#and his characterization in that rendition of him can be based off of the creator's view of Batman

[butwhatifidothis]

???? Who the fuck says that its a must read to understand edelgard????? What the hell are you talking about. Its called a fanFICTION for a reason, of course its not going to be 100% accurate to the game, it's made by some edelgard hyperfan apologist. What did you expect? what did you REASONABLY expect?

Here is a link to a document made by those of r/Edelgard. In it you will find in this document - which has the purpose of collecting the most valuable pieces of 3H meta that the fandom has created throughout the years - this:

You will find this fanfiction - one of the only fanfiction on this doc, mind - lumped in with all of the meta pieces, with it being described as "long-term analysis of Edelgard's character." And within the actual fic itself, you will find Cap'n saying this in one of his author's notes:

That in fact, he does believe that fanfiction is meta. He claims to have done an immense amount of research about the game - going over paralogues, supports, explore dialogues, with that showing up in how he'll oftentimes incorporate canonical dialogue into his work. With him viewing fanfiction as, "by its very nature," having merit in being considered meta, it then reasonably means that he considers TEatG to be part of his meta too. His meta, the collective of which is described like this in the aforementioned doc:

With all the main conclusions this doc writer said his meta amounted to - C-PTSD, Edelgard being once being deeply devout, and wearing a mask - all being crucial parts of the fanfiction itself. And with some of said meta being described as, wouldn't you guess it, required reading to understand characters, like Edelgard as shown in the screenshot and Dimitri as shown here:

And with people - different from this doc, mind - who outright uses dialogue that is a invention of the fanfiction to make a point about the canon game 3H:

"It's called fanFICTION of course it's not going to be 100% accurate to the game" and you're right. Fanfiction shouldn't be expected to be held to such a strict degree of accuracy to any source material its based on. TEatG, however, is not considered just fanfiction. Talking points that are specific to this fic are used as genuine meta, by both the author and others. It is said by both the author and others to be meta. People say that the meta that this fic is filled with is crucial in trying to understand the characters.

So what do I expect from that? I expect there to not be glaringly obvious mistakes that a base reading of the game would debunk. I expect Byleth not having the actual ability to rain down actual javelins of light onto her enemies after merging with Sothis, or to commune with the dead and have them give her an advantage in battle by changing the weather (Chapter 58). I expect Jeralt to not be act like Alois. I expect the basic, bare-bones numbers to be correct, like it being correctly stated that the Southern Church attempted its insurrection 120 years ago and not 160. I expect to not have an extremely poor understanding of a completely different language merge with the genuine, actual opinions and meta of the author and for said bad interpretations to appear in the fanfiction. I'm literally asking for the bare minimum, and oftentimes I'm just not seeing it in this piece of fanfiction that both the author and others are claiming is a meta piece, that people keep saying is needed in order to understand characters.

This sort of fanfiction is about what I might would expect from Baby's First Woobie Fanfiction, and if it was taken as that by the fandom then I literally wouldn't care about it; I'd just blacklist it, But it is seen as meta, it is accepted as meta, and people use its talking points to form their genuine opinions about the game. So yes, I am going to be expecting a bit more from it than I would pretty much any other fic

[ryanmeft]

Ryan’s Favorite Films of 2019

A stuttering detective,

A top hat-wearing vamp

A forced-perspective war,

A bit of Blaxploitation camp

Prisoners on a space ship

Having sex with bears

A writer goes remembering

Whenever his pain flares

  A prancing, dancing Hitler

A gambler high on strife

Here will go cavorting with

A mom who becomes a wife

A family plot with many threads

Three men against their own

A stuntman and his actor

A mobster now quite alone

Doubles under the earth

Two men in a tall house

Are here to watch a woman who

Is battling with her spouse

A family’s plans for their strong son

Go awry one night

A man rejects his country

Which is spoiling for a fight

 A house built by his grandpa

(Maybe; we’re not sure)

Looks out upon three prisoners

Whose passions are a lure

  All these are on my list this year

It’s longer than before

Because picking only ten this time

Was too great of a chore

  What are limits anyway?

They’re just things we invented

I don’t really find them useful

So, this year, I’ve dissented

  You may have noticed this time out

That numbers, I did grant

Promise they’ll stay in this order, though?

Now that, I just can’t

  I’m always changing my mind

Because, after all, you see

Good film is about the heart

And mine’s rather finicky

  There are a lot more I could name

(And I’ll change my mind at any time)

For now, though, consider these

The ones I found sublime

 20. Motherless Brooklyn

I’ve got a (hard-boiled) soft spot for 90’s neo-noirs like L.A. Confidential, Red Rock West and Seven, and Edward Norton’s ‘50’s take on Jonathan Lethem’s 90’s -set novel can stand firmly in that company.

19. Doctor Sleep

There’s something about Stephen King’s best writing that transcends mere popularity; his work may not be fine literature, but it is immune to the fads of the moment. So, too, are the best movies based on that work. This one, an engaging adventure-horror, deserved better than it got from audiences.

18. Jojo Rabbit

There was a time when the anything-goes satire of Mel Brooks could produce a major box office hit.  Disney’s prudish refusal to market the film coupled with the dominance of franchises means that’s no longer the case. If you bothered to give Jojo a shot, though, you got the strange-but-rewarding experience of guffawing one moment and being horrified the next.

17. By The Grace of God

I’d venture this is the least-seen film on my list; even among us brie-eating, wine-sniffing art house snobs, I rarely hear it mentioned. Focusing on the perspectives of three men dealing with a particularly heinous and unrepentant abusive priest and the hierarchy that protects him, it’s every bit as disquieting and infuriating as 2015’s Oscar-winning Spotlight.

16. Waves

You think Trey Edward Shultz’s Waves will be one thing---a domestic drama about an affluent African-American family (and that in and of itself is a rarity). Then it becomes something else entirely. It addresses something movies often avoid: that as life goes on, the person telling the story will always change.

15. Transit

You’re better off not questioning exactly where and when the film is set (it is based on a book about Nazi Germany but has been changed to be a more generalized Fascist state). The central theme here is identity, as three people change theirs back and forth based on need and desire.

14. American Woman

Movies about regular, working class, small-town American usually focus on men. This one is about a much-too-young mother and grandmother, played brilliantly by Sierra Miller, dealing with unexpected loss and the attendant responsibilities she isn’t ready for. 

13. Marriage Story

There is an argument between a married couple in here that is as true a human moment as ever was on screen---free of trumped-up screenplay drama and accurate to how angry people really argue. The entire movie strives to be about the kind of realistic divorce you don’t see on-screen. It is oddly refreshing.

12. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino’s love letter to 70’s Tinseltown is essentially a question: What if the murder that changed the industry forever had gone down differently? Along the way, it also manages to be a clever and insightful study of fame and fulfillment, or lack thereof.

11. High Life

Claire Denis is damned determined not to be boring. Your reaction to her latest film will probably depend on how receptive you are to that as the driving force of a film. Myself, I’m very receptive. I want to see the personal struggles of convicts unwittingly shipped into space, told without Action-Adventure tropes, in a movie that sometimes misfires but is never dull.

 10. Dolemite Is My Name

And fuckin’ up motherfuckers is my game! Look, if you don’t like naughty words, you probably shouldn’t be reading my columns---and you definitely shouldn’t be watching this movie. Eddie Murphy plays Rudy Ray Moore, the ambitious, irrepressible and endlessly optimistic creator of Blaxpoitation character Dolemite. Have you seen the 1975 film? It’s either terrible and wonderful, or wonderful and terrible, and the jury’s still out. Either way, Moore in the film is a self-made comic who establishes himself by talking in a unique rhyming style that speaks to black Americans at a time when black pop culture (and not just the white rendition of it) was finally beginning to pierce the American consciousness. What The Disaster Artist did for The Room, this movie does for Dolemite---with the difference being I felt like I learned something I didn’t know here.

 9. 1917

Breathless, nerve-wracking and somehow intensely personal even though it almost never takes time to slow down, it is fair to call Sam Mendes’s film a thrill ride---but it’s one that enlightens us on a fading historical time, rather than simply being empty calories. Filmed in such a way as to make it seem like one continuous, two-hour take, for which some critics dismissed it as a gimmick, the technique is used to lock us in with the soldiers whose mission it is to save an entire division from disaster. We are given no information or perspective that the two central soldiers---merely two, in a countless multitude---do not have, and so we are with them at every moment, deprived of the relief of omniscience. I freely admit I tend to give anything about World War I the benefit of the doubt, but there’s no doubt that the movie earns my trust.

8. Ash Is Purest White

Known by the much less cool-sounding name Sons and Daughters of Jianghu in China, here is a story that starts off ostensibly about crime---a young woman and her boyfriend are powerful in the small-potatoes mob scene of a dying industrial town---but after the surprising first act becomes a meditation on life, perseverance and exactly how much power is worth, anyway, when it is so fleeting and so easily lost. What do you do when everything that defined you is gone? You go on living. This is my first exposure to writer-director Jia Zhangke, an oversight I must strive hard to correct in future.

7. Knives Out

The whodunit is a lost art, a standard genre belonging to a time when mass audiences could appreciate a picture even if someone didn’t run, yell or explode while running and yelling every ten minutes. Rian Johnson and an all-star cast rescued it from the brink of cinematic extinction and gave it just enough of a modern injection to keep it relevant. Every second of the film is engaging; Johnson even manages to have a character whose central trait is throwing up when asked to lie, and he makes it seem sympathetic rather than juvenile. The fantastic cast of characters is backed up with all the qualities of “true” cinema: perfect camerawork, an effective score, mesmerizing production design. As someone who didn’t much care for Johnson’s Star Wars outing, I’m honestly put out this didn’t do better at the box office than it did.

6. A Hidden Life

After a few questionable efforts and completely losing the thread with the execrable vanity project Song to Song, Terence Malick returns to his bread and butter: meditative dramas on the nature of faith, family, and being on the outside looking in, which encompass a healthy dose of nature, philosophy and people talking without moving their lips. That last is a little dig, but it’s true: Malick does Malick, and if you don’t like his thing, this true story about a German dissenter in World War II will not change your mind. For me, what Malick has done is that rarest of things: he had made a movie about faith, and about a character who is faithful, without proselytizing. That the closeness and repressiveness of the Nazi regime is characterized against Malick’s typical soaring backdrops is a masterstroke, and the best-ever use of his visual style.

5. The Lighthouse

Robert Eggers is a different kind of horror filmmaker. After redefining what was possible with traditional horror monsters in The Witch, he returned with something that couldn’t be more different: an exploration of madness more in the vein of European film than American. Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are two men stranded in a lighthouse together slowly losing their minds, or what is left of them. The haunting score and stark, black-and-white photography evoke a nightmare caught on tape, something we’re not supposed to be seeing. It’s not satisfying in a traditional way, but for those craving something more cerebral from horror, Eggers has it covered.

4. Us

I have become slightly notorious in my own little circle for not thinking Get Out was the greatest film ever made, and now I’ve become rather known for thinking Us just might be. Ok, so that’s definite hyperbole: “greatest” is a tall claim for almost any horror movie. Yet here Jordan Peele shows that he can command an audience’s attention even when not benefiting from a popular cultural zeitgeist in terms of subject matter. It’s a movie with no easy or clear message, one that specializes in simply unsettling us with the idea that the world is fundamentally Not Right. I firmly believe that if Peele becomes a force in the genre, 50 years from now when he and all of us are gone, his first film will be remembered as a competent start, while this will be remembered as the beginning of his greatness.

3. The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Ostensibly about urban gentrification, this story of a young black man trying to save his ancestral home from the grasping reach of white encroachment is a flower with many petals to reveal. Don’t let my political-sounding description turn you off: the movie is not a polemic in the slightest, but rather a wry, sensitive look at people, their personalities and how those personalities are intertwined with the places they call home. Though the movie is the directorial debut of Joe Talbot, it is based loosely on the memories and feelings of his friend Jimmie Falls, who also plays one of the two central characters. If you’ve ever watched a place you love fall to the ravages of time and change, this movie may strike quite a chord with you.

2. Uncut Gems

When asked why this movie is great, I usually say that it was unbelievably stressful and caused me great anxiety. This description is not usually successful in selling it. The Safdie Brothers have essentially filmed chaos: a man self-destructing in slow-motion, if you can call it slow. Howard Ratner has probably been gradually exploding all his life; he strikes you as someone who came out of the womb throwing punches. He’s an addictive gambler who loves the risk much more than the reward, and can’t gain anything good in life without risking it on a proverbial roll of the dice. His behavior is destructive. His attitude is toxic. Why do we root for him? Perhaps because, as played by Adam Sandler, he never has any doubt as to who he is---something few of us can say. He’s an asshole, but he’s a genuine asshole, and somehow that’s appealing even when you’re in his line of fire.

1. Pain and Glory

When I realized I would, for the first time, have the chance to see a Pedro Almodovar film on the screen, I was overjoyed. His movies aren’t always great, but that was of little concern: he’s one of the handful of directors on the planet who can fairly call back to the avant-garde traditions of Bergman or Truffaut, making the movies he wants to make about the things he want to make them about, and I’d never seen one of his films when it was new and fresh, only months or years later on DVD.

It seems I picked right, as his latest has been almost universally hailed as one of the best of his long career. An aging, aching filmmaker spends his days in his apartment, ignoring the fans of his original hit film and most of his own acquaintances, alive or dead---he tries hard to put his memories away. Throughout the course of the movie, he re-engages with most of them in one way or another, coming to terms with who he is and where he’s been, though not in a Hallmark-movie-of-the-week way. Antonio Banderas plays him in the role that was always denied him by his stud status in Hollywood. It isn’t simply him, though: every person we meet is engaging and, we sense, has their own story outside of how they intersect with his. Most engaging is that of his deceased mother, who in her youth was played vivaciously by a sun-toughened Penelope Cruz. Perhaps Almodovar will tell us some of their stories some day. Perhaps not. I would read an entire book of short fiction all about them. This is the year’s best film.

[spaceorphan18]

Hey I recently asked @midwexican this question. So I am a late addition to this fandom and I came across one of your posts about the characterisation of All the Other Ghost characters based on the early rendition of the characters in the show. I wanted to ask if you were to characterise and give powers to the Glee characters based on their depiction in all six seasons, how will your AtOG look? Disclaimer I love AtOG and hope this doesn't seem offensive to the work.

Hi! Welcome to fandom - it’s never too late to be here :) 

This is a fascinating question! 

So, I hope you’re not too disappointed when I don’t really have a good answer for you.  Also, I apologize up front for the amount of Marvel references I’m about to use.  Unlike Rainjoy (or Stan Lee, or any superhero creator) I’m not that good at coming up with super powers.  I also think that Rainjoy did a relatively good job of making their powers complement their personalities, so most of them would stay the same. 

Santana having something involved with fire is spot on, and would never change.  (Though, as an aside thought - you could do a Black Widow - super assassin thing with her, too, which would be just as interesting) 

Puck being a big brute -- again works perfectly. 

Artie being tech related and resourceful -- and also a kind of Iron Man-esque type character with questionable morals.  Perfect, yes.  

Quinn -- I do think being psychic is perfect for her.  Though you could add an Emma Frost-ish like secondary power set on top of it, like becoming diamond, or something ice related, which would make an interesting contrast to Santana. 

Brittany -- I understand why she did what she did with, a tiny woman with unknown absolute strength and not sure how to use it? Yes, I get it.  But it reflects a little too much on the infantizliation that both the show and ATOG did with her.  It’s also slightly redundant of Puck’s powers, too, and it’s always nice to switch things up. 

I’d actually give her some weird mystic shit -- like Doctor Strange or Scarlet Witch.  Brittany is canonically very weird and claims to have bizarre powers already, so why not let her be the one who is waves her hands and have the entire of reality shift? 

Mercedes -- she’s barely in Grey, which is a shame, and her powers are pretty much akin to Dazzler (from the X-Men).  Which is fine, but maybe add in some vocal power as well into the mix.  

Or, to just bring her out more -- give her extreme powers, like Storm from the X-Men.  Storm is a near goddess, and is treated as such.  Mercedes deserves the same type of respect. 

Sam -- Sam is a fascinating one, because he’s the kind of character whom Rainjoy made ‘fast’ because she needed it for the plot, and Sam really didn’t have much of a character back then.  Fast isn’t necessarily bad (and he does have some The Flash type qualities about him) but I may lean more towards what the show actually did.  The Blond Chameleon was an impersonator.  So, Sam could easily become some kind of shapeshifter, modeling himself to whatever the plot needed ;) 

And thus leaving Kurt and Blaine, whom I’m sure you’re mostly interested in if you’re asking me.  You’ll have to excuse my self indulgent thoughts on this one.  

FWIW - for both Kurt and Blaine, my issues with Rainjoy’s characterizations are more about who they are out of costume, which I’ve openly stated I do not like, and they do not feel like /them/, but in costume, they’re closer to characters I recognize. Because of this, I don’t really take issue with either of their powersets as given.  But there are other things you can do with them. 

Now, first of all, Kurt’s ATOG powers of invisibility and intangibility aren’t necessarily bad for a reflection on his entire arc on the show - especially when it allows him control and manipulation - something that is akin to Kurt’s personality.  

However, when trying to think about how an older, more mature Kurt would handle a powerset, it got me thinking about my favorite superhero - Rogue from X-Men.  

If you’re not familiar with her - Rogue’s main powerset is that takes life energy from skin to skin contact.  Throughout the years, while at first this was a huge hindrance to how she interacted with others, leaving her isolated and lonely, not being able to connect to another person despite being desperate to do so.  However, she’s since learned how to control it.  And on top of that, she’s collected other abilities as well -- such as super strength, flight, and invulnerability.  And the fascinating thing about Rogue is that she’s nearly unstoppable as a physical force.  But her weakness is actually her emotions, and her inability to let anyone in for fear of hurting them.  She’s also a kind soul, which can be hidden deep because it’s not her outward demeanor, you have to kind of discover that about her.  Rogue has let people in over the years, has close friends and is married even. But she’s still fiercely independent, and probably always will be. 

So, the more I thought about this, the more I found it super fascinating to layer onto Kurt.  I mean - take the above paragraph and give it to Kurt, and there are a lot of similarities between Rogue and Kurt’s stories.  So, if I was writing a superhero Kurt story, I’d try that.  

That’s not the only way you can do it - but that’s just what I’d experiment with.  

Meanwhile, Blaine.  

The shields are actually fine, I don’t necessarily have a problem for them.  He is a protector all the way through the series, and his role to defend (and be the sidekick) is kind of always there.  And he is kind of out of that Captain America type mold.   (Oh god - that would make Sam Falcon.  And Kurt would be the freakin’ Winter Soldier, oh dear...)  

You could also go the whole Peter Parker route and ground him in whatever the hell powers you want, but give him the weight of ‘responsibility’ layered on him, and there’s your inner turmoil.  

But thinking about Rogue got me thinking about her canonical husband, Gambit, and how the two of them complement each other.  Gambit’s much more outward - his superpower is giving things (kinetic) energy to the point that they often explode.  Everything about Gambit’s powers and personality are much more outward facing, so I was thinking about that for Blaine, too. 

Blaine is a giver -- and I was thinking about ways Blaine could give off things, whether it be energy or something else.  

But more specifically (thinking about Gambit’s charming abilities) if you took Blaine in maybe a darker way -- you can have him be a major Empath -- or moreso, the ability to influence people’s emotions through his own.  It’d be such a fascinating contrast to how inward Kurt is, Blaine being so emotionally open all the time.  

Anyway, so those are my thoughts -- you could really do a lot of things, but anything I come up with will probably be related to something Marvel-ish, since that’s how I relate to superhero-ish things.  Not sure if this was at all interesting for you, but those be my answers.  ;)