#i just think he was underdeveloped

[andreal831]

If you were to rewrite Jackson, would you still implement the love triangle? If so, would you make it more of an unrequited love or would you truly explore Jayley? If not, what type of role would you have him play?

TGW outtake suggestion:

In chapter 30 (I think) it mentioned Elijah never called Hayley for her birthday, and knowing Elijah, he’d probably feel guilty about this. So I’m thinking this could start from the dinner Hayley, Elijah, and astra we’re having together and at the end of the dinner, Elijah pulls astra aside and tells her that he wants to plan this whole day out as a surprise to celebrate her birthday. Then the next day could be them doing all sorts of activities and Elijah giving her some sort of expensive gift or something.

That explanation sucked, basically just Elijah plans a day to celebrate Hayley’s birthday because he feels guilty that he missed it.

If I was the writer from the beginning, I would have gotten rid of any love triangles. I've said it before, I don't like them. They are unnecessarily messy. Especially in a show like TO where the plot is so heavy. It worked better in TVD because the show centered more around the relationships. Most of the enemies were part of the romantic drama. But TO was focused on family and the enemies were typically after power or revenge. There wasn't time for messy relationship drama. I would have preferred for the show to have established relationships that could have been partners/supported each other throughout the show.

I've loved Nathan Parsons since before TO even existed so I was so excited to see him in TO. Fun fact, he was one of my first male crushes. I was then super disappointed to see his character be so underutilized and underdeveloped. I would have introduced him as alpha of the pack without the arranged marriage. I know many cultures have arranged marriages and that is great as long as everyone wants it. Hayley was not comfortable with it and said it multiple times. I hated that the show just kept going down that path and introduced the arranged marriage again in season 2 just under a different name, the "unification." If I was in charge, the women would have much more autonomy in the show.

I would have kept the warring family idea and even had Jackson be warry of Hayley's sudden appearance. This girl who is supposedly the long-lost "princess" of the pack shows up, pregnant by their enemies, and living with the Mikaelsons. Hayley would have had to earn his respect as well as the packs, but once she did, he would teach her the pack's history. I would also make him a better alpha. I don't think I would make him more politically minded because I would have played more into the fact that he has spent his entire adult life as a wolf because of the curse. He would have leaned on Hayley who naturally seemed to know how to make allies with the other factions. Instead of a marriage to fix the rift in the pack, Jackson and Hayley would have created a bond based on mutual respect and love for the pack. They would have introduced the idea of co-alphas without needing it to be romantic or sexual.

I hate when shows can't allow opposite gender individuals to just work together without it being romantic or sexual. I love a good friendship. That is one of my biggest complaints about TVDU. It created such great friendships but instead of developing them, it focused on the romantic drama. The friendships/found families in New Orleans were what was going to save it from war. You have Marcel and Davina, Vincent and Cami, Cami and Marcel, Vincent and Freya, etc. These bonds that transcended the factions was what saved them over and over. But the wolves are left out of that since, after Jackson died Hayley basically forgot about the pack. They could have done it with Eve, but she died to early. It would have been nice to see Jackson forming those bonds with the other factions, starting with Hayley.

I wouldn't do an unrequited love storyline. These always just make me sad. I know it happens in real life but that's why I love fiction, I don't need to add any unnecessary pain that way (I know that's ironic coming from me). If I did explore Jayley, I would have actually shown them developing feelings for each other. Show Hayley being torn between her feelings. And then shown that even if you love someone and try to make it work, for various reasons, it may not. This doesn't mean it was bad or one of the partners was "evil." In real life, relationships don't work out, it doesn't make the relationship any less important or impactful.

I truly do think Jackson deserved better from the writers. This is why *spoilers for my story, The Great War* I had jayley end the way they did. It was on Jackson's terms. I know some people thought it was out of character, and maybe it was for the show, but that's the point. Jackson is supposed to be a strong leader, yet he couldn't stand up for himself in the show. He gave Hayley ultimatums instead of setting boundaries and then just left when it got hard. They needed to have a real conversation. So in my story, when they did have this real conversation, they realized they were never going to get what they wanted out of the relationship. Jackson deserved to be able to set his boundaries and get away from the Mikaelsons. He deserved to have a love that isn't forced or manipulated. It's why I didn't kill him. I hated that so many characters were sacrificed just to push certain ships or push the Mikaelson story forward (RIP Gia).

I have already written an outtake for chapter 30 but I do love this idea. And y'all know I love writing haylijah. I'm not sure when I'll get it done but I will definitely write this!

Thanks for the ask and the suggestion!

[puppyeared]

RETURN TO MONKE (PUBERTY EDITION)

MK’s monkey form doesn’t feel right to me so i wanted to break up his transformation into stages. Maybe as he learns to accept that side of himself it becomes part of him, instead of changing between human and monkey randomly (which is probably painful). Love yourself, NOW!!!

@zymstarz im tagging you for FULL MONKE

[lemongogo]

i wish we saw vash interact w the plants more T__T

[spacedlexi]

i just think a "friended/romanced + saved + trust aj" violet does such a good job rounding out the plot and characters of S4 and i dont say that lightly

she walls people off out of fear just like S3 clem did and learned to grow out of through the compassion of others. feeling like she could have done more to save minnie being what initially makes her step up to lead, but her accepting her love for clem (and clem choosing to save her) is what leads to her Truly accepting the school and everyone inside it as her Home and gives her something to fight for ("i tried my damnedest not to care about either of you. and i still couldnt tell you why." "i know where youre coming from. after losing so many people, sometimes its easier to keep everyone at arms length." "and then you wonder why you fight so hard to stay alive. i dont wonder anymore."). this being the reasoning behind violets detachment from the school, as well as a negative home life impacting her idea of what a home even was. but together they turn ericson from a prison into the home theyve BOTH been looking for, renaming it together, and envisioning it for the future together. the two of them understand each other deeply, from what theyve lost to how its affected them and the poor ways theyve decided to react to it. but through their support of the other, they BOTH get to evolve into more relaxed and confident versions of themselves, who know Exactly what theyre fighting for

her troubled relationship with brody and getting to learn more about what happened with the twins/violets reaction to it and how she ultimately blames herself/brodys guilt about her part in it and how she misses violet. getting the chance to mend that relationship before its too late. the 3 of them becoming closer because of it. and getting to develop clems friendship with brody leads to a more impactful moment later in the basement

her relationship with tenn reflecting clems relationship with aj, in the way they both made the decision to look after their respective boys after their primary guardians died (ajs parents, tenns sisters). both of them can understand the responsibilities they have taken upon themselves, and how hard it can be to do right. the 4 of them become a tight knit group quickly. especially in EP2 as vi supports clem while tenn supports aj through the marlon fiasco

her confused relationship with minerva introducing interesting conflict both within her relationship with clem (who has her own personal conflict with minerva, which vi still ties into through her relationship with both minnie and tenn) and the over arching plot, which has themes of learning when to let someone go because they are no longer who they once were (clem and lilly "we were family once", mitch about ms martin "you get all caught up in who people used to be, and you cant deal with whats in front of you", violet about minnie "the real minnie? shes been gone this whole time and i have to stop mourning her")

having a saved violet on the boat expanding the conversation with minerva about her motivations with the delta. violet apologizing for never looking for her, minnie saying she knows she would have but that its too late now, so sure this is just the way things have to be. getting to hear minnie say "you can be rewarded, just like i am", giving us insight into her character. and clem getting the last word before she rams the door down, her and violet fighting minnie Together. and violet saves clems life, making the Choice to shoot minerva, which in and of itself is a huge moment for violets character in regards to her relationship with both minnie And clem

and aj shooting tenn on the bridge brings things full circle, by putting violet in the same position louis was in EP2, where aj has killed the most important person to her, in an effort to save her life, and now she must reckon with those feelings the same way louis had to about marlon. not so easy now is it violet? ("so youre mad, but sad" "can i be that for a while?" "yeah, its ok")

just... ough... violets whole character just fits into Everything so well, but in a way that elevates the characters and plots around her, while also developing her into her own

[betweenblackberrybranches]

I didnt really like the newest season of hilda :(

[annihilatius]

The urge to make irrelevant/side characters be prevalent in my Minerva's Den rewrite even tho I wouldn't know what to do with them immediately just cuz they barely got shit to do in canon

[theworldinclines]

drawing conclusions. connecting dots.

[ambriel-angstwitch]

Kai: Cinema has existed for over a century and Dracula has never met a dolphin in any movie

Kai: There are so many stories left to tell.

Jay: What porpoise would Dracula have to meet a dolphin?

Kai & Jay: Ayyyy!

Nya: Hm, they must be sharing a brain-cell today

[djungleskogs]

.

[philosophiums]

there's a conversation happening on tiktok right now about why there has been such a sharp rise in people wanting to watch female-led anime instead of being so focused on shonen and the girl who posted the video listed her reasoning as shonen constantly fucking up "power creep" (her words but i'm pretty sure she meant power scaling).

anyway i'm going to subject you all to my thoughts on this because i refuse to post anything on tiktok. (i'm also putting this under a read more because it got longer than i thought it would SKJDBVKJDBVJ).

now, i don't think complaints of power scaling in shonen is a bad thing, but i also don't think it's actually the problem with shonen (nor do i think it's the reason that there's an increase in interest for female leads bc i think that's literally just people wanting to see more female main characters which is not new or surprising or weird, but that's not the point of this rn).

i think the problem with shonen (most of the time) is the lack of actual story content - like fucking... plots and themes and motifs.

her two examples were mha and jjk because to her they sit on opposite sides of the spectrum in regards to power scaling (in mha the villains are so weak that children can defeat them, and in jjk the villains are so strong that no one can defeat them), so i'm also going to work off of these two examples.

mha's problem is not that the children are the only ones who can fight the big bads, it's that we don't get to see proof that the kids are actually stronger than the adults. sure there's evidence of adults fighting the villains and losing vs the kids fighting the villains and winning, but there's no setup for like a mentor/mentee moment of the mentee finally besting their mentor and us the audience getting to see that they're finally stronger. in fact it's... typically the opposite.

mha shows us multiple times that even the strongest characters in the main cast of kids are not stronger than, say, kids who are two years older than them or their teachers, let alone the best and strongest professional heroes in the verse. and that's not a power scaling issue, that's a storytelling issue. because you can set up stories where kids are stronger than the adults in their verse, and you can write it in a way that makes sense, but mha does not do that.

and of course mha has multiple other storytelling problems, not the least of them being the fact that it set itself up to be one of those "if you believe in yourself and try hard enough you can do anything" stories only to immediately undermine itself by giving the mc the most powerful ability in the verse free of charge, making the entire opening sequence have zero emotional payoff (a problem that continues on and on forever in the anime/manga).

jjk, on the other hand, set itself up to be a story about cycles, about the past repeating itself, about the inevitability of curses and hardship and never learning from past mistakes, but all of that was completely abandoned somewhere in the middle of the shibuya arc and was never touched on again.

all of the main characters in jjk have direct mirrors within the main cast - yuji & geto, fushiguro & gojo, nobara & shoko, maki & toji, nanami & mei mei, the list goes on - and it had the perfect opportunity to either be a story about the inevitability of trauma cycles OR a story about breaking those cycles, but instead half the cast is now dead and it's become a manga that's just about cool-looking fights.

the problem with jjk is not that the villains are too strong/unbeatable (i actually think there could have been merit to making jjk a story where the villains win, but that would have required focusing on the theme of cycles which, again, has unfortunately been lost) - it's just that there's no fucking plot anymore. there's no meat. there's no point. even if the goal of jjk from the beginning was to subvert a lot of typical shonen tropes, it's so so hard to care about that anymore because there's no reason. the plot is gone, the themes have vanished, the emotion is no longer in the room with us, and it has absolutely nothing to do with (im)balances of power within the verse.

but of course this is not a new problem in shonen. it's so incredibly rare for shonen to have a good story that maintains from start to finish in a satisfying arc, and that's almost a staple of the genre now - training arcs and a war arcs and lots of fighting and very little actual substance. the ones that do have it are gold mines. but again, this is not a new problem and it's not a new conversation, and i don't think it's the heart of why that girl posted that video or why all those people agree with her.

i truly think the actual reason this conversation is happening is because there's a new set of people who have recently turned twenty-something and are realizing that they don't identify with shonen protagonists anymore because they're no longer teenagers. and i think those people are upset that the characters/stories aren't aging with them and are finally looking at all the shows they like and are realizing that they're constructed around a trope of, essentially, child soldiers fighting battles that the adults in their verses cannot. and these people are realizing that they maybe don't like that anymore.

because when you're a teenager, shonen is escapism or a power fantasy or both. it's more relatable because it's made for that age group. but when you're an adult you start going "hey... where are these kids' parents?" because you realize that it's unfair and unreasonable in real life to put so much pressure on literal children. (i always think of that post that went around tumblr a few years ago that was a gif of this character in a tv show saying something like "i'm 13. i'm practically an adult." - bc when you're a 10 year old watching that, you go Yeah That's Right She's So Old, but when you're 30 watching that, you're just internally groaning because you have been a full legal adult for this child's entire life and they're barely older than a baby to you).

but of course shonen (and YA lit and superhero cartoons/comics and the list goes on) is not meant to be "realistic."

but just because it's not crafted as realism doesn't mean it shouldn't have story elements or themes that can reflect reality and/or be applied to real life. it also doesn't mean it can't have a fucking plot SKJDBVJKDVB

[hollowflight-propaganda]

Ngl, I'm pretty excited to revisit arc 3 + Dragonslayer for my series reread because book 11 is the only one of those I've done a proper reread of, and that was 4 years ago

I'm also excited about that because then I can imagine my own complex rewrite for it all :)

[trentcrimminallybeautiful]

i have this silly little undeveloped au in my brain that's just like. tedependent but it's the sarah jane adventures. sort of. not literally in the doctor who universe necessarily but like. local intrepid reporter trent crimm investigating weird shit except the local neighborhood kids will not leave him alone.

i have so many thoughts about this but none of them are coherent enough for a proper fic i think:

i just think trent being good with kids, generally. go mentor figure trent! (what this has nothing to do with my thesis what do you mean)

trent, like sarah jane pre-series, having a sort of reputation in the neighborhood (or in general, since i'm also incorporating his actual canon vibes/story) as to being standoffish, aloof, cold, etc., and generally anti-social, keeping to himself. and as the kids keep dragging him into things kicking and screaming he might also be dragged kicking and screaming into a community <3

if his daughter is essentially luke does that mean he adopted her under Strange Alien-Related Circumstances? absolutely it does, yes.

see i've got two great ideas for ted/tedependent. on one hand, although in the context of SJA/nuwho i'm not so much one for sarah jane and the doctor as a Thing, ted playing the role of like. someone from trent's Mysterious Past who he won't talk about who set him on this path? someone who was kind and wonderful and changed his life but then--at least it feels like to him--abandoned him? someone who made him a better person--from doing whatever journalism he used to do to this--someone who he's still kinda in love with... but trent can no longer even really talk to......until he shows up again? that's some good shit, not gonna lie. although i'm jimmying that into a happy ending somehow, goddamn it.

ALTERNATIVELY. henry being one of the Neighborhood Kids (as if we're using "canon" kids, we've got limited options) and ted being an oblivious parent. trent is trying to get these kids to STOP POKING INTO DANGEROUS ALIEN NONSENSE PLEASE THIS IS HIS JOB PLEASE STOP BREAKING INTO HIS HOUSE but they're stubborn and smart and they may or may not have saved his life once or twice and oh GOD THIS IS SO IRRESPONSIBLE but he can't just TELL THESE RANDOM NEIGHBORS about ALIENS. but like anyway this just painful secret identity-esque nonsense where ted knows henry's taken a shine to that nice journalist down the street and his daughter but does NOT know that henry is getting into Shenanigans(TM). this could lead into all sorts of drama about, you know, his kid being in danger... or, alternatively, ted has worked with some unit/torchwood-esque place before and is like OHH you know what? this explains that time i thought i heard you speaking an alien language. cool, cool. and trents like. .....WHAT

etc. i'm not wording this well but i think you get the idea.

if you really really wanted to make it complicated you could do both, considering the doctor's whole thing--either a fob watch or a regeneration--but honestly, i don't want to do that, so i won't

some of the adults do definitely get involved though. keeley either clocks that shit right away or thinks she's clocked it but she's actually clocked something entirely different. she's like i know you're mi6 babe ;) and he. is not. meanwhile roy having ten freakouts in a row and then being like nvm i'm fine with this. (is not fine with this, but will be eventually). jamies like yeah aliens. everyone knows about those. and they're like what?? no they dont?? and so on.

is beard an alien? genuinely no one's sure. he's not telling.

HOLD ON can i give trent k-9???? can trent crimm get a robot dog?????? yes please i think he deserves a robot dog

also see the trickster episodes? bet you could do something real fucked up with those.

i feel like i had more when i started this post but i don't remember

this not well thought out at all and i have no idea where everyone would fit in

anyway my point is. trent crimm, intrepid journalist, running around trying to stop alien shenanigans while Those Meddling Kids keep following him around. trent crimm doin a little Breaking And Entering. scooby doo shit. and he has such an interesting mix of seeming suave and badass and then immediately doing something embarrassing. trent crimm--via shenanigans and also Those Meddling Kids dragging him into their lives (aka he tries to keep his distance SO badly and only is involved when dangerous shit is going down but like then it's all. child knocking on his door like IT'S AN EMERGENCY OPEN UP and hes like WHAT WHAT IS IT and theyre like can you help me with my homework :( and hes like. fuck. yeah fine what do you want help with. (some subjects he's very helpful on others he's VERY not) until they're like okay but you're coming to this bbq right. and he's like? no? and they're like you're coming to this bbq right. and so on) ANYWAY the point is they keep dragging him into their lives and now oops! trent actually knows his neighbors and has to go through the mortifying ordeal of being known. but that also means that when he gets badly hurt or sick he's used to the empty hospital room but now he actually gets people showing up and forcing baked goods on him and shit and i'm just feeling a lot of things about this extremely hypothetical au based on my already existing feelings about trent gaining a community in s3/post-canon,

wait does this mean trent gets sonic lipstick? HELL YEAH IT DOES

[chiarrara]

i caught up on jjk. favorite panels in the last few chapters, plus:

thematic catharsis coming around

[picklepie888]

Is it bad that a part of me hopes that Arthur doesn't develop as a character? That he just stays as the one generic rich guy of the group? Because the notion of all the other characters hyping him up, only to be the blandest piece of white bread is so hilarious to me! You got the solicitor, the cowboy, the insane asylum owner, the eccentric vampire 'expert', and then literally just some guy. I know he will eventually do stuff in the story, but I wanna continue having my own perception of him until then.

[tomboyyyaoi]

o i wanted to make a post that im honestly not smart enough to actually sit down and think out but i like the way meryls trauma doesnt completely woobify her character but does still affect her, it just feels nice to see a female charcater not be completely reduced to a wet soggy mess bc of trauma but also not to (very unrealistically) just Get Over It i think trigun has a nice balance and its refreshing

[wizardsimper]

Hoping that in the next patch they stop tweaking characters personalities and start fleshing out Wyll's storyline...