#he will change narrative as he goes

[sailorsally]

People saying they are no longer taking seriously stuff Misha says, YOU WERE ALL THIS TIME TAKING THE ABSOLUTE DELIRIOUS SHIT THAT HAS LEFT THIS MAN'S MOUTH OVER YEARS SERIOUSLY????????????????

[anghraine]

Darcy's role in P&P would work for me anyway, but tbh it works for me 10x better because he halfway reverts back to form towards the end of the book.

[halcarols]

i'm noticing this pattern of comic book writers defaulting to incompetence when it comes to giving characters "flaws" instead of like… actually making them flawed. what narrative purpose does hal jordan crashing his test plane (a task he is meant to excell at) serve? it contributes to neither the plot nor character, unless the writer deliberately wants to make his protagonist seem like a joke.

a character fucks up and learns nothing from it, because there was no compelling reason for them to have failed in the first place. rather than developing a character, it regresses them. there's no nuance in their mistakes; none of the their errors stem from faults of personality and the guise of imperfection dissipates as soon as the narrative requires it to. where's the struggle in all this? the hard-wrought character development? incompetence is generic, nothing but a red herring to distract from the fact that most characters now have but a fraction of their pre-reboot depth. the so-called internal struggles these heroes have are shallow caricatures of the moral debates that used to be present in comics.

a flawed character is not an incompetent character. it's just something i wish writers would remember.

[infizero]

i think one of the things that makes toby fox's writing so great is his ability to tell a compelling narrative AND metanarrative at the same time. undertale isn't JUST about how people play games and the need for completionism, and it isn't JUST the main story that you play through. it's both! and both are equally important.

and i think the same will be true for deltarune. some people tend to think of it as black and white when theorizing, either focusing too much on the meta aspects without taking the actual plot and character arcs into account, or doing the opposite and saying that the meta aspects aren't important and won't end up being relevant to the story. it's both! it's always been both!!!

[coachbeards]

the rest of the characters: happy!!!! romcommunism! power of love and friendship!! healing!!! getting better!! found family!!!

coach beard subplot:

[field-s-of-flowers]

The inclusion of Hermes as a father figure rather than a narrator in Hadestown is the single best thing Anaïs Mitchell could possibly have done for the framing of her story in this essay I will-

[posletsvet]

Nothing from what I've learnt this morning is true, I'm gonna cuddle up with my cats and stay in bed all day and daydream about everyone being alive and happy

[randomidiocyncrazies]

... it's interesting that the preview for Bravern is just a different edit of the one for ep11; the dialogue is exactly the same with the previous ep 11 preview, just the images and background music that's different.

if there isn't another preview for ep 12 later, then it's pretty much confirmation that ep 12 will be a redo of ep 11 due to time travel shenanigans, though who triggers the time travel remains to be seen. I really hope it's Isami, but it'd also make sense for Bravern to subconsciously(?) do a time jump before death, or future Lulu trying again.

[soapcan18]

Ngl I’m a little upset they changed the origins so that Aziraphale and Crowley met BEFORE Eden, when they were both angels. Like that scene was adorable and I get the whole point of it was to set up why Azi thought Crowley would want to go back to Heaven as an angel at the end of s2 but… if your major-cliffhanger-breakup scene only works because of something you shoehorned into the story that wasn’t originally there, does it really even have much value? Plus I liked when Eden was where they first met. It was interesting to see them form their Agreement and relationship and fall in love despite being “hereditary enemies” and coming from two completely different sides of a coin. Plus they were just so… innocent? Is that the right word? in that scene because they were two beings on opposite sides, trying to make sense of the jobs they were given and the plan God had for everything up ahead. Slowly falling in love with the Earth and each other. It was really sweet. But by putting in their NEW “meet-cute,” it changes that, and implies that Azi only fell in love with Crowley because he was previously an angel, not just because he was a “nice” demon and showed him a different side to things. (Also Crowley doing the wing thing just felt VERY on the nose idk how to feel abt that. But it was cute.) Although I will admit you could argue that Azi always saw him as previously an angel since that’s what Crowley, a demon, is by definition. And of course a lot can be said about how Aziraphale has always been manipulated by Heaven, and that finale was just showing how he needs to break free from their hold on him by himself before he can be with Crowley. I mean all in all I don’t have that much of an issue with this change, and it doesn’t even ruin my enjoyment of the series. It just kinda rubs me the wrong way and I don’t know why? Anyways, decisions were made this season and I don’t agree with all of them, but I still had a lot of fun watching it, and I have high hopes for s3 whenever that comes :)

[sameteeth]

something that i think is really interesting about billy's view of flint in s3 is that he thinks flint's death (if it's in a self-sacrificial way) will not absolve him of his sins in life but that it will make up for the hurt he's caused. or at least that billy wants it to. he pushes flint to take the maroon queen hostage so that flint will die, but flint will die for the crew. billy says in s3e6 "with all the shit that he's done, the things he's gotten away with, [flint dying to free them from the maroons] would have been fair. that would have been right" and that he wants to see "the moment the world finally catches up to [flint]" if/when he dies dueling teach. billy has a very simple idea of justice - he wants flint to die for the death and destruction he has caused, no matter how. that will make the world right, that the narrative will be balanced again.

but what billy doesn't know, and what makes me INSANE about this show is that the full quote from billy is is "I think part of the reason I've been able to stand by his [flint's] side is that I wanted to make sure I've got a good view of the moment the world finally catches up to him... and this story starts to make sense again." but to flint, what he has done is in service of his own justice. justice for the deaths of thomas and miranda and james mcgraw, for the theft of his home in london and again his home in nassau. but to billy, HIS narrative identifies flint as the villain. as the monster. for billy to get justice, flint must die. but it's SUCH a good line, because it also prompts the viewer to think - in OUR narrative, which follows flint and silver mostly, flint must succeed. we want him to beat teach and take the fleet back and overthrow the british empire. flint is shown to be a murderer but he is also shown to be deeply deeply human and we are set up to sympathize him. but it makes you consider what other voices we aren't hearing. who else has been hurt by flint's actions? what narratives have flint as the villain ? none of the characters in black sails are the heroes in every story - but to who are they the villains?

[capricornsicle]

"I'm going to tell you a story. Maybe it will sound familiar." Visionary x Insatiable x Status Asthmaticus x The Wolves of War

[mobiues]

i have so many things to say about the confrontational pie scene but to surmise: while i may somewhat understand s1lvie's frustration over mobius' overall seemingly flippant attitude, i do not actually think mobius deserves to be framed as though he did not care abt the state of things simply because he chose not to seek how his life was like on the timeline. mobius' interest to not see how his life was like is well within his right, something he gave viable reason not to pursue, and, most importantly, will not have swayed him either way to fight for the life he has now and/or what the tva could stand for when the multiverse war is on its way. s1lvie's undermining his efforts was not okay when mobius opened season two with him wanting to safely monitor and defend new branches against strong, unsure voices like dox

[lisbonsteresa]

knees weak, arms are heavy

[limitverge]

rebirth!

[darabeatha]

One more thing is that in game, M.octezuma takes on a new and different name which is 'i.zcalli' and I think that in the context of a Grail war, he could go by that instead of being called 'avenger' to conceal his true identity

[tomwambsmilk]

This might be my most Controversial post and if you're someone who's genuinely rooting for tom and greg to have their happily ever after in canon then you might not want to read past this point. Just to be perfectly clear I do love tomgreg in both their canon and fanon forms and absolutely no shade to the unironic requited tomgreg truthers, you're the backbone of this fandom and I love your work etc. But. I'm still skeptical of an actual romantic relationship going canon and even more cynical about it actually ending well so, uh. Dead Dove Do Not Eat and all that

I think that Tom being unable to make a really definitive bold choice is intimately related to why I think canonical tomgreg would end in acrimonious divorce (at least with how the characters are at the end of season 3… obviously character development is real and could hypothetically shift the equation). Tom is the literal human embodiment of that fable about the kid who reaches into the cookie jar and gets a huge handful of cookies but then his hand get stuck and he can’t pull it out and he starts crying until someone explains to him that if he lets go all but one he’ll be able to get it out. Except he’s never realized that last part and he’s so afraid of ending up with no cookies at all that he can’t let them go and instead crushes them into dust and tries to eat the crumbs and goes “this is what I wanted actually. This is fine. This is what normal well-adjusted people do and I am Happy.”

It’s deeply rooted in fear and that’s because Tom’s other fatal flaw is being a little bit of a coward. I say this with utmost affection but he’s always hedging his bets and trying to make the safest choice. This is not always a bad thing, but sometimes you do have to make the bold choice just to learn things about yourself. (Or simply because it's the Morally Right Thing To Do but uh. We don't need to get into that right now re: Tom). You have to make a choice and sacrifice something in the process and that’s how you learn what will make you happy and what won’t. Except Tom is so afraid of being unhappy and making the wrong choice that he can never let himself do that, and that’s why he doesn’t really know who he is and what he wants and instead lets himself be defined by societal images of wealth and privilege. He likes expensive things because that’s what he’s supposed to like. He wants to be CEO because that’s what he’s supposed to want. I think if he actually became CEO he would be miserable, in part because of what he’d need to sacrifice to get there but also because being CEO means being bold and taking risks and I think that’s actually his own personal version of hell.

That’s part of why I’m skeptical of tomgreg going canon because I think leaving Shiv for Greg would be an incredibly bold move and I don’t think Tom’s capable of that. Maybe if his marriage fell apart Tom would go for Greg, but then I think he’d very quickly find himself in a “grass is greener” situation. I don’t think he would really actively choose Greg, internally, so much as stumble into that relationship because Greg is there and Greg is the person he’s closest to, and eventually this would eat away at him. That’s NOT to say Tom wouldn’t have very genuine feelings for Greg, but I think stumbling right from his failed marriage into a relationship with Greg would set the whole thing up to crumble and collapse, especially once the weight of Tom’s emotional baggage sets in. There’s going to be a part of him asking himself “do I really love Greg or was he just convenient,” and rather than making the decision to really commit to Greg and see if the relationship can work he’ll start developing an emotional affair with someone else without even realizing what he's doing, because the problem with really making the decision to try and commit to Greg wholeheartedly is what if it ends up being Shiv all over again? What if he decides to be vulnerable with Greg and open up to him and give Greg his emotional fidelity and Greg ends up letting him down?

And because he's incapable of having an emotionally honest conversation he just starts tallying everything Greg does in some mental T-chart of "he loves me/he loves me not". Meanwhile, I do think Greg would be largely taken in, at least initially, by the idea that Tom threw everything away for him and when he realizes that Tom's marriage to Shiv was going to crumble into dust on its own merits anyway he's going to start feeling like a consolation prize and start pulling away and that's going to make the whole situation worse. When the relationship finally breaks down it will be acrimonious because both of them are going to feel upset and betrayed and misled. And that doesn't even begin to factor in Tom's uglier possessive and abusive tendencies and the pressure that remaining at Waystar would put on the relationship and whatever unresolved issues Greg still has around his gay homewrecking dad. Theoretically, they could go to therapy and start working through this shit and improve as people and make it work but tbh I think that they're far more likely to cannibalize each other first and not in a romantic way.

I would love to see it though. I really would. It would be an absolute nightmare but it would be amazing television and I would eat that shit up. Jesse Armstrong are you listening to me. Jesse Armstrong answer my calls