Reblogged
Reblogged mother-i-crave-rwrb
tenorgender
bitches hate me for my earnest whimsy and my pathological degree of avoidant behavior
Reblogged insomniac-arrest
there was a great study a few years that went into the whole "ppl online are bigger jerks than irl cuz theres a virtual wall and no repercussions" and the researchers were expecting to see that be the case but it turns out that people who were really angry or argumentative online were also found to just be assholes in person and people who were pretty patient and nice online were found to be patient and nice in real person as well
and it just debunked that whole cynical idea that people will naturally be mean if theres no punishment for it
the researchers found that being online didnt make people more hostile, but that being online allowed already hostile people to dominate forum conversations, and the less aggressive people were much less likely to reply or engage, ending in just the aggressive people bickering at eachother
Reblogged
See the thing abt Damen and Laurent that rlly gets me is that Damen is the only person who gets to see Laurent as he truly is. And he loves the raw, damaged, hurt, sometimes even soft version of Laurent behind closed doors. But he fell in love with the mean, abrasive, cold, intense version of Laurent, too. And most importantly, knowing the true Laurent, he still allows Laurent to maintain his outward persona and protects his ability to maintain that facade, he upholds Laurent’s facade.
tockthewatchdog-deactivated2020
feathersescapism
Every time I see this quote I realize how poor even very smart people are at looking at the long game and at assessing these things in context.
One of my favourite illustrations of this was in a First Aid class. The instructor was a working paramedic. He asked, “Who here knows the stats on CPR? What percentage of people are saved by CPR outside a hospital?”
I happen to know but I’m trying not to be a TOTAL know it all in this class so I wait. And people guess 50% and he says, “Lower,” and 20% and so forth and eventually I sort of half put up my hand and I guess I had The Face because he eventually looked at me and said, “You know, don’t you.”
“My mom’s a doc,” I said. He gave me a “so say it” gesture and I said, “Four to ten percent depending on your sources.”
Everyone else looked surprised and horrified.
And the paramedic said, “We’re gonna talk a bit about some details of those figures* but first I want to talk about just this: when do you do CPR?”
The class dutifully replies: when someone is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse.
“What do we call someone who is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse?”
The class tries to figure out what the trick question is so I jump over the long pause and say, “A corpse.”
“Right,” says the paramedic. “Someone who isn’t breathing and has no heartbeat is dead. So what I’m telling you is that with this technique you have a 4-10% chance of raising the dead.”
So no, artists did not stop the Vietnam War from happening with the sheer Power of Art. The forces driving that military intervention were huge, had generations of momentum and are actually pretty damn complicated.
But if you think the mass rejection of the war was as meaningless as a soufflé - well.
Try sitting here for ten seconds and imagining where we’d be if the entire intellectual and artistic drive of the culture had been FOR the war. If everyone thought it was a GREAT IDEA.
What the whole world would look like.
Four-to-ten percent means that ninety to ninety-six percent of the time - more than nine times out of ten - CPR will do nothing, but that one time you’ll be in the company of someone worshipped as an incarnate god.
If you think the artists and performers attacking and showing up people like Donald Trump is meaningless try imagining a version of the world wherein they weren’t there.
(*if you’re curious: those stats count EVERY reported case of CPR, while the effectiveness of it is extremely time-related. With those who have had continuous CPR from the SECOND they went down, the number is actually above 80%. It drops hugely every 30 seconds from then on. When you count ALL cases you count cases where the person has already been down several minutes but a bystander still starts CPR, which affects the stats)
That Vonnegut quote brings this particular moment to mind:
Yes, it’s just a pie. Yes, the pie itself doesn’t do much direct damage in the grand scheme of things. But the pie is resistance, and resistance inspires resistance. Resistance inspires survival. Throwing pies sometimes starts a movement. Throwing pies sometimes saves lives.
And of course, we haven’t spoken about the inherent morality of throwing pies at oppressors in a world where oppressors have outlawed pie throwing. At the very least, pie throwing is a reminder to the oppressors that no matter how much money they have, no matter how much power they have, there are still some people, some moments they can’t control.
I’d rather go out throwing pies than just rolling over and accepting that pie throwing isn’t going to solve anything. Yeah, the pie throwing doesn’t immediately solve the problem, but it doesn’t have to because it’s just a starting point. So throw the damn pie.
So throw the damn pie
Reblogged couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name
something i really enjoy in horror movies is when the victim(s) start to hunt the killer in return in order to kill them first, both because it's an interesting parallel that (if done well) asks the audience to consider the question of when violence and killing are a justifiable means to an end in order to survive and at what point it crosses the line from acceptable to abhorrent and condemns the perpetrator, and also because it's a little bit funny. like i can do that too bitch you're not special.
Reblogged
Anonymous asked:
Something something, Viktor existing as a soul within a mental world inside the machine herald is a metaphor for him retreating into himself
I think that it was a literal metaphor of Viktor's self imposed isolation/loneliness. You can see in the scenes of him in the mental world, such as when he is trying to recover Vander's humanity, that he is much more expressive in that world in that he's much more open. Like it is the more vulnerable and open part of him that he tries to keep safe, to keep from being hurt.
This is also the part of him that we see when he's trying to reach out to Jayce yet again in the council room scene. And you can see that the automaton that he uses as his body is like a shell that holds his soul inside it, the one that is controlling it. Right after Jayce rejects the notion and essentially destroys the automaton or disconnects it from Viktor. Viktor tells Singed to finish the process, which ends with him being alone in the mental world. Almost as if he is resigning himself to being alone. Like a turtle retreating into its shell to avoid being hurt again. Even if the turtle never comes out of its shell again, at least it won't be hurt again.
So the Machine Herald in this case is Viktor's "shell" that he's retreating into to avoid being hurt again. He went from one "shell" the automaton that he could hide in and use, but still was reaching out and using it to interact with people directly, to this huge creation that stands above everyone else, making any kind of connection much harder. And maybe that's what Viktor wanted. He didn't want to risk reaching out again for fear of being rejected and hurt again, so why even bother with it?
And later, we do see that in the astral plane/mental world, the outer layer that is the Machine Herald is like quite literally a shell/protective layer that Viktor uses to protect the more vulnerable layer underneath. He retreats into it, seemingly giving up his emotions in doing so and forgoing any connections because at least then it wouldn't hurt.
Reblogged
the thing about fandom’s framing of steve as this rebel without a cause type of reckless idiot who is just incapable of following orders is that, like “angry chihuahua” pre-serum steve, i get where it comes from. it’s funny and meme-able, and, most importantly, it’s a way to distance steve from the boyscout image so many people associate him with, and that so many of his fans hate.
but, just as angry chihuaha steve, reckless idiot steve is also upsetting because it takes the most sincere, earnest, good things steve has done in the mcu and twists them to be not the actions of a noble hero, but the stupidity of a manchild who challenges everything and everyone for no reason. it bastardizes the very core of steve’s character, and, above all, equates making steve more cynic/less idealistic with making steve better and cooler.
and that sucks because, no, he’s not a boyscout, but, guys, the very core of steve’s character is cheesy. steve as a character represents an ideal, and he does so in the most sincere, earnest way possible. steve’s superpower is his heart and his bravery. he’s a hero because he’s a good person, not because he’s snarky, because he’s a genius, because he’s super powerful or because he was chosen by fate or a prophecy. he’s just… the ultimate Good Guy. it doesn’t get much cheesier than that, unless your name is Clark Kent.
and if that isn’t interesting to you, it’s cool. anti-heroes are the norm in the mcu and in most superhero movies for a reason: they’re fun to watch and very relatable. but, i’m sorry, steve is just not one of them. steve is that guy who walks old ladies to cross the street, not the guy who cracks a bunch of jokes while kicking a villain’s ass. and you’re free to find this boring and lame as much as you want to, but that’s IT. that’s the character. and i feel like a lot of people are not comfortable just letting steve be that way - they need to twist his actions to make him seem much more of a rebel badass than he actually is, and since i’m so attached to this stupidly sincere portrayal of sheer goodness and bravery, it becomes upsetting.
like… streve crashed the Valkyrie into the water not because he’s an Extra™, Dramatic Bitch or whatever, but because it was the only chance to land the plane without killing tons of innocent people. TFA is the ONLY origin movie in the mcu that doesn’t end with a triumph, but with a tragedy, and fandom somehow thinks it’s fun to turn steve’s sacrifice into a laughing stock, to act like he did so because he’s stupid or missed bucky’s dick too much or anything of the sort, instead of seeing the fact that steve did what he did because he valued other people’s lives above his own, because he valued doing the right thing over getting what he, personally, wanted.
and i guess to me it’s upsetting because this is something that resonates so deeply with my values and the person i want to be, and so to see fandom turning it into something small and petty just hurts, even if it’s just a joking shitpost. because when you act like steve is just some insolent dude who challenges everything and everyone just because he can, you end up turning his character from a hero to an idiot with poor impulse control. when you make headcanons of his friends being annoyed and bored by his constant idealism and desire to do the right thing, you turn him into a burden to sam or bucky or natasha or whoever, ignoring how he’s actually a leader and an inspiration to the people around him - you ignore how he broke through bucky’s brainwashing through sheer loyalty, how he made sam want to suit up for the first time in years, how he gave natasha trust when no one else would have.
basically, you take away the beautiful things about his character and turn into something that, yeah, might be funnier, but it’s just so cynical it’s almost depressing. it turns something that is genuinely idealistic and optimistic into a pessimistic, shallow thing, and that’s just not what steve rogers is meant to be.
He was also one of the few people to understand and empathize with Wanda and Pietro - To see their reasons for joining “Shield” (Hydra), letting Hydra experiment on them in Age of Ultron.
And again with Wanda in Civil War.
He also empathized with Zemo, a man who’d almost gotten Steve’s best friend killed and torn apart a new family he’d painstakingly built for himself in the new century.
He’s a good egg, one of the best. Takes a mighty big heart to do what he does.
Reblogged
thinking abt how jinx told sevika she gave silco his injections because "he was a big crybaby and didn't want to do it himself." thinking abt how we know silco has given himself his injections plenty of times without issue. thinking abt how silco took in a little girl who could never do anything right, who could never be trusted with anything important because she'd fuck it up, who was a jinx, and told her "I trust you enough to put this needle in my eye." thinking abt how vulnerable of a position silco put himself in just to make jinx feel safe and loved.
Reblogged gandalftopsurgery
There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.
I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.
As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.
The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.
The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.
As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.
I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.
The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.
I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.
I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.
All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.
I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.
My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.
If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:
It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.
Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.
Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.
Sources:
• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text
• Betches News on Instagram (screencaps)
I thought it was fairly normal to feel empathy for bad people.
I thought it was common, even.
But after my Elon/Grimes post... now I'm wondering if I was mistaken about that.
I wrote a post about Trump being traumatized after his assassination attempt and a post about his poor adaptation to aging. I expressed sympathy for him in both cases. But I still maintain my white hot hatred of him and wish for him to face consequences.
Elon was abused by his father. Some of the stories are incredibly tragic. Hearing those stories triggers an involuntary response in my emotional systems that I can't stop no matter how much I despise present-day Elon. I also wonder if that abuse never occurred maybe we wouldn't be dealing with this current clusterfuck.
I have never held so much anger towards a single person as I do my brother. But I also see him as a victim of abuse. I know he was once a really good person and he was slowly corrupted. I feel sorry for him. I mourn the amazing person he used to be. And I still love him.
But that doesn't make me any less angry.
I honestly think it's incredibly important for us to understand the people who are bastards who seek to ruin lives. Hitler as a kid wanted to care for his mom who was dying of cancer. Understanding that pain and even relating to it is important for us to not lose the value that they are human. Making them into monsters puts to much space between reality. And he deserved what he got, if not more.
They can be an enemy you want to see destroyed. That you do not want any positivity towards. I think what happens here is that sometimes understanding the tragedies an absolutely right bastard has experienced; threatens their "righteousness of anger." I, personally, do not think because I have context around another person's life it invalidates my own hatred of them. For some though that flexibility is difficult to come to terms with so they lash out.
if you have any empathy for these people ur literally compliant in what they’re doing. i don’t care that they had a “shitty home life” and they just need a hug from their dad to feel all better. they’re sick horrible people who are willing to DESTROY AND END the lives of thousands to add another dollar to their billions
I want to start by saying this was incredibly hurtful.
I really think you need to read what I wrote again because you grossly misunderstood it. Especially the "hatred" and "consequences" part. I can tell you for certain I am still wishing that bullet didn't just graze Trump's ear.
The absolute gall to tell people they aren't allowed to have emotional responses. How do I stop an involuntary emotion? What magic technique do you have because I'd love to end my depression and anxiety right now.
Errol Musk raised a stepdaughter, then impregnated her, and then married her. He literally drove his current wife to preschool and she called him "Dad".
Here is a recent quote from him.
Imagine being raised by that.
This awful person created another awful person. It's tragic. It's sad. And it makes me feel bad.
Understanding the reason someone turned into a monster is useful. This tells me we need to do a better job of protecting children or else we are going to keep making new Elons.
it’s useful, and it’s good to understand, but it’s also important not to humanize these people when they won’t hesitate a single moment to destroy thousands of lives
I think most of us can agree that evil is born from trauma and the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But the reason we call it evil is that at no moment and in no way it should be justified by our society and collective conscious as
And as cruel as that sounds, there are important reasons for this. It because evil won’t hesitate to dismantle said society, conscious and it’s values from within
This is also called the tolerance paradox. It’s an important observation that was born from the aftermath of WW2
Some things should be dehumanized and given no tolerance, to keep them from spreading
It's possible we are working off different definitions of "humanize" but I think there is nothing more human than stupidity, ignorance, and hurting others. Elon is just a human. He is fueled by trauma and ketamine abuse and is lashing out at the world. He desperately wanted people to like him but wasn't willing to put in the work to be remotely likable. Plenty of people overcome their trauma and make the effort to defy their poor upbringing. Elon made a different choice. And he is responsible for that choice. No awful childhood can justify his actions.
I see the lack of humanization as a much larger problem for conservatives. They have taken away Elon and Trump's status as human beings and elevated them to gods. Elon is an infallible Tech Jesus capable of bending all machines to his will. And Trump is the Grand Business Genius who thinks 90 steps ahead and is playing 8D chess to save our country from immigrants and people with pronouns.
I wish people from that side would humanize them more and see they are flawed, pathetic, and despicable. They are squishy sacks of meat like the rest of us.
I will never excuse their actions or decisions. I consider them well beyond redemption. And I wish every day they never existed.
This is probably a semantic debate. I think we are all on the same page that these people suck and need to go right fucking now.
I actually don't think this is a semantic debate, I think that Frogman is right and "it's important not to humanize people who won't hesitate to (effectively) kill people" is, no shit, protofascist ideology.
No matter how awful, how violent, how genocidal, how "evil" someone is, you have to remember that people are human. You have to treat them as humans, as rational actors who are doing things that they believe will achieve their goals, that their goals are founded in a desire to see *their* version of a better world and not out of some abstract demonic drive to be evil.
The second to last poster is fundamentally understanding the paradox of tolerance in a way that would almost be funny if it wasn't so fucking dangerous. One of the attitudes that you absolutely cannot tolerate if you want the world to be a better place is the dehumanizing of you enemies.
You can't do this because it's saying "there is a version of the world in which it is correct to treat some people as other-than-human, and the rules that apply to humans (the right to a fair trial, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, etc.) do not apply to those people."
And that means you're saying there are conditions in which people *can* lose those rights and that's where the whole thing starts. "People who hurt children don't deserve rights/kill all pedophiles > the LGBTQIAs are trying to recruit your kids > queers are all pedophiles because they want to recruit and destroy your kids > trans people don't deserve rights." "Terrorists don't deserve rights > all Arabs are terrorists > you can't do war crimes against a population with no civilians > gazans as young as 4 are hamas > it's not a war crime to bomb a hospital it's a legitimate attack against a terrorist stronghold." "Criminals have violated the law and don't deserve the same rights as the rest of us > crossing the border without permission from our government is a crime > all undocumented migrants are criminals > it's okay to separate criminals from their families and put them in cages and offshore prisons"
Elon Musk is a shitty, shitty person but by dehumanizing him, by refusing to recognize that he is just as human (with dreams, hopes, trauma, longing, love, fear, and family) as you are, you are trying to differentiate him from you. You are trying to say "that's not human. That's not like me, I'm not like that, that's a monster and monsters don't deserve to be treated like people."
And people who think that way are very good at finding monsters. Maybe the monsters who don't deserve rights are all the Republicans in congress. Maybe the monsters are all the pardoned J6ers. Maybe the monsters are all republicans generally. Maybe it's everyone who *tolerates* republicans so it's everyone in red states. And that's how you get people saying "they fucking deserved it" after the Texas freeze the same way people are saying "they fucking deserved it" after the LA fires. "Suck it up, that's what happens when you vote for [my political opponents], you deserve what's coming to you because you're all monsters."
The worst person you can think of, the most genocidal dictator, the most vile racist supporter of apartheid, the most prolific murderer - these are all humans, they are not special, they are not unique, and you would do well to remember it because you're not special either. It's imperishable to recognize the humanity of those people because to do so is to recognize that NOT being like that is a choice. YOU could become like them. YOU could do some great harm in the name of your best vision of the future.
Look around at the world right now. Look at the online crackdowns on queer expression, on trans joy. Do you know how we got to a place where it's easy to ban and hide and silence trans women in the name of "content violations"? It's because of a bill meant to protect children from being sexually abused. "Of course I support SESTA/FOSTA, I'm not a monster like those pervert freaks, nobody has to tolerate sex on their platforms" - one of the major, major tools that is being used to silence, isolate, and harass queer people online was voted in by Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris.
We have to recognize the humanity of the people who do awful things because it is a vital reminder that we, humans, maybe even good people, can easily do awful things ourselves.
Anyway. Absolutely bugfuck insane that "it's important not to humanize bad people" is a take that people will say out loud in 2025.
There are people who are decrying the attack on USAID who have loudly and proudly said that Florida doesn't deserve hurricane relief because of its abortion ban. "Florida doesn't care about women so I don't care about Florida." Great! Cool! That's the exact same logic used by Trump to withdraw from the WHO.
it's important to humanize all humans. it's important to humanize all people. it's important to humanize your enemies. it's important to humanize those you hate, despise and feel sick from the thought of belonging to the same species as. because you do in fact still belong to the same species and it is important for the reality in your head to sync up with the reality you actually live in
If we forget they are human, we forget we can become them.
This is a reason to remain kind and full of love.
Reblogged
I am not exactly sure where this is but it looks very cool. I found the picture here.
Reblogged
with arcane’s focus on visual elements, something that’s been nagging on me lately is mel medarda’s final design and why it compounds the tragedy of her story:
firstly, when we see mel in her flashback, she’s already wearing her significant white/gold, but tempered with blue—noticeably missing her mother’s greys and reds, even then, showing her idealogical differences
then in piltover, we see mel as her own self-actualization—all white and gold and black, colors connected to power, and with an elegant cut that still places her slightly apart from piltover fashion. it shows her place as a non-combatant (long skirt) and someone privileged (the pure white) and wealthy (the gold. so much gold.). this is mel medarda at the pinnacle she’s worked so hard to achieve—it’s elegant because she is elegant
which of course becomes subverted when we do see the gold accessories taken away and the white dirtied when she’s kidnapped by the black rose—this is the first and only time we see mel in actual disarray, and it shows how vulnerable she is when she’s outside the political sphere
and after her transformation, we have this costume change, where aside from the increased gold (now representing magical ability instead of just wealth), we have mel in a a skin-tight catsuit style getup, allowing for greater movement, and her hair done in micro-braids in a style that won’t affect her center of gravity. at first, when i was watching, i was confused (especially about the hair), but then i realized—
this isn’t mel dressing herself to reflect a change, this is leblanc’s vision of mel, where power is swiftness and she is markedly different than others in a way that is now impossible to ignore
and she tries to return to her previous sense of self with the white hood, going back to a trademark of her style, but notably this is an outfit worn to conceal, not reveal and show off like her previous iconic dress, and her change is visibly with even just the hood off
and when mel accepts black rose’s help and betrays them and her mother dies, the white hood disappears—try as she might, she cannot go back to who she was, and she stands before noxians as a mage and mother-killer and a wolf, something dangerous
and then, when we see mel leaving piltover, she’s wearing nothing of her original self, but a combination of black rose’s getup and her mother’s colors. there is almost nothing of “mel” in this outfit, as if she’s been subsumed by these two identities—noxian and mage
even her makeup has shifted, with the red line under her eyes and the gold in her lower lip directly copying her mother
this isn’t a mel who’s realized herself in a new identity. this is a mel who, when faced with the enormous loss of her brother, mother, lover and former identity, has fallen into the definitions and roles that were presented to her, and who is now primed to continue the cycles started by her predecessors
and moving on from arcane, i think it would be fascinating to see mel in one of the newer shows to see how she grapples with this and if she either falls back into tradition and dooms herself, or if she’s able to break free and reforge her identity on her own terms