#damsel to badass

[shy-raccoon]

The damsel in distress slowly starts getting more and more unstable from the unaddressed trauma of being frequently kidnapped. One day they completely snap and the villains start being found mysteriously murdered with increasing brutality.

[ilkkawhat]

[legyt]

I watched Damsel without knowing it had a book, and that netflix readapted it into live action 🙉 (I want the book)

Elodie was a total badass and I love her, like genuinely I loved the twist with the whole princess and the dragon plot, its amazing.

!!SPOILERS!!

I somehow predicted the dragon being her bestie at the end, which made the whole thing even more amazing, like the dragon came with her as she and her family goes home. Overall the movie was a fantastic experience, and as much as this seem like review(which it kinda rly is), I just genuinely wanted to talk abt it.

[kiraman]

vi is so fucking fascinating to me, I am studying her like a bug in a jar

she was a CHILD putting on her father's gauntlets in spite of the fear gathered in her little body, in spite of just witnessing someone she's known all her life die in a HORRIFIC way (benzo), still she rises, still she says I HAVE TO DO THIS still she takes on men three times her size and fucks them up so bad that silco has to send his shimmered up fucked up monster to try to stop her and STILL she persists, indifferent to the worst happening because she’s survived the worst already. furious and unstoppable and determined to do whatever she has to survive and ensure those she loves survive, no matter the cost.

vi under all that debris, bruised, bleeding, screaming, watching her family die, staring at the monkey head in shock and crying because this can't be happening, they were so close...

sobbing in pain until her father saves her just to watch helpless as he dies protecting her. they were so SO CLOSE to surviving, so close to escaping and everything gets ripped away in a second

vi trapped in that prison cell for years and years on end with the ghosts of her family and her guilt for company, drowning in guilt, wondering if her sister's still alive, no doubt thinking about how she LET her slip right through her fingers

the last thing vander said to her was "take care of powder"

she's let the man who's her FATHER and loves more than anything down.

"whatever happens is on you" / "protect the family" / "take care of powder" .... but she can't, not anymore, she's fucked it up and let everyone down (re "I should have been there for you, for everyone") all she can do is sit in that shitty prison cell, on that freezing floor, hungry, bloody, counting the hours until she can somehow rescue powder

Vi is piercings and tats that no doubt got infected, she's a child becoming a woman too fast, she is a danger-zone high-risk disaster area and won't back down, won't give up.

Vi is soft!! self-sacrificing, protective, supportive. ("You wanna talk about today?", "We've all had bad days, but we learn, and we stick together") brave, SMART, witty. she's got a tongue sharp as her fists and a barbed, delicious sense of humour. she gives people nicknames (cupcake, pow pow, pretty boy) and fights with everything that she's got to protect what she loves!!!! she is her father's daughter!!!

she is idealistic and expects the world to see her reason, look at things through her eyes and wanna make a change ( "This is how things are, how they've always been. I was so stupid to think it could change. / "oil and water that's all there is" )

and yes! vi is not flawless. she's obsessive (re sevika. to her eyes she is the last thing standing between her and silco/getting to silco and saving jinx) and complicated, morally ambivalent because she makes mistakes, flies off the handle like a comet crashing through everything in her way, makes reckless choices because she has to. she is selfish when it comes to jinx and would do anything to keep her safe.

also

look at the way she hugs the people she cares about!!!

[lnkedmyheart]

Dazai is so love interest coded.

[triglycercule]

jk!nightmare and jk!dream are just fucking kaido and teruhashi from saiki k i'm gonna kill myself 😭😭😭 this is what happens when you do the chuunibyou and perfect girl trope you get fucking saiki k. whats next i make jk!epic or something have reality breaking powers??? mayhaps.... JK! not happening

anyways jk!nightmare is so fucking stupid she's the worlds largest girlfailure. the only reason she still gets to live out her delusion is because everyone in school is nice enough to play along with her. meanwhile dream is just perfect she's got one of my favorite designs. perfect looks perfect grades perfect personality part of the star sanses she's PERFECT. too bad that she's a naive idiot. maybe the dumbness is genetic among the dreamtale twins who knows but i made them both total idiots

[mellosdrawings]

How well do you reckon you'd do in the hunger games?

I'd die in seconds of overwhelm and anxiety x'D

The worst is, I'm actually very good at fighting. I have a black belt and very good reflexes and I know a bunch about survival. But yeah my head is my worst enemy and I have chronic fatigue so I wouldn't last more than a couple hours at best :')

[akimojo]

Every time I stumble across someone trying to argue on whether lightning or serah is the better protagonist I wanna bang my head against the wall

[novella-november]

Is this fanfic friendly? I feel like an outlier.

I guess this is my sign it's time to throw together a FAQ post to link to lol.

Yes, every event for this blog is fanfic friendly :D

Though as I mentioned on my Ominous October post, for events that include multiple short stories, I encourage everyone to flex their creativity and take one of their planned short story fanfics, and at least *attempt* to turn one of them into something entirely original; rebuilding a character and story from the ground up to stand on its own two legs is no easy feat, and that is what makes it so fun!

It really gets your creative gears turning, to make an "au of an existing material" to be something entirely original, and you can be pleasantly surprised about the things you come up with!

As a few people say, its not just a matter of "filing the serial numbers off" -- you have to add in just as much *or more* as what you take out when you are turning a fanfiction into something that is original and completely divorced from its original source material / inspiration, and that is a hard, but very rewarding challenge!

Obviously, this is not a requirement (there's no hard requirements for any of the challenges, other than no cheating, including no using AI),

but if you would like an extra challenge for the short story events and you're planning on doing entirely fan-fiction, I highly recommend trying it out at least once, and seeing where it leads you--

you may find yourself pleasantly surprised by what you find down that rabbit hole!

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

so like, what's protocol,

(spoilers for netflix's damsel)

if you're a talking dragon lady who was tricked into murdering a bunch of innocent girls who weren't even the real daughters of the guy who murdered YOUR daughters, and then you murdered the dad of the latest girl sacrifice, after he had second thoughts about selling his daughter's life away (to the rich family who murdered your kids) (and protects themselves by murdering more of other peoples' kids) to save his starving kingdom and you kinda kill squished him for trying to save her- if, for example, he had a wife (now a widow) (due to you) (little awkward) whooooooooo HADN'T known about the sacrifice thing, but HAD gotten such a baaaaaad feeling that she tried convincing her stepdaughter NOT to go through with the arranged marriage, then went riding off with a stab wound to try saving her OTHER stepdaughter when THAT girl was ALSO taken to be sacrificed (to you)- but then blah blah blah, the truth comes out, her eldest stepdaughter defeats you and heals you with glow slugs, and you both burn the evil kingdom to the ground (the girl warned them) (only the castle servants took her seriously and ran) before all four of you sail off from the smoldering ruins while the widowed lady (proud daughter of the finest ropemaker in her homeland) heads home to rule their kingdom together (after FINALLY being called "mother" by her step daughter) with what's left of her family, leaving the place where her husband was killed, and you go with them, finally ending your centuries long watch over the bodies of your murdered children to make a new life with this fellow mother and her two kids....

hypothetically. how long, or how many heart to hearts would there need to be, for you (dragon milf) (lost her kids) (starting a new life) to maybe, possibly, be having a thing for lady bayford (lady queen milf) (lost her husband) (helped save her step-kids) maybe bond over caring for your kids more than literally ANYTHING else (whole starving or burning countries included) and like, bring her flowers or a shiny rock, or something.

or heck, you seem pretty set on the idea of fairness and repayment and such, what with the whole "three daughters sacrificed for the three daughters murdered" thing- and you DID kill her husband (while he was trying to protect their kid)

so theoretically, since YOU don't have a husband for HER to kill, i suppose you might decide that being her wife would be next closest thing, especially if you stood ready to lay down your dragon life for her stepdaughters. If that's not enough, promising to spend your very long life protecting her people might work too. Maybe also with giving her flowers?

..... im not saying this HAS to happen. But. If-

[twistedappletree]

I just love the intro and expectation we get for Jin Ling in the beginning of the donghua, like he’s flying through the air with his bow shooting 3 arrows at once like an expert marksman, hopping from tree branch to tree branch with his hair majestically blowing in the wind and then for literally the rest of the show, he’s either passed out on the floor or being rescued from a ✨situation✨ ?????

my boy got princess coded SO hard

[the-crow-binary]

Seeing a post saying people who don't like N!Annette are clowns and racists, having almost thousands notes with everyone agreeing, actually hurts to see. God forbid we want to see characters not completely denatured. God forbid we want to see female characters that are strong in other ways than physical and magical. God forbid not every CV girl has to be strong and magical. God forbid we can dislike a black character for reasons completely unrelated to their skin colour.

God forbid NFCV actually makes changes that align with the games by developping characters and concepts that didn't have the chance to fully shine, instead of destroying everything and re-shaping them completely, shitting on the games' fans in the process.

"the fact that Castlevania purists are crying and shitting their pants because Annette was turned from a dansel in distress to a badass WOC will forever be the biggest clowns in the entire world."

Just because your character isn't a "damsel in distress" anymore but a "badass WOC" doesn't make her automatically better. Especially considering how your "badass WOC" is acting like a bitch for no reason sometimes (and don't get called out for it, like she is in the right. and no, her trauma might EXPLAIN her bitchiness, but it doesn't excuse it.), while the "damsel in distress" was actually kind and courageous and ready to end her own life to go against Dracula's wishes because fuck him.

If wanting NFCV to show respect for the games and it's fans and to stop using the #(magical)girlboss trope for every single important female character of theirs and show a female character being strong in a different way makes me a "purist" and a "clown", then so be it.

[honestlyvan]

Thinking deeply about the fact that from a structural perspective, Casey is coded an "innocent". He's denied even the agency of tragedy, he doesn't get killed or Taken through any action of his own, but is rather constantly acted on by the plot, creating a parallel between him and the real Logan, who is the ultimate innocent.

He doesn't even get to fulfil the traditional role of the mentor -- doesn't get to sacrifice himself, doesn't even get sacrificed at all -- and Saga doesn't have to symbolically transcend and take on his role, because his role in the narrative is defined through Saga, not the other way around.

[elena-loves-starwars]

Spoiler warning

So I watched Damsel last night. I seriously love Millie Bobby Brown in this, she is so talented. And I read the book a long time ago, but something struck me as odd

Does Elodie just have a badass dragon sidekick now? Because like...

I want one

[bardicious]

You know, just realized that every/or almost every x-men movie has the villain attempt to use Charles, or take him out of the picture entirely. Like, Charles is dangerous, and all his enemies know it, he's also vulnerable because of his disability, and they know that too.

There are so many years we don't see of Charles' life, but realistically how many of those years has Charles spent on the defensive of mutant and human alike, trying to murder or kidnap him?

[selenekallanwriter]

The genre is ‘badass women with swords’ and I’m gonna need 1000 more movies like these, please and thank you.

Also, I ship it.