#I could expand on that (the concept not the story as that would be hypocritical) if you wanted

[bookwyrminspiration]

well if it's linh asks you want, then i've been thinking more about the dark!linh au instead of actually writing it and im still having brainrot about it bc i just. adore the concept.

and okay so i Think i have a basic idea and i have a possible start and a possible end (that doesnt wrap nearly everything up but IS a conclusion i can end a fic on and then possibly write a sequel but then just never do it) so thats??? better??? i just. need help with. everything else.

oh and?? have a quote?? from both linh and tam pov since i cant help myself.

Linh unfroze herself from her position, joints aching at the effort it took to stand up. She waited, watching to see whether or not Rhys would move on. He wasn’t. Fine. She was doing this, then.

and

He’ll pass by her portrait, sometimes, hanging in the hallway his mother and father don’t dare to walk through anymore, and for a second not be able to tell the difference either. She’s the smiling one, though. She’d always been.

so?? enjoy??? even though i havent,,, actually been writing it ive been thinking about this au for SO LONG and i am just. AAAAAA

- pyro

it is Linh asks I want! always! she's excellent and i love her so much

oo the dark!linh au!! I still have my own idea for one of those that you inspired, I just haven't worked on it because, you know, the wings au. I learned a fun fact about the wings au earlier today and it broke my brain but this post isn't about that so I'll move on. I'm very curious to hear about your ideas for it. I also adore the concept, so I am !! right now

a basic idea is how you start a fic! so you're already doing great. all stories start with an idea and go from there. And then the start and end are an excellent next step. Figuring out the framework makes it so much easier to do everything else in the story! I've already written a post about my planning process so I won't repeat all that hear, but if you want help or feedback on anything I'd be more than happy to help! I don't know how helpful I would actually be, but at the very least I think I could be a good listener. Or maybe I'd just be good at asking questions, but that's also a cool part of the process.

The planning stage of a story is infuriating but so much fun, because towards the beginning its a lot looser. That means that there's a million opportunities to pick from and ruminate on. And you can throw a bunch of things together without it needing to be "right" because things don't need to fit together right now. So you can include notes and details for plans that completely contradict each other and not worry about it! But all that freedom can be a lot sometimes, like opening a new document. Because how do you narrow it down? How do you get from point A to point B and make it make sense and sound good? I start a new document every two weeks and it's always a slap in the face like ah. What words should go there?

:000!! quotes?! oh this is so cool

"to see whether of not Rhys would move on." Who?? is Rhys?? it kind sounds like Linh is gonna fight him for some reason. I have already constructed an entire scenario and image in my mind around this so I'm going to narrate this so you can be amused by how incorrect this is. They're at a bar. Linh is in the shadows, but watching. Rhys is some self-entitled bitch of a human she's been trailing for days for some reason i haven't figured out yet. Wait. the plot thickens. Linh is serving as a bodyguard for someone the Neverseen needs protected, and Rhys is overestimated his security at the bar, getting to close and too pushy and insistent and trying to make a deal with the person she's protecting. Maybe they're in the middle of negotiations with papers all spread in front on them and a glass of whiskey in hand. And Rhy is refusing to take no for an answer. Linh's been watching the entire time from the rafters or something, crouching, which is why her joints ache. And now that she's been called to action she's going to use the part of the whiskey that's water (like how they dilute it?) to choke him while he takes his next drink. And come up behind him while it happens, feigning concern but really its so no one tries to come up and actually save him. I'm 100% sure this isn't going to happen in the au but damn was it cool to imagine. But whatever this scene turns out to be will be even cooler. I'm positive of it!

and then that tam quote?? oh my?? I'm trying to imagine how he would've turned out if he continued living at home and seeing his parents regularly and it isn't ending well in my mind. I feel like his parents would pretend to be really loving at first now that they've gotten their ideal one child and don't have to acknowledge the twins but it fades after a while.

"and for a second not be able to tell the difference either." Oh?? is someone mistaking him for his sister? I'd assume it's his parents. I feel like they wouldn't have been able to tell them apart a lot and do that stereotypical "oh but you just look so similar" thing even when they...didn't. I was friends with a pair of twins and hung out with them a lot a few years ago and the number of times people did this was so infuriating and I wasn't even the one it was happening to. Because?? if you took a single second to look a little closer you could tell exactly which twin was which based on facial features. Headcanon that the Song parents couldn't tell apart their kids and didn't even try to. I'm getting distracted now oops.

"She's the smiling one, though. She'd always been." hey just throw me off a cliff next time, okay? (/j /lh). Oh that one hurts. There's so much pain in one sentence, but so much nostalgia. I don't know the context for it but knowing you it's probably angst. And knowing that linh is now dark, the way she's been preserved as sweet and smiling in Tam's memory hurts but I love it.

i did! I did enjoy! I hope my responses to it made sense, but I love hearing other people's ideas. also don't feel pressured to write anything, please. if you want to then go for it, but you aren't letting anyone down by having ideas but no writing. I'm happy to hear about either and I'd be just as excited about this au as i am right now even if it was never written! the concept as a whole is so cool and I'm very interested to hear everything about it you're willing to share.

and thinking about aus forever is honestly a great way to start. it was like nine months I spent just thinking about the wings au before I wrote a single word, and several months after that to write it regularly. don't know where i'm going with this but I'm trying to be comforting/encouraging.

if you do want to write it, I wish you luck! writing isn't always easy but it can be very rewarding. if you do want to publish it, then I'm curious to read it. if you want to keep talking about it, then i'm excited to hear more. if you don't do any of that, it's also fine and I'm glad you enjoy it so much. I think everyone should have a story just for themselves, and if this is yours than i'm happy for you!

[anfie-in-the-box]

Dreamtale_Not_Found Teaser

Notes

Nobody asked for this, including me. I never intended to participate in Aftermare Week (and I'm a bit late as it is). Furthermore, I never could figure this ship out at all; for me, it just didn't work. Until suddenly, it did. All thanks to this event. Not sure if I'd expand this idea, but have this teaser nonetheless.

。。。

Do you?..

"Well, that's new," Nightmare says out loud, unsure how to react.

To be fair, it's always something new unless he concentrates on a certain AU. There are too many of them, so it's only natural they come and go.

He's been through this so many times, yet it's as awe-inspiring and breathtaking as ever. He still remembers the first time. He couldn't put up with his life anymore, and he tried to change it. Only... He hesitated a mere second before making contact with the closest golden apple. After all, he never touched it.

There's no proof, but it felt like the whole world shifted, settling in a state completely different from before.

That night, for the first time in his life, Nightmare had a dream. It wasn't a good dream; quite the opposite actually. He remembered walking in a cold, empty world filled with what he thought was snow. Of course, it was monster dust. He learned that shortly after, right as he stumbled into a human murdering an armless lizard-like monster. The air was thick not only with dust but also with grief, horror, and pain. Nightmare's never felt so much negativity in one place.

As time passed, his lucid dreams have become more and more frequent. He explored a world he was dreaming about, invisible, untouchable. The worlds were different every time, each of them unique in its own way, and he craved to learn and see as much as possible in what little time he had. Need to hurry made him upset at first, but then excitement came, the thrill of a race against time, a gamble of what he discovers and what misses, what chooses and what discards.

He was so vulnerable back then, no wonder he'd fallen into a trap of escapism, sleeping more and more every day. Dream was so worried, and Nightmare... Nightmare couldn't care less. He just wanted to get out of the world where everybody neither loved nor accepted him. Or, well, he believed so. What a fatal fallacy that was.

Now, his life is balanced and bearable, yet, the dreams stay a welcome distraction and adventure that Nightmare awaits with eager anticipation. They never cease to surprise.

Like this time. He got thrown into so many different places, but this one is something else. There doesn't seem to be anything but a tiny lawn with two words above, and then, there's only endless darkness. "Continue" and "Reset", the words say. Nightmare is vaguely aware of the concept after visiting so many universes, but... Is this really what it looks like? Even if so, what is he doing here? His dreams always led him to monsters or humans, but this place is utterly empty.

Did something break? Was he abusing his power to travel between the worlds? Is this his punishment? Will he stay here forever? What about Dream? He's strong, he'd live on even if Nightmare never woke up or disappeared for good, but Nightmare doesn't want to bring that on his brother!

"Anybody here?" Nightmare tries, despite the anxiety building in his whole being, verging on panic. It's all for nothing, of course, he's invisible, untouchable, and inaudible during his dreams, he's never present enough in another world to interact with it. But doing something — anything at all — is better than giving in to panic.

Then, suddenly, a voice comes from the darkness, astounded yet wary, "the heck?!"

Nightmare shrieks, taking a step back and instantly going on the defensive. Ready to cover himself or dodge.

"who's there?"

Now that all Nightmare's senses are heightened by fear, he can actually see where the voice comes from. A distant figure coming his way in fast, big steps, running almost.

Wait...

"Do you... hear me?" he asks, not quite sure if he expects an answer or a lack of it.

"duh. see ya, too."

Okay. Alright. They're not attacking, only coming closer. No reason to relax yet, but perhaps he should show them he's not a threat. Ever so slowly, Nightmare raises both hands. For some reason, that earns him a... chuckle?

He doesn't even see there are two of them at first. The only thing he can focus on is those weird white things covering their heads. He's never seen anything like this before. What is this? Are they okay?

Then, he remembers what types of worlds he has access to.

Then, he sees a huge bloody slash across the creature's chest.

Everything falls into place.

They're really, really not okay.

Only then, he finally realises there isn't only one creature before him. A monster wearing his face — or, well, about a half of it, the other being covered by this strange white thing, — a Sans of this universe, if it even is a universe, it seems; and a kid sitting on his shoulders, covered by the whiteness as well.

"did we startle you?" Uncertain, Nightmare nods, his gaze glued to the blood dripping from the slash. It's rude to stare, he might make this Sans mad, but just can't get himself to look anywhere else. It doesn't help that there's nothing to look at. Definitely nothing as vibrant, not even the grass behind their back. No, Nightmare can't look away even if it'd be the death of him.

"so? mind telling me who you are? or how you entered this place, maybe? dunno, don't care, you choose what comes first."

The stranger's tone is nonchalant, but Nightmare can sense other's emotions, so there's no way that's fooling him. They're confused and distressed. And in so much pain that never ends.

"I'm dreaming," Nightmare falters. It suddenly hits him that he's actually talking to somebody from another world. One of those he's never present enough in. What changed? Could it be this place that affects him? If so, wouldn't that be a trap, a prison with no way out?..

Stars, please, anything but that. He doesn't want to leave his brother.

The stranger's only socket widens in surprise. He looks as taken aback as Nightmare feels, truly.

"but you're not..." he mutters, clearly talking to himself. Shakes his head abruptly, earning a huff from the child on his shoulders. "sorry, kiddo, didn't think that through. you good?" They nod. "then, do me a favour and go play with the blasters, 'kay?" He lifts them with magic Nightmare is all too familiar with and summons the blasters, although smaller than Nightmare's accustomed to. The child pouts but goes away without a word, settling on a lawn.

"okay, let's start over. first, put your hands down, that looks uncomfortable." Says someone with a seemingly eternally bleeding wound, Nightmare thinks but does as asked. It's not like he's in any position to choose. "seems you're more afraid of me than i'm of you if your shaking's anything to go by. relax, kid, i'm not gonna hurt ya if you're not gonna hurt me."

He's not a kid. Not anymore. He really is shaking, though. Haven't even noticed. But that's not surprising at all, he still doesn't know what to expect.

"I'm not a kid," Nightmare says before he can stop himself. The stranger just shrugs, "then give me something to call you, why don't ya?"

That's... actually reasonable. His name never came up.

"Nightmare," the stranger gives him a quizzical look, so he clarifies. "That's my name. Nightmare."

"wow. somebody has a dark sense of humour or something?" Nightmare's not sure how to respond, but he doesn't get the chance anyway. "no, sorry, that's kinda hypocritical of me. name's geno."

As in genocide?

Nightmare doesn't ask that. Maybe he just heard that word too much during his travels.

"so, nightmare. how did you get here?"

。。。

Credits:

Undertale © Toby Fox

Dreamtale © jokublog

Aftertale © loverofpiggies

Aftermare Week © @bluepalleteuniverse

。。。

Notes

I tried to explain as much as possible in this little teaser, but if you have any questions, ask away. Although some things might be spoilers, and I'm planning to do something with this idea. If not a full story, perhaps a collection of shorter ones would suffice. It's not set in stone yet.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and take care 🌻

[maxwell-grant]

May I please ask where you set the boundaries when constructing a crossover? (i.e. How far are you willing to bend characterisation of the setting a character's adventures take place in and of the individual characters themselves to make this crossover work? How many settings are you actually prepared to smush together before you feel you're losing more than you gain in this mix? and so forth).

I could be off the mark here, but this question sounds like you yourself got a very big idea planned but you are unsure of how far you can, or want to, push the concept. Two words of advice upfront: 1: Stop overthinking it, and 2: Run your ideas by people whose judgment you know and trust. I run some of my biggest and stupidest ideas by friends of mine and they help me make them less stupid or at least stupider but in a better way.

I mentioned in my post about potential Shadow crossovers that "boundaries" are not the priority to fret over so much as having a good working knowledge of the characters. And part of that is because a crossover, by design, already constitutes the breaking of boundaries. That's by default what a crossover does. You don't wanna test or break boundaries, then you picked the wrong kind of story.

A crossover is still a story like any other. Two characters meeting is not a story, it's a premise. You don't start a story by defining where it can't go, before you've even decided where you want to take it. Some boundaries are important, others aren't. Some boundaries are hard-coded and unbreakable, and others HAVE to be broken for the story to work, and the process of deciding which is which is easier when you have a clearer idea of what are the characters and what is the story you want to tell, and what you can and can't do with either. You gotta understand the properties you're working with, or at least, understand WHY you want to work with them and make this crossover happen in the first place.

For example, you could, very easily, write a crossover between The Shadow and The Spider, just by going through the motions. They are urban vigilantes with fairly similar designs who live in the same time period and fight crime with their supporting casts. I'm sure most writers offered the job wouldn't think twice of putting them together. But as someone who's read their stories quite extensively and who likes and obsesses over both characters, I would not cross over the two, because their stories and characters are fundamentally incompatible with each other in a more "serious" narrative, and you could not merge the two without seriously fraying one or the other.

It's a story that doesn't work, with characters that are not supposed to function together or in each other's narrative real estate, even with a character as malleable as The Shadow. This doesn't mean that it's impossible to write a good Shadow and Spider crossover, but to me, personally, these two are hard-line incompatible. That is, if it's a crossover based specifically on these two, because that changes if said crossover expands to more characters, as I'll get into.

Regarding the question:

How far are you willing to bend characterisation of the setting a character's adventures take place in and of the individual characters themselves to make this crossover work?

By default, any crossover is already going to have to create new settings from scratch based on relevant bits and pieces from the properties in question, so you do get more leeway for bending it.

But regarding characters, it's a question that cannot have a unified answer, because it's even more so dependant on a case-by-case basis. You could argue "only as much as necessary for the story to work", sure, but that's not really a good answer, because a story can do anything it's author wants to, and sometimes the story is not good to begin with, or the characters are just not made for being in the same narrative or even partaking in a crossover to begin with.

No amount of justifications for a story or characterization can excuse an unsatisfying result. Joe Yabuki and Guts are two of my favorite manga protagonists, but there would be no point to even attempting to put them together in the same story, because you'd have to twist either their narratives or their characters past the point of recognizability, which defeats the purpose of making a crossover to begin with.

Like, yeah, we've all heard the argument that Zack Snyder's Superman makes sense in the context of his movies, doing his own thing. Sure. But there's a reason any discussion of that character in the context of Superman in general comes prefaced with "Zack Snyder's" first, and why mainstream audiences who earnestly looked forward to Batman V Superman walked away feeling cheated, because, to borrow RLM terms here, they got "MurderMan vs Captain Hypocrite", and you can't even tell which is which in that description. You gotta give audiences at least a bit of what you promised them.

How many settings are you actually prepared to smush together before you feel you're losing more than you gain in this mix?

This one actually DOES depend on the story, because most stories that aren't just short narratives require multiple settings for it's scenes. Chances are your narrative will already be combining multiple settings, because setting is a word that can refer to "Korea during the Joseon dynasty", "spaceship traveling through lost nebulas" and "the McDonalds parking lot", as if they are the same thing. And in a way, when you look at a narrative's bones, they basically are.

To an extent, I think opening yourself up for a massive crossover of multiple properties of different characters and settings can, indeed, be a better choice than just going off purely by X meets Y. You start off by making it very clear to the audience that the boundaries are thin and you will be breaking them, and you use said framework to instead tell a myriad of stories, big and small. Stories that you couldn't really tell if you stuck to an existing framework or defined strongly the boundaries you can't cross. I'm gonna use Smash Bros as an example:

Smash Bros is arguably the biggest "official" crossover of all time, and it doesn't really have a "story" other than the basic framework that the series was built on, that these were representations of Nintendo icons dueling it out, and the few details that used to define this in the older days (like the characters being trophies and copies, and not the real deal) have been basically pushed aside. The most story you get in Smash nowadays is in the form of what the trailers showThe "point" of Smash was never really to tell a big, dramatic story with these characters. And maybe you really can't tell this kind of story, or a good story, with this many characters to juggle.

But they tried it once.

I'm sure most of you who do remember Brawl, as anything other than the blistering shame of the franchise that it's treated as these days, remember it mainly because of Subspace Emissary, which was this big, dramatic storyline where the end of the world was at stake and all the characters had to pull their weight to fight it. Subspace didn't have dialogue, it didn't have much story other than characters going from scene to scene while fighting, several of the characters either got nothing to do or were written poorly (mostly Wario), and none of this mattered at all, because Subspace, I'd argue, was the one and only time Smash Bros ever really recaptured that childhood feeling of smashing toys together that the franchise was built on.

Because if you remember being a kid smashing toys together, you remember not just doing it because you wanted Max Steel to kick Cobra Commander's butt. No, you did it because you wanted to tell a story where Max Steel got trapped in a rapidly filling water tank along with He-Man's Battle Cat while Cobra Commander kidnapped Max's girlfriend April O'Neil and bombed the city, and Max Steel had to talk Battle Cat into not eating him so they could together save the city and April from evil, and so they reconciled their differences and saved the day. Those things mattered to you. They were the stories you could tell with the resources you had in hand, sagas you did for the sheer fun of it, regardless of whether they were "good", you probably didn't even think of that. Why would you? You had bigger things to do.

And that's what Subspace did. It was big and dramatic and the world was at stake and all these heroes were coming together. Ness sacrificing himself to Wario so Lucas could have a chance to run away. Diddy Kong dragging along seasoned Star Fox pilots to rescue his buddy. Samus and Pikachu forming a bond. Peach stopping a deadly battle just by offering tea. ROB's story arc culminating in actual genocide, hell, ROB having a story arc to begin with. To a lot of people who played Brawl as one of their first games, this would have been their "introduction" to a lot of these characters in any sort of narrative, and to characters like ROB or Ice Climbers, this would have been the only chance they would ever get to be part of a great big dramatic narrative. Hell, Pit sure looked like he was on the same boat at the time, until Smash brought the Kid Icarus franchise back from death, and now Smash is where characters or properties get to stay relevant or at least on life support (Captain Falcon), or make glorious comebacks (King K.Rool). Brawl was what destroyed the idea of there being boundaries as to who could get in Smash or what kind of story could be told within it.

And people don't seem to recall this nowadays, but Brawl was when Smash exploded in fan content, specifically inspired by Subspace. This was the period of the Machinima craze and the fan mods galore and fan remixes and fan art and fan headcanons and fan films, and suddenly it hit people that, just because the games couldn't accomodate the stories they could tell with the premise, didn't mean that they couldn't start telling them on their own. We even got the formerly longest piece of English fiction off of it. The devotion Melee inspired in competitive players, Brawl did for artists and creators who got their start off in Smash fan content.

And because of it, suddenly a lot more people started writing stories with ROB and Ice Climbers and Pit and Captain Falcon and so on than there would have ever been if it wasn't for Brawl and Subspace. Smash gave ROB a story the character likely would have never gotten otherwise. And if you don't grasp what I'm getting at because you still think that fan content is a long way from being "official" or at least respectable, I don't know what you're doing following someone who rants about pulp fiction all day.

The point I want to get across is, boundaries in a crossover are important, yes, they exist for a good reason, but the boundaries should be defined by the story and characters and whatnot, not the other way around. Boundaries in fiction exist to be crossed or tested, they exist to tell you where you can't go so you can try to do so anyway and either fly high or crash.

Sometimes, bending or twisting characters and settings can be both a grave sin, as well as the thing that allows them to survive. Sometimes there are rules that seem unbreakable until someone breaks them without trying. And sometimes, going big and stupid and carefree over-the-top is either the worst, or the best outcome. It's fiction, taking risks and having fun is part of it.

So I'm afraid I thankfully cannot give your question a universal answer.

[thevindicativevordan]

whacha think of that superman 2000 pitch? seems like a mixed bag honestly, not sure if gutting the marriage would have been worth it

Personally I think it could've been the shot in the arm the character needed.

For those people who have somehow found this blog but aren't obsessed with every bit of info on Superman they can find, what Anon is talking about was the Morrison/Waid/Millar/Peyer pitch on how to reboot Superman for the 21st century. No doubt the creative names behind this have peaked your interest, and I promise the pitch itself is fascinating. You can read the pitch as well as an article that analyzes it and gives some of the background. Note that there were at least two versions of the pitch, Superman 2000 which is what we have a copy of and was more Waid/Millar's brainchild, and Superman Now which was the final pitch and more Morrison's baby. Far as I know we have never been able to read the Superman Now pitch but we do know a few details about it.

Revamping pretty much every corner of Superman's world, from the man himself, to his supporting cast, to his Rogues, this was basically an attempt at rejuvenating the character who was already starting to show signs of stagnation at the tail end of the Triangle Era. For Byrne fanboys this pitch is the blackest heresy because it pretty much goes scorched Earth on Byrne just like he did to Pre-Crisis. All the soap opera storytelling is gone, replaced with much more high concept scifi adventures. "Grounded" Superman is gone, his power levels were going to rocket up, including his intelligence which would have been nice. Trunks on the costume were gone too, Superman would've gotten a new costume with a new S-shield. The Fortress would've been massively expanded and fleshed out. Unsurprisingly a lot of these ideas are 100% up my alley. Big dealbreaker for a lot of people is that the Superman 2000 version would have dissolved the Clois marriage.

Must confess to being a bit of a hypocrite here: while I'm adamant that Peter and MJ should be married, I'm indifferent to whether Clark and Lois are. It's hypocritical because Millar was on the team, and he is rumored to have passed along some of the pitches ideas to Quesada, who used the basic premise of a trickster dissolving a marriage with magic in One More Day. So this pitch may have helped contribute to the Spider-Man story I hate with a passion, yet I still think overall it's great.

Why am I not so upset about the Clois marriage getting dissolved? Well for one the 2000s were some of the worst writing for that relationship ever. Grounded had Superman implicitly threatening to break Lois' arm if she didn't bury a story because it would've put people out of work. Earlier in the 2000s you had Lois being written as a "bitch" who was "unworthy" of Clark, with Clark getting romantic teases with Lana, when both of them were married to other people! Only Busiek and Johns wrote the couple to my liking during the 2000s. Fundamentally I care more about whether Clark and Lois are written well than whether they're actually married, and I think we would've gotten much better writing for both if this pitch had gone through rather than what we got. However you should know that the final pitch apparently kept the two of them together anyway.

Love telling people about this pitch because it spits in the face of the idea that Morrison and Waid are just Silver Age nostalgia fanboys. They wanted to take the trunks off of Superman decades before Jim Lee did it! The Daily Planet is a 21st century media company that doesn't sell newspapers?!?!? Red Kryptonite as a tool for horror stories instead of funny throwbacks to Pre-Crisis?!? Weisinger would be rolling in his grave. No question that those two really like a lot of Pre-Crisis stories, but they aren't interested in returning to that status quo. Morrison also apparently wanted to keep the marriage (I've heard contradictory accounts about whether they are pro or anti-marriage, but Waid/Millar are both on record as being against the marriage) and Clark & Lois stayed together in the final version of Superman Now.

Lot of ideas for how to revamp the Rogues as well, my favorite is the Mxyzptlk pitch. Making him more of a serious threat to Superman is something I've wanted done for a long time, and it's part of my own take on where he should go. Bringing in Solaris and making him a threat to Superman in the present would've been awesome, I still have hope that Solaris will be one of Jon's foes. Rest of the ideas are solid, I am curious if they had plans for other foes beyond the ones listed, and what those ideas would've been.

Overall a lot of ideas that are present in this pitch would go on to form the basis for individual stories, acclaimed stories at that. Morrison used their ideas for All-Star Superman and Action Comics. Waid used his for Birthright and presumably some will also show up in his project with Hitch coming next year. Millar used a few ideas from this pitch in Red Son, particularly the ideas for Lex. Could all four working together on weekly comics done as well as they did working individually? Morrison and Waid working together on a weekly got us 52, but that was a miracle in execution that left the 52 team pretty burnt out at the end. Doubt they could have kept up the energy for weekly Superman comics for long, but I do think it absolutely would've gotten people excited and interested in Superman. Also am sure that at least some of the comics would've been legendary, and the 2000s would've been overall a much better decade for Superman. Might have even put him on better footing to challenge Batman in popularity.

The pitch is one of the ultimate "what ifs" of comics and Superman in particular. Impossible to say if the execution would've been able to deliver on the ideas, and many of those ideas got turned into stories anyway. Still, can't help but sigh and imagine 4 of the hottest creators at their peak who love Superman working on his main books. Doubt there will ever even be a chance of anything like that happening again.

[sallysoot]

Yo, it’s the yandere platonic Philza anon here. Alright so, totally hypocritical now. If I were to, hypothetically, write a yandere platonic Philza fic (try saying that 5 times in a row), could I send that in? Or do you not like it when people send in stories and stuff? I had a lot of ideas that I did not mention because I didn’t want the ask to be too long and I would love to expand on it if I may. Also, just for clarity sake, could I be 🎀 anon?

Have a good day/night.

hi!! sure you can be! anyway, this has come up before and my stance hasn’t really shifted on it: i prefer to not get fics/full-length headcanons/etc. in my inbox. not because they’re too LONG, but because i don’t want a really great fic submitted to me to get tons of well-deserved notes, giving me exposure and everything off of someone else’s work! but if someone makes a blog of their own and lets me know they’ve written a concept they sent an ask about into a fic, i’ll defs check that out!

[mollyscribbles]

Owl House rewatch thoughts

* Hard to say from what little we see of her, but I think Luz' mom might have been less worried about her daughter reading fantasy and more about the "multiple incidents of bringing uncontained live animals and explosives to school" thing.

* If Eda considers Luz' Azura book as being only useful as kindling, it means she's not inclined to view human books as something she can make snails on.  Considering how unique her portal to the human realm is treated, where did Amity get her Azura books?  I've seen people suggest the author travels between realms, but if that were the case, Amity would've been able to get the latest volume from a local store rather than needing to borrow Luz' copy.

* Suggestions for other species that escaped from the Boiling Isles: the platypus and peacock mantis shrimp.

* "Weak nerd arms" ok really identifying with Luz here.

* Really love this take on Chosen One stories.  Because yes, there is an appeal in being told you're special, you're unique in the best possible way, but ultimately this is a story about people who aren't "special" so much as outcasts who do their best with the situation they're in.  Which is something that a lot more people can aspire to be.

* The fact that this was a set scheme(as the multiple fake maps would indicate) rather than a trap specifically designed for Luz indicates that even people who've spent their lives on the Boiling Isles would be drawn to the idea of being a magical chosen one. I bet Amity's not the only one to have an interest in fantasy literature around here.

* Oh wow Amity's first appearance outside the credits is . . . something.  It's easy to forget just how far she grew in one season.

* Eda's not a *bad* teacher, so much as she has yet to learn that teaching requires expanding on a concept you introduce and explaining your reasoning.  "Here is what you can learn from tasting snow" instead of just "here, taste these different kinds of snow"

* Hm.  For someone who despairs at the concept of the school teaching blind obedience, her teaching style kinda relies on it.  Bit of a hypocrite there, Eda.

* Gonna be honest, the first time I watched this and King mentioned Eda sneaking a drink of elixir, I thought it was going to turn out to be a magic-looking flask.

* It seems slightly odd that King's apparently known Eda for a while but didn't have any idea of the curse.  Maybe she was just REALLY good about keeping up with her elixirs pre-series.

* Really like the metaphor for a chronic illness that's kept under control by medication.

* If the Emperor's Coven provides access to all forms of magic, you'd think others aspiring for a spot would be permitted a multi-track education at Hexside.  That might be why none of them seem to be that impressive at magic when they're supposed to be the "best of the best" -- even if they have *access* to all forms of magic, they've only had training in one specific field during the bulk of their education.

* lbr, Lilith's cheating was worse because at least Eda told Luz what she was doing.

* You'd think Willow and Gus might have caught on that Luz didn't have permission for them to come over when she told them to hide from Eda.

* It's nice that Eda realizes raising a kid with a "screw the rules" mindset will result in a kid who breaks her rules sometimes.  Cleaning up the mess she caused is really the correct punishment for Luz; directly dealing with the consequences of her actions but otherwise considering it a lesson learned.

* Reading to kids in the library is an A+ way to shift Amity from "Jerk" to "Jerk with a heart of gold" territory.

* Prediction: At some point, Luz will return to the human world (probably only briefly but Eda won't know at the time) and Eda will come across the "Coping with empty nest syndrome" book Luz got her from the library.  She'll cry.  King will cry.  Hooty will cry.  Every viewer will cry.

* Pretty sure that, given what the world is like, if any of them ended up questioned about their actions during the body swap episode, they could just say "Oh yeah I was body swapped that day. What'd I get up to?" and everyone would consider this a perfectly logical explanation for them acting out-of-character.

* HC that Hexside is fully aware some illusion-track students skip class by having an illusion of themselves attend in their place, but they figure a student maintaining a decent replica of themselves for the duration of the class period requires enough effort to count as a form of class participation, so they just let everyone think they're getting away with it.

* Gus and Willow are really ride-or-die friends.  Always nice to have.

* Probably some of the mystery appeal will be gone from the Human Appreciation Society once a legit human is just attending classes on a regular basis; being able to get definitive answers to questions rather than spending your time speculating would cut back on the draw.

* I love all the details they include on this show -- a lot of other shows would just stick in scribbles while panning past pictures instead of writing out all of Eda's incident reports.

* The pallisman is a neat concept; sort of like a mix of a wand and a familiar, a magical control that will have opinions of its own.

* Given Bat Queen apparently has enough of, um, a biological aspect to have kids, I wonder if that means Owlbert is capable of laying eggs.  Or having eggs with another owl/pallisman if the male pronouns are anything to go by.

* I mean even Phineas and Ferb didn't question Perry laying an egg when he uses male pronouns so could go either way in terms of what Disney would allow.

* Reading the book fair signs, it looks like sci-fi is a popular genre in the Boiling Isles.  Makes sense, since what we'd consider Fantasy would be more contemporary/urban fantasy to them.

* Getting the vibe that someone on staff had a less-than-amicable experience co-writing with a friend to inspire this one. And/or experience with shitty contracts.

* The Hexside requirements also required knowledge of basic runes, but given Luz apparently had no issue with that I'm guessing she just picked those up offscreen.

* "I've seen worse" is the ideal admissions response tbh.  Like . . . she pulled off the required spells and the headmaster has seen decades of students' awkward first attempts.  It probably counts as a good day when no one's admissions test resulted in needing to bring in someone from the Construction Track to repair the building.

* It's very reminiscent of D&D that the majority of the cast has the response of "This is clearly a trap.  Let's check it out!"

* You'd think that carnival fortune tellers wouldn't have the same appeal in a world where it's something you study at school.  Unless it's viewed the same way as those "magic" shows they have sometimes where the tricks all involve chemical reactions.

* Kinda surprised a school that teaches kids fire spells doesn't have some kind of fire suppression system in place.

* Hrm.  Guessing the mind guardian went back and undid their own damage offscreen; otherwise they'd have had to go re-do the repairs before leaving.

* Good they had the wifi and charging cable coming through the portal to explain why Luz' phone still has service and the battery's not long dead.

* Luz, how have you survived this long with your instinct for pushing buttons.  The same as the rest of humanity in a world full of buttons, I suppose.

* Probably if they thought about it, the best criteria for picking Grom royalty would be less who's the most skilled at magic and more who has the most low-key fears. . . . nvm, having a Stay-Puft incident would cause them to reasonably scrap that approach.  Maybe appointing someone who obsesses over grades would have better odds of producing a relatively-simple-to-combat exam paper.

* I'm thinking the letters are written by Eda, who doesn't intend anything sinister by it so much as being the type to cover her bases when pulling off a scam and realizing Luz' mother would need some evidence to indicate her daughter was safely at camp.

* The band-aids clearly have some healing spell built-in, considering they've been used to heal inanimate objects.

* someone on the writing staff has a long-standing rant about Quidditch they've been holding back on.

* I know that normally the humor in the cut from "she's finally growing up." to Luz planning the heist would be that she's doing something that sensible adults would consider to be a bad idea, but if Eda saw her just then she'd wipe away a tear of pride and go "Her first self-planned heist! They grow up so fast!"

* Eda's the one who talks about cheating at stuff, but Lilith has a habit of playing *dirty*.

* I would like to say I appreciate them going with a more serious credit sequence because it was disconcerting with Star Vs when a dark ending was followed by "I THINK EARTH'S A REALLY GREAT PLACE"

* Lilith may have made a 30-years-late attempt to redeem herself, but I really don't trust her.  I don't quite want her dead, but she DID spend decades trying to force her sister to join the Emperor's Coven as a prerequisite for curing her curse.

[hearthandhomemagick]

Food For Thought - Steven Universe

Hello there, I would like to tell you my story and journey with the amazingly beautiful, and wonderfully written TV Show...

Steven Universe.

I started watching this show when it first came out in High School. I mean, I was so excited to watch it that I anticipated the very first episode and sat down with snacks to observe it’s premier. I had become immediately enthralled not only with the art style, but also with the genuine wholesomeness and elucidations of processing emotions and life experiences. I was astounded that a kids show could express to me how to manage my emotions as well as connect with my moral standings. It’s a show I recommended to everyone, but often didn’t talk about because of it being a kids show, and me being almost being grown. It was my secret love until someone else brought it up.

This show stuck with me through the years, and helped me through some of my hardest moments in life. 

I remember watching the episode, “Mindful Education” and melting into Garnet’s lesson of mindfulness and self-awareness. I had been going through a lot at the end of 2016, graduating and going through a rough election along with having to move states for college. My opinions were forming in the extreme area and I had a fire to protect my thoughts and opinions with no restrain or any form of control of my emotional reality. I was rambunctious as much as I was head-strong and, at times, hard-headed all together. 

When this episode aired, I didn’t know why I loved Garnet and Stevonnie’s song, “Here Comes a Thought.” But I did, and it still carries with me into my life today. 

I want to discuss a specific time, though, that this episode saved my sanity and opened my eyes to a concept I didn’t understand when I first watched it. I was on social media, and was defending my opinions against quite a few people by myself. Eventually, I was getting nasty comments from a bunch of millennials telling me, 

“You’re too fucking stupid to understand, maybe you should go back to school, child.”

“You’re so emotional, and your emotions don’t matter here. Imagine being this dumb.”

“Imagine being a dumb bitch like Carly and saying you wanted to cut your penis off to look like a woman.” *NOTE I am not transgender, there is nothing wrong with being transgender and her insinuating such did not bother me. Her rhetoric insinuating trans was wrong is what irked me, this bitch was transphobic and had issues that she needs to repair in her own time. She wrote an entire post based around this context on her personal page using my real name, and she didn’t even know who I was.*

and my personal favorite, “Here’s the suicide hotline, I know your generation is prone to killing themselves and are overly emotional.”

Now, there were over 50, under 100, messages going back and forth where these people were just bullying me and I refused to back down. I wound up in a panic attack in my bedroom, literally wanting to kill myself because they were bullying me. The hotline would have come in handy if it were the actual hotline. I ended up going to my dad and older sister (my older sisters friend was the main one I was arguing with and her posy showed up on my post), because no one on the post was on my side.

Both told me, “If you can’t handle the heat, stay out of the kitchen.” My sister told her friend to stop, and threatened the other girl for her nasty posts and comments. My dad tried to mediate on the post itself, but the people wouldn’t stop. I eventually had to take it down.

My family didn’t calm me down in this moment. Not even a little bit. It felt like a back-handed helping hand. Like they wanted to protect me, but also somewhat agreed with the people on the post.

The only thing that calmed my nerves in this moment, ultimately, was the song, “Here Comes a Thought.” 

I sat in my room, sobbing, hoping to myself that it would make sense as to why it was okay for these things to happen. The song soothed over my nerves, eventually releasing my muscles and giving me a sense ease. I was able to process and realized a few personal things as well. I didn’t realize it, but before long, I was meditating to the song on repeat. I kept telling myself, “I’m okay, this is a thought. A moment. I am not my thoughts. I am not this moment.”

This was simply one of the ways Steven Universe has helped me process and understand myself more. I bring this up because I came across and article today that disappointed me to the core.

The Steven Universe Fandom has toxic tendencies.

I was shook.

How could a child’s show be turned into something so negative? Something that was meant to promote self-awareness, self-love, acceptance of character, and understanding of others had been morphed into a gatekeepers safe haven.

Now I know this isn’t the majority, and before you get offended, hurt or start defending yourself, I want you to ask yourself if what you are defending is an action you would defend from anyone else. If it is, by all means defend your ground.

But the one concept that eludes me, and offers zero substance in terms of valid arguments, is that men can not watch this show. Let me explain why men NEED to watch this fucking show.

My boyfriend watched this entire show, episode for episode, and benefitted from it. This show offered him coping techniques, an understanding of why love should come before war, and mediating every situation so you see and understand every perspective. These are things children shows didn’t offer him growing up, he has often and openly verbalized his need for this show in his childhood because of certain traumas, and we often continue watching it even after seeing every single episode and movie.

This show was never meant for one or two groups of people, and if you feel that way then refer back to the writers themselves who were literally trying to teach the lesson in the show over and over again to NEVER EXCLUDE PEOPLE FROM YOUR GROUP. You exclude people, and you create a division, a war of sorts. You immediately have become the thing Steven Universe advocated against in the first place.

This also leads into the whole “art” situation in the fandom. 

This show is anti-bully. There are commercials for it and everything. It is expressed in multiple episodes why bullying is never a good thing in any situation. 

You simply cannot justify the hypocrisy in bullying someone out of self-expression that literally harms no one. You can’t justify it.

Think about it. You draw or sketch a piece of art that took you hours, or even a few minutes. It’s your favorite character, and maybe you yourself are going through some mental thoughts regarding your weight that lead you to draw the character thinner or bigger. Size shouldn’t matter in any capacity when relating a character to ones self. 

If you’re skinny, you’re beautiful. If you are thick or curvy, you are beautiful. If you are obese or overweight, you are beautiful. Weight doesn’t matter, but representation of body types in different characters does matter.

Imagine a child falls in love with a bigger character, but is experiencing body challenges where she is being picked on for being too thin or scrawny (it happens, I’ve seen it with my nieces). Who are you to say that making her favorite character look like her own body is wrong? Especially if art is a coping mechanism they use for mental health reasons.

Like Malachite, a fusion that was devastating and abusive in every way, you are taking the choice and voice of an entire being to make your actions and opinions “right” or “okay”.

There is so much more I could say on this show, and so much more I could say about the fandom. And I know it is not the majority of the fandom, but I did want to make everyone in the fandom aware that we are human.

None of us are stoic and balanced like Garnet, and even Garnet had problems in her relationship. None of us are strong and laid back like Amethyst, and even she had self-love issues. None of us are as analytical and organized as Pearl, and yet she had problems throughout the series. 

None of you are perfect, and to act as if you are is defeating the purpose of a show trying to teach you how to be responsible for yourself and your actions. I’m not perfect either, and preaching about a fandom I’m not a huge part of sounds counter-intuitive, I’m aware.

But my nieces want to watch this show. My nephew watches this show with me. My boyfriend’s niece is going to start watching the show. 

Please do not make a toxic environment for kids who need this show to grow up. Kids who experience trauma, and learn from this show deserve a safe space without people trying to justify bullying or force them to think that because they are a boy or girl, they can or can’t watch the show. Without people making people feel bad for being themselves.

Why don’t we create a new space? A space where everyone is accepted as they are, and negative behavior is addressed the same way the gems or Steven would address them. With education, perception awareness, and PATIENCE. 

I know some will say, “It’s not my job to raise your child.” and “It’s not my responsibility to make people aware of their tendencies.”

You’re right. It’s also not your responsibility to bully people into changing themselves to fit your dialogue. Simply put, you’re responsible for yourself alone. But you have no right to complain on someone's behavior, art or experiences if you are not willing to be patient with correcting said behavior in yourself first.  

Who knows, maybe I’m in the wrong here for not knowing the full story. All I’m saying is, if you see someone being a bully, being mean or even being a hypocrite, call them out in the sweetest way possible. Let them know we are facilitating a safe space for people who need a community rather than a closed off club.

Be the change you want to see in this world.

Learn, grow and prosper. 

I wish you all well and genuinely hope we can all expand our perspectives to fully understand each other in healthier and more communicative based ways. We deserve that sort of kindness from each other.

[hafanforever]

King Runeard, the Lying Hater

Introduction

When I saw Frozen II on its opening day of November 22, I purposely did not read any specific details about the plot because I wanted to be surprised and not come across anything that could be major spoilers (although weeks before, I did come across a brief leak of the ending, but I’ll save that for another time). I went in thinking that the film might not have a main antagonist, especially because the trope of surprise villains in Disney animated films was waning and becoming somewhat predictable. Needless to say, I was very shocked to find out that the film did indeed have a villain: King Runeard, the father of Agnarr and grandfather of Anna and Elsa!

Six years ago, when Frozen first came out, one of the things I enjoyed most about it was how Hans was set up as the main antagonist. Unlike in their past animated features, rather than subtly showing him as the villain from almost the beginning, Disney purposely and completely misled viewers into thinking Hans was the (initial) male hero, another typical heroic prince, like their previous fairy tales. His true colors were finally revealed in the third act, and until the very end, Hans had continued to fool almost all other characters with this facade. At the same time, though, there were subtle clues of his villainy during many of his earlier scenes, so his revelation did not come totally out of nowhere. Still, the concept and twist of a hidden main antagonist, one that was a prince, no less, was a part of the film that I thoroughly enjoyed because it was something so different and unexpected.

So in the years since Frozen, Disney continued a trope of surprise villains (which began with Wreck-It Ralph and was also included in Coco and Incredibles 2 from Pixar), But after a few years, figuring out the villains started to become easier and less exciting, at least it did for me. And in Ralph Breaks the Internet last year, the Arthur virus that duplicates into clones of Ralph after scanning his insecurities didn’t exactly produce the same effects of setting up and revealing a true hidden villain. This is why I wasn’t at all anticipating for there to be a villain, hidden or not, in Frozen II. So when I realized that Runeard was the villain, I was very shocked. Not like how I was when Hans’s true nature was revealed, but for a variety of other reasons (which I will explain below).

And because I had SO much fun writing analyses about Hans and his villainy (especially this one big analysis) for the first film years ago, I am excited to share with all of you my first analysis about Runeard and my thoughts and opinions on his villainy! And who knows? Perhaps I will be able to write more about him after this!

King Wrong

Like with Hans in the original film, I have read about some critics and fans’ criticism of Runeard’s villainy in the film, most especially about there being no explanation on just what made him detest magic in the first place and how it seemed that his treachery came out of nowhere. I think some fans were also upset that this villain is directly related to Elsa and Anna, the main heroes. Even though I agree about there being a lack of true motivation on Runeard’s attitude towards magic, I can overlook this flaw because the few words he speaks showing his dislike of magic and distrust towards the Northuldra for following magic tells me A LOT about his true personality, just like I could see that about Hans when he betrayed Anna and reveals to her his entire plot to take control of Arendelle!

Although Runeard appears briefly in flashbacks when Agnarr tells Anna and Elsa the story about visiting the Enchanted Forest when he was a child, we hear the majority of his speaking lines as a moving ice manifestation in Ahtohallan. It is here that Elsa encounters him and other figures of people from moments in the past, in or around Arendelle. When she does, she quickly discovers his true feelings towards the Northuldra and the real reason why he had the dam constructed in the forest. As I explained in this analysis, Elsa goes from delight to shock to confusion, and finally to anger as she listens to Runeard say the following words to his second-in-command:

“The Northuldra follow magic, which means we can NEVER trust them. Magic makes people feel too powerful… too entitled. It makes them think they can defy the will of a king!”

Runeard’s words regarding his description and views about magic provide enough information for me to interpret and visualize what kind of person he really was in life. For starters, as a king and a monarch in general, Runeard was in the highest social class; therefore, he had the most amount of power over anyone else, even though he was normal (at least in terms of what is considered to be normal as a human being, by being non-magical). Since he was a king, he was very power hungry. He thought all the power he ever needed as a monarch was in his own status as one. In being a king, he saw himself as supreme, superior, the greatest person of all in rank. He saw himself as someone who was at the very top, and he wanted to remain at the top. Runeard did not want anything (and presumably anyone) to stand in his way of power, so much so that he would go to any length to ensure he always stayed on top, to ensure that his own authority and legacy as a king was not challenged, threatened, or ruined.

Being that way, Runeard detested and feared magic, most likely not just because it isn’t normal, but because it is the only form of power considered by some to be greater than that of any monarch, the only type of power that could stand in his way as a ruler. With his fearful, hateful views on magic, Runeard was further prejudiced and closed-minded by privately having instant distrust and dislike towards anyone who either possesses magical powers of their own or has any kind of associations with magic. Regardless of what their social classes would be, he felt that people who had connections to magic would view themselves as superior, as the most powerful people of all, far superior and more powerful than a king like him. As a result, Runeard wrongly believed that the Northuldra, who were peasants and thus belonging to the lowest social class, thought that their relations to the magic of the Enchanted Forest would make them believe that they were greater than him, that they were more powerful than him. Perhaps he even believed that because they followed magic, the Northuldra could and would one day plot to usurp him, try to overthrow him as king and take control of Arendelle. This would mean that Runeard was SO consumed by his fear and hatred of magic to the point that he was extremely paranoid about it, too. 

And the more I think about it and absorb his words, the more I realize that Runeard was most likely a hypocrite as well. He says that magic makes people feel too powerful and entitled, and yet when he makes this declaration, HE is the one who is acting too entitled! Like I said before, in being a king, he sees himself as supreme, at the top, and so he feels he has the greatest amount of power of all! Does he even realize this? I am sure he does! He sounds so arrogant, so haughty, and so confident, probably in thinking he is the greatest and most powerful being of all because he is a king! He may detest magic, but he really ought to eat his own words since he’s showing major hypocrisy here!

Despite his lack of proper time on screen to give him a strongly developed personality, all of these interpretations I have about Runeard give me the impression that he was two-faced. Obviously, his feign act of kindness and gesture of “peace” with the Northuldra made them and the Arendellians see him as a kind, noble, benevolent, generous ruler. This was a false, artificial image he created for himself that he always showed when out in public, one that he made sure to protect. But in private, behind closed doors and away from prying eyes, Runeard was in reality a dictator, a persecutor, an oppressor. He was truly nothing more than a cruel, arrogant, manipulative, ruthless tyrant who was determined to expand his kingly power, and secretly abused it at any chance that came his way. And the worst way he did this was when he tricked the Northuldra leader into letting down his guard after the latter voiced his suspicions over what the dam was really doing to the forest, then murdered the unarmed, unsuspecting man in cold blood.

Unlike Grandfather, Unlike Granddaughter

Another major point about Runeard that I want to address is my thoughts and opinions on what he may have thought of Elsa since she has magical powers. I said before that, when Elsa witnessed the kind of attitude her grandfather had towards magic and people connected to magic, there is a strong possibility that he never would have accepted her, despite their blood ties. Now if he had actually known her, perhaps there is a chance that Runeard would have learned to accept and love Elsa, just as her parents and sister did, even though she was magical and it was what he detested more than anything. Perhaps just because she is his granddaughter, his own flesh and blood, he would have learned to love her unconditionally, unquestionably.

However, what we see him tell his second-in-command about his thoughts on magic and distrust of the Northuldra gives me a strong feeling of doubt about the chance of him seeing Elsa in any kind of positive light.

When the memory of Runeard orders the officer to bring in Arendelle's grand army to prepare for an imminent attack, the officer wisely points out that there is no reason why they cannot trust the Northuldrans. But then he says his infamous words that the Northuldra can NEVER be trusted simply because they associate with magic. “Never” is the key word here. It pretty much tells me that Runeard was firmly, arrogantly, and stubbornly set in his prejudiced ways about magic, with his hatred, fear, and paranoia consuming him enough to cloud his judgment, so much so that it seemed like nothing could ever convince him otherwise, that nothing could have been said or done to change his mind. I feel this theory of mine is supported when he scowls at the officer before making his declaration. He clearly completely refuses to heed the man’s advice, effectively showing his arrogance, strong stubbornness, and outright refusal to ever trust anyone who is connected to magic.

So is there a chance that Runeard would have accepted and loved Elsa even with her powers, just because she was his granddaughter? Maybe...but I have a lot of serious doubts that he would. It wasn’t just the words he used to describe magic that give me these doubts, but the tone of voice he used. He sounded very gruff, very cold and callous, aloof, and especially haughty. Runeard just sounds like he was too blinded by his own fear, by his own hatred, and by his own feelings of supremacy as a monarch to be more open-minded, to have better judgment, to give magical people a chance, especially if they could prove themselves to be trustworthy in the first place.

Nope, since Runeard just sounded too aloof, too hateful, too prejudiced, and too firmly set in how he described his feelings about magic and what it does to people, I seriously don’t think there is a good chance that he would have accepted Elsa, ever.

My Personal Thoughts

Since seeing the film a couple more times and putting everything together, I got to thinking that Runeard being the main villain was a very good twist, even though Hans’s revelation worked better for me. Yes, I agree that Runeard’s revelation does have some shortcomings, including a lack of further development in his character, but I have some specific reasons why I feel this way about him.

Despite his appearance being among the briefest (if not the briefest) for a villain in any kind of Disney film, the way in which Runeard plays his villainous role is very rare for Disney, or even in almost any film. Runeard is unique because he is a posthumous main antagonist, the first one to be featured in a Disney animated film. And despite being dead years before the main events of Frozen II take place, his former actions are still what drive the entire story, both in the past and in the present. He affects the flow of the story from the very beginning of the film, and is one of the few Disney villains to do so.

Furthermore, when you watch both films in order, you realize that his heinous actions of building the dam to weaken the forest, murdering the Northuldra leader, and instigating a battle between the Northuldrans and Arendellians that caused some to be killed and others to be trapped in the forest due to the impenetrable mist not only led to the main events of Frozen II, but also to the events of the first film. Because Iduna, a Northuldran girl, heroically saved Agnarr from the battle that Runeard had started, the elemental spirits rewarded Agnarr and Iduna (who later married and became the next king and queen of Arendelle) by giving Elsa, their oldest daughter, ice powers. In Frozen, after her coronation party, Elsa accidentally reveals her magic to the people in Arendelle, which allowed both Prince Hans and the Duke of Weselton to turn Arendelle against her. But because Anna sacrificed herself to save Elsa from being murdered by Hans, Elsa realized that love helps her control her powers, and her people eventually learn to accept her for them. Three years later, after Elsa hears a mysterious voice calling to her, she awakens the elemental spirits and they wreak havoc in Arendelle, forcing everyone to evacuate the kingdom. After Elsa discovers Runeard’s crimes and freezes while doing so, she reveals this to Anna, who has the dam destroyed, releasing the Northuldra and Arendellian soldiers from their imprisonment in the forest. Anna’s actions also lead to Elsa thawing out, then saving Arendelle from being destroyed by the flood caused by the dam’s destruction.

After seeing the movie for the first time, one big thing I noticed about Runeard was that he was entirely omitted from pre-release storybook merchandise (except for the junior novelization, which came out a week before the film). All of these books ended with the vague explanation that Elsa “found the truth” and nothing more. This was clearly done to keep his role in the film a complete secret, to shroud anything that referenced his true part in the story. When I first discovered his role as the villain and realized how Disney kept the revelation about the character a total secret until the release, I had no negative thoughts. It FASCINATED me! I mean, the fact they covered his tracks even in the promos and the books by not mentioning him at all? I was totally ASTONISHED! Additionally, Jeremy Sisto, Runeard’s voice actor, was never previously mentioned or listed among the names of other actors who were announced as portraying new characters. In fact, it was only when Sisto attended the worldwide premiere of Frozen II that his role as Runeard was first and finally revealed. This further told me that Disney went to even greater lengths to keep Runeard’s role as the villain a complete secret, and again, it took me by complete (positive) shock.

It didn’t take me long to realize this setup was meant to be similar to the original film, in which emphasis in the advertising campaign and earlier film scenes was put upon Elsa and the Duke of Weselton as the potential main antagonist, all just to cover up the truth about Hans. Not only did Hans have few scenes and little dialogue in the trailers, but the first main trailer labeled him as “The Nice Guy”, obviously to keep his real nature a total secret from viewers until the film’s release date. And despite seeing some clues in his earlier scenes that made me suspicious about Hans, I was still stunned when he was revealed to be the film’s true villain. When I let it sink in that he was a hidden main antagonist, something so different and unexpected, and how well audiences were misled about the character before, I thought it was just an EXCELLENT twist, and one of the best parts about Frozen!

Conclusion

Because of the unique and different type of villain that Hans was in the original Frozen, he was definitely one of the main reasons why I loved and still love it. And I love Frozen II, I really do. I thought it was a very worthy sequel, especially because of how it set up the story to explain just where Elsa’s powers came from and made her the protagonist this time, since Anna had her turn in the first film. I went to see the movie with strong expectations of it featuring several parallels to the original movie, and they far exceeded my expectations, especially since Runeard’s revelation as the hidden main antagonist showed that Disney was really trying to recapture elements that were originally done in Frozen!

Unlike how I felt about Hans in the first movie, I’m not sure if I’d say that Runeard’s hidden villainy and subsequent treachery was one of the very best elements of Frozen II. His limited time shown on screen makes his characterization and true motivations very underdeveloped in sharp contrast to Hans. But still, considering the qualities of him being a posthumous main antagonist, one that drives the film’s story (and even the one of the predecessor) from the entire start, and the major lengths that Disney went to completely cover up his true role are definitely the things I do enjoy about the character. Not necessarily about who he is, but what he is, which is how I also feel about Hans. Hans is certainly not a likable character since he tried to murder Elsa and Anna, and of course, Runeard is worse because of his extreme prejudice and coldblooded murder of the Northuldra. Perhaps both films could have done just as well without having Hans and Runeard as villains. But I think villains can be a great way to help move stories along, especially with bringing in conflict, and both of these villains played their parts in their respective films well. They helped to drive the plots without having the plots being solely focused on them.

This concludes my thoughts on Runeard for this entire analysis, and man, is it LONG! I hope you all like it, and if you like Frozen II as much as I do, go see it again! Have a great day! 😄

[arcticdementor]

Wokeness has not simply taken over the CIA, as the entire foreign policy establishment has moved in the same direction. A particularly sinister aspect of this shift is that we are seeing a merger between a fanatical new faith and long-standing institutions specializing in manipulating populations.

Spreading democracy is an important part of American foreign policy. While it’s fashionable to brush off concerns with democracy as hypocritical or just a cover for power politics (“look at Saudi Arabia!”), I believe that outside of the Middle East, where pretty much everyone is non-democratic, American foreign policy is driven by ideological goals that aren’t reducible to material interests.

In this worldview, all countries called “democracies” have reached the end of history, while all others are candidates for regime change, if not today then when the time is right. When countries fight back against this, it’s considered aggression on their part. Hillary Clinton believes that Putin interfered against her in the 2016 election because she spoke out against his government as Secretary of State. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s certainly what I would do if I were Putin, and the lady who tried to overthrow me was running for president.

It seems strange that such a concept would drive US foreign policy, given how little Americans themselves agree on what is or isn’t “democratic.” Was Trump casting doubt on the legitimacy of 2020 “undemocratic”? How about when Democrats did the same in 2016? What about gerrymandering? Court packing?

These are silly debates, and I feel sorry for people who have strong opinions on them, which always boil down to “what my side does is democracy, what the other side does isn’t.”

…

Nonetheless, the American government clearly has something in mind when it uses the term, and it often relies on non-governmental institutions (NGOs) as supposedly objective sources of information. One of the most important of these is Freedom House, and it is therefore worth looking at the organization in some depth.

According to its financial report, in the fiscal year that ended in 2019, Freedom House raised $48 million. Of that, $45 million, or 94%, came from the American government. Its current President is Morton Abramowitz, a lifelong American diplomat. The Chair of the Board is Michael Chertoff, who was Secretary of Homeland Security under the second Bush.

Looking at the 12 members of the Executive Board, and just going off their bios on the Freedom House website, it appears that 6 have had jobs for the federal government, with at least one other appearing to have worked as a government contractor.

You might think that an organization that is funded almost completely by the American government, and staffed by former American officials, wouldn’t have much credibility as an “independent non-governmental organization.” Yet it is called an NGO, and regularly cited by the press as an objective authority on which government actions are legitimate.

Much of what is called “civil society” functions this way. The American government then uses the work of “independent” organizations to justify its own policies, as you can see by going to the State Department website and searching for “Freedom House.”

…

Freedom House has represented the American foreign policy establishment as long as it has existed. According to its own website, the organization at its founding in 1941 had among its leaders Eleanor Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie, the Republican who lost to FDR in 1940. So imagine a “non-governmental organization” today being founded by an alliance of Jill Biden and Donald Trump.

After advocating for American entry into World War II, Freedom House supported the Cold War. Although the website mentions these facts, it tends to downplay or ignore its more recent history, which has involved cheerleading for disastrous wars in the Middle East.

…

So it is this organization, run by former American officials and funded by the US government, whose former Chairman was also the director of the CIA and helped lie the country into Iraq, that is the nation’s most important source for deciding who is or isn’t free.

Recently, Freedom House released its annual report on the state of democracy in the world. It would be one thing if the organization simply declared some countries “democracies” and others not. Instead, it gives a number to each country on a scale that goes up to 100, updating the scores on a yearly basis. So in 2020, Ethiopia gets a 24, Switzerland is a 96, and North Korea is a 3. After 20 years of war, the US has managed to get Afghanistan to 27.

Here’s an interactive map where you can find out how well your country is doing.

There’s actually a formula that they use to calculate each score, although it’s not always clear what causes a country to gain or lose points. 40% of the score is determined by how well a country does on “Political Rights,” and 60% on “Civil Rights,” with subsections under each of these headings.

The 2021 report tells us that 2020 saw “the 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom.” Sounds really bad. But it’s one thing to say, that for example, the US is freer than China, or that the coup in Myanmar was a blow against democracy. It’s quite another to pretend to have a neutral formula that can compare the state of democracy in say Hungary versus France, the US versus Canada, or Syria versus Cuba. But that’s what Freedom House gets tens of millions of dollars a year from the American government to do.

…

In Europe, Freedom House tells us that “Hungary has undergone the biggest decline ever measured in Nations in Transit, plummeting through two categorical boundaries to become a Transitional/Hybrid Regime last year. Poland is still categorized as a Semiconsolidated Democracy.”

That’s a nice coincidence, how the two European countries that have moved in the most conservative policy direction are the ones also becoming more “authoritarian.” Looking in more detail, it appears that Freedom House classifies conservative countries as authoritarian in two ways

1) Portraying things that would otherwise be considered normal politics as “authoritarian”, while ignoring things that are similar or worse when done by non-right wing governments; and

2) Just directly penalizing countries for conservative policies.

…

This map gives the game away.

…

The connection between how many genders a government acknowledges and its level of democracy is never explained. The report also mentions the Polish government’s opposition to abortion and Slovenia reducing funding for its public broadcaster.

Many conservatives in the United States criticize the media and would like to ban abortion, cut funding for NPR, and not have schools teach that gender is a social construct. They may be surprised to learn that they are engaging in “anti-democratic” activities.

To show the kind of hackery at work, here’s the report on Poland for 2020. We are told that the Archbishop of Kraków describes “LGBT as a ‘rainbow plague’ bearing similarities to communism.” So apparently countries are judged based on the wokeness of their clergy, so Poland loses a point in part for that, and appears to get another point deducted for some combination of the government’s positions on birth control, abortion, and gay adoption.

You can really tell that American conservatives annoy Freedom House analysts more than any other people in the world. In the US, not only are conservatives’ views on abortion and gay marriage undemocratic, but so are their positions on organized labor, with Freedom House mentioning a Supreme Court ruling that government employees could not be forced against their will to contribute to public sector unions.

…

Not only does Freedom House portray the behavior of conservative governments in an unflattering light, but it looks past what are much clearer violations of individual liberty and democratic norms when they are committed in the service of left-wing social or political goals.

Sweden, for example, is one of only three countries to receive a perfect score of 100. This is despite having hate speech laws, which have in the past been used to arrest Christian preachers for their interpretation of the Bible. Norway, another “perfect democracy,” in 2020 expanded its hate speech laws to cover gender identity, with punishments of up to three years in prison for violators.

“Whether a country arrests people for speech” seems like it could be a clear criterion an organization interested in democracy can use, but Freedom House prefers a vague points system that allows it to penalize countries for everything it doesn’t like.*

…

As seen above, Freedom House doesn’t mind criticizing the United States; the country after all only gets an 83, making it a not very good democracy. Yet it’s notable what the US doesn’t lose points for: NSA spying programs, and the prosecution of journalists who have brought them to light. Julian Assange is, in the words of Glenn Greenwald, “responsible for breaking more major stories about the actions of top US officials than virtually all US journalists employed in the corporate press combined,” and he’s now facing life in prison. Yet Assange goes unmentioned in the 2020 report, along with Edward Snowden.

On the question “Are there free and independent media?” the US only gets a 3 out of 4, because “Fox News in particular grew unusually close to the Trump administration” and “Trump was harshly critical of the mainstream media throughout his presidency, routinely using inflammatory language to accuse them of bias and mendacity.” The US gets 4/4 on the question “Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution?” Surveillance programs are mentioned, but here no points are deducted (the US also gets 4/4 on academic freedom).

It’s a strange algorithm that deducts points for criticizing journalists, but not for putting them in jail. It’s the algorithm you’d expect, however, from an organization run by former American government officials.

…

If the US government and the NGOs it relies on define conservatism as undemocratic, we will in the coming years find ourselves having hostile relations with nations that do not threaten American interests and whose only crime is offending the sensibilities of a liberal elite that holds positions that are far from universally accepted within the United States itself.

The potential implications for liberty at home are no less catastrophic. If conservatives are not only wrong, but “undemocratic,” it becomes easier for the other side to justify attempts to silence dissent and take extreme steps to prevent them from coming to power.

The media, when it advocates censorship or government suppression of its enemies, never says that it’s going about silencing dissenting views. Rather, the propaganda it uses involves classifying what the target is saying as “hate,” “disinformation,” or “foreign propaganda” to delegitimize the speech as unworthy of either First Amendment protection or respect from non-government institutions.

…

It’s fine to disagree with many aspects of American conservatism, as I certainly do. And it wouldn’t be correct to say that there is no objective measure of democracy one can use; certainly, some countries pick their leaders through fair elections, and others don’t. But democracy is supposed to involve a respect for various segments of society, and a consideration of their views. A definition of the concept that delegitimizes what large swaths of the population believe about economic and social issues, while overlooking the prosecution of journalists disfavored by American foreign policy elites, is little more than a tool of propaganda and potentially oppression.

Luckily, it’s easier to know what to do about Woke Imperialism than Woke Capital, or Woke Institutions more generally. The national security establishment does not survive by its ability to bring in voluntary donations or make money through selling products and services people want. Freedom House, like many other similar institutions, is almost exclusively dependent on the American taxpayer, despite the NGO label.

Given how much contempt the organization clearly has for a large portion of the public, and the threat to political liberty that can result from identifying democracy with one side of the political spectrum, there is no reason for that support to continue. While cutting it off would certainly be seen as “undemocratic” by Freedom House, it would remain at liberty to continue writing reports at its own expense.

[elains]

BOOK REVIEW: HOUSE OF EARTH AND BLOOD, Crescent City Book I, by Sarah J. Maas.

First off, my sincerest thanks to @scraphim, who listened to my comments and rants with the patience of a saint and encourage me to put them down. Second, english is not my first language, so my apologies if there's anything confusing or awkward.

General Rating: ★★ 1/2

THERE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A CUT HERE OUT OF COURTESY BUT TUMBLR MOBILE IS BEING ITS IMPOSSIBLE SELF SO DO MIND THE RATING BEFORE CONTINUING.

Congratulations, Sarah J. Maas. You got me to sit down and write a review for a book, something I hadn't done (officially, anyway, might as well count the endless conversations with my friends) in a long while. Unfortunately, House of Earth and Blood was one more disappointment in an ever-growing list, and this review was born not out of pure, simple enjoyment, but of how much reading this bothered me.

Let me start by saying that I wanted to like this book. I did. I don't buy books which I don't think there's a chance I will not enjoy, I have way too much to do with my life and little money to spare on that. I hoped Sarah would go back to the early days of ToG, when the writing wasn't so choppy I kept questioning what is her problem with commas and when the characters weren't more and more of the same. Or perhaps that she would go back to ACoMaF, which at the time I loved reading.

Silly, silly me. The thing about having an eye-opener to something is that you can't go back. It's not so simple to close your eyes and pretend the bad doesn't exist, doing so feels irresponssible. I'm not sure her books have changed much, perhaps it was just me, the reader, whose perspective changed.

Let's go into the detail, then. Warning for spoilers of her previous books:

• THE LENGTH. It. Is. Ridiculosly. Long. I would say that length itself it's not necessarily a bad thing, something can be long but engaging. HoEaB's problem is that it drags on, to the point I had to put it down I don't know how many times out of frustration that nothing relevant happened. The infodumps do not help AT ALL, making the whole experience even more tiresome. I'll talk about worldbuilding separately, but jesus, so much unecessary information whose only purpose was to add to the wordcount and could have been woven into the story more organically. Readers are not dumb, they can make simple inferences, you don't need to explain every little detail.

The story only picks up and runs like the devil itself is chasing it in the last like, 20 chapters or so. Considering there are 97 of them... Yeah. It could have been a shorter, more direct and overall just more engaging.

• THE WORLDBUILD. I'll give Sarah J. Maas a point: it is more elaborate and refined compared to ToG and ACoTaR, whose worldbuilding are in general quite shallow and in the later's case, nearly nonexistent. However, the use of names blatantly lifted from real-world mythology and places bothered me to NO END. In a book which is built around those mythologies as their main source of inspiration, I can understand. Not here. Look, Maas can come up with original fantasy names, there are even some in HoEaB itself. But unless it's meant to be purposeful and Crescent City is to be Earth All Along, it's just jarring and feels lazy. It's not something new— refer back to the Illyrians and the Myrmidons.

Archean? Valbara? Pangera? Hel? REALLY? And those are just place names. Might as well name something Proterozoic. Or Laurasia.

The Roman inspiration, which was supposed to be a big thing from all her talk felt extremely loose and barely there. Oh sure, there are legions, a governor, the SPQR/M, and some names which to me, a portuguese speaker, where so cringy I had to laugh (Like Gelos and Cervo. You know, literally Ices and Stag or in that case Hind), but they did not feel Roman to me, naming aside. You could literally have named them anything else and it'd still have worked.

We studied Rome (mostly the government and the legal system) in our first semester of College and it might be the student in me, but I kept wanting to see more of the government structure, the politcal system itself. In a book that dealt with law enforcement and figures in places of power, this was a part of the worldbuilding that felt lacking, and a wasted opportunity to expand on the Roman inspiration.

What gets me is that some interesting concepts could have been explored better. I kinda like the idea of the Asteri, the rifts, the summoning salts.

• HUMANITY'S PORTRAYAL. Ahahaha. Where do I even begin with this one? In KoA, I hated that Aelin loosing her human side was seen as such a big sacrifice when the Fae were repeatedly shown to be "superior": stronger, more beautiful, immortal, the list goes on. Aelin herself preferred the Fae-side, so it felt a completely pointless sacrifice. In Crescent City, it gets even worse. Humanity is oppressed, trying to fight for their freedom and their inherent rights as sentient beings, and the books keeps going on and on about the Vanir.

Forgive me, but I'm supposed to be sympathize with the Vanir? To see the Vanir main-characters go on and change the world and make it better for everyone? I'm sorry but I'm not here for that. Bryce's mother and stepfather and Briggs aside, the HoEaB could have definetely used a human PoV or just. You know. ONE THAT DOESN'T FAVOR THE VANIR IN EVERYTHING. So yeah, I'm here cheering for the humans.

• THE CHARACTERS. I like Ruhn. He read like a concerned older brother, I could relate to that, not a possessive alphahole and I was baffled when Bryce kept insisting that. Oh, he has his flaws, but overall, I like him and his friends. They're nice. Danika, too. I would have liked to see more of Juniper and Fury, and them together, instead of using their relationship as kind of a surprise. Hypaxia is another Yrene/Sorscha. I also liked Lehabah, she was a sweetheart (Also I'm sorry am I supposed to think Bryce witholding the news on her freedom to throw a party WASN'T a WTF move? That Lele just knew because she looked at the documents???)

Now, to our main duo. I found Hunt boring. Simple as that. There was nothing in him that I found captivating, nothing new in terms of SJM's Love Interests. How he kept sexualizing Bryce in the most inappropriate of moments pissed me off. His and Bryce's relationship felt to me as Rowaelin 2.0, just as they themselves read as another versions of them, and not very different ones. He is not supposed to be an "alphahole" but... I didn't feel it. Hunt felt as just more of the same.

Now, Bryce Adelaide Quinlan.. Is it so much to ask for a main character who isn't gorgeous, super special, and super-powerful? I get the appeal of the trope, I'm no so hypocritical as to say that I've not indulged in it myself, but with Sarah, it feels overdone. When all characters are beautiful, special, so powerful it... kinda loses its meaning. However, that's not what bothered me about Bryce, no, it's the fact that she could be read as PoC (Golden, Tanned skin, two very ambiguous terms. My white cousin gets golden skin when she stays too long outdoors ffs), and as a PoC myself, reading her into those situations bothered me so, so much I cannot even begin to tell you.

Her curvy, sensual, bug boobs and butts are easily one of the more sought after where I live. People would go to great lengths for such a body and no, it will not hinder your dancing career. We have a word for it roughly translates to Hot, but having men call you that as something laid out on a table for their pleasure, objectifying you is horrible. And that's what most characters do in HoEaB: sexualize Bryce again and again, playing into harmful stereotypes.

My skin crawled reading those passages. I felt uncomfortable. And it wasn't even just the nameless, countless side-characters: it was Hunt himself. Every single move Bryce made was sexualized and I hated, hated it. "She's a Queen who owns her body and doesn't care for anyone else's thoughts" is all well and good, but women like me already have the stereotype of whores, sluts, homewreckers, and it was handled in such a tone-deaf way that it touched ALL of my wrong buttons. It was just uncomfortable, and cringy.

Two and a half stars, like those bad movies we still watch god knows why.

[caps-clever-girl]

thoughts on endgame.

fair warning, i am not going to be kind. i enjoyed watching this movie, for the most part. it was funny; it had many good jokes and good, pure and well done interactions between multiple characters. but i didnt like it, and here are the reasons why.

unfortunately, this isnt a ‘nitpicky’ post. my main problems are with a lot of the bigger points points of the film, and had quite a few. this is a LONG post.

• “marvels first gay character!!!!!!!!!!!!” shut up. you joined the ‘fad’ late for brownie points and it was a cameo character who got about 3 lines. there are plenty of canon queer and gay characters who could have been introduced, either as cameos or in earlier films. dont even get me started on the fact that tony has more canon bi material than most others and marvel could have taken the time or even the slightest bit of effort to make this. while i enjoyed the jokes about steve being Incredibly Hot and his ass being Gods Gift To America (which honestly??? correct!) that could have been expanded on. several characters made comments about how nice steve’s ass is, and could have been used as actual material for a queer character, instead of sticking a random chharacter in there. i get the whole ‘gay people could be anyone! its normal!’ thing by giving the ‘role’ to a regular person, but you would also prove that by making any one of your 30+ main cast actually queer instead of making gay jokes and hints that could be retconned and explained away by humour.

• slapping someone out of a panic attack, and treating the panic attack like a joke. yeah, i get it, they didnt have a lot of time. still, come on. did iron man 3 teach you nothing? apparently not since tonys ptsd was pretty much never brought up again.

• speaking of thor. now, i am not an expert, but when a person gains weight, they do not keep their abs. certainly not after five entire years - not even asgardians. i also found it odd that thor became the way he did. i understand gaining weight and comfort eating after all the trauma thor went through losing his home and brother and people, i really do, but 1.) do it properly, at least, and 2.) thor is the leader of his people. does he want the task? not particularly. he hasnt wanted to be king since the first thor movie, but hes been forced into the role. even depressed i dont think thor would shy away from it, not completely. hes always wanted to do right by his people and i think that hed stuck to it, especially after The Snap backing him into a corner, if that makes sense. to clarify, i dont have a problem with chubby/fat thor. (IF done right instead of with weird, shitty cgi, that is.) i have a problem with the fact that thor, even though he doesnt want to be king, would abandon the last remanents displaced people to build a new home all on their own and become a hermit gamer boy. ESPECIALLY with valkyrie around. she’s been through a derpressive, alcohol fuelled time in her life and thor pulled her out of it. (mostly anyway, asgardians are party animals and im p sure she still gets trolleyed on the reg) i have bo doubt that after years of wallowing she would do her damned best to try and kick his ass out of it, even if it were just because his people need a leader, instead of letting him drop everything on her and just let him stew while new asgard gets on with it. i also didnt like the fact that all of thors emotional moments were treated as jokes and made to be funny when hes genuinely Fucked Up about eveything thats happening and made his image into a whiny crybaby.

• professor hulk. more of a personal one, this, simply because i just didnt like it. fair enough if y’all disagree on this one, im not going to fight it. i just never saw him wanting to combine himself with the hulk. ever. when he apleared on the screen i was completely blindsided, and his explanation, and the way he interacted with the kids????? i just want to know where all of this confidence suddenly came from. i use the term ‘suddenly’ loosely, since its been five years, but bruce has never been the guy to care about strength or looks or fame. hes always been shy and nerdy. not afraid to stand his ground or make his opinion known. hes bot a catchphrase, posing and flexing ‘hell yeah lets take a selfie’ guy. i get that thats maybe the result of the hulk and bruces combined personality but it just felt WEIRD to me, like, there wasnt a time in the film where i felt comfortable with the character. this was the final avengers film, with all of the original six avengers in it. but it didnt feel like that, it didnt feel like bruce or the hulk was in the film, even though there was a lot of funny and good moments with orofessor hulk, it felt like a stranger with some familiar characteristics. it ruined any feelings of nostalgia for me. i like bruce, and i like the hulk. i like the way their differences add to the story and the way they interact with eachother, and the slow change in their relationship. sorry if its petty but i prefer them seperate, theres just so much more to them for me.

• clint and natasha’s journey for the soul stone. both times, in infinity war and endgame, a male character and a female character went to get the soul stone. both times the male came back and the female died, and we lost possibly two most developed and main-line female characters in the entire mcu. now i understand the reasoning for both, and out of the characters that went there, i agree with the choice. thanos and gamora; it was thanos who was aware of the sacrifice and who chose to make it. gamora didnt get a choice and was unaware until it was too late. thanos was never going to die there. he knew there would be a sacrifice and chose to take gamora, because she would be the most likely sacrifice to actualky sucsesfully yield the soul stone because she was the most loved by him. i get it, but we lost gamora and i dont like it. clint and natasha; looking at it completely objectively, clint has a family, a wife and three children, that he wants to get back. natasha does not have any children, nor any (blood) family. if i had to choose, based on facts like that, id choose her too. but i still hate it, because there goes the only female member of the avengers. also, nebula (and i think maybe rocket?) KNEW that a sacrifice would be made and either accidentaly or deliverately left out the terms of aquiring the soul stone. it would have been easy to tell, if not easy to solve. but nothinb was said, and two best friends had to make a fucking awful and horrible choice when they might not have had to.

• on the ‘feminism’ tangent; the random congragation of women in the end scene??????? i dont????? okay so i am marking myself as a hypocrite here because i did love this scene!!! it made my lil gay heart go boom to see so many good and strong women all in one place - ESPECIALLY rescue - and it also made me realise how many women there actually are across the mcu??? which was really nice?? but it just felt... so forced? the way they ALL suddenly apleared and stood together even though they were all mixed in around the battlefield. it was a wonderful thought and i did enjoy it, but it seemed too Off and Odd to seem as much more than a bid for Feminism Brownie Points.

• captain marvel. i dont know about you, but i was actually looking forward to her being in the film. for a character so hyped to be the saviour of the avengers and the end of thanos, she was barely in the film. ‘i have other planets to save, the earth isnt the only one affected by thanos’ yeah but earth is the only plannet actively attacked by him. its where the people who are rallying to fight him and reverse what he did are. dont you want to stick around and help them? surely it would be a hell of a lot easier with your help, and faster too. yes, she blasted theough the ship at the end, but she did fuck all to help defeat thanos himself, and the help she did give with the ship came at the end. i genuinely think they kept her out of the movie because she was too powerful, and would have made fighting thanos etc too easy to get all the suffering and noble sacrifices in. if she had been a side character i dont think id be as mad, but she got a whole MOVIE in which she is clearly the start of the entire avengers initiative; she is their HISTORY!!!! she is so powerful!!!! and yet she has 5 mins of screen time!! it pisses me off that she was So Strongly implied to be the character the avengers NEEDED, the one that without whom it would be IMPOSSIBLE to defeat thanos; the woman that really tipped the scales in there favour, and yet she did fuck all. (and lets not even get started on the carol/rhodey and carol+tony bromance we COMPLETELY missed out on.)

• (speaking of bonding what the fuck happened to tony and nebula????? after they were rescued it was like they never met)

• the whole entire concept of time what the fuck!!! ‘dont change anything’ okay well for the most part you did okay, and the PLAN and CONCEPT was actually really easy to grasp, at least to me, which is hard when working with paradoxes and wibbley-wobbley timey-wimey stuff. but that went out the water when past!thanos and his army were brought into the future and disintergrated. does this mean they’re dead in the past - since they would have just. Left and not come back and therefore ceased to exist from that point???? or did tonys Snap simply send them back to their point in time, with no memory of what had occured? idk because it aint explained.

• speaking of; loki. again - his past changed; he managed to escape, with the tessarect. this is not explained nor expanded upon. assuming the events of thor 2 came about - which were impossible if he escaped - then his timeline would carry on as normal, and would PERHAPS explain the tessarects wacky timeline. (i dont know for certain, because i cant work it out anyway). but loki disspearing means he wouldnt have gone to trial on asgard, nor would he wouldnt have been in thor 2 - also by extention meaning that frigga is still alive. technically if he went back to get odin off the throne anyway, everything else after thor 2 involving loki/asgard would still come to pass. either way, we dont know. it was a nice way for endgame to give fans what we wanted; the posibility of loki coming back. but it doesnt make a lick of sense, and we have no idea if hes still alive/escaped or not, and why. personally i have no fucking idea and im pretty sure it was a cop out so they could give us what we wanted. which brings to my other point:

• giving the audience what we wanted. we got loki interaction. we got loki ‘escaping’ and ‘surviving’ (????) we FINALLY got rescue, who many fans have been asking for since i think iron man 2, and even more so since The Badass That Was Pepper Potts in im3. we got morgan stark and tony and pepper married, we got jokes about steves ass, and more jokes about male characters admiring how hot other male characters are. and, most importantly, we got tony having the nice relaxing life he wanted out in his cabin in the woods with his wife and kids (even if it was a horrific way of getting there). i dont quite know how to explain it, but to me it seemed like they were shoving as many ‘fan-requests’ into the film as possible - so that when they killed off 2 of the original 6, and removed another by ageing him out of use, they could lessen the backlash and justify the changes by going ‘but you got so mych that you wanted beforehand!!’. a tactic they drenhed us with because one of those 2 was a fan favourite that people were BEGGING not to be killed off because they felt that he hadnt recieved anywhere near the peace or happiness he deserved so far - and now never will. which brings me to:

• tony’s death.

there are two parts to this.

one, i was incredibly pissed off because strange’s Big Plan, the ONLY reason he saved tony in infinity war, was so tony could use the gauntlet and kill himself anyway later. anyone in that film could have used that gauntlet - and many wouldnt have suffered fatal injuries; captain marvel, steve, t’challa, peter quill to name a few possibilities - basically, anyone who is in anyway enhanced would have had a better chance of surviving and would have therefore been the better choice; aka, half the mcu. i think it was a proximity thing; tony was closest. he had the oppertunity and the others didnt. but tony didnt know about the option of using it until strange looked at him and gave him ‘the signal.’ the signal to sacrifice himself. and of course, this is tony stark. when is he ever going to refuse that.

but reason two, and this is the one that stings the most; tony started the mcu.

in my opinion, he is the character who has put the most in during the whole ten years. he, of ALL the characters, deserves his happy ending of marrying the love of his life and having a kid, without constantly fearing that hes foing to have them ripped away from him, that hes going to have to fight to the death to keep them safe.

one of my friends, when i complained about tony dying, said; “it was his time. plus, he had a legacy! with pepper and morgan, and the iron man name. how can you be upset?”

i can be upset because tony got the happiness he wanted after losing exactly 50% of what he held dearest. i can be upset because hawkeye got his family back, but tony only got five years with his wife and less with his kid, instead of getting the oppertunity to grow old with his wife and watch his kid go to collage like clint will. i can be upset because the character that has gone through the most trauma, both physically and mentally, who spent the last ten years trying to better the world and everything in it and protect it, who got the most shit for every decision he made and who ended EVERY SINGLE FILM with a broken limb or his face littered with bruises and cuts while every other film centric character ended the film usually scrape free, didnt get his happy fucking ending. sure, he has a legacy. but i dont give a shit, because that legacy - of iron man, of morgan and pepper and stark industries - would have been there whether tony was alive to see it flourish or not. but he wont be.

this goes beyond being a ‘tony stan’ or tony being my favourite character. out of every single character, from start to finish, anthony edward stark fucking deserved a happy ending and by god he deserved it the most. i will argue that until my end of days.

i watched tony stark on screen for ten years, and i watched him get progressively more scarred and fucked up. his parents. the ten rings. losing yinsen. obie. vanko and hammer. the palladium poisoning. new york; the nuke and the wormhole. the ptsd, the panic attacks. the iron legion and retirement attempt. killian and extremis and the end of that returement attempt. wanda’s vision. jarvis being destroyed. the accords and subsequent civil war. finding out about the winter soldier and his hand in his parents death. finding out that steve knew. siberia. struggling to balence iron man and the accords. losing peter. being stranded on titan, in space for weeks.

tony in that wheelchair, shaking and rail thin and unable to stand for more than a few moments will haunt me forever.

i watched him suffer for ten years - longer, even, in-universe - clawing for his quiet, happy ending while fighting for the happy ending he thought the rest of the world deserved, and instead of getting rewarded he just got beaten down and beaten down. after ten fucking hears of watching the backbone of the entire franchise get nothing but shit piled on him until he struggled to breathe for it, excuse me for thinking he woukd finally get the chance to crawl out from under it and be happy. no strungs attatched, no awful, sacrificial price to be payed, just for a man who had given so. fucking. much. to finally get something for once, and be allowed to keep it.

well i was wrong. and i feel so incredibly fucking stupid for even hoping otherwise.

and thats what i didnt like about avengers endgame.

[whitleyschn33]

I kind of want to say a small controversial thing about Weiss. Everyone says that her character development and arc are the best and I kind of disagree. By no means am I saying it's the worst, but I do think it's boring and predictable. Think about it, how many times have we seen an antagonistic rival (or villain) be an ass to the main hero but slowly learn about *love* and *friendship* and then become good and join with the good guys? Too many to count, and some done better than Weiss.

Hello!

I am by no means going to berate you or make fun of you for that opinion. That would beyond hypocritical of me, and I want this blog to be a place where people can express opinions (even the unpopular or controversial ones) safely.

You do have a point - an Ice Queen/Prince initially being a prick towards the Protagonist and Co., and then becoming a better person through friendship and love is by no means an original concept. It’s a trope, one so commonly used I would bet good money that a lot of people called it within the first 3 episodes of RWBY. That does make it predictable, and for some people, that can be a turn-off.

Predictability isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though - to quote Cinder, “Even if you know how a story ends, that doesn’t make it any less fun to watch.” Even if the concept isn’t original or even anything fresh, if it’s still portrayed in a compelling way, it can be quite entertaining. Execution is a huge part in telling a good story, and I believe that’s why Weiss’s arc is widely regarded as one of the best in RWBY.

Weiss’s arc is, in my opinion, the best executed arc of team RWBY. It’s something that was built up and worked on for 4 volumes, and had a satisfying and natural conclusion when Weiss ran away from Atlas (not to say that Weiss’s character will never develop further, but the end of V4 felt very much like the end of a chapter for her). Were there things that could have been expanded on and added in to put new spins on her character, her relationships with her family, and her feelings about Atlas and the company? Absolutely. But what we do get of that is entertaining enough to satisfy most viewers and keep us from feeling like the arc came out of nowhere/had no narrative weight/like there wasn’t an arc at all (and the beautiful and kickass songs that suppliment her arc don’t hurt).

It also probably helps that of the main four, Weiss’s arc feels the most fleshed out and completed at this point in time. Ruby has changed and developed, certainly, but not to the extent her teammates have. Yang’s arc didn’t really start (at least, for me, and as far as I can remember) until the end of V3 when she loses her arm, and is still very much ongoing (or, it should be at any rate, since I refuse to believe that every issue she has with Adam and Blake were solved with the V6 finale). You could make an argument that Blake has completed an arc with learning to trust the people she cares about to help her stand against her problems, rather than run away from them - but I don’t think that I’m the only person to feel like its execution could have definitely been handled better - and I would argue that that arc isn’t over yet, either.

At the end of the day, though, it does come down to personal preference, and there is nothing wrong with not enjoying something. No one should make you feel guilty or wrong for not enjoying something that a majority of people do. Execution may be a huge part of telling a good story, but it’s also something that will only appeal to certain people. If you’re not one of those people, that doesn’t make you wrong or stupid, it just means you enjoy different things (it’s as if you’re your own human being with your own thoughts and tastes - who knew?).

Anyway, thank you for sending this in! I hope I can speak to you again if you have anything else to say!

Have a good night!

[whetstonefires]

how do you think the batfam mightve progressed if jason never died?

Whaa, 4 asks at once? I’m sorry I still haven’t gotten back on the last one, I thought I was unstuck but guess what, I wrote myself into a pretty little corner by being all ‘I don’t care about what’s canon! i’m just gonna have fun!’ which is the correct approach except then you find out the thing you made up is incorrect and idk how to deal with that. being wrong. it’s a life skill i’m still working on.

So like, if the vote had gone the other way...it depends so much on the writing and editing teams, and so little on real causality, it’s hard to frame a picture?

Jason was created as an alternative to aging Dick down and taking him out of the Titans; his new character origin after the Crisis on Infinite Earths barely got out of its shakedown tour before they killed him off. We know who he was enough to spot the major character derailments, but who he might have been? It’s hard to say.

If he’d made it through the vote, the noisy fans would still have hated him, and so would the man writing his comics. I doubt Starlin would ever have convinced DC to do the HIV plotline with Robin like he reportedly tried, but I feel like Something Bad remained likely.

The 90s are known for their grimdarkness for a reason, and Jason just missed living through them. I feel like his odds of going villain were pretty high anyway, not because of him but because of the constant need for drama fuel. I mean, Alfred had a villain phase, in the 60s.

Babs became Oracle almost simultaneous with the Robin trade-off, debuted the same month Jason died (January ‘89), so that still would have happened. Tim’s influence on her was very slight.

Without Tim, there would have been no need for Steph, since she was created partly as a love interest but more importantly as a foil, and a way of getting more of that high-energy feeling traditionally associated with Robin back into the story even though so many of the fans loathed it and refused to have it in their lead.

(Not that Tim didn’t have a lot of it anyway, but it wasn’t his core feel the way it had been for Dick and Jason. Possibly of note, the ‘87 Killing Joke and ‘89 Batman movie also marked a rise in the use of Joker as Batman’s main dramatic foil rather than Robin, which coupled with the Bronze Age in general really shaped Tim’s character direction. It’s hard to say what caused what, with these trends.)

They might have introduced a girl anyway, to replace Babs. Maybe even a version of Cass. Shiva stated under interrogation during ADitF that she had no child, but in comics terms that half-guaranteed she’d get one eventually, because the concept was now out there.

I doubt Jason would have gotten his own series in the 90s, considering his screaming hatedom and the fact that it took three extremely successful mini-series to get Tim a regular title, but if DC had managed to repackage his character into something that the 90s liked and he had made a go of it, he’d probably have acquired a completely different supporting cast. He might well have continued his pattern of acquiring moms. Maybe even Talia. The whole Sheila thing would have been a half-forgotten backstory subplot by like ‘94 probably.

It occurs to me after typing all of this that you might want to hear my ideas about what in-universe causality might logically have led to, lmao. Let’s see.

Jason’s adolescence was hitting a rocky stage that I doubt this betrayal and near-death experience and technical bereavement would have ended, though it would probably have hit harder than his last few near-death experiences even assuming another improbable complete recovery.

If we up the realism dial a little, he might be forced into retirement by the severity of his wounds. He’d still have to hash out his trust issues with Bruce, probably more than ever. Being a shit communicator was not yet a key part of Bruce’s personality; they might have sorted things out.

Jason would not have dropped out of college. If he’s retired, he goes into a prestigious but helping-centered field with an understanding that he is now the son Bruce trusts to step up to keep WE on the straight and narrow after he dies; inheritance of voting shares may be structured around this expectation.

(Dick experiences that really complicated hypocritical jealousy where you specifically rejected a thing, but it spent so long being marked yours that you feel robbed anyway when someone else gets it. Not a lot of it in the disability scenario, because there’s a distinct vibe of consolation prize there, but otherwise.)

Babs would still have been Oracle. It would have been a less fraught launch, though.

Dick might not have heard about the Ethiopia thing at all, if Jason made a full recovery, considering how little communication was passing between him and Bruce at that point. Dick’s level of Batcomputer access only stated Jason as ‘location unknown’ when he was dead, so.

He and Jason got along fine, regardless of retcons since then, but he was under a lot of stress from a lot of sources, and the feeling that he couldn’t go home even when he really needed to, because he’d been replaced, was very present. That might well have blown up at some point.

I tend to think of Bruce as having changed pretty dramatically as a result of Jason’s death, disregarding a lot of retcons, but I mean, 1987 Bruce already failed to notice Dick having a mental breakdown right in front of him and put him off in favor of hero work with Jason on Dick’s birthday, he just did it cheerfully and with fairly courteous wording. There was a trend in the faildad direction starting already.

There was a lot of relationship stuff in need of fixing and in some ways Jason’s presence made that as hard for Dick with Bruce as Damian’s later did for Tim, even though there was a lot less drama and intentional emotional violence and attempted murder involved. So. That could have gone a lot of ways. Realistically, even without Tim trying to play peacemaker, Dick always gets dragged back into Bruce’s orbit, though. That’s narrative causality at work, but also psychology.

In-universe, Tim can be assumed to have already existed before Wolfman invented him. He’s mostly away at boarding school, but he’s nosy and well-intentioned and he Knows. If Jason ran away more comprehensively than the Great Mom Tour, he might approach him with an argument for why Batman needed Robin and he should go home. Or there would eventually have been a case where he knew something they didn’t and attempted to subtly pass information and got noticed.

Or Oracle’s expanding field of awareness would have eventually noticed him and his zoom-lens one summer evening while his parents were in Haiti getting dead. Idk.

He’d probably have gotten mixed up in Bat-things eventually, and if it wasn’t before the Haiti thing there’s no way Batman would have been invested enough in this random disappearance to be there in time to help, so he’d have been completely orphaned at 13. Bruce taking him in is reasonably likely, since he wasn’t exactly in a position to create himself a fake uncle at the time. On the other hand, he might have gone into foster care. His parent’s company still would have crashed without them, so he wouldn’t have inherited much, but he’d have been better off than most kids in the system because he’d have some assets.

Steph is even more guaranteed to hit the vigilante scene. Bruce would be a lot friendlier to her without Jason death issues for her to trigger, though that doesn’t mean he’d actually be friendly, and Jason would like her, and possibly communicate more effectively than Tim did about how she could not die, or possibly they’d have egged each other on into steadily more unwise behavior.

On the other hand, depending on where Jason’s character development went after surviving Ethiopia, he might at 17 find 15-year-old Steph indescribably annoying precisely because they have so much in common, and lash out at her as a proxy for his younger self, and be kind of awful.

Cataclysm breaks causality to even acknowledge anymore because they rushed on from it like massive chumps, but Jason would have been a good Robin to have for it. He’d have been pretty tall by then, and he’s got the mental tools for surviving in an unfriendly urban environment where money is useless. I think he and Cass would have gotten on well, they have compatible personalities. The only major issue I can see is if Bruce or Babs got really positive about her and triggered some kind of jealousy or possessiveness issue.

We don’t really have any specific data at all from before Jason died about how he would cope with a rival for something he felt entitled to but insecure about--he deferred very nicely to Dick as his elder, but Dick wasn’t actually a threat to anything Jason valued. Assuming later canon is applicable, jealousy would be a definite issue with any additional family members, though I assume without the risk of homicide.

Okay here is an after-midnight hour of my half-baked opinions. You asked for it! ;DDD

[foolishtomfoolery-blog]

I finally found one

I have a morbid obsession with Hell.

When I was young, my Bible-thumping Aunt saw fit to fill my head with notions of Satan. She thought my mother was lacking in religious conviction and made it her job to teach me the way.

Unfortunately, her chosen method of leading me to salvation was to tell me stories about Hell and the Devil incessantly.

I cannot tell you how many times that woman told me I was going to go to hell for all eternity if I kept up my dastardly ways.

To anyone else, my crimes would be harmless. Things like adjusting my balls when they stuck to my thigh or reading a Harry Potter book were not harmless to Auntie Carol. They were gateway acts.

Kind of like gateway drugs, but more detrimental to my moral compass than my health.

Her plan backfired of course. Instead of leading me down the path of righteousness, she incited a rage within me.

I mean, what type of God could be that damn unforgiving?

A nefarious one, that's what kind.

That was my opinion anyway.

So I started digging a little deeper into the concept of hell and the Devil. Most people find it off-putting when I say this, but I came to like what I found.

He seemed like an okay guy in comparison. Far less hypocritical at least.

Anyway, along the way, I found accounts of Hell Gates.

There was all manner of stories and legends. Different places, right here on Earth, that could lead you into the fiery depths of Satan's lair. In some instances, people swore they had seen the Devil appear near these gates.

By the time I was in my twenties, I had decided it was something I needed to experience myself.

Straight away, I am not a wealthy man. I have never been able to check out the spots listed overseas.

I was able to make it around to a few located here on our very own soil.

I was disappointed each time.

Apparently, when word gets around that there are gateways to Hell in your area, it invites a great deal of attention. The attention that locals tend not to appreciate. Most of the time the locals would call the police and the tourists would be chased off.

I got to hang around a few places for a while, but nothing ever happened. Each time I would head back home, ready to search for the newest spot.

Anyone else may have given up. I thought about ending my search a few times, but I could never bring myself to do it.

I'm uncertain why it was important to me at that point. The only thing I knew was I needed to find a real Gateway. I had to pass over that threshold and see what was inside.

A couple of weeks ago, I developed a bizarre notion.

I started seeing reports of wildfires popping up along the West Coast, and it got me to thinking. Wherever these gateways were, there was sure to be fire present. Satan is essentially a deity, which would make it feasible for the gates to move around if he desired them to. It also made sense to me, since there were stories about the gates all over the world.

It was only a matter of days before I decided to check it out.

I took everything I had out of my savings, and I took a trip to the West Coast.

For the first time in my life, the trip wasn’t wasted.

I was there when it opened up, and it was the most glorious feeling I have ever experienced.

It started as a pinprick of light, so small I thought I had imagined it at first. I watched as it flickered, fighting to grow steadily. It was so small, yet blinding in intensity. That pinprick soon expanded to a cavernous hole. It seemed to lead into nothing, and yet fire surged forth from within, all-consuming.

A wave of raw emotion, unlike any I had ever felt swept over me. I watched that fire incinerate everything it came into contact with. It was like I was a hit with the essence of humanity and all the emotions were warring within me.

Everything smelled of sulfur and campfires. It was disgusting and comforting all at once. Despite the fact that smoke filled my lungs, I found myself inhaling deeply. I was calm as chaos consumed everything around me.

Enthralled by the whispers of something ancient coming from the Gate, I crept closer. The desire to give myself over to whatever creature was on the other side consumed me. More than anything I craved the promise of its eternity.

The closer I tried to get to the gateway, the dizzier I became. The heat was unbearable and the smoke was suffocating. Yet, I persisted. I needed to cross over more than I had ever needed anything in this life.

I was almost there, a mere finger length away when the portal snapped shut. The fire still raged around me, but the creature that brought it here was gone.

At that moment despair, unlike any I had ever known, filled me. I fell to my knees, the will to move forward gone entirely.

I came to three days later in the hospital. The doctors said I was lucky to be alive after all the smoke I had drawn in. My legs suffered most of the damage, along with my left arm.

They thought I was a hiker, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The news said a lightning strike caused the fire, but I know what happened.

Satan isn't on the other side of these gates.

Whatever that being is, it is much more than Satan. Something ethereal and primal, something that predates religions. It is cleansing the world the only way it knows how.

I don’t know how, but I will encounter it again.

This time I will not hesitate to cross the threshold.

[littleshebear]

Okay I’ve read the Fall of Osiris issue again and…yeah, I still hate it. I wanted to like it, I really did but I have so many problems with it. Putting this under a cut and I won’t tag to spare the people who loved it. 

I’ll start with some things I did like. I liked Saint. Saint seems like a nice, reasonable dude who is capable of seeing both sides of a situation. You can see why he was so loved based on only these few panels that he appeared in.

The narrative taking the piss out of the Cult of Osiris was good because I am here all day, every day for those ridiculous edge-lords being mocked.   Okay, the things I didn’t like. They are legion. 

Osiris. Sorry guys, I know loads of you love him but I’ve never liked the dude. I’ve got no time for arrogant people who prize intellect to the exclusion of everything else. Osiris is the kind of person who doesn’t even bother trying to explain things because the peons will never understand (See also Asher Mir, can’t stand him either for precisely this reason). He’s the kind of person who won’t delegate effectively. He can’t trust anyone else because no one else shares his brilliance so he has to do it all himself. I don’t care how much of a genius he is, the most intelligent dickhead in the world is still a dickhead.

Now, this wouldn’t be a problem in itself. I’ve got nothing against stories having unsympathetic, flawed protagonists. This is fine. What’s not fine is when the story has a narrator who is so ridiculously sympathetic, it means the meta-narrative is basically bullying the reader into liking him. Ikora’s narration is just dripping with regret and admiration for Osiris, the narrative clearly wants us to side with him but I’m just sitting here like, “No. He was irresponsible and he had no business being Vanguard Commander, he sucked at his job.” I really, really don’t like stories that try to tell me how to feel about the characters and I feel like this is what’s happening. It’s like Bungie have gone, “Here’s a really complicated, nuanced, flawed character but we don’t want your view of him to be nuanced. He’s a Good Guy!”

My other issue with him is that I find the central conflict just so damn stupid. Osiris is Vanguard but he’s not doing his Vanguard duties. This is Objectively Bad but we’re supposed to believe that it’s okay because, why? He was right about the Vex? Bullshit, he can be right about the Vex and still be a shit commander. I just don’t understand why Osiris took the job in the first place, he has nothing but contempt for the Traveler, the Speaker and the Consensus, he was never a good fit for this job so I don’t understand why he said yes to the job offer in the first place. If he said yes because of his ego but we’re still supposed to believe that he did nothing wrong? No, that’s nonsense and I’m not having it. For someone so smart, accepting the post as Vanguard Commander was staggeringly stupid and lacking in self-awareness. If you don’t have the time or the inclination to do a job, you step aside for someone who does. 

I also have some trouble with his philosophy. He claims that the Traveler is the cause of the Vex arriving in our universe and he’s demonstrably wrong on that. Okay, Osiris doesn’t have the benefit of the Books of Sorrow to know that the Vex’s arrival was down to Crota but even with out that, his views on causation are shoddy at best. If the Traveler didn’t exist, how could he possibly know the horrible things wouldn’t have arrived in any case? Just because the Traveler’s arrival in antecedent, that doesn’t mean it’s causative. For someone so smart, you’d think he’d be able to make that philosophical distinction. Okay, yes, it’s likely that hostile life forms would chase the Traveler because they want its power, that makes sense but that doesn’t necessarily make the Traveler’s motives nefarious. Osiris is clearly unfamiliar with the concept of reciprocity, that it’s generally considered morally correct to help those who help you. He obviously doesn’t give a shit about imperatives either. The Guardians are in a position to fight evil so they should, because it’s the right thing to do regardless of the Traveler. But no, he’d rather spread empirically and ethically shoddy nonsense about the Traveler. 

He’s also a hypocrite. He complains that his cult are blindly stupid followers, he rails at Saint about how the consensus doesn’t allow dissent but his response to Ikora’s questioning of him is always the same: Have faith in me. Faith in the Speaker and the Traveler? Bad. Faith in Osiris? Good. Like, fuck off dude. 

I’m sorry but his reasons for ignoring the looming Fallen threat make no sense to me. Yes, Osiris, we get it, the Vex are bad. But as Ikora rightly says, there are lots of bad things. Saying that they might die out where the vex won’t is the such a fucking ridiculous response. “Oh, the Fallen might become extinct.” Yeah. They might. Doesn’t make a blind bit of difference if they trash the City and murder all of humanity before that happens. There are innumerable threats and a good Vanguard Commander has to be able to juggle all of them. So not only can he not manage his time or delegate effectively, he can’t prioritise either. Dude needs to go on business management training to learn how, for real. For the most intelligent person in the system he does and says some incredibly stupid things. 

He has so many faults but this narrative wants us to overlook them because Ikora said so.

And then there’s the characterisation of the Speaker. Oh boy. Oh boy oh boy. I don’t know why they did this. After the D2 campaign the outpouring of love for him was pretty universal so to see them going int his direction with his character really hurts. He went from a kindly, paternal spiritual leader to a straight up book burning fascist. Like, that’s extreme Bungie. Yes, there is a strong religious element to the Speaker’s philosophy and he probably doesn’t like that being undermined but I think they’re over-egging the pudding just a teensy weensy bit here. He’s so completely unsympathetic in this issue it’s hard to believe it’s the same man. It’s never explained exactly what is so heretical in these prophecies either. We’re just supposed to take it on faith (ha) that the speaker is being unreasonable. He wants to go full on dictator because of Reasons, basically. The reader is never told why, exactly. I really hope that’s expanded on in subsequent issues because at the moment it just isn’t good enough. Furthermore, remember how devastated Ikora was when the Speaker was taken by the Red Legion? I just can’t see her getting that emotionally invested in someone who burns books and suppressed knowledge. It’s so inconsistent.  I really don’t understand why they did this with the Speaker.

Oh wait, no, I do. They did it in a clumsily obvious attempt to make Osiris seem sympathetic in comparison. I mean, why write a sympathetic character when you can just make a shitty character look good in comparison to REALLY shitty ones, right? This is not good writing.

I wanted to like this, people, I really did. I’m so stoked about the idea of more fleshed out Lore, actually seeing characters we’ve only heard about in grimoire but oh boy, I am not here for this perpetual white-washing of Osiris’ flaws. It bugged me in The Curse of Osiris campaign and it’s just been compounded here. we were promised a dangerous man, we got misunderstood Battle Santa. 

The only thing that could possibly get me through this nonsense is seeing Ikora as an incredibly unreliable narrator. 

[theeternalponderer]

Cartoons

"It's just a cartoon" is one of the most pathetic excuses I see for people not being emotional over them. So what? So what if it's a cartoon? Would your feelings change if it were live-action, and if so, prove that you are nothing more than a hypocrite? Or are you just unwilling to admit you were touched by them, since I bet cartoons are "kid stuff" to you (adult-aimed animation a la the The Simpsons or Rick and Morty notwithstanding)? So what if real life can be sadder? Real life doesn't have the constraints of a cartoon.

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." -Mark Twain

We evolved to be perfect pursuit predators, never tiring of the chase before the prey. But the discovery of agriculture rooted us in place, and the taming of fire vastly expanded our array of tools upon which we kept improving. But do you know what gave humans culture, the ability to connect with others who were different yet similar, our astounding capacity for empathy given its decided lack in nature? Storytelling.

We'd sit around the fire at night, telling each other stories. Stories of the hunt and the brave warriors who slew great beasts, or stories of the storm and the farmers who fiercely fought against it every step of the way to save their food. The elders would tell stories to the young, who would eventually play mix-and-match with them and add on their own stories of daring and courage, romance and tragedy, comedy and drama. These stories became the fairy tales, the legends, the myths that everyone connected to, and could recite by heart, with maybe their own little twist added on.

Saying "It's just a cartoon" in order to deflect the emotional weight of what happened doesn't make you seem cool, mature, or any of that jazz. You are in essence rejecting the concept of storytelling in its entirety, which is an utterly ridiculous thing to do in a society that evolved due in no small part to its tradition of telling stories.