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Ethan Winters Doesn't Get Enough Love and that's Heartbreaking

So I'm gonna preface this by saying yes: there will be spoilers to the ending of Resident Evil 7 and Village. If you don't want that scroll away now. Leave, shoo, outta here, go on git, *angrily shakes broom and smacks it against the door to make a loud, aggressive sound*

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Okay so I get Ethan was the "villain" of Resident Evil Village because he killed everyone's favorite vampire mommy but this is in fact a Resident Evil game. Alcina and her daughters and the rest of the four lords were always going to die. It's the nature of the game. It didn't help that Capcom flipped the script and leaned VERY heavily into the villains of Village when it came to the marketing. (Hell I'll bet Capcom is literally kicking itself for making Lady D the first chapter boss) but they really went heavy on making Ethan kind of take a backseat to Lady Dimetrescu and Heisenberg for this game. Which I think is really kind of shitty because we get to see Ethan at his best in this game both in terms of characterization and development.

I need to give a shout-out to Todd Solely, Ethan's mocap and voice actor. We don't get to see Ethan's face in the game so we have to go off of every little action Ethan does and every bit of dialogue we get from Ethan we pay a closer bit of attention to. It's like when you lose one of your senses every other sense tries to make up for its loss. Some truly stand out moments of this were.

1. When Ethan is rejecting Heisenberg's offer of using Rosemary as a weapon and Ethan just spits back at Heisenberg "Rose is not a weapon, fuck you." Ethan freaking lowers his head and leans into the fuck you. You can just tell Ethan is not having ANY of this at all and while I know a lot of people wanted an option where we could have sided with Heisenberg, I'm glad we didn't. Forcing us to pick between Mia and Zoe in RE7 was already a nightmare. Like would the option have been nice yes, but the canon of Resident Evil is being held together by duct tape and spit at this point. That would have torn down the whole house of cards that is the continuity of this franchise.

2. When Ethan is in the village and after he watches the floor cave under Elena and he watches her burn to death. Ethan starts audibly crying, "why does everyone around me keep on dying?" And when he leaves out the window he slams his fist against the pane and yells out why this is happening to him again. You partially wanna go 'come on Ethan, you're in a Resident Evil game, get with the times.' but you realize Ethan thought he was free, he thought if he and Mia cooperated with the BSAA and did what Chris told him to everything would be okay. Yet here he is, back again in Resident Evil hell and he's had three years of him trying to rebuild his life after an EXTREMELY traumatic event just thrown out the window.

3. When The Duke points out that the jar Ethan has is in fact Rose's head and we see him drop the jar like it was a bomb. We saw Ethan's brain literally break. That's his daughter, the one thing he loves more than anything in this world, in this tiny jar. His whole world has shattered. And then when The Duke tries to make light of the situation the abject fucking hatred and pure venom in Ethan's voice. Especially the line "You'll pay if I find out this is a lie." With the delivery of an almost animalistic, hatred-filled growl. It sent a shiver down my spine. It felt like Ethan was willing to freaking maul The Duke with his bare hand (and what's left of the other one)

4. It's not as serious as the last three, but it's actually rather heartwarming. The whole opening portion of the game where Ethan is walking around the house with Rosemary commenting on things throughout the house. There's so much tenderness in this opening. This is a bit of a contrast to the very terrified but almost cynical towards the end delivery we got for Ethan with RE7. We're now seeing a much more tender and loving side to Ethan. Especially when Ethan is pretending to be one of Rosemary's stuffed monkeys. It's silly and cartoonish but it really shows the depth of Ethan and just how much he loves his daughter.

5. Ethan's become such a little shit by the time Village rolls around. He may be yet another human* trapped in a Romanian hellscape with mutated nightmares, but by god is Ethan willing to verbally beat you down if you step in his way. "Looks like your outside matches your inside now, psycho witch." he shouts at Lady D. in her Dragon form." Or when he talks down to Moreau after killing him. "In death as he was in life. Disgusting." And the delivery of that disgusting too was just *chef's kiss*

6. When Ethan is killed by Miranda and is in the Purgatory state with Eveline. Even though the effects make it seem really hard to make out what Ethan is trying to say, I also think it genuinely is because Ethan is freezing, his body has gone cold, his body has given up on him at this point and Eveline reveals the truth. Ethan has always been dead. Ethan is shocked at this realization. His whole life for these past three years have been a lie. But to see Ethan drag himself up again solely for the sake of saving his daughter? UGH. SO GOOD.

7. The entire ending cutscene where Chris is helping carry Ethan and Rosemary out of the Altar and back to the Helicopter. It's honestly so heartbreaking. Once we saw Ethan's good hand start to disintegrate, we knew. Ethan's time was up. Ethan's body had taken on too much damage and the Mold couldn't keep him alive much longer. His final words while alive in this phase still make me choke up every time. "Mia..? I'm so sorry... I love you... Keep Rose safe. Watch over her.. Teach her to be strong.. Goodbye Rosemary." In Ethan's last conscious moments the only thing that mattered to him were his wife and his daughter. I.. i need a moment..

Ethan Winters was different than any other Resident Evil protagonist. He wasn't some ex-air force pilot turned sharpshooter, super-cop who punches boulders. He wasn't an ex-army master of unlocking turned international savior and founder of a paramilitary group created to stop bioweapons. He wasn't a rookie cop turned direct operative for this universe's version of the Secret Service who saves the president's daughter. Ethan is just a regular systems engineer from California who loves his wife so much he was willing to drop everything for a chance to save her. Ethan's just a civilian forced to survive the world of Resident Evil. Hell, Ethan didn't survive, Ethan Winters was killed by Jack Baker after Jack stomped on Ethan's head. What we know as and see as Ethan is really a collection of mold that re-animated Ethan and took over his body and personality. It's downright horrific when you think about it.

Ethan being a dead man walking is something that I've thought about a lot since finishing Village for the first time. To know that Ethan isn't Ethan, but instead is just a collection of mold cells that used his body and has dog-eared his consciousness and personality is insane to me. Not only was Ethan able to resist Eveline, the source of the mold that created the thing that became Ethan, but he was able to resist The Black God (the Megamycete) completely. The mold collective that was Ethan Winters was able to fully retain Ethan's shape, form, appearance, consciousness and be completely unaffected by most external factors. Even in Resident Evil biological terms, what Ethan Winters was, was nothing short of a miracle. When Ethan "dies" in the game during a game over screen we don't see him mutate into your usual flavors of Resident Evil biological nonsense. We never saw Ethan disintegrate after dying (if he did it was done off screen but bleh) Ethan was a full-fledged human while absolutely not being one.

The complications and plot holes that this opens are very numerous. Why exactly was Ethan able to maintain so much of himself despite purely being a mold being? How was Ethan able to resist even Mother Miranda even while being directly connected to the Megamycete? The source of ALL of the mold infection? How was Ethan able to sexually reproduce and make a (mostly) normal human? How did Mia not get re-infected with the mold by having sex with Ethan? Why didn't Ethan mutate as opposed to say Jack despite having similar regenerative abilities? If the BSAA was able to physically remove mold spores from both Ethan AND Mia, how did they not realize that Ethan was even more infected than Mia?

Don't get me started on Mia, she's getting her own rant soon enough but Mia while being just as much a victim of this situation as Ethan, Mia Winters is easily one of the worst characters as a person in Resident Evil. She lied to Ethan about her occupation as a researcher for The Connections, she physically assaults Ethan on multiple occasions (she was infected by Mold and under Eveline's influence I'll give her a pass here.) But most importantly Mia is fully aware that Ethan is still infected with the mold. This is compounded by the fact that originally in RE7 we were told that Mia was just Eveline's handler. When in reality at the Exposition Bombing at the end of Village we see a photograph (see below) showing that Mia and Miranda weren't strangers. They knew each other enough to take a picture with each other. Mia wasn't just a handler, she was a full-blown researcher and scientist with The Connections and she was fully aware of the extent of Ethan's infection. Yet she willingly allowed herself to be impregnated by a molded Ethan. She sits on the secret for a long time, she almost even tells Ethan the truth in an argument a week prior to the events of Village. Yet she doesn't. I want to give a lore-related theory/explanation to this. I can't remember exactly which game it was but Wesker had entered into a file that he hypothesized that the human psyche plays an impact on mutations on highly mutagenic strains of viruses. I.e. think about how Alexia became this bulbous, insect queen in her second form because she saw herself as royalty, genetically superior and above all else. Mia had no idea what would have happened if she told Ethan the truth, she didn't know what would have happened to Ethan whether he would have just had a full-on mental breakdown or if he would have mutated because his psyche would have become so fractured. Let alone what would have happened to her family. Because while Mia may have been duplicitous and lied to Ethan both in RE7 and Village: Mia genuinely loved Ethan. I don't think there's any way we can debate that.

(The person on the far right of the image is Mia. The woman to the left of the little girl is Miranda. The little girl is Eveline. Mia and Miranda weren't strangers. Which begs the question: why did Miranda keep Mia alive in her lab?)

Ethan Winters is a character who has left a huge impact in only two games. While he's your generic everyman protagonist with a little bit of biting sarcasm in RE7. By the time Village rolls around Ethan is a fully-fleshed character. We get our actions survivor back but this time with basic military training, even more sarcasm, and now with the full range of emotions. We get to see Ethan as a tender and loving father towards his daughter, from criticizing Mia (Miranda) for reading a scary pop-up book with Rose to him swaddling his daughter as she starts stirring and crying. To holding onto Rose tightly but ever-so tenderly as Ethan is physically falling apart and carbonizing. We watch Ethan cry as the people he tries to help die around him, we see Ethan filled with abject and carnal rage towards his adversaries. Ethan truly is Resident Evil's titleholder for best dad. (Sorry Barry lol) and for a character with no face that we can see during the main game, Ethan is exceptionally expressive and emotional and shockingly so human for this franchise.

I'm beyond excited for what Shadow of Rose: the DLC for village will bring. My theory is that since Rosemary has gained access to a remaining sample of the Megamycete, we probably will see Ethan again in some way/shape/form since the Megamycete absorbs the consciousness of all who die within the reach of its roots. Whether or not Ethan is corrupted or he finally reunites with the daughter he loved so much is yet to be seen. But I would love to see a tender moment where Ethan pulls Rose into the tightest of hugs. He remarks how he's been inside of her watching her through her connection to the mold. Ethan would be profusely apologetic about not being there for her, but that he's so incredibly proud of the strong young woman she's become.

Ethan Winters deserves more love and recognition and it's a crime he doesn't get his pearls. I love this daddliest catch of a man who literally goes through HELL just to save his daughter. It broke my heart when Ethan died, just like it did when I saw Piers die from Resident Evil 6. But we got a fantastic character out of all of these two games. So go on Mr. Winters, smile. I hope whatever afterlife you are on you're loved and valued.

My Over The Garden Wall tattoo by Josh Stephens at Hold It Down Tattoo. Richmond, VA

$10 says that fangirls are still going to love Evan Peters character even though he's a literal trash bag in the season just because it's Evan Peters. Just saying

Lady Saitama in some pretty lingerie from this amazing fic X X X

*Sees new Creature video*

Me: *Sighs* What stupid thing have my children done today

Woof woof

everyone say thank you con

Con-going Cosplay Hacks

- Check out of your hotel early Most hotels accept cash payment at any point during your stay. If you are splitting up the payment of your room, head down to the front desk as soon as you have everyone’s share of the money. They will still hold the credit card for any extra incidentals, but this way you don’t have to wait in a long line at the end of your con stay to check out.

- Put bandaids on the back of your uncomfortable shoes You’re wearing a shoe that cuts into your heel, something you only notice after walking around the con for two hours. If you happen to be wearing tights, you can place a fabric bandaid into the heel of the shoe itself and have it be just as effective. This way you won’t have to remove your tights to get the bandaid on your skin!

- BRING FABREEZE AND SHOUT WIPES/TIDE PENS Someone in your group is going to stain their costume. It’s 100% guaranteed to happen. Whether it’s from food, drink, or smudged makeup, Shout Wipes or Tide Pens will save you from the stress of now having a stained costume.

Also, Fabreeze. It will make you feel better about wearing the same clothes multiple days in a row (not just cosplay!), AND it is a good idea to spray your cosplay down before packing it back up for the trip back home.

- Bag up what you can of your cosplays Buy the galleon storage bags for your trip and squeeze what you can of each cosplay into the bag. Label the bags as needed (ex: McCree 1 of 2). This way you have everything you need for that cosplay together in one place, thus saving yourself from tearing apart your entire suitcase every time you want to change cosplays. If parts of your costume don’t fit into bags, that’s okay! At least they’re big enough not to lose track of. Or you can upgrade from a storage bag to trash bags!

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I love novahd fanfics that are like “I opened the door for my Aleks and wrapped him in a blanket in case he got cold” when in reality it would be like “I tripped the fucker on the way to the car and stole the blanket for myself cause the lil shit doesn’t deserve it”

The Water Signs - The Lure of Addiction

The Water Signs - Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces endorse the zodiac’s resource of intuition, psychic energies and interpersonal connection. Those with many planets around Water tend to have an inbuilt antennae that absorbs the frequencies of the moods around them. This acute receptivity can cause a friction of emotions within these individuals; a volatile merging of their own intense feelings tied with and other people’s worries, desires and emptiness. In astrology, the Water signs symbolize the zodiac’s connection to the collective unconscious, and for this, these individuals carry the weight of the world’s communal emotions on their back. Many Water born can fall into the cycle of substance abuse, only in desperate attempt to self medicate the exhaustion and attenuate such levity of feeling. The cosmic responsibilities of the Water signs are severe, and their duty is to relate to the rest of humanity on an emotional level. For some, the weight is to much to bear, and the lure of addiction too overwhelming to resist.

Cancer is the first of the Water Signs, and symbolizes water at its most basic; tranquil in some areas, turbulent in others. These individuals are osmotic in absorbing their surroundings, and at hostage to the Moon’s changing effects on their mood. As Cancerians often experience intense and volatile affective instability, they often resort to habitual vices and addictive tendencies to respite the harsher moments. Especially during periods of financial and residency hardship, Cancer will feel especially vulnerable, and tend to latch on to any substance that acts to lessen reminders of reality. It is within their nature to find a comfort and safety in ‘safety blankets’, and many Cancerians find it hard to let go of a vice once it has offered relief. Neptune is the God of Waters and rules Cancer in Esoteric Astrology, where the mass sensitivity and mass identification with form and with forms is recognized. Old Commentary suggests ““… one of the major difficulties and great problems of the disciple is his extreme sensitivity to impacts from every side and his rapid ability to respond to contacts coming from "all points of the compass, from every angle of the zodiacal wheel and from that which is within as well as from that which is without, from that which lies above, below, and upon every hand,”“. For Cancer, it is believed a way to neutralize the chaos within, a measure to eschew the lure of addiction, is found through the creation of a haven, a safe haven, in which they can nurture and pour all their energies into giving and receiving love. Their universal powers instil them with a generous capacity for nourishment and charity; and although they respect tradition, Cancerians have the quiet power to transform all that is old into new - it is when they learn to direct the energies of all their emotions into creativity, nurturing and into relieving the shared pain of the masses that the waters remain tranquil.

Scorpio is the second of the Water signs, and with Pluto, the zodiac’s Death Tarot Card as its ruler, Scorpio pulls us to the darkest depths of the ocean, where our darkest and murkiest secrets lay bare. The rhetoric around Scorpio follows the theme - secrets, harsh realities, the hidden, the confronting; and these natives are often subject to intense mood swings, stretches of self isolation, and  a periodic overpowering melancholy. There is a perception in Scorpio that borders on psychic, and their overpowering emotions can lead to the use of substance to attenuate the madness. There is an innate intense jealousy present in Scorpio, and an inborn sense of suspicion and paranoia; this can lead them to use alcohol or drugs to curb their impulsivity and calm their possible thoughts of violence. As a Fixed Sign, the energies surrounding Scorpio find it extremely difficult to let to go of comfort measures, and it is unlikely these individuals will easily admit they have a problem with addiction. Scorpio can drag themselves from the midst of the ocean’s floor, by endorsing their powers of regeneration, and  engaging in their cosmic duty, assisting others along the transformation process. This is why they are living now in a crisis,  often being torn between two contradictory tendencies: the past and death on one hand, and the future and life on the other. During life a part of themselves will die in order to let another part be born. Scorpio represent the death of the ego, and for this, they must be willing to die a million times over. Those who resist the temptation of destructive addiction, are promised the zodiac’s greatest package of soul transformative treasures.

Pisces, as the final sign of the zodiac, and the evolution of the Water signs carries the particles of the 11 signs before him. Saturated by the forces of humanity’s collective unconscious and mentored by the illusionary Neptune, Pisceans are highly vulnerable to the lure of addiction, especially of the liquid form. The watery energies are sensitive, and Pisceans are highly receptive of the emotions of their surroundings. These individuals feel easily exhausted, and experience random intense feelings of anxiety, joy or gloom; involuntarily soaking up the emotions of all the people they contact. Pisceans tend  to feel a terminal unstable sense of self, legacy of their mutable quality, which can lead them to turn to substance to find stability and individuality. Their ruler, Neptune, is the zodiac’s magician, who favours the trick of illusion; she is known for her deceptive pull into the world of substance, where the boundaries of reality and imagination dissolve before us. Pisceans can be overwhelmed with the harshness and expectation of realism and feel relief in the mystical world of drug and alcohol use. Pisces home is the 12th House, and this is where our unconscious waters are under guard; it is said the Pisces is forced to merge meaning with matter, to evaporate the division between the material and the dream and build boundaries between himself and others - or he will drown in the 12th House’s unconscious waters; through substance abuse or psychosis. 

DOES IT HAVE TO BE HUMAN ?!

DOES IT HAVE TO BE MINE?!