#and it doesn't meaningfully contribute to any of the plot

[octosan]

What does it speak to her character that the person she had a "benign possession" with was going to force Mythal on her daughter by stripping her of her free will and also used her grandson as a soul jar

[but-a-humble-goon]

I think Doom the Dark Ages is unironically a fantastic example of how to write a story around an invincible protagonist.

Doom Slayer has an absolute monopoly on violence in this universe, he is violence incarnate, he wins any battle against any odds by default. They use this to build on the story where he's treated in-universe like a living breathing superweapon with much of the story revolving around conflict over who should have control over that power and how it should be used.

It would be very easy for the main character being effectively a "win any fight" button to kneecap any sense of stakes or dramatic tension which is why the previous two games didn't really bother having any and were straightforwardly about watching Doom Slayer giving the forces of evil atomic wedgies and stealing their lunch money. Dark Ages walks that tightrope really well though. The villains are smart enough to know trying to fight the Slayer is a losing battle so their plans revolve around trying to delay or distract him while they accomplish their bigger goals. There's also an actual supporting cast this time who meaningfully contribute to the plot and their lives are often leveraged for stakes. Just because the protagonist is invincible doesn't mean all the things he's trying to protect are.

Weirdly instead of detracting from the power fantasy I find it actually enhances it too. Putting the Doom Slayer into a broader cast of characters really contextualizes his badassery. Getting to see him from an outside POV you see how heroes and villains alike react to him and how the sheer weight of his presence affects the rest of the story outside of him. It's cool.

[fuckmeyer]

Bella Swan should've questioned her choice to become a vampire in Eclipse

on the surface, yes, this is the I Was Born to Be a Vampire saga. yet here we are, book 3, standing at the precipice with Bella as she makes The Choice one final time. beyond the war with Victoria, Edward and Jacob externalize the fight Bella is having with herself: the choice between humanity and vampirism. literally and metaphorically, it's do-or-die o' clock for Bella. time to choose.

Bella is an avoidant, unreliable narrator, so she doesn't really engage in that question. cool. we love a Holden Caufield. however, the downfall of this book (& consequently, the series), is that the author is also unwilling to seriously engage these questions meaningfully.

character development largely happens off-screen. the asking, digging, and answering of pivotal questions are not shown to the reader. as a result, the emotional beats feel off & hollow.

look to Bella as an example. in chapter 12, her upcoming graduation (a milestone she previously cared nothing about) has her realizing she isn't ready to become a vampire. she never thought about the prospect of saying goodbye until now. she's about to leave everything. she's scared.

great! what an excellent time in the series to weigh her options. what would it mean to be a vampire and leave your life behind? what would it mean to remain human and navigate a relationship with your vampire bf? why is humanity so wonderful? what are the drawbacks of vampirism? what makes vampirism worth it?

listen: it Does Not Matter that Bella "always wanted to be a vampire." questioning her choice is necessary. why? having her think through this decision ultimately emphasizes her reasons for choosing vampirism. it gives her choice more weight, & in turn, strengthens all the themes we see up until this point. it solidifies the series' message.

but we never see her come back to this question. we never see her grapple with what eternal life would mean, or what it would mean to choose humanity. we never see her voice her concerns to any other character (until after the battle).

suddenly, in chapter 20, she realizes she is ready. but we don't get to see that change of heart. after all the desire she expressed to be a vampire, & the drama of the stomach-sinking flash of doubt in the eleventh hour, it's the "guilt and anguish" she felt watching the Cullens and wolves practice that makes her "ready." it's the fact that she's "a liability" and desires to "be partners" with Edward. (implying she's not now? girl, yikes)

in the critical moment of her most consequential choice, her decision boils down to feelings of guilt, anguish, & inadequacy, told to us after the fact. these feelings seem to be a byproduct of love...but notably, there is no mention of love factoring into her decision.

does a reader need to know every thought a character has? no. but when the climax of a series' arc revolves around a character making a very personal choice, one would expect to see more discussion on the pros/cons of becoming a vamp vs staying human. for me, the rigid focus on plot at the expense of character development was Eclipse's biggest downfall, and a contributing factor to why Breaking Dawn also feels as hollow as it does.

[writers-potion]

Using Description and Setting Meaningfully

The setting, and a writer's description of it, is an essential part of any story. A good writer would use that setting for more than just a place for things to happen.

Use setting to emphasize other aspects of the story, such as:

Magnify the theme

Convey the general mood

Enlarge conflict

Magnifying Some Theme Through Description

Here's the thing about theme: modern readers aren't looking to be reformed. They wish to be entertained.

So, let description carry the burden of conveying the theme rather than you having to say it!

Side note: Theme is NOT a few haughty ideas you learn in lit class (like pride, beauty, everlasting love) but anything that you are trying to convey in a particular scene (like, trying to get a date). You can have several themes instead of one lofty philiosophical theme. That's fine.

The key here is to pick and choose the kind of details that contributes to the theme. A few examples:

Theme = oppression and manipulation of workers.

Aim = highlight deariness and tension

Setting: a break room in a factory

Details: slow ticking of a clock, raspy gurgling of a coffeemaker, completely utilitarian carpet and walls

Theme = teenager scheming a scam that his father already knows about

Aim = establish stealthy tension

Setting: the breakfast table

Details: toaster loudly launching two slices of bread at exactly the same moment that the teenager realizes his plan is ruined, catlike movements of the "stealthy"teen

Theme = a character's life is about to be transformed

Aim = show that change is imminent

Setting = train platform

Details: the darkness falling, colors of distant hills and the sky changining, the last train rolling in, workers happliy switching from "work mode" to "weekend mood" as the character waits for his train

Conveying Mood and Tone

The mood of a character determines how the story progresses.

If your main character is depressed, the plot will crawl on and take on a brooding, ominous tone. If he is determined, passionate and happy, the plot will speed up into loud, blowing action.

Often, the prevailing mood doesn't come from the character, but from the setting itself.

Again, let's explain by example:

Mood = Gloomy, baleful

Details: Sulphurous smoke, thick fog, horses' hoofs on cobbled streets, vendor's cries, unseen organ creaking out a sinister tune, sounds being muffled

Word choice is important. If you're conveying gloom, using strong verbs like creak, screech and adjectives like sinister and eerie.

Use sensory description: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory and gustatory.

Another way is to describe simple actions:

Mood = irritation, aggression

Details: mashing the end of a cigarette in his plate, one draught of the coffee in his cup, wiping lips with his napkin - crumpling and dropping in on the table, standing up from the table, staring at the other person.

Mood = Giddiness

Details: flicking water from his glass on a lunch companion, twisting his napkin, playing with food without eating

Once you've established a prevailing mood, you've pretty much set the course of your story. No reader will expect the main character to party all night with loud rock music after a sinister description of his way back home.

Enlarging Conflict

Think of the things or actions that will eventually build up to the main conflict. Then, choose a setting that will naturally bring out such an action/ though from the characters in it.

Conflict = Woman hasn't spoken to her son for a decade and now, she has to confront him

Setting: House where she raised her son, among things that he hasn't seen in all that time, working bits of backstory into objects in the house (tie in a sofa, picture on the wall), mannerisms of the characters as they greet each other at the door.

Allow the setting to provide the little sparks that will blow up eventually. This way, you can effectively cut out that slow middle and jump into action without much effort.

Description is a matter of wordsmithing, of selecting preciosuly the right words to create certain meanings. Make every word and sentence count.

If you like my blog, buy me a coffee☕ and find me on instagram! 📸

[sapphire-weapon]

So. I gotta say some shit.

I think we all have a tendency to be more gracious to Ada's character than she rightfully deserves. I'm guilty of this, too. We all want to give her the benefit of the doubt and insist that her character serves a purpose and is worth talking about because she's A. such a huge part of Leon's character and B. the only non-white member of the cast, but like.

There's nothing there.

I noticed this when I rewatched Separate Ways recently (because fuck ever playing that shit again holy fuck Separate Ways sucks to play).

After RE2, Ada isn't a character anymore. She has absolutely no arc; her character never develops or goes anywhere. She's not tied to anyone or anything in the plot in a way that matters -- even her relationship with Wesker doesn't fucking matter, because there's no fallout or consequence as a result of anything she does to/with/for him, whether it's beneficial to him or against him. She has only one facet to her personality: snarky and mysterious. We never see her emote or speak in a context removed from either of those two qualifiers. Ever.

She has some softer moments here and there, but they last for like a single line of dialogue or two and then the scene just completely moves on without them -- so, those softer moments never actually matter anyway.

She doesn't enhance or enrich Leon's character in any way; the only thing her character serves to do is isolate him from the main cast, which gives his character nowhere else to go other than horrible, spiraling depression because every action he takes in his life turns out to be completely meaningless -- because it's not allowed to mean anything, because he's become so far divorced from the central plot of the series.

The only functional purpose that Ada Wong actually has is as a plot contrivance to explain how a bad guy did a thing. Other than that, she exists solely as a pair of legs and tits for Leon to chase after.

We all hold out hope that Remake is going to change this and turn her into a real person with autonomous motivations and goals, and there might be some merit to that, but like

She's not there yet. She's just not. There is no there there, when we talk about Ada's character.

And this tiptoeing around that we all do to try to make it seem like we're supportive of her character just

strikes me as silly a lot of the time, man.

I understand wanting to give credit where it's due, but it's not due for Ada's character. And I understand the desire to not be seen as misogynistically bashing her, but I feel like supporting her character as it currently exists is what's actually misogynistic. Because her portrayal in canon is misogynistic.

And I also understand the desire to not be seen as being a ship war fuckhead, but like. It's not about the ships, man. It's about Ada. Specifically Ada. She just sucks, dude.

And this is coming from the person who has probably written more meta about Ada Wong in an attempt to justify her character than basically anyone else in the fucking fandom.

idk I've just been thinking about this lately while perusing EagleOne fics. It feels like everyone in this ship feels obligated to address The Ada Problem before they can start to justify a relationship between Leon and Ashley, and it's like

No, you don't. Especially in Remake canon, you absolutely do not have to bring up Ada at all. Because Remake seems very self-aware of the fact that the problem with Leon's character has always been Ada, which is why they seem to be actively writing her out of his overall arc.

Like. Let's just call it for what it is. Ada is the worst part of Leon's character. The relationship is poorly written and poorly executed and doesn't make any fucking sense for who both characters are actually meant to be. They actively hold each other back -- not as people, but as characters who are meant to meaningfully contribute to the storyline.

And idk I'm just tired. I'm just tired of always having to do the hand-wringy "oh no no, Ada's really cool and great and I'm not trying to diss on her, and her relationship with Leon actually matters" shit, man.

Because she's not cool or great and her relationship with Leon doesn't actually matter -- and if it does matter at all, it's due to the negative impact that her presence brings -- not just to him, but to the entire fucking plot of the series.

She's the worst recurring element in the entire series, and there's not even a close second.

[aihoshiino]

oshi no ko in general has a bad habit of setting things up and then just kind of not following through on them but man. black hoshigan ruby really was a whole load of nothing, wasn't it

she has that incredible speech in chapter 79 about tracking down the culprit and killing him but she doesn't actually achieve anything or contribute meaningfully to the revenge quest and of the things she is allowed to do for herself, none of it is actually off her own back – she's just doing everything saitou tells her to do and even the one plan that is her own (the cosplay kerfuffle on dig deep) doesn't really have any long term consequences despite the fact that the arc wrap implied she might end up damaging her friendships with minami and frill.

you can't even really say it was anything to do with her growth as an idol because we're explicitly told saitou is basically managing her from a distance the entire time. and she doesn't contribute to the revenge plot in any meaningful way despite her talking about revenge just as fervently as aqua does. she doesn't even know who the culprit is by the end of it all!

ruby is in black hoshigan mode for 44 chapters – almost a third of the entire manga so far! – and it amounts to nothing. i was really excited when we started getting into the movie arc because i was hoping this was when we would finally start really digging into ruby's insecurities and lingering trauma over sarina's death, her abandonment and losing ai at such a young age. but instead we just get nudge wink incest bait and a refusal to take ruby seriously enough to actually examine her feelings on any of this shit.

in general i find the back half of oshi no ko (post tokyo blade onwards) to be weaker than what preceedes it but this overall lack of respect for ruby as a mover and shaker in the story in her own regard really is one of the things that drives me the most crazy.

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | The Octagon (Karson, 1980)

This isn't very good, but maybe worth seeing for the cast. First and foremost, you get Art Hindle, who just a year earlier played the most divorced man in Canada and in this one treats his girlfriend abominably, which makes you wonder if he was more at fault for his marriage falling apart than the other movie let on. (Whaddya mean he wasn't playing the same character...) You get Lee Van Cleef, who is gruff and steely but with a twinkle in his eye as always, but given that his character doesn't meaningfully contribute much to the plot, you wonder if he owed somebody some shooting days. You get Tadashi Yamashita AKA Bronson Lee, who I suspect was brought over on Chuck Norris' insistence, given his background in Japanese karate films, but mostly makes you appreciate Sho Kosugi's star vehicles all the more given how little he has to do despite playing the main villain. You get a few recognizable faces in smaller roles, like Tracy Walter, Brian Tochi, Ernie Hudson, who's really jacked in this and is really jacked now and was probably more jacked in Ghostbusters than anybody realized, and Richard Norton, looking like the porn parody version of Norris with an even worse moustache and mop haircut.

As for Norris, who falls flat as always when playing heroic and is not at all helped by the echoing narration that probably sounded in the theatre like he was sitting behind you, whispering sweet nothings in your ear. But he has good chemistry with his co-stars, and one wonders if he'd be better respected as an actor if he'd instead made a career out of good ol' boy supporting roles, stepping in for a few minutes to back up the boys and mack on some honeys while opening a can of whoopass on the bad guys. I'm thinking like Bo Hopkins in The Killer Elite. Certainly he would have proved more engagingly threatening to the ninja villains in that movie than Burt Young, whose easy elimination of countless ninjas in the climax provides an embarrassing low point in Sam Peckinpah's filmography.

Anyway, the plot involves a ninja training camp in which an international assortment of terrorists, mercenaries and other nogoodniks attend to learn the ninja ways. This thankfully avoids most of the racism of other movies of this era in its depiction of this lot, although the diversity of the villains means that this probably reflects Norris' views on DEI. Norris and Hindle also bitch about their government being unable to stand up to said international threat, so there's probably some stuff to unpack if you're looking for it, although it's less blunt than his movies for Cannon. (Also, given that some of the characters include Canadian terrorists and it takes three ninjas to take down Art Hindle, this is the most fearsome Canada has ever been onscreen.) This is also firmly a product of the Carter era, in that it has that extremely brown look and a generally low energy level. I guess the Crisis of Confidence extended to ninja movies. There isn't very much action until the last twenty minutes, and while those come up short against pretty much any of the Cannon ninja movies, they're an oasis in the ninjitsu desert of the rest of the movie. That being said, given that Carol Bagdasarian's character spent a good amount of time in this ninja training camp, it's a little lame that she spends the climax shooting people with an assault rifle. That is not the ninja way.

[gayleviticus]

something else that bugs ne abt captain laserhawk re revolution

it's common for people online to complain about the trope of noble revolution but they suddenly burn down an orphanage to show they're extremists who go too far - and to be perfectly honest I've always thought this was a bit of an exaggeration. like, I get that revolution continually being evil and extremist is a tiring trope especially when it just ends w heroes maintaining the status quo

but I do think that a) it is also reasonable and fair to have villains who are hypocrites around revolutionary fervour and its a good thing to have a healthy scepticism of, b) the bombing orphanages part usually isn't that arbitrary, and c) villains w noble goals but evil methods are just compelling in general

however. captain laserhawk is genuinely just the tired old trope of revolutionaries bombing orphanages arbitrarily. and I can't even be mad at it really, because it doesn't feel fleshed out or coherent enough to be a proper plot point rather than one of the many wild things that happen in the show

in fairness it seems highly likely to me laserhawk got massively compressed from its original episode count - and while it prob would have been better to go at a slower pace and get thru less content, at the end of the day writers can't control that

nonetheless, Alex Taylor just seems totally arbitrarily evil in pursuit of his revolution. I have no idea how what anything he does contributes to meaningfully fighting Eden and its all gratuitously cruel as well

and it occurred to me that this might all be a very clever way to parallel evil revolutionary with abusive lover - someone who keeps telling you cruelty and harm are justified because it's for the greater good of love, who gaslights you and causes you to doubt your own conscience and intuition.

but I don't at all feel like the show effectively leverages this, particularly since it really doesn't seem like alex was abusive? he betrayed dolph, sure, but a significant one time betrayal is different from a consistent pattern of abuse; it doesn't really work w the parallel I'm trying to construct here.

(in fairness I'm ngl my eyes kinda glazed over at any scene involving dolph- who I just didn't care about! - post episode 3 so I can't say w certainty if his VR prison stuff tapped into this, but I don't think it did)

[amirisqueer]

OLD 2020 ART

A silly AU I made a couple years ago. I still think it's kind of fun. Here is the original description:

"So, first off, this is going to be pretty loose concepts for a Warriors AU I had in mind. I need to work on personal projects at the moment, so I won't go too into detail with this. Additionally, I should have reread Power of Three and Omen of the Stars before this, to make it more detailed and accurate, but again, I need to work on personal projects.

I may come back to this when I have time for it. As for now, it'll stay pretty loose. Unless some of you want to mess around with the concepts, and I fully welcome you to do so! It'd be really cool to have a bunch of people putting their ideas into this, and making it a community thing!

I've removed anything to do with Rock, the ancients, the stick, and the Tribe, because they're all pointless and irrelevant to the plot, and contribute nothing to the story. The undergroud tunnels remain, but they're left a mystery.

Anyway. On with the villainy.

PoT and OotS were disappointing, to say the least. PoT had a good build up, and had tons of potential, but, as usual, the Erins wasted it. OotS is a hot mess; like PoT, potential was wasted, the plot meanders, there are far too many inconsistencies and plot holes, character motivations are weird, characters are unlikeable and boring, a ton of important points in the story feel really contrived, and it's poorly written over all. I still enjoyed these arcs, though, just for how bad they were.

I think it would have been really cool if the Erins explored the potential for villainy Jayfeather and Hollyleaf had. Jayfeather expresses quite a bit of resentment and disrespect for Starclan, and seems to feel like he's above everyone else bc he's part of a prophecy (one that really never is used or explored meaningfully). He's also pretty interested in plants that harm people, which is unique for a medicine cat.

Hollyleaf is a stickler to the warrior code, though we see her twist it and her logic to fit what she wants, especially when she goes out of her way to murder Ashfur, and threaten Leafpool. She's also shown to be very ambitious, and wants to be leader one day. She wants to be important to her clan, and be respected.

Lionblaze, in this AU, is a lot softer, and much more caring and gentle. While he does want to be a great warrior, he doesn't enjoy fighting, which makes his power a point of angst for him, since it's one that enables him to hurt other cats without any physical consequences to him. Lionblaze in the books always stuck out to me as particularly bland; he was just another cat who wanted to be the greatest warrior, who loved fighting, and was aggressive. I want a soft, gentle hero. I want a hero who can and will fight for what he believes in, but would much rather take a pacifistic route.

Again, I need to reread PoT and OotS to refresh myself, but bear with me.

What if we explored this in a way that made Jayfeather and Hollyleaf villains? These traits certainly make it easy.

What if Jayfeather grew especially resentful of Starclan, and, upon learning of the prophecy and how much power he held, turned against them? After all, Starclan gets increasingly annoying, petty, and downright irritating as the series goes on. They act as though they know more than the living cats do (which they don't, and this is shown multiple times), and instead of actually doing anything to help the clans, they give vague omens and signs that could easily be interpreted as anything!

So Jayfeather, resentful of Starclan, plots against them. He wants them to hurt. He wants them to admit they're no better than anyone else. He wants them to stop being so pretentious and full of themselves. He also hates Starclan for making him blind, and, like he said in The Sight, he wishes he had never been born because of it. Jayfeather's bitter and vindictive nature is explored a ton here.

He comes up with a plan to wrest the clans from Starclan's control. He wants everyone else to resent them, too, so Starclan will lose what power they have over the living cats. And to do that, he'll need to take over clans and spread his ideology, much like Sol.

Meanwhile, Hollyleaf wants to be leader, as mentioned before. And Jayfeather sees this as an opportunity. He's the mastermind behind all this, as the most intelligent of the three; he's the one pulling the strings.

By the way, Hollyleaf has a power in this AU. Her power comes from her dedication to and belief in the warrior code; she can always tell when cats are lying, and when they have broken the code, as well as convince them to believe in her own convictions, too. The more she believes in an idea, the more easily she can persuade cats to take her side, and believe in her version of the truth.

And so Jayfeather uses her. Throughout the books, he'll help her become deputy, and then leader, by strategically poisoning clanmates (as well as cats from other clans) to help her gain power. He's also making up visions, too, and manipulating clan politics, trying to turn them against Starclan that way, too. He tells Hollyleaf the things he reads in other cats' minds to help her find weaknesses to exploit.

Hollyleaf believes that what she's doing is right, and that she's fulfilling the prophecy, and making Thunderclan strong. In reality, she's simply carrying out Jayfeather's attack on Starclan.

Lionblaze, meanwhile, is blissfully unaware of this. He does what he does best; fight and try to be a good warrior. The best he can be, in fact. While Lionblaze isn't very intelligent, Jayfeather is wary of trying to involve him, because Lionblaze is a genuinely kind hearted cat, whereas Hollyleaf isn't.

Also! Throughout the PoT arc, there are tons of bonding moments between the three; for Jayfeather, it's all manipulation, but for Hollyleaf and Lionblaze, it's genuine. I've always been irritated by how Warriors never actually shows bonds between families and friends; the books just usually go "they were friends" or "they were family" and that's it. It makes all the family/friend deaths so unemotional and contrived when they happen, because the bonds are never explored. I don't care that Feathertail died; you never showed me the relationship she and Crowfeather had. His grief feels fake, and I'm not invested, at all.

In addition to this, friendships between the protagonists and side characters are also more deeply explored. For example, Hollyleaf and Cinderheart would have a very deep, loving friendship, and Lionblaze and Berrynose would have a friendly rivalry, but are also there for each other. Lionblaze also deeply cares for his family, and loves his siblings, Brambleclaw, Squirrelflight, Firestar, Sandstorm, and Leafpool dearly. Hollyleaf is close with her mother and father too, of course, but not quite as close as Lionblaze. Jayfeather is too wrapped up in his hatred and fantasies of revenge to really bother with friendship or family, and thus is viewed as even more prickly by his clanmates.

Jayfeather makes sure to make Hollyleaf look like an excellent warrior and leader, helping her find opportunities to do so. He encourages her to use her power to persuade Firestar to give her an apprentice, so she could be made deputy, and it works. Eventually, she'll use this power on Firestar to convince him to make her deputy after Brambleclaw dies.

Also! In chapters from Jayfeather's POV, it's shown that he grows to hate himself, too, for his actions. He knows very well what he's doing is wrong, but he keeps doing it. He feels horrible for using Hollyleaf the way he does, and feels slimy and gross about it. He thinks he's too far gone, that there's no hope for him. So he keeps making things worse and worse, and hates himself every second of it.

This only serves to make him more bitter and resentful, and he lashes out at clanmates even more, taking out his anger and other mixed emotions on them. It's pretty clear he's developed some sort of depression. At this point, it's obvious that revenge on Starclan won't make Jayfeather happy, at all. But that's what keeps him going.

Eventually, Sol comes along, and Jayfeather sees him as an ally; after all, he's trying to dismantle the clans' belief in Starclan, too. With Sol, he helps spread disbelief and strife, leading to Shadowclan being reduced to the state it was in. Thunderclan is following lead, though a bit more slowly, because, annoyingly, Firestar and Brambleclaw are still there.

So Jayfeather sneakily poisons him, without any cat in the clan knowing. He, of course, does this after Firestar has taken a liking to Hollyleaf, and during his grief, Hollyleaf goes and consoles him, as well as giving him advice on who the new deputy should be, strongly hinting that she thought she would do a good job, by stating traits that she has, and that Firestar has seen in her.

So! She becomes deputy! Lionblaze is, of course, proud, but he's a bit unnerved by the fact that Jayfeather and Hollyleaf don't seem bothered by their father's death. The fire scene happens at some point, and they learn about Squirrelflight's lie. Ashfur is still killed by Hollyleaf to keep the secret. And this time, she doesn't spill it.

Sol is also eventually killed off, because when Jayfeather realizes he's also trying to destroy the clans, not just ruin their belief in Starclan, which isn't what he wants. He doesn't want Starclan or the clans to die; he wants Starclan to suffer. So, he comes up with a plan to kill Sol, and Hollyleaf executes it.

At this point, Hollyleaf too is becoming resentful of Starclan, and twists her version of the code to fit with that, silently vowing to enforce it when she becomes leader.

Thunderclan is starting to grow really angry with Starclan, due to Jayfeather's and Sol's influence. Firestar continues to have faith in them, and the clan slowly turns on him, seeing him as a weak and incompetent leader. Other unfortunate things start to happen as well, like prey being scarce in greenleaf, warriors being injured more, fights on the borders breaking out, etc. It should be noted that Hollyleaf also uses her power to help convince the clan of Jayfeather's beliefs, and it works really well, seeing as she believes them herself. The majority of clan starts to believe that Starclan has abandoned them.

But not all of them, which is key to the rest of this AU!

Hollyleaf believes this too, and believes that the clan would do far better being lead by her. She speaks with Jayfeather about this, and, of course, he's pleased by it. They hatch a scheme to kill Firestar in secret, using a lethal concoction of herbs and framing it as a sickness.

Also! As Jayfeather's ideology spreads, other medicine cats' connection to Starclan grows weaker and weaker, until, finally, at the end of the PoT arc, they cannot communicate with Starclan at all. Only Jayfeather can, as that's one of his powers.

Once Starclan is entirely cut off from the clans, Cinderpelt's spirit (in Cinderheart) is released; her link to Starclan has been severed, so the whole reincarnation sort of thing no longer works. Cinderpelt is instead stranded in some sort of limbo, and never finds her way back to Starclan.

However, Leafpool has noticed Jayfeather's interest in toxic plants, and grows suspicious of him... so she must be killed, too. While gathering herbs with Jayfeather, Hollyleaf ambushes Leafpool and kills her. Jayfeather has Hollyleaf injure him, too, so he can frame it as an accident with some rogues, which he just barely got away from. Hollyleaf is never mentioned in his explanation, so she's completely free of suspicion.

Two of the three never learn of their true parentage, and only Lionblaze ever really cares about it, because of his deep connection with his parents, grandparents, and aunt. Lionblaze later learns about it from Squirrelflight.

With Leafpool out of the way, they can finally kill Firestar. Jayfeather slips deathberry juice into some of Firestar's fresh kill, and, when the leader is unconscious and in the medicine den, Jayfeather poisons him with more and more herbs (like foxglove, water hemlock, deadly nightshade, etc), which prove powerful enough to kill all his remaining lives.

The clan doesn't suspect a thing, and grieves for him, despite his weak leadership. This further reinforces the belief that Starclan has abandoned them.

Hollyleaf becomes Hollystar. And, despite everything she's done, she gets her nine lives. This is because, since Hollystar and Jayfeather are part of the proohecy, and supposedly hold the power of the stars in their paws, they can force them to give her nine lives. Especially with Hollystar's power of conviction.

I'm not sure who her deputy would be, but it would have to be someone incredibly loyal to her. Perhaps Cinderheart, seeing as they were close friends. Maybe they even get to be a cute, villainous lesbian couple. You know what, they do. CinderHolly is canon in this AU.

However, Lionblaze notices how unbothered Jayfeather and Hollystar are by Firestar's death, and starts to suspect the worst. He has kept his faith in Starclan, by the way, despite his siblings' attempts to sway him. He has also gathered a small group of the clan together who still believe in Starclan, and they worship in secret at night, outside the camp. This group, critically, includes Whitewing and Birchfall, Dovewing and Ivypool's parents. It also includes Squirrelflight and Sandstorm, who were, of course, incredibly loyal to Firestar.

With Hollystar in her leadership position, and a blindly loyal deputy and mate are her side, she pushes her anti-Starclan agenda, and actually forges an alliance with Shadowclan and Blackstar. They promise to help each other in the coming days, seeing as Starclan has left the clans, and they can only depend on each other.

Windclan and Riverclan are horrified, especially the medicine cats (except Mothwing, she actually sees this as wise), but through Hollystar's conviction, these ideals infiltrate the other two clans. Each clan splits into factions: those who have faith, and those who do not. Consistently, the latter groups are larger.

Lionblaze is incredibly upset by this, and is torn between his love for his siblings, his care for his clan, and his faith to Starclan. Hollystar starts to weed out the disloyal cats, the ones who still have faith in Starclan, and makes them sleep in a separate den from the other cats. She keeps a close eye on them, and monitors their movements at all times, with the help of Cinderheart, Jayfeather, and a few other extremely loyal warriors.

One evening, Lionblaze manages to sneak out from under the gaze of his clanmates, and eavesdrops on a conversation between Hollystar and Jayfeather. He learns of their manipulation, and how they killed Brambleclaw, Leafpool, and Firestar, and, in fury, attacks Hollystar. This grabs the whole clan's attention, and during the battle, Hollystar loses a life.

Lionblaze, being the big hearted cat he is, stops fighting once his sister dies once, horrified at what he's done. However, the clan has turned against him, and he, as well as the other Starclan faithful, are driven out of Thunderclan territory. Hollystar has convinced Thunderclan that any Starclan faithful cats are dangerous traitors, and, at the next gathering, encourages the other clans to drive them out, too.

Lionblaze and his group, meanwhile, shelter beyond Thunderclan territory, and Dovekit and Ivykit are born. They slowly recover their strength, and set up a sort of temporary camp. Lionblaze tells them about Hollystar and Jayfeather's treachery. All the cats are bereft, and have no idea what to do. Soon enough, though, a group of Shadowclan cats find them, and reveal they've been driven away, too. The clans by the lake have all lost cats, and they are weaker now, which is critical for OotS. This is where the PoT arc ends.

Hollystar's regime is as strong as ever in Thunderclan, and the rest of the Starclan faithful cats in the clans have been driven out. The Dark Forest sees this as an opportunity to take advantage of, and starts recruiting warriors and apprentices to their cause to destroy/take over the clans, or whatever the DF was trying to do. Like. Seriously. What exactly were they trying to accomplish?

We'll just go with destroying the clans, due to their festering, bitter hatred for Starclan, and how the clans wronged them in their past lives.

Starclan is completely cut off from the clans, except for Lionblaze's group, which has become its own sort of clan. Each of the groups of Starclan faithful have found their way to him, and they live an unsteady, unsatisfying life outside the clan territories. They want to go home. They want their clans back. But if they dared set paw at the lake territories again, they'd be killed.

Enter Dovepaw and Ivypaw. Despite not really being a clan, the group has still continued clan traditions, and Dovepaw is apprenticed to Willowshine, while Ivypaw gets Brightheart. For extra drama, Brightheart and Cloudtail were split over the Starclan debate, and Cloudtail remains with Hollystar.

In this group, there's a lot of quarreling over who's in charge, as they don't really have a leader. They eventually agree to have a small council of four cats, one from each clan, to lead them. Lionblaze, Tawnypelt, Heathertail, and Mistyfoot are the leaders of this group, and they are trying to form a plan to take the clans back. Tawnypelt was also able to convince Tigerheart to remain faithful to Starclan, so he's here, too.

Squirrelflight, in a soft, emotional scene, reveals the three's parentage to Lionblaze. Instead of driving them apart, this makes them grow even closer, as they both understand what it's like to care for their siblings deeply, even when they've done something wrong.

The fourth cat from the prophecy remains, and it's Dovepaw. She doesn't have any powers, and yet she'll be key to turning the clans back to Starclan. During their time spent as a group, the borders between the clans here dissolve, and they become united and strong.

Dovepaw is actually trained as a medicine cat here, and is the only one in the group who can connect to Starclan. Her faith is particularly strong, given how her life began with being driven out of her home. This is how the connection between the clans and Starclan is slowly restored.

Meanwhile, in the clans, as the year progresses, things get worse. The draught happens like before, and a patrol is sent upstream to investigate the cause, like before. Leopardstar dies, and someone replaces her; possibly Reedwhisker. Perhaps he didn't go with his mother, and remained with Riverclan. This could be a source of grief for Mistyfoot, and affect her actions in the rest of the arc. Reedstar it is, then.

The DF keeps training and corrupting warriors in the clans, and as the arc goes on, some of them start to fear that Hollystar was wrong, and that they should've stayed faithful to Starclan. Of course, no one says this; anyone who speaks like that is immediately exiled.

Hollystar practically controls all the clans, given her power. Her propaganda has taken hold of the leaders' minds, and they all follow her suggestions. Jayfeather is both happy and dissatisfied at the same time; he is glad Starclan is suffering, and frequently visits them to gloat, but he feels that something is wrong. He isn't truly happy. He's still bitter cold and angry inside.

If I'm being honest, I barely remember what happened in OotS between the first and last books. The whole arc was a disaster, and, like I said, its plot was boring and meandering. I apologize for the stark lack of detail in this part. Like I said though, this is just a loose concept for this AU, and anyone can add their ideas to it, if they want!

Essentially, in the end, there are 3 factions fighting: the Starclan faithful, Hollystar's clans, and the Dark Forest. Jayfeather, once he learns what the DF is up to, is upset about it, and opposes it, simply because he doesn't want the clans destroyed, he just wants Starclan to suffer, and have them watch helplessly as the clans live perfectly well without them.

Lionblaze and his faction also, through the arc, spy on what the clans are doing, and learn how things are slowly falling apart. This isn't so much due to the lack of Starclan, but due to the Dark Forest taking advantage of that lack of faith. Had the DF not been an issue, the clans would have made it perfectly fine through that period of drought, and lived well w/o Starclan's influence.

Ivypool is also recruited into the DF like usual, but this time, she immediately knows something is up, bc of Lionblaze and the rest of the group having such firm faith in Starclan, and passing that onto the kits. However, since Ivypool is smart, she decides to spy there, along with Tigerheart, which give the Faithful an advantage. There, they finally have a name: the Faithful.

Hollystar's clans eventually learn of the threat from the DF, and things devolve into panic. Hollystar and Jayfeather are losing control, and both the DF and the Faithful take advantage of this.

Dovewing is especially gifted with speech in the AU, and is really compassionate and dedicated to what she believes in. She rallies a good portion of Hollystar's clans to the Faithful, and their numbers grow steadily. She is, in a way, like a cleric in DnD, and Lionblaze is a paladin. Dovewing does most of the speaking, while Lionblaze does most of the fighting.

Then, the battle breaks out. It's DF vs the Faithful vs Hollystar's clans. Like the Great Battle in the other books, this battle is chaotic, takes place all over the clan territory, and a ton of cats die. Hollystar and Lionblaze have an intense encounter, and Lionblaze pleads her to see sense and join their side. However, she is too far gone, and too convinced of her own flawed beliefs to listen. Hollystar is killed by Lionblaze in an emotional battle, and Jayfeather is eventually cornered, too.

Lionblaze also pleads with him to switch sides, and it is here that Jayfeather finally reveals what he's been doing all along, and has his traditional villain monologue. At the end of his monologue, he admits that he isn't happy with how things turned out, and feels hollow, numb, and bitter cold instead.

Jayfeather loathed himself as much as he loathed Starclan. He knew his actions were wrong, and hated himself for it, but he couldn't stop himself. He wouldn't. From his first kill onwards, he thought it was too late for him to change paths, that he'd always be a despicable, miserable cat. He sees no chance at redemption, and asks Lionblaze to kill him. When he won't, Jayfeather eats the deathberries he had kept with him, killing himself.

In the end, the Faithful are victorious, and take back the clans. Lionblaze, however, is completely devastated by all the loss. He had lost family and friends during all of this, and feels utterly swamped by grief. The loss of his siblings hurts the most; not only had he lost them to death, but he had really, truly LOST them; their personalities had completely changed, and the cats he once knew had vanished.

Despite this, he pushes through with Dovewing and Squirrelflight's help. Lionblaze becomes Lionstar, at the urging of his clanmates. He names Squirrelflight deputy, and Dovewing is his medicine cat. The clans are recovering from Hollystar's reign, and are turning back towards Starclan, for better or for worse. Either way, their faith has only strengthened during this time, and once again, the medicine cats can connect with their ancestors.

So! That's it! That's the villain Hollystar and Jayfeather AU! In my opinion, this is MUCH better than how things actually went in the books, and I would have rather had things go this way. Potential isn't wasted (as far as I know), and each of the three is more fully explored.

The OotS part is definitely lacking, because like I said, I've forgotten what happens through most of it. Lionblaze also gets a bit shafted, because I wanted to focus on Jayfeather and Hollystar, and also because I don't know his personality as well. I really wish I had given him more content, but my pool of ideas was a bit shallow for him :'D. If any of you have any ideas for him, or for the rest of the AU, please feel free to share them!!

I may come back to this in the future, after I've reread PoT and OotS, and add more details. For now, though, it is this.

Let me know what you guys think! I'd love to hear your ideas, too, like I've said a billion times before! As I've said many times earlier, I think it'd be really cool if you all contributed too, and we made this a community thing!"

[sytokun]

If you could indulge me in this little rewrite of Blake's V4-5 arc? What if after Beacon fell Ironwood sent Cordovin to occupy Menagerie to sus out any in-hidding WF, catalysing his paranoia for later volumes and depicting Cordo as an actual scary person. Ghira wants to keep the peace but Blake becomes restless as tensions between Atlas soldiers and the locals grow, and the arc accumulates with a more courageous Blake taking down Cordovin's mech with Sun and Ilia's help.

Tumblr's editor crashed just as I finished typing this and I am willing myself to write it all again from scratch, lmao. This site needs an auto recovery option.

Well this is an AU. I say AU and not rewrite because by definition, it's not following the same plot or the same rules as RWBY, and doesn't pretend to (which makes it even funnier when people complain about it being something it's not pretending to be). Calling it a rewrite implies a strict adherence to canon, which this doesn't have.

But still, I'll add the rewrite tag to this and other future posts simply because a lot of the kind of thing I'm writing overlaps with rewrites and their general philosophy when handling canon.

When you're writing something like this, you're basically asking a question and answering it. Each question shifts the story's divergence from canon by a degree, and when you start moving, the deviation will be enough that even if it travels in a straight line from there, it will never be the same as canon events.

For example, say I ask the question: "What if Team RWBY spent a longer time in Beacon?"

From this, I know that I have to delay the Fall of Beacon, or change its circumstances entirely. What would change about the Fall if Ruby was in her second, third or even last year at Beacon? Would Pyrrha still die if we spend more time exploring her as a character? Where would Cinder be during all this time?

By asking one simple question about RWBY's world, ten other smaller ones pop up that you need to answer, but then you find out those questions lead to entire character arcs, and creating timelines, and making sure the Kingdoms make sense, and now you're reconstructing an entire universe from scratch and hating yourself. /s

So back to your query. I can't answer this meaningfully because if it were up to me, I'd likely just… not have Cordovin at all. Or even Ghira for that matter. Let's look into why.

First, Cordovin. I have to ask myself first, "What does Cordovin contribute to RWBY's story?" Like really? We have to go backwards, from "How do I fit this character in" all the way back to "Do I even need this character?" What is Cordovin's actual role in the story? She's a minor villain - a comical, incompetent one at that - whose only purpose is to be a one-off obstacle in Team RWBY's airship-stealing plan. A plan that was already poorly conceived from the start when better, more sound plans existed but were unexplored by the plot.

So that's multiple strikes against Cordovin. Her impact on the story is low; she has no important relationships with any characters; and her existence is tied to a weak plot point which actually detracts from the story. If she adds little, then the story loses little from removing her, too. We know RWBY has a cast bloat problem, and if someone wants to earnestly solve that problem, that means they have to combine characters or even remove them entirely if the benefit they bring to the story far outweighs the effort to put them in.

The same principle applies to Ghira. This is part of a longer post I wish to write about Blake after this, but how important is Ghira, and by extension Kali, to RWBY's story? How much do they add or take away? Now, depending on your story and preferences, they would indeed be very important. But not to my story, at least not as they are now. And it's not exactly an easy decision to make either - it takes a lot of thought and deliberation, weighing multiple pros and cons against each other.

The fact that compared to Cordovin, Ghira and Kali are more well-liked in the fandom should, ideally, not affect your decision or desire to have a clean house to work from. Put yourself in CRWBY's shoes: when they made these characters, they aren't thinking about if fans will like them or not, they just put them in. I would say they were thinking about how these additional characters would benefit the story they're trying to write, but that implies... thought.

As they say, "Kill your darlings". Fans wouldn't be stuck with half the migraines and heartache writing fanfiction and cleaning after someone else's messy house if CRWBY exercised this for their own story.

[degenerate-perturbation]

for the ship game...vrizrezi hawke/anders and ummmm kaladin/moash 👽

Vrisrezi: Do not ship

I do not like Vrisrezi because interactions with Vriska make Terezi much more boring, and Vriska isn't particularly oriented towards Terezi either. The character I wanted to see Vriska grow and change alongside with was Tavros. They had narrative resonance and something sort of resembling a coherent parallel arc. Vriska and Terezi are more of an informed-attribute Ultimate Rivalry than a dynamic I really felt invested in. Somehow, these characters are less than the sum of their parts; they do not contribute meaningfully to one another's arcs in ways that are good rather than bad.

I could easily have liked this ship. I have nothing against it in principle. I just don't think what was presented in the story made a compelling case for them, and I didn't ever read any fanfiction.

I enjoy the concept of this ship more if it's in the context of a fucked up FLARP polycule with Aradia and Tavros also involved. That shit is great. I also do strongly prefer it to either Dave/Terezi or John/Vriska, and it's probably one of the best Vriska ships out there.

Hawke/Anders: Do not ship

This one I actually do actively hate and will not engage with fan content for.

Partly it's that I think that the DA2 story works better without any Hawke/Companion romance. Hawke is most interesting to me as an aggregator of baffling ruffians rather than someone who is actually One of the ruffians. Because Hawke is boring. They're a boring cookie cutter protagonist who I care for only as a plot device and narrative tool.

But I dislike Hawke/Anders especially because a romance arc would be a terrible decision for Anders' story. The whole Kirkwall period is things getting worse and worse for Anders and culminating with a suicidal act of mass violence. There is no way to jam a healthy relationship into that character arc, not even getting into the actual in-game details of their romantic interactions.

Now, an unhealthy relationship? Yes! Absolutely! I can read Hawke/Anders as abusive, mutually toxic, or otherwise some kind of ill-advised train wreck which ultimately is only a brief stop along a larger story about something else. But hardly anybody writes that. Everybody wants to project their protective poor little meow meow feelings onto Hawke and have them Take Care of poor widdle Anders who is so sad and so wet. And I don't truck with that. Hawke is entirely the wrong character for this formula and I cannot enjoy it.

What would have made me like it? Idk, if Anders' entire character arc was completely different.

What I'll say for it is that I do think it's fantastic as a toxic trainwreck nightmare story and I actually love shitty evil rivalmance Hawkes who make Anders' life worse.

Kalmoash: Literally have absolutely no idea if I ship or not. Like I fucking guess?

I think I only like the made up fandom version of this ship. But when I remember their actual canonical interactions I just feel sort of icky.

Moash is just so...look, I love Moash. He sucks, and I love that for him! Here is a character so absolutely, triumphantly responsible for his own suffering, so clearly being damned by his own basic character flaws, that it's fucking excruciating to watch. It's fantastic. What fertile ground for a redemption arc! Moash is a guy who hit rock bottom and picked up a shovel. He did this all to himself, and boy howdy does it compel me.

But wow, he sucks. And he's not being written with compassion by an author who ultimately likes him and his bullshit. He's being written by an author who has nothing nice to say about him at all. My enjoyment of this character is not supported by the text, because the text is frankly not that deep. The text is all there on the surface and it doesn't leave much room for interpretation.

So I enjoy pretending that they dated during WoR, but like their close friendship is moooostly an informed attribute. Which is a real shame, because it limits the emotional impact of the betrayal and the emotional impact of any possible future redemption arc.

Anyway yeah I guess I do ship it because if I see a picture of them kissing I'm hitting reblog.

[blackasmidnightcats]

QfG Rants and Remakes part 5

Big thanks to both @agathasarmy and @yarasquad for sharing their ideas with me and believing that I could actually make a coherent rant without being too swallowed up by my emotions and hopefully I'll be able to do the same here.

P.S. Imma change the title of the next Rants and Remakes cause it's definitely not focusing on QfG anymore and it's gonna focus of AWWP so yeah...there's that to look forward too.

Chaddick & Yara + Tagatha interlude

Note: This post was originally gonna be titled "Chaddick & Yara + Mourning the Departed" and would have turned out as how it is explained below but as I was writing about Chaddick I realized that I needed to talk about something concerning Tagatha and realized that this post would have been too long for all three so I gonna move the "Mourning of Departed" in its own post. Hope you guys understand. Tagatha has a strong pull with me.

Imma actually gonna outline this cause I need to organize my thoughts and at least with this I could remember the direction that I would be heading.

First part's definitely going to talk about how Chaddick and Yara's death is bs

Then imma explain why them staying alive would have impacted the TCY storyline a lot more meaningfully (p.s. this is where the Tagatha interlude will be found)

And last (and this has been moved to its own post so stay tuned for it), I would also like to nitpick Soman's obvious lack of thought when it comes to the characters that have departed (mainly Callis and Lady Lesso and August Sader) and how it should have affected the characters (mainly Sophie and Agatha)

How Chaddick and Yara could have helped the storyline better

WARNING: I realized while writing this that I kinda made Chaddick and Yara more flawed than they are writen because I have to think about their character growth and they can't have that without having any flaws. So expect some more drama with these two than needed as I share my thoughts on how their characters could have went. They get better in the end believe me.

So I think that everyone in the fandom is one with the idea that Chaddick's death was one of the MOST worst decisions that Soman made.

As @agathasarmy said it once, Chaddick's death is more frustrating than sad because of how out of nowhere it is.

Via @agathasarmy:

but… Chaddick??? dying??? IN THE BEGINNING OF THE SERIES????

IT DOESNT MAKE SENSE, AND THE ONLY WAY IT MAKE SENSE IS COS SOMAN OBVIOUSLY DID IT TO INTRODUCE RHIAN AND THATS THE SHITTIEST THING ABOUT IT

HE REDUCED CHADDICK’S DEATH AS A PLOT DOOR WITHOUT PROPERLY SUBSTANTIATING CHADDICK’S CHARACTER FIRST SO INSTEAD OF US TRULY MOURNING HIS LIFE WE’RE JUST LEFT WITH THIS HOLLOW FEELING OF WHAT HE COULD’VE BEEN AS AN INTEGRAL CHARACTER TO THE PLOT

THIS

Chaddick's death felt hollow because it was a PLOT DEVICE. It didn't (or at least Soman didn't) conscider Chaddick much of a character but a means and once this happens some deaths can be very very hollow.

Like his POV chapter was very hard to read all because especially once you find out that he's dead by the end of it (SHAME SOMAN, SHAME) because his story and plot had so much potential. We weren't able to properly feel sad about his lost because we didn't get to know him better.

It just feels tragic. So much potential lost, all because Soman wanted Tedros to feel vulnerable because he lost his close friend.

WHICH SOMAN DIDN'T REALLY NEED TO DO

I explained already why this is bull and I'm gonna explain later what could have happened for Chaddick's character.

But in summary on why Soman didn't need to do it: EXPECTATIONS

Chaddick and Tedros would have been stressed out with all the expectations and comparison with Arthur and Lancelot. One wrong move could have broke them apart easily.

But Soman could have also not wanted to deal with Chaddick against his Sophie obssession so there could be that too.

SHAME SOMAN

Now, Yara.

Our little Soft Girl

She should not have died.

She really shouldn't have

W h y ?

Because her being alive would have impacted the story more than her death ever did. Just like Chaddick.

And if the problem was what she could have affected in the storyline in TLEA, then she could have been on the sides like. . . as Tristan from time to time or something.

Her being alive would have not affected or change TLEA at all. Like if more important characters like the Coven and the League can fade into the background then so could she.

But I really don't imagine her being in the school for New Evil with Aric as Dean. No, maybe Yuba could have hidden her with the League and she could have accompanied Princess Uma when they were getting Tedros and Agatha and then accompanied the Leuge or something.

Really it would have been that simple. C'mon.

Plus Kiko has been reduced to wreck after that. At least, with Yara being alive she could have fixed herself a bit more.

Okay

So in summary again: CHADDICK AND YARA SHOULD NOT HAVE DIED AND SHAME ON SOMAN FOR KILLING THEM OFF

Now, let's get to the juicier part, what could these two have contributed to the TCY storyline.

On Chaddick

It's pretty obvious what Chaddick's role should have been. He should have been important to the plot because his role would have been about breaking the comparison between the Past and the Present (see Soman, it could have been integrated into your canon plot) between him, Tedros, and Agatha to Lancelot, Arthur, and Gwen.

I'm pretty sure that Camelot has its eyes on these three.

It's pretty freaking convenient that they all have a predecessor to be compared to. And I'm pretty sure that it's not just Camelot who notices the pattern. I mean the whole freaking Woods read about this affair.

So Chaddick, along with Tedros and Agatha, should have been the ones that break this chain. It could have symbolized that Camelot was entering into a new, better era after a similar relationship broke it.

Like, a King, his beloved Queen and his most trusted Knight brought hope but ended in a Tragedy.

Now, another King, his beloved Queen and his most trusted Knight are skeptically judged for having the same pattern and they instead bring the Glory that first trio didn't

With Tedros, Agatha, and Chaddick united with each other bringing Camelot out of its traumatic experience with Tedros's parents, Camelot finally accepting that these three are not the same as Arthur, Gwen, and Lance and fully supporting them DESPITE the fear, would have been a much stronger message of that 'the past doesn't always repeat itself.'

Because with Rhian being known and most propably remembered as Tedros's most trusted Knight and betraying him in the end, it's like a copy of what Lance technically did to Arthur.

It just further proved that Camelot's King would always be betrayed by the ones they trust most.

Sadly for Arthur, he was betrayed by both Gwen and Lance and they left him alone.

While Tedros still has Agatha but without Chaddick the lesson simply is not learned.

Chaddick was integral to this formula because Camelot would have had to face yet another propable tragedy for their beloved King in the hands of the people he loves. With Tedros, Agatha, and Chaddick, complete, proving that they could do better despite having just a strong a bond as what Arthur and co had and Camelot accepting and trsuting this, the previous wounds would be replaced with new Hope.

Because even if that whole affair happened and ruined the Kingdom, at least they have proof that it's not always gonna happen that way.

And that's why Rhian being remembered as Tedros's Knight hurts this idea. Cause he betrayed him too.

Anyway, hopefully I made my point with this legacy thing.

Plus Chaddick and Arthur's Round Table training him. WHY SOMAN WHY?!?!?!

And now, imma explain what I think should have happened with Chaddick and how his character development and his role should have played out.

Because Chaddick is a pretty well rounded character, his POV chapter proves that he's brave, and is willing to die for his friends and what's right, and there isn't really much flaws to him aside from that he can sometimes make the most worst decisions despite being pretty wise.

I honestly cannot tell if he is stupid sometimes or Soman just does this to him cause PLOT.

Fandom I need help with this. Give me some opinions.

Like. . . he's wise enough to know what was right, examples being warning Tedros about Sophie and the first to listen to Agatha in AWWP, but also dumb or ignorant enough to bully Agatha in Book 1 and that VERY IMPORTANT THING ABOUT completely ABUSING Tedros is AWWP.

Like I'm kinda confused with him.

Well maybe we can say that he's a bit ignorant and maybe was raised with privilege so that's why he bullied Agatha in Book 1 and kinda wisened up in Book 2 about her.

But I am not excusing his attitude towards Tedros in AWWP because that was messed up. Well, AWWP was messed up so there is that but if we have to acknowledge that mess and have some closure then I vote for it to come from Chaddick and Yara.

Like maybe the reason why Chaddick is more wise now is because of that very experience. Maybe he could still be a bit guilty about it and that kinda messes with his mind cause he still thinks that Tedros is still the same boy those years ago in their second year and Rhian uses this to his advantage.

Actually, thinking about it this makes so much sense.

Like instead of AGATHA having the trust issues (thought I wouldn't completely vanish it, just not at the same level as she does in canon) it's CHADDICK that has them. Cause he's always kinda gets haunted by what happened in AWWP.

I mean Tedros replaced him with ARIC of all people when he failed to retrieve Agatha. There has to be some animosity between them since. I can imagine that Chaddick kinda felt like him and Tedros could never be as close as when they were during their first year. And he would totally understand it if Tedros never really forgave him for what happened and was at peace with it even if he didn't have enough guts to find a closure for it. He'd respect his friend first and foremost.

But then comes Tedros, all fine and inviting him to be his Knight like that would mess Chaddick up.

He propably couldn't believe it at first and maybe even kindly refused the offer at first but then he sees the heart break in Tedros's face and Chaddick realizes that Tedros really wanted this.

Tedros still sees Chaddick as his closest friend despite what happened in AWWP. And maybe after some thinking, Chaddick realizes that he still wants to have the bond with Tedros like what they had in Book 1. So he accepts.

But of course, they've changed and Chaddick still gets eaten by guilt because I think that he's the kind of person that knows that he did something wrong and wants to repent for it.

So instead of that wise friend that Tedros had in Book 1, Chaddick can't trust his judgement about Tedros because he's scared he'd go too far. So he kinda just agrees to Tedros's ideas and doesn't really give advice. Tedros kinda notices this and tries to talk to Chaddick about it but Chaddick would be all formal to him. Tedros, I don't really know, would think that it would be for his sake with the comparison with Arthur and Lance and all. So he kinda just goes along with it.

It's messy right now guys, I know, I'm kinda butchering Chaddick's character here but I promise it gets better and in my mind he'd be like this for only Book 4. He'd be Wise Chaddick again right after. Just give me a chance to explain.

So they have this kind of miscommunication thing that Canon Tagatha had in QfG instead and that would have made so much more sense and here's why;

Warning: this is officially where the Tagatha interlude starts so if you wanna skip it (why though???) find the sign that states it's the end. It's gonna be in pink too.

The fact that Tagatha was having a miscommunication failure was kinda off with me because 1) they've been over this in AWWP and TLEA. In TLEA Tedros has absolutely no problem with pushing Agatha to share more when she wouldn't and 2) he could easily read her like a book, especially when it counts. Like he could get her favorite food wrong but he always seemed to know what Agatha was having trouble with and was there to help her out and is not afraid to call her out on it (i.e. the Cinderella thing, he was on point there)

Imma provide some examples of Tedros totally getting Agatha when it counts;

AND THIS

AND THIS TOO

WAIT THERE IS MORE (The Tagatha Moment)

AND LET US NOT FORGET

THIS IS WHY TLEA TAGATHA WILL ALWAYS BE BEST TAGATHA.

I get that Agatha's insecure about herself and maybe she was kinda influenced with the Excalibur thing (but I highly doubt it though) but it's no reason for her to get to the conclusion she did at the end of QfG.

I mean girl, you were always thinking that Tedros would be a Great King in TLEA and that's why you've been so insecure about yourself. WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT???

Someone call me out on this PLEASE. I'm hurting myself by judging her too hard.

I can imagine that she would be sceptical with Tedros's ideas and kinda doubting him about it (you guys have no idea how much it hurts typing this) but I can also imagine that she would never doubt that Tedros's heart is in the right place even if she thinks that the way he gets there isn't always the best.

Like we have literal proof that Tedros gets Agatha almost like Sophie does and the best thing is that I'm sure that Tedros would think of the best in mind.

The mess in QfG makes no sense because they should be over this miscommunication bs and it should not have been a thing.

And if it was because of the stress with Excalibur and his responsibilities as King that made Tedros suddenly not get Agatha then WTF Soman!?!?!? I did not ask for this. They were literally about to die in TLEA and yet they could still joke and tease each other and have these cute little scenes with the other.

Instead I got Rhian's b*tch ass being Tedros's therapists when he knows sh*t about this boy and Agatha doubting Tedros like he did something horrible. (Well he did for trusting Rhian but i digress)

I could have had more of these cute Tagatha scenes instead. Like, is it too much to ask for these two to just show their love for each other in other ways than "I will save you" and "You're the best thing ever and I don't want to lose you for this horrible thing that I did or say" like give me small softer moments anytime.

Tedros gently teasing Agatha when she's being difficult and Agatha being totally trying not to show that she's smitten over it.

Agatha trying to be romantic at the most outrageous moments and Tedros being like "?????" but totally finding it cute.

Other character just not getting these two when they do and they are just as confused.

These are the kind of scenes I wanted from them. And if I have to use Chaddick to get it then so be it. (I'm sorry about this, I'm mostly projecting at this point and these really affecting my personal opinions on this matter but I'll try to tone it down a bit so that it's still coherent)

Note: this is the official end of the Tagatha interlude but i'm not keeping any promises that it'll be the last

Anyways, Chaddick and Tedros, they have more reasons with having communication problems because;

They have not been together for a very long time and they've both propably changed since

AWWP. So far, the two of them have had horrible experiences as the last thing that they remember about each other.

As I explained, I headcanon that Chaddick has a somewhat formed a sort of PSTD with it and is very scared that he's gonna mess it up.

I'm not even going to try to explain the PSTD thing cause I feel like I'm not gonna do it justice but I hope you get what I mean.

Chaddick must have become more unsure of himself after AWWP and he must still be trying to fit this new Tedros with the old one that he used to hang out with in Book 1. It would have been a good comparison to show that Tedros has indeed change and grown since then.

Like Chaddick kinda feels like he needs to intervene when Tedros shares a very outrageous suggestion but doesn't know how and kinda ends up in a mess.

Basically imagine Tagatha's problems in QfG and apply to Tedros and Chaddick instead.

And Chaddick would have been suspiscious about Rhian from the beginning. He's a smart savy guy afterall.

So Rhian kinda exploits this and gets the two boys against each other. Because say that Tedros and Chaddick have this big fight propably like the one when Agatha comments that Tedros was being a horrible king but Chaddick's the one that said it instead. Say that this happens around the middle of the Book and it's the final straw between them because they haven't been properly communicating and all the pressure on them. Rhian could easily worm his way to Tedros's side and replace Chaddick nicely. Cause unlile Chaddick, Rhian would make Tedros believe that HE'S the one that believes in him the most.

So they kinda fall apart and Chaddick and Tedros are trying to understand where it all went wrong.

Agatha would try to understand each side and get them to better terms again but she can't do it alone plus a-hole Rhian is butting in.

I imagine that, for me, the logical person that Chaddick might approach on his dilema with Tedros might be Ravan.

Cause the two of them basically think the same way and are usually calm and wise. The only difference would be that Chaddick's more active while Ravan's more passive and choses to observe before making a move. So he calms Chaddick down when he's being too impatient.

Chaddick and Agatha would be talking of course. And I don't know why but I imagine that they're more numb to all the gossip about the three of them especially around each other because they're both sort of level headed and wise then when they're with Tedros individually.

And I imagine this is where the Tagatha drama happens. Only after Rhian cause I wanna be clear that without him, Tagatha would have been fine. He also tries to break them up by saying that Agatha sides with Chaddick and that she doesn't have much faith in Tedros too.

Agatha's going to deny this of course (because it's all bs from Rhian) but Tedros has been too stressed and vulnerable that he sorta starts to believe it and Agatha gets frustrated that Tedros is choosing to believe Rhian when she's known him longer and after everything that they've been through.

But Tedros isn't fully under Rhian's spell. I would have put several times when they would doubt each other especially when Rhian talks crap about Agatha and Chaddick and it would be beserk button for Tedros so Rhian doesn't really go there.

Now Chaddick would be having his little personal battle with himself and Ravan and Agatha would be there to support him and give some advice.

The real kicker would have been when Rhian is adored by Camelot as Tedros's Treasured Knight, someone better than Lancelot and Chaddick kinda has a heartbreaking moment because HE'S supposed to be the one that was known as Tedros's Treasured Knight not this stranger. Not this stranger that stole everything from him especially his best friend.

Agatha hears about this and reflects the time when she gave up her own position as Tedros's queen in TLEA and remembers that Tedros knows her and all her monsters and has been the light to help her fight them.

So she and Chaddick have this talk and she tries to concinve him that Tedros wouldn't want for Chaddick to just give up on him like that. Chaddick thinks about it but is still not completely convinced but Agatha reminds him that Tedros CHOOSE HIM to be his Knight and Liege and they both have to fight for it.

It's Ravan who finally manages to get Chaddick to gear when he asks Chaddick if he's going to regret anything he should choose to either regret letting Tedros go and not fighting for their friendship or make a complete idiot of himself but fight for their friendship instead.

So Chaddick does the latter but everything is too late and the Rhian thing happens as I explained in the first Rants and Remakes post and Chaddick gets tossed into jail with Tedros.

It's in book 5 that I imagine their relationship actually starts to heal itself and they both try to get through everything. I haven't thought of all the kinks out yet but I imagine a lot of fights and Chaddick just kinda shouting what he thinks before he startsvthe regret it and Tedros being this physic and just getting Chaddick too like how he does Agatha.

Again, I haven't thought of everything yet but I'll share it when I do

Now let's move on to Yara

On Yara

Yara would have been more influencial alive then dead and I already explained why how she could have been handled in TLEA cause where I really see exploiting her is in the storyline of TCY.

With the Balance vs Chaos in mind as well as the Lady of the Lake villainess plotline, Yara could have been the answer to this.

She'd be a living reminder of everything that all the characters went through in AWWP and how horribly toxic it is to everyone. Especially those like Yara who lives in the between.

Like with the Lady plotline she would have promoted ultimate purity for both Good and Evil and doesn't believe that each side could be able to understand each other so she thinks that she's promoting Balance that way and that letting each side corrupt the other is Chaos.

She would have believed that Yara is an abomination to the Balance because she is the embodiment of the idea that you can choose some charcteristic from two sides and still be yourself.

Plus with Yara alive the other characters would be forced to rethink their ideals and how to approach this new possibility and reflect on the old ways that have been hurting the ones that are similar to her.

I imagine that Yara's gonna have an internal struggle with this like she's still trying to understand it herself and as she tries to understand it the more that the other characters do as well.

I haven't actually thought out her actual detailed storyline just yet and even though I wanna say more I know that I might butcher her character as I go on but I definitely know her importance to the possible story.

As I explained before, if in TSY was Good VS Evil and that the TCY was about Good AND Evil and how both sides need each other to grow and develop and that the importance of the School still teaching Good and Evil in its most purest form is so that they'd all have a guideline to go by but the curriculum has become more flexible with their beliefs OF Good and Evil and that every student just have shades of grey but choses to go by these either of the two and can still be a Hero or a Villain then Yara could have been the right person to show that it doesn't matter if your not completely on one side and was given the characteristics of the other, it matters what values you choose to follow despite it and how tou choose to use it to help everyone else for the better.

Cause it's canon already that it doesn't matter what they are, it's what they do that counts.

NGL I'm not completely satisfied with how I explained Chaddick and Yara I feel like I didn't do them justice here and I will definitely get back to this when I have organized and fleshed out my thoughts on them

Anyways, if you guys would like to add your own thoughts to this post pls do.

[protagonistheavy]

Well I fully finished Stranger Things 4 and still very much of the opinion that this sucked and is a pretty eye-rolling near-end to a charming series. So many moments still stand out to me as being these glaring plot holes or inconsistencies or questions without answers (nor the intrigue to make you come up with your own answers). Dynamics between characters are horribly mismatched, and the cast is just way too bloated to even give everyone their fair share of attention. Some scenes feel so nonsensical with how they contribute almost nothing and can yet eat up ~10 minutes of runtime.

And overall, everything is just so over-the-top. Season 1 was so captivating because of its subtleties and eerie atmosphere, it was quiet so it could really startle you with surprises that meant something, it kept you intrigued. But all of the mystery is so artificial here, everything explained aloud like it's a comic book, all of the suspense tainted by awkward characters that, quite honestly, have never truly gelled with the rest of the cast -- mostly because they were burdened with overbearing personalities that gradually stretched the reality of the story into seeming more and more like a cartoon.

There are so many scattered things to complain about... The absolute nonsense that was Susie's house and that entire scene, the terrible handling of the Nancy/Steve/Jonathon romance plot, Robin falling in love with a near-exact clone of herself, Argyle's dumb pothead aspects, and my GOD the ENTIRETY of the Russian plotline -- a huge waste of time, an entirely different movie of events that simply didn't need to happen and had zero correlation with everything else happening. It was a pointless division of the cast, separating characters from the dynamics that deserve attention, and throwing them into the wacky shenanigans of two Russian nobodies that the story will grab you by the neck to try and make you sympathize with. Seriously, the most this plot connects to the rest of the story is that they think they can help the kids by hurting the demogorgon and demodogs, which ultimately doesn't really add any effect that wasn't already ongoing: its not like they severed Vecna's connection in some way, or meaningfully weakened him, they're just one more simultaneous attack in a scene that easily could have been executed without them.

Okay and another thing. Maybe I missed a detail about this. But why the fuck are gates suddenly such a difficult thing to create... when in season 1, we clearly had the Demogorgon making portals all over the place, without consequence. Several times, the characters go through these portals and back -- are these special portals that Vecna is making? Because his dialogue really seems to insist that he just, like, didn't know a way to get to the normal world. Some more weird questions: what the fuck even is the upside-down? Is it NOT a parallel version of the real world? When did it BECOME one? Like, we have Nancy point out that her bedroom is as it was several years ago, implying the upside-down Hawkins was made when the Hawkins Lab made their own portal... but then Vecna resides in the haunted house, which is as it was when he lived there... right? Or.... ??? this ticks me off so much lmao it feels like Im either an idiot for missing an explanation, or the writers are just confusing me with weird misinformation as they try to figure it out themselves.

It feels like evidence that the Duffer bros did not actually have a clear image of the total series, which seems to contradict what theyve told fans, suggesting they've already had this whole plot figured out since season one. that just seems so ridiculous to me lol when there's so many points within the story thus far that feel like the writers either had to make-up on the spot, or certainly did not see themselves writing when they first wrote season one. I mean good god are you really going to convince me that in season one, they had planned out that one day, Mike and Jonathon and Will and their stoner friend Argyle would have to go visit Susie, whose home is a total riot of eccentric siblings that they get the assistance of in order to hack the government and locate a secret underground base? Im sorry but it's clear to me they've been playing with mystery boxes that they didn't know the answers to, and that's fine! I get it that writers have to adapt to their own stories, or that they might create mysteries without yet knowing the answer, but these answers they've been coming up with are not great answers lol. This is just so not how these characters shouldve developed, not the plot that shouldlve happened.

God, and the whole plotline with Brenner................ I dont have the time to keep complaining but man, almost any angle I try to remember this season, I just recall either a glaring disappointment, or how that scene was played out really weird.

[teaveetamer]

See, I'm really approaching this from the perspective of "what would be cool" vs. "what would be realistic to actually create". I think it would be really cool if permadeath could be this uniquely integrated story mechanic but—as the games are now—it's really just not feasible. When discussing how the series should improve itself, criticism should be feasible to implement.

And for the record, I am talking about improving the main plot of the game. Not battle dialogue, not optional supports or optional side content. I'm talking about characters meaningfully contributing to the primary narrative of the piece. By "meaningful" I mean being active participants who influence the trajectory of the story. E.g. think Felix in AG chapter 7, who takes a meaningful role by deciding what your army will do next, and then for his role in convincing Dimitri to fight again.

For them to be active players in the main narrative, then they need to be able to meaningfully contribute. But the gameplay dictates that they must be disposable at any given time, because permadeath. These two things are mutually exclusive. You cannot both meaningfully contribute to the trajectory of the plot and also be 100% disposable to that plot. You might be able to get away with it for one character, maybe two, maybe a handful, but there's no way you could go beyond that. Too many variables. That's why there's only one character in the entire Telltale Walking Dead series who can survive through multiple episodes without being effectively killed off or written out.

I'm not ragging on permadeath. I understand why people love it and I'm not advocating for it to be wiped from existence, but I also can't pretend like it's not a factor in many of the complaints I, and many others, have about the writing of modern FE.

I'll agree on FE13's dialogue "decisions" not really mattering and that being a huge missed opportunity, but that doesn't really have any effect on the discussion of permadeath. That is one small, concrete decision reached at the same point by every player that must occur one way or the other for the story to progress. You can force the timelines to reconverge at the end because you know every player has made that decision one way or the other. There are two possible world states, and ONLY two possible world states, and the devs completely control both.

Permadeath is too... open, for lack of a better word. There are hundreds if not thousands of potential world states your game could be in at any given moment. Every chapter a character dies, or doesn't die, you create a new world state, with no way to reconverge them because there's no way to bring dead characters back. The devs have no control over who you allow to live and die, either, aside from giving certain characters the "too injured to fight" immunity. There is absolutely no way for the developers to be able to account for all of those in the main story writing, so the side characters are relegated to small, modular bit parts, one liners, and optional side content such as paralogues and supports.

I get wanting to have both permadeath and a great story! I want it too! I just don't think it's going to be possible. Even a huge studio would have trouble implementing permadeath in a way that would allow characters contribute meaningfully to the story.

You don't have bad suggestions, either. I suppose you could maybe add some gameplay differences (e.g. characters you can recruit only if another character dies, an extra side chapter if a character dies, etc.) but I don't think they're ever going to do that for one simple reason. Casual mode exists now. I can't imagine it would go over well to lock casual mode players out of signficant amounts of content like that (especially if that content were vital to understanding the plot or some aspect of the side characters. Like, could you even imagine the shitstorm if, say, Dedue's paralogue was only available if you killed off Felix? Or if you could only recruit Gilbert if Rodrigue died?)

What are your thoughts on the common sentiment that perma death no longer has much room in FE games anymore? Basically, with more story driven narrative, the concept of perma death wears a bit thin because it limits the characters that can be truly important in said plot (unless they retreat instead of outright dying). Do you think perma death is a mechanic no longer needed in modern FE? Do you think it still adds anything at all? Do you think leaving it out entirely might be best for FE17?

I think, from a gameplay perspective, it absolutely has value. It has been, for better or for worse, a core part of the series' identity for a long time. It's really the thing that a lot of people knew Fire Emblem for. Its also integral to a lot of people's enjoyment of FE as a series. I think they'll have a hard time getting rid of it if that's a decision they ever try to make.

I also think, from a writing perspective, the writers are never really going to be able to grow and create more distinct, impactful narratives if it continues to be the primary consideration when creating the story for the game. I also think it's used as a crutch, or as a justification for bad narrative decisions (most often by the fans themselves). Think Dimitri's only support system being Byleth in 3H. The game HAS to be that way, because all of these other characters could be dead. But if you have those characters alive, it looks like the game is just blowing off all of Dimitri's other connections in favor of propping up the self insert.

Personally, from a story writing perspective, I think FE17 will be a much stronger game if they don't have it. From a narrative perspective permadeath only ever adds anything if characters are allowed to react to important deaths and those deaths have a long term impact. If a character dies and the MC is sad about it for one or two scenes but then goes on their merry way and acts like nothing happens, it's not impactful (think Ike's reaction to Greil vs. Ike's reaction to losing a random character, like Oscar. Or Dimitri's reaction to Rodrigue vs. his reaction to Annette dying). In, like, every case permadeath only really removes from the narrative. You might get fluff reactions to the deaths, but that's all it is. Characters can't act too sad for the rest of the game because there's no feasible way you could keep track of every potential combination of dead characters they could be mourning. The only characters who are allowed to have impactful deaths are NPC characters who were always going to die within the narrative anyway.

Basically, I get why people love permadeath, and I don't hate its existence in FE. But I think we've reached a point where they have two goals: make a meaningful narrative, and keep the gameplay experience that helped give the series its identity. Unfortunately, these things are set up to actively sabotage each other. They're almost mutually exclusive. You can't build out a complicated, interconnected narrative full of personality and characters people love if you only have one or two players in it, and you can't keep everyone unkillable for the narrative because people will feel like it invalidates the point of permadeath.

I don't see permadeath ever going away completely, but I can see them shifting it so more characters are "unkillable" so they can still contribute to the narrative or including more NPC/NPC-lite characters the narrative can focus on. I think, at the moment, it's the best compromise they'll be able to come up with.