#rage cage

personally it had some amazing ideas and expanded lots on worldbuilding in interesting ways and i can't help think of it fondly because it was one of my favorite fics as a kid, but woof, the imperialism and sexism in it hit me real hard in the face after a reread :(

i have read that fic a truly horrifying amount of times and i have so many thoughts on it. personally, my favorite part is that she codifies autism as a super special mythical ability you get from literally being born from dragons, which is always fun to read and makes you feel a little nice about yourself as an autistic person. the rest of the fic quickly gets bogged down with vatharas Ideas On How Society Should Run featuring Pacifism: is it a real ideology or just a shield used by hypocrites?

the most obvious thing is that she fucking hates aang but feels like she has to TRY and hear him out, kind of in that typical "let's hear both sides" way, but she tries this like 12 times, and every repeat just hammers in that she has no idea why a person would genuinely not want to go to war. it is very clear she has thought about this a lot because she goes on for like 500k words about it. it is also clear that her working theory is that you only would be a pacifist if you were a lying coward or a naive idiot who doesnt know how the world works.

side note: i also dont think she knows what a child is except for "smaller human with less experience". you can see it in all her child ocs, but, like, vathara, the whole point of the protagonist being 12 and having the weight of the world on his shoulders is that he's going to make a ton of stupid mistakes. can you please stop acting like he's ontologically evil and incapable of learning better just because he's 12. i also don't like 12 year old boys but at least i know when to disengage, ok. you could have just written him out of the story, vathara. tons of people do this in fanfiction every day. anyway.

her whole arc with katara is that katara throws away staying comfortable with her friends and family in order to travel alone on a mission of bloody revenge, and actually she's right to do it and REALLY she would be monster if she didn't. and not only monster figuratively. vathara goes so far as to say that the people around her should literally put her down like a rabid dog because of her antisocial behavior if she does not trade the grudge for a focused and decisive hunt for justice. it all ties into what vathara considers the role of violence in society.

first of all, vathara considers passive aggressive behavior to be just as harmful as physical violence. i think this is a relatively reasonable thing to think if you are an autistic woman who was born in, like, the 70s or 80s or whenever she was born. i will not pretend to know exactly how old she is, but you can make assumptions. i can imagine her growing up thinking she's normal and everyone else are the weird ones, surrounded by ladies who seem to naturally understand the social rules of gossip, and kid vathara living through that classic brutal old school bullying. after that, she hits adult life like a truck, still finding herself limited for no reason except for that she's different. it doesn't help that passive aggressive behavior is associated with women and she clearly has some misogynistic hangups.

i made this backstory all up in my head, but i can totally understand why someone would come up with a harm equivalence like that. i just also think it's completely wrong, maybe mostly because violence scares me and i don't like it, but i think a lot of people will agree that she's unusually staid in her beliefs.

if you read vathara's authors notes, she repeatedly brings up reference books that she found compelling, and a lot of them are crap like histories of asia by white people, "What Cops Know and Pure Cop by Connie Fletcher," and some other books on war and violence specifically. to be honest, she's still more well read than 95% of fic writers you'll find out there, and she applies what she learns to her writing. however, i have also spent a lot of time in the library picking out random nonfiction that interests me, and so i will say that, when i say those books are crap, i mean that they're crap. the history books could have a perfect timeline of historical events, but they almost never actually understand why things happen because the authors are operating on a skin lightness = percentage human system as well as an unquestioned faith in the british christian style of moral compass being correct in every circumstance. you can't trust ancedotes from cops like in fletchers books because they lie out their asses, please dont make me justify this one in the year 2025. for the psychology books, i would like to paste in the description for one of her books on violence from the author's webpage:

On Combat looks at what happens to the human body under the stresses of deadly battle the impact on the nervous system, heart, breathing, visual and auditory perception, memory – then discusses new research findings as to what measures warriors can take to prevent such debilitations so they can stay in the fight, survive, and win. A brief, but insightful look at history shows the evolution of combat, the development of the physical and psychological leverage that enables humans to kill other humans, followed by an objective examination of domestic violence in America. The authors reveal the nature of the warrior, brave men and women who train their minds and bodies to go to that place from which others flee.

like come on man. now the warrior guy's going to preach to us? hey, did you know that fear and panic during violent situations are entirely based on your nervous system, and you can actually train yourself to just not do that and instantly become superhuman? if you've never read this kind of book before, you might think i'm exaggerating, but there's a self-help motivation to a lot of this style of navy-seal-worship book.

here's a bit more from the blurb:

After examining the incredible impact of a few true warriors in battle, On Combat presents new and exciting research as to how to train the mind to become inoculated to stress, fear and even pain. Expanding on Lt. Col. Grossman’s popular “Bulletproof mind” presentation, the book explores what really happens to the warrior after the battle, and shows how emotions, such as relief and self-blame, are natural and healthy ways to feel about having survived combat. A fresh and highly informative look at post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) details how to prevent it, how to survive it should it happen, how to come out of it stronger, and how to help others who are experiencing it. On Combat looks at the critical importance of the debriefing, when warriors gather after the battle to share what happened, critique, learn from each other and, for some, begin to heal from the horror. The reader will learn a highly effective breathing technique that not only steadies the warrior's mind and body before and during the battle, but can also be used afterwards as a powerful healing device to help separate the emotion from the memory. Concluding chapters discuss the Christian/Judeo view of killing in combat and offers powerful insight that Lt. Col. Grossman has imparted over the years to help thousands of warriors understand and come to terms with their actions in battle. A final chapter encourages warriors to always fight for justice, not vengeance, so that their remaining days will be healthy ones filled with pride for having performed their duty morally and ethically.

oh yeah, i bet you're discussing the christian/jewish view of killing in combat. raise your hand now if you think this guy would go for zionism.

and let's just say... i also really don't respect a west point psychology professor's opinions on domestic violence!

the other thing about vathara is that she thinks not wanting to fight to the death to protect the people you consider close is actively antisocial behavior that should get you exiled at the very least. my theory is that she was raised american conservative, and she had to leave her family and community because they couldn't accept her. even as she built a new support system, she kept some of those values, just restructuring them to better fit her new situation.

if you've ever read her series project tatterdemalion, having a class of warriors who stands up for what's right no matter the cost or how much the people they're protecting scorn them is basically the thesis. the good feelings/fluff motivation of that fic is that all those warriors share bonds of unconditional trust with each other. i imagine vathara and her new community, ostacrized for things beyond their control, standing proudly, watching the flow of the rest of their town go by, thinking, "yeah, we did this all for them." basically a nationalistic view of being queer... WHAT I'M SAYING IS VATHARA'S THING IS PATRIOTIC FOUND FAMILY.

oh my god, it makes so more much sense when you look at her work in that light. the outgroup is reviled and actually they deserve that because they fuck everything up (real) (not fake). the heroes stand for JUSTICE, and they are also VERY HOMOSOCIAL, but it's different from other military fiction BECAUSE IT'S OKAY THAT THEY'RE GAY. the heroes protect HELPLESS CIVILIANS, and MAYBE THOSE SAME CIVILIANS HATE THEM, but it is NECESSARY and in fact the heroes FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM ARE THE ONLY THING HOLDING SOCIETY TOGETHER. without those heroes... heh... well, it wouldn't be pretty, would it? we would have all those bad actors fucking everything up, like aang from avatar the last airbender, and then everyone would die, because there are evil people out there who want to kill us... but, really, with him messing everything up all the time, isn't aang just as bad as the taliban fire lord ozai?

in regards to ideas and worldbuilding, quite frankly, anyone who likes fantasy novels could come up with the same level of depth and variety vathara wrote into embers. her whole dragon lore is basically just pern with different steps LOL. my general description of vathara's writing style is that it's mercedes lackey if she ever got really into buffy and tvtropes. all of her magic worldbuilding is straight from mythology books and fantasy paperback authors of the 80-midaughts. if you read any of those books, you'll see it. i must say, i am scared to ever read a book by marion zimmer bradley/set in xanthe world/etc because then i will know how much vathara copied from infamous sex pests with pedophile convictions. but that's not the point. i guess the point is ... i find her mind completely fascinating but really annoying?

In the Rage Cage of the Den, stands a member of the New California Republic. His uniform denotes him as a sergeant, but he is without his breastplate in the ring. The stout man is in a glute-tightened stance in nothing but his fatigues and boots, leathery hands at the ready for some God-Honest grappling. He grins under the rim of his over-sized helmet, ready to face his next opponent and enjoy his leave time as only a robust old buzzard can. By gettin’ beat down on.

He rolls his neck. “Alright you cake eating, bank founding, toenail collecting maggot shrimps! Is there anyone willing to face a REAL GOD HONEST PATRIOT in the damned ring?! I ain’t leavin’ till the fights are as good as the piss water in this stinkhole!” He flexes his hands, ready to GRAPPLE.

@j4gm was asking me if I had this game, and then @mifil came in a moment later asking to play it. The game was on sale and everyone else had a copy, so we were good to go.

The game doesn't make the best first impressions. It has a jpeg of the "😂" emoji as its main picture, and R.E.P.O. obviously is meant to rip off F.E.A.R. It's a Lethal clone and the playable characters look a bit like Amongi. Upon launching the game, I was smacked in the face by motion sickness. It has everything working against it.

Fortunately, while it doesn't live up to the sheer terror Lethal Company offers, this game does have its own charms.

There are three major differences:

1. It is cartoony in nature. The monsters that kill you are a lot more ridiculous than what you might see in Lethal. The brightness is also lighter and it's hard to get lost. So while it's still terrifying, it's more accessible than Lethal to scaredy pants like me. This can be a con too, I turned pixelation etc back on because the game needed to be scarier.

2. The loot system has altercations. In REPO, you can load the loot onto a trolley. If you knock the loot around, it will be devalued. If you exceed the quota, all loot on the checkpoint will be crushed and turned into money, so you need to be careful not to load it too early if you want the maximum extra cash.

3. The game is forgiving. Enemies won't oneshot you, and you get plenty of opportunities to hide or escape. You also get far faaaar more cash from the items, and you can spend the extra currency at a shop which offers weapons and character upgrades. Even if you die, you can be reviver mid-level at a cash checkpoint. The penalty is that you need to reach quota at all 2 to 5 checkpoints before you can leave.

So this is how it went:

There were five of us - Mifil, Jagm, Charlie, Sketti ("Skitty") and myself.

I was killed immediately in the first round by some kind of Spirited Away phantom. Then I was killed by a floating head. Then I was killed by Charlie, then I was shot at point blank by Mifil.

Then when I got my revenge on charlie in the store, things got out of hand. I was hammering him to death and he defended himself. We went too far and the hammer managed to attach itself to a floating drone, so it was swinging around with a life of its own, knocking us down. We ran for the escape.

There is a huntsman who will shoot anyone that makes a sound. Charlie is a talkative individual. On many occasions, we'd hear him speak, then the ring of his life being extinguished would echo through the halls.

Mifil and I ducked under some furniture while the Huntsman passed by. A yeti charged through the room and killed him instantly. We couldn't hold back our laughter.

I saw the Huntsman fall down ten flights of stairs and lose health like a Minecraft mob. I think it's intentionally funny so he can track your laughter. Then I saw Jagm heroically attempt to kill him, and get shot in the face.

The huntsman walked right into the final exit, preventing us from leaving or even moving. Jagm and Skitty heroically lured him away, only for Skitty to die.

At one point Jagm and I were accosted by two shadows at once. He died. Mifil had already died. Charlie's head was in the room. I hid behind a barrel for three minutes contemplating reality, too terrified to move forward by myself. But I managed to steel myself, and begin loading the trolley.

Then - by some miracle - Skitty showed up! With great relief, I explained our circumstances as the last survivors. Then she led us to a checkpoint, and we managed to save all the loot and revive everybody. Rejoice! I have never been so brave in my life.

We proceeded to load the final checkpoint with exciting loot, and follow the path back to the escape vehicle.

Unfortunately, the game decided we had achieved too much.

The very next room was *rammed* with monsters. Like. Seven monsters. It was an ambush!

First of all it was four little gnomes that we managed to kill. We lost Jagm, but we were still going to make it. Then we smashed an evil baby to bits. This bit was surprising, but all was good.

Then, before I could celebrate, I was chopped to pieces by a lady with scissor hands who had also spawned.

Then we were all dead except for Mifil, who in a final act of desperation tried to hide in a fountain, only for YET ANOTHER creature to spawn next to her, finishing her off.

After our failure, we were entered into a contest for the King of Losers - A battle royale where the players fight to the last toy standing. And Charlie managed to kill me with a frying pan, only to get shanked immediately with a katana by his friend. The inflatable hammer didn't help much.