Anyone ever think about how some people probably miss Shen Jiu in Svvss.
How some Bai Zhan dissolves probably attacked because they were jealous of the Qing Jing disciples who had a teacher for all his sharp tongue and non existent tact was actually there. Where for all his harsh punishments and glares never beat you into the ground in the name of training.
How some of the older Qing Jing peak disciples liked the old one better than the new one without memories because he understood and while he was not nice he was kind in his own weird way.
How some Qiong Ding disciples liked him better when he had his memories because there was a peak lord with eyes like theirs. Someone so unequivocally looks like a wolf and a snake so unafriad to hide how hungry he is for more. But still so loyal.
How someone of the older Xian Shu girls mourned the man who treated them as the hidden blades they were. Who looked at them with a weary sort of respect and never once thought of them as belongings or things to be owned.
How some of the older hall masters and sect cultivators miss the sharp tongue and un forgiving wit of their former martial nephew and shidi. Who for all he never asked for help was never rude when it was offered for all the used to bristle at the implications of him needing help. He never lied to spare their feelings.
How a few peak lords miss their sharped tongued shixiong. He didn’t look down on them for being in the lower peaks. They miss the way their verbal spars would go and even if they rarely won the challenge was fun. As no one wants to challenge the beat of the best and that’s what the peak lords were.
How they all collectively feel like Shen Jiu losing his memory was a slap in the face to the man. Because all through the body of the same, the sharp mind is the same, they aren’t the same. No more sharp eyes or poisonous tongue instead there’s something soft. Something that if pushed slightly would die kneeling and not with a broken or straight back.
They all know that this wasn’t the ending that he would have wanted or even deserved.
As know instead of dying and being known as Shen Qingqiu the master tactician and the Xiu Ya sword he is known as Shen Qingqiu the Qing Jing peak lord, empress of the demon realm, husband of Luo Binghe.
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"Star Wars isn't dead y'all are just haters"
"Disney saved Star Wars"
"It's the Woke Agenda that ruined Star Wars"
My mans, Disney single-handedly destroyed the Sequel Trilogy despite the Force Awakens being the gateway to something potentially fantastic; MCU'd the Mandalorian (a story which originally had nothing to do with the Prequel and OG Trilogy aside from sharing a universe and exploring a sect of a completely different culture/ideology); ego-boosted both Filoni and Favreau to the point where their OC Verse is not only canon but openly disregarding the Star Wars Universe Bible/Lore; gave us a snippet of what an extremely misunderstood indigenous culture is actually like (instead of portraying them as the savages one of the white leads mislabeled as animals that deserved to be slaughtered) only to then wipe out the tribe we got to know for no reason other than shock value thus alienating indigenous/poc viewers in the most disrespectful way possible; completely threw away the entire message of TCW (that being a clone does not make you incapable of being your own person who has their own thoughts, ideals, moral compass and overall identity) by making TBB (a show that does have it's strong points in set design, soundtrack orchestration and overall sound design, but is extremely weak on both characterization and storytelling because they either make the meaningful plot points stretch too thin or focus on the wrong character completely) their go to show marketed for kids instead of the actual kids programming that people shit on for being for, surprise, kids; constantly disregards valid critique from their consumers (to the point where infighting in the Fandom has gotten extremely ugly) that people either give up on interacting completely or simply vanish and take all their things with them (because no one seems to understand where these critiques come from, or how being unable to admit your special little show is imperfect is actually not a good thing for both you and others).
This isn't even accounting for the fact the Fandom seems to have doubled in it's overall toxicity since Disney took over.
Which is par for the course when a mega corporation takes hold of something that started out extremely political in nature anyway.
The Cash Cow machine needs feeding after all...
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gege is really good at character design & development, so it hurts even more to see how much of it goes to waste or just...passes by unnoticed because the most interesting aspects of the story are closed forever in author's commentary instead of being put into the manga
take toji as an example. he's easily one of the most tragic figures, and fuck, we all know that gege made competition for this title extra hard, but to get proper insight into his story we need to fish for scraps of data all over the place except for its part shown in manga. his relationship with zen'in clan, his relationship with megumi's mom and their tragic fate - two cores of his character - are mentioned somewhere in author's notes or thrown in passing much later than it's needed to properly understand scenes that happened months ago. the reading of his actions completely changes when you know what led him to become the man we've met in gojo's backstory.
and hell, it doesn't influence just toji. megumi's, maki's, mai's, naoya's storylines are inextricably tied with toji's, he's the foil and the trigger for all of them, and you can't quite grasp the understanding of them without understanding of toji first, and toji is so underwritten it hurts
"people can't read with understanding of text anymore" people shouldn't dig in extras to be able to grasp characters and story as author intended for fucks sake
show, don't tell, show, don't tell, show, don't fucking tell
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dude i have a question that might be considered out of pocket but i need your brilliant take on it
i was rewatching the finale last night (because i like to cause myself pain) and i got to the part where aemond said he wanted to make a gift of luke's eye to his mother
so my question is
genuinely, what the hell do you think alicent would have done if aemond returned with luke's fucking eye😭😭😭
lmao welcome to my entirely unrequested character study of aemond. short answer: she'd be horrified, and that scene more than anything speaks to the beautiful fraught asymmetry of alicent and aemond's relationship, palpable and tragic and woefully understudied.
alicent does not desire violence and does not particularly respect violent people. e.g., we can imagine characters who might have been heartened or reassured — even if interspersed with guilt — that larys had been willing to kill to advance their interests. alicent is never shown to appreciate this silver lining; she is deeply remorseful and properly disturbed. the end of the season finds her attempting to stave off catastrophic violence surrounded by men who are effectively unbothered by the thought. aemond is one of these men. he is also her favourite man. i think this breaks her heart a little.
i'll preface this by stating again how much i sympathise with aemond, who is really neither a slick badass — his facade — nor a calculating psychopath — his caricature. aemond spends his childhood awash in a feeling of inescapable, humiliating powerlessness, and everything he becomes is a direct response to this experience, including his unfailing loyalty to his mother, his sole childhood advocate and ally. but aemond clocks alicent's powerlessness, too; and probably at no other time more palpably than during the quarrel at driftmark. viserys leaves her in the lurch; cole backs out when the rubber hits the road. when he tells her i gained a dragon, i don't think he's actually saying it was a fair exchange; clearly he doesn't really feel that way — he's still seeking his revenge years and years later (and fair enough). rather, i think he's telling her — and importantly, telling the people he perceives to be her enemies — we have real power now. we're safe. i got you.
aemond consistently strives to be alicent's one reliable ally. aemond also spends his life trying to make himself more powerful, and, if i were to really speculate, probably hasn't determined within his own heart whether he's done so to protect himself and his mother in the conflict he's seen presaged at driftmark, or in excited anticipation of that conflict as an opportunity to seek revenge. herein we find the crucial difference in how alicent and aemond each perceive safety, and perceive power — alicent thinks safety is found in the absence of violence, and power is the ability to be free from it; aemond seems to believe safety is found in a monopoly on violence and power is the ability to do it. it's entirely unrelated, and not to be insensitive by mixing factual and fictional tragedy, but i think sometimes about something prince harry once said about his childhood experiences watching the press chase and torment princess diana — his frustration knowing he would one day be a man, that he would one day be able to protect her, but not yet — and the anger, the frustration that caused. i append to aemond, though fictional, a very similar pain.
regardless, to whatever end, aemond's intention is to be feared and to be dangerous. he tells cole i don't give a fuck about tourneys for the express purpose of tipping us off: aemond is trying to become as effective as possible at killing real opponents in a real conflict. two things here: first, though aemond may not care for tourneys like the knights Rhaenys calls green as summer grass, he's equally inexperienced; he also doesn't know — cannot know — the true meaning of war or the costs associated. (see, e.g., his crucial misunderstanding of the nature of vhagar.) and second, tragically, though he's probably (if perhaps only partially) done so for her, he's become exactly the kind of man who has left alicent feeling trapped and perpetually terrified. olivia cooke somewhere noted that alicent lives in trepidation surrounded by 'psychopath men', and part of this fear seems to be what these men will do in her name and under the guise of advancing her interests. e.g., she knows larys' murder of lyonel did double duty. Tis only a look of pride, Ser Criston. Larys is the new lord of Harrenhal. to have become somewhat afraid of aemond — apprehensive, at least, of his adult nature — will likely only grow harder on her and harder to ignore. and the same will likely come of aemond's unintentional killing of lucerys, and would come had aemond returned instead with his severed eye: horror at the act; guilt and terror and frustration at the knowledge — however deeply buried — that aemond would have done it not for her, or for their family, but for himself; and that once again, she has been made the unwilling catalyst for the very violence she strives so painfully to prevent.
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