#who lost everything because of the domino effects of those choices

[majorasnightmare]

thinking about isobel and ketheric, and my durge and ketheric, and isobel and my durge

like ketheric whos entire personality is centered around being a failed father, dirge who lives solely and exclusively for a father who does not love him, isobel being horribly violated for the sake of fatherly love in the name of a person shell never be again like excuse me this trio of people makes me go insane

ketheric and dirge like!! zealot recognizes zealot, ketheric knows what its like to be devoted wholeheartedly to a god who will discard you and thats explicitly why he has a businesslike relationship with myrkul, who KNOWSSS ketherics heart isnt in it but doesnt care, ketheric who never fully believed in the absolute plan but carried it out nonetheless, ketheric who nonsensically traded the death of the world for his daughters life, who in reality most likely traded his afterlife for isobels life, knowingly condemning himself to never see melodia again, to an eternity of torture at myrkuls hands, just so isobel can breathe again. dirge knowing with perfect clarity his own father would never do that for him. ketheric knowing that kind of hopeless devotion and willful blind ignorance leads to a kind of iron will that makes dirge genuinely dangerous but pitying the poor fool nonetheless because despite dirges clear intelligence and skill, despite his overwhelmingly obvious power, hes shackled to a self destructive idiot whod bite off his own arm just to spite the world who couldnt give a single fuck about dirges mental state or how that affects achieving bhaals OWN goals and fulfilling his OWN desires, because ketheric understands perfectly well a god will be stupid and selfish first and reasonable and measured second. dirge hating ketheric not just for being a wishywashy traitor who cant settle on something to be devoted to, but because ketheric has the shit figured out. its a zero sum game. theres no winning, only different types of losers, and embracing that truth means acknowledging his entire life has been a pointless self destructive waste that will never give him the satisfaction and actualization dirge craves, so its easier and more stable to just interpret ketheric as a coward. except hes going to kill himself for isobel. going to go through hell for her. theres a level of devotion and love and care there that dirge has only experienced once in his life and the memory of it is enough to drive him to madness, but despite it all ketheric IS competent. is level and measured and powerful and capable of looking past his own self interest to the far horizon of victory, is tactical and clever and willing to wade into the fray. so dirge hates, and admires, and envies, and pities, and reflexively seeks out and avoids ketheric in equal measure. wants to carve him up until he finally breaks, screaming for a god that wont hear him as just rewards for his insolence (because dirges loyalty will SURELY be rewarded, loyalty to his god and to his father, certainly), cant stand the idea of working alongside anyone else, hates being around him but hates doing things without him, falling into old habits of depravity just to get away from the cacophany of emotion and the introspection it tries to trigger.

and then ketheric is doing all of this for someone who doesnt really exist. the isobel he wants to revive isnt real. its a version of her thats stripped hollow of the things that make her, HER. he wants an isobel that doesnt love aylin, he wants an isobel that is content to remain in place and be protected by him, where he was the center of her world. he wants an isobel that hasnt existed for over a century. he wants an isobel like he remembers thinking of the days before melodia died. its why despite everything he gives up for her, if ketheric gets his hands on isobel he tadpoles her. the tadpoles are just a convenient tool for cutting away the unnecessary parts of a person, things they dont need and wont want afterwards. isobel mourns the father she had after her mother died, but ketheric wants the isobel she used to be when melodia was still present in their lives. the isobel after melodia died eventually left him for aylin. grew up and became a person outside of their small family and community. had interests and desires and goals that took her away from him. she doesnt need aylin, doesnt need anything besides family. thats whats important, thats whats worth ruining lives over. everything after isobel was just a failed copy, not even worth reminiscing over. everyone beyond isobel doesnt matter. desecrate the family tomb, abuse your son, drag your aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters out from the grave just to see if it works, if it sticks, because the whole world revolves around a little girl who stopped existing long before she died, because she became someone else someone new and left you floundering alone. youll get them back even if it means you burn in hell forever, those few precious moments are worth it, itll all be worth it, its already worth it. kill yourself kill the world because the only god worth dying for is the one found in between poorly scratched letters on a paper rotting from age that say "love you papa, -I T". live every day with the smoke and the rot knowing that your father loved you so much he cant even look at who you are now. live every day knowing its a gift you cant return to a man who doesnt see you, knowing that all youll ever have are ghosts that seek to hollow you out and play pretend with the shell. hes awful. hes horrible. hes a monster. hes your dad and he loves you so much its killing you. will kill you. has killed you. has killed everything you could ever want in your life. hes your dad. he read you stories when you were small. kept you from falling apart when your mother died. your rock in stormy seas. he wants to read you another story. its dark outside. its scary. this story has a happy ending. its just for you. the girl in the picture book has your name but doesnt look like you at all. its written in silver blood. theres an ache that wont leave, a rot that refuses to mend, a scar that wont close, and its all for love

thinking about dirge being the one to drag isobel from her coffin, to bring her back for the sake of sealing a pact that will end the world, going against his entire religion the whole reason for his existence just for the sake of fulfilling his own fathers dreams. children living at the behest of their parents, denied death for their fathers selfish whims. isobel autopsied and opened, layers peeled back. gortash and ketheric never exhumed a body, never prepared it for the grave, never made such an intimate study of death. gortash unwilling to bloody himself unnecessarily, ketheric unwilling to look past the deathmask to see isobels interior, so its dirge, it has to be him, the only one willing to bite down his own desires for the greater good. an unforgivable violation of autonomy, but the only one who thinks of it as such is the scion of the murder god. she cant consent. she cant choose to be apart of this, to sacrifice herself for a cause greater than herself. he has to inflict this upon her. life is suffering and madness and delusion. death is peace, and he is the holy vessel of transition from one state to the other. this? this is blasphemy. she has already fled this horrid blighted world for a better one, and here he is participating in blasphemous ritual. its for the sake of their plan, its for the sake of enacting his fathers dreams (as all children know, you are naught but a vessel to achieve the goals they could not in their time), but she cannot even take glory in the knowledge of her sacrifice, cannot even know she is a sacrifice until its too late to go back. carves open and peels back the picturesque skin, preserved by gloom and arid darkness and sealed stone to keep away the rot. peeling away the mask of Isobel Thorm to see the visceral rotting insides of a person ketheric cant stand to see.

clearing away the ruin and decay so something new can take its place. corpses are objects fled of souls, no longer a person, no longer anything and thus free to toy and play with as boredom and curiosity desires, but this is not a thing. this will again be a person, a vessel to trap someone inside of, to force them to suffer and persist and delude and live and he cant even ask if shell do it. do it to help him break the world and put an end to this madness forever. cant convince her of the rightousness of it, the necessity of it, cant help but use her for it. to gortash she is a token exchanged for power, to ketheric she is a snapshot of a better world he wants to go back to, but only here on this dirty bloodstained table with a bhaalspawn elbow deep in her organs is she a person, whos autonomy and personhood is being irrevocably violated. his nature is to free them of these shackles, to snip the cords and revel in the ensuing destruction, and here he is binding her again. the humiliation, the horror, of being set loose from this hellscape only to be brought back. to be dragged, kicking and screaming, back into living. to be subject to such awful blasphemy. here in the dark and the quiet where there is no voice to speak back to him, when there is no rushing blood or beating hearts to call forth his purpose, there and then does armageddons prophet desire forgiveness, only in this shadowed purgatory can someone truly see. when all the world lies dead at my feet, i will beg forgiveness from no one but you. lamb on the altar, holy blood, if such desecration was not necessary for the cleansing of suffering, i would never deign to subject you to it. to you alone do i tender my apologies, my blessed father may forgive this sin in light of the retribution it will call forth, but cruel fate has chosen you without your knowledge to bear this disgusting violation, and the only salve i can offer is that, gods willing, you will not suffer long. to live in a world that could give rise to something like me is a torture i would not wish upon anyone, and for the sake of my father i inflict it upon you nonetheless. when you rise, my only thoughts will be of murder, holy and pure. but here in the dark, when you are at peace and i am not, i think of you, and what youd want, and how no one would ever, COULD ever, ask for what i do to you here. here in the quiet i breathlessly whisper a prayer meant only for your ears, a second sin i cannot stop myself from committing, here where you cannot hear me but God surely can, a wish that i will surely pay for dearly, a punishment i endure willingly and without complaint, a smallest fraction of the torment i knowingly inflict upon you. i live, and soon so shall you, and for that, i will never know peace.

im so sorry. i did it for love

[danmeiconfession]

This is just an opinion.

I’m sorry, but I can’t support a protagonist like Shen Yuan if he can’t respect the body of the person he’s taken over. The transmigration trope in many of these novels often leads to the erasure of the original soul, which makes me feel sad for them. While I understand why many fans like his character, I can’t root for him anymore. There’s a sort of horror in knowing that he and the rest of the readers pushed for such a bleak ending for Shen Jiu. An omnipotent being forces him to be a scum villain, and the person who condemned him has now taken over his body, his name, and married his abuser, his torturer. Imagine how horrified he’d be to learn he’s married to his own disciple—it’s disgusting. Someone who is just like all the men in his life takes away his autonomy and the name he earned; Shen Qingqiu is literally ripped away from him.

I remember someone mentioning that Shen Jiu follows the formula of MXTX's shou protagonists, and they’re right. The only difference is that he’s not allowed to gain a second chance. When Wei Wuxian tried to save the Wens, it cost him everything, similar to how Shen Jiu’s attempt to save his martial brother set off a domino effect of tragedy.

There’s a difference between Shen Jiu and Shen Yuan. Unlike Shen Yuan, whose path is clear and predictable, Shen Jiu’s very rare but kind actions often lead to dire consequences. Each time he tries to do something good, the world retaliates harshly. That’s why I like Shen Jiu more. I don’t mind a character’s misdeeds if they reveal something profound about them. Shen Jiu’s attempts to do good, even when they backfire, show his sincerity. Shen Yuan’s choices, on the other hand, seem easy and don’t require much moral struggle.

What saddens me is that a rich, lazy millennial is thrust into the body of a traumatized orphan and somehow gets the happy ending. Even if he didn’t ask for it, there’s a moral duty to respect the original character he's inhabited now because without Shen Jiu’s body, Shen Yuan would have no purpose is that even a lie because what goals or aspirations did he even have? We truly have nilch to go off what he's like without he's online persona but frankly he's a bad person to me if he harasses an author and makes no effort to even get himself to express his emotions especially his apathy like the fuck bro what going on here bro?? How do you just not give a shit about anything besides your beloved LBG like he's cuckoo up in the head like a few bolts and screws were lost in the making of his birth.

It actually made me mad, to be honest. I wish the author had never created Shen Jiu as a character because it spoiled my enjoyment of the book that I took as fun entertainment. SVSSS was the first transmigration story I read that gave the original soul such an important role. Other stories often use these bodies as self-insert devices, but knowing Shen Jiu is an actual character made me see him differently.

I also find it unsettling that Shen Yuan has to live as another person for the rest of his life. Sometimes, silence speaks louder than words. If the author isn’t going to do an identity reveal in an MXTX story, what does that say about Shen Yuan’s relationship with everyone else and the ML included? Wouldn’t everything fall apart? Doesn't that mean something is off lol???

This omission to me kinda undermines the foundation of his relationships, especially with the main love interest. Living a lie means that Shen Yuan’s connections are based on a false premise. If those around him, including the main love interest, don’t know who he truly is, their interactions and feelings might be based on their own misconceptions. In essence, the story hinges on Shen Jiu because his life and identity are the foundation upon which Shen Yuan builds his new existence and I find SY careless and disregard of that to be unappealing for a protagonist to follow .

I can see how the System's role in "SVSSS" can be interpreted as a form of horror, especially considering the implications for Shen Jiu. Here's an expanded take on your guys idea a theory of sorts:

The System's reasoning for booting Shen Jiu out and replacing him with Shen Yuan could be seen as a chillingly calculated move. Shen Jiu’s unwillingness to follow the predetermined outline and his resistance to the System's goals could have led to his removal. The System’s primary objective seems to be the satisfaction and happiness of Luo Binghe, the protagonist. Given the tragic nature of "PIDW" (Proud Immortal Demon Way), the System might have sought a more compliant individual to ensure a more favorable outcome for Luo Binghe.

If the protagonist, Luo Binghe, obsessively desires companionship and affection from Shen Qingqiu, and the original Shen Jiu isn't reciprocating, the System might decide to alter the course of the world. This new beginning involves replacing Shen Jiu with someone who not only understands the narrative but is also deeply invested in Luo Binghe's happiness—someone like Shen Yuan. As a form of punishment for Shen Jiu’s disobedience, the System forces him to take a backseat, helplessly watching as events unfold with Shen Yuan in control of his body.

This scenario adds a layer of horror, as it portrays the System as an omnipotent force capable of rewriting lives and fates to suit its goals. Shen Jiu’s autonomy is completely stripped away, and he’s forced to witness his own life being manipulated and his identity being overridden. By replacing Shen Jiu with Shen Yuan, the System ensures that Luo Binghe’s desires are met, but at the cost of Shen Jiu’s existence.

.

[it-happened-one-fic]

Waiting For You - Jack

Author Notes: Haha! Jack fic in time for the Portfest event! That aside, this fic actually doesn't have anything to do with Porfest and, furthermore, I should not be allowed to write fics while listening to 80s ballads and feeling sad. I wrote this fic while listening to "Right Here Waiting" by Richard Marx and, as per usual, reader is gender-neutral. I hope you enjoy!

Type: Gender-neutral reader/ Angst with comfort/ Fluff/ sfw/ Can probably taken as platonic even though I wrote this with romance in mind

Word count: 1871

It was a strange thing. To ponder if you were truly loveable or if everyone just simply accepted your presence because they had little choice in the matter. Because you were present, it was easier to just accept you rather than just shun you.

Maybe it was because you were useful to them. You knew Crowley used you, so who was to say others didn’t?

And maybe you really were only worthwhile when you were being useful. When you were facing overblots, giving others a place to stay and hide from dorm drama, or making it so they could stay in this school by forming a half of a student.

They were bitter thoughts, but sometimes, in weak moments, they came. And when they came, they seemed to devour you.

To swallow you whole and threaten to destroy everything you’d built up for yourself in this strange world of magic.

The friends you’d made, the dorm you’d been repairing, the home you’d slowly built for yourself. You suddenly found yourself questioning it all and wondering if you would ever return home to where things had at least pretended to make more sense. 

Where you weren’t burdened with expectations and the lingering fear that the only reason anyone stayed close to you was because they felt they had to.

And did you even want to get home? It was a terrifying question to have. Especially when you feared that the people you’d come to love so much—the people who made you want to stay here with them rather than go home—might not care for you in the same way.

“If we leave them be, they’ll never make it.”

“They’ve saved my life; I should help them at least once.”

Were these the thoughts your friends had? That without them, you couldn’t make it? That they had to repay a favor?

It felt horrible to question others and their reasoning. Did it really matter why they lingered nearby? Wasn’t their presence enough for you? Or were you really so greedy that they had to genuinely care about you?

The sadness that suffused your entire being seemed to be beyond anything you’d felt in the past. 

You were lost, and, now that you had realized you were living merely by the grace of others, you were terrified.

It was hard to believe that they cared for you when you could have such selfish thoughts. Why would they, after all? Who would care for and love someone who questioned whether or not their friends, who’d been with them through near life-and-death situations, cared?

But question them you did. Because they didn’t willingly go through those situations. They’d just been at the wrong place at the wrong time. And being by your side often seemed to be the wrong place, given how many things had gone wrong since you’d come to this school.

Your hands gripped at your legs tightly, your tears muffled by the way you curled in on yourself as you questioned if perhaps your presence here as something from outside this world had somehow caused a domino effect that resulted in the overblots.

It was an illogical thought, but one that plagued you and had become the root of all the fears that were now assaulting you as you cried within your dilapidated home. Alone. 

It was almost a blessing that Grim had gone off to wander around the campus and left you alone. Because while you were lonely and did want reassurance that someone cared, you didn’t want to be seen like this.

Crying over fears that you had no proof of and that were an insult to the very idea of the friendships you mourned. Because if you were truly friends with the young men here at this school, you wouldn’t be questioning them in such a fashion.

Questioning everything and everyone like the uselessly emotional person you were. You couldn’t blame people if they didn’t like you, because why would they? You didn’t even like yourself right now.

A small logical part of you whispered that this was all just brought on by how exhausted you were, mentally and emotionally. But did that really matter? Exhaustion was just an excuse and didn’t change the fact that you were behaving like a small child right now. Hardly fitting behavior for a Prefect who took care of everyone else.

Your throat ached with restrained sobs that you forced yourself to keep muffled should someone enter. And, like a cruel answer to both your hopes and fears, someone did enter.

The front door opened downstairs, and you heard them long before you saw them, their familiar voice calling out your name in an almost curious tone, “Y/n?”

Jack. It was Jack. 

Dear Jack, who was so like a stalwart companion and actively did his best to protect and look out for you. Like so many others, Jack had done so much for you. 

You didn’t want him to see you like this. So broken and filled with ungrateful thoughts, even though everyone, including him, had done so much for you.

Your entire form tensed, somehow curling tighter on itself as you willed your tears to vanish like the sun behind a cloud. Praying that your eyes wouldn’t appear puffy by the time he reached where you crouched in your room, somehow unable to bring yourself to hide even further. 

It was almost like there was some small part of you begging to be found and comforted while the rest of you recoiled at the very idea of it.

You heard his footsteps on the stairs, and then the door to your room creaked open. You felt yourself freeze even as he spoke once more.

“Y/-” Your name was cut off in the middle, and you heard a sharp intake of breath that caused your fingers to twitch before you slowly looked up with a forced, wavering smile and made eye contact with the young man who stared at you from the doorway.

Jack stared at you in shock, with something akin to horror in his golden eyes that were now wide, and he stood frozen in the now open doorway.

“Hi Jack, how… How are you doing?” You managed a fakely cheerful tone, as if that could hide the fact that you’d just been sobbing your eyes out for senseless reasons that you couldn’t bear to tell Jack. Not when he’d already done so much to help and asked for little to nothing in return.

You didn’t get to say anything else as the young man darted across the room to where you sat on your bed and knelt, his hands finding your tear-stained cheeks even as you attempted to pull away and hide your face. “I’m fine, Jack. Really it’s-”

“You’re not fine,” His tone was firm, and the way he was looking up at you from where he knelt on the ground brooked no argument. And something about that steady gaze of his had you nodding and biting your lip as the emotions started to overwhelm you once more. 

Your eyes filled with tears that slowly began to stream down your cheeks before you gave way. Sliding off the edge of your bed and all but collapsing into Jack’s secure embrace as he held you tightly to him. As if he could hold you together even as you tried to crack into a billion pieces under the pressure of your own thoughts.

And he sat there with you, rubbing your back soothingly and not saying anything as you sobbed into his shoulder without explanation. He didn’t ask any questions but just accepted you, as he so often did. Serving as a support against the maelstrom of emotions you were currently experiencing.

Guilt, fear, sorrow, and even a little heartbreak. It was like you were mourning for all the things that you hadn’t let yourself consider since coming to Twisted Wonderland. It had been a long time coming, but you’d finally cracked under the pressure of everything and given way to your own feelings.

Slowly, you calmed down, though. Your sobs gave way to quiet sniffles before you leaned back and wiped your face as Jack met your gaze. He was still quiet as he watched you, continuing even now to rub your back in the most soothing manner possible.

His ears were down, and worry shone in his eyes, but he waited. Waited until you were ready.

“I’m sorry,” Your apology was mumbled, almost like your voice was still buried under the weight of all the emotions you’d just let loose, but Jack simply shook his head.

“It’s fine… Do you feel better now?” You nodded quietly, feeling oddly small in this moment, as you shifted backwards to give both him and yourself some room as the embarrassment and slight mortification of having just bawled on his shoulder like a small child set in.

But if Jack was judging you, he didn’t show it. Instead, he just continued to watch you carefully. Almost like he was trying to see where you were hurt even though there was no physical injury, “Do you want to talk about it?”

You shook your head again, “No… maybe later.” The two of you fell silent, you resting in his presence and Jack just sitting there and silently supporting you, even at a distance. Waiting until you were ready and willing to talk to him. Until then, he would be there waiting for you.

You glanced hesitantly at him, meeting his gaze once more, and he looked at you almost expectantly, waiting for whatever it was you had to say.

 “Can I… Lean on you?” It was an odd request in many ways, but it didn’t seem to phase him. In fact, he just nodded and held out one arm, fully prepared for you to cuddle up against his side and lean on him in exhaustion.

And as you leaned against him, tucked up against his side, safe and sound, you felt yourself slowly begin to relax and then, slowly but surely, smile despite yourself.

You had no idea how you'd questioned the people of this world... how everyone... how Jack cared for you. Because wasn’t this what love was? Sitting with someone, comforting them, and waiting until they were ready to talk to you.

And it was nice to let yourself rely on him for support, and there was a sort of catharsis to having finally let all of those messy emotions out in the form of tears. 

You would have to talk about it. You couldn’t just sob on Jack and then not explain it. And it would be hard to put all of those messy feelings into words, but you would. And when you did, you somehow knew that Jack would accept it.

Because even if you doubted and needed reassurance sometimes, it was a simple truth that Jack cared for you. And in the end, if it was with Jack, you knew you could face those emotions once more without drowning in them this time.

Because if Jack could wait for you like this, then you knew he cared for you just as much as you adored him. And that was enough.

[whatyourusherthinks]

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Review

What's The Movie About?

Lydia's grownup and has a punk kid of her own, and after her father dies she starts seeing Beetlejuice pop up again. Meanwhile, Beetlejuice's ex shows back up and starts hunting him down, causing him to become more desperate to marry Lydia, and Astrid (Lydia's daughter) meets a cute boy while dealing with the fact her mom can't see her dead dad.

What I Like.

Hoo man, I don't know where to start. Pretty much everything about this movie is great! The returning cast is excellent, Winona Ryder especially hasn't lost her touch. I like the expansion to the original story. I like how Lydia's daughter is all punk which bothers the goth Lydia the same way she bothered her parents in the first moment. There's some pretty nice moments between Lydia and Delia when Lydia is having trouble with Astrid, and I like the resolution at the end. Beetlejuice makes more of an appearance in this movie than he did in the first one, and he is slightly sanitized, but he's still pretty much the same character and Michael Keaton is super funny. He's just no longer groping women. (Which isn't a huge loss because those "jokes" weren't funny. That was the worst part of the first movie.) They actually go over his backstory in the movie, and it was hilarious. I wasn't expecting that scene to be as good as it was. Speaking of hilarity, the movie as a whole is extremely funny. They repeat a couple jokes from the first movie, mostly just physical gags, but the new characters and scenarios are hilarious. Willem Dafoe's character thinks he's in a noir and I loved him. Beetlejuice isn't the only thing they expand on, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice shows off more of the the afterlife and different types of ghosts. Plus, the movie looks super good. The effects are mostly practical, and show the 38 year time gap because they look so much better than the first movie. There's a point where they literally replace Willem Dafoe with a wax statue and I loved it. The story is nice, it has the same family reconnection story that the first one has but with biological family. I think it's nice. The finale is also a lot of fun, I like the song choice and watching everything collide with each other is entertaining. I did mention this movie is funny right? Because this movie is damn funny. There's a lot more background gags in this movie that I was constantly pointing out and laughing at. This movie is so good you guys.

What I Didn't Like.

There's some inconsistencies between the sequel that get handwaved away for kinda dumb reasons, but it's all either to cover-up actors who don't return (for a good reason *cough cough*) or to set-up the new story elements that I like, so I didn't mind. Honestly, probably only noticed because I was looking for things to nitpick. I wish they didn't ignore what I thought was the funniest joke of the first movie, but it's fine. Also, much like the first movie, it's just stuff happening and it feels random until the various plot points domino into the finale. That's fine, and it is a comedy so the structure is based around telling jokes, but it still suffers compared to 90% of other movies. Also, Tim Burton directs the movie. It has a random racist moment in the movie. The second in inevitable with the first. I dunno, I feel like I'm hand waving a lot of the problems with this movie, but it's coming up on Halloween at time of writing. I was just feeling the spooky spirit and enjoying the laughs.

Final Summation.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is damn good. It might be the second best movie that has come out this year. Maybe this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to reviews, but I was somewhat surprised on how much I liked it. I like it maybe slightly less than the first one, but it depends on when you catch me. My father, who's a big fan of the original, likes this one more, so take that as you will. Either way, I don't think you can go wrong with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, check it out!

[dathen]

Honestly I attribute most of the "Jon is stupid" takes to the Just World Fallacy. People want to believe he's stupid or cruel or misguided, because if his decisions are ultimately obvious mistakes, they can rest assured they would not make the same choice and would be safe from the terror and pain he goes through. It runs counter to /literally everything else/ about the podcast and the stories we're shown but if he "deserves" it somehow, then all they have to do to be safe is not "deserve" it

This has been in my inbox for a bit but it's ALWAYS RELEVENT because it constantly keeps coming up.

This is SO TRUE THOUGH. It's a lot less prevalent post-160, but pre-160 it was common to see Elias's "you didn't know what you were choosing, but you DID choose this" unironically brought up as Wise Words to Live By in nearly every Jon analysis. Every torture, every violation, every heartbreak was "something Jon chose." Hell, I've even seen his Mr. Spider trauma at eight years old blamed on him, because "if he wasn't so picky he wouldn't have been given so many books."

After 160, when "Jon chose all of this" became "oh wait Jonah orchestrated this," the fandom takes turned on a dime to be about how stupid Jon was vs. how evil he was. Only a stupid person could be manipulated like that! (ignore how literally every other character has been manipulated, such as Basira being sent 'round the world over and over following Elias's orders) Only a stupid person couldn't protect his friends! (ignore how long he DID do everything to protect the others, how "Gertrude lost all her assistants" didn't repeat for him because he valued them so much, how several of them owe their lives and happiness to him) There's some weird unattainable gold standard of What Should Have Happened out there, and because the story doesn't go that way, Jon has to get the sole blame for it.

An especially aggravating instance was related to the Lonely mark. Martin chose not to kill Jonah, and was sent into the Lonely as bait, and Jon chose to follow and save him. Neither of them knew the stakes. Immediately after, Jon started getting saddled with fandom blame because "he should have known that he had been marked by every fear except the Lonely, and that something bad would happen if he saved Martin."  I don’t think that Martin chose to end the world, but his choice was part of the whole horrible manipulated domino effect, and...he just gets skipped over as a non-factor.  I've seen Jon get more blame than *Peter Lukas*, who allowed all this to happen by making the bet in the first place, and who could have just told Jon what Jonah was planning (but apparently he'd rather die instead), but....unironically gets framed as an "unsung hero" who tried to prevent the end of the world? MAKE IT MAKE SENSE

But it's easier to just say Jon brought it all on himself by not being smart enough or good enough, than to face the horror of a decent person doing as well as any of us could hope to, but still going through what he did.

(also every time I make a post like this a dozen vagueposts pop up in the tag about how I'm "excusing everything Jon ever did" and "am allergic to nuance" and "am trying to pretend he's a perfect hero," so I am heading all those off with the should-be-obvious assertion that I'm not pretending Jon is perfect, but rather insisting that the suffering he went through is undeserved, and that the blame that fandom and the characters saddle him with is disproportionate and unfair)

[springsaladgaming]

Progress Updated 9/1/2022 aka what day is it?

I'm think I might have missed a couple of updates? But I can't be sure. One of the many weird things about ADHD is that you plan to do a thing, like contact a friend or family member for example, and you keep saying to yourself, "I'll get to it later," and then next thing you know three months have passed and everyone else feels pissed off and neglected whereas you still feel like you talked to them just yesterday. And then apply that to everything else in your life too. Eating meals, showering, doing laundry, going grocery shopping—and it's different from depression, when you just don't have the energy or willpower to accomplish these things. Instead, you have every intention of doing them...on an infinite timeline. It can be a real shit show.

I bring it up because normally I'm pretty good at coping with this time perception difficulty and still getting things done, but lately I've been fatigued very frequently and have not been managing the quirks of my neurodiversity very well. That unfortunately includes me making these updates and working on my interactive fictions (both of them). I live in a place where September and August are the hottest months of the year, and right now my theory is that the heat is responsible for my lapses in self-management. It's a domino effect; I don't sleep very well, sleep deprivation sets off my chronic health issues which, though minor, make me less able to cope with other things. Like the sound of a fly buzzing up against a window across the house, for example. (The other day, there were about 40 flies buzzing around my kitchen, living room, and bedroom, and I wish that was an exaggeration. I almost lost my damn mind.) And then I'm so wound-up about those kinds of things that I can't devote the mental energy to managing my time well.

All that is to say that I haven't gotten much done on my WIPs lately. Even though they are on my mind constantly, setting aside the time to work on them has been hard. What work I have gotten done has been mostly on paper—the tactility of wring in pen is soothing and is one of the only things right now that's allowing me to work on Ninelives, but writing by hand is obviously slower and harder to substantiate in terms of the measurements we typically look to for works in digital form. I've been doing some plotting and some coding prep for Chapter 3, making note of routes and choices I want available. I wanted to have Chapter 2 finished by now, but it's not.

In light of everything I've just said, I don't want to officially go on hiatus or anything like that, but I want to set the expectation that progress will likely continue to be slow at least until the weather cools down. Thanks for your patience with me, and thanks to those of you who have continued to send me asks in the meantime. They help keep my mind focused on Ninelives, so I always enjoy getting them. (I have a couple still in my inbox, I will try my best to get to them soon!)

As always, hope everyone is doing well and staying safe out there!

[solena2]

So.

Tommy isn’t Theseus. Every time I see Techno’s analogy about Tommy being Theseus brought up I’m filled with endless rage and I’ve DECIDED!

That it’s about time I explained just why it’s so objectively incorrect.

-

First: a bit of backstory on Theseus, because I doubt many of you actually know much about him beyond what Techno said in his “so you want to be a hero” speech, which left out a lot of relevant details.

Theseus was a demigod with two fathers and one mother. His fathers were king Aegeus of Athens and the sea god Poseidon, and his mother was Aethra, Aegeus’ wife. Aethra raised Theseus on her own, far from Athens to avoid him being assassinated.

Aegeus left him nothing but a sword with the Athenian crest and a pair of sandals, buried under a rock so no one else could get them.

When Theseus came of age, he took the sword and sandals and headed up to Athens, slaying various monsters along the way. (It pains me to abbreviate it that much, but Techno left out everything before the Minotaur so it won’t help me much in debunking his analogy.)

Once he got to Athens, he met up with his dad, chased out his stepmom Medea, (yes, that Medea) and killed some people. Then comes the relevant part.

Crete had won a war against Athens a while back, and because of this, every seven years Athens was forced to send 14 tributes to be killed by the Minotaur. (Yes, this inspired the Hunger Games)

Theseus decided he’d volunteer and kill the Minotaur, thus ending the tribute system for good and getting one over on Athens. He promised his dad that if he won, he’d come back in a ship with white sails, as opposed to the standard mourning black that signified the death of the tributes.

So he went to Crete, met king Minos and his daughters Ariadne and Phaedra, and got sent into the labyrinth. Ariadne gave him a magic ball of string that kept him from getting lost, allowing him to find the Minotaur and then safely get out afterwards, providing he could kill it.

He killed it, led his other 13 tributes out, and sailed back home. On the way, Athena told him to leave Ariadne stranded on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, so he immediately did so, because Theseus was an asshole.

He got home, his dad committed suicide because Theseus forgot the white sails and his dad assumed he’d died, Theseus became king and married Phaedra, and then the fun began, because again, Theseus was an asshole.

First, he cheated on Phaedra with Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, so she left and took the kids. Next, he and his other asshole friend Pirithous decided to kidnap themselves some new wives. Theseus decided on Helen of Troy, who was a child at the time, and Pirithous decided on Persephone, which resulted in both him and Theseus getting stuck in the Underworld for a while due to pissing off Hades.

Once he got back up, he killed his son for fucking his wife, which is messed up on many levels, and then left Athens because his people were rightfully not super okay with that.

Then he goes and meets Lycomedes, who throws him off a cliff.

-

Next, let’s talk about Techno’s speech a bit.

He starts off by accusing Tommy of being a power hungry dictator (paraphrased), before asking him if he wants to be a hero.

Then, he provides what is apparently the archetypal example of heroism, something often associated with selflessness, kindness, and generally giving at least one singular solitary fuck about other people.

Theseus! Heroic hero who does heroic things, like, uhhh *checks notes* cheating on his wife, kidnapping children with plans to forcefully marry them, leaving people alone on tiny islands with no supplies, killing his kid, etc. etc...

So we’re off to a great start.

Then, he gives a short summary of Theseus’ life and times! He skips the first part of his life completely, which is hilarious to me because it’s the only time Theseus ever did anything actually heroic or selfless, and gets straight to the meat!

“Let me tell you a story, Tommy. A story of a man called Theseus. His country was in danger, he sent himself forward! Into enemy lines. He slayed the Minotaur! And saved his city. You know what they did to him, Tommy? They exiled him. He died in disgrace, despised by his people. That’s what happens to heroes, Tommy.”

-Technoblade

So first off, he doesn’t mention... really anything other than the Minotaur and the exile, which is leaving out a lot of relevant details, like why Theseus was exiled. (You know, killing his son in cold blood?)

Second, he doesn’t give details in general. Not that he should’ve given a full telling, or anything, but I’m always surprised by the shortness of this speech when I go back and listen to it. He pretty much just gives the barest bones of an argument and expects his audience to take it at face value. (Which they do, but it’s still bad practice)

From the more accurate (if still brief) summary if Theseus’ life I’ve just given, I’m sure you can see why this might be more than a bit dubious, as an analogy. Given cc!Technoblade is literally an English major, and doubtless knows significantly more about the myth than I do, I’d imagine this was never intended to be taken at face value.

Over and over again, c!Techno proves himself to be an unreliable narrator, and over and over again, the fandom at large takes his word as gospel.

-

Now, as far as a more in depth argument for Tommy as Theseus goes, I will attempt to debunk that as well, because there are some genuinely good points to be made.

First of all, most people make Dream out to be the Minotaur. Given the time this speech was made, I imagine Schlatt was the intended target of that, but with latter events in mind, Dream does make much more sense.

I’d say this is honestly pretty fair, but I don’t think Tommy takes the role of Theseus in that narrative. I’d argue he’s much more analogous to the role of Ariadne, giving the tools required to defeat Dream but ultimately not doing so through his own power, but because someone chose to take those tools and make use of them. This also provides the very interesting characterization of Punz as Theseus, which is an incredibly unique take that I hope some a Punz enthusiast does something with, because I don’t know enough about his lore to make a good analysis on that.

The idea of Schlatt as the Minotaur, as was probably intended by Techno at the time, makes much more sense, though I still think other characters fit the role better. Firstly, Schlatt wasn’t killed, he died of a heart attack, and if someone had killed him I think it’s more likely to have been Wilbur or Techno who did it than Tommy, as Tommy was still very hopeful and idealistic at the time, at least compared to his character now. You could posit Tommy as Ariadne again in this situation, given he was the one to mastermind the final charge, and though I think Tommy as Ariadne is an idea that’s worth further exploration, I’d say Fundy futs the Ariadne role here much better, with him giving the spy’s diary before being effectively shunned and left out in the cold by both Pogtopia and Manburg, much like Ariadne was abandoned in the original myth.

I’d posit the Theseus in this scenario as Techno, Wilbur, or possibly Philza, as they were the ones to actually kill things in the 16th, though Techno and Wilbur’s killings were more in the metaphorical sense, taking the second life of L’manburg.

As for the exile, Tommy exile was alike to that of Theseus only in concept. Both were sent from their kingdoms for a crime, resulting in a falling out with someone close to them, and had a precarious relationship with heights while they were gone, but that’s about where the similarities end and even then they’re superficial.

First of all, Tommy’s exile was far more because Dream was looking for an excuse to do it than because briefing actually means anything on the SMP, given how Dream had been griefing bases and blaming Tommy for it for a while before it went down. (Fun fact, Bad and Skeppy were going to burn one of his discs over this, but one of them got sick so they had to cancel the stream.)

Theseus’ exile, on the other hand, was entirely deserved, especially when you consider how serious a crime killing family was in Ancient Greek culture. It was pretty much the biggest no-no in existence, and I’m almost surprised he wasn’t just straight up executed for it.

Second, Tommy’s falling out with Tubbo was almost entirely due to outside forces, (Dream) rather than because anything Tommy had done. Though Tommy’s cavalierness towards the trial and attempts to threaten Dream with Spirit doubtless didn’t help things, Dream surrounding L’manburg in obsidian walls and threatening them to exile Tommy was entirely his own choice, and not something that can be pinned on Tommy, no matter what the apologists may say.

Meanwhile, Theseus’ falling out with Phaedra had begun long before his exile with him cheating on her. Him killing his son was merely the last in a long line of dominos to completely destroy their relationship.

Last, Tommy nearly killing himself is very different from Theseus being pushed off a cliff. Tommy’s near suicide was the direct result of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of c!Dream for what was canonically, I believe, several months? (Correct me if I’m wrong on that one.) Tommy almost jumping off a pillar because he was deliberately isolated from his support systems is nothing like Theseus being killed because he was a cocky asshole who thought he was god.

-

So that’s why I don’t think Tommy is anything like Theseus, and why I’m filled with endless rage by the completely uncritical acceptance of this parallel, but it’s not the whole reason it pisses me off.

It also pisses me off because, as stated earlier, cc!Techno is an English major. He knew what he was doing with this. The fandom’s insistence on refusing to acknowledge his character as an unreliable narrator is, in my opinion, acting as a massive kneecap to what could be a great analysis of how he thinks.

Specifically: why does c!Technoblade think Tommy is like Theseus?

Of all the Greek heroes to pick, why that one? Was it just the tantalizing opportunity to parallel Schlatt with a horned monster, or was it because c!Techno has some genuine in-character reason to think this myth specifically applies to Tommy.

Now, we all know people in the SMP have a habit of analogizing Wilbur and Tommy. The assumption Tommy wanted to be president, the belief that Tommy nominated Tubbo directly, the belief that he was intentionally deceiving Techno about Pogtopia’s intentions regarding Manburg... all of these stem from Wilbur. There are more cases of this, of course, but several analyses have been done in the subject already, and this is long enough without more padding.

So why does Techno think Tommy is Theseus? Well, it’s simple, isn’t it?

Wilbur is Theseus.

To be continued, because this is already too long and my brain hurts.

[yourlocalcatholic]

How do you make the decision to go from pagan to catholic? What was the breaking point that told you it wasn’t right?

I’m no witch, never been comfortable with the use of magic so I never honestly practiced anything. But like I’ve called myself pagan for years and never have I found a community where I didn’t feel like an outsider. I’ve talked to many pagans, introduced my best friend into it and watching him get so into it in a almost obsessed way has made me feel even more so like an outsider. Sometimes I can tell he’s disappointed that I don’t see the beauty in the magic or tarot like he does. I’ve been feeling so lost and my family has never been church goers so it’s not like I have any idea how I’m supposed to go about any of it. 

Early on when I was exploring Christianity again, I came to an impasse. I realized that there simply was no way to have a foot in both worlds; there was no way I could be both pagan and Christian. I had a choice: the Christian God or the pagan gods. At first it started out as “well I’ll just take a break from paganism to explore Christianity and see where that takes me”, but that quickly developed into a complete renouncement of my pagan past. What started out as “dipping my toe in the waters” soon became submersion. 

What happened between the toe-dip and the submersion was a lot of research and a lot of prayer. I read the Catechism that my RCIA director gave me and buried myself into Scott Hahn’s books. I had a list of topics that I disagreed with the Catholic Church on, and one by one I researched the Church’s teachings on each of those topics. One by one, the teachings of the Church trumped my previously held beliefs. Granted, before my conversion I knew very little about what I actually believed (in regards to topics such as abortion, marriage, sex, etc.). The worldview I once adhered to as a pagan crumbled, and I no longer could defend staying with my pagan gods. 

I definitely know where you’re coming from. No matter what pagan community I found myself in, I felt like an outsider. I too felt lost and unfulfilled. Because I lacked connections, it was rather easy for me to disappear from my pagan circles as I explored Christianity. My family was never big about religion or church either, so I was completely alone in my pursuits. I just decided one day to email a local church, show up to Mass one evening, and from there it became a domino effect. I soon signed up for my parish’s RCIA class, found myself a sponsor, and with each passing day I became more and more enveloped into Christianity. 

If I had to summarize, the main reasons why I chose Christianity over paganism are as follows:

1. Paganism left me spiritually starved. No matter how many offerings I gave, how many prayers I said, how much devotion I gave to the gods, I was in constant desolation. My mental, emotional, and spiritual health were devoid of life as a pagan. The Bible, on the other hand, answers my emotional needs more so than any other religion or psychologist.

2. The teachings of Christ are infinitely more reliable and truthful than the teachings of the pagan gods that I followed. I realized that the worldview perpetuated by the pagan gods was not the truth. Rather, truth was in Christ alone. Everything that the Bible and the Church teaches has the ring of truth to it. C.S. Lewis perfectly captures how we must approach Christ: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” 

3. The historical evidence of Christ’s life AND His Resurrection cannot be ignored. There is so much evidence of the Resurrection that any historian would say that it absolutely did happen, but they reject it because it is a supernatural act.

[kiingocreative]

The Structure of Story is now available! Check it out on Amazon, via the link in our bio, or at https://kiingo.co/book

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The More You Learn, The Less You Know

"I know nothing." That's what I say to myself when I'm stuck. It's my go-to Socratic writer's block motivational quote. Most writers usually have that critic inside trying to bait them into procrastinating or, worse, giving up when they hit a crossroads in their writing. It happens to me when I start overthinking and ask myself, "what happens next?" What a scary thought. If my character chooses door A, they might not complete the journey I started them on. If I choose door B, they might lose some of their uniqueness that makes them relatable. If I decide on door C, oh, screw it, I should just give up because I'm lost! And despite all the screenplays I've read, books I've obsessed over, and podcasts I've listened too I still don't know what to do next. If you're a writer, I know what you're thinking "Sounds like my Tuesday night breakdowns."

We all agonize over the choices our characters make. We all start to feel like we know nothing. We're just a bunch of aimless Jon Snows with our mighty ink swords roaming the backwoods of creativity in our minds looking for the perfect scene to write. But it doesn't have to be that hard. First, admit to yourself that you know nothing: "zero, zip, zilch, nada." If you know that you know nothing, then you're teachable. If you know nothing, there's an answer, and there's a tool out there somewhere that someone has created for you to learn and use ad nauseam until you get sick of it or learn to use it appropriately. Sounds too good to be true, right? That's just your inner critic at the wheel. Slap that judgmental procrastinator and get back in the driver's seat.

I know nothing, but I do know this...dun dun dunnnn! The more I learn about writing, the less I feel I know. Not because I forget tools or rules, even though sometimes I do, but because I understand that the world of writing and the ways to do it are endless. I can keep learning! It's ok to pick a writing book like "Save the Cat" and attempt to write a "paint by numbers" type of screenplay. I've done it, and I made a pretty funny, some would say, a decent little indie flick by just trying it out and learning from it. I find most screenwriting books to be equals because you can learn a new tool from any of them.

"Give us a tool already!" I feel you murmuring, reader, so here's some practical wisdom.

Marry Your Scenes

One of the biggest reasons we get stifled as writers is because we don't remember one fundamental guiding principle of storytelling: causality.

Causality? Yes, causality, the relationship between cause and effect. The principle that everything has a cause.

Every choice we force our characters to make should have a consequence, and therefore the consequence can help you set up your next scene. I don't want to over-simplify this, but let's see what happens if I do. If two people get married, what happens next? What comes to mind? Do they celebrate with their loved ones? Good? What else? What happens next? Do they go on their honeymoon? Great! What happens on their honeymoon? They make love? Excellent, or one of them gets too drunk, leaving the other to order room service and watch an overpriced movie. It's very much like a domino effect. Each one of those events happened because of the one preceding it. Marry your scenes to each other and understand why the choices are being made–and what consequences can occur because of them.

Where do you go from here? Well, if we use our newlyweds, maybe our sober character leaves the room to get some ice or puff a "J". This could lead to their getting arrested by island police without identification in her wedding dress. Or if it's the man, he runs into his high school girlfriend who's on a business trip on the same island and wants to go for a drink to catch up. All of this is just because one of our characters couldn't monitor their alcohol. Consequences to actions, to choices, are everywhere in your writing. Write a few and pick the most interesting ones. Which ones are those? The ones that make you smile, laugh, cry, or squirm. All of which will lead you to the next scene.

Background on These Thoughts

During the pandemic last year, I was fortunate to get a reduced price "writing scholarship" at the Jacob Kruger writing studio. On top of that, I started learning how to speed read so that I could consume as much written writing advice as possible, never to have an issue breaking a story or creating a helpful scene.

Consequently, I started writing more and more every day without fear of messing up or writing a bad scene. Could it be because I was reading and writing every day? Was I applying all the little things I was learning? Was it slowly becoming second nature? The answer's; yes. I read everything! My wife, an exceptional RN, was in the ER fighting off the plague. My industry was shut down, so as I stayed home with our kids trying to keep from going stir crazy, I read books and articles to them out loud until they started booing me or to myself, until my eyes needed a break. I read many things on Dan Harmon's story circle, the: "But & Therefore Rule" by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, listened to John August and Craig Mazin, and went on Kiingo's Instagram live discussion to participate, and see what else I could learn, watched old movies, new movies, read scripts I was a machine.

I have since written and co-written three feature-length screenplays, a handful of pilots, live-action and animation, and a couple of short films. Writing is HARD, but finding rules and tools to apply to your writing isn't.

Rule-Tools

Here are a few things I picked that were reinforced and to keep in mind when writing a scene. In every scene, you must know what your characters want and what they need; if you know their wants creating an obstacle that fuels causality is pretty straightforward.

So try the following:

1. If you know what they want, GIVE IT to them, and therefore what is the consequence? (There are many)

2. If you know what they want, but you DON'T GIVE IT to them, what is the consequence? (There are many)

3. If you know what they want, but GIVE THEM SOMETHING NEW instead and see if this stops them from wanting their original want. (How strong is their want? Strong enough to continue to pursue it? It better be if your movie is any good.) What is the consequence? (There are many)

4. If you know what they want, GIVE THEM a part of it but make them sacrifice something for it, and therefore what happens? (Maybe it's too expensive, maybe it's too embarrassing, perhaps it could hurt someone they love.) Consequences just start falling out of the sky once they MAKE A CHOICE!

Try applying one of these four rule-tools to your scenes and watch as your characters create their story and structure for you. I promise it works. Next time I'll show you how to combine these rule-tools to something like Dan Harmon's Story Circle.

Then again, I know nothing.

[arlingtonpark]

SNK 139 Review Part I: On Eren Jeager and Genocide

Why?

Why is this happening?

Folks, I’m going to be honest here: there are no words for this. The main thrust of this chapter is completely inexplicable. It’s stupid. It’s ill conceived. FML.

Just…just the term itself is laughable.

Eren redemption arc.

Sksksksksksksksksksksk

After everything he’s done, everyone he’s killed, you’re going to try redeeming Eren in the final chapter?

Eren didn’t need to be redeemed. He was a bullheaded kid who didn’t let anyone stop him from doing what he thought needed to be done. He sees the titans outside the walls as enemies to be exterminated. When he learns that his real enemies are other humans, who have a right to freedom as much as he does, he can’t accept it and decides to just exterminate them too. That mindset led him down a tragic path of genocide.

That’s not a bad character arc!

In fact, I’d say it’s very compelling. Nonconformity and obstinance are often presented as virtues; flipping that paradigm on its head and showing the vices of those virtues was legitimately smart and provocative.

Making people rethink what traits are virtues and vices is a great moral to the story, and it paired well with the other moral of cooperation and loving your fellow people.

Then this chapter came out, and they threw all that away.

Eren’s arc once made me think of Aristotle, who argued that true virtue lied between extremes: neither too submissive nor too rebellious.

Now Eren’s arc makes me think of pseudointellectual 4chan philosophy, and dumb teenagers: “He’s not a bad guy, he’s just human!!!”

Eren’s motivations are a mess now. He had no free will, but he also had a plan, but deep down he wanted to do the rumbling no matter what, but actually he really wanted to be with Mikasa.

Oh, and B T dubs, he killed his mom too.

You can tell Isayama is desperate to make Eren as sympathetic as possible to justify making him the anti-hero because he’s throwing everything he can pull out of his ass at Eren.

Really, though, all he ended up doing was smearing shit on the character.

Eren’s plan was to kill a significant part of the human population so the world wouldn’t be as overwhelming a threat as before. Simultaneously, he planned (“planned”) for the alliance to become vaunted heroes to the world when they killed him, thus paving the way to peace.

This…makes no sense?

There is no reason Eren should have believed this would work. During the battle of Trost, Pixis asked him if humanity could unite if threatened by a common enemy. Eren said no.

Eren is a pessimist about people. He sees how much the walldians fought with each other and concluded that people would always be at odds.

And the Tybur family helped defeat the Eldian Empire, but only the Tyburs were seen as heroes by the Marleyans. That good will was not imputed from the Tyburs to the other Eldians on the continent. There’s no reason to think that would happen here when it didn’t back then.

I’m assuming, anyway, that the alliance becoming heroes is supposed to lead to a world where Paradis is safe since that’s supposed to be Eren’s goal.

I’m willing to grant that maybe this part of Eren’s plan was more of a hope on his part. Peace would come only after his death, so he can’t truly “plan” for anything afterwards.

I think it’s safe to say that killing the world’s population was the main part of his plan, since that’s the part he had the most control over.

To the extent he had any control over his actions, which brings me to the next point.

So, turns out Eren had no free will.

Can you not feel Isayama’s desperation?

After all the awful things Eren’s done, Isayama’s brilliant idea to make him sympathetic is to strip him of all agency.

This is done by two routes throughout the chapter.

The first is by building him up as a victim. Eren’s mind is fucked; he can’t really control himself. Any decent person would feel pity for him, which is reinforced by the sorrow Armin visibly feels for him.

Then, like a shotgun blast to the face, we are told that Eren killed his mother in a moment that is clearly supposed to endear us to him.

This is such a transparent appeal for our sympathy. Isayama’s desperation leaps off the page and mugs us of it.

The only thing that this revelation adds to the story is that it gives Armin a reason to take up Eren’s hand, and show him support. You can see Armin’s heart breaking for Eren in that moment.

That’s mostly why this is here: to give the mass murderer a hard luck story so our hearts melt for him.

The second route is that depriving Eren of agency absolves him of blame for what he did.

Eren beat Armin bloody, but you can’t really blame him for it. He was drugged out on the Founding Titan and didn’t want to do it. He was acting on impulse, just going with the flow, so he deserves, at the very least, some leniency.

Eren both having a plan and not having much in the way of free will is contradictory. Everyone still talks about Eren as if he’s someone who is doing stuff even though we’re told he’s not really capable of rational decision making.

I’m going to be nice and assume Isayama’s intent is that when you parse this all out, you end up in a place where Eren is not truly responsible for what he did, and in any event this all ended with the titan curse broken and the world at peace, sooooo break out the champagne everyone, we achieved world peace!

…

Yeah, bub, I’m not partying right now.

Isayama’s ploy to absolve Eren of blame didn’t work. Eren is still responsible for the people he killed and his Founding Titan lobotomy counts for shit. Turns out it helps to know how free will works when you’re writing about free will.

Free will is the quality of being in control of your actions, at least to the extent necessary to be held responsible for them.

Eren was just going with the flow (wonder what Annie thought of that…), acting on impulse, and getting dragged along by fate, but that’s not actually important.

It’s been known for centuries that current events are caused by previous events and that the current events will bring about future events in a never ending chain of cause and effect. One domino causes another to fall causes another to fall and on and on. This is called determinism.

And that’s ok because we free will exists. It exists even if we can’t do anything other than what we are going to do. It exists in spite of, or even arises out of, determinism.

This premise, that free will and determinism are not mutually exclusive, is the foundation for a family of theories about free will called compatibilism.

Compatibilist free will is the most popular theory of free will. There are a couple of variations on the basic idea, but the gist is that free will exists when your actions can be linked to an aspect of yourself that you identify with.

For example, if you had no choice but to do something, but you’re ok with that because it’s what you wanted anyway, then you have free will.

Even if I didn’t know you’d stop me in the end, I think I still would have flattened this world. 

-Eren Jeager

That’s all I needed to hear.

EREN, FUCK YOU!!!!

Eren had free will, at least as much as necessary to blame him for his genocide.

Isayama threw this curveball at us and all it did was ruin Eren as a character while leaving him just as repugnant as before. Incredible. It’s the worst of both worlds.

Before this chapter Eren was a guy who believed in something and followed that belief no matter who got in his way. That was great! It was tragic and sad, but great storytelling.

Where does this chapter leave us?

What we learn in this chapter is that Eren didn’t really believe in anything. He may have free will enough to be a shithead for what he did, but that doesn’t mean he has free will enough to be an interesting character.

Eren coming to grips with him not being free, in an absolute sense, would have been so much more interesting than what we got. Eren started the series comparing humanity to cattle in a pen. He ends the series being literally sheparded by fate to his death like cattle to a slaughterhouse.

And yet we get no exploration of that at all.

It’s lame. Everything about this is lame. From a storytelling perspective, Eren was just along for the ride. Who would want to reread this series now? A story about a boy who’s quest for freedom neither ends tragically nor happily, but is just forgotten about by the end. What’s the point?

There is none.

Eren’s journey ends up lost in the author’s own ignorance of the very thing this is supposed to be about.

Unfortunately, SNK isn’t interested in 80% of the world being dead. If it were, Eren wouldn’t have gotten such a warm send off.

I was honestly shocked when I read this chapter.

I thought it had been made clear. SNK had come firmly down against genocide. I never imagined Isayama would try a 180 in the final chapter.

And, well, he did, and here we are.

SNK is pro-genocide.

To wit:

Once Eren’s abominable plan is explained to everyone, he is lavished with love and comfort by his friends.

Armin did punch Eren for being callous about Mikasa, but overall all Armin had nothing but sympathy and understanding for Eren. They held hands and hugged and gave Eren a tender farewell.

All they talk about is how great a sacrifice Eren is making.

Not the sacrifice of 80% of all people, but the sacrifice that Eren personally is making of himself.

I don’t know what deranged mindset Isayama has that made him think this was sensible, but no, Eren is not sacrificing anything. He was always going to die. We’ve known this for several dozen chapters. It’s not a sacrifice to befall the fate you were always going to suffer.

He lost nothing. If anything, he gained from this ending.

Eren died knowing he was loved and appreciated by his friends. What more could a dying man ask for?

Eren is rewarded by the story for killing 80% of humanity.

His ultimate fate was no worse than was expected even before he committed the genocide, and he went out in the knowledge that his friends loved him for it.

It doesn’t even make logical sense that his friends would be so receptive to what he did.

There is no difference between Eren’s plan and what we thought Eren’s plan was before this chapter came out.

Armin thought Eren’s plan was to murder humanity to ensure his safety, and Armin was appalled. Armin was willing to sacrifice his life to ensure Eren failed. He was truly acting for the greater good of humanity.

In this chapter, Armin learns that Eren’s plan is actually to murder most of humanity to ensure his safety, and Armin loves him.

Again, hand holding, hugging, “thank you.” No mention of the unfathomable harm caused. The 80% killed are not even a footnote in this chapter.

Even after the fact, Eren’s friends showed no qualms with Eren essentially winning and procuring their safety through genocide.

When previously the mere thought of that was what motivated them to lay down their lives to stop him.

I don’t think Isayama believes this genocide is supposed to bear on how we think of Eren. I say, having just read the chapter that’s all about Eren, in which his genocide doesn’t bear on how his friends think of him. At all.

Was that too great a leap in logic? I apologize if my rationality offends you.

Eren may have died, but he won in the end.

His friends are safe and the world looks set to conclude a peace treaty with Paradis.

I don’t buy for a second that the world is a threat to Paradis anymore, and I don’t buy for a second that there won’t be a peace shortly after the end of the story.

It’s very telling, to me, that it’s the world that’s come to grovel at Paradis’ feet, begging for peace, when previously it was the other way around.

The contours of this “peace,” if you can call it that, were made pretty clear in the epilogue. The world is in ruins while Paradis is stronger than ever, so the world sues for peace for fear of Paradis attacking further. 

This is the moral of the story. Frankly, it’s been staring at us in the face the whole time.

How do you end the cycle of violence?

The answer is to win. To be stronger. More determined.

The only peace is enforced peace through domination.

Peace through the barrel of a gun.

To be continued in part II (and possibly part III)

[arcadialedger]

How Catra and Zuko have been saving me lately: A (sort of) meta

A very long, personal post under the cut. This is really important to me, and I could really use some support, so if you could take the time to read and reblog that would be greatly appreciated. I just want to reach out.

Once again, please PLEASE read. I really need help.

Recently, I’ve found myself desperately latching onto the characters of Zuko and Catra, as many have in the past. To put it simply, I’m in one of the most difficult times of my life right now.

I’m transferring colleges because I was doxed by an online hate mob (long story) , and in general because I just didn’t belong at my old school. I went to three different high schools, moved around a whole bunch, and I don’t really belong anywhere. All of my friends are far away, my parents are busy working and I’m alone.

I just feel like I’m wandering aimlessly in darkness, unloved and unsure where to go. I’m faced with making a huge decision about my future with this transfer, and I’m terrified. Terrified I won’t make the right choice, and terrified it won’t be the newfound happiness I so desperately need it to be. But most of all, I’m terrified of being unwanted and alone again, wherever I go.

I’m used to not being wanted. I’m 4’10, not thin, and have been tossed aside because of my appearance my entire life. I’m 20 years old and haven’t been kissed (how pathetic is that). I moved schools and stayed in my room depressed because I never got to lay down roots and establish a foundation. Hell, I never even got to live as a teenager. I’m just behind and broken.

I was hoping Tumblr would be my place, where I could write and analyze and showcase my talents. Be wanted for once. For a while, it looked like it might be. Then a friend blocked me and made a callout post, due to me having a different opinion on a sensitive matter, and a domino effect began. I lost more friends and half of the fandom we’re both in blocked me seemingly at their word. I had featured this friend on an episode of my podcast at, had many fond memories chatting with them, and even bought a zine to support them. The loss hurt, and I was cut off from one of the few things I had. It was all taken away from me. My growth halted as I dealt with months of online abuse: including death threats, suicide baiting (these people knowing I’ve struggled with being suicidal), aphobic slurs (knowing I’m ace), mocking and editing images of my face. My Twitter was hacked, I lost podcast deals with creatives who my friends who blocked me and started all of this went on to interview because of said hacking, and I was threatened to be doxed. I suffered blow after blow while the people who hurt me grew and were rewarded, allowed a place here, and this continues to this day. The damage remains. I have to self reblog a whole bunch to get my content remotely seen in the algorithm.

Because my entire life, it feels I’ve never been allowed a win. I’ve never been allowed to have and keep anything good. I’m short and ugly, talentless with nothing to give to the world, my family has no money so I haven’t gotten to travel or experience a lot of things. I’ve spent my entire life envious of the “hot skinny girls” who’ve been wanted and dating since high school, who live in McMansions and get to go on vacations.

When I work to make good content on Tumblr and build a following talking about what I’m passionate about? It’s taken from me. When I work hard to get into my old college’s honors program and earn a trip to Greece which I could otherwise never afford, a global pandemic comes along and makes sure I don’t get that kind of positive experience in life.

I’m used to it all, being worn down and unwanted and losing. I’ve gone my entire life behind, lesser, and not enough.

And that’s why I’m so scared. I have a big decision to make, I’m at my own crossroads, and I desperately need all of this to come together for me this year. I’ve gone so long without happiness and love. I need this to be the light at the end of the tunnel, newfound happiness. I need to find newfound happiness. All I want is to escape the darkness, find peace of mind and function day to day doing the things I love without being stressed.

So when I see Zuko— so angry at the world for being given the short stick, abused, and never making things easy, and Catra— driven mad by comparison and feeling as though the world takes away everything from her? Gosh, I feel it so hard.

Because that’s just what I do. I get angry at the world for making things so hard for me. I compare. I feel like the world just takes and takes and never gives me a win. And so I’m never happy. I feel their pain and loneliness so deeply, and I’m terrified that I’m the villain because of it. I cry at the anguish and self loathing in their eyes because I have been there. I AM there. 

Like Zuko comparing to Azula, I feel lesser because the world has constantly told me I am so. I feel cheated and given the short end of the stick, as though life has it out for me. I get angry and lash out from my pain.I’m desperate for validation from people who can never give it to me. I’m so scarred from my past, I can’t believe I have a future. 

Like Catra, I’m always left behind. I’m lonely and driven mad by the unfairness of the world. It takes and takes until I’ve lost it all, but it never gives. I’m so afraid of losing anyone and anything else, I refuse to let anyone in. Because why would I deserve love? There’s nobody who wants me, no purpose for me on this world. I’m nothing, just constantly chasing an impossible goal of perfection to justify my existence. 

“You drive them away, wildcat”

Yeah, I know their hurt. I know what it all feels like. To be that broken, that insecure, that left behind and unwanted. The punching bag of fate. These characters suffering is so much of my own.

And that’s why they’re the only thing to give me hope.

Seeing them be where I am now, and where they end up, I allow myself to believe that maybe, just maybe, that can be my future. That I’ll get a happy ending. It gives me the courage to believe that what I’m so desperately striving for can happen. 

Zuko standing up to his father and forging his own path in life, which leads him to a better place as he finds his destiny and happiness after so many years of torment. We both have scars-- if he can overcome his, why can’t I?

Catra, after so many years of struggle, taking agency over her life back from those to abused her, and finally learning to accept the love of those around her. Opening up to pain and rejection and ultimately being forgiven. Catra felt so lonely, unable to see the love around her-- maybe I’ve been doing the same thing. Maybe I’ll find the strength to take my life into my own hands and find my own love.

It’s so empowering, a flicker of light in what feels like eternal darkness. I am so worn out and broken. I’ve never had love, or learned to love myself. In the real world, it is find to find hope.

It is only in these characters, who have felt my pain and found their way to a better place, that I find comfort.

I am one of so many who have been touched by these characters arcs, and they are one of the purest examples of why stories are important. Why the emotions narrative can evoke are important. It is not only escapism, it opens up a door to critical self introspection that can make a real difference in our lives. It holds up a black mirror of our lives, providing an outside view of our deepest, darkest emotions and struggles which can be so hard to understand when they’re inside. 

These characters, and their stories: insecurity, abuse, doubt, comparison, chasing validation, just wanting to find your purpose in life and happiness-- they are the stories of life, stripped down to it’s rawest emotions. 

There is power in redemption. There is power in rising from the bottom. 

As I said in my last post about Catra and Zuko:

“Their stories: being angry at the world, driven mad by comparison and a need for validation, making wrong choices, processing trauma, needing help but being too scared to open up and accept it, feeling as though they don’t deserve love or forgiveness, fighting to restore and maintain valued relationships, convincing themselves they’ve lost it all, feeling conflicted or confused, realizing what they thought they wanted isn’t fulfilling and hasn’t brought happiness, escaping years of mental conditioning which told them they were worthless, not seeing the love they have right before them, constantly fighting uphill for a life which seems to throw everything it can at them… Well, isn’t that just the most human story of all? And so their redemptions give us hope.”

I have been so lost and lonely for so long, and now I’m at a crossroads. I’m so scared to believe that this change, this new path, can lead to a better place, but these characters? They give me strength to. They give me faith.

This has been a rambling post of feelings, and I am thankful to anyone who has read this far. I’m just so tired of feeling this way, and needed to reach out and share this. If you are also feeling this way, know you are not alone. You are so very far from alone.

I just really don’t want to feel unwanted and unloved, like I don’t belong, anymore. I want to have a place here. I probably sound desperate because I feel that way. I don’t know how else to cry out for help other than sharing this.

 If anyone wants to message or send asks about this, please feel free to do so. I want, and very much need, to talk. 

[agoddamn]

When did "hyperspace lanes" become a thing, anyway? I get that they're there to be a proxy for traditional territory grabs because the war we're familiar with does not map well to space (I've gone on about this before, cough), but I don't remember them in the movies. I vaguely remember "hyperspace corridor" being tossed around in the EU pre-TCW, but I always got the impression that those were more rough delineations of popular/traversible routes than something you can blockade and hold

Wasn't the test in the Domino Squad ep called the Citadel?

"He's picking and choosing which assignments I can be a part of!" Yes, Ahsoka... that's basic decision-making??

Plo has a logo on his vambrace like Obi-Wan. Sasae Tiin does, too

"It's not his decision when and how I put my life in danger; it should be my choice." Well, the one running the op gets to assess who's gonna be the most useful on the op. Aside from that, though, does the concept of being a minor literally not exist in Star Wars? It would... explain a lot

How on earth did Ahsoka tag along when there were a limited number of freezing machines

This whole episode having the mood of "oh, that willful Ahsoka!" rather than "you compromised this operation and people are dead" is why I don't entertain the "muh child soldiers" argument for more than a second; everything so blatantly runs on kids' show logic where teenagers do all sorts of deadly things because they're marketable

While Ahsoka's explaining herself, Obi-Wan chats with Cody in the background :3c

There's, what...Fives, Echo, Rex, Cody and two or three redshirts here?

The stiff disappointment in Cody's voice at "no jetpacks"

I like how Obi-Wan doesn't have to stop dangling off the edge because this motherfucker has no neck

As someone who's squeezed into small pipes before it's goddamn nerve-wracking. Ahsoka is very chill about all this

RIP Charger

...so it doesn't even matter that Ahsoka snuck them in if they immediately trip the alarm

Oh, there's more redshirts here than I thought

For like half a second when Anakin said "take out security" I thought they'd brought a slicer clone but the guy just fucking shoots a camera, lmao why did I think it would be anything else

RIP Longshot

Huh. It's Cody that stops for Longshot and Obi-Wan who tells him they have to go

>Cody tackles an assassin droid

IS YOUR GUN DECORATIVE??

Rare specific mention of officers, with all of them in one cell. Sucks to be the 99% non-officer crew complement, though

I love that deactivation shit is EXACTLY like KOTOR where someone just has their saber clip into it and uhhh sure that's "off"

"It's going to be impossible to escape" wow, what a quitter

RIP another 212th guy. He's half the man he used to be

In contrast to the usual assumption that Jedi are soft and ignorant, Piell here is...actually pretty OPERATOR. Made the best choices to protect the mission, pushed for the better escape route, never stops to bitch. Poor bastard, being stuck with Tarkin

I like how I can't stand this droid comedy but I find the HK factory hilarious

...the droid calls Artoo Commander. Does Artoo have rank? Is he an officer? I wouldn't put it past Anakin

SHIIIIIELD

Literally the most effective small arms setup in Star Wars and I bet we never see it again

RIP 212th rando #3. They gave up naming the cannon fodder after Longshot I suppose

Ahsoka looks like she has a natural inclination for gymnastics...and maybe a worse sense of smell? Everyone else in here is holding their nose

Tarkin why the fuck are you whining about the Jedi not being hardass enough when you literally have the most operator general, what the fuck

I like how I'm supposed to be extra sad about this dead clone when at least four guys have already bit it with no ceremony. Within thirty seconds Anakin is making quips about big explosions; there might have been a picture of a blasted helmet, but the narrative is untouched by death. A clone dying is not a big enough deal for the narrative to get somber over, so why should I care?

Oh so THIS is where that gif of Cody jumping on the droid and shooting it out from under his own feet is from

RIP to two or three more dudes, though at least one was in greys

Plo has these neat engravings on his rebreather. It's a nice touch, for an assistive device that's a regular part of life to get decorated like a regular part of life

"What if your Jedi friends aren't there when we arrive?" Then you die, like you were going to ANYWAY, fucking hell you're a whiner

"either way, he is a good captain" no he the fuck ain't, keeping up morale is part of being a leader. Has one of Piell's clones even spoken? They've died, but they didn't get to talk

These guys are talking like they found out they're sharing the same sugar daddy

RIP one...two? more of Piell's guys. Couldn't tell if that second one got back up after Piell jumped in front of him

There's two grays left, which means--wait, one of them is Tarkin

THEY WIPED OUT MY WHOLE SQUAD: 卌 ||||

... and the last gray dies for Tarkin. Imagine getting captured, probably tortured, and then dying in the extraction zone to save Tarkin

Oh wait, Fives deserves a tick too (you know, to the best of his knowledge)

THEY WIPED OUT MY WHOLE SQUAD: 卌卌

Touching moral about how sometimes you force your way into a mission you're not qualified for out of ego and damn near everyone dies but you're now the most important part of the mission! Wew

Oh wow, is there one more grey left alive after all? The little clone that could. No, I shouldn't jinx him...

So, to recap: the objectives were to recover Piell and stop the Separatists from getting the coordinates

Piell is dead

Piell's entire officer complement save the world's biggest cockmunch is dead

All of the clone strike team aside from the battalion leaders and Fives are dead

You lost like fifteen guys, including a Jedi, and recovered three people, none of whom were who you were sent to rescue

But they got the coordinates...I guess...

:Wilhelm:

Coburn is Plo's admiral?

Oh my GOD the Plo's Bros noseart is so cute

I like how they're talking about how Anakin and Tarkin are brilliant military men and there's zero mention of how much of this shit got carried by Piell

Is this show...strawmanning...itself?

[greenninjagal-blog]

Deja Vu pt6

Hey guys! Surprise!! Have twenty pages of Dee picking a fight on TV. For those who are new around, [here’s] the first chapter and for those who need a refresher [here’s] the previous chapter! 

Summary: Remus and Dee confront The Prince on live TV. Things go downhill rather quickly.

Word Count: 10447

TW: temporary character death, blood, 

Read on Ao3 || My General Writing Masterlist

Remus is twenty-one and he thinks that people might not actually be worth saving at all. 

There’s an electricity in the air, a buzzing so loud that he can almost taste it as he shifts his weight between his feet. There are so many people around him, nearly too many, packed together like sardines in all the crevices that they can fit. Remus wants so badly to kick his leg out just to see if with one nudge he could toppled the human domino train down all the way, but Dee gives his hand a small, gentle squeeze.

His hand is warm, his touch intoxicating in a way that no drug could ever hope to be. Remus has felt it before, in futures that never happened, but it still feels unreal as it's going on. He thinks maybe, possibly that he’s stuck right now, right this second and that his real body is somewhere else bleeding out on the ground.

But he also thinks, traitorously, stupidly, suicidally, that he doesn’t mind as long as he gets to keep feeling Dee’s hand in his right now.

Dee’s touch is featherlight, but Remus is hyperaware of every atom in his body at these moments: Dee goes on to talk about so many things, but Remus’s brain only hears touch, warmth, Dee, Dee, Dee. And the Shapeshifter has to say his name at least four times before Remus realizes that time is passing and he’s not passing with it.

It should be annoying-- Remus thinks that Roman would have tried throttling him by now--but Dee just gives him a wispy, honeyed smile and does it again, like seeing Remus short circuit is somehow the best sight in the world.

Which is sweet, sugary, splendid. It might even mean that Dee intends to stick around after those feelings fade away to the bitter acquired taste that is Remus’s company after a year. So very few people ever got past that: the kids at school had flocked to Roman’s cotton candy exterior and had eaten him all up and then got burned when they mistakenly thought that Remus was anything like his twin outside his face.

(He wonders even now if Roman still shares that face with him. Did he dye his hair? Get piercings? Or did he cover his mirrors so he wouldn’t have to remember Remus existed at all? Does Roman think about Remus nearly as much as Remus thinks about Roman?)

Oh wait, Remus knows the answer to that last one.

Dee squeezes his hand again, even without looking. He insisted on dressing presentably today: shining shoes and one of his new suits tailored to his exact size and a flattering face that just screams trust me with all your finances, I won’t rob you blind, Grannie! When they were getting their coffees, the woman in front of them had called him a gentleman and Remus almost choked on his drink at that. A pretty face, a kind gesture, a mask and Dee wore his like a skin walking alien and no one was any wiser about it. Except Remus.

He reaches over and steals Dee’s latte from his hand. Dee tenses, then relaxes and watches with an amused smile as Remus sniffs it.

“Not nearly enough vodka in this,” he decides and Dee laughs.

“Ah, yes, because the girl at the counter is surely old enough to be serving alcohol,” Dee says. “And the last thing I want to do is be on TV drunk.”

His nose scrunches up at the detestable thought, but Remus thinks it’s the exact opposite of what they should be doing. Dee? On TV? With no inhibitions? Remus listened to his late-night rambles on the flaws of society when there was nothing but sleep deprivation weighing on their souls and Remus was moved enough to find himself here today. There was something about his honesty, his psychological approaches, his confidence, that made him so trustworthy. He was a leader at heart and Remus was happy to follow him, even if it meant going right off a cliff.

(Not like he hadn’t done that a time or fifty before. And besides, Dee could grow wings if he wanted. He’d catch both of them and fly them to safety.)

“A dash of vodka is just liquid courage,” Remus says. 

Dee turns his green eyes on him, the light through the window making sparkles in his irises, or maybe that’s just Dee doing subtle magic of his own. Whatever it was Remus decides he doesn’t ever want to look away again. Dee's eyes are priceless; Remus wouldn’t be surprised if Dee had stolen a hundred jadeite stones and shoved them in his eyes for safekeeping.

“Who needs liquid courage--” Dee says “--when I have you?”

Remus tips back Dee’s latte and slurps it so that his tongue burns right out of his mouth, because then at least there’s a reason for the mortifying smoldering all over his face. Dee reaches up and rubs the pad of his thumb over Remus’s cheek, tickling his mustache ever so slightly and laughs again.

“Darling,” he says. “You’re too easy.”

“You going to do something about it?” Remus challenges. “I wouldn’t be opposed to it right here, over this table, you know. Might wanna make sure little Timmy over there is covering his eyes first though. He doesn’t need his awakening until a few more years down the line.”

They’re close enough to the other customers that an elder woman with a pocket dog in her purse gives him a glare and a teenage girl in a sweater turns bright pink and stares out the window just a bit too hard. There’s a good chance that Remus could get both of them to do something more, but before he can open his mouth again, Dee is leaning in.

He’s using his usual height today, which means that Remus is just a bit taller, but Dee makes those three inches feel like hairbreadths. His breath is warm on Remus’s neck, and it sends shivers down his back when the phantom feeling brushes over his skin. He smells like cardamom, and Remus’s mouth freezes, his words long lost and forgotten in the prospect of Dee saying literally anything at all.

But in the end Dee just wordlessly hums and drops back to his flat foot.

It takes Remus a whole second to remember how to breathe. And another to realize that Dee took back his latte and was drinking it like he was entirely unaware of what he had just done to Remus, except that his lips slip off the rim on his cup and they’re curled upwards in that absolutely sensual smirk of his.

“It’s almost time,” the shapeshifter says moving on casually while Remus tries not to let his brain melt right out of his ears. “I should go get into place.” He peeks at Remus and glances away just as quickly. “You…you’re sure that you’re alright to do this, Remus? You don’t have to if it will hurt you.”

Remus wonders vainly if Dee was aware that the term “Martyr” was engraved on his ribcage, imprinted on his heart, seared into his soul. If there was ever a choice between himself and someone else getting hurt, Remus wouldn’t hesitate, and he never had. If Roman had ever looked, like truly looked, he might have noticed that, and then maybe things would have turned out even marginally different. But this time around, Remus nods at Dee and squeezes his hand back so hard that his fingers lose their blood flow. 

“It’s not gonna hurt me,” Remus says, which might be a lie and not even a believable one, but they both pretend. “Besides, this means something to you, doesn’t it?”

Dee’s shoulders tense, and resettle, as if he’s reminding himself that Remus is not a threat. He licks his lips, chasing after the taste of espresso. “It does,” he says and it shouldn’t feel like Dee is telling him some big surprise secret, because they spent the past three days planning this whole thing out on the floor of their hotel room while Remus rolled that casino coin between his fingers and thought about how Dee’s hair looks soft and fluffy when he’s just waking up.

“Remus…” Dee starts. “There’s something I haven’t told you yet. About me. And… this.”

Whatever this is. He’s hesitating again, hovering like he’s on top of a fence topped with barbed wire and he knows that he needs to pick a side but can’t quite decide which side will hurt less: the spikes or the lava? Remus shakes away the unneeded thoughts to focus in on the trepidation in Dee’s expression, but as soon as he zeroes in on it, Dee smooths it out.

“Timing,” he says almost as if to himself. Then, “I’ll tell you after we do this. I owe… I owe you that much.”

Remus doesn’t think there’s a single thing that Dee could ever owe him at all. Not when Dee pulled his bleeding body off the balcony, not when Dee kissed him with all the tenderness in the world, not when Dee stayed with him in the face of literally everything. Dee can’t possibly owe him anything when Remus is the one standing here with a power that’s not even helpful unless it’s killing Remus, and Dee is out here trying to save lives with what he has.

But Remus is decently sure that if he opens his mouth to say any of that, what will come out will be something undoubtedly more emotional than they have time for and will probably scare Dee away entirely: a love confession, a proposal, matching headstones for their graves that they’ll probably be in much sooner than either of them would like.

“And Remus?” Dee says, like he doesn’t notice that he’s literally the only thing that matters in Remus’s little world. He gives Remus’s hand another meaningful squeeze. Then he pops up on his toes to brush a kiss to his cheek in a way that makes Remus feel like a middle school girl in a catholic school discovering how attractive boys are for the first time. 

His heart beats so hard he thinks he can taste it around the coffee and whatever the hell it is that Dee tastes like. 

“Thank you,” Dee says with sincerity.

“If we were characters in a book, this is the part where right before the author kills you off for dramatic effect.” Remus reaches out and clinks his cup with Dee’s. “Don’t make it that easy.”

Dee snorts in that very dignified way of his. “Of course, what was I thinking? My apologies. Here I was, assuming that the soothsayer might be able to help me to cheat Death but apparently I was mistaken.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be right there in your ear, Despacito,” Remus says pointing towards the earpiece he’s wearing. “You won’t be able to get me out of your mind even if you wanted me to!”

Dee smiles, quick and wonderful and Remus drinks in the sight like it’s the newest liquid craze, better than the latte in Dee’s hands, or the ice coffee in his own, or fresh drinking water in the middle of the desert. Dee’s hand drip, drip, drips right out of Remus’s, although the atoms in his fingers don’t stop tingling with sensation.

“I look forward to it,” Dee says as final parting and then he weaves his way out of the café. Remus bites his plastic straw and follows with his eyes until he can’t anymore. The people around them move out of the way for him because Dee gives off that aura of someone important and no one wants to be caught dead getting dirt on his freshly polished oxfords. 

For all their planning, Remus still feels a little nervous with everything going on. They gathered as much information as they could about the day: the new registration office was being set up in a public library as a temporary location and it was closed for activity outside of the registration. Remus took particular pleasure in reading the heartwarming amount of public backlash about that from regular people who just really liked the library for some reason. The building is a lucky four stories tall-- which Remus thinks is nice. The library back in his hometown was two, poorly funded, and he’d been banned from visiting when he was ten because he’d seen the old librarian fall off a ladder and tried to help her by grabbing which did not go over remotely well.

The street is casual: a bunch of modern buildings with local shops and boutiques. Dee got sidetracked two days ago picking out new shoes from a window display and chatting with the owner who surprisingly was very informative.

“The Prince? My niece thinks he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread,” the older woman said while packing up a pair of single strap monks.

“Oh?” Dee said conversationally which made Remus look up from where he was flicking through a rack of sun dresses.

“I think he has a few screws loose,” the woman said. “No child his age should be running around in a costume like that. He’s just inviting danger to himself, not to mention those around him. In fact, Linda-- you know Linda right? She owns the chocolatiering place on fourth street? It’s got lovely chocolate strawberries-- Linda said over our weekly tea that if she got the chance, she would punch him in the face!" the woman chuckled. "But I don't blame her at all. All this nonsense about super powers and abilities and someone might start looking twice at how her baby girl can get any animal to eat out of her hand."

Dee raised an eyebrow. And the lady waved off his unasked question.

"Magic ability or pure coincidence! I don't care about any of that! If that FBE comes knocking on Linda's door the whole group of us shop owners are ready to stand up against them. Linda’s little girl belongs right here with her family and not anywhere near some secret government building or on some watchlist like a criminal!"

They left after that and paid a visit to the chocolate shop on fourth street. And what do you know, the little shop received a generous cash award from a lesser known chocolate secret society group thing. Remus doesn't remember the actual name Dee used, but he does remember that they were selling dinosaur shaped chocolates and he bought a box just so he could bite the heads off all of them.

The main street leading to the library-turned-registration office was closed off completely and marked that way with crowd control fences, which might have been for the best. In just the two days leading up to the grand opening, the city’s population seemed to have doubled. Remus was moderately amused by it, watching from the window of their hotel room: people came from the woodwork, springing into the city with the rigour of a bunch of busy ants who were so completely unaware of the exterminator coming.

Dee didn’t let him try looking to the future more than a few times and to be very ridiculously honest, Remus is kinda grateful for it. Every time he looks he feels something off about himself, something he can’t put a name to, something he can’t put a finger on. It just seems that one minute he’s fine and the next he’s hacking up blood. 

Which by the way, means he’s dying according to WebMD and Google. Remus doesn’t let Dee see the worst of it, but the nosebleeds are stronger, and Dee’s not exactly stupid. He can tell that Remus is using more tissues, that he’s holding them to his face longer, that he’s pale and tired and his hands are colder to the touch.

They don’t talk about it. Not really.

They should.

But if there’s one thing that Remus’s mother taught him, it’s that if you avoid talking about something for long enough it will disappear and you’ll forget about it.

Perhaps the biggest thorn in their sides-- both of their sides and their lungs and the back of their necks right through the medulas killing them instantly-- is the charming Prince himself! The character seems to be everywhere and nowhere all at once: the news has him stopping burglaries and home invasions up and down the east coast, calming down violent criminals, and helping little old ladies cross the street, and flashing his award-winning, crowd-hypnotising smile at the cameras. And yet for all the several hours worth of footage that Dee and him had scoured through, neither of them can quite figure out what The Prince’s power is.

It’s mental, at least. Something to do with information based on what Remus can come up with. He can tell from the way that the guy reacts in the middle of any confrontation: there’s a moment where green lights flash in his eyes, flickering so quickly it might have been a trick of the camera if Remus hadn’t caught it so many times on so many different occasions. One moment he’s acting one way, the next he’s changing course entirely, moving or stopping or avoiding. Like he knows what’s going to happen. 

Like he can see the future. 

But somehow he avoided all the fun nosebleeds and the feeling of death over his shoulder. Like maybe when his power manifested people actually believed him! Like maybe his friends didn’t shove him away and maybe his mother loved him and maybe he stayed home and watched Disney movies with his brother all night when they were seventeen instead of letting him go to a party where everything went wrong.

Remus’s hands shook far more than they had any right to when he first made the connection, first made the comment, first made the joke out loud for Dee to laugh at without pay attention to what he was actually saying. Then he dry heaved into a trash can for fifteen minutes while Dee rubbed his back and pointedly waited for an explanation that Remus didn’t give him because Roman is nothing and no one and he doesn’t matter when Remus has Dee.

“Perhaps he’s a mind reader,” Dee suggested.

Whatever he ends up being, Remus decides that The Prince better hope he figures out some shit with Dee. Because if Remus has to enter the ring, he doesn’t think the Prince will be leaving it in anything other than a body bag.

“You seem very… invested in him,” Dee said when Remus told him as much over a breakfast of french toast and eggs at a dinner where the waitress didn’t tell them to stop making out in any flickers of the future he blinked at. Dee was choosing his words carefully. Too carefully. 

“His face is very punchable,” Remus said, squeezing ketchup in his orange juice. “I’m surprised no one else sees it! Don’t you just get filled with rage when you look at him?”

The way Dee blinked said a lot, but Remus pretended not to notice as he used a straw to stir his drink and poured a bit of syrup in too. For flavor and fun. Dee doesn’t say anything more on the topic, and Remus doesn’t ask because he gets the feeling Dee will tell him the truth if he does.

And Remus doesn’t think that this is a truth that Dee wants to tell right now.

Maybe later. After Dee’s dragged the Propaganda Prince from his golden pedestal and Remus has had his fun in the mix. After they stop the FBE from their nefarious plans. After. 

Remus tastes the word in his mouth and he’s not sure why it feels so foreign to him. It’s a strange mixture of bitter and unforgettable, of sweet and strange, of something he’s never tried before and might never get to taste again.

It’s better than blood. Less red too.

Remus taps his foot as he watches out the window of the coffee shop. There are a lot of people inside here and he’s not sure how many of them are regulars compared to how many of them want to just watch the possible freaks that have to walk down the street and enter the building pretending like they can’t feel all the world watching them do it. 

Remus isn’t even one of the suckers doing it, but he can understand how it might make someone queasy. The number of eyes looking, watching, remembering them is something of a curse; the cameras are blatantly obvious and the gawking of the other people is unignorable. If things were different, Remus wonders if he might have been nervous about this, about entering the building, about taking a step out of line and telling the whole world what he could do.

It was supposed to be a secret, right? At least that’s what his mother had always encouraged him to believe. She told him to stop talking, to stop crying, to shut up and pretend nothing was happening, smile at the cashier, Remus, but don’t tell her that you can see her tripping over her shoe laces and cracking her head on the floor. When people asked his mother how her children were, she never had enough to say about Roman’s achievements.

Remus sticks his straw all the way in his mouth until it pokes his uvula and his eyes water. 

She tried.

And in the end it wasn’t enough, isn’t enough, because now she talked so much about Roman that she didn’t even remember that he existed anymore. He’s grown up and she’s still the same.

He wonders if she would even recognize him if they passed each other on the street.

Something to think about. Perhaps he can convince Dee to take a trip with him to the other side of the country, to his hometown, to his old neighborhood. He’s sure that by now they have enough cash for a couple dozen eggs that belong on the outside of his old two story suburban house. After all this, after they save the day, after they put Princey boy in his place. After.

The clock on his phone ticks down, and Remus feels like his chest is going to explode if his heart gets any faster. The FBE registration office opens at ten a.m. and he’s not entirely certain the world will still be standing by ten oh five, but that’s what makes everything fun, isn’t it?

The coffee shop customers shuffle and move like a complex organism trying to rip itself apart but never quite managing it. Outside there are more people, pressed together, close enough to be touching, to be talking, to be nervous and excited and emotional. Camera flashes go off, news crews stand in the middle of the street with microphones interviewing the normal people who are treating this like a festival or a parade rather than the thinly veiled death threat it is.

They’re packed so closely together that Remus has a hard time seeing over their heads, and peeking at the temporary stage that’s been set up in front of the entrance to the library. There’s a podium on it, though, and decorations of a brilliant red, white, and blue, along with speakers and microphones being tested for the brilliant speech that the Prince is going to give for his adoring fans. There’s security and police patrolling everywhere, news crews and reporters and civilians watching with bated breath as the time draws near.

Part of Remus wants to wonder why here, why now, why did the Prince choose to come cross country out of the blue like this? Surely he could get just as much adoration from his fans in New York.

There must have been something that happened on the East Coast that drove him out here. Bad publicity that might make him look bad-- for a moment Remus entertains the idea that the Superhero managed to kill someone and now the FBE was graciously covering it up and sending him to Oregon so that he stays out of the way, stays out of trouble.

Too bad for him; Remus and Dee had claimed this part of the country as their own playground and they brought nothing but trouble with them. 

Dee would take extra special delight in taking a bat to the Prince’s glass house reputation if the man let him. Remus would take extra special delight in watching Dee do it.

Remus tapped the screen of his phone again, checking the time. Dee should be in place by now, hiding among the normal people, slipping between the patrolling law enforcers, and plotting the best place to be in order to make his grand entrance.

((It was adorable watching Dee figure out what he wanted it to be: the man curled up in a sweatshirt with hair still wet from his shower and chewing the end of a pencil in between spitballing ideas at Remus. His eyes seemed to glow when he got excited, and they were hypnotizing to look at, swirling with all the colors: grey blue, jade, hazel, silver. Whenever he liked an idea he scribbled it down on a piece of paper and smiled with his fangs out and Remus had to resist the urge to kiss him again, lest they fall behind in their planning phase due to an excessive make out session.))

In the end, planning this whole thing wasn’t all that much different from their other heists: the casino where they met, the fancy banks, the jewelry stores, a privately owned winery. There was less of Remus looking at the future, true, but that just meant that they spent more time lying next to each other scouring the internet on their individual phones for relevant information and eating chocolate dinosaurs.

The clock strikes thirty-till ten and the whole world seems to hold its breath. Remus can feel it, the way the air holds itself and suddenly the whole coffeeshop, the patrons, the cashiers and the machines go quiet with anticipation.

“There!” yells a kid from a window seat, covered in chocolate from a partially devoured muffin and bouncing on the cushion. He presses both his hands to the cleaned window, as if he can phase right through it if he pushes himself hard enough. “There! It’s a car!”

“Where? I wanna see!”

“Is it The Prince?”

“The Prince! Move I want to see!” 

Remus barely has time to brace himself before there are people pressing up against him, strangers shoving and pushing and yelling and trying to get to the window to see exactly what is going on. Remus himself leaves a nice face print to the glass that he suspects the long suffering employees are going to have blast cleaning later.

Assuming that the shop is still standing after all this. 

Someone’s elbow goes into Remus’s spine and for a second Remus blinks and there’s a guy standing over him, pressing a hand to his pulse, and the manager at the front desk of their hotel is screaming again. Remus hisses out a harsh breath that fogs up the window and scrubs the thought, the concept, the memory from his mind. Because he’s not dead, he’s not dying, he’s not on the hood of a car. And the last thing he needs is to forget that.

The car that the kid had pointed out was actually a caravan of cars: black nondescript SUVs with tinted windows and tires thick enough to be bulletproof. The type of cars celebrities and CEOs and politicians ride around in when their limos are being deep cleaned. The crowd blockers leave more than enough room for the cars to parade through the street right to the stage. Someone outside even sets off a confetti cannon so it rains red and gold and white paper through the air. 

Remus grinds his morals together and shoves himself backwards, knocking into about six more people who are swarming for his spot so quickly, so frantically, so vehemently, that Remus doesn’t actually make out any of their faces or forms or bodies. The whole shop was swarmed with people, but now all the bodies were pressed against the street windows and Remus thinks if they were on a boat, they would have capsized. He tugs the front of his leather jacket to straighten it and elbows his way through the front doors and out into the street.

Outside it’s not much easier to see anything. The cheering crowd is the most annoying thing ever. Although the hand made signs people are waving are a close second. Remus fights the urge to knock several of them out of people’s hands because the crowd control are watching like hawks and--

-- “HEY! HEY!” one of the uniformed guys yells at him. Remus flips him the bird, and because he’s so busy laughing at the guy he misses the sign holder’s left fist coming for his face.--

-- “HEY! HEY!” one of the uniformed guys yells at him. Remus flips him the bird, and because Remus knows better now he manages to dodge the incoming fist and drive his elbow up under his attacker’s guard and right into his diaphragm. There’s an exhilarating feeling flowing through him as the crowd around him jostles and shouts and falls to chaos in a way that completely derails the plan Dee worked so hard to put together.-- 

--Remus tears himself back to the present, stumbling slightly over a swaying ground. He coughs into his fist as his body is checked by a passerby into the outside wall of the coffee shop. There are flecks of red, so small Remus wouldn’t have noticed if he weren’t looking for them. That’s good, that’s great, that’s fine.

He’s fine.

The crowd pulses and the volume of dissonant cheering increases tenfold. Remus wipes his hand on his thigh and looks up to see over through the crowd for what was happening, although he already has a good idea. The cars must have completed their slow circuit and the doors of one of them must have popped open for the guest of honor to step out.

Another burst of confetti shoots out filling the air with white pieces of paper that almost look like snow. Remus ignores them mostly as he slips through the crowd in ways that his body probably shouldn’t be able to move: under an elbow here, passing a shoulder there, winking at the college student his face is three inches from as he scoots between him and an older woman with a crying child on her hip. He feels his spine crack more than he hears it as he moves.

He makes it to the crowd barriers with an impressive number of bruises, a bit of coffee from an off balanced teenager, and a scrap where someone hit him with one of those stupid signs. He’s close enough to the stage that his skin itches, that his throat burns, that his toes curl; the Prince isn’t even looking his way but Remus thinks that the white of his super suit would look excellent covered in his blood. There’s a rapier at his side that glistens in the sunlight, silver and shining and ready for use although Remus has yet to see him actually use it as a weapon rather than a fancy prop.

The Prince is an actor on a stage waving to his fans, a red herring meant to distract everyone from the implications of the FBE headquarters right behind him. He blows a kiss to the crowd and Remus gets the urge to punch his face again.

Instead he presses up against the barrier wall, hooking his arms around the metal bars to hold himself in place and watches with his tongue in his cheek. He nods at the techie standing on the other side: a guy with hefty headphones, bright purple hair, and a mouth mask with an anime character on it from a show Remus vaguely recognizes. The guy squints at him suspiciously for a moment but ultimately just shrugs and goes back to writing something in a pocket notebook and leaning against the side of a News Crew van he presumably works for.

On stage, The Prince approaches the podium waving still and smiling twice as broadly as before. Remus isn’t sure how anyone can look at him and think “safety” when his charming show of teeth also makes it look like his mouth was going to split his entire head open. A police line-up stands along the wings of the stage, like he’s a real prince about to address a nation. 

Someone Remus doesn’t recognize is also on the stage in a suit. The Prince grins and shakes the guys hand like they’re old friends. They pose for a camera flash for a moment, sharing a laugh that can’t possibly be that funny, and the new techie rolls his eyes so hard his head shakes. Another person from the crew joins him standing side-by-side and they share a short conversation that leaves the one with the headphones glaring.

The guy on stage claps The Prince on the back and offers him the podium with microphones before stepping back clapping enthusiastically.

Remus thinks boredly that it would have been funnier if Dee were up there, dressed up in a stranger’s skin and stepping back only so that The Prince never gets to see the knife Dee shoves in his neck. But Remus knows Dee better than that; he’d never kill, and he'd definitely never deliver a fatal blow when his victim didn’t know his name. 

(Remus wonders distantly, when he realized how much names meant to Dee. Was it before Dee offered up his name at that casino? Or later when Dee was breathing into Remus’s mouth and Remus was trying to figure out what was wrong with himself? Dee wanted people to know his name, wanted people to remember him when he left, wanted them to recognize him-- but he also didn’t and Remus isn’t sure how to solve that puzzle yet so he sticks it in the back of his mind to work on when its just the two of them alone in a hotel room in the dark.)

The Prince winks to someone in the crowd and finishes his last wave. Remus glances back at the line of SUVs but no one else comes out of them-- which isn’t that weird? Remus seems to recall the Prince being very specific that he had a team and a partner and yet he’s up there all alone receiving all the glory. 

Of course they could just be shy, but based on how little information there actually is about the team and partner existing, Remus thinks that maybe it’s a farce meant to placate children’s dreams of being on a super team with their super hero! 

(Remus is not alone in this thinking either. Dee’s favorite website called AnxiTEA has several dozen articles written about how The Prince sucks and that he’s just doing all this for publicity and recognition-- along with a carefully worded warning that if The Prince begins losing either of those things, he’s most likely going to become feral and turn on them all.)

Remus adjusts the earpiece in his ear just as The Prince opens his mouth to start off that particularly exciting, bold, inspiring speech of his. But before he gets more than a syllable out, a shadow floods from overhead.

The crowd collectively gasps and screams, spreading apart in every which direction; Remus lets out a hefty groan as the guy next to him bowls into his shoulder and he nearly flings over the fence. The techie on the other side drops his little notebook in shock, and his friend pulls out a phone immediately.

The shadow sweeps downward through the air like the largest bird in history. Remus laughs as he watches, Dee’s wings glisten with black wings that glisten yellow when the sun reflects off them. In fact just watching him, Remus has a hard time believing that Dee didn’t grow up with wings attached to his back. He makes floating and flying and landing look graceful, ethereal, easy and breathless and exhilarating. Dee lands on the stage due left of The Prince, safely with his knees bent to absorb the shock. When he stands back up, his blond hair flows slightly in the kickback wind and his trustable dark eyes sparkle.

(He went with the black and yellow color scheme. That had been Remus’s favorite option. The black of his suit makes the shimmers of gold look expensive, dangerous, and untouchable. Although, Remus is a little biased on the front that he always thinks Dee looks dangerous and untouchable. He’s a caution sign, a warning, and Remus can’t wait for The Prince to ignore it.)

“Hello,” Dee says and Remus thinks he can hear his barely concealed laughter over all the crowd's confused chaos. The police line behind The Prince lurch into movement at the sound of his voice, but the hero himself throws out an arm and stops them where they stand with hands on their tasers.

Dee raises an eyebrow, a polite expression on his face. And the Prince mirrors him.

“Oh wonderful!” the hero says in a confident tone, in a reassuring tone, in a placating tone that tells the audiences watching that there’s nothing to fear from the black winged Angel that just descended down on them like a herald of Death. Dee’s eyes shine with amusement that Remus can pick out even from over here. “Another friend like me!”

The Prince offers a hand to Dee, a handshake. Remus digs his teeth into his tongue as he watches Dee take it from above, like he’s royalty allowing the poor publicity prince to greet him. 

“Not quite like you, my dear Prince,” Dee says. “If the wings weren’t a dead give away already.”

The Prince’s lips tighten. Remus thinks that his expression screams “calculating”. He looks at Dee like he’s still trying to figure out if he’s a friend or foe, and Dee’s body language offers no hints at all.

Or well, maybe a few hints. Remus can see it, because he can see Dee: the tilt of his head is a challenge, the light in his eyes is condescending, the openness of his body facing the crowd speaks in volume of who he’s actually there for. Remus can read every bit of Dee and it sends a shiver down his back to realize.

The crowd bobs and murmurs, unsure of what to do with the surprise visitation. Several camera flashes go off like someone is trying to prove to themselves that the wings are real. The techie on the other side of the barrier reaches up and hooks a finger over his mouth mask as if he’s debating ripping it off to breathe easier. Remus digs his chin into the metal bars of the crowd barrier and wishes he had some popcorn.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Prince,” Dee says silky smooth.

“Good things I hope,” The Prince says back. “I would love to sit down and have a conversation with a fan as elegant as yourself, but I really must be getting back on schedule. I’d be happy to sign somethin--”

Dee laughs pleasantly, although Remus thinks he should be swinging to dislodge the superheroes head from his neck.

“You are a riot!” Dee takes a few steps forward. “You think I’m up here to get your autograph?”

The Prince’s eyes narrow slightly. “Aren’t you?”

Dee flexes his wings just as slightly, letting them shimmer so beautifully for the crowd up front to see. “Oh no. I must confess I’m not much of a fan at all. I’d really much rather skip to the debate portion of this.”

“The debate,” The Prince repeats like he hasn’t ever heard the word before. Remus half expects him to snap at that guy behind him to offer up a dictionary so he can read the Webster definition before he responds. But in the end the Prince merely moves his arm back and settles his right hand on the hilt of his rapier. 

“I’ve been fascinated by you, Prince,” Dee continues, gliding around him and stretching his wings so that the police line is forced to take another step back or get bumped. Dee circles the hero much like a snake starting to coil around its prey before the final strike. He’s slow and methodical and Remus doesn’t think anyone can look away from him. He knows he can’t. “They call you a superhero. The first real life one to walk the streets.”

The Prince follows Dee’s motions with his head. “I have no control over what the media says.”

Dee gives him another condescending look. Remus thinks it’s eerily similar to the ones that his teachers used to give him when Remus insisted that the other kids shoved him on the playground when he did nothing to them first. 

“Of course you don’t,” Dee says. “The media can be rather misleading at times. After all they said that my way of handling an out of control child with an arbitrary grasp on fire was fallible. Incorrect. Deplorable.” Dee stops just over the Prince’s left shoulder and tilts his head. “Villainous.”

The Prince blinks, stiffening.

“Oh,” he says. “You were the one at the mall. In Idaho.”

“Yes,” Dee says. “And if I had done nothing, that child would have continued to operate under the impression that killing is an acceptable punishment for petty thievery. And yet I’ve received nothing but bad press, criticisms, insults for what I did while you get praise and recognition from your… adoring fans. I would say that’s quite unfair don’t you think?”

The Prince’s nose twitches. Remus watches his hand on his rapier tighten, but he refrains from drawing and making the first blow in front of a billion witnesses. The cameras couldn’t draw away even if they tried. 

“Perhaps if you had tried talking first, rather than jumping straight to violence--”

Dee tuts and presses a hand to his chest. “I so do love how much you know about what happened there! With all the completely accurate information and that confident tone you’re wielding, my prince, one might be convinced that you had been there and watched that child nearly kill three innocent people after I attempted the talking part first.” 

The Prince’s jaw set.

“Oh? Nothing to say?” Dee lowers his chin to look The Prince dead in the eyes. “The truth is that the child in question decided to attack a man robbing a previously insured jewelry store-- most likely out of desperation-- and decided to attempt to burn him alive. The action of which nearly killed me and my… partner if it hadn’t been for a spot of good luck. Then when I attempted to help preserve the criminal from the life threatening third degree burns he was suffering, the child called me a villain and demanded I and another brave bystander back away from the man so that he could die.” 

Dee’s eyes flash blue and green and then a cold steel blue before they settle back on the silent superhero. “You and your original way of thinking are an inspiration to us all.”

The Prince’s face twitches again, the whole thing this time, twisting into a not-very-nice expression for just the briefest of seconds before he remembers that there’s a captive audience watching this play out. He takes a deep steadying breath and lets it out again.

“I apologize,” he says. “I jumped to a conclusion. You made an acceptable call in the face of a diffic--”

“I made the only call,” Dee inserts harshly. “And I don’t want your apology. Words mean nothing.”

“What are you here for then?” The Prince asks, and Remus can’t help the feral smile that etches across his features. He leans forward as far as he can without tipping the fence because he doesn’t want to miss a single second of this.

“Oh, that would be simple,” Dee says. “I want you to explain to the world, why you are trying to get hundreds of people killed.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I don’t suppose you would.” Dee says. “I can’t imagine that you’ve had to do a lot of critical thinking these past few weeks.”

The Prince scowls and opens his pretty little mouth, but Dee waves him off with a clandestine motion. There’s a delicious looking smirk on Dee’s lips: something that Remus thinks he can spend all day staring at. He’s having fun up there with all the attention on him, having fun with people hanging on his every word, having fun leading The Prince around like a dog on a leash. A showboat, a leader, an actor-- but Dee’s the director too, telling the cameras where to point and what to frame because this is his show, even if no one else realizes it yet.

“I’ve been following the FBE for a while now. You can imagine that as someone with an ability I tend to be interested in politics that directly affect me, as all good upstanding Americans should.” Dee flutters his wings a bit again. “However, I can’t imagine why anyone-- certainly not someone with the brains such as yourself-- would purposely align yourself to their less than noble intentions. They aim to take advantage of people like us, and you are using your… well earned celebrity status to convince the people that this is acceptable. Good, even! Surely you don’t truly believe that the FBE and Madam Secretary of Defense have your best interests at heart?”

The Prince shifts his weight around, looking for all intents and purposes like he was ready to leap across the stage and make Dee eat his own words, in the end he just settled back down. 

“I do actually,” The Prince says. “I’ve been working with them for a while-- all of my team has. Madam Witchall has been a great help in getting this project on its feet so that the FBE can provide aid to--”

"I guess what it boils down to is this," Dee says, steam-rolling everything else the Prince might have wanted to say. Remus can pick the irritation out of his clipped tone, simmering under the guise of being passion rather than anger. "How much do you trust your government? How much faith do you put in people, Princeps?

"This is, after all, the same congregation that sends military recruiters to the more impoverished schools in America and hounds kids until they believe that their only option to get into college is to sign up for the military. Is that what they did to you as well? Convinced you, you were dangerous and unable to control yourself and that they could help you?"

The Prince’s jaw tightens so hard that even Remus can see it from where he’s standing. He wants to laugh, but he puts his hand in his mouth instead. The crowd is murmuring, mesmerized by the sheer audacity of this shapeshifter to show up and question the morals of their beloved hero. It would be funny, if Remus doesn’t close his eyes and see Dee’s charred corpse from that kid at the mall not so long ago whenever he tries to sleep.

Hero idealization was a dangerous thing. It needs to be nipped in its bud before it strangles everyone; luckily there’s no one better with a pair of shears than Dee.

 "I do believe that’s none of your business," The Prince says.

"But it is," Dee coos just a bit too sweetly. His words come out slick with honey. "Because you are also a person of ability and I happen to care a great deal about people with abilities."

"We have a duty to those less fortunate than--"

"We--" Dee cuts him off sharply “--do not have a duty to anyone for anything."

He takes a breath, recenters himself, and when his eyes open again, they’re a piercing green that pins the hero to place on the stage for everyone to see. "In case you’ve forgotten, my dear Prince, we are mere humans, too. Not everyone wants to grow up to punch each other in the face. Some of us would like to live a normal life, without being forced into superhero dramatics."

His easy dismissal is inviting danger to come knocking. Remus likes that about him, the fearlessness. Did it come from after he had met Remus, or was it something Dee had grown up with? A symbol of faith in Remus’s abilities or a symptom of delusion? The mystery is tantalizing on Remus’s--

--tongue. Remus savors the taste of it with a grin. It’s so much better than blood, so much better than slushies, so much better than french toast and eggs and only one step down from the taste of actually kissing Dee. 

Remus blinks, pressing against the barrier, his eyes catching sight of something else amongst the crowd although he isn’t sure what it is at first. A flash of a camera? A pushing shoving motion? It's something and Remus tries to follow it but it’s gone in the next half blink and he’s not sure what it was at all. 

Then everyone is screaming and the crowd is in chaos and Remus gets slammed into the barrier again and shoved along it for a sharp second before he hits the ground. The noise roars over his thoughts, over his breathing, over his ability to comprehend anything that’s not how he’s being stepped on by careless bystanders fleeing the streets. Someone trips over him, someone steps on his ankle, someone kicks the back of his head and his lungs burn and his eyes itch and he knows he missed something---

--Tongue. Remus savors the taste with a hint of confusion. It’s better than blood that’s in his throat, than slushies in his memories, than french toast and eggs and only one step down from actually kissing Dee.

Remus blinks, pressing against the barrier, his eyes catching sight of something else amongst the crowd although he isn’t sure what it is at first, and doesn’t bother caring, because something else is happening and he needs to know what it is that causes the crowd to splinter apart like shattered glass. Dee is talking on stage, winding up the toy Prince to dance to his tune, and Remus is watching with his heart in his throat and unable to hear a word of it.

Then Remus blinks and Dee is not standing on stage because the shapeshifter’s body is morphing exactly the way it shouldn’t be. The crowd screams, and Dee’s eyes are empty in a way that Remus has seen a million times and abhors unlike anything else in the world.

Dee is not standing on stage because he’s actually fallen off it onto the asphalt ground below and there’s a spray of red mist in the air where he had been standing before. Remus is body-checked into the crowd barrier, and skimmed along it, until he hits the ground and feels himself get trampled over, but it doesn’t matter because he knows what he saw. 

Dee is not standing on stage because he’s dead with a bullet in his head from---

---Tongue. Remus does not savor anything about the taste because whenever he closes his eyes the only thing he can see is Dee’s dead body and the only thing he can feel is copper clawing its way up his throat with the blind terror. 

Remus leaps over the barrier, causing everyone around him to yell. The techie with the purple bangs in particular jumps back, but Remus ignores them in favor of watching, because Dee hasn’t seen him and doesn’t know what's coming and Remus wants to scream at the top of his lungs because watching Dee die never gets any easier to see.

It’s a bullet to the head. From the right temple through his brain at a downwards angle and Remus feels the blood sprinkle over him like sea spray straight from his darkest nightmares. He barely even notices, barely recognizes it, barely cares about it at all, because the next thing he knows Dee’s body is following it down right into Remus’s arms and unseeing blue-grey eyes stare at an empty sky.

The Prince is there too, mouth open and horrified, and even though everyone is screaming Remus can hear him start to say a phrase, a word, a syllable, “Re--”---

--Tongue. Remus’s mouth tastes like blood and absolutely nothing else because Dee is going to die from a shot through the head from a sniper, a shooter, an asshole and Remus thought maybe that Dee was over exaggerating before with his whole “the government is going to turn us all into weapons or eliminate us” rhetoric, but Remus thinks that he should have paid attention a little harder. Listened a little more. Believed a little better.

He stares at the building behind them, the library that’s being passed off as the FBE and the dark tinted windows that make the upper floors look abandoned completely. It’s like watching….it’s like…. it’s …

There’s a flash, a flicker. Then a heartbeat and then Dee is dying, dying, dead all alone and Remus feels himself body-checked back by a faceless person in the crowd and tossed to the ground to be trampled to death too.---

--tongue. Remus spits blood out of his mouth curling in on himself to stop anyone else from seeing because fuck him. He presses two fingers to his ear piece and pretends poorly that his throat doesn’t feel like someone took a pack of razor blades to it. 

“Sniper shot, fourth floor, third window over,” Remus rasps. His heart pounds in his throat, in his skull, behind his eyes in a way that makes him want to tear his skin off to get the feeling to stop. Blood floods over his fingers, smearing on his chin, and across his sleeves no matter how hard he tries to get rid of it.

“One minute, forty seconds,” Remus coughs, and stares at the drips that hit the lower half of his shin, the toe of his boots, the asphalt.

Dee doesn’t react. Not at all and Remus wants to scream because he can feel time passing and he can’t stop the future from happening. He can’t, he can’t he can’t he can’t--

"You heard me, right?" Remus says maybe a little hysterically, because fuck, if they got this far and their mics weren’t even working and Remus just got the only person who ever mattered to him killed on live TV.

At this distance, Remus doesn’t know if he can make it, but even if he does, even if he tackles Dee down from the stage and the bullet misses them both it will go straight into the crowd, and there are people in this crowd-- people with lives, with families, with friends. They might have abilities, or they might not, but once that shot is fired the entire street will become a riot. Remus can hear the screams in his ears, ringing there so loudly it makes the present sound like a graveyard.

"I hear you," Dee says airily, acting like he’s talking to the superhero, but the words loosen the knot in Remus's chest, because he changed his speech, changed his stance, changed how much he knows about the future and now things will be different. The Prince eyes him rightfully warily, because Dee’s biggest weapons are knowledge and words.

"I hear you,” Dee says again directly to the hero, “I hear that you’ve been brainwashed into thinking that you owe something to the people who helped you control your ability, but the truth is… you could have done it without them, on your own. You certainly have the brains and the intuition for it." 

He offers a hand out to the hero, casually, fluidly, and Remus almost laughs. He thinks if he opens his mouth again then only thing that will come out is blood and the people next to him will definitely notice that.

"Come with me, Prince of the People," Dee says right as the sniper lines up the shot. "Let’s discuss a better way to protect innocen--"

The gunshot is silent. Remus almost misses it in the collective intake of breath from every living thing in a ninety mile radius. Dee’s hand is out and the bullet catches the sunlight in a brilliant single flash.

-- through his brain at a downwards angle and Remus feels the blood sprinkle over him like sea spray straight from his darkest nightmares. He barely even notices, barely recognizes it, barely cares about it at all, because the next thing he knows Dee’s body is following it down right into Remus’s--

Dee’s skin ripples, his wings disappear. At this distance, Remus can’t tell what it turns into, what he impersonates, what he becomes that can fend off a bullet, but in the end it doesn’t matter at all because The Prince leaps forward with his sword drawn.

Remus blinks and the world feels like it tilts on its axis, spinning faster under his feet. He hugs the crowd barrier to steady himself. That… that isn’t possible. This isn’t what he saw. But there it is: The Prince wraps himself between Dee and the bullet, and draws his rapier so quickly that Remus almost misses it happening. It shouldn’t be possible-- It can’t be possible, but he’s faster than the bullet and somehow the piece of metal veers off trajectory into the stage at their feet and embeds itself there.

“That’s--” Remus’s breath catches, clumping up in a knot in the back of his throat that tastes a lot like blood.

The people in the crowd scream, the people near the front shove to move back, to get away, to find shelter and safety from bullets that were only targeting one man on stage. The police guard springs into actions that Remus can’t focus on because he’s so busy trying to remain upright when gravity is trying to drag him straight down to Hell.

“Are you alright?” The Prince asks, lowering his rapier.

“I--Dee--” Remus stutters.

“Was that... going to hit me…?” Dee asks in a tone that suggests that all the oxygen left the atmosphere. 

“I don’t-- I can’t--” Remus swallows a mouth full of blood and it goes down his throat like thick, slow slugs trying to suffocate him. “I swear--”

“Have no fear,” The Prince says. “I’ll protect you. As long as I’m here, no harm will come to you. You have my word.”

“Re,” Dee says. He sounds like he’s several distant planets away. Remus’s hands are red and sticky and he swears if he closes his eyes that he can feel the misty spray of grey matter over his face when Dee falls from the stage, when his body lands in Remus’s arms, when those empty eyes stare up at him and see none of the grief in Remus’s eyes.

“I watched you,” Remus chokes. 

He saw it. He knows he saw it and it was real and Dee died and Remus was left all alone like every nightmare he’s ever had. Dee died up on stage in front of the whole world and Remus saw his whole world shatter.

It happened.

“You can’t see the future, Remus!” Roman yelled four years ago and Remus has proved him wrong a hundred billion times over since then. He shouldn’t have to keep reminding himself of that.

“You died,” Remus says. “You died and I watched and I’m sorry-- I’m sorry, sor--”

“That’s all I needed to know, darling,” Dee tells him. 

“Pardon?” The Prince asks, realizing maybe for the first time that Dee isn’t talking to him.

“You’re clever, Prince,” Dee says loudly, and Remus hears him so clearly in his earpiece it stabilizes him even when the world spins under his feet. Dee shoves himself out of the hero’s hold, stepping back twice, and looking downright murderous. “Far more clever than I gave you credit for! Did you just try to have me shot? Killed? All so you could look like the dashing hero on screen?”

“What?” the hero says and because he’s an actor Remus almost believes that he’s confused and not threatened.

“You just tried to kill me!” Dee snarls. “In front of all these people?! Because I dared ask a few questions about your motives?!”

The Prince stares at him, and Remus imagines his insufferable mouth is twitching into an awkward smile, like this is a joke that he doesn’t understand but doesn’t want to be rude. 

“I assure you that is not the case here,” he says. “In fact I believe it’s far more likely that you arranged to have yourself attacked on this stage to emphasize a point on your part. I suspect you might have some type of protection against bullets, but even if you did I could not stand idle when there is a chance of you being hurt.”

“How noble,” Dee says. “Throwing yourself in front of everyone and asking nothing in return no matter the situation. A true hero complex.”

The Prince’s grip on his rapier tightens, but he says nothing.

“You say such pretty words, Prince,” Dee says. “Tell such convincing lies. You want people to step up and join you in a game of play pretend without realizing there are deadly consequences when abilities get out of control. You want people to follow you, to sing your praises, to believe you can do no wrong…. You’re the hero, of course! They’ll be so enamored with you, they won’t notice you leading them straight off a cliff.”

For a second the world stops turning, time stops passing, the crowd stops moving. Remus feels every atom in the air pressing up against him, itching, pulling, compressing against his skin as his heart pounds in his chest like some type of creature trying to escape his ribcage. There’s a ringing in his ears made from the silence between Dee and The Prince and it’s louder than any scream that the crowd makes, any gunshot a sniper takes, any calm Dee fakes.

“And I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.” Dee offers a complimentary shrug and then he launches across the stage, aiming for The Prince’s throat.

[Chapter Seven]

[erenthecoordinate]

Chapter 138: Dreams vs Reality

So I’ve sat down with my thoughts on ch138 for about a week analyzing Mikasa’s “vision” for character meta and its function to the plot. Needless to say there are polarizing opinions for obvious reasons- but I still feel the need to share my view bc I think it reveals a lot.

Disclaimer: I realize the issue with ship wars. I don’t intend to claim one thing or another; it’s entirely fair to interpret Eren’s feelings in many ways because that’s how this series works. I have no interest in arguing about it.  I’m only interested in the dream vs reality aspects of the chapter.

For the record, I’m working with two theories here and I emphasize THEORIES. It’s cool to disagree with parts or all of it! I do hope my words get you thinking at least a bit though!

The Butterfly Effect

In order to tackle these two theories, the theory of the “butterfly effect,” paths dividing into multiple timelines originating from one singular timeline depending on Eren’s choices, needs to be considered.  On first introduction to the Attack Titan’s abilities, Eren says that the holder can see future memories of its respectable owners.  Thanks to the Paths, Eren is able to communicate with previous holders, like Grisha, to commit acts that would lead him to obtaining the Attack and Founding Titans.  The Butterfly Effect would kick off the events that we’ve been following along in the story and imply that time exists in a circle, since the reason Eren gets the titans is because he was able to convince Grisha to do so by showing him selective memories.

The issue with this is in ch138, if Mikasa’s reality was actually a divergent timeline, if it really were the case Eren and Mikasa would run off together if she had confessed her feelings, there would be no way for Eren to convince his father to give him the Attack and Founding.  Therefore, they wouldn’t have even been in the outside world to run away to, Eren wouldn’t die of the titan curse, which is what happens in Mikasa’s ideal world.

It seems that he needs Paths specifically to communicate with Grisha.  It’s even possible he needs direct contact with royal blood to even see the memories, or else it was needed to trigger that ability for him to now do so more freely later.

Therefore, in this case, we can assume the butterfly effect is either debunked or functions differently than a domino reaction.

Paths exist in parallels – Mikasa’s Ideal is an alternative reality

We have confirmation from the storyboard of the chapter that this was meant to be Mikasa’s “ideal (world).”  Had she confessed her feelings to Eren, she would have suggested running away the night before Eren leaves his friends so that they can live Eren’s last 4 years in peace.  Obviously with the watering down of the Butterfly Effect, we see that it is impossible for this to happen, at least in the main timeline.  

Mikasa experiences a migraine when faced with the reality that Eren has to die in order to kill the “Founding Titan.”  She’s been experiencing these unexplainable headaches throughout the series during certain critical points of the plot that she personally experiences.  We can assume Eren has been lying about the Ackerman abilities in order to push Mikasa away from him, so that she would have less hesitation when she ultimately has to face him.  We don’t see Levi having these migraines when his own “host” Erwin cannot be protected from death.  Even Kenny doesn’t seem to experience or note these headaches when Uri is dying.  The only thing that is mentioned is the awakening power and inability to have their memories wiped or manipulated.

That said, it doesn’t seem to apply to Ackermans actually experiencing what the Founder can show them.  In this case, the theory of an alternate reality would be plausible if one with the Founder can access those other realities.  If Mikasa did experience another reality, it is because Eren who “controls” (or rather is lent power by) Ymir is able to bring her there. This would mean that timelines exist in parallel to each other and there are multiple alternative universes and realities, ones with Titans and ones without.  The headaches may be a result of a resistance that is likely due to showing Mikasa these realities during specific moments, ones with situations that align with other realities but aren’t explicitly converging at any point and her Ackerman blood trying to block that process from happening- with Ymir and Eren together, they are able to breakthrough that barrier.

Now you can interpret that Eren’s reason for bringing her there is to assure her that there is a reality where she suggests running away together and that she experiences that life with the assurance that she will stay with Eren as long as he lives.  She knows that this isn’t her own reality: “I think I shouldn’t be here.” Eren likely also brings her here to show that even with their peaceful life that the conflict still exists and that she still cannot save him.  After he dies, he wants her to detach herself from him, forget the memories, and to be free.

Whatever the reason, we can assume that the “cottage” Mikasa and Eren aren’t the main timeline Mikasa and Eren.  It wouldn’t make sense for the history and it wouldn’t align with their motivations throughout the story.  While the timeline of events up to that point are similar if not exact, their behaviors aren’t quite the ones we have been following.

I’ll explain further but in short to believe the above in genuine runs a high risk of presenting as “character assassination.”  In other words, “out of character.”  (Sorta)

Keeping this in mind, this potentially means that these “path” visits have been foreshadowed and even acted upon by Eren before this moment.  First off, we know that Eren foresaw the future of the Rumbling and “that sight” when touching Historia’s hand.  We also know he sees other moments in between via these future memories.  He is only limited in seeing the actual chain of events that gets to that point.

For years before he concedes to this future, he is adamant about finding literally any other solution that will not result in the Full Scale Rumbling.  When Kiyomi brings up even threatening the world with the Rumbling on top of sacrificing Historia, he rejects that offer, suggesting that they should consider other options.  When Hange says that Hizuru cannot  aid in getting other allies to help them, Eren is distraught by the failure of another plan.  However, he accepts going to Marley to survey the nation to seek opportunities for peaceful conversation.  Before their departure, Eren discusses the potential destruction of Paradis with Historia, saying that their options are to fight or run away- Historia, however, accepts the duties given to her.  Eren knows this option is unacceptable and with that nature he must go forth with Hange’s plan or commit the Rumbling (though of course he knows the latter is the future).  It’s the rescue of the little boy Ramzi that gives Eren the realization that the events are exactly how he saw them when receiving the future memories.  He actually considers leaving the boy behind to change that fate, but his nature, just like how he can’t accept the fate of Paradis to be destroyed, causes him to protect the boy.  Eren realizes that the future cannot be changed- because of fate and because of his nature.

He asks Mikasa the big question and receives her final answer.  This seems far fetched but when his friends arrive to interrupt the moment he says with disappointment that it was “perfect timing.”  Of course, this could also indicate the frustration of having this conversation interrupted with Mikasa, or that he no longer wanted to hear an elaboration because he didn’t expect anything to change, but with the future sight theory he could have foreseen his friends showing up at that precise moment; there isn’t a lot of evidence to say one way or another, but it’s worth considering since even Mikasa is confused when he says this, meaning that there is supposed to be focus on why he says this.  During the conference that proposes Eldian rights, after attendees and speakers insist that the real issue are the Paradisians and they should be ridden of, Eren leaves, now convinced that this is the path he has to take.  All other options are lost despite his begging, and he is sure there is no other way.

Everything seems to go just like Eren plans, including the time to meet up with Zeke; the only obstacle that he hadn’t foreseen was Reiner bringing reinforcements early.  Either these are events leading up to the same future that he did not see, or this is a different Path he exists on.

We see that he convinces Grisha to slaughter the Reiss family in order to get the Founding Titan when Zeke takes them on a “memory lane” trip.  With showing Grisha selective memories, his father decides to hand the titans to Eren just as he did in the “alpha” timeline.  He tells Zeke that he was able to “get to this point” thanks to Zeke, so now he is on the proper path.  Now the events are aligned where he does “see that sight” by contacting Ymir directly and activating the Rumbling.

How did he get to that path though?  Where does it start?  Is there a beginning at all?  Well, either Zeke had led them to a parallel path that was similar enough to show identical memories so to convince Eren that Grisha was brainwashing him—or Eren took advantage of a distracted Zeke to “path jump.”  It’s interesting that Zeke is the one leading them up until the end of the chapter when Eren is the one now pushing Zeke to get to the next memory.  The events up until Grisha gets to the Reiss Cave during the titan invasion occur according to the main timeline.  

At this point, Eren is aware that the future of this timeline is viable, one that he is most “like himself” because his behavior is consistent with his beliefs.  He was always fated to be this way, he always knew that he would never abandon Paradis so long as they were at risk.  He would never allow his friends to suffer that fate.  There was never a future for him to run away and live in the mountains living the rest of his life in isolation with Mikasa.  His very nature would never allow him to.

It is also possible that this foresight didn’t always come with the goal of flattening the entire earth- he would have foreseen the Rumbling not complete, he only ever mentions starting it and “that sight,” points in the manga that we have already seen.  He had the opportunity to prevent his friends from fighting by wiping their memories (save the Ackermans, but even they are just two people), but chose not to due to his ideologies, which he carried since he was a child.  In fact, he goads his friends to kill him.  He knows this is a future he is fated to have.  He expects Mikasa to kill him.  Expects that he must convince her to let go of her hesitation and end his life.  “You should let go of me.”  Why invade that path to tell her this if his goals are to destroy the world, unless he truly expects to stop her and the rest?  How could he foresee “see you later Eren” though as an end to his life?

This might be the answer to destroying the true Founding Titan since it now exists in their physical world as he acts as a vessel.  This might be the solution to eradicate the titans- “destroy this world.”  Disconnect Paths.  Stop the indefinite fate where he and his home perish by erasing the existence of Titans altogether.  Break fate.

It was (mostly) just a dream

The second running theory is that Mikasa really does just experience the moment of “going back to their home” as a dream.  We know she gets headaches at critical moments where she runs the risk of losing someone close to her—and this isn’t isolated to just Eren.  This happens when Carla dies and Armin is on the brink of death.  The dream ultimately is a coping mechanism, wishing for an ideal world where she can live with Eren in peace and isolation, instead of facing the inevitability that Eren must die.

Also the chapter’s title is “A Long Dream.”

Now I’m not claiming that Mikasa is suffering a delusion, because she is very much aware that this “reality” or “dream” isn’t real- just because she is lucid does not mean she thinks this a world that exists for her.  She’s very aware that this ideal world of hers is impossible and was never possible to begin with.  Her dream is a confrontation of the reality that even with an innocent Eren who just wants a peaceful life that it is not aligned with the nature she has watched develop.  As much as she wants to cling onto an innocent and idealized image of her loved one, she knows this isn’t who he is.  This isn’t who they are.

She knows that the world they live in is still with conflict- Eren reminds her of that.  She apologizes for bringing it up because that realization that they left to live in peace and potentially leave their homeland exposed with no alternative solution, simply giving in to the circumstances, is not who either of them are, and to hold onto that image of Eren is merely fabrication.  The entire dream functions as a metaphor.  But in every world, Eren will die, be in by her hands or the titan curse.

[This is alluded to in Lost Girls, another “alternative reality” story.]

It is only disrupted when Eren tells Mikasa to throw the scarf and forget about him because she deserves to be free.  He wears the titan markings of his Founding Titan.  At this point it’s implied that Eren is communicating through Pathways that connect to her dreams.  Remember, dreams (and nightmares) are a very prevalent subject brought up in the series alongside memories- it is possible that the Founder can infiltrate dreams to communicate much like it can bring Eldians to the Path realm.  Mikasa cannot be controlled because she is an Ackerman, but this doesn’t omit the possibility that she can still see differences in her dreams (or reality) if interfered by the Founding Titan.  Ymir allows this open line of communication with the knowledge Eren is convincing Mikasa to kill him.  To simmer down the emotional turmoil, he says that she must forget about him.  Of course, because Mikasa cannot be manipulated, she decides that while she must kill him, that his death is inevitable, she will not forget him.  And he will not die without her expressing her feelings.  That is her own willpower.

At this point, the dream is “shared” between the two because Eren is an active spectator.  When Mikasa says her final goodbye, her “see you later,” it isn’t the same dream as what it started as.  Which is why he is able to remember it in the first chapter.

Now, I say mostly a dream because it is possible that dreams themselves could create alternative realities if they haven’t existed before.  But even if that wasn’t the case, Eren still alludes to path jumping, so the series of events could have still led him to a path that would be able to infiltrate Mikasa’s coping dream, knowing that she would struggle to end his life, but that she needs to see him again and be assured that he wants her to move on with her life, and not to see this as a failure on her part- that her answer really would not have mattered so she should not regret her choices.  She is the one that has to kill him to get to this point.  He expects to die, he doesn’t stop her when she gets in the titan, he seems resigned to that fate.

The dream theory is shorter but I’m inclined to believe that is what really happened with perhaps some mixture of the “alternate realities” theory for the sake of the plot solving the issue of titans, as well as reverting the rest of the cast from their Pure Titan fate.  Getting rid of Paths (the Founding Titan and Eren) is a viable solution to both rid of the nightmare as well as give Ymir and Eren a new life without being enslaved by fate.  But that’s a big elaborate and perhaps too complex theory.  I’m only making sense of how the final chapter may wrap up.

Alternative Selves: Fabrication to Cope aka “Mikasa and Eren would not run away”

Regardless of either theory, we must come to the conclusion that the Mikasa and Eren in her dream, her ideal world, whatever it may really be, are not their main story selves.  In fact it is impossible both because it would break the timeline and because it would not align with their true selves, the ones we’ve been following along throughout the story.  It makes more sense for Mikasa to cope with this ideal of hers, but the moment she enters that vision, she knows that this is fake and that this Eren is an idealized version she created (or exists elsewhere and time).  To believe otherwise is not understanding who these characters truly are at their core.

Regardless of Eren’s feelings towards her, be it romantic, platonic, familial, his very nature, as he states himself, would never allow him to “not make a decision.”  He would never abandon the others he claims to love, the ones he wants them to live long lives, to wander in the dark without at least a warning of the impending doom ahead of them.  He gave his friends the freedom to fight.  He fights for the freedom of Eldia, protecting Paradis.  He could never accept a fate that would allow the massacre of his people, even if he must commit omnicide to prevent it.  Remember, this is the boy who saved a girl he never knew because her freedom was stolen.  This is the boy that defends his weak friend because he values how the other boy’s mind opens to doors to freedom- the boy that gave him the knowledge of the outside world that fueled his ambition to break down the case in the first place.  He doesn’t want to live a mundane life.  Especially not if his oppressed people are in danger.  This is the guy who has a superior officer who calls him a monster that will not submit to any cage anyone puts him in- he has the fire in his eyes to keep moving forward, to persevere against all odds. 

This is the man that would lay down his own life if it meant Paradis would be saved.  He would simply never choose the option to run away from that, not even dream about it.  

He knew he wanted to see that sight.  He was shown that image.  That is his ideal world.  His vision, his dream.  Which means he must fight and move forward.  Find a way to save his loved ones so they live long happy lives.

And, honestly, it’s inaccurate to call Mikasa selfish for her ideal life because while she would want to live alone with Eren by her side, when being reminded of the carnage that will take place and that they are not there to help, she submits that it is something neither of them could accept.  She might want to run away to have a peaceful life, but not with the knowledge there are consequences for doing so.  That there are people she would leave behind.  She wouldn’t leave them to that fate.  Her actions to stop Eren is evidence of that.

As much as she loves Eren, she has devotion to her homeland and her friends, too.  To run away would be uncharacteristic.  This is the girl who decided to fight when the boy who saved her was in danger.  This is the girl that chose to keep fighting even when her closest family, the one she loved, was “killed.”  She is the girl who threw the knife away and promised that she would never leave her friend behind.  She stays to fight for her home, Paradis, because it is her birthplace, she belongs here- she wouldn’t run if her home is in danger.

Which is why, to assume they are the real Mikasa and Eren in Mikasa’s “ideal world”, is utterly and completely misread.  That is not nor ever what their characters would lead to.  The idea of running away would be barely a flicker of a thought at most, but even then, it is uncharacteristic to act.  Unreal.  Just like their artificial selves in that “dream.”

It isn’t like Isayama didn’t allude to Mikasa and Eren separating.  He does so for Armin when they have clashing views on the world and their own selves- Armin being more “worldly” and explorative and Eren being more “self-focused” and personally ambitious.  Mikasa would sympathize more with Armin’s point of view, but her desire is to be by Eren’s side.

Isayama gives his opinion on Mikasa’s determination to be stuck to Eren the entire time.  It is a “pitiful” existence.  She is willing to even shoulder his burdens just so he could come home, that perhaps his emotional distress is the reason he is causing mass destruction.  She is desperate for this.  That is… not exactly productive of her character, or the plot.

However, he clarifies that this is his view on Mikasa’s course of direction.  Her ideal is to be with Eren forever.  It may not necessarily be entirely positive that she leaves him behind since deviation from that ideal isn’t guaranteed growth.  Isayama has a habit of allowing his readers to experience his work with their own interpretations.  Just because he believes Mikasa’s existence with Eren at a constant is unfavorable, everyone will see it that way.  Perhaps it is a good thing that she has a goal to work towards and that it is the fuel to her fighting spirit.  That her desiring a peaceful life with Eren is a good motivator.  Or alternatively, her fixation on Eren would lead her into more dangerous situations that would risk her life, it has her see an unreal version of him, unable to accept his fated death that she is willing to sacrifice everything, even if it means shouldering the burdens he carries, if it means he lives.

The message is clear, however, that whether you, the reader, sees that as wholly positive or negative, or a mixture of both, the intention is that she must let him go.  She must accept his death.  Because if she is to keep her home, a semblance of peace and closure, save her friends- this is how it must end.  There is a beautiful nuance, however, that Mikasa is given the opportunity to forget so that she can avoid the suffering and be free, but she chooses not to- just as she decides when Eren is first taken from her.  When she initially thought he died, she decided to keep fighting to honor his spirit and memory.  She never wants to forget him.  Even if he will die in every reality they share together, the worst thing in the world is an existence without even the memory of him.

This is why she is able to get that closure.  She expresses her feelings and says her final goodbye, in this world anyway.  “See you later” because she will still have the ideal dream knowing that while it isn’t real, it can never be real, not for her, but his memory will live on with her.  And she can carry that memory without sacrificing her agency, her home, her friends, her love.  That is what she is meant to do.

Anyway, I wrote this mostly to observe the function of Paths and what Mikasa’s dream infers is possible, and an opening to a solution, as well as her decision to end Eren’s life.  The dream speaks loudly of Mikasa and Eren as characters because it shows us what they are not.  It emphasizes the characters that we have been following since the beginning are raw and motivated, destined to live their lives fighting and protecting and moving onward, never surrendering.  And to insist otherwise would be a disservice to how they’ve been built up to after all this time.

....

[Once again: Despite the language in this, the manga has always been a work to be wildly interpreted in a multitude of ways, I just speak passionately about why I think certain interpretations don’t make since to my own. But nothing is indefinite. The material is flexible. See it how you wish.]

[ishkah]

On The Far-Left, Effective Activism & Violence

Introduction to what it means to be on the far-left

So first off, as socialists & anarchists, we know we are far outside the Overton window. We know even if left-wing policy positions are more popular than right-wing, most people are still going to be biased to what they’ve grown up with and what’s familiar to them.

But, we also know we can shift the Overton window from the radical fringe: [1]

The most important thing about the Overton window, however, is that it can be shifted to the left or the right, with the once merely “acceptable” becoming “popular” or even imminent policy, and formerly “unthinkable” positions becoming the open position of a partisan base. The challenge for activists and advocates is to move the window in the direction of their preferred outcomes, so their desired outcome moves closer and closer to “common sense.”

There are two ways to do this: the long, hard way and the short, easy way. The long, hard way is to continue making your actual case persistently and persuasively until your position becomes more politically mainstream, whether it be due to the strength of your rhetoric or a long-term shift in societal values. By contrast, the short, easy way is to amplify and echo the voices of those who take a position a few notches more radical than what you really want.

For example, if what you actually want is a public health care option in the United States, coordinate with and promote those pushing for single-payer, universal health care. If the single-payer approach constitutes the “acceptable left” flank of the discourse, then the public option looks, by comparison, like the conservative option it was once considered back when it was first proposed by Orrin Hatch in 1994.

This is Negotiating 101.

So our hope is that our ideals and passion can be admired by some, like risking prison to sabotage the draft for Vietnam, so some peoples sons aren't conscripted into fighting an evil war. [2] Then any moderate left policies might look reasonable in comparison which makes them the tried and tested policies of the future.

We should also openly acknowledge that the ideal future we would like to see is empirically extremely unlikely to come about in our own lifetimes in the west, as there are still so many hills to climb first in pressuring workplaces over to a more co-operative flattened hierarchy of workplace democracy.

To quickly summarise, the direction the far-left would like to head in, is going from; a two party system, to... a multi-party coalition through preferential voting, to... some local government positions being elected by sortition, to… the majority of society being so content with worker-co-ops and syndicalist unions that we transition from representative democracy to direct democracy. So, a chamber of ministers to federated spokes councils.

Now I might be the minority in the far-left on this, but I would want people to have the option of going back a step if people aren't ready for that level of direct democracy, where the choice is disorganization and suffering or slightly less suffering under a repressive system of governance again. You could relate this to the position Rosa Luxemburg was in in lending support and hoping some good would come of the Spartacist uprising, whilst also wishing they could have been convinced to hold off until they were more prepared.

This is why it’s so important to build the governance model slowly enough to match expertise, so as not to falter with people pushing for ideals before having adequately put them to the test. So as not to cause a whiplash effect, where people desire a reactionary politics of conformity, under more rigid hierarchy of just the few.

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As anarchists & socialists who desire a more directly democratic society, what tactics should we use if we want to be effective at moving society in that direction?

Electoral politics - We need to get really well educated on how even the baby step policies toward the left would be an improvement on where we are now, we need to learn the internal politicking of government and get good at having friendly arguments with comedy to appeal to friends and acquaintances basic intuitions.

The goal being that we can talk the latest news and (1) Win over conservatives to obvious empirically better policies on the left, and (2) Win over liberals when centre-left parties are in power to feel dismayed at the slow pace of change, and so acknowlege how much better it would be if there was a market socialist in the position willing to rally people to demonstrate and strike to push through bills.

Mutual aid – We should put the time into helping our neighbours and volunteering, for example on a food not bombs stall, to get people to see the positive benefits of a communalist caring society.

Theory – We should be educating ourselves and helping others know what work and rent union to join, what to keep a record of at work, how to defend yourself from rapists and fascists, how to crack a squat and how to write a press release, etc.

Campaigning – We should look for the easiest squeeze points to rack up small wins, like the picketing of a cafe to reclaim lost wages, so that word spreads and it creates a domino effect.

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What tactics should we or shouldn’t we generally avoid in our political campaigns?

Civility as an end in itself

They’re not lies, they’re “falsehoods”; it’s not racism, it’s “racially charged comments”; it’s not torture, it’s “enhanced interrogation.” For years, U.S. media has prioritized, above all else, norms and civility.

Mean words or questioning motives are signs of declining civility and the subject of much lament from our media class. However, op-eds explicitly advocating war, invasion, sanctions, sabotage, bombing and occupation or cutting vital programs and lifelines for the poor are just the cost of doing business. What’s rhetorically out of bounds - and what isn’t - is far more a product of power than any objective sense of "civility" or “decency.”

Where did these so-called norms come from, who do they benefit, and why is their maintenance–-even in the face of overt white nationalism––still the highest priority for many liberals and centrists in U.S. media? [3]

This is so important to challenge, and yet incredibly nuanced. So, it is obviously a great success that the rate at which people would go around hurling racist insults looks to have dropped in favour of more political correctness.

It is also true that in pursuit of political correctness and an ethic of care, we can look for simplistic niceness, to the detriment of being able to identify systems of oppression.  We need to be able to refuse the emotional labor of treating our bosses as friends when we have no desire to be friends with them. [4]

Similarly in our everyday interactions, we need to encourage our friends to accept us for who we are or not to accept us at all, so as to create deeper connections which builds stronger communities: [5]

It can be annoying or hurtful when others presume they know everything about you. But rather than assert their wrongness and make them defensive, you can acknowledge it as a common human failing and find creative ways to hold a mirror up to what life experiences they’ve had that lead them to jump to those conclusions.

One way is a kind of playful authenticity, telling a lie about a lie, to get back closer to the truth. So don’t outright challenge the idea, but don’t live up to it either, in fact live down to it. Playfully undermine the idea by failing to live up to the glamour of what it would mean to be that person, then find a way of revealing that it was a misunderstanding all along, so they needn’t worry about it applying to you.

Media Chasing – We shouldn’t chose our actions for the primary purpose of provoking conversations because it is insincere to ones own desires to materially affect change and it’s recognised as such by those who hear about it.

Transparency – We should be transparent with our supporters in all we hope to achieve and how successful we are being at achieving that task, so as not to attract funds for labor we haven’t and aren’t likely to be able to do.

Civil Disobedience – Whether it be breaking the law without causing any damage or economic sabotage and political violence which we’ll talk about later, anarchists hope to chose the right actions to provoke conversations and materially challenge unethical industries and actors, so as to push electoral politics towards direct democracy and eventually consolidate our gains in a revolution.

Fascists will also use tactics from civil disobedience to political violence, and tend toward violence against people for people holding ideas as the things they hate, rather than the lefts systemic critique of material conditions. All in the hopes of pushing society towards a more authoritarian constitutional republic, before seizing power in a palace coup and attempting to rule as a sequence of dictators for life.

It is up to the left to try and counter this violence by doxxing, making their rallies miserable, etc. And it is up to everyone to decide which government to vote in, to enact what degree of punishment to bring down on people breaking the law on either side.

Any direction the society goes in for either not controlling or bowing to which protesters demands is still the moral culpability of the government and those who participated in the party political process.

There simply is an obvious legal and moral difference between for example victimless civil disobedience on the left aimed at all people being treated equally in society like collecting salt from the sea or staying seated on the bus, to the type of violence you see on the right, like Israeli settlers throwing people off their land with arson attacks, stealing another country’s resources against international law.

But again, it is true that to whatever degree anarchists chose bad targets optically, we do to some degree bring the slow pace of change on ourselves by handing the right an advocacy win.

Graffiti & Culture Jamming – Whether it be an artistic masterpiece that no one asked for or altering a billboard to say something funny and political, instead of the advert that was there before pressuring you to consume more and more, most people can be won over by this as a good form of advocacy. Just don’t practice tagging your name a million times over every building in town.

Hacking – Obviously most people agree whistle-blowing war crimes is a yay. Selectively releasing documents to help conservatives win elections however, is a nay.

Sabotage – We should chose targets which have caused people the most amount of misery, for which people can sympathise most, like the sabotaging of draft cards I wrote about at the beginning. So causing economic damage to affect material conditions and make a statement.

We also need to carefully consider the difference between property which is personal, luxury, private, government owned and co-operatively worker owned.

So, it could be seen as ethical to chose material targets of evil actors in order to cause economic damage and make a statement, so long as in the case of personal property, the item has no sentimental value and can be replaced because the person is wealthy. Or is a luxury item that was paid for through the exploitation of others labor. Or is private property, meaning the means of production which should be owned collectively anyway.

It’s an expression of wanting to find an outlet for legitimate anger against that which causes us suffering. For example, if taking the risk to slash slaughterhouse trucks’ tires in the dead of night is how you develop stronger bonds with a group of people and gain the confidence to do amazing things like travel the world and learn from other liberation struggles.

Fighting – First off, I think propaganda by the deed, physically hurting people for the purpose of making a political statement is evil, as it runs counter to our philosophy on the left that material conditions create the person and so we should make every peaceful effort to rehabilitate people.

However, to the extent that some current institutions fail to rehabilitate people and the process of seeking justice through these institutions can cause more trauma, then personal violence to get to resolve feelings of helplessness in the face of evil acts can be an ethical act.

For example survivor-led vigilantism: [4]

“I wanted revenge. I wanted to make him feel as out of control, scared and vulnerable as he had made me feel. There is no safety really after a sexual assault, but there can be consequences.” -Angustia Celeste, “Safety is an Illusion: Reflections on Accountability”

Two situations in which prominent anarchist men were confronted and attacked by groups of women in New York and Santa Cruz made waves in anarchist circles in 2010. The debates that unfolded across our scenes in response to the actions revealed a widespread sense of frustration with existing methods of addressing sexual assault in anarchist scenes. Physical confrontation isn’t a new strategy; it was one of the ways survivors responded to their abusers before community accountability discourse became widespread in anarchist circles. As accountability strategies developed, many rejected physical confrontation because it hadn’t worked to stop rape or keep people safe. The trend of survivor-led vigilantism accompanied by communiqués critiquing accountability process models reflects the powerlessness and desperation felt by survivors, who are searching for alternatives in the face of the futility of the other available options.

However, survivor-led vigilantism can be a valid response to sexual assault regardless of the existence of alternatives. One doesn’t need to feel powerless or sense the futility of other options to take decisive physical action against one’s abuser. This approach offers several advantages. For one, in stark contrast to many accountability processes, it sets realistic goals and succeeds at them. It can feel more empowering and fulfilling than a long, frequently triggering, overly abstract process. Women can use confrontations to build collective power towards other concerted anti-patriarchal action. Physical confrontation sends an unambiguous message that sexual assault is unacceptable. If sexual violence imprints patriarchy on the bodies of women, taking revenge embodies female resistance.

Other examples we can think of are personally desiring to fight fascists in the street to block them from marching through immigrant communities. To pushing your way through huntsman to save a fox from getting mauled to death by dogs.

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Political killing

I’ll work through hypotheticals from circumstances relevant to the past, present and future, then talk through the ethics of each.

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Past possibilities

Most people agree anyone who took it upon themselves to assassinate Hitler a day before the break out of WW2 would be seen as committing an ethical act, no matter who follows, because throwing a wrench into the cult of personality spell built around Hitler would be a significant set back for the fascist state’s grip over the people. And given all the evidence pointing to the inevitability of war, such an act could easily be seen as a necessary pre-emptive act.

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Present possibilities

Most can sympathise with quick revolutions against dictatorships where the result is a freer society, like the Kurdish uprising in Northern Syria which took power from a regime who had rolled tanks on demonstrators and outlawed teaching of their native language.

But, even there, there are key foundations you need to work from, like the probability you won’t just give an excuse for the oppressor committing even worse horrors as was the case with the Rohingya militants who ambushed a police checkpoint, resulting in army & citizen campaign to burn down many villages, plus murder and rape those that couldn’t get away.

As well as a responsibility to put down arms after winning political freedoms and a majority are in favour of diplomacy through electoral politics, like in Northern Ireland today.

Under representative parliamentary systems, the sentiment of most is that even if it could be argued that a war of terror against the ruling class was the easiest route to produce a better society, that it would still be ethically wrong to be the person who takes another’s life just because it’s the easiest way. Since regardless of manufactured consent or anything else you still could have worked to build a coalition to overcome those obstacles and change the system slowly from within.

And I agree, it would be an act of self-harm to treat life with such disregard when you could have been that same deluded person shrouded in the justificatory trappings of society treating your behaviour normally. I don’t think the way we win today is treating a cold bureaucratic system with equally cold disregard in whose life we had the resources to be able to intimidate this week. Time on earth is the greatest gift people have, to make mistakes and learn from them.

So then, an easy statement to make on life under representative parliamentary systems is; outside of absurdly unrealistic hypotheticals, I could never condone purposefully killing others when campaigning against such monoliths as state and corporate repression today.

Breaking that down though; what do I mean by an unrealistic hypothetical? For example the philosophical thought experiment called the trolley problem, where you have a runaway trolley hurtling towards 5 people tied to a track, and you can pull a leaver so the train changes tracks and only kills 1 person tied to a track. Or you can change it to 7 billion to 1 even. Or 7 billion of your average citizens vs. 1 million unethical politicians, police and bosses, to make it political.

Now what do I mean by purposeful, well we can think of for example the most extreme cases of post-partum psychosis which has mothers killing their babies. But more nuanced than that, the rape victim who gets worn down by their abuser for years until they have a psychological break and kill.

That does still leave a lot of lee way for people knowingly taking risks with others lives, not intending to kill, but who are reckless in their actions, such as with some forms of economic sabotage. And I agree such a reckless act would bring up feelings of revulsion for all kinds of reasons like questioning whether the person was really doing it to help people or for their own ego-aggrandizement. All that can be hoped is a person makes a careful accounting of their ability for human error and weighs it against the outcomes of doing nothing.

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Future possibilities

We can hypothesise the unrealistic case of 99% of society desiring a referendum on a shift from parliamentary representative system to a federated spokes council system and the MPs dragging their feet, the same way both parties gerrymander the boundaries to make it easier to win despite it being the one issue most everyone agrees is bad, and people needing to storm the halls of power to force a vote to happen.

More likely though, an opportunity for revolution might arise from such a confluence of events as climate refugees and worker gains forcing the state and corporations into trying to crack down on freedoms in order to preserve their power and enough people resisting that move, who are then able take power and usher in radical policy change, with either the army deciding to stand down or splitting into factions.

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References

1. Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution - Use your radical fringe to shift the Overton window P. 215.

2. The Camden 28 - The Camden 28 were a group of Catholic left anti-Vietnam War activists who in 1971 planned and executed a raid on a Camden, New Jersey draft board. The raid resulted in a high-profile criminal trial of the activists that was seen by many as a referendum on the Vietnam War and as an example of jury nullification.

3. Citations Needed Podcast - Civility Politics

4. Slavoj Žižek: Political Correctness is a More Dangerous Form of Totalitarianism | Big Think

5. A Love Letter To Failing Upward

6. Accounting for Ourselves - Breaking the Impasse Around Assault and Abuse in Anarchist Scenes.

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[ask-iamnotanalicorn]

Previous: The Discord Timeline

The Industrial Devolution Timeline:

The road to economic domination was creeping and insidious.

First, Nightmare Moon returned. Celestia and Cadance were able to subdue her, locking her in a (very comfortable) prison while Celestia sought a way to free her sister of the evil influence warping her mind. With the monarch so distracted and Princess Cadance struggling to take up the slack, a few opportunistic entrepreneurs began getting their roots into the market.

Then the Crystal War began, dividing Celestia’s and Cadance’s attention even further. The Changelings attacked, sowing destruction and distrust until Cadance defeated their queen. Tirek cut a swath through the countryside before being stopped, increasing the economic struggles. It was as if a domino of assaults on the Equestrian daily life had started, with none able to stop the ever-larger dominoes from toppling.

Celestia was terribly injured during the final fight that destroyed King Sombra. Luna finally overcame her rage and the parasitic magic fueling it, but went into seclusion out of shame and a desire to tend to her wounded sister. Cadance’s focus was split between post-war rebuilding in Equestria, assisting the confused, freed, and much-distrusted crystal ponies with stabilizing their crippled city, and tending to her own first child. With their leaders so distracted and the country still reeling from so many attacks, ponies desperately reached out for any kind of financial and necessities stability. 

Perfectly fertile soil for the country’s most hostile economic takeover in its history.

Flim and Flam’s tactics were simple yet effective: move in wherever large numbers of companies had collapsed and fill the void with simple, cheap necessities that anypony could afford. As their finances grew, they began to expand, beating out surrounding competition with their rock-bottom prices until they could either buy out or crush their competitors. They continued this strategy further and further out, their influence spreading like hives across Equestria until hardly any retailers of food, drinks, household goods, small machine parts, and pretty much every other goods reseller below industrial level still operated. (Although who knew what the future might hold for FlimFlam Industries?) Once competition decreased to almost nill, they raised their prices to just barely affordable, swelling their already full pockets.

By the end of the Crystal War, they had such a grip, so much financial and political power, that even if the princesses should realize the toxic hold this company has on the market, it will be a long road back to rebalancing the economy. The country has, regrettably, come to rely on Flim Flam Industries, and their stranglehold would not be easily broken.

Sales always dreamed of being a traveling salespony. He’d even gotten a taste of it before the war. But now... well, there was no one to sell for. Companies kept dying out from under him. And if it weren’t bad enough that FFI already sold cheap, unexciting product options, the further lack of competition gave them even less incentive to TRY. They could cut costs on everything from packaging to flavor to color options; there was absolutely no consideration for variety or improvement or innovation. Soon everything in those blasted pop-up depots came in bland, uniformly labeled containers, with names like FLOUR and SOAP and TOWELS. There was no ART to it, and worst of all, no heart. And certainly no need for a door-to-door sales technique - not when F&F Depots were on every corner and people already had little choice but to get their goods from them.

So that’s how Sales ended up here, running one of those blasted depots. It is barely salesponyship, but it was still the closest thing he could find to his special talent. Meanwhile pollution and unchecked labor laws are creeping out from the cities, and farms are being consumed for their timber and factory locations. Quills & Sofas went under, leaving Sales’ father without a job and one more worry for Salespitch. Everypony prays that Celestia would heal, that Cadance would realize the depths of what was happening and make some move to stop it, that even the once-evil Princess Luna rumored to be tending her sister in the castle would take a stand. But for now, FFI is taking full advantage of the rulers’ distraction and obliviousness to tighten their hold on the country’s economy. Sales works and keeps his head down; it’s too great an issue for one pony to tackle, especially a pony whose only real talent is talking.

He tries to remind himself that things could be worse. Despite crummy wages and the soul-deadening monotony of just grabbing standard crap off a shelf when asked, Sales IS making a living. He makes an effort to keep his depot looking like the pony who works there actually cares (a façade FFI has long since abandoned.) Black took up work as a stocker in the store, so at least they get to hang out. Pollution isn’t as bad in Featherhorn (yet), although the deforestation and smog have been spreading nearer. But Sales just can’t get around the fact that there’s a briefcase-shaped hole in his soul where good, honest, smart salesponyship was meant to be. It’s hard not to be bitter and miserable when your purpose has been almost completely taken away from you.  Still... if Sales can find a way to get a new company going without being ground under Flim and Flam’s hooves... maybe he can go back to doing what he loves, and the world will feel a little more right again. Fun Facts About The Flim Flam Timeline:

- I got my idea for a total economic takeover from a book 6 of the Pendragon series, “The Quillen Games” by D.J. MacHale. Its setting is a world where a single corporation has such control that they even own the people to an extent, but I didn’t want to go THAT dark (although this is still darker than my initial draft), so I stopped at just owning all of the selling outlets. Lack of competition in capitalism breeds complacency, leading to high prices with minimal improvement or variety. (That book may have also stuck in my mind because it was the first time an author so thoroughly pulled the rug out from under me that I was too depressed to finish the series. I can’t HANDLE that kind of catastrophic reversal, MacHale!!!)

- Sales’s dad, Sales Patter, lost his job as Head of Sales at Quills & Sofas after the company was eaten by FlimFlam Industries. He currently lives at home taking care of Pitch Perfect while Pitch Forward does her best to bring in funding through her competitive high-diving sponsorships. Sales and Black contribute money as well, although Black has a surprisingly well-stocked savings account that he refuses to explain to anyone.

- Flim and Flam offered Sales a job as their company spokespony, mainly because they loved the idea of having an ‘alicorn’ as their mascot. Obviously he turned them down, but he did still grudgingly accept a position at the Featherhorn depot since it’s the closest thing he can find to what he’s good at. (Flim and Flam do still like to give people a show, especially when it comes to the smoke and mirrors they must use to keep the wealthier populace and government from paying too much attention to some of the ways FFI cuts their spending - at the expense of their workers, mostly.)

- I’ve seen others do this timeline harsher; there’s a fimfiction that had an interesting take on Celestia being injured in her fight with Nightmare Moon and then IMPRISONED by Flim and Flam’s company so it could take over, which led to an ever-rising problem with pollution, underage workers, poor labor laws, and backhoof politics. Some of that does exist in this timeline, but I went with a severe injury and seclusion in the palace. The Princesses are still AROUND, but being carefully shielded from the truly dark nature of some of Flim and Flam’s machinations. It may just take someone getting their attention drawn to the right things to start the ball rolling...

- Sales and Patter do team up to create a small startup company, selling goods made by Featherhorn’s citizens to the local area. Black uses his connections as a Royal Service agent to sneak them into the palace, where they get an uber-rare meeting with Princess Celestia, who is blessedly awake enough to recognize the little AI and hear their plight. She convinces Luna, who has been taking care of her this whole time, that something needs to be done. Luna is grossly undereducated about modern economics and business practices, but she pulls Cadance in, and while Cadance works on investigating these horrible labor practices they’ve reported, Luna begins brushing up on her education and offers some protection to Sales’ little company. She does, in fact, find some obscure ancient laws that give them a leg up in the fight against FFI when they inevitably try to buy out, sue, and/or bankrupt Sales’ and Patter’s company into the ground. But they start making some headway. 

- It’s a long road back to a balanced market, and much of the work will be done by the Princesses. But the inspiration ponies draw from the changes they see starts the dominoes again - this time, in the direction of positive change.

Next Week: The Wasteland Timeline (finale!)