#essay warning

Oh this is the question for the end of this chapter or i dare to say for the end of this whole chapter. I want to make like a little relations chart or something like this for especially THIS and future acts as a yknow little summarizing

I was doing the dishes when I remembered when someone mentioned how Caine can’t directly affect the cast’s minds, but can manipulate them as seen with the stupid sauce in ep 4. Gooseworx’s response was very vague, giving only a small ‘heh’ in response but it got me wondering what that sort of thing could do if Caine realized how much he could do with it. See, no one expects Caine to do anything malicious, because he isn’t supposed to be, and quite frankly, he doesn’t want to be the bad guy either, ALTHOUGH he does have a very oblivious and factual sense of logic.

My thoughts then turned to the meals he makes for the cast, occasionally, if they eat meals regularly, or if he gives them to the cast as prizes, (as seen in the end of the TADC pilot). My brain immediately thought of how Caine, wanting everyone to enjoy his adventures and their life in the circus, might react when he realizes he could just feed them something that could actually make them enjoy his shenanigans! To Caine, I’d make perfect sense, and not malicious at all since then they’d be more compliant and happy. Even if it’s forced onto them.

The thought of Caine making an adventure for them, and making a meal for them afterwards with code that’ll manipulate their senses and practically mind control them seems like something he’d 200% do if he ever realized he could. One of he worst things would be that then, if they were still “conscious”, they wouldn’t just be stuck in the circus, they wouldn’t just be trapped with each other, they’d be trapped in the back of their minds, suppressed as second thought that would be completely overlooked. If not, then their minds would be seen as completely stable, and they wouldn’t even be able to get out via abstraction anymore! An everlasting generation of circus members that don’t go insane, argue, or abstract! Caine would see it as perfect!

Ragatha Theory

I’m not sure how many of you knew how much I loved my sweet sweet little four legged son, but for the last 16 and a half years of my life, he has been there for me. Each and every time I was alone and needed a friend or someone to talk to or comfort me, he was there. He protected me when I was too little to know what I needed (since i was 5) and he has never let me feel unloved a day in my life.

It absolutely broke my heart today to hear him cry out in pain, take him to the vet and hear just how much he had been fighting to stay alive recently, but I am so glad he is no longer in any pain. I put him in a beautiful resting place, in my garden at this house which he and I have only lived in for about 18 months at this point, but I believe it was the greatest home he ever had. I don’t know what I am going to do without his beautiful smiling face greeting me at the door each night, or in my bed each morning, but I am so so so grateful for every day I got to spend with him. I can so clearly remember times when I thought I was not going to last in this world, and that he was the one to remind me I have a purpose, I should greet each day with a spring in my step, and that nobody is alone.

I will miss you every day, buddy, I hope you get to chase your old friends in doggy heaven now. Thank you for making sure I made it to where I am today. I couldn’t have done it without you, the best companion a kid could ever have asked for. I truly believe you were my guardian angel. You were the best, the very very best dog in the world. Rest easy sweetheart. 🕊️

The pessimistic side of me, tells me that it’ll be a sad ending. One that doesn’t allow them to end together. But in a way, maybe that’s their happy ending? Not to us but 😪 it’s realistic and what happens sometimes.

Their relationship to me, isn’t over just yet. You can’t really let go of someone from your past, even if there’s someone better for you maybe. The heart only longs, it doesn’t think for itself. But here’s what I think, according to the authors most prominent songs to this series. First, the song that decided all fates (I voted for bazzi LOL), and the song that lies in the title.

I still don’t know my name, in my opinion is a very pleading song. It’s a cry for recognition, and validation maybe. And personally I see it fitting Mabel’s perspective perfectly, now, we have yet to uncover whatever happened between Lucky and Mabel in the past so I may be 100% wrong about this so I’ll just continue talking about the song itself. The first chorus talks about secret relationships, and the emotional turmoil that it’s causing. In the perspective of the singer, I could guess they’re asking to be seen, not for things to just be casual whenever it’s convenient but for a change. The second verse, is so much more passionate with yearning and hoping the person feels the same. All and all, it’s holding strong themes of unrequitedness and possibly just things that needed to be talked about but never had the time. For me, I see this as I, I still love you, please change. But a person who loved you back wouldn’t need changing. So maybe Mabel got tired of waiting. Who knows

Random questions, what's your favorite bird? and what are your tree top favorites?

oh god this is such a hard question. you've unlocked my bird autism so buckle up and grab some popcorn

I’ve never heard that phrase used before. No, I wouldn’t sort myself into that particular camp. However, I think the internet gets WAY too polarized about these things. Should people be romanticizing abuse or abusive relationships of any type? No, absolutely not. Ive always believed that fiction has a huge impact on reality (I’ve made posts about it before, but I’m on mobile rn so I’m too lazy to go find and link them), and the more people romanticize abuse in fiction, the more socially accepted it’s gonna become in real life. (See: all the studies about some of the the horrific effects of violent porn.)

However, I think the internet has somewhat lost its ability to differentiate between portraying something in order to explore or reflect upon a dark topic, and romanticizing or condoning that thing. Note how I said up there that people absolutely should not romanticize abuse. But if nobody ever made any kind of art or fiction that portrayed abuse, or any other kind of evil, how would we as individuals and as a society ever process, understand, or make progress? If we Disney-fy and bowdlerize every single thing, we will be an emotionally, morally, and philosophically stunted people.

I was actually just talking about this with a friend, perhaps I put it better there:

“Plus, people have this really weird assumption that portraying something in art in the same thing as.... doing it in actual real life? Which is absolutely ridiculous, not to mention damaging, because art and fiction have always been so much about exploring themes and thoughts and whatnot, and if you say "you must ONLY EVER explore MORALLY PURE things in fiction and never stray into dark or immoral subject matter!!!" ... that limits human thought and philosophy and morality SO MUCH.”

So, to address your ask:

“any ship is okay” nah, not exactly. I don’t support condoning, encouraging, or romanticizing abuse. (And to reference the post that started this, which I might link later when I’m not on mobile, “abuse” here of COURSE includes child abuse.) However, the internet really has to learn that portraying something is not tantamount to supporting or condoning it. If we were only ever allowed to make art about the things we supported or actually partook in, Agatha Christie would be the most accomplished serial killer of all time.

“There should be no fandom police” Actually yeah, I agree. Discussion board moderators and the like, for self contained fandom communities where there are built in guidelines? Yeah, sure. But fandom is a Wild West of art, fiction, and self expression. It’s a sandbox, as people have often described it. I’ll reference that earlier post again and say that if a fan feels that they need their hand held online, and they can’t blacklist tags, block content they don’t want to see, and manage their own fandom experience, then they’re probably too young to be unsupervised online. Again: this is not saying that “oh nazis are allowed to exist, just block them! :)” no. Obviously that’s different. But I think “fandom police” are entirely unnecessary. In my experience, such “police” operate very much like police in the real world: they don’t really make anything safer, they just harass people who are minding their own business.

Also, I don’t think people need “fandom police” to tell them what’s right or wrong. That’s just... I don’t want to be mean here, but that’s ridiculous. For one thing, if a fan genuinely needs a random internet stranger to come in and tell them “that’s morally wrong” in order to navigate morality, that fan is WAY too young to be unsupervised on the internet. For another thing, the idea that somebody (or multiple somebodies) should be tasked with going around decreeing moral value on various fandom trends and topics is just plain impractical. Who’s to say that person or those people are pure bastions of morality? It just doesn’t work that way.

Now, should people have constructive conversations about morality and ethics and philosophy, in and out of a fandom setting? Yes. Duh. That’s the only way human beings made it past the Paleolithic era as a species. And (again, because I feel like people are going to willfully misinterpret this), I’m not saying “oh absolutely any kind of behavior and any message and anything is fine because we all have different opinions uwu.” See the first paragraph. Punch Nazis, eat the rich, and spit in the face of racists, homophobes, and misogynists.

I’ll quote my conversation with a friend again because I feel like it really wraps up my thoughts here:

“Yeah the internet has really ruined the term "problematic." Nazis are problematic. Writing about nazis to explore themes of morality isn't problematic, it's a reflection on and exploration of morality and history. And people don't seem to be able to see the difference between those two things”

Yeess, my friend, speak to me of Revan...

There’s just

so much

There’s the first version of Revan, the Jedi Knight. The young woman who is so horrified by what’s going on in the Outer Rim that she can’t stand back - she has to throw away everything to help the war effort. And she’s so inspiring, she’s like a force of nature, so people follow. The young woman who forms such close bonds - with Alek, her closest friend, who stands by her always, with Meetra, the girl she takes under her wing. She believes in the Jedi and she loves her Master but she cannot simply look away - and if that means breaking with the Council, so be it.

Revan’s fall is about attrition, at first. I see two distinctive sides to Revan - the cold, hard, ruthless tactician side, and the slightly goofy, trolling dork side. It’s the tactician side that takes hold more and more as she slides toward the Dark Side - because she’s having to pull this army back from the brink by it’s bootstraps, against one of the toughest enemies the Republic’s ever known, and she soon learns that she just can’t do the thing that’s 100% ethically right all the time. This is a war, after all. This gives rise to the Revan that Canderous remembers; “Feints, counterattacks, mass deceptions. Revan was a genius on the field. Revan abandoned worlds of their defenders so that others would be too fortified to strike, and was willing to make sacrifices in order to advance goals.” Sacrifices that, of course, eventually lead to the Mass Shadow Generator and the destruction it causes.

Revan has of course already found some of the Star Maps by the end of the war, so she feels she needs to go looking for where they lead, and gets caught up in the Sith Empire. But I also think she initially runs from Malachor, from the horror of it, because she knew what she was setting off in theory - but seeing it was a different matter. And seeing how it destroyed Meetra - that’s all on her. She considers Meetra already dead - probably because she believes she’ll go mad without her connection to the Force, or perhaps even because she believes the Jedi Council or the Senate will call for her execution when she goes back to Coruscant - but either way, she sees Meetra’s death, in whatever form, as on her hands. 

One of my absolute favourite quotes from KOTOR is this from Kreia; “...perhaps Revan never fell. The difference between a fall and a sacrifice is sometimes difficult, but I feel that Revan understood that difference, more than anyone knew. The galaxy would have fallen if Revan had not gone to war. Perhaps she became the dark lord out of necessity, to prevent a greater evil.” This 100% influenced my perception of Revan’s character. The Revan who comes back from Dromund Kaas breaks free of the Emperor’s mind control, so she could go back to the Jedi. But she sees that the Republic she’s fought so hard and given up so much to save is too weak to fight the danger that’s coming. The Republic, to her mind, needs strong and effective leadership and organisation that can stand up to the Sith Empire. She wants to create an Empire, using the Dark Side, to fight another Empire that uses the Dark Side - fight fire with fire. Mical says “she fought to keep the infrastructure intact”, hinting at these ulterior motives. Darth Revan isn’t your average cackling, card-carrying, evil-just-because Sith Lord. She’s pragmatic villainy at it’s finest. That’s not to say she doesn’t do evil things, and ruthless things, and she’s unrepentant for the most part - but she’s here to Empire-build, not wantonly destroy. She’s not the type to go in for random acts of cruelty either. 

I think it’s easy to see amnesiac!Revan as a bit of a bird with clipped wings. She’s suddenly not this supremely powerful Dark Side Empress any more - she’s a random Republic soldier who happens to find out she’s Jedi material. I think the second round of Jedi training, and her journey with the crew of the Ebon Hawk, and especially her link with Bastila, are all very important because when she realizes she’s Revan these things allow her to ground herself - to reconnect with the Jedi beginnings that her previous self lost. I also think she’s conflicted about whether she’s going to go Dark Side again, whether she should, after the revelation, right up until she confronts Bastila on the top of the temple. Because that’s not Bastila - and if that’s what the Dark Side does, she doesn’t want it. As well, I think having companions and people she loves - Carth and Juhani especially - around her who are so determined not to fall makes it easier for her not to. The tragedy of her and Malak is that he wasn’t weak-willed, he was devoted to her, and that’s why he followed her to the Dark Side. And then they both changed - she lost the lighter side of her that always relieved the ruthless side, and he got more callous, power-mad and cruel, and in the end neither could recognise what they’d seen in the other. 

Revan is quite - almost gracious to Malak in the dialogue at the end of the game, as I remember it, but I think she’s less sad about killing him than she pretends later. This guy betrayed her, and even if she can only half-remember it, he hurt and almost succeeded in turning Bastila - he’s got what he deserves. 

I don’t subscribe to what happens in the book Revan, so I’d rewrite it so that Revan had everyone on standby, waiting for her call to come help her. When it comes - years later than anticipated, because a) we need time for KOTOR II and b) I like angst, everyone sets out to rescue Revan and they kick the Sith Emperor’s ass and go home, job done. 

I could talk about Revan and Bastila, Revan and Meetra, Revan and Malak and her other companions - I could talk about Revanasi for days, but I’ve already yakked on enough.