#That this was only ever a tragedy of good people whose good intentions were manipulated and twisted. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

whentheynameyoujoy · 3 years

Text

Women in SPN—Is it Really That Bad?

TL;DR: Somewhat, yeah, it kinda is.

This is going to be a series of long ones, people.

Before I jump head first into this giant vat of weird toxic shit, let me say something:

The thing about most of the female characters is that on their own? They’re perfectly fine, ranging from serviceable to the occasional flash of thematic brilliance. Barely any of them qualify as “this is hateful on its face and incompetent regardless of context and the writers should feel bad for ever conceiving of it”, i.e. the normie benchmark for justified criticism. It’s only when you put these characters next to each other that a worrying pattern emerges;

Although discussions about sexism in the media were very much a thing in the mid-2000s, as well as shows with characters whose primary role wasn’t to serve a man’s needs, I can’t honestly claim that the flaws of SPN are out of the norm for its time; and

The first few seasons could really do with a PSA at the start of each episode, something along the lines of “A part of the reason why female characters are killed off or written out with such regularity is rabid superfans who couldn’t abide anything with tits brushing against J2, srsly, the writing team and the 2000s’ fan base were a match made in hell, except it wasn’t the writers who couldn’t do with bitching on their LiveJournals about the gall of women to exist in the show, choosing instead to harass the creators and actresses and wives and call them every sexist insult under the sun AND I MEAN WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE HAS THERE EVER BEEN A CESSPIT AS DISGUSTING AND NUKEWORTHY AS THE SPN FANDO—“

Anyway.

SPN has a legacy (as a posterchild for not knowing when to bow out gracefully, but legacy nonetheless) and isn’t watched in 2005 but in the year of our Lord Today. Meaning that as time goes by, the issues surrounding the show’s production retreat into the background and only what’s on the screen remains, to be judged on its own merits.

So let’s run down a list of the more noteworthy and relevant female characters of the first arc, focusing on their characterization, role in the narrative, and end. In the conclusion to this series of posts, the sum of characters will be analyzed as a whole to see if there are any unique tendencies in the show’s handling of women as opposed to that of men. I’ll do this for the original five seasons as the recent finale went out of its way to say that nothing after season 5 was strictly speaking necessary so why bother.

(Also because I died of frustration in season 8 and vowed not to subject myself to any more of the post-apocalypse fanfic era)

Angels, while strictly speaking genderless clouds of energy, will be classified as men or women depending on the apparent gender of the vessel they spend most of the time riding. The same goes for demons where I also take into account their stated gender while they were alive. That’s because although beings like Meg, Ruby, Anna, or Lilith can’t technically be considered women in the show’s present day, their consistent preference for conventionally attractive and/or female vessels throughout the original arc makes claims of genderlessness essentially meaningless. For all intents and purposes, we’re watching girls and women on screen.

Baby—the only true NB of the first run

All right, time to jump.

Say hi to our ladies!

Mary Winchester

Killed in the very first scene to give the story a reason to exist, she remains an active presence throughout the first arc where she has a wide-reaching influence on the plot and characters, driving the conflict on several levels. Fleshed-out more and more with each appearance to be more than just “the dead mom”, she’s portrayed as protective, pro-active, capable, and assertive, mirroring the duo’s desire for normal life and their inability to have it. Her story comes full-circle in season 5 when the personal tragedy of her fate is embedded in the wider tragedy of the Winchester family curse and the overall theme of destiny.

Status: Dead as of s5

Importance: Major

On her own: Textbook example of fridging… and that tropes aren’t bad in and of themselves.

Jessica Moore

Comparatively, if anyone doubts fridging can evolve into something meaningful, Jess drives the point home by having no personality and no point but to prop up her boyfriend before she ends up pinned to the ceiling, the reveal of which is the most interesting thing about her entire existence. At best she’s a symbol of Sam’s civilian life, at worst an obstacle to be removed for the story to happen.

Status: Dead as of s5

Importance: Major in terms of manpain, non-existent otherwise

On her own: A cardboard cut-out, barely qualifies as a character

Missouri Moseley

A psychic and the primary reason why John Winchester even knows to wipe his ass. Appears once over the course of the first arc yet everyone wants her to come back years later—that’s how awesome she is. Has this fantastic trait of being compassionate and empathetic while not taking a single speck of shit from anyone, especially when it comes from the two main dumbos who might just as well have been raised in a barn. Is very particular about the pristine state of her coffee table.

Status: Alive as of s5, killed in s13 (wait, what?)

Importance: Major…ly wasted potential

On her own: As strong a character as Bobby Singer, and as worthy of being elevated to the main cast.

Lori Sorensen

The writers can’t figure out why anyone in the universe would care about Jess either so they insert an intentionally awkward romance subplot to convince people the time’s not yet ripe for Sam to stop grieving and start slaying. The result’s… erm… well, awkward. Lori’s naïve, sheltered, devout though accepting of her non-repressed friend, and sort of on a religious crossroads because of her hypocritical preacher father. I guess the virginal power of her virginal virginity does… something in the plot? Primarily a vehicle for Sam to mark the stages of his moving on.

Status: Alive as of s5

Importance: Minor

On her own: A bit done. Like a bit lot. Like a “could be a trope namer” bit lot.

Meg

Boom, baby!

Arguably the chief antagonist of season 1 and one of the best things about it. The first one to point out the pervasive toxicity of the Winchester family business, so props for perceptiveness. Possesses the standard qualities of a lower-level henchman—manipulative, no-nonsense, and quietly sinister which, while not exactly groundbreaking, sets her apart from the other bad guys in the season as they tend to have no distinguishing characteristics at all. Plus Nicki Aycox makes the role seem more unique and “lived-in” by projecting a sense of understated amusement at the two main chucklefucks. Is one of S1’s turning points in blurring the lines between monsters and humanity. Has a face transplant twice—once to have revenge (good on her) and the other time to pursue someone else’s goals again before getting stomped into the ground like a mook.

Status: Alive as of s5 (?), killed in s8

Importance: Major

On her own: The actresses do most of the heavy lifting. Which doesn’t mean I don’t love watching the character burst onto the scene and announcing the end of the Winchester brand of bullshit.

Layla Rourke

A terminal cancer patient in a religious cult, she’s a more mature take on a Lori-type character and the themes of faith and doubt. Serves as a conduit for Dean’s budding survivor guilt, self-loathing, and sense of worthlessness. Is kind and cheerful, with strong hints that she’s relying on forced optimism to get through the days; also understanding of the circumstances of others while realistically freaked about the possibility of death. Weirdly, she enters the episode already in a state of acceptance and leaves it just as accepting when it’s confirmed that yeah, she’ll die soon. All expressions of anger at the injustice and senselessness are left to her mother which somewhat undermines the “struggling” portion of Layla’s character and renders the final scene where she makes peace with her fate a bit hollow.

Status: Implied dead

Importance: Minor in the overall narrative, major in the episode and Dean’s development

On her own: I want to like her, I really do, just… if only she were allowed to get pissed, once.

Cassie Robinson

Dean’s ex and that’s pretty much all there is to her. I struggle to pinpoint a single personality trait of hers—the 2000s idea of a “strong woman” and “not like other girls”, perhaps? Undermined as a love interest because TPTB don’t show the happy or any parts of her relationship with Dean so really, why should anyone care if two sniping assholes with little to no chemistry get back together? Memorable for being in a horribly scored softcore scene which YouTube tries to convince me lasts for shy over a minute, not the week I remember it to. Involved in the show’s first and last attempt at incorporating the issue of anti-black racism.

Status: Alive as of s5

Importance: Minor

On her own: She’s in the racist truck episode. ‘Nuff said.

Sarah Blake

A sophisticated people-person conversationalist with a love of high art and a deep sense of introspection. Ascends to the state of godhood by being able to pull off pigtails while adult. Bonds with Sam over responding to loss by crawling into a shell but deciding to move on. Doesn’t care for your fancy schmancy fine dining, Romeo. Isn’t ashamed to openly talk feelings which includes her explicitly asking Sam if they have a thing going on (honestly, this is such a breath of fresh air for a normcore romance). Despite being scared out of her wits, she refuses to be shoved into the helpless civilian box after learning about the existence of the supernatural; Dean creates a Pinterest wedding board in response.

Status: Alive as of s5, pointlessly dragged back to be murdered in s8

Importance: Minor in the overall narrative, major in the episode and Sam’s development

On her own: A great love interest that has enough writing behind her to fool you into thinking she’s something more.

Up next, whenever I feel like it, seasons 2 and 3!

#spn #spn critical #supernatural #supernatural critical #sexist writing #mary winchester #missouri moseley #meg masters #sarah blake #layla rourke

15 notes · View notes

jostenneil · 4 years

Text

I think something so fundamental to Naruto as a story is the fact that Naruto and Sasuke’s individual journeys in relation to Konoha—as a system and as a collective of people—are always going to send them in opposite directions. Like I realize that a lot of fans (including me, at times) wanted anything but angst for them as a conclusion, after all that they went through, but in doing so I think people ignore something undeniable about the story itself. As the story progresses, Konoha becomes a home to Naruto, and a source of exile to Sasuke. More under the cut!

The problems I have with Naruto’s post-canon—Chapter 700 and onward—lie mostly in the idea that Sasuke is willing to bend and cater to this system that:

manipulated his brother into massacring his whole family,

isolated him as a result of that massacre, fixing his hatred on a singular point with no thought to how that situation could easily spiral, which it did,

provided him with no knowledge as to why that massacre actually occurred,

and when he did find out the reason, lead him to realize that Konoha was a village that had never wanted him to begin with, that he had been spared solely because his brother loved him that much (but even then, that love wasn’t without consequence, and it was manipulated by the background intentions of Konoha’s elite),

and, regardless of all these facts, continued to alienate and criminalize him rather than help or address his trauma and his very valid reasons for rage aimed at the village.

Do I agree that there were better ways for Sasuke to go about his intentions once he recognized Konoha’s elite for the scum of the earth that they were? Sure. But I also think it’s important to recognize that he was incredibly destabilized as a child, and it’s amazing, because for some people this is a very hard thing to understand? I think fandom doesn’t realize the difference in the words ‘justified’ and ‘explained’. Were all of Sasuke’s actions in canon justified? Maybe not (although a lot were). Were all of his actions well explained by his trauma? Honestly, yeah.

So to circle back to the point that I am trying to make—it’s true that during Part I, he grew very close to Team 7, and for a brief moment in time, these relationships were like a lifeline for him. But think about it—is a connection that you hold to three people enough to keep you in a village where you hardly feel connected to the rest? This is only a mild issue for Sasuke at the end of Part I; he doesn’t feel very connected to most people in Konoha, but at best, they’re just annoying background noise, trivial obstacles in the face of his goal to hunt down and murder Itachi.

By the end of Part II, however, it’s overwhelmingly integral to his situation. Over the course of his journey, he’s come to learn that Konoha as a system always viewed him—his family—as a potential threat. His life was spared by his brother, but even that came with consequences and orders orchestrated by Danzo and co.; add onto that the chaos that he wrecked once he was free of Orochimaru’s tutelage, and you have a person who didn’t just alienate himself from his village, but who was alienated by that village in turn.

It just makes so much sense to me that he leaves at the end of Chapter 699, because while he obviously cares deeply for Naruto and Sakura, is it really realistic to imagine him staying there just for them? What would he do, and what purpose would staying there serve him? This village rendered his entire life a lie, trivialized his existence, and traumatized him as a result. Aside from his connection to Naruto, by the end of the manga, Sasuke is purposeless. For someone whose entire arc is propelled by hate and sadness that stems from a very specific purpose, he ends up in this strange, sort of in-limbo space. . .

. . . which is why I actually like the idea that he decided to go on a journey for himself. It’s why I like the Blank Period notion of him being this forever traveler who drops in on occasion to help when circumstances are dire. It’s a good balance for him. In the fast-forwarded post-canon, however, we see that he’s essentially become a more child-friendly Itachi equivalent—he’s signed his life away to forever protect Konoha from behind the scenes, despite the fact that it comes at the cost of him neglecting his own family, and for the sake of a populace that for the most part does not care for him. It just feels like such a cruel way for his story to come full circle, after everything that he went through, because as much as he loves Naruto, Sasuke admitting to loss is more an acceptance to let love in, in full, and to let it guide him over the hatred he’d harbored in his heart for so long. That doesn’t have to be equivalent to submitting himself to Konoha—it just means that he should allow himself to prioritize his own needs and desires, rather than let anyone else’s evil or trauma guide him, as it has for the whole story.

And actually, that notion, to me, is what made Naruto’s character progression and ending make a lot of sense in comparison. He is someone who constantly strove for heartfelt connection to others, despite the pain and rejection that it could very often inflict on himself. In many ways, it was a dangerous way to think, and he often came off as naive(, which Naruto as a story is plenty criticized for, because it easily runs counter-intuitive to any sort of worthy political commentary on the series), but it also made him a very hopeful and independent person. He didn’t allow what others thought of him or inflicted upon him to guide his thinking, and he was very much someone who prioritized his own heart over the malice of others.

So naturally, Naruto always ran in a direction opposed to Sasuke as a result of this thinking—and we know this. Befriending and changing the people around him for the better was what propelled Naruto more than anything, and it’s why Konoha ended up as a home for him despite everything it and its people did to discourage and put him down. He had to go to ridiculous lengths to prove himself, and in many ways it was cruel to realize, but he also formed so many valuable relationships along the way. Like, his relationship with Sasuke obviously takes precedence, because it is the foundation and catalyst for everything, but I don’t really agree with people who view Naruto’s dream of becoming Hokage as an obstacle to that bond. I actually feel like those were goals that ran in parallel for him. And I mean, he even says it, doesn’t he? How is he supposed to become Hokage if he can’t even bring back this one friend from darkness. It just resonates so much to me that by the end of the story, Naruto is someone actually prepared to take on the mantle of Hokage—because he understands other people’s pain, and he runs with it, and he is insistent upon making the people around him love themselves because he knows how miserable he was as a child hardly able to love himself.

In that sense, Chapter 699 is, to me, a really great chapter. I think it captures that forever diverging dichotomy between him and Sasuke perfectly. Naruto is a story equally about Naruto making a home for himself in Konoha as it is about Sasuke freeing himself from the same village’s shackles. True, there is this intense, deeply rooted love that they are always going to have for each other, but that love is something that runs alongside their own personal feelings and ambitions, rather than against it. I think people get caught up in the idea that a happy ending for them has to mean that they’re together together, but to me there’s a certain poetry in them going their own separate ways. Konoha is no longer a home for Sasuke (if it ever was, even a little), but that relationship to Naruto and Team 7 will forever be important to him and influence him wherever he goes; and Konoha has become a home for Naruto, but it’s also with the peace of knowing that Sasuke won’t ever succumb to the darkness of others again, and will love himself first.

So, tldr; I think the notion of Naruto ending with Naruto and Sasuke going their separate ways is kind of ingenious, because it ties deeply into what Konoha means to each of them by the end of it. This isn’t me saying that I think they’re never going to see each other again—I just don’t think the conclusion to their individual arcs has to be in opposition to what their relationship means to them. They can continue to be intensely important to each other, while prioritizing their own hopes and dreams. That’s the beauty and tragedy of their relationship to me. (Chapter 700, who?)

#uchiha sasuke #uzumaki naruto #narusasu #sasunaru #naruto #i haven't like. properly naruto meta'd in Years #and it's funny bc i used to not like sns at all #but in recent years where my naruto experience has been kept more to myself #i've found myself to really enjoy their dynamic and all of the tragedy woven in #not to say that i didn't hate their relationship ever #i just don't think my views on it ever aligned with most of the shippers? and still don't kinda #but either way! i would love to talk to people about this #bc it's a really fascinating narrative progression to me #mine:meta

94 notes · View notes

ssaalexblake · 4 years

Text

I am, as they say, That person who has a huge ass pile of books to read that i’ve had, in some cases, for years, but i saw the new Suzanne Collins book was out and got an e-copy and read it immediately, you know, as you do when you have a huge pile of books to get through.

anyway, spoilers, definitely ---

I’ve never actually read a Book where the whole story was from the perspective of a terrible protagonist, i have read books where there have been spare chapters from the perspective of villains, but never has the villain been the Protagonist before in my experience. And this protagonist was showing danger signs of a seriously pathological narcissistic personality from the opening world building chapters, and it only got worse and worse as the stakes in his life got higher and higher.

And here’s the thing, i Know people were immediate and vapid in attacking Collins for this when the plot summary were released, and i will admit, my eyes rolled so very much at the immediate assumption that this was a story to make you sympathise wigh him, because, simply, i’ve read the trilogy. Collins’ doesn’t even make her Hero characters that sympathetic a lot of the time, with the exception of Prim and Rue, whose literary function demanded them to be symbols of purity and innocence, practically everybody else is in a shade of grey. The victors we love all have blood on their hands, even Peeta, who is also a symbol for non violent ideals, is corrupted by the narrative. This is not a series that is particularly nice to it’s cast of characters, even when we are meant to Like them.

But now after some brief fandom browsing i am now just going ‘wtf’ at the idea that people are Still holding onto the idea After having read it that, just because a story is about a bad guy, the author Must somehow be endorsing their actions. I’ve literally never read a story with a more unsympathetic protagonist. What a Disgusting person.

This story revealed that the villain is a pathological and possessive narcissist who is very much the hero of his own story, but sure as hell nobody else’s.

I also noted that people have been commenting that the book is too Coincidental in its references and that it made it a bad story, that they were just for clout. That Snow is in 12. The lake. The bakery and so on and so on, and that it put people off and seemed just a grab to keep people interested, but the thing is, it’s a Ballad. This isn’t ‘the novel of songbirds and snakes’, it’s ‘the Ballad’. It plays out, contextually, with the deliberate knowledge that all the readers have read how this story ends in the trilogy, as one of the covey’s songs.

I’m not sure how to phrase it, but i feel like viewing the story and plot itself as more of a folk song or limerick is the best way to look at it from, it’s not Meant to be a novel. It’s a Ballad. The literary devices in two such storytelling methods are very different, in a ballad i would Expect this type of thing which is fair because the book is named a ballad. In a novel i would find it a bit too coincidental, but i don’t think that was how we were supposed to look at it.

That all aside, i never actually had any feelings for Snow beyond the literary device he embodied, the power so vast and beyond you it is hopeless to even think of defying it. Now i have Many feelings about Snow, namely, that i actively hate him now.

This book may actually play out as a cautionary tale about being careful of narcissists, actually, and taking care to make sure they do not end up amassing too much power.

I would say Collins portrayed Snow as a mixture of the old Nurture versus Nature debate, his absolute lust for total control to no longer be the victim of something as horrific as the war was Clearly a case of circumstance... If he had never been in the war, he would not have felt the sheer powerlessness that has led to his absolute need for control.

There is also the other angle of his nurturing that plays into this, his Absolute sense of entitlement as a Snow. He was born a Snow, not some lowly normal capitol family, or worse, one of those ‘district animals’. In his mind, what was rightfully His was stolen from him when they lose the business in the war because of district 13, he got bit in the ass by capitalism, hilariously. His family’s business went under, and the loss of income from it took them from hero to zero, but he though he was Owed his money and status by virtue of his birth and did not see how fragile the perch of his wealth and status was even After the perch had been toppled and he was left penniless. The presence of irrefutable evidence that nothing but access to more dollars provided his life style did not even break through his entitlement.

But i mean, there are a lot of entitled capitalists in this world who think that just because they Used to have money and a thriving business means they are entitled to always have that, and while it makes them not that great, it doesn’t exactly make them Monsters. But here’s the thing, you also cannot claim that Snow is not just naturally a self centered narcissist. That is just a personality trait, and it is This that makes the above a horrifying problem.

When somebody else is harmed, it is about how it will effect Him. The tragedy in being assigned district 12, girl, was not that a girl was being stolen away to be murdered, but that he got stuck with one of the kids unlikely to win. Tigris’ implication of what she may have had to do to keep their family operating was first and foremost about how uncomfortable and disgusted it made Him. Other were reduced to utter horrors to survive the war and he judged them for it, all the while, he only escaped such a thing because of a crime his grandmother committed (looting was, technically, illegal). Clemmie maybe needing him? It wasn’t about her or her life, it was about how it might effect Him (to a point, it is fair to fear for your own life in such a situation, but most would bother to feel bad about it). This is just a handful of examples, but there are many, many more.

He is also Horrifyingly possesive. He, Literally, is a textbook case of an abusive boyfriend who kills their girlfriend because they might have priorities other than him. Lucy Gray may not be dead, i was not left with the impression he succeeded in killing her, but the deal sealer is in the attempt, not whether he succeeds. The entire narrative in his head towards his relationship with lucy contains every danger sign i’ve ever been warned against in men. He wishes to Own her, not love her, and that he was literally given her life on a plate as an experiment did not help with his narcissistic entitlement. His family and friends (though, he did not have friends) all assumed he loved her and because they said it he assumed it was true. But it was possession he was feeling.

He did not help Lucy out of the goodness of his heart, it was self serving. It was self serving the entire time. Us, having knowledge of his internal monologue are aware of his self centered intentions, but the characters around him, unaware of this, treat him as if he is a good person because they assume he has charitable motives. He very much does not. Him comforting Clemmie was, every step of the way, for his own benefit. He Certainly was not the saint Sejanus thought he was.

But he still Believes the people who tell him how great he is!!! Narcissist.

he is, in short, a right piece of work. What a monster it takes to get your ‘brother’ executed for treason and manage to make it about himself in about an Hour. What a monster it takes to attempt to do that to Lucy Gray. What a monster it takes to get the Plinth’s only child killed and take his inheritance and power out of a sense of entitlement and continue calling the grieving mother ‘ma’.

Anyway, brilliant character building. I Hate him.

I also Love the world building, the confirmation that Reaping Day is on July 4th, the idea that in the beginning even the capitol citizens thought the hunger games were barbaric and depressing and that they had to be won over by a propaganda campaign of dehumanization and entertainment. The idea that mentors were once capitol citizens, that it went wrong so they erased it from history but cherrypicked the parts that worked.

I found Dr Gall or whatever her name was gravitating towards Snow interesting, because people who are like that Naturally gravitate towards people who prove their world views right, and by all rights Snow does turn out very much like her (admittedly, with less an interest in science), who is to say she in turn was not less of a monster in earlier life but grew into it as well? She saw something in him and nurtured it with poison.

This is getting increasingly more random, But i love Peeta’s highjacking now. I was never against it, but it was never the plot for me, but now i am So into it. Because Sejanus is Very peeta like, that idealism. And how satisfying it must have been for Snow to finally be able to crack into that and destroy it because he has the Power to do so now.

On the flip side, I actually now wish we had Peeta perspective chapters, because there is a compelling argument to say Snow and Peeta have their similarities, too. I mean, their defining difference is that Peeta is a good person, but they have the same talent for sheer manipulation as each other, Peeta manipulated hunger games audiences into keeping Katniss alive longer, Snow did the same with Lucy Gray. They are both deeply charismatic, generally liked by their peers, popular, are sabotaged by small groups of people who hate them for reasons beyond their control. They are inversions, same coin, different sides.

The sexual slavery of the victors is now a more narratively interesting thing, as well, because snow is, in this book, Disgusted by the idea of any kind of sexual impropriety (not My opinion, but he considers it impropriety). He is disturbed by Tigris’ implication she may have had to engage in it. Was what he did to the victors merely a case of his disdain for district animals and wishing to subject them to the most degrading thing as possible? How did he get from A to B here?

Seeing the very first career pack was interesting, too. I wonder if the stronger districts started to band together in the games from realising the strategy had advantages or of the capitol subtly Encouraged the behavior themselves. The latter seems more likely, considering they were the ones out for a good show.

I was interested on canon confirmation on the peacekeepers, to be honest. I’ve seen fic discuss where exactly they come from, but to know they are made up from less wealthy capitol citizens And district people after either money/a way out of their assigned district’s profession or both was a nice lore drop.

I know it’s not Confirmed Tigris is the same Tigris who played a part in mockingjay but... it would be so wonderful if she were. Being brought down, in part, by she who nurtured him. Tigris loved Coryo because she thought he was somebody he was not, so when and how did she find out who he Really was?

In the end, i find the idea that this books Shows us Snow created the country we see in the trilogy through the reasoning that A) humanity is terrible and will always fight and try to destroy each other and that B) he decided that if point A was true, he’d amass enough personal power to make sure he would Always be in control of the fights and come out on top of them utterly Fascinating societal commentary, most of which is not really my lane to address so i won’t (also, it’s fairly obvious).

But the idea that Snow was one of the capitol ones who sees the district people in a more favourable light simply because he’s at least willing to admit they’re not zoo animals is Stunning when you put it in context of all the things He does to them. He’s not even close to the worst one and look what he did!

In the end, i think Collins has fleshed out this world and made it more horrifying than it was before. And Panem is meant to be a reflection of our own society’s failings. This book was not to say ‘oh Snow was an actual person so wasn’t That bad’, it was trying to say ‘Snow was an actual person and is Very much terrible’ because the idea is this series is a highlighted reflection of the real bad in our own world. If the monster Snow is cannot be relatable to a real person, how is it any kind of societal commentary at all? He cannot be one dimensional and totally evil from the womb if you want the story to actually say anything.

I also did find this story relied on Collins’ previously seen not necessarily realistic world from the original books to make its point, and i did not expect that to be a deal breaker for so many people considering the story from the trilogy relied on its audience’s skill to read into the meaning rather than the literal at times as well, but i stand by my assertation that the title is meant to be an indication of the type of narrative the book observes, it is a song, which is a very different style of story than that in any other kind of media.

#tbosas #tbosas spoilers #the ballad of songbirds and snakes spoilers #admittedly i only read this b/c i know i'd finish it quickly b/c it's not v long and wouldn't be like #reading level hard #b/c i can't be bothered with anything complicated right now #But i did enjoy it #i've enjoyed genuinely hating the person whose head i'm in #who knew

4 notes · View notes

asterisquebloomed · 4 years

Text

Follow Forever

I seen a few of these before, and I thought what with the year ending, perhaps this was a good idea to do in commemoration of these past two years. I know I haven’t been the most active of RP partners. I’m really slow and my motivation is fickle, but I love RPing, I love writing, and I’ll never give it up, it brings me so much joy writing with everyone. So in honor of all that has happened, and as wish for more to come, here are some words of gratitude to some of my partners, friends, and mutuals.

@breakingreality

Avo, where do I even start with you? Oh I know, that you’re fucking amazing? Is that a good place to start? It better be, because here we go.

You are my best friend out of all the people I’ve met here in these last two years. I love talking to you, gushing about our characters, scheming and plotting future threads, teasing you with unanswered questions and unsolved mysteries, teasing you in general really, and just talking about whatever may cross my mind at the time. You’re easy to talk to, easy to get along with, and super friendly. I’m so happy to have met you and made friends with you, you have no idea. I’ll fucking fight anyone who dares talk shit about you. You’re understanding, smart, clever as fuck, and are one of the most enjoyable people to talk to. You’re a great writer, a great creator, and an even greater friend. I look forward to talking to you and I thoroughly enjoy your company. I don’t think you’ve ever once pissed me off, which is amazing because I have the shortest fucking temper ever. I wholeheartedly appreciate you and everything we’ve done thus far. If you ever need someone to talk to, to vent to, to confide in, whatever, I’m here for you. So if you ever feel lonely, or unwanted, or like you’re being ignored, come talk to me, cause I’ll never ignore you.

On that note, let’s turn our attention towards the RP side of things shall we? You’re an amazing writer, a wonderful RP partner, and your character are great. Like I love Eli, she’s fucking fantastic. Her sassy attitude, her impulsive nature, her quirky habits (Please don’t eat frozen steak Eli) and just all the intricacies and nuances, every single thing about her is great. A girl forced to grow up too fast, a child forced to face her mortality before she even got a chance to live. So when faced with two options, to die sad and alone without ever having had a chance to truly enjoy all that life has to offer, or to live by forsaking her humanity, the choice was obvious. She gave herself to the darkness, embraced being a monster, all for that chance. A chance to experience, to enjoy, to live. I’m sure most of us would make the same choice if we were faced with such a dismal situation.

Eli is amazingly written, you bring her to life in a way most could only hope to achieve. Her reactions are organic and visceral. She’s such an emotional girl, as much as she tries to hide it behind that stoic facade of hers. Her emotions are so raw and powerful that they sway the reader to feel along with her. To feel her fury as she fights against those who have done terrible things to her or those she loves, to feel her happiness however short lived it tends to be, and to feel her sorrow, the deep, bitter sorrow that seems to constantly plague her very existence. She can never seem to escape it. The abuse, the torment, the manipulation, all the suffering she goes through, that leads her to the edge, and when presented with it, she jumps. She leaps into circumstances she never fully understood, dives into a dark and twisted world, one full of horrific tragedy. Before she knows it and before she’s even aware, she’s lost her humanity. She’s become a monster, not only in name, but in nature as well. She’s become the demon those nuns claimed her to be, and she murders her tormentors for the things they have done to her. She gets taken in by a morally questionable individual and is put to work as an assassin, forced to kill people who are the same as she once was, humans who became monsters and lost control. She’s forced to essentially kill herself, over and over again. She’s been isolated her entire life. Made to mistrust others, to be distant, to be cold, to be uncaring.

And then she meets a girl, a special girl who accepts her for what she is. A girl who, while initially afraid of the truth that was revealed to her, overcomes that fear, because what you are doesn’t matter, it’s who you are that is important. She accepts her, refuses to let her go, and swears to never abandon her. For probably the first time in Eli’s whole life, she has a friend. Someone who truly cares about her and enjoys her presence. It’s no wonder she fell in love is it?

But like all things in this poor girl’s life, it’s fated to end in tragedy.

Listen, I love Eli, she’s a great character, she’s compelling, nuanced, and with so much depth, of both emotion and personality. She’s conflicted, she struggles, she has ups and downs, she feels and wants, she’s both silly and serious. She’s like a real person. She’s not just one thing, but many things, all blended together to create a single individual, just like we are.

You’ve done an absolutely fantastic job writing this girl. You should take pride in what you’ve done, because you’ve created an amazing character here.

I adore her relationship with Ivalinne and Reiko. They’re such stark contrasts to each other, such different dynamics, and the conflict between the three is great.

Which brings me to threads, I’ve loved every single one, and I have SO many ideas for more. I’ve got so many plans and schemes and plots in my head that I have yet to spring on you since I don’t want to overwhelm you, and I hope we’ll get to explore each and every one of them. I can’t wait!

You are probably the biggest fan of everything I do. You support me in my endeavors and are always cheering me on, and I thank you for that, I really appreciate your support, how much you enjoy my stories and characters, it makes me so incredibly happy. You’re probably the biggest fan of Ivalinne’s story, and by far the most vocal. I hope you’ll continue to partake in my stories as I tell them, I’d love to have you along for the ride.

Have I heaped enough praise on you yet? I could probably go on for hours about how amazing you are, so in the interest of not making this post even longer than it already is, I’ll stop here.

Avo, you’re great is all aspects, and I hope we continue to write together for as long as is possible. I look forward to the coming year and all the wonderful threads we’ll surely write together in 2020.

@intrinsicmirage

Aster, you’re such an amazing writer. Your narration is beautiful, I love the way it flows and how poetic it is. It’s a pleasure to read the things you write and a joy to see you on the dash.

You are a creative force, your ideas and concepts are awe-inspiring. The lore you’ve crafted is so interesting and well thought out, from the Coils to the Shroud, to the various species you’ve made all from scratch. You have an amazing mind and I love seeing what you come up with. Your characters are compelling, interesting, and in some cases downright terrifying. S9 is a fearsome being, an ancient god risen from the dead yearning for the power they once had and more, intent to make the universe bend to their will and take all they can get.

Syn is great. A woman struggling with her past and trying to find meaning, going from a materialistic, greedy mercenary whose focus rested solely on the wealth and possessions she could gain, to her confronting her past and taking on the trials of the Coils. She’s so haunted by her pasts traumas that in the past she couldn’t bear to speak of them, and to confront them head on took a lot of courage. She comes out triumphant and sees the world in a new light, making her realize just how pointless her treasure trove of amassed wealth is, and that there’s something much more important than money and material things. She takes her future into her own hands, reshapes herself and takes control of her own identity, giving herself a new name, one that she chose for herself, one that wasn’t given to her by someone else. It was hers and hers alone. Now known as Malam’schir, she sets her sights far higher than she once did as Syn, seeking to tear down a corrupted system of power where the strong reign supreme. All that she willingly puts herself through and endures for that goal, it’s admirable. She’s done a lot of horrible things throughout her life. She’s never been what one would consider selfless, in fact, she’s been the opposite, and for someone like that to, in the end, work towards helping the weak who are trapped under the heel of corrupt monarchies and corporations who hold an iron grip on the planets and systems in the galaxy, that is some amazing character development.

I think it really is amazing when a writer can make you feel for a character that isn’t morally sound and who is either grey, or downright evil. It takes a lot of skill to get the audience to invest in and sympathize with a character who isn’t an obvious hero. To have the reader root for someone who has killed countless people without a second thought, who lies and steals and does whatever it takes to achieve their goals, that in my opinion is a true sign of a skilled writer.

And you’ve done exactly that. I find myself wanting Malam’schir to succeed, cheering her on even when full well knowing that during the Lifeforce Coil she’s systematically torturing and murdering people to gain a better understanding of how that energy works before assimilating the lifeforce of those she’s killed into her own to bolster herself for the journey ahead. How detrimental this act becomes to her, as all the memories and personalities of all those she’s absorbed blend together. The gambles she takes as she descends into the Nine Hells and the risk all of this poses to her, not just physically, but on a fundamental level. The question of ‘is she still herself’ when all of those personalities merge and intermingle. What is truly her and what is inherited from all the souls she’s consumed. It’s fascinating and I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.

You’ve done an excellent job with your characters. They really feel like actual people, not mere concepts, but individuals with a will all their own. You bring them to life in such a spectacular way and it’s an honor to be able to write with you.

As a creator, I look up to you. You inspire me to go further and deeper, to explore beyond the world I created and reach out into the universe in which it exists. To explore my concepts on a cosmic scale rather than on a planetary one, and I thank you for that.

You’re a great friend, easy to talk to, fun to bounce ideas off of, and just an overall welcoming person. I’m glad to have met you and it makes me so happy that we’re friends. We’ve been mutuals since almost the beginning, sometime in March of 2018 or so, over the course of so many URL changes that I had to give you your own tag just to keep track of them all, and it’s been wonderful having you along for the ride. Thank you for your support through these years and for your continued interest in what I do.

I absolutely adore our ship and have so many ideas for what is to come for Reiko and Syn/Mala. Despite them both being terrible people, their relationship is so pure and beautiful. A love without expectations, one that doesn’t judge or hold the other to some sort of standard or code of conduct. A love with no burdens, but just simply being there with one another, enjoying the moment and each other’s presence. It’s so wonderful and I love every instance of it. Such rich emotion and such a profound love, even though both believe themselves unfit for love and unworthy of being loved. For such dangerous beings which such questionable morality, they are so sweet together. The fact that these two, who are ultimately very selfish individuals, would do anything to protect the other—even if it cost them their very lives—is so beautiful, it touches my heart.

I look forward to what is to come in the new year and hope to continue writing with such a wonderful writer for as long as I can, and I hope you too, feel the same way.

@sisterofthedevil / @cruentusscarlet / And more

Flan, you’re the reason I’m here in the first place. You were the first person I reached out to when I decided to come back here and enter the RP community. It was due to you that I got to join that first discord server, the first one I was ever in. It’s my home and I treasure it so much, so much so that even if that server is slowly declining, I’ll never leave it, because it’s the first place I got to call my home on discord. All of the friends I’ve made, all of them are thanks to that first step. If it wasn’t for you I might not have been able to make my place here. I’m so grateful for that. Even if we don’t talk much, I still consider you a good friend. And that’s not to mention how great of an RP partner you are.

Reiko and Flandre’s thread is one of my favorite threads I’ve had to date. I’ve loved every moment of it, it’s been such an intense roller coaster of emotions, and it’s probably the only thread where all of Reiko has been on full display. I hope going forward into 2020 that we can continue to write together.

You’re a great writer with such a unique style. Each one of your muses is fleshed out with intricate details and is a different spin on things, What with Flan having accidentally killed her sister and become the new mistress of the manor. Remilia embracing the role of being a terrifying monster and doing horrible things without batting an eyelash. Parsee being trapped not only emotionally and mentally, but spiritually and physically as well, unable to leave the bridge and be free. Satori, despite the horrors she’s witnessed, does not just follow suit to her species. You’ve given attention to every little detail, from the placement of her veins to the way she would have to put clothes on to accommodate them to the lasting effects of being able to read minds and bring other’s traumas to the surface. Alice is such a unique take on her as Shinki’s daughter, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything similar in regards to Alice’s origins and it’s amazing.

Each one of your muses shows how much thought you put into the characters you play and how dedicated you are to them. All of their trauma is very much real, and you portray it so well. There is never an easy fix to such problems, and you’ve done their struggles justice and shown just how hard it is to live with things like loss and abuse. Never does it feel like their trauma is overlooked or minimized, and their struggles with their demons and all the torment they’ve endured is very real, and how each one of them deals with their trauma in a different way shows such deep understanding of how different people react to things differently and everyone has their own way of coping.

I hope going into the next year that we’ll continue to RP together, there’s so much more I want to see and explore with your muses. You’re a great person, and I wish you all the best for the coming year.

@catacombofsouls

Lina, we’ve only become mutuals rather recently compared to most on this list, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed talking with you over these past months. It’s great to have someone to scream about The Case Study of Vanitas and Pandora Hearts with. You’re friendly and easy to talk to, and you’re always up for whatever ideas I come up with, or happen to mention. Really, you’re a very kind person and I enjoy your company. I hope going forward we’ll continue to be friends and RP partners for the foreseeable future.

I know with my recent lack of motivation that our threads haven’t gotten very far. With any luck, I’ll be able to regain my motivation and write more frequently. You have so many muses I want to interact with, particularly your OCs. Light is a very interesting character and I want to interact with her at some point in the future. I have quite a few ideas, but I don’t want to overwhelm you or myself for that matter, so once I get our threads going again and I’m not in draft hell, I’ll come to you with some even more fucking up ideas!

Thank you for reading Ivalinne’s story! I’m glad you enjoyed it, and I hope you’ll stick around for the stories to come! I’m glad you like my characters and I hope you’ll continue to enjoy what I create going forward.

@mayohigan-orange / @witchwaltzing

Cobalt, I know you don’t think you’re a good writer and all, but you really are. You’re not only fun to RP with, but fun to talk to as well.

Reiko and Chen’s interactions have been a wild ride, and a highly amusing one at that. Chen has such a feisty personality and she’s not afraid to speak her mind, or to even cuss someone out, regardless of who they are. Though that seems to get her in trouble more often than not. Between her picking fights with all the wrong people, and her devotion to those she cares about, Chen is joy to have around. Even with Ivalinne, who she hardly knows, she’s promised to keep her safe and she won’t betray her word. She’s an admirable little kitten who tries her best. She’s still very childish and her lack of worldly experience shows with just how easily Reiko has been able to get things to go her way, which still astounds me since that’s entirely unplotted and we just go with the flow with our threads.

At first glance, your Chen appears to be just the cute cat often seen in fanon, but once you get to know her, you see that there’s more to her than just that. You’ve developed her character and given her depth. Her eagerness to prove herself, to live up to her Master’s name and legacy, how desperate she is to do so despite the risks. How protective she is of those close to her, and even those she’s only recently met. She’s a good girl with a strong heart and even stronger convictions, and how passionate she is shows in not only her words, but her actions as well.

You don’t give yourself enough credit. You’re a great writer, and a fun RP partner who pushes themselves to do more. I seem to recall you not being too confident in fight threads, but here you are, writing one with me and doing it spectacularly. You’re dependable and reliable, probably one of the most reliable RP partners I’ve had the pleasure of writing with. You’ve never once dropped one of our threads, even though we have so many, and that’s something I greatly respect.

You’re a good friend. You’re easy to get along with, and you’re so casual and friendly, joking around and just overall are an enjoyable presence to have around. It makes me happy that you were so enthusiastic about Ivalinne’s story, to the point of wanting to change the ending. To have someone be so invested in something I wrote is amazing. I’ve done my job as a writer if I’ve made the reader feel for my characters and root for them, and I’m so glad you enjoyed it so much. Thank you for your support and your continued patronage, I hope you’ll continue to read my stories and continue to RP with me moving forwards into the coming year. Don’t doubt yourself, you’re a good writer, and I’m sure you’ll only get better as you go.

@soulwitch / @volatilepaths

Kako, you’re really just amazing on all fronts. You’re a great supportive friend, a calm voice of reason, and a wonderful and dedicated writer. You put so much of yourself into everything you do. You’re always there to help anyone who needs it, always willing to give advice and be there for those who are having a tough time, it’s really awe-inspiring just how much you give to not only the community as a whole, but to everyone you interact with. I know I’m frustrating to deal with at times, but you never give up on me, and I really appreciate that. So many others would have just been done with me, they wouldn’t have tried to work things out and make sure an understanding was reached. I’m really grateful for that. The problems I’ve come to you with, and you’ve helped me work through, I’m grateful for that, truly. You’re so friendly and accommodating, always wanting to make sure your partner is happy and comfortable, and that they’re enjoying how each and every thread goes. The way you put others needs ahead of your own is really admirable. You’re a great person, and you deserve all the best, really.

You writing is great, and your characters are amazing. You’re not afraid to delve into some really dark topics and that, in my opinion, takes a lot of courage. Jeanne is absolutely terrifying, through and through. She’s a great villain and a force to be reckoned with. A woman so utterly broken by all she’s been through that she’s become such a monster, one who cares not what evils she commits. She lies, she manipulates, she does whatever it takes to get what she wants, to satiate her desires. She’s a masterpiece of a villain, and I really need to find some way to get to see more of her. Reiko utterly despises her, and wants absolutely nothing to do with the woman, to stay as far away as she can and to keep Jeanne from encroaching upon her. They’ll never be able to get along thanks to Jeanne hitting upon the things she most abhors, so I’ll have to come up with something else, because I do want to interact with Jeanne. I want to see more of her, try to understand her better, she’s a character with a lot of depth, and I want to see more than just the surface.

Which brings me to the Redbellion event. Everything about that was amazing, Kako. From the story, to the interactivity, to the sheer size and the amount of time and thought put into everything. It was great and I’m glad to have been a part of it, even if it was only a small one due to my own anxieties. You were so helpful and accommodating, making sure I who was late to join, was able to get in on the action and feel like I made a difference in the event. I’m proud to have contributed, happy with what I got to do. It was fun reading through the various stories that came from it. I got invested in quite a few things and found my emotions swinging to the tune of your words. The androids that struggled to survive as they were divided between their mother and their nature as synthetic beings, Core who became a terrifying abomination, and Harune, who sacrificed all she held dear just to save this dying galaxy. It was a beautiful story and you did an amazing job bringing to life not just a single world, but an entire galaxy. It’s amazing what you did. You put so much time and effort into the whole thing. The sheer depth of your dedication and devotion is admirable. I could never hope to do something like that, let alone carry it all the way to the end. Your determination is amazing, and you have my deepest respect for your efforts.

You’re someone I look up to, someone I’m glad to know and happy to have the honor to write with. I know I haven’t been the best of RP partners, what with my sporadic activity and my flighty muses and motivation. I’m sorry for that, and I hope that I can do better in the coming year. You’re a great writer, an amazing person, and a wonderful friend, and you deserve all the best in the coming year.

@unhingedsea / @sophisticatedsuccubus / @justthatdamnrich / And more

Ellen, I know we haven’t spoken much recently, but I hope we’re still as close as we were a couple months ago. I miss having you check in on me and message me. I really enjoy your presence and love talking with you. Hearing about your ideas, how you’re branching out into fandomless OCs of your own setting, it makes me excited to see what you create. I hope you’ll bring them to tumblr so that we can interact and I can see more of them.

Your characters are a diverse mix of drastically different personalities. From Wada, who is batshit insane by any measure, to the shy and socially awkward 2pi, to the rage filled Klowni, you have such a varied mixture of characters. I’ve enjoyed the threads that we had, even though they were rather short-lived. I hope we’ll get to RP more in the coming year, I really want to see where things will go, especially with that thread between Reiko and Jo’on.

I know you’ve been struggling lately, feeling like what you’re doing has lost it’s appeal, and that you’ve lost touch with those who you once interacted with frequently, but I don’t think that’s the case. Everyone has been really busy lately for some reason, many people that were once frequent on the dash are active less these days, and it’s sad to see, but I don’t think it’s that they have lost interest in what you do. I for one haven’t, and I never will. You’re a joy to see on the dash and I hope you’ll come back and RP here more. I definitely want you around, and I’m sure others do too. So please, believe in yourself, I’m sure you can do it.

You’re such a great person. So friendly and welcoming, always cheering everyone on. You told me you swore to be that positive light for others, no matter what it takes, and that’s something amazing. Something I would never be able to do. I hope you won’t burn yourself out, because giving so much is a hard thing to do, especially in an unkind world. I hope you don’t give up, that you keep going and striving to be who you want to be. If you ever need someone to talk to, I’m always here for you.

Thank you so much for being such a fan of Ivalinne’s story. When you told me that reading my writing, reading my story, motivated you into writing, I was honored. That my writing could have such a profound effect on someone, it’s unreal. I’m happy you enjoyed it and I hope you’ll continue to read as I write Eliyah’s story and more.

@fxtelism

Dennis, you’re a good friend and I’m grateful to have someone I can confide in about the things I can’t tell anyone else. You’re nice, friendly, and easy to talk to and get along with. I really appreciate your company.

Thanks to tumblr eating the notifications of our threads at every turn, we haven’t made much progress RP wise, but hopefully that will change in the coming year. I want to see more of your characters and get to know them, get more interactions, and develop our muses further. Leon is really sweet and it’s adorable how much of a flustered mess he is, it’s great. Soft boys are good! Manifestation is very interesting, an opposite to the kind and friendly person who he was created from. I’m curious to see where things could go with both of them. If just tumblr would stop eating notifications.

Now then, Ivalinne’s story. Thank you so much for reading. You have no idea how much it means to me. When you were reading and mentioned that one thing, I was so excited to see you get to the end. Having someone realize and notice things really is great. Probably the best feeling I’ve ever felt. I hope you enjoyed her journey and will continue to read the stories I’ll tell in the future, because I’ve got plenty more to tell!

@echointheforest

Marii, you’re a great friend, and thank you for all your support. You’re so welcoming and easy to talk to about literally anything. I never feel awkward talking to you about things, even though I sometimes worry I bother you too much.

ReiMarii is love, ReiMarii is life. I adore our ship. It’s the first ship I’ve ever had, and it’s been amazing. Thank you so much for introducing me to shipping, I’m so grateful for it. Shipping is so much fun, so full of feels, and I love it. I hope shipping with Reiko hasn’t been too angsty for you, it seems that no matter what, everything comes up bittersweet, and I hope that doesn’t upset you. I love how Reiko and Marii are together, it’s adorable. Everyone else only sees the surface, the bitchy exterior that woman presents to the world. and they write her off as that being all there is to her. But there’s so much more to her than what’s on the surface, and exploring all that lies beneath it with you has been one of the greatest pleasures of this past year. Every interaction has been wonderful, I love every minute of it and I hope we’ll continue to interact more in the coming year.

I know you worry a lot about whether you’re a good RP partner, and while I’ve already said my piece on it to you, I’ll say it again. You’re a great RP partner. You’re in no way a shitty RP partner. You’re a joy to write with and I love interacting with you. Life has been hectic for you recently, but I hope it will calm down, so you don’t have to be so stressed and exhausted all the time. You’re a great person and you deserve the best. I hope we’ll continue to be friends and continue to interact through next year as well.

You’re the first person, and so far the only, to see Reiko’s core. You’ve seen a side of her no one else has experienced. Marii’s touched her heart, reached through the ice and rust and connected with her on a level not even she thought was possible anymore. If things continue the way they’ve been going, she might even end up telling Marii about her past, so I hope we’ll get to explore more and more of their relationship, sink the claws of love deeper into her heart. Maybe Marii can make her realize that being who she is isn’t as bad a thing as she thinks it is, maybe she could help her to accept that she’s not damaged or broken beyond repair. That she’s worth the love the youkai has given her. I want to see it, someone be able to reach her, to tell her it’s fine.

So I hope we’ll continue to write in the coming year, that we’ll continue to develop this tender, beautiful relationship between dark and light, because I’m excited to see where it goes. How deep it will get and how close they’ll become. The future is bright, and hopefully Marii can teach Reiko that as well.

@johnny-writes

Johnny, I know your retirement date is quickly approaching, and I’m sorry I haven’t fulfilled what I promised. I said I’d put priority on our threads, but I failed to deliver, and I apologize for that. I wish we could have had more threads, that I had met you sooner so we could have done more. It saddens me that soon, we won’t get to write together anymore. I’m going to miss you as an RP partner. I hope we can continue to be friends though, even if you’ll be leaving the RP community.

I know Mara and Tojava weren’t exactly planned characters for you. They were created from a meme and it all started from there. I like both of them, the concepts and tropes they’re meant to explore. I was looking forward to you writing their story, and though you got derailed during NaNoWriMo, I hope you’ll continue to work towards the completion of their tale.

The thread between Reiko and Mara was a very interesting one. I’m sorry my bitch of a muse made Mara cry, she didn’t deserve that at all and I still feel bad about it, but I enjoyed the thread nonetheless. Feels are fun, no matter what form they come in. The thread between Ivalinne and Kazuma was fun too, it’s a shame it won’t get to continue to the ending I had planned. It would have been a chance to show Ivalinne is more clever than most probably assume due to how most of her threads have gone. It’s a shame it will never come to pass.

Speaking of Ivalinne, thank you for reading her story! I appreciate your interest. When you told me you got hooked after the first two parts, I was overjoyed. I’m glad you liked it, and I hope you’ll continue to read Eliyah’s story as I write it.

You’re a good friend, a logical voice of reason, and I’m grateful for that. I know I’m not always the most reasonable person out there, but it really helps when there’s someone that can talk some sense into me. Thank you for your support this past year. I’ll miss having you around on the dash, sending asks in to my characters and I’ll miss seeing your characters around. But just because they aren’t around doesn’t mean that they don’t exist anymore. I look forward to seeing the story you tell with them, and I wish you all the luck with your plans for the future.

@geisthonoredferry

Koma, we’ve only met recently, but honestly you’re great. You’re so supportive of everyone, what with your little handwritten notes to people and all the positivity you spread, you’re a great influence on this community. This place needs lights like you, people that care about others and support them no matter what. You’re a blessing and I’m happy to call you my friend.

I hope in the coming year that we’ll be able to get some more interactions going. My motivation to write has been very low recently, and I’ve been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of drafts I have, but I’m not gonna give up! I’m going to reply to everything and keep moving forward.

Thank you for reading Ivalinne’s story, I’m glad you liked it and I hope that you’ll continue to read the things I put out and enjoy them all the same.

I really appreciate how much you care, how you check in on me to see how I’m doing, how you send positive little messages in the server and how you’re always doing your best to spread that cheer. You’re great, really. As both a writer and a friend. Though you should really stop lying to people and saying I’m cute. You’re the cute one here, not me.

@weaverstale / @draconianmyths

Kirbs, you’re great, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You’re so caring and compassionate, always concerned for everyone else and supporting them with positivity. Thank you for your support. I do appreciate it, really, even if I believe myself unworthy, it does make my day better. Don’t ever stop being that way.

We’ve both been low on writing motivation lately, and that really sucks. I want to RP more with you. Orochi is very interesting, and my dumb thot of a muse can’t resist an attractive man. Or an attractive women, as Konoe proves. She really just can’t resist attractive people in general really. I hope going into the next year that we’ll be able to have more threads and interactions.

You’re a good friend and you’re easy to talk to. I know at times our...interests in conversation topics just don’t always match, I apologize for that. I am but a shy nervous bean, naive and innocent about such topics. Regardless, I do enjoy talking to you, and I hope we’ll continue to be friends in the future.

@magicaldreaming

Xana, I know we’ve only become mutuals recently, but I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you. I love hearing about your OCs, it’s fascinating. You’re easy to talk to and really chill, and I appreciate that. I hope we’ll continue to talk and be friends in the coming year.

As for RPs, you’re an amazing writer with some amazing muses. Krolia was one of the first I seen, through your threads with another blog I follow. Krolia immediately caught my eye, she’s very strange in a curious and interesting way. She’s an ancient being with a love for modern technology, idol music, and junk food, and it’s adorable.I really want to have a thread with her someday, once I manage to get my draft situation under control. I hope to see more of her, she’s really interesting.

But probably my favorite muse of yours currently is Celia. I read along with her threads in Redbellion, and honestly, they were my favorite. I love her journey throughout the event, going from an emotionless killing machine intent to cleanse all biological life from the universe, to realizing the true beauty of life, and realizing she had set in motion the destruction of an entire galaxy full of it. How she fought so desperately as the end of all was looming over her, how much she regretted what she had done, and how badly she wished to right the wrongs she committed. How she gave her all to save people. to protect them from the menace she had unleashed, and how she gave her life, her light, in order to save everyone. The woman that once sought to exterminate all life sacrificed her own to save what remained, and that is beautiful. I teared up when she started to fade into slumber and go dormant. You did an amazing job building up her character and her development was spectacular. I look forward to see where she goes from here, now that her outlook on the world has so drastically changed. With any luck, I’ll regain my motivation and be able to see that hope through with our thread!

All in all, you’re a great writer, never doubt your talent. It really shows a writer’s skill when they make you feel for and root for an evil character. That’s so much harder to accomplish than simply having the reader side with the hero. Any writer that can do that has my respect, just as you do.

@fragmentedsilhouette

Sage, I know you’re not really on tumblr much anymore, but I’m going to list you here anyways. You’re a good friend, calm, easy to talk to, and your company is enjoyable. I should really talk to you more.

I miss seeing Amaeris on the dash, she really was a great character. Well thought out and of questionable moral standing (Wait a second most of the characters I’ve spoken of here have been that way...Do I have a thing for that type?!) A shadow of her former self, literally. A deceased ruler of an ancient empire aiming to regain her former glory and rebuild her kingdom anew, so that she may reclaim what she had in life. You put a lot of thought into her and I wanted to see where she would go, if she’d ever be able to take back what was taken from her.

I hope one day we can write together again. The brief instances when we did were enjoyable. Maybe sometime next year? Who knows, but one can hope!

@moonternity

Lilli, we may have never gotten to RP on tumblr, and we might not have RPed all that much in general, but I think you deserve to be mentioned here as well.

When we first met two years ago, you hated my guts and told me straight out. I admired that honesty, since honesty is something I value. You gained my respect by being so honest about your feelings. I wanted to be friends with such an honest person, someone who wouldn’t lie to me and who’d tell me flat out if I fucked up. So I wanted to win you over, and as you know, I did, and that made me so happy.

I’m glad to be your friend. Happy that you want me around. It means a lot to me, truly. I enjoy your company, the fun we’ve had with the campaign, and even just talking to you. Thank you for being my friend, for giving me my first D&D experience, and for just being you.

---

And thank you to all my followers, both on the RP Side Blog where I actually do all of my writing and to all the followers here, whether you’ve just followed the wrong blog or not! Thank you for your support! I hope I can continue to write more and more in the years to come!

Happy New Year to you all!

#Follow Forever #Appreciation Post #Positivity #Mun Speak #Thank you everyone for supporting me and writing with me!#This post is ungodly long #Sorry #It's just the way I am #Happy New Year to everyone!#Here's to a good next year!

13 notes · View notes

jaimetheexplorer · 5 years

Text

I thought I was the Warrior, and Game of Thrones was ASOIAF, but it was just the Stranger

Latest post in the “koops works through the stages of Jaime-Lannister-character-assassination-induced grief” series. I’m sorry I keep spamming the blog with these, but it’s helping me put my thoughts in order and move on, and maybe they can be useful to others too.

This is where I’m at right now. Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow or next week and see it differently, but... here it goes.

Long analysis ahead!

I know some people right now are a bit/very upset at Nikolaj for seemingly supporting D&D’s assassination of Jaime’s arc, after he advocated against twincest and pushed in favour of adapting Jaime’s book arc and his relationship with Brienne for many years. To see him describe the ending as a perfect conclusion to Jaime’s arc, seems very jarring. And I was equally thrown off and confused for a while.

But I think what I have come to realize from rewatching his interviews (especially the ones where Gwen is sitting next to him - because she knows him, and knows how he truly felt about it; her reactions to his answers say a lot about that) is that Nikolaj has simply made peace with/resigned himself to D&D’s (incoherent, depressing and uninspiring) idea of Jaime. The version he doesn’t like, the version he would not have written himself, the version he complained about for years, but the version they might have had in their head all along: the one that served their twincest fanfic best.

I was a show-first fan, but I was always aware that the show had issues with adapting the books (as per GRRM’s own admission of “traumatic” creative differences where D&D pushed for changes more than for adaptation) and that many books fans hated it for that. But I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because I thought they would eventually veer towards the direction the books had taken, and all that seeding and build up would find its payoff and provide closure (even if not as satisfyingly as the books). The S6 finale remains one of my favorite episodes ever. Like Nikolaj, I expected S7 to start with Cersei having to face the consequences of that act and Jaime and Cersei’s rift finally being adapted. Like Nikolaj, I was shocked when the leaks came out showing that, instead, Jaime would stick with Cersei and get her pregnant again. Like Nikolaj, I tried to rationalize that storyline because, in the end, we knew Jaime did leave Cersei “without looking back”. It seemed like S7 might be just more of the usual adaptation problem the show always had but, FINALLY we would get Jaime’s identity arc adapted in the end. Like Nikolaj, I went into S8 full of hopes, which were all met beyond even my wildest expectations, in the first 3 and 1/2 episodes. And then... the shocking, cruel and nihilistic rug-pull in the second half of episode 4 blindsided me completely. This season felt like a sadistic lover who builds their partner up towards climax, lulling them into a euphoric sense of security and vulnerability, only to suddenly knife them in the stomach repeatedly at the end and tossing them out in the street, naked, to bleed to death.

Now, is Jaime’s ending satisfying, especially after so many years? No. Is Jaime’s ending earned and not tacked together in a rush? No. Is Jaime’s ending one that feels true to his character in the books? Definitely not. Does it feel like a lot of foreshadowing and seeding was all for nothing in the end? Absolutely.

But I see where Nikolaj is coming from, once I think about all those adaptation choices that were the total opposite of the books, and that I did not give much weight to because surely they will converge to his book material eventually, and surely ALL this seeding isn’t for nothing, and surely they won’t have characters end up where they started after so much work, and surely they would never do something so horrible to Brienne and her arc. Boy, was I wrong.

6x08 contained the highly questionable adaptation of the dialogue between Edmure and Jaime at the siege of Riverrun. The show decided to make Jaime’s entire speech to Edmure be about Cersei, when, in the original version, the Riverrun siege is very much a matter of honour for Jaime. Jaime wants to avoid, in any way possible, to raise arms against the Starks and the Tullys because he swore an oath to Catelyn Stark that he never would. We thought show!Jaime was using his reputation to manipulate Edmure and bluffing, because that’s what he does in the books (”don’t make me say the words”). We thought he was bluffing, because Brienne was in that castle and they wrote in an entire scene to basically show us Jaime did not want to fight her (I guess they “kind of forgot” about that - the first symptoms of memory loss). Turns out, it truly was all about Cersei for them so that they could use it to justify Jaime’s self-destruction in the end.

Go back just two episodes (6x06) and you have another huge change to the backstory of Jaime’s mission in the Riverlands. In the books, Jaime argues with Cersei against going to the Riverlands because, again, he does not want to fight against the Starks and the Tullys given the oath to Cat. In the books, the Walk of Atonement happens *after* Jaime has already left for the Riverlands, and, as of the books, she’s currently awaiting her trial. That is when Cersei sends the infamous letter begging him to come fight for her (or die for/with her), which Jaime burns, leaving her to her fate, “effectively estranging” them. That is when Cersei is in clear denial about Jaime abandoning her in her time of need to disappear with Brienne instead. In the show, it’s the complete opposite: Jaime is begging Cersei to let him stay and fight for her because she needs him, while she tries to send him away. And in 8x04, Jaime abandons Brienne to go back to Cersei in her time of need.

The show has taken every single thing Jaime does for honour and/or Brienne in AFFC/ADWD and made it about Cersei.

The entire Dorne storyline, a show-only horror, was about romanticizing incest, the tragedy of it all, and how misunderstood JC were in Westerosi culture, from Ellaria’s comments to Myrcella’s lines as she dies in Jaime’s arms about, essentially, happily accepting being a product of incest.

The White Sword Tower scene at the end of S4, which in the books shows that Jaime, in order to maintain the sacredness of the place, rejects Cersei’s attempts to manipulate him with sex in order to get him to help her with her plans, is turned into yet another example of romanticizing incest in the show, with Cersei “choosing” Jaime and them desecrating the honour of the WST by having sex. Later, Jaime never finds out about Lancel and the show omits all the other instances of infidelity on Cersei’s part, thus removing yet another element that could cause a rift between the twins.

And these are just the major, glaring changes/omissions, without adding changes/omissions like Cersei’s revulsion towards Jaime’s stump, her physical and psychological abuse of him with slaps and throwing wine cups at him and insulting his courage and intelligence, her abuse of Tommen, and so on. It all boils down to either reducing the rifts between the twins to a minimum, or making even Jaime’s honourable deeds to be about Cersei.

But I kept the believing, despite all these unfaithful adaptations, that SURELY they would eventually default to the books’ arc, also because they put an awful lot of effort in JB foreshadowing in every season for it not to pay off big time.

Well, turns out I was misguided.

We know for certain that the conclusion to the war against the WWs will not be the same in the books: the books has no Night King (and IIRC, they never will) and far more complex lore surrounding the Others and the WWs. Arya dealing that final blow is something D&D deliberately chose to do three years ago because Jon “was too obvious”, and they retrofitted Melisandre’s line to be about the NK when it clearly was not intended that way. So, if they were willing to alter the lore and the foreshadowing of such a huge plot point, which millions of viewers, no matter whose characters they favoured, had been waiting on for decades, and for a storyline that underpins at least half of the backbone of the books, it was probably naive to think that they would concern themselves with being true to book!Jaime’s identity arc and his love life, a relatively inconsequential story by comparison.

And so I can see what Nikolaj is saying when he talks about the way “D&D *chose* to adapt the story after the books” (look at Nik’s words very carefully in interviews, and how he always talks about D&D’s adaptation choices, and never about GRRM’s ending). D&D made Cersei into a far bigger character than the books ever intended her to be (GRRM didn’t even know if he wanted to give her a POV, because he didn’t think it’d add much to the story) and chose to reduce Jaime to Cersei’s accessory. D&D seem to have never truly moved on from S1 (or maybe even pilot) Jaime, while GRRM wanted to explore identity and redemption with him without making a judgement. D&D deliberately changed crucial Jaime plot points to make them all about Cersei, rather than honour. The over-emphasis on “the things I do for love” is a show-only obsession, when that’s just a very small part of who Jaime is in the books. We all thought/hoped this could still work out to adapt Jaime in the show, because the emphasis would be on the fact that the object of that “love” would change and Jaime would redirect “the things he does” towards a healthier, purer, good kind of love (i.e. Brienne) that inspires him to be honourable. And, maybe, in part, they did. But D&D probably never had any serious intentions to let Jaime break away from Cersei for good and so this ending “makes sense” for them. And I think Nikolaj has come to reluctantly accept this.

That of course doesn’t change the fact that the writing in the last 1.5 episodes was the most horrible, nihilistic, cruel, unnecessary and unearned (especially in the last 1.5 episodes). It doesn’t change the fact that, if D&D don’t seem to see Jaime as anything more than an addict, they don’t even register Brienne and her feelings on their radar. It doesn’t change the fact that they spent so much time and money building up an expectation that Jaime and Brienne were heading somewhere meaningful, only for it to amount to an assassination of their dynamic in the space of half an hour. It doesn’t remove the suspicion that there might have even been a change of plans (possibly out of spite, possibly for shock value, possibly at the last minute) to switch to a failed redemption, rather than a successful one. But I think it does explain where Nikolaj is coming from and I think, perhaps, it’s the healthiest course of action at this point, because there’s nothing we can do to change it (and the fact that so many casual viewers feel just as disappointed is comforting too).

In a sense, for Jaime fans (and Brienne fans, and JB fans by extension), Game of Thrones has been our abusive partner. The TV series is Cersei and we are Jaime. We spent years of our lives hanging on, trying to find positives amongst a lot of negatives, because it kept dangling in front of us the seeding of a Jaime and a JB dynamic that we recognized from the books and seemed to be building up for the future. I think that’s our biggest disappointment, in the end. Jaime in the show was never meant to be as deep and complex as Jaime is in the books. But we hoped he would have a similar trajectory in the end, to give us closure at least. And he didn’t.

These last episodes were our “I thought I was the Warrior, and she was the Maid, but it turns out she was just the Stranger” moment.

And I think this is our time to put it in the fire.

#got meta #got negativity #asoiaf #jaime lannister #anti jaime x cersei #meta #my meta

123 notes · View notes

ariainstars · 5 years

Text

Rogue One or Why I (Probably) Won’t Watch This Movie Ever Again

It’s not as if I disliked “Rogue One”. I found it excellently made, from the political, philosophic, psychological point of view as well as with regard to settings, action scenes, acting, music, effects etc.

But why didn’t anyone tell me how deeply sad this story is?

“Rogue One” tells the story of a group of persons who all, for different reasons, have nothing left to lose and thus sacrifice their lives to help the Rebellion against Palpatine’s Empire. There is no reason for us viewers to get attached to the members of this crazy suicide mission: it is their destiny to die and we can sense that right from the beginning. Personally, I never felt compelled to root for them, I only felt terribly sorry for them.

It sure is interesting to be confronted with the reality that so many heroes gave an important contribution to the end of the war but never got anything good from it; also, how bleak and dangerous their lives in this totalitarian Empire were, constantly on the run, always oppressed, losing another piece of themselves over and over - family, health, mental sanity, safety, integrity, in the end life.

The only character I could feel with a little was Cassian, who stayed by Jyn’s side to the bitter end so she wouldn’t have to die alone. Jyn on the other hand never requited his feelings; her entire being was set on doing her father’s will, and Cassian, like everybody or everything else, was just a meaning to this end for her. (Though, in all honesty, she never compelled or manipulated anyone.) She may have been meant as a strong female character, but I didn’t find her in the least compelling or admirable. Jyn did what she had to do because she did not know what else to do with her life.

Jyn’s fate is a somewhat sarcastic take on the bond between child and father emphasizing that a father may give his child’s life direction and purpose but that this must not necessarily make him (or her, in this case) happy.

What baffled me most, in retrospect, was the reaction coming from most Star Wars fans. Long before I had watched the film, I had heard respectively only read of enthusiastic responses, usually culminating in “A real Star Wars film again, at last!”

Of course setting and design remind very much of “A New Hope”, because the story is set shortly before; and for brief periods we see the Death Star, Governor Tarkin, Leia and Darth Vader.

So then, this is what fans want, this is allegedly “real Star Wars”? Excuse me, depressing? Not the aesthetics and the message of the Prequels, the energy and drive of the classics or the new impulses and hopeful glimpses of the Sequels? Does it only depend on cosmetics whether a film is defined “real Star Wars” or not?

This whole story is a tragedy. It’s not a call to adventure with a happy ending like “A New Hope” or “The Phantom Menace”, a Greek-style drama like “Return of the Sith” or anything of the sort. It’s supposed to bring home that there is nothing wonderful about war and that everyone involved will lose much more than they win. This also fits to one of the Sequels’ themes, when we meet the old heroes again; they had won a war and founded a family - but before that, Luke and Leia had lost their old families, Luke had to give up his dream of becoming a pilot, and all of them suffered through tremendous physical and psychical horrors. And, as we learn, after a period of peace they had to watch their victory go up in smoke again as the embodiment of their hopes, their son and heir, nephew and pupil, turned his back on them and devoted himself to becoming evil like his grandfather, the very person they had fought against respectively tried to rescue and redeem all of these years before.

Yes, in a way “Rogue One” is “real Star Wars”. There is a person with father issues at the center, it’s an authentic, honest story, the characters are well-developed and the narrative is well thought out. But I was left almost in tears thinking how the hope Leia expressed in the last scene was founded on the absolute lack of hope of the protagonists of the crazy Death Star mission. I felt depressed for two days after.

Even “Revenge of the Sith” doesn’t make me feel that bad when I watch it, though the outcome is so terrible. There is Padmés funeral scene that leaves the viewer space to mourn, and the scenes with the twins and their surrogate families announcing that not all is lost. “Rogue One” just makes a quick cut when all is said and done and that’s it.

No one will ever think about these persons ever again, no one will mourn them, no one will be grateful to them or call them heroes. A brutally honest take on war and rebellion, opposite to the end of “A New Hope” where the heroes are celebrated and seen as such, though they are responsible for the death of everybody who lived on the Death Star. (Not that I’m blaming them, in that situation it was either destroy them or be destroyed.)

Luke Skywalker, hero of the first classic film which directly follows after this one, never knew his parents, lost his foster parents and his mentor during the course of a few days, but he joined the Rebellion and thrived on it. For Jyn, the loss of her family is a dead weight which hangs on her shoulders until it leads to her death. Jyn merely survives, making one heavy step after the other; she never rebels and goes her own way like Luke did.

I was also surprised since I had heard that Jyn was supposed to be a strong-willed woman, designed to be a role model to female spectators. I wouldn’t want any girl to choose Jyn as a personal example to go by: she is a cold, cynical person whose life never knows fulfilment, not a symbol of hope but of relinquishing of life, hope, happiness.

Her characterization is particularly bitter when we compare her to Han Solo, to whom Star War’s second spin-off was dedicated two years later. Though Han has a sarcastic streak, he remains generous and humorous, and he always cares and is cared about by someone. Despite his name, he is never really alone: he bonds with Qi’Ra, Chewbacca, Lando and Enfys Nest, while Jyn never is close to anyone. (Is it a coincidence that the names “Han” and “Jyn” are so alike, I wonder?)

Also contrarily to Jyn, Han turns his back on his father figure Beckett, deciding to go his own way. And in both cases, this attitude is not heroic in the conventional sense, but personal; Jyn does her father’s will because she feels committed to him, not to some greater cause. Han, too, rejects Beckett when he feels personally betrayed and let down by him. No wonder Han, as we get to know him in the classic films, is the most independent and worldly-wise of the characters. He initially had no father figure, then he found one but in the end, he chose to do without him. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence, when Han kills Beckett in self-defense, that his last words are “You made a wise choice”.

The difference between Han and Jyn, or also Luke, Anakin and Rey, to name other Star Wars heroes, is that he doesn’t have a father figure but he also doesn’t look out for one. He gladly befriends Beckett who is more experienced than he, but when he finds he can’t trust him he turns his back on him, with regret but not mourning him for long.

Han never knew where he came from, but with that also came the freedom to make his own choices; and as we know, contrarily to Jyn he still had a long and fulfilling life and found real friends, a home and a purpose. Very fittingly, “Solo - a Star Wars Story” is a feelgood film and not in the least depressing.

In both cases, we have a very realistic and not at all starry-eyed outlook on what “heroism” and “fighting for a just cause” means. Star Wars remains true to itself by hammering home all over again that it is not at all gratifying to be a lonely hero, and that on the other hand having a family may be a good thing, but being defined by them is a crushing burden. Picking up that burden and doing what you believe you have to do in order to feel connected to them may lead to the desired end, but then the question arises whether that end is really so desirable if the cost is so high. Again, Star Wars is not about the good guys blowing up the bad guys, but about growing up.

Luke Skywalker never knew about his family for a very long time, and after he had learned about it his father died, leaving it to him to repair the damage Vader had caused together with Palpatine; and as we see him again in “The Last Jedi” his character shows a bitter parallel to Jyn - lonely and disillusioned. This also follows the line of the Prequels: even if you have the best intentions you may still err, and deciding to give your life to what you perceive as a higher cause may literally become your, not exactly happy, fate. Becoming a Jedi master Luke became emotionally detached, which brought to the downfall of his temple; only when he communicated with someone again - Rey, Yoda, Leia, and also with his nephew a little - his existence gained new purpose.

In his last moments, Luke announces that he will still be there as a Force spirit; and after death he is remembered by many people in the galaxy, whether they knew him personally or not.

Jyn and Cassian die in the blaze of the Death Star fire, giving up what little they still had or were; Luke’s death is illuminated by the light of the twin suns which this time rise instead of setting. He loved and was loved, that is why he will never be truly gone. Jyn, Cassian and the other members of the Rogue One mission are forgotten, despite the invaluable service they did to the galaxy at large. This is what “Rogue One” ultimately is about: complete, utter and inescapable loneliness.

So, thank you for the food for thought, “Rogue One”. But I don’t think I will watch you ever again.

#star wars #rogue one #jyn erso #cassian andor #han solo #death star #film analysis

17 notes · View notes

tumblunni · 5 years

Text

I had a really weird dream involving Dr Maddiman. Its a shame i can barely remember any of it and also it seems i woke up before it ended? Like i just had this overwhelming sense that allll the plot threads were gonna be wrapped up any second now and then BOOM awake. So just a whole bunch of random stuff happened with no real explanation at all.

It was some sort of post apocolyptic setting i think? Humanity was in these small isolated cities fighting against some sort of invading army but we never actually saw the aliens themselves. And some part of my brain was like "it makes sense its the same rules as a hairdresser and the design takes cues from a pack of AAA batteries". I have NO idea what that means! So basically everythibg was super vague and undescribed and dream-me just had a sense of already being a long time fan of this series and knowing enough to fill in the gaps. Apparantoy this was some sort of adaptation of a thing id already seen, but id been told the ending was different and more accurate to the manga? Also i wasnt actually a person watching this show i was still the protagonist of the show yet i acted like i'd been reincarnated and relived this week a million times or something

ANYWAY the way dr maddiman comes in is that he was some sort of 'brilliant but dangerous' expert the government had hired to help our fight against the aliens. It wasnt really explained why he was.. yknow.. maddiman. Like is this meant to be that ghosts also exist in this sci fi universe? Was he a half alien hybrid instead of a yokai? Was it just human maddiman with the personality of yokai maddiman due to ptsd...? In any case he didnt seem entirely tethered to the laws of reality and nobody knew exactly how he pulled off all his scientific miracles. He was treated as the only guy who could understand the mindset of the aliens, but that also made him dangerous because he trapped in the delusion of everything being okay and fun and happy and he often did evil things by accident while having good intentions. But they didnt have anyone else who'd cracked the code of the alien weaponry so they had to put up with him. He was just sorta assigned a crack team of secret agents whose job was Be The Old Man's Friend So We Dont All Die. Dont let him realise how the world is all destroyed and such, just play along with his goofyness and try and remind him to do his important work while dancing around why its important. it was super creepy how he was locked up and gaslighted like this!! And he was all 'oh im sure when im done with my ultimate experiment i can go home to my wife and kids' and yeah it was implied here that the same backstory applied :( 'distract the old man and validate his false opinion that his family is still alive and waiting for him' :( poor sci fi madds :(

Oh also for some reason he seemed to be wearing elements of Adventure era Dr Eggman's outfit? But just the general style of the coat and the wearing goggles that he never actually uses. And he had a very warm and cuddly autumnal colourscheme

Anyway i was part of the Super Secret Grampa Cherishing Division whose job was to act as his assistant but also secretly be packing a bazillion weapons to neutralize him if he poses a danger to humanity. But i started to genuinely care for the guy and question the 'any atrocity is permitted for the sake of saving the world' philosophy of my bosses. Also it was just very weird how it was this post apocolypse alien fighting action thing yet i didnt see ANY OF IT cos this story was confined to this one laboratory. It was surreal hearing about all this stuff happening offscreen!

I think Maddiman's main project was some sort of dimensional transport thing using salvaged alien tech? It was just a door in his lab that usually led to a closet but if he got it working itd teleport us straight to the alien base and save the world. And a lot of it wasnt explained but i got this great sense that itd all come together with a great twist ending evebtually but then i woke up before i got that far. Same for the reveal of this maddiman's new sci fi backstory and soooo many other dropped plot threads. Alas!

So anyway: closet. Closet with one of those bead curtain things cos i was thinking about them when i fell asleep. It was supposed to be a teleport but when it malfunctioned it had really scary negative effects warping people's biology and stuff. I remember one of the test subjects was sent in for a five day trip to a specific alternate dimension but then when they came back itd been several years and theyd had to survive in a deadly wasteland and been mutated into a hellbeast. And maddiman had a huge breakdown because he felt like his recklessness and optimism towards this experiment had caused this mistake to happen, and he'd never realized just how awful the consequences could be. He was babbling motor mouth discussing theories for where it went wrong and there was something like 'we'd only tested it for one day trips and assumed that just programming two of them would equal two days but actually with each additional number on the screen it multiplies the days by 3" And there was something about like...the bead curtain was the machine rather than the door itself? Like trying it on a bunch of different doors around the lab to try and find a way to cure this person.

And there was some sort of artificial intelligence computer with the personality of an adorable lil girl, who helped maddiman do calculations and stuff. She missed the mistake in this calculation cos her concept of linear time and the limits of human organs was kinda undeveloped. She only existed within the realm of numbers after all, and didbt even have functionality to record footage of her human friends's faces. No idea wtf a human looks like! So maddiman was lost in his desperate grief of potentially accidebtally killing or at least mentally scarring a person and the government would probably kill them now if they saw they were a super mutant. And he was sobbing and begging this AI to help, his last resort was her maybe being able to see a brainwave that he'd missed. But she was freaking out cos she didnt even fully understand why maddiman was crying let alone what to do to fix it. Eventually she did manage to find a solution theough some simple different logic thing that she had from her perspective as a computer. And that person was saved but still traumatized and maddiman had a moment of realizing just how high stakes everything was and freaking out. He was like 'whats wrong with my head, why didnt i notice that, why was i so reckless, why cant i seem to grasp basic human logic that i need right now" Having a big existential crisis of 'wait how did i even get in this lab, where's my family and why do i seem to have superpowers'. Protagonist mission: hide all the goddamn mirrors to avoid this weird ghostgramp (...aliengramp??) from realizing he's dead (..or an alien??) and losing control of himself. And everyone was running around talking about 'containment procedures' and poor maddiman didnt know that if his panic attack continued he might just straight up be killed for outliving his usefulness. So the protagonist was desperate to help him calm down and it sucked SO MUCH cos they had to lie about his past and weave the web of deception around him again for his own safety. In the end they just hugged him close until he calmed down, and all the other employees were like GASP THEY ACTUALLY TOUCHED THE EVIL DANGEROUS SUPER EVIL MAN and protag was like 'i am 1% away from slapping the next bitch who insults this grandpa'. And it was super depressing cos once he'd calmed down he seemed to start forgetting that anything bad had ever happened?? And he was really panicking and scared cos he didnt understand why he was forgetting, and he knew he had to cling onto something important but he didnt know what. And then five minutes later he was back to haha cheerful nothing is wrong and i love doing my fun science in this room im never allowed to leave. And protagonist was crying the tears that this poor gramp wasnt allowed to cry :(

Also actually i think maybe he was a ghost AND an alien? Like he was a scientist who died in some sort of tragedy back when the aliens first invaded, but along the way he'd been infected so his body got back up as a twisted combination of human and inhuman. And this was something unique to him, like he just happened to have a genetic mutation in his blood that was totally undetectable in life but happened to mix unpredictably with this alien virus to turn him into a hybrid instead of just killing him. So the government was very interested in finding a way to replicate this and create new supersoldiers, as well as just taking advantage of this dude's confused mental state that granted him a unique understanding of alien tech that made him more effective than other scientists. And, of course, also made him easy to manipulate :(

And i also had a feeling that maybe his backstory was mixed up with Adventure dr eggman? Like here it seemed he had a daughter instead of a son, and she had a similar death to Maria Robotnik where she was assasinated by the government he worked for, and it tipped him over the edge. I think Maddiman-alien-scifi-dude originally died trying to save her from being used in some sort of experiment? Like she was already dying of a disease and thats why maddiman took this job to have access to powerful government technology to try and look for a cure. But when the whole alien apocolypse happened, the evil government decided to use her for experiments cos she was 'basically dead anyway'. Theyd just lie and tell maddiman she died of her illness. So this was how they found out that this particular family's bloodline had a mutation that let them form a viable hybrid with alien dna. They were turning this poor kid into a monster in the basement while lying to her dad about her being dead! And maddiman was about to commit suicide from having no reason to live anymore, with the hell of this apocolypse world and the false impression that his kid was already dead. But somehow monster-daughter sensed this or something and broke out of containment to try and save him, and when he saw her he was able to recognise her even in her twisted state. So when the soldiers gunned her down in front of him and fed him some lies about this not being his daughter, he just completely snapped. He tried in vain to fight back and take down as many of them as possible in revenge, but well he was just a simple round dad with no ability to fight a government. So he was unceremoniously executed along with his kid and they shoved the bodies back in the lab to continue testing. "Damn that overemotional science dad, he made us execute our most valable test subject! But at least this way we can analyze his corpse to see if the mutation is passed down on the patrilineal side." But at some point during the fight, monster-daughter's blood had splashed on her dad and gotten into his bloodstream. So the seemingly dead body suddenly got up out of the morgue and started sucking people's blood or something. And this led to the current situation where they have him locked up cos he's a valuable test subject but also hey he has 100% reason to kill all of us and we're screwed if he remembers his past. Also i think the computer AI thing was his subconcious attempt to recreate the personality of his daughter even if he couldnt remember she'd ever existed :(

Anyway at some point things escalated and there was this final showdown versus both the invading aliens and the evil governmebt guys. I think there was some corrupt greedy politician dude who stole maddiman's teleporter tech and sold us out to the aliens cos he wanted money and power or something. And probably predictably the aliens just threw him off a bridge after he gave them the thing, because seriously even this evil army thinks these government dudes are too evil!

So this big actiony event was happening and Maddiman was freaking out like 'no no no i cant leave the lab everyone wpuld be mad at me, i dont even know what its like outside this room' even when he was in the middle of being attacked by aliens. He was forced to face his repressed memories to survive, and he naturally had a massive fuckin freakout! And i think maybe when protagonist character was trying to protect him he accidentally lashed out with his powers and hurt them, and he was so horrified thinking another person he cared about was gonna die because of him. Protagonist was like 'dont worry gramps its just a scratch' but he'd already freaked out and run away into the battlefield to his heavily implied death.

BUT THEN at some sort of moment of dire need, he came back all powered up and re-memoried and was like 'i have every reason to despise humanity but im not gonna let more children die because of these damn corporate monsters (and also literal monsters which are infinately less scary)" And he did some sort of great sacrifice to save the protagonist at the cost of his own life, and it was super dramatic falling from a building into a lake of fire or something. While sobbing and smiling peacefully thinkibg "did i atone for my sins? Will i be able to see my family again?" As his smiling face sunk beneath the flames and the protagonist cried out into the abyss...

Aaaaand then i dont really know what happened in the big battle and i also never found out wtf the solution was to fixing the transporter thing or how the aliens invaded or any of the million plot points that were non gramp related.

I just remember that when we all saved the day and defeated the baddies we found that maddiman had actually survived and it was a big hugs reunion. He was like "OH YEAH i totally forgot i literally already died once and regenerated from it, and this was the entire start to my story. My bad!" *shrugs inexplicably not dead arms*

So yeah in summary im glad my brain summoned up a universe where my favourite sad granddad is literally immortal now, but also why did it torment him with an even sadder plot than his original one

#weird dream tag #the sequence with trying the teleporter curtain on different doors actually took up the majority of the dream #it was ridiculously long and i wish i could slap my brain and be like 'geez save some time for explaining gramp backstory more!'

2 notes · View notes

canadianabroadvery · 5 years

Link

In Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller, Shadow of a Doubt, spunky, recent high school grad Teresa Wright discovers her beloved uncle is a serial killer.

Wright’s subsequent efforts to protect herself and others from psychopathic Joseph Cotten are continually frustrated by the extraordinary denial of her family and her community lost in the “thrall” of the worldly, smooth-talking Uncle Charlie.

Heartbroken and distraught, she must contend with her uncle’s violent agenda while being obstructed by a naive and vulnerable community of his enablers and/or soon to be victims.

Wright’s horrifying predicament resonates as I witness my – our – psychopathic uncle – UNCLE SAM, the U.S. government – perpetrate violent crime upon crime against humanity enabled by a maddening, morally mute, over-trusting, under-informed and/or indifferent citizenry.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully wrap my mind or heart around the profound lack of outrage and empathy among government leaders from both corporate parties, the corporate media, as well as the vast majority of my fellow citizens at the ongoing atrocities of the Global War on Terror (more accurately, the “US Global War of Terror”) and the “regime change” covert and/or overt operations initially and sinisterly described as “humanitarian interventions.”

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 seemingly justified a “gloves off” bloodlust defiance by the political and military “guardians” of America of the legal and moral pillars of our democracy. All these years since, the mandates for constitutional and moral justice “for all” have gone unheeded.

The Iraq war was launched illegally and with manipulative lies. Bush’s torture program was in total opposition to constitutional, international and moral law. Its perpetrators deserved serious prosecution.

The Geneva Conventions were ratified once upon a time by a U.S. Congress. Habeas corpus, in place since 1679, so cavalierly suspended with the GWOT’s “anything goes” rationale.

When such gobsmacking evil manifests on such a collective and global level for such a sustained amount of time, it deserves a serious analysis by those of us still spiritually awake enough to protest it.

At this point in my concerned citizenship, I am moving beyond anger into an awe of the scope of the – well – I call it downright and seriously unchallenged EVIL. Looking for a more clinical term than that? How about patriarchal psychopathology?

In his acceptance speech for the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, Harold Pinter acknowledged the long trail of U.S. international war crimes as well as the lack of historical and current accountability by this government, corporate media and its citizenry for them.

“It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening . . . You have to hand it to America . . . masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

Speaking of bottom-line and minimized evil, the specter of torture has reared its ugly head once again with President Donald Trump, an unabashed torture enthusiast, and the confirmation of his choice for Director of the CIA, “Bloody Gina” Haspel, notorious overseer of a secret black prison in Thailand where brutal torture was conducted. She was readily confirmed by a combination of Democratic and Republican senators. Senators, no doubt, who after fearful years of being labeled “too soft on terror” were not about to stick their necks out for decency and morality.

Too many of my fellow citizens, terminally influenced by an amoral corporate media, I am nonetheless at a loss for their easy acceptance of torture.

A Pew Research poll released in 2017 revealed that 48% of the US citizenry believed that some circumstances could justify the use of torture, and 49% maintained there were no circumstances that would ever justify it.

Every other US citizen is thumb’s up for the use of torture!

How disturbing over the last decade for the use of torture to be normalized and decriminalized by the military, citizenry, politicians, media, and those government lawyers who early on cravenly defied the obvious spirit of basic “Golden Rule” morality, the Constitution, and international law, to minimize the savagery of torture with euphemistic labels still parroted by much of the corporate media and or applied as fig leaves over the reprehensible.

“Enhanced interrogation techniques.” Thank you, New York Times. They are monstrous methods of inflicting debilitating psychological and physical anguish on victims even at times to the point of death. Techniques that, along with being illegal and immoral, are universally regarded as unreliable. They are reliable only in generating false confessions (which apparently was one of the goals of the original, craven perpetrators).

Torture is wrong. It is evil.

Reading Jacob Weisberg’s book, The Bush Tragedy, I learned that the main ego-armature for George W. Bush during his Yale University years was his participation in the fraternity culture.

Weisberg discloses that when “W” finally became head of a fraternity, he “ruled” at one point that lowly pledges be branded with real, Texas branding irons as part of their hazing.

When the Yale Daily News got wind of Bush’s sadistic and zealous intention, it disclosed it to the entire university community. The Yale administrative patriarchs immediately huddled together to deal with the negative P.R. (I’m guessing that far outweighed the actual physical or psychological welfare of the targeted pledges.)

The patriarchs’ solution? Rein in Mr. Bush, whose sociopathy they presumably minimized as an impish, “boys-will-be-boys”-ness. With the proverbial wink and nod, they insisted young Bush forego the branding irons and instead ONLY make use of scalding metal coat hangers or lit cigarettes to burn freshman flesh.

Say what?

Problem solved? This Yale incident foreshadowed and undoubtedly helped foster the ultimate creation of the craven and covert torture program by Bush and cabal, particularly with the ever-Satanic Dick Cheney.

The green-lighting of that more modest degree of torture speaks volumes of a troubling, profoundly unempathetic – sociopathic— macho-mindset within the deepest, most influential halls of America’s supposed intellectual and ruling class elite and mentors of said elite. They enabled and abetted young, already morally-deranged Master Bush, instead of role modeling and enforcing boundaries of basic human decency.

Just another rite of male passage? No wonder our American culture is so violent.

Andy Worthington, a prime advocate for victimized prisoners of Gitmo once reminded his audience during a NYC anti-war forum that in 2007 it was Senator Obama who declared:

“In the dark halls of Abu Ghraib and the detention cells of Guantánamo, we have compromised our most precious values. What could have been a call to a generation has become an excuse for unchecked presidential power.”

President Obama posed as a person of character most convincingly. It got him the White House. Twice.

Obama took no responsibility for his breathtaking, 180-degree reversals of golden promises of anti-Bush reform, pre-election.

The most obvious and necessarily immediate reforms that he failed to act on were the restoration of habeas corpus rights and the prosecution of the perpetrators of the clandestine Bush torture program, of those who had most reprehensibly exploited the post-9/11 fear, outrage and vengeance sensibility of much of the citizenry.

Obama’s policy decisions instead included deadly drone warfare, assassination kill lists, unlimited due-process-less detentions, military tribunals, countless corporate wars and U.S. military (corporate-opportunistic) garrisoning; and the continuation of Gitmo and God only knows what other black sites.

Obama’s posture was of an always rhetorically amiable and faux-reasonable Roman emperor with thumb’s up or down power over life and death. Many of his “subjects” adored him.

“We tortured some folks,” he finally admitted with a shrug at a press conference. As if it was not a colossally serious deal. “Folks”? Now there’s a friendly word.

This is heart-of-darkness territory. Obama chose to become an enabler of violators of human rights and then a violator of them himself. To add to the horror, Obama so readily was enabled by the media in this, the vast majority of Congress, and the vast majority of citizens.

Does the cult of celebrity in America overwhelm basic human decency? It seems so.

Do U.S. leaders as diverse (but all amoral) as Bush, Obama and Trump, along with callous political cronies, military leaders and media, only need to repeat the word “terror” enough times to have so much of America fall into a “do with us, our money, or anyone else whatever depraved, anti-humanity behavior you want” kind of swoon?

“To torture or not to torture” not only a hot news media topic, but fodder for jingoistic and sensationalized movies and TV shows (as the normalization of torture steamrolls on).

Loyalty and admiration for the troops (no matter what war crimes they may be committing) and/or blind trust in a national administrative and military authority should not override human decency. American “exceptionalism” should not override identifying and ending war criminality. It does.

The status quo establishment in America has us locked into perpetual war with untold mass global deaths and maiming and ever-increasing economic hardship for all humanity except for a tiny percentage of transnational elites.

A paradigm shift from a “profits over people” patriarchy to the humanism of partnership and cooperation is the answer, but that would require decisions based on a U.S. leadership, a U.S. media and a U.S. society that seriously honored empathy, justice and the law.

Ours do not.

Scott Peck asserts in his book, People of the Lie, that mental health is “dedication to reality at all costs.” This healthy sense of reality includes an in-touchness with one’s inner reality and a respect for the reality of others. It requires the capacity to fully think and FEEL.

This “feeling capacity” – including and especially EMPATHY — seems most vulnerable to dysfunction in our society and world, among both leaders and followers.

Feelings are profoundly under-valued in our U.S. society, and this feeling dysfunction is at the heart (or lack thereof) of the existing suffering and injustice.

Alice Miller, in her book For Your Own Good, refers to a “poisonous pedagogy” that can infect a society. She explains that that was what made the “good” (as in compliant) German population easy prey for the authoritarianism of Hitler.

Miller emphasizes that the capacity for empathy is not linked to one’s intelligence. She points out that both Hitler and Stalin had enthusiastic, highly intellectual followers.

If one is not able to respond with authentic feelings and thoughtful consideration to real life situations involving oneself or others, one is susceptible to “enthrallment” to the will of a toxic and controlling leader, asserts Miller.

She also contends that unprocessed trauma in one’s childhood, that is, when children are exposed to profound degrees of non-empathy from adult caretakers, will cause a crippling or shutting down of their feeling capacity later in adult life along with the potential of a sudden dismantling of their own will for the will of another. Miller explains that such trauma undoubtedly also happened to the original destructive caretakers during their childhoods in a continuing, generational cycle of dysfunction.

When trauma goes unprocessed by feelings, that is, it stays unfelt and un-grieved, it induces one to over-identify with an aggressor and enter his or her “thrall” later in adulthood. Also, such conditioning can induce one to project one’s negative feelings about oneself onto others as scapegoats. People with a disordered feeling capacity cannot handle and take mature responsibility for whatever guilt, shame, anger, frustration gets triggered within them in the present and must deflect it.

In People of the Lie, Scott Peck discusses the experiments of Dr. Stanley Milgram at Yale in 1961 which revealed how people were so readily intimidated by an authority in a white coat that they willingly would inflict what they thought were disabling electric shocks on strangers without question. Six out of 10 of the tested humans were willing to inflict serious harm on strangers from their own over-conditioning to the will of authority figures.

Peck emphasizes how obedience is the foundation of military discipline. “A follower is never a WHOLE person,” he maintains. Tragically, most people are far more comfortable in the “follower” role, leaving the responsibility and decision-making to those who step forward as leaders. When ruthless, reckless, immature, even sociopathic persons assume leadership positions, especially in an authoritarian system, the results can be tragic.

He also contends that a lack of conscience in human beings is partly due to “specialization”, a detachment from responsibility. One regards oneself as simply playing a role in a group scenario and thus can easily pass the “moral buck” so-to-speak to another part of the group. Troops shooting foreign civilians with a kind of “video-game aloofness”, for example will rationalize: “We don’t kill the people. Our weapons do. Whoever gave us these weapons and instructions are really responsible for the killing. Not us.”

Another example he cites is of how weapons manufacturers, sellers, lobbyists, etc. feel no personal responsibility for the consequences of violence from the weapons they distribute. The moral decision as to the use of the weapons is not part of their “specialized” roles. (And the financial profits are just too damn juicy to consider otherwise.)

Peck also cites the regressive shutting down of authentic and appropriate feelings in people due to a phenomenon called “psychic numbing.” The mind has the ability to anesthetize itself from feelings in the face of trauma. “The horrible becomes normal,” he writes.

Finally, he explains that groups bond often within a collectively egotistical groupthink by circling the proverbial wagons against a common, demonized enemy. “The other.” Scapegoating occurs when a group collectively projects the “badness” of themselves, too difficult to fathom, onto others.

James Lucas in an article for globalresearch.com back in 2015 declared that the United States has killed approximately 20 million people in 37 countries since the end of World War II.

How many of us can actually begin to feel and process the utter enormity of such a revelation? (One thinks of a quote attributed to the profoundly non-empathetic Joseph Stalin: “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.”)

What say you to 20 million, America? Look what our UNCLE SAM has wrought.

Can we as a nation cultivate a collective capacity for “empathy”? A critical mass of us reached a breakthrough of collective conscience during the Vietnam era (though it took us long enough, admittedly).

Can each of us dedicate ourselves to a “reality at all costs” awareness for our individual as well as collective mental health?

The fast hardening of soft fascism seems to be happening with little conscious struggle among the masses who seem convinced we non-elites can get away with staying passive and will be supported by our corporate-captured politicians and media.

Can we face down and acknowledge the relentless criminality of our government and representatives (who are not really OUR representatives).

If such crimes are not acknowledged, called out and then accounted for they will continue and escalate in number and nature. Even more frightening, more and more and more “good” Americans will succumb to this “normalization” of evil.

Confronting evil is daunting. Confronting mass and institutionalized evil all the more so. Sickening. Spiritually exhausting. It even has been said to biologically weaken one’s thymus gland that supports the body’s immune system.

We must detach from seductive “cronyism” with authoritarians or authoritarian followers and encourage others to do so.

We must explore the details of what is going on in our citizen name, with our tax dollars and especially with our vulnerable, patriotic and earnest young who can become tragically confounded by and induced to perpetrate institutionalized evil policies.

We owe it to ourselves and our world to stay whole and awake as citizens. To speak truth to power. Once again, “a follower is not a whole person” as Scott Peck declared.

“This is why the individual is sacred. For it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.”

It has been said there are three types of people in this world. A smallish group of people who make things happen. A larger group of people who watch things happen. (I am thinking, of those “good people who do nothing.”) And finally the third, excessively large and clueless group, exclaiming, “WHAT THE F*CK HAPPENED???”

Let’s try to shrink the second and third groups and expand the first by getting up and exercising those consciences.

#us militarism #us exceptionalism #us imperialism #us foreign policy

2 notes · View notes

him-e · 6 years

Text

Ships and “Endgame” in the ST

I’m curious about are how the narrative treats Rey and Kylo’s interactions in TLJ and how Rey interacts with Finn: I just wanted to hear a counter-argument on why F/innRey wouldn’t be endgame and/or Rey/Kylo would be endgame. They’re not connected necessarily: both can’t be endgame at the same time because I don’t expect Lucasfilm to depict a poly relationship any time soon, but arguing against Reylo being endgame doesn’t mean f/nnrey must be canon or vice versa. Please don’t think I’m writing this in bad faith, I’m genuinely curious about these points and I don’t mean to disrespect anyone who ships Reylo.

Rey and Finn’s interactions in TFA and TLJ are framed very positively. The lines of dialogue between them like “Cute boyfriend?” and “You looked at me like no one ever had,” definitely point to romantic interest to me: I don’t see why the creators would include lines like that without indicating some romantic interest was there. Finn is the first person to ever “come back” for Rey, and their experiences with each other are “firsts” that are incredibly important. They care deeply about each other.

In TLJ, they are separated for the majority of it, but you could say that separation is always part of the romantic arc, and Rey is constantly thinking about him, while Finn is constantly thinking about her. Before she heads off to save Kylo, she gives Chewie an important message to Finn. (Which could have been something like “I love you” but I don’t want to assume.) When they see each other and embrace at the end of the movie, it’s the first time Rey looks *happy* in TLJ. She looks so happy when they hug, and there’s a long hold both on their embrace and at Rey’s heartbroken expression as Finn tucks in Rose.

In contrast, the Rey and Kylo scenes could be interpreted as Rey learning her lesson about how important Kylo is to saving the galaxy: not a “Don’t Trust Your Sexuality” lesson, which I do find a misogynistic angle to take on this particular issue, but a lesson about thinking she needs Ben Solo to save the galaxy, a lesson that she doesn’t need him. Additionally, although most of their Force bonds are weighed with attraction, she never seems to be very happy with him, and at the end, he says deeply cruel things to her (The Throne Room scene) and attempts to have her killed on Crait.

The last Force bond tells me Rey is not budging, and, per the novelization, has no compassion for him: it would be a long, long road to have her forgive him at all, let alone build some sort of romantic dynamic even though they will probably be enemies for a significant portion of IX. (Noting here that yes, they were enemies in TLJ too, but IX can’t spend a large portion of its running time devoted to intimate conversations like TLJ did: it’s the final act of this Trilogy and the Skywalker Saga, things need to start wrapping up.)

I do think that Kylo Ren’s redemption is somewhat necessary to keep the story of the Skywalker family from seeming like a complete tragedy: it would be a pessimistic ending, in my view, if the takeaway from the ST was “Sometimes, your loved one can’t be saved, and so other people must rise to the occasion,” for the Skywalker family. But, even if I think redemption is incoming, I’m still not convinced that Kylo could be with Rey. There’s audience reaction to consider (cue the cries of people asking just how this villain is worthy of the hero), but also the narrative beforehand: although Rey seemed willing to forgive Kylo completely for a part of TLJ, the audience still remembers scenes like the interrogation (a violation of Rey and something that robs her of agency, even though she does defeat Kylo), the Snow Fight, the Throne Room, and Crait. They did tone down some of his actions in the interrogation, like touching her, supposedly, but I still feel like Kylo is an unambiguous villain in those scenes, his treatment of Rey is awful (and this is just about his behavior, not whether Rey fights him off) and then, after showing us some of his humanity in TLJ, he snaps back to being a villain, and hurting Rey, intentional or not.

In TFA, Kylo is very much an aggressor/pursuer of Rey and her triumph is in fighting him off; in TLJ, he seems like more of a tempter figure, and Rey’s triumph is not giving into his offer and finding value in herself. She doesn’t ever seem happy with him, and the narrative never shows us a scene of complete fulfillment when she’s with Kylo: he never gives her anything she didn’t have, where Finn does in TFA by going back for her. (The scene where they touch hands, especially considering the music and the fact that Luke Skywalker is the one walking in on them, could also be read as an ominous one where Rey is getting too close to the dark.)

I don’t deny that Reylo was extremely “shippy” in TLJ. But Rian Johnson, in the same interview when he said that Kylo’s perspective in the throne room was a “naked, emotional appeal” also said: “It was important to me that it wasn’t a chess game, it wasn’t just a manipulation. It’s unhealthy, and there’s much that is awful about the way that he is manipulative. From his point of view, it’s a very naked, open, emotional appeal.” So he does acknowledge that Kylo is being unhealthy and manipulative, and that’s the writer’s intent. Rey’s arc in TLJ is very much fit to a naive hero’s arc, where she trusts the wrong person and sees the error of her ways. It doesn’t mean that Kylo is irredeemable and can never be trusted again, but TLJ also doesn’t mean that Kylo and Rey should be together, and includes quite a few scenes that could be read as red flags on his end, signals to the audience that this is a bad man who doesn’t have Rey’s best interests at heart.

And then there’s the next film, which is more opinion/conjecture on my part, but I don’t think JJ Abrams is the kind of storyteller who’s interested in depicting a big epic romance as the finale of the Skywalker Trilogy, or interested in involving Rey in the Skywalker Redemption question. Han and Leia care about Ben in TFA, Rey only views him as an enemy; and when she does try redeeming him in TLJ, the answer to her attempt is a solid “No.” JJ is a Better Trevorrow to me, in some ways, where he’s good at spectacle and big, bombastic movies, and although he isn’t openly misogynistic, his movies do have some sexist pitfalls. The “Reylo” arc is on a knife’s edge as it is, and already perceived as abusive and glorifying of a villain who hurts the heroine by many people: how would he be able to execute it in such a way that the audience wouldn’t be outraged at the injustice of Kylo Ren not only getting redeemed, but “getting the girl” so to speak? (I totally think the idea of Rey as a prize is repulsive, but unfortunately the majority of people do still perceive heroines or love interests who are female this way.)

Rey not needing Kylo, and being able to ascend to heroism without him, was the end point of TLJ, and I think it would undermine that ending if in IX she did turn out to need him after all and they had to work together or she had to forgive him. The movies so far have explicitly showed that while they’re attracted to each other, he’s a toxic person who isn’t good for her. And if it is going to be romantic going forward, why would it have an “endgame” type ending? And then there’s the option of Rey being alone romantically, but still surrounded by friends, allies, and people who care about her.

And on a separate note, I just feel like there are far too many “romance” cues for F/innRey for that to not have been planned from the beginning. In TFA, those “boyfriend” lines weren’t essential, they could have been taken out without affecting the friendly-rapport feeling in their relationship. In TLJ, they didn’t have to juxtapose Rey being in tears facing Kylo to happily embracing Finn upon being reunited with him. And while there is the factor of Rose kissing Finn, they never entered into a deliberate romantic relationship or showed that the feelings were mutual: I feel like FinnRose isn’t essential to the next movie if they dismissed it, since so much of Finn and Rose’s arc could be read as them being friends or compatriots. There’s really no cues of romance until she kisses him.

I’m sorry this is much longer than I anticipated, but these are the things that have been nagging me for the past few months. I did really enjoy TLJ, and I do like Reylo and apologize if my comments came off like I was trashing the ship for no reason, but this is my honest reading of the text. I have a lot of respect for your meta and wanted to bring up these points: if you don’t want to respond to this, I’m sorry for depicting a negative opinion and wasting your time.

Don’t worry, I don’t think you wrote this in bad faith! That’s one hell of an essay, and I want to thank you for taking the time to write it and submit it to my blog. The two main arguments you’re making are a) that reylo is real but is depicted negatively and so it’s unlikely to be endgame, and b) that f/nnrey can still happen and be endgame because the romantic hints dropped in TFA must go somewhere and it makes Rey happy (forgive me for the simplification). I’ll try to address some key points.

The movies so far have explicitly showed that while they’re attracted to each other, he’s a toxic person who isn’t good for her

I don’t think that’s what the movies showed. He’s not a toxic person to Rey (Daisy Ridley has gone on record saying Kylo “nurtured” Rey in a way that even Luke couldn’t do)—he’s someone whose political affiliation and morals and ideologies can’t be reconciled with Rey’s, and THAT’S why Rey dumps him. Because he doesn’t stop firing on the Resistance fleet and instead asks her to essentially become a villainess at his side, because he’s still hellbent on being the leader of a despotic military organization, that’s why the narrative separated them at the end of TLJ, not because he’s “toxic” or “abusive”.

even if I think redemption is incoming, I’m still not convinced that Kylo could be with Rey. There’s audience reaction to consider (cue the cries of people asking just how this villain is worthy of the hero), but also the narrative beforehand: although Rey seemed willing to forgive Kylo completely for a part of TLJ, the audience still remembers scenes like the interrogation (a violation of Rey and something that robs her of agency, even though she does defeat Kylo), the Snow Fight, the Throne Room, and Crait. They did tone down some of his actions in the interrogation, like touching her, supposedly, but I still feel like Kylo is an unambiguous villain in those scenes, his treatment of Rey is awful (and this is just about his behavior, not whether Rey fights him off) and then, after showing us some of his humanity in TLJ, he snaps back to being a villain, and hurting Rey, intentional or not.

So it actually all boils down to the audience’s reaction, doesn’t it? He’s too much of a villain so let’s not make reylo happen or the audience won’t accept it. But what the narrative is depicting—intentionally—is a hero/villain romance. The villain being a villain and yes, doing villain things including trying to hurt the hero (and viceversa, the hero doing hero things and trying to stop, violently, the villain) is exactly what defines this sort of pairings. Part of the audience will love it, part won’t, but a narrative that is afraid of pissing off a part of the audience isn’t a strong narrative.

I’m also not sure what would be the point of redeeming Kylo but still having him portrayed as a toxic individual whom the heroine should stay the fuck away from. Does this sound like an epic closure to a trilogy of trilogies whose thematic pillars have always been hope and redemption? To me it just sounds like a moralistic tale trying to half assedly appeal to tumblr discourse.

The “Reylo” arc is on a knife’s edge as it is, and already perceived as abusive and glorifying of a villain who hurts the heroine by many people: how would he be able to execute it in such a way that the audience wouldn’t be outraged at the injustice of Kylo Ren not only getting redeemed, but “getting the girl” so to speak? (I totally think the idea of Rey as a prize is repulsive, but unfortunately the majority of people do still perceive heroines or love interests who are female this way.)

You’re talking as if the audience is a hivemind and universally agrees with the intra-fandom, white-feminist, tumblr-specific “Reylo is abusive” wank. But the majority of the audience is actually moderately fine with Reylo, and most of them will be overwhelmingly okay with it if IX has something that tops the praetorian guard fight in terms of iconic jedi/sith marriage alliance. A good 80% of the general target audience for SW is people who don’t engage with fandom the way we do, they couldn’t care less about reylo or f/nnrey or any other ships for that matter, they just want to see a good story and be entertained for three hours and pew pew space battles. The people who will be “outraged” if Kylo “gets the girl” are only a tiny niche if you consider the star wars audience as a whole.

Also, it isn’t Kylo getting the girl. It’s Rey getting the boy. TLJ made sure to put her perspective front and center—it’s she who pursues Kylo, she who catches him in a state of undress, she who gets the eye candy, she who ruminates on his backstory while also delving deep into her own. It’s her point of view, her feelings, her attraction, her choices, while Kylo remains relatively passive for most of the time, waiting for her (to show up in a force connection, to come to the Supremacy, to take his hand).

The scene where they touch hands, especially considering the music and the fact that Luke Skywalker is the one walking in on them, could also be read as an ominous one where Rey is getting too close to the dark

oh, no. No, no, no. :)) The Force theme plays during the hand touch. (the /ominous/ music you hear before is actually some notes from Kylo’s theme, iirc). And the point of Luke’s arc in TLJ was that he was wrong about Ben, wrong about trying to murder him, and especially wrong about going into exile for years, and after this scene he finally decides to face his demons. He’s not the wise mentor whose perspective can be trusted. His perspective is as flawed as everyone else’s. And he is actually the one who is depicted in an ominous way in that scene (barging in, hand raised to destroy the hut in a gesture that reminds intentionally of what Ben did the night he destroyed the jedi academy).

And at no point Rey got too close to the dark. She only got close to Kylo. She was never tempted by power, or knowledge, or violence, or any of the traditional pitfalls of the dark side. Her only instinct was to help, and save someone from himself. If compassion and love are a path to the dark side, then we should rewrite the Sith code, lol. No, Luke was wrong, he learned his lesson, and by the end of the movie he went to face Kylo Ren fully knowing that he wouldn’t be the one who’d turn the monster back into a man this time, but that someone else could.

It’s not about “needing”, or “having to”. It’s about wanting. Rey not needing Kylo (and likewise Kylo not needing Rey) is something I’m thankful TLJ established, because it actually lays the basis for the healthiest kind of relationship, the one where you love someone without depending (materially or emotionally) on them. This puts all the emphasis on personal choice, rather than necessity, and I think fits extremely well with the main themes of this trilogy. Rey realizing that she doesn’t need Kylo was beautiful and I’m sure the narrative won’t backtrack on it, but I still think she’s going to be with him in the end, not because she “has to”, or “can’t live without him”, but because she wants to.

And I think this doesn’t undermine Rey’s agency at all, on the contrary, it elevates it.

Re: the proposal speech being manipulative but also genuine according to Rian, please refer to this and this.

Re: Rey being “unhappy” with him, uhm. I see this argument tossed around all the time and it annoys me big time. Right, she was SO unhappy that she ditched Luke to run to Kylo and try to save him as soon as she got a Force flashforward of his being at her side. What an ugly vision she must have seen, right? Careful not to confuse “raw emotions for an enemy whose pain resonates deeply with mine, as I’m also fighting a war” with “unhappiness”. Rey wasn’t unhappy in TLJ anymore than she was in TFA—she just stopped pretending to be fine, as she met someone who made her dig under the surface of her plucky heroine facade and confront her own demons and feelings of abandonment, and who brought his own demons and feelings of abandonment to the table, which Rey felt intensely for.

Happiness, conversely, isn’t always a sign and guarantee of romantic love, and the idea that love always makes you feel happy is generalizing and shallow, especially when it’s more about looking happy than anything. “She looks so happy when they hug”. Uh. So? I have a best friend who is truly the only person in the world who can put a smile on my face when I’m feeling down and who I can be completely myself with, and I would even say she’s the MOST important person in my world aside from my own family, and YET, I’m not in love with her. Nor should I try to be in order to stop suffering or be generically “happy”. Friendship is friendship, and love is love: both are equally important but they’re not the same, and they fulfill different needs. (mind, this is not me dissing friends-to-lovers tropes, which I like a lot, or saying that friendship can never evolve into romantic love, just that the kind of comfort and happiness true friendship offers isn’t necessarily the best basis for a romance, especially when there aren’t any obvious signs of romantic/sexual attraction.)

Speaking of which, and moving to the pro-f/rey part of your submission… I think most of the confusion re: f/nnrey being “obviously” romantic in TFA comes from the assumption that an “endgame” relationship needs to be portrayed as unambiguously positive since the start. Yes, Finn and Rey’s interactions in TFA were overwhelmingly positive—almost too positive, which in mainstream fiction doesn’t bode well for romance. Central romances, especially of the “epic” kind, are generally bumpy (or downright antagonistic) at first. And by “at first” I don’t mean the first five minutes of interactions, as in f/nnrey’s case: I mean at least the first act of the story. Translated into the context of a movie trilogy—it amounts to the first movie, give or take.

I just feel like there are far too many “romance” cues for F/innRey for that to not have been planned from the beginning. In TFA, those “boyfriend” lines weren’t essential, they could have been taken out without affecting the friendly-rapport feeling in their relationship. In TLJ, they didn’t have to juxtapose Rey being in tears facing Kylo to happily embracing Finn upon being reunited with him. And while there is the factor of Rose kissing Finn, they never entered into a deliberate romantic relationship or showed that the feelings were mutual: I feel like FinnRose isn’t essential to the next movie if they dismissed it, since so much of Finn and Rose’s arc could be read as them being friends or compatriots. There’s really no cues of romance until she kisses him.

funny how you’re saying that f/nnrey had “too many” romance cues not to have been planned from the get go in the same breath as you also argue that finnrose isn’t irrevocably romantic and could be easily dismissed in IX. Finn and Rose have a complete romantic arc in TLJ. Complete with a kiss. Whereas Finn and Rey only have a “boyfriend” line (which could be very well foreshadowing of Rey getting a “boyfriend” in TLJ, which she did, lol) and everything else is about deeply caring for each other and being each other’s first real friend (she looked at him like no one ever had, he came back for her when nobody would). Friendship tropes, I’ll concede, can sometimes be confused with romantic tropes, but why do the tropes used in TFA f/nnrey speak of romance more clearly than what Finn and Rose had in TLJ?

My opinion: they don’t. And if it seems to you like they do, it’s probably because you want them to see that way. Which is okay, as long as you’re aware of your bias. What really tips the scale from “could be romantic” to “oh no it’s definitely romantic” is the usage of textual, unequivocal romantic tropes and situations like Rose kissing Finn on the lips against a beautiful beaming ray of light or, well, Rey accidentally walking on a half naked Kylo and being very confused.

Those are facts, not hints.

And this isn’t Game of Thrones with its three hundred parallel storylines and red herrings or a 14 seasons-long CW teen drama, it’s a three-movie space opera that needs to be as closely knit and narratively solid as possible, it can’t afford doing a back and forth between romantic storylines, which at this point (following your logic) would be THREE, and two of them should be dismissed or ended badly in the last movie for the third to be endgame.

The main couples of this trilogy as established by TLJ are Finnrose and Reylo. F/nnrey having any sort of romantic development at this point would only confuse the audience and unnecessarily complicate the narrative, which is already complex enough as it is.

In TLJ, [Finn and Rey] are separated for the majority of it, but you could say that separation is always part of the romantic arc

Not for the entire second act of a trilogy, the one where (statistically in the SW movies) the pairing makes the leap from platonic (or antagonistic) to romantic.

and Rey is constantly thinking about him, while Finn is constantly thinking about her.

…were they? I mean, they probably were and it’s fine to headcanon it that way, but we weren’t actually shown any of it on screen (it was just handwaved at, with Rey trying to make contact with Finn, and Finn trying to leave to find Rey in the beginning) and this is important, storywise. It means that their dynamic is already established; the narrative trusts the audience to remember that they’re friends, they care about each other, they have an unbreakable sibling-like bond à la Luke and Leia, and there’s no need to remind us that they care about each other or introduce new developments in their relationship, which was fully formed by the end of TFA already.

Before she heads off to save Kylo, she gives Chewie an important message to Finn. (Which could have been something like “I love you” but I don’t want to assume.)

Again, it’s fine if you want to headcanon it that way, but one half of the pairing having the revelation that she loves the other offscreen (and no payoff for that at the end of the movie) is a really bizarre way to establish an endgame romantic pairing, if you ask me.

Re: the residual “romantic” cues in finn/rey—I think, if there were any (which in itself is debatable, but still), it’s probably because the finnreylo dynamic was originally conceived (by JJ) as some sort of lowkey love triangle, and then scrapped (still by JJ) in favor of a completely platonic bond on the f/nnrey side. Thankfully, Rian threw any possibility of a wacky love triangle out of the window by introducing Rose and letting Finn have his OWN romantic storyline rather than being reduced to a third wheel or cannon fodder to some stupid romantic conflict for reylo (which has no shortage of conflict on its own anyway, lol).

You also make it sound it deceptively easy to dismiss Finnrose as some sort of failed experiment or brief but ultimately irrelevant digression in the path that leads to the f/rey romance. It’s not. Rose is an important character, whose feelings matter, and she’s EXPLICITLY, textually in love with Finn. There’s no way to work around this fact or pretend it didn’t happen or argue that they’ll magically turn into platonic coworkers or *compatriots* (?). Finn’s feelings might be less clear but that’s why we still have a whole movie to go. But they already kissed, which as I said is far more definitive storywise than a line about a cute boyfriend or a kiss on the forehead.

Finally,

it would be a long, long road to have [Rey] forgive [Kylo] at all, let alone build some sort of romantic dynamic even though they will probably be enemies for a significant portion of IX.

It wouldn’t be a long, long road to have her forgive him, it would be a very short and simple road, because TLJ already did the bulk of the work in this sense, and made Rey deeply care for Kylo and, even more importantly, understand where his rage and hurt come from. The romantic dynamic is already established, it only needs to come to fruition, which is incredibly easy to make it happen since (to your admission too) they’re doing Bendeption anyway. To be frank, Kylo only needs to choose to ditch the First Order and maybe make ONE selfless act to redeem himself, even in Rey’s eyes, especially in Rey’s eyes. Nothing he did on Crait was worse than what he did on Starkiller (his body count is even shorter!), and it took Rey approximately 5 days to believe in his inherent goodness. I don’t think she’s changed her mind on that. I think she knows he isn’t in the right place to change his views yet, and is fully ready to fight him if need come, but she also doesn’t hate him, as the novelization also confirms (whereas, post tfa, she thought she did).

yes, they were enemies in TLJ too, but IX can’t spend a large portion of its running time devoted to intimate conversations like TLJ did: it’s the final act of this Trilogy and the Skywalker Saga, things need to start wrapping up.

Actually, it can. TLJ did it and managed to have TWO other full fledged storylines (including another romantic arc) running parallel to the reylo one, an identity/redemption arc for Luke AND an epic climatic battle in the end. 2 hours and 45 minutes are a LONG time to develop a dynamic to its fulfillment. And what other loose ends or main conflicts does this trilogy have to resolve yet, other than Ben’s relationship with Rey (and reconciliation with Leia, hopefully)? The only reason you think IX can’t spend time on reylo is because you don’t see it as a crucial part of this trilogy. But it is.

TL;DR; in my opinion f/rey doesn’t have enough set up to be the endgame romance (not even considering TFA alone), and with Rose’s introduction they kind of sealed the deal. Having Finn and Rey be involved in romantic threads with two other main characters only to undo those threads and put them together in the end actually requires more work (narrative-wise) than letting their respective romantic storylines evolve to their natural conclusion in IX. Pre-TLJ I said that both f/rey and reylo can be “canon”, and both are, the former as a friendship (the most important one in this trilogy) and the latter as a romance. I just don’t think they’ll be both romantic in the end. There’s potential in that to explore in fanfiction (just like there was potential in, say, Luke/Leia or Obi Wan/Padmé or even O/bikin), but it’s an extremely unlikely (and messy) direction to go for the canon story.

Hope this clarifies my opinion on the issues you raised, and that I didn’t sound too dismissive of your points. If so I apologize in advance.

#submission #sw wank #sw asks #sw for ts #discourse #fandom discourse #finnrey for ts #reylo for ts #finnrose for ts #tlj for ts #tlj wank #anti reylo bs #ship wank #sw ships #reylo**#sw**

18 notes · View notes

comradekatara · 5 years

Note

niche question ik but how many parallels do you think can be drawn between edgar + edmund and zuko + azula?

NICHE QUESTION?????? NICHE QUESTION???????? HAVE YOU MET ME???????????????????????????????????

so anyway.

i wish i had an archive to refer to because i am absolutely positive i have talked to/yelled at chell about this before. at the time i said something along the lines of zuko is edgar who was cast aside by his father and azula is edmund who was favored by her father. i’m also willing to entertain the notion of iroh filling the gloucester role. but let’s set all of that aside for a minute, and just talk about them.

the blue spirit is known as “the scourge of the fire nation.” he uses violence (the fire nation’s primary value) to his ends, but without fire (the currency of violence), and this is significant because he has fire, but notably cannot use it in this disguise. the blue spirit is precise and controlled in a way that zuko normally is not. zuko is all frayed edges and trying to block up a dam with a bandaid. but with the blue spirit, zuko uses the fire nation’s foremost mode of operation against them. his performance is his control.

lear refers to edgar as “the thing itself.” old tom is, indeed, the personification of the lear universe. but, what differentiates his madness from lear’s or gloucester’s is that it is feigned. if the fire nation runs on violence, the heath runs on madness. he is utilizing that madness for his own gain, making performance out of chaos & entropy (the ruling forces of their universe). all life is performance, and meaning is what we make of it; edgar knows this, thus he weaponizes lunacy to maintain control.

when i flippantly refer to zuko as a theatre kid, i mean it in a much truer sense than in his flamboyance, or even his critiques of love amongst the dragons. he learned at a young age that to survive, one must wear a mask. the blue spirit is to zuko what old tom is to edgar; it is his disguise that is “the thing itself.”

azula may be “legitimate,” but she is not firstborn, she is not a son. legitimacy is an arbitrary construct, differing in every world order. that is the point. edmund notes that their world is flawed. it is “the plague of custom” and “the curiosity of nations.” their laws are not legitimate. (fine word, legitimate.) if azula wants to take power, she knows she must rely on her skill and her cunning. her “dimensions are as well compact, [her] mind as generous, and [her] shape as true.” but she does not want to usurp her father; her father agrees with her. he, too, was not crown prince. he killed his father to overcome “the plague of custom.” no, it is zuko who is the blind one: “a brother noble, whose nature is so far from doing harms, that he suspects none.”

we all remember that moment in “the storm” wherein we see azula, here no older than eleven, cheering on the blinding of her brother. much like gloucester, he is deemed a traitor for actions motivated only by good intentions, but unlike gloucester, a) there is no first servant, no noble actor who speaks out or intervenes, only an arena of onlookers who can not only stand the sight of this horrific act, but even revel in it, and b) he only loses one eye: there is still room for redemption.

“azula always lies,” zuko knows. edgar does not. he seems to think that he and edmund have a good rapport. he also loves his father despite his flaws. edgar can acknowledge that gloucester is wrong about many fundamental principles in regards to the true world order, and still enjoy spending time with him. the second that zuko understands that ozai is fundamentally wrong about the world, he loathes him (as he, obviously, should). this is where the parallels begin to diverge. but the themes remain the same.

“just you and me, brother: the showdown that was always meant to be,” azula says, and of course, the tragedy of this scene is that she believes it. edmund resents edgar, surely, but he can still recognize that the problem is gloucester, that the problem is custom, and their father’s belief in it. azula has yet to see this. edgar overpowers edmund. zuko overpowers azula. azula’s downfall is that of feeling unlovable––that no one in her life truly sees her or loves her––and this shatters her.

as edmund lays dying, he says, “yet edmund was beloved,” citing the love triangle between sisters. I find this line very telling, for it illustrates that for edmund, this was not a rampage against custom or any of his supposed principles (those are which he states are not actually wrong, by the way); edmund just wanted to find love, anywhere he could get it.

edgar had love, and he never knew what it was like to live without it. similarly, zuko had ursa and iroh, who managed to support him just enough that he was eventually able to escape from under ozai’s abuse. at the point we find azula in at the end of the narrative, she will not die as edmund is willing to, for she knows she was not beloved. she cannot rest easy yet.

zuko is too trusting. zuko’s fundamental worldview is a gentle one, based in kindness and extending a hand––but the world won’t allow it. “I will preserve myself: and am bethought / to take the basest and most poorest shape / that ever penury, in contempt of man, / brought near to beast.” old tom is a defense mechanism, and the only one edgar thinks to take. i’ve often joked that edgar could have just… left, but of course, had edgar truly done so, edgar would not be edgar. had zuko been truly happy as a refugee in ba sing se, zuko would not be zuko.

azula is too cynical. she sees the world as a game of chess, in which ozai is the king (functionally useless but also the most important piece in the game) and herself as the queen (the most powerful and useful player). she sees a world order with a hierarchy, and with cogs in a machine. the best episode of person of interest (4x11) involves harold telling the machine the following:

You asked me to teach you chess and I’ve done that. It’s a useful mental exercise. And through the years, many thinkers have been fascinated by it. But I don’t enjoy playing. Do you know why not? Because it was a game that was born during a brutal age, when life counted for little. And everyone believed that some people were worth more than others. Kings and pawns. I don’t think that anyone is worth more than anyone else. […] Chess is just a game. Real people aren’t pieces. And you can’t assign more value to some of them than to others. […] People are not a thing that you can sacrifice. The lesson is that anyone who looks on the world as if it was a game of chess deserves to lose.

additionally, everyone remembers the scene in which azula says the following to long feng:

Azula: It’s because they haven’t made up their minds. They’re waiting to see how this is going to end.

Long Feng: What are you talking about?

Azula: I can see your whole history in your eyes. You were born with nothing, so you’ve had to struggle, and connive, and claw your way to power. But true power, the divine right to rule, is something you’re born with. The fact is, they don’t know which one of us is going to be sitting on that throne, and which one is going to be bowing down. But I know, and you know. Well?

Long Feng: You’ve beaten me at my own game.

Azula: Don’t flatter yourself. You were never even a player.

it’s an epic scene, and an epic line, but the fact of the matter is, she’s wrong. there is no “divine right to rule.” her worldview is one of imperialism, and as harold tells the machine, such a worldview, wherein some lives are worth more than others, is untenable.

edgar kills edmund because king lear is a play of worldviews battling it out both on a physical and psychological plane (if there is any difference, anyway). those who survive are kent, albany, and edgar, who value integrity and decency. edmund is not wrong to call custom a plague or nature his goddess. but he navigates this worldview all wrong. edgar and edmund both know that looking to heavens is “the excellent foppery of the world.” they know that there is nothing behind the curtain––that there is no curtain, even. but edmund chooses to take a path of manipulation and violence, and this is what he gets wrong about the world. his worldview is thus untenable, and edgar must destroy it.

“my father compounded with my mother under the dragon’s tail; and my nativity was under ursa major; so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous.” without the irony inherently imbued in this statement when edmund says it, it is a deeply apt way to describe the worldview on which the fire siblings were raised. zuko accepted ursa’s love, but azula was too busy seeking ozai’s approval. zuko was too trusting. azula was too cynical. but even then, they both knew one thing above all: the secret to survival is in performance.

#forgive the fact that i dont cite all my claims about edgar but pleas trust that i know this play by heart #lol #also yes person of interest doth fucketh but i am scant to admit that #anon #asks #analysis #zuko #azula #azula&zuko #synthesis #anon thank u for asking this question i love u so much for making me write this #and even if no one gives a shit i refuse to put this under a readmore bc its my favorite thing ive ever done for l4s and yes that includes #townie.mp4 etc etc

108 notes · View notes

bunny-wan-kenobi · 6 years

Text

Thor Thoughts Part 3: Come Home Brother

Part 3 of my series of reflections on Thor–this one’s a doozy (because, FEELINGS), so see below the cut:

The Elevator Scene

Right after @vitoliel and I saw Thor Ragnarok, we talked about the Elevator Scene. In a movie bursting with quips and big laughs, this brief pause with Thor and Loki stood out because it was one of the few times we actually see them address the whole complicated history between them and all the betrayal and hurt and frustration wrapped up in it.

Thor: Loki, I thought the world of you. I thought we were going to fight side-by-side forever, but at the end of the day you’re you and I’m me and… oh, maybe there’s still good in you but… let’s be honest, our paths diverged a long time ago.

Loki: Yeah… it’s probably for the best that we’ll never see each other again.

Thor: That’s what you always wanted.

What’s special about this scene (other than being the PERFECT preface to pinnacle of Marvel comedy “Get Help”) is that it represents another turning point for these brothers, who we have seen throughout these movies as family, rivals, enemies, and tenuous allies. Now, seconds before the action ramps up again, we get this goodbye moment with two men whose paths have come together once more, and it’s sad.

A huge part of this gravity owes itself to Tom Hiddleston’s emotionally-layered performance as Loki where we actually glimpse the uncertainty and hurt crossing his face as he glances at Thor. Meanwhile, Thor is speaking to him, eyes straight-ahead, looking outwards. This moment is an inhale, a moment big with possibility because we know as viewers that it doesn’t end here (these two overpowered Norse idiots are always going to find each other anyway), but until the payoff comes later, we’re left with the quiet tragedy of this farewell.

What Do You Mean Indifference?!

There is a lot to unpack here, but what was startling to me was how different @vitoliel and my interpretations for this scene were. I went on and on about how this scene was so moving because here’s Thor loving his brother so much that he’s giving him the space and distance to make his own choices (even if he doesn’t agree with them) and is moving on himself. When I finished (I’m definitely the passionate-monologuer type), my friend paused and shared that what came across to her was Thor’s indifference to Loki and how deeply that must have hurt.

Wait–what? Indifference?! What did she mean–couldn’t she see that this was Thor letting go, letting Loki live his life and–oh. Oh. I stopped my indignant sputtering and let my friend continue. She somehow put her finger on what I had totally missed: To Loki, it looked like Thor had given up on him, and that indifference was more painful than hate.

A new question dawned on me: What if Loki never wanted his brother to stop chasing him? Even if he never said so, acted instead like it didn’t matter, like the distance between them didn’t sting, what if he still yearned to be considered worth pursuing, worth that effort? What if he just wanted the security and constancy of that one hand reaching out to him, even though there was no certainty of him ever reaching back?

It hit me that I didn’t think of this before because I was looking at Thor and Loki’s relationship through the lens of an older sister. In so many ways, I resonate with Thor’s optimism, his faith in people’s potential for good…and his dogged protectiveness of his family.

When Watching Thor Turns Into Family Therapy

I have two siblings, a sister and brother, and I’m horribly guilty of the same kind of bear-huggy, smothery love Thor is inclined towards. Like Thor can’t help trying to bring people to himself, bring them together and close, I can’t help but reach out towards my siblings, whether it’s through way too many ice cream cones and Broadway outings to nosy (well I think just curious) questions about their love lives, their classes, their jobs.

I’d like to say that they are equally responsive to this outreach and we have relationship-building, soul-searching conversations together ALL the time…but it’s not like that. My sister is more reserved with her affection and inner world, though always energetic, mobile, and with her own blend of snark and good sense. My brother steps towards adulthood and is far from the little boy who used to lean into my shoulders when afraid or tired.

In the past, when they warded off my attempts to hear what they were up to, I used to press them, ask follow-up questions, try again and again. I didn’t have the closeness with my siblings that I craved, and I wasn’t satisfied settling for a call once a month–if even that. So I put up with the eye-rolling and sighs that headlined that I was being overbearing, smothering, nosy.

But I got tired. Things weren’t matching up to the harmonious picture of sibling love and unity that I somehow kept striving for. I wasn’t even sure if it was realistic to want it–maybe I was asking too much of my siblings. Maybe we were all too different from each other and I should be okay with that. So I allowed for some distance, called less, and didn’t push my questions when I did.

Blindspots

Reflecting now upon the Elevator Scene with Loki and Thor, I wonder if me and Thor share not only the same sometimes-overbearing affection for our siblings–but also the same blindspots. Our situations are totally different–none of my siblings have tried to take over the Earth with an alien army or pretend to be our dad to rule the house (though I’m sure my sister could do anything she puts her mind to), but in some ways I have mirrored Thor’s giving up on the possibility of a deeper connection and healing with our siblings.nbsp;

My tendency is to be a people-pleaser and keep the peace, whether it’s good to let things lie or not, and so I didn’t want to inconvenience my siblings or reach out too much that it would alienate them. I thought I was doing this out of love, and I thought it came across that way…but what if it didn’t? What if my distance is not the freedom Thor and I frame it as, but a reflection of our own resignation to the way things are with our siblings?

And to a large degree, it is. I mean, Thor has tried SO MANY TIMES to reach out to Loki, confront his harmful behaviors, remind him that they are family, and tell him to come home. You see this most in Avengers when Thor points to all the good memories of their brotherhood as proof that they could have that again:

Thor: I thought you dead.

Loki: Did you mourn?

Thor: We all did. Our father…

Loki: YOUR father! He DID tell you my true parentage, did he not?

Thor: We were raised together, we played together, we fought together. Do you remember none of that?

Loki: I remember a shadow, living in the shade of your greatness. I remember you tossing me into an abyss, I who was and should be king!

……………..

Loki: I AM a king!

Thor: Not here! You give up the Tesseract! You give up this pointless dream!… You come home.

But again, despite the insistence on family bonds and coming together, there are blindspots. Thor simply doesn’t fully understand Loki’s motivations or the demons he’s wrestling with. He makes assumptions about Loki’s power grab based on his perceptions and limited information and dismisses the rest as “imagined slights.” Ouch…that must have stung Loki.

And not only that, but it’s possible that Thor didn’t consider how he has contributed to Loki’s sense of alienation and disillusionment or that it’s simply not possible for them both to go home and have things be the way they were. Loki’s foundations have shattered too much and there’s been too much conflict between them to go back. Thor wants to understand, but there’s a lot going on in Loki under the surface that he just doesn’t see. He says that they are “brothers,” but how do the actions line up with this label from Loki’s point of view?

Seeing where Thor misses the mark with Loki makes me afraid of what I am missing when I interact with my siblings. I love them and like to define myself as a good older sister, but what if I’m like Thor–all good intentions but causing more hurt rather than helping? This isn’t all me and Thor’s fault since there are just things you don’t see under the surface, and we’re not perfect, but the anxiety of it leaves you in a lose-lose situation because you don’t want overwhelm your siblings with your concern and care…but you also don’t want to lose them.

It is all too easy for me to relate to Thor, and by the time the events of The Dark World come around, I feel his weariness and frustration. He wants so much to trust Loki, to be close to him again, but after seeing his compassion met with betrayal and bitter mockery one to many times, Thor is about *this close* to being done. And by Ragnarok, it looks like he is.

A Way Home

Now, whether the elevator conversation is Thor’s way of using reverse psychology on Loki, banking on his betrayal as part of his greater plan, I do think Thor’s words reflect just enough truth of what he’s actually feeling. Maybe he wants to be indifferent to Loki and let him do whatever he wants–that casual passivity would be the easier path. But whatever Thor says, his actions (as always) reveal that there’s still a small stubborn part of him that holds hope for Loki and the brotherhood they could reclaim.

So what does Thor do? He anticipates Loki’s betrayal, but I think he also gives him an opportunity to come back. He leaves him trapped in an electric bind on the ground, but instead of tossing the remote or taking it with him to cement his action, he places it just close by enough. Not only that, he has already engineered a prison break with compatriots he knows will be headed this way to escape Sakaar.

Now the choice is again up to Loki. There is a hand reaching out, fragile, uncertain, maybe, but with enough hope to envision the possibility of Loki rejoining Thor and helping save lives rather than simply manipulate or destroy them. And you know what? Loki takes the hand, and when he shows up on Asgard to save the day, it isn’t surprise you see on Thor’s face–it’s joy.

The coda of Ragnarok provides the response to the question posed by the conversation of Elevator Scene. Loki and Thor are different, and the choices they have made and their outlook on the world mean they will not always understand or align with each other. Each has wronged the other, and they’re only beginning to deal with that. But that doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive with them standing by each other’s side when most needed. Maybe they don’t need to put distance between them to find a way for them both to move forward–maybe that’s not even what’s best for them.

The alternative is more complicated: choosing to work through the pain and tensions of the past to figure out what being brothers looks like now after everything they have been through together. Thor can learn to listen, continue on his journey of open-mindedness and meet his brother where he is. Loki can learn to heal, trust in the love and care offered him as he reworks what his place in the world is–both the mischief and the heroism. They can figure out how they can be equals in the way they never were before.

This post wasn’t meant to be so lengthy or anything, but seeing Ragnarok hit me in a way I didn’t expect. And after seeing Loki and Thor wrestling with these deep issues, maybe I won’t stop reaching out to my own siblings–even when it’s hard to. I won’t blame myself for when things don’t go the way I hoped, for the things outside of my control or the things they do, but I won’t let it deter me either. I can’t fix everything, and neither is it up to me to, but I can model care to the people who matter to me and take ownership of that. Me and Thor will stay stubborn and love our siblings the best way we can and never apologize for trying. It’s a new world after all, and maybe we just need to rediscover what home is before heading there.

Thor Thoughts: Part I, Part 2

#thor #loki #thor ragnarok #bunny talks thor #siblings #thor meta #bunny posts

10 notes · View notes

woonietune · 6 years

Text

Whose fault was it that Woon killed himself?

Although I believe they’re not, the reasons seem to be a series of misunderstandings and the fucked-up destiny that Dong-soo didn’t believe in---the gisaeng who was only trying to protect Woon (someone she didn’t understand and whose love for his friends she probably resented), the assassins of Heuksa Chorong who were trying to kill the man (Cho-rip) who they believed was trying to kill their beloved boss, and then Dong-soo not showing up in time. Dong soo, who wanted to protect everyone and who believed in the letter of justice--remember he chided Woonie for trying to kill Hong when everyone knew Hong was the cause of everything--yes, killing Hong would have made Woon get in serious trouble but it was a short-cut to saving hundreds of lives? Dong-soo was all about protecting people, but he also believed in Woon, believed everything he said, and he was fresh from Cho-rip telling him just that. He believed Woon’s lie about hurting Cho-rip. Dong-soo, in his innocence and faith in Woon, only contradicted Woon on the point of destiny not being real and always was supportive of Woon--he never contradicted Woon when Woon listed his own sins. Even when Woon perpetuated Chun’s pattern of lying--such as taking the blame for killing the boys camp commander and Crown Prince Sado, when Dong-soo had seen Chun kill the former with his own eyes and even said on the spot at Crown Prince Sado’s murder to Chun “so you’re the one responsible for this.” Dong-soo knew who was truly behind all the evil at Heuksa Chorong. He knew... and yet could not kill Chun when given the chance to fight him. Dong-soo was young; I don’t blame him--he was the best swordsman in all Joseon, but had he truly mastered the Living Sword? There was so much he didn’t know-and he didn’t know because Woon hadn’t told him. If Woon had only told him half his story, would Dong-soo have killed Chun the night of that fight? Even Gwang-taek had regrets about not killing sometimes

I’m not sure of the extent of Dong-soo’s unwillingness to kill, but we all saw what Dong-soo did in order to save the Prince Heir (try to cut off Woon’s own head in that spectacular stunt when Woon leans back on his horse in that fake attempt to kill the Prince Heir) and all he did to protect Ji-sun; Dong-soo was learning the power of his own sword, Had the matter involved Woon, had the matter involved knowing the extent to which Chun had played in manipulating Woon, would Dong-soo have dealt a fatal blow? I’m still not sure. It may not have been in Dong-soo’s character; even in the series final battle, Dong-soo could not muster the courage to stab Woon, who presented a good argument for Dong-soo’s doing so--and called himself a state criminal. And in any event, Dong-soo’s killing Chun would not have worked in the tragic narrative the script was trying to tell....

Yes, it was after that fight that Woon rushed Dong-soo and gave him his best shot---tried to kill him in a scene that surprised everyone. IF DONG-SOO COULD NOT DO HIS JOB then after that riveting scene where Dong-soo effectively blocks Woon’s blade, Woon would kill Chun. He said he would become an assassin. It was the only time in the entire series he was fully committed to becoming one. Because who did he have to kill? His own abuser, the person who had abused Ji-sun, killed Woon’s own father, and DESPITE his apparent admitting his own sins to Woon, was still guilty. And what had Chun told Woon long ago? In order to become an assassin, one must kill one’s most beloved person. So Dong-soo rushed Woon with “my best move”--and yes, he probably knew Dong-soo would block it, but he needed to do it. And he held onto Dong-soo longer than he needed to, in what to audiences was a clear embrace, and whispered words into his ear that in what for all intents and purposes was a lover-like gesture (argue that and much of PanAsia will argue back). Woon’s most precious person was Dong-soo.

When Woon was on his knees after delivering a fatal blow to Chun, who did Woon say he would give up being an assassin for? For whom would Woon change his life? Not Ji-sun (he had told Hong “that woman’s life is my life,” and Hong had promptly called out that lie). Not Chun himself, although Chun had told Woon twice not to follow his path of woe and killing--ha, Chun’s programming Woon was too deep, as I’ll explain later. Woon was on his knees, swearing he would change his life, and he did. He did keep his promise that he would throw away the life of an assassin. “I will forsake it all, Dong-soo-yah.” Woon changed his life for Dong-soo.

Not that Woon had ever done a very good job of being an assassin. He’d merely identified as one, accepted the position as one, and allowed others to believe he was one. He did carry out assassin assignments, but he’d tried to heal the first people he’d been assigned to kill and had tried to protect so many others along the way. He didn’t like the job and said as much that he wanted to return to live with Dong-soo. But he’d faithfully remained a servant of Heuksa Chorong when he could’ve easily escaped under Gwang-taek or Dong-soo’s protection. He believed that he couldn’t leave--he bought that lie, hook, line and sinker from Chun, and he would not let anyone else protect him.

It was Woon who fought to protect himself (he never allowed Dong-soo, for all those proclamations of protection, to save him), and it was Woon, whose political machinations, in a match for Dong-soo’s physical strength, helped stopped the internal political coup against the Prince Heir that fateful historical day. Woon redeemed himself. As it should have been. That’s what makes a hero. Woon was never a simpering maiden like Ji-sun (who I disliked---Jin-joo fought for herself and saved Dong-soo and others countless times--it bothers me that both women in the script wielded weapons but both were discouraged against fighting and the former was even denied emotional independence from Dong-soo). I can’t blame Dong-soo for not saving Woon. That job was supposed to be Woon’s if Woon was ever to be a truly redeemed and healthy person.

And even after Dong-soo’s speech on the wharf, where Dong-soo had said there is no destiny, after he had convinced Ji-sun that one makes one’s own destiny, and had told Woon “I don’t bow to destiny like you,” Dong-soo did not protect Woon from Chun, who still haunted Woon. So Woon went out to kill Chun---no reason to do that, really. The man was effectively no longer the leader of the guild, had really resigned his post to Woon, was a broken man after Ga-ok’s death, and had no one to fight after Gwang taek’s death.

And Woon stabbed Chun and dealt him a fatal blow. The narrative has Chun limp away and actually be killed by state enemy arrows while saving Jin-joo in an echo of a redemption, but the truth is, he was never a father, and the damage he had already inflicted on Ga-ok and the death-path he set up for Woon were sins he couldn’t change with his feelings for a girl he thought for a moment could have been his own daughter, who WAS the daughter of the woman he had loved and lost, albeit a daughter by his rival (a man he regretted killing--maybe because then there was no more “fun” as Chun called it? Who knows? The man lied so much all his life, I find it difficult to believe much of his regrets at the end, only his suffering and loneliness). Chun may have been a different person had he made different choices in his life. If with all his talent and swordsmanship had chosen to leave the guild with Ga-ok and have a family, or dissolve it like Woon later did--but no, like Ga-ok said, he loved dominating people too much. He drank too much. He wanted to fight Gwang-taek too much. He mind-fucked a little boy, and set off a time bomb in him, lying to him for years, that would go off a decade later.

Chun was, what we would call in these days, a classic narcissistic abuser. What would be called in those days, a man taking advantage of his privilege and his power. Although, come to think of it--that’s a man common as the grasses in the field these days too. And given what the statistics are for child-rape in my own country and in this century, back then, when there were no laws to protect them, when it was open-season on those not powerful and male, I have no doubt that the writer intended Chun, who was way too touchy-feely with Woon, raped Woon as a child. I know many people in the WBDS fandom won’t go that far. Oh, maybe the scene suggested that Chun “felt” Woon’s killer rage when Woon walked by him on the path that day as a 12 yr old. Maybe Chun knew that Woon was the son of someone who had made a blood-vow with Gwang-taek, the Yeo Cho-sang who had once been a worthy fighter even if he was a village drunk now--but why the interest in the child that moment? Woon was simply walking down the road. Chun asked Woon his name so he DIDN’T know for sure that Woon was Cho-sang’s son. Even so, is swordsmanship hereditary? Chun looked Woon up and down. He had no evidence Woon could fight and would make a good assassin. He touched a boy’s hair, showed uncharacteristic paternal affection he would not show later--although he remained touchy-feely. With a pretty 12-year old he had hunted down like a rabbit.

And he would lie, lie, lie to the boy and play mind games with him like a classic narcissist who loved power and dominance.

How Woon recalls the memories he blocked out is typical of victims of abuse and one of the devices used very well in a script that is far from perfect (although memorable because of many reasons--the characters, the fighting scenes, the poetic parallels, the stunning outdoor shots, the ton of money poured into production, the standard K-drama emotion-range of love and tragedy being extra intense). Woon recalls bits over a period of 10 years, doesn’t know the truth until Chun tells him that it was Chun himself who murdered his father, and may not remember the whole truth- until the day he impales himself on Dong-soo’s blade, and re-enacts what his own father did that day. Yeo Cho-sang impaled himself on Woon’s own blade.

What truly happened with Woon was that even after Chun’s death, even after Woon was able to redeem himself in the coup and save lives, even after believing Dong-soo and Sword Saint that a man makes his own destiny, and believing that he was free of his burdens, he was not free of Chun.

Like many victims of abuse, he perpetuated Chun’s narrative of LIES that he was a murder---a course set by Yeo Cho-sang, blamed himself for the murder of Crown Prince Sado when it was Chun who had killed the Crown Prince, even told the Prince Heir that as the truth is shown playing in Woon’s mind.

Yeo Woon, still held in the grip of Chun, even though Chun is dead. Still a prisoner of a narcissist pirate. Still a victim.

And one of the things these perpetrators do is foster guilt, terrible guilt in their victims that EVERYTHING is their fault while instilling some sense of debt and confusion and loyalty. Woon’s father may not have let Woon take up the blade, may have told him the nonsense that about the killer destiny. But Woon’s words to his father that night Woon could not kill him were “I AM NOT A KILLER.” Chun heard those words and yet let Woon believe Woon had killed his own father. What a great guy that Chun. I can’t believe audiences fell for that charismatic typical sociopath. It’s such Ted Bundy classic bullshit.

Chun gave Woon the blade that Woon’s father wouldn’t and allowed him to use it. Woon said NO to his father, but he couldn’t say no to Chun. Stockholm Syndrome in a way because Chun had rescued Woon from a father who beat him, who had killed Woon’s mother, who had given him the sword to defend himself, a boy referred to as “girly” throughout the whole series, that Yeo Cho-sang had refused his own son.

Yeo Cho-sang, a ineffective abuser because Woon was a damn tough kid, did not get through to Woon and manipulate him the way Chun did. And then Chun did not teach Woon a thing, no swordsmanship, no wisdom so forget anything approaching genuine parently mentoring--Chun merely lied, gaslighted, gave him assassin assignments and exploited his gifts in every way. In the end, Chun was Woon’s killer.

Other people were bystanders. Chun killed Woon in the field that day. A person without Woon’s history who had heard Cho-rip’s words “It’s all your fault” would have known them to be false. Woon heard what he had believed all his life. His suicidal self (he had attempted suicide before in the series, asking Ji-sun to kill him, holding his own blade before his throat before Chun, trying to kill Hong in what he knew would end up in his own conviction and death) believed Cho-rip that he did not deserve to live.

And a healthy person would have believed that he deserved Dong-soo’s love and care. Time and time again, Woon didn’t speak his truth to anyone, not even to the person who most needed and wanted to hear it--Dong-soo. Woon didn’t tell Gwang-taek and Sa-mo at the wharf what happened to him, how he became an assassin--they asked. They both tried to parent him. They both tried to care for him. Dong-soo tried with all his heart to save Woon. Woon refused them all--not believing he was worthy.

Why? Chun had said there was there was blood on Woon’s hands. Woon believed Chun, not his own father, that he was shit. That he had a killer destiny. That whoever he had saved did not make up for that. That he had to die. Cho-rip listed the people who died because of Woon. Cho-rip said that even the Prince Heir and Dong-soo would not be safe if Woon lived. Woon believed that. In order for Dong-soo, his most beloved person to live, Woon would have to kill himself. Dong-soo’s being alive was more important than Woon’s being alive.

The following video killed me. It echoed a lot of what I speak of in this meta--and the song in its repeated use of the word “come” creeps me out because of the power Chun had over Woon and the sexual implication. The MV seems to indict Chun, Gwang-taek, and Dong-soo in Woon’s death. I don’t blame “let me take care of you” Gwang-taek who sent Woon back to Heuksa Chorong (and don’t get me started on Gwang-taek’s other flaw of believing women shouldn’t wield the sword--in those days women could not enter military or police and had only a choice as bandits, outlaws or assassins if they did and his love Ga-ok had died by the sword--but I address that in my fix-it fic because I have Woon say, as he suggested to Dong-soo, that there was no protecting everyone--that one shouldn’t go around saying one could when one couldn’t, that sometimes men would not be around to protect women). I don’t blame Dong-soo, who in his desperation, told Woon something literally impossible to carry out but impossibly romantic--that if there was something Woon could not bear, Dong-soo would bear it for him. I don’t even blame Cho-rip, who in his stupidity, in his hyper-academic reasonable-ness and allegiance to the law, was trying to protect the Prince Heir--and who probably felt bitter still for having been stabbed by Woon and who didn’t have all the facts about how Woon saved people--and who, yeah, had been treated as a third wheel by Dong-soo and Woon, all his life, would say those things to Woon after having been STABBED by Woon’s own employees.

I blame Chun.

I see one victim and one cruel perpetrator.

Chun killed a beautiful, good person. Yeo Woon who all his life tried with all his goodness and intelligence to do right, who stood up to his father and the Prince Heir to save even his own life while he tried to save others (this is also typical of abuse survivors--their compassion and caregiving excesses, their willingness to sacrifice themselves for others, even as they fight for their own lives like crazy--PTSD is a desperate coping mechanism for survival); Woon was exploited and defeated by Chun’s crazy programming at every turn. In the end, Chun won. In the end, Woon was Chun’s mirror--he believed he was the irredeemable murderer Chun actually was, and his own goodness believed that such a person didn’t deserve to live.

And it was a grotesque tragedy--Woon dying for Dong-soo. Dong-soo unable to protect with his own sword and Woon dying on it in his arms.Just as Woon changed his life for Dong-soo, he decided to die for him. One huge flaw of the series is how Dong-soo is drinking, almost in a parody of Woon’s own father and Chun, in attempts to forget Woon and hallucinates Woon in the end, and yet this is so unsatisfying. As is the very end when Dong-soo promises to teach martial arts to a child (is it the same child Woon reached out to and tried to teach how to hold a sword?) Woon died for no reason. No reason. Even as a cautionary tale, even as a supreme tragedy--and yes, Shakespeare wrote tragedy so yeah it’s a genre and fine fine but that makes the funny bits at the end of the series ring false and strange (Cho-rip's little courtship of Mi-so! Cho-rip of all people!), and the story doesn’t end with any solid ending or tribute to Yeo Woon--at most, an oblique one.

Gwang-taek and Ga-ok got prolonged, hugely weepy, classic K-drama funerals, but stunned audiences didn't have time to mourn Yeo Woon before Sa-mo was a-flirting or Cho-rip was kissing Mi-so right out there in public, and nope, no funeral, nothing. The whiplash, wow. i would have at least like to have had the vaguest recognition that some of Woon's brave deeds were recognized (maybe the gisaeng told?) or know where Woon was buried. Woon was, after all, one of the two main leads, and arguably (although most reviewers won’t even argue the contention) Woon’s character stole the show; I don’t know how many times I’ve read the series should’ve been called Assassin Yeo Woon instead of Warrior Baek Dong-soo.

We know that Baek Dong-soo went on with his life, lived well past what men of his time did, and became famous for writing a martial arts book. Yeo Woon, as may be the point of the script, is a figure lost in history. But should he be lost after audiences have grown to love him or mourn him so much? Ah, the reason for this blog and why I’ve written so much fix-it fic.

And yes, I am a survivor of abuse. Yeo Woon didn’t have to die. As the script was written, he may have--I predicted it from the episode his father went down. Was there any escaping that trauma? But as in all transformative art and reimaginings, I can save him. Fandom can reclaim him. He’s not dead. He’s not. I will save him again and again.

eta: omg so many typos--caution to maybe edit before posting. I did put this up on A03 though. I’ll put up a somewhat funny story re Cho-rip later. I just needed to purge myself of these fandom thoughts.

youtube

#Yeo Woon #Warrior Baek Dong-soo #Dong-soo X Yeo Woon #WBDS meta #Why I wrote so much fic I'm obsessed with this story and yes I'm survivor of abuse

3 notes · View notes

julystorms · 7 years

Note

i remember you saying erwin wasnt real guilty about the deaths of his comrades so i thought you might find his character monologue relevant as most of what he talks about is him feeling guitly and him naming the comrades who have lost their lifes

Thanks!

YMMV ETC AND SO ON: THIS IS MY INTERPRETATION OF ERWIN’S CHARACTER PLEASE READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

I wouldn’t say he doesn’t feel guilty at all, or even that he doesn’t feel guilt on a general level because he basically tells us this himself:

But IMO what we’re meant to see in this scene is that his guilt comes second to his goals. Always. The focal point of the conversation isn’t: “Wow I feel shitty about what’s happened to these people who I’ve sent to their deaths” so much as, “HOLY SHIT WE ARE SO CLOSE TO THE TRUTH man I hope I can pay back my debt later.”

This gets a tad long so please read under the cut.

First, I want everyone to look at the definition:

I highlighted the two that mattered here, but a feeling of guilt is feeling responsible for a specified wrongdoing; in this case, that is sending people to their deaths.

Erwin definitely feels badly about what he’s done; there’s a lot in the canon that would point to that statement. For example, the above panels. See also: shortly before his death, the corpse pile and ghostly images surrounding him. He feels personally responsible for those people’s deaths.

What the diehard Erwin stans tend to forget about (selectively, I might add) is that the guilt Erwin feels doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Context is incredibly important to understanding his character.

In the end Erwin admits he wouldn’t have done anything differently. Even here, in the above scene, Levi is horrified to see that Erwin’s reaction to this revelation isn’t fear or horror or even some form of self-loathing--not just for sending people to their deaths, but for sending people to their deaths to fight against and kill other people. We might simply see this as war, but these characters have no real concept of war considering how their world is arranged for them. Anyway, rather than showing some kind of negative emotion at this reveal, Erwin gives us a slasher smile. He’s so close to his goal of learning the truth. This is a huge step toward that goal. His smile makes sense to us, the reader, because we later learn what his goal is and what has pushed him toward it. Levi doesn’t know. Erwin’s reaction is completely out of the blue; it’s kind of disgusting in context.

Erwin is now a step closer to the truth. But that knowledge, and further knowledge...was acquired at a steep price.

And he knows that it will continue to come at the price of hundreds more lives. That is a price he’s willing to pay. Other people’s lives are a price he is willing to pay. And I’m not saying this from a narrative standpoint: this is something he says and feels himself. His goals are ALWAYS #1 to him. Even to the detriment of others and the loss of human life.

There’s no remorse, no regret. Look at him talking about paying the debt back in the afterlife, like these soldiers and his pals who died for him did him a solid by giving up their lives--like they borrowed his car hauler or shoveled snow off his sidewalk once instead of giving their lives for a cause they believed in--one that wasn’t exactly the cause Erwin is passionate about/fighting for.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think Erwin is much more complex than that. I think he’s a great character, probably one of the best Isayama has given us. Think about his history, about how his goals--both to prove his father’s theory and to prove that he didn’t get him killed for nothing--consumed him, led him to do what he did to his father, almost, but this time purposefully, knowingly, to other people--people he was in a position of power over.

I don’t think Erwin is an irredeemable asshole. I don’t think he’s a villain. But I do think he’s manipulative and lacks empathy. He had to become that way, though. He had to, if he was ever going to learn anything. That was worth it to him. He wouldn’t do it differently. That doesn’t make him a selfless li’l angel saint of a man. It just makes him interesting.

Look: Erwin is a tragic character, but it’s not because of his guilt, not because he manipulated people into joining a cause that isn’t entirely the one they believed they were fighting for. Erwin’s place as a tragic character has nothing to do with his death, nothing to do with the serumbowl, nothing to do with losing his arm or his fighting spirit or casting aside some of his humanity.

Erwin is ambitious to an extreme degree.

And what makes him tragic is that he didn’t get that way all on his own. There was a catalyst. That catalyst was a mistake, made not by just Erwin, but by his father as well. The tragedy is that if Mr. Smith hadn’t told his son what he thought, if he’d just lied to him, if he’d tamped down the curiosity Erwin displayed about understanding the truth behind the discrepancies in the history books, Erwin might have ended up a very different person.

The tragedy is that one man sitting down to tell his son the truth as he suspected it to be changed the course of a lot of people’s lives. Some for better, some for worse. It’s hard to imagine the kind of person Erwin would have been if his father hadn’t died because of him. It really makes you think.

(I do think he’d have still been ambitious and motivated but I think in many ways he makes a decent parallel to Grisha who fandom views as a much worse person despite the two of them being scarily similar.)

But like I said, his guilt is guilt without remorse. He admits to his guilt, to feeling badly, but he’s saying that with every intention of continuing on with it. No regrets. It was worth it to him. Which some people hate because they think it makes him a giant asshole, but I think makes him interesting as a character. He’s a guy whose goals just happen to line up with the plot of the story (not the characters, at least not at first). He’s sacrificing lives for his own goals but those goals aren’t too far removed from what we as readers want to know about the world these characters live in; that makes it forgivable for a lot of readers. But think about the characters who don’t have that goal, about the people who exist in the world who are fighting for humanity’s sake who don’t realize what Erwin is up to, who just want to fight for what they already have instead of something more. Man, it’s deliciously complex and terrible and I LOVE IT. We rarely get characters like Erwin--characters who are “good guys” literally ONLY by virtue of their selfish goals aligning in part with that of the main characters/readers.

I don’t want anyone to think I hate Erwin. I find him a fascinating character. He’s complex in the best of ways. I don’t see him as a selfless saint, as a virtuous man, as especially considerate or caring of other people. I see him as an ambitious and motivated man who will accomplish his goals by any means necessary, even if those means get other people killed--even if deep down he doesn’t like what those means have to be.

And the best part about Erwin’s character is that his goals were selfish because he couldn’t possibly have known the extent of what we, the readers, now know about the world he lived in. Levi’s comment in the above scene about the cost not being worth it... I mean, Levi’s right, but what we know now is that the fight was going to come to Paradis eventually, anyway, and if humanity had continued to cover in the walls as Levi wanted to do, they’d be completely boned. So Erwin sacrificed a lot of lives selfishly, never knowing if doing so would amount to anything, never knowing if people were dying for fuck-all...

But in the end perhaps it wasn’t all for nothing--even Erwin himself died so that the truth was discovered.

See, people want to say Erwin was selfless in the end by giving up his dream, but really I feel his dream was that the truth BE DISCOVERED and yeah, it would have been nice to see it for himself, to discover it for himself personally, but that wasn’t the goal. The goal was that everyone would know it. And in leading that charge he tried to ensure that at least a few people would learn it and share it--and expose the lies and bullshit that he probably didn’t understand fully but knew had to be going on/hoped would be uncovered. ‘Cause seeing the goal for himself wouldn’t mean a goddamn thing if he couldn’t return to his people to share it. In dying, other people would have a higher chance of being able to take it back.

So that catalyst led a hell of a lot of people to their deaths--including Erwin himself. It’s interesting to think about. This is why Erwin in an AU never ever feels quite right to me. He’s ambitious as hell but there needs to be a catalyst of some kind to make him as ruthless and remorseless as he is in the canon; his situation made him that way. Take it away and he’s just an ambitious businessman or something doing hardcore negotiations.

Anyway, the TL;DR here is: Erwin feels guilty; I would never dispute that. But he lacks remorse because he’s incapable of regretting what he’s done. I guess you could choose to hate him over that, but honestly it’s rare that we get interesting characters like Erwin--someone selfish and ambitious and motivated with a goal in mind that requires a lot of sacrifices, someone ruthless and yet SMART enough to do what it takes to get to a place where he can pursue the knowledge he seeks. Like damn. I don’t like what he’s done any more than I like what other similar characters have done, and I acknowledge that the sacrifices of others were made meaningful by sheer luck, but it doesn’t make the overall picture any less fascinating to me.

#snk #snk meta #erwin smith #behold my unpopular opinion/interpretation of erwin #cute anons #replies to friends

107 notes · View notes

krokodile · 7 years

Photo

movies watched in 2017:

the neon demon - a rewatch, and i loved being able to not have to try and figure out the story and just enjoy the movie with all its glorious beauty. it’s throwback horror done flawlessly, while still being totally unique and impressively creative.

roman - i love angela bettis as an actress, but less so as a director. still, i don’t think this is meant to be the next great american classic (...wait, is lucky mckee actually canadian?) i think it’s more of an experiment, and a successful one. it held my interest and kept me guessing, and that’s enough. editing could’ve cleaned up some things with picture and sound but maybe the roughness was intentional.

into the forest - such garbage. emotionally manipulative dreck. and make sure you shoehorn your anti-abortion message in there somewhere. i always thought evan rachel wood would grow up to be a great actress, but whatever potential she had I’ve never seen fulfilled.

arrival - remember how they remade the day the earth stood still a while back and it was utterly moronic? THIS IS THE MOVIE THEY SHOULD HAVE MADE. the sheer beauty of amy adams interacting with the creatures left tears in my eyes many times, and despite being equally heavy with the message, it left plenty of time and space for interesting, well-drawn characters. throw in some fucking impressive storytelling and amy adams being her usual luminous self and there’s just nothing to not love in here.

the girl on the train - disappointing. maybe my hopes were too high after seeing how great the gone girl adaptation was, but this story just didn’t work as well in a visual medium. emily blunt tried her hardest, but this was the weakest performance i’ve seen from her to date.

the 9th life of louis drax - i hated every single character so much, i couldn’t get invested in the story. and even if i had, the resolution was glaringly obvious from the first voiceover. oliver platt was the only tolerable performance.

get out - i was expecting to like this movie, but i wasn’t prepared for HOW MUCH i liked it. the 99% on rotten tomatoes made me expect a “message” film, and the more critics love those the more boring i tend to find them, but i was still pretty optimistic. holy shit though, best movie i’ve seen in a LONG time. people have already talked about what’s so great about it, far more eloquently than i could, but it’s pretty close to perfect. and the performances are going to go down as some of the most immediately remembered and recognized in the horror genre. a lot of the film’s success comes from daniel kaluuya’s utterly brilliant performance - he’s the easiest horror protagonist to love and root for since sharni vinson in you’re next.

we’re the millers - not really my taste in comedy, but i got a few laughs out of it.

nocturnal animals - i hate that i didn’t like this movie, because i so wanted to. and the frustrating thing is, i can pinpoint exactly what went wrong for me. the screenplay is fantastic; it looks gorgeous (i love how the “book” segments actually LOOK just ever so slightly fake); amy adams knocks it out of the park and the supporting cast is terrific. my problem is jake gyllenhaal. and i don’t think he’s a bad actor; i like him just fine. but he was a terrible fit for this role. (and tbh i didn’t need the flashbacks to his and amy adams’s relationship. the movie would’ve worked just as well without them and they derailed the narrative quite a bit.) all his screaming and crying and raging just seemed incredibly calculated, and i don’t think it was intentional. he was just out of his depth here. i’m also not sure why the opening sequence went as long as it did. and no i’m not whining that i had to look at naked obese ladies. but it just felt like someone trying to be david lynch and came off very pretentious student film. i also think it could’ve been half the length and still accomplished what it set out to do. but really i can let go of everything but jake gyllenhaal’s performance.

i know there’s been some controversy about the violence against women portrayed in this film, but i’ve noticed that people by and large have no problem with extreme violence against women being portrayed as long as there’s no nudity; the fact that we saw their bodies nude (and that tableau was absolutely beautiful, by the way; that got the most genuine emotional reaction from me out of the entire film. so softly devastating; especially since isla fisher and ellie bamber had used their few minutes onscreen to get me to completely fall in love with them) is what people find horrific and unacceptable. the sexual violence, nearly all of which took place offscreen, was not used for shock value or as a cheap device to give a picture “depth” or “tragedy.” i can only assume i’m not the only audience member whose guts just ripped in half in sorrow seeing mother and child laid out like that. i actually think it was one of the best done moments in the film. i understand not wanting to see that, but to call it unnecessary or exploitative seems to me like the point has been greatly missed. (it also involves totally not understanding the film’s structure and jake gyllenhaal’s character but i won’t go into that.)

i am not a serial killer - pretty good little movie. i usually hate it when things go supernatural, but this was one of the rare occasions where the movie was no worse for it. mostly some parts lagged for me; otherwise no complaints.

psycho - a partial rewatch since jenna was watching it. still a terrific movie. and it was fun picking out all the little things bates motel has referenced over the years.

6 notes · View notes

sebastianshaw · 7 years

Note

9, 12, 33.

9: What power do you wish you had?Reality warping. I could just make myself and my life be exactly how I want to be, and fix lots of other problems in the world too. And if I wanted any other powers, like flight or time-relapse, I could just change reality so I had those.12: What character do you dislike the most?I really, really hate Sabretooth. He’s one of the few characters that I just full-stop won’t even RP with, and I frankly can barely read anything with him in it. 33: Which character deserves more attention than they get?So many! Probably more than I know! These are a few of my own underrated faves though (and it’s a very biased list, I RP as several of these characters)Fabian Cortez - Fabian was a major villain during the first half of the 90s, and remained an important character in relation to Quicksilver and Magneto even after he lost his “major villain” status overall. He’s the asshole that manipulated the retired Magneto back into villainy for his own ends before then killing him off so he could use his image as a martyr to lead a cult, and he also was a constant thorn in the side of Quicksilver, even kidnapping his daughter during the Blood Ties event. He’s very devious, very competent, and very…hilarious? The guy is definitely intelligent and dangerous, but he’s also RIDICULOUS. Like he’s the thirstiest fucker alive, he does shit like lying to birds and wrapping his cape around himself when he’s scared, he’s a huge diva, he’s just super duper awful with no redeeming qualities whatsoever and he’s so much fun to read. Add that to being a part of some major stories and connected to such popular characters (Magneto and Quicksilver, plus Apocalypse in the cartoon series) and I think more people should be aware of this guy.Madelyne Pryor- She’s not what I’d call unknown, but I’d like to see a bigger tumblr fandom for her. Most of tumblr is only familiar with the movies, but Maddy’s tragedy and pathos and spiral downwards are all super compelling and something I think a lot of people would find engaging. Claudette St. Croix- There’s a lot of demand on tumblr for autistic representation. Claudette is the only canonically autistic mutant in the X-Men series. What’s more, she’s also female and POC, and I’ve never seen someone with autism in media before who wasn’t white and male. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have much of a character/personality, and her “autism” was written as just being completely non-verbal (not that there’s anything wrong with that, some autistic people are, but she never really communicates in any way and we never see her thoughts either, so her personality never gets shown) and staring at nothing, but I feel like if a new writer picked her back up and expanded on her with care and accuracy, she could become a really good character, both in terms of autistic representation and in general. Haven- Haven was a seven-issue X-Factor villain in the 90s and she’s unique for being the kindest, most benevolent “villain” that any X-Men team ever faced. Her story and design are very interesting and unusual, and also stuff that happened to her is actually pretty relevant to things going on now (government team gets sent after a brown woman with a funny religion because well she MUST be a terrorist, and of course they turn out to be right so that makes it okay they opened fire on her immediately before even telling her she was under arrest)Shinobi Shaw- Sebastian’s illegitimate son, and a barrel of laughs. Exploits include trying to drunkenly seduce a yakuza boss and the X-men bursting in on him TWICE while he’s in the bath. He’s not competent or threatening at all, but his flamboyancy and stupidity are just wonderful to read. He also has some unexpected pathos due to his abuse by Shaw, and the glimpses we get of what’s going on under his shallow stupid playboy surface are really profoundly painful. Also, he’s very openly bisexual. Like, blatantly. It’s not GOOD bisexual representation, as it’s used to play up how decadent he is and relies on some nasty stereotypes of bisexuals as sex-crazed hedonists who are probably evil, but, well, it was the 90s. The Hellions - These were a team of young mutants being trained by Emma Frost in the 80s while she was still with the Hellfire Club, but most of them weren’t evil. They were just kids that she got to before Xavier. They were really great, engaging characters with lots of potential, and it was a shame they were killed off. There was surprising complexity and depth to them, and there was surely even more going on we weren’t aware of because they weren’t the focal characters. Between this and their connection to a majorly popular canon like Emma, I think more people should know about them.Zaladane- Given how popular Magneto’s family is, how much fanart I see of them, I think more people should know Zaladane/ Zala Dane. She’s a sorceress from the Savage Land who claimed to be the long lost sister of Lorna Dane aka Polaris, and she used a machine to steal her powers. Lorna dismissed her claims, but Moira MacTaggert confirmed that the machine could only have been used to transfer powers between genetic relatives. Zala then later used the same machine on Magneto to add his powers to what she already took from Lorna. Meaning, she must be related to BOTH of them. The math kinda does itself—she’s got to be Magneto’s daughter. Later changes to continuity makes that impossible, however, but who knows, maybe she came from an alternate universe or something and that’s why Lorna didn’t know about her, how she wound up in the Savage Land, etc. Zala’s admittedly not really noteworthy in her own right, but she intrigues me as a long-lost-Magneto-spawn, and given how much fandom loves the Magnet clan, I think she oughta get some attention.Selene- Like Maddy, she’s not what I’d call unknown, but there’s not a lot of love for her in the tumblr fandom. She’s not really a compelling character as a person, but she’s a lot of fun as a villain who just relishes in being evil. Her ridiculously overt predatory lesbianism is also downright hilarious in terms of how much Claremont was clearly enjoying writing her.Kwannon- Everything Psylocke is today is due to Kwannon. Psylocke was originally a white British woman, a model and not much of a fighter, but a body-swap with a Japanese ninja asassin named Kwannon turned her into the Psylocke we know today. Kwannon suffered tragically for this, and I think she ought to be remembered, especially by any fan of Psylocke. Moira MacTaggert - If you’re imagining a sexy young American CIA agent, stop it right now. I’m talking about comics Moira. Comics Moira is around Charle’s age, very Scottish, and she is actually DOCTOR MacTaggert, a world-renowned leading geneticist whose area of specialty is mutants. She’s badass, she’s smart, she calls Charles out on his shit when no one else does, she has dark issues of her own, and she goes after a kelpie with a giant gun. She’s a longtime ally of the X-Men and friend to mutantkind, she lives at the mansion and forms a relationship with each team member of the time, and even forms/leads her own team of X-Men on Muir Island (the site of her research center) when it appears the original team has been killed. Moira debuts at an early point in the comics, and is an important player in numerous stories for years to come up until her death at the hands of Mystique, but not before she discovered the cure to the Legacy Virus, saving the lives of countless mutants. Moira definitely needs more appreciation, and I’m not even a Moira fan. (I don’t dislike her, obviously, she’s just not an area of focus for me)Exodus- A super powerful mutant from the 11th century awoken by Magneto in modern era, Exodus was a Crusader during his own time and remains one today for Magneto’s cause. He’s so powerful, writers tend to just...ignore he exists, because he can do SO MUCH it’s hard to write him. But I really love his well-intentioned extremism, the fact he really means so well, is often noble, and his really unsubtle gay crush on Mags.And, of course, Sebastian Shaw here. He’s hardly a D-lister in the comics, but all fandom seems to be aware of is movie Shaw and it makes me sad :C

4 notes · View notes