#I hate this scene more than the entire fandom hates the love triangle

[viewlumia]

Behold, my least favorite line in the entirety of Ninjago!

[my-current-obsession]

Something I both love AND hate about FF7 (the original game and everything after, including the Remake trilogy) is that it is just ambiguous and/or player-driven enough that no matter which side of the love triangle you fall on (assuming you do in fact ship Cloud with one of the girls), the majority of fans for that ship are 100% CONVINCED it's the correct/canon option.

Like, certain scenes are definitely up to interpretation, and people are going to thus have varying reads on those scenes and the characters/relationships the scenes are about. It doesn't help that several scenes change depending on the player's choices, which acts as a confirmation bias as you naturally get more time and romantic moments with the girl of your preference. It really seems to me that MOST people who ship Cloud and Aerith have one solid interpretation (with a plethora of supporting evidence) of the series and the romance, while most people who ship Cloud and Tifa have their own solid interpretation with plenty of evidence that is VASTLY DIFFERENT from the Clerith reading of the game.

This is not a case of "one ship is clearly, explicitly canon and fans of the opposition just like their pick better and/or think it made more sense narratively and WISH it was canon" - for an example of that, look to the Avatar the Last Airbender shipping wars. This is a case where both sides literally interpret the story just differently enough that they come to entirely different conclusions about which girl is Cloud's true love. And if either side reaches out to try and explain their viewpoint to the other, they're just met with "uh, no. You're wrong." Try and explain what Cloud might be thinking in a given scene with one of the girls, why he acts a certain way... "That's not it at all, where are you getting this? Are you delusional?"

Like, I am a Clerith shipper. I have played all the games in the compilation and watched Advent Children. I tried to be as completionist as possible, even. And I came out on the other side of really digging into the story of this game loving Cloud and Aerith's dynamic and pretty firmly convinced they were canon. Or as canon as possible in the timeline where she died.

As any Clerith fan who participates in the fandom would know, if you try and explain your interpretation of these characters and the romance to a diehard Cloti supporter... you're met with a lot of "you're misinterpreting! Cloud and Aerith were just friends! She loved Zack to the end and Cloud loved Tifa since childhood and never stopped! Also Aerith is actually BAD for Cloud because she's too pushy/abrasive. She's not helping him open up, she's just forcing him to go along with her and making him uncomfortable!"

All of this is of course infuriating, but I'd like to think I'm self-aware enough to know we are kind of guilty of the same thing. The majority of Tifa fans are SO happy about the kiss in Rebirth, while we're over here dismissing it because, one it's optional, and two Cloud is "obviously" using Tifa as a rebound or settling for her since Aerith is seemingly unavailable. But that's not how Cloti fans see it at all.

We can talk until we're blue in the face about how TIFA deserves better than Cloud because she shouldn't be the second choice - the one he settles for. But I think most people who really love Cloti genuinely don't see it that way. In their eyes, she's NOT second-best. Cloud loved her all along and this kiss is finally confirming that. And nothing we say will dissuade them, just as nothing they say will actually change OUR minds about Clerith.

It is honestly really difficult for me to try and see the story and romance the way Cloti fans do, but I know the reverse is also true. Both groups of fans interpret the characters and relationships differently. The compilation ALLOWS us to interpret them differently. And this is why the ship war for a game from 1997 is still raging on.

Because both camps are certain they're right, they defend their position viciously. Sometimes that means invading the "other side" to tell them how wrong they are. This discussion/rant was prompted by a Cloti fan on a Clerith vid who wanted to debate MY comment about how wonderful the ship was and how good they were for each other. He was "confused" and "concerned" because Clerith fans were reading the story wrong or warping it to suit our ship.

I wanted to tell him, "buddy that's what YOU'RE doing". I wanted to write a goddamn essay explaining why Clerith is canon actually. But considering in my INITIAL comment that he first responded to I'd already brought up why I thought Clerith was great, and he was IGNORING that... I knew it would be pointless. There is nothing I could possibly say that would change his mind. There is nothing he could possibly say that would change my mind.

As long as both sides of this war are fully convinced they're right, this war is going to be endless and brutal. And that's why my absolute biggest fear for part 3 is an open, ambiguous ending regarding the ships. Maybe it will canonize nothing. Maybe it will canonize BOTH by having the actual ending change depending on which girl the player favors.

Either route will offer no relief to this eternal battle. I would honestly prefer for Cloti to explicitly and unambiguously win than an ending where neither girl does. Because I can accept a loss. I can accept being told that actually I WAS interpreting the story wrong, but I'll only accept it from the text itself. If anything, a Cloti ending might encourage me to go through the entire compilation again trying to view it with that canon couple in mind. I'm sure I'd see things differently, even if I'd always have a place in my heart for Clerith. And I sincerely hope that if Clerith were to win that Cloti fans could do the same.

All I know is that I'm sick and tired of this ship war. I personally have never gone after Cloti fans or engaged in Cloti content with the intent to debate or hate on the ship. But I don't speak for all Cleriths. I'm sure at least a few fans of my ship are guilty too. I have seen many obnoxious Cloti fans invading our spaces to disparage us - mostly on YouTube and Twitch, less here on Tumblr - but I KNOW there are plenty of kind Cloti fans who just happily enjoy their ship and leave us to ours as well.

At the end of the day, regardless of how part 3 ends things, I just wish we could live in peace. Please enjoy your ship. Your interpretation of the text and romance is valid. But so is mine. If neither side can agree, then the best thing to do is leave each other alone.

[blackbird-brewster]

I was so disappointed when after they went home together the next episode basically just skipped over everything and hardly had Tara even in it! We spend WAY too much time with Garcia and I like her but I’m so over her plot with that guy. Plus all this time with JJ and Emily and it’s cute but Tara gets like 5 mins to be Rossi’s therapist? Ugh. I wish she’d gone to Emily and they’d talked about their issues and maybe JJ joined after. Idk it was just annoying waiting for a week to see what would happen between her and Rebecca only to get nothing. I think they’re either going to be randomly together at the end or they’ll act like it was a one time thing. I really hate that this is where they ended up. They should’ve had them meet at work slowly & slowly fall for each other but that would mean caring about the characters that doesn’t give a shit!

Hey, Anon? I love you. You have no idea how validated I feel by this ask. I seriously feel like I'm the only one who cares about Tara/Rebecca sometimes, which is WILD considering WE HAVE A CANON QUEER SHIP!!!! But a lot of the fandom would rather focus on dissecting every frame of the stoned Jemily chaos, than care about Tara/Rebecca. (Don't get me wrong, I love Jemily -- but I would have much rather had a scene or two of Tebecca than an entire episode of JJ/Emily)

I hate that Rebecca wasn't even in 17x06 after she and Tara went home together in 17x05. LIKE!?!?! WHAT HAPPENED??? I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MY GIRLS!!! And I totally agree, there's been WAY too little Tara the last few eps. I hate that she was solely in 17x06 as Rossi's therapist, like dude, go to fucking therapy and stop milking the women on the team for emotional labour. I'm so tired of Rossi's man-pain bullshit. This whole reboot has been centered around him and Voit and --- FOR WHAT?!

I also agree that the whole Penelope love triangle is annoying af. They've ruined her character and this season she's just been used to be a point on contention between Tyler and Luke. I'm too gay and polyam to care about that bullshit.

Unfortunately, Rebecca isn't in this week's episode either. So once again, we'll have to wait to find out what happened after 17x05. And I suspect, because we don't see her for two episodes, by the time she appears in 17x08 she and Tara will be magically healed and back together. WHY can't we just get them having some adult conversations about everything, huh? WHY can't we get some screen time for these two incredible actors? We've had less than five minutes total of these two in scenes together (without other people in them).

I think in ALL of Season 16, Tebecca only got a total of 13 minutes of screen time. (I calculated it once, can't remember the exact total but it was there abouts)

YET, Will was a main fucking character last season. He was in EVERY fucking episode, went on the jet, went into the field, etc. Like????? (Yes, Rebecca did that this season, but she's still a very background character)

Since the show won't give Tara/Rebecca the storyline they deserve -- I'll do it myself. I'm working on my fifteenth Tebecca fic and I have more ideas on the to-do list.

I love them and it's become my sacred duty to protect this ship from canon fodder.

[maddy-ferguson]

can u expand on the byler vol2 problems

i said ask me to expand and i will and you delivered thank you for that!!! i didn't say byler vol2 problems though i said byler fandom problems post-volume 2!

i think the main thing is overcorrection. i said every major problem but i only meant the things i think of as byler tumblr trends that annoy me personally. tbh🙏 it's subjective. kind of.

i've been rereading posts from after volume 2 recently and yeah it's the "will only ever gets to be sad" to "will deserves a villain arc" kind of pipelines that you saw after volume 2 that i think are still very much happening i'm gonna talk about even though the will villain arc one died down pretty quickly. on this side of the internet anyway. some of these actually aren't volume 2 related sorry i lied i was mostly thinking about the mike stuff when i said that.

mike says i love you to el: everything always ends up being about mike somehow. i think this is the biggest one. people like the mystery and the way mike's sexuality isn't confirmed like will's is and so they analyze him more which leads to people literally rewriting history with takes like mike is more queercoded than will?😭 i get that everyone knows will is gay now but the mike focus has people thinking that will has no subtext when literally his entire storyline is full of the saddest subtext ever!!! but it's not subtext that you can choose to only read as "this boy is gay" so it's not as fun i guess😔 and it really isn't as fun. because it's mostly heartbreaking and awful lmao but yeah. just wanted to give a thumbs down to the mike is more queercoded than will take again.

mlvns say will is a whiny crybaby, bylers say going through what he's had to go through would make anyone cry just as often so will isn't even that sensitive even though he is it's literally one of the first things we learn about him lol. people imply that being sensitive is bad so often and act like will has sensitive gay kid allegations to beat when he literally doesn't like he is a sensitive gay kid😭 why do you think that's bad exactly...🎤

mike says i love you to el: 90% of people think they read everything wrong for 72-96 hours and then everyone's like oh no i get it now. byler's still endgame. overuse of the term media literacy and everyone who doesn't think or simply doesn't believe that the duffers would make byler endgame is stupid and has no media literacy. which actually comes off as very INSECURE!!!! and is frankly annoying. and obnoxious. the term media literacy needs to be taken away from byler tumblr i'm so serious.

will is not a baby just because he's gay look at these two scenes he's actually so mean and most importantly not sensitive (and then he's not even mean in the scene) and he can load a gun could a sensitive baby do that (and then he's literally 12 in the scene so like. i'm sorry but that's a baby to me😕). how dare you imply that he's sensitive, gay, and a kid. i'm kidding about the gay one because no one in this day and age is defending will by saying he's not gay but some of them might as well be because it's the qualities that made people assume he's gay that people try to say he doesn't have. the how dare you infantilize him he can load a gun one is just nonsensical because regardless of how you feel about will with a gun you're definitely meant to be like oh no this poor little kid has to defend himself all alone :( in the moment like him being a kid isn't a bad thing (??/!??,/) it makes you feel for him and is part of what makes what happens to him so awful.

mlvns accuse bylers of hating el and of being raging misogynists: elmike is born. bylers start saying that el will actually be thrilled by the match and might actually set up the guy she spent the first two and a half years of her life out of the lab fixated on who's been her boyfriend for over a year and her newfound brother. because she's so mature and over the petty drama that's a teenage love triangle. which is crazy because i DON'T believe that most bylers are as misogynistic as mlvns make us out to be like i've seen way worse which might be because...the show is actually pointing to mike being gay so it's not made up and no one needs to give el a thousand flaws to justify anything? even though people do blame her for things that i don't know if she should be blamed for but whatever that's a different discussion. i was saying: it's crazy because while i don't think bylers are all awful misogynistic el haters...the girl being so happy and out of the way and not being given the space to feel anything about her (gay) boyfriend not being in love with her is sooo new age 2010s mlm fandom sexism. let el have emotions about her breakup with her gay boyfriend who was the first person she bonded with (who didn't die immediately) after escaping the lab who lied to her about falling in love with her at first sight 2k25‼️

everything about babygirl mike and buff byers? let's not get into the whole buff byers debate i hate it with a passion. but it's like. people want mike to be taken down a peg. mike says i love you to el with will's sad little face in the background and people want mike to have to beg for forgiveness. which i get because as i was saying the other day, "i feel like my life started 24 hours after you were taken to the upside down and were traumatized forever because i met this girl who's replaced you in every way that matters, will" is hard to get over. but idk. people are so weird about mike being lame and loving will and about will barely caring about him in return and about the loserification of mike wheeler because yes mike is a loser but only in the sense that the whole party is!!! and that's something that gets lost when he's made to be below them and below will specifically because people feel like he has all the power in the relationship right now and will's at his mercy. which is something they don't like. like it's okay they're both miserable actually. rejoice! post-volume 2 mike needs to have fallen first and he needs to have fallen harder because if the only thing will gets at the end of everything is a boyfriend who loves him only as much as will loves him it's not good enough even though that's all he's not letting himself hope he'll ever have.

[tleeaves]

Fanfic tropes

Thank you for the tag, @writing-for-life! It took me so long to get around to this.

Rules: How much do these tropes affect your decision to click on a fic?

• -10 -> very dissuaded

• 0 - don't care either way

• 10 -> very enticed

• nope -> if it's a hard no and you'd never click on a fic with that tag or or you even have the tag blocked or you'd insta click out of the fic if it wasn't tagged

Bonus points for explaining the rating and whether it's conditional.

Age Gap: -6 It very much depends on the kind of age gap we're talking about, though I get uncomfortable when it's about teenage characters more than one year apart. As two adults? Perfectly fine, so long as you're not counting an 18/19 year old as an adult in the dynamic with some 30 year old, sorry. There's a level.

Codependency: -5 Tends to make me uncomfortable. The real-life experience of it has soured a lot of romanticism that goes on around it for me. As before, there are levels and lines associated with it. Depends. But generally, I don't like it. There are healthier ways to write about people who don't want to lose each other.

Enemies to lovers: 10 ...shut up. So what if it's my favourite trope SO WHAT? When done right, it is just beautiful, wonderful, delicious, fantastic. I tend to write enemies to lovers adjacent tropes in a lot of my works. I'm obsessed with the kind of chemistry it creates, the tension, the drama. Of course, there's also a healthy way to do it, and then downright red flag type toxicity. Be careful.

Enemies With Benefits: 4 Can be a delicious slice of drama and spice when done right.

Fake Dating/Relationship: 5 I didn't care much for it for a while, but it's grown on me. When done well, it is almost as fun as enemies to lovers.

Found Family: 7 Really enjoy this trope, though it tends to get repetitive in ways its done. My favourites are from canon really and not fanfic, but I won't click away if I see it in the tags - most likely I'd be curious to see how the author chose to do it.

Friends to Lovers: 0 Don't really care. Don't love it or hate it. Sort of bland, depending on how you write it.

Friends with Benefits: 0 Also don't care much for it but I'm not dissuaded or encouraged necessarily.

Hurt/Comfort: 3 It depends. I like writing hurt/comfort but it's always a coin toss when it's in fanfic. I more like writing angst and comforting scenes than I do reading them, weirdly.

Love Triangle: -4 I'm so tired of it because one character is always clearly the better option (to me) and it's frustrating either watching the character in the middle be an idiot who can't decide over what should be an easy choice or pick the wrong love interest entirely. And then if it's a proper triangle where someone likes someone else? Boring and frustrating. Have a threesome about it.

Mistaken/Hidden Identity: 10 Fucking delicious. Give me more. I want more fics with this.

Monster Fu... Relationship: 0 Don't care much, I don't really have cause to come across anything with it?? None of my fandoms really have monster characters to fuck so... unless you count werewolves? Kinda feels too much like bestiality there, sorry. If it's human/animal-aligned then it's more of a "nope" if it goes into sexual territory.

Obsession, Possessiveness, etc.: -10 NOPE. I'M GONE. I'M OUT. I can give some fics passes if it's a more low-key, but it very rarely is.

Opposites (like grumpy x sunshine, etc): 1 Depends. I like opposites, but it's difficult to make it feel believable in fanfic sometimes. Cute in theory. Execution tends to be a bit off. Plus, I don't like it when it's too surface-level sunshine and grumpy etc.

Poly: 0 Also depends. I don't care too much. If I think the dynamic of characters is good, I'm completely fine with it and will even enjoy it. Rare though. I haven't seen a lot of these.

Pregnancy: -5 BUT it also depends. Highly conditional. Highly. I need it done well and without cliches.

Second Chance: 5 I actually quite like this when the circumstances are good e.g. a lot of time has passed and whatever incident that took them apart was not too bad, or genuine changes have occurred, or there was a misunderstanding etc.

Sex to Feelings: 2 Kinda tasty, not gonna lie. I don't mind it.

Slowburn: 10 TAKE MY MONEY. SLOWBURNS FOR THE WIN. THIS IS CRUCIAL. ESPECIALLY WITH ENEMIES TO LOVERS OR RIVALS TO LOVERS, IF IT'S NOT SLOWBURN WTF ARE YOU DOING.

Soulmates: -10 Bye. See you on the other side of the delulu spectrum.

Tagging: @faithfromanewperspective, @ibrushmyteeth-donttellanyone, @zoyalannister, @manawari, @stabbydragon, @sourlemons262, @griddle-cakes. Tagged you either because I know you're a fanfic writer or because I think you'd enjoy this (or both). No pressure to do it though, loves <3

[bookishfeylin]

I saw someone say SJM had always planned on Feysand endgame, but that isn’t true. When she admitted to scrapping what she’d written of the second and third, she said in another interview that she had to add Rhys in earlier than she originally intended. That I remember, she didn’t specify if it was that he didn’t appear until the second or third book, but I do remember her saying he was supposed to be the villain and that she loved writing him so much, he was literally the reason she scrapped what she had planned.

I don’t know if he was the villain over Amarantha and Amarantha was just added in because she had decided to switch the endgame (which given the context of ACOTAR and all the plot holes and the fact that SJM said the first book was relatively unchanged from when she first wrote it during the editing stage, only to add some stuff in, makes more sense than Amarantha being the villain; a good example being the head on the spike having the NC’s insignia rather than Amarantha’s, but there’s obviously more that supports this) or if he was the villain after Amarantha. SJM never specified, but she made it clear he was the villain and there would’ve been a love triangle. The admission of adding Rhys in earlier and rewriting the books for him implies Feylin would’ve been endgame in the original version she wrote.

I've seen a few people who have been in the ACOTAR fandom since the books came out or who were in the ACOTAR fandom way back when say this and even reference old newsletters about the originally written trilogy that was scrapped (@editoress and @soartfullydone I'm calling you two in here), and the fact that everyone seems to remember the same thing (and Sarah doing this exact same thing in Throne of Glass) suggests to me that this was... very real. But most of the old newsletters about this that other people linked have since been deleted, and I can't find any old interviews about this. If any of you three remember the specific interview or newsletter where Sarah said this PLEASE let me know.

But yes, Rhysand's scenes in ACOTAR are bizarre in that he isn't really... pivotal. At all. Cut him out and the plot is almost seamless. Get rid of the stars on the dresser, have Lucien rescue Feyre on Calanmai, make the attor be the one that threatens Feyre and causes Tamlin to let her go, and cut Rhysand from UTM ENTIRELY and the plot still flows perfectly fine. It truly does read like he was a last minute add in, because he just does not affect the plot at all.

And, for anyone who may or may not be hate reading my blog, I want to say that ship changes are FINE. It's FINE to change endgames and whatnot! But the minute you try to discuss a dark topic like abuse, you HAVE to write with the care such a theme deserves. The minute she decided to have Tamlin be abusive and make Rhysand the healthy endgame love interest, drastic changes needed to occur in ACOTAR, not minor interjections of Rhysand's character here and there doing morally dubious actions. But Sarah chose not to, and reading ACOTAR alone, Tamlin is by far the healthier love interest with the lack of, uh, drugging and molestation and mindrape and whatnot. Sarah superimposed a story about abuse and redflags on an already-written fantasy story that worked on fantasy morals, and the longer it goes on, the more this series falls apart because of it.

[christian-fujoshi]

A, K, N, W, X (for that fandom ask game)

A. Ships that you currently like a lot.

Recently a friend got me into Xenoblade Chronicles and so I've been rotating a Reyn/Shulk/Alvis love triangle in my brain...I just think that little white-haired twink was born to be a total homewrecker, idk lol! I played the sequel first and while I don't hate the canon straight ship (really! I actually think it's pretty decent) I also really liked some of the yuri bait scenes between Pyra and Nia...to the point that I am Picturing an AU in which Nia becomes Pyra's driver instead of Rex (however I am not so obsessed with the game that I could write it myself). Otherwise I haven't had a ton of ships on the brain lately (but Valjean/Javert will always have my heart)

K. What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

Ange Ushiromiya...she's just like me fr. Outstanding arc. Outstanding character. Basically the core of Umineko's themes despite not showing up until episode 4. She's everything. Close second goes to Reimu Hakurei for being a Grouchy McGrouchypants who everyone nevertheless cares for deeply. She didn't find a family, the family found her (despite her best efforts).

N. Name three things you wish you saw more of in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).

We need more BL. We always need more BL. If the cast is entirely female then genderbend your ship and now you have BL. XC2's biggest flaw is its lack of viable BL in its party. XC1's biggest flaw is Fiora existing and impeding my Reyn/Shulk/Alvis love triangle (not to be a 2000s anime fan about it but to be a 2000s anime fan about it).

W. A trope you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.

Honestly nothing really comes to mind here? I believe tropes are what you make of them and I think I have more issues with people's Takes on tropes than I do with tropes themselves ("enemies to lovers is weird and abusive" and its cousin "enemies to lovers is weird and abusive if straight" being some of my least favorites). X. A trope you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

Enemies to lovers. Enemies to lovers. Enemies to lovers. Oh my gosh my brain is going to explode. Look if you're shipping enemies to lovers there's probably some level of narrative foiling going on there that is just so thematically and psychologically rich that it is going to drive me feral (yes this is about Valjean/Javert)

[adelle-ein]

lace's xenoblade 3 review/thoughts

So I finished Xenoblade 3's main story. I'm far from done with the game, but I did all the main character side stories and a lot of side quests, and I do have all the heroes. Most of them aren't ascended yet, and I have many other misc sidequests and places to explore on my list, but I'm going to be doing that here on out while enjoying the post game perks.

Overall it was really good despite some glaring issues. Spoilers, obviously!

Just to make thing clear: I have only played Xenoblade 1. 2's character designs, weird-ass grooming love triangle, treatment of women, fanservice, and obsession with sex and dirty jokes are such massive turn-offs that I refuse to pay money for it. If someone would like to give me a copy of 2 as well as the money for its allegedly amazing DLC then I'll play it, but that's literally the only circumstances I can see that happening in. Also, to be totally honest, the fandom tendency to bully and harass people who don't like 2 has ruined any interest I might have otherwise had. I am generally familiar with 2's lore and how it connects to 1, though, having read up on it while deciding whether to play 2 and in advance of playing 3 -  no expert, but I do know stuff.

My biggest issues with Xenoblade 1 were that a) it didn't seem to like its main cast very much and b) it absolutely hated women to a frankly comedic extent. 1 literally is just The Shulk Game, periodically featuring Melia and Dunban. Every significant scene, major moment, iconic line, act of bravery comes from Shulk. Every characters' thoughts, feelings, and motivations revolve entirely around Shulk. Every woman revolves around her love interest (who, uh, is generally Shulk.) Reyn effectively vanishes by midgame, Sharla really served no purpose in the plot whatsoever and was largely there to be a love triangle point, Dunban is pretty much just a mentor, and while Melia gets a lot of plot focus and characterization, it ultimately amounts to a lot of suffering and minimal payoff (slightly rectified in Future Connected.) But it could be worse - Fiora, despite all her setup as Shulk's foil, despite her arc setup about disability and mortality and a literal god in her chest, is nothing more than a love interest, who has no motivation beyond being at his side, who at the pivotal motivation-stating moment has nothing more to say than "Shulk!" And of course there's also Riki, who is literally just a comic relief character and is unceremoniously written out of the game every time a cutscene gets emotional or plot-significant (only to reappear shortly after asking for food at inappropriate moments.) If it weren't for the Heart-to-Heart unvoiced text convos — which take for-fucking-ever to unlock — that would literally be all there is to these characters, and even within the Heart-to-Hearts, there isn't that much to go on. Ultimately, I enjoyed 1 a lot more for its gameplay and potential than anything else. To me, a story that doesn't care about its characters is pretty much never an enjoyable one.

Long story short, Xenoblade and I have a tenuous relationship. I pretty much exclusively play turn-based games due to a variety of disabilities. Xenoblade's combat, however, is forgiving enough on easy mode that I can get by thanks to auto-attacks and not relying on button mashing, so it's pretty much the only one of its kind that I've ever played. I'm including all this context to make it clear going in that I do not consider myself a Xenoblade fan, or hardcore player, by any stretch of the imagination.

My point here is that 3 absolutely blew me out of the water. 3 loves its characters. It adores its characters. It wants the absolute best for its characters. Which, uh…is sometimes an impediment, but most of the time it's great. Every cast member actually plays a role, gets an arc, gets backstory and development, and most importantly of all, they maintain a consistent web of friendships that have nothing to do with Noah. Every duo of characters gets some kind of cute interaction once in awhile, even combos like Eunie and Mio that don't hang out much, and it not only makes things feel organic, it prevents both love-interest-trap and the Shulk Obsession effects that 1 suffered from. Everyone gets a side story, everyone gets big boss fights, everyone gets a big piece of the screentime pie even though Noah is the main focus, and it's the high point of the game. The characters are all, genuinely, really good — Eunie and Taion are far and away my favorites (duh…) but they all overall feel well fleshed out and well loved. Noah definitely gets preachy towards the end, but he doesn't get every single good one-liner the way Shulk did.

Sena, unfortunately, is the only real exception to this rule. The poor girl starts and ends the game as Mio's cute accessory that she sometimes lends to Lanz. While she still gets way more character work than, say, Sharla, and isn't reduced to a love interest, her ascension quest has absolutely nothing to do with her and her "development" makes  no impact on her behavior for the rest of the game. Taion changes visibly as a person after the events at Colony Lambda, but while Sena says a few things about being true to herself, every subsequent story scene still has her using her perky, happy-go-lucky persona and being Mio's hype girl. The writers clearly had an idea in mind for her, but really fell down in executing it. This shines in Mio's side story — apparently Miyabi also saved Sena before her death, and yet Sena has never really seemed affected by this the way Mio is. It's never even mentioned before this side story that Sena had any involvement in Colony Omega. I have no idea what went wrong with writing Sena, but it's pretty sad, honestly. All that being said, it's really not THAT bad — it just sticks out compared to how the other five are treated. More of a "five great, one mediocre" type situation, you know?

Honestly, gameplay is great. The combat is insanely confusing and overcomplicated and everyone is yelling constantly but like. That's a given. Xenoblade. If I hadn't played 1 I probably would have just had no idea what to do, but I was able to fumble through despite getting bombarded with "tips" such as "Celestial Arts are special Arts triggered by filling up the Star Gauge and properly timing your Moon Attacks. By triggering a Punch -> Fly -> Burst -> Shine combo, you can turn off the enemy's Rage Meter and Shatter them, thereby executing a Shattershimmer attack. Try it for yourself! Also half those moves don't actually work on most bosses, but we won't tell you that." That gives you an idea of how every single "helpful tip" that pops up in Xenoblade feels to me. Again, though — a lot of this is on me. I don't have the processing skills or memory to be Good At Xenoblade, and easy mode negates the need to know most of this anyway, but man is it silly sometimes. I have some nitpicks about smaller stuff, like how the class unlock system works (luckily the postgame options render this effectively obsolete, whee!) and steering the boats (sound of me getting stuck on a stray monster and crashing sideways into an island.) But the exploration is so much fun and the sidequests are a lot more engaging than 1, and that's what really matters to me in Xenoblade gameplay.

Plotwise, things really do just drop off after the chapter 6 opening. Everyone said so and I was skeptical. I am no longer skeptical. Not sure the writers had any idea what they were doing beyond that point. It's not as bad as some (TEAM ASANO) but it sort of feels like they might have run out of time a little — the last dungeon really just feels like padding, X and Y don't even get death cutscenes, and Z feels unfinished. The basic concept of Z being the personification of everyone's fear and inertia works really well, but — and I can't believe I'm saying this — it wasn't as well executed as the similar final boss in Persona 5. Just not enough time spent on Origin and what its whole deal is, and things stayed a bit too Noah-centric at the end for my tastes. Also that final boss needed to have skip options in the cutscenes, if I hadn't cleared it my first try I would have cried from sheer fatigue lol. I also think the "side stories" are pretty meh, with only Taion's and Lanz's really working for me — I actually quite liked Sena's, but it isn't remotely about Sena and really should have been just a Ghondor quest. Eunie's felt purposeless, Mio's just absolutely destroyed the very concept of death in the entire game, and Noah's was…terrible.

And this brings me to my biggest plot complaint: death has become absolutely meaningless. The rebirth thing, I could get behind. The execution of Taion's side story, for example — while Nimue is drawn to and admires Taion for the same qualities that led to her past self mentoring him, she never regains her memories, and things will never actually be the same again. But that's okay, because she gets to live her own new life now. That can work for me. I can get behind that. Similarly, Eunie found her old husk and remembered her previous death, but she doesn't gain all the life experience and memories of that version or anything, just lives with the burden of a trauma she didn't experience. Moebius recruits gain memories of all their past lives, but they also become evil and warped under the weight of repeated bitterness and loss. All of these approaches worked. Not perfectly, but they worked for me. And then Miyabi shows up and just ruins everything. She's the age she was when she died, she retains all of her memories, she's exactly as she was. She might as well have never died at all. So…what's the point? That sacrifice that shaped Mio's life and outlook — it was pointless, in the end. Miyabi gave nothing up to save Mio (and Sena.) So it wasn't even a sacrifice. These aren't as bad but: Why is goddamn MWAMBA back, that's the silliest thing in the world, he's the Tutorial Party Member and those should never come back (unless you do something cool a la Fiora, and that sure wasn't the case with him.) His Agnus equivalent from Mio's squad whose name I don't even know is back. Cammuravi is back, and while he seems to be retaining his amnesia, he acts exactly the same, he's back to his previous age, and he's ~naturally drawn~ to Ethel (which…their relationship wasn't explicitly romantic or anything but I do feel a little weird about him hanging out with her as a child in this life when they were equals and the same age with some romantic subtext in the past one…) I do know however that some future quest will age Ethel back up, but that was all very weird. I don't think anyone should be coming back at the age they were previously, but even if we're doing that, they DEFINITELY shouldn't be regaining their memories.

In a game that's literally supposed to be about life and death, the value of each cycle, of each life no matter how temporary, where the characters repeatedly insist that each of their lives have value no matter how many times they're reborn — "death" becomes less than a slap on the wrist. I also don't know why Nia revived — probably just a 2 reference, as I understand from the wiki, and if so that's totally fine, but the timing of that after Mio's side story just blew the concept of death off a cliff was really not ideal. Would have been better to have her not awaken until after D was killed, as it just adds to all the resurrection in Mio's story and makes things feel very silly and death extremely cheap. The one good thing is that so far Miyabi seems to be the only cartoonishly bad no-consequences-at-all example, but that could change in other side quests, and frankly, once is bad enough when the game's themes so heavily revolve around the value of life and death.

Moebius is insanely hammy. It got old really fast, and then got funny again when I realized that literally every single one of them is like that. There's a certain refuge in audacity there, imo. They're just all complete weirdos who won't stop chewing the scenery, I can respect that. Although D's "true identity" being treated as a big reveal ("wow! You're a serial killer that has literally never been mentioned in this game before!!") was pretty ridiculous. Also kinda disappointed that we didn't get E, T, L, and S alongside N and M…while it makes sense, and the implication is that this is the first life in which these six got together, I wanted evil Eunie :( N is kinda hilariously pathetic, which may not have been the intention. I got off so many daze->bursts on him during his last battle and he was just bouncing around like a fucked up plinko horse it was goddamn hilarious. Also his armor has a booty window. I can't take this guy seriously. The big M/Mio reveal is really well handled and great, though, and the absolute peak of the plot. I just laughed at N a little during it. Can you really blame me.

I will also say that M/N's story did, personally for me, ruin the idea of Noah/Mio as a romantic couple — seeing a version of them that reached the peak of codependency to the point of genocide taints every version of them. Even though the versions we play as can reach acceptance and part for the greater good, it's hard not to think of N and M and their arc. Again, that's for me — not judging people who do love the couple or anything, I'm just a little repulsed by them together now :') I will also say that while some of the "life cycle"/"yay babies" stuff feels a bit hamfisted, it's really not too bad, especially with the focus being more on babies and life than "everyone's purpose is to make babies." And the language seemed surprisingly non-heterosexual (I'm so glad that Lanz/Sena stayed platonic.) The game sort of glosses over N and M (or some other version of them, but I got the impression that was them)'s teen pregnancy as well as Monica's (Ghondor is 18 while Monica is 33 — easy to miss but Monica was a teen mom) and I do feel weird about that. Not the end of the world but the material sometimes teeters on the edge of…not so great?

Side note: Now that I think about it, why are Nopon entirely outside the cycle and just living their merry lives completely consequence free in whatever parts of the world they want. Why was there no Moebius nopon i am so disappointed. Not to mention they keep inventing shit that just completely shatters all of Z's plans. Nopon are canonically more powerful than Moebius this is a very funny concept to me

All of this being said, the ending itself actually works okay for me. I always have mixed feelings about "but then it never happened!" type endings, I always prefer "let's rebuild the world with the tools we have." I don't like it when "bad/flawed/noncanon" timelines get erased without a trace and become meaningless. This is why my favorite time travel game is Radiant Historia. Have I mentioned I fucking loathe act 3 of Dragon Quest XI, to this day have refused to play it, and actually regret buying it at all solely thanks to act 3's existence? It's a MASSIVE pet peeve. Anyway, the ending narrowly subverted pissing me off — it manages to stay bittersweet by treating the Agnus/Keves separation as a consequence of restarting the world. You could argue that the ongoing "oh, they'll meet again somehow" reassurances ruin this, but to me it just barely manages to work. It might, admittedly, undermine some of the messages about moving on and forward and avoiding the endless now — but I think it's okay, in the end. Even if baby Noah runs into that alley and immediately trips over baby Mio and they get every single memory back, I think the ending as a whole is well-constructed enough that it can work. It wasn't a huge, universal retcon — either the effects of what happened will linger (they'll regain their memories and have to live with that knowledge) or the consequences of their choice will (they'll never meet again, or they'll meet but not remember) and that ultimately works for me. Subjective, though, and I get why some are disappointed with it in one way or another -- I would also have personally preferred a "rebuilding the world together without any Flame Clocks" ending. It's better than "Fiora's just all better and a Homs again with no lingering effects at all" or "Pyra and Mythra just are alive and have separate bodies bc Reasons now" though. *JKR voice* You solved it, Ginny was perfectly happy again!

The characters are what really carry this game's writing as opposed to the plot, and that's generally okay with me. Really, my big outstanding complaints are the death thing, mostly as it applies to Miyabi, and that things are a real slog in the final fetch quest and then dungeon, with that classic "padding an already too long JRPG" vibe. Seriously, I finished at 62 hours as a fast reader with a whole ton of side content left to do — that dungeon could have been ¼ of the length and equally effective, guys. Why.

Miscellaneous commentary — the VA work is great/terrible in exactly the ways I wanted it to be, Nia and Melia's new designs are great (and Melia's really suits how her VA's voice has changed, which is a strong improvement over Future Connected - not anyone's fault, just a weird side effect of things being recorded a decade apart. Getting to properly see and hear adult Melia really feels like it fixes up those issues though.) The Nopon are way cuter than they've ever been, fluffy and big-eyed, and their speech is definitely my favorite from the three games (toning down the mehmehmeh was a very good call, especially since this world is supposed to be a mix of 1 and 2.) Giving Riku that extremely deep voice in the English dub is a hilarious choice and I have endless respect for them for that. The main cast all sounds great, Sena being an American stereotype is so funny, Noah's VA handled his multiple roles really well, and Eunie was just hilarious at all times. Seriously I adore her. Music sounded great, but I was mostly listening through switch speakers so that obviously affected the quality a lot — it sounds way better when I listened on the PC through headphones though so I'm slowly making my way through. Should have won at the game awards but we all knew it wouldn't lbr :') The character models are great and this is definitely my favorite artstyle from any of the Xenoblades — everyone is a LOT more expressive than 1 but not, well, ugly like in 2. Much more facial feature diversity too which is sorely appreciated. Jiggle physics were kind of ridiculous (Mio should not have those!! She's like a b cup!!! why) but at least the outfits and angles weren't too wild, and Monica is the only one who looks outright cartoonish proportions-wise imo. I really enjoy the class system and getting to do wild/fun stuff with it, but I also like that significant cutscenes have everyone using their "traditional" weapons — it strikes a nice balance between gameplay and character fun for me. In general all the fight cutscenes were really well choreographed and lively, with lots of cool touches that made them actually worth watching -- stuff like Lanz blocking a huge long hit while Eunie and Taion use an ongoing sustained heal to keep him alive longer, it's neat.

Also That Photo is so dumb and so poorly timed but hey that's why i'm not playing 2

Anyway, yeah, I have my gripes but it's overall a really good and heartfelt game that feels like a lot of love was put into it! Really good! I…will still be avoiding the larger xenoblade fandom bc What The Hell Is Going On In There. eunie's the boss. why is this so long i just wanted to write a few paragraphs not the fucking iliad sobs

[mannatea]

Predictably asking for Symphonia for the fandom meme!

I stan. 🙏

the first character i ever fell in love with: Raine. Even as a teenager she was my favorite and I loved her immediately.

a character that i used to love/like, but now do not: I actually think I used to really like Zelos and found him hilarious when I was a teenager myself, and now I'm like 😨 about half of what he does and says. Yikes, bro. It actually makes me wonder how differently he would be written if the game was coming out for the first time now, because a lot of the stuff in the game just would NEVER fly these days.

a ship that i used to love/like, but now do not: Ah. Behold, my personal cringe: I used to ship Kratos/Raine. It didn't last very long because my fellow shippers in 2004 made me abandon ship entirely & do a heelturn toward my current OTP out of pure spite. If I'm being honest I was only shipping it because they were the only two adults in the party for a while, anyway, so it wasn't a serious attachment. 🙄 But like, it should be noted that this happened while I was in the middle of writing a love triangle fic. (My other personal cringe, shh.)

my ultimate favorite character™: RAINE, MY BELOVED. 🤍 I literally love every single thing about her.

prettiest character: You thought I was going to say Raine didn't you? WRONG. It's Yuan, actually. Look at him.

my most hated character: RODYLE. He's just so hateful.

my OTP: Regal/Raine. I will die on this hill, actually. (And have been quietly since late 2004.) This is the only ship I just won't compromise on. What can I say about it? Their dynamic just hits on a lot of notes that work exceedingly well for me personally. I won't write a manifesto here (you may thank me for holding back for your benefit) but I love both of them so much and think their personalities balance one another out incredibly well, which is a lot of fun to write.

my NOTP: Basically any Raine ship that isn't my OTP is a NOTP for me, though I do have two in particular I would consider NOTPs. IYKYK.

favorite episode skit: The My Sister skit. IT GETS ME EVERY TIME.

saddest death: Marble. SHE'S AN OLD WOMAN. PLEASE.

favorite season side plot/scene: Virginia, honestly. It messes me up every time. The doll haunts me to this day. Also, that they so INTENTIONALLY made Raine look exactly like her. Poor Raine just can't escape. And the trauma?? AHHHH.

least favorite season side plot/scene: That buffoonish Peeping Tom thing at the hot springs. I wanted more meaningful conversation with my girls and I had to deal with that instead. NO WAIT I HATE THE SCENE IN SYBAK LOOKING FOR THE LITTLE BOY'S MOM SO MUCH MORE. ZELOS'S BOOTSTRAPS SPEECH WAS THE WORST THING I HAVE EVER HAD THE MISFORTUNE OF READING, not because it wasn't 100% in character for him (HILARIOUSLY IT IS VERY IN CHARACTER 🤣) but because I feel like nobody else in the scene was written in a believable way—not Regal, not Colette, and not Lloyd. WTF WAS THAT SCENE?

character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but i hate am lukewarm about: Hate is a strong word here so I toned it down. I feel very lukewarm about Kratos. In fact, I'd go so far as to say his potential was a bit wasted just because they didn't bother to do enough with him.

my ‘you’re a piece of trash, but you’re still a fave well-liked’ fave: This is a hard one, because the trash characters are still trash to me. I'll maybe go with Kate or George for this. They both did terrible things but I still find them interesting and compelling as characters.

my ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave: Colette, always. Also? Presea.

my ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship: I don't have one because you'll never see me shipping something like this. It's not my cuppa.

my ‘they’re kind of cute, and i lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship: This is a hard one. Maybe Genis/Presea for this? I think they are good for one another but they're both too young BY A LOT to really be thinking that deeply about things. However, their respect for one another and their compassion/understanding of what the other has been through could lead to something nice later in life. I'm not over those adorable skits where Genis asks for advice from others on what present to get for her and they all collectively give him the worst advice imaginable and he ends up buying her a whetstone because he KNOWS HER AS A PERSON and she LOVES THE GIFT. This is what peak performance looks like in a person, actually.

Thanks! ♥

[firelxdykatara]

Let me start by saying I've never watched Legend of Korra. like, the most I've watched was any bending scenes/fights and all the Zuko and Toph clips (admittedly, I didn't watch any of the Katara clips because..well..honestly I didn't want to see her be so meek). But I've always felt kinda...bad for liking Mako since the few posts I did read made it seem like both Korra and Asami were better off without him and I didn't want to accidentally fall into the category of sympathising with a man who didn't treat women right. Even when I watched what few clips he was in -Mako seemed a little serious but not anything bad- I thought it was just because I didn't see enough of him to see why he was so bad for Korra and Asami.

And then I read your post on Mako and how he had to do anything and everything to take care of Bolin and my heart kinda broke. I don't know if this is right, but it kinda feels like Mako is being treated a bit like Katara's being treated. Like, they both fit the sibling-turned-parental-figure roles and some of the fandom seems like they can't accept that both are still teenagers who...well, still act like teenagers. seriously, I'm gonna be mad if I ever see another 'take' about how Katara is bad for acting more teenager than mother 😤. And the parallels between the non-con kisses that their respective Avatars gave them, with both Mako and Katara shouldering the blame (though in Katara's case it's more of a "she's supposed to like it! She's the Avatar's girl uwu") . It just rubs me the wrong way how neither of them get any slack for acting less than amazing when they both spent years carrying their trauma and shielding their siblings from that same hurt.

Sorry if this is bothering you or if it doesn't make sense; I'm just kinda fed up of seeing people side with the Avatar no matter what the situation was, especially when Korra and Aang were actually in the wrong *coughnon-conkisscough*

You're not bothering me at all, don't worry!

Honestly all of this makes a ton of sense, someone who's never seen the show and only has fandom's word to go on could be excused for thinking Mako's a fuckboy who was intentionally leading the girls on rather than a kid who'd been raising his baby brother alone on the streets since he was eight years old and maybe not the best at navigating personal relationships and didn't know how to deal with the fact that he had feelings for two incredible girls at the same time. That shit's hard to deal with even when you have parents and had a happy and comfortable life and are just in high school trying to get through the day, but you throw that in the mix with 'became a parent at eight years old' and 'struggled to get enough to feed his brother, nevermind himself, while they lived on the streets' and then everything that happened during the series, and it's like, cut this kid some slack maybe????

Also the comparisons with the way the fandom treats Katara are also spot on. Obviously in Katara's case there's also an added element of racialized misogyny, because she's a dark-skinned girl and the only dark-skinned girl in the main cast, so that gets added to the fact that she was also the gaang's 'mom friend' and you get fans unironically calling her a 'bitch' for -checks notes- getting reasonably upset after being pushed to her limit and losing her cool--but in Mako's case, he actually fills the same niche in the krew that Katara did in the gaang, and he gets a lot of the same treatment, which I think winds up coming at him from the opposite side of the fence so to speak. Because he's a boy, he automatically gets the blame for anything that goes wrong with the love triangle--up to and including the avatar violating his boundaries and kissing him without his consent--because Korra and especially Asami are precious girls and could do no wrong.

And the thing is that it gets kinda complicated because Korra did also get a lot of racialized misogyny flung at her by the racist&misogynistic dudebros of the fanbase who hated that a brown girl was now the avatar, but that wound up overshadowing the very real and reasonable criticisms that can be made of her character and her behavior. Especially in Book 2, where she gets angry enough at Mako for -checks notes- doing his job and not wanting to jump to conclusions that she TRASHES HIS OFFICE!!!!! IN A FIT OF RAGE!!!!!! (which of course Mako gets blamed for and a lot of fans will frame that as Korra getting 'reasonably upset' which lol no)--and the fact that this occurs in the same season as Bolin getting trapped in an explicitly toxic and abusive relationship with a Water Tribe girl (who happens to be Korra's cousin) that is played for laughs the entire fucking time makes me think that Bryke just have very troubling ideas about how it's ok for women to treat their significant others, particularly if they happen to be men.

(Although let it not be said that they didn't write toxic relationships from the other side, Varrick spends the entire series mistreating Zhu Li and then at the end he decides he's in love with her and they get married [in a very Western ceremony, incidentally], and nothing is ever mentioned of the awful way he treated her for the entire show.)

So yeah like, it really, really bothers me that Katara and Mako share similar niches in their respective teams and both of them get a whole lot of untoward hatred for -checks notes- being teenagers and having feelings and sometimes expressing them. They both deserve so much better from their respective fanbases, and I think the biggest reason Katara has a bigger and more devoted defense squad is because atla is still pretty widely regarded as the best installment of the franchise and a lot of people just don't care to even watch lok. The bulk of the lok fanbase is anti Mako and it's hard to maintain any resilience as a fandom in the face of that lmao.

But I'm always happy to talk about how much I love him and if I can only turn the tide one anon at a time then that's ok.

[otp-armada]

If Jason wanted to convince me that Lxa was the love of Clarke's life, he wouldn't have killed her off, effectively cutting their love story permanently, with 4.5 seasons left of the show. Their arc, starting with their introduction in 2x07 and concluding with L's death in 3x07, is 17 episodes long, accounting for 17% of the entire narrative. If I generously add 3x16 to the count, an episode in which L is already dead in the corporeal world Clarke is trying to return to, it's a whopping, grand total of 18%. An 18% congruous with Clarke's intense connection to Bellamy and vice versa, which even A.lycia confirmed as romantic. Feelings romantic enough to spur the formation of a love triangle. An 18% ignoring Clarke's ultimate choice to go back to her people when L wanted her to stay.

CL is a chapter in the story begun and wrapped up in the first half of the narrative. And that's omitting further illumination on the finer details making CL so problematic for Clarke. Do you expect me to believe it was coincidental for CL to occur at a time when Clarke was spiraling down a dark path, commencing with Finn's death? Who played a hand in forcing Clarke's own hand, with Finn, and TonDC, and Mount Weather? Whose example inspired her to ensnare herself in armor and warpaint to be strong enough to save her people? Whose behavior did she emulate in the pushing away of support from her people? Who gave her a place to continue hiding from Bellamy, her mom, and her friends? A place to be someone other than Clarke Griffin? In lieu of facing her fears like the heroine she is? The purpose of CL wasn't to provide Clarke with a magnificent, fairy tale romance gone tragically wrong. I believe Jason's intent with the relationship aimed to further damage Clarke's psyche after L's death, to solidify the belief that her love is not only deadly to its recipients but renders her too weak to do what must be done for survival.

After 3x16, CL is an often superfluous namedrop or two per season for Clarke to briefly react to before carrying on with the plot. Season 5 aside, most of these references are needless enough to be able to interpret them as attempts at reparations for the L/CL fandom's benefit -and their views- without altering the course of the story. Crazy me for thinking it's not enough to constitute an ongoing love story. Crazy me for not thinking this was on par with interactions between living characters. Crazy me for thinking it doesn't befit a love story for the protagonist.

This sliver of the story is what Jason and the CLs would have us unquestionably believe is the pervasive love story of The 100's seven seasons?

Despite his lie and the constant gaslighting from the pineapple CLs, some of us know how to decipher what a temporary love interest is. Lxa? I think you know where I'm heading with this.

I'll acknowledge my admittedly negative appraisal of CL as someone who recognizes its value to the LGBT+ community and treats it as valid while not caring for L/CL on a narrative level. I felt, when swayed by L's influence, Clarke became the antithesis of what I found admirable about her. I resented Clarke's acquiescence of her power to the commander. I wanted nothing more than to remove the wedge L had driven between Clarke and Bellamy.

Let me try to give L/CL the benefit of the doubt for a minute. I don't hold L as responsible for Clarke's choices, but I recognize the prominent role she played in their upbringing. The push and pull was an intriguing aspect of their dynamic, as was the chance to meet a manifestation of who Clarke might have been if she was all head, no heart. Her fall from grace was arguably necessary for her to be a fully-rounded character, not a Mary Sue. It wouldn't be realistic for the protagonist of a tragic story about a brutal world to be a pure cinnamon roll. When forgiveness is an innate theme with Clarke, it would be my bias at work if I was content with her applying it to everyone but Lxa. Clarke saw enough commonalities between her and L to identify with the latter. When she extended forgiveness to L, I believe it was her way of taking the first step on the path to making peace with herself by proxy. None of this means I wanted them paired up. At best, I made my peace with seeing the relationship through to its eventual end. In time for L's death, ironically. My passivity about them notwithstanding, my conclusions are, however, supported by canon.

If I may submit a Doylist reason for romantic CL? Jason knew he had a massive subfandom itching to see them coupled, thereby boosting ratings and generating media buzz. A Watsonian reason? Without relevance, I think L would have been another Anya to Clarke. Grapple shortly with the unfair taking of a life right as they choose to steer towards unity, melancholy giving way to the inconvenience of the loss of a potential, powerful political ally. Romance ensured her arc with L would have the designated impact on Clarke's character moving forward in the next act.

For a show not about relationships, Jason has routinely used romantic love as a shorthand for character and dynamic development. It's happened with so many hastily strung together pairings. And when it does, everyone and their mother bends over backward to defend the relationship. It's romantic because it just is. Didn't you see the kissing? Romantic.

No, The 100 at its core is not about relationships, romantic and otherwise. But stack the number of fans invested exclusively by the action against those of us appreciating a strong plot but are emotionally attached to the characters and dynamics. Who do we think wins? Jason can cry all he wants over an audience refusing to be dazzled solely by his flashy sci-fi.

Funnily enough, "not about relationships'' is only ever applied to Bellarke. Bellarke, a relationship so consistently significant, it's the central dynamic of the show. The backbone on which the story is predicated. Only with Bellarke does it become super imperative to represent male-female platonic relationships. As if Bellarke is the end all, be all of platonic friendship representation on this show. In every single television show in the history of television shows.

Where was this advocacy when B/echo was foisted upon on us after one scene between them where he didn't outright hate Echo? When one interaction before that, he nearly choked the life out of her. If male-female friendship on TV is so sparse, why didn't B/ravens celebrate the familial relationship between Bellamy and Raven? Isn't the fact that they interpret Clarke as abusive to Bellamy all the more reason to praise his oh-so-healthy friendship with Raven as friendship? They might be the one group of shippers at the least liberty to use this argument against Bellarke, lest they want to hear the cacophony of our fandom's laughter at the sheer hypocrisy of the joke. Instead, they've held on with an iron grip to the one sex scene from practically three lifetimes ago when the characters were distracting themselves from their feelings on OTHER people? They've recalled this as "proof" of romance while silent on (or misconstruing) the 99% of narrative wherein they were platonic and the 100% of the time they were canonically non-romantic.

Bellarke is only non-romantic if you believe love stories are told in the space of time it takes for Characters A & B to make out and screw each other onscreen, a timespan amounting to less than the intermission of a quick bathroom break. If it sounds ridiculous, it's because it is. And yet, some can't wrap their heads around the idea that maybe, just maybe, a well-written love story in its entirety is denoted by more than two insubstantial markers and unreliable qualifiers. B/raven had sex, and the deed didn't fashion them into a romance. Jasper and Maya kissed but didn't have sex. Were they half a romantic relationship? Bellarke is paralleled to romantic couples all the time, but it counts for nothing in the eyes of their rival-ship fandom adversaries. Take ship wars out of it by considering Mackson. Like B/echo, the show informed us that Mackson became a couple post-Praimfaya, offscreen, via a kiss. Does anyone fancy them an epic love story with their whisper of a buildup? Since a kiss is all it takes, as dictated by fandom parameters, we should.

If Characters A & B are ensconced in a romantic storyline, then by definition, their relationship is neither non-romantic nor fanon. "Platonic" rings hollow as a descriptor for feelings canonically not so.

If the rest of the fandom doesn't want to take our word for granted, Bob confirmed Bellarke as romantic. Is he as delusional as we are? Bob is not a shipper, but he knows what he was told to perform and how. Why do the pineapples twist themselves in knots to discredit his word? If they are so assured by Jason's word-of-god affirmation, then what credibility does it bear to have Bellarke validated by someone other than the one in charge? They're so quick to aggressively repudiate any statement less than "CL is everything. Nothing else exists. CL is the only fictional love story in The 100, nay, the WORLD. CL is the single greatest man-made invention since the advent of the wheel."

We've all seen a show with a romantic relationship between the leads at the core of the story. We all know the definition of slowburn. We can pinpoint the tropes used to convey romantic feelings. We know conflict is how stories are told. We know when interferences are meant to separate them. We know when obstacles are overcome, they're stronger for it. We know that's why the hurdles exist. We know those impediments often take the shape of interim, third-party love interests. We know what love triangles are. We know pining and longing.

Jason wasn't revolutionary in his structure of Bellarke. He wasn't sly. Jason modeled them no differently than most other shows do with their main romances. Subtler and slower, sure. Sometimes not subtle at all. There's no subtlety in having Clarke viscerally react to multiple shots of Bellamy with his girlfriend. No subtlety in him prioritizing her life over the others in Sanctum's clutches. In her prioritizing his life above all the other lives she was sure would perish if he opened the bunker door. There is no subtlety in Bellamy poisoning his sister to stave off Clarke's impending execution. In her relinquishing 50 Arkadian lives for him after it killed her to choose only 100 to preserve. In her sending the daughter Clarke was hellbent to protect, into the trenches to save him. In him marching across enemy lines to rescue her. In her surrender to her kidnapper to march to potential death, to prevent Bellamy's immediate one. No subtlety in Josie's callouts. No subtlety in Lxa's successful use of his name to convince Clarke to let a bomb drop on an unsuspecting village. Bet every dollar you have that the list goes on and on.

There are a lot of layers to what this show was. It was a tragedy, with hope for light at the end of the tunnel. It was, first and foremost, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi survival drama. Within this overarch is the story of how the union of Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake saves humanity, ushering in an age of peace. In this regard, their relationship transcended romance. But with the two of them growing exponentially more intimate each season, pulled apart by obstacles only to draw closer once again, theirs was a love story. A romantic opus, the crescendo timed in such a way that the resolution of this storyline -the moment they get together- would align with the resolution of the main plot. Tying Bellarke to the completion of this tale made them more meaningful than any other relationship on this show, not less.

Whereas the trend with every other pair was to chronicle whether they survived this hostile world intact or succumbed to it, Bellarke was a slowburn. A unique appellation for the couples on this show, but not disqualifying them from romantic acknowledgment.

Framing Bellarke in this manner was 100% Jason's choice. If he wanted the audience to treat them as platonic, he should have made it clear within the narrative itself, not through vague, word-of-god dispatches. A mishandled 180-degree swerve at the clutch as a consequence of extra-textual factors doesn't negate the 84% of the story prior. It's just bad writing to not follow through. And Jason's poor, nearsighted decisions ruined a hell of a lot more than a Bellarke endgame.

The problem is, when Bellarke is legitimized, the pineapples are yanked out of their fantasies where they get to pretend the quoted exaggerations above are real. Here I'm embellishing, but some of them have deeply ingrained their identities in CL to the degree where hyperbole is rechristened to incontestable facts. An endorsement for Bellarke is an obtrusive reminder of the not all-encompassing reception of their ship. A lack of positive sentiment is an attack on their OTP, elevated to an attack on their identity. Before long, it ascends to an alleged offense to their right to exist. The perpetrators of this evil against humanity are the enemy, and they must attack in kind, in defense of themselves.

Truthfully, I think it's sad, the connotation of human happiness wholly dependent on the outcome of a fictional liaison already terminated years ago. I'm not unaware of the marginalization of minorities, of the LGBT+ community, in media. I haven't buried my head in the sand to pretend there aren't horrible crimes committed against them. I don't pretend prejudice isn't rampant. When defense and education devolve into hatred and libel for asinine reasons, though, the line has been crossed. You don't get a free pass to hurt someone with your words over a damn ship war. No matter how hard you try to dress it up as righteous social justice, I assure you, you're woefully transparent.

[i-was-bored-so-this-happened]

Rae Watches Primeval

Season 1 Episode 2 AKA, This Post Has Been In The Making For Multiple Months/I’m Being Very Brave With All These Bugs

If you’d like to be tagged in future Rae Watches Primeval posts, let me know

This is long as fuck, my dudes

Spoilers. Spoilers everywhere.

Gotta love the end of the Previously On though “I lost her. And now I think she’s back from the dead.” THEME MUSIC BUH-DUH-BUM-NEEAAOOOOWW

Also - THEME MUSIC YEAHHHHH

Oh woah I zoomed in to make the image clearer and really I’ve just made it grainer. It’s that Essence of the 2000s

God, I hate the Underground. You know one time someone tried to push me down the escalators at an Underground? And another time when I was little I mis-timed my step and got my foot stuck in the gap and everyone just trampled over me? Hate the Underground

Ah yes, only when the train stops does it become unbearingly hot and all the women start fanning themselves at the same time

hhhhhhhhhh jesus fuck my worst fucking nightmare oh my god

i’ve already been in contact with many insects today so i’m going to be a bit more jumpy at this episode than usual, yes i know the insects around me were mostly plastic, shut up

The guy on the other side of the window heard nothing

Eyup, there are Duncan and Tom

“I swear on my Empire Strikes Back poster signed by Luke Skywalker and Dave Prowse”

I know we make fun of, “I do know what a sacred relic is, Duncan, I have seen Raiders of the Lost Ark” but that is a line I’d spontaneously make up mid conversation with my friends

Wtf is Duncan eating, the video’s too grainy to see

Duncan’s the only one eating, Connor’s brandishing a banana and Tom’s chewing a plastic fork Tag yourself, I’m Tom

I take back my statement of, “I know we make fun of...” because bruh please stop making nerds talk like this, every second sentence is not a pop culture reference

Is it cake? It might be cake

Look at the little bi man, unable to sit correctly. I understand, little bi man, for I, a little bi woman, am also unable to sit correctly

I’ve zoomed back out a bit so Stephen isn’t just squares

Connor. Honey. NO. Take the hat off and the outfit might be bearable ^ The entire fandom @ Connor at any given moment

OH, was that scene just...him finding out where Abby lived? That’s only just clicked right now. Connor why you stalking Abby, how did you even find out where she lives

Or was that him finding the “anomaly” and he already knew where Abby lived?

I’m not even going to mention the lizards, I leave that to @late2000shistoricalreenactment

HH NOPE NOPE NOPE CLICKED BACK ON TO SEE THE SPIDER FUCK OFF

Tom Cruise?

We’re Seven Minutes and Forty Seconds In, Folks. We’re In For a Long Ride

“You can hold my hand if you’re frightened.” “And how is that going to make me feel better?”

How the FUCK DO YOU NOT SEE THAT THING SITTING ACROSS FROM YOU?????

Bro. BRO. You’ve been spraying PESTECIDES everywhere on the UNDERGROUND and you’re just going to EAT the FOOD YOU DROPPED ON THE FLOOR without even CHECKING IT?

This lighting is so very nice to Lucy Brown, she looks lovely

“We should huddle together for warmth.” Is something I actually say to my friends if one of them says they’re cold and it usually works

Ah yes, the Stephen-Abby-Connor love-triangle everyone loved so much

Abby dON’T THROW AWAY YOUR TEA!!! JUST BECAUSE HE MIGHT BE GAY??? GIRL

That is a pitiful tent, even a one-person tent. Can’t even get changed in there

Claudia also getting comfy and sitting incorrectly in Stephen’s chair It is the chair or is it the people sitting in the chair, that is the question

“Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!”

asdkjbhasjhadskjhb Abby took a radio with her?

Not gonna lie, impressive remote-control life-size dinosaur for the two nerdy slackers

Dude is STILL DOWN THERE?? It’s been a whole ass day!!

Nothing came out of your spray can, bruh

Wilhem scream, present and accounted for

SO I...UH...STARTED THIS POST IN JUNE....IT’S NOW AUGUST...WHEN I STOPPED WATCHING I WAS ONLY 14 MINUTES IN....MAKE SURE YOUR SEATBELTS ARE ON

Oh my god since I was last on Dailymotion they’ve added a Picture-in-Picture feature, that’s going to make these posts so much easier to make!! Good going, Dailymotion, my beloved

Oh so potatoey <3

Connor this is why you signed th e OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT

Damn, look at that favouritism. You can’t pick a favourite child, Nick

I do love the soundtrack though, I’ve missed hearing it

“Venom, to be precise.” Then why did you tell her it was poison??

oof i’m gay, lucy brown is really just so pretty this episode

Lester’s hair was so messy in the first season

Boom boom bang bang baby!

Oh no, not the black Lexuses! Lexi? The big black cars!

THERE HE ISSSSSSSSS!!!!! MY BOYYYYYY TOM FUCKING RYAAAAANNNN

I have no gifs of him from this episode, criminal

“They don’t even know what they’re looking for!” neither do you!!! That’s why they’re going first!!

“Well, there can’t be that many types of venomous predator under the Aldwitch.” “You should see the last tube home on a Friday night.” ICONIC

no thoughts

funnily enough, i’ve never really been scared of the bugs in this episode unless i’ve encountered a lot of bugs that day

do the night-vision goggles really work that well when there’s actually loads of light in the room?

Wilhelm Scream Two, Electric Boogaloo

We get to see that that soldier’s bitten and then never hear about him ever again

This might be the most Tom Ryan gets to speak in any episode he’s in....and that is a crime

This cool rotating shot would have been cooler without the cuts

In case you didn’t hear that, as Nick and Stephen are gearing up, Stephen tells Nick, “You wear it well, you look good.” Do with that what you will

Ooohh, synchronised torch-turning-on

god the spider sounds are loud

“Does anyone have a really big slipper?”

hhhh okay the bugs are getting to me a little bit now, i’m going to bed soon, don’t infect my dreams please...

w...Stephen? what was that? I?

ugh i do love the shots that go around and through anomalies

Alright Stevey you don’t have to shout

Arthropleura: *is directly above him*

“Damn.” you really had no plan, huh

i’m sorry i just hallucinated-

a DALEK HAS HIM OH NO

A giant centipede, surplus oxygen, come on, come on [snaps fingers] you should be able to get this without Connor

Apparently when Cutter isn’t there all palaeontological and historical knowledge goes out the window and Connor restores those braincells

Abby, you can run after him, you know.....you don’t have to just stand there without moving.....call after him once and only once...and then not tell Claudia

Remind me one day to make a post about parallels between this episode and 5x04 because there’s at least a couple if I dig

Damn, Stephen, couldn’t you hear those sound effects? They’re louder than your voice!

There’s only fifteen minutes left and in that time Stephen has to nearly die

Well done on walking towards the giant magnet with your metal weapon

And THAT’S WHY YOU TELL CLAUDIA WHAT’S GOING ON, ABBY

“That’s the problem with heroic gestures: succeed and you look wonderful, fail and all you do is leave everybody else a bloody mess to clean up.” Claudia is so very quotable

You heard THAT, but not the giant BUG?

“What happened?” “Had an argument with a bug. Bug won.”

Ah yes, Helen, leave a message with a man and then leave him for dead, great plan

“It’s the kind of bug that’d stick to the kitchen at parties.”

NICK KNEW IT WAS AN ARTHROPLEURA, WHY DIDN’T STEPHEN???

oh god no, not this part, goddamn it stephen

“It’s so much easier to do this stuff when you’re dying.” - Dying man in a long-term relationship asks his colleague out shortly after speaking to his ex-girlfriend [who also happens to be his best friend's wife]

The spiders have had enough, they’re going home

Oh shit! Oh shit I have a shirt the same colour as Connor’s! I found it at work a couple weeks back and bought it! Yo!

Alright! Two days later, I'm back, and I only have like ten minutes to go so maybe this post will go in my queue today!!! Yaaayyy! It only took me...two months...

Oh so now CLAUDIA'S down here too??

dAMNIT

Did they ever explain why there's just...loads of bunkbeds in this abandoned section of the Underground? I can't remember. I don't get it.

Cewl

"If I don't come back, you can have my Star Trek Next Generation Top Trumps" "I'll treasure them" An adorable moment, honestly

"On second thoughts, actually, maybe you should bury them with me."

And he just happened to bring a bottle of...turpentine with him

I mean, I guess he knew there'd be bugs and he was always planning to go down into the underground to them so he brought it with him to keep them away? Or something? I guess?

Ah, yes, the only mention of Connor's panic attacks ever, it was nice knowing you

"Claustrophobia and vertigo on the same day," again, I think this might be the only time either of those things are ever mentioned, much like how all of Connor's allergies are brought up in the first episode but never actually cause him any problems

"Bite me" - Nick Cutter, 2007

Aw, he tried

Eugh, burned bug. Burned bug smells horrible, and that's a big bug

I can't get over how I have the same shirt as Connor now

Something that always bothered me when I was little was that if the bug bit into the bag it would have left holes, so Baby Rae couldn't understand how the venom didn't just leak out of the holes in the bag

I've never seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer...

My headphones keep making a buzzing sound like there's a fly in my room when nothing's playing through them and there is no fly, it's very irritating

It was at this moment in time I realised I'd written "Jenny" in every instance I'd meant "Claudia"

Ah, yes, the convenient amnesia

UGH, Abby's so pretty right here

Stephen is also pretty but like right now we're focusing on Abby

AH THE FATHER-SON MOMENT YESS

IT'S SO POTATOEY AND FUZZY, GOD, THE 2000s

"I don't suppose you'd consider giving me a cool nickname, would you?" *silence* "No."

No, Connor, please, it's better without the hat sometimes, this is one of those times

UGH I LOVE THE ANOMALIES

The Helen Where Are You track is one of my favourite pieces on the Primeval soundtrack, I listen to it all the time

askjhasdkjhsjh the little break that tells you what's on next is included in this recording and apparently Dancing On Ice aired after this episode sdajkhsaskjh

[davidmann95]

How about those JL storyboards?

In case you haven’t heard, Zack Snyder is putting on display the ‘storyboards’ - i.e. a rough plot summary accompanied by some Jim Lee sketches - for what would have been Justice League 2 and 3, or as this puts it 2 and ‘2A’. You can see them here (I imagine better-quality versions will soon be released), and read a transcript here. This is evidently a very early version: this was apparently pitched prior to the release of BvS and Justice League being rewritten in the wake of it, with numerous plot details that now don’t line up with what we know about the Snyder Cut, plus it outright mentions it builds on the originally planned versions of the Batman and Flash movies. But it’s a broad outline of what was gonna go down, and while I initially thought it was Snyder throwing in the towel, the timing - paired with the ambiguity left by the necessity for changes, including that this doesn’t factor whatever that “massive cliffhanger” at the end of the Cut is - says to me he’s hoping this’ll be a force multiplier behind efforts to will sequel/s into existence. He’s probably right.

I’ll be discussing spoilers below, but in short: with this Zack Snyder has finally lived up to Alan Moore, in that like Twilight of the Superheroes I wouldn’t believe this was real as opposed to a shockingly on-point parody if not for direct, irrefutable evidence.

Doing some rapid-fire bullet points for this baby to kick us off:

* Folks who know the subject say a lot of this is a yet further continuation of Snyder doing Arthuriana fanfic with the League reskinned over those major players, and I’ll take their word for it.

* I don’t know whether I love or hate that in Justice League 2 the Justice League are only an extant thing for the first scene, and then it’s Snyder giving everybody their own mini-movies. It’s compressing the entire MCU “loosely interconnected solo stories leading to a single big movie later” strategy into a single movie!

*  Funniest line in the whole thing: "Even Lantern has heard of the Kryptonian, worried that he's under the control of Darkseid. He heard his spirit was unbreakable." Hal what fuckin' Superman movie did YOU watch? Second funniest being “IT WILL GIVE HIM POWER OVER ALL LIVING LIFE”

* 90% of the plot I have nothing to say about, it’s generic stage-setting crap. That to be clear is the ‘shocked it’s Snyder’ element, it feels so crassly commercial in a way I can’t believe is coming from the BvS guy.

* Most of what I have to say is unsurprisingly gonna be about a handful of characters but Cyborg’s happy ending being “he isn’t visibly disabled anymore!” is not great!

* The Goddess of War battle with Superman...never pays off? No clue why it’s there.

* What I’d originally heard was that the Codex in Superman’s blood was the last key to the Anti-Life Equation and that’s why Darkseid was coming to Earth. It’s not like all of this wouldn’t have already been averted by Kal-El’s pod smacking into an asteroid on the way to Earth so it’s not as if this makes it any more Superman’s fault, and it would have at least tied all this back to the beginning of the movies, but I suppose that was either fake or from a later draft.

* I have NO idea how this was reimagined without the ‘love triangle’, it’s the central character thing and the entire climax flows directly out of it!

* Darkseid’s kinda a chump in this, huh

Anonymous said: So: Does Zack Snyder hate Superman?

Look: the hilarity of this when Cuck Kent has been a go-to Snyder cult insult towards ‘inferior’ takes on Superman for years cannot be understated, yet at the same time I can almost wrap my brain around where Snyder’s coming from with that as the end for his take on the character. He talked in that Variety piece on how his interest in Superman is informed by having adopted children himself, and Deborah Snyder is the stepmother to his kids by previous relationships, so I can see where he’d be coming from, and I can even imagine how he’d see this as ‘rhyming’ in the sense of “the series begins with Kal-El being adopted by Earth, it ends with him adopting a child of Earth!” In the same way as MARTHA, I can envision how he would put these pieces together in his head thematically without registering or caring what the end result would actually look like. In this case, Superman raising the kid of the man who beat the shit out of him who Batman had with Clark’s wife, who earlier told Bruce she was staying with Clark because he ‘needed her’, suggesting if inadvertently that this really honest to god was a “she’s only staying with Superman out of pity, she really loved Batman more” thing.

But Clark is nothing in this. He’s sad and existential because of coming back from the dead I guess, then he’s corrupted, then time’s undone and he woo-rah rallies the collective armies of the world (interesting angle for the ‘anti-military/anti-establishment’ Superman he’s talked up as) as his big heroic moment in the finale, and then he stops being sad because he’s adopting a kid. So his big much-ballyhooed, extremely necessary five-movie character arc towards truly becoming Superman was:

Sad weird kid -> sad weird kid learns he’s an alien, is still weird and sad, maybe he shouldn’t save people because things could go really wrong? -> his dad is so convinced it could go wrong he lets himself die -> ????? -> Clark is saving people anyway -> learns his origin, gets an inspiring speech about being a bridge between worlds and a costume -> becomes superman (not Superman, that’s later) to save the world, albeit a very property-damagey version, rejects his heritage he just learned about and space dad’s bridge idea -> folks hate him being superman and that sucks though at least he’s got a girlfriend now -> things go so wrong he considers not being superman but his ghost dad reminds him shit always goes wrong so he should be good anyway, which sorta feels like it contradicts his previous advice -> immediate renewed goodness is out the window as he’s blackmailed into having to try and kill a dude but the dude happens to coincidentally have some things in common so they don’t kill each other after all -> big monster now but superman keeps supermaning at it because he loves his girlfriend and he dies -> he’s brought back, wears black which apparently means now he likes Krypton again? -> he has work friends now but he’s still sad because he was dead -> evil now! -> wait nevermind time travel -> rallies the troops -> his wife’s having a kid so he’s not sad anymore -> Superman! Who gives way to more Batman.

Do I think Zack Snyder is lying when he says he likes Superman? No. I think he sincerely finds much of the basic conceits and imagery engaging. But I don’t think he meaningfully gives shit about Clark as a character, just a vessel for Big Iconic Beats he wants to hit. Whereas while for instance he’s critical of Batman as an idea (at least up to a point), he’s much more passionately, directly enamored with him as a presence and personality. So while Superman may be the character whose ostensible myth cycle or arc or however it’s spun might be propelling a lot of events here, it’s a distant appreciation - of course the other guy takes over and subsumes him into his own narrative. Of course Batman is the savior, the past and the future (though if he’s supposed to be Batman’s kid raised by Superman there’s no excuse for him not to be Nightwing), the tragic martyr to our potential. Admittedly the implication here is also that Batman can apparently only REALLY with his whole heart be willing to sacrifice his life to save an innocent, for that matter apparently his great love, once said innocent is a receptacle for his Bat-brood, but he and Clark are both already irredeemable pieces of shit by the end of BvS so it’s not like this even registers by comparison.

Anonymous said: That “plan” Snyder had was utter dogshit. Picture proof that DC & WB hate Superman. Also I love how you’re like Jor-El: Every single idealistic take you had about Snyder, his fandom, and BvS was wrong. Snyder’s an edgy hack, his fanbase just wants to jerk off to their edgy self-insert Batgod as he screams FUCK while mowing people down with machine guns, and the idea that BvS said Superman was better than Bats was completely wrong. You know what comes next SuperMann: Either you die or I do.

In the final analysis, beyond that mother of god is there sure no conceivable excuse for the treatment of Lois in this? The temptation is to join that anon and say as I originally tweeted that these were “built entirely to disabuse every single redemptive reading of the previous work and any notion of these movies as nuanced, artistic, self-reflective, or meaningful”.

...

...

...yeah, okay, that’s mostly right. Zack Snyder’s vision really was the vision of an edgelord idiot with bad ideas who was never going to build up to anything that would reframe it all as a sensible whole. He’s a sincere edgelord genuinely trying really hard with his bad ideas who put some of them together quite cleverly! But they’re fucking bad and the endgame was never anything more than ramping up into smashing the action figures together as big as he could, the political overtones and moral sketchiness of BvS while trying to say something in that movie reverberated through the grand scheme of his pentalogy in no way beyond giving his boys a big sad pit to rise out of so when they kicked ass later it’d rule harder, and all the gods among men questions and horror and trappings were only that: trappings. Apparently he’s really pleasant and well-meaning in person, but at his core his art as embodied in a couple weeks in his 4-hour R-rated Justice League movie meant to be seen in black-and-white all comes down to that time he yelled at someone on Twitter that he couldn’t appreciate Snyder’s work because it’s for grown-ups. He made half-clever, occasionally exciting shit cape movies for a bunch of corny pseudo-intellectual douchebags, folks latching onto and justifying blockbusters that at least acknowledge how horrifying the world is right now even if the superheroes are basically useless in the face of it if not outright part of the problem until a convenient alien invasion shows up to justify them, and a handful of non-asshole smart people who vibe with it but...well. ‘Suckered’ is a harsh word, and definitely doesn’t apply to all of them re: what they’ve gotten out of it up to this point and would (somehow) get out of this. But it doesn’t apply to none of them, either.

[waynedunlaptheorgandonor]

can i say a sort of pointless rambly thing i was thinking about that i can't put under the cut bc i'm on mobile?

jk, i'm not actually asking. ramble below, not edited for clarity. the following is completely unclear and i will not fix it:

i've been thinking about how part of the reason i'm so chill about caryl is bc growing up as a queer woc 99% of my main ships were like, never gonna fucking happen bc they literally couldn't. it was like, "omg, they gazed at each other from across the room, let's analyze the homosexual subtext of this one scene for the next fifty years, that's not necessarily hyperbole." i've watched all my ships fuck other ppl/have other love interests, and i knew that my thing was never gonna be canon, so to see like, one thing being like, "one half of my ship fucked another person several years ago while pining for the other half of my ship," i'm like...#nice, bc that can and likely will be used as a plot point to get them together later on, whereas in other situations i've been in i just kinda had to deal with it. so my impulse when i see ppl losing their shit is to be like

and to be slightly annoyed, tbh, bc the ship is still on track to be canon, and it's like, literally two white heterosexuals, they're prime candidates for juicy angsty pining that actually gets a resolution.

but!

that being said, i recognize that that attitude isn't necessarily fair. for one thing, i'm not the only queer woc (or some variation thereof) in this fandom, and some ppl's impulse might be exasperation instead, bc like, "wtf, even my mayohet ship has dumb fucking drama," and that's valid as hell, and i get it.

and also, i get that, even if you didn't grow up shipping impossible ships (or mulder/scully, bc that's a brand of bullshit all its own), this has been a suuuuper drawn out process where sometimes it feels like they're legit sprinkling crumbs to keep you hooked, just to play you again, and when you are invested in something, like /rly/ invested, especially if it's a form of escapism or hyperfixation or whatever, that can be e x h a u s t i n g. and i get that. i truly do, and while i make a lot of snide comments about the fandom being bonkers, i do get where the bulk of you are coming from (unless you're one of those ppl who hate on actors and esp actresses for just doing their jobs, and attack them on social media, in which case i am very much judging you and you need to get your life together).

i also realize that in the scheme of things i'm still a newbie. i've been here, what, twoish/threeish years, whereas some of you have been here since the beginning, so i'm not as worn out as y'all. but i also think that gives me a bit of objectivity that some of y'all have (understandably) lost.

my positivity is not meant as a sleight against those of you who are feeling negative, but is more of a semi-objective viewpoint (i say semi, bc lbr, i'm invested af in this, so i definitely have bias), and to me the threads of the storyline they're crafting seem sort of obvious.

like, let's look at it, yeah? they have one season left of this show that has been on for over a decade. they need to cater to everyone to give them a satisfying ending, while still hanging on to carylers bc of the spin-off. darylrreah seems like a very calculated move, bc it gives them both something to make abcers happy, while also creating tension and suspense and pining for carylers (i think they might underestimate just how fed up some carylers are tbh, and are banking on us to hang on for one last ride, which, honestly? if they play it right will probably work.)

if they end up doing a dumb love triangle thing, which, without seeing the episode and gauging the subtext i can't confidently say if i think they will or won't, it will ultimately end in our favor. it has to, bc leah isn't going to third wheel them on the bike in the spin-off. we can say with good authority that whatever that relationship ends up being (again, idk if they'll drag it out or not) it will be temporary. which leaves caryl open to ride off into the sunset and then bone down in every state in the united states and in puerto rico for good measure.

it's a lot of cheap drama, but i really and truly do not think it's anything to worry about, and i still really and truly trust kang to not make it out of character. ik ppl still don't agree with me on that point, and i'm not gonna argue, but to me it really does make perfect sense.

and i also predict that they are gonna play it up hardcore in the promotional shit and talking dead, but when that happens, remember it's bc it gets attention. regardless of where the story is ultimately going, relationship drama gets attention, which gets viewers, which gets amc and twd producers nice and comfy with full pockets

idk. to sum up ig i just wanted to clarify that i don't mean any harm with my relentless positivity. my history in fandom has just made this seem like nothing in comparison, bc while ppl are freaking out, i'm like, "oh damn, they're actually gonna get together by the end of this, aren't they? i didn't know that could happen!" and that makes me excited instead of upset

and you definitely don't have to listen to me. maybe i'm actually wrong. maybe i'm completely full of bullshit and am just good at making things sound confident. i got a lot of As on papers in college over books i never read, i know how to bs. but i also know how to analyze, and i while i will be the first to tell you i am not the best at a great many things, i do know that i am good at critically analyzing text while taking into account the context it was written in, and imho all signs point to canon caryl. when, i'm not entirely sure, but i see it happening. if it doesn't then they severely fucked up their storytelling, and that'd just be bad writing on their part.

(if you want proof that i'm good at reading writers'/producers' intentions, consider that i watched like, 8 seasons of supernatural before giving up, and said to myself, "i think they're gonna make destiel canon, but not until the very last second bc they are rly into catering to their fans but also have to consider their dumb fanboy audience so they can't do anything crazy overtly gay," and guess who hit the nail on the fucking head on that one)

none of this is important, but it was rattling around my mind grapes and i wanted to write it down into something vaguely coherent, and where else better to do it than here. i can word vomit and then send it into the ether and pretend i never said a thing. i love this horrible website, nothing can compare

i have no real conclusion to this, it was mostly stream of consciousness, but i hope it sort of helps y'all understand where i'm coming from, and why i am as chill as i am about things. not about y'all. y'all cause me so much anxiety i get physically sick and have to legit block tags, but with the actual show content i'm zen as hell

uh

the end ig?

it feels weird even signing off on this, but w/e

-diz

[linkspooky]

It’s Not a Love Triangle

Eren isn’t choosing romantically between Mikasa and Historia. In fact who Eren romantically likes is pretty much out of the question for him. He’s already said as much to Zeke, he doesn’t think it matters because he’s going to die in four years. He’s already stopped himself from having those feelings. However, not only is  Eren wavering between both girls written like a classical love triangle in a way the fandom has picked up on (and boy have they picked up on it), both of these girls clearly mean something to Eren. Eren is choosing between them in a way, but not romantically. Eren and Historia represent two different pathways Eren could have chosen. 

1. A Want vs Need Conflict

Historia kinda represents what Eren thinks he wants. Eren always gravitates towards his wants. [...]  Historia seems like the opposite of Mikasa. 

So, I’m paraphrasing here but this meta was written in response to an ask I received which pointed out this fact. Historia represents what Eren thinks he wants, and Historia is also the opposite of Mikasa. 

A Want vs. Need conflict. Explained. 

To understand want versus need, you’ll first need to know what each one means:

Want: something your character desires, because they believe it’ll improve their happiness.

Need: the lesson they need to learn to overcome their inner struggle and achieve true happiness.

Just like real people, your characters will have things in their life that make them unhappy, uncomfortable, or discontent. Their want is the thing they think will free them from these problems. On the other hand, their need is to learn and grow. This is how they’ll achieve true happiness, and how they’ll overcome the conflict of your story. [x]

So, Anon was picking up on that conflict. In a way Eren’s want being ‘freedom’ itself, kind of relates to this conflict. If a want is something a character thinks will free them from those problems, then Eren’s want is a quick and easy solution that will free him from the struggles he’s facing. Eren restates over and over again in the panels above that he wanted things to turn out this way. He wanted this conflict, he wanted to start it, he wanted to make it worse. In a way that is true. 

Historia represents what Eren thinks he wants. Eren keeps flashing back to two scenes when he is indecisive, either his childhood with Mikasa (wrapping the scarf around, seeing her by the tree the day the wall fell) or kissing the ring with HIstoria. The reason we keep coming back to kissing the ring is what Eren was thinking just as he kissed the ring. 

First when Eren’s indecisive about whether or not to tell everyone about the royal titan’s blood activating the control titan, his gaze lingers on MIkasa and Historia. He even talks about how his father had two wives, one of royal blood, and one who was just a regular girl he met on Paradis island. All while looking indecisively between MIkasa and Eren. It’s colored romantically, but it’s not. 

When Eren is about to kiss Historia’s ring he isn’t thinking about Historia in a romantic context. He’s thinking about how he wants to sacrifice his own life, but he doesn’t want Historia to sacrifice her life. 

Eren has always associated Historia with ideas of control, importance and agency he feels like he doesn’t have. Even the act of kissing the ring is like something a prince in a story book would do. Eren has always been especially bitter about the fact that he is just kind of a regular kid that all of this got thrust upon, rather than a person of import. 

Historia, and Zeke are both examples of characters who have lived lives that Eren thinks he wants. Zeke is propped up his whole life as a special person who is going to change the world and save the Eldian people, and this entirely wrecks him as a person. Historia’s circumstances in life were determined entirely by her birth. She was mistreated for being a bastard, she was abandoned for being a bastard, and even when she rose up as queen it was more because of her bloodline and how she could be used as a symbol to the people. 

It’s not just Eren being a baby about not feeling special enough though, it’s also how Eren copes. The fact is Eren has been made to feel powerless, and has lost people in circusmtances he can’t control again and again. This continual loss, and no lasting security makes Eren feel insecure as a person. Eren feels, incomplete and insufficient. 

He is made to feel continually unworthy of not only what others try to give him, but also he doesn’t think it’s even okay for him to survive and keep living when he was helpless to protect his mother. Carla tells him that he doesn’t need to do anything, all he needs to do is be born into this world to be loved. Yet, after losing her Eren feels himself as unworthy of even a mother’s love. He is continually feeling inferior over and over again, and Eren’s attempt to correct those feelings is, always, always, always. 

To make some grand desperate gesture like this. Eren swings between wanting to die in some big sacrifice to protect all of humanity, and wanting to kill everyone else, and both of those are very true to who he is at the same time... somehow. But, what’s important is both of them are kind of the same thing. 

I’m simplifying here, but you can look at my other meta for Eren’s psychological inner workings. Basically, Eren wants to do a big thing. Eren has been made to feel so helpless, and so useless for so long that his response is just as extreme as all of the stress he’s piled up and endured for so long. He wants to do a big thing, that will place him at the center of the narrative. 

These ideas, specialness, strength, importance, they all represent a control over their own lives Eren does not have. Even Historia gets to ascend as queen and gets political importance. Eren brushed against the idea that Historia might just be a normal girl in the Uprising Arc, but that’s also not the conclusion he landed on. We see his thoughts at the end, and he chooses to see HIstoria as a special, strong person again. Not only that but he sees Historia as having something he lacked. 

His statement is ironic because it also applies to Historia. Eren thought he was special, but everything special about him was just kind of happenstance. Eren just happened to inherit the attack titan because who he was born as. The same way Historia just happened to be born as someone with royal blood. In that way, Eren and Historia are both normal people. They were born into cirucmstances they can’t really control and they live reacting to those circumstances the same way as everybody else. Everybody, is a normal person, because everybody is born into this world. 

Eren is able to perceive for a moment that Historia is a normal girl, but also ultimately he’s not able to give that to her. And it’s because Eren and Historia are ultimately too similiar. When given the choice between playing a role, and being themselves they will try to choose playing a role because that’s their broken way of seizing agency in their own lives. It’s just Eren will pretend that he is important when he doesn’t and try to steal that for hismelf, and Historia will try to fulfill what other people expect of her. 

Eren could have perceived HIstoria as a normal girl, but I think ultimately he didn’t and it was because of this moment right here. Both Eren and Historia cope in a way where they try to be important. I think true rebellion for Historia would be declaring that she’s just going to be a person. You know a normal girl. That’s what she wants, but Historia will always deny what she wants and act in ways she thinks she wants instead. Or rather what she thinks other people want of her. 

Historia declaring that she’s the enemy of mankind is dramatic, but it’s really just flipping the narrative. Either way, if she’s the girl who sacrifices herself for the sake of mankind, or the enemy of all mankind who refuses to sacrifice Eren it’s just one extreme flipping for another. It’s still black and white thinking. 

Also if I were to simplify the goal of both Eren and Historia, it’s that they both want to live with pride, because as people they are fundamentally without pride. They are both insecure in themselves, their decisions, and choices. 

However, they don’t exactly understand what living what pride means. As characters both of them are kind of grasping. It honestly just means live with your choices whatever they are. However, Eren, Historia tend to see these things in big, sweeping dramatic narratives. So they think living with pride means, making these big decisions that affect the whole world. 

Basically, Eren and Historia are both lacking in pride because they see themselves as such little and insignificant people. So, they make choices that they think will give them pride. However, their ideas of pride also go hand in hand with unhealthy ideas of self sacrifice, taking everything on their shoulders alone, and also just... plain wanting to die. 

2. Family vs. Pride

Mikasa represents what Eren needs, but he thinks he can never have. Simply put, the narrative focuses on HIstoria’s connection to Eren when he talks about the unhealthy things he thinks he wants. Whereas, Mikasa always represents the connections in his life. 

Eren thinks he wants destruction. Eren thinks he wants hate. Eren thinks he wants to be the one to end the world. The same way that all along Eren thinks he’s wanted to kill all the titans. Eren’s moment of kissing the ring is shown again and again as the image associated with Eren coming to that decision. Whereas, Eren’s quiet moments of regret always linger around Mikasa. When he’s thinking of his friends happiness it’s Mikasa who is at the center of the picture looking towards him, at the same time as he’s about to go forward with Zeke and Historia, Zeke brings up the fact that MIkasa is probably just in love with him. 

Eren stops to ask Mikasa why she was following him around all this time. He asks Mikasa to see something in him that he can’t see in himself, because maybe, sort of he thinks it will give him a reason not to go if she can just soemhow say the right words to him. 

Everything human and vulnerable about himself he associates with MIkasa. When Eren is choosing to cut himself off from his friends so they cannot get in th way and stop him, and also he cannot stop himself he deliberately tries to make Mikasa hate him. He also states that he hates her. 

If Eren doesn’t love Mikasa. If Eren hates her in fact. Then Eren cuts off that vulnerability and weakness that might trip him up when he has to make the big decision to end the world. Eren is who he thinks he wants to be around Historia. Even when Eren breaks down in front of Historia, he’s still begging her to sacrifice himself so his death can save the world. 

There’s a parallel to these two scenes because Eren breaks down crying in front of both girls. 

Mikasa’s response is a gentle assertion that Eren didn’t need to be strong and protect her, he helped her just by being by her side, and living with her. It resembles Karla’s words that Eren doesn’t need to be anybody important, he’s already worthy of being loved just because he was born into this world.

Historia’s speech is much more complex than that, and it wavers between a selfless statement which is I will save someone crying if they are right in front of me that’s the way I want to live my life, and a much more selfish statement of LET’S FUCK THE WHOLE WORLD IF TI’S TELLING US TO SACRIFICE OURSELVES. However, I think it’s clear which part of the speech Eren picked up on, and it’s when Historia suggests they become the enemies of mankind together. 

Eren and Historia are people who desire to be loved for who they are, and be just normal people and have that be enough, but in the moment they will most often choose to be someone other than who they are. Mikasa makes the opposite choice of both of them. 

Mikasa chooses family over and over instead of pride. 

However, I don’t necessarily think this means that Mikasa is better as a person than HIstoria. It’s just what makes her different. Mikasa’s never really been insecure the same way Eren and Historia are. 

She already has plenty of pride, which is why it’s not a big concern for her. 

It’s also not a problem that HIstoria wants pride. That’s probably going to be the final and utlimate direction of her arc. It’s that HIstoria’s idea of living with pride is very messed up. She doesn’t know what living with pride is, and acts on what she thinks it is instead. 

Not only that Mikasa’s version of living with her family is very messed up as well. Mikasa has always, always, always been a very codpendent character. She thinks living with her family means prioritizing one person and following them around at the expense of everything else. She also thinks it’s fundamentally impossible to live without that person.

Mikasa’s primary difficulty as a character has always been finding some way to live on without Eren. However, she also wants to be close to Eren because she loves him. See it’s like a conflict. 

We’ve seen since Trost the conclusion she needs to reach that she can live on even without Eren. However, it’s difficult because Mikasa associates family, living, these things are things Eren gave her and not things she has for herself. It’s because these ideas are so tied up in Eren for her because of childhood trauma she has difficulty seeing them clearly.

She attributes too much of herself to Eren. Mikasa has difficulty seeing herself as a person apart from Eren, thus she becomes codependent. Mikasa wants family, but her idea of family is messed up and codependnet. Eren and Historia want pride, but their idea of pride is also messed up. 

However even though both girls are flawed, Mikasa is the one who represents the path of living. It’s been the central struggle of her arc since Trost. How can she continue to live in a world that is cruel. If Mikasa can’t do anything to make huge changes to the nature of the world, then how can Mikasa continue living inside of that world? 

For Eren there is two conflicting desires. There is what he thinks he wants and what will alleviate him of his struggles. That is, dying in a cool way. Then there’s what Eren actually needs which is to learn to live with himself and his flaws, and keep living even in a world that is far from his ideals. 

Eren at the moment is gravitating towards Historia. He chooses to confide his plan to destroy everything in her. He follows her words and decides to become the enemy of the world.

However, the one facing down a sea of titans to get to him is Mikasa. The one who ultimately stops him by reminding him of his humanity is going to be Mikasa. The one person who loves him as he is. Eren wants to be free from everything, but he’s forgotten that it’s your connections with other people that gives you the strength to carry on the burdens of life together and keep on living. 

[artemisdesari-blog]

Why I Find Tauriel Problematic; An Essay On My Thoughts, Feelings, And Why Ambivalence Has Turned Into Frustration and Distaste

Although I have only been back on the fanfiction horse for about two years, and what a wonderful two years those have been, my brief stint writing fanfiction for The Hobbit has shown me a great deal about the fandom, and one of those things is that Tauriel is something like Marmite. For those unfamiliar with Marmite, it is a British salty yeast extract spread that is either utterly delicious or utterly vile depending on the tastes of the one eating it. The marketing slogan for it is “You either love it or hate it”, so even the manufacturers are aware that enjoyment of their product is a very subjective thing. Tauriel seems to polarise the fandom almost as much as said yeast extract, although there is a little more mid range ambivalence towards her as well. For me, personally, I prefer to pretend that she never existed in the movies at all, something that I will get into at a later date. That ambivalence has, sadly, shifted to distaste.

It is no secret that in popular literature and culture there is a very glaring absence of strong female characters. To the extent that when your Captain Janeways, Samantha Carters, Natasha Romanovs and so on pop up they become worth commenting on. Tolkien, of course, is no saint where this is concerned. It is glaringly obvious that for every Lúthien, Galadriel, Arwen and Eowyn there are dozens of male characters who play far greater roles in the saving of the world. In fact, The Hobbit is without strong female characters entirely, being a novel completely dominated by the male Company of Thorin Oakenshield, including the title character. Considering who Tolkien is supposed to have originally written the tale for, the source myths that he referenced and prevailing attitudes of the time, it is unsurprising. In fact, that characters like Eowyn and Galadriel pop up at all, not discounting Lúthien whose romance with Beren was said to have some inspiration from Tolkien’s own marriage, is impressive all things considered. 

With that in mind, let us consider the matter of Tauriel. She was not in the book, and while I can see why the studio wanted her added to the film they later made decisions about her which sat, and still do sit, very poorly with me. Generally speaking, as a writer, I prefer to try ignoring the fact that she exists in the movies, even if I reference the movie appearances of the dwarves to avoid writing about too many bearded males with white or blue or blond hair. If I do reference her it is usually in passing and with no intention to do anything further with her other than acknowledge that she was added to the cast. Frequently, however, I get asked the questions “Will Kíli and Tauriel be forming an attachment?”. “How do you plan to handle the romance between Kíli and Tauriel given the relationship you’ve been building with X character?”, “Why do you dislike her so much?”. I’ve even been accused of disliking her from the misogynistic view point of “the evil female who corrupts the helpless males,” which is frankly offensive and not at all the case.

To the first two questions: she is not book canon, I do not need to address the so-called romance because there is nothing in Tolkien’s canon to support her existence and thus the romance. To the last question… well, that one is a little more complicated and requires an in depth examination of her introduction, actions and interactions with Kíli, as well as his personality as established over the course of the films since we have precious little to go on in the books.

First, let us look at Kíli. He is a flirt. We know that, we see him flirting with various elves during dinner in Rivendell. Beyond that, however, we see very little of his tastes or preferences, although it is probably fair to assume that he is probably something of a romantic as well. As much as he is a main character, he is still more of a background character compared to Bilbo and Thorin. It is, after all, about the hobbit of the piece. He is young, either just about to turn 77 or not long having done so and that makes him young enough that we get the impression that he and Fíli both are still of an age where it is perfectly natural to idolise their uncle and be desperate for his approval. We see that the few times he is dressed down he feels it very keenly. We also see that he is playful and open, perhaps the most playful and open of all of them except, maybe, Bofur. He is curious, perfectly capable of giving his all when it comes to a fight and Gandalf refers to him as one of Thorin’s best alongside his brother and Dwalin. 

We also see him flip from open and loving, though perhaps infatuated is a better word, to cold and murderous in a moment, so we can probably include passionate in all things in that as well.

Now, let us look at Tauriel. Unlike Kíli, we have no set age for her. We know that she is young for an elf, but the ages given range from somewhere around 600 to 1,400. There is one quote placing her at 1,347 but it is in a sea of conflicting information. Regardless, she is young, she is idealistic and curious. She has never left Mirkwood and has dedicated much of the last few decades to attempting to curb the influx of giant spiders which are spreading from Dol Guldur while arguing with Thranduil; who wants his borders kept clear but refuses to deal with the source of the threat. An attitude not unfamiliar to many of us, sadly. She has the friendship of a prince of Mirkwood but is declared not good enough for him. Also, not an uncommon attitude in those who could be thought of as nobility.

She, like any being that has literally had hundreds of years to practice, is incredibly good with her weapons and pings and flips around like the others of her kind. Given her youth and position we can conclude that she is considered unusually skilled for her age but she still has the advantage of living forever, unless she tires of life or is killed, to keep improving her skills.

Finally, let us look at the history between elves and dwarves. It is not a pretty one. They come together for the sake of occasional trade, or to face the threat of Morgoth, and later Sauron, and their armies, but otherwise they keep to themselves. The dislike is clear on both sides and occurs well before the day Smaug arrived in Erebor, during the First Age in fact. So it will be difficult for this young pair to overcome millennia of bad feeling between their people, some of whom actually remember the events that set the dislike in stone. Legolas and Gimli are later understood to be among only a very, very, few who become close enough to be considered great friends. Much of fandom would probably cheerfully have them be a great deal more given Legolas snuck his dwarf into Valinor after Aragorn’s death.

To the shoe-horned in romance, and I do mean that in the literal sense. Evangeline Lily has been heard in interviews to say that she was wary about the fan reception of Tauriel from the start and that she signed on under the explicit understanding that there would be no romance or love triangle. And at the end of the initial shoot there was not. When they came back for studio shoots and reshoots, however, she was presented with a list of scenes that had been added and some that needed to be reshot to accommodate, you guessed it, a love triangle. She was signed in, she had taken the money, done the work and was boxed into a corner. The love triangle went in and it became the part of the films that polarises the fans the most. Besides, if we want to ship something, we do not need to have it spoon fed to us. Bagginshield is the most popular ship in the fandom and we only get the odd hint towards it here and there. Then look at the multitude of other ships. We did not need to be given something we can make up for ourselves.

That out of the way, let us look at their meeting:

The Company is beset by giant spiders, destined to be dinner, confused and disorientated and more than a little desperate, weakened due to lack of food and the weird miasma of Mirkwood which has been playing havoc with their minds. None of them are in good shape but, as they do, they fight on anyway. They need to survive and reach the mountain so that they can take back their home. Enter the elves, arrows whistling, blades crunching into thick spider exoskeletons, performing all manner of acrobatic leaps and twists to avoid getting bitten or killed. It is impressive, eye-catching even to the older dwarves, and would likely be even more so to a pair of young dwarves like Fíli and Kíli. We do not see Fíli’s reaction, he is too busy frantically looking for his missing brother who has been cornered by a spider. 

Enter Tauriel, who refuses to give him a knife to defend himself with and help her deal with the stragglers because she believes he may well be an enemy. She is, in fact, somewhat derogatory towards him. I would not say that Kíli is charmed, although he is certainly impressed, because were he charmed I do not believe he would have such a massively discontent expression on his face as she takes him back to the others. I suspect that, much like in Rivendell, he would have put more effort into turning on the charm. 

As the dwarves are led away, we get the first indication that Tauriel has noticed him; she comments that he is not entirely unattractive for a dwarf due to his lack of beard and the fact that he is tall for one of their kind. Legolas is unimpressed, but we expect that.

Once they reach the cells we see the dwarves desperately attempting to avoid being locked up. Most of them are attempting to force their way free, Fíli appears to be in the process of having yet more knives removed from his person while he huffs and sulks, and Kíli is watching as he is taken to a cell of his own. A solitary one at that. Fíli and Kíli, it could be argued, are a little bit co-dependant. Not horrendously, but they have been watching out for one another over all the rest from the start, they are brothers after all, and in the life of a dwarf five years is not all that much of an age gap. So we can assume that Kíli does not really want to be locked up on his own, he is a social person regardless it would seem and I suspect that being alone would be a special kind of torture for him. He tries stalling. 

“Aren’t you going to check me? I could have anything down my trousers.”

I’ll give Tauriel this, she is quick witted and this is possibly one of my favourite exchanges of the films. Her reply; “Or nothing” is cool, a little bit cutting and gives no indication of any sort of interest at all. If anything, she seems a little exasperated with all the fuss the lot of them are creating and she simply wants to be done with it. Away Kíli goes and off she goes to report to her king.

Who proceeds to compliment her on her good handling of things so far, order her to make it better faster, reject her proposal for exterminating the source rather than simply dealing with the fallout and then tell her that no matter what else she has done, she is not good enough for his son. Oof. She hesitates before replying, stumbles her way through a response and seems genuinely upset about it. Regardless of whether her feelings for Legolas are of friendship or if she had been hoping for a little more as well, being told something like that had to hurt.

We next see Tauriel patrolling the cells. Some of the dwarves are making noise, most seem pretty resigned, Kíli is fiddling with his promise stone. Which he promptly drops and loses through the bars, only for it to be stopped by Tauriel who demands to know what it is. As you do. Kíli, as you do, replies that it is a curse stone and any who is not a dwarf who looks upon it will suffer greatly. I forget the exact quote, I could look it up but I’m not feeling quite that dedicated to making my point here. Tauriel hesitates. I will not say that she is alarmed, she seems to take his words with a pinch of salt, but she is definitely wary and we have to remember that she is a very young elf who has spent all of her life in Mirkwood. She has not interacted with dwarves, has no reason to have done so and so she has no idea if what he is saying is true or not. And we have no idea how many of the old stories about elves and dwarves she has heard, although we know it is enough for her to have a generally low opinion of them. Her hesitation is enough to cause Kíli to come clean, perhaps fearing that she will take this precious memento of his mother from him. You can see the moment that Tauriel decides to return it, the flicker of surprise that a dwarf would mention a parent with such apparent fondness and it makes me wonder what stories she has been told about dwarves and their emotions. Regardless, she gives it back and the two begin a conversation which starts with Kíli’s opinion on starlight and moves on to become centred around Kíli’s travels. 

It is a good, safe, sensible conversation which would ring no alarm bells. In fact, the only thing that hints towards the idea that we should be looking for a romantic angle is the shot of Legolas looking down upon them with a disgusted sneer. 

This is where I began to feel uneasy with the direction the story was taking. Legolas is clearly jealous, Tauriel has clearly been hurt by the callous words of Thranduil and there was, perhaps, a little bit of flirting going on between the bars. This is Kíli after all. One thing we forget, however, is that she is his jailor. She is in a position of significant power over him. Let us flip the genders. The one behind bars is female, the one who holds the keys and is showing a marked interest in her is male. This is a familiar trope, and one which many of us shudder back from due to the power divide and the vulnerability of the female character, no matter how kind the male one seems. Why, then, do so many of us ignore the reverse scenario? Why is it alright for a woman, or elleth, in a position of power over a male, and especially a young one who might well be looking for a way out and a way to keep his friends and family safe, to pay such marked attention to a male captive?

The answer, of course, is that it is very much not alright, but we let it slide because it is not the reverse and society seems to have this thing for women in power seducing helpless males.

So, they have got their flirt on, spent an unspecified length of time languishing in the cells and now it is time to escape. The book would have us believe that they spent a month or so in the cells and rode their barrels out with relative ease. No gates, orcs, arrows or chases through the rapids. I can understand the movies needing something a little more dramatic. It would have been a dull escape otherwise, but we can already see the shift in Tauriel when the dwarves escape, even though she has known them at most a month, and the film makes it seem like they have only been in there a day or two which is what makes her actions later make even less sense than they would had she known Kíli a month. She hesitates. Her prisoners have escaped, her king is going to be very displeased, and still she hesitates.

I refuse to get into the thing with the morgul arrow, I find it very hard to believe that Sauron would have allowed the use of those and thus tipped others who were not Gandalf, Saruman, Galadriel and Elrond off to the fact that he was on the move. I am not even entirely sure they were a thing in book canon which is neither here nor there. It is believable that Kíli would have been hurt, that is a risk in every combat situation, and I will leave it at that.

The dwarves escape and head to Lake Town with Kíli in increasingly poor shape, Tauriel and Legolas take an orc to Thranduil for questioning which results in the elf king ordering the gates sealed. He wants nothing to do with whatever quarrel is between the orcs and dwarves. I hardly blame him. Legolas and Tauriel both object at different times and get shut down, and Legolas goes to obey his father’s orders, only to realise that Tauriel has already run off after this bloke she hardly knows.

I love Kíli, I do, but at this point he holds about as much of a permanent place in her life as the bloke I started to play Dungeons and Dragons with three months ago does in mine. And she probably knows him about as well as I do that guy.

She is idealistic, young, desperate to see the world. I get that. It is as good a reason as any to want to go out there and save it given that she is, to borrow from Guardians of the Galaxy, one of the idiots who lives in it. But saving the world, or that corner of it, was not what set her off in Thranduil’s throne room. Being told that Kíli was going to die slowly and painfully was. As much as the scene argues that she is going out there to save the world because she believes that they have a responsibility to do so, she has also already shown that Kíli is one of her primary reasons.

Four years ago, my then four year old, looked at this whole mess and said “But Elsa says you can’t marry a man you just met”. Where she got the idea Tauriel wanted to marry Kíli, I do not know, but that observation stuck with me. 

Anyway, because this is getting rambling, stuff happens, the dwarves have a feast, Kíli gets left in Lake Town with Fíli while the rest go on to Erebor and Tauriel fights her way into Bard’s in time to get some athelas to heal Kíli, although not without a little bit of dithering about before hand as she tries to work out what, if anything, she can do to help him. It is not the first time we see the calm, collected and confident character we were introduced to take a backseat before she pulls herself together but it is quite prominent. Kíli, while being healed, spouts off some romantic gibberish about him and Tauriel being worlds apart from one another and wondering if she could have loved him. 

It is very sweet. It is also delirious ramblings. I have said some things while feverish and sick that have had my Significant Other raising his eyebrows at me. It is not meant to be taken really seriously. For all we know, five minutes before he might have proposed marriage to Óin or been hallucinating a fight with Smaug. It is sweet and romantic, as we might believe Kíli to be, but can it be considered a true declaration?

Incidentally, this part is one of the changes that makes me really quite angry. Fíli and Kíli were always supposed to be at Thorin’s side when they entered Erebor. He leaves Kíli, and therefore Fíli, behind with barely a twitch, and callously does so after making him struggle his way to the dock and the waiting boat in front of the population of Lake Town who are waiting to see them off. It raises questions about whether the gold obsession that plagues the line of Durin had already started to set in, but I think it was a decision made to give a greater sense of peril to the scenes in Lake Town when Smaug is razing the place. 

Either way, I do not like it. 

The morning after the night before dawns, Kíli seems none the worse for wear after his near brush with death, though we know that Frodo was heavily weakened after his own such encounter in sixty/eighty years, depending on if you book or film timeline it. He is saying goodbye to Tauriel and effectively tells her he loves her by calling her “amrâlimê” which most of us here know means something to the effect of “my love”. Watch Fíli behind him, rolling his eyes and shaking his head as though this is not the first time he has seen his brother act like this. Fíli is the Darcy to Kíli’s Bingley, except maybe this time it really is not love at all and Fíli is right to be wary and frustrated. It is also the time we see Kíli go from adoring puppy to murder hound in about 0.6 seconds with the arrival of Legolas. This time he is clearly infatuated, but I would still hesitate to say “in love” for a couple of reasons. The first is that they really hardly know each other, and while love at first sight is a wonderful idea it is not necessarily the strongest foundation for a relationship. Especially one with such incredibly strong Romeo and Juliet vibes. The second is that she has saved his life twice at this point. It is a known phenomenon that when someone does such a thing gratitude can be mistaken for powerful love.

In fact, Aidan and Evangeline have both reported to have said that had Kíli survived the pair of them would have very rapidly recognised that this is not love at all. It is gratitude and infatuation and not something which could withstand the judgement of both of their peoples.

Here, they separate, and neither mentions the other at all. Tauriel is cast out of Mirkwood, Legolas vows he will not return without her which is a whole other host of problems on its own, and they go forth to Gundabad to see what the orcs are up to. 

It is bad news, but then these things usually are.

Things go horribly wrong in Erebor, words and Arkenstones are exchanged, hobbits are nearly flung from very high places and battle commences while Dwalin attempts to knock some sense into a gold consumed Thorin. You can see why Kíli will not have had time to think about Tauriel at all.

With the battle joined, it is fight or die. Kíli is unaware that Tauriel is anywhere on the field, or that there is a trap waiting for him in that bloody tower and Tauriel… well she panics. Seeing that Thranduil is intending on withdrawing for the good of his people she stands before him and pulls a weapon on her king demanding that he stay and fight and help the dwarves. If not for the fact that Legolas comes and takes her toward Ravenhill I think Thranduil probably would have crossed a line into kinslaying right there and then. There is only so much disobedience and, frankly, treason one can endure from a subject before something more permanent needs to be done about them.

They get to the tower, Fíli is already dead and Kíli is desperately trying to hold his own against an ambush so that he can avenge his brother. And Tauriel, for some unfathomable reason, races through a tower full of orcs screaming his name. That… that is not how you do these things. At all. By doing that you draw the attention of every creature that is currently free to track you down and kill you. 

Moving on.

Watch them fight against Bolg together. They do not do it well. Kíli is fabulous next to Fíli, and probably Thorin and Dwalin and any other dwarf for that matter. He probably would not do too badly with one of the Men beside him but the elvish style of combat and the dwarf style are very different and it does not mesh well for these two who barely really know each other. Legolas and Gimli fight in many of the same battles, but rarely side by side and they are certainly more in tune with one another than these two are. In this case, Tauriel is definitely panicking and I wonder if she would have done the same if it had been Legolas she was fighting with. 

Somehow I doubt it.

Anyway, eventually they are overwhelmed, longing looks are exchanged and Kíli is killed. Tauriel breaks down to Thranduil who declares that it was clearly real love.

I just, there is so much wrong with this I hardly know where to start. 

A lot of time is dedicated to this addition. It drives a wedge between Thranduil and Legolas that we had no reason to suspect existed, it deprives him of one of his loyal guards and it does absolutely nothing at all to affect the outcome of the quest for Erebor in a positive way. It adds nothing to Kili’s death, it does not make it any more of a tragedy than it is in the book. In fact, if anything I think it takes away from it a little bit. For those not in the know, in the book Thorin is felled on the field, fatally wounded by Bolg who is then crushed to death by Beorn. Fíli and Kíli, who do not wish to see their uncle’s body taken and desecrated, and likely hoping that there was some small chance he could be saved, fight over him as guards until they are overwhelmed and die side by side before help can come. It is, ultimately, a terrible waste of their lives. Thorin lives long enough to apologise to Bilbo in one of the healing tents, much as he does on the side of the mountain in the film, and then he dies. 

So Tauriel has made no positive impact upon the outcome, it could be argued that her moment of hesitating to threaten Thranduil could have been the moments where she and Legolas might have reached the tower fast enough to save possibly Kíli, perhaps even Fíli, we will never know. What we do know is that the addition of the love triangle added extra time which could have been given to any of the rest of the Company, most of whom were given very little at all to do other than carry on in the background. We could have spent more time with Bilbo, who got shunted aside for the Legend of Legolas parts and, of course, the love triangle additions. We did not even get the funeral in the theatrical release!

It seemed to primarily be, well, filler. And the studio’s bizarre opinion that they were not going to get female viewers if they did not stick some form of romance in there. It seemed to almost be an attempt to mirror the Arwen, Aragorn, Eowyn triangle from the Lord of the Rings, except they missed the mark there spectacularly. Arwen knew very well what she was giving up in marrying Aragorn, and she ultimately made the same choice that her uncle had made thousands of years before as had her very nearly ultimate grandmother (bar Melian) before that. Tauriel could have had no concept at all of what she might have been tying herself to. And that does not even get into the political ramifications of it had Kíli survived, or if he and any one or both of Fíli and Thorin survived. 

This next is, of course, speculation, because we have no real way of knowing. 

Tauriel has sacrificed everything, her home and position for some dwarf she hardly knew. They think it is love, but in the coming weeks with Kíli dedicated to the mountain, whether alone as king or with his uncle and/or brother, distance begins to grow. Tauriel is an elf, she may have fought in the battle but she is still not completely trusted. Rumours from those who might have seen her interaction with Thranduil during the battle start to surface. Kíli might overlook them for himself, but could Thorin or Fíli? If they were to send Kíli to do something that Tauriel would not like, could they trust her not to do the same to them as she did to Thranduil? She owes them even less loyalty than she did him and she threw it all to one side in a heartbeat. If Kíli is the only one of the younger two who survived, where does that leave the succession? If he and Tauriel cannot have children together the throne is not secure, even if they could with all the millennia of bad blood between elf and dwarf will the general populace really accept a half elf on the throne? Especially one who might live forever. The answer there is very likely to be no, which will cause more problems further on and puts Dáin and later Thorin III Stonehelm on the throne again. So there was no point saving Kíli if the original timeline would come to pass anyway, if with a few more hurdles and a heap more unrest thrown in. In other words, it would cause a lot more contention than it would solve.

If they did grow apart, as the actors have stated they would, I think Tauriel would have come to resent Kíli for his role in her decisions, even though she was a grown elleth and perfectly capable of reasoning out possible consequences for herself. Evangeline says that Tauriel went back to Mirkwood after the battle and I suspect Thranduil forgave her out of pity and because he knew she had learnt a terrible lesson. I doubt, though, that she ever regained his trust, and I very much doubt she ever rose to any real position within the kingdom again. If Kíli had not died, I suspect her reception would have been less forgiving and more in the nature of “well if it isn’t the consequences of your actions” before being thrown from her home in disgrace.

Either ending is unhappy for her.

This whole diatribe actually makes it sound like I quite like the character, and there are some small parts of her that I do like. The film needed a strong female character, and this is perhaps one of the reasons that one of the more popular genderbends in the fandom is female Bilbo. Because either way, the story still works. And all the initial stuff with Tauriel worked. Her early interactions with Kíli, that snappy comeback which is actually a favourite because as a response to someone intending on unsettling her it is perfect, even that little bit of wanderlust that she lets seep out. Where it falls apart, and where my dislike stems, is the introduction of the love triangle, the huge power imbalance between them when it begins in the dungeons of Mirkwood, the fact that gratitude and love are allowed to blur over the line with no one questioning it. Except, perhaps, Fíli, who is the long suffering older sibling accustomed to his brother becoming infatuated with this or that pretty face or great warrior.

Had it been left at the wanderlust and the whole bit with the delirious confession been done away with, she could have still been great. Had she kept her head a bit better upon seeing Kíli fighting Bolg or even had a material effect on things for good I could possibly, possibly have overlooked how it all began. But that moment in the cells set my squick metre off and coloured my opinion of it from there. And even repeat watching has not helped me to see it in a positive light. It was filler, time wasting, and I find it hard to like a character who was introduced as someone that girls could look up to, and who became, instead, every cliché female love interest that I feared she would. They set her up, let her and us down, and as a result I prefer to pretend she never existed, or gloss over her entirely. 

And because people are always asking me what my problem with her is I’ve grown to despise her. 

Kíli is a grown dwarf, he is perfectly capable of making his own decisions and thinking for himself. Tauriel does not manipulate him into having feelings for her, she seems to be made uncomfortable by the confession in fact, but just as he is capable of thinking for himself, so is she. And I question every decision she made from the moment she locked him behind those bars, because that is where the Tauriel that Kíli met in the spider’s nest begins to vanish. 

She could have been a great character and she did not need a love interest, or to become one, for that to happen. The studio handled her poorly, and that is why I would prefer to ignore the fact that she, and that stupid love triangle, ever existed.