#How Is That Even Possible? (trope)

[egophiliac]

have you been keeping up with gozyuger? it's just... truly wild to watch

OKAY I'm finally caught up! and...wild is an understatement, huh! getting some real Donbros energy off of this one (in the best of ways though really) (just all kinds of super weird and super fun! 💍) (...also the blue ranger might have murdered a child?) (I mean probably not) (they wouldn't. but.) (what if)

I'm especially fond of Bouquet and Fire Candle, just because they encapsulate the two modes of my brain at any given moment

[lazylittledragon]

so uhhhhhhhh. not to be cryptic and bitchy on main but congratulations to everyone in my messages for like 5 months on being right i guess

[foreverunraveling]

Is it just me, or does Young Royals really love to scare us, lull us into a false sense of security, and then pull the rug out from underneath us (in a way that's much worse than the original threat)?

For example, you see August clocking Wille leaving the movie before Simon in episode 2.

You (if you weren't too distracted by the scene itself) might have worried that he might show up when they were having their first kiss there. But he didn't. The show consciously created that tension and then relieved it as a foreshadowing of the much worse version of that to come later.

That tension is recreated at the end of episode 4 when August is shown outside a window at Forest Ridge.

There's a brief moment of relief--he's at Alex's window, not Wille's. While you know deep down where this has to be going, you still have a kernel of hope. And then even when he does make it to Wille's room, you can't tell it's a boy (let alone Simon) for five full seconds. Hope tries to stay alive. We all know how it ends, though--that tension snaps right back into our faces when August spots Wille and Simon moments later.

This happens on a different scale with Wille and Simon's planned weekend together in episode 3. When Wilhelm tells Simon that August will be staying at Forest Ridge, that introduces a tension of "will they get their weekend together?"

That tension of "will they get their weekend together" is relieved when Wille asks if he can come to Simon's in Bjarstad, only to AGAIN snap right back into our faces when a much bigger problem surfaces--Erik dies. So, they don't get their weekend anyways.

Hell, there's even a hint of this in episode 2 when August walks in on Wilhelm looking at Simon's Instagram before rowing practice. He doesn't actually see what Wille was doing, though--so it's okay--and he ends up taking a call from Erik.

In another way, this happens with Wilhelm and Felice's relationship from season 1 to season 2. She initially kisses him in episode 3, and we worry that he might just go with it. He doesn't, though. What a relief. In the next episode, though, once he's crown prince, Wilhelm is publicly flirting with Felice (despite her relationship with August) over how "cute" she looks in a video. But our worries about this fade with the release of the video and Felice's support into season 2...

Until they actually almost hook up in the third episode, that is.

And it's definitely not limited to Simon and Wille and their relationships. It comes up with Sara and August too. When he initially kisses her in episode 4 of season 1, you might worry that maybe Sara will respond in a less-than-healthy manner, or that she'll keep what happened to herself instead of telling Felice. Sara rebuffs him, though, and tells Felice about what happened in the stables later that episode.

Tension introduced and relieved, so we move on. But then in the final episode of season 1, Sara goes to August's room to confront him about the video. And she ends up kissing him. In season 2, they end up being in AN ENTIRE SECRET RELATIONSHIP that Sara keeps from Felice. The original fear that you might have had about August twisting his way into Sara's heart was well-founded, it seems.

There are also smaller examples. Like when you see Erik driving incredibly fast in episode 1, or when you see Wilhelm riding on the scooters with Simon, Rosh, and Ayub in episode 2, some people worried there might be some kind of accident. (He was going hands-free, for fuck's sake.)

Well, in both of those instances, everything turned out okay, while Erik's actual offscreen accident in episode 3 obviously did not.

The anxiety about Marcus catching Wilhelm and Simon kissing at the Valentine's party is momentarily alleviated when it looks like him and Simon are going inside, but then Marcus turns around and sees Wille (not to mention he sees Simon eyeing Wille throughout the entire song and during the applause).

Let's not even get started on the drugs. We thought that storyline was resolved, gone, done away with after Alexander was seemingly expelled during season 1.

But then he's back in season 2, and the question of whether anyone will tell Alex that Wilhelm was the one to pin the blame on him arises. It seems a minor issue--given that Alexander wasn't actually expelled, and he seems to like Wille, we don't necessarily expect it to matter all too much. In episode 6, though, the "drug thing" is back at the top of our list of problems. We thought that this had been dealt with! That we'd gotten past it!

But it's worse than before--there's a pill bottle with Simon's father's name on it, and August has it! August has a potential witness behind him (Alex) and is threatening to tell not just the school, but the cops!

Don't worry, though, the tension is relieved when Simon tells Wille he's not going to report August to the police... for approximately six seconds until we see that Sara is reporting August instead.

Anyways, following this pattern, you can draw some really interesting potential conclusions about season 3 based on some of the big tension reliefs that have occurred over the past two seasons. Not saying that any of these will happen, but I'm preparing myself for anything:

Wilhelm has some sort of drug OD—like Simon (and some of the audience, probably) worried on the night of the Society party. This is one I'm really hoping doesn't come up.

Wilhelm actually kills August—when Wilhelm puts that gun down, it's a massive relief for most of us (also the characters present). This would just be... wild. And would explain Omar's tweets about how crazy the season is, I guess.

Sara outs Stella's crush on Fredricka, like she was threatening to do when Felice was moving out of their room at the Manor House. Istg if she does this I might lose it.

Wilhelm's mother dies. This was definitely one idea on some people's minds when Wilhelm takes that call that turns out to be about Erik in episode 3.

Wilhelm actually abdicates. This is definitely a threat made in season 2 that was later assuaged. I'm pulling for Wilhelm taking the throne only to abolish the monarchy. That might be a bit too optimistic on my part, though.

ALTERNATIVELY, August gets the throne. They teased us with this when Wilhelm almost didn't give the speech. August was literally walking up to the podium when Wille leapt up to take his place and momentarily rescued us from the notion that August was going to be ascending the throne.

Wilhelm and/or Simon and/or Sara get pulled from Hillerska. After the video, both Simon and Sara were potentially not going to return to the school. Simon was even late for the first day back, when he missed the choir performance. And Wille was almost physically removed from the school in episode 2 of season 2. Given the statement in the trailer about the school potentially shutting down... this one doesn't seem like too much of a long shot.

It's hard to say what any of this could mean for Simon/Wilhelm's relationship—I mean, in season 1, we had about six instances where we thought we'd get Simon and Wilhelm together and originally didn't (the first music room scene, the conversation after Erik's memorial, the second music room scene/drug situation, the video leak, Wilhelm LYING about the video leak).... the reasons kept getting worse and worse, until there's a release of tension when Wille says he won't deny the video—only for it to be far more crushing when he does deny it having promised otherwise. It seems like there's a new, bigger problem every time they turn around. So far, they've overcome all of the obstacles they've faced (honestly, I don't know how)... but I can't imagine that they're about to be facing an easy course based on that trailer.

Anyways, these are my meandering thoughts about some ways that we can try to guess at what we might have coming based on the show's patterns and its use of foreshadowing. Like I said, I'm just trying to mentally prepare myself for some of the wild-ass shit that might go down. So these are some crazy scenarios based on a few fake-outs that we've had so far. I'm still hoping that they don't take the smallest, most hopeful bits of seasons 1 and 2 and crush them in season 3....

[s-p-r-i-n-g-t-i-m-e]

mayhaps this is a hot take but I truly dislike “Loid gets murderous and overprotective of Anya dating Damian” content

like. there are sm reasons I dislike it

first off, just fundamentally, I hate that trope. I think parents being protective of children in general is cute, and even maybe protective against their partners to an extent, but it rlly feeds into the Western (esp American) notion of parents owning their children. it gets even grosser when it’s the dad and his daughter, it’s just a branch of ‘women and their purity having to be guarded until they’re properly married’ sexism

secondly, if this is pre-reveal (either Damian comes over/talks to Anya in front of Loid and it’s p obvious he has a crush, so Loid, of course, course notices, OR somehow, post-canon yet not revealed, they get together), Loid would absolutely use that to advance Operation Strix lol

obviously Loid is NOT a bad or uncaring father, he is absolutely not that, BUT he does also very vehemently care about achieving world peace thru his spy work, AND ANYA UNDERSTANDS AND EVEN AGREES WITH THIS (to the highest extent she can as a child, at least). he would never partake in extensive manipulation that’d harm Anya emotionally (or even Damian tbh, his whole goal is to create a world where no children have to cry) but he would DEFINITELY encourage their relationship in order to eventually, somehow get to Desmond the ghoul-eyed freak

thirdly, even if this is POST-reveal, I still don’t think Loid would be unreasonable. sure, he may apprehensive due to Damian’s family and more concrete examples of Anya growing up (MAYBE bc honestly I think Loid would be ecstatic with every milestone in Anya’s life considering how genuinely supportive and proud of her that he is) BUT. but

he, again, not only wants to create a world where no children have to cry, so he clearly values the youth and their quality of life, but ALSO KNOWS abt how shitty Damian’s father is. personally, I think he’d be GLAD that Damian has a safe place to come to, with ppl who’ll support him (unconsciously, bc Loid is very oblivious to his own emotions lmao)

anyways, tldr; the “Loid being super hostile to Damian dating Anya” trope is tired and sucks and we should move onto appreciating a trope that honours the CORE of sxf, more found family, where Damian joins the Forgers, even before he and Anya potentially marry (even before they date if possible tbh)

[gifti3]

the goverment is definitely figuring out this alien situation asap right?? cause whats happening currently is not feasible in the long run is it not??

im sure they are trying to maybe figure it out...probably, but part of me feels like it is not being treated with the seriousness it should be by them, which ig is in character LOL

pretty much relying on one guy (who doesnt even wanna be doing this) is actually scary

and the mc still has to like 'encourage' him to do it, tho its much easier in the 'ray ending' for sure. that man just wants to live a regular life with mc (unfortunately for him that means continuing to be binary star and dealing with aliens)

and if i was a citizen and knew this id be panicking

like yea u have these other heroes helping and stuff which im sure looks comforting from an outside point of view! but like the actuality is that its ray keeping things afloat

AND ON THE TOPIC OF THE MC, i was definitely in my head like....wouldnt rays superiors (managers??) get like curious about them? like no way theyre not being nosy about it after a certain amount of time passes. it really feels like something that could be leveraged against him,,, (if there is fic about this pls send it to me lol)

honestly i feel like mc and rays relationship would have moments of high stress. like there will be good times but also the bad times will also be there and its sometimes gonna be because of outside factors they cant control

[fyuyushia]

Js want to let it out that my initial idea for CT!au was actually tsundere!reader and exasperated!Jinwoo who gets the CT quest but instead of starting from 0 he's already at 50% because you liked him since highschool and he can't believe it because you're so emotionally constipated you suck at showing your interest

So he takes the affection meter with a grain of salt and then the plot is js jinwoo no longer being dense and actually picking up on the signs and getting you to soften up to him and him going: oh theyre so stupid(he's NOT any better) wait they're actually cute

[citysmells]

The episode where abed is going on a date with 2 girls (s4e8) is weird because hes kind of blowing off troy in the beginning like troy wants him to help him with brittas dance but he says No im going on 2 dates yay wacky hijinks and then he meets Rachel who is now the the girl he Actually liked that was under his nose the whole time Trope . LIKE in my opinion rachel here is a stand-in for troy.. troy was the actual one under abeds nose the whole time who wanted to do hijinks with him and then abed meets this random girl who Also likes movie tropes and hijinks and abed Also blows off like.. also crazy how abed never talks to rachel again until After troy leaves. LIKE OKK

[problemswithbooks]

Onyx Storm and LGBT+ Rep

How does everyone feel about the LGBT+ rep in the series post Onyx Storm? Personally, I'm not very impressed.

Now, the LGBT+ rep was never the best. Frankly it was always a blink, and you'll miss it type deal, but I have to say after reading Onyx Storm I'm seeing some worrying signs.

One thing I noticed in particular was that the two main LGBT+ characters we have are the only ones without clear love interests/ they're the characters pointed out as sleeping around and unattached. This is in comparison to the straight side characters, who almost all have clear end game love interests or close relationships with one person. The straight characters also have their love interests as part of the side cast, who have at least some lines, as opposed to the LGBT+ characters whose lovers are barely mentioned by name, let alone are a part of the group.

Take Dain. He's one the main side characters. This book it appears his love interest and end game (because no one simply has a crush in a romance novel, or breaks up) is Sloane. Sloane didn't have many scenes in this book, but she's still around, she still has moments. She's apart of their Wing. She has multiple interactions with Dain on page. Also she was a pretty big character last book, who has family ties with an important character from the first book.

In contrast, Ridoc. He was a major character in this book, getting far more scene time than he did in previous installments. He's gay and the only thing we know about his love life, something that's been brought up multiple times, is that he loves sleeping around. In the book where he gets upped scene time, his only romantic interaction is flirting with a new Flier who never shows up again. The only other thing he does romance related (if you can even call it that) is to jokingly mock his straight friends for having steady partners, instead of living it up by sleeping around.

Rhiannon gets similar treatment, though she's not as much of a player. Rhi is an incredibly important character in the first two books and Violet's bff. Her romantic partner is a woman called Tara. They have an off and on again relationship, that is implied to simply be sexual, not romantic. Tara maybe gets a line in one of the books, but I can't recall it at all. Tara is in First Wing.

Unlike the straight characters (or at least those pursuing opposite sex relationships) these two prominent LGBT+ characters are not allowed to have romantic interests, only sexual hook-ups, none of which who are other important side characters, therefore get zero character interactions.

Also, the only LGBT+ character that had a romantic partner (who again is not part of the main friend group) died in this book, so that's not great.

I'm not saying that Yarros has to write an epic LGBT+ romance, but it'd be nice if she at least gave one of these characters as much care as her straight side characters get in the romance department. I mean, would it have killed her to have Ridoc or Rhi have crushes on someone in the main friend group and have cute interactions with them, similar to Dain and Sloane, or Sawyer and Jesinia, or Imogen and Garrick? Why can't Ridoc be interested in Bodhi and get some cute moment during the sparing matches?

I doubt it was intentional, but Yarros is playing into the trope (especially with Ridoc) that LGBT+ people are very promiscuous and rarely have meaningful relationships based on love, rather than sex. Past that, it really feels like they aren't treated the same as the 'straight' characters (because they could be bi) who get at least some dialog with their love interests, who in turn have scenes independent of that relationship, because unlike the LGBT+ characters' love interests, their crushes are important to the story.

[schrodingersinteraction]

Omfg just finished leverage season 4 that finale was impeccable

[dxkjf]

These are ocs purely for me to indulge in my stupid little love for detectives and mystery stories. And i rewatched the great mouse detective and I'm going a wee bit mad perhaps. I'm not sure.

[dreamsy990]

ch4 spoilers if you haven't. been there i find it really fun how in deltarune susie is the consistent like. video game rule breaker (see: not being able to equip certain armors, not being able to unequip an armor unless you're replacing it, ralsei's room, and just many other little things). and i do wonder if this will continue forth for the prophecy & such. will susie intentionally or accidentally break out of the prophecy and cause a different ending? cause i feel like deltarune is going in the direction of oh your fate is decided by these texts. but like that could be. wrong. idk.

on one hand i hate to be one of the people thats saying toby was lying about there being one ending, on the other youre so right. because the way deltarune is set up it FEELS like its meant to be a narrative about determinism and subverting fate. and susies kinda the catalyst for a lot of that. especiallyyyy w the theory shes not the monster referenced in the prophecy.

im sure someones said this before but i like the idea that the snowgrave route is the intention of the prophecy. "love finds its way to the girl" or whatever the line was being a reference to LV. the idea that the main route of deltarune would be subverting fate while the snowgrave route is doing "what youre supposed to" is really cool to me idk.

with the way the game is setting up the idea of choices not mattering, it feels like its meant to be subverted. sooo much of this game is about defiance to me like every aspect of this game is full of ideas of doing what youre not supposed to. it just feels right for the prophecy to either not come true, or come true on a technicality (like reinterpreting the vague parts, i.e. turning "love finds its way to the girl" into being about a romance instead of LV).

anyways. yeah thoughts. idk how its gonna end but ill like the ending either way so im just here for the ride

[uwudonoodle]

Speed Racer (2008 by the Wachowski sisters)

If you slept on this movie, you should definitely go watch it, because it absolutely slaps.

[911-wassup-bby]

.

[maspers]

It's a shame certain religious tropes have fallen out of favor with the masses because the "random person is on a religious pilgrimage/mission/whatever and ends up in the Location With Shenanigans" is the perfect setup for so many good story ideas. It allows the protag to be both an audience surrogate (because they're just as confused as we are about this unfamiliar context) but also provides a springboard to ensuring the protagonist has a distinct personality aside from "being the protagonist". Even in cases where they're pretty much a silent stand-in for the audience, there's inherent questions like "what are they supposed to accomplish while on this journey", "what are their own reasons for going on this journey" (which can have a similar answer to the first but not necessarily, the discrepancy is where interesting stuff happens!), and "how does the fact that they are on this journey inform the actions and decisions they make upon arriving in the Location With Shenanigans".

There's an inherent nuance to a character's religious beliefs and how it affects their behavior and vice versa, that I think a lot of stories overlook? Too often I see religious characters fall into one of two categories: 1) Author is trying to make a statement about organized religion in some form and this character is being used as a vehicle for that, and 2) Author has mistaken the character trait of "being religious" as a personality trait (which it *can* be, but usually shouldn't be) and as such it's reduced to being a quirk or a gag. These are both relative extremes on a scale, I think, but you can get a lot of mileage out of the stuff in the middle. Heck, there doesn't even need to be like any super deep plot that specifically relates to them being religious? You don't need any "crisis of faith" plotline to make a religious character interesting (though that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, just that it isn't always necessary). Just the fact that they're religious in a realistic way while in the Location With Shenanigans is enough, you can combine that with their personality and backstory to add a layer of depth to what they say and do.

Ashitaka from Princess Mononoke isn't exactly an example of this concept, he's been exiled instead of being sent on a journey and he's not so much religious as he is representative of his culture, but the vibes are there. At his core Ashitaka's sense of morals and ethics are based on something distinctly different from that of the other characters in the film, leading to a contrast that helps him stand out as a character. A lot of his decisions are informed by his culture's own belief system, and we can see this in how the inhabitants of the forests and Iron Town react to him. Even when he's doing something that basically anyone with common sense or moral fiber would do, his background provides an extra level of nuance. Does that make sense? The story of Princess Mononoke isn't about Ashitaka's cultural beliefs and their effect on him, in theory you could remove those elements from the story entirely and have him act completely the same, with the plot being almost entirely unchanged. But would it be as good of a story without that aspect of his character?

The idea of an outside element being introduced to what is otherwise a seemingly closed system (aka the Location With Shenanigans) is always ripe for storytelling, and the very nature of religious beliefs, regardless of what they are, can make them an inherent outside element. There's always a level of "foreign-ness" because a character's religious beliefs are usually rooted in something inherently not connected to the rational understanding of the world (and/or the closed system they're introduced to). You can do a lot with that. Even if it's a completely fabricated religion you made up for the story, you can still do so much with it because that's how religions work, even in stories where it seems like it wouldn't even matter. Because if a character is devoutly religious, it always does matter, even if it doesn't seem to from the perspective of an outside observer.

[loverboyfae]

i love thinking about the mind/body dualism conundrums of fantasy situations that can never be tested. if you get de-aged what happens to your mental processes? do you retain your mental illnesses/neurodivergencies in a body swap scenario? does the body keep the score in a time loop?

[the-everqueen]

my major problem with fanon Hob is that he's treated as universal. which a) is impossible, nothing is actually universal, there is no singular Human Experience, and b) the text (show and comix) doesn't consider him a universal. he's an anomaly in his irrepressible desire to live. he's a foil for Dream. he's one of an unspecified number of immortals who occasionally cross paths with the Endless. he's not an Everyman, he's very much the product of the world around him (which changes with time but also doesn't - a white man in an established British empire holds a certain degree of power/liberty across centuries). why does whiteness = universality? why does whiteness = Human?