#you can add nuances LONG AS THEY ARE STILL EVIL AND FUCKED UP

[jedi-enthusiasm-blog]

No small part of Legends seems determined to make the Jedi look bad and the Sith look good. Considering the Sith are inspired by nazis and fascists, it's both funny and deeply concerning.

But I digress.

One of these attempts is the character Darth Vectivus, a human male Dark Lord of the Sith during the time of the Galactic Republic, when the Sith are in hiding. Apparently, he's a man with friends, with a family he loves and who love him back, a regular job… He's a perfectly normal guy, a perfectly mundane dude among thousands of megalomaniacs.

His first appeareance is as a ghost (some funky Dark Side thingy he created, btw), when he's trying to convince a Jedi (don't remember this one, I think it was a girl?) to strike him down. This is because these ghosts are connected to a living being, if the ghost is striken down, the being they're connected to dies. Vectivus is connected to Jacen Solo, who's on the edge of falling to the Dark Side. Apparently, Vectivus does not want a galaxy ruled by the kind of Sith Jacen Solo (or rather Darth Caedus) would become.

But, unlike other attempts at making the Sith look good in the EU, I actually like this guy. Why? Mostly for the funnies, not gonna lie. This Dark Lord of the Sith, the ultimate villain of the SW universe… is a perfectly normal guy with the same problems in his life as the rest of us.

Vectivus didn't know he was Force sensitive until his adulthood when, while doing Business™️, he and his employees came across a Dark Force nexus inside one of the mines they were working in. Fascinated by the power he could feel, he disolved his business, gave compensation to his employees, and went to search for the surviving Sith who could teach him. However, despite his Sith training, he remains a perfectly normal guy who lives a perfectly mundane life until his death, when he dies surrounded by friends and family. It's hilarious, can you imagine his Master's face? The sheer dissapointment?

He has restrain and moral standards. For example, he seems to be a decent boss and doesn't exploit his employees, cares for his friends and family and, just by guessing, isn't a complete asshole to his Apprentice since, whoever they are, they opt not to kill him despite the existance of the Rule of Two.

And yet… we find out he's still economically predatory, he still abuses his powers to harm and profit over rivals, and generally win at business. He isn't causing harm to those close to him, but he's still harnessing the Dark Side to hurt others.

That's the whole point, the Dark Side is always corruptive. Darth Vectivus is just less corrupted than most Sith.

That's it, that's what I like the most about the guy. He seems normal, is normal in a way… and yet he's still an evil bastard, only the regular evil bastard we find in our daily lives instead of the murderous crazy no-sense-of-restrain kind of Evil Bastard™️ we're used to see in a Sith.

It's… a bit of a grim reminder that evil is everywhere, in everyone, including you, and it can take many forms. That even the most kind-seeming people can be evil.

On the other side, the people he's murdered are… zero. Nonexistant, zero, nada. He's killed absolutely nobody. It's actually pretty funny. He's the only non-murderous Sith in existance, literally the only sane man in an Order of fascist megalomaniacs and it's hilarious.

I'm rather glad for his existance, actually, thanks Legends. Mostly because now I can say that I've killed as many people as a Dark Lord of the Sith.

[narwhalandchill]

spicy take incoming but i kinda wish ppl werent so desperately attached to and protective of this moniker of Great Big Brother 100% Perfect So True And Real when it comes to childe bc honestly. he really isnt (perfect or even that good at times) and to me acknowledging the ways both he and his family (for enabling him) are in some ways kinda just. doing teucer incredibly dirty in the long term but only with the best of intentions in the short term is so much more interesting than just pretending hes a flawless brother?? like it only adds to the drama and irony of it all man like theyre rly so dysfunctional as a family unit its great. even if hoyos likely never exploring that shit in its true depth it still lives rent free in my head for sure lol

like. you rly dont have to turn ajax into some sort of unfeeling uncaring monster of a shit brother to acknowledge that he does, in fact, repeatedly make incredibly reckless and selfish choices during his SQ with teucer and in general by choosing to obstruct the truth of who he is from lil bro so completely?

like this stuff can be nuanced and coexist with his absolutely 100% genuine commitment to protecting teucers bubble of a worldview (and w the theme of childlike dreams and wishes being so prevalent in general who knows what could be cooking w that one in particular) and his loyalty and love for his family without just having to whitewash the dumb shit he does lmao

like just bc hes capable of and willing to face the potentially grave repercussions of absolute bangers (🙄🙄) like teaching an actual fucking child to consider ruin machines fun besties and 100% insta ready to fuck himself up by protecting teucer at the cost of aggravating his still-unhealed injuries from the liyue AQ when dottores abandoned lab turns out to be more lively than expected doesnt. make that choice not a very irresponsible one yall im begging 💀

like. hes the adult here . the entire situation unfolding as dangerously as it does in the factory is Absolutely all on HIM for not being able and/or willing to disappoint teucer by just . Doing the mature thing and sending him away to safety because HES gotten too attached to this idea of being his lil siblings' loyal knight and perfect brother that Always finds a way to surpass the expectations no matter the cost its a role HE wants to keep playing despite the risk

like its So obviously a pride thing for him too and thats so fucking interesting because Of how flawed and questionable the logic is!! like yes he truly cares about teucer and ensuring he has a great unforgettable time during this impromptu escapade in liyue like thats not up to debate but the point im trying to make is that the choices he makes are Still very much intertwined with his ego and overconfidence and not really based all that much on Whats Actually The Best Approach Here. he improvises a way to give teucer the best mr cyclops outing he has ever seen bc HE wants to be the one offering him that experience and ends up biting off a bit more than he can chew and he can only blame himself for that one and This Isnt Fucking Sustainable

like i dont think that makes him evil but i do think it showcases his arrogance and flaws in a very concrete way and is a part of why calling him a perfect brother or at least one without an asterix just. rubs me off wrong lmao

like idk feel free to keep calling him that if its important to u and all if u want idc (and i do to some extent get why this defensive narrative of insisting hes great no issues at all emerged bc i remember 1.1 some ppl acting like hes childcare satan for how he treats teucer lol) but. at least like . Be willing to chip in to fund the therapy teucers going to need for those lifelong trust issues in the future man 💀

Bc Thats The Other Thing. now tonia and anthon i dont consider a part of this bc at least they Know hes in the fatui and hiding the gory details of ur harbinger job from ur baby sibs is like. fair enough and reasonable. but. crafting an Entire different AU version of yourself and feeding it to your baby brother as what constitutes actual reality surely is a choice of all times like ajax ily but genuinely . What the fuck if you were real id throttle you

AND HIS FAMILY ENABLING IT THE ENTIRE TIME ITS CRAZY LIKE. As a person with multiple siblings both older n younger with some similar age gap cohorts involved. God id snitch so fucking fast i dont think ppl rly stop and think much abt how objectively horrifying this shit is from teucers long term pov 😭 in the best way obviously given its fiction like its so scrumptiously awful and dysfunctional .

(& just in general man im just so obsessed with the way ajax 14 basically broke the eggshell of his past life and emerged to rise towards his destiny drowned in the guts and gore of the place and people and community he once called home unconditionally. Bro he fucked that town UP and now his family relations will never ever be the same its so fucking Delicious. those 3 days missing and what followed are just Actually a literal fucking horror movie when you stop blindly stanning our ginger menace, forget ajax' side and take the pov of his family and morepesok in general Why Are People Not Talking About This)

like. its not that i dont understand Why this is sth childe ended up doing as i said Thats The Point. its human. teucer is the only one in the family who wasnt there during that fateful 3 days/months . Like yea anthon and tonia were prolly sheltered from most of the carnage back then too but they still Know where he was sent when he became literally uncontrollable and almost killed the neighbors (everybody & their mom loves demonizing his parents as if his demon spawn ass left them a fucking choice JFEJSJSJSKDKS) . like its at least Known.

but then theres teucer.

And like. teucers the Only one with whom ajax can even pretend to have that delusion (ha) of normalcy and a family that hasnt seen him gaze into the abyss and stare back bloodied and grinning ear to ear . like. hes the only shot childe can have at even playacting some crude imitation of normalcy before Everything and even That comes with an expiration date hes fully aware of. so theres just lies after lies after lies and the fact that even his family just. if not actively partaking in the charade then at least silently allows the entirety of it to happen to teucer whos the Only fucking one out of the loop is just..... dude its not fair on him At All

Misleading teucer THIS much is just. its fucking horrible man but i GET it. thats why its so delicious man i GET it but god its just . imagine being teucer in this situation.... thats his entire fucking World shattered once the truth comes out. Everyone close to him has been lying to him his entire time. They all knew and they let him be misled. Like sure he might be happier Now with ajax dutifully protecting that childhood dream of his but after that. Just. sit on this for a bit. after everything do we Really think teucers just going to understand why it came to be and see it as worth it???? Will he really????

yet at the same time as awfully cruel it all is its just So human!!!!! Its so human of both ajax and his family to use the innocence of the only child that was spared the aftermath of worlds best/worst 3 month abyss training camp to indulge in this flawed false reality where their third son didnt walk into the void and come back hungry for More until only the fatui could take him and even then it only spurred him on further on that path. Like its all an act and a lie and its just. Not fucking fair on teucer but hes still doing it and theyre letting him even tho they Know it wont last theyre all looking teucer in the eye every day and letting him believe like man....

like in both the entire ruin factory sequence And in general hiding the truth from teucer as extensively as childe does hes being incredibly selfish but at the same time its selfishness only rly in the way all people are when it comes to Wanting to be seen a certain way by the ones they love and care about. and thats what makes it so interesting. bc as much as the choices he makes are dubious (or like. this decision makes sense to him. a morally bisexual total omnivore ethics-wise narwhalpilled since 14 who sees exclusively in abyss shrimp colors and acts accordingly) both they and the motivations behind them are also just. So very human ones . as terrible as the implications and eventual inevitable downfall of those choices can (will) be.

like. is it not that much more fascinating to consider all the ways that childe is neither a particularly exemplary nor an egregiously bad brother just one that. Happens to be wired weird in the head and proud and flawed and with a track record of heavily suspect decision-making but that also very much genuinely loves his family man. Like i can love that about him without dismissing the fact that theres parts to how hes treating teucer that 100% can and imo rly should backfire horrifically bc. It really just is that fucked up

hes not a good brother hes Worse AMD better than that and also not alone in this like. his family is an active fucking part of this . But like still . Is he trying his best with his abyss shrimp colored vision ? Yes. Is his love genuine? Absolutely. What are the marks? 3/10 meet me in the office after class mister youre just actually horrible (affectionate) 😭

A perfect brother? Not My Ajax man 🗣🗣 and like theres SO MUCH to explore in that it makes me so sad you just. Never see any of it p much in fanworks bc we all just call him best bro and whatever and thats that like its so sad. this family is terrible horrible awful and no good and they deserve it but also didnt deserve it it was misfortune it was fate it was inevitable . justice for teucer man i need to get him in therapy asap

[wren-galathinyus]

alright bitches, screaming into the void again, act two of the second season just dropped and I am sobbing and inconsolable, as always, spoilers for arcane season two under the cut

-CAIT AND MADDIE?????? YOURE FUCKING KIDDING ME?????? HOW DARE THEY. the scream i scrumpt. but okay genuinely, I'm very curious how that dynamic works and started, I really am praying that it's just a casual thing and cait sort of rebounding, because to me caitvi is always gonna be endgame (side note, get it I guess, at least one of the girlies is getting laid)

-also I loved the paint the town blue music intro and how it can be interpreted and the way both sides can be seen with so much nuance but also how both sides can feel black and white about each other

-Mel being a bastard child is genuinely so funny to me with the notion that Mel didn't believe that her mother could fall in love, and now she's stuck with these freaky magic people. it's actually so interesting as it reminds me of the sorcerer class in dnd and how magic is inherent in the blood, but also, if you're a wizard, it's something you learn. as seen with Mel and the people that learn the arcane (the guy that saved baby jayce) (also the artificer which is everyone who utilises modern hextech, but specifically the inventors)

-the reuniting of Vi and Jinx!!! omg the tension, the grudge being held, but also the very clear longing for the sisterhood to be rekindled. and how this time, when Vi hits Isha (even though by accident) there's someone there to smile and ask if she's okay and to keep going. something something breaking the cycle of trauma.

-then to add onto that the fam reunion of Vi Jinx and Vander! and of course the fact that Vi chose to trust, again. despite how many times her trust has been broken and betrayed, she trusted again, and it payed off, because even if only for a couple days, she had a father back. she had a family, this time with a new younger sister addition

-and to add onto that even further!! the reunion of all of them with cait!! all of them are chosing trust and chosing forgiveness to try fight for a greater good and a future they wanted to fund!!

-the small family dynamic in the first episode that is sevika, Jinx and isha is so perfect to me. and I find it so curious that with isha, Jinx wants to leave behind revolution and violence to try and have something bordering on domestic. idk, I just love the three of them and how they would go to any end to save each other

-meeting young vander, silco, and the girls mum! it all started out so pure with so much hope. they wanted to leave a legacy and a world where you could raise children. and though they have failed initially, those children are now picking up the mantle. brimstone and blisters is an amazing phrase and goal

-small side note, I love seeing sevika try to step into a leadership role

-y'all what happened to ekko???? please, why is he on the mural?? I swear he better be in the final act. but I love to see that the fireflys are still thriving

-viktor and jayce truly are doomed yaoi and it's going to doom the whole rest of the narrative... and I kinda love that for them. all jokes aside though, it's amazing to see both of their developments and how viktor grew and created this amazing (if very uncanny valley) society (cult), and jayce, tormented by the touch of the arcane, driven close to madness, is so destructive. and despite one promoting growth, the other destruction, I'm actually not sure which one of them is in the right! like is the hexcore inherently evil and thus viktor and his community, or is Jayce delusional and going to self destruct in the worst possible way? or both! or neither! we'll see

-haha omg Jinx not being recognised and then also being laughed at for her pants

-the warden of stillwater is dead and all I can say is thank fuck 😌

-the scene in the prison! holy fuck. Jinx and sevika releasing everyone and Jinx making the sarcastic proclamation, only to be met with genuine connection from her fellow Zaunites. all of them touching her shoulder as they pass. "we see you, we know that you have done bad, we choose you, you are our hope" is what it says to me. and you can see that it really gets to Jinx, that she's having this holy shit people cherish me moment

-ambessa is amazing and awful. I don't love her but what a character she is. she's driven and corrupt and full of so much love and hate (fuck that other guy tho, the one that always stands near her who I can't be bothered to remember the name of, glad he dies, acab)

-so much diverse animation in these three episodes you absolutely love to see it! vander with his almost abstract view of the world when he's in a rage, only seeing in colours of blood red. the way that isha sees the world in her childlike sketch while reliving moments. the soft and peaceful almost watercolour sketch of vanders mind behind Warwick's animal brain. how much peace and love goes into every detail of this show will never cease to amaze me

-that one guy will never catch a break from Vi and it's the funniest running joke in the series

-Caitlyns face when Vi calls her cupcake

-the way Jinx draws her name under her eye with Vi's pitfighter paint in the same fashion as Vi's tattoo. it really says to me that Jinx still idolises her and wants to be like her sister still, no matter how much they've changed. while also accepting that there are parts of each other that neither want

-Caits character... ooh boy this one's a doozy. so yes, fascist dictator style, but we still see remorse from her. a want for things to be better for everyone. the deep desire to be able to change things for the better without mass acts of violence. but again clinging to the need for revenge. at least at the start. she still very much betrays ambessa when she sees how much pain she's willing to cause to fuel her own purpose though. I think she's come to terms with the fact that what she wants is something she has to try to achieve without becoming a monster. she's deeply flawed. she's amazingly complex. I'm in love with her. she's a cop. she's a heartbroken daughter. she wants to fix the world. she may have broken it a little under the deeply misguided tutelage of Noxus. I really can't wait to see her in the final act. especially since I believe she is going to be part of the revolution now

-Jinx calling the gauntlets bitch mittens 😂😂

-he's your father too (ouch)

-yknow, genuinely thought the pitfighter arc was gonna be longer than that but I'm not too bothered by it. I'm also really glad to see that Vi is allowed to be wrong! she is amazing but also makes a lot of mistakes, and she has people in her life that aren't afraid to call her out for her shit. I feel like a lot of people think she can do no wrong because she feels like the main protagonist, but the show continues to remind you that she's just a person, and one who is deeply fucked up by her trauma, but she is trying her best

-also just noticed the detail of the black rose having the red galaxy as their sort of ethereal plane, while viktors is a deep blue. I wonder if that's to do with the combating magics that they posses and if they are in opposition, whether thematically, morally, or any other kind of way. just thought it was cool

-also is it just me or does the dog on Vi's jacket look like a domesticated version of the wolf that Singed used to revive Vander??

-the way that both Vi and Jinx sound like their mother

-the hug? I actually cried

-and finally. omg isha why??!?!?!?!? holy fuck I know that it was desperate, but child just pulled a season one act one powder move. what is the fallout of this explosion gonna look like? are we going to lose vander for a second time? is isha gonna die? how will our main crew fare? I can't wait for the final act. it's gonna be amazing!!!

-I lied, final final thought, Cait disarming Vi was so funny (and also hot)

sorry is none of this is very articulate or if some of it is a bit repetitive, but I needed to get it out of my system. please feel free to add thoughts or even tell me if you think I've got some things wrong!

[liquidorcard]

Could we maybe get an analysis on her “stop making villains like Magneto, they suck” video?

Also, I for one am sat patiently for that Flowers In The Attic analysis.

FItA Lorch Analysis coming next.

For right now: Part 3, Final round. FIGHT!

[Part 1] [Part 2]

Lily Commits Elder Gay Mutant Abuse, feat. "Eldritch Lily" (Part 3)

8:30: "And making these characters hop in the giant death robot so they can randomly do some heinous act of evil so you feel less guilty for wanting to bring them down is very telling about your priorities as a writer." [We're still talking about Korra, for context.]

I'm highlighting this quote more than anything as a means to really dig into the big stink with Lily's media analysis here. I've said something along the lines of, "I kind of agree with her, but not actually," several times while writing this, and this is exactly why.

I think a lot of people come at media criticism from a very flawed position because of the way the grading works in our school systems, of all things. They judge it like there is the possibility of getting an A+ on your show, movie, novel, video game, etc. For the purpose of reviews, as a quick way to indicate quality/how much you recommend a piece of media, I understand why critics would use scoring systems like that-- but when it comes to analysis, that's not really a useful approach. There are technical skills and proficiencies in execution that you can grade media on like that, but even they have their nuances. Conceptual ideas presented in media, however? No dice.

There are certain filmmakers in particular who I fully acknowledged are very skilled at their craft-- I still strongly dislike their films. I don't agree with the conceptual ideas they have to present, and I don't think they convincingly rationalize their position textually, subtextually, or otherwise. With that said: I think most media produced, regardless of quality, is a net positive for the intellectual landscape of humanity as a whole. With the exception of media that is actively harmful in a very direct way, disingenuous propaganda, or particularly egregious cases of cooperate slop, I support any creative's ability to add to the long-form conversation art and creation offers. Those highly proficient filmmakers I ideologically disagree with, their ability to articulate their worldview so genuinely, and clearly helped me as a creative articulate why I disagree.

With all that said, it's clear Lily doesn't think in that regard. Lily has taken media crit she has heard from other sources. She has just retrofitted it to whichever property she wants to rip into. If it superficially applies enough that she can misrepresent a piece of fiction with an argument, she will apply it across the broad. Approaching media crit like there is a definitive way to "score" fiction on its conceptual value, like it's a high schooler's end of term essay. Context be damned.

What she is articulating here is a valid criticism of certain fictions that try to present morally complex villains. This is a complaint I've made myself over properties like the first Black Panther film (which, thankfully, they at least did their best to rectify in the second). But not Kuvira. Not Magneto as a whole.

9:07: "Which would have been interesting, and led to some criticism of the main characters for trying to restore the same monarchy that has previously failed the people."

They weren't trying to restore the monarchy. They were protecting the prince from assassination. I feel like it'd be pretty tyrannical of the Avatar to say, "fuck you Earth Kingdom, you don't get your royal family anymore," without their say, Lily . . .

9:18: "Maybe talk about the United Republic being a literal concurred settler state."

YET AGAIN LILY'S CRITICISM BOILS DOWN TO, "I HAVE NEVER READ A COMIC."

9:30: [Lily takes like, the 12th bullshit pot shot at the creators of Avatar.]

I've ignored it up until this point. There's been too much else to talk about. But Lily has assumed an absurd amount about the authorial intent of everyone she's discussed in this video-- including Jack Kurby's intent when creating Magneto.

9:40: Lily fumbles through some final point here with two sentences that make no sense when put together about how this is all people doing tropes badly, but if you did it well then the trope wouldn't exist and aaaaaaaaaaaaa.

God please strike me down.

10:10: Lily calls this all propaganda.

Again. She's sort of right in the abstract, divorced from the content of her video. Wrong when taken in context of what she's talking about. SOMETIMES "sympathetic villains" are used as political propaganda. Sometimes, they're a legitimate expression of a creator's misunderstanding or mischaracterization of an ideology. Sometimes, they're an earnest dissection of the ideological concept.

Good argument of specific pieces of media, retrofitted, flattened of any nuance, used to discredit a thing Lily doesn't like across the board.

We're in a timeloop.

10:25:

God is dead and we have killed him.

11:01: "The problem is that this idea of all villainy being nuanced and complicated has just never really been true. Evil people in real life will often just invent justification for evil things they already want to do. And there's a point where someone crosses the line of evil so much that nothing they say earns them sympathy."

Lily thinks people commit acts of extreme violence and atrocity for . . . Fun, I guess. Disturbingly enough, this tracks real well with how she's justified her own abhorrent actions in the past. When other people do bad things, it's because they like it and are bad. When she does a bad thing, she has a reason, and therefore, it's justified. Another self-tell Lillian.

11:42: "The problem with my idea for these kinds of villains is that they inherently make white people of any gender uncomfortable."

GOD FINALLY FUCKING DONE THIS GOD FORSAKEN VIDEO AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Pray for me, the fucking psychic damage I just fucking took for you guys.

I suppose the only take away here is this:

The thing that's so exhausting about Lily's videos is the complexity of the degrees in which she is wrong. She's developed, for lack of a better word, a talent for laundering good arguments in a very disingenuous fashion. I wouldn't go so far as to call what she does plagiarism. Her work is more than just stealing other people's arguments and regurgitating them back-- but what she does is a spiritual cousin of sorts.

She bootlegs intellectualism to sharpen it into a shiv she can use to stab at anything that displeases her. The same way she weaponizes her marginalized identity, she weaponizes honest and thoughtful media analysis aswell.

This video was, frankly, barely even about Magneto. Barely even about sympathetic villains. She has no interest in the material that was the topic of this video-- not even enough to do a bare-bones Google search beyond looking up vague facts she could massage into supporting her claims.

A lot of those very early X-Men comics are fucking rough. They include shit like Charles expressing some very creepy thoughts about a (I believe then) teenage Gene Grey. Some very yikes dynamics with the then mostly/arguably entirely white mutants acting out very on-the-nose imagery associated at the time with the black liberation movement. And some very questionable framing and dynamics due to the fact that, real life marginalized groups typically don't have dangerous superpowers.

However, you can almost sense the moment when Kurby started to take the reigns and make the X-Men into something really special. Not to imply that Stan Lee is a bigot or a bad writer, he had very good intentions. By his own admission, he did his best work as a collaboration with his artists guiding the story along with him (sometimes, well, functionally being the actual writer, no offense, Lee left a bit of a complicated legacy, we can't get into it right now.) Anyone familiar with Kurby's work as a whole will know just how profoundly humanist he was with the stories he told.

Despite what Lily arrogantly implied here, he always intended Erik to be a very sympathetic character. Even as a "villain," a sympathetic character vaguely coded as an "extremist" black activist was kind of bold for the 1960s. I can't tell you for certain what ol' Jack's authorial intent was, the man very rudely died 3 years before I was born so I never really got the chance to ask him-- but dare I say this was his best attempt at laundering the idea that maybe "radical" activists actually maybe had a point? To an audience who would have been VERY against that idea if presented to them outright at the time? Even now?

Media does have the power to shift cultural perception-- even if that takes time. In the early 2000s, when I was taught about Malcome X for the first time as a child, even then, 40-some-odd-years later he was presented to me in a negative light. It was in the context of him being the inspiration for Magneto, however. The emotional connection I had to that character made me question whether that characterization of Malcome was entirely fair-- even though I was too young and didn't have the full context to grasp what I was being told at the time. I do believe to some extent that Magneto's popculture relevance has helped preserve the legacy of some of the more controversial activists in history. By being a figure people can personally connect with. Of course, it's all more complicated and messy than I'm making it sound, however. It's unfortunately very easy to flanderize figures of history, boil down their motives, and flatten their narratives. A character in a story, detached from any direct sociopolitical baggage, is something you can form a bond with. Something that can (if handled properly) promote empathy for their real-life equivalents.

There absolutely is a conversation to be had about certain ideologies or positions being more often than not, for practical or political purposes, cast in the antagonistic role in fiction. However, Lily's thesis here, boiled down to the bones, has been disproven ten times over by the abject failure of shit like The Comic's Code Authority and The Hays Code. People don't emotionally connect with squeaky clean moral paragons as much as they do messy, complicated, emotionally challenging complex characters-- even when you paint them as the abject villain of the story.

People fucking adore Magneto. He's a cultural icon. Even before the FoX-Men movies came out, he was probably one of the few comicbook characters your mom could name. Vaguely recognize, at the least. And yes, that doesn't always translate into people being charitable to "radical" civil rights activists in real life-- but doesn't necessarily harm it either. Anecdotally, it helps, if but just a smidgen.

Anyway, get fucked Lily. Magnet Daddy FTW.

P.S. X-Men '97 is really good. Also, it's 100% alluding to these two having fucked. Maybe outright confirmed it by now, I'm not totally caught up.

I mean, we all already knew they totally were lovers, but.

Come on Disney, give the people what they want. Make 'em kiss. These poor old men have been having sexual tension for like, 60 years.

[wingsdippedingold]

I couldn’t reblog this normally since I have the og poster blocked, but this is a pretty common sentiment in the community that I want to put my comment on:

Now I’m not gonna sit here and argue that there aren’t people who like Feyre more in the first book and consider her to be “better”, because people do, and I think it’s valid to think that as well as valid to not think that. To clarify I think neither, but more on that later. This is also a decently long post, I tried to make it concise but it’s anything but that 💀

I think comparing her character in the first book to her sisters (this post is specifically Nesta, but I’ve seen it done with Elain) is purely made in bad faith. Equating them in this manner blatantly ignores the obvious differences in characterization and nuance in their writing.

It is widely known that SJM has said that Elain and Nesta were just made to be caricatures and cartoon evil sisters and that she didn't initially plan for them to become anything more than background characters. They were meant to be flat and evil, because that’s all the purpose they had at the time. They were there to give Feyre a hard time and make us sympathize with her, and they did that.

No one is saying that that it’s silly to get hung up on Nesta’s actions because they “happened a long time ago and she had development”, they’re saying that because her actions were literally meant to be cartoonishly evil and not to have any actual depth or reasoning to them.

However, Feyre at the time was still a fleshed character that was supposed to be in the spotlight. Her character traits and depth were continuously shown off, whereas her sisters only existed to give her a backstory and struggle. Her character in the first book cannot be written off to the same degree as her sisters, and it’s false equivalency to think that it can be.

At the time the way Nesta and Elain was written was fine, but in deciding to change them to be actual characters with thoughts, feelings, and backstory, Sarah majorly fucked herself over. This is why she had to retcon things and add their own struggles later on and why you’ll see a lot of people defending them for their cabin actions; and as a side of the fandom who take her retcons as canon, you can’t pick and choose which ones you don’t want to take as canon solely because they change the your notion of the character. It’s a packaged deal, either you’re down with SJM’s narrative and story, or you’re not (I’m not), because guess what? The other characters around said character will also comply by these retcons.

But when you hammer it down so hard that these girls are horrible people in the first book because you couldn’t give the time of day to make sure you’re actually creating a cohesive storyline, rather than just trying to push out a character for people to immediately sympathize with, it’s hard to rectify that, and I often find it the mark of a bad writer (and poor planner) regardless if you weren’t planning on ACOTAR being a series.

I 100% understand Nesta hate, it’s hard to change your idea of a character when you’ve already been made to dislike them and like the character they initially antagonized. If she, or any other character, is not your cup of tea, that’s fine. Like what you like. Hate what you hate (assuming you stay in your lanes and tag correctly, which many of you do not do, and instead tag specifically to push your anti content into pro spaces and make people mad, but that’s a different topic) u, this circles back to my original point that you cannot equate the validity of the characters and writing of Nesta and Elain to Feyre in the first book.

Now do I agree that Feyre was her '"true self" in book 1 vs the others? No.

I think a lot of people, and a lot of antis, earlier Feyre lovers, and probably some of my mutuals, will disagree with me on this, but Feyre's character progression has always made sense to me. That's not necessarily to say that I like it, but considering her circumstances, the people around her, the environment, and her own personality and beliefs, her change and progression from ACOTAR to ACOSF makes total sense to me. I do think there's some inconsistencies, and I definitely think there’s a lot of situations where ACOTAR Feyre would react differently than later Feyre, but that’s just a product of her being a character with an arc and overall I can understand how she got from point A to point B.

I won't get into the details here, but if anyone's curious on why I think so, Imk, l'd love to talk about it

There’s also a good chance that the original poster of this will try to argue my way directly from my account, which is weird because I have you blocked, so I won’t see it, nor do I care to… so don’t? Idk man, save your energy, the stalking is crazy

[max1461]

[Rant-post, almost certainly presented in an overly, uh... absolutist way? An overly harsh or inflammatory way? Idk. At the very least there are parts of this I would probably add significant nuance to]

I've never shoplifted, but it's also in a large class of "bad" behaviors that I don't really give a shit one way or the other if people do. Another one of these would be like, cheating in school. And that latter example is one that nominally should come back to bite me, because my current career ambition is, you know, to go into academia (the legitimate way). But I still don't care when other people cheat.

Of course I'm talking about average cases here; obviously you could generate some sort of exception with an evil scientist and a sensor that blows up the earth if anyone shoplifts, or whatever.

But anyway, I want to go farther than this: it is not merely that I am indifferent to these behaviors, but rather that I think being indifferent these behaviors is a strong sign that your ethical intuitions comport with mine, and indicates that we may get along interpersonally, whereas that being strongly against these behaviors is a good sign that our worldviews are not so compatible (although hopefully we can still get along, of course).

I think that, when it comes to behavior towards others, I value above all else a tendency to non-interference. I have a strong feeling that I do not want to be involved in other people's business unless they give me a good reason to be, and I do not want them to get involved in mine. This supersedes any feeling of any social responsibility to police the behavior of the group for the better, or so on. I like to stay out of other people's business and I like people who stay out of other people's business. If someone in my community, like, commits a murder, the harm is grievous enough that I am sort of impelled to at the very least produce a judgment on the situation, and I will probably be drawn in in some capacity. But if some people in my community, idk, yell at each other or get into a fist fight or whatever, I would like strongly to remain a neutral party. And I do. It is even easier and more desirable to remain neutral when the "harm" of an action is significantly diffuse, as in shoplifting or cheating.

I associate excessive concern with diffuse harms like shoplifting or cheating with a micromanaging tendency, a desire to police the behavior of the group so that it may be engineered towards some positive outcome. I do not like this. It's why I'm a pretty strong of free speech absolutist. Worrying a lot about shoplifting is like worrying a lot about who is allowed to say "queer". You might contend "but shoplifting is actually harmfully, whereas people calling themselves queer or whatever does no harm!" I contend "by even going through the ethical calculation, you're walking a road I won't follow". I don't care if the world is a little worse when the wrong people say "queer". Even if the exclusionists or whatever were right on a factual level I would not care. The would can be a little worse, if that's the price of you not fucking with me and me not having to fuck with you.

I'm a socialist for a lot of reasons. One of them is that I think poverty often rises to the level of "grievous harm", like murder, that we are compelled to get involved in. Another is that I think property rights are often closer to "annoying interference with other's behavior" than they are to "bulwark against annoying interference". This is where I diverge from right-libertarians. You all know this, this is the deadest-beaten-horse on this fucking blog.

At a basic level I don't care what other people do, I truly deeply don't care what other people do, and I truly do not want to care. Leaving people alone is a very high virtue, and I practice it, and I like when people practice it with me.

This is I think the heart of what looks paradoxical to a lot of people in my ethics. Cheat on your test, shoplift, run your shower too long and waste water, yell offensive shit on the street, I won't stop you or try stop you. But I refuse to ever kill a single insect, and I'm dubious about the ethics of training dogs or keeping indoor cats, and I'm kinda on board with the cultures that think its rude to talk to strangers in public. I don't know.

[yellowspiralbound]

Since season 3 of The Witcher Netflix comes out tomorrow...here are some of my concerns on adaptation from this season onward. Potential spoilers for the future seasons and definite spoilers for the books. Long post ahead.

The Hansa's Dynamic

I am so worried about how the Hansa is going to be handled in the show. Like shaking in my boots terrified. The showrunners already really messed up Dandelion & Geralt's dynamic...and that's one of the easier dynamics present in the Hansa imo. The dynamic is already going to be screwy because Cahir is a middle aged man and not a petulant teenager if he's present in the Hansa at all (though I think he will be since Emhyr called him and Fringilla out at the end of s2).

Emhyr as a Character

Speaking of Emhyr...I think they might attempt to give him a redemption arc, and I cannot emphasize how bad of an idea that is. They're going to retcon the whole "wanting to impregnate Ciri" bit, which I have mixed feelings on. Like yes, on one hand that's fucking gross but on the other hand, that bit is in there to show how fucked up Emhyr is and why Geralt needs to get to Ciri so quickly; it adds a sense of urgency to the Hansa's travels. If I see Emhyr sympathizers on my dash after this season I will lose my fucking mind.

Milva's Pregnancy & Related Scenes

I suspect that Milva's pregnancy is going to be cut entirely or play up the rest of the Hansa's concern for her as a weird "men think they can control women's bodies" thing which Milva will have to fight with them about so the show can be appropriately pro-choice without exploring any of the pro-choice nuance the books bring up. I can just see Regis talking to the guys about it being turned into a "the father deserves a say in a woman's choice to abort" scenario instead of the "I will give this woman her abortion regardless of what you all think about that (and I've made that VERY clear) but I think she's making this choice because she believes you all will abandon her/not support her if she wants to keep this baby and someone needs to make sure that she knows that won't happen" scenario that it actually is. This is also plays into my concerns about the Hansa's dynamic as changing that scene changes it irreparably.

Characterizing Nilfgaard as a Nation

Right now I feel like the show could go one of two ways 1) Nilfgaard is wrong in everything it does or 2) Nilfgaard is right in everything it does (if Emhyr gets a redemption arc). The show has already made a show of the Northern Realms' racism, which is book accurate mind you, but I fear this will translate to a sort of "Nilfgaard is the better nation as its less racist" scenario. While Nilfgaard is better in that aspect and a few others, it is still a militant slave nation. Nilfgaard and the Northern Realms both have their evils and their virtues; that's a big point in the books and the games. Neither nation is 100% good or 100% bad - they're just nations. I don't think the show will be able to handle that kind of nuance.

Jaskier & Radovid...

Apparently, Radovid is supposed to be one of Jask's love interests this season. Radovid is a massive racist, a war criminal, and a teenager. I'm sure all of that's going to be retconned but for fuck's sake just make a new character if you're going to age up and completely change the personality and insanity of an existing one. Important note: I am 1000% in support of queer Jask. I have never shipped that man with a woman in my life (even in the books and games) but for the love of God why did his LI have to be fucking RADOVID??

Mistle & the Rats

If they make Ciri and Mistle a love story, I am going to be disappointed but not surprised. Let me be clear: Mistle is a rapist and an abuser. I suspect they will change that to shoehorn in a queer relationship (even though Triss and Philippa are RIGHT THERE if they want a semi-canon wlw couple). The Rats as a whole are definitely going to be made into more robinhood-like characters because God forbid a main character like Ciri is morally grey or does questionable/bad things.

Geralt's Disability

If this season ends with the Vilgefortz and Geralt fight, as I suspect it might, Geralt will be disabled permanently by the end of this season. The dryads do not fix it. Magic does not fix it. Geralt becomes disabled and stays disabled. His disability becomes a hindrance during the books and the reader actively sees him grapple with the fallout of this. I do not trust this show to handle that - especially with how much more closed off Geralt is in the show compared to the books. If I had to guess, Geralt's disability will be handwaved away or mentioned in passing and never actually shown to impact him which is not cool.

[caitlincat-95]

Just going to preface this with that this is just MY opinion and people can disagree with me. I don't mind. I also don't mind people loving this game. I do. I am still playing it. But there are so many things that this game did that missed the mark so I HAD to get it out. There is more I didn't get to add in, but it was getting a bit long so I didn't include them.

My Rant about DATV

I love Dragon Age. I love it deeply. It is why when I see it be half done, it hits me so hard. This game is SO far from good for me. The thing out of me and my brothers mouths at the start of this game was "What happened in the past 10 years?" I wanted to know how we got from point a to b. I didn't need details, but ANYTHING would have been nice. We got over it until we realized that no one batted a fucking eye at the elven gods being evil and also being set loose. Which I can get that the Inquisitor would have explained everything that had happened during tresspasser, but I find it hard to believe that everyone bought that. But whatever I let it go. Until we saw everyone and their mother have a fucking eluvian. The fucking mirrors that were SO FUXKING RARE and so important to the elves. The elves who in no fucking way in hell would have just let people have them. They Grey Wardens say "oh it was lifted to us by the dalish" like what the fuck. All I'm asking for was a small exposition to explain to me where the state of the world was in 10 fucking years later.

Ok letting that go. Whatever. Moving on. To Solas. I HATED that we met him so early. I would have liked to PLAY atleast ALITTLE bit of us actually trying to find him. It just threw us into already having FOYND him. And then to have him just immediately out of play instantly is really dumb. Tresspasser set up with the elves all leaving across Thedas. And the only place I would think would be to go and join Solas. Who would be convincing them hewas going to help the elven people. And with how oppressed the elves are in DA, I can easily see them flock to him. It would have been so interesting to play into. Hell, my brother even said that they should have joined the gods after Solas was imprisoned. It would have made the enemies you fought more nuanced and sympathetic. Knowing that the elves tou would be killing l, alot of them are Inky there because of how horribly they were mistreated and that they finally saw a chance to not be oppressed is to join with the gods. Who would have manipulated them and preyed on those feeling of resentment. They had such a good setup, and they fumbled it hard.

Next thing that I started to realize that bothered me story wise, were the companions. Like I expected to build a team and then GROW and LEARN how to be a team. I expected arguments, disagreements, not everyone just joining and getting along. Sure whatever there was banter of Harding not trusting Lucanis because of Spite....or him.and Davrins whole thing. But that got over quickly and in Hardings case only happens in a fucking banter. LET THEM DISAGREE AND ARGUE! Then we learn and grow after something major happens. And it bonds them together!! These people all came from different cultures, different t backgrounds, different mindsets! Why did no one take string issue aginst Emmrich, except for Taash who surprise got over it in a blink of an eye, or why isn't anyone more judgmental of Lucanis the fucking abomination!! Also I HATED how Rook solves all their problems. Like have us influence their thought process maybe. Maybe after spending time with Rook, they start to see things differently then they had before. Maybe Rook offers insight they didn't have. Don't have them turn to Rook and say hey Rook tell me what my decision is. Like fucking Davrin deciding to let US decide the griffons fates! Or Emmrich letting US be the ones to make the decision of his future!! It just felt like at the end of everyone's story the game made US chose where everyone ended up. And it should have been SO much more than that. SPECIFICALLY in they game that claimed to be companion focused and team focused.

The companions' stories weren't that great to me either. Some were fine, but others I feel like could have been more. Em.richs was fine I loved it with the whole lich thing and the choice you had to make. Fighting his colleague and everything was OK. Bellaras I liked, I like that you couldn't save her brother, it gave it a bit more of a weight behind it. Neves quest was fine. Davrin's quest was fine. Harding's was fine. Taash's was fine too, but the start didn't flow naturally for be. I did like how their story ended, though. I did feel hurt for them losing their mother. Lucanis' quest......... I had expectations for his....I LOVED Lucanis in The Wigmakers Job. Him AND Illario. Their whole dynamic of being cousin whom cared deeply for each other, but one being favored, but that not stopping Illario from.caring for his cousin. And then finding out Lucanis was next in line for First Talon and he doesn't want it, but Illario does. And Lucanis even wants Illario become it. But he won't refuse his Grandmother, who beat them into killing machines, but Lucanis thinks that fine because it made them able to survive. So I thought that there would be a.nice.story about two cousins one struggling to break out of her shadow so he doesn't just let her dictate his life, and then other getting a chance to actually prove she was wrong about him. It's a cheesy story I know.

So when finding out Illario betrays Lucanis it hurt me. That's his cousin he loves so much. I also didn't care for the jealous cousin cliché. But it could have actually worked had we gotten to explore why Illario did what he did. And how broken this family was and maybe we could have helped piece it back together. Maybe taking Caterina out of the picture since she was the reason for this in the first fucking place. But instead of any nuance to their stories. We got a story about a caring, but stern grandmother wanting her grandson back, and a jealous cousin who just wanted to make a grab for power. They made Illario one note evil, for us the good guys, to defeat. There also didn't feel like any character growth for him at all. Like it was supposed to be him finally getting out of his mental prison and finding common ground with Spite. But they didn't give me enough conflict with Spite for me to really feel it as growth. And then the fact that Caterina decides he is First Talon knowing he doesn't want it, shows me he is still trapped under her thumb. He just accepts it just because that's how it is. That's not a satisfying ending to a character story. The only ending we get is if he imprisoned Illario or not. Which I don't because that boy deserved better. Both of them deserved better, but I can rant about them forever.

Something about Spite and Lucanis did make VERY clear to me is how LACKING this game is in communication and getting to know my companions. What happened to the conversations I could have that Inquisition had. Where I could ask them things and get to know them. And after major story beats, they had REACTIONS to them. For a game that claimed to be companion focused, they didn't do that great of a job except make attractive looking companions.

Putting the companions aside amd looking at this story. It was just so cliché good guys vs bad guys. Like there wasn't any nuanced morally grey conflict. There was no choice that made me have to sit and think about it. Like REALLY think. And don't tell me it was Minrathous and Treviso. Because it hardly effected anything story wise. All it did was piss me off because they punished you harder for saving Treviso over Minrathous. I lose Lucanis' romance if I DON'T save Treviso, they take a bigger reputation hit, they destroy their home base and never give you a new one, the leader is blighted and dying, they made me feel like I could save people just to throw it in my face that you can't, and every fucking time I walk around there are dead bodies and venatori EVERYWHERE. Which would all be fine if it got reflected the same way in Treviso if you let them get blighted. But it doesn't the blight is off in the distance, not in tour face, Neve isn't locked.if you destroy Minrathous, the crows still have their base, the only thing is two characters end up ighted and die, no faction leader gets hurt. It doesn't feel balanced to me at all. It forced me as a Shadow Dragon who wanted to save her town, but romance Luca is, it forced me to choose Treviso. Which whatever I love them more anyway.

Back to the cliché story. The enemies are two after school cartoon evil monsters. They don't have anything that could make me even pause to consider their position, unlike Solas who I COULD, even if I never agreed with him. And I never felt like we did anything to actually prepare for this. We gathered people up to the city choice and we're like we need to go fight the dragon and save the city. And for a.moment I was like fuck this is crazy and I was ready for us to go.to the city and make our way to the dragon and see everyone dying around us and it feel wild and urgent. They even had us say we needed to make a plan to bring the dragon.to the ground. I was ready for an awesome.moment. then we go and just get thrown into a dragon fight, which only happens because Ghilinajn decides to tell the dragon to get Rooks dagger. And then we fight it and then it flies away. Like there was no lead up.to it. There was no plan. And I'm like they could have just kept destroying the city why leave. All the dragon had to do was stay and keep flying around killing everyone.

And then making the First Warden a massive ass was fine, but he was also just cartoonishly bad. And we didn't even have any other Wardens except Antoine and Evka question him? REALLY? After Inquisition, we did that AGAIN. And then when the Siege of Weisshaupt happened, and the First Warden STILL questioned us. All the had to do was LOOK outside and he would have known it wasn't the same blight. And then I thought he had FINALLY turned around when he was going to make the sacrifice. Nope he was just doing it for glory. And I'm like what the hell. Why not atleast give him a noble send off. Admit he was wrong and take that sacrifice in place of a younger Warden who had more time than he did left. And then we have a sit down with the group and there is THE FIRST TIME a companion conflict. We start sidequests for everyone and then poof the conflict is resolved and Lucanis and Davrin have drinks and everything is fine. They worked it out off screen. Thanks I would have maybe liked to see them have it out. And then after that there is NO more team.conflict atleast none that doesn't get solved eith Rook walking up and going " hey play nice".

And then after the companion quest we kinda just rolled into the end game. Finding that Elgarnan has his big ass dragon and just going with the same throw Lucanis at the god so he can stab it with a dagger, hope he doesn't miss this time. And how they handled the end game mission, with all the factions and companions there. It didn't feel like they earned it. Having you forced to lose a companion felt like it was there to just go " Haha SEE we aren't just good guys vs evil guys". And then the WHOLE fucking choices thing was ripped right out of Mass Effect 2, who did it better because I REALLY felt hurt when I fucked up a choice because I cared so deeply for my team because we actually BECAME a team!! This game didn't earn the big crazy ending when they rest of it fell flat. Also speaking of character death, they did Varric DIRTY. He shouldn't have died period and sure as FUCK shouldn't have died like that. That was just an insult to that character.

The ending of this game was the OY thing that made me feel something deeply. And that's because I was attached to Solas amd his VA did a good fuxking job and the Inquisitor's VA! Solas having that moment where he fucking cried, it made me cry. That was all I wanted and I'm ATLEAST glad I got.to see his story wrap up. And right when I was all tears and feeling good with that end, we hit the fucking epilogue. And I watched as each pictured passed by and the only thing I could think of was "why are the just telling me stuff that I did in game" where the FUCK are my effects from the things I did. Where is my Rooks happy ending with Lucanis. I was so disappointed by it. And then on TOP of that. I accidentally got the secret ending.....and look I was already EXTREMELY pissed with them literally writing that the South was just IN FLAMES AND COMPLETELY DESTROYED. I'm like WHAT THE FUCK WAS THE POINT OF ME SAVING THEM IN THE PAST THREE GAMES WAS THEN. THEY ALL DIE IN 20 YEARS. But oh my god, finding out the secret ending. I lost hope for what a next game looks like. Having a big bad mysterious organization be the masterminds behind ever single fuxking story that happened in this ENTIRE series. Just. Why. I mean, I know why. They didn't want to be tied to those games anymore.....but WHY. Ugh. I will end my rant here. I am so disappointed in this game and have zero hope for the Next Mass Effect game. BioWare really needs to step it up, in my opinion. I do love this game even with all my issues I have with it, and that's why it HURTS me so much to see it have SO much potential, just to see it squandered.

[skaruresonic]

Do you have any opinion about this post? It proposes that a key element of Shadow's characterization is loyalty, and the reason portrayals like SA2, '06, TMOSTH and Prime are beloved is because Shadow is loyal to something (I would add Forces as well), while others like Boom and IDW fall flat because he's only in for himself.

(some of the tags, of course, are all "sega take notes, everyone gets it but you", which is funny for multiple reasons)

I want to agree with it more than I do. The way it's worded makes it difficult for me to be fully persuaded, because it seems to be missing something.

I feel like the post is a bit over reductive. It's already an exercise in futility to try to boil Shadow down to one or two traits because he contains multitudes, nuances, and subtleties; it'd be like distilling Eggman down to "evil scientist" and then ignoring all the ways in which his manchild behavior molds his character archetype.

The others have limits on their loyalty. Sonic will help you out, but he’s not gonna kill a man for you. Shadow will. He doesn’t have that limit. If you are Shadow’s friend and you need him to kill for you, he will do it. Period.

Idk maybe it's just me but something about this style of analysis rubs me the wrong way. When people make declarative, emotionally-loaded statements about the characters that Sound Good on paper but don't hold up to close scrutiny. If you're going to assert something this lofty, you need to provide concrete examples. When did Shadow kill for a friend in the games? When did he express the willingness? Can you give me an example?

also lmao "Sonic's not gonna kill a man for you," Sonic will absolutely kill a man if he fucks around and finds out While I agree with the overarching idea that loyalty can be an important part of his character, if we're talking post-ARK raid Shadow... You kind of have to be honest about the brand of loyalty he possesses, because his loyalty looks very different from Amy's or Tails'. It's a specific, hardwon type of loyalty. It's begrudging. It's that "Pssh, what? I don't care. Feelings are for wussies" kind of loyalty, if anything. Like, it took Rouge dragging his unconscious ass home, a three-day-long fever dream, and her twisting his arm just to get her to begrudgingly call her "ally." You know what I mean?

On the other hand, I disagree with the notion that an overt lack of loyalty inherently makes him unrecognizable, since self-determination is an arguably equally prominent part of his character. In ShTH, you're just as free to ignore the wishes of your partner characters and go your own way. Cue the Fleetwood Mac.

Framing it as though loyalty is the linchpin on which his character rests risks defining Shadow solely through his relationships with others. Note that I'm not necessarily saying his relationships aren't important, just that they're not the most important. Agency and the right to determine his own destiny are vital parts of his character as well. He didn't just tell Rouge "And I will fulfill my promise to Maria; that's the only thing that matters to me now" in SA2. He first told her "Even if my memories aren't real, it's still me, Shadow."

...I'm not sure why OP decided to include Archie and X in their analysis, considering Archie and X are dead and have no bearing on Game!Shadow's character. Not sure what's meant by Shadow being "loyal" to Amy in MoSTH, either; I don't really have context for that since I didn't play it. If I had to guess, however, methinks OP may be mistaking Shadow doing something kind for Amy for friendship or loyalty towards Amy. You can do kind things for others without necessarily being "ride or die" for them.

This is where the post really loses me. Shadow's backstory doesn't need to be expanded upon at this point in the series; they've already dedicated at least three games and a handful of adaptations to his tragic backstory. We don't need to keep returning to the same well again and again. Surely we can do better than to navel-gaze. And the reasons why "he's like this" ought to be clear to anyone who's played the games, since they're fairly self-evident.

"But what about pre-raid Shadow?" I hear someone inevitably ask. Well, yes, Shadow displays obvious loyalty toward Maria, Gerald, and the ARK as a whole, but certain ShTH endings notwithstanding, it's not a blind sacrificial devotion. Regardless of his loyalty, he exercises the agency not to act like a mindless weapon in the hands of his creator. He possesses reason and more importantly, uses it. He still has enough presence of mind to seek to undo "all the evil the Professor has created" in SA2.

Even before the trauma of the raid and Gerald's programming went and deeply mucked up his sense of self, he was preoccupied with notions of self and identity, for understandable reasons. He wasn't purely a lapdog for Maria or the researchers. I feel like swinging the pendulum in the polar opposite direction and saying "Shadow is defined chiefly via his dedication to others" because it swung too far into "Shadow is a hyper-macho jerk" territory isn't a balanced stance to take.

Like this post is arguing from a Watsonian perspective, as though IDW!Shadow's jerkassness indicates some sort of internal selfishness, when the Doylist "Shadow was just written like shit in the book" will suffice. Shadow has a character outside of his relationships to others, just as Sonic and Eggman do. He's quiet, introspective, and in all honesty, he comes out with some hard-hitting lines sometimes. "This is the final voice of the last war machine," anyone?

Sorry if this reply is all over the place, I'm just writing down thoughts as they occur to me lol. Feel free to add your two cents.

[trans-leek-cookie]

the thingw the orcs in dunmeshi is sth i skirt around bc like u said it is. not a great modern take on orcs. obv not the worst it could be and kui at least did engage w trying to write a more involved lore on them rather than just having this be the same “orcs are big uncivilized brutes” version 8000000 but that element is still there. and i do think “its not the worst” is hardly what i would want to set my highest expectations to jdhdgksgd

tumblrs being a bitch n not letting me put images in so I'll just paste the text from the other ask

Nodding. ty for the info on the ways halfling racism can be compared to irl examples in “the middle east” like that rly is such a close comparison i wonder if it was at all intentional… AND FR on the whole . wishing we knew what they called themselves bc the “halfling” “half foot” thing i rly cant help but think abt how it feels like irl examples of certain groups being denigrated to category slurs its like. LOL. dunmeshi makinh me feel party to fictional racism and microaggressions against my will...

Idk Abt skirting around bc I think it's smthn we should face head on, but at the same time I'm not in a place where I can really add onto the discussion wrt orcs as a white/East Asian person. IIRC ppl have said tolkiens orcs are black and/or central Asian (Mongolian I believe) coded, which is meaningful cause he's influenced so much of modern fantasy, and thats. Y'know. Not great. Also the orcs in dungeon Meshi are essentially an indigenous group from what I remember so that's also a whole mess. Again, my opinions arent very meaningful when it comes to this, but I feel like it's incredibly disappointing to see an author who's clearly capable of nuanced and interesting commentary on racism in the context of real life and fiction (even if it's not always great it's clear she's thinking about it in some depth) really just. Fall back on tropes. Bc for the other races - human is a wider category than usual, tall men aren't always the Everyman, elves are long lived but that doesn't make them wiser, and halflings are mature, worldly and resourceful, which I feel like does a lot to break free of typical fantasy pigeon holeing. But the orcs are just sorta... The Bad Guy but Not That Bad I guess? Theoretically it's a departure from the "super evil forever no exceptions" idea of the but it's still so far behind what needs to be done to make it less of a lazy, racist trope.

Yeah, again I'm not west Asian or Arab like I said, but between reading stuff ppl online write n talking to my Iraqi friend + rereading dungeon Meshi and really trying to analyze it, it kinda stood out to me. I will say I was a little unconfident posting about it bc it's 3 things (4 if you count the name note) but theyre still really notable at least to me. The hand/foot cutting is I feel the most explicit? Because that's such a fucked up stereotype it just stands out immediately. I don't necessarily know if the half foot/middle east connection was intentional, because I assume Japan/Asia in general has a different relationship with West Asia (since they are the "far east" in comparison, so "Middle East" wouldnt really make sense?), but it could be one of those things that colonialism managed to spread. I'm not very knowledgeable about that, but even if it wasn't intentional I think it's a very interesting parallel in how language can be used to categorize people as "normal/other". So i can't say if its intentional or not, but it's definitely an interesting lens to consider the story thru. Id also say I believe halflings are said to be native to a place that's east from where the story takes place, but not the eastern continent (which is p much easy Asia). I've seen some ppl take this to mean eastern Europe, and I don't think that's wrong, but I think u could also think of it as west Asia? Idk if we ever got much info on it in story, so I might be missing some details. (Honestly I'd personally HC that halflings are generally mixed Eastern European/West Asian- not to conflate the two, but rather Im imaging the majority of them are in a kinda blended culture).

[licncourt]

I've only read the first trilogy a decade ago and while swimming around book fandom for the last couple of months i've come accross different opinions regarding Lestat post QotD. I've also heard that AR massacred his character in Tale of the Body Thief.

How would you describe Lestat's character arc post QotD? Is there even a character arc? Does he finally get to mature a bit and work on his issues? Does it happen off page? Did he get lobotomized like Louis and Armand?

God this is such a hard question, especially when it comes to a character arc because yes, there is technically a discernable arc for Lestat, but the problem is that it was entirely unintentional and the opposite of was AR seemed to be going for.

The first book after QotD is the best example of this I think. It starts off really strong with Lestat struggling to cope with the effects of Akasha's abduction and the changes to his body, as well as a bittersweet but well-written look into what his relationship with Louis is like at this point in time.

Unfortunately it goes completely off the rails after that. It's hard to say that Lestat is wildly OOC because he's really not. Most of what happens feels pretty authentic to someone with Lestat’s personality dealing with trauma through the lifestyle and moral lens of vampirism. He's manic and self-destructive and vacillating wildly between lashing out at loved ones and total emotional dependency.

The issue becomes some of the plot events themselves and how they're handled. This books is pretty notorious because it really ruins the growth Lestat has experienced up to this point, most pressingly by making him a rapist in both a human and vampire sense.

If this had been played as a reaction to his own assault and a fucked up attempt at taking power back and "embracing" evil to cope, MAYBE this could've been spun into at least some kind of existential horror narrative about cycles of abuse and becoming the evil that you hate, but the tone, the context, and AR's real-life opinions on these issues make it clear that this is just the author's idea of "what men are like" (it literally says that in the book).

This is really the first step in Lestat transitioning from what he is in the trilogy into a messed up male power fantasy for Anne Rice that lacks any kind of self awareness, nuance, irony, or character consistency. From this point on, this macho character completely eclipses the Lestat we knew before as AR turns him into something unrecognizable.

This progresses across the rest of the books (with very brief glimpses of the "real" Lestat that are just enough to add insult to injury). If she had written him as putting on macho playboy persona as an act to deal with his own fear and trauma and vulnerability, it might’ve worked (although it still would've gone on too long). Instead, this is completely unironic, a full change of character with no explanation given as AR started to project her own ideals onto an established character.

By the end of the series, he's clearly happier, but it feels hollow because he's also not himself. He's magically not traumatized anymore, he's a prince who's the perfect masculine ideal and everyone fawns over him as a god. It feels like some desperate fantasy TVL Lestat would have had instead of reality.

He's definitely more mature and suddenly able to commit to Louis and make "good" choices, but we never see how he got there or what changed. There's no healing process shown and no reason for any of the changes. It's jarring and confusing and you're happy for him, but unsatisfied. Sure, things are better for him, but his character is far less interesting and a lot more unlikable so you can hardly be excited for the good stuff.

So basically AR turned Lestat into accidental existential horror over the course of two decades and then popped him out the other side as an alpha male with an eight pack and a crown.

[fandom-hoarder]

I just saw you reblog a post about Misha and Jared being overlooked for good acting vs Jensen. And I agreed with OP and your tags about Jared and Misha.

I think Misha had his areas of strength, but Casifer was more of a caricature or copy-cat of Mark P Lucifer, rather than Lucifer in Jimmy’s body (or Cass’ vessel). For example, Jared made Lucifer his own but there was still a tie to Mark’s version with his menace and condescension. I believe Misha can act, and there is one episode where I think he played lucifer well, but stopped really trying because Apocalypse Cass and The Empty Cass are frankly embarrassing.

Another point that was brought up is that some people overlook that Jared is good because they hate Sam or hate Jared, which I think is true but those peoples opinions aren’t valid because they have an agenda. But I also think it’s that Jensen/Dean are scene stealers and are often more animated, so the casual enjoyer is likely going to be drawn to him. Then he pulls out the emotion and it catches you because he’s usually fun. On the other hand Jared/Sam are more of a steady presence on SPN, most of the time, so it can be easier to not focus on him.

But what I’ve found on rewatches is that, while I initially was drawn to Dean and his expressive eyes, I’m now drawn more often to Sam and the nuances of what he’s doing, especially when he’s playing Not!Sam or Sick!Sam, but I still mostly love their scenes together most.

Though I think both actors have their strengths, I think Jared is truly stronger at physically embodying different characters, and Jensen often gets a stronger emotional response but I’d add a caveat to that because I’ve also noticed a difference in the quality of writing for emotional Sam lines vs emotional Dean lines at times, especially early seasons vs late seasons dialogue.

Anyway, sorry this got so long. I’m not even sure if you usually do asks. But I just had to comment because I find it so frustrating how a loud group praises Jensen skill and dumps on Jared when the truth is they and their characters are doing different things for different purposes, but both are good actors, and both have also had flat moments or over the top moments that have taken me out of the show once or twice.

[Reference]

The thing with Misha is he's pretty decent at getting into character with a gimmick.

Castiel is well known for his gravelly voice, because Misha thought about what would happen to a human vessel containing an angel, and then he stuck to the bit.

He is great at caricaturing Mark P's Lucifer, because he has some distinct facial expressions and line delivery. But, like I said in those tags, that wasn't the actual assignment. 🙃 And a big part of this is on Misha, because he could've given more thought to it; but it's also on the directors that allowed it. And I think a huge part of that might be how Mark P's face is a shorthand for Lucifer, and perhaps people forget that's just a vessel. So you end up with a Jimmy Novak vessel, comically contorting his face into Nick's features.🤨 I can't take it seriously; it's so uncomfortable to watch.

Apocalypse World Castiel is maybe even WORSE to me, because

1) how and why does he sound like that? Is Jimmy Novak German over there?? Or is that what CASTIEL sounds like, since our Castiel also doesn't sound like Jimmy Novak?

2) why would castiel even have the same vessel? I can give this a pass for the sake of the mind trip of seeing evil cas with the same face, but that brings up:

3) the FUCKING ACCENT is an honestly lazy shorthand for evil. Because he's not just doing a German accent, he's doing a Nazi Villain Accent like from a movie, complete with facial ticks. Someone else has a more in depth post on why it's Not Great to use German accents and Nazi caricature as a shorthand for evil, but I can't find it to link right now.

It bothers me so much.

The Empty doesn't bother me as much, except for the fact that once again Misha made a character choice that no one else depicting The Empty did. However, I'll give him a pass on it since his was the first.

_

Conversely, Jared puts a lot more thought into character motivation to create a nuanced PERSONA. He's not just "how can i make this one quirky in a new way?" He's getting into the character's head, and often switching between them. The way they carry themselves, the tone of voice while still being Sam/Jared's voice, the way he had Gadreel speak in iambic pentameter! The way you can see the difference when you pay attention.

And maybe I didn't appreciate it as much the first time, because I binged it ravenously rather than taking the time to think about any of the acting. So perhaps, like you said, Jensen/Dean's stronger emotional acting took the spotlight.

But with rewatching, I notice so much more about how Jared portrays different characters and learned so much about the care he puts into figuring out every character, I'm just constantly in awe.

I don't think Jensen's Michael was that bad, but it also didn't feel like Jared's Lucifer. Maybe part of that is that Jensen hadn't had to act anyone other than Dean as often as Jared had to act Not Sams.

J2 definitely each have different acting styles and strengths, and sure it's maybe not always perfect, but I love both. Though, I do have to admit, most of my reblogs and posts on the subject are just about Jared...lol. He's just amazing to me, maybe especially because Sam does get shafted to the background a lot, but when I look for him Jared is putting his all into Sam. If acting was still one of my personal interests, he would be a role model to me.

[hypermania]

I stopped watching the walking dead at the end of season 8 and only know what happens after that from seeing other people post about it when it was airing and there was so much negativity so it’s really interesting to see you watching it now and seeming to have mostly positive thoughts. Do you think watching it after the fact helped or am I totally misreading your feelings? 

this is a very funny ask to receive because i feel like all i've done is complain about how bad the show became starting around 7x01 but apparently all of my complaining has been confined to other spaces haha. i do, however, think that not having to wait and watch week-to-week helped me get through it and enjoy it more than i would've if i'd still been watching it live, but even the ability to binge it can't fix what i think are the show's three fatal flaws:

1. negan—i know this is an unpopular opinion but negan is one of the worst things to happen to the show. he takes up so much space and energy and yet the show never fully commits to actually doing anything with him. in s7 they literally bashed us over the head with his villainy and it was boring. his monologues were supposed to be menacing; they were supposed to make us scared to find out what he was capable of, but all they really turned out to be were long and corny and so fucking frequent that you couldn't help but tune out. i didn't need to hear him monologue about being an asshole to know he was cruel. i got that perfectly fine from his actions and the actions of the people who worked for him.

and he was cruel, in a way no other villain on the show was, but the show so desperately wanted to keep jdm around that they shot themselves in the foot by trying to pull back on the cruelty. yeah sure negan will bash several people's brains out with a baseball bat just for fun in front of a child but he would never lay a finger on that child. no, no, he didn't threaten the kid. he was just bonding with him.

yeah sure negan will force women's hands so that they feel there's no other option than to marry him and therefore sleep with him but he'll kill a blatant rapist. don't you get it? he's evil and you should fear him (but forget all that because he's totally redeemable).

yeah sure he'll help burn hilltop to the ground but don't you see he's actually on your side. like?? it's not nuance or moral complexity or shades of gray. it's just bad writing so that jdm can stick around, despite there being zero reason for negan to still be around. negan is responsible for so much damage and loss of life (and loss of potential in the form of community building) that it is unconscionable to me that he can ever show his face among any of the survivors. he wasn't a compelling villain and he's somehow an even less compelling reluctant ally. let maggie kill him already. at least there'd be a little catharsis in that.

2. rapid world expansion—this is difficult because long-running shows need world expansion to keep from becoming stale and repetitive but you have to strike a balance between expanding the sandbox and straight up changing the sandbox. i think the show did a really good job of opening up the world in the first six seasons. everything up to and including alexandria felt real and grounded in the world that they had established. in atlanta (and the outskirts of) they were such a small group and operating within such a limited amount of space that it made sense whenever they came across new places and/or new people (the farm, the prison, woodbury, grady memorial, terminus, etc). and then making the pilgrimage up to dc and finding alexandria all made sense as well. they spent time establishing what alexandria was and how it came to be.

but that explanation relied heavily on the idea that alexandria was isolated (i mean, aaron had to go out and travel just to recruit people ffs). so when you then add in the kingdom, hilltop, the saviors, the scavengers, oceanside, etc. you're saying, "actually there is a giant interwoven network of communities all around that somehow just magically never crossed paths with alexandria, not even when they were dealing with the gigantic horde that should've threatened all of them." and it makes no sense. and then add to that the commonwealth, the whisperers, and whatever the fuck the crm is. it's just too much. and none of those places they added in are ever really established in any meaningful way, with any real connection to our protagonists.

the commonwealth is the worst example of this. it's a a community of fifty-thousand people, most of whom seem to be completely out of touch with the reality of the apocalypse, and it's never really explained how. how do they keep walkers out? how do they have plumbing? how do they have electricity? how is noise not an issue? where is the food coming from? the weapons and ammunition? what were they doing with the train cars at the beginning because it seems like actually they accept everyone? why were they so suspicious? none of it's ever explained past a few comments and vague allusions here and there. they just plucked us out of the zombie apocalypse and plopped us into a dystopian society and said, "have fun at your new playground!" and i'm sorry but i'm not having fun. this is not the playground i signed up for.

3. rapid cast expansion—this one goes hand in hand with the world expansion. the show needs to add in new characters to replace departing characters and to introduce new and fresh dynamics but it's important that those characters matter in relation to their connection to the found family the show's been establishing for 5+ seasons. in my opinion, the last time the show successfully added new characters to the group was when they introduced abraham, rosita, and eugene (*there's a notable exception of 1.5 characters to this but i'll get to that in a second).

it's not that i don't like any of the characters they add after that, it's that none of them feel like family. none of them ever feel fully integrated into the group or fully realized as character in their own right. they're just... there. i like ezekiel and enid and jerry and princess and connie etc but they just don't matter. they're just people who also exist. the thread that ties them to the group i care about is a shared living space and desire to survive, not anything they've actually been through together. and that's kind of stupid because they've been through a lot together (fighting the saviors, building their communities, the whisperers, the stuff at the commonwealth, etc). it just doesn't feel like it because they're all so spread out geographically (due to the rapid world expansion) and because their connections aren't really to the family, but to the communities at large. and that doesn't work on a character-driven show.

*the exceptions to this are, in my opinion, dwight and maybe jesus. dwight is the only later seasons character that the show puts any effort into actually making me root for. some of that's because he starts out as an antagonist and therefore has to redeem himself but a lot of it is because he does actually redeem himself. i understand why he did everything horrible he did in the first place and i sympathize with it, but then i also watched him put his own life on the line over and over and over again simply because it was the right thing to do. dwight was held more accountable for his actions than any other single character in the history of the entire freaking show and despite proving himself, they still send him away just so they don't have to look at his face. and i know it was because he was going over to FTWD but damn does that suck because he's one of the only later seasons characters that actually feels fully developed.

i have some thoughts about jesus as a character and why he feels more fully integrated and realized than, say, gabriel or aaron but they're still very jumbled so i'm not going to get into it right now.

anyway, the point is that there are all these characters that the show is telling me matter and are important to my characters but they don't ever give me a reason to believe that beyond the fact that they just all happen to be on the same side.

so. yeah. i don't like the show anywhere near as much as it probably seems like i do and those three issues are the main reasons why. i have smaller gripes too (eugene never being held accountable for anything ever, rosita dying, michonne leaving her children, etc) but they're not structural issues, you know?

and despite having said all of this, i immediately started rewatching as soon as i got to the end because i do really love the found family of it all.

[marshmellowtea]

anyway i keep complaining about the killing eve inspired who's lila au living in my head rent free so i might as well. fuckin. make a post about it lmao

putting this under a cut because holy fuck this got long (and this isn't even everything, if you can fucking believe it) (also warning for some mentions of ableism, if there's anything else i need to warn for lmk)

honestly i never watched all of killing eve nor do i really remember most of the plot so i'm calling it "inspired by" rather than a fusion au or something because it's just become more and more its own thing. really this whole thing kicked off because my brain went "hrhrhghg. lila (and will by extension) wearing pretty outfits and killing people while tanya tries to figure out who the fuck she is. mommy issues. sapphic girls. send tweet" and that's the basis this thing was founded on lol. (i was correct for this btw, in case you were wondering /lh)

will and lila do share a body in this au but i'm kinda flip flopping between whether or not they're a system or if i wanna take this further away from the source material and add supernatural elements to this where lila is a tulpa/spirit/whatever tf she is that latched onto will like in their original canon. i'm kinda leaning toward the latter because i don't want this to fall into stereotypes about people with DID being scary or evil (like. lila isn't evil in this au but she does enjoy killing people which can frankly pose a Problem even if i do try to be delicate/more nuanced about it) but i feel like stereotypes can happen either way so i'm. trying to figure out what to do here ahgkldjglk. this is another reason this au was originally going to stay solely in my head but honestly i developed too much to keep it bottled up so HGDKSJFKL

either way they share a body but lila does all of the killing because will is squeamish and frankly far too sweet to be a murderer lmao. they have a way better relationship here than the one they have in canon, they're more like friends or siblings and lila goes out of her way to protect will......even if she can be a bit careless with their body sometimes. when she does get injured on assignments though she tends to get him a treat (things like clothes, food, stuffed animals, toys, books, games, etc agere stuff too because that slipped in here OOPS) to try and make up for it, though honestly, sometimes she gets him things just because. their apartment is littered with things lila bought (or stole....) for him at this point cuz it's the way she shows her love for him basically. what else is she gonna do, express it verbally? fuck that lmao

i was kinda agonizing about this choice but yu is their handler/the one who gives them their missions, and also their surrogate father figure because of course he is lmao. i was kinda worrying about this being ooc for him but then i realized like....he was part of the group that killed the rest of the lawrence fraternity, which regardless of intention is still murder ahglkdjsf. i feel like a lot of people gloss over how morally dubious that was, even if it was almost definitely his best option given the circumstances, so i'm just taking that same logic and bringing it here--lila was trained to kill by and for the lawrence fraternity in this au, and once they're gone (either by dying, arrest, or something else, maybe she just runs from them idk that could be interesting) she just continues killing because it's all she knows. since she refuses proper rehabilitation, yu here is like "look, if you want to kill, we can find some people we need you to kill as a last resort, and we'll even pay you well for it. please stop killing random people you choose to pick fights with" ahdlkjlkJFD. also, having her technically employed by him helps keep her and will close so that he can make sure they're safe because he worries about these orphaned teenagers okay :'))

tanya's role here is kinda nebulous here, originally she was going to be an agent tracking lila down like eve was but i didn't wanna bother messing with these character's ages (i ALREADY have an au where they're aged up to their mid twenties for the sake of plot so give me a break lmao) so now she's more like.....technically a witness who decides to get invested in the case despite being like 17/18 and having no expertise lmao. like in the og killing eve i was thinking maybe she meets lila in the bathroom before she kills someone and thus becomes obsessed with her when she realizes she's probably the killer? i have to work on her more idk i just want these two to be weirdly obsessed with each other and for tanya to frantically hunt her down with her limited resources before they eventually meet and KISS about it

tbh as an additional motive for tanya i have been toying with the idea of martha being the one lila kills since that's her friend and it would fit with that one who's lila scene BUT two problems: 1) i would have to come up with a reason for lila to have to kill martha and i can't. really think of a good one especially if yu is the one giving her orders, and 2) i would just feel really bad about doing that to her. hgdalksjflksadf. she might be spared solely on my guilt alone honestly, we'll see what happens.

anyway that's the basics of the au i just wanted to get this fucking word vomit out there. i may or may not post more about this later (or, god forbid, i might write an actual fic, could you fucking imagine lmao) but yeah. if you read all of this bless your soul i love you

[makeste]

I like Bakuguo but his attitude is starting to really piss me off. He's talking about Daku as if he's just ~crazy~ and as if he isn't partly to blame for Deku's toxic self-worth issues. It's infuriating to watch. If Bakuguo doesn’t admit out loud and in front of his friends that his bullying of Deku played a part in Deku's current destructive state and if he doesn’t verbally apologize and reaffirm Deku's worth then I can no longer like Bakuguo's character or Hori's writing.

tbh I don't really know why this is the discourse of choice for people all of a sudden, but this is already the second ask I've gotten about it, so I might as well address it lol.

I think fandom is conflating fanon!Deku and canon!Deku here again. fanon Deku is of course much more sensitive and woobified and has much shakier self-esteem. fanon Deku is the one that turns evil in so many AUs because of Kacchan's bullying. fanon Deku is the one that actually jumps off the roof in so many fics, as opposed to fishing his notebook back out of the pond a few minutes later grumbling about how Kacchan needs to think before he speaks or else he could land himself in serious shit one day if god forbid anyone actually does take his cruel words to heart.

and just to clarify before I get any further, I am not saying this to excuse Kacchan's actions in any way, because what he did was still completely terrible and unacceptable and WAY over the line, and what's more he knew it, too. the bullying was still shitty and horrible and awful, and definitely impacted Deku and made him miserable. I fully acknowledge that, and that Kacchan has a lot of atoning to do for it. this is not a "Kacchan did nothing wrong" post.

but that being said, I don't think canon Deku's reckless self-sacrificing nature actually has anything to do with the bullying. I think they're two completely separate things. canon Deku actually has pretty decent self-esteem in spite of everything Kacchan did to him. canon Deku doesn't think he is useless. canon Deku had a wholeass fight with Kacchan less than 10 chapters into the series in which he explicitly spelled it out for Kacchan that he had a lot of worth, and was going to prove it to him. canon Deku was persistent in wanting to become a hero and hoping and believing that he could find some way in spite of being quirkless. canon Deku never let go of that dream even when no one else supported it. I don't think he would have even given up on it after being told no by All Might, tbh -- we just never got to see how it would have played out because of everything that happened with the sludge monster shortly afterward. but he's not the type to ever give up on something that easily, and we've seen that. canon Deku never thought he was useless, but rather wanted to prove to everyone else that he wasn't.

the drive that Deku has to save and protect others even at the expense of his own safety is something entirely separate from that. he doesn't break his body for others simply because he has no self-esteem and thinks that his own life isn't important. he does it because he can't stand the thought of someone else getting hurt, and knowing that he could have done something to prevent it. it's as simple as that. like, Spider-Man has the whole "with great power comes great responsibility" thing, right? and he doesn't have low self-esteem; he simply believes that if he has the ability to help someone else, then he has a responsibility to help them. it's a personal creed. and Deku is based on Spider-Man. his philosophy is based on that philosophy, which was one of Horikoshi's core influences and is one of the core creeds in superhero fiction.

Deku is self-destructive not because he doesn't value himself, but because he is literally physically incapable of standing back and doing nothing if he knows that he can do something. he's the type of person who sees a car speeding towards someone and leaps in to push them out of the way. NOT because he wants to get himself fucking pancaked by a speeding car, but simply because he can't sit back and watch the other person get hurt without taking action. his body moves before he can think. and that's where the whole "doesn't take himself into account" thing comes in -- the fact that his thought process simply stops at "get them out of the way of the car", and never extends beyond that to "hey, and maybe I should try to find a way to do this that doesn't involve me getting hit in their place." to him, that's simply less important than the first priority, which is getting the other person out of the way.

and regarding that last part, while that may seem like a self-worth issue if he's prioritizing everyone else above himself, I think what it actually is just selflessness taken to extremes. like for instance, when a parent sacrifices themselves to save their child, them placing the child's life above their own isn't necessarily because they don't see themselves as having value. rather, it's that they love the child so much that they place their well-being even above their own. and that's what Deku is like as well. except that in his case he cares about EVERYONE, and so is willing to sacrifice himself for anyone. and that selflessness is his defining character trait, and simultaneously the most admirable and the most terrifying thing about him. it's both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness, which I think is fascinating to explore.

but anyway, so that's also why we never really see anyone thoroughly chewing him out for this behavior either. because the thing is, it is admirable how selfless he is. it's just that there's also a reason why most people are at least a little bit selfish. and that's because too much selflessness will ultimately and inevitably wind up getting you killed. at some point you either have to learn when to put the oxygen mask on yourself first, or else find yourself a loyal group of friends (or classmates) to watch your back, and make sure that mask gets on you when you need it. and maybe help you land the plane too while they're at it.

anyway so that was a lot of rambling, but basically it all boils down to three things:

when Deku berates himself for being useless (for instance at the end of the War arc), he's doing it out of frustration for not being able to push the others out of the way of the metaphorical car. that's the kind of uselessness he can't stand. the sitting-back-and-doing-nothing uselessness.

Kacchan's bullying was terrible, and it might have indeed played a part in Deku's choice of the word "useless" as a way of berating himself in these instances, but he is not the one who gave Deku this mindset of taking himself out of the equation. that's something that was already inherent to Deku from day one. (but that said, Kacchan has a lot of things to apologize to Deku for anyway, so if he wants to add this to the list I certainly won't stop him. he gets mad about Deku's suicidal attitude because it worries him, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he doesn't feel responsible for it. people underestimated his feelings of atonement before 284/285, and I think they're still underestimating him now.)

and lastly, one last important note, which is that Deku's current "saving" mindset isn't wrong, just as Kacchan's "winning" mindset was not wrong either. the lesson to be learned here is NOT that being selfless and wanting to save other people is bad. rather, it's the fact that he's trying to do it alone that's got him all fucked up right now. basically when you think about it, selflessness is really just selfishness on someone else's behalf. which means that in order for Deku to be saved, it isn't necessary for him to change his outlook or his selfless attitude, even if it is pretty crazy lol. rather, all he really needs is a good group of friends who are willing to act selfishly on his behalf in return. protecting each other through mutual selflessness lol. teamwork as self-preservation. hence why the U.A. kids are here now.

anyway so yeah, I think that's everything. sorry this got so long and out of control lol. this is just a very specific nuanced thing that's hard for me to express, but which I feel is very important when it comes to Deku's character. Kacchan didn't unleash Depressed Nomad Deku on the world (or at least not in this respect). but that being said, he and the others will hopefully be the ones to nudge him back on the right course again.

[celiabowens]

underrated SFF books (YA and Adult)

So uhm, since I keep seeing the same books on my dash all the time (and I like them too, just...there’s more! to read!) here’s a list of less popular SFF books, divided into YA and Adult. I’ve tried to mention when there is lgbt rep and the trigger warnings. Also, books written by poc will be in bold. Please point out any typo or mistake or if I’ve forgotten specific rep/tw mentions.

All of these are books that I’ve read and enjoyed (by enjoyed I mean anything from 3 stars and above), but if anyone wants to add titles please feel free to do so!!

YA:

The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi: beautifully written, fairytale-like story rich in mythology (inspired by several Hindu myths. There’s a full list on goodreads indicated by the author herself). Roshani’s prose is gorgeous.

A Crown of Wishes by Roshani Chokshi: it’s a companion novel to The Star-Touched Queen, but both can be read as a standalone. I liked this one more than its companion and I particularly loved how the romance was written (slow burn, but specifically, the author really highlights the mutual respect between the characters, we love to see it).

The Young Elites by Marie Lu: fantasy trilogy set in a world inspired by Renaissance Italy, in which children who survived a mysterious and deadly illness ended up with strange and dangerous powers. Secret societies and a female villain!

The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu: historical fantasy following Mozart’s sister, Nannerl, a girl as talented as her brother, but afraid of being forgotten because of the lack of opportunities she has to be seen and heard. Nuanced sibling relationship, no romance.  

The Midnight Lie by Marie Rutkoski: fantasy f/f romance! Both a coming of age story set in a society with a rigid class system and a slow burn f/f romance with a lot of banter. TW: abuse.

The Weight of Feathers by Anna-Marie McLemore: magical realism. The book follows two families of traveling performers that have been locked in a feud for over a generation. This was the author’s debut and I remember getting an arc of it and being impressed by both the prose and how the forbidden love trope was handled.

When the Moon was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore: another magical realism novel. One of the main characters is a trans boy and the book focuses on issues of racism and gender. One of my favorite YA!

Strange Grace by Tessa Gratton: fantasy romance set in a village that periodically sacrifices a young man in order to keep a deal with the devil that ensures their prosperity. Also, polyamorous and non-binary rep.

The Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee: first book in a duology following avatar Kyoshi’s life. It explores the political and cultural aspect of the Earth Kingdom and Kyoshi’s past. Bisexual rep.

Descendant of the Crane by Joan He: sort of a murder mystery fantasy, as the main character finds herself suddenly thrust into power once her father has been murdered. The story has a slow build up to a last part full of twists and machinations and it features lots of court intrigue. Warning: the ending is quite open and afaik there isn’t a sequel planned as of now.

The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones: a quite unique take on zombies influenced by Welsh mythology (it’s super cool). The novel follows Ryn and their siblings, as they try to get by after their parents’ death by working as gravediggers. Only well, the dead don’t always stay dead. The characters read a bit younger than they are imo. There is chronic pain rep.

The Magnolia Sword by Sherry Thomas: retelling of the original ballad of Mulan. The book follows Mulan, who’s trained her whole life to win a duel for a priceless heirloom, as she joins the army. There’s a lot of political and historical details, which I really appreciated. Do not go into it expecting a fun adventure though. The descriptions of war aren’t extremely graphic, but be aware of the fact that most of the book is set during a conflict.

The Candle and The Flame by Nafiza Azad: standalone fantasy set in a city on the Silk Road! It’s a quite slow-paced tale about love, family and politics. It has lush descriptions of landscapes and cultures (and FOOD, there are some really great descriptions of food). It’s a very atmospheric book and while I struggled a bit with the pace I’d still recommend it.

Forest of a Thousand Lanters by Julie C. Dao: sort of an East Asian inspired retelling of Snow White, but following the Evil Queen before she became Snow White’s stepmother. I honestly haven’t read its sequel (which should focus on Snow White herself), but I do think this can be read and enjoyed as a standalone too.

The Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner: it’s hard to point out exactly what this series is about because it has evolved so much with time. It starts out as classic quest/adventure series with The Thief (which may seem a classic and simple book, but is actually full of foreshadowing and has a really clever set up), but develops into a complex and intriguing political fantasy in The Queen of Attolia and The King of Attolia (and then goes back to the quest theme in book 5, Thick as Thieves).

Adult:

A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers by Alyssa Wong: I’m cheating with this one because it’s technically a short story but I love Alyssa Wong’s stories so I’m putting it here anyway. It can be read for free and you should just...read it.

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang: grimdark fantasy (TW: abuse, self harm, rape, drug abuse), inspired by Chinese history. It’s adult, but follows younger MCs and the unique blend of different historical periods/inspirations makes it extremely interesting. The characters are extremely fucked up in the best possible way, plus the use of shamanism is awesome. Please make sure you check all the TW before reading.

The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang: a Japanese-inspired militaristic fantasy, with elemental magic, a badass housewife dealing with her past and hiding a sword in her kitchen’s floor. It has interesting and nuanced family dynamics and a great reflection on propaganda and the use of narratives.

Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri: first book in an epic fantasy duology inspired by Mughal India (TW: abuse, slavery). I really liked both Empire of Sand and its companion and I find them pretty underrated. Both books have great slow burn romance (with a focus on mutual trust and respect) and focus on culture, religion, self acceptance and politics.

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: a fantasy bildungsroman set in Mexico during the Jazz age. It’s a great approach to adult SFF as it follows a young girl on a life changing adventure. It features Mayan mythology and a god slowly becoming human (this trope is everything!).

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden: a coming of age story inspired by Russian folklore. The trilogy as a whole has one of the best arcs I’ve ever seen: each book is perfectly self-contained and has its own arc, but also fits perfectly in the bigger picture of the trilogy. The atmosphere is amazing, the cast of characters is extremely well developed. Also frost demons are better than men.

The Binding by Bridget Collins: historical fantasy, but with very minimal fantasy elements. It’s set in a world vaguely reminiscent of 19th century England. I’d say this book is about humans and self discovery. It’s about cowardice and the lies we tell ourselves and those we wish we could tell ourselves. Gay rep. (TW: abuse, sexual assault, pretty graphic suicide scene).

The Divine Cities trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett: starting with City of Stairs, it follows a female diplomat and spymaster(!!). The whole trilogy features an interesting discussion about godhood, religion, fanatism, politics, without ever being boring or preachy. It has complex and rich world building and a pretty compelling mystery.

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett: heist fantasy following a thief as she’s hired to steal a powerful artifact that may change magical technology as she knows it. Set in a Venice-like merchant city. Also, slow burn f/f romance.

Jade City by Fonda Lee: sort of a gangster urban fantasy, heavily inspired by wuxia and set in an Asian-inspired metropolis. It follows a pretty big cast of characters, each with their own journey and development. It features nuanced family dynamics and a lot of political and economical subplots. Not extremely prominent, but book 2 features m/m side rep.

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse: inspired by Native American culture and specifically by the idea of subsequent worlds. It has a kickass MC and a good mix of original elements and typical UF tropes. TW: the book isn’t extremely violent but there is death and some gore.

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine: space opera inspired by the Mexica and middle period Byzantium. It focuses on topics like colonialism and the power of narratives and language. It has one of the best descriptions of what it’s like to live in between spaces I’ve ever read. Also very interesting political intrigue and has a slow burn f/f romance (and a poly relationship recalled through flashbacks). I ranted a lot about it already.

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee: a Korean-inspired space opera with a magic system based on math. It’s honestly quite convoluted and difficult to follow, but it also features some of the best political intrigue I’ve ever read. Plenty of lying, backstabbing and mind games. It also features lesbian and bisexual rep and an aroace side character (TW: mass shooting, sexual assault, abuse). I also really recommend Yoon Ha Lee’s short-story collection Conservation of Shadows.

The long way to a small angry planet by Becky Chambers: character driven space opera featuring a found family journeying through space. A fun read, that also deals with topics such as sexuality and race. Quite easy to go through, as the world building and plot aren’t particularly complex themselves. f/f romance.  

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo: an Asian-inspired fantasy novella that gives a voice to people usually silenced by history. It follows a cleric (non binary rep) as they chronicle the story of the late empress, retold through objects that she used in her life. It focuses on bonds between women and the power that lies in being unnoticed. f/f side rep.

The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark: an urban fantasy novella, based on Orisha mythology and set in an alternate, sort of steampunk, New Orleans. I really like how creative Clark’s worlds are and how good he is at writing female characters (which rarely happens with male authors).

The haunting of tram car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark: novella set in an alternate steampunk Cairo populated by supernatural entities. It’s set in the same world of a Dead Djinn in Cairo, which is a short story you can read for free.

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone: epistolary novella set during a time-travel war. It has gorgeous writing and an amazing f/f romance. As a novella, it’s quite short but it’s beautifully crafted and so complex for such a short book!

The Citadel of Weeping Pearls by Aliette de Bodard: a novella set in the Xuya universe (a series of novellas/short stories set in a timeline where Asia became dominant, and where the space age has empires of Vietnamese and Chinese inspiration), but can be read as a standalone. It’s a space opera featuring a disappeared citadel and the complex relationship between the empress and her daughter as war threatens her empire.

One for My Enemy by Olivie Blake: self-published urban fantasy following two rival families in New York. Sort of a Romeo and Juliette retelling but with gangster families and magic. Honestly recommend all of her books, I love how Olivie writes and especially how she writes female characters.