#character analysis(?)

[memphisfoxhound-blog]

Ragatha, love, you need a cup of tea, a rage room, a hug, and a warm blanket.

Hey soooo... Anyone else thinking that Ragatha's toxic positivity comes from her not wanting to be like her mom?

Like, the only perspective she has of a person being mean is them being controling and abusive so she tries hard to not fall into that category even if she neglects her true feelings and opinions.

[crimsondinnerparty]

BEDLIA SAW IT ALL. SHE ALWAYS DID.

“Is Hannibal… in love with me?” “Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you and find nourishment in the very sight of you? Yes. But do you ache for him?”

Let’s be very clear: Bedelia Du Maurier is the only character who walks into Season 3 knowing exactly what story she’s in.

Everyone else — Will, Jack, Alana is still playing chess. Bedelia is reading the damn script.

She knows Hannibal is dangerous and not just intellectually. She knows he devours not just bodies but identities. And she knows he’s not just obsessed with Will he’s metaphysically bound to him.

She doesn't ask “Does Hannibal love Will?” to be provocative.

She asks because she’s already calculated the cost of being the woman standing between a god and his chosen disciple.

She warns Will. She warns Hannibal. She tries, for a time, to curate her own survival. But what makes her tragic is that she knows she’s not a participant in their story. She’s a footnote. An observer. A ghost inside the theatre.

She’s poised, brilliant, manipulative yes. But she’s also in survival mode, almost always.

Her actions are strategic not seductive. Her elegance is armor, not allure.

She’s not trying to win Hannibal. She’s trying to outrun him.

But she still ends up seated at that long table. Alone. Dressed like the final girl in an opera. Awaiting her own consumption

Not screaming. Not crying. Waiting.

Because Bedelia always knew this was the ending.

She just hoped she’d find a loophole.

SHE'S THE ONLY CHARACTER WHO SEES LOVE AS VIOLENCE

Let’s revisit this exchange:

Will: Is Hannibal... in love with me? Bedelia: “Yes. But do you ache for him?”

This isn’t just Bedelia being sly.

This is Bedelia translating Hannibal's hunger into a divine, destructive force.

She names it. She gives it language.

Not lust. Not obsession.

Ache. Sacrament. Ritual. Death.

She knows Hannibal doesn’t want to possess Will. He wants to transform him. Through suffering.

And Will — Bedelia knows — wants it too.

[hughjidiot]

No but for real, the lore drop for Ragatha in episode five explains so much about how and why she acts the way she does. Long ramble incoming.

The fact that Ragatha's mother was, at the very least, verbally and emotionally abusive, puts all of Ragatha's behavior in the Circus into perspective.

From the very first episode we see that Ragatha is a positive, upbeat person. When Pomni arrives, Ragatha immediately takes her under her wing to try and ease the transition into this new world. This continues into the next episodes: she tries to hype Pomni up for their adventures in the Candy Kingdom and Mildenhall Manor, and shows concern both times when she goes missing. This even extends to the other members of the Circus: she's on friendly terms with Kinger and Zooble, and stands up for Gangle against Jax's bullying. It's clear that Ragatha is making an effort to be completely unlike her mother: kind, caring, positive and supportive.

However, this insistence on being positive all the time comes with it's own issues. It's not that Ragatha isn't a kind and caring person, because she absolutely is. The problem is how that's all she's allowed herself to be seen as. As Gangle and Jax observed in episodes four and five respectively, Ragatha's constant positivity even in the face of their nightmarish circumstances makes her cheerfulness come of as performative and disingenuous, even if that isn't her intention. It makes it hard for others to gauge just how genuine Ragatha's positivity truly is.

Then there's her need for validation. We see this as early as episode two: when talking to Kinger when Pomni is still missing, Ragatha talks about how rough Pomni's first day was, then admits "I don't think she really likes me that much." Then in episode four, while under the effects of the stupid sauce, she admits that she doesn't want Jax to hate her, even after openly saying that she hates him. We can infer that Ragatha didn't get much love, if any, from her mother, and now she seeks that approval from others and thinks that just being unlike her mother is the way to do it.

The issue there is that she's approaching friendship as if it were something transactional: be nice to people, they'll be nice back, and everyone can be friends. Whereas genuine friendship is formed by opening up and forming a bond with others through commonalities and shared interests. Take Gangle and Pomni: they both like Ragatha well enough, but neither of them are really friends with her. Meanwhile, Gangle and Zooble are friends thanks to their shared interests in the arts and mutual dislike of Jax. And episode five has Pomni start to form a friendship with Jax when he starts showing a less abrasive side during the slower-paced adventures.

Speaking of episode five, there's Ragatha's reaction to Pomni and Jax's budding friendship. Her expression during the bar scene is one of shock and disbelief that Jax of all people - abrasive, loudmouth, bullying Jax - is able to start earning Pomni's friendship before she can, even after showing Pomni nothing but kindness and support. It flies in the face of everything she's trying to accomplish by being everything that her mother wasn't. The end of episode five shows the result of Ragatha's constant forced positivity: Jax and Pomni go off together, as do Gangle, Zooble and Kinger, leaving Ragatha alone without anyone to truly call a friend.

Still, her situation isn't completely hopeless. As stated, the others do like Ragatha well enough - even Jax doesn't completely hate her. Pomni even tried to reach out during episode five's softball game by telling Ragatha that it's okay to let her negative emotions out, showing that Pomni does care about her. The potential is there for Ragatha to grow out of her mindset of perpetual positivity, be more honest with her emotions and form a genuine friendship with Pomni and the other players.

Or maybe Gooseworx will punch us in the gut and have Ragatha snap and abstract from the despair of being alone and the realization that all of her positivity has amounted to nothing. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

[foreverfallingstars]

I get a little ill when I think about Theo, who was so dead set on keeping himself alive, sacrificing himself for Liam.

He was so willing to throw himself aside to try and save Liam knowing damn well he might not actually come back. He could have thrown Liam to the Ghost Hunters like he claimed he would to get a head start and potentially save himself, but he didn't. S5 Theo "my survival is all that matters" Raeken turned into someone who was ready to risk EVERYTHING for the chance that Liam would live.

Pretty much every time Liam is in danger during S6, Theo shows up and is ready to save his ass no matter the risk it poses to himself. THAT IS SO INSANE TO ME

🏷️ @glimmeringasteria

[inkyrainstorms]

Thinking about this scene again

mainly, Jaspers word choice here sticks out to me, because out of everyone he could’ve chosen, he chose Rachel and Lanyon as examples of people that he’s been “cowering behind” in a city as dangerous as this one. Rachel makes sense, we’ve seen examples of Rachel showing him around London and helping him adjust, but…

As far as I can remember, Lanyon and Jasper haven’t had a meaningful interaction in the comic thus far. Certainly not enough to warrant his inclusion here.

But you know who has been formative in Jaspers introduction into London, and who would definitely make the list Jasper was laying out here? Someone Jasper has looked up to since day one, despite his many flaws?

Henry Jekyll.

I think Jasper was going to include Jekyll in this conversation, but skirted around him and said Lanyon instead because Rachel’s crisis was in large part, not intentionally but definitely still, Jekyll and Hyde’s fault

conclusion: Jasper is a sweetheart who knows when and how to broach delicate topics send tweet

[jonathanspenguinboxers]

PLS TALK ABOUT CLARY AND VALENTINE’S PARALLELS AND PERPENDICULARS I BEG YOU

Sorry for answering so late, but I didn't want to half-ass this because I genuinely love their dynamic. They are perfect foils. That being said, this is really long and I still could keep going 😓Also, I only did the parallels because it just got way too long to do both, so I'll do another post on perpendiculars and tag you! Also! This is NOT Clary Slander. I adore Clary, but she has flaws and I love them. I also recognize that she grows a lot, so a lot of their parallels are going to be towards the beginning of TMI, before she undergoes more growth. Lets begin!

A need for control. At the root, Valentine is very much ruled by his need for control and his fear of powerlessness. That is why he is so obsessed with the 'stronger race' and eradicating downworlders (who are stronger and faster, that he's explicitly questioned why they, nephilim, would be made to be weaker), it is based in his need to impose order in a world that he sees as dangerous and chaotic. Clary's instinct to control appears when her friends are in danger, like him, she cannot feel helpless and that is why she will do anything, create new runes, run into a vampire nest, jump through a portal by herself, defy authority, act completely recklessly- because that recklessness is her sense of control when it is out of her reach. She refuses to wait, refuses to listen to reason, because she will do what she believes she has to, she takes control and will not let anyone derail her from her path, even if it means putting herself or others in danger. Neither abide by what they perceive as injustice, and radically defy it as a way of controlling something they cannot change.

Isolation. Valentine, while surrounded always by followers, is eternally and profoundly alone. He trusts no one, not even his wife or parabatai and it emotionally isolates him from everyone. A quote that embodies him so much for me is when he talks to Jace and says "You're right, it is [your fault for hurting everyone around you]...The harm is not deliberate of course. But you are like me. We poison and destroy everything we love. There is a reason for that...We are meant for a higher purpose, you and I. The distractions of the world are just that, distractions. If we allow ourselves to be turned aside from our course by them, we are duly punished." The fact that he believes he cannot, by divine fate, love or trust anyone but himself, essentially correlating it to punishment and death. He lives only in self imposed isolation. Clary has always had loneliness in her connections. Simon and Jace both at some point remark that they "wish they could follow [her] inside of [her] head." That she is absent, even with her closest people. She has never fit inside the mundane world and even in the shadowhunter one she is an anomaly and Valentine's daughter. Also the whole thing about loving her brother and accepting of it in that she didn't expect for love to be easy for her. That she would be punished for it and this was just that, a punishment for love because she has always operated independently. She often acts with the underlying idea that she is a burden, such as running off on her own, or taking on danger by herself. They both create distance between the people around them because of their beliefs that they must shoulder their burdens alone.

Their identities are shaped by what they hate, not what they want to be. Valentine is shaped by his direct opposition and hatred to what he views as corruption, weakness from the clave, and of downworlders. His sense of self is firmly rooted in being against downworlders and the clave. He thinks this makes him right, rather than figuring out what right is and abiding by that, he abides only be not being. That is why he is such a hypocrite. Clary defines herself very much the same, that she is against Valentine and therefore a good guy, without looking to see what she even thinks is good, believing that being against bad automatically puts her there. Their identities are shaped by rebellion, by dissent to what they fervently hate, and as so they are very reactive and view the world in black and white terms. (Luke having to call out Clary when she had just been putting down downworlders and Luke for being in the circle, thinking her understanding of Valentine's bigotry automatically makes her superior and morally right, despite just spewing the same bigotry.)

Righteous and convicted. Clary sees things in very black and white terms, proclaiming people as 'evil' or 'good' the same way Valentine does. Clary sees him/the circle as absolutely evil, with no allowable reason or humanization. She shuts down Jocelyn, she questions and reprimands Luke, demeaning everything else they have done for the sake of moral highground and that unwavering conviction against evil. She deals in absolutes. Obviously, Valentine is exemplary in absolutes, wanting the eradication of all downworlders as well as anyone and everyone who defies him. He is convicted in his cause. To the point that he stood in front of an angel. They are righteous in the very definition of it, and have a limited black and white mindset that makes them focused and single-minded. Both of them believe they know what is best, whats most moral, that they are exemplary of these things, whilst being hypocritical of their own convictions. They are blinded by their vision to fix everything outside of them, seeing problems and projecting onto others while never looking within. That is, that Clary had people to turn it back on her, whilst Valentine was encouraged and enabled.

Next, rebellion. This is not surprising, and their most blatant similarity. Valentine rebelled during the academy, he skipped class, he had an inclination anywhere he went to defy authority, and obviously, the Clave. Clary is the same way, defying every and anything she deems unjust. She turned on Jocelyn after she found out she had lied, she spat on Valentine's shoes and bites back at every turn despite him typically having an upper hand, she defies adults regularly and consistently, such as the time she defied everyone by creating a portal by herself against better reason and Luke had to follow her and drag her out of Lake lyn. They do not yield. It took the wrath of an angel to take down Valentine, and I can't imagine what could take Clary. They are both predisposed to dissent, to standing up against who they perceive as the unjust and do not back down.

Charisma. Valentine was extremely charismatic and persuasive, I mean, he had the entire circle wrapped around his fingers. Clary, while not as directly and intentionally, is extremely magnetic and people are inclined to follow and to listen. My biggest example being during the alliance scene between shadowhunters and downwolrders. She commanded an entire room, brought together two very opposing sides alone. It's a beautiful mirror, that Valentine had been in the accords hall commanding all of the shadowhunters, and later on so was Clary. They are forces of nature. They both have presence and when they are in a room they are listened to. The TMI gang would go anywhere with Clary, even edom, because they have full faith and loyalty to her.

Perpendiculars coming soon! Thanks for getting all the way to the end of this if you did, let me know what you think, if you agree, or if you have things to add on!

[cereal0606]

never thought of it this way but it makes so much sense now 😔😔😔

I restudied the TF2 characters to remind myself of their personalities and mannerisms, and now that I'm looking at Demoman again, he's strangely a tragic character:

He lost both his parents due to an explosive HE set off; afterwards, he loses his eye because of a cursed sword, then becomes a drunk when his real parents take him in after pretty much abandoning him. And it's obvious in his voicelines that he's really depressed.

Then, every Halloween whenever Medic puts his eye back in, he loses it AGAIN. And Medic, after eight years of putting his eye back, literally REMOVES a part of his brain that helps him remember things, and now he's going to have to live his life just forgetting things ("thank you kindly, stranger!" Reference to a comic panel because, LIKE, WHAT?)

In comic 7, he just looks sad when he sees the better "demoman" (it's not stated but it is heavily implied the man's something of a demoman) in both the statue and the portrait in the hallway. Or impressed, either way, he's envious of that "demoman."

He pretty much doesn't live up to his family tradition either of losing both his eyes after 30. Meaning that he was never a good Demoman. He doesn't even WANT to be a good Demoman, especially since he keeps asking Medic to put his other eye back in.

AND HE ISN'T EVEN ANGRY ABOUT EVERYTHING I JUST EXPLAINED. He has every right to be a villain, or at least an antagonist. But instead he took the sword, doesn't hold it against Medic for erasing his memory, he takes care of his blind mom even after abandoning him, and he just drinks his problems away instead of lashing out.

I know the writers didn't intend this, but he's just so tragic.

[thinkblotted]

Building a Better Star (aka, the Star Essay)

I like Star. I’m getting that shit out of the way right here at the beginning, just in case. I like Star, I like what she is, I think she deserves better writing. 

Also - these are my takes. These takes may not be your takes. We can have different takes.

Okay? Okay. Let’s go. 

For the purposes of this analysis and suggestion, I’m only going to be going off of movie canon Star, rather than book canon Star, because while they’re basically the same, there are a few background elements in the book that expand  on Star’s internal thoughts and relationships with the boys that you could only get from exposition in the book, and that’s not as available a source as the movie, so. 

Since I’m either posting this on tumblr for the four people who will read it, or filming myself talking about this like a normal person with normal hobbies, I won’t explain who canonically she is because that’s unnecessary for this audience of me and a discord server, but rather who she is as a character as presented.

The thing about The Lost Boys is that it exists as a double edged sword of characterization for all its characters. They’re all incredibly simple, and in that white space that’s left behind where deeper characterization would be put in other movies, here there’s just a void, leaving the audience to fill in the gaps however they see fit with whatever they can glean from the surrounding world. 

The vampires are the prime example of this - of all the characters, they get the least amount of dialogue and have the most void to fill in who they are as characters. Star is the runner up, having more character, but the same amount of void in her backstory. 

So who is Star? 

Star is The Girl of the group, a trope wherein you have a group of characters who make up the core of your main cast and usually they’re all male, with one or occasionally two exceptions being girls - if it’s two, one will be the ‘nerdy’ or otherwise ‘not strictly desirable by main male cast’ role, and the other will be The Girl, who is almost always the love interest of the main male, who, even though she’s more of a main character then the secondary girl, typically does less than them. As presented, Star fits this trope easily, as well as filling out the subtropes that it consists of. 

She’s soft-spoken, pretty, demure, stays out of most of the fights in the story, offers the protagonist advice but never tells him directly how to face the conflict of the story, offers support but never directly physically supports the protagonist. She’s an inciting incident all to herself, but never actually drives the plot forward except to be a shining prize on the mountaintop of the narrative that the protagonist must climb in order to claim. 

After being in the Lost Boys fandom for about two and a half-ish years now, there are some take-aways specific to Star that the fandom tends to play on the most. 

And I want to add in here, I do not have a problem with these traits being assigned to her. Star, like the rest of the cast, is a very malleable character. The void around her is just as vast as the other vampires, and this is fandom - we play with blorbos from our media like dolls. This entire thing is purely based on what I personally would like to see Star become, and since I’m a freak, I don’t just write fanfic, I also do this. Apparently. So take everything I’m saying with a giant grain of salt.

The traits that I most see attributed to Star are:

-She’s a shrinking violet, either unwilling or unable to interact directly with the conflict of the story

-She’s being held against her will to the point that leaving in any capacity is not only not an option, but would lead to physical harm/possibly death if she tried (ie, she’s an abused captive) 

-She cannot be held responsible for any bad decisions she’s made in the past or makes in the current story, or any bad turns the plot takes 

The first assertion is held up pretty well by the canon of the movie, and most of the fandom also agrees that it would have been nice if the movie actually did make Star a little less soft. There have been several outcries for Star to ‘vamp out’ like the Boys did, to at the very least give her a scary vampire face! Her tiny confrontation with Max at the end of the movie would have been a perfect space for that, but unfortunately, the movie has 80s-itis and being the female love interest and a victim in the plot, Star isn’t allowed to be aggressive in such a blatant manner. 

Star also hangs back whenever the Boys have presence on the screen. She’s never in the forefront, sharing the space, she’s in the background, watching them, only observing. The one time she directly contradicts them, ‘Leave him alone’ she’s told straight up to ‘chill out, girl’, and she doesn’t continue the conflict. When she does decide to try and be more forward with Michael, directly affecting things, she waits until there is no other persons of consequence around in order to do so. 

The second assertion of her being held against her will is a little trickier to pin down as a trait, but evidence of this is implied with how she contributes to the narrative - mainly, in asking Michael directly to save Laddie and her from the Boys, or at the very least, the situation she’s in. Though, it should be noted, that Star never makes a direct statement of what that situation is. She hedges that it’s being being driven to kill to sate the vampiric nature, but when taking scenes like David simply saying her name to get her to come to him, being told indirectly to back off when the Boys are hazing Michael, and backing away in a fearful manner when Michael is drinking the blood wine into consideration, there’s the darker notion that she’s being abused in other ways. 

Because the movie is meant to be a lighter flick, full of scary-yet-alluring vampire punk boys and over the top monster-hunting gore, billing it as a ‘horror-comedy’ excludes any deeper exploration or more explicit on-screen showing of verbal, emotional, or physical harm that Star may be experiencing. Doing so would take away from the fantastical and darkly whimsical nature of the story, grounding it too much, and making the Boys, though they be villains, into villains we wouldn’t love to hate.

Thus, the darker implications of what Star might be facing behind the scenes, when Michael isn’t around and before he came along, is left to the audience’s interpretation, as well as any ability Star has to struggle against them. The fandom frequently interprets as none, thanks to the plot of the movie being what it is. 

The third major assertion that the fandom tends to adopt is that Star is largely if not completely irresponsible for the missteps of other characters and for her own predicament. 

This given trait is the most difficult to back up with evidence directly from the canon as it relies heavily on filling in the blank spaces of Star and the other character’s backstories. Star is not responsible for Michael spotting her in the crowd at the concert or deciding to follow after her. Star technically didn’t tell Michael to accept David’s goading to race. Star told Michael she both didn’t know how to help him, and couldn’t explain it. Star is not responsible for Michael’s induction into the Boy’s gang because, well, she told him what he was drinking was blood. Star never directly acts to drive the plot forward until the beginning of the third act when she does admit to Michael that she needs his help, thus, cannot be held responsible even in part to Michael’s involvement. 

Lack or acceptance of Star’s responsibility for her own inability to leave the Boys is even harder to pin down, as we have no movie canon for what her life was like before meeting the Boys. The implication from the world around them is that Star is a runaway kid like many of the people seen in the opening sweep of Santa Carla, likely from a crappy home and was taken in by the Boys but soon got in over her head, but this is never directly confirmed. 

The idea that Star made a bad choice, and was not just manipulated and coerced after the ‘honeymoon’ period with the Boys is somewhat controversial as it paints Star in a less favorable light. She isn’t an innocent victim, but rather someone who made a bad call and refuses to acknowledge her own agency in that decision, instead placing any and all blame on the Boys. 

‘But what if she’s tried that already?’ Unfortunately, that lies entirely in the realm of off-screen possibilities that are not support by any canon. Star in the movie is never shown or implied to have tried escaping before, and in the book she merely has internal monologues about wanting to leave, not that she’s ever attempted it. 

Giving Star any one of these traits on their own isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Star is very much helpless in this situation - she’s in a den of immortal man-eating monsters while only being barely half of one herself, and refusing to take the option that would grant her more physical power to assert control in the situation, because the act required would be a shattering of her moral compass. Regardless of her involvement in how she got here, she deserves to be able to leave and make better choices. 

But giving Star all of these traits at once with nothing else to her flattens her completely. It does her, in my opinion, an incredible amount of injustice to absolve her of any kind of responsibility in her own problems and then rob her of any bravery to take a risk and change it herself.

And that’s not a good character. 

In order to build a better Star, we need to first accept a truth that might be a slightly hard pill to swallow: 

A good Star is not necessarily a protagonist. 

At least, not in the same way that Michael or Sam can be. Michael and Sam are protagonists in that they’re the heroes of the story. They face the main conflict head on and drive the plot forward with their actions, and are who we’re rooting for to win. We see them and their actions as ‘good’. They are absolved by the framing of blame in what is done to them. (Michael in getting in over his head with the Boys by ignoring the reservations and loose warnings of others, and Sam of murder with the fact that the Boys are man-eating monsters bent on getting back at them when one of their own is killed.)

If you make Star a protagonist in the same way, with her needing to be framed as ‘good’ in the story, but only keeping the character traits previously listed, then she’s a boring character. She becomes only nebulously ‘good’ just by virtue of not technically having done anything that could be considered ‘bad.’ Being counted as a heroine only by default. 

And that sucks. That puts her simultaneously on a pedestal where she can do no wrong, but is an empty shell that’s there to smile or cry and do nothing else. 

Often, when talking about female protagonists, antagonists, anti-heros and characters with grey morality or amorality, the added layer of them being women forces ten times the scrutiny on not just how they’re built as a character, but on their creators and why they’re choosing to build the character in the way they are. Any mistakes plot-pushing decisions made by the character aren’t as likely to be accepted as just the character acting in the story, but get traced back to the author. The audience constantly asks the question, ‘if it was a male character, would there be consequences for this act, or are you treating this character special because they’re a woman?’ 

In this case, it’s ‘Michael also fucks up, and yet is treated as a victim, deserving of sympathy and being saved by his brother rather than having to fight all on his own. Their situations are the same. Why not Star? The only difference between them is gender.’ 

This essay is not about whether or not Star is deserving of being saved, nor is it saying that she deserves being trapped in the situation that she’s in. But much like how Star reminds Michael that she did indeed tell him that it was blood in the bottle and he scoffed at her, Star deserves not to be a lifeless doll being acted upon, and a good female character deserves to not be a pretty, perfect Barbie doll that does no wrong and always looks pretty. 

So with the knowledge that a better Star cannot be purely a protagonist, how do we lower her from the boring pedestal? 

My suggestion: by inverting her three main traits

The first: If she’s billed as meek and demure and soft, then make her more aggressive and vulgar 

The second: If she seems to be kept at silent gunpoint, then give her more freedom to act

The third: Make her at least partly responsible for her own situation, regardless of whether or not she thinks she is 

The first revised trait is the most important in my opinion to building a better Star, as it will help direct and reinforce the second two. 

A large part of Star’s lack of presence in the movie is quite literally, a lack of physical presence. Star seems to hate even being near the vampires, and depending on what kind of story you wish to show her in, it could make sense. But chances are, if she’s given the shrinking violet trait, she’s been given the other two as well, and that makes a bad Star. She must be allowed to speak, and more than that - she must be allowed to show emotion. 

Let Star be angry. Let her be hurt in a way that’s not beautiful and languorous, a wilting agony of suffering in silence. And I’ll say it: Let Star say the Fuck word. As silly and simple as it may seem, such a small detail can transform a character. Star deserves to be as rough-edged and imperfect in her words and attitude as any of the rest of the Boys, possibly more if she’s in a situation that she hates! If she had the bravery to run away from home, then she should be afforded the bravery to be more than a pretty, silent, pure woman who doesn’t know what a cigarette is. 

The second revised trait is going to be the most fluid in interpretation because it relies the most on the author or artist or fan’s personal interpretation of what the relationship between Star and the Boys is really like. 

In the movie, Star seems to move with the Boys. She’s usually near them enough that they can keep an eye on her, as we see with David watching Star talking to Michael before the beach race. The only times we see Star distance herself physically is right after the bonfire, where she comes to the Emerson cabin to convince Michael to save her, or when she and Michael have sex. The first time, she seems desperate, like she may not have much time, and the second, she’s been left there on her own while the Boys go out and cavort, likely with the implication that she should stay where they can find her when they get back. 

Again, this is the trait that can be toyed with the most, but a good way to combat the feeling that she’s being held against her will is to give the notion that there are parts of being around the vampires that she likes. There are tiny hints of this in the movie, and the book expands on this. In the movie, there’s a moment during the race where Star seems to be enjoying herself while riding with David - at the very least, she’s enjoying the speed and thrill, if not the person she’s with. In the book, Star and Paul have the best relationship of any of the boys, with Paul trying to cheer her up and promising a ‘happily ever after’. To keep it from feeling like a full captive situation, give Star a reason to feel a bit conflicted over the pack. She’s there in the first place, after all. 

The third revised trait is going to be the most controversial, as it’s a hard thing to admit when people in real life do it. 

Admitting that sometimes, the problems we find ourselves dealing with, are our own fault. We make a bad call, we make a poorly informed decision or decide in the heat of the moment. Sometimes, we are lied to, but the lie is flimsy and we chose to swallow it because it’s what we wanted to hear at the time. I like to ask authors writing villains this - what’s worse and more compelling; a villain who lies, or a villain who tells the protagonist a truth they don’t want to hear? 

And, as backwards as it sounds, making Star partially responsible for her situation is giving her more agency in her story. It gives her a reasonable character flaw that she has to confront and defeat. 

Here is where I’m going to throw in an interesting observation about a specific scene that I think helps lend itself to this particular revised trait: the scene where she asks Michael for help directly. In canon, the scene goes about like this - Star comes to the cabin, Michael tells her that he knows about the vampires, and when he expresses that he thinks it’s basically done for him, Star tells him that it’s not, he’s not fully gone, and that she needs his help to save all three of them. Now, there’s something really, really interesting to me about this scene: Star is NOT a reliable narrator during it. At all. 

To say that she’s lying outright about everything would be untrue, but when you examine it, you realize that she’s being untruthful all the same. When Michael gets upset, accusing her of not caring about him because in his eyes she let this happen, she says that she DOES care about him, using physical touch to reinforce this. When she’s soundly rejected, by Michel slapping her hand away and demanding to know why she REALLY came, she very reluctantly tells him that she was hoping he’d help them. It’s her last answer, the last thing she wanted to say. Obviously hoping that the emotions would be enough to persuade him, rather than just saying that she needed help outright, which would be easier to say no to. 

Secondly, the WHY. Star states that Michael was ‘supposed to be her first, because it’s what David wanted’. When watching the scene, the delivery, the body language, and given the full context of the plot and how we’ve seen Star behave? We can only come to the conclusion that Star. Doesn’t. Know. That. 

Max’s ultimate goal is to get Lucy, and to get Lucy, he needs Michael and Sam to be on board, or at least BE vampires. Killing one of her children would hardly serve that goal. Given the ending fight, Max doesn’t give a dead rat’s ass about Star. And Star? She doesn’t even know Max exists. David telling Star to kill Michael to turn her into a vampire is not only pointless, but going expressly against Max’s wishes. We don’t know how much of Max’s plan David and the Boys know about, or given their personalities and implied relationship with him, even care about, but defying him in this instance doesn’t seem like the smartest thing to do. 

Not to mention - Star does like Michael. She hugs him at the end, she does give him a warning about the blood, albeit a weak one. She does attempt to fight Max in the end, even if she fails. As for her thoughts on David, those are more complicated. Whether the relationship is real, coerced, that she’s simply a pawn being used to tug Michael around or whether she and David did like each other at one time, is unknown, but it is clear that Star knows that David is interested in Michael, and doesn’t like it. So it would then be logical to assume, given this, that Star would assume, based on what she knows and has been able to observe, that she’d pain David in a worse light. Insinuating that it’s HIM who’s pulling the string, assuming what he wants and what his intentions are, even if she DOESN’T. KNOW. 

All this to conclude: Star is an unreliable narrator taking actions based on her own flawed assumptions. Which means she’s going to make mistakes, and miscalculate her position. She’s going to cast herself in a certain light, and like anyone, maybe not want to admit when that light is suddenly not a reflection of her best. 

So, how do I conclude this. 

Star is an interesting character, and I do enjoy her. If you managed to sit through this to get to here, and if there’s anything to take away from this, it’s that I enjoy Star and I want her to be a better…her. She deserves to cuss and spit, she deserves to be angry and sad at her predicament, she deserves to be loved as a whole person and not some untouchable angel. Let her fight. Let her bite. Let her bleed for her freedom and personhood.

Most importantly, if you allow the Boys room to be more than they are presented as on screen, then you can afford to give that to Star. 

Thank you for reading, if you did. 

@misslavenderlady (I almost forgot!)

[thealpacaavenger]

Jax is an Asshole: That’s Why I Love Him.

With all the new information about Jax from episode 5, I feel the need to remind myself (and possibly others) why I love Jax.

I actually originally felt pretty meh about Jax. I liked him, sure, but I wasn’t anywhere near as enthusiastic as I am now. However, once episode two came out, I witnessed Jax’s delightfully reprehensible behavior in full force. That was what truly made me love the character.

As time passed, my excitement for seeing him grew more and more with each episode. When it came to episode 4, I saw the potential for true character complexities. And I was ecstatic! Huzzah! My favorite asshole twink gets some tragedy!

However, the tragic result of this was people forgetting why Jax was amazing in the first place! He’s delightfully complex and horrifically horrible! Don’t forget who he is. He’s a jerk, he’s a bully, and he’s perfect.

Don’t get me wrong though! My love for Jax has extended beyond his assholeish-ness. After episode 5, I am *beyond* excited to see him grow as a person and get closer to Pomni (I hope things don’t go horribly in that part).

And guess what? Ragatha was *not* in the wrong for yelling at him. What she said about his friend was not purposeful (don’t get me wrong, it still sounded pretty darn horrible. Especially if his terrible behavior and thus lack of friends is in part a result of ribbit’s abstraction). She still has flaws of course. Her people pleasing, her toxic positivity, her fakeness, and more. But that does not mean she is a bad person for calling out Jax.

I love a jerk, I love Jax, and I love a tragic twink. Frankly, I would hate him in real life. But here we are.

[writing-for-life]

The Weight of Goodbye

Dream’s SoM-meetings with Hob Gadling, Lyta & Daniel Hall and his subjects

Sorry not sorry for using this one again, because I’m Jon J Muth’s no. 1 fan, plus it helps me to get over Kelley Jones’ art which I find… challenging 🤣

I’ve been thinking about The Sandman #22 for our reread, and while there are many gut-wrenching issues, this is one of the most quietly devastating ones. It’s a bit like Dream writing his will while pretending he’s just going on a business trip (and of course we get something similar again later on in The Kindly Ones 🥺)

The Speech to His Subjects

Dream addresses the denizens of The Dreaming before departing for Hell. He frames it a bit as instructions for his absence (and sounds super awkward when admitting he made mistakes—it’s honestly like car crash TV), but the emotional undertones suggest something far more permanent:

He tells them about how to maintain the realm if certain situations arise (like him not coming back, either because he dies or because he gets captured) and presents it like contingency planning (for lack of better term). But the truth of the matter is that he’s putting his affairs in order. The formality of it, the careful way he addresses potential concerns: This isn’t just someone covering all bases, this is a ruler preparing his kingdom for the real possibility that he won’t return. And it’s the first time we get told, in no uncertain terms, that if he gets destroyed (his choice of words, not mine), another aspect of Dream will take over.

[Also: Is it just me who thinks that Kelley Jones draws him at his most beautiful when he’s vulnerable? Because some of his other artistic choices are… well, definitely choices 🙈🤣]

What truly gets me is the narrative use of Matthew. He’s concerned, but he doesn’t grasp the hint of finality in Dream’s tone. And at this stage, the reader may not either (we need to remember that we didn’t have the type of hindsight we have now back when the comics first came out; we didn’t know how the whole run would end). So Matthew is, once again, a stand-in for us, the reader (that always makes me think of The Wake, and even after decades, I’m still not over Matthew's speech and his grief). It doesn't help that we’re starting to see their growing bond, and the cracks in Dream’s armour he hid only a minute ago when everyone else was still there:

“I wanted to stick around. Do you mind?” “No.” 😩

The Meeting with Lyta and Daniel

Dream’s visit to Lyta Hall and baby Daniel often gets brushed to the side a bit, and without the knowledge of what’s going to happen, I get it.

But of course we do know what has already happened in The Doll’s House. Even there, it was painfully obvious that Dream, at least on some level, had plans for Daniel. So yeah, this is not a social call; he’s checking in on his replacement (for lack of better term). They have a bond because Daniel was conceived (show)/gestated (comics) in the Dreaming. It’s not Morpheus who gives Daniel his name—it’s most likely Daniel who told him his name.

Lyta’s discomfort throughout the scene isn’t just about supernatural entities dropping by unannounced, or about her deep-seated hatred of Dream because she considers him responsible for Hector’s death. She knows, on an intuitive level, that he is marking Daniel in some way because he already told her back in The Doll’s House that he’ll one day come for the child. At the same time, he’s acknowledging here that this might be the last time he sees the child for a very long time, and that he means Lyta no harm (“today” 🙄). And maybe that’s the only explanation for this:

Because I don’t know about you: If a strange guy whom I deem responsible for my husband’s death tells me the “true” name of my yet unnamed child, I'd certainly not consider that name and smile about it happily…

Hob Gadling and the Toast

Dream appears to Hob in a dream, and that’s a deeply significant choice. He could have met him in the waking world just like Lyta, but instead, he chooses to visit Hob in his own domain, where he has absolute power. But he doesn’t really use that power here, other than for getting in contact in the first place. He rather reveals something that could almost be considered vulnerability:

That’s the same Dream who stormed off in a huff in 1889 because Hob dared to suggest they were friends. The same Dream who tentatively acknowledged that friendship in 1989. The same Dream who now decides to say goodbye to the one person he actually considers a friend. For someone whose entire existence is built on pride and hierarchy, this shows character growth. But it also shows how desperately alone he really is, and that he doesn't want to be a burden to anyone (and that's compounded to the umpteenth degree when they meet the next time 😔).

But there’s subtext here that’s even more heartbreaking: Dream is settling his accounts. He’s making sure that if he doesn’t return from Hell, Hob won’t spend the next century wondering where Dream is, or if their friendship was real. By choosing to appear in Hob’s dreams, he’s giving him something lasting: a memory. And many of us know that this will be one of the cornerstones of Sunday Mourning.

The tragedy is that Hob doesn’t even truly realise this is a goodbye, and he hopes he’ll be back “eventually”. He's happy to have seen his friend, even if it was "just a silly dream"...

Patterns...

When you read these three sequences together, you can't help but see that Dream is systematically saying goodbye to the, at least at this point, three most important cornerstones of his existence: his successor (Daniel), his one true friendship (Hob), and his realm.

This isn’t the behaviour of someone who expects to return unchanged from his mission. This is someone who understands that going to Hell to demand the release of an ex-lover he condemned 10,000 years ago is likely to have consequences he may not survive.

Which brings us to the most important question of this issue:

Does Dream already know he will die?

I don’t think he knows, at this point, specifically how or when. But I think he does understand that his existence is reaching some kind of conclusion. The family intervention, the guilt over what he has done to Nada which makes him return to Hell: They’re really only the culmination of ten billion years of accumulated mistakes and regrets, and it’s only going to get worse from here.

The paradox is that Dream is finally ready to change, but change is antithetical to how he perceives himself. So perhaps, on some level, he understands that real change might require becoming someone else entirely. And that is something I think he does know at this point.

What makes issue #22 so powerful is how it recontextualises everything that comes after. When he eventually faces his final choice in The Kindly Ones, we can look back and see that he was already preparing himself here (and if you know me, you will also know that I staunchly insist he already made an, albeit subconscious, choice in #8). Maybe it’s a masterclass in dramatic irony: Dream thinks he’s being practical with making his contingency plans. But we can see him subconsciously preparing for an ending he hasn’t yet acknowledged to himself. But he also has...

Kelley Jones’ Art

I just briefly want to brush (no pun intended) on how Kelley Jones’s art reinforces these themes. His Dream is somehow always in shadow, even if it’s just his face. There’s a weight to him in every panel, a sense of someone carrying an enormous burden. I am generally not a fan of Jones' art (sorry), and I find his constantly changing Dream difficult to get used to (but I guess that's the point, and I totally get it on a conceptual level). But one thing stands out to me: The way he draws Dream against various backgrounds (Lyta’s apartment, the dreamscape with Hob, the throne room) consistently makes him seem isolated, separate, already partially absent. Even when he’s surrounded by other people/beings. But maybe I'm just reading too much into it…

Anyway, to put it all in a nutshell: The real tragedy, but also the deeper meaning of The Sandman, is that Dream tries to make amends for a lifetime of mistakes, only to discover that some changes require transformation so complete that the self doesn’t survive the process. But in metaphorical terms, the death of the ego is also a beautiful and necessary thing…

[jester-k4rd]

THIS is how you analyse a character. I will keep playing devil's advocate for this guy to those who just say he was born evil. No, he was not. He was a child.

Donquixote Doflamingo’s reasons and motivation

His motivation is unexpectedly noble for a guy who has suffered brutal violence and was raised by the ruthless killers. We can look into his head for the first time when he has an emotional outburst over the situation in Marineford. When Doffy’s emotions started to outpour, he verbally attacked the World Government.

海賊が悪!!? 海軍が正義!!? そんなものはいくらでも塗り替えられてきた…!!! // Pirates are evil?! The Marines are justice?! Such things have been changed as many times as you want!!!

“平和"を知ねェ子供共と"戦争"を知ねェ子供共との価値観が違う!!! 頂点に立つ者が善悪を塗り替える!!! 今この場所こそ中立だ!!! 正義は勝つって!?  そりゃそうだろ! 勝者だけが正義だ!!!! // Brats who don’t know peace and brats who don’t know war have different values!!! Those at the top decide what is good and what is evil!!! This place is neutral ground right now!!! Justice will prevail, you say?! Of course it will! Whoever prevails is just!!!!

A huge inscription "The Marines” that is shown when Doflamingo is talking about the nature of justice kinda implies.

Justice is the favorite word of the Marines, the World Government army. He directly accuses the Marines of being not very just and defending the world order that brings people suffering. In the pictures from his head, the different values he mentioned are illustrated by the attitude to food. The child soldiers are happy about the canned food they have found (if there were meat on the skeleton, they would probably have gnawed it too), and the rich girl does not want to eat vegetables. Why this particular example is given becomes clear later.

These are the elite officers of the Donquixote Family as children. As can be seen, they all were destitute. The rest of the Donquixote Family members as children are also depicted in a similar way. Doflamingo felt like saying pirates are not always evil and the Marines aren’t always this shining beacon of justice, because sometimes piracy is a lesser evil than…

妻が焼き殺された…!! どうでもいいんどろお前らにゃ // My wife was burned to death!! It’s nothing to you, right?!

お前らに納める[ 天 上 金 ]のせいで…!! 国が飢餓で滅ん��んだ……!!! お前ら腹へったことあるか!? みんな骨と皮になって死んだよ!!! // Because of the Celestial Tribute we have to pay, the country has been ravaged by famine!!! Have you ever had nothing to eat?! Everyone died leaving only a bag of bones!!!

...than death from starvation.

At the time of the Marineford Arc, it was not yet fully revealed how terrible the rule of the WG is, but, to put it bluntly, it turned the world into a giant Nazi camp.

Keep reading

[encryptidarchivist]

i do not know to what degree spotify comments are representative of the camp here and there fandom but i’ve seen a few people saying things along the lines of “elijah’s manipulating sydney into betraying jedidiah!!” about episodes 22 and 23 and i want to talk about it because it’s bothering me.

is elijah manipulative as hell? oh yeah! abso-fucking -lutely! but sydney is smart. he knows what elijah is doing. he literally says it himself listening back to the tape of their first meeting- no matter how much he means it when he tells sydney he loves him, the effect elijah has on sydney means there’s a danger here.

but. but. when elijah says that jedidiah has hurt sydney deeply and that sydney deserves better than him, is he wrong? as much as jedidiah tells sydney he loves him, he never shows it when it matters. he has been distant, he has been secretive, he has been straight up cruel to sydney, and none of his apologies have actually lasted longer than the moment he said them. it’s guilt with no direction and love with no action. he’s doing exactly what he did as a kid watching over a fruit fly.

anyway the gist of it is that this take bothers me because it undermines sydney’s autonomy in this situation. yes, he is being manipulated, but given the choice between jedidiah and lucille trying to control him through coldness and refusal of honesty and someone who seems to genuinely love him and want to be around him, can you really blame him? it’s not a good choice - it’s a self-destructive choice - but it is a choice, the first meaningful one sydney has felt like he’s been able to make in a long time. sydney is trying to find anything in his life that he can control, and he’s found it in the choice between two terrible people.

thank you for coming to my ted talk

[pesky--dust]

I would like to speak about Abigail’s age.

On the Hannibal Wikia we may see that she is nineteen years old, but this isn’t ever stated in the show, is it? Let me explain the way I see it.

We know that G.J. Hobbs was killing university students for eight months. When Will saw the field kabuki left by Hannibal, he realised that the killer has a daughter who would be leaving home soon.

Moreover, Marissa in Potage says about people at school talking which means that she and Abigail are still in high school. In Oeuf Hannibal asks Abigail, if she thought about going to the university and Abigail states that her father was killing girls from the universities she wanted to attend.

So... all of that would probably mean that she is supposed to graduate for the high school soon enough.

However, Hannibal and Will somewhat become her legal guardians. I guess it may be so because she was running away from the facility she was in, but! Given she and Marissa were still being high schoolers makes me think that Abigail could have been younger than nineteen years old?

I'm kind of basing it on my own experience which is pretty common in my country. Namely, they scare us with the finals and the choice of the university as soon as we start high school, and so we go with our teachers and classmates, but also with families to the universities that are close in order to check out whether we would like to study there. It starts on the first year of the high school.

I doubt that Abigail would be in the first year of high school but as far as I know, in the United States you typically finish high school, when you are eighteen years old. Since we know that she and Marissa were still supposed to be in the high school, I would say that Abigail didn’t turn eighteen years old yet.

My guess is that she had her birthday while she was supposed to be dead, after Savoureux and before Mizumono.

[yjhbignaturals]

ok, so this pissed me off, right

to recap: this was around reading again arc, where there was a hit out on dokja's head coming straight from olympus saying that whoever permakills him is the one he loves the most.

this was a pretty painful part of the novel for me for more than just personal reasons bc before this part of the story, arcs and arcs ago, whenever we went anywhere near dokja's traumatic past, it would always lead back to his mom.

and when we finally meet sookyung in person, dokja describes her as looking nothing like him. you get about 3 exchanged lines of dialogue before you realize that dokja's every interaction with his mother involves him misconstruing her intentions and emotions, projecting his own insecurities. and sookyung cannot clear things up because dokja keeps closing the door on her.

so, looping back to reading again, you get to the scene of sookyung reaffirming her love for him as a mother.

this scene reeks of tension.

dokja constantly denying her love for him, enjoying the pained looks on her face, refusing to forgive her for the slight of sicc'ing the media at him and sending his life careening off the deep end as the public was reminded over and over again that he was a murderer's son, of never coming back to him when she was released so he could finally say he endured it all just for her.

because he loved her.

even though he fully believes her story. even though it's mired in bitterness. his heart aches when she reaffirms her love for him.

sookyung in this scene is genuine, repentant, so desperate to save her son that she killed him to try and keep him from permanently dying. she does it to say, "I love you," her heart bleeding on the slab. "Perhaps even more than myself." because she remembers what he did for her, and she's hoping to any listening god that he's still here, her little reader, the one who loved her so much.

maybe this will save him.

maybe this will reunite them. it's a foolish hope but she's so, so desperate.

so how does the manhwa depict it?

so yeah. im pretty pissed abt it

[sovvannight]

chara

jatp characters x my favorite classic literature Carrie as Emma Woodhouse (Emma, Jane Austen)