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maxwell-grant · 2 years

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Jojo bingo: Father Pucci

And that brings us our second bingo

If Jonathan and Dio are my favorite characters sharing a kind of number one position together, Pucci is in a bloody contest with Jolyne and Jotaro for number two. I would even argue that he's the best JoJo villain. Even with his significantly more nuanced and calmer personality compared to them, he’s just as gloriously over-the-top and ridiculously funny at points as the other main JoJo baddies. He has two of my absolute favorite Stands in the series (Whitesnake alone deserves a separate post for how much it’s personality and powers add to Pucci, who is already complex and fascinating and horrifying even without a Stand that has an entirely separate personality), he’s pro-active and vicious as a main villain to an extent the series hadn't seen since Phantom Blood Dio, he grows in power and scope and personality over the part, he’s psychologically disturbing and fucked up to an extent I'd argue surpasses Kira (y’know, the fetish-based serial killer), he adds a ton to Dio's character and his story culminates in him growing into a bigger, badder and better villain than DIO and, just, Pucci is incredible. There couldn't be a better villain to wrap up the original JoJo saga. One of the greatest villains of all time ever.

I feel like out of all the main JoJo villains, Pucci is the only one who does pull off being morally grey (Valentine really isn’t, he’s a silver-tongued imperialist torturer and J.Geil-tier disgusting creep who’s just good enough at appropriating heroic imagery that he’s convinced himself and a good chunk of the readership (and the Eyes of Heaven writers apparently) that his deeply selfish and unfathomably monstrous plan is noble and selfless and patriotic. He’s a good and layered villain, but morally grey he isn’t). Having significantly lesser crimes compared to the others, more human reasons and more concrete goals, all of which doesn’t do that much to make him sympathetic, quite the opposite. Pucci is horrifying for a myriad of reasons, some of which have to do with the fact that we’re allowed to understand him and his backstory and his goals, and get in his headspace in a way that’s only really reserved for protagonists. Pucci is one of the best examples of how audience sympathy can be used to make villains more resonating and even more horrifying. Pucci is horrible, awful, even described as “the evil that doesn’t know that it’s evil, the worst evil there is”. And we walk through his journey every step of the way.

Sometimes this moral greyness gives way to people arguing Pucci wasn’t so bad or that he was the only JoJo villain not motivated by selfishness, which I kinda disagree with. Because while it’s true Pucci doesn’t think of himself as selfish and genuinely believes he’s doing everyone a favor, Pucci’s plan is monstrous, and to pull it off he commits the most unfathomably selfish deed in the entire series. He quite literally breaks the universe and rebuilds it again in order to strip agency from everyone, HIMSELF INCLUDED (even if he does have more power over it than everyone else), so that everyone will accept the fate that’s decided for them and never try to defy fate. This, he argues, is born of “resolution eradicating despair”, which further cements Pucci as a Joestar-gone-wrong, in that he quite literally turns the driving ethos of the series against itself, against the universe and the Joestars. And he wins.

No one has any agency, no one's decisions matter, no one’s at fault for anything. Pucci rewrote the universe so that he’d fundamentally never be responsible for his sister's death, by making it so that she not only never really existed to begin with (since the dead do not carry over with their souls and personalities intact), but even if she did, she would have just learned it’s inevitability ahead of schedule and accepted it and be happy for it, just like everyone else, nothing anyone (certainly not him) could have ever done about it. And this? I find this to be a level of ghastly selfishness somehow scarier than anything DIO did, because it’s so much more human, so much more tragic, and so much more fucked up existentially.

(People have argued a bit over whether or not this goal fits DIO’s character and there’s room to argue both ways, but even putting aside Eyes of Heaven (which is thankfully non-canon, but it’s take on Heaven DIO was designed with input from Araki himself, which counts for something), the plan outlined in DIO’s Diary was always meant to be fulfilled by a friend and not DIO himself)

And I think this is part of why I’m so strongly in that “Everyone is wrong about them” camp because, people consistently mischaracterize Pucci as only a couple of steps above the average DIO flunky, or someone motivated by a romantic love towards DIO (putting aside the age thing, DIO’s Diary quite literally states that Pucci would have been the wrong person if this was the case), or even non-canon spin-offs that depict Pucci as someone who’d immediately abandon Heaven if DIO was still around to boss him. I fundamentaly disagree with this because Pucci adheres to the same theme of legacy that defines Jolyne. And much like Jolyne, who has to battle for the sake of her lineage and the universe, needs to be better than Jotaro, needs to succeed where Jotaro failed (which she does through rescuing Emporio), Pucci has to be better than DIO. Stone Ocean is the glorious apocalyptic book-end to Phantom Blood, with Jolyne, at the end of the world, forcing herself into becoming the final Ultimate JoJo and wrangling along whatever reality-warping weirdos she can, as she desperately tries to catch up to the new Ultimate Evil who's running away with the plot so fast nobody can catch him until the end.

Pucci surpasses DIO, in terms of power (he attains a Stand that surpasses all other time-based Stands, including the one that defeated The World), scope and accomplishment (he single-handedly disabilitates DIO’s arch-enemy with relative ease and then kills him by turning his time stopping power against him, as well as the current JoJo and the entire supporting cast that accompanied her, and recreates the world into one where the Joestars cannot do anything against him, and only loses because he, like Dio, goes too far and targets an outsider ally to the Joestars). Pucci isn’t DIO’s 2nd in command or partner or flunky, or DIO-lite, Pucci is superior to DIO, he’s DIO’s ultimate accomplishment, the supreme power he attains over Destiny and the Joestars, within the text. When they do JoJo mega crossovers like Jorge Joestar and Eyes of Heaven, they downplay Pucci’s agency and beef up DIO’s powers to be some multiversal world-challenging menace, just so he won’t be lagging behind Pucci, who already is that in-canon.

Pucci is horrible because he makes use of every resource at his disposal, everything that the protagonists have, everything that the Joestar bloodline has used over the centuries, Pucci turns against them. Enrico Pucci’s endgame is to rewrite the history and ethos of JJBA itself so he may wrench defeat from the jaws of victory forever, and he succeeds, and I love that this is not at all an exaggeration of what he does.

Pucci is horrible because everything he does stem from his complete inability to analze himself and admit wrongdoing, to even recognize his cruelty and malice as such, he has such a gargantuan moral and personal blind spot that even his Stand, the rageful melting spectre he bosses around to corrupt and kill people and strip away their memories or give them dangerous powers, is shown to be more introspective and reflective and humorous than the human who wields it, who has to yell at it occasionally to get things done.

He compartmentalizes everything that comes his way and interprets everything so that he never has to have his worldview challenged, never has to question himself, never has to regret anything that ever happened to him or that he ever did. Everything was fated to be. Everything is a test that everyone, including him, must pass, ergo, he’s on even odds with everyone else. If he fails or fucks up, he’s being tested, ergo, he will eventually succeed. If others fail or fuck up, they’re to be disposed of, such is the order of things. If he succeeds or something goes his way, it was fated to be. If others get the upperhand, he’s being tested by fate, and since fate demands him to survive and complete his mission, he’s got permission to destroy and kill whoever’s holding him back.

If he does horrible things, well, what’s a few corpses, or a hundred thousand, for the good of the entire world? Would you make their sacrifices meaningless by stopping him? Everything is fated to be, and fate is on his side, not yours. He’s DIO’s God’s chosen. If The Lord wanted him to stop, he’d have chosen someone else, he’d have died by now, but he didn’t, so it falls on him to drag mankind kicking and screaming into the better tomorrow his friend showed him. He barrels through the story with this mindset and even dies screaming it, screaming at Emporio and the vengeful power of the brother he murdered that they just don’t understand anything.

His backstory is so fucked up because we see how he was wronged by fate and circumstance time and time again, how he was just confused and looking for answers, but for all intents and purposes he was a good kid trying to do what was best for everyone. He went to a seminary to find answers, to alleviate his guilt over his (at the time) dead twin brother, to learn about how to find happiness for himself and others. A horrid situation was thrust into his lap by no fault of his own, and he tried to handle it with the least amount of harm to all parties, and he fucked up catastrophically. And that moment, that awful moment, where he finds Pearla’s body and has a moment of self-realization, where he briefly understands he is to blame and, is on the cusp of kickstarting the path that should have lead him to becoming a better person, a morally responsible person, and then

fucking

DIO

who immediately provides Pucci with the escape hatch out of the Painful Moral Growth path, who fills his head with poison and stunts his growth by giving Pucci absolution on the terms that Pucci wanted, not the terms that Pucci needed. What started as seemingly the most benign thing DIO had ever done for anyone (healed a young priest’s malformed foot and left him some parting words) spiraled into the actual end of the universe as said priest, well, no longer needed God, once he figured that DIO could play the part for him, could provide him the answers the church wasn’t giving him, could alleviate his guilt and teach him what brings people together and alleviate his guilt and teach what makes someone happy and alleviate his guilt and alleviate his guilt and alleviate his guilt and alleviate his guilt and

As much as I stand by the idea that Pucci is DIO’s superior and his ultimate legacy, because this is DIO we’re talking about and all evil in-universe springs from him (Araki said as much in the post-scriptum for Vento Aureo that DIO embodies Destiny and Fate), Pucci is also, to an extent, a victim of DIO. This is also part why I fundamentally disagree with the idea that Stone Ocean softened DIO. I don’t agree with the idea that his pursuit of Heaven was out of character either (it was essentially what he’d always been looking for, trying to attain happiness by taking control over his destiny in increasing bids for power and self-transformation), and I don’t agree with the idea that this was out-of-character. I’d argue DIO’s much-vaunted manipulative charisma, while always present, had never once been depicted as horrifyingly thoroughly as it is here, when he truly lives up to the dark messiah image his followers in Part 3 described and when we see how thoroughly he was able to corrupt Pucci, even while doing seemingly nothing but being the priest’s friend at a time of need. Stone Ocean, I’d argue, makes DIO scarier and more godlike in a way no other part (and certainly not those crossovers that did push Dio into actual godhood) did.

I think Pucci is one of the few religious villains I’ve seen that I like because he’s much more interesting than just a condemnation of particular priests or the church as an institution, and he doesn’t go the obvious route of being an old white bigot (quite the opposite, since those types killed his family to begin with). Rather, he embodies so many kinds of thinking you see within religious circles or mindsets. “He works in mysterious ways”, “He saves all of us in the end”, “only His will matters”, “humans cannot possibly claim to understand His design”, “there is a point to the suffering”, “the suffering will be worth it if you trust Him”, “look out for His signs even if you don’t understand what they are for”, “your suffering on Earth will be nothing compared to how much better your life will be in Heaven”, “trust those that He sends your way to guide you”, “trust not those who fall into the path of evil, the path that is not His”, “your enemies deserve salvation as well even if they don’t know it”, there’s just, so much you could dissect here, in terms of how Pucci speaks to the experience of religious thinking, or even just believing in the existence of God even if you’re not specifically christian or religious (...see why I put up there why I’m a little scared to admit I relate to, or at least kind of get, Pucci? Sometimes I think of Pucci as almost a big Mr.Hyde to the collective experience of everyone who grew up religious and had that shape their worldview whether they wanted or not.).

Pucci, a man every bit driven by the same unsatiable black hole that DIO has (just replace “ambition” with “guilt”), takes all of these, and drives them to an unfathomably horrifying, yet entirely plausible, conclusion. Spearheaded by tangible proof that yes, Fate is real, Heaven is real, and he can make it happen, no, he’s the one assigned by higher powers to make it happen, so long as he just does this and that and gets rid of some vile enemies of his that would rather have all of mankind suffer before letting him win. But, no matter, the sinners always get their due, in the end.

I hate that Netflix’s release schedule killed the Stone Ocean hype but, no matter, nothing can take away from how great it is and how great Pucci is. Not quite my favorite but one I’d easily argue is the best villain in the series, the perfect apocalyptic pilgrim JoJo needed to bring the end of all things and the birth of countless new ones.

Also, I always read Stone Ocean and applied DIO’s OVA theme to Pucci’s scenes. I love his anime theme, but I will always think of this as Pucci’s theme first and foremost.

#replies tag #character opinion bingo #jjba #jjba part 6 #stone ocean #jojo's bizarre adventure #enrico pucci #dio brando #whitesnake #made in heaven #that scene where he finds the body is so fucked up man #he comes SO CLOSE to getting the epiphany he needed #he was just a lost and confused 15 year old #Dio ruins everything even when he doesn't really do anything #I love Pucci but he fucks me up

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crossdressingdeath · 1 year

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I hope later varric realizes how much of his foot he ate when he told quiz it's hard to see them as a person, and the only reason he can't apologize and explain himself to quiz is bc they're too busy 🤧

I really can't get over how that line comes from Varric, of all people. Varric whose main role in the story is knowing the previous Important Hero of the age and who talks a lot about how being a hero has taken enough from his best friend. But then, I guess you could say that part of Varric's character is that no matter how much he cares for people a part of him is always looking at them as fodder for his stories, and him seeing Quiz as an icon instead of a person could be part of that? There is sort of a weird feel to him making Hawke and Quiz the protagonists of his heroic tales about the events of DA2 and DAI respectively, especially if you play one or both of them as being an unwilling hero and miserable in their role. Like, "Is he keeping quiet about that because it's personal and the world doesn't deserve to know about it, or because it gets in the way of a good story if the hero openly, explicitly does not want to be there?" is a question that can definitely be asked about Varric and it's something that neither of his appearances thus far have really gotten into. He loves his friends, but his most famous book comes from treating his best friend's life as plot fodder, and there's no evidence that he ever... y'know, asked? Hawke and Quiz before he turned what depending on player choices may have been the worst periods of their lives into bestsellers? (Do they get a cut of the royalties at least?) And some things Varric comes out with are like... as an example, Varric pushing a romanced Bull for details about what Quiz is like in the bedroom is kind of fun especially with how Bull shuts him down immediately, but it's also... y'know, incredibly invasive. There's a lot to get into with a character whose most notable actions mostly involve turning our heroes' lives into books whether they like it or not and I wish Varric's DAI quest was about that instead of his shitty sort of girlfriend.

But yeah, it's really awful that in his friendship cutscene of all places Varric says that he struggles to see Quiz as a person. I mean, DAI is very much a story about Quiz's personhood being stripped from them! They're the Herald of Andraste, they're the Inquisitor, they're a religious figurehead, they're the hero to all the good little Andrastians, they are not allowed to just exist as a person. Especially if you're playing a non-human or a mage, but even non-mage Trevelyan has a huge number of expectations placed on them. Like... in DAO you have to save Ferelden, in DA2 you have to save Kirkwall (again, and again, and again, and- you get the idea), but it's really only in DAI where you are expected to be a specific person, even if you absolutely physically can't be because you are not a human non-mage noble! So Quiz is already in a situation where everything they are as a person is being denied in favour of this image the world has of the perfect Andrastian Inquisitor, and their inner circle are basically the only people who ever treat them as a person in their own right instead of just "the Herald of Andraste" (and even then only sometimes; for every time a member of the inner circle shows concern for Quiz's wellbeing, one of them comes out with something like "you're not allowed to believe Mythal is real because you're the Herald of Andraste"). And now one of said inner circle, one of the people Quiz is closest to in the whole of the Inquisition, is looking them in the eye and telling them he struggles to see them as a person. It's a horrible, horrible thing to think about someone who you claim to care about! It's an even more horrible thing to say! Varric looks someone he supposedly sees as a dear friend in the eye and tells them he forgets that they're a person and absolutely nothing comes of that! Like, that should've had a pretty serious impact on their relationship????? But nope, nothing, Quiz doesn't even respond to it. Like... I get that it's different situations, but it really does remind me of Solas's refusal to recognize the current people of Thedas as people. Except with Solas his failure to recognize others as people is a central part of his character and him being pushed to realize he was wrong via Quiz's friendship/love and being terrified of the fact that if Quiz is real that means everyone is real and bringing down the Veil will cause another apocalypse on top of the one he's trying to undo is one of the most fascinating things about him; with Varric it's just Quiz specifically he doesn't see as "a real person", and it's a throwaway line that the story does nothing with. If nothing else I would've liked to see more done with that parallel.

And yeah, I really would've liked a sequence where Varric realizes just how far he shoved his foot down his throat by telling Quiz, someone whose story revolves heavily on being treated like they're not a person (even if it's in the quote-unquote "positive" way of "You're more than just a person") that despite being one of their closest friends in the organization he also struggles to see them as anything more than just the "Herald of Andraste" and... actually apologizes for it. But it doesn't happen! Very sad.

#dragon age inquisition #varric critical #now THERE'S a tag i never thought i'd use...#asks #anon

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knightofgalatea · 9 months

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Jury's Out!

Ingrid’s normal fictional fare was stories of courage and bravery, heroes and noble lords and ladies. Yet at the behest of one of her classmates, she’d tried her hand at reading something a little new, a series of books that had recently surged in popularity. They were mysteries mostly, with the addition of rudimentary investigation, culminating in trials held against formidable legal opponents.

It was not something Ingrid would have picked up of her own free will, preferring instead to read of more heroic exploits, of powerful kings and valiant knights. But once she’d cracked open the cover of the first book, she had been utterly hooked, something about the fast pace of the writing drawing her in and refusing to free her from its hold.

She read through the first book quickly, and had grown utterly dismayed when she’d learned that the monastery library did not have the next few books available, with a waitlist so long for even just book two it could have encompassed the entirety of the Galatea lands.

So she did the next best thing, heading to the closest bookstore in the town below the monastery when she had a day free from classes and training. Whether she bought all of the books in the series was entirely between her and the goddess, but she would be lying if she said she’d only purchased one book.

It was about halfway through the series that Ingrid wondered about the usefulness of such a system. Two opponents battling with their words, trying to prove that their arguments were most valid, were most just. It was a system wholly new to her, and the novelty of the system was no doubt partially responsible for her interest in the series, and for how she’d been swept away in the current of its popularity along with what felt like nearly half the school.

But thinking on the applications of a judicial system such as what was written in the books kept her focused well past finishing her next read. She even found herself daydreaming, practically dozing, her focus nowhere near the assignments she needed to complete for class as she turned over the fictional law system in her mind over and over.

Could it work? It certainly seemed like it could. But if it could work, how could it be applied? And how would one get someone to defend people suspected of crimes? How would one even find someone eloquent enough to make such a case before a crowd?

It was a question that baffled Ingrid, who much preferred her actions to her words. She was not a poor speaker by any means, but it did not always feel natural, not like whens he was sparring, or when she was performing small acts for her friends. That was as simple as breathing, and it did not fail her the way words sometimes did.

Her curiosity plagued her for days, until she remembered that Marianne’s adoptive father was renowned as a phenomenal orator. He could speak with ease to so many of even the most frustrating of nobles. And Marianne was clever, and kind, and although she was quiet there was certainly much more lurking beneath the depths of her often grey countenance.

It was then that Ingrid made an impulsive decision, closing her book and setting it to the side as she bolted from her room. She raced down the steps from the dormitory, bolting across the cobbled ground of the monastery towards the stables. There were few places Marianne would be, and the sun was high and the air was warm, which meant that even she would likely be out, no doubt brushing down Dorte and some of the other horses housed in the stables.

Sure enough, perched like a bird on a stepstool next to Dorte, Marianne was murmuring softly, something Ingrid could not quite make out.

“Marianne!” She shouted to her friend, pushing her way into the stable, breathing in the sharp smell of hay. “Marianne, you know those books that have been popular lately?! The ones by Shane les Parodee?!”

She was breathless, but she didn’t give her friend a chance to respond. “So I’ve been thinking at great length over the legal system in the novels, and I was trying to figure out how someone could be eloquent enough to defend cases in such a system. Do you know what I’m talking about?!”

She was far too excited for her own good, but an idea was already brewing in her mind, beyond just speaking with Marianne on the details. Perhaps she could get some pointers, and then perhaps she could set something up, something that would make it possible to hold a fake trial much like in the books.

Ingrid clapped her hands together, feeling strangely giddy. Maybe she could even rope Marianne into it as well, which would surely create a fantastic opportunity for them to strengthen their shared bonds, so they could become better friends, better allies in the battlefield and in the future of their world. “What do you say?”

@cursedbluebird

#cursedbluebird #jury's out!#I can't relax here!!!#//let me know how this is I wrote it in like a mad haze #//i think ingy's curiousity would get the better of her and she'd want to try this out #//she can be a little TOO excited sometimes i think

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girderednerve · 3 months

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i am cringe but i am free

i am losing my fucking mind about vegeta dragonball, which is ridiculous. i know it is ridiculous. i am losing my mind about vegeta dragonball anyway. he's the worst. he's the original manlet. he's like if rage had legs & pointy hair. i hate him. he's the only man to me

the thing to me is that he's actually very brave, but it's a horrible kind of courage where he's running risks that no one else sees—goku has a very noble kind of bravery, he's got that heroic detachment where he likes being alive but he is completely fine with dying to save someone else and isn't afraid of that, only afraid of failing to protect those he cares for. vegeta has spent a lot of time being humiliated & failing desperately to improve his circumstances, so when frieza & beerus show up he knows exactly what those situations feel like; he is personally afraid of what might happen to him, because the worst outcome he sees isn't dying in a fight but instead being forced to live miserably, which he can't endure. his ridiculous & nonsensical pride is probably just what he's like, but it's made substantially worse by his being thwarted for years; he's always trying to get his own back, even when it makes no particular sense for him to be doing that. it's great. my fondness for vegeta hinges on a sort of genre adjustment, where one goes "okay well it is a shonen where goku could punch the world in half, everything is always at least one-third a joke, and shenron can just un-kill people no problemo," so i am not taking the mass murder seriously here because who cares in that kind of setting. but there is generally a gap between vegeta's actual ability to hurt the people around him & his perceived ability to control his own life, which often results in him behaving very badly. and his priorities are fucked, but then like, so are everyone else's, what is goku doing ever (i love him). he's very loveable to me. he's just so fucking mad all the time, and he never gives himself or anyone else a break; this isn't good behavior, but it's deeply sympathetic in this strange way.

anyway obviously i think he & goku are married & i like thinking about how that happens, because in dbz when vegeta shows up he's genuinely a scary opponent; i like that little scene of the saiyans eating their enemies raw, because it's very fucked up (dragon ball super, which i am watching for the first time now, is much tamer!). the frieza arc is a great time for people who want to be weird about vegeta, because he has some excellent moments in it—mostly when he dies, actually. i love when he dies in part because goku understands him perfectly, so there's closure. their whole weird deal builds out of being the only two people who share their specific set of pressures. goten & trunks like to fight, but goku & vegeta need it; violence is something else when they make it. goku's key trait is his detachment—there's no artifice to him, really, he strives for infinite accomplishment & the only things holding him on earth are his individual relationships & his willingness to stand between earth & destruction ("i am the light in the darkness! i am truth!"). but really he's just in it to be his best, and he accepts no limit. vegeta is much more grounded & practical in a way—more aware of the idea of limits, but stubborn about them, competitive, angry. i love this about him. i'm not sure he loves it about himself ("he made me what i am. don't let him do it to anyone else").

i had only seen vegeta staring into the rain as a meme and when i watched the scene for the first time i kind of lost my mind, because that's such a ridiculous, powerful declaration. without goku, there's no point in vegeta fighting ever again! he gives it up! and of course that's not what happens in super, but i am charmed by the idea that GT just picked that up and said, "well, what, you think he'd lie? vegeta? the most hardcore stubborn man to ever do it? you think he'd overstate what his relationship with goku meant to him? of course he kept his word." it drives me nuts to imagine! they both die a bunch, but they leave defining patterns behind. persistence to a fault.

but anyway they're also goofy assholes & bad husbands & worse fathers (i forgive goku here mostly but i have no idea how gohan does), so they're a great match! chichi is a difficult character to me because she's just a nagging wife punchline most of the time & it's difficult to see what either she or goku gets out of that relationship. bulma & vegeta make more sense to me, because both of them are vain & petty & hilarious & conniving. i can see how they would like one another. so i sort of want to sit there & poke it, like, okay, what kind of relationship would work for goku & chichi? and the answer to me is platonic marriage where chichi mostly hangs out with bulma & her other friends, piccolo is functionally her coparent (i like this because it is funny to me) and goku & vegeta do their intense thing on the side. when vegeta died the first time goku was like "now there's only me" and it's important to me that there isn't! they keep each other from loneliness. they make each other understood. crunch crunch crunch i hate my job

#fandomposting beloved mutuals pls avert yr eyes etc #so thank u to vegeta dragonball for giving me something else to think about

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heretic-altias · 9 months

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FFXIVWrite Day 16 - Jerk

Altais is very self aware that she is in fact, a jerk, lol. Yet somehow she still makes friends. This takes place at some point during Heavensward, as Altais spent that expac learning mch.

Don’t know my characters? Here’s a basic breakdown to help you out!

Ishgard’s ever freezing climate was not pleasant to an Au Ra. Altais’s scales frequently felt like ice against her skin.

It had originally been the simple warmth emitting from the manufactory that had driven her to see what Stephanivien had wanted. And maybe one could argue that had brought her back the next couple of times. But as Solar’s time in Ishgard went on, she found herself enjoying the work there. Designing and building weapons was a way to grow stronger, and she had a good mind for the magitek engineering involved.

Stephanivien was also the only Ishgardian who acted so friendly towards her. Sure, there were a couple of people who acted friends towards the Scions and Solar as a whole, but Altais had always felt those people tolerated her at best. She was not a kind person, and had never learned a lot of social niceties. She usually came across as blunt and rude, whether it was intentional or not. Combine that with a general mistrust of people, and you had a woman who was very difficult to befriend. Most people backed off fairly quickly. Ishgardians in particular with their general dislike of anything scaled.

So Altais didn’t quite get why she was wanted in the manufactory. She knew Stephanivien wasn’t like the typical Ishgardian noble in regards to origin, he would recruit anyone willing to spend time there. But how had she not scared him off with her demeanor like most others? He didn’t even avoid her while she worked, he would often stop to ask how it was going, or work on his own project nearby to make small talk. Altais could understand her talent being wanted, she had picked up on the craft faster than anyone else, but why did he value her company?

One day, tinkering with her newest weapon, she decided to ask.

“Why do you like being around me anyway?”

“Why would you ask such a thing? Do you have reason to doubt my intentions?” Stephanivien questioned curiously, stopping what he was working on to give her his full attention.

“I doubt everyone’s intentions to a degree, but you’re not exceptional there. Most people don’t like my company though. I’m not exactly friendly. Some people have told me I’m outright mean. Not that it matters to me, I am what I am, but you’ve been the odd exception in this city. Solar likes me, but what we have is something… different” Altais shrugged.

Solar was the group of people she constantly faced life and death consequences with. They knew she could fight alongside them and had seen that she would. That wasn’t an experience anyone else shared with her. It was hard to put into words exactly what, but that had built a special sort of bond between them. One even Altais could recognize.

“Well you and I share this interest in machinistry. That’s enough to start a conversation in itself I daresay. I try to talk with everyone here, but you keep up with my theories better than anyone else. You don’t share much about yourself, but when we work together I see a bright mind behind that harsh exterior that I’d like to get to know more” Stephanivien thought aloud, seeming to consider his words carefully.

“I’m not really sure what it is you think you see. I’m not a very good person and I come across exactly as I am” Altais answered back.

“Ah, but you’re not a bad person. ‘Good’ and ‘kind’ are not always connected. You may not be kind my friend, but I can assure you that you are good. Do you think I would have seen the potential I did in you if you weren’t?”

Altais had her doubts. She could see what he meant, this city was full of outwardly kind people who were rotten to the core. But just following some heroic types around didn’t make her good like they were.

“I don’t think I’ll ever understand your persistence in befriending me” Altais finally decided with a shake of her head.

Maybe someday she would. But she’d said pretty much the same thing to Akku early on, and while she liked him and considered him a friend now, she still didn’t understand his persistent attempts at friendship in face of her attempts to brush him away.

“You might just need more time to grow used to it. But if there is anything I can do to make you feel more comfortable here, be sure to tell me. I would hate for you not to return” Stephanivien insisted.

Altais turned away from her own work to glance at the project behind him.

“Well that gun certainly isn’t capable of shooting me in the back, so I think I’m safe for the moment” she pointed out.

Stephanivien feigned hurt, “You wound me! Worry not though! She’ll shoot perfectly well once I finish putting her together! But I believe the targets we have set up would be more suitable for testing than your back”

“Using those would come with less regret too I’d imagine. The targets don’t shoot back”

Stephanivien laughed, and while Altais’s face didn’t change, a slight upward lift in her tail gave away her amusement to those who knew to recognize it.

Altais didn’t have the answer to her question in the end, but she also didn’t have a reason to stop coming back.

#ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #ffxivwrite2023

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lorekeeper-backset · 1 year

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I'm bored, here have these Fire Emblem: Three Houses What Ifs that accompanied the Author's Note of a chapter of my currently on-hiatus because I'm too lazy to work on it fanfic. They're free to use as story ideas but if you do use any them I'd appreciate you sending it my way.

What If… Edelgard Won? I know what you’re thinking: Isn’t this just the Crimson Flower route? But it’s not. When I say “Edelgard Won” I mean that straight up villain Edelgard (no, we’re not arguing this right now) from the other three routes wins. She trumps the Kingdom, Alliance, and Church and takes over Fodlan.

What If… Claude Became the Hegemon? In other words, what if Claude took Edelgard’s place as the main antagonist. Basically, somewhere along the line Claude decides that the best way to End Racism is if he takes control of everything. So we get to see how scarily competent Claude would be as a bad guy. Obviously, he’d have great strategy because, you know, Master Schemer, but also he’d weaken the other sides by outright stealing troops from them. Because evil or not he’s still Claude. He isn’t fighting to defeat one specific group or blaming one specific group for all the oppression. He just thinks that taking over everything is a faster way to change things than working with the system (which is basically Edelgard’s doctrine but she purely blames the Church for all this bull). And a lot of people will think that he makes good points and decide that, yeah, they’ll join this guy. In fact, the points he makes will be so good that they might even make the audience question who the bad guy is (it’s still him) which I think is something they tried to do with Edelgard (she is right, Crests are an issue) but she also caused way more bloodshed and joined up with Those Who Slither so it’s kind of moot. Claude, obviously, won’t use Demonic Beasts because he’s just as against Those Who Slither as he is as a good guy but he might use Golems he reverse engineered from the Church. Because of how scarily competent he is this will actually force the other three sides to team up for realsies to fight him and Those Who Slither might join in too as a third party (though nobody will actively help them because, you know, they’re Those Who Slither, and in gameplay terms it would function like the battle of grondor field) because Claude is a way bigger threat to them since he’s not only actively hunting them along with everyone else but their main base is in Alliance territory. Man, I really put a lot of thought into this one. Also, Hegemon doesn’t mean he’ll be turning into Fallen Claude or some such thing, just that he’s the bad guy in this scenario.

What If… Byleth Never Came to Garreg Mach Monastery? This one’s simple. Something happened that caused Byleth to simply… not come to the Monastery. Or maybe they did and they just kind of left.

What If… Byleth Woke Up Too Late? Basically, Byleth falls off a cliff as usual but by the time they wake up the war’s over. However, it didn't end in anyone’s favor, possibly due to Those Who Slither or just because Byleth was kind of a lynch pin, so Fodlan is s lawless post-apocalyptic waste land. We could have all sorts of cool post-apocalypse versions of the characters. Like a version of Lorenz who has decided that even though his noble house has fallen, that's no reason not to act like a noble and do heroic things and try to make the future a little brighter (sorry, but Ferdie’s dead in this universe so he can’t take that role). Or a version of Ashe who’s gone dark after one dead friend too many.

What If… Sitri Survived? This one’s also simple. The method by which Sitri survives could be any number of things. Maybe Baby Byleth dies before they can perform the operation or maybe the birth just goes smoothly. Who knows.

What If… Sothis Bonded to Edelgard? This one’s an interesting one. Maybe even more interesting than Hegemon Claude. So, somehow Sothis bonds to Edelgard instead of Byleth. Maybe instead of doing blood experiments Those Who Slither just straight up stole Sothis’ crest stone somehow (which unfortunately means neither Byleth nor Sitri can show up in this story) and for reasons that are probably similar to why their main timeline (for a certain sense of the word) experiment worked on her the Crest Stone takes and now she has Sothis in her head. Sothis probably first emerges sometime around when she first emerged for Byleth, maybe during the same confrontation with Kostis. This allows Edelgard time to develop her anti-Church and anti-Crest views. So now she has this being who may or may not be the Goddess in her head (since she’s not ignorant of Fodlan’s religion and politics like Byleth she immediately recognizes the significance of Sothis’ name) who’s also really abrasive towards her and that would obviously affect her character arc in a significant way as at first she probably searches for a way to get rid of Sothis and Sothis isn't all that fond of Edelgard either for obvious reasons but the two slowly warm up to each other and who knows what happens then. Also, since we need a third teacher and Byleth isn't available, I say we use a retired Jeralt who would also have changed quite a bit due to a lack of Sitri (or possibly, even more heartbreaking, Those Who Slither straight up ripping Sitri or Byleth’s hearts from their chests).

#fire emblem three houses #fe3h #fire emblem #au #what if

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spider-xan · 2 months

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While I am still in TASM critical mode, I am once again going to bang on about how horrifically ableist those films are, especially with regards to their interpretations of Curt and Harry, and it drives me insane that very few people seem to recognize the ableism, even though the movies are explicitly pro-eugenics and not subtle about it - ffs the first film literally has Curt do that fashy speech about how disability and illness are weaknesses of humanity that must be genetically eradicated, you cannot get more explicitly pro-eugenics than that, and while it could work as a villain monologue that is challenged by the hero and narrative bc depiction is not always endorsement, it's not! The film presents eradication of the disabled as a class as a noble thing in the pursuit of equality (what) that the hero agrees with! It's only bad when he tries to turn everyone into lizards, but it would have been okay if he didn't go into comic book villain territory!

Like, as I have said many times before, no, I don't think Curt is some kind of gold star disability rep in the comics or other adaptations, but at least he isn't a fucking eugenicist trying to genetically eradicate disability as a class of people and this is presented as heroic and sympathetic in the comics or other works, and his character usually has a personality and other things going on in his life that isn't 'Disability is sooo tragic, isn't he pitiful for being an amputee? :( :( :(' where you would think he was terminally ill or something and there is nothing else to his character beyond being a tragic disabled guy where the tragedy is the disability in and of itself, anyway, yeah, can you tell I hate the writing for him in the film and it drives me insane that the most ableist version of him by a huge margin is now widely considered to be the best interpretation, and the way people praise him is like, idk it's bad out there when it comes to people's understanding of disability and ableism!!

#xan's spidey meta

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beatriceaware · 2 months

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Review: Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803)

"Men who cannot ardently feel, cannot taste supreme happiness."

A bestseller in its day, Thaddeus of Warsaw is considered by some to be the first English historical novel, taking its plot from the very real Kościuszko Uprising in Poland against an invading Russia. It utilizes real events and real people, though I do have difficulty in labeling it a historical novel myself, when it takes place only about a decade before the story itself was written and published. (Kind of like someone writing a "historical novel" taking place about an event in 2014- it still seems too contemporary).

The story follows Thaddeus Sobieski, a Polish nobleman who finds himself a penniless refugee after a tragic defeat. The book opens with military-heavy scenes that, according to Devoney Looser in her biography on Jane Porter and her sister Maria (Sister Novelists), "a general had said, "No one could have described so well the horrors in Poland who had not been an eye-witness." Many couldn't believe a woman had written it."

Once Thaddeus reaches England, however, the plot becomes a little more familiar to the tropes of the time. The plot itself is complicated to explain fully, but involves a few sudden, dramatic deaths, multiple women falling in love with this "noble foreigner," misunderstandings that lead him to think he has been abandoned by a dear friend, money woes, swooning, and several unlikely connections that continue to stretch belief by the end.

It is not without its moments of enjoyment or insight, but as a modern reader -even one used to reading drier classics- it was not always easy to get through. The most difficult aspects for me, personally, are the overwrought emotion in both the prose and dialogue, and the way the plot points start stretching credulity like taffy.

Jane Porter crafted Thaddeus to be what she saw as a sort of ideal man: deeply sensitive and emotional, honorable, religious, and heroic (in the "literally running into a burning building to save children" vein of heroism).

From a social perspective, I found it interesting how Thaddeus's financial position was not much better than what you might find a young lady of time in; in fact, he actually resorts to doing the very same thing that Laura in Self-Control does: sell his paintings. He later becomes a language tutor for two wealthy young ladies, a job sent his way thanks to an older woman who has taken a motherly interest in him, Lady Tinemouth.

Speaking of Lady Tinemouth, she has one of the most dramatic backstories of anyone in the novel, as she is revealed to be the abandoned wife of a cruel man who basically left her for his mistress and then legally took their children from her, where he (and his mistress! the GALL) have raised them to hate her. Spoiler alert: we do find out later that her daughter never believed the lies against her mother, and the two are reunited on her mother's deathbed. The daughter, Lady Albina, ends up marring Thaddeus's best friend, Pembroke Somerset, who in the end turns out to be his younger half-brother. Thaddeus himself ends up marrying Pembroke's cousin, the lovely Mary Beaufort.

I'm starting to learn that that is the sort of drama you get when reading Georgian novels!

Over all, this is a pretty hefty tome of a book (it was originally published in four volumes rather than the usual three), but if you are brave enough, you can find a free copy on Project Gutenberg.

Wild fact is that apparently (according to Wikipedia) the towns of Warsaw, North Carolina and Pembroke, Kentucky get their name from this novel!

#book reviews #classic novels #british literature #Jane Porter #Thaddeus of Warsaw #regency era #19th century fiction

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kontrarevolucionar · 2 months

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The Top 9 Types Of Literary Heroes

In almost any story, the hero will fit into an archetype in some way or another.

Using character archetypes doesn’t mean the story isn’t creative, though! Archetypes are simply tools for writers to use and play with.

A story outline (like the three-act structure, for example) can be a good scaffolding for us build our story around. A character outline can be a good scaffolding for us to build a hero around.

As readers, we can train ourselves to spot these archetypes. As writers, we can utilise established archetypes to give a character more depth. Analysing archetypes is a great activity for a writer to do.

We can consider archetypes when trying to understand more about the heroes we’ve already written. We can use them when planning a story to create the best character for the narrative and the world.

Whatever the stage of your writing, knowing the different types of literary heroes can help you write better protagonists. Let’s dive in and take a look at nine common examples.

Hero type #1: Epic hero

What is an epic hero?

The epic hero is the first archetype that comes to mind when we think of heroes. They are called to adventure, they face trials, they save the day.

They will begin their story at a point of stability and they will usually return to stability, only now they have been changed in some way.

For some, this means they have gained power(s) through their journey. For others, it means they now know more about the world at large.

What are some examples of epic heroes?

Epic heroes are classic heroes, and it doesn’t get more classic than Odysseus from Homer’s Odyssey.

Odysseus is challenged to complete trials; he shows courage, loyalty and smarts. Eventually he succeeds in his quest and returns to a period of stasis.

A more recent example of an epic hero could be Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings.

Aragorn was born noble, but at the beginning of the story he is in a humble state. Then he is challenged, and eventually becomes the king his people need him to be.

To go even more recent, we can consider Rapunzel from Tangled. Rapunzel begins her story at a point of stasis, but finds adventure when she becomes bored of her limited life.

She is keen to explore, which she does, facing trials along the way. Finally she ends the story as the returned princess.

How to write an epic hero

While many epic heroes are admirable or at least interesting characters, that’s not their primary function.

An epic hero doesn’t have to have as much depth and inner turmoil as some other types of literary heroes. Writing an epic hero can be more straightforward.

An epic hero will often be destined for greatness of some kind. That could mean they’re the long-lost child of royalty or even gods.

Once you have your epic hero’s backstory, you can put them on the traditional heroic path, like Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, and they will complete their quest, save the day and return to a point of stability.

If they were long-lost royalty, their new stability could be happily ruling their kingdom. Maybe they return to the exact same point they started from, happy with their original, humble life.

Hero type #2: Iconic hero

What is an iconic hero?

The iconic hero is often bundled in with the epic hero, but they aren’t quite the same.

Both the iconic and the epic hero are classically heroic. They are courageous, loyal and clever.

The difference is that the epic hero goes through a journey and comes out the other end changed in some way. The iconic hero is eternal and does not change.

It can be easy to think that this type of literary hero isn’t interesting, but that isn’t true. As readers, we like these characters. They can feel familiar and even safe. We know that they won’t change.

An iconic hero won’t die in their own story. The story’s other characters could change, die or simply leave, but the iconic hero is always what we expect and need them to be.

What are some examples of an iconic hero?

Literature is littered with iconic heroes. They’re especially popular in comic books.

Consider Batman, Superman, Hulk, Wolverine, Professor X, Captain America. These characters are defined by their respective traits. They may experience a character arc, but Batman is always Batman.

The comic book iconic hero works well because readers often jump into comics at random, not always starting with the very first issue.

The iconic hero archetype means we know what to expect when we pick up the next Batman comic, even if we’ve missed the last 100 or so.

This is also why writers can reboot these stories and franchises so frequently.

The iconic hero is also popular among detective characters. Agatha Christie’s Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, and even Nancy Drew are all iconic heroes.

They hunger for truth, and they come out the other end the same way they went in. James Bond and even Geralt from the Witcher series fit this character type as well.

How to write an iconic hero

Looking at the above examples, there’s something that links these heroes: they’re all stars of multi-volume series.

To write an iconic hero, your character must appear in many stories. Otherwise, they’re just a regular old hero, not an iconic one.

Start by getting to know your character. Understand them as best you can, because they aren’t changing.

You might feel that you need to change them to progress the story along. For example, the detective getting better at detecting in order to solve the crime.

But the detective doesn’t really need to get any smarter; they just find the next clue.

You can change the environment around your hero, however. You can have some fun with an established iconic hero by putting them in a new and foreign situation and exploring what they do.

Hero type #3: Anti-hero

What is an anti-hero?

The anti-hero has become increasingly popular over the past decade. The key feature of an anti-hero is their lack of typical heroic attributes.

While a typical hero is courageous and idealistic, and follows a moral code, an anti-hero does none of these things.

Anti-heroes may perform actions that are morally ‘correct’ according to the laws of their universe, but they don’t perform these actions for moral reasons. Often, they act for selfish reasons.

Anti-heroes do what needs to be done and don’t particularly care who they hurt along the way.

What are some examples of anti-heroes?

For a lot of people, the first anti-hero that comes to mind is everyone’s favourite science teacher, Walter White from Breaking Bad.

Walter White is the hero of the story. He takes to a life of crime to save his family from financial ruin. But as he continues on his path, he makes more and more questionable decisions.

His antagonists are undoubtedly villains, but he is by no means a good guy.

For another example, we can look at the early version of Han Solo from the Star Wars franchise.

Hardcore fans will always tell you that ‘Han shot first’, referencing a gun fight in the 1977 film, where Han shot Greedo first. In re-releases, this was edited so that Greedo shot first and Han simply retaliated.

Why is the distinction so important? If Han shot first, it’s an example of his moral ambiguity. He shoots first, asks questions later (or never).

We later see Han become more of a typical hero, where he makes moral and just choices, but throughout the first Star Wars film, he is only motivated by his own interests: he wants to get paid for his work.

He is a hero by his actions, but an anti-hero by his justifications.

How to write an anti-hero

Writing an anti-hero can mean writing a heroic path for your character to follow, and then writing a character who is not at all interested in that path.

They’ll go along for the ride if it benefits them, but they aren’t interested in acting without (mostly material) reward.

An anti-hero isn’t a reluctant hero (we’ll come to that archetype soon); they’re just someone who will only perform heroic deeds if they are benefited by those deeds (or who achieves good outcomes through not-so-good means).

Hero type #4: Reluctant hero

What is a reluctant hero?

A reluctant hero has a lot of similarities to an anti-hero. Neither of them really want to be there; they’re just forced to be there.

However, while the anti-hero is there because of personal gain, the reluctant hero is forced to be there because to do anything else would go against their moral compass.

What are some examples of a reluctant hero?

There’s no better example of a reluctant hero than Shrek. He grows and shows his vulnerability and eventually makes heroic choices that don’t directly benefit him.

Throughout the original Shrek film, we are shown that he is rude because he is insecure, and expects people to leave him. Once he lets people into his life, he is loyal to them.

He saves Donkey from assumed death at the dragon’s tower because it’s the right thing to do. Leaving Donkey to die would distract the dragon, which would benefit Shrek.

He makes personal sacrifices to do what’s right, even though he doesn’t want to.

Another great reluctant hero is John McClane from Die Hard. He just wants to go on a holiday, but he’s stuck in a building filled with terrorists.

He’s a hero because his conscience tells him that he has to do something about that, even if he’d really rather not.

How to write a reluctant hero

Writing a reluctant hero is similar to writing an anti-hero. You create a heroic path for your character, and then a character who does not want to travel that path.

A reluctant hero can require a bit more character development than an anti-hero and often some backstory to go with it.

Hero type #5: Liminal hero

What is a liminal hero?

A liminal hero is a hero who is in between states or spaces. They might cross over with some other types of heroes, but this type of hero has some unique characteristics.

‘Liminal’ indicates a space, a state, a feeling that’s between two established elements.

Being a teenager is existing in a liminal state. A teenager isn’t quite a child, but they’re also not an adult yet either. Because of this, a lot of YA stories feature liminal heroes.

You don’t have to write YA to write liminal heroes, though, because teenagehood isn’t the only liminal state available to you.

A ghost is in a liminal state. They’re dead, but they’re still on this plane of existence.

A liminal hero is a hero going through their own form of change and transition. This affects their story, their interactions with others, and their character arc.

What are some examples of liminal heroes?

Many liminal characters exist in the YA space because their transition to adulthood and their transition through another liminal space can reflect each other.

Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight is such a great example of a liminal hero, she even named the book to reflect that state – twilight is a transition between day and night.

Meanwhile, Bella (our liminal hero) is in her own transition period. Bella is a teenager, transitioning into adulthood. Later she’s a human, transitioning into a vampire.

It’s not until the end of the saga that the transitions are completed and the liminal hero’s story is over.

Another great liminal hero is Spiderman. Peter Parker/Miles Morales/your preferred Spiderman is another teen trying to become a mature adult. In the midst of that, he has to be a superhero.

He can never be 100% himself (a teenager) or 100% Spiderman (a superhero); he always exists somewhere between those states.

Zoraida Córdova’s Labyrinth Lost (the first in the Brooklyn Brujas series) sees the hero, Alex, in a liminal space: the space between life and death.

Alex doesn’t fit in with her family, and she’s a bruja with magic, but she hates magic. She goes on an adventure to save her family after she made a terrible, magic-based mistake.

Alex remains in a state of flux for her entire story and only exits her liminal space when her journey is completed.

Remember, though: just because liminal characters often exist in YA literature, that doesn’t limit you as a writer. You can write whatever you want. (You’re in your own liminal space.)

How to write a liminal hero

Liminal heroes are inherently uncertain. They don’t really know what they want yet. They’re in-between.

For some, this means being in a literal liminal space (like life vs. death or normal vs. superhero). For others, it can simply be a transition time in their life.

Liminal characters exist between the spaces of certainty. But uncertainty is a character trait as well. If you’re not sure where to begin writing a liminal hero, remember how you felt in key transition times of your life.

Hero type #6: Everyman hero

What is an everyman hero?

The everyman hero is an ordinary person, with no special abilities, who acts heroically. They’re not Superman; they’re just the person who’s here.

The everyman hero is almost an audience insert. The archetype is designed to represent the average person.

It can be hard to empathise with a superpowered hero of the story, but easy to connect to a regular person – an everyman.

The name ‘everyman’ is gendered, but this heroic archetype isn’t limited to men. Any character can represent the average person and complete heroic tasks.

Even characters made of plastic… (See below.)

What are some examples of an everyman hero?

One of the best examples of an everyman hero is in The Lego Movie. The hero of the story, Emmet, is nothing special. In fact, the film directly tells us that he is ordinary.

Emmet still acts heroically and saves the day, despite not being ‘special’.

Ellen Ripley from Alien is also an everyman hero. Ripley possesses no ‘special’ abilities besides her determination, and she still manages to overcome the Xenomorph and survive.

And who could forget Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee? These two heroes are just regular hobbits who find themselves on an epic quest to save the world.

Their compassion for others and determination allow these ‘everyhobbit’ heroes to complete their monumental task.

How to write an everyman hero

The everyman hero is a normal person, who finds themselves in abnormal circumstances. They face extraordinary challenges.

They may think themselves to be special in some way (the way that Emmet does), but the power of this archetype is that they are just like us.

To write an everyman hero, you need to write a character who cares and who will do the right thing.

If anything makes this type of character special, it’s their compassion, determination and willingness to sacrifice for others.

Hero type #7: Romantic hero

What is a Romantic hero?

The name ‘Romantic hero’ doesn’t refer to a hero who has romantic relationships. Instead it refers to the Romantic period of literature.

The defining features of a Romantic hero are their constant rejection of established norms and their sense of self-importance. They reject authority and rules and are often introverted and isolated.

It’s important to note that while these concepts may have negative connotations, they are not necessarily character flaws in a Romantic hero.

The heroic archetype of ‘misfit hero’ is a modern example of a Romantic hero.

What are some examples of Romantic heroes?

A hero who doesn’t conform to societal expectations and is self-important and moody? There’s no better example than Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice.

Darcy doesn’t act how we (and how Elizabeth) expect someone in his position to act. In the beginning, at least, he’s somewhat rude and doesn’t particularly care what other people think of him.

This is in direct opposition to a lot of the other characters who are caught up in the many rules of Regency society.

Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games series can also be seen as a Romantic hero. Katniss doesn’t follow the rules of society, and she is better for that.

She tends to isolate or distance herself, but she thinks outside the box because of her isolation, and can succeed in her many trials because of her unique way of seeing the world.

How to write a Romantic hero

The way to write a Romantic hero is to give them lots of inner turmoil, broody behaviour and (occasionally unearned) confidence.

Romantic heroes know that they do not fit in, and they do not care. To write a Romantic hero (or Byronic hero – see below), you need to know what established norms they will reject.

And, importantly, you need to know why those rejections make them interesting and heroic.

Hero type #8: Byronic hero

What is a Byronic hero?

Lord Byron, never satisfied with established archetypes, invented a twist on the Romantic hero: the Byronic hero.

The Byronic hero is a sub-category of the Romantic hero. The key difference between them is that while Romantic heroes are better off because of their rejection of societal rules, the Byronic hero has been hurt and rejected by society.

In their isolation, they become apathetic or even dangerous to themselves and to others.

What are some examples of a Byronic hero?

The best example of a Byronic hero is Lord Byron himself. He was overly obsessed with himself and his own work and everywhere he went, he left a trail of broken hearts in his wake.

We can also see this archetype in Bojack (Bojack Horseman), Loki (the Marvel Cinematic Universe), Mr Rochester (Jane Eyre) and Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights).

How to write a Byronic hero

Writing a Byronic hero is similar to writing a Romantic hero. They both live with inner turmoil, and as the writer, you’ll spend a lot of time in your character’s head.

To write a Byronic hero, you first need to know why they were rejected from society. What crime, sin or difference set them apart from their peers?

Once your hero has settled down, isolated from society, how will they twist and change into someone who wilfully eschews tradition?

You also need to know if your hero would return to society, if society would have them. For some Byronic heroes, returning to the group that rejected them is their ultimate goal.

Finally, you need to decide if your Byronic hero will change their behaviour and stop being a danger to themselves and others. Or will they embrace their fatal flaw, their story resulting in tragedy?

Hero type #9: Tragic hero

What is a tragic hero?

The tragic hero was first defined by Aristotle, and they are the central player in most tragic stories.

Aristotle argued that any good tragic story needed emotional investment from the audience. We need to be sympathetic to the hero and feel catharsis at the end of their story (which was most commonly their defeat in some way).

A tragic hero is someone who is flawed in a major way and though doing their best, they still meet tragedy at the end of the story.

They may make poor decisions or do bad things. But at their heart, they are (or at least want to be) good. That’s why their downfall is so tragic.

What are some examples of tragic heroes?

Can you get any more tragic than Romeo and Juliet? Romeo is passionate, excited, in love. He would do anything for his love. He’s reckless, but that’s because he’s so passionate.

His recklessness is also what leads to his and his lover’s deaths. If not for that trait, both he and Juliet may have avoided death.

To switch to a contemporary example, what about Game of Thrones? (Spoilers for the last season of GoT. Scroll past the paragraphs between the stars to avoid.)

We watched Daenerys Targaryen survive many hardships throughout the run of GoT, only to see her end turn tragic.

Dany’s whole journey was to become the ruler of the seven kingdoms. Her single-minded desire for the Iron Throne became her fatal flaw, and she ultimately died because of her actions.

Ned Stark also suffered a tragic fate where his downfall was his own moral code.

(He is perhaps an even better example of a tragic hero than Daenerys, who could arguably have been called a ‘villain’ rather than a hero in the end.)

Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby is another tragic hero. Throughout the novel, we seem him constantly searching for more. For the American dream. For Daisy. For a sense of satisfaction that he will never find.

Gatsby is near-delusional, obsessed with the dream of the perfect life with the perfect wife. Because of his inability to accept the truth of life, to see beyond his idealism, he meets his tragic end.

How to write a tragic hero

Writing a tragic hero is hard! They have to be flawed and meet their tragic downfall because of those flaws. But at the same time, the audience has to care about them.

Keep in mind that a tragic hero must be virtuous as well as flawed, suffer a reversal of fortune, have the sympathy of the audience and (despite their best efforts or intentions) cause harm or come to ruin.

Should be simple, right?

Aristotle broke it down a bit for us:

Hamartia is the hero’s tragic flaw that leads to their downfall.

Hubris is the hero’s excessive or unreasonable pride.

Peripeteia is the sudden change or reversal of fortune.

Anagnorisis means ‘recognition’ and is where the hero learns something important about themselves or the world.

Nemesis is the unavoidable punishment for the hero.

Catharsis is the hero’s inevitable downfall and where the audience can release their built-up emotions. It may also bring renewal or some positive change to the hero’s world.

This iconic structure is still present in today’s fiction, though many authors manage to create a tragic hero without all these elements. (Nemesis, for example, is often omitted in contemporary stories.)

Bonus: Combination heroes

Above are the key archetypes of literary heroes, but don’t feel limited to using just one type. And if you’ve already started writing a character, but they don’t neatly fit into one of these types, that’s fine.

Some of the most engaging characters are those that are a combination of different archetypes.

The reluctant everyman hero. The liminal Romantic hero. The iconic anti-hero. Or any other combination that suits your writing style and your story.

As a reader, you might not be able to categorise each hero you read as one of these archetypes. However, each hero will partially fit into at least one archetype.

Let these types of literary heroes inspire your writing. Maybe you’ll be the first to use a new archetype combination in your story.

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tailhitch · 8 months

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“Newsy, is the camera on yet??” An excited feminine voice called out. “And how do I look?”

“You look fine ma’am I guarantee it.”

“Just, like chill Cammy, I just need to remove the lens cap, besides I doubt he’s goin anywhere anytime soon.” The cap was removed from the camera revealing a light purple rabbit with a heart shaped nose, a purple button down shirt, and a blue skirt. In her hands was a simple wireless microphone. Next to her kneeled a massive blue black and gray robot with glowing orange eyes, a mask covering the lower half of its face and a blue metal skirt around its waist. “Alright you’re good to go Cams.”

“Hello everyone my name is Cammy the rabbit with Channel Ten News. Earlier today in the quiet town of Mellow Creek on the southern reaches of the isles we call home a devastating incident took place. An experimental robot belonging to an unknown manufacturer attacked the sleepy little town killing several critters and injuring dozens more.” If one looked carefully they would see one of the robots hands clenched into a fist at the mention of the casualties. “Thankfully before further destruction could occur a hero appeared from seemingly nowhere, no not our local super duo Splendid and Nutboy, but instead it was the mechanical giant you see before me. Sir, could you please tell us your name?”

“Well my name is Tailhitch ma’am, and I’m not that tall, I’m only seventeen feet'' the machine rubbed the back of its blocky head bashfully.

“A pleasure to meet you Tailhitch, would you mind answering some questions for us?”

“Nice to meet you as well ms. Cammy,” Tailhitch held out a finger which the rabbit happily shook, “and I’d be happy to answer your questions to the best of my ability.”

“Thank you, our first question is, what were you doing before the attack?”

“Well Ms. Cammy I was sort of just exploring the isles, see I’m relatively new here having only arrived a few months ago in the area around Happy Tree.”

“Why hadn’t you shown yourself before this?”

“Simple, I’m a little paranoid, the first day I got here I met Splendid only to be tackled through a building by him because he thought I was some ‘alien invader’ or something” Tailhitch did the jazz hands motion to emphasize his point.

“Fascinating! And how did you survive such an encounter with the hero?”

“Well, as it turns out my weapons had something of a negative effect on him as they don’t mix well with organic life. Add in the fact that even by my own people’s standards I’m freakishly durable and I was able to go toe to toe with him for a little while.”

“Your own people? Are you saying there are more like you?”

“Somewhere out there yes, although I doubt they exist in this universe.”

“What are they called and also, universe? You’re saying you’re from another universe?”

“We go by several names although the most common are cybertronian and transformer, and yeah, it’s kind of why I’m stranded here”

“What happened that led to you coming to the isles Mr Tailhitch?”

He sighed, loudly. “Look, I don’t really wanna get into it but let’s just say I had an incident with a fellow soldier and leave it at that, ok?”

“Ok, so you said that you are a soldier? In what army exactly?”

“I fight for the Autobots under the command of the legendary Optimus Prime.”

“Ooooh that sounds heroic!”

“He is, I’ve watched him throw himself in front of explosions just to save a handful of innocent civilians from a race that he doesn’t even belong to.”

“Wow, that's incredible! But getting back to the incident from earlier, is that why you threw yourself at the runaway robot? To be like your commander?”

“In a way, I guess. Optimus has always taught the rest of the Autobots to always protect those that cannot protect themselves. Seeing that thing attacking civilians I knew I had to do something. It wasn’t about emulating Optimus, it was about doing the right thing as a soldier. Be strong enough to be gentle, he’d tell us.”

“How noble. Could you please tell us how the fight played out from your side?”

“Of course. I first heard the screaming while I was in my vehicle mode and worried that something serious was happening. I sped around a corner only to be met with the robot on the other end of the street. I could see that it had someone in one of its claw hands so I knew I had to take care of that first. Driving up as fast as I could I transformed and extended the blade above my left hand,” he held up his left arm and a brilliant glowing orange blade emerged from the limb right above the hand before it slid back into his arm vanishing from sight. “After that I cut the arm off, retrieved the thankfully unharmed critter, and told them to get somewhere safe before turning to face my opponent once again.”

“Did you have any trouble battling the robot?”

He shook a hand in a ‘so-so’ motion, “the fight itself wasn’t the hard part, in fact it was quite easy to handle that thing, the actual hard part was keeping it from smashing into buildings or hitting any bystanders with its eye beams.”

“Yes, the footage captured shows you throwing yourself in front of blows that weren’t directly aimed at you.”

“Soon I found myself in close quarters combat with it, unfortunately that isn’t my specialty”

“What is your specialty then?”

“Demolitions work, I carry a myriad of explosives with me for various purposes, the problem was that due to the environment we were in I couldn’t risk a shot from my blaster or an explosive going wide and hitting a building or Primus forbid, a civilian.”

“Primus?”

“The primary god of the cybertronian race.”

“I see, carry on.”

“So I was forced into close combat having to rely on my blade and my fists, it’s a good thing that it was as clunky as it was otherwise the fight would have been more difficult. But in the end after a series of punches, kicks and swings of my blade I brought it down.”

“Truly amazing stuff, after the battle was over witnesses say they saw you examine the destroyed robot's body before crushing part of it with your bare hands and dragging it off, what happened there and where are the remains now?”

“I found the manufacturer of the machine and it made me angry, so to prevent them from recovering their little project I ripped it to pieces and threw it into the ocean which is right around the time you two found me.”

“And who exactly made the robot?”

“That is something I’m not willing to disclose simply for the fact that I do not want you getting hurt because of me. What I can say though, is that I probably made some very powerful people upset.”

“I understand, well we only have a couple more questions for you.”

“Ask away ma’am.”

“After you left the scene, Splendid and Nutboy arrived with Splendid saying that he always knew you’d make a great hero. How does that make you feel?”

“What he thinks of me as a hero is irrelevant, I was simply doing what was right and my job as an Autobot. I have no ill will towards Splendid, or his sidekick but I’m not doing this for money, fame, or fun.”

“And our final question before we let you go on your way is this, what will you do now?”

Tailhitch stood up and looked to the horizon. “Well, the secret’s out now so I can’t hide anymore. I’ll probably just keep doing what I’ve been doing, living amongst you all while looking for a way home. But at least now I’m able to openly help people.”

“Well I must say this has been a truly enlightening interview. Thank you for your cooperation and time Tailhitch.”

“The pleasure was all mine Ms. Cammy, stay safe and have a good rest of your day.” With that he turned and walked off before transforming into a pickup truck of an unknown make and drove off.

Cammy turned to her cameraman with excitement in her eyes. “I think this is it Newsy! This is our big break! Stop recording and let’s get this back to the studio!” Cammy dragged her partner along by one of his hands all the way back to the news station.

How fortunate for the partners that a mass casualty incident had already occurred that day sparing them from gruesome fates of their own.

#happy tree friends #transformers #crossover #transformers oc #htf fanart #htf ocs

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absynthe--minded · 2 years

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in the midst of a long-awaited ask about institutional critique in Tolkien’s works I find myself fascinated by the fact that there’s not a lot of inherent worth in being royalty in the Silm and the Histories, and as this is sort of tangential to the points I’m going to be making in that ask, I figured I should talk about it here

specifically, in The Lord of the Rings there’s real importance to the fact that Aragorn isn’t just a really cool guy he’s got spiritual bonds to and dominion over the land? there’s prophecies to fulfill and unjust systems to break down and justice to be done and restoration that’s got to happen, and Aragorn (as I’ve said before in other posts) is of course a moral person who chooses to do the right thing and who has had decades of training to be a good diplomat and a good King, but also, it matters that he’s the heir. LotR is about Frodo and Sam (and neither of them are nobility, that’s Merry and Pippin, Frodo might be landed gentry but he doesn’t have an inherited title and Sam is 100% common-born) but in the background it matters that the monarchy be populated by good people because otherwise the monarchy is fucked

but in the Silm, where we get maybe five or six total non-noble characters of any importance (Círdan, Aerin, Sador, Nellas, Beleg, Bereg potentially), the monarchy is kind of ineffective when it comes to... well. basically everything. Manwë might be king of Arda but he can’t stop Morgoth from destroying the Trees. Thingol sits in Menegroth feeling smug but he’s hiding behind Melian’s Girdle. Fëanáro is High King for what might as well be all of five minutes and he uses that High Kingship to fuck everything up and make his personal problems the whole world’s problems. Findekáno’s most heroic moments (facing off against baby Glaurung, rescuing Maitimo, presumably assisting during the Bragollach) happen when he’s still a prince. Once Morgoth wins everything enough to call himself king he’s basically on the way out. Findaráto and Turukáno and Artaresto/Orodreth make their marks as essentially ineffective outside their very limited sphere of influence, with Turukáno both refusing to offer help to Húrin and refusing to heed Ulmo’s words of warning. Findaráto goes further than that - he really only becomes truly heroic when he gives up his kingship, realizing that there are things more important and more honorable than maintaining his life of relative comfort and luxury and influence.

Nolofinwë is sort of the lone exception, winning the Dagor Aglareb and reunifying the Noldor as best he can and introducing a few centuries of relative peace and prosperity for his people, but unlike Aragorn there’s nothing about what he does that truly necessitates him being High King. If he’d been a charismatic populist leader or a community organizer he could have conceivably done a lot of what he does in canon.

and I find this interesting because this is a story where everyone - and I do mean everyone - has some kind of tie to the nobility or to the ruling class, and yet one of the messages it repeatedly returns to is “the nobility and the ruling class are fallible, they are prone to error, they are just as flawed as anyone else, and when they fuck up they fuck up spectacularly”. Fëanáro doesn’t have some kind of deep spiritual tie to his people, they decided to follow him because they liked him. Thingol declared himself king of Beleriand and possibly arranged for his most significant political rival to die in battle, RIP Denethor of the Laiquendi but he ultimately doesn’t act in the best interest of Beleriand as a whole at any point.

the people who do the most good - Túrin, Beren, Findekáno - are acting outside of their roles as the heirs to great houses, and often are forced to choose between loyalty to the governmental system that gave them power or their hereditary office and doing what’s right. Túrin goes back to Dor-lómin and instead of freeing everyone from slavery and starting a resistance movement and restoring his family name to a place of honor he makes everything objectively worse; his heroism is best showcased when he’s under an assumed name and away from his identity as the heir of Húrin Thalion. Beren has to abandon Dorthonion for the sake of his own survival, and he never reclaims it, he finds worth and value in a life beyond striving to save a legacy that cannot be saved by just one man. Findekáno goes against the political best interests of his father when he saves Maitimo from Angamando - even though this act of selfless altruism and deep love is ultimately the right choice, in the moment he’s risking his own life for the heir of a hostile house and he has no idea how this will end up.

there’s something really compelling about the fact that the story Tolkien wrote that’s praised as glorifying the heroism of everyday people is the one about the spiritual renewal inherent in the fulfillment of prophecy, and the story he wrote about a bunch of bitchy nobles all fighting each other is the one that’s most ambivalent about whether or not there’s anything special about the people in charge.

#tolkien #silmarillion #silmarillion meta #lord of the rings #lord of the rings meta #absynthe's meta

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serpenteve · 3 years

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why we ship darklina

an essay literally no one asked for

Nobody needs a "reason" to ship Darklina. But considering this is a villain x hero pairing, it got me thinking about why we shipped it in the first place when the narrative and author so badly wanted us to root for the more sensible alternative pairing and why it became the most popular ship of the entire trilogy.

Personally, I find it really interesting (and low-key hilarious) that a lot of the reasons shippers gravitated towards Darklina can be directly traced back to how badly Bardugo bungled Alina's character arc, Mal's entire characterization and narrative role, Nikolai's wasted potential as an alternative love interest, and the noble intentions she gives the the Darkling.

Alina's Character Arc

Alina's character arc doesn't match who she is as a character. I've written more about that in this post, but a lot of readers were introduced to a passive and insecure protagonist who we were expecting to undergo a typical YA coming-of-age character arc where Alina acquires self-acceptance, confidence, and embraces the full breadth of her powers over the course of the trilogy. Instead, Bardugo gave Alina the kind of character arc that's usually deserved for power-hungry anti-heroines or tragic heroes with a fatal flaw to punish.

The plot offers a strange binary: either Alina suppresses and hides her powers and therefore stays away from descending into villainy OR Alina attempts to find Morozova's amplifiers in order to defeat the Darkling but then becomes corrupted by power in the process. Alina's journey to self-acceptance and exploring her own powers are unfortunately entangled with her relationship with the Darkling. The only way she is allowed to move forward through the plot is to succumb to the corrupting influence of the amplifiers.

For better or for worse, the first character to really embrace her powers instead of thinking she's a fraud or that she's weak or that she's an unholy abomination is the Darkling. He's the first person to recognize her power for what it is and accurately judge its potential and implications for the rest of the world. He advocates for her in front of the royal court, in front other Grisha who think she's weak, and even against Baghra who is initially a very ill-tempered mentor with little to no faith in Alina's abilities. He even rather ironically advocates for her even when the heroic person who's supposed to be supporting her (Mal) does not.

At the start of her journey, Alina is insecure and in constant need of assurance and validation. The Darkling's role as her mentor and guide into this unfamiliar world of Grisha makes him the perfect advocate not only for her powers but also to help Alina see her place in the world. However, once he is revealed to be the villain, Alina also fails to realize that it's time for her to advocate for herself and throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Mal's Characterization & Narrative Role

When Alina loses the Darkling as an advocate in S&B, Mal steps up to take this role. Alina is still rather passive for the majority of the first book and it's Mal who originally wants her to have Morozova's stag as an amplifier if it will mean being able to stand against the Darkling. Bardugo intended for him to be a heroic love interest as a foil to the villainous love interest and I believe she mostly succeeds for the first book.

However, because this is a story about punishing Alina's "evil ambition" (despite there being very little evidence of that) Mal is supposed to serve as a voice of reason in the narrative. Once Alina considers the necessity of acquiring more amplifiers to defeat the Darkling, it is Mal's role to warn her of the potential consequences, to remind her of her inner humanity, and to ward against the corrupting influence of Morozova's amplifiers. Mal's declarations that he wants back the old girl he knew without any power is meant to drive an ideological wedge between them, yes, but he's also meant to be Correct™ because, again, Bardugo is writing a story about a corrupted power-hungry heroine who goes too far and needs to be punished rather than the arc we were all expecting and the one that Alina's character needs: a coming-of-age story of self-acceptance and personal growth.

Some point after the backlash of Siege & Storm, Bardugo seems to have become aware of her mistake and attempts to scrub Mal's character to be more sympathetic. There is a bizarre exchange half-way through the third book when Mal finally declares:

"I wasn't afraid of you, Alina. I was afraid of losing you. The girl you were becoming didn't need me anymore, but she's who you were always meant to be."

This is an interesting line because it's a complete reversal of Mal's narrative role so far. He's supposed to be her voice of reason that opposes her at every turn but readers interpreted him as being resentful of Alina's powers and angry that she was no longer dependent on him. Bardugo is forced to retcon Mal's entire role in the narrative from being a voice of reason that opposes Alina's quest for power to a supportive friend who will fight by her side. But this was never her initial intention and I believe this change was brought on 100% by audience reaction because she failed to understand the arc her heroine needed and the kind of story her audience was anticipating for such a character.

Needless to say, having your heroine's main love interest actively resent her quest for power until half-way through the third damn book did not endear many readers to Mal. Because Bardugo failed to understand the kind of character development her heroine needed and failed to understand audience expectations, we hated Mal. He became the embodiment of every toxic chauvinist we'd ever met who can't stand the idea of his partner's success and feels entitled to be the center of her universe. He was not the voice of reason. He was an annoying gnat hellbent on dragging the heroine down and away from her destiny. We did not want to root for him. Even the villain was more sympathetic than him because he could bring her closer to achieving the self-acceptance the narrative was obsessed with denying her.

Nikolai's Wasted Potential as a Solid Love Interest

Nikolai plays several roles in Alina's journey but most importantly in our discussions for why we ended up shipping Darklina, his entire potential as a serious love interest is wasted.

When we meet Nikolai, we have hitched our wagons to the Darklina train because despite being the villain, the Darkling is the only one who will allow the heroine to accept her powers and come into her own. Her heroic love interest, Mal, is actively sabotaging her efforts and holding her back from her true potential. But then, in swoops Nikolai and we pause, wondering if there may be a better heroic alternative after all?

In a lot of ways, Nikolai and the Darkling alike: they are eager for Alina's power and see her as a solution to all their problems. They may want to use Alina to prop up their own agendas, but unlike Mal, Alina's summoning powers are a massive plus, not a burden. Nikolai is the heroic alternative to our villainous Aleksander. So we wait, wondering if Nikolai will be the one to fix this mess of a romantic subplot. His royal connections offer an easy path to upwards mobility for our heroine and we sense that an alliance between them (even if it's initially political in nature) may bring our heroine closer to obtaining more power, influence, and self-acceptance not only for herself, but also for the oppressed minority she is a part of.

But, again, Bardugo is still obsessed with that "punish the heroine for wanting power" agenda so while Nikolai exists as another mentor figure who offers Alina advice on how to rule, how to appeal to other people, how to charm, how to win people over, and Alina learns and applies much of what she learns from him, he is not treated as a real love interest.

Despite Nikolai being written as a fairy tale prince (handsome, charming, smart as a whip, brave in battle, etc) Alina never actually considers him romantically. They are friends and allies at best and the only time she considers kissing him is only when she's pissed about Mal.

Nikolai's proposal at the end of Ruin & Rising feels like one last saving grace, one last opportunity for our heroine to take control of her life and make a dramatic change to break from the past. But this too is rejected because Alina's arc will never let her access any power. She does not reject Nikolai because she wants to marry for love. She rejects him because she has been "punished" for wanting power and has internalized that she must not seek any more power for fear of angering the plot gods (and Bardugo). She must return to being nobody in order to remain a good and moral person.

(And, of course, we resent Mal even more because who in their right mind would choose him over Nikolai? Once again, he becomes a roadblock on our heroine's journey to power. We grow irritated that the heroine is failing to grasp an opportunity to elevate herself. We throw the book against the wall. Why are we even following this heroine?)

The Darkling's Motivations

Still, all of the above might still not have been enough to pull the reader to the villain's side. But the Darkling is the living embodiment of Villain Has A Point™. He is not pure unadulterated evil. He is not Lord Sauron or Voldemort or the Terminator.

He's more Magneto, Roy Batty, or Ozymandias---a man who is part of an oppressed minority who longs for justice and power but is absolutely unhinged in his methods.

Alina runs away because she does not want to be a non-consenting weapon in hands. But we always end up wondering what would have happened had Baghra not warned her. What would have happened if Alina gladly joined the Darkling's side? There's hundreds of fanfics written precisely about this situation because despite the villainy of his methods, we wonder if Ravka might not have been safer after all?

If the Darkling had used the Fold as a weapon against Fjerda and Shu Han, would any of the problems Ravka faces in the later books even exist? Would any Grisha fall victim to the khergud programs or be killed as witches? The Darkling wipes out Novokribirsk and kills hundreds of lives, but how many would he have saved with the Fold as Ravka's greatest shield and sword? 🤷🏽‍♀️

And therein lies the problem with the trilogy inconsistent moral landscape. The Darkling is an anti-villain that exists in a narrative that is very black and white, unlike the rest of the books in the Grishaverse where our protagonists are anti-heroes who kill, steal, and torture their way through the plot with nary a judgmental glance from the narrative. We long to see our heroine give in to her dark side and get her hands dirty because watching a naive, passive, scared little girl grow into a ruthless powerful Grisha would have made for a hell of a compelling story.

But that's not the story Bardugo wanted to tell.

The Greg Trilogy

Despite taking place in a fantasy Tsartist setting, the Grisha trilogy is oddly anti-Grisha. The narrative doesn't spend much time trying to examine the context or implications of an oppressed minority group fighting for power other than to say "magic powers = evil". Nikolai skates by on a throne of inherited wealth, privilege, and imperialism but it's okay because he's charming and witty and the only monstrous part of him is the Darkling's curse. Literally everything is worse for Ravka and their Grisha after the destruction of the Fold but Ravka must move forward into a new age without relying on Grisha power but putting their efforts into new muggle technologies. Alina must be stripped of her powers and returned to her "old self" in order to be purged of evil.

Basically, it's all one gigantic ✨ dumpster fire ✨ of mismatched character arcs, incompatible moral aesops, inconsistent characterizations, wasted potential, unexamined plot points but it's a a dumpster fire we lovingly and spitefully embrace in fanfic.

We don't ship Alina with the Darkling because we're stupid abuse apologists who somehow missed the giant flashing moral aesop of the books---and honestly, who could have possibly missed them when it's shoved in the reader's face every other chapter? We ship Alina with the Darkling because the entire ship is the embodiment of wasted potential (and wasted ✨aesthetics✨ tbqh 👀). We ship Alina with the Darkling because we're sick and tired of stories where female power is demonized. We ship Alina with the Darkling because the plot gave us literally no other alternative to see our heroine succeed except to give in to her alleged villainy.

But most of all, people ship Darklina because Leigh Bardugo utterly failed in writing the story she intended to write because had she succeeded, Darklina would not be the most popular ship of the trilogy.

#darklina #sab meta #grisha meta #grisha discourse #wow im embarrassed by how fucking long this is #but you know i had to write it #anti leigh bardugo #its not really anti so much as it is just pointing out why her story flopped for a lot of readers #alarkling #viv metas

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hashtagartistlife · 3 years

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IR hunger games AU

pt 4/???

pt 1 | pt 2 | pt 3 | pt 4

bonus comics under the cut + some more exposition

bonus cut 1:

bonus cut 2:

Recap of the story so far: yuzu gets picked as tribute for the hunger games. Ichigo manages to volunteer in her place. Rukia gets drawn to replace yuzu, and ichiruki end up being the tributes for district 12.

Ichiruki then meet urahara, their mentor, on the train to the capitol. On this train they may or may not have a conversation regarding the fact that Rukia saved Ichigo’s life as kids, and that they have consequently been dancing around each other for years now. I reserve the right to add more to this section later. Either way, they are awkward at best and frosty at worst as they enter the capitol.

At the capitol, they meet their stylists, uryuu and orihime. They are new stylists, who only graduated last year. This is their first official stylist job. This in itself is not that surprising, as district 12 was unpopular and often stuck with the inexperienced or not-quite-so-talented stylists. However, though uryuu and orihime are inexperienced, they are the furthest thing from untalented or unpopular - since they had been students, they have been somewhat of a rising star in the styling community. So, everyone is surprised when they both (separately) apply for the district 12 styling job, because they really could have had their pick.

Ishihime were both born and raised in the capitol, but their childhoods were far from the lavish, glamorous lifestyle commonly associated with capitol citizens. If the capitol had a caste system (which they do — it’s just unspoken, is all), they would be on the bottom rung — orihime grew up under her brother in as close to poverty as what you can get in the capitol, dreaming of the glitz and glamour of the upper crust life. Ryuuken, meanwhile, is very rich, but for whatever reasons uryuu ran away from home young and has been surviving on his own since. The fact that they both clawed their way up the ranks to become hunger game stylists out of pure talent and tenacity was a novelty for everyone, and contributed to their rising stardom.

Ishihime hadn’t met prior to their appointment as district 12 stylists, but they HAD heard of the other— it was a pleasant surprise to both of them that the other had also applied for the job. Though they only meet on the job, they click instantly and develop an easy working partnership to create a sensation with ichigo and rukia’s opening ceremony outfits. The outfits had a fire + ice theme, based on the fact that district 12 was a mining district (coal > fire, diamonds > ice).

Orihime applied to the district 12 job because of Ichigo— she saw him volunteering for his sister on TV and maybe fell a little bit in love with him, with the idea of him— how romantic, how heroic of him, how noble to be able to volunteer for his sister like that— the same age as her, and so handsome, too, she wants to be by his side, she wants to help him, she wants to make sure he looks his best at the games so that he can maximise his chances of returning to his sister… as stated previously Orihime grew up entrenched in the capitol mindset so she is not yet aware of how fucked up the whole system is. Uryuu, meanwhile, nobody is particularly sure why he applied for the job… he said something trite about wanting to use his skills where it’s most needed, how he likes a challenge, but orihime wonders if that’s really all there is to it— outwardly, he’s the picture perfect new graduate, enthusiastic, happy, proud of his job— but there are moments when they are being applauded for their latest creations when she thinks his expression goes a little sour… it’s always fleeting and gone so fast that she can never be sure however

Ichiruki, meanwhile, are the talk of the town. What with their stunning entrance at the opening ceremony and rukia’s public confession, all they have to do now is ride this wave of popularity all the way through the games for an easy win— unfortunately, they are both terribly bad at knowing how to manipulate this situation to their advantage. They both understand the gist of urahara’s plan — act like they’re falling in love— but neither of them understand WHY or HOW this will work. Why would the audience be invested in their falling in love? What exactly do they want to see? HOW do they act like they’re falling in love? (and, in Rukia’s case— how much of it should be pretend, how much of it is real?)

Enter Rangiku, the previous district 12 stylist. She and gin grew up in one of the districts, both hating the games and the capitol, until one day at 14 yrs old, gin said to her ‘i’m gonna make it so that you don’t have to be afraid of your name being called at the reapings no more’, volunteered as tribute, won the games, and promptly disappeared from her life.

Years later, rangiku sees gin on tv as the new host of the hunger games. She’s stunned and infuriated— she thought they both hates the capitol for what they did to the districts and now he’s WORKING for them? What the hell is he thinking? So rangiku packs up and moves to the capitol— her plan is to try to see him, to talk things out, surely there must be some kind of misunderstanding— but gin is all rich and famous now, and very heavily guarded, and she’s a nobody. There’s no way anyone will let her within ten feet of gin at all— so, rangiku decides she’s going to have to join the circus to talk to its head clown, and becomes a stylist.

Unfortunately, even as a stylist, she can’t get a word to him edgewise— and she’s starting to suspect that maybe it’s not that she can’t get to him, but that gin is actively avoiding her. She COULD climb the ranks until he can no longer avoid her— she is very good at this stylist gig, much to her surprise— but she doesn’t have the heart to do the backstabbing and bribing necessary for that. She is constantly warring between ‘I cannot pour my talent into something this morally bankrupt’ and ‘but maybe if I do my best, I’ll give my district’s kids a fighting chance’.

Eventually, by the time ichiruki step up, rangiku is so sick of having to dress kids up nicely for slaughter that she hands in her resignation, gives up on gin, and is getting ready to move back home to her district. That is, until she sees what an absolute record-breaker ichiruki are becoming, and start to hope again— that maybe, this year things will be different. That maybe, they will be different. That maybe, at least one of ‘her kids’ won’t go home in a coffin this year, will instead require outfits for a victory tour instead— a victory tour that is accompanied by their stylists… and the host.

So, rangiku comes back in an unofficial capacity to help ichiruki refine their act a bit more. But with less than one month left till the games commence, will what they come up with be enough to carry them through the entire games? And, even if it does— what will happen if at the end of it all, the two people who remain are ichigo and rukia— when only one person gets to return home alive?

Very unrelated point, but: ichigo apologised to rukia for grabbing her wrist post-tribute interview. Just wanted to clarify it is NOT alright to grab at people under any circumstances— ichigo did it in the heat of the moment, but when everything was cleared up he apologised for it. Had to mention this somewhere because it bothered me so much while drawing this installment— Ichigo you have NO room to be scolding the reporter for grabbing rukia, you did it not too long ago yourself! Having said that, that’s probably why he’s being very touchy about this— it was something that had been a sore point for him too very recently.

To be continued!

#bleach #ichiruki #bleach fanart #artist life #bleach art life #kurosaki ichigo #kuchiki rukia #hunger games au

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cyberiada · 2 years

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Payroll (SteamWorld Heist)

Payroll. Payroll Payroll Payroll

I got. a triple bingo. this is Not normal /hj

i'm gonna start this off by saying that i think he's the character with the biggest wasted potential in the series. he's Extremely one-dimensional, not interesting at all and his only defining features are 1) fast, 2) has a wheel instead of legs and, obviously, 3) loves money. he's literally the only character on the crew that doesn't give Any information about his backstory. like. none. zero. my memory is Not the best but i don't remember him mentioning his past at all. and i think with the right background and motive, he could've been a really interesting character. i'm gonna get more into this later

payroll is. extremely hard to like. i don't think i can name anything that actually draws me to him. i literally started liking him ironically and then got attached to him Against My Will (/lh). i can understand so well why so many people don't like him. payroll, the actual character in the game, is just. Bad. nothing that i like about him is canon. the payroll that i like is literally the version of him that lives in my head. and it's not even an idealized version or anything - he's just. a character with actual motives and a past who Definitely did a lot of bad things in his life (some of them he doesn't regret at all). also i think he's extremely charismatic, can convince anyone to do anything and can sweet-talk his way out of Any situation, because it fits him So Well

he is Not a good person. he's such a bad person actually. but so is the rest of the heist crew. they are Literally space pirates. they're not heroes. 90% of the time their motives aren't "heroic" or "noble". they fight chop sue's gang because they're disturbing the peace on their turf, they bring down the red queen because they're sick of how she's been treating them and they defeat vectron because piper wanted to finish what she has started. and sure, with the way that it's portrayed they are Heroes who help steambots and stand up for them and that is partially true!! but i don't think they're just some goody-two-shoes who fight Evildoers and help people, Because It's The Right Thing To Do. the world of steamworld heist is Much More complex than that. they help people, because they can see themselves in them, they sympathize with the steambots crushed under the weight of the system designed to make their lives as hard as possible. i don't think we can divide bots into 'good' and 'bad'. of course, this doesn't excuse scrappers harassing the poor cowbots or the royalists Literally thinking of steambots as lesser and discriminating them in every way possible. but i don't want to act like piper's crew doesn't do bad things either. they do. they're rude, they're violent and they kind of fight fire with fire. but their actions have a good outcome most of the time and i literally can't hate them for anything they do. i'm just tired of pretending they're good people. they're not bad people either!! they're just very morally grey characters imo. i have a lot of thoughts about this but i'm getting super off topic so let's move on

the biggest issue with payroll for me, i think, is his lack of depth. he gets No development and he feels so. shallow. like the people making him went "oh well we need a member who's just there for the money" and refused to give him any interesting traits. he feels rushed and unfinished. with the right backstory he could've been So Much More. make him someone who's seen what this twisted world has to offer. who's decided that it's devoid of meaning. that there's no point in seeking any higher goal in life. who had to lie, cheat, manipulate and backstab his way through life, because of how Hard it is to Exist as a steambot in the core. his desire to be rich can still be his driving force, but make it have some deeper meaning. Make It Count

to sum things up, payroll is Not as deep as he seems, but he has a huge potential to be. he's a horrible greasy little gremlin that ruined my life and he's my favorite and least favorite character in the game at the same time. god i sure hope they make more characters like him /hj

#i literally switched to my pc to write this #this got So Long and im so sorry for that but. uhh enjoy my incomprehensible rant i guess?????? /lh #payroll is literally Such a bad character but he's everything to me #i forgot to mention he's Gay As Fuck. aro also #alright im shutting up now #thank you So Much for this ask elgo. you have No Idea how much i wanted to get all these things out of my head /lh #steamworld #steamworld heist #payroll #grahame 'payroll' phroggi #heist

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