#i can understand the need to change story elements to work better in a different format

[clumsypuppy]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[gwydionae]

SAY IT WITH ME:

FEMALE CHARACTERS CAN BE WARRIORS AND FEMININE

MALE CHARACTERS CAN BE SMART AND MASCULINE

BEING BOTH IS NOT A "FLAW" WHERE ONE NEEDS TO BE REMOVED

IT'S CALLED "COMPLEXITY"

[comicaurora]

Tahraim is my fav absolutely adore him! I love that you’ve made the smith deal in introspection and cryptic bs, a lot of times smiths are very straightforward characters in stories. What made you decide to shake it up?

Can gods be tied to concepts as well as cities? As Tahraim seems to be a god of blacksmithing (or at least has some serious motifs) does he have a city thats just forges?

He also seems a lot more mobile than the other gods, or is he just “tied” to Danix?

Tahraim is a conceptual god, a class of deity considered grander and more untethered than city or nature gods. Also in his weight class are Emnis and Erebas (dreams and nightmares), Shanyasi (music), Sennaia (knowledge), Jiya (war), and a whole bunch of others. They're gods of ideas, and their domains are in the collective consciousness of mortals. They can manifest anywhere they hold sway, and several of them have constructed domains of their own in pocket dimensions; Sennaia has a transfinite library hidden away somewhere, and Tahraim has a forge.

Tahraim's personality comes from my own experience with artists and craftspeople. Many artists are acutely aware that in order for their work to be better, they need to be better. The process of creation and introspection becomes inextricably linked. Forging a tool changes the forger, little by little.

There's also an element I've observed from teachers. I was always a firm proponent of "don't be cryptic or cute, just tell me the thing and I'll get it," and while that's true a lot of the time, there are concepts that cannot be Just Told in any meaningful way. They don't hit or stick if the person doesn't put them together themselves and construct a way that works for them. Teaching isn't always the impartation of information; a lot of the time it's guidance so the student crafts the tools that work for them. Even if the teacher can perfectly communicate what method works for them, everyone is different, and a student that does the exact same thing exactly right might gain no benefits or be actively harmed by the process. Instead, the student has to parse the lesson and create their own tools to execute the same goal.

Personal example under a readmore because it got a little long:

I've sporadically dealt with intrusive thoughts my whole life, though I didn't understand what they were at the time and they've mostly gone away on their own. When I was little, upsetting thoughts would get stuck in my head and stay there; things would give me nightmares that lasted for weeks, or I'd be stuck awake in the wee hours ruminating on every time in my life I'd done something shameful or harmful or wrong. My dad recognized I was upset, and tried to teach me a method of "counting thoughts" that worked for him, where I could sit for a few minutes and just passively observe the thoughts floating by, counting them and observing them and thus becoming aware that they were small, fleeting things with no power on their own. The problem is, this method didn't work for me at all, because "count the thought" didn't communicate to me "and that makes the thought not a problem anymore." The thought still hurt just as bad, all I was doing was reminding myself how many bad thoughts were happening. I would get overwhelmed and end up more distressed, and the fact that this thing that should have worked didn't work just convinced me that I was trapped and nobody could ever help me.

It took actual years before I found a method that clicked in my brain, and it was just one step further down the path of counting thoughts:

"Having that thought is harmless."

Every thought that got stuck in my head was about times or ways I might've harmed people. The things that distressed me most were things I'd done wrong that I had zero power to change, so the wrongness would just haunt me forever, making me miserable forever. But the root of the distress was that I had messed up and hurt people.

The thing that clicked was that having the thought does nothing to anyone but me. The thought is harmless, even if the event the thought is about wasn't or wouldn't be. Having the thought hurts no-one else. And since 90% of my distress was distress at the thought of hurting other people, it hit me that in reality, even in the depths of my angst, I was just sitting there, hurting no-one.

And suddenly I found that the last few intrusive thoughts rattling around in my brain withering, because the last thing that had been feeding them was gone. I was given the technique for Counting Thoughts, but it wasn't made for my hands. I had to make my own version out of it. And just because it worked for me and my own personal brain doesn't mean this method would work for someone else, just the same way the method that worked for my dad didn't click for me. If I wanted to teach someone a way to bypass intrusive thoughts, all I would have to work on would be what worked for me, but I could try to guide them through a path similar to the one I followed to find my method so they could maybe find their specific hangups and what specifically would work for them. Every mind is different.

This is also why it's so frustrating to hear someone say stuff like "Oh I used to worry about that too, but it's actually fine, you can just stop worrying about it!" And it's like, "oh, fuckin brilliant, just stop worrying about it? Absolute genius, I just hadn't thought of that-" like yea it sounds flippant and yea it's not helpful, but they are using the only frame of reference they have and describing what they did. They stressed about something, realized it was not actually a problem, and knowing that was enough to make it leave their mind alone. But saying that they "just stopped worrying" doesn't make you understand or internalize how they did it. And because they can't seem to help you, it makes you mad. But then sometimes, with time and perspective, you look back and think "wow, yea, at some point I really did just stop worrying about that." It doesn't mean their advice worked, it just means somewhere along the line something clicked in your mind and started working.

Tahraim is a smith who sees no difference between shaping a tool and shaping a person, but there are some ways that people can't be shaped from the outside, and instead have to shape themselves. He likes to be subtle and cryptic, but he also has good reason to be. The only way to make something click in someone's head is to guide them towards it and nudge them when necessary. It's not all hitting stuff with hammers.

[inconveniently-discorporated]

My heart hurts so bad for Aziraphale because I can honestly just relate to him so, so, so much.

(not putting this one under a cut so warning season 2 ahead, I'll tag it at the bottom too)

Aziraphale says, "Nothing lasts forever," but I don't believe for a second he doesn't wish that it did.

He WANTS things to go back to how they used to be. He WANTS the seraphic Crowley squealing with joy as he cranks up the universal machine and sets the stars aflame. He WANTS there to be no sides, he WANTS to believe in the idea of the host united, he WANTS to go back before Crowley got himself in trouble by asking questions. He wants, I think, to be in that moment of creation and adoration forever.

Change seems to frighten him. There's an aspect of uncertainty. There's an element of chaos, the loss of control. I understand this deeply. And what the Metatron offered him was just that: certainty, control, the ability to dictate his own narrative.

I used to be in a toxic job. On top of it, I had intense anxiety and other undiagnosed neurodivergencies that made it even harder to fit in and understand the untold rules I was supposed to follow to get along. When I first got there, it wasn't so bad -- perhaps I was, like Aziraphale, also a bit idealistic. Then there were some changes that brought instability, significant more anxiety, and a lot of nights spent agonizing over my lack of control over it all.

My friends and significant other tried to convince me to leave, but I didn't want to. I didn't know what else was out there. I didn't know if it would be worse. I didn't know what kind of stability it would have.

Then my manager left, so that spot opened up. I had worked there for a long time, and honestly, I never saw myself going into management. I didn't think I could. I wasn't sure I even wanted to. All of that extra stress, on me? Not to mention, getting FURTHER into the job that was taking a massive toll on me? But then...

Then I would have control. Then I could run things the way *I* had always thought they should run. I wouldn't need to worry about who would replace my manager and whether my life would be a living hell -- I would make it what I wanted it to be. Upper management was really pushing for it, so I applied.

To make a long story short: I don't think it went very well. I didn't have the support I needed. I didn't have the emotional skills I needed. I think I did my best, but I'm not fond of those times. At the time, I was SURE that I wanted to move up even more, I was SURE this would make it all better. I thought this was what I REALLY wanted.

But that's not what I needed. What I needed was to get out, and eventually I did. Even as ready as I was to leave, it was absolutely agonizing. I could barely stand to handle the unknown. I was going to work together with my spouse, actually, and I was so excited for that, but I still... I still was upset and worried sick over the dramatic change that would befall my life, after I had made the decision to leave.

That's where I can relate to Aziraphale. I wonder what would've happened if, before I had actually left for good, the head honchos had come up to me and said, "We want to keep you -- how about we offer you (an even higher position)?" -- would I have said no, or would I have wanted to make a difference?

Funny, I said exactly that, too. That's almost why I didn't change jobs in the first place. I said, "But I feel like I'm really making a difference with what I'm doing now." But what pushed me over the edge was realizing that none of that mattered to them, it was all about THEIR control of ME, not the other way around.

I'm so intensely curious to see what happens with Aziraphale next, but I'm sure he will learn what Crowley understands: nothing lasts forever, and sometimes it's good that it doesn't -- even if sometimes we wish it did.

[blacklunardice]

✦Falling for the Same Darling — Lin Kuei✦

Request: Can u do a short story where sub-zero, smoke, and scorpion all have the hots for the reader and they end up kidnapping her? + Someone also requested some headcanons for them too.

Warning(s): Possessive Behavior, Kidnapping, Mentions of Punishment (Spanking, Isolation), Mentions of Unwanted Touching, Slight Guilt Tripping

Note: I don't really do one shots as of now, so these are a headcanon/scenario type of thing. This had been requested twice and I've decided to write out how they are as yanderes separately and how they'd be if they all fell for the same person. Anyway, this was fun to write! :D

For starters, I have this feeling in my gut that Kuai Liang and Tomas are more willing to work together if they find out they like you. The two of them wouldn't really see a need to fight over you, given that they want the same thing. Basically to protect you from any dangers the world could throw at you.

The same can be said for Bi-Han, but...he's a bit possessive... I saw this but know that's a bit of an understatement. He butts heads with the two younger Lin Kuei members. Sure, he is aware of how capable they are, but he believes he can fully protect and provide for you on his own. He's pretty adamant and territorial.

The only way he would fold and actually give in to sharing you is if Kuai Liang and Tomas take some much-needed time to convince him. They'd bring up how it would just be needless violence and fighting if they dueled for your affections when they can all just come to an agreement. They bring up the benefits of this arrangement. You'd be fully protected by all of them and no one would really want to approach you when there are going to be three ninjas who can practically wield the elements.

So in the case of the two convincing Bi-Han, he begrudgingly agrees. I will mention that there is going to be tension between him and Tomas, unfortunately. He's okay with sharing you with Kuai Liang...but Tomas is another case. He always did treated the younger member differently ever since their father adopted him and that hadn't changed. It's usually Kuai Liang who stands as a mediator even when the tension escalates.

✦Bi-Han — Sub-Zero✦

This man is hella possessive; even before deciding to kidnap you. It wouldn't be surprising if he was the one to suggest it. He is a man who takes charge and has confidence in his decisions. Bi-Han believes that having you within arm's length is for the best (again, due to his possessiveness). He was going to go through with the kidnapping on his own! To his annoyance, though, his brother had caught on to his plans. It was not hard to pinpoint that he felt some type of way about you, but you may mistake it for dislike or that he despises you. It’s since he has a resting bitch face and many assume he’s glaring at everyone within the vicinity. Still, his younger sibling knew better and understood his deep affection for you.

He’s almost the same when you’re within the walls of the Lin Kuei after the kidnapping. Bi-Han remains tense and cold as ever even in your presence. He does get annoyed when you want to push yourself away from him, which prompts him to pull you back to him aggressively (not in a way that hurts you). Your place is right here and he’ll always remind you of that. Still, he is told to be gentle in his approach towards you, especially if he wants you to come to him and willingly stay by his side. Bi-Han understands this, despite his grumbling, and tries to be softer. It’s a little difficult for him, but he at least tries.

It’s better to be caught by the other two than him if you ever try an escape and fail. This man is very blunt and his words are as sharp as icicles when he lectures (maybe to the point of berating you) you after dragging you back to the home. He doesn’t hold back and he has to be pulled away for a moment to have time to cool his temper down. He won’t hurt you — especially if  Kuai Liang and Tomas have anything to that. The worst he would do is spank you or make you sit in a room alone. He’s a little bitter after your punishment is over and it shows. He gives you pointed looks, dragging you close to him, and overall gets more demanding.

✦Kuai Liang — Scorpion✦

Kuai Liang has your best interest in mind before and after the kidnapping. He deeply cares for you and would hate if you ended up fearing him or his brothers. Discovering Bi-Han’s plan to kidnap you was something. He had a suspicion that his elder brother was up to something the moment he noticed his gaze on you. It was the same way he looked at you when you were not looking. The situation is definitely complicated, but he doesn’t want conflict between him and Bi-Han since he knows it won’t end well. Every choice and negotiation he makes is all for you and your sake. It’s safe to say that Kuai Liang is fiercely loyal to you and would move heaven and Earth to make sure you’re okay. So he falls into the overprotective yandere category, but at least he can keep a cool head.

Your comfort is assured while under their roof. He understands that you need time to adjust, so he doesn’t push you. However, he knows that Bi-Han and Tomas are not the same as him, so he must remind the two that this will take time. Yes, he does want to hold you close and never let go, but he won’t be hasty. Even so, there are times when he wants to be just a little selfish — to just bring you in his arms without any hint or indication of his actions.

He scolds you if you ever try to escape, but at least he’s not as harsh as Bi-Han. No, he’s just a little disappointed that you would even attempt to leave. I don’t know why, but I can see Kuai Liang guilt-tripping you a bit to make you feel bad. He brings up how the three of them have provided you with everything you need, so it is foolish to want to leave. After the lecture, he sighs, holding you close and making sure you’re not injured. If it's your first attempt, he won't punish you. However, you are not going to be let off the hook with any attempts after this. You're not going to be left alone at all, since alone time is considered a privilege. If you want that back then you'll have to make up for it.

✦Tomas Vrbada — Smoke✦

Soft. He is very soft towards you and practically adores you. Tomas definitely was the one to fall for you first out of the three. He is a bit clingy and maybe obsessive since he hangs off of every word you say. He can’t really help it since he enjoys your company as he gets to know you. However, he does have some possessive traits and they show a little the moment he notices how Bi-Han is looking at you. He frowns at this, at first not sure how to make of this. Tomas knows for sure that the older Lin Kuei member’s gaze is not out of distaste. No, he knows better. There’s a bitter taste in his mouth. He just…cannot allow Bi-Han to pursue you; you deserve better than that. He’s always felt a little out of place within the family and that is purely due to Bi-Han, so there is a bit of anger towards the older man. Then he learns about the plan to kidnap you. It almost sets him off and if it weren’t for Kuai Liang, he would have confronted Bi-han himself.

Sharing you with the other two within the walls of the Lin Kuai is fine. He can take what he can get and he does want what’s best for you. Despite reminding himself that, Tomas wished he had you all to himself. It felt a little wrong to be this selfish, but the cryokinesis user does not make the situation easier. Again, as mentioned before, there will be tension between these two. Tomas is the most approachable and you’ll probably feel the most comfortable being around him. Even so, he does tend to get in your space a lot. If you show discomfort in any way, he will back off a little…but only until the next time you two spend time together. Once again, he can’t help it; he loves being around you. It’s either that or you dealing with how Bi-Han is. Yes, he would absolutely put himself as the best option (especially compared to Sub-Zero).

Tomas is going to make excuses for your attempted escape. At first. When noticing you are gone, he is calm but his mind is racing. He assumes that maybe someone from a rival clan had taken you away or something else had happened. The moment he gets you back, he asks questions. He does not want to believe you left because you don’t want to be with them; to be with him. It would break his heart. He wants to know what can he do to make things better. Is it Bi-Han? Are you homesick? Do you not feel loved enough? There has to be a solution to this…and no, you’re not going back home. That would defeat the whole purpose of bringing you with them in the first place. You would be asking for too much.

[felassan]

Shinobi602 comments on ResetEra:

"If Anthem was a runaway success, you'd be seeing a very different BioWare right now who'd be all in on the live service model. They're running uphill because they've got goodwill they need to earn back after the fact, but its failure (plus Fallen Order's success) is what allowed them to pivot right back to what they're good at: single player character driven RPGs. Silver lining but still." [source]

User: "I don't think its unreasonable to have hoped that a Dragon Age game would have similar gameplay to previous Dragon Age games." Shinobi: "Veilguard does have similar gameplay though, just not the exact same gameplay." [source]

"Open world doesn't automatically mean better. Inquisition's open world zones were basically Bioware's response to Skyrim and anticipating that's what players wanted. The big zones were cool but they were also bloated and full of uninteresting quests. Andromeda also took Mass Effect to huge open world zones and they had the same result. It was ass and the game benefited nothing from it. It's better for Bioware to stick to what they do best which is tighter, more structured play spaces." [source]

"they'll do what they think they're good at. Inquisition was highly rated, but the big open areas were also flawed. If they felt that's not what they'll excel at, that's fine. There ARE larger open areas in Veilguard though. If that's your very strict definition on what will make the game good apparently." [source]

"If you're sole definition of a Dragon Age game is that you can take direct control of companions and a tac-cam, it's understandable. But I think it's completely false that this is somehow unrecognizable as a Dragon Age game. There are tons of different aspects that define the series outside of that." [source]

"It's been evolving and changing for over a decade." [source]

"They did say there are some "killer cameos" they're keeping secret. My mind's going to several different possibilities..." [source]

User: "Yeah, they need to wrap up this story in this game. I'm already a little annoyed that we are getting another "the veil is torn and demons are wrecking havoc" story. They cannot stretch that to a third game." Shinobi: "It's a lot more than that. It's not a repeat of Inquisition or anything." [source]

"This might genuinely be the most in depth CC in a mainstream RPG that I've seen." [source]

"Yeah this is more like Inquisition, though you could still change out companion helmets in that one." [source]

"They did confirm tavern songs are back so that's good news, and The Swan (Minrathous tavern) has a bunch." [source]

"Yeah there's a good amount of veterans working on Veilguard. Though I always find that to be such a weird qualifier, and it seemingly always comes up with Bioware in particular. As if there aren't tons of talented non-Bioware devs from across the industry who could join the team and still write and design a great game. Like nah, it can't be a good game unless it's got people who've been there for 20 years! 😄" [source]

"There are also rune items you can equip that provide different effects and act as their own abilities basically, plus ultimate attacks for each class specialization (so 9 total), plus finisher moves and things like elemental combo detonations for extra damage." [source]

"there are definitely 'open areas' you can explore around in. It's not more linear than ME2." [source]

User: "Is my reading of "mission-based" it being like ME2/3 correct?" Shinobi: "Yeah, in that regard, it's more structured like Mass Effect, which I think is to its benefit. DAI just suffered way too much from open world bloat. I think the tighter, handcrafted structure works a lot better." [source]

User: "How big are the areas? Like the first game where you open the map and pick a location?" Shinobi: "Don't know exactly. But that's what I was told. There are several open ended areas that are explorable in the story. Plus a hub area." [source]

"I think if fans have been yearning for a quality Bioware game like they were used to before, this is that. Tight design, great character models, environments, animations have gone next level, combat fluidity, etc...it's all here. I compare it to the jump from ME1->ME2. [re: the jump in quality/fidelity/presentation.] This isn't a spoiler, as Game Informer said, it's a full on action RPG, and you can still pause and issue commands. But this is not DAO. Preferences put aside, Bioware's moved on from that ages ago. This isn't BG3 at all. But they've put a huge emphasis on making combat feel good to play. As in engaging the player, more real-time, more Mass Effect. It's a meaty, single player RPG with lots of systems going on inside. Also, like they said, this is the prologue, the beginning of the game. Keep that in mind if you don't see everyone's powers unlocked or intense pause and play. If you keep all that in mind, I think you'll really like this." [source]

"But it's a big jump for Bioware. [re: animations]" [source]

"[rogues are] flashy, jump around a lot, etc." [source]

"Party members can definitely get knocked out in battle" [source]

"It's important to note that what was shown was completely level 1 combat, and likely on easy mode for demo purposes. There is way more to it in more advanced battles. When it opens up with way more abilities, unique momentum attacks, ultimates, and other...things they haven't shared yet, on higher difficulties, it will look and feel way different." [source]

"It'll be rated M. It's got its share of nudity lol." [source]

User: "should we expect a comparable level of dialogue role playing as we had in Inquisition? I don't mind the changes to combat but there seemed to be more auto dialogue here than I remember from Inquisition or Tresspasser." Shinobi: "Yeah. That was just the intro. They just like to keep the pace going for a big start to the game." [source]

"This isn't accurate at all though, and it keeps getting perpetuated. Yes, there's been departures like Casey Hudson, Aaryn Flynn, Mike Laidlaw, etc, but I could easily list dozens of people at Bioware right now that have been there for 10-20+ years, some even longer. Do they just...not count for some reason? The entire core team building Mass Effect right now were OG leads on ME1-3, been there for over 20 years. And even outside of that, like, does this really matter? Do you know one of the game's premier VFX/lighting designers worked for ILM? Or one of the cinematic leads is an alum from Blizzard? Or one of the creature animators was a senior creature animator on Horizon Forbidden West? Talent is talent. And if we look at the industry through that lens too, sure, tons of studios are just "X, Y, Z studio in name", in many ways. There's no studio in the industry that holds on to their entire team for 30-40 years." [source]

"They do have that data. And I think even this thread would be shocked at how tiny of a % of players took direct control of other companions. Or went into tac-cam. Not just Inquisition but the whole series." [source]

[epickiya722]

You know what the moment it was revealed Izuku was left with the embers back in 424, I knew he was going to become Horikoshi's previous protagonist from 2008... Jack Midoriya.

I'm sure almost everyone has heard of Jack Midoriya, right?

Well, guess what, you are today!

Let me just point out something that I noticed when it comes to Horikoshi and his concepts and characters. Some of the characters are characters from his previous works and maybe he has used a certain concept before. Izuku Midoriya and his story is no different. It's been told before but in a different flavor.

(I kid you not that every time I think I'm done finding every character and concept Horikoshi has used before, I'm not done. I'll probably make a post of a list!)

For those who don't know, Horikoshi had an one-shot manga published back in 2008, which is 16 years ago, called My Hero. Already seems familiar, doesn't it?

Well, it should be. My Hero Academia is like a more revamped version of that story, just expanded with more added themes and characters and a different setting.

In summary of My Hero, Jack Midoriya is a salesman who wants to be a hero, but due to being anemic and failing his Hero License exam (yes, that exists), he can't become one officially. However, it doesn't stop him from trying! Throughout the story, Jack does still try to be a hero, using the gadgets the company he works for makes. Spoiler alert, by the end of the story, he is recognized as a hero. Especially, by the one person he has looked up, Snipe aka the real Positive, the mantle Jack used during his vigilante run.

Now, how does this may relate to Izuku Midoriya?

Throughout the story, it seemed that a quirk, a good one, is what was needed for someone to be a Hero. Izuku was born Quirkless and his dreams of being a Hero seemed fruitless, nearly shut down when his role model, All Might tells him so. (Which Snipe does to Jack.) However, after trying to save Katsuki, All Might sees that Izuku does have the ambition to be a Hero and Izuku inherits the One For All Quirk from him.

Now I know some of you said that was pointless for him to have a Quirk and then lose if he was going to become a Hero anyways using gadgets.

But, folks, that was it. There is a point. And the point is... it was pointless.

Here's what I'm getting...

One theme I think is often looked over is "be your unapologetic self" and another could be "work with what you have".

Izuku never needed a Quirk to be the best Hero he could be because he already had Heroic qualities, but he did need a Quirk to see that.

One For All was a Quirk that needed to be gone. It was a curse disguised as a blessing. It worked so to challenge Izuku into becoming the Hero he always meant to be. Just as Jack Midoriya did in his story.

Now that Izuku is Quirkless, he now can become that Hero. He still has room to grow and learn from what he did fail at in the past to be better in the future.

It wasn't something he was going to learn overnight just as society isn't going to change overnight.

While MHA has some fantasy elements, just like many other stories before and after, it is a reflection of the real world sometimes. One reality is that it takes a long time to finally understand something.

In real life, it takes people years to understand "Hey, that's not right" or "maybe I should change this about me".

The characters of MHA are no different.

"Society hasn't changed, there's still discrimination, there's still rankings and---"

Well, yeah. Again reflection of the real world.

And just because the changes aren't seen, doesn't mean that they can't happen or that they didn't happen.

The last chapter gave us glimpses of what transpires over the eight years. What if those events have changed? Even not then, what about later?

"What about the talk between Katsuki and Izuku?" Just because we didn't see it, didn't mean it didn't happen. It was revealed Katsuki put in a lot of money for Izuku's Hero equipment, so that's a sign for me that they did talk some more because knowing Katsuki, he wouldn't have just done that unless he knew Izuku would be okay with it somehow.

Hell, they still had two years of high school left together. You're telling me it's impossible that they didn't have a talk?!

Sometimes I feel like some of you decide "this sucks" is because you just don't have the patience to try to decipher the message yourself. You want it handed out to you.

Not me, I want a writer to challenge my imagination because that gets my mind working and really engaged with the story. I might not understand it, but it's not that big of a deal for me. I'll still try to understand and if I never get it, I'll just move on.

Really my overall take from "Izuku being Quirkless again but still a Hero" among other things is that yeah, work with what you have. Just because you receive something that may be a blessing, it will also curse you in some way. The things and changes you want won't happen overnight, it takes time. Izuku was already a Hero, or at least one in the making.

And honestly, Izuku wearing a suit (because he's a teacher) and still being a Hero with gadgets just visually is like a reminder of "I'm not forgetting where I started" from Horikoshi.

It's wholesome in a way that he went back to an earlier work and still used his intended concept for Izuku (he wanted to make him an adult but had to change it to Izuku being a high schooler) of his last chapter. Full circle! My Hero may not be Horikoshi's first work (yes, folks, it's not), but it's familiar.

And I know some of you may not care for my opinion because I'm sure this post made you feel some kind of way (not my intention, but damn it, I'm tired of not expressing how I feel), but I know some of you might.

My overall thought of the finale? It is not as bad as some of you make it out to be. I'm sure there are worse endings out there and it's not like Izuku didn't become a Hero. It's not like Izuku didn't have people by his side because he did.

"But he was lonely." Well, you would, too if you couldn't hang out with your friends. But they're adults now and busy. Izuku is busy, too, he's a teacher.

"But Izuku's feelings!" Cut it because this is the same fandom where some of you don't care how he feels. He cries, it was annoying to you. Oh, but when he was neglecting himself y'all sure was like "yeah so badass".

I see myself in Izuku with how he treats his emotions. He's expressive, but he also tends to keep in his feelings. He even keeps them from us, the audience.

"Eight years it took him to be a Hero again!" Back to my original point. Izuku was always a Hero. You don't have to go out there and fight to be one. You don't need a Quirk to be one.

Overall, I don't hate the ending at all. It have easily been worse.

Sure I would have loved more Miruko, but I'm glad she's alive and some other Heroes didn't get the spotlight like that anyways. She is still a minor character, so I'm not actually upset. 😆

[alexanderwales]

Pitchposting: The Waves

Here's the logline: a hero flits between universes where everything is different and yet all characters recur. The love interest is the same, whether she's a pirate captain, a cubicle worker, a bard, whatever. The villain is the same, whether he's a rear admiral, a corporate tyrant, or an evil overlord.

Multiverse stories are often about the path not traveled, the way that the world might be different. This would be a story about commonality, everything staying the same.

So there are some number of stories being told here, and the shape of all of them is exactly identical, all hitting the beats at the same time. A death in one means a death in the other, but our protagonist is only in one place at a time, so we see each beat only once and infer the rest. A car chase in one story is a ship chase in another. The climactic battle where soldiers crash against the castle walls becomes a climactic battle where the pirate horde smashes against the walls of a fort, and that turns into a modern cityscape where rioters smash against the walls of a towering skyscraper.

My vision here is that we do grand changes as we move between stories, only to find that everything is equivalent.

So what do you do with this? What's this sort of structure for? What cool stories or scenes does it lend itself to?

My first thought is to break it, naturally. If there are five or six realities that we're cycling through, maybe our protagonist can get just one of them onto a different track, one where fate has something else in store. I don't know how you would do this, there's this neat scene in my head where we go "all is lost -> all is lost -> all is lost -> all is ... wait, what's that?!".

My second thought is that having multiple realities moving in perfect synchronicity with each other allows for a way to really underscore a character, say something about them with thick red marker. The elemental thing that's supposed to define a tragedy is that the bad ending is something that came from within the character, right? Something that they could have stopped, if only they had been a different kind of person. The seeds of their downfall laying within them. So isn't there something nice about seeing that this is invariant? That the worlds are different, circumstances are different, but the choices are the same? You'd have to be incredibly careful with this (and the whole thing, really), because I think in constructing different parallels you might end up with something that the audience doesn't consider parallel. But it could work, layering the emotional beats on top of each other.

My third thought is what I think should have been my first thought: the story is one about mastery, coming to know and understand the rules, "winning" across all realities because of understanding, ideally with some kind of character synthesis along the way. I think this is ... well, difficult, given the rules as I've been talking about them. If there's a "twist", then it should be a twist that happens across all realities simultaneously. If there's something gained or lost, it should always have a parallel. I cannot immediately think of some clever way of breaking this system - something that the reader would understand to be clever or at least worthwhile. (I say reader, but this would be better in a visual medium.) Maybe "breaking it" in a different way is the ideal, pulling the realities into each other, swapping conceits and genres. But this, too, would take a lot of planning to pull off, and you'd need to be careful about these set pieces.

So if I were serious about this (which I'm not, this is pitchposting,) I would start out with our characters, then build some worlds around them, trying for maximum variation in those worlds. The plotting is also pretty vital, particularly the "standard" plot whether you're going to break that or not. I do really like the idea of having a single "mundane" world, a place of office buildings and stakes that are measured in lunch breaks and water cooler conversations. I want the swings to be extreme, but the parallels blindingly obvious when they're put in front of you.

To be clear, I'm not sure that this structure/gimmick could actually work. In a text medium, which is what I primarily work with, I think you'd have to spend too much time on blocking and descriptions and detail whenever you switched realities. Switching scenes can be rough even in the best of circumstances.

But it's an idea that I've had rolling around in my head, and if I can't do something with it, then I hope it can at least spark something in someone else.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Sorry if this seems confrontational, but for the life of me I can’t get into your “Chloe has no growth” point when the show itself retracts growth from everyone and is inconsistent with everyone. You saying “The show just lays down basic character traits in Chloe” doesn’t make sense when her basic character traits are supposed to be her being selfish and spoiled.

S2 built off of that and despite what you say, had Chloe doing things that in S1 she wouldn’t have done. She apologized multiple times to the people she wronged, she willingly put herself in harm’s way to help the people she cares about and she was openly vulnerable to Ladybug in “Malidiktaor”. Something S1 Chloe wouldn’t have done. If there’s a distinct difference between a Chloe back in S1 and a Chloe in S2, then growth HAS taken place. But it doesn’t stay because of the formula (and the writers just don’t want her to keep that growth)

So what I’m asking is…what do you mean “Chloe doesn’t have growth”?

I can understand the “No arc” argument because an unfinished arc feels like there’s no arc at all (even though they are fundamentally not the same)

I wouldn't say that the show retracts growth from everyone. It's more that no one is ever supposed to grow. Every episode resets the cast. That's just how pure formula shows work and Miraculous is being sold as a pure formula show. The characters are meant to be static (one of the writers literally compared Miraculous to Dora the Explorer).

That static nature is why pure formula shows normally avoid giving their good-guy characters major flaws. It's the wrong medium for that type of thing specifically because the characters cannot change in meaningful ways throughout the show. They can learn little lessons that don't really change them and maybe have big change between seasons via a special or movie, but that's about it. Thus things like the season four conflict working so poorly. It's just a terrible choice for a formula show! The conflict is literally not allowed to develop properly because of the chosen format.

But sure, let's talk about Chloe and why I will die on the hill that she never demonstrated meaningful improvement even with the issue of the inconstant writing. In fact, seasons-one-to-three Chloe is one of the most consistent characters in the show. For this discussion to work, we need to start off by discussing character development and the two main forms it can take: character establishment and character growth.

Character Establishment

When the audience meets a character, they know nothing about said character. It's up to the writer to guide the introduction process. To choose when to reveal already existing elements of the character's personality, skills, and backstory. This is called character establishment. It is the writing telling you who the character is on a baseline level. Those reveals don't need to happen at the start of the story, though. They can be - and often are - held back for when the time is right.

When these reveals are delayed, it's important to remember that these elements were always part of the character. The reveal isn't changing who the character actually is. It's just changing how the audience views the character.

For example, we spend a good chunk of season one uncertain why Gabriel is doing what he does. Then, in Origins, we learn that it's all for Emilie. This is new information that adds depth to Gabriel's character, but it doesn't change him in any way. This is who he always was. We just know him better now and can recontextualize past events with our new understanding of his motivation.

Character Growth

Character growth is when writers take a character's personality or world view or even just their skills from point A to point B, allowing the audience to watch the character change and become a new better - or lesser - version of themself. This is usually part of a larger character arc where all the moments of growth add up, but it can take the form of small moments of growth that don't fit into a bigger picture, too. I'd probably still call that an arc, but we'll use the word "growth" a lot in this post, so let's just call it growth to be consistent.

Miraculous doesn't really have either arcs or growth because - once again - formula shows don't allow characters to meaningfully change, so I'm going to have to make up an example here. I'll use one that illustrates how character establishment and character growth can and do intertwine as that's an important thing to acknowledge to help guide this discussion.

Let's say that we have a character who lost their family at a young age. We'll call this character Mary. Mary's loss guides her character throughout the entire story, but the other characters and the audience are never told that this is what's going on. We just know that Mary acts in seemingly illogical ways at times and that she trusts no one.

Throughout the story, Mary learns to trust her costars, leading to a big, dramatic scene where she finally tells them - and the audience - about her past. This big dramatic scene is both the culmination of a character arc and a piece of baseline character establishment that allows us to understand Mary's character better no matter what part of the story we're reading.

Because these combo growth and establishment moments are so common in stories, it can feel like character growth when we learn new things about a character in a dramatic moment, but that's not always what's happening. Sometimes dramatic moments are just there to reveal what was always there by forcing a character to act differently than they usually do through the power of extenuating circumstances. These extenuating-circumstances moments are not character growth because, once the moment is over, the character resets to their normal self. The moment wasn't there to let them grow. It was there for the sake of the plot.

This is actually a really important thing that writers need to know how to do. Figuring out what circumstances will make a character say or do a thing they generally wouldn't say or do is part of how stories work. I have started stories with characters acting wildly "out of character" because I put them in the a situation where the behavior suddenly was in character!

Oh, you don't want to talk to this total stranger because you're an introvert with social anxiety who has yet to learn how to love yourself and open up to others? That's nice. Your leg is broken now and you're stuck in the middle of nowhere. What you gonna do sucker? Lie there in the dirt or talk to the nice lady who wants to help you? Your choice! (Spoiler: he talked to the nice lady. He even let her physically support him when he'd usually never let a stranger touch him!)

As soon as that scene was over, the character reverted because it wasn't growth. He didn't become a more open person. He just did something he normally wouldn't do because the situation demanded it. It was extenuating circumstances so that the freaking plot could start.

This is what happened with Chloe in season two. Everything that people call growth is really just extenuating circumstances that reset by the end of the episode or even by the end of the scene.

Let's Talk About Chloe

Chloe does not have a character arc, aborted or otherwise. She is never taken on a journey where we watch her change. All we get is delayed character establishment via extenuating circumstances, but it's given in ways that make some people feel like she was being given an arc. Let's talk about why that is.

Season one Chloe is a one dimensional mean girl. She has almost no depth. She's just here to be petty and cause akumas. She is not a fully realized character.

Season two takes those traits and keeps them, but also gives Chloe a lot more depth to round her out and make her feel like a real character. She's just as petty and mean as she always was, but we're finally allowed to see her in some moments that make her feel like a well of potential to become something more, which the writers basically had to do if they wanted to let her be a hero. The audience needed to feel like Chloe could be good in the right situation.

The feelings evoked by her newly discovered depth are why people go "oh, she had a character arc! My feelings about her changed in a big way!" But she didn't have an arc. You just got to know her better by seeing her in moments where she was forced to be vulnerable. That's not growth. Growth is meaningful, lasting change, not situational change. Everyone changes based on the situation! It's why the "True Selves" stuff is such nonsense. It implies that there's one set way that we're supposed to act in order to be authentic and anything else is some kind of lie which just isn't how the world works.

Let's look at some examples to drive home what I mean.

Season one established that Chloe idolized Ladybug. It's why we get things like this moment from Evil Illustrator:

Ladybug: Fine! You stay! Later! Cat Noir: What do you mean later? Ladybug: I mean, you're the one who wants to protect her, so you don't need me. So, later! (swings away) Chloé:(looks over balcony) Ahhh! Ladybug! Text me! OK!

And this confession from Antibug:

Ladybug: [Chloe] pretended she was me?! How often does that happen? Armand: She idolizes you.

So Chloe adores Ladybug and wants to impress her/be her best friend. Cool. Got it. That never goes anywhere in season one because season one doesn't see Chloe and Ladybug interact much. The most we get is Ladybug saving Chloe from akumas, which doesn't allow for deep conversations. I don't think that they're ever alone in a moment where they can actually talk.

That changes in season two. In season two, they get to interact a lot and it's often in moments where there's a big threat and no one else is around, letting us see a new side to Chloe. But that's not Chloe changing. It's just the writers revealing that Chloe has more to her than the mean girl stuff because of course she does! Pure mean girls don't exist. Everyone has depth. We simply never saw that depth before because Chloe was never put in a situation where she needed to be open. We can't say that season one Chloe wouldn't confess things to Ladybug or chose to sacrifice herself to let Ladybug win because she never had the chance to do those things!

In fact, I'd go so far as to argue that season one Chloe probably would have done the same things as season two Chloe because season two Chloe doesn't really contradict season one Chloe. Antibug showed us that Chloe was pretty desperate to be loved and welcomed the way that Ladybug is loved and welcomed:

Chloé: Jagged Stone! Jagged: (thinking she's the actual Ladybug) Ladybug! What are you doing here? Chloé: Um… when I find out you were here, I knew you'd wanna see me! I had to come say hello. (Sabrina waves at Jagged)

and Chloe has always been a stubborn girl who stands up for what she wants even if what she wants is something bad. Antibug also showed us that Chloe can be genuinely nice to the people she cares about. Her and Sabrina's relationship is shown to be complex with them often having a lot of fun together.

Similarly, Origins sees Chloe showing her father genuine affection after she's saved from Stoneheart:

[Image description: Chloe and Andre hugging and looking very happy to be together]

Origins is the baseline episode that tells us who the characters are on day one, so I never once doubted that Chloe loved Andre, but Andre didn't get akumatized because of Chloe's actions in season one. He didn't even get akumatized for something that Chloe had nothing to do with! His first akumatization is in season two, so it's not shocking that we don't get a Malidiktaor type scene until Malidiktaor.

Chloe was vulnerable with her personal hero when her beloved parent was in danger, but not before? Shocking! Who would have guessed?

Me. I would have guessed. I didn't even realize that people were reading it as some sort of character growth because it clearly wasn't. Malidiktaor didn't feel like something new for Chloe's character. It just felt like the writers were leaning into things that we'd always known about Chloe and using them to better establish her character as someone who genuinely cares about select people. She just doesn't show most of the time.

The same thing goes for Chloe's sacrifice and apology in Zombizou. Chloe only sacrifices herself when there's no one left but her and Ladybug. When the choice is to let the terrorist win or take the hit and let you personal hero save the day. Brave? Sure, but also not growth. Chloe is team Ladybug for all of seasons one, two, and three! She wants Ladybug to like her! Plus even a petty brat can have moments of goodness where they pick a hero over a literal terrorist.

This honestly would have been a damming moment if Chloe didn't sacrifice herself. She functionally had no other choice here. The entire episode builds itself to the self-sacrifice moment so that Chloe is forced to make that choice even though she's been her petty bratty self throughout the whole attack. It's genuinely solid writing.

Then, in the heightened emotions directly after the Zombizou win, we get this:

Miss Bustier: But I hurt a lot of people... Chloé: No... I did... I forgot your birthday, once again. And when I saw everyone had prepared a gift for you, I totally lost it. Because I, too, would've liked to offer you something. I'm sorry, Miss Bustier. Miss Bustier: Thank you, Chloé. Those words are the best possible gift you could ever give me. (hugs Chloé) (Chloé hugs her back, forgetting herself for a moment.) Chloé: Huh?... Uh, yeah. Okay then, we're all good.

A brief moment of vulnerability that quickly ends and does not stick around because Chloe's change was situational, not true growth. The next scene of that episode starts with Chloe being her usual self:

Chloé: Me? You want me to apologize to the entire class? Ridiculous! They should be thanking me for saving everybody.

And ends with the reveal of Chloe's gift to Miss Bustier, which was given in private via a note.

Once again, nothing new for Chloe's character. She acts as she always has, being mean to everyone while having moments of vulnerability when things get tense. Remember that hug between her and her father that we talked about earlier? Same concept. She had just almost died from an akuma attack and so she needed some emotional support, leading her to act more openly loving than she usually does when he's around. Once the moment is over, she reverts to the petty mean girl default.

Giving gifts to placate people is also something that we've seen before. A pretty similar thing happens at the end of Evil Illustrator, it's just played less sympathetic towards Chloe because the writers weren't giving her depth back then:

Sabrina: Too late. Chloé and I are doing the project together. Marinette: You mean, you're doing the project? Sabrina: Well, of course! After all she's been through... Marinette: Ughhh.... Nice new beret, by the way. Sabrina: I know, right! Chloé lent it to me. She really is my BFF! Chloé! Your geography homework's ready!

For any of this to be character growth, we need to see Chloe act differently over time. For her to be put in similar situations and get different outcomes, but we don't see that in part because Chloe didn't change and in part because season one didn't do much to develop Chloe's deeper side. We rarely see her alone or in moments of extreme vulnerability, but you need those moments to show her depth. That's why Despair Bear had Chloe crying alone after Adrien threatened to end her friendship and not before. Chloe is very reluctant to openly show depth. You have to force it out of her, which perfectly fits the character we met in season one.

Even her standing up to Hawkmoth and rejecting the akuma isn't character growth in my opinion. Chloe has always stood up to authority and demanded whatever she wants. She has wanted to be Ladybug's friend and be seen as a hero since season one, so it's not shocking that her extremely strong will would allow her to defy a terrorist. If there is anyone in this show who can stand up to a terrorist on shear "no!" power alone, it's little miss I-always-get-what-I-want. I could see a variation of this happening at any point in the show, just change Chloe's reason for defying Gabriel to match the situation. Rework these lines to be about a party that she wanted to go to and I'd still totally buy it:

Chloé: No, Hawk Moth! I am a superheroine! I am Queen Bee! Ladybug will come and get me when she needs me! I WILL NEVER JOIN YOU! (throws her photo onto the ground as the akuma exits it... and pants)

Chloe acted like a hero here because she wants all the perks of being a hero and can't believe that Ladybug would actually bench her. That's impossible! Ladybug wouldn't do that!

As soon as Chloe accepts that she won't be a hero again, Chloe stops acting heroic because acting heroic wasn't growth. It was her playing a part the same way she played a part in Despair Bear. She was doing what she needed to do to be Queen Bee again and not because it's the right thing to do. This would only be real growth if she rejected the akuma after accepting that she wouldn't be Queen Bee again, but that's not what happens. As soon as she accepts that she's out, she no longer has any reason to play nice. She never grew into a character who did what's right for the sake of doing the right thing. It's always been about getting what she wants or being seen how she wants to be seen. Until that changes, she hasn't changed.

So no, Chloe didn't have an aborted arc. They didn't start to redeem her and then change their minds. All they did was make Chloe one of the most complex characters in the show only to then not do anything with the character they wasted our time establishing, ignoring the complexity they gave her while also cranking her mean dial up to the point of absurdity where she's not even fun in her original role anymore.

I get why it feels like she had an aborted arc. The fact that the character establishment was delayed makes it feel like something shiny and new about Chloe. There's also the fact that the character establishment we get in season two is the kind of character establishment that you'd do if you were setting up for a redemption arc, but that doesn't change the fact that it was all establishment work. None of it was a true arc where we watched Chloe grow. We just saw her put in situations that revealed hidden depths.

Her showing depth is not her growing because when in the world does she show off this supposed growth? She only acts differently in the type of scenes that we've never seen her in before or around characters that we've never seen her truly interact with before. When she's around the established teen characters or in her usual scenes, then she acts the same way that she always has. We never see her be genuinely nice to Marinette or something like that. She's only nice to Ladybug and she's still rude to Chat Noir. That's not character growth! That's character establishment that can then be used to guide character growth!

Same thing goes for the stuff in Despair Bear. We learn that Adrien can push Chloe to be better, but he never does it again and she reverts as soon as he lets her off the hook, so it wasn't character growth! It was just Chloe establishing that she can play nice when she needs to. This means that she could grow if the story chose to take her down that path because we've established that she knows what being nice looks like. Fake it til you make it plot go, go, go! But the plot never went, went, went so meh?

Add in the fact that season one was a bit of a test season with lots of elements that got dropped and the fact that characterization in this show has always been wildly inconsistent from episode to episode and I'm really not seeing a strong argument for Chloe having an intentional arc that somehow got aborted. People just saw the potential for her to have one and argue that potential is the same as an aborted arc when it really, really isn't.

To give an analogy, Chloe's story is like walking into the kitchen and seeing grandma laying out the ingredients for her famous chocolate chip cookies. We get excited because, hey, cookies! Then we come back an hour later and there are no cookies. Nor is there some other sweet that uses the same ingredients. There's just ingredients, sitting unused in their original packaging, making us wonder what the heck grandma was up to. At the same time, she never really started making cookies. She just set out ingredients. They're still there, totally unused, waiting to be made into something, so we can't call them a failed cookie attempt. That implies a level of commitment that was never there. She didn't even say that she was making cookies! We just assumed she was because we, understandably, wanted cookies and wanted to believe that grandma had a purpose to her actions.

[karin-gespenst]

CtM s14e1 first watch immediate thoughts

well that ended better than I had feared it would. Thank you to everyone who posted about the content of the episode, that helped me go in prepared for the story of Paula. While it certainly is upsetting to see how the adults from the church were actively disturbing her instead of helping, I'm glad her parents finally saw that she needed care based on her actual situation instead of some religious belief.

The three different generations of unwed mothers in this episode show how their treatment in society has changed. Millicent had to give up her child and never met him again for decades, pretending that he never existed until his wife was at her front door. Nancy at least got to see her child growing up, and fought her way through all the obstacles that kept them apart. It may not be likely to have happened like this historically, but they are in a good place now and hopefully will have a happy future together. Paula now is going to a mother and baby home, I believe offscreen the midwives gave her some education about her body and now she will have an environment that is meant to support her in the coming time. If that home is the same one that Chummy works in, I believe there's a good chance that both Paula and the baby will be fine in the end. I was impressed how the scenes with Paula and with Colette were cut so close together that it was painfully obvious how young Paula still is. Sister Monica's words about children bearing children were raw and too true.

I'm open to the idea that Roger is a decent person and Nancy and Colette will be happy being in a family with him. It's going to fast for my taste and I blame that on the writers trying to bring Nancy's arc to a close way ahead of the series ending, because they have SO MANY characters to take care of. We haven't had a happily married couple for a while (apart from Turnadette and Fred and Violet - do they have a shipping name?) and supposedly that's what the show is about, or is it?

That religious differences situation with Nancy's future stepmother was interesting to watch, I've recently rewatched Derry Girls and there is certainly a lot of aspects that I won't understand as someone who grew up in a different time and place. I remember thinking that is ridiculous for two persons of different flavors of christian beliefs to be treated like some sort of inconceivably incompatible beings. and it's apparently still a topic today, my uncle and aunt had to get special license from the pope to get married if i recall correctly, and had two different priests at their wedding.

I liked the speaker at the raise the roof meeting, can she come and help Sister Julienne fight for Nonnatus House in the war against the Board?

Did I miss something about how Fred ended up being at the protest? Or was that meant to be a surprise for laughs?

the question of needing another cesarean once you've had one is still a topic today for good reason. All the women in my family who had one with their first baby also needed one for their second, or third. Phyllis being traumatised by the mother who died painfully while she tried to save her is very moving, and I'm glad that Rosalind was able to step in and help. That was a very good job she did there. I can also see how she is struggling with the hard aspects of nursing work, and the intersection with social work. You can be professional and do your best and come up with ideas, but there will always be another suffering person or pain you can't prevent. It's what made me quit social work ten years ago and I still think of the people I tried to help but couldn't because I'm just one person and can't cure everything.

So, Cyril and Rosalind. I understand the compelling elements of the story they have. We haven't had a long term story about an interracial couple yet and I get why they don't want to introduce someone new. With Joyce just going through divorce she's not the best candidate for such a story. Wait - maybe that would be interesting, since Cyril is also in this weird place of being separated and probably working towards divorce in the future. Lucille may have learned about herself that she does not want to be married anymore and prefers staying alone, or taking holy orders or something else. mutual agreement on ending their marriage would be something I can get behind. As I've seen it she never was very keen on finding a husband before Cyril proposed, so I understand if she doesn't want one anymore, especially not in a different country.

the next episode is going to hit hard as well, I guess. while rewatching I notice very much how the show has changed in pacing and how the episodes are more crowded and the ratio of fluff to grit is not always on point. still I'm happy that the show goes on and we meet more patients of the week with their predicaments that still relate to our lives today.

[writingquestionsanswered]

How Much World Building is Too Much?

Anonymous asked: This question is on behalf of my cousin who came to me for advice. When he has an idea, he writes the most detailed worldbuilding EVER, designs the characters and has a general idea of how the story will go, but then when he starts writing he does maybe 2 chapters and it dies. I, on the other hand, do ZERO worldbuilding ahead of time (I don't need much) and end up finishing 80% of what I start out to write. How do you know how much worldbuilding is enough? How do you keep from spending so much time planning that by the time you get to writing, you don't know where you're going with the actual story? I want to help him but our styles are so different, I don't know where to start.💔

(Ask edited for length...)

I identify with your cousin a lot, because this is often how my stories go. I'm first inspired by a place, or the idea of a place, and everything sort of grows out from there. In my early days, I would also pour everything into world building and character creation, only to find myself falling flat with the story. And a big part of that, I learned, was that I didn't really understand how stories worked. It was easy to build a world and set up characters, but since I didn't understand story structure, I didn't understand how to flesh out the nugget of a story idea I had to go with that setting.

So, one thing you might do is try to get a feel for where your cousin is in that respect. You can start by asking pointed questions about the potential plot, and if he doesn't have answers already, it will help guide him in that direction. Some questions I would ask:

1 - Who is your protagonist? What is their "normal world" life like before things are turned upside down with the inciting incident?

2 - Who and what is important to your protagonist? (Stakes)

3 - What past experiences have led to them being who they are now?

4 - What needs to change about your protagonist's life, beliefs, or values?

5 - What happens to turn your protagonist's world upside down? (Inciting incident) Who (or what) causes this to happen? (Antagonistic force)

6 - How does this affect your protagonist specifically, and what goal do they decide to pursue in order to resolve the problem?

7 - What steps does your protagonist plan to take in order to reach their goal? What knowledge, skills, resources, or help must they acquire in order to achieve their goal?

8 - What obstacles does the antagonistic force create that the protagonist must overcome on their way to the goal?

9 - How do the events of the story help to change your protagonist's life circumstances, beliefs, or values for better or worse? How will they change by the end of the story?

10 - How does your protagonist face off against the antagonistic force, attempting to defeat them once and for all in order to reach their goal? Are they successful? What is the aftermath and how is the character's world/life changed--for better or worse--as a result of these events?

If your cousin can answer these questions, they'll have a reasonably well fleshed out plot that should help carry them through the story. How little or much planning of the plot ahead of time they need is something they'll need to discover over time, but if the above isn't enough to help them get through the story, they might want to go back and flesh out the specific plot points. You can point them in the direction of my post Creating a Detailed Story Outline, which suggest several different story structure templates they can look at to help them coax out the specific plot points of their story. And, bear in mind that story structure templates do not have to be followed exactly. They're just a guide to help you flesh out the story. Many writers like to combine different elements of different plot structures as a loose guide as they write their stories.

I hope this helps!

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I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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[donkoogrr]

Do you think Bruce Wayne became written as a worse and worse parent because the idea of what makes a person "Heroic" has changed over the years?

(Cut for rambling)

At the start of Batman comics there was a very clear need for the audience to suspend their disbelief. The comic was very much a story, a reflection of the world where the reader was to be entertained with tales about a strange detective investigating the strange crimes of Gotham City.

Robin was Batman's partner, a new element to the story that appealed to a younger audience. They were a team that brought in a lot of capital. Authors would write heart-rending storylines and at the opposite page there would be a weird cheerful ad for Batman and Robin using fruit pies to stop crime.

Society evolves quickly and our media can struggle to keep up. The notion that children should be protected is a relatively recent one and it makes the inclusion of child heroes become... unpalatable to people. Modern values have changed and so too must the characters.

But applying current social values to the concept of child heroes would erase them.

Their whole existence is to be young and to fight the people who want to hurt them. To be young and be able to protect one's loved ones is a compelling story.

It's not just comic book heroes who fall under this paradox, either. Avatar: The Last Airbender is full of children learning how to fight and die for their world. Percy Jackson is another. Hell, one could even make a case for Warrior Cats. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were facing off with murderers just as often as any kid hero.

It's a common and loved story because we've all been children who have had to carve out a place for ourselves in the world.

So the existence of Robin, of child heroes in general, becomes an awkward duality. The character is too profitable to retire. Many people can still suspend disbelief enough to enjoy the story. Other people struggle to accept that a "hero", a "good Dad", could allow his children to fight at his side.

So authors are tasked again and again to try to explain Robin. To excuse the existence of a child hero in a day and age when most responsible adults would freak the fuck out at the idea of a kid going out at night to fight criminals.

And sometimes, more often than many of us would like, they come up with writing Bruce as a bad parent. A bad leader, even. It doesn't help that writers don't often get to have stories published that have significant influence on Batman as a character. He's purposely, perpetually trapped at one starting position for every new story.

Which is a valid take. In my opinion it's uninspired, but I understand the rationale behind it. They're working against a lot of baggage. There's nearly 90 years of culture shift to account for and hundreds of authors. Even the way comics are written now is very different from back then and that also messes with perceptions.

To me, Bruce is a deeply flawed man. He's been a shitty dad, yes, but not because Robin exists. He didn't have a choice with Robin - that was decided by forces beyond his control. I don't know how to judge canon Bruce Wayne; there are genuinely too many stories for me to feel like I have an accurate read on him.

I know that he tries very hard to do good. I know that he has the potential to make better choices and take kinder actions.

I'm not going to hold my breath, though. Even if we get a canon Batman run where he gets therapy and apologizes for his mistakes and past actions, where he has some real, meaningful dialogue with the people he loves... The next writer can ignore that for a more dramatic plot where he acts like a complete drip.

Pick your preferred version and warp canon to fit that guy - it's what DC does.

Thank the goddess for fanfiction.

[hiwelcometothemonstersancturary]

Image ID: Two glitter texts, reading as "NIGHTMARE FACTORY – DEVLOG 0". End image ID.

Hi, I'm Garça Visconde Mirigis, and I'm VERY happy to announce that this post you're reading is the first devlog ever for my nightmare game, a 3D platformer parody of mascot horror genre! And yes, nightmare, not dream game, because making my actual dream game is way out of my current abilities at the moment!

Ever thought to yourself how different a horror game would be if our protagonist decided to help the monsters instead of... [reading a list off-screen] killing, imprisioning, sacrificing, exorcizing or even banning them to other dimensions? Because I have, for ungodly amounts of time, and after literally years I decided that the time to actually make this thing has come. Welcome to the NIGHTMARE FACTORY!

OKAY BUT WHAT IS THE SYNOPSIS?

As previously mentioned, NIGHTMARE FACTORY is a parody of mascot horror games, set in an abandoned toy factory that also used to host a theme park. You play as Vera Torres, a 57 year-old mechanic who used to work in there. One day, our dear Vera receives a call from an old coworker: The higher-ups are going to sell the factory and the theme park, but they need a good inspection, and no one is accepting the offer! Feeling a bit nostalgic and wanting to help her friend, Vera decided to help take a look inside...

... Only to discover the place is now filled with strange monsters whose leader has, somehow, decided that she's actually his mother?! But she only had one kid ever in her life...?

Yeah, Vera is CONFUSED, and it's now your duty as the player to help her figure out just what the heck is going on!

... AND WHAT THE HECK IS THE GAME ACTUALLY ABOUT?

The game is a lighthearted and pink look at mascot horror as a whole, featuring little references to other games and lots and lots of silly jokes. It is also a long love letter for the genre, because as much as I like poking fun at FNaF, it did change my life for the better and it will forever have a soft spot in my heart. I love the franchise despite it all, and making a whole game just to poke fun at it and other similar games feels stupid. No one can create a good parody if they don't love the thing they're parodying even a tiny little bit.

NIGHTMARE FACTORY is not an "aha look at how stupid this is" look at mascot horror. I want it to be as sincere as possible, and the end product needs to be honest and not ironic in the slightest in order for it to be a success.

HOWEEEVEEEER. Despite the silliness, NIGHTMARE FACTORY can and will feature grapphic imagery and disturbing content due to its nature as a horror title. Trigger and content warnings have not been currently set, but shall be added as development continues.

WHAT ARE THE ~ INSPIRATIONS ~ ?

HEHEHE. HAHAHHAA. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. MY FAVORITE PART!

The gameplay is inspired by the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy, Pac-Man World 1-2 and Rayman 2! These are my favorite platformers ever and I played them for hours as a kid, and since NIGHTMARE FACTORY is all about toys and childhood I figured it would be the perfect fit!

For themes and story, NIGHTMARE FACTORY is inspired by Five Nights at Freddy's, Bendy and the Ink Machine/Bendy and the Dark Revival, Tattletail, Poppy Playtime, Silent Hill 1-4, Welcome Home, My Friendly Neighborhood and the Lacey series on YouTube! Some of the themes include loss of childhood, the horrors of motherhood and girlhood, corporate corruption, trauma recovery, grief and rage.

For visuals, however? Alice: Madness Returns, Hello Kitty Roller Rescue, Strawberry Shortcake: The Sweet Dreams Game, Disney Princess' Enchanted Journey and old dress-up flash games are my references!

THE SETTING

The game is set in 2020s São Paulo, Brazil, AKA where I live, and it can and will feature elements of brazilian culture. The final version should have both english and brazilian-portuguese translations, with cultural notes being featured to help non-brazilians understand some jokes and themes better.

CURRENT SITUATION

NIGHTMARE FACTORY is currently sitting at "the single gamedev is desperate to start programming but he's busy with uni work" stage of production, but do not worry, the single gamedev is also working on the story, how level progression shall go, how the game should feel to play, and, of course, planning the mechanics, AKA the most important part of a fun game. I'll make an entire devlog detailing every single main mechanic as soon as I'm able to finally start fully working on this!

NIGHTMARE FACTORY is being made with Godot, Blender and Krita, and it will be released first for PC.

NOW A LOOK AT HOW THE SINGLE GAMEDEV IS ALREADY ANXIOUS ABOUT MAKING THE GAME

It wouldn't be a project I made without me losing my mind about it from day 0!

Nightmare Factory is a 3D platformer game, with around ~30 levels planned, divided into 5 acts/chapters/arcs/sessions. You can think as these sets of levels as Crash Bandicoot's Warped level selection, like this!

After answering some asks relating to mascot horror as a genre, I remembered a conversation I had with my amazing partner some weeks ago about how I want to release NIGHTMARE FACTORY. YES, I didn't even start programming it, but this is the type of thing I need to settle on before I build a good chunk of the game. It will be important!

But then. There's the problem: I don't like it when games are "released" but you have to pay more to get all of them. Yeah, each chapter would be super cheap so they would have a full game price when combined, but also. Do I want to do this. Do I genuinely want to do this. Like? Am I sure this is the right way to do it?????

Image ID: Screenshot of Crash Warped for the PS1, with Crash standing in front of a warp room with 5 blue buttons on the floor, each marked with a number from 1 to 5. The 6th button has the face of Tiny Tiger, signaling it to be the entrance to a boss fight level. End image id.

My first plan was to release each act separately so I could both get feedback and also have more fun, because by getting feedback I would be way less worried about messing things up + I could update things like character physics to be less wonky or more stiff in case it was a common complaint, which could change the entire level design. And also because I'm a clown and I want to make a mascot horror parody, and releasing it in chapters aligns perfectly with how I want this to go.

Anyways, this has now lead to me deciding that the game should be a "pay for it once" type of thing. I'll still release it in chapters, but the updates will be for free. Will I regret this decision because liking it or not I need money + I am an indie dev + there's nothing wrong with game devs expecting to be, y'know, PAID for their work? Absolutely so!!!!! But I think that, for now, this will be how I develop this silly game.

Anyways, this is getting long enough, so I'll finish it for now. Character introductions will be made after the gameplay-focused devlog, so see you guys soon enough! Byeeee <3

[accio-victuuri]

Xiao Zhan “Blog World” interview section:

"Blog World": In 2023, you have three dramas starring you on the air, which have achieved very good results. If you sum up this year, what is your evaluation of yourself, or what do you want to say to yourself?

Xiao Zhan: Enrichment and gain. I hope that I can continue to work hard and give back to the audience with more and better works in the future, and also deliver more positive energy through my own actions.

"Blog World": In the period emotional drama "Where Dreams Begin", you play the role of Xiao Chunsheng, a tough and upright young man who bravely pursues his dreams. What impact does this character's character and story have on you? What did you gain from the process of creating characters?

Xiao Zhan: Xiao Chunsheng is a very vital and infectious character. I am often moved by him. He is tenacious and always sticks to his inner bottom line, and will not be easily affected by the people around him or the surrounding environment. At the same time, he has the drive to face difficulties. He often says, "The difficult road is the uphill road."

This character is actually much more outgoing than me. He also acts as the "big brother" among his friends. He is very responsible and always tries his best to take care of the friends around him and help everyone solve problems. This innocent heart is also affects me.

"Blog World": As a period drama, involving decades of time changes, how do you grasp the characteristics of the characters at each stage? For you, what is the most important element in a person's growth process, and what needs to be adhered to?

Xiao Zhan: I think the first thing is to believe and allow yourself to put yourself in Xiao Chunsheng’s shoes and experience the situations he encountered at different stages. In fact, there are subtle differences in the stages of military service, retirement, employment, entrepreneurship, etc., including the relatives around him. , friends will also slowly get closer or become separated, so when performing, I need to think about the front and back scenes, and immerse myself in the situation: with Chun Sheng’s unyielding spirit, what will he think and do when faced with these situations? .

I think for me, it means sticking to what I believe in and doing what I think is right.

"Blog World": This time you starred in the fantasy drama "Yuguya" and returned to the field of costume dramas. Do you have any new feelings and surprises?

Xiao Zhan: The new feeling for me about the character Shiying is that he is a mortal human being with all the seven emotions and six desires of a human being, which is very vivid. The surprising thing is that this character has a sense of contrast. He is reserved and sharp, cold but affectionate. He is not a single character. These all gave me a better fulcrum to understand and interpret this character.

"Blog World": Shiying in the play is a lonely and cold person, but his destiny has experienced great twists and turns. What do you think the character's attitude towards life is?

Xiao Zhan: Shi Ying’s attitude towards life is that man can conquer nature and everything depends on man-made efforts. Therefore, he will firmly do what he thinks is right, and in the end he will dedicate everything he has to the righteousness of his family and country.

"Blog World": In the urban drama "Sunshine By My Sdide, you play the role of designer Sheng Yang. The character has a sunny side of a young man, but at the same time he is very mature inside. Is this the image you want to maintain?

Xiao Zhan: As far as I am concerned, I do not deliberately maintain a certain state or image at a certain stage. In my understanding, Sheng Yang is a person who knows the world but is sophisticated. He has the energy of a young man but is not naive at heart.

As an actor, I hope that everyone will not have a fixed concept of my performance or role. It is best that every work can bring a new image to the audience, making everyone forget who Xiao Zhan should be. what does it look like. (laugh)

"Blog World": Do you imagine what your life would be like now if you had not entered the entertainment industry?

Xiao Zhan: Actually, I have never imagined that I might still be in the design industry, where I commute to and from get off work every day, and may have to work overtime frequently. Or open a bakery, paint when I have nothing to do, or go traveling with family and friends.

"Blog World": In recent years, you have participated in a variety of works and diverse roles. What method do you usually use to detach yourself from the emotions of the previous role and adapt to the next role?

Xiao Zhan: Maybe I just give myself some time off, return to my daily life, sleep, exercise, and relax for a while, that’s about it. It also takes a while to welcome a new role, to read through and become familiar with the script, and to sort out the relationships between the characters.

"Blog World": Regarding the profession of actor, do you have any new insights now compared to when you first debuted? Is there any change in mentality?

Xiao Zhan: My previous idea was relatively simple, I just wanted to act well and try different roles. My thoughts have not changed now, but I will have higher demands on myself. In addition to hoping to be recognized by the audience, I also hope to bring some strength to everyone through my roles and works. I think this will be very meaningful and valuable.

"Blog World": What is your current ideal on the road of acting? What are the requirements for yourself reflected in your work?

Xiao Zhan: My goal has always been to hope that everyone can see their own progress and changes through each work. I also hope that my performance can be affirmed and recognized by the audience.

What I can do is to fully understand and appreciate the role, discuss and communicate more with directors, screenwriters, and senior actors who I have collaborated with. At the same time, I will also listen to the audience’s well-intentioned and helpful suggestions on performance, and improve my own performance. shortcomings.

Be down-to-earth, interpret each role carefully, and do your job well.

source.

[marvelstars]

George Lucas and the prequel trilogy

"I knew if I'd made Anakin 15 instead of nine, then it would have been more marketable. If I'd made the Queen 18 instead of 14, then it would have been more marketable. But that isn't the story. It is important that he be young, that he be at an age where leaving his mother is more of a drama than it would have been at 15. So you just have to do what's right for the movie, not what's right for the market."(George Lucas)

George Lucas may not be a perfect writer but I really liked to see how aware he is of his lack of skills writing dialogue and the fact he very purposely didn´t make a marketable movie with the usual action formula for blockbuster summer films, he´s trying to make an opera story with elements kids would like to see, I personally do think the prequels could have been done better and the passing and some creative decisions could have been changed to make the story more understable, especially the part where Anakin grows into his own as a adult and general in the clone wars and Jedi instead of telling this story in another format because he took more care in showing his fall. We can´t appreciate the fall if he didn´t see his rise properly.

Still I like the fact that he´s purposelly making unpopular decisions but that have a reason for his story instead of using the same old tired formula for action movies.

Everybody was expecting a teenager darth vader, dark but cool and Lucas goes completely left field and shows a kind and generous slave kid who had to leave his mother to get his freedom, who inmediately gets on the bad side of the Jedi Order Council not for a fault of his own but mostly that he´s inconvenient, his existence is inconvenient, the Jedi don´t need chosen ones because they already got rid of the sith, there´s nothing to change here, nothing at all and he suffers the same rejection Padmé suffered at the Senate when she pleaded for her people´s safety.

I think this is so interesting in how Padme(14) and Anakin(9) are kids given adult responsibilities who try to understand the brutal adult world they live in one as a slave another as the leader of an occupied planet and try to make a difference, not quite managing it but seeing things in a very idealist form, just like their children did in the OT, their tragedy is mainly the fact this adult world still has rules they have to follow and try to work within a system that has become stagnant and corrupt, while their children could burn it all down because everything outside of them and their side was evil, this is not the case with Anakin and Padme, they have to pick and choose a not so bad decision out of many bad choices, their world isn´t good vs evil as it was in the OT, it´s grey vs dark and in the end those choices destroy them both but also give the way for their children to fix what was broken in their world in the first place and honestly this is so much more interesting than the classic story of the hot couple who falls in love and saves the day at the end of the story.

[serial-serializednovelreader]

Nova’s Notes - North and South - Chapter 2

After the wedding, Margaret heads home with her father, who was also at the wedding. Her mother is noticeably absent, due to not having money to afford a new gown — despite it being her only niece’s wedding. Mrs. Shaw does not guess this is the reason, due to her only complaints being consumed by “I was in an age gap marriage” (I am paraphrasing, but this is kind of what it says!) and unable to remember what it’s like to be poor.

It seems that Mrs. Shaw thinks that her sister, Maria (aka, Mrs. Hale) got the better end of the husband bargain, with him being handsome, only eight years older, mild-mannered, and most importantly, they loved each other. However, as it shows later in the chapter, Mrs. Hale thinks Mrs. Shaw got the better end of the bargain, because she got a rich husband and now has to want for nothing material.

What can we glean from this? Both sisters are very similar and have “grass is greener” syndrome. They let their anxieties consume them rather than being happy with what they have, and, at least in Mrs. Hale’s case, it does affect those around her.

Margaret does not seem to mind that her mother is not there, as she has been needed by everyone in the past 48 hours and getting to meet her mother in the comfort of their home is preferable to the hustle and bustle of the Shaw/Lennox clan. In reference to how busy they have made her, she says she had to play the part of a “Figaro”. After some research, I found this was a comic character from several plays, operas, and serialized newspapers that was a barber-turned-valet. I believe the symbolism comes from the character being a busy servant that was very much in demand from how useful he was, though feel free to correct me/dive deeper into this.

While Margaret is happy to be going home, she is sadder than she thought she would be at the prospect of leaving Harley Street and notices something is different about her father sleeping in the carriage beside her. Not only has his hair (once a rare blue-black) gone gray, his face is also still anxious even in sleep, which it never used to be in waking. She tries to discover the cause of this change and wonders if this has anything to do with Frederick not being in England anymore.

Because of the way she laments about him and his situation, I can only assume Frederick is her brother and because of “terrible affair” as a navy man, he is unable to come back to England, though he does write to his family occasionally. The issue is Margaret was not there when the incident happened and only got a partial story from her aunt: all she can hope to do is comfort her parents and ease their anxiety.

Margaret is excited to return home, of course. She is back in her element with the forest and returns to her old habit of tramping along the underbrush, breathing in the fresh air. However, not all is well at home. As aforementioned, her mother is not happy with her situation and while she does not take it out on Margaret, she does take it out on Mr. Hale.

Mrs. Hale constantly compares how the bishop treats Mr. Hale compared to how he could be treated if they moved elsewhere. I tried to find some context on how this system works between the parish priests and the bishop — as I’m not Catholic myself and have no personal knowledge of this — but I could not find much. I’m assuming this is the Catholic church we’re talking about, since they reference a bishop and Mr. Hale as a parish priest. Of course, please feel free to add onto this. All I can conjecture is that because Mr. Hale is a parish priest in a small town, this does not afford him much connection or wealth. My understanding is that the bishop is aligned more with the government, so he could — in theory — give Mr. Hale those connections or move him to a better position if he tried for it. He has done so with other priests (less qualified than Mr. Hale, in his wife’s opinion), but has not budged with Mr. Hale.

However, Mr. Hale does not want this: he’s happy with what he has at Helstone and the increased pressure from his wife causes him to “shr[i]nk”. Margaret does what she can to make her mom happy in their home, rather than also pressuring her father. Why does she take her father’s side in this? I believe it’s for a number of reasons:

1) Margaret is more like her dad than her mom — she doesn’t long for the rich, fancy life that her mother does and that is one of the things she misses least about her life on Harley Street. She also have a more mild temper and can empathize with her dad.

2) She loves her home by the woods — if they get a “better living” (as her mother put it) that would likely involve moving to a more central part of the town — or a different town entirely — and she wouldn’t be able to spend her time outside in the forest or walking to different cottages all day.

3) While this isn’t a new change in her mother, perhaps she believes she can talk her out of it easier than her father, even though he is mild-tempered. After all, just because Margaret is mild-tempered does not mean she doesn’t have a determined streak; indeed, we’ve already seen evidence of it and so she assumes her mother can be reasoned with easier than putting more pressure on her father.

4) The request itself is bound to lead to more; “grass is greener” people are usually never satisfied. Perhaps Margaret has seen this before in the past, where her father has given her mother what she wants and it has only led to her asking more of him. Maybe she hopes to nip it in the bud this time since it’s obviously gotten worse and is negatively affecting her father.

Keep in mind, these are theories on my part; we don’t know the exact reason as of yet, but I think it’s interesting to think about the reason why she takes her father’s side!

We can also trace the source of her mother’s discontent: “the time of the mutiny in which Frederick had been engaged.”

Ok, so that does tell us a lot here. While in the navy, Frederick took part in a mutiny and was likely exiled from England (from the limited understanding we have — more is likely going to be said later). Now — if this is what happened — the penalty for mutiny is usually death in those times, so it’s a pleasant surprise he made it out ok. Later passages state he’s in Rio (Rio de Janerio, Brazil, I’m assuming?) currently and the few letters he does send, Margaret does not know the full news of. Why would her mother start to resent their home for this? Many understandable reasons:

1) Obviously, the house carries many memories of Frederick. Having daily reminders of your son that can never come back to this home and you can never see again (with you in too delicate health to travel — which she is) is painful.

2) Perhaps the neighbors closest to her were not very sympathetic when they found out about this mutiny. Mrs. Hale had hoped they would be a listening ear and instead the Hale family became the center of gossip in that part of town (that she knew of). Maybe the other part of town brought her gifts and became that listening ear. But doesn’t that seem backwards for the “richer” side to be nice and the “poorer” side to be gossipy? Yes, it does, but everything is about appearances. If I had to guess, both sides were probably gossiping, but the “richer” side did their part of bringing gifts to seem sympathetic and Mrs. Hale took that as actually being sympathetic. From what we’ve already seen of her, she values material things (gift-giving is probably her love language lol) and this would win her over. This is a lot of reaching I know, but it could be possible, right? The only reason we don’t hear about it is because we’re in Margaret’s POV and she doesn’t know anything about what happened when Frederick’s mutiny took place.

3) Similar to the first point, sometimes when you’re somewhere with an extremely bad memory, you want to leave that place and will justify your reasoning with whatever you can. Think about the feelings Mrs. Hale must’ve felt when she opened a letter to find that her son was exiled and would not be coming home. Did she even find out from him, or was it a generic navy office letter? Sometimes, people cope by wanting to start somewhere fresh and this could be a product of that.

4) Being “poor” is what got their son into this situation in the first place. He wouldn’t have had to become a navy officer if they had more money, right? He could have taken up a different position, such as a merchant. Perhaps in a misguided attempt to “fix” this, she is trying to better their situation. Of course, it is too little, too late to actually change anything, but she still wants to try for her daughter. She is already trying to match her with a handsome tradesman from the other part of town she wants them to move to!

5) A bit unrelated, but I also think she’s moving her worries about Frederick onto worries about their living situation. Kind of like how you can feel anger when you’re actually sad, her whole “we need to be more rich” isn’t actually the problem she has; the problem she has is “we need our son back”. Having more money or influence wouldn’t be able to bring their son back — it can’t — but channeling those worries is (what she thinks) a better use of her time because it’s something she can actually control.

6) Her maid, Dixon. Later in the chapter, it describes Dixon as seeing Frederick as her favorite and cleaning his room once a week as if he was coming home, despite her never doing housework. Sweet, right? Well…I see Dixon as causing more tension in the house than good because she resents Mr. Hale for taking her and Mrs. Hale away from their cushy lifestyle at Beresfords House (where Mrs. Hale grew up) and she sees herself as a “protecting fairy” against Mr. Hale. If Frederick was her favorite and Mr. Hale’s situation is what led Frederick to be a navy officer…yeah, I imagine Dixon often laments about their living situation and how perhaps Frederick would still be there if they were living somewhere else (that’s not guaranteed, of course, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t say it!!). Having someone constantly whisper disparaging things about your husband and his house is not a good idea — almost an Iago to your Othello, if you catch my drift. Again, it’s not entirely related, but I think it does link back to Mrs. Hale’s resentment of the house.

After reading this, you may think one or the other side is “more correct” — and that’s fine if you do — but I think both sides are valid and just need to communicate. It’s not Mrs. Hale’s fault she resents Helstone and it’s not Mr. Hale and Margaret’s fault that they love it. What they need to work on is communicating as a family and reaching a good compromise that suits everyone.

Margaret does attempt to do this by taking her mother on daily walks, which works for a bit until autumn sets in and her mother’s health is affected. It’s hard for Margaret to engage with either of them at this point or find much of anything to do; her mother doesn’t like being read aloud to (go off, I guess?), and encouraged her husband to spend all of his time in his study with parish affairs rather than fun card activities, so no family game night either. He doesn’t even go to visit his parishioners (which Margaret could probably be a part of), because his wife discouraged that as well (not to be mean, but I’m starting to see why maybe they weren’t the nicest to her after Frederick got banished, she doesn’t seem to engage with them very much?!). The books they have on hand for her to read are ones she has already read — or just very short. In other words: this girl is about to start singing “When Will my Life Begin” from Tangled. /j

So, she tells her mother about life in Harley Street, but it often leads to her mother comparing their homes again and Margaret longing to ask about Frederick. But she has a conundrum: around her mother, she thinks she should ask her dad instead and then the reverse happens around her father. She procrastinates this difficult conversation and I can kind of understand why. Her parents both seem like delicate people who get anxious easily; now that she has noticed how “old” her dad looks, I imagine she’s noticed a similar change in her mom and doesn’t want to risk damaging their health. Additionally, their emotional health seems pretty unstable as well and she probably sees that in a new light as an adult and doesn’t want to risk destabilizing that.

Margaret does seem to notice that her father seems…off. He’s not only more anxious (which can happen at the slightest of causes), he’s distracted too and he’s the first to snatch up letters whenever the postman arrives. So does he have news of Frederick that he’s not sharing with either of them? It sure seems that way.

BUT enough gloom! Margaret’s a fall girlie and she’s determined to sketch what Helstone looks like, since she learned art with Edith. It’s a fine October day when a housemaid announces Margaret has a visitor: Henry Lennox.

My honest reaction:

This guy again?! He did say he would be checking up on her…

Jk jk, I’m eager to see what this meetup is going to be like and it’s going to be super hard not to read ahead!!!! But I won’t, because I like being surprised and giving my reactions/analysis as it comes.

In the meantime, I want to sum up a bit more about Margaret’s mother and father, since I think they are characters we’ll be seeing for the foreseeable future. Again, using bullet points because I went long.

Mrs. Hale:

Ambitious

Loves her family

Deep sadness for her son

Apathetic to the parishioners

Hates fun (jk but seriously what is her deal — no reading, backgammon OR visiting schoolchildren??)

Controlling towards her husband

Dreams of grandeur for her daughter

Married for love — happy at one time

Delicate health

Not inflexible (walks did help temporarily)

Overall, not a glowing character review, but like with Mrs. Shaw it’s early and she’s not heartless; she does describe her as kind towards her daughter and did marry for love, so at one time she was a more tender person than she seems to be now. The whole “apathetic to the parish” thing did happen before Frederick though, so I attribute that to her having come from a more well-off family and not understanding the importance of these visits. Perhaps she also wanted to keep her husband closer to her — although you’d think she would do that by actually engaging with him, but ok? Overall, like every other Gaskell character, she is not black and white and we cannot paint her as such. I hope to learn more positive traits that I can add here because I do seem to be just bashing on her, but I am trying to find good things to say!

Mr. Hale:

AnxiousTM

Aging

Mild-tempered

Quiet

Tries to please his wife

Determined streak

Bottles up issues

Content with his life OR

Does not like confrontation

Easily depressed/distressed

So, it’s unclear whether he won’t better his living situation because he doesn’t want to confront the bishop or because he’s actually happy with Helstone. Due to his anxious personality (can relate btw), I would *guess* the former, but it could very well be the latter — or both! For someone who is anxious, it is very difficult to walk up to what is the equivalent of (I’m assuming is) your boss and saying “Hey, give me a better living situation right now! I’m better than the other parish priests you hired!” His wife makes it sound easy, but…idk from my standpoint, that is quite the opposite!!! However, if I saw that my partner was as miserable as Mrs. Hale so obviously is (and for more reasons than just the living situation thing), then I would at least consider it. Again, it’s a complex situation, and I feel like both of these characters are not helping each other by not communicating and continuing to ignore the other’s needs. In that sense, Mr. Hale is also in the wrong for just kind of shying away from the conversation, instead of telling her no OR having a deeper conversation about this. I want to add more to Mr. Hale’s character chart other than “anxious” but we don’t hear much from him in this chapter, so hopefully we get more of him soon!

One more thing: I made some important additions thanks to someone in my reply section, so if you want to peer review/correct me, I may have actually already done that in the reblog section, so please check that out first! I also explain why I’m reblogging it over just editing this post. If I didn’t address it, feel free to add on and I’ll edit the additions post!

I think that’s it: see you next week North and South fans!