for the file Changyoon mentioned.

Just by the title Yuto knew instantly it was the terror attack happened 2 years ago. But since the intricate details of Hyojin's brother was not in newspapers, this is a record filed in ministry without publicly published but can only access by CID.

Yuto has complicated thoughts, he knew once he clicked into it, he will never view Hyojin and Changyoon the same again.

But the phrase of "His brother was executed by the system. And his best friend watched that happened then later committed suicide" repeats in Yuto's head. And it gave Yuto the motivation to click on the file.

To be continued in part 2... will upload soon (I have to split because its too long)

[dlkardenal]

Why are bad guys sexy?  - Breaking down the popular trope

We all know “sexy bad guys” from books, movies, and series. You need only to look into any popular contemporary work and I bet you can point out at least one of them. In recent years there is a tendency for them to move from an interesting side character position to the main love interest of a female protagonist in more and more novels.

They share many common traits. They’re often possessive, arrogant, self-absorbed, have power in the society, can be narcissists or psychopaths (we will have another blog post about them later), and – of course – they are insanely handsome. All women fall for them, but the big question is, why? The trope works, just look at the members of TeamDamon from the Vampire Diaries, the fandom of Rhysand from the Court of Thornes and Roses, and the millions of people who bought the Fifty Shades of Grey. How can it be, that these characters are considered irresistible or at least very attractive?

This phenomenon has many different reasons, most of them are rooted so deep in our psyche that we are not aware of them. We must go back in time when human society was very different from today, and fighting for survival was the daily life of our ancestors.

1. Because of evolution

In primates, there are three different family models. One is monogamy where one male has one female, and they are mates for life. Here the male is essential in taking care of the offspring if they are confident the child is from them.

The second is the harem, where there is one dominant male with many wives and the other males either try to fight him or arouse the females while the dominant male is with another female or occupied with challengers. The females take care of the children while the alpha protects the whole family, however, if there’s a change in the seat of power, the new alpha often banishes or kills the offspring of his predecessor.

Yeah, animals are cruel. But so are humans, since this was a common practice for our ancestors for a long time as well.

The third model is promiscuity, where everyone can have sex with everyone, love is free as the wind but there the males have no idea which child is who’s, so it easier for them to dump all the responsibility of making sure they survive on the females.

Gibbons are a good example of monogamous primates, gorillas prefer harems, while chimpanzees voted for promiscuity. We in our modern western society like to think that humans have implemented a monogamous family model, but this is not entirely true. During our history harems were more common, and great rulers often had many (and by many I mean dozens, sometimes hundreds of) wives, and sometimes hundreds of children. Ramses II had 99 sons, not counting his daughters, and millions of people alive today are descended from Ghengis Khan. On the other side, those who always envision the downfall of morality in our society like to point out that we are slowly tending towards promiscuity. (The hippies say hello to them.)

2. Because of our genes

From a genetic point of view, there are a few things to consider. Males can’t get pregnant, so they value quantity over quality, trying to almost mass-produce children, and if some of them survive they are good to go. Females can only have a limited number of children, so they want to ensure their survival, they want them to be fit, to carry on their genetic data. For this, they need to copulate with the best male, and it’s a generous bonus if that particular male stays to help raise the little devils. The best scenario for a female is when she has the attention of the alpha male, the strongest, the most desired – therefore his child will inherit these qualities. But they also want this male to stay with them not even glimpsing at other females, all the while helping with the children. In contrast, it is a way better deal for males to go on a copulating spree, having as many descendants as possible. And that, ladies and gentlemen, means a clear and visible conflict of interest between the two sexes.

But not every male is as alpha as they come. What about the betas? Hell, even the omegas. How could they pass their genetic data? These little buggers found different solutions, based on which family model they live in. In a harem, a beta has no chance to beat the alpha, so he goes through the backdoor. The alpha can’t guard all his females at once, so the beta has a chance with the neglected females. Also, alphas have higher mortality than betas because they do the fighting. If we think about a caveman tribe, alphas go hunt a mammoth or fight with sabrecats (sadly not dragons, Skyrim lied to us all), and sometimes they don’t come back, leaving grieving widows behind. Here comes the beta male to comfort these poor women, and if he is lucky, he can make a few offspring along the way. Because he doesn’t fight, he can help the female with the children, so they will have a higher chance of survival, and are more likely to pass on the beta-gene. Yeah. You heard me. Some of us are beta by birth.

In monogamy, the females are stuck with their beta mates and the only way out is kind of risky. The females must decide whether they should take the risk and cheat on the beta with the alpha. If they do, the children will be more fit, but if they are caught the beta will leave the female alone with the children and won’t ensure their survival. Why would he? Those are not his descendants. Let Mr. Alpha sleep in the bed he … well, probably slept in with the aforementioned female. When the males can’t guard their females and have no idea whether those children are from them or not, there is a high chance that they won’t stay in the first place. That way all the females and all the males can have sex with whoever they want and now our family model changed to promiscuity.

3. Both? Both. Both is good.

Now that we understand the system of alphas, betas, omegas – my biology teacher called them “casanovas” and “clerks” – and the age-old conflict between sexes, how is all this related to the main question, the sexy bad guy trope?

If we think of the traits of our bad-guy in question, we can clearly see that he must be an alpha, a Casanova-type male. Power to ensure a safe home and food for his lady? Check. Handsome and desired so his children will also be top of the class? Check. Is he strong so he can protect the female from sabrecats? Check. Does everyone else know that he is the best? Of course, he shows it every moment with his arrogant behavior, there is no question.

Another thing that complicates the picture is how authors tend to make the bad guy sympathetic. How can they ensure readers don’t have the urge to hit these Alpha-holes in the face? They give them a tragic backstory! They are never bad because they are… well… bad people, but because they were neglected, they have childhood traumas and so on, and they are just waiting for the female protagonist to heal them.

And THIS, my dear readers, is the ultimate hook.

If we have a caring female that ultimately saves the bad guy, her prize will be an alpha male who stays with her and only her. She gets what all our ancestors wanted since we as a species grew a spine: the alpha male who gives her the best children ever and  also stays to help raise them.

This also elevates her above the other females who also longed for this male. The protagonists in YA fiction are mostly introverts, bookworms, outcasts, rejected by their environment, so being desired by the “Casanova” serves as social justice as well.

4. In practice

I may sound judgmental, but this trope is not from the devil in itself, even we use it in our WIP. Given that, it can be executed both in a good way and a very, very bad way, depending on the compromises the author makes and how far they go to make the guy bad. He needs to be bad otherwise there is no redemption plot, there is nothing the female needs to save him from, but he can’t be so evil, that the reader thinks there is no saving him.

The threshold for this is not the same for every reader. For example, I draw the line at abuse. If the bad guy is abusive towards the female, then he doesn’t deserve to be saved, but I am aware, that there are tons of people who glorify abusive relationships – I saw many posts about the Joker and Harley Quinn being relationship goals for example. Another interesting example is Kylo Ren and Rey from Star Wars. Kylo is a mass murderer but ultimately, he managed to redeem himself which I quite liked, although I totally understand that some draw the line there.

Just be aware, that this is fiction. Something that resonates deeply with our instincts, but in real life if someone wants to save the bad guy they will fail miserably in most cases and come out from an abusive relationship with deep wounds and traumas.

Here is the question for you: where do you draw the line? What makes you think the bad guy cannot be saved no matter how sexy he is? Comments are welcome!

Join us next week when we shove men under the microscope and analyze why damsels in distress appeal so much to the most viral hero types.

Lory