kingchad

[kingchad]

Some of Jedidiah’s pics from Dream It Fest

[kingchad]

[kingchad]

She’s literally one of my favorite characters ever now like it’s so funny. I used to hate her so much because I thought she was a hypocritical manipulative class traitor and she totally is but I completely understand why. Her childhood was horrible not just because of the abstract horror of the dystopia she grew up in but because of the neglect and emotional abuse of her mom. Of course she doesn’t even realize she was abused so that’s a whole can of worms. her “happy ending” sucks so badly for her because she’s the world’s most closeted/repressed lesbian but her entire arc revolves around her relationship with a man she has nothing in common with. A man who happens to be THE KING OF THE COUNTRY so that’s a pretty high stakes relationship especially when her and her friends’ access to him is the only reason anyone on the Isle has a possibility of getting human rights. And her only outlet for this stress is magic, which she is not allowed to do unless it is in “service of the greater good”, so she’s basically just the royal guard dog. HER LIFE SUCKS!!!!!!!

[kingchad]

Excuse me

[kingchad]

It’s gonna be 10 years of descendants this year *puts head in hands* *lies down on the ground and lets the earth reclaim me*

[kingchad]

A lot of people leave Gil out. And those people are cowards.

Sea Three polycule truther til the day I die

[kingchad]

Sea Three polycule truther til the day I die

[kingchad]

OUAT Hook is not even a little bit of a weird guy he’s just a normal archetypal bad boy. Harry Hook is insane. What’s not clicking.

[kingchad]

Big for those who care but I am fully tapping out I think. I just need 1-3 and my selected characters of choice from d4. Life and love to those who feel otherwise.

[kingchad]

characters have to be a little bit awful in ways that you cant defend. its good for the ecosystem. your honor he did do that. He did in fact do that

[kingchad]

[kingchad]

i'm making a collection

[kingchad]

The Gil / Harry cut kiss in d2 is one of the wildest things ever to me. Because normally I would be like there’s no way this is real but it’s inexplicably in the movie novelization which to me implies that it was in the film edit for a significant amount of time.

[kingchad]

y'know as much i think jaylos was overrated i never saw #it for benlos i mean the "good boy" scene was interesting but still (not trying to start shipping wars everybody ship what they wanna ship!)

i honestly don't love benlos so much either anymore, but it was my first descendants ship before i pivoted away so i have nostalgia for it. i think it's an important part of the descendants ship ecosystem though and it's not very popular anymore which is a shame.

benlos is a hook up relationship imo. there is not a long lasting foundation there but there is chemistry.

[kingchad]

VIA @pinballlizard ….TAGS ON MY POST I ACTUALLY LIKE AND AGREE WITH

a lot of people say Thomas Doherty’s acting decisions as Harry Hook are lifted from Captain Hook’s character in OUAT but I straight up disagree. Harry’s look might be aesthetically inspired by OUAT Hook but on a personality level those are two completely different men.

[kingchad]

TOP 10 DESCENDANTS SHIPS AS VOTED BY MY FOLLOWERS

↳ #9 - Ben and Carlos

“ Good Boy”

[kingchad]

I havent kept up with the actors social media, I am curious - could you link to or explain how Jed Goodacre interprets Chad vs. how you interpret Chad?

oh, yes, gladly! There's an observable shift between D1 Chad and D2/3 Chad. D1 Chad is a lot more pointed and deliberately mean. D2/3 Chad is a comedy side character who is incidentally mean because he doesn't recognize when he's being insensitive.

my personal speculation is that when Sarah Jeffrey had scheduling conflicts and couldn't be on set for D2, the original intended plotline for Chad had to change, and leading to him becoming a harmless gag character for levity. It also doesn't hurt that Jedidiah Goodacre is a HUGE Jim Carrey fan and pretty clearly enjoys any opportunity to improv/be silly on set. (If you're familiar with Carrey's work at all, D2/3 Chad is definitely giving that.) I suspect that Jedidiah's affinity for comedy on set pushed the Chad character even MORE in the direction of harmless sidekick than maybe was originally intended. If Audrey had been in D2, Chad might have been more similar to his D1 self throughout the series.

Of Chad, Jedidiah gives a pretty consistent take whenever he does give one. The quotes I'll pull are "[Chad] always thinks that [he is] doing the right thing, when sometimes [he is] not smart enough to understand [he is] dead wrong"* and "I feel like the first movie, maybe Chad was a bit more standoffish and maybe came off as not such a nice guy....in the second film, you found that Chad was more of a loveable idiot. That's a very fun place to be when you're an actor because in any scene, your go-to move is to just not understand and sometimes it ends up being funny. In the third installment, you can expect much of the same." Pretty unambiguously can be interpreted that Chad is stupid and means no real harm, and Jedidiah has fun playing him that way.

PERSONALLY, I much much much prefer D1 Chad's personality, because I have historically been drawn to and have a real fondness for characters that are assholes. I do try and incorporate some of the stupidity and goofiness of D2/3 into my writing, because I recognize that's 2/3rds of the canon material we have and I don't want to be COMPLETELY making shit up, but y'know. In my view, Chad knows when he is being a dick but doesn't value the people he's treating poorly enough to care. He isn't book-smart but he is people smart, and can manipulate and exploit the people around him. He thinks he's better than other people and can use that to justify anything he does.

A really core part of this to me is that Chad has almost religiously bought into the societal rules of Auradon, namely that there are good and bad people, and fairytales go a certain way. This is part of why Chad is deeply closeted and feels like he can't come out. He feels pressured to "stick to the script", in a sense. Heteronormative fairytale society. Auradonian compulsory heterosexuality.

Adopted Chad is a new thing for me, but I think it adds another layer to the fairytale conformity thing. Like he feels an even greater pressure to do the nuclear family, white picket fence castle grounds, 2.5 kids thing because he worries he might be perceived as "not belonging" by others. He feels he needs to prove himself by throwing himself into the stereotypical prince thing as much as he can.

I personally think those traits are more interesting to write and read than D2/3 Chad's traits are. They provide a great starting point for character growth. It's way more engaging to watch someone change into a more empathetic person when they can understand that they were wrong. It's not as interesting to read about a stupid character bumbling through social interactions imo.

I don't think that I always successfully communicate those ideas in my fics because I was 15 when I started writing Descendants fic! It's been 7 years, I'm 22 now and hopefully a better and more thoughtful writer! Incorporating all of this is something I'm REALLY deliberate about in my WIPs now and I actually want to rework a lot of stuff I've already posted someday.

*this first quote is from 2014, pre-release press for Descendants 1, so honestly this kind of disproves my speculation since the whole statement seems very by-the-numbers "Disney gave me a list of character traits and it's these ones" to me. I guess Chad might have been stupid all along! but the vibe is definitely different between films so the understanding of the character definitely shifted between movies regardless.