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shrinkthisviolet · 4 years ago

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The Problem with KATAOW S3

(Yep, I’m finally doing it)

Okay so, let me just say that the season overall? Phenomenal. Clearly planned out, not one of those “oh no we need to make another season” seasons, the enemy is defeated in a satisfying way, the characters’ arcs are concluded–

Wait. Hold that thought. Because my problem with this season concerns one person. Or, I guess, one mandrill, since he isn’t a person at all.

That’s right, I’m talking about Hugo/Scarlemagne.

So I didn’t even realize something was off when I first started the season, until I read this fic (it’s an alternate S3, and I absolutely recommend it). The comments gave me pause, because they said that they felt Scarlemagne was acting too passive in S3. I’d just gotten done seeing him and Kipo talking with his “brotherly advice,” so I didn’t understand that.

However, the more I watched, the more I realize that the comments were right. Scarlemagne was a background character, and normally, this wouldn’t be a problem (it’s Kipo’s show, not his), except...this is his redemption season. And they kinda try to one-and-done it in one episode, which I feel does a great disservice to him and the show overall.

His relationship with Kipo is also...gone for some reason?? They bring it up in the 9th and last episodes, but other than telling us “oh hey remember that they’re siblings?” it’s nowhere. As if it doesn’t exist. Which is sad because that could’ve been the key to his redemption.

Kipo only redeems him to form HMUFA (she also wants to do it for their relationship, but that’s not really made clear), but what if she just wanted her brother back? What if HMUFA was important, but not as much as having a family again? Remember, this is the girl who went toe-to-toe with him in last season’s finale and called him out and pushed him until she threatened the safety of her loved ones.

She doesn’t back down, and she initiates change. In a way, regarding her brother, Kipo herself was also made passive, which is a shame–that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of her character.

Scarlemagne’s moral ambiguity is also pretty much gone. Now, in regard to the pheromone thing, that could just be him being tired of arguing about it, which tracks. But the fact that he gives in to Wolf’s reasoning instead of KILLING THE PERSON WHO TORE HIS FAMILY APART AND TORTURED HIM AND IS TRYING TO KILL HIS SISTER? Yeah, no. I don’t care how redeemed Scarlemagne is, he would never give in to an argument like that.

Also Wolf would never make that argument in a situation like this. I get that she’s less hardened and more like Kipo now, but...she calls Kipo her sister. Her pack. Wolf was raised a wolf, at the core of it, and even I, as an older sister, would throw moral compasses out the window to protect my siblings. THAT’S JUST HOW FAMILY IS (in my experience)!

He and Kipo don’t really have any arguments. He doesn’t try to get her to see his perspective, his advice (“make them fear you”) doesn’t come back to haunt her later (especially when she...basically does that twice? Anyone remember that? The writers don’t)...what’s the point of a morally gray villain if they’re not clinging to their reasoning?? Sure, maybe Scarlemagne realizes his dictator impulse was wrong, but he could’ve said something like, “I made a place for myself in a world that was trying to hurt me. All I wanted was to unite the mutes and guide them. I wanted a family again.”

And Kipo could say something like, “That’s not a family. Families don’t mind control each other to keep them in line.”

Scarlemagne: “Ah right, I forgot. They just leave their created children for dead and shame them for ever wanting to use their powers against corrupt people. My mistake.”

Like?? Obviously he went about it the wrong way, but...he thinks his intentions were good (as morally gray villains do), and he was hurt, and let’s face it, Lio’s moral absolutism (critiqued very well in this post) pretty much ruined everything (also that dumb decision to wait around?? Tf??). Scarlemagne doesn’t have to change Kipo’s mind, but...maybe some indication that he’s still in that cage for a reason? That maybe Kipo’s tried to help him before, but he won’t renounce his intentions (only the dictator part)?

Like...COME ON, writers! You can’t even say that moral ambiguity was too much for a kids’ show, because this show has it in SPADES (Lio is forced to reckon with and apologize for his mistakes, as he should, and ATLA/LOK was practically the blueprint for moral ambiguity in kids’ shows).

So I think I’ve covered everything? But I have one last complaint: Hugo’s death.

IT MAKES NO SENSE

I kinda knew it was coming because I spoiled myself 😂 (that’s all I knew though, the rest was a surprise), so I was expecting Mute Emilia to eat him or something as he was flying. That wouldn’t have been great, but it would’ve been better than CRASHING INTO THE SIDE OF A WALL OR SOMETHING

Like...are you KIDDING me?? I know mandrills aren’t super strong, but this is BOGUS in a show where falls like that never hurt anyone (yes, I’m aware that everyone who falls like that is a Mute, but they’ve fallen like that as humans, too. Idk. Plenty of other media has their heroes get up and be fine after falls like that).

Also...he was just starting his redemption!! It could’ve been something awesome!! But they threw it away, and for what?? A moment for Hugo to forgive Lio (Song didn’t really do anything imo, but she was kinda complicit, and I find it weird that she didn’t even apologize?), sacrifice himself in a stupid way, and then just...die??

Nope. I don’t accept it. I refuse. We weren’t shown a gravesite, so I choose to believe Hugo appeared right behind Kipo at the end, all “quit telling people I’m dead!” “Sometimes, I can still hear his voice!” (Screw canon, this is canon now. KATAOW screwed itself over when it didn’t even have the decency to give Hugo a proper death).

Oh also, Scarlemagne passively accepting Wolf as Kipo’s sister is soooo unrealistic I can’t overstate it! I’m just gonna refer you back to the fic series linked above, which handles this so much better. There’s no way Scarlemagne would take a surrogate sister label lying down, that he wouldn’t have an identity crisis (if Kipo can adopt siblings at random, can she disown siblings too?), that he wouldn’t shame Wolf for it, that she wouldn’t have an identity crisis...

Oh also, Kipo herself has problems, as outlined in this post (which includes my reblog of it where I also state my problems with her). I love Kipo as a hero, but...S3 could’ve done more for her.

Maybe I’ll write a fix-it for this season one day. Who knows. But I wanted to get all this off my chest 😂 feel free to debate in the notes and reblogs!

#kipo and the age of wonderbeasts #kataow s3 spoilers #MAJOR S3 SPOILERS #no seriously PLEASE watch the season before reading this it’s actually really good #kipo oak #hugo oak #scarlemagne #wolf #lio oak #song oak #benson #dave

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iaintyourbro · 4 years ago

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What was the point in having all that character development for Cloud and having him return to his real self at the end of the game if they were just gonna ruin his character by having him so screwed up in AC? I just got done watching AC, but now I sort of regret watching it b/c it's like everything that Cloud does in the OG and Remake doesn't even matter anymore b/c he's just depressed later on. I hate to say this but what were the devs thinking when they made AC? They ruined Cloud in it :(

Hey anon,

I think most folks agree - AC is a hell of a jump from the end of OG Cloud to what we are presented with in AC. The issue is, the “filler” for those two years is contained in, mostly, On the Way to a Smile and partially in The Kids are Alright.

Case of Tifa shows Cloud’s soft side quite a bit - especially since Tifa is really struggling with her guilt almost immediately after OG ends, which is when this novel starts.

Now, this one, I joke and say this is pre or post sexitime, since they make sure to specify that they were alone.

But a lot of this starts to fade when Cloud gets hit with his spiral of depression, and since Tifa is also struggling, they go out of sync with each other. Do I think AC does a great job of portraying this? No. I think AC has multiple issues and is one of the parts of the compilation I’m hoping they “remake” so it’s very clear how this all is going down.

If you read the Ultimanias and The Reunion Files, they do make it clear that Cloud’s issue with Aerith is fully guilt related, and then they also tie Zack into it.

But that’s another issue with the novels - Zack is missing. Zack isn’t mentioned once in the novels, which, since he does show up in AC and since he’s portrayed as a large part of Cloud’s life, makes little sense.

To be fair, AC and the initial novels came out pre-Crisis Core, and I think that Crisis Core is meant to show how important Zack really is to the compilation and to Cloud and Aerith. The only reason Cloud is alive is because of Zack.

The other thing not mentioned during AC, which to me seemed strange, was the Lifestream, or much of what went on in OG. Meteor is talked about, Sephiroth, Aerith, and even Zack are touched on, but nothing else regarding Cloud’s character arc are. The Lifestream scene is considered to be one of the most powerful in the OG and is also the dev’s favorite scene. Why not put it in there?

So, yes, I agree. I think AC did a disservice to Cloud’s character because it’s not clarified. I DO think it’s realistic how his depression is portrayed, but there is no buildup. They do this in OG with things too, no buildup, just slam it in your face like here you go, this is happening.

Kingdom Hearts is another one that makes Cloud this super broody dude

Remake is doing a much better job of building up certain things: Cloud’s mental breakdown, Cloud’s borderline obsession with Tifa, Aerith’s quirky powers of being a Cetra, Sephiroth’s ability to control and cause hallucinations for Cloud... so I think they will fix the perception that AC gives later on. Whether that’s a remake of the film or another form of media, I think we will get a clear story for the entire compilation..

While they’re at it, they should probably look at DoC too.... but I’ll take whatever they give us.

#FF7 #Cloti #CloudxTifa #FF7 Remake #Final Fantasy 7 #Final Fantasy 7 Remake #FF7 KH #FF7 AC #FF7 OtWtaS

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dotthings · 5 years ago

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So let’s talk about Cas’s issues, and how they hit that nerve of Dean’s insecurities.

I feel like Dean’s personal issues get discussed a lot (by myself included), both from a Dean-positive take and from the pressure placed on this character in a more negative way. There’s a lot of expectation placed on Dean as a character and ironically enough, in that process I feel like even Cas fans don’t do enough digging into what makes Cas tick, what his weak points are, his fears, his cyclical dysfunctional hang-ups. Cas is a layered, complicated, well-developed character with a now 12 season history on the show, as a main character, even if he is less prominent than Sam and Dean, and as such this means there are flaws as well as goodness in him. It does Cas a disservice to paint him as never wrong, as never causing hurt to those he loves. I’m not speaking as a Dean fan here, but as a Cas fan, this just isn’t about fairness to Dean, I feel there is an actual imbalance in how these discussions tend to go and it’s kind of a habitual tendency in the fandom. In part fueled by the fact that Dean is so open with his feelings, shows that he feels things SO hard and so deeply, that’s the character, and that kind of makes Dean a lightning rod to talk about Dean feelings, good or bad.

Canonically, Cas tends to get less pov due to structure, when Cas isn’t in every ep of a season and where SPN structurally puts Sam and Dean as the center spokes of the wheel, no matter how near the center Cas is of that show wheel. Cas has become another core pillar--Dabb referred to Cas along with Dean as a “core character” in his pre 15.09 interview. But because logistically, Dean still carries more pov on the show, we get more looks into Dean’s mind than into Cas’s. Which isn’t as great for Dean fans as you might think because by SPN not giving more Cas pov, it’s putting more and more of the responsibility for making the profound bond work onto Dean and Dean’s pov. While Cas has contributed plenty to this rift that developed.

There’s also the thing about the fandom default perception is that Dean is repressed emotionally. Which, sure, in many respects, yeah. But not in the way it’s popularized in fandom. Dean is actually the more facile, open, raw, vulnerable in expression of his emotions, with big outbursts, of hurt/anger or softness. He goes big. He expresses. He cries easily. He doesn’t exactly hide. He wears his heart on his sleeve. But because Dean is also a character who constructed facades to survive, he puts on facades and one facade is "no chick flick moments.” A facade I’ve pointed out again and again he’s terrible at maintaining, nonetheless it is real and he can be gruff and he does at times try to hide from his own feelings, and avoid, and struggles not to say stuff and then it gets out anyway. But he’s also very openly emotional.

While Cas is actually far more locked up emotionally as a character. Far more repressed than Dean. Look at his background. Millennia as an angel. Shoved back through the angel reprogramming machine every time he displayed an independent thought. Angels have emotions. They are not unfeeling. But they are taught emotions are weaknesses. They are a taint. They are dangerous. A lot of Cas’s arcing over the past 11 years has been about learning what emotions are and how to manage them. Even if we remove that factor, Cas also has a personality of his own, as a character, and is a survivor of trauma and abuse, as Dean is. Cas, like Dean, carries a lot of anger.

Cas is impulsive. Sometimes heedless. Ironically, he often pulls Dean back from heedlessness. But he has that tendency and Cas’s heedlessness tends to result in cosmic level events (leviathans unleashed, angels falling). He has a temper. He will end you if you hurt those he loves. Cas in the past has shown a hubris about how he has to fix all the things because these frail humans he loves can’t, Dean’s “just a man,” and while Cas definitely outgrew that, there are remnants still there. Which isn’t JUST hubris. Cas, being an abuse and torture survivor, being a survivor of emotional neglect, similarly to Dean, also has, similarly to Dean, this thing about needing a mission, a purpose. He needs to be needed. And if he isn’t serving a purpose, if he feels he isn’t being useful, then he feels worthless. The Dean corollary to that is Dean’s lack of self worth in what his father instilled in him--that he has no purpose, no mission, outside of protect Sam, and the hunt.

This need for purpose and Cas’s insecurities powered a lot of his arc with Jack. Cas’s relationship with Dean evolved over time. They didn’t stay just the same. In some ways the bond equalized in good ways, but as part of that, Cas was no longer the “Winchesters’ guardian” of early Cas seasons. That role gave Cas purpose. As Cas drew deeper and deeper into the family, as his character developed and he increasingly got his own arcs, which are all good things, that also meant Cas wondered what his purpose is.

Protecting Jack gave him purpose. A mission. Someone to look after. His relationship with Dean isn’t that. That hit a height with “draped yourself in the flag of Heaven” at the end of S9. By S11 the focus shifted to Dean’s drive to save Cas. Dean and Cas’s relationship is that of peers, fellow soldiers, friends, and yes, on a coded level that’s been harder and harder to ignore in later seasons, lovers/husbands.

Cas devoting himself all to Dean wasn’t sustainable. Just as Dean couldn’t perpetually be all about Sam, but while Dean and Cas are more peers/husbands role, Dean is Sam’s stand-in parent. Dean was parentified at the age of four. Sam as recently in 15.09 says Dean raised him. Sam knows his actual father figure is Dean, not Bobby, not John. There’s a whole lot about Sam and Dean’s relationship that made a lot more sense to me once I kept that in mind, that symbolically they were parent/child not just siblings/hunting partners. (Their codependency added another complication into the mix) That is not the relationship Dean and Cas have ever had. They are protective of each other. But it’s not a pseudo parent-child relationship. Nor are they codependent. But Dean always had a Sam, while Cas...did not have a Sam. Dean wasn’t his Sam, once he found a Dean. Dean was something else entirely. Not less, but different.

Enter Jack and while I was resistant to that arc initially, in the long game I can see multiple overarching purposes for the story. One of them is Cas’s character development. While the Cas and Jack bond isn’t just like Sam and Dean’s, and I’m not suggesting it is, it has that similar pseudo parent-child aspect. Jack is all of Team Free Will’s kid, but I think the way Jack impacted Cas’s arc made the most seismic shifts.

The thing about this S15 rift with Dean and Cas is that it’s not really about Dean’s existential crisis about “realness.” It’s not actual about Mary or Jack or that freakin’ snake. Well, it is...I’m not suggesting Dean had no valid reason to be hurt and upset with Cas. That is real. But this was ramped up as a culmination of years of issues. It mashed Dean’s buttons so hard because these are reflective of cyclical behaviors that come from Cas and it hurts Dean every time. Underlying all that, maybe subtextually, Dean’s doubts about realness played into it here as well. But the doubts, fears, insecurities, and hurts Dean feels about Cas are there regardless. Chuck applied pressure points to hasten the rift. To rip them apart because that serves his purpose but all he did was play on their actual insecurities and feelings and then watch them dance to his tune.

One of Dean and Cas’s issues has been things that have been there a long time, in the relationship, where Dean’s chronic issues play on Cas’s insecurities and Cas’s chronic issues play on Dean’s insecurities. There’s a bunch I could reel off. Dean’s abandonment issues vs. Cas’s tendency to keep things from Dean, not turn to Dean, not trust Dean, for one. This is something Cas has done for years, long before Jack, and it hurt Dean then and it hurt Dean now. Just for example.

I feel like what happened late S14/early S15 is that all these long running issues they never addressed came crashing down on the bond at once.

The things that are Cas’s issues, Cas hasn’t talked much about. Cas doesn’t talk about his innermost emotional landscape the way Dean does. Sometimes he does speak his feelings, but I wish he’d do it more often.

The things Cas has done in the past that hit on Dean’s abandonment issues all got ramped up with Jack. And it happened more than once. Why is Dean so hurt. Look at how he responds to Cas keeping things from him, or to losing Cas, or to Cas not reaching out to Dean, trusting Dean enough to go to him in the past. How hard that has been on Dean. Take your pick of plots. Cas teaming up with Crowley. Cas and the monster souls. Cas running off with the angel tablet.

With Jack there was a string of events. It wasn’t just the one thing. This isn’t my condemnation of Cas or because I don’t get Cas’s motivations and good intentions. Or about Cas being right/wrong. Right or wrong, his actions still hurt Dean. Being a parent added such a completely new layer into Team Free Will bonds, the TFW familial unit shifted. Change can be hard on a relationship anyway.

Quick recap of the sequence of events with Cas and Jack: it was Cas slipping away from Dean as Cas devoted himself to a nephilim in embryo. When Cas bonded with Jack’s grace in the womb. When Dean said he didn’t recognize Cas. There was Cas’s belief in the vision Jack showed him. It was Kelly giving Cas a mission to protect her son. Cas, like Dean, feels a strong sense of duty. Remember Dean’s S2 speech when Sam died? How Dean expressed the depth of his sense of failure? “I had one job, to keep you safe.” And by the end of S14, Cas lost Jack. He had one job. To keep Jack safe.

Cas pretty much thinks he’s worthless without that, same as Dean.

So there’s Cas, taken by Kelly after Dean was begging him--begging him--to return to the bunker with them so they could talk. While Kelly effectively prevented Cas from taking the action he might have done of his own volition since she drove off in the Impala with Cas still inside it and he couldn’t stop the car without hurting her and her unborn child, the element of choice there is murky. But Cas did choose to protect Jack. He did choose to knock out Sam and Dean at the playground. There’s Dean, as he has in prior seasons, seeing Cas walking away again.

Then it happens again. Cas heedlessly goes after Lucifer, when he should have waited, Cas was so focused on his Jack mission, and as a result, Lucifer stabs Cas dead, right in front of Dean’s eyes. So Dean loses Cas again, and audience gets to see Dean is utterly devastated (but Cas doesn’t).

But then Dean gets Cas back! His big win...which Dean confesses to Sam but again, Cas doesn’t get to hear it. And then right after getting Cas back, Cas is running off again, due to Jack. Dean begs Cas--BEGS HIM--let me come along, you need backup and Cas says no. Because Cas has to fix all the things himself. So Cas gets kidnapped and locked in an angel proof cell. Dean doesn’t even know he’s lost Cas this time due to voice mimicky plot, but there it is again, Dean loses Cas, again for Jack. Then Cas keeps that detail about Felix the snake from Dean, which wasn’t right for Cas to do, to be so secretive. Whatever his intentions, no that wasn’t right, and it goes right back to Cas’s tendencies shown in earlier seasons. To fix the thing himself. Anael calls Cas on it, even. His fears. Which leads to Cas finally going to Sam and Dean with the information. Cas apologizes and confesses, explains in a rare moment of us actually getting to see inside Cas’s emotional landscape that he was scared what Jack losing his soul would do to tear this TFW family apart. What Cas would lose because of that. A hella lot of that is about Dean, not just TFW or Jack.

None of this has ever been Cas not caring about Dean. Cas was there for Dean in S14. He fought to save Dean, first from Michael, then the Ma’lek box. But Dean and Cas don’t exist in a profound bond bubble.

Dean doesn’t even know yet that Cas sold himself to The Empty to save Jack midway through S14. Should we start screaming now?

So after Cas’s confession and apology late in S14 about what Jack did to the snake that Cas didn’t clue in Sam and Dean about, Mary is dead, because of soulless Jack, and all hell breaks loose with Jack, and Dean believes the only way out of this with soulless Jack is to kill soulless Jack. Cas doesn’t agree. Dean delivers an ultimatum, my way or the highway and who cares what you think (bad move, Dean). So to save Jack and Dean, because if Dean shot Jack with Chuck’s gun, it would kill Dean too, Cas runs off to get to Jack first.

From Dean’s perspective he’s seing Cas’s back again, leaving him again. Losing Cas again.

Think about how this steps on the same nerves as Cas’s vanishing acts in earlier seasons, or Cas walking into the lake, or Cas staying behind in Purgatory when Dean did everything he could to save him. Think about Dean’s abandonment issues. Think about how Dean’s abandonment issues and this repeat cycle of Cas’s inherent tendency to not get that he should loop his family into things, that he can’t fix it all on his own, of leaving, even if he always comes back. And no we can’t blame Cas for the times he left when he didn’t want to, when something happened to Cas, but when he vanished into the lake in 7.01, when he insisted on staying behind in Purgatory in S8, when he heedlessly went pell mell after Lucifer--Dean losing Cas was a direct result of Cas’s choices. Where Cas put himself into a position where Dean lost him.

This has happened again...and again. Imagine the heart-crushing heartbreaking panic for Dean during their Purgatory revisit when Cas disappeared. It’s Dean having to relive his Cas trauma. Because guess what, Dean loves Cas a lot. I don’t know how this even became in question in fandom, it continues to utterly baffle me.

So it’s not really about Jack though. I’m not blaming the Jack storyline for this. What happened was the Jack storyline brought those issues to a boiling point. Cas’s insecurities and drive to have a mission. Dean’s abandonment issues clashing with Cas’s running off again. Repeatedly.

What’s going to happen when Dean finds out about The Empty deal, and not just the deal itself but the fact Cas kept that, too, from him. I don’t think it will be rage this time. Not after 15.09. It will however, I suspect, be utterly devastating for Dean...maybe this time he won’t snap at Cas, he’ll just say how devastating it is, before he and Sam get to work on a solution. And Cas will have to witness how devastating it is. Cas hearing Dean’s prayer in 15.09 is such a big deal and I really really hope this hit Cas hard and woke him up to some things. Because with all of Cas’s particular insecurities, despite the fact that Dean has repeatedly shown Cas directly how much he matters, there’s also been plenty audience gets to see (Cas is family/Dean’s grief arc/Cas is a big win) that Cas hasn’t. Cas hearing Dean’s prayer here I think will change things. Cas won’t be the same. Dean won’t be the same. The bond won’t be the same. In a good way.

15.09 didn’t feel like resolution to me, and I’m glad Dabb confirmed that in his pre ep interview. It felt like ice melting, barriers crumbling. That’s good. It’s a start. That will help them with what’s next. But they have so much to work through still. Because their problems aren’t just from recent plot events, or Chuck. These tap into some fundamental things about them each that affects their bond. I’ve been saying this since before the end of S14, this isn’t hear to destroy their bond, it’s to level it up. It’s to deepen it, to fix what’s been amiss at the root and realize it into something even more powerful.

I need Cas to speak, not just Dean. Not just for my ship but for the character, I need more looks into Cas’s inner emotional landscape and how he feels about his own insecurities and I’d love to see an equally big confession about his Dean feelings.

#Dean Winchester #Castiel #Destiel #Dean and Cas #Team Free Will #Jack Kline #Supernatural #spn #supernatural spoilers #meta

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thegaudiercollection · 5 years ago

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The Last of Us Part II: The effects of exposure four days after completion

There is a plant in my apartment. When my partner and I moved into our unfurnished flat, it was one of the few things left behind. A scrawny, scraggly thing, we left to it’s own devices tucked away as we focused on populating the space with our own things and navigating the perils of quarantine. Naturally, months later, the plant was even worse off than before from neglect. After finishing The Last of Us Part II (TLOU2) I have become obsessed with nurturing and caring for this poor dead plant until I can bring it back to life. There are other factors to my huge emotional stake in this plant other than TLOU2, such as current political events and general ennui but that beautiful game is a final straw. I loved it. I think it’s a masterclass story of the perils of hate, of longing and loss, grief and collateral. Of pain and moving on. It is a tale desperately in need of being told during modern times as ideas of revenge and justification become muddled and blurred. Naturally there are spoilers to this so please do not continue reading if you don’t want that.

SPOILERS Below

Death

I have seen many people talk of the main character death of Joel as being unnecessary and unwarranted. As a disservice to his character. I could not disagree more. I understand those thoughts and it was a devastating loss so many years after falling in love with the character in the first game. But his death is far from a lacklustre shock tactic in place of real narrative as we’ve seen with shows like Game of Thrones. It is not death for deaths sake. His entire death is central to the story and it’s protagonists. It of course completely encapsulates Ellie’s. Here is someone with so many mixed feelings for her father figure after the discovery of his actions at the end of the first game where he killed the fireflies and prevented a vaccine being made. She says at one point “My death would have mattered. You took that from me.” This complete betrayal coupled with her desire to try and forgive even if it’s impossible is a central theme. She has a lack of closure with him, and with it she becomes lost in navigating life without that purpose. She pours all her efforts into doing what he would do. “If it was you or me, Joel would be halfway to Seattle by now.” That’s why the parallels with her beating Nora for information and demanding a location on a map from Mel and Owen, all perpetrators in the murder, mirror Joel’s actions in the first game. He does the exact same thing while trying to find Ellie. But this is a man consumed by the loss of his daughter and the last twenty years of survival and all the horrible deeds he did in that time. When Ellie does it, she is shown to be deeply effected by the trauma of it. Her numb and shaking reaction to torturing Nora. Her breakdown at murdering the pregnant Mel. The costs of this hit her hard, because she is not Joel. Which is all he wanted for her.

Joel never wanted Ellie to be like him. Ellie was what dragged him from that person into a better one. He learned to care again with all the vulnerability that brings. Ellie’s process is so similar with the narrative parallels. We spend the majority of the game begging Ellie not to go through with it when we see the adverse effect it has on her. The people around her and herself are hurt with every act of revenge. Where initially, we see Abby, the one who dealt the killing blow, we as an audience are calling for her death. We can’t wait to kill her. And the game solemnly shows us that cost. We sit there going wait no I don’t want Ellie to feel this way. But it’s what we wanted. This is the cost.

Playing as Abby

I was initially reluctant to play as Abby for half of the game but it was a brilliant and integral part of the plot. We see so many parallels between her and Joel when she starts to look after Lev and Yara, two kids she discovers. We see the similarities between her and Ellie with her desire of vengeance. We see these interpersonal connections that grow on us, the very people we condemned immediately at the beginning. We see them as having their own complex lives, their own three dimensional narratives. We start to care about them and start to see how Abby and her friends have their own motives. Ones we want to disagree with because we love Joel but it’s hard to do so because it seems so right that he would be the antagonist to them. That’s not why we should disagree. The game shows us that the cycle of violence harms everyone in the vicinity of it. The only winning move is not to play. To say no and break the chain. Abby has the complexity of Joel. His brutality matched with their good deeds. It is a great opportunity for us to connect with a character that had she been introduced any other way we would have loved. Hell, when the trailer first showing Abby came out people lost their minds about how great she seemed. How capable and strong. The game tells us that if we love Joel then we should love her too because they both have the same flaws and same merits.

Misery Porn

I’ve seen people describe this game as unnecessary misery porn. I get why, and if you don’t want to play a game with a profound sense of loss and tragedy throughout then it won’t be for you. But it isn’t misery for misery’s sake. Every stroke of sorrow is either to drive us to empathise with characters feeling the same kind of way, or to show the cost of violence as an answer to overcoming grief. Some say that just because it’s post apocalyptic doesn’t mean it needs to be sad. I agree. The genre itself is far too often just a outlet for people to have gruesome and half baked plots with character death as a substitute for genuine plot. But a sequel to a game so routed in tragedy, a game called The Last of Us, you shouldn’t criticise it’s sequel for not being primarily focused on softer elements. The sadness of the sequel is a clear and direct progression of themes set up in the first one. It would a disservice to the series to change gear. That’s not the core themes of the games. If you think the ending of the first game is a happy one, you should revaluate the outcomes for both Ellie and Joel and the morality of Joel’s actions. If you still think the sequel does a disservice but filling itself with pointless misery then fair enough. But I think the sequel is entirely honest to its roots and if anything is better than the first one as it has that platform of character development there to springboard a emotionally stocked tale for fans to immediately dive into.

Lastly

I think people who think Joel’s death was out of character and sloppy writing should take that anger and pain and direct it towards the narrative as the game would want of us. The seemingly bold execution of a main character so shockingly and so early on is exactly the kind of pain Ellie felt at his death. To have someone who means a lot to you taken so quickly and ruthlessly is exactly what sets her on the path of the game. And the ultimate message is one of overcoming that grief. Her journey of violence that leads to nothing but more death ends with her leaving Joel’s guitar behind, literally moving on, from that pain. Trying to kill Abby, killing her friends, brings no solace. It costs so much. Her walking through and empty house is the cost of her leaving her family to pursue vengeance. As Dina says “She doesn’t get to be more important than us.” Ellie mad the very human choice to desperately try and force herself to overcome her PTSD and her loss of Joel by misguidedly going for revenge. But as she is moments away from getting this outcome she sees a flash of Joel the night she told him she was going to try and forgive him. And she stops. She finally allows herself to grieve without recompense. Greif doesn’t have a quick fix. It has to be felt, harshly and wholly. Working through the pain, letting time take its course, and getting to the place where you can evaluate your actions and their fruitfulness, is the only way forward. It cost Ellie a lot to learn that and to get to that point. But I think the end is ultimately a showcase of her process from where she was to where she is. I was so deeply affected by the end because it’s the greatest tale of grief and the cost of revenge as an answer I have ever experienced. For everyone who doesn’t like it I am sorry. I hope you can put that anger and disappointment into the narrative and use it to further connect with the characters. If you can do that, I think you’ll discover a fantastically told tale. I hope you do.

#The Last of Us #The Last of Us Part 2 #Spoilers #The Last of Us Spoilers #The Last of Us Part2 Spoilers #tlou2 spoilers #tlou ii #tlou ellie #tlou joel #tlou abby #Review #The Gaudier Collection #video game #narative #naughty dog

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autumnblogs · 4 years ago

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Day 51: Estrangement from The Self

https://homestuck.com/story/5935

I didn’t really take Terezi’s problem with Faygo seriously the first couple times reading Homestuck, but in terms of the way that Homestuck’s different characters mirror each other, and the Trolls’ bizarre alien problems are used to directly comment on human problems, I think it makes sense to say that Terezi’s Soda Abuse should be taken exactly as seriously as Rose’s alcohol abuse.

Rose and Terezi only interact a handful of times, which is a shame, because on a certain level, they share the same basic problem; a lack of faith in the people around them combined with a crippling lack of self-worth. Though they both have strong narcissistic tendencies, Rose and Terezi display over and over again a desperate need for affirmation, and when they can’t get it from their peers, they seek it from other sources; Terezi’s manipulation by Aranea, in this sense, is parallel to Scratch’s manipulation of Rose in terms of the motivation of the one being manipulated.

More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/5936

(More indication that being on the God Tiers literally elevates characters to exist more on the narrative layer than they did before.)

https://homestuck.com/story/5937

In theory, I want the story to reward Dave’s newfound aloof optimism, but I think he’s still like... going too far in the other direction from where he started. We know he’s been questioning his relationship to Bro’s weird ideology, and he’s clearly less interested in being a Hero than he “should be” - but he’s still coping with his emotions mostly just by not acknowledging them.

He’s in for a rude awakening when he gets to the new session.

I should note that like, while Karkat and Dave’s friendship develops into a romance instead of into a platonic bromance after the reset, I don’t think we’re given much of an indication that their actual dynamic is all that different aside from being more physical.

https://homestuck.com/story/5944

Davesprite’s story is parallel with Dave’s, and as I’ve probably already said, forms a core part of Homestuck’s narrative about the distributed nature of the self, and the way that we can’t ever really know ourselves perfectly.

There are the literal material distributed selves like Davesprite, or sometimes Brain Ghost Dirk, or all the various versions of a character from other points along their own timeline, or from Doomed Timelines.

Anything we learn about Davesprite helps us to learn more about Dave. Anything we learn about Lil Hal helps us to learn about Dirk.

If Homestuck is about alienation, estrangement, then through characters like Davesprite, and Lil Hal, we learn that these people are not only estranged from each other by time and space, they are even estranged from themselves by the partitions in their own head, and by the way in which they are observed by other people, and form idealized versions of themselves to aspire to that they can never be. Other better versions of themselves exist in other timelines, and two different versions of a character both wish that they were the other.

Paul Tillich, a French existentialist philosopher and theologian talks about the idea of estrangement from the self as being rooted in the same problem that estranges us from others in his essay You are Accepted.

Maybe that’s another thing that I need to write about. I shall probably do so once we get to Davepeta’s talk about the Ultimate Self. (Did I already write a companion piece about it? Maybe I did.)

https://homestuck.com/story/5955

Okay; the plot has switched tracks, but the theme is very much still exactly what it was during Davesprite’s ramble. What is the significance of all of the alternate selves? In keeping with her very Dirk-like adherence to the idea that she is a certain person who is a certain way, and needs to be who she is, Vriska’s conception of all the alternate selves is that they are meaningless and have no signifiance.

I think it’s telling that we don’t really see any alternate Vriskas in this undead army.

https://homestuck.com/story/5957

While this seems extremely obvious to me anyway, it’s worth pointing out that Meenah alludes to the reason why The Condesce has latched onto Jane in pretty much exact words.

She yearns to have an Heiress, someone that she can teach her badass ways. In short, Meenah wants the same thing that Dirk wants - she wants ideological offspring!

https://homestuck.com/story/5961

I think with Andrew’s stated disdain for Worldbuilding (don’t quote me on that; I’m just pretty sure he said it once, and the fact that his villains are the characters who engage in long-winded worldbuilding screeds is suggestive of this as well), this is another way in which He is Fucking With Us.

The worldbuilding gives us symbols we can use to think about the themes the rest of the comic addresses, but broadly speaking, it’s not actually all that consequential.

https://homestuck.com/story/5966

Aranea continues to use language suggesting that she views the universe very much like a single organism - it’s an interesting quirk of hers.

https://homestuck.com/story/5982

As we come up on the conclusion of Disk 2, Aranea’s monologuing definitely recalls Scratch’s monologuing. (And of course, the journal entries from Mindfang before that).

The background information here is definitely relevant for one thing; helping us to understand the emotional background of the characters.

https://homestuck.com/story/5986

Long isolation and hardened pursuit of justice sounds like a certain mail-lady.

https://homestuck.com/story/5997

As in her initial conversation with Terezi, Aranea calls attention to the somewhat “fake” nature of Choice, and libertarian free will as it is often conceived of. It would not be in keeping with Caliborn’s character for him to choose the other option; just as it would seemingly not be in keeping with Vriska’s character for her to abandon her pursuit of power.

https://homestuck.com/story/6017

Terezi’s black and white worldview - her view of acts as good and evil, and her view of people as either good or evil - makes her completely incapable of coping with the shame of her bad decisions. Terezi doesn’t know how to forgive, or what forgiveness looks like - she does not know how to bridge the gap between herself and someone else once they are estranged. She has never been able to forgive Vriska. And she certainly can’t forgive herself. Not for getting into a relationship with Gamzee. Not for becoming addicted to Faygo. Not for repairing her vision. And certainly not for killing Vriska.

https://homestuck.com/story/6020

And Karkat brings it around again to the ongoing conversation about the ways characters are estranged from themselves.

https://homestuck.com/story/6043

Tavros’s single emotional triumph in pretty much the entire story.

He finally ditches his abusive girlfriend, and stops putting up with her.

Ironically, being tolerated in their wickedness is probably the last thing people need when they’re involved with it.

Letting Vriska keep on abusing him is a disservice to both Tavros and Vriska.

Really, it’s best for both of them.

https://homestuck.com/story/6050

Vriska continues the pattern of shit-talking herself. She always vacillates between vastly inflated self-esteem, and complete dejection.

https://homestuck.com/story/6054

Vriska’s vastly inflated ego is part and parcel of her nature as a Thief of Light I think.

Because she doesn’t just think the world of herself in the sense of stealing everyone else’s meaning and relevance.

Vriska assigns all the responsibility in the world to herself. If she doesn’t act, or if she doesn’t, as far as Vriska is concerned, everything that comes to pass, comes to pass because she wills it, at least at the moment.

Vriska Serket is a Megalomaniac of the highest order; she conflates herself with Lord English. She conflates herself with God.

Vriska is as alienated from herself as anyone is, and it’s because she thinks she understands who she truly is, and considers living up to the ideal version of herself a matter of ultimate importance.

https://homestuck.com/story/6056

Kanaya’s intervention is parallel to Dave and Karkat’s.

https://homestuck.com/story/6065

Caliborn has graduated from having nothing but complete disdain for everyone who is not himself to having some use for other people, but even his camaraderie only extends to those who prove themselves useful to him; he makes a mockery of friendship, and his attempts at civility are signifiers as empty as his life is of the possibility of genuine benevolence.

https://homestuck.com/story/6071

Meenah’s emotional theatrics are as genuinely disheartening as they are darkly hilarious because, like Dirk, and like Vriska, Meenah is a Dangerous PersonTM; she views the violence she is capable of as being intrinsic in her nature, and something she basically is incapable of resisting. Like everyone else in the story, Meenah is basically uneasy with who she is, but only a handful of characters are like Meenah in that they are basically resigned to that uneasiness. Instead of doing the things Meenah wants to do, she does the things she does not want to do.

https://homestuck.com/story/6241

So here we are at the end of Disc 2, in the same basic predicament we were at the end of Disc 1.

Everyone is miserable. Everyone’s relationships have broken down all but completely.

Everyone is estranged from each other, and everyone is estranged from themselves, and if they think a cute little reunion is going to resolve all of the emotional problems that they have failed to confront over the past three years, they’re in for a rude awakening.

More tomorrow, as we start in on the final quarter of Homestuck.

See you tomorrow; Same Cam Time, Same Cam Channel

#liveblogging #commentary #paul tillich

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crusherthedoctor · 5 years ago

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The Lutrudis Hadeer Characterization Masterpost

A while back, I made a big post about the thought process that went into the design for Lutrudis, as well as her name, species, and choice of weapons. In the midst of doing a bunch of other stuff (like the Eggman Sweet or Shite review, which is definitely still coming guys I swear, please don't leave me D':), I recently figured I could do the same for the character's... well, character, and provide some further insight into how her personality was shaped together. Cause why not, right?

Obviously, we won't be covering literally every single personality trait that Trudy has, like her hobbies and whatnot. If we went over all of that, we'd be so far into the future that Tumblr's search system might actually start working again. No, we'll just be keeping it to the central ingredients that make up the overall package.

1. A cool head? In my Sonic OC?

The recurring cast in the Sonic universe is filled with fiery, hot-blooded sorts in one way or another. Sonic might as well be the love child of Mentos and Diet Coke with how full of energy he is, Knuckles and Amy are both prone to letting their temper do the talking, Eggman... is Eggman, and the list goes on. And while there are a number of characters who are more low-key or even outright introverted by comparison, they still tend to exhibit a trait or two that makes them more in-line with the rest of the crowd, be it youthful excitement (Tails, Cream), a fiery temper (Blaze), or the odd bit of cockiness (Shadow).

So what better way to help make Trudy stand out... than by not really having anything like that at all? Contrary to most of the hot-blooded cast, it takes a lot to truly enrage her, and even then, you'll be lucky to get anything past tranquil fury. She's not particularly hammy either - flowery with her language at times, certainly, but not hammy - nor is she a cocky type, even against the weakest or most ridiculous of opponents, and although she does grow as a person over the course of the story she's involved in, all of this remains fairly consistent.

That's not to say that Trudy is not a passionate person. Far from it, in fact. She has a lot of passion. She just shows it in a different way than the average Sonic character.

2. Lutrudis? More like Unsureofdis.

Uncertain characters are also somewhat rare in Sonic's recurring cast (at least in the game universe), and just like with the previous point, even when they're there, they'll usually have something to counter it. Blaze may have been a bit insecure before meeting and befriending Sonic and Co, but as mentioned, she’s got a fierce temper, and even when she started off on her own, she felt that only she could take care of the threat of Eggman and Inferior Eggman Nega. Likewise, while Silver may have doubted himself about Leslie the Crack Dealer’s Iblis Trigger ruse cruise, he still got cocky when he had Sonic on the ropes, and he could be quite full of himself in the Rivals duology as well.

The point being, they still tend to show some semblance of the same “yep, I'm the one for the job, no questions asked” confidence and swagger that nearly everyone else has, no matter the flavor. Trudy, suffice to say, does not have this mentality. Trudy accepting Sonic and Co's help in dealing with sinister affairs in Viridonia without any haughty protest on her part isn't just because she knows they can handle it, or because they're Sonic Heroes and they'll show 'em the real superpower of teamwork... it's also because she's genuinely not sure if she would be able to take care of the matter on her own.

When she saved Cream from the wrath of the Wraith for example, she wasn't thinking “This looks like a job for Miss Hadeer!”

She was thinking “This could very well get me killed, but I have to help the poor bunny somehow...”

In other words, Trudy doesn't consider herself to be some sort of destined protector who has to do this herself. She constantly second guesses herself, and frequently believes her friends are more qualified and competent than she is. Her only reason for doing her best and helping out regardless is simply because she wants to.

3. A light at the end of the tunnel.

For the sake of tact, it's not shoved in your face relentlessly, but reading between the lines, it can be easy to get a sense of melancholy from Trudy. Particularly due to past experiences, she does indeed have an element of depression within her, and this can occasionally show in her body language and facial expressions, even if she's currently feeling positive emotions.

And yet, notice how she continues being a friendly pony. Notice how regardless of her experiences, and her thoughts on said experiences, her actual behaviour is (mostly) free of bitterness or cynicism, and that she doesn't hide the joy that her new friends make her feel. She's not outright ignoring her experiences or pretending they don’t affect her, because they clearly have affected her, and she's never ignored her scars (metaphorically and literally, the latter being a permanent side-effect of her condition), but she knows better than to let it consume her, so she tries her best to look at the bright side of life even during the darkest days.

It's Sonic's opinion that Trudy's inner spirit is a lot stronger than she thinks, with or without his help. Her refusal to give into misery and lash out at the world foreshadows that he's not unjustified in that belief. That, and it ties into the franchise’s usual taste for optimism and idealism against the odds.

4. Hadeer? More like Hadork.

So, everything thus far helps set Trudy up as a mellow, down-to-earth sort of personality. So far, so good. However, it's still the Sonic the Hedgehog universe we're talking about, filled with many colorful characters of all shapes, sizes, and eccentricities. When a franchise has a larger than life cast in a larger than life world, the characters who are meant to be grounded often risk coming off as boring and could end up easily overshadowed, because the creators or writers often neglect to give them any quirks of their own, usually out of fear that it'll disgrace the character's gracefulness. In fact, I personally feel this was a common problem with Sally, in both SatAM and Archie (mostly pre-reboot admittedly).

IMO, these writers are just being plain old silly. Just because a character is quirky doesn't mean they forfeit all their dignity altogether. Like a lot of things in life, you just have to balance it out, and that's what I did (or tried to do...) with the green equine.

So yes, Trudy is elegant, but she's also a really goofy dancer. Yes, she's gentle and motherly, but she also goes back and forth between being a heavy sleeper and being an insomniac. Yes, she serves as a warmhearted auntie figure for Cream (and a big sister figure for Amy), but she also spends a quarter of her time looking like a ninja with the way her bandana covers her face (whether it be due to cold weather, strong scents triggering her sensitive nose, or doing it in the presence of villains as a mildly theatrical way of visually conveying her disdain for them).

And of course, in the right situation, she can be just as much of a dork as the titular blue hedgehog is.

Which leads me to my next point...

5. “You might know everything I'm going to do...”

Trudy was created with the intention of having a character who is actually like Sonic himself in a lot of ways, but it's not apparent initially.

This sort of yin-yang contrasting routine has been done before a few times in the series, with Knuckles, Shadow and Blaze being the most obvious examples. But with them, their similarities are easier to spot from a distance. Knuckles is more earth than wind, but you can tell he's as stubborn as Sonic is. Shadow's methods and outlook differ, but you can tell he's still a mirror of Sonic (cause you know, he looks like him). Blaze is more distant, but you can tell how she can easily be just as worked up and angered as Sonic.

With Trudy however, if you take her at face value, you would think she's the exact opposite of Sonic. She's an introvert, he's an extrovert. She's got a calm temperament, he can get impatient even at the best of times. She's quite fancy, he's more rough and tumble. She takes things slowly, he leaps ahead without a care in the world... You would think that, outside of them both fighting for good, they would have nothing in common, and that their dynamic would be more akin to Sonic's relationship with Sally, which although they were friends, their relationship could often be somewhat rocky due to their differences in... basically every area and opinion imaginable.

But then you get to know Trudy, and the unfolding of the adventure reveals the rest of what she has to offer. The aforementioned soldiering on in spite of any depressed moments is in itself a small hint that Trudy shares Sonic's philosophy of never giving up. She believes that most people are good at their core, and while she won't excuse especially evil people or actions and will punish them appropriately (albeit with regret that it had to come to that), she's willing to give a chance to those who are willing to take it, just like with the Blue Blur. Not only does she NOT find Sonic's jokes and hijinks annoying, she actually has a similar sense of humor herself. And while reasonable people generally tend to loathe injustice and oppression, Trudy shares Sonic's uniquely intense contempt for it, and believes in one's own personal freedom just as much as the hedgehog does, let alone freedom in general.

In short, Trudy is what you get when you take Sonic's deeper qualities and general outlook on life, and apply them to a more introverted and taciturn personality. The exact same beliefs, but from a different perspective, so to speak.

6. A different kind of intelligence.

Tails and Eggman are the resident kings of scientific prowess in Sonic's world, and it goes without saying that I wouldn't want to do them a disservice by having Trudy one-up them in that department. But that doesn't mean your character can’t be talented in other areas, right? Contrary to what all those Mary Sue tests dictate, your character can in fact have a high IQ without intruding on an official character’s territory.

Therefore, Trudy is pretty good at innovation and craftsmanship in her own right, but whereas Tails and Eggman do it through technology, her field of expertise is more to do with arts and crafts, and to a lesser extent geology. For example, both her bow and her whip were crafted by the lady herself, using nothing but her decorative knowledge and flair.

Outside of that, she tends to know a fair bit about a lot of things in the world, largely attributed to her photographic memory, meaning she's bound to have a few answers no matter the subject of discussion. Granted, she's unlikely to be the absolute number one expert on any of those things, but she's at least a useful jack of all trades in that regard.

7. Feeling a little horse.

I very much approve and flat out adore the idea of Sonic characters having characteristics that remind the audience of what species they're supposed to be, so I made sure that Trudy had a wide selection of little mannerisms that would reveal her for the little horsie that she is. These include, but aren't limited to...

- When she’s fascinated or concerned by something, she’ll lean a little forward with her hands close to her chest, which subtly mimics the act of prancing.

- When she wakes up, she briefly stretches her arms and legs (albeit not too recklessly so as to risk straining her sensitive limbs).

- Her tail has a number of quirks. If she's happy, it might slowly swish to and fro. If she's REALLY happy, it might flick...

- And if she doesn't approve of someone or something, it might stiffen and raise a little bit, as if to helpfully inform the bad guys where they can kiss, if ya know what I'm saying.

- When she's being affectionate with her friends, she might give them the ol' nuzzle.

- When she's in a playful mood, there might be a little skip in her walk, the anthro equivalent of trotting.

- When she's annoyed, she might humorously let out a snort that sounds identical to a real life horse snort. And while she certainly doesn't neigh in the traditional sense, when she finds something hilarious or Sonic's making her laugh with his antics, her laughter can't help but take on a neigh-like touch to it. (The latter was actually a headcanon suggested by @darklightheart, and I immediately agreed with it because it's cute and funny in equal measures.)

Naturally, she gets all shy and embarrassed when the neigh-laugh comes out, thinking it sounds silly. At least Sonic finds it endearing.

Note that I'm well aware that some of this differs from how real life horses react to certain things. (Eg: tail swishing tends to happen when a horse is agitated rather than happy.) But I freely admit that it's more for the sake of giving the character that extra bit of soul than it is for utmost accuracy. That's the way it goes with fiction sometimes. :P

Interestingly, Trudy tends to get Sonic indulging in a funny hedgehog characteristic of his own. That being, he might curl into a ball if Trudy's being particularly... ~complimentary~ towards him.

And there we are! These are the core elements that make up Trudy’s characterization. If you ever wanted a general list of what makes her tick, then hopefully this post will help in scratching that itch. And if it doesn’t, then hopefully it still proves that more thought was put into her than Scourge. :]

#Lutrudis Hadeer #Sonic Character Design

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baldrambo · 5 years ago

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On Joyce Byers....

Joyce Byers is a bad ass. So why is she handled with kid gloves by everyone? This is a bit of a companion discussion to my Hopper post from a few weeks ago. Like my prior meta, I will discuss what I believe to be truths about Joyce and her arc, which don’t appear to be aligned with most analyses of her character that I’ve seen elsewhere. I will make 5 assertions and address each of them below the cut because (as per the norm) this got really long and I am not trying to clog up people’s dashboards.

Assertion 1: We have no canon evidence that Lonnie was physically abusive and making Joyce his victim does a disservice to her characterization

Assertion 2: What Bob represented to Joyce was more important to her arc than Bob himself (aka Bob/Joyce were not really a good match)

Assertion 3: Making fun of/being frustrated by Joyce’s magnet obsession misses the point of her arc in S3, which was about her pro-activity rather than reactivity

Assertion 4: Joyce inappropriately attempts to compartmentalize Hopper (aka Joyce needs to let Lonnie and Bob go if she’s to ever move on)

Assertion 5: Joyce is not a delicate cinnamon roll in need of our protection she is a BAMF and should be treated as such.

Assertion 1:

Our first introduction to Joyce is as a small, mousy, anxious, chain-smoking single mom who….can’t find her keys. And not because she is is careless. She has literally SO much on her plate at any given moment that the location of her keys is trivial until it’s not. She works long hours at a low-wage job to support her boys. She really has no life outside of work, paying bills, and cleaning house. Wash, rinse, repeat. She is just barely scraping by.

And yet we learn through flashbacks fairly quickly after Will’s disappearance that despite working long hours, despite the constant stress….she still manages to find time to parent her boys. And not just be any old parent, mind you. Joyce Byers is a good parent. When Will is out in Castle Byers she doesn’t just barge in. She respects his personal space, remembers a unique nerdy password, and waits for him to tell her that she can enter. She then trusts his judgment when he says that he can handle watching Poltergeist. This is later juxtaposed by the scene in Nancy’s bedroom with Jonathan where Karen attempts to enter the bedroom after Nancy has had to lock it. Jonathan looks at Nancy, a little shocked, and says “she doesn’t knock?” Which is weird to him, of course, because Joyce would always knock. Now lets contrast Joyce, who is Mother of the Year, with Lonnie Byers who is a Grade A Piece of Shit™. He abandoned the family and hasn’t seen them in years. And when he was around, he spent his time being a deadbeat, calling his son a faggot, and trying to force his boys into being “manlier” and more mainstream.

We first meet Lonnie in 1x2 when Jonathan drives out to Indianapolis to confirm that Will is in fact, not with his father. When Lonnie’s girlfriend answers the door, Jonathan pushes past her and into the home, shouting for his brother. Lonnie then comes in from outside, grabs Jonathan, and pushes him up against a wall. Only then does he realize it’s his son. Lonnie hadn’t seen Jonathan in so long that he almost didn’t recognize him, and initially thought him an intruder. Jonathan angrily shoves Lonnie back, who steps back and laughs. Notably, Jonathan does not appear to fear Lonnie and Lonnie makes no attempt to otherwise assert any other type of physical control over Jonathan. Lonnie talks to him like he’s an adult.

When Lonnie returns in 1x5 for Will’s funeral, he is an immediate negative influence who has Joyce up drinking all night, calls her crazy, and starts sniping at Jonathan about some stupid poster in his bedroom being inappropriate. However, there is no real confrontation until Joyce finds the flyer in his belongings and realizes he is attempting to collect on Will’s “death.” She screams at Lonnie and holds her ground when he shouts back. She shoves him. She gets in his face and throws his bag at him. And then little 5′2 Joyce Byers successfully throws a grown ass man out of her house. He never raises a hand to her.

This is not a Lonnie Byers apology piece. Lonnie Byers is a shitty dad, shitty partner, shitty person. I think an entirely separate piece could be written on the emotional abuse of his boys (although in the 80′s Midwest much of that would be considered normal, but that’s another essay). But there is nothing to suggest that Lonnie ever hit them, or Joyce. If the Duffers wanted Lonnie to be physically abusive, they would make it obvious, no?

The most clear example of this? Neil Hargrove. When he enters Billy’s bedroom in 2x8, he has complete control. Over Billy, his wife, the conversation. He overtly strikes Billy, humiliates him, and it’s clear that Billy fears him. Susan Hargrove also fears him, and she stands in the background for the entire confrontation, avoiding eye contact, saying nothing. The only time she attempts to intercede is to diffuse the situation, diffuse Neil, when he commands that Billy apologize and quickly shuts up when it’s clear her efforts didn’t work. She then exits the room, first allowing him to leave the room before her. The dynamics here are light years from Joyce/Lonnie/Jonathan.

Ok so. Why am I bringing all of this up? Because, imo, turning Lonnie into a physical abuser cuts at the heart of Joyce’s characterization. Joyce Byers is a fighter. That’s what Bob loved about her. “You fight back,” he told her, in a somewhat awestruck voice. Joyce is not a Susan Hargrove. None of this is to suggest that Susan is to blame for what she has gone through, or that somehow Joyce is better for not being like her. I contrast them because the Duffer brothers do. Joyce will steamroll anyone and anything that gets in her way to protect her boys. If she’s on a mission….if she is trying to save someone…watch out. Making Lonnie a physical abuser so he can be a plot device, or because it makes it easier to hate and villainize him upsets the core of Joyce’s character. And it changes the entire show.

Assertion 2:

Much of Joyce’s inner strength shines through in S2. When S2 begins, Joyce can’t leave Will’s side and still worries about him incessantly. She’s overbearing and “struggles to function” whenever she is not with him. She is forced to re-live the horrors of what her and her family went through every time she goes to Hawkins Lab and worse…she has to place her trust in the very same people who nearly ripped her family apart. Yet, she doesn’t give up, she soldiers on for Jonathan and Will. But so much like S1, S2 Joyce is helpless. She is unable to control what is happening around her. The events of S1-S2 make her reactionary, she gets dragged along by the plot instead of driving the plot.

But there is one bright spot of happiness for her…..Bob. He is the exact opposite of Lonnie in every way. He is kind, thoughtful, hardworking, honest, and trustworthy. He put Joyce first, he tried to bond with and be a parent to Will and Jonathan. And he was willing to jump in to the fray when he had no idea what was going on to save her, save everyone despite being absolutely terrified. Bob Newby. Superhero.

There are some early warning signs that perhaps….we as the audience are not supposed to view this as the perfect match? Jonathan, in particular, doesn’t seem to approve at all, in fact, it downright confuses him. He confides in Will that he doesn’t understand what Joyce sees in him and later gets agitated when he learns that Bob has stayed the night. Hopper, too, seems to struggle with it. And while a lot of that can probably be chalked up to the early signs of jealousy, his forced “I’m happy for you” appears to be at least somewhat tied to his inability to take her dating “Bob the Brain” seriously. Why drop all these hints if it doesn’t mean anything?

It’s the conversation she has with Bob in 2x2 on Halloween that really cements Joyce’s arc and Bob’s central purpose. While they’re dancing to Kenny Rogers, he starts prattling on about moving to Maine. He’s in love with her, he knows being in Hawkins is hard for her. So why not start over again and be a family? “We aren’t a normal family.” She tells Bob. His response is simple: “It could be.” And that moment plants that seed for Joyce. What if they COULD be a happy, nuclear family? What if they COULD leave all that trauma behind them and finally find safety and security? She starts thinking on it so much that by the end of S2 when Bob brings it up again, she’s all but ready. And the Duffers have confirmed, if Bob had survived she would have gone with him to Maine.

But here’s the thing: what if someone else besides Bob had planted the idea in her head? Would she have wanted it any less? Or consider, was it really Bob himself that drove her desire, or was it always lying dormant there waiting to be activated? If she had started dating Hopper after S1 instead and HE had been the one to make the suggestion, would she have desired it any less? Did she really love Bob himself, or the idea of him?

It’s easy to romanticize Bob because he seemed perfect, he represented the happy ending that Joyce wants, that WE WANT for her, but here’s the thing. There is no perfect guy. You can’t move a few states away and leave behind Demogorgons and another dimension that nearly killed your son. That stays with you wherever you go, and you have to face it and deal with it. You can’t run away from trauma, and Joyce has to realize this. Joyce is chasing a mirage. Perhaps Bob was kind of a mirage, too.

Assertion 3:.

The Joyce we see at the end of s2 seems….like she’s going to be okay. She has her boys, Hopper’s friendship. She’s lost Bob but the Gate is closed now, everyone is safe (or so everyone thinks). But then there’s S3 Joyce. She’s lonely, isolated, sad, discontent, and restless. The kids are trying to move on from the events of S1-S2. But she’s unable to. She’s unable to move on from Bob, from her fear that her boys could still be in danger, from the feeling that something is going to go horribly wrong again and she won’t be able to stop it.

So Joyce preemptively reshapes her arc. She decides she is going to put her own house on the market. Bob may not be coming with her but goddammit she is going to move anyway and find safety somewhere else. When she notices the magnets fall off the fridge she is not going to wait and see what happens, SHE is going to go research magnets and solenoids and weird science stuff she doesn’t understand and SHE is going to figure it out and SHE is going bring it to Hopper before shit hits the fan. And when they call the military, SHE is not going to wait around for them to show up and save her kids. She’s going to take action herself.

Thus, Joyce is driving much of the plot in S3, rather than being dragged along by the plot as she was in S1-S2. She is not focusing all of her time and energy on Will and his safety, and reacting to where he is and what he’s doing, she is able to focus on Hopper, El, the Party, the bigger picture. Will kept her focus narrowed, magnets expanded them.

And perhaps most significantly, the magnet obsession is what ultimately saved the day. Joyce is the hero of S3. Think about who saved the day in S1-S2. Who were the heroes? El and Hopper. In S1, El sacrificed herself to kill the Demogorgon and save the Party and Hopper resuscitated Will. In S2, El and Hopper closed the Gate. In S3, who saved the day? El? She had no power. She wasn’t even the one fighting the Meat Flayer. Hopper? He was trapped on the platform. Who closed the Gate and killed the “Meat Flayer?” Joyce. By herself. This ended the threat, this stopped the “Meat Flayer,” this saved El and the Party.

I think it’s easy to miss all of this due to the tonal shift in S3, which added some silliness to the plot lines that didn’t exist in S1-S2. On the surface, obsessing about magnets instead of your son seems ridiculous. But this shift gave Joyce’s character a chance to breathe, a chance to grapple with her own feelings, what she wants, it gave her a chance to just be Joyce instead of Mom™. So S3 is about her, instead of what is happening to her.

And i think, ultimately, this tonal shift in S3 is what allowed that to happen. If the circumstances in S3 were the same as S1-S2, then the Duffers wouldn’t have had this freedom. If we want to see Joyce grow as a character, there has to be time and energy spent on her away from her kids and away from the same closed loop of S1-S2. Which brings me to my next point.

Assertion 4:

Jopper. You can’t expect me to write this long ass meta on Joyce Byers and not talk about Hopper, right?

In early S3 there is obviously a marked shift in her relationship with Hopper. There are no longer secrets (El) or other relationships (Bob) that they can use to hold each other at arm’s length anymore. There are no other adults in town now who understand what they’ve been through. Joyce is effectively co-parenting El with Hopper and it’s clear that he not only asks her for advice often but that they spend a lot of time together. This did not happen between 1 and 2. It’s made fairly clear upfront that Hopper is hopelessly in love with her, but what of Joyce? She’s more difficult to read. And this is due in large part to the fact that she is more complicated than Hopper and her feelings are more complicated than his.

I am not here to argue about whether I think Joyce loves Hopper. This entire analysis is based on the assumption that she does because I think the Duffers and Winona have given us more than enough to go on to draw that conclusion. What I AM here to argue, however, is that Joyce is still grappling with what she wants and (inappropriately so) is attempting to compartmentalize Hopper.

Adult relationships are complicated and particularly for a character like Joyce, who has been to Hell and back a few times, there is added complexity that has to be dealt with and worked through. She’s been in prior relationships before. She knows what it’s like to be in love and she’s felt the pain and grief that comes along with it. She’s been divorced already, had a spouse that abandoned her, children to prioritize over her own love life, and trauma stemming both from the events of 1983-1985 and separate from it. Joyce, especially, is fresh off the train of losing a love interest who she got close to very quickly. You can imagine her hesitation about leaping forwards again with someone else who could die.

There’s your backdrop for Joyce in S3. Throw a healthy dollop of she has feelings for Hopper and then point blank ask her: “What do you want, Joyce?” She could probably tell you that she wants to feel safe again. That she wants to be free of the pain and grief of losing Bob and what happened in S1-S2. If you really can get her to open up (or if you are a mind reader like Murray) you would also find out that she is still holding onto that desire to have a normal, happy family which includes a “nice guy to settle down with.” The thing about Hopper is that he fulfills all of this for her, just messily. Joyce is still looking for that coloring book of life to be filled in by an artist (Bob). Hopper fills it in like a 3 year old with disorganized scribbles that cover the picture but can’t quite stay in the lines. Lonnie is easy: he never even filled in the lines to begin with.

Hopper shares personality traits with both Bob and Lonnie. Like Bob, he makes her feel safe, she can trust him, she knows he cares about her, feels more than friendship for her. But he’s also brash and loud and argumentative and after spending a decade of her life screaming with Lonnie….she doesn’t want that again. He probably at times DOES “remind her of a bad relationship,” but Hopper is not Lonnie. He respects her, treats her like an equal, trusts her judgment. But she can’t escape the constant comparisons.

And what I’ve seen from a lot of the fandom are the same attempts to shove Hopper into the “Lonnie” box or the “Bob” box that Joyce keeps trying to do. S1-S2 Hopper is in the “Bob” box. We like S1-S2 Hopper. But S3 Hopper, man. He is in the “Lonnie” box. He yells and stamps his feet. This Hopper isn’t “good enough” for Joyce.

But here’s my radical proposition: Hopper IS good enough for Joyce if he is who she wants. And he is what she wants. But she needs to let Lonnie and Bob go first.

Lonnie and Bob still have a hold on her and if she is going to be able to take that leap forward with Hopper she needs to put their ghosts to rest. She couldn’t save Bob, but maybe she can save Hopper. Maybe Hopper isn’t perfect and has a temper, but that is ok because he loves her and respects her unlike Lonnie. I think if we see Joyce work through this in S4 and join her on her journey of making the decision to be with Hop and making that choice FOR HERSELF rather than the plot or some other force making that decision for her, the payout is gonna be huge.

Assertion 5:

Finally, I wanted to touch on the common theme of this whole analysis: that despite this inner strength, despite the growth and change her character has undergone, she is still largely handled by the ST fandom with kid gloves. Like she is someone that can’t take care of herself, and who we need to step in and defend and protect against….the world. Here are a few examples I’ve seen over and over:

1) Mischaracterizing S3 Hopper as an “abuser” that Joyce needs “protection” from, much like she needed “protection” from Lonnie.

2) Attempting to turn Jonathan into her protector/her keeper.

3) Defending her when she is in the wrong because she is Mom™ (see i.e. standing Hopper up for their date and being non-apologetic about it.)

4) Analyzing “what is best for Joyce” without thinking about her canon feelings or what SHE wants

As I dissected above, Joyce never needed protection from Lonnie. She doesn’t need protection from Hopper. Or anyone. She doesn’t need Jonathan stepping in for her and she does not need us the fandom, to decide FOR her what she wants and what she can and cannot do. All this does is, ultimately, build her arc around men and strip her of her agency as a character.

All the canon evidence suggests that she is a bad ass. She curb stomps assholes on the regular and saves the day, multiple times. So why is it next to impossible to find any discussion of Joyce that doesn’t involve complaints of what man (Duffer or otherwise) is wronging her at any moment? Is it because it’s just easier to pidgeonhole characters, particularly female characters, into villain/oppressor and “the good guy?” Because if we open her up into complexity outside of being our cinnamon roll mom we worry she could disappoint us? Because we cannot accept that a good female character doesn’t need protection? What happens if Joyce is just a complex person who is both mom and badass? Focused on her kids and herself? Deserving of her own life and respect for her autonomy? Is both selfish and selfless?

Joyce, imo, has one of the most compelling arcs on the entire show. We are introduced to her as a Mom who is barely holding it together already and then loses her son, sending her into a spiral that her inner strength alone carries her through. After nearly losing her kid again, she loses her boyfriend horrifically, and just when she thinks they may have finally escaped it all permanently she has to single-handedly close the Gate, torching the only other man she loves in the process. So she packs her shit up and moves her family away from the danger. She goes from the most reactive character on the show to, perhaps, the most proactive one.

She may not have “powers,” she may not be able to effectively wield a gun, but she can knee an asshole in the crotch and that makes her a hero to me. I say let her be everything she is, allow her to explore her own wants even if they are imperfect, let her make mistakes and stand up for and protect herself, and let her be her own person outside of the character arcs of other male characters.

Andddddd end scene.

#joyce byers #jim hopper #jopper #jonathan byers #lonnie byers #thank you for coming to my long winded ted talk part 2 #aka joyce byers could beat my ass and i am here for it #also this got me all kinds of hype for s4 lemme tell you its gonna be JOYCES SEASON #anyway if you read this please give me your thoughts i love to hear what other people agree and disagree about #i get so wrapped up in these im sorry they're so long jfc #meta

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aeondeug · 5 years ago

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I feel a need to like. Actually do a formal look into and write up on why I feel it is important to look at the aesthetic design of Soul Society from a thematic or and character arc stand point, as opposed to a “lol does the worldbuilding make factual sense as a collective afterlife?” sense. For this project I will need to gather. Images of the comic. It’d probably help to gather images of the real world things that Soul Society’s aesthetic is based off too, and timeframes for when those things were made and worn.

Important points of interest with this...Byakuya’s story I think might be one of the clearest in this regard. Since he is related heavily to the central RUKIA IS GOING TO FUCKING DIE conflict, and his role in that is very much based around his need to adhere to strict traditionalism versus his emotional needs. Which creates a nice tight little package I feel like. This does apply to like. The arc and its cast as a whole, I feel, but Byakuya is just extremely apt due to his position in the RUKIA IS GOING TO FUCKING DIE bit of things.

Another thing of note is what I feel may be the significance of Ichigo’s outfit change when he finally figures out his zanpakuto (except not really because THINGS AND STUFF AND FURTHER PLOT NONSENSE). Since he starts out with like a very traditional outfit for a Soul Reaper, albeit a very strange sword, and he then ends up with an outfit that is still very clearly Soul Reaper influenced but is like...Stylish chic modern outfit fashion baby work it version of the outfit. Especially the shirt. A sexy, sexy blend that is very Ichigo and very cool. Which is important for like. Both Ichigo’s character development but also the general traditionalism versus the rejection thereof thematic of the Soul Society arc. Especially in how Ichigo manages affect and influence those around him.

There is an obvious need to mention the outfits that Orihime, Ishida, and Chad bring in. Because that I think is one of the most clear indicators of what the sides in the debate are. Because you have like, on the one hand, this very old school aesthetic with loving attention given to waraji and closeups on people’s feet so we can see just how on point his art of them is. And then you’ve got like. 2000′s ass Japanese fashion showing up to be like Hello Yes We Are Trendy Teens Interested In Rejecting This Fuckery.

The aesthetics of the Rukongai also need looking at. Especially in contrast with the clothing worn by those in the Seireitei. Since that divide helps emphasize the fuck out of like. The strict hierarchical structures of a more conservative Japan by like showing off this very fantastical take on like. The divide between commoners and the samurai nobles.

I am currently reading my way through the Arrancar arc right now and I do want to finish my readthrough as a whole before ANY. Sort of going back. So there is a lot of reading to do still since I am not even. Halfway done. But thinky thoughts of things to make into projects possibly...

Speaking of the Arrancar arc. That is also something I want to write about the aesthetics of and how it shows off the thematics and character dynamics. Like just the way Aizen is framed in his environments compared to the Espada is, alone, a thing worthy of A Paper. There is a lot going on that one series of pages where he’s sitting on his throne while talking about shit. The first big show of that location. Which is a really cool thing since it helps say things about like...how this arc deals with nihilism, the strict power dynamic between Aizen and the Arrancars, Aizen’s role in the story and his being the bad guy...It’s just a really cool series of pages and I go back to look at it at times because it’s very loaded and just so much that is important to the arc is conveyed entirely visually during that scene.

I also feel like Orihime’s role in the arc is often just kind of neglected by critiques of the arc that are focused on how it is structurally a mirror of Soul Society. Specifically the contrast between her and Ulquiorra I feel is very important. And how things like how Ulquiorra is even designed to look as a character and how he is framed against Orihime says...A lot? About like what her thematic weight here is and what Orihime is even actually doing in the narrative. Because she is doing more than sitting there to be a plot device that is saved. And that’s something I find interesting about the Rukia and Orihime as captives structures. Their positions as captives and how they react to that and how the world reacts to that shows off like. The big thematic cores of the arcs in question and those themes are where the differences in the arcs lay. It’s why I can look at Soul Society and Arrancar and go “These aren’t just the same story”.

In general I have feelings about how the Arrancar arc is written off as just a poor clone of the Soul Society arc. And another avenue to think on besides just like the visual aesthetics of Kubo’s comic is also like...What does it mean that he mirrored them that way? Like we can go through it and be like “A girl is kidnapped, we have to go to a new alien place, we go through fights with increasingly ridiculous general captain whatevers, we manage to get through to a raging fight man, one of the characters turns out to actually be a sexy lady...” about it and yes. That is a point. They are structurally very, very similar even if they are very different thematically. So what does that mean? How does that work with the thematics of Bleach and how those are shown off overall? Because I think “It means Kubo is a lazy artist and Bleach is bad after Soul Society” is a boring, unconvincing argument and I need to able to articulate in a variety of ways why I feel that way.

This has gotten long and rambly and off point from the original topic. But I guess I just have a lot of feelings about this goofy ass comic and like. I want to know why Bleach makes me feel the way it does. I want to be able to articulate why exactly I like Bleach. I want to pick apart this comic and find the cool shit and talk about why that shit’s cool and smart and meaningful while still being a big, dumb shonen romp.

And I just have a lot of feelings about this because like. For years I just accepted the “lol Bleach is bad after Soul Society’ narrative and didn��t fucking read the comic from where I initially fell off. Because I mean it’s 600+ chapters long and if everyone is saying it’s worse than Naruto and only One Piece was good anyway why would I read it? That is a massive time commitment and I could read like 500 distinct yuri series in that span of time. But then I went back to actually read it after hearing people who do like Bleach or at least feel it is being done a disservice by the discourse talk about it and found that like...I actually think it’s good? That it’s actually my favorite of the Big Three? That it has interesting things to say and interesting ways to say those things? I just have feelings, man.

#bleach

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kiramartini · 5 years ago

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i just found this old post and the cheating part is obviously bs but tf is toxic about having sex one more time and then breaking up tomorrow like varchie did in 3x10? i mean is this not what choni did in 3x15 but without the conversation about it beforehand? and i don’t think choni is toxic for that either but op is a choni shipper so i’m hoping the reason they deleted that post is bc their point didn’t age well. at all.

“having sex every single time you have issues” funny how this is actually a part of veronica’s character and not exclusive to her relationship with archie but applies to her relationship with reggie as well (x)

in 2x01 when grief sex didn’t work, veronica had to turn to the middle gif (x)

in 2x08, there was absolutely nothing wrong with them turning to “carnal defiance”, there’s a reason saying “screw it” and having sex on your “last night on earth” is a popular trope...let alone the “fuck you” element to a sanctimonious serial killer wanting to kill people for “sins”. it only turned into an issue when archie said “i love you” and veronica wanted to ignore it...but even then sex didn’t function as a solution to their problems bc archie kept trying to talk to her about it and then eventually they had to break up bc it wasn’t working.

does 2x14 count? veronica tries to initiate sex but archie rejects her bc he’s mad about her kiss with jughead. it’s worth noting that veronica isn’t necessarily even aware archie’s mad until he rejects her so this is not a “let’s have sex to forget i kissed jughead” moment if ppl have tried to twist it to that.

idek why ppl try to use 2x20 as an example “they having sex while all this is going down in riverdale!” as if they even knew about any of it until archie received a phone call AFTER they had sex

in 3x05 they had sex in jail, big deal. it was reunion sex, not “solve an issue” sex. conjugal visits are a thing. NEXT.

their first sex scene in 3x10 was another reunion sex scene. yes they had things to talk about that didn’t happen until later that episode but it’s not like they straight up jumped each other without veronica asking him questions, him apologising and understanding if she doesn’t want to simply take up the relationship where it left off. veronica reassures him that she’s just happy he’s home and safe and from archie’s pov at least they’re just having reunion sex, not trying to ignore or solve anything. ofc we know this to be not true. veronica thought she could just jump back into the relationship like normal but it turns out she can no longer ignore her unresolved anger towards him. archie understands. he also has the SATs tomorrow so tonight might not be the best time for a difficult conversation. could we find comfort and familiarity with each other for one more night before everything changes?

and in 4x13 when archie realised veronica was using sex to cover up a bigger issue (which btw wasn’t with their relationship but her own personal issue) he basically forced her to stop and talk about it.

and btw it’s not varchie’s fault that reggie is a side character again now that he’s not involved with veronica, this is a riverdale problem where characters become irrelevant if they’re not involved with a core four storyline. one can ship varchie and wish for more reggie screentime, that’s not inherently contradictory especially since if the ONLY screentime he can get is with veronica that’s a bit of a disservice? not that i think the only s3 screentime he got was veronica related (tho lbr most of it was) but that’s the implication if you hate varchie for relegating reggie to a side character again. as if the writers can’t easily give him screentime and storylines now that he’s no longer with veronica.

and re: hating varchie’s reunion at the end of s3 bc archie’s going through ptsd and needs to focus on himself instead of being in a relationship right now...look, i, too, would’ve loved for archie to have been single for more than two episodes at a time on this show. as a varchie shipper from the pilot (and actually before the pilot bc of the comics) i wish there had been a little more breathing room between his relationship with valerie and veronica. and tho his relationship with grundy definitely qualifies as trauma he didn’t even have ptsd back then! so yeah i get where this is coming from but this is not a varchie problem. just look at the fact that he started dating josie two episodes after he broke up with veronica. but somehow his reunion with veronica at the end of s3 is the real problem? nah. we can talk about this as a general riverdale/archie problem, not a problem specific to one ship. but also. being in a relationship is not exclusive to working on yourself and recovering from ptsd.

as for rr having more chemistry: this is not the serve y’all think it is when the actors were dating.

#varchie #archieronnie #rd 3x10

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taffysannotatedsonichu · 7 years ago

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The Most Pointless Character in Sonichu

Taffy here. This was a post I made for the Kiwi Farms forum on the most pointless character in Sonichu in late October 2017, and I took up the challenge to prove every single character has no point. This was kind of my beta version of what would become Taffy’s Annotated Sonichu, so I thought it would be worth reprinting here (also I’m sorry it’s taking me so long to get more CWCDefense or GitM up, I’ve been really sick for the past two weeks and I’m just now trying to get back in the swing of things).

Chris's comic persona and fursona are pointless because he could have just lived vicariously through Sonichu and not have an in-comic presence.

Sonichu himself became pointless after Chris took over as main character but was already pretty pointless since really Chris could have just written a straight Sonic fanfic with Sonic as the lead in the first place. Besides the occasional electric attack and the complete lack of an original personality he's basically Sonic.

That said, all the characters ripped wholesale from Sonic or Pokémon (Sonic himself, Perfect Chaos, Robotnik, Giovanni) are pretty pointless as they were dropped not long in as Sonichu grew to have its own canon with its own crazy cast of characters.

In addition, any character ripped wholesale from any other franchise (Beavis & Butthead, Bugs Bunny, Meg Griffin) exist solely for "fan service", or rather fan disservice.

Rosechu is extremely pointless, all she does is A) be a token girl, B) prove Sonichu is STRAIGHT, and C) occasionally face rape someone. That said The Incredible Lioness is probably the closest we get to a real character with a point, rivaled only by the Voltorb that kills Simonla. They have simple purposes (to brutally maim and murder) and they do them to a T.

Kel is pointless since Rosechu could have just been Chris's Pokémon to begin with and she didn't need to exist as a middleman.

For that matter, any character best known for being a Moon Pal (Bill the Scientist, Metal Sonichu, Yawning Squirtle) or just as a meme in general (Inos), while being great for laughs, are all pretty irrelevant background characters.

Reldnahc Notsew Niatsirhc exists solely for Chris to physically obliterate his sexual insecurity.

Any Jerkop or Manajerk exists solely for Chris to vent his frustrations with real people who were just doing their jobs. Same goes for Hanna.

Blake is too inconsistent to have a point to existing. He was a pointless villain-of-the-week at first and then he was a pointless supporting character.

Sarah Hammer and Wes Iseli are particularly pointless because Chris' relationship with Sarah was already waning when he wrote Sonichu 2. Since the reincarnation plot point was dropped not long after, you can honestly skip Sonichu 2 entirely and not miss anything.

Mary Lee Walsh, while being awesome, is like the jerkops and manajerks just there essentially as a comic book voodoo doll. Maybe the point of her was to show that Chris can in fact write an interesting and badass female character? We'll never know.

Count Graduon is pretty redundant with Mary, power wise. Other than to vent frustrations with his graduation he's really pointless.

All of the Chaotic Combo are basically team filler filling out some elements that the rest of the team lacks. Specifically:

Wild Sonichu doesn't really have a personality. He's pretty redundant with Sonichu himself, other than, of course, we need a green Sonichu. The one thing that possibly could have made him interesting, the struggles of being a single father, are really rushed over so Chris can get back to the murder spree. His only notable father-daughter bonding experience was drilling a man to death.

Bubbles Rosechu, aside from being the token blue Sonichu/water type, finds one Sonichu ball and then returns to being a moron.

Angelica Rosechu, although I imagine her original purpose was to be a pacifist voice of reason and a token religious character, well, that got thrown out the window pretty quickly. The things that differentiate her from Bubbles besides their powers are few and far between.

Punchy Sonichu is just the token red character and the token Asian. Seriously I don't even know what "fighting type" means. In fact, why not make him fire type? It's the one element missing from the Chaotic Combo (Bubbles is water, Wild is earth, Angelica is air, Magi-Chan is ether/heart/mind, no one's fire!) (Note 26/11/18: I now know Fighting-Type is a type of Pokémon, but nevertheless “Fighting-Type is one of the weirder types. The Pokémon types are elements, supernatural creatures... and martial arts. And yes, the Fighting-Type icons in the series are red while Fire-Type is orange, but from a team balance perspective fire would have made sense).

Magi-Chan, especially after being paired off with Silvana taking away his sole unique trait of not being driven around by his penis, is just Chris's round the clock surveillance system.

Boulder Dropping Whale would have been useful if he actually killed Bubbles's mother but since he failed he's just a great meme.

Why does Flame the Sunbird even exist? He's literally just Kazooie from Banjo-Kazooie and his role could have easily been filled by Wild or Bubbles or anyone because that stupid Sunstone doesn't even matter, except it does make everything grow like Norma, whoever she is. Norma is the most relevant character in that whole issue. (Note 26/11/18: Yes, I named Nadine’s mom after this typo.)

Again, Darkbind and Zelina are crimes against nature. (Note from an earlier repost): I am referring to a previous post complaining that Darkbind and Zelina were the combinations of not two but four franchises (Sonic, Pokémon, Zelda & Darkwing Duck) and came off as clunky because of it.)

Crystal the sister is especially irrelevant now that Chris is a girl (why not make her a trans man to mirror Chris' own transition? Oh wait JERKS.), but she was always redundant with Rosechu and Chris himself.

Sailor Megtune - why didn't he just draw Megan herself? We know he's okay drawing her.

Megagi - Already kinda redundant with Megtune and she really had no reason to exist after Chris & Megan had that falling out.

Jamsta and Lolisa speak for themselves at their uselessness. I mean, they are just bit characters anyway. But as someone else mentioned before their radio station is particularly shitty.

Patti-Chan, while her story is cute, just exists as a way for Chris to hold on to his beloved pet and not fully cope with her loss.

Allison Amber, although being one of the better characters, wouldn't need to exist if Chris would just do some work for once. That said if the point of her character was to be an audience surrogate (I mean, until she shoots a man in cold blood) then for once Chris succeeded.

Bionic the Hedgehog as previously mentioned is just there for the sake of having an orange Sonichu, even though he isn't one.

All of the specific characters of Chris's "real life" "sweethearts" (Pandahalo, Blanca, Ivy) as well as their OCs (Jiggliami, Blazebob & Chloe, Layla Flaafy) are pointless because they all just disappear almost immediately after they're introduced after Chris finds out they were a troll or they "died".

Likewise any rendition of one of Chris' real life trolls (Jason Kendrick Howell, Clyde, Jack Thaddeus, Alec, Evan, Sean & Mao) are again just there as pen-and-paper voodoo dolls for Chris to take out his frustrations on. The trolls in particular almost work against Chris' point in including them because no matter how much Chris paints himself as the hero his violent murder sprees always end with him looking like the villain. (Justice for the Asperpedia Four!)

Beel is just Satan and a secretary for the 4-cent-garbage building. Pretty pointless.

Zapina is just there as a token "cute" character.

Simonla is just Wild's token sweetheart and then later the lynchpin Chris needed to justify executing his enemies.

Silvana, while another fairly interesting character, is just a villain-of-the-week with an added dose of Chris's sexual insecurity.

Sarah & Rita Jackarass - These two are both stupid minor characters, but why on Earth did there need to be two of them?

GodJesus exists solely to heap praise onto our beloved autist.

Those stupid Samurai Pizza Transformers are stupid. I hate them so much. I hope they burn in the Earth's lava core.

Sonichu & Rosechu's children are initially just there to be cloyingly cute and then once they're grown to be Chris's LGBT mouthpieces, forgetting that we won't listen to anything they say because we already hate them. Of special pointlessness is Cerah, because while Robbie is the most punchable he's at least the focus character of a lot of the newer stuff (even though we hated him as a Sonee, we hated him as a Sonichu, and we'll hate him as a Rosechu), and Christine is vapid she gives credence to the idea that Magi-Chan is giving it to Rosechu behind Sonichu's back which is way more interesting than canon. Cerah does jack squat besides be a lesbian.

The Asperchu cameos are just there for Chris to try to force Alec to give him what he wants and the Basement Rosechus are just there to slander Alec's name.

Sandy is particularly irrelevant since Simonla's back, she was never anything more than a replacement goldfish for her.

Kevin the Jew - I knew it! I knew it all along! Peppermint Patty is a boy!

Bananasaurus - Don't listen to your Patreon backers Chris.

Lastly, Russel & Cynthia are just there to fill the Sonee/Rosee void left when Cera Christine & Robbie evolved, a void no one in particular wanted filled.

Edited (27/10/17) to include all the MLP characters and Chris's ponysona - We hate them and we want Sonichu back.

#cwc extras

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douxreviews · 6 years ago

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Charmed - Season Five Review

"My sister, the demon magnet."

A clear departure from the dark, mature tone of the previous two years, Season Five is where Charmed starts to go downhill. Following some network meddling to avoid the apparent doom and gloom of the previous season, there's a massive shift towards a lighter, and subsequently more banal form of writing. I do feel like I have to defend the first half the season to many, which features a few of Charmed's better hours, but the second half...not so much. Spoilers and, unfortunately, leprechaun discussion ahead.

You can kind of get why there would be an attempt to back track to the light-hearted tone of the early episodes of the series. Season Four was by all rights a bitter pill to swallow. With Prue's untimely death, and the Halliwells’ hard battle to rid themselves of The Source for good, things got pretty dark. Why not change tack and have a bit more fun? Sadly, for Brad Kern et. al, more fun means squeezing Alyssa Milano into the skimpiest costumes possible, and breaking the record for the highest number of irritating magical creatures in a single episode of television. Ugh.

Initially, the dress-up games aren't all that terrible. Sure, the Mermaid fiasco in the two-part premiere was questionable, but the decision to tie it back to Phoebe's pain and desire to escape the toxicity of her relationship with Cole was oddly affecting. Even the fairy tale absurdity of 'Happily Ever After' feels rooted in similar personal struggles. By episode 5, though, we get our first taste of the tackless dreck that will become signature in the series' later seasons. The results are a mixed bag, to say the least. 'Witches in Tights' is a great title for an hour that serves very little purpose other than to get the girls in a "theme of the week" get-up to liven up the WB promos. This tastelessness carries through to the end of the season with Rose McGowan's pain coming through in spades during 'Nymphs Just Wanna Have Fun', where she spends two thirds of the episode prancing around in rags like some brainless dodo. The costume party even runs into the season finale, where a potentially great idea is squandered by a need to ham up every single angle of the girls' transformation into Greek Goddesses.

The first half of the season does shine in a lot of ways. Julian McMahon's presence is still welcome, though Cole's return feels little redundant in light of the rather conclusive ending his vanquish gave us in Season Four's 'Long Live the Queen'. Regardless, we get some great character beats throughout the first 12 episodes before Cole's humanity is eventually lost and he has to be vanquished for the final time in the 100th episode 'Centennial Charmed'. Despite an unnecessarily extended arc, Cole was still an integral part of the show's growth and maturity and Julian McMahon will be remembered fondly.

There are some clear high-points elsewhere, too. A great guest spot from Melinda Clarke in 'Siren Song' helps to buoy yet another episode dedicated to the never-ending push and pull of Phoebe and Cole's now defunct marriage. 'A Witch in Time' is one of my personal favorites. With a fun time-travel element at its core, and one hell of a twist mid-way through the hour, it’s one of the rare examples of how smart the writing team could still be this late in the game. The 100th episode toys with the idea of an alternate reality without Paige around to save the Power of Three. It's played well for the most part, and effectively ties a nice bow around Julian McMahon's time of the series. 'Sense and Sense Ability' is also a bright spot in the otherwise depressing haze of nymphs and leprechauns in the second half of the season. Its full of fun gags and is home to a clever idea that ties neatly back to the strength of The Power of Three, an element that's oddly rare at this point.

For the most part, though, Season Five is a big disappointment with some really low lows. 'Lucky Charmed' is one the worst hours of the series, drawing on cliched leprechaun tropes, and tired demon drama. 'The Importance of Being phoebe' is a tacky mess, and is one of those episodes where you question how good the girls are at spotting when there's something clearly wrong with each other. What's so sad about episodes like these is that you have to endure them knowing there's material that’s just as heinous coming up later in the series.

In the face of some dreadful episodic content, you would usually be able to turn to the sibling dynamics that were almost always well crafted. Unfortunately, Season Five marks a point in the show where the writers begin to favor a more segregated approach to the girls' individual arcs, with lifeless love interests and silly new jobs taking precedent over genuinely effecting drama. Phoebe's time is spent floating from guy to guy and building her career as the city's biggest advice columnist, a career development that makes Prue's quick hire at 415 Magazine seem like a completely feasible move. It's great to see her mature, though. Paige makes a rather questionable choice to leave her job as a social worker, one that causes her to drift for most of the season with very little purpose. Piper's role is probably the better one this season, with her pregnancy, and the subsequent birth of her first child Wyatt, taking up most of her screen time. Unfortunately, her journey this year ends with one of the biggest mistakes the show ever made; the dissolution of her marriage to Leo.

For reasons that stem from lazy writing more than anything else, Piper and Leo are pulled apart in the finale in order to allow Leo to take up a bigger role "up there" with the Elders, and to make room for the time-travelling Chris, who pops up in the season finale and will continue to plague the series next season. It's a move that's just as frustrating as it is contrived, and almost appropriately messy as we enter Charmed's problematic sixth season. There were some attempts to shoe-horn in some martial discord before the finale, notably in clip-show episode 'Cat House', but those small scenes do little to shake the feeling that the writers are now driven more by major story beats, and are far less concerned with the characters that were so well drawn when we started this journey five seasons earlier.

Potions and Notions

Sam makes his first re-appears here since season two, and it marks the first time he comes face-to-face with his daughter, Paige.

There was a lot of build up to Wyatt's birth. The moment itself is actually rather sweet, but the show doesn't really use his abilities to their fullest extent right away.

Phoebe's premonitions start to become more vivid this season, which basically means they're less blurry.

Spells and Chants

Cole: "What happened to us, Phoebe? How'd we get here? We used to be so in love! Even without your sisters, it's not working... Why?" Phoebe: "I don't know... Maybe it just wasn't meant to be."

Piper: "Even if he can handle the demons, he must sense the tension, which means at the very best we end up with a neurotic infant." Leo: "Look on the bright side. Growing up with your sisters, he was bound to be neurotic anyway."

Best Episode: A Witch in Time.

Honorable Mentions: Siren Song, The Eyes Have It, Sympathy for the Demon, Centennial Charmed, Sense and Sense Ability.

Worst Episode: Lucky Charmed.

There are some admittedly strong elements this season, but it's mostly a disappointing year that feels like a disservice to the well written drama that came before it.

5 out of 10 leprechauns.

Panda

#Charmed #Piper Halliwell #Phoebe Halliwell #Paige Matthews #Charmed Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews #something from the archive

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boombitxh · 7 years ago

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Feminine vs. Feminism on Scandal

A few days ago my good sis @alessandra-mnl wrote a fantastic piece about Scandal’s Crossover episode which inspired me to write this piece about how Scandal treats feminism and femininity. It was initially a comment on her original post but I’ve expanded it as follows:

The feminine-skewed positions as dictated by society and sometimes biology, like teaching which you just mentioned, or the treatment of the concept of First Lady on this show, even motherhood, have been abysmally represented. For a show that praises its feminism core I find it tremendously irresponsible to take this route even if its intentions are to juxtapose the gender roles while reversing them. It does this poorly and I’ll explain why.

The concept of feminism doesn’t state that you need to usurp masculine traits in order to be successful. It isn’t to shun or shame or even taint with negative connotations what are considered to be “traditional” feminine gender roles. The point is that women should have the choice to be conventional or unconventional, or both should they choose to be and not risk ridicule or condescension. The representation of this notion on the show has been done a disservice time and time again.

A fantastic guideline which I often refer to while analyzing gender roles in media is the documentary “Miss Representation”.

Fitz and Olivia are placeholders for reversed gender roles. The emotional, which is often a trait established for the female in heterosexual romantic depictions in media is in this turn attributed to Fitz. Nothing is wrong with that characterization, media that we consume should be working adamantly to give their male characters emotions that aren’t rooted in anger and aggression. I thought this was the show’s intention until we see how other characters in the show shun him for this, and how the show undermines its message about male toxicity when it apparently reinforces it via the ridicule of other characters towards Fitz. Mellie labels him idealistic, romantic, and she doesn’t mean it in a positive way. Cyrus regularly implies that loving Olivia weakens his professional effectiveness. Wearing his heart on his sleeve is seen as negative by almost every character directly in his surroundings. This is when switching gender roles goes wrong. The show can’t choose to reverse a gender role and then subsequently ridicule the character for the very same thing - an exercise in futility to me.

Then we have the theme of motherhood, which biologically can only be a feminine trait, and which is constantly scorned by Mellie. She had kids FOR Fitz, to advance his career and in turn hers, but she explicitly states she doesn’t have a motherly bone in her body. Her children are portrayed as a burden for her, not entirely positive is it?

The show also plays around a lot with the normal (in this case read romantic, family & family life) versus the professional (in this case read as power) life of its female characters. It sticks them into this binary turbine that makes it impossible to have this aspect of the show resonate with its viewers. Women’s very real lives can and do contain both elements, there’s no shame in it. Millions of women get up and go to high-powered jobs like the ones depicted on this show, and still choose to have children and families. And many women also don’t, and it is perfectly fine, but what is imperfect is the show’s insistence that you must choose one or the other. Life for women doesn’t happen in this either-or spectrum anymore, and it feels like an old iteration of feminism of yore where women’s rise in society was directly rooted in the idea that they had to be more like men.

And last but not least the role of First Lady. Continuously depicted as subservient to the President and entirely rooted in the domestic aspect, which we all know is a lie. It is offensive to relegate the role of First Lady to the role of a mere party hostess. First ladies go above and beyond this as we have learned from history, however the show rarely if ever touches on the social causes they champion etc. And when anyone is shown in their role as First Lady, or First Lady proxy as Olivia was in her different White house tenures both as First Girlfriend and Chief of Staff to unwed Mellie, they are shown to have a consistent condescending attitude towards their role and only shown in the domestic aspect of it. It is both intentional AND disingenuous.

Even if the show is intending to show how much of a failure it is for women to adopt male patterns to achieve equity it still fails miserably in its attempt because it is too extreme in its binary confines.

This depiction of feminism via a masculine approach of aggressive power-seeking is narrow and does not aid in the true representation of modern women. I would’ve liked the show to tackle these things seeing as to how adamant they’ve been with their depiction of the binary context of womanhood for the most recent seasons, especially when it pertains to Olivia. I wanted more for her than the trappings of her own head than a binary battle of love vs power. Feminism doesn’t have to be classically and or conventionally feminine, but it does have to be inclusive and broad, and that entails not shunning femininity.

#scandal #scandal abc #olivia pope #oliviapope #fitzgerald grant #fitz grant #fitzgrant #olitz #scandal olitz #olivia and fitz #tony goldwyn #tonygoldwyn #kerry washington #kerrywashington

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bulletandsophia · 8 years ago

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Some Meta (Tinfoil?) Because Episode 4 Had Me All Shook. Spoilers Included, Beware.

Okay, so I’ve few more thoughts about what can happen to the show moving forward. I think I’ve seen enough material from the past four episodes to create this somewhat long assumption on the endgame ship.

First and foremost, I am a fan of a good piece of literature (defined from here on, as I’ve studied in the university, as a piece of text or material from whichever medium or channel) and a well-thought literary criticism. I am keeping an open mind on this one so I hope you do too so we can create a healthy, substantial, and fascinating discourse. To keep it clear, this is mostly show-based analysis. 😊

And so, here we go. Read below the cut.

After seeing episode four that just for some reason blew me away not only on the execution and craftsmanship but even more so on the emotional depth that almost all of the characters in that episode have conveyed. I’ve already written a short recap on this particular episode in a previous post but in summary, I thought the episode gave us all what we wanted and rightfully, in GoT style. It was confusing, terrifying, and most definitely opened to A LOT MORE to interpretation.

The episode is both plot and character(s) driven that for me, it moved so much of the story in all characters’ respective playing field. Just a quick recap of the instances that has inspired me so to think of this meta:

1. Jon and D*ny finally have a semblance of a real conversation that made us see where their priorities still lie. Jon in the North, D*ny of conquering all of Westeros. Emphasis on “still” because this scene can inspire even more shifts in their dynamic. To where? That is the most exciting part.

2. Stark children Sansa, Arya, and Bran are finally all together in Winterfell surrounded by both angels (Brienne/Pod) and demons (Littlefinger) that could potentially put them in a tug-of-war. But ultimately, House Stark is back.

3. Jon and Theon dealing with past issues rekindled in a short but very tension-filled reunion. Might seem random. But I believe, it’s not (initially because of Dadvos’ reaction) but you can see why later on.

4. Tyrion and Jamie having some sort of similar realizations (of fear and disbelief) after witnessing D*ny’s fury and destruction on the battlefield.

With all these impressions and material to work on, a huge question has run rampart after this episode leak. Is the endgame Jonsa or J*nerys? This episode was filled with moments for both ships to shine and sail and I say they are both sailing very well. But again, in consideration of ALL that is happening (cue here LF’s words of wisdom: everything is happening all at the same time), we cannot simply disregard characterization, context, AND the other characters in order to make a ship happen.

First, Jon and D*ny are definitely going somewhere. I cannot entirely say yet that it will be full-on romantic or tragic or chaotic for episode four left this (too deliciously) vague for me. But they are intertwined both in the aspects of claiming the Iron Throne and in defeating the White Walkers. What I love is how blatant this knowledge is that I don’t even have to explain why. For anyone with the right senses, matched with the aforementioned knowledge of their intertwined fates, the simpler and almost only logical thing to do is to place Jon and D side by side as the power couple. It is a good picture. It is an efficient picture. But of course, this is GoT and as I see it, showrunners are putting in as much tension between the two to deny the audience the quick and convenient union of “ice and fire”, creating an even more plausible chemistry a la the usual love-hate relationship trope. But as of now, Jon and D*ny are sure of their intentions and priorities in defeating the Walkers and getting the Iron Throne respectively. It is then in these contrasting goals that their true dilemma lies. At this point, they are not agreeable with each other. While some may argue that there is also a clear attraction, this mere reasoning cannot reconcile their beliefs and allowing it to be is a disservice to both characters. And so, as I can see it, and mentioned in my previous post, something drastic will have to occur to make this partnership believably happen.

With episode four, I can now fully understand those supposed “leaks” comparing J/D with Lyanna and Rhaeger later on. It actually makes sense. And if it does happen, I will be so glad for it. Because for Jon and D to get together, it will have to be some sort of an epic “betrayal” not only for the realm, but to their current disposition and beliefs now. The look Jon had in the cave scene where D mentioned his pride and of sacrificing his people because of it, is a look of a person conflicted. D*ny’s words are challenging Jon’s honor and loyalty to the North/Starks. This creates an internal dilemma for Jon. He does not want to betray his people and yet we also know how he is so desperate for help. So how then can Jon get the queen’s support? This question has opened up tons of interpretation in which I conclude will make J*nerys actually happen—but not without its bitterness. Because first and foremost, I believe, for that ship to happen, both J and D have to sacrifice and shed some parts of who they are now.

For Jon, it will be his biggest gesture and by far, his biggest character shift yet because the possibility of J/D happening first lies in the notion and acts of Jon Snow falling in love with D. Like truly falling in love with her. He has to admire her truthfully, honestly and with a passion despite everything that has happened and despite everything D has already done. This choice that Jon will make will also be despite the North, his beliefs, and despite his siblings. Jon will choose D and evidently, not his honor (cue here Maester Aemon’s words: what is honor compared to a woman’s love, etc.) This then makes the J/D-L/R parallel sensible. This is a version of J/D against the rest of the world, against all the odds.

BUT THEN, we were also bombarded in the past few episodes of how Jon should be smarter than Robb and Eddard—both of whom died because of honor and love. So, another way to read this (and probably the most intriguing) is for Jon to perhaps do the other way around. Jon—loyal to a core to the North and his family—will shed his honor (unlike Ned) and will be unburdened by love (unlike Robb) for ironically, planned and with selfish intent, he has to make D fall in love with him and earn her trust.

Ultimately, as King, this is Jon Snow finally playing the game of thrones.

The only silver lining here is for D to be the one to change, and not Jon. For J/D to make sense, she needs to clear up her issues and questionable judgements on leadership, morality, and power. That is then her big gesture, to fall into Jon’s ideals and principles and of the people he cares for. This will be her paradigm shift from all that she’s worked for and believed in since so many seasons ago; accepting that she is not fit to rule (and not born to rule, once Jon’s identity is finally revealed) and finally shedding off the madness and ruthlessness in her (madness that episode 4 can attest to). She has to see Westeros the way Jon sees it too. She has to be remorseful with her past (and future?) horrific actions (again, once she finds out Jon’s parentage). So, for as long as D’s hunger for the IT won’t recede, J/D is the narrative and the tragedy of Jon losing a core of his self for it, emulating the same mistakes his parents did before him, embodying and solidifying that he is indeed both ice and fire, and starting an unnecessary war, betrayal, and conflict between the kingdoms (and perhaps, even within his siblings)—only this time, it’s much worse, what with the bigger threat of the undead that still looms.

So how does Jonsa play in all of these? Were we all just delusional in seeing those parallels? Were we overanalyzing Jon’s protectiveness? No, I’d beg to differ. I think all these Jonsa hints are even more deliberate as we are also now (assumed) to go canon with the J/D ship. I actually love how these two ships are playing side by side. Because even if small, short, and unseen by the casual viewers, Jonsa hints are scattered all over the episodes since season 6. I’d like to believe that this has a specific and special reason in the narrative. Because while J/D might be the epic, tragic, right-in-your face love story, Jonsa is not. Or I think will it ever be.

I think it’s never supposed to be that anyway because as I see it now, again considering all of the things that is happening, Jonsa is the story that has to creep up with melancholy realization for both Jon, Sansa, and us, the audience, as soon as the dust of war has settled. And if I were to believe that D will find her demise beyond the wall fighting the walkers, then this leaves Jon with only one option: to go home. I still couldn’t fathom him wanting the throne. And before anyone can even raise this, Sansa in this scenario is NOT and NEVER will be a second option. Not when, as I said, she has been creeping up since season 6. She is then, as we’ve seen, already a part of Jon. His reactions in anything that concerns Sansa is a reflex; they now share a quiet natural bond.

As what we have witnessed, listed, and gif-ed (lol!), these Jonsa moments are already too many to be disregarded as simple accidents. I think these moments are planted for posterity and to serve as a reminder for us as soon as the war ends of their certain dynamic building and buried in the middle of all the magic and the spectacle. For all the parallels showrunners have made for Jonsa, Ned/Cat is the most evident. And what else do they perhaps want to make us remember but of that sheer joy, love, and relative peace Ned and Cat had and portrayed in season one?

Jon and Sansa IS Ned and Cat reincarnate. With all these parallels and hints, with Sansa’s competency in ruling, her undying belief in goodness (‘If I’m to be queen, I will make them love me.’), Jon’s stil intact honor, bravery, and love for family, hugely echo Ned/Cat’s ideal courtly, familial life that we have not seen for so long. Jon and Sansa, relieving this scenario again one moment at a time, only affirms that they are or can be, the dream of spring, the two people who can rebuild a home again (vs. J/D’s partnership that saves). And at this point of where we are now in the story, it is literally a wishful thinking. It cannot be realized. Yet.

But, as soon as the WW are defeated and Jon comes home, we can have this. We can finally have this. And no one—any character who had the privilege of witnessing Jon’s protectiveness with anything that concerns Sansa and what with Sansa’s constant talk of Jon—can argue that they did not see this coming. Always, even if just a hunch (LF and Davos’ suspicions), it has always been there. Then on the other hand we, as the audience, both casual and in-depth, have the power to look back on the literature and surprise ourselves with the ingenuity of it all.

It has always been there.

But the best pay-off for this ending is perhaps the fulfillment of Jon and Sansa’s dreams. A loving household they can finally live in. Together. And with the restoration of peace, Jon can also then redeem and revive the honor, the loyalty, and the love he had probably lost along the way in fulfilling his prophecy.

BUT if indeed, it comes to an end where Jon had changed and transformed (to a half-dead, the Night King, D’s husband if she survives, or ultimately shedding the remaining Starkness in him), the bittersweet truth still lies so glaringly. Because we can look back to all these moments and realize that Sansa is Jon’s what could have been. She is his once dream fulfilled before all the chaos, the prophecies, and the truth changed, possessed, and occupied him so. She is the other reality he could have had. As the audience, our power again to revisit each and every episode since the reunion can realize how they could have also worked so, so well; the quiet parallel to the more dramatic, glamorized, and epically soap-opera way J/D has or can happen.

The last three episodes of this season will surely change (or add) more to this thought but at this point, with the promise of bitterness, blood, and eventual spring, this is where I can see the end game going. And so while J/D can become canon, I believe that this does not make Jonsa any less true. Both endgames are a realization and a contrast of the dreams (Jonsa) and the destiny (J*nerys) of the song of ice and fire himself, Jon Snow.

Whew! What do you think? :)

#jonsa #jon x sansa #jonsameta

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