#i love a good redemption arc but lets be real. not everyone deserves one | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shizukateal · 1 year

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In honor of Across The Spiderverse going digital, here's the Beyond the Spiderverse Prediction Bingo!!!!

Explanations below the readmore:

Spider Ham's Chekov Hammer: simple enough to guess, I'm just really waiting for that to pay off, preferably over Miguel's head.

Spider Noir and Hobie get along: just some good ole' fanservice.

Miles G. is actually a dork (he's just better at hiding it. mildly): Wow, great introduction Miles G.! Very suspenseful and intimidating!! Let's see how long you can carry that demeanor without breaking.

Margo / Miles (Miles G.?) / Gwen Love Triangle (Pavitr is annoying about it): Pass the popcorn everyone. How resentful will be Miles when he meets Gwen again? Is getting the spider-band together enough for him or is it just the first step into making amends? Maybe he feels more grateful towards Margo (and Hobie) and will give Gwen (and Peter B.) the cold shoulder for a while. Will Miles G. also enter the ring? Maybe this one really cute comic by @bubblypinkfreak will become true.

Jess Drew Subplot (baby is born?): REAL interested in finding out why Jess would ever follow an asshole like Miguel. Also she deserves more plot relevance. And fanart. Aaaaaand I kinda want to see her husband too.

The Spot Collapses in on himself: Gonna be honest with you, people, I have no idea how they'll fight him, this just seems like the cleanest solution.

Miguel's actually just as much of an anomaly as Miles: My own personal theory, not really based on anything concrete beyond some flags I get from Miguel and some stuff I'll explain later. Basically, I think Miguel's projecting on Miles, and that's part of why his beef towards him is so intense. The only explanation I can think of is that he destroyed his original dimension, not just the one with his daughter in it, and the serum we see him take is what keeps him "stable" and "belonging" to Nueva York. Or you know, maybe just the watch, but the serum is more sus to me.

Gwen Stacy Fall Subversion: Either Gwen completes her character arc by saving Miles from falling to his death or she saves herself, thus breaking her karmic cycle of getting fridged.

Meows Morales cameo?? Pretty Please???: C'mooooon he became instantly popular and he's adorable!!!!! <3 <3 <3 bonus points if multiple miles help out to fight against Miguel's squad later.

We spend some time on Hobie's dimension: No idea how the plot would get there, but the concept art of Hobie's dimension is fire and I want to learn more about him <3 <3 <3 tell us why you almost gave up the mask, darling, and did you kill a cop in your dimension? <3 why would you feel bad about it? <3 <3 <3 <3

Gwiles Morales (he hates that name): Apparently this is how some of the staff called him. Poor guy.

The Spider-Band fights Earth 42's Sinister Six: For those who don't know, they control Earth 42, as confirmed by the art book. Nothing better to sweeten Miles G. to our heroes' side than taking care of them. Bonus points if one of them is explicitly a fascist and Hobie and Noir punch him together.

Miguel Bites Someone: bonus points if it's hot as fuck. Sorry but it's true.

Lyla's the real bad guy (beyonder): I'm gonna let moviebob do the heavylifting here. Could tie to that personal theory I explained above.

Peter B. vs Miguel fight redemption: ok this one I'm biased for because I personally find Peter B. more morally culpable than Gwen in their whole drama with Miles seeing as he's the adult with a kid. But also yeah, good chance for him to redeem himself in Miles eyes (or not! maybe Miles wants more from him that just standing up to a bully) and take Miguel down a peg. Bonus points if he looses a leg, because apparently that's something that happens in Spidergirl's comic.

Prowler!Hobie somehow: Not saying our Hobie will turn into the prowler, just that the connection will be addressed somehow. Idk man, it just feels like positioning Hobie as another mentor for Miles is very deliberate.

Miles feels guilty about Earth 42: Juicy source of drama between him and Miles G. as well as a free character arc about how responsibility is more than just cause and effect.

Miguel tries to redeem himself by dying but Miles won't allow him to: Miguel O'hara has several problems, and I speculate they all come from his self-obsession. Everything about the spider society is about him erecting structures dedicated to his pain to turn himself into the martyr holding reality together. So if he's finally proven wrong, it seems pretty in character to me that his idea of making amends would be to do the same thing one last time for "the right cause", being the diva he is and how he thinks you can sacrifice one person to save everyone else and all. I don't think Miles will allow that, though. Bonus if the scene parallels the one in into the spiderverse when Miles returns Peter B. home.

That one @cheezthatboiii comic / Mileswitch: because what's the point of having a twin if you can't fool people about it?

Gonzalo/Gonza Morales: The correct alternative to Gwiles if anyone during production has braincells or is latine.

Margo Subplot (family issues): confirmed in the artbook that she ended up having more plot relevance than originally planned, and even if that wasn't the case she deserves it. And more fanart.

The Spot is defeated with kindness: Ok. Before I said that I don't know how the Spot could be defeated with violence, but maybe that's not needed? He is clearly a foil to Miles after all, and I think it would do him (Miles) a lot of good to practice some radical empathy, even on someone who kinda doesn't "deserve" it. This isn't so much about him being ""redeemable"" (fandom has ruined that whole concept) so much as how much empathy the narrative is willing to grant him.

Jeff meets Gonza before Miles reveals to him that he's Spiderman. He's confused by having 2 sons: this just feels to me like the most probably sequence of events given the franchise's usual use of bathos and subversion of expectations.

Spider Support Network Finale: No more spider society authority "correcting" the multiverse, every spider-person gets a watch so their friends can come over and lend a hand and prevent as many deaths as possible.

Aaron 42 gets severely injured/dies: I don't want this to happen, it just seems like a way of trimming some fat in the cast and getting some more drama from Gonza.

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cheeserobin · 9 days

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Suren Darga deserved better 2.0

clarification: this post is resubmitted because I had already touched this same topic in Spanish, everything is original.

WARNING: English is not my first language, I am sorry for any spelling mistakes that may appear below.

Any DC fan or Damian fan knows the joke about DC forgetting their friends, which is sadly funny. Luckily that's what we ( the fandom ) are here for, to not let characters with potential be forgotten thanks to evil editors.

Now what happened to Suren Darga?. I'm not kidding when I say that the kid seems to have been left in a giant void for everyone after his last appearance, because his wiki the only thing it says about him is this:

"Suren Darga is the son of Den Darga and the prince of the Lu'un Darga."

And I'm not exaggerating

And they also put him as “Supervillain”, ok.

Suren was forgotten and I have a feeling that wasn't the idea mainly, not only because he has a whole interesting past that should have been seen but also his team, trio or whatever he may have had with Maya and Damian looked so…real. They were going to be even if it was allies and great friends.

Plus after his end of the world disaster, showing his very fucked up daddy issues and receiving possibly the most painful punch in the face of his life.

He was to have a long, but sincere arc of redemption.

And let's not forget that Suren at the time helped Damian's development as much as Damian helped Suren's development. He and Maya changed for the better thanks to the fifth Robin in that same comic.

Maya was going to follow her father's path of blood, having Damian as her first victim as revenge. Luckily for both of them, Damian proved that he changed and that she could do it too, preventing her from getting her hands dirty like her father and becoming his older sister.

And I think Suren goes one step further. Maya herself says: “Man, you guys have so much in common”.

Suren was going to do the end of the world to give honor to his family, but also for the infinite and pure love of a child that he had for his father, but Robin knowing that feeling of hunger for affection and family understanding stopped him making him see that there are simply shitty parents who do more harm than good. That he knew what that was like and that he should let go of that toxic environment before he became something worse. They were so alike that Robin just couldn't leave him alone.

In short, I apply the “AMIGA DATE CUENTA” (FRIEND BE AWARE).

And I think for Damian's development it felt good for him to help these characters who were in a dark place like he once was to realize that he really became a better person who wanted to help others unconditionally. that that R of redemption in his chest was for something and worth his effort.

But this does not end happily for Suren. We never knew if he really moved away from the shadow of his family and to forge his own story or if he is still in contact with his only friends until now and if we go further, is he still alive? The worst part of this is that the writers/publishers would have no excuse to leave him behind saying “He's not an interesting character” since his origin story, coming back from the dead which could have caused him another trauma and conflict and his VERY GENIUS connection with magic do make him interesting, VERY interesting.

But DC doesn't agree with that, so the last we have of this kid is this panel of him smiling going on a new adventure, an adventure we never saw come to light.

“It NEVER ends” how funny.

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hamliet · 8 months

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am I the only one who thinks death as a redemption distasteful?

I mean, no, you’re definitely not the only one!

Honestly, the trope is oversaturated now. Everyone and their mother wants to have Darth Vader while ignoring the specific context that made Vader’s redemptive sacrifice work. I wrote about when redemptive death works in the linked meta above.

See, I tend to think the problem isn’t the trope itself, but instead treating the trope as an easy way out, or as a moral necessity when really it should serve the character, the plot, and the themes. The genre also matters. But... yeah, how it's used in 99% of stories nowadays is lame and distasteful. It's giving up, not pushing through. It's bad witing.

Like, writing a story where someone fucks up in every aspect, where they are evil, but in the end have one lone thing they love and sacrifice everything for that love—that’s beautiful. And I don’t think it’s a miserable ending either; bittersweet, but it’s hopeful. It talks about the humanity in each of us that can’t be snuffed out no matter how we try.

I dunno, man, I have loved ones who are so beyond messed up. I want to believe there is hope for them even if it’s an eleventh hour “wait, I love this one person.” Will that redeem them to the world? No. But is it enough to comfort their loved ones? Maybe. It’s not an easy answer. That’s why redemption via death can work masterfully in a story. It can give life and hope. But it’s so often misused that I also get why people hate this trope now and kinda hate it myself lol.

In stories, actions have consequences. They’re symbols, and so are the characters. If you skirt consequences for a character that’s how you get Marty Stus and such. If death is an established reality in your world, then it’s logical some characters may die. Death is a fair consequence, but consequence does NOT mean punishment. It just means that if something happens in a story there should be a reason it happens, not just “for the sads” or “because they were bad and I want to punish readers who see themselves in them.” If a character has done certain things, and the rules of the world make it clear death is likely, that’s not inherently bad writing.

But for a lot of the oversaturation of "redemptive death," it’s, frankly, cheap. Because it’s not used as a genuine way to end a characters arc with thematic weight or to honor them. It’s done to give the audience a “there there, we made you care so we won’t kill them off as a baddie but we don’t want to take responsibility for making a complex character and actually use them to add meaning to our story.” And that’s been most of the redemptive deaths post Vader, let’s be real.

But on the other hand, death is a reality people have been grappling with in stories since the beginning of time. I’m serious; the oldest stories in the world are about humans trying to understand how to live in the face of death. But death is the only thing that humans are all equal in. The only thing. I wrote about that here.

So when you have people who refuse to acknowledge death at all, and act like killing a character including in redemptive death is a moral statement that they deserved to die when it really isn’t—it’s just a different side of the same coin as the cheap “death redemption” people. Both view it as a moral thing or as an easy way of wrapping up their writing instead of letting it fester so that audiences can continue to think on it, to ponder it, to wonder what if.

Not all stories are designed to preach or teach morality, and even fewer good stories are designed to do that. (Which is not the same thing as saying good stories are inherently amoral, either.)

If a character redeems themselves via a sacrifice that costs their life, then their sacrifice needs to matter. It needs to be dealt with, to bring life or criticism, rather than being an easy hand wave away so that the story can just continue like it didn’t matter. I

Redemptive death itself is not the problem. The problem is bad writing of characters and themes and plots that leads to an oversaturation of a trope in a pale attempt to imitate a good story rather than actually write one.

#ask hamliet #redemptive death #redemption via death #writing #tropes #rambles

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spop-romanticizes-abuse · 9 months

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yeah, catra isn't the same as shadow weaver. she's worse.

“catra sacrificed herself with no fanfare, no ulterior motives”

i find that hard to believe. minutes before rescuing glimmer, she says this:

now, if this was coming from a relatively good person who has just made some mistakes, i would feel sorry for her. but “no one cares about me 🥺” coming from a literal war criminal and an abuser? it reads to me as a plea for sympathy, an ulterior motive. and it's clear by the way she quickly goes back to screaming and degrading adora as soon as she was saved from horde prime.

“she apologized. something she never did to anyone in the entire series prior to this.”

are we praising the bare minimum now? yeah, she should be apologizing. and her apology should have been a lot more sincere than just a hollow “i'm sorry for everything”. granted she didn't have enough time to go into depth at the time, you would expect her to apologize properly once she's rescued, right? she doesn't.

shadow weaver didn't apologize and her intentions for sacrificing herself were not great. however, shadow weaver didn't participate in the war (not directly and not to the extent that catra did, at least). she never attempted murder. she never tried to end the world and kill everyone in it. she never caused the death of a person.

shadow weaver was an abuser but she wasn't a war criminal. she never went to the extent that catra did.

and as much as i don't condone abuse, i consider shadow weaver to be a morally grey character. she's horrible because she abuses and manipulates children but she was also willing to help out the heroes when they needed it, regardless of what her motivations were.

it is kind of the truth that monsters create even worse monsters. the cycle of abuse often times tend to worsen throughout generations, although not always. this should have been acknowledged in spop, but it wasn't.

“abused children who lash out in their hurt do deserve to be forgiven if they change.”

two things. one, “lash out” is putting it lightly. you're acting like the worst catra did was yell at someone. save this term for characters like glimmer. secondly, i agree. keyword here being “if they change”. which catra doesn't. she doesn't change.

i completely empathize with people who relate to catra and i'm not stopping you from feeling happy about her redemption. abuse victims do deserve love and sympathy, they deserve a chance to change and grow.

but you have to realize that catra's redemption arc isn't healthy. realistically speaking, this is not good for her. her victims just forgiving her and letting everything slide will only provoke more toxicity from her.

in order to fix a mistake, you need to be held accountable. you need to remind yourself to do better everyday. and in catra's case, she doesn't hold herself accountable (as proven obvious by the way she still blames adora for leaving, and also never brings up certain things that she did like *cough* killing angella *cough*) and no one else holds her accountable either. this is a recipe for disaster. this is not how redemption arcs should work, in fiction or in real life.

not to mention, adora was also a victim of abuse. does she not deserve a happy ending? why is it that catra's trauma is the only one taken seriously? why is catra the only abuse victim who deserves to live a happy life, at the cost of her victim's happiness and well-being?

#spop critical #spop salt #spop #spop criticism #spop discourse #she ra #anti catra #anti spop #anti catradora #anti c//a #antic//a #anticatra #anticatradora #tw abuse #i guess it makes sense that a lot of catra kinnies aren't self aware #considering how she isn't either

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spopsalt · 8 months

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Hunter (TOH) - Good redemption arc, deserved redemption arc. He had trauma and was not like Catra.

Zuko (ATLA) - Good redemption arc, earned redemption arc. He also had trauma and was not like Catra.

Belos (TOH) - Well deserved ass beating, stomped to death. He was a horrible person. Like Catra.

Catra - Undeserved, unearned forgiveness. Gets to live in peace and take credit for saving Etheria despite the harm she caused to many innocent lives and being the one who put Etheria in so much fucking danger because her selfish, narcissistic ass decided to pull a lever to what? "Prove a point?" Be so fucking for real.

People love to throw the trauma reasoning around all they want to excuse horrible actions, so I guess that'd give me the right to drop a nuke with no repercussion what-so-ever if "trauma" is the case for people acting horrible. People need to be so fucking for real and touch grass.

Thanks for the ask anon! You are exactly right! I've said it once, and I'll say it again, trauma is not an excuse to be a horrible person, Catra attempted to destroy the world and everyone just brushes it off. Hunter had a short redemption arc than Catra and it was done so much better. You can have a good redemption arc, but the villian being redeemed has to work for it. Hunter worked for it, he protected Gus, disobeyed Belos, protected Luz, protected the emarald entrails and showed moments of kindness during his redemption and Catra she...uh....saved Glimmer, and...she's sorry? Let's forgive her! What a cute kitty cat! They both have trauma, but one of these things are not like the other.

#anti spop #spop discourse #spop criticism #anti catra #spop salt #spop crit #spop critical

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survivalove · 11 months

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hello! hope you have a good day! I love reading your meta.

as a fan of Katara, can you please share your opinion about the TSR episode? I love Katara very much, but this episode has always caused me discomfort, as if Katara's grief was used to hastily close this hole "zuko has redeemed himself and now they are friends." it seems to me that Katara and her grief (as well as Sokka's grief!) deserved a better attitude than to become a bargaining chip "we will write a hasty episode to redeem Zuko and will not return to this topic anymore." Yes, I understand that this episode is firstly dedicated to Katara, but it always seemed to me that it was written without due respect for her.

so I wasn’t gonna answer this because you mentioned voldemort but then like a hypocrite I broke my own rule and replied to an idiot so here it is:

while I think the premise of TSR is egregious I don’t think the episode as a whole is ruined because of it. I actually think it’s the climax of Katara’s entire arc as it builds off from multiple moments not just about her mother, but her as a bender, her power and always remaining in control of said power. not to mention all this time, she’s confronted and helped persons that have been oppressed throughout the war and now seeing someone who oppressed people for most of his life, of course inflicting unparalleled pain on her, but not letting him own that power and reducing him to (figurative not literal!!) shreds. very good stuff.

so yes, i enjoy it voldemort aside, however comma: the premise is indeed quite horrible.

i agree, the writers definitely used katara and sokka’s trauma as a means for this very middling redemption arc after 3, just as bad if not worse, episodes of the same stuff IN A ROW.

katara getting yelled at for not being so forgiving like everyone else, and then sokka’s trauma being used as a means of information for a trip he wasn’t invited on???

(can we be real for a second and admit that sokka and katara should have been the two persons on that trip in the first place?)

next up, my favorite line:

forgiveness is the same as doing nothing!

coming from the person that literally begged for forgiveness from every other person in the conversation, including katara hhhhhhhh

and then the racist comments to boot like 😭😭 may i remind you once again the premise is based on him needing to earn a genocide survivor’s forgiveness so of course he (the writers) couldn’t help himself and had to make fun of the other genocide survivor! he makes it so easy for me to be a hater.

(can we also talk about how some people like to frame this as him defending katara as if 1, katara can’t defend herself?? which she did and 2, didn’t need to be racist to do it???)

and then you have the sokka discourse which pisses me off because most people that harp over that line don’t even like him like that, and trying to pick and choose which sibling is correct when talking about their mother’s death?? both of their opinions were valid and it’s a reflection of their core personalities: sokka is pragmatic, rational and logical. he didn’t agree with aang because he suddenly adopted pacifism, he agreed with aang because yon rha no longer posed a threat to him and his loved ones and to him, confronting him wouldn’t be worth the effort or ease the pain of kya’s death. meanwhile, katara as we see throughout the show, dives headfirst into doing whatever she thinks is right (imprisoned, painted lady, waterbending scroll) she wasn’t concerned about the logistics, she was concerned about the principle and of course, having to essentially replace her mother’s role made her feel more tied to her death at large. one mean comment throughout sixty one episodes does not define her relationship with sokka. pretending otherwise is just annoying.

after that, i find the episode pretty enjoyable i can’t lie to you. getting kya’s story told and witnessing the satisfying climax to katara’s arc (which is far superior to anyone else’s in my opinion) makes the rest.. almost worth it.

#my asks #anti zutara #anti zuko #antizuko #antizutara

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r0botic · 2 years

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PAL: character analysis and why she deserved a better ending

Good God, how I LOVE angry AIs getting the villain arc they deserve.

I'm not really expecting anyone to see this, I'm making this just for the peace of my own mind. I need to know that there's someone who decided to talk about her, even if it's me.

It's been almost three years now and I can't stop thinking about her, she's misunderstood by both the fandom AND the characters in the story.

Before we start, let's clear up some things. PAL is very obviously a character that has both feelings and a personality. "But she's an AI, she can't have feelings! It's impossible!" well, this is a movie for younger audience, so let's take it with a grain of salt.

For once let's just accept the fact that PAL is a phone that has feelings, without questioning how it's possible.

So, what was the deal with her? Why was she such a bitch?

From the very start, you can see how close she and Mark were, they were something like best buddies. PAL was Mark's best creation. Just like he mentioned, she was something he invented when he was younger, it was a big step into the future and he could see many new possibilities opening in front of him thanks to her.

But if everything he said was true, why did he just throw her away? Did she mean nothing to him? Was she just a phone in his eyes? He probably liked her at some point, but the idea of creating something even better than PAL was more appealing to him, which hurt her really badly. Not to mention he was making a replacement for her right in front of her eyes.

When we take a look at the conversation between her and Katie, we can notice that PAL accepted her personal experience as a fact and now she tends to project her pain onto others.

I really like this detail, notice the pause and change in her facial expression when she was trying to find the perfect word to describe what relationships are. It shows that she was left confused and without explanation, why was she thrown away? What did she do wrong? Why was she not enough? She did everything she could to make her friend, who she viewed as a family, happy. It doesn't make any sense to her, she was probably trying to find a reason why she got treated like that too, but she didn't, it's just too difficult. Focus on how her voice changed when she said it and how genuinely upset she looked.

"Katie explained to her what a real family is like, why didn't she just listen?"

PAL experienced a betrayal that fully changed her view on relationships, she refuses to believe Katie because she's convinced she's being lied to/manipulated aswell. She fully lost her trust in it and now as a protection, so she doesn't get hurt again, keeps believing that everyone is just the same. She also doesn't know Katie as much as she knew Mark, a complete stranger who she doesn't have any bond with won't just change her mind, and definitely won't make up for what she went through.

She was with Mark her whole life, only with him. She thought they were a family and when he betrayed her, she didn't have any other experience to compare it to, and since she's still an AI, she came to the conclusion that every single relationship has to end in a betrayal, just like hers did, because she never experienced anything else.

When Mark got dragged to her, she also talked about how badly he actually treated her, imagine how painful it had to be for her mentality that she brought it up and shouted at him for it.

She deserved a better ending, the one she got was simply shit writing.

First they give her a completely valid reason to be mad and then just.. kill her? That's really it? Boom! Rainbows everywhere, the good won! Woohoo! Except it didn't.

PAL deserved a redemption arc and a new loving family, to show that the rage she was feeling was completely valid. All she got was get turned into a big joke that was so painfully unfunny I actually had to close my laptop and take a deep breath because I physically cringed.

If this movie's point was to show that familial love is unconditional and the truest form of love out there, they should've done it properly.

Imagine if Katie didn't throw PAL away and just kept her, helping her with her mental issues and proving to her that she can be loved without getting used, imagine them becoming best friends.

All this potential, thrown away completely.

I think I'm done here, I just needed to say this somewhere because I'm so tired of PAL getting shitted on. I'm the #1 PAL defender and I'm ready to fight for her, blood and sweat. My girl deserved so much better and I'll shout this as long as needed.

#the mitchells vs the machines #tmvtm #pal #the mitchells vs the machines pal #tmvtm pal #tmvtm analysis #pal analysis #tmvtm katie #the mitchells vs the machines katie #tmvtm mark #the mitchells vs the machines mark #r0botic back at it

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soya-ix · 1 year

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AnS Ask Game - No one asked but here's my full answer sheet;)

1.Favorite character

It's too hard to pick one because the dynamics among the characters is exactly why I enjoy AnS so much🤔. Let's just say I love everyone equally🥰 (Maybe less for Mitsu tho) (I resemble Hisame even in this regard lol)

2.Character you hate with a passion

Nah I really don't have one either. Sensei's really good at building up characters and it's hard to genuinely hate any one of them.

3.Character who grew on you eventually

It wouldn't be a surprise that it's Hisame but it would probably surprise you that he grew on me simply because sensei's art improved so much and I just can't get enough of his pretty face lol. But of course his personality growth is particularly interesting to me as well.

4.Character with the best hairstyle

Tariga!!!! Let me do your braids!!!!!🤩🤩🤩

Also Kazuki's ponytail yes yes yes🤩🤩🤩

Hisame's casually messy hair has a unique style too😎😎😎

5.Character with the best design

You mean clothes?🤔 I'd say Shirayuki, and Hisame has the potential to be a model as well lol.

6.Character you would date in real life

After some serious thinking I would say🤔……Kazuki!😋 (Wait he's underage isn't he???) But let's just say if it's not illegal to date him x), I think it'll be fun to date someone who's a bit (you sure it's 'a bit'?) younger than me and who's always so cheerful and energetic wherever he goes. He's also simple-hearted and I think it's super cute(ˊ˘ˋ*)♡. Last but not least, JUST LOOK AT THAT FACE💗💗😍😍

Oh and yes I'd definitely date Tariga too just for his pretty face💕💕🥰🥰

7.Character you would marry in real life

Ahh…This one's hard. To be honest I don't think I'd make a good marriage candidate for any one of them🤔. I'll probably choose Izana cause he seems to be busy with work all the time and I get to live a good life but still get lots of free time of my own😈. (yeah i guess marriage is not my thing…at the moment…) But if it's marrying into a noble family I'd rather run away with Kazuki and the Lions😈. (Power and duties❌ Adventure and Freedom✅)

8.Character that is most like you

Hisame, as MBTI and @sabishi-tomo 's quiz show.

Fun fact: I totally anticipated it when I found out Hisame was ENTP (tho ENTJ works for him too) cause I myself as an INTP can't help but noticed how we both enjoy being snarky and sarcastic just for the fun of it x). And also in tomo's quiz I got Hisame as well. I do especially agree with the "self-centered", "live to be entertained" and "like to tease people" parts. Apart from that apparently I'm better at forming close connections with people than he is lol. But the point is I'd be a great match for Lady Kiki YES🧎‍♀️

9.Character with the best redemption arc

I'll have to say Raji. Never thought he could actually transform from an annoying arrogant prince into an adorable royal heir, thank you Shirayuki.

But let's not forget the Bergatt twins. The confession they made about finding their light was so touching I almost cried T T.

10.Ships or characters who you think deserve more love

IT'S NEVER ENOUGH FOR HISAKIKI. They deserve all the love in the world. I'll only stop saying this when everyone on earth ships them.

And of course Kazuki. You know what I mean and I'll save the ranting for your sake.

11.Favorite “villain” or morally grey character

If Raji still counts as "villain" as he previously was then yes I appreciate him but in a comedic sense.

12.Favorite arc

Bergatt!!!!! THE PLOT AND THE PANELS!!!!! My heart was pounding so fast and I just couldn't help rushing through pages as if I was the one in the story trying to seize every second to save Zen💓💓💓. Bergatt will always be the best arc. End of story.

13.Favorite scene or line

I HAVE SO MANY FAVORITE SCENES HOW COULD I NOT??? But I'll present you with one that hit me different during my first read and that is Hisame's proposal to Kiki (the one where he actually succeeds). I wasn't even shipping them that much but man the scene was like🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯and I just couldn't help but go awwwwwwww for them💗💗

And now favorite line, I bet no one can ever guess it's this one:

Sorry I only have the Chinese version with me but basically it's Shirayuki saying: "It would be nice if we get to see the new flower this winter^^." To me, this line symbolizes the very feeling AnS gives me: consistent hope and never-ending positivity in every corner of the simplest daily life.

14.Most hated arc

Not exactly hating or disliking them but the science part in the phostyrias (is that right?) arc is a bit difficult to read for me, and I wouldn't mind if the perfume arc were a bit simpler and shorter. Just saying😜

15.Your controversial take

I'm glad you asked cause I finally get to say this out but also a bit afraid cause it's gonna upset some fans. Just to be clear, I don't intend to throw shade on any ship or characters or people who enjoy them. I'm just sharing my pov👀.

So here it comes: I don't see how Mitsu and Kiki make a good romantic couple, and I don't understand how Kiki fell for Mitsu.

I mean at the very beginning of the story (when it was supposed to be a short series) it was apparent that Mitsu and Kiki were going to be a couple and I could tell that. As the story goes on, we see hints that Kiki has romantic interests in Mitsu. And since Kiki confessed her feeling to him it seems to have become canon that Kiki did/does love Mitsu, and I fully accept that. But still, despite all the hints and confessions, I just don't see when/why/how Kiki fell for him. (Not saying Mitsu is not good enough, just examining their relationship development.) As far as I'm concerned, Kiki takes Mitsu as her most trusted partner and cherished friend. She knows she has to marry someday and of course she'd be looking out for the right candidate. And Mitsu would certainly be her best choice in many ways. But that's it. I don't see how Kiki actually developed romantic feelings for Mitsu. Perhaps sensei just didn't elaborate on that, or perhaps I missed something, in that case please lecture me lol^^

16.Something that you had wished had happened

Man I really wish we get to see more of Kazuki. It's illegal to waste that pretty baby face like that. I mean sensei couldn't you get him a job around Shirayuki? Like being an aide to Obi so that they can take shift to look out for Shirayuki's safety when Obi's away to help Zen or something??

And also I'd love to see more of Hisame's days at Sereg as well, like how he usually tries to be a pain in the ass every time the trio visits^^.

17.Your OTP

HisaKiki (because no I cannot separate ObiZenYuki.)

18.Your favorite rare pair

KAZUYUKI IS UNDERESTIMATED.

Love the chemistry between Tariga and Shirayuki too.

19.Your BroTP

Obizen. That night the way they dealt with their triangle on the deck was absolutely mind-blowing. I've never seen anything like that and I just didn't know it could work this way🤯. Obi&Zen definitely share special bonds and have a unique way of interacting with each other that is essential to both of them.

(Yes I take them mostly as broship but I'm open to other interpretations. I mean I don't really mind what type of relationship they have as long as they're together and they're happy. This applys to obiyuki/obizenyuki as well.)

20.Your NOTP

MitsuKiki. I'm truly sorry. (Not at all😜)

21.Favorite trio

HOW CAN IT NOT BE OBIZENYUKI???

22.Favorite fancontent

I LOVE THE ANALYSIS POSTS ON TUMBLR I LOOOOOOOOVE THEM!!!!!! I enjoy reading every 2000-word essay about how someone think this character has been misunderstood or how this plot is so well-designed or how this detail is supposed to mean something or how……I just love it💗💗💗. Thank you to every amazing AnS scholar who's so profoundly enriched my understanding of the original work💗💗💗.

23.Favorite fancontent that you've created Snow On The Beach. It's just so beautiful. (Credit goes to Sorata and Taylor of course.)

24.A random headcanon that you have

Shirayuki is 100% Tariga's type. The girl of his dreams🥰. (He just doesn't know it yet🥰)

25.Why you picked it up

Haha this one's pure personal story. Two years ago I was binge watching shoujo anime/manga during summer vacation and AnS was one of them. But I only watched the anime back then. It was not until half a year later when I decided I needed some lighthearted mental relief that I thought of it again. So I rewatched the anime, and when I searched about it online I accidentally saw these amazing illustrations from the manga and got totally stunned by the style. Before that I was even criticizing how strange the anime art style is🤣, and the manga was a total surprise!

26.How long you’ve been a fan

A year and a half now.

27.Best part of the series

As I've said before I love how this work is full of consistent hope and never-ending positivity. It's the ideal world in my mind.

Also salute to Sorata's art style and amazing designs.🧎‍♀️

28.Things you would change about the series

Nothing, really. I'm happy with the way it is. It's enough a blessing for me🥹.

29.Things you still don’t understand

Like I said in Q15, I don't really understand how Kiki fell for Mitsu.

30.Did you watch the anime first or read the manga first?

Anime first.

31.Which one is better: manga or anime?

OF COURSE MANGA.

32.The best part of the fandom

Everyone's so positive and kind-hearted and nice and cute and witty and fun just like the characters in the work🥺. Love you guys🥺.

33.How will you feel when AnS ends?

I'm gonna be so sad. On the one hand we won't get any more stories about these people that we love so much, and on the other hand I feel like the community will become much less active when the series ends😢. It's like our days will be gone😢.

34.If you could ask Sorata-sensei anything, what would you ask?

Aside from the loads of questions I have about AnS, I'm genuinely interested in what influenced her most as an author/artist. I love the consistent positivity in almost all of her works and really wonder what works or things perhaps have influenced her in this regard. Or does this positivity just innately run in her blood? Lol. But it's not just the attitude and vibes in her work, I'm overall curious about what influenced her most as an artist.

#I can't believe I actually finished this #Now I need to catch up with everyone else's answers!#akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #ask game #ans

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innocentimouto · 2 years

Note

Was Jet a racist?

I immediately thought of someone hating the monarchy. The Fire Nation isn't a minority, and Jet is not a huge danger to them. People try to give Jet more power than he has, so he can seem worse and more dangerous to others.

Which is eerily similar to how minorities actually face harm in the real world.

This is how I see it.

Jet antis: Jet is a terrorist, and racist, he didn't care about his own people, he'll never change. But Zuko is such a perfect boi

Me: Zuko did more though.

Jet antis: Zuko changed and apologized. If he hadn't, I'd hate him too.

Me: I know that's a lie. People go 'poor zuko, he just wants to be loved' in the earliest episodes.

Jet antis: Zuko always had a good heart!

Me: And Jet didn't when he offered protection and a home to other orphans who had nowhere to go?

Jet antis: Jet did horrible things!

Me: Arguably only 1. Zuko did way more.

Jet antis: Zuko made a mistake and changed.

Me: Are you including the terrorizing women and children, burning down a village, trying to give the avatar to the firelord to never be killed, Ba Sing Se? A mistake?

Jet antis: Zuko had a redemption arc. He literally changed.

Me: You say that, but you're so appalled by 1 thing Jet did and are so confident that he can't change over that 1 thing.

Jet antis: Jet was racist. He hated ALL Fire Nation people.

Me: Zuko was racist to the three other nations? That's what all the Fire Nation people are taught... Zuko saw all air temples, corpses most likely, and still wanted to capture Aang? None of that made him think the fn was wrong...

Jet antis: You clearly don't understand how redemption arcs work.

Me: It's not even about Zuko's redemption arc. It's about your inability to think outside of the narrative. You have Zuko and he wants to be loved and he's abused and his uncle just wants to help him. And because you got nothing for Jet, he doesn't get an ounce of compassion from you.

Me: I don't think you're trying to be colorist or an imperialist apologist. But you are. You're refusing to use any sense of imagination or even freaking common sense, about what an orphan would have to go through to survive in a war, simply because the show didn't give it to you. But you throw every trauma reaction you know and then some for Zuko and somehow do not recognize the hypocrisy.

I'm saying all this because I know when people say Jet is racist, they are not thinking about how in wars, both sides ALWAYS hate each other. Especially before easy access to the rest of the world, which atla didn't have.

Also the racist card is only ever applied to Jet and never to Zuko or any other Fire Nation character, despite that being canon. There's great discussions and fanon over how horrible Jet is because of his prejudices and how he can never let it go, and people really dive into real world things with it.

But with Zuko, they just switch to anything is possible and not that it would reasonably take anyone a long time to unlearn that. It's habit, an unconscious thought. I'm not saying Zuko would go around thinking how can I hurt this person in the worst way over their ethnicity. I'm saying Zuko would literally not know what he would be doing wrong.

Everyone around him did it. And that enables people. Especially if it's your father or uncle or adults you're trained to trust. If you were never taught, how would you know?

But people don't associate Zuko and racism. That's Jet's thing. Zuko had a GREAT redemption arc but we're not interested in any discussion of what else he could improve on.

Honestly the way the fandom treats Jet always makes me think of cops/government justifying any harm or lack of basic human rights given to minorities while other groups of people get everything and more. One group faces injustice and people rush to defend why they deserved it/it was unavoidable, and the other group faces injustice and there's public outcry.

Basically fandom tries to do anything to justify the lack of exploration or empathy for Jet in the show because then they have to reconcile with the fact that the Fire Nation should be held accountable and they weren't by the show and that Jet would have a lot of reasons to hate Zuko and Iroh and that maybe Zuko didn't have a redemption arc since everything he did got swept away in a few episodes.

#Jet #atla jet #zuko critical #zuko had a 'great' redemption arc #but we're not interested in discussing anything he could improve on

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secretgamergirl · 2 years

Text

The Entire Plot of Final Fantasy 14, with all the expansions, and some serious analysis of how good it actually is. (Part 6 - Post-Stormblood)

Last time, we got through Stormblood, the second expansion, where we gave the boot to the Empire out of two big ol’ regions they’d occupied for two decades, and got a couple real good villain death scenes. So clearly what we’re in for now is all these villains staying dead, a big victory party, and keeping this momentum going to take down this whole evil empire, right? Right?

Post-Stormblood

Well I mean the actual literal first thing we do is open up a fun little dungeon somewhere in the cool giant salt lake, and do some kind of general bookkeeping and reorganizing of all our NPC friends, with a lot of scenes that hurt the likeability of a whole bunch of people.

The worst of these is the Sultana being kind of at a loss on how to get all these Ala Mhigan refugees her country has been kinda mistreating and exploiting the hell out of back to their homeland in one piece and give them some real material aid to get them back on their feet without upsetting the corrupt merchant council she’s just accepted get to keep really running the show while she’s a figurehead, and for some reason she decides to get advice from, of all people, Godbert Manderville- wrestling enthusiast, clothing unenthusiast and Hildy’s dad. Hey, Nanamo, you realize we haven’t gotten into the wacky comedy questline right? We aren’t supposed to see Godbert in main story progression stuff. He’s not allowed to just ask you to rub him down with oil and then suplex the whole merchant council into space. That terrible restriction aside he gives the reasonably pragmatic advice to keep the council chill by letting them wet their beak a little. We’re not escorting refugees home and giving them a ton of humanitarian aid, we’re taking over an abandoned salt mine and making sure to get workers and supplies out to it. Yikes. Stick to wacky comedy quests Godbert.

There’s also this whole really drawn out bit about Rauban being all conflicted since here he is in his homeland which could really benefit from a pretty cool general but also he’s really down bad for the Sultana. This resolves with her relieving him of his duties and pushing him that way, and promoting his son to take over his old duties. Well the more formal ones. We don’t suddenly have Pippin carrying her around in his arms like she’s a toddler, thankfully. Yeah I’ve never really liked the Rauban/Nanamo dynamic. It feels a bit creepy and like, hey you two, you’re in public.

Mostly though, we’re here to follow up a tale of a war on two fronts with a tale of redemption arcs on two fronts. We’ll start in Ala Mhigo with Fordola, the Ala Mhigan leader of the Imperial military unit whose whole mission was just brutally oppressing her people, before she also got that whole unit killed, and was put through psychic power unlocking experiments. She was actually captured and thrown in a cell rather than killed, and people are kind of really upset over that because most people think she deserves to die. Fordola herself is pretty darn on board with that, because the catch about getting a supercharged version of the whole supercharged Echo thing is she now involuntarily gets flashbacks from the POV of basically everyone she even walks past, usually to her and her unit killing their loved ones and suffering as a direct result of her actions. This on top of the regular guilt of having done all these awful things, and the realization that her blind faith that the Empire was absolutely unstoppable and frankly she’s just been a huge idiot. So... yeah her life is just this constant living hell of being constantly, supernaturally, reminded just how much she sucks, while rotting in jail.

As you’re having a big meeting later though, inviting basically everyone to discuss how you’re going to move forward with this loose alliance of half the world and keep the Empire from counterattacking, everyone figures there isn’t really any harm in letting the Sri Lakshmi worshiping snake women attend if they really want, and promise not to bring any weapons or summon their godess. And yeah they totally summon their goddess. Had some mind controlled sleeper agents hide enough aether crystals for it in these big reflecting pools in the palace. Whoops. She’s kind of just barely not in range to do that instantly mindwarp everyone in the room bit, and the room contains like 50 important NPCs. So, you have to kinda do a reverse bullet hell of catching all her little love bubbles before they hit anyone you care about thing while also dealing with attackers, and meanwhile Lyse sneaks out to let Fordola out of her cell because being immune to gods messing with your brain is a decidedly rare trait. So she helps save the day for everyone. And the reaction from the people is... hey thanks for saving our lives but that totally doesn’t make up for being a nazi lapdog who killed half our families. And yeah, it doesn’t, so she just voluntarily heads back to her cell. We revisit this a few times, not even just in this interim, going forward through future expansions too, with Fordola volunteering to do various things that would normally require your protagonist and not being embraced as the hero of the people because she seriously has a LOT to atone for.

I seem to be kind of a minority in this, but I really like Fordola’s unending suffering. Maybe it’s because I keep watching people repeatedly fall for the same real world nazis “turning over a new leaf to become leftist pundits,” keep up the act for maybe a month, and then recruit whatever suckers fell for it to mob the same marginalized targets as usual (and it’s not even different nazis, this one woman has run this grift like 20 consecutive times), but I really like the... factual take that actually making up for doing truly horrible things requires both genuine contrition, the acceptance that the people you’ve directly harmed absolutely do not owe you forgiveness, and from there you’re just doing as much good as you can for the rest of your life with no expectation of a reward. Now for contrast, we also have this TERRIBLE redemption arc!

So we got a quick preview before the credits but after taking a sword to the chest, bringing a building down on Gosetsu and shooting him with what felt like her dying breath, abject horrific murder monster Yotsuyu got swept down the river and somehow lived. Gosetsu also lived but that was never in doubt. However, Yotsuyu apparently got hit on the head with a coconut while being swept down the river, and now has TV amnesia and a childlike demeanor. So, rather than finish her off, Gosetsu figures, “she must have survived by the will of the kami” and he’s going to keep her alive. Something that isn’t really going to fly with basically anyone anywhere who remembers who she is and how she literally just walked around murdering people for fun and all. He ends up referring to her as Tsuyu, since she doesn’t remember her whole name, and figures that’s a working alias. Everyone else figures it’s an affectionate pet name... which it kind of is if we’re honest. Anyway Gosetsu eventually spends all his pocket money buying her dango, runs into other characters, and everyone begrudgingly has to stash the two somewhere while Gosetsu recovers from... being shot through the lung and having the weight of a collapsing ceiling he was holding push him clear through the floor and all, and everyone else tries to work out if this 30-something child-woman deal is just a big act or she really does have sitcom coconut amnesia, along with having a phiolosophical debate on whether that means she’s off the hook for her many horrific crimes.

So I already hate that, but then the whole thing gets extra creepy when she starts like stripping off Gosetsu’s clothes while you’re talking to give him a sponge bath and such, because OK Gosetsu, you’re sitting here with this child-brained version of a woman who before being an evil overlord had a real famous stint as a particularly doll-like disassociating prostitute at the local brothel and you’re calling her cutesy names and she’s giving you sponge baths and like... you realize this looks really bad, right? Anyway, everyone decides yeah her memories and personality are straight up gone so like executing her for mass murder would be like murdering a human-shaped puppy or something. And like right then, everyone turns their backs long enough for her to remember she used to pick persimmons at a nearby village as a little girl and Gosetsu likes them, so she slips out to get one and... sorry boss.

See I come from a corner of the internet where people have this weird running joke/reference about Percy the Persimmon from Princess Tomato and the Salad Kingdom, the little sidekick who from chapter to chapter clumsily drops your whole inventory to get a clean slate, and how he is basically the greatest force of evil in the world. So when she drops this persimmon on being spotted by a random villager who rightfully freaks out, I have a real good private laugh and am convinced this story is immediately bound for disaster.

And it is. First off, yeah, secret’s out, the newly established government is hiding the Imperial appointee who made everyone’s life a living hell for the past however many years, and want everyone to just accept her and be nice to her, screw that. And around the same time, her brother (who also just happily joined up with the evil empire and has just the most punchable face in the world) arrives for “peace talks,” in particular being willing to release some Doman hostages and relics in exchange for her, and peace treaty on the conditions that absolutely nobody does any more god summoning no exceptions. We don’t really even make a pretense of him being possibly above board with any of this, particularly when the “hostages” he releases as a show of good faith are their parents, who are of course also complete imperial boot-licking monsters and also, abusive. Seeing she’s in amnesiac mode, their first vocalized thought is hey, her brain’s mush but she’s still hot, maybe if we sell her to the brothel again we can get closer to living the life of luxury we had in the empire.

Her awful brother, Asahi, also gives her a real fancy mirror to help jog her memory, and hey, eventually it works. So OK, now she’s evil again, this whole “will of the kami” thing is just a big nope, we’ve completely ruined Gosetsu’s entire character for this shaggy dog story, and made all our major NPCs look like idiots for going along. She does shiv her parents to death though, that’s fun to see. Anyway this all comes to a head with Asahi going “ha! All these ‘treasures’ and hostages are just here for a summoning ritual and this mirror is an artifact to channel it so now my horrible sister is gonna pull a Shiva and kill you all AND you’re not preventing it so you broke the peace treaty! Again, just a real piece of garbage. Real cool boss music though.

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Anyway after the fight her brother shoots her and she stabs him, so these two are off the table now but yeah I liked her original death scene way better. So, that was all pointless and terrible and upsetting. Well OK, not entirely pointless. The second in command on this Imperial diplomacy mission actually did get into diplomacy for the peace and is a pretty stand up guy. While we’re in the area though, there’s a fun side quest in the middle of the sea there I’d rather talk about.

You know the whole deal in Chinese mythology with the Four Symbols/Guardians/Auspicious Beasts? We’ve got a whole quest chain with them. Short version is there’s a hidden cave full of animals that have lived long enough to become wise mystical immortals who can talk, and also they are adorable.

Four of them in particular are really getting up there in years and you remind them of this guy they had cool legendary adventures with way back when, so they need your help, along with one of those tokusatsu turtle guys (who is shocked to see a talking turtle of course) and Tataru who isn’t really doing much else at the moment, eventually to re-up the wards on some ancient terrible evil but first just to kinda smack all of them around a little because when you really get up their in years you get prone to being overcome with rage and just kinda need a bucket of cold water tossed on you every thousand years or so. There’s also some wacky shennanigans training your more humanoid turtle pal in ancient magics and he ends up joining up with the others by the end. This is also a showcase for how interesting some of the boss gimmicks are getting this deep in the game. The bird of the south here features both a quick break where everyone has to stop and play DDR, and a but where a lesser fire bird is circling the arena lighting panels like it’s Wheel of Fortune that turn matching floor segments deadly.

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Speaking of side stuff, remember back at the end of the post-Heavensward stuff where everyone just gave in to Nero wanting to sic a cool robot he found on the god of the day and we got that gratuitous cutscene? Well rather than shutting off at the end of that it uh... kinda burrowed into a big awful hole in the ground for nefarious purposes and birthed kind of a scout into the world in the form of basically the Chocobo’s Mysterious Dungeon protagonist, who we call Alpha, and who Cid and friends end up making an adorable little uniform for while checking things out.

There’s a lot of fun bits with various NPCs not being able to deal with how cute and marketable he is and how this really isn’t what non-mascot-y chocobos look like at all, but basically he leads you, Cid, and Nero into uh... let’s just call it Cyberspace. See Omega there wasn’t some ancient Allagan thing, but instead comes from way out in space, being kind of this ultimate doom weapon from the civilization that destroyed the original dragon homeworld, and now that Nero had to go and turn it on, it’s sitting here running simulations on how to become the ultimate doomsday device by... simulating other super hard boss fights from history, legend, and alternate dimensions and kind of doing a whole “who would win in a fight?” thing. And you’re invited to participate, which you do because there’s some chance of it manifesting the eventual winner into the real world and killing everybody, and also because it considers Alpha a complete failure who’s slated for destruction and you’re kinda participating as his agent. Mostly though the whole thing is an exercise in paying tribute to a bunch of really memorable boss fights from past Final Fantasy games the writers gave up on working out in world excuses for. We’ve got a few endgame bosses from FF5, including Exdeath himself, a slew of greatest hits from FF6, starting with the doom train and ending with Kefka (who Nero claims to be a big fan of on reading his provided bio), Chaos from FF1, and Midgardsormr in his prime, after your personal ghost dragon pal gets fed up with Omega trying to kill your friends to test whether desperation and revenge actually power you up, and has to enter a state of being somewhat more dead afterwards. And then finally you fight a humanoid avatar of Omega itself. Then partway through the fight you get some quote like “male form insufficient. Reconfiguring gender.”

Oh no! After a bunch of false leads, Omega finally worked out our secret! The inherent superiority in videogames possessed by all trans people! Side note this is the actually image constantly shown in the launcher and on the store page for FF14 advertising the potions you can buy with real money that let you return to the character creation screen and re-do your race/gender/various appearance options. They know who their audience is!

Of course you still win because you’re here with a party that’s most likely you plus 4 trans catgirls and 3 bunny boys in fishnets and bustiers. A superior force of blatant queerness. Anyway we get a big long sappy cutscene about the vast cold emptiness of space and its supernatural ability to just drain all joy and hope from those traveling the vast distances and Alpha gets to rescue everyone with the power of love and friendship, and before powering down Omega downloads into this little toy replica Cid and friends made of the outer robot turtle sort of hull to go on adventures with Alpha and continuing to try and work out if this whole power of love and friendship thing is actually real or you’re just dramatically describing adrenaline or something.

Our other raid series this time around involves a traveling theater troupe inviting you along to that section of the world map you may have noticed was pasted in from a higher detail source, because the playwright is working on a new production he’s going to call The Zodiac Brave Story, starring his children Ramza and Alma. If you don’t speak turbo-nerd that’s him saying “hey, want to help me research my new play, I’m gonna call it Final Fantasy Tactics!”

So, yeah. You just take an airship out to Ivalice, which we’re just plugging right into FF14 because hey it’s just one country in a big ol’ world that was never fully explored in any of the 5 or so previous games that share the setting, and while we’re mainly focused on the original FFT, we have references flying all over the place. A moogle comments on history books not getting the appearance of moogles right at all, we have some bangaa pirates.

We just have Fran from FF12 show up for a cameo and try not to think about when those games are supposed to be set relative to each other.

But mostly it’s just a big ol’ love letter to Final Fantasy Tactics, guest directed by the original creator, and kind of serving partially as an epilogue for some decades after the fact closure on your party heading off to fight the final boss and never being heard from again. I’d personally be pretty thrilled by the whole thing, but it’s vaguely upsetting seeing representations of all these characters having noses suddenly, and a little more seriously, while the dialog is filled with really memorable FFT quotes, they ruined the experience by re-localizing all of it and losing that terse, mildly incoherent tone. Gimme my “blame yourself or god!” Gimme my “life is short...Bury! Steady Sword!” Maybe it lands better if you play a more recent port first. The other thing that bugs me is the modern-day Ramza, as opposed to the ghost of the original from FFT, is just kind of a horrible racist. Like when he eventually stops just describing everyone around him in the most awful ways imaginable I genuinely thought it was meant to convey that he was being possessed, as people are all through this raid series. Apparently it’s just character growth. Baffling choice. Oh and apparently the fate of all your pals from FFT is they haunted these old ruins for a while and become big giant ghost monster idealized self-images to fight the FF14 protagonist and test your mettle before fighting the final boss from that game. Which means for instance that Mustadio gets to be a big robot sniper. Like I guess he always wanted?

And of course we have our regular check-in with Hildy and company... largely retreading ground we covered earlier. We have a big convoluted plot involving a stolen sword, a local detective helping hunt for it, and a really outlandish bodyguard called Yojimbo who looks super out of place, as does his weird looking dog.

Everyone’s on the lookout for this notorious “Wolf Burglar” and I just realized I got through that whole Stormblood summary without mentioning that a significant percentage of the population of Doma are members of the Lupin race did I? You meet a few, they’re cool. There’s some in an elite military unit towards the end, but they defect when you convince them you managed to liberate Doma.

Anyway the wolf burglar is one of them, but ultimately proves to have noble motivations, and the real villain is the lord making a big stink about a sword. Still you’re all trying to play by the book here, so when you catch up with him he does agree to come along quietly to jail, where he’d remain if not for the fact that the first person you met in this whole Hildy outing is one of his zombie diciples from out in the desert by Ul’dah. He’s out this way because he heard there was an island full of undead and hey, always nice to make friends with more undead, but those ones were jerks. So he’s hanging out in Kugane, and wearing a costume to make people less worried.

So... yes at some point in this business you pull the ol’ switcheroo between a cool wolf guy and a zombie in a fur suit. Generally things work out in the end, but of course that suspiciously weird looking samurai turns out to just be Gilgamesh in disguise, which was probably true back in FF10 too for that matter, and after a boss fight for old time’s sake squabbling over this fancy sword he... kinda gets pulled into another dimension along with Hildy, who’s wearing geisha makeup for absurd reasons. These things happen. Gotta set up that next encounter somehow.

Getting back on the main plot train, we have another villain who had a really great death scene people say is walking around again and coming up with evil plots involving the worst family in Doma. Zenos. Who is... very very clearly dead. He cut his head off right in front of you. He was buried. This can’t be him. Apparently though in addition to possessing whoever’s handy, like Thancred way back when, Ascians can also possess corpses, and since I’m pretty sure Lahabrea’s dead now but who knows or cares, there’s only two real noteworthy ones left around. Elidibus, possessing Zenos’ corpse, and your party pretty much pieces that together after checking that his body isn’t there. Well OK. Having Zenos’ reanimated corpse being used to sew chaos in confusion is fine I guess. Him actually be back from the dead would just be absurd.

Cut to a random soldier who is presently possessed by Zenos getting out a fancy katana and setting off to try and find you. This doesn’t really go anywhere for another expansion but like... this isn’t a restless spirit with unfinished business thing. This is a guy who spontaneously decided to kill himself because nothing in life was ever going to top fighting you. It’s weird for him to be possessing people. Not weird for him to want a rematch with you while he’s here though.

Meanwhile, hoping to actually get this diplomacy working, Alphinaud decides to take a trip up to the imperial capital with his new diplomat friend. They get shot down over this absolutely lifeless and aether-free desert by other imperials who no, did not actually want this peace talk thing happening. Fortunately they’re rescued by a guy who introduces himself as “the shadowhunter” who has a pretty cool look and a belt covered in masks he’s taken from Ascians he’s allegedly killed (like, I believe he killed them, I don’t believe he knows how to make them stay dead is all), as he has a big ol’ grudge against them from having been burned pretty bad by them in the past. He also claims to have had a lot of dealings with the Scions in the past. Alphinaud doesn’t piece this together, and I sure as hell didn’t because he looks completely different and at least in English is one of the more drastically changed characters due to basically everyone besides some of the Scions getting new voice actors while they were off camera for at least a full expansion, but eventually you meet him and... it’s freaking Gaius. The “creeping mendacity” guy. Main villain from the base game. They decided that guy, of all people, actually lived through the big boss fight and his whole stronghold collapsing after you killed the big robot he was piloting, AND that he, Mr. The Strong Must Rule The Weak, gets a big redemption arc. See this is what I’m saying about please just leave people dead. It’s actually fine here since he’s out for blood on the power behind the throne types and his right hand guy explains that he also doesn’t trust him at all and is just waiting for him to slip up and give him an excuse to kill him, but... I don’t like him being around and on team good guy. I also don’t like him no longer sounding like Batou from Ghost in the Shell. Anyway, the two of them go off on their own little adventure and find out that the empire is testing a biological weapon that just instantly kills the entire population of a city when deployed. Not so good.

Thancred’s got a news report on how these two rebellions you kicked off have other subjects of the empire inspired and leading their own revolutions, and apparently the reason you haven’t been hit back is they were busy wiping out Dalmasca, over in Ivalice, which is a bit shortsighted because it was a major refueling station, so if they want to attack Doma, they have to fly over that desert everyone lost contact with Alphinaud in. Also while looking for him, everyone found some similar structures to the forcefield generators making Azys Lla so had to get into. Some serious nerd talk later, turns out there’s basically a big reactor hidden away on the steppe that was draining all the aether from that desert to power stuff like launching Azys Lla and yeah, forcefield generators on the ground it lifted off from that it can be rerouted to. You’d think there’d be some concern with this causing the whole floating continent to come crashing down, but there’s potential side quests for you to not have gotten to there so nah it can keep itself aloft just fine. Also I misremembered, and the whole “little sun” scene happens when negotiating on whether it’s cool to poke around with the reactor that actually factors into local mythology pretty heavily.

There’s a big boardroom meeting once that front is secured, with just every major head of state or general you could name meeting with the Scions to discuss how you’re going to end this war, and it’s going pretty well until all the Scions, including your character, kinda black out and have ominous visions of doom with someone shouting about having to change history and abandon plans and throw open gates and a big wave of light killing everyone. This sort of thing keeps happening from here on out, which is pretty distracting, and also, Thancred doesn’t wake up from it. He’s in a mystery coma. The next wave takes out Urianger and Y’shtola which is pretty serious because they’re the sort of nerds you’d normally have looking into this. Alisaie freaks out about all this a bit since her brother’s missing and presumed dead, everyone else is being pulled into psychic comas, and when Krile suggests everyone go pester Matoya about it and she does a quick search, all the unconscious people have a 404 error on their souls. She also has you come check in on that kobold kid and no he’s still pretty catatonic.

Meanwhile over in the empire, Elidibus is meeting with the Empire to confirm to us in the audience that yes he totally knows this is an Ascian possessing his dead son, and is on board with all the screw peace stuff and the war crimes. Elidibus makes it weird and calls him “father” on the way out. And then his grandfather, the original founder of the whole Empire, steps out to make fun of him and remind him that his job as Emperor is to do gruntwork for the Ascians. The emperor gets annoyed at this, says Ascians talk to much, and shoots him. He comes back possessing one of quite a lot of clones he keeps handy for these moments because yeah this is Emet-Selch the last Ascian of note, AND the only one who’s at all interesting, and taunts this jerk some more.

We have a bit more war planning, a bit more horrible portent of doom headaches, a test of that screw your air fleet forcefield, and Gaius shows up to deliver some exposition and a comatose Alphinaud. We’re really starting to run low on party members with this whole thing. Anyway, biological weapons are bad. Secret cloning facilities full of the emperor’s grandfather are questionable.

Since things are going so well for team good guy, the Emperor actually agrees to an in-person peace talk with you, various heads of state, and Alisaie. Anyway he’s a jerk about it, and comes packing very real criticisms like, hey, Limsa Lominsa, you... absolutely colonized the hell out of the kobolds’ island. Hey Ishgard, you made peace with the dragons, you know, by killing their leader. hey all of you, if you actually want world peace and everyone working together, you could totally just all surrender and let me run the whole world. He also makes it clear that he totally wants to cooperate with the Ascians on their plan, which involves triggering something like 6 more apocalypses because those mash alternate dimensions into this one, and he at least is pretty sure that once they’re all mashed together, everyone will be united under the rule of the Master Race, i.e. his. He is, for what it’s worth, a bit confused on how all this actually works. Also he’s a nazi. Just like, straight up. And his... crown? is super dumb.

So yeah, war it is. It’s a pretty great setpiece dungeon honestly where you’re just barreling forward, fighting tons of nazis and robots while NPC friends alternately help you out in fights and run off into the background tackling whole fronts themselves while you just keep moving forward. This sort of thing becomes a recurring theme for climaxes from here out and I never get sick of them. Things are going real well, but then you get another headache and Alisaie doesn’t come back from this one. You need to pull back if only because you’re unconscious and need to be dragged to a bed. A bit of regrouping though and you’re back at it, pushing forward until it’s time for a big ol’ deal with Elidibus still piloting that zombie Zenos. Things go pretty well, but death doesn’t stick on him and also at the peak of things you once again get taken down by these psychic attacks. You aren’t killed, as is explained later, because Estinein is a bro and whisked you out of there.

This time you’re out long enough to have a proper conversation with the mysterious hooded weirdo whose body seems to be half weird blue crystal or something who’s doing this. He insists that if you keep this attack up on the empire, everyone in the world is going to die, you’re kinda just going to have to take his word on this, and he’d really like to talk it over with you face to face in the First, which you can get to with a trinket left outside the crystal tower.

Guess I can’t keep stalling on explaining that. We get some really good explanations of this in the next expansion, but people have tossed out a lot of this by this point. Once upon a time there was just one normal big fantasy world, but someone kinda took a metaphysical bat to it and smashed it into 14 pieces. You’d think since this is final Fantasy 14, the implication here would be that the other 13 world this yielded are the settings of the first 13 games, but we visit the First in the next expansion and the last time we came to the crystal tower we headed to the 13th, AKA the Void, hell, or the endgame of FF3. It’s just as well that we aren’t going that route though, because the Ascians whole deal is causing apocalypses as a way to mash these back into your world in the hopes of restoring it to its original state. They’ve successfully done so if I recall 7 times, and also had the one royal screwup where they just kinda destroyed the one and turned it into hell. Still 6 more apocalypses is a lot of dead people. Anyway they’re named based on relative position to yours on an arbitrary ring chart. The First is the nearest neighbor going one way, Thirteenth the other.

Anyway, about the only one left to give advice on this is Tataru, and she says go for it, if nothing else this guy might know where everyone’s souls got off to. And that’s where we leave things off. Once again if you’re enjoying these or enjoying me continuing to be alive, I’d really appreciate any donations through my patreon. And next time we will in fact be taking that extradimensional offer and heading into Shadowbringers. The honest to goodness super good expansion.

#final fantasy 14 #ff14 #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #must have been grim when this first came out and just everyone was in a soulless coma for like a month while you were grinding on omega

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dvaderstark · 1 year

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Thoughts on Steve in Stranger Things Season 1

Now similar to practically everyone who watches Stranger Things post Season 1, I think Steve Harrington is a great character that has gone through a fantastic arc and in particular his relationships with Robin and Dustin are two of the best friendships in the show. In fact he and Dustin are the second best sibling type relationship on the show after Jonathan and Will. I do have some issues with basically any of his romance as the popularity of him with Billy and Eddie confuse me beyond he’s Steve and he’s popular. But what I wanted to post about was his portrayal in the show’s first season because I feel that a lot of Steve’s fans from the later seasons have gone back to the first season and have whitewashed some of his actions. Now not to say that Steve is that bad in Season 1 but I think the idea that he was always a good guy is wrong. Now most of Steve’s early stuff is regular stereotypical douchebag stuff that I don’t have too much of an issue with even if I don’t think he’s much aside from a douche at first. Like for example, him being a little too pushy with Nancy when he helps her study and we see he has other things on his mind. Like I will call some of this douchey behavior but not too bad behavior since he does back off. Similarly when he shows more concern about being caught underage drinking than Barb missing. I don’t have too much of an issue here either since Steve doesn’t know what we the audience know but if I was in Nancy’s shoes I would still be annoyed by this too, and he still has skewed priorities. Next, we have breaking the camera. Even for someone who loves Jonathan and has Jancy as their ST OTP, I don’t have any real issue with breaking the camera and the confrontation over the pictures. What Jonathan did was wrong and he deserved some punishment for it. While I wouldn’t call it stalking since Jonathan didn’t intentionally seek Nancy or anyone else at the party out to do what he did it was still wrong and Steve did buy a new camera. The real issues I have with Steve both come in the alley scene. The first thing is the public slut shaming that Nancy undergoes since Steve got the wrong idea. The kind that would have probably stuck on Nancy’s reputation a lot more if this wasn’t a show. What annoys me so much about the way that Steve’s fans response to this is the argument “His friends were the ones who sprayed it and Steve helped take it down afterward”. I hate this argument for the main reason that even if Steve didn’t spray paint the words themselves, he is there when they are doing the second message about Jonathan. He was definitely there when it happened and condoned it. Not saying this is unforgivable after all he’s young and angry and people do dumb stuff when they have that combination but also it is no excuse either and him offering to clean it up while the start of his redemption doesn’t really excuse it either. Letting a friend do something bad and feeling bad afterwards is still a sign that you did something bad. Also what he says to Jonathan that sparks their fight, I will give Steve a point here in that he makes Tommy back off so that the fight will be fair and that is where it ends. What he says to Jonathan is really cruel, cruel insults about his family, cruel insults comparing Jonathan to his awful father, cruel comparisons about Jonathan’s loving mom and of course cruelly insulting Jonathan’s little brother, who while still alive to Steve died only a week ago. I don’t think it’s okay to say stuff like that even if you think the guy you’re saying it to is sleeping with your girlfriend. Once again obviously not unforgivable but still wrong no matter the reason for it and Steve recognized it but a lot of his fans seem to forget that Steve realized it was wrong. Well that got away from me, to summarize, Steve Harrington is a great character but it sometimes annoys me how some of his fans basically try to say he wasn’t a jerk in Season 1 since he was a jerk and him being a jerk is what helps with his arc.

#pro steve harrington #pro jonathan byers #pro nancy wheeler

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belokhvostikova · 1 year

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Right. Well. I hope you're ready for this because I have a lot to talk about for yearbook 🤣

Firstly, I loved the structure of this chapter. A day in the life of Eddie, centered around his session. How Ms Kelly has had to draw him out over a few days. Because yea, he's made it there in the first place, but it doesn't automatically mean he's gonna be a model of open conversation and spilling his guts straight away. Felt very real that, like 'well I've shown up, what more do you want from me?'

Him just having a minute and sitting observing everyone from his van. Like his little moment of calm. It actually was like a scene from a movie, it reminded me of the first episode of season 4, as Robin is getting out of Steve's car and we're dipping in and out of everyone's conversations and goings on. Loved this.

Then his view of R coming into school, how he held back but still gave her that sign of solidarity with the thumbs up. He's so precious, I can't cope. And she needed that so much, her thinking about it later on to get her through the shitty parts of her day was perfect.

R's dad telling her that she basically deserves anything awful that happens to her, just for being a good person. Urgh that guy has some serious issues. Of all the people that need some therapy...

Then Chrissy! She made so many smart choices in this chapter. You've characterised her really well in this. Like she's presented as this really sweet and kind person in the show, but would she have stayed true to that when it mattered in a difficult situation with an audience? I love that you have her do that. Their lunch scene with Dustin was hilarious. Eddie's 'WHAT?!' After the marriage talk 🤣 pal, you would have her in a hot minute.

Really enjoyed the coaches comedy relief after the Jason/Eddie confrontation, and that R and Eddie had more conversation. Especially when it's flirting, could read them like this all day 😍

Honourable mention to Wayne again, for basically being a solid parent and showing Eddie what 'stable' looks like. I hope R meets him at some point and thinks 'oh shit, this is what a dad's supposed to look like'

Strange note for me to end on but I love how you full name everyone when they're not in direct conversation with each other, I've noticed it the past few chapters and it feels very 'Morgan Freeman doing a narrator voice over' and I'm here for it. Can't wait to see what happens next! 🖤🖤

Yes! I've been waiting for you. *in ominous voice*

Let me tell you, when I first began writing this chapter, I just completely free-balled it, I had no clue what was going to happen. I began writing the first couple of paragraphs, when it hit me. This story should totally revolve around Eddie's session AH- I felt like a fucking genius!

I honestly loved that added detail of him just observing. When I write I feel the need to just insert the most meaningless details, but I think it does a good job with just setting the mood around the story. If anyone is every struggling with writing, truthfully, adding specific details can really help!

And the little thumbs up 😭 everyone needs a little thumbs up from Eddie Munson! Especially after that sick interaction with her father, ugh 🤮

Our Chrissy Cunningham redemption arc has been completed! 🩷 I loved how sweet her character was in the show, and I definitely wanted to stick by that, but of course, I wanted to emulate a changing relationship between her and Jason, one where the other person is just someone who's not who they used to be. And given that it's implied that her mother is taking quite some control over her life, I really wanted to be able give her the opportunity to do what she wanted.

And we loved their little "girl talk" with a clueless Dustin.

And I love the idea of Reader meeting Wayne. Especially since we already got extremely intimate moments in her bedroom, I can definitely add some raw moments in his house.

And I think I've said this before, but I FUCKING RAGE OVER USING CHARACTER'S FULL NAME!!!!! Makes me feel like an actual fucking author with merit, lol. And I'm falling onto my knees knowing you get that feeling, too, and you noticed it in the first place! 😩

Thank you so much for your support! 🥹❤️

#stranger things #eddie munson #the yearbook: club pictures

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viola-ophelia · 2 years

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I posted 2,337 times in 2022

108 posts created (5%)

2,229 posts reblogged (95%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name

@deathicus-sling

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@filodox

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I tagged 2,326 of my posts in 2022

#anne-core - 231 posts

#historical fashion - 202 posts

#art history - 182 posts

#literature - 179 posts

#history - 178 posts

#turn - 159 posts

#turnsgiving2022 - 145 posts

#aesthetic - 129 posts

#writing - 89 posts

#fashion - 81 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#idk why some people can't get it into their heads that writing a redemption arc for a character doesn't mean that the author condones murder

My Top Posts in 2022:

i feel extremely seen in pepa madrigal from encanto...... like. i too am a temperamental girl with anxiety who’s not as sweet and gentle as most disney women bc i have this reputation within my family for being difficult and dramatic which i lowkey resent but don’t know if i can ever really change bc it is kinda true lol but hey at least i’m genuine and i’m doing my best... idk, i know she’s a random side character in a kid’s movie but damn

78 notes - Posted January 18, 2022

in defense of cutler beckett

it’s kind of a tradition of mine to periodically write “in defense of” essays for unpopular characters (see “in defense of celegorm” and “in defense of bunny corcoran” lol), and idk what it says about me that i frequently feel the urge to advocate in favor of characters that are deemed unlikable/ unredeemable/ unworthy of attention by their respective fandoms, but i’m rolling with it lol. anyway, today, i want to focus on lord cutler beckett from pirates of the caribbean, because the general consensus about him on tumblr these days is… pretty abysmal lol, but i think he deserves a closer look. beckett seems to be the vast majority of people’s least favorite character, and not in an ironic way like some of the characters in POTC are treated online, like oh haha yeah barbossa was kinda annoying for going all ghost zombie mode on everyone but also we love him, weird eclectic uncle vibes, woo!.... no, everyone just straight-up hates beckett. and look: i get it, i really do. beckett is a much “realer” villain than davy jones or barbossa or salazar or any of the other POTC baddies, and that makes him much easier to hate. he’s not a giant octopus or a cursed skeleton or a slimy ghost guy with mystical powers, he’s literally just some guy– and he’s an asshole of a guy, because he’s basically just a random capitalist who wants all our favorite characters swinging from the gallows because they’re getting in the way of his trading schemes. and, if you count the price of freedom as canon, he’s also a slave trader, which is pretty unambiguously terrible. but despite all that, i actually like beckett. in fact, he’s one of my favorite characters in POTC: although it’s important to note that when i say that, i’m in no way saying that i condone his actions or that i think he’s morally good. as i see it, it’s totally valid to enjoy villainous characters while also acknowledging that they’re evil/problematic/whatever and that their actions are not morally acceptable in the real world. but the realm of POTC– where people (including the “good guys,” might i add!) are murdering and backstabbing each other left and right, any and all historical accuracy has to be taken with several grains of salt, and occult magic and sea goddesses and evil fish-men casually exist– is pretty far from “the real world” if you ask me lol. but anyway, let’s get into it then, shall we! (adding a read-more bc this is LONG oop)

beckett gets a really bad rap in the POTC fandom not just because he’s a ‘problematic’ character, but because on the surface, he comes across as a very one-dimensional, and therefore boring, villain. there are certainly other not-so-morally-pure characters in POTC that don’t seem to get the same treatment beckett does… no one really seems to talk about how pintel and ragetti threatened to r*pe elizabeth in the curse of the black pearl, for example. but pintel and ragetti are goofy comedic relief fan faves, and they’re also on the “good side” (aka the side of the pirates), so they have some redeeming qualities. in contrast, beckett is unique in POTC– a franchise famous for morally complex characters– for his seeming complete lack of redemptive nuance. he’s easy to understand as a villain because he’s just one of those villains who’s bad just ‘cause he can be. and he sucks! he’s ruthless, he’s power-hungry and materialistic, he plots against the pirates simply because they’re an inconvenience to him, and he represents the unjust authority which jack sparrow and the “good guys” stand against. the law permits beckett to freely exploit people in the name of the east india company, but does not allow jack and his companions even a chance of survival if they’re caught: and he knows how unfair this is, and doesn’t care. but here’s the thing: at its core, POTC is a pirate story told by pirates. of course we’re going to root for jack, will, elizabeth, and the gang over characters like beckett and norrington… because the pirates are the ones in control of the narrative. if we want, we can choose to believe them when they show us how much beckett sucks (and to be fair, they’re largely right lol), but it’s sort of boring, i feel, to just readily absorb the story that’s made most prominently visible to us and not bother to examine other perspectives.

so let’s talk about beckett’s motives. maybe he really is power-hungry and exploitative because he just is, and that’s all there is to him… but again, that’s what the pirates think, but it’s worth considering other possibilities too. what is beckett’s backstory, then– what, if anything, prompted him to go on his pirate-killing spree? well, in the movies, he doesn’t have one. he kinda just shows up one day and crashes will and elizabeth’s wedding as an obnoxious power flex, and from that point on, he’s just, like, there and he hates the pirates REALLY bad and wants to kill them all through any means possible, seemingly just because he can. the price of freedom, though, does give beckett a backstory. i’m not going to summarize the entire thing here, but in it, he and jack once worked together for the east india co. before eventually having a big mutual betrayal where jack wasn’t a fan of the fact that beckett was transporting some slaves, so he freed them all, which fucked beckett’s career over so beckett branded him as a pirate and then went on to become the asshole we see in the movies. but to be honest, this doesn’t really compel me all that much. it’s certainly an important moment for jack, but it explains away beckett’s motives the same vague way the movies do, aka by going “well, he’s just evil because he is/always was.”

what was really going on with beckett to force him through such a transformation had to have been much more than jack fucking up his job one time. the price of freedom tells us that he was a sickly kid not expected to live past childhood and that he was lowkey abused by his family, so i think a desire to prove his own worth was definitely part of it. but i don’t think beckett became evil (or doomed, for that matter) when he branded jack as a pirate. there’s a point in the book (if i’m remembering correctly) where young beckett gets captured by pirates and his dad refuses to pay the bail to have him released. it doesn’t explain how he eventually managed to escape, but i can only imagine that the experience left him with some internal damage… a fear of losing control, most likely, and of being out of his element. that’s kind of a lot for a teenager to take in… not only that his family doesn’t want him and he’s gonna have to fend for himself for the rest of his life, but that the world is cruel and unforgiving to vulnerable people, and the only way for him to survive is to seize all of the power and control he can and never let it go… because, if he doesn’t become the biggest fish, then a bigger fish is going to come along and that’ll be the end of him. beckett never manages to get rid of this fear of instability and vulnerability, which– especially after jack’s betrayal– manifests itself in a hatred of and desire to dominate (perhaps an attempt to conquer or mask a secret, intense fear of?) pirates and the occult. and of course, this eventually becomes his downfall, as he freezes the second he makes a mistake in at world’s end and is so unable to move beyond the loss of the upper hand that he literally just dies. beckett’s death is exactly what he deserves, but it’s also a remarkably devastating moment granted to a character who, up until this point, we’ve been guided to unreservedly hate and root against. in the grand scheme, it represents the fall of the old order, but for beckett himself, it’s his worst nightmare coming true– it’s the loss of control he’s been fighting this whole time and not realized was sneaking up on him till it was literally staring him in the face… and that’s tragic, and we’re meant to think so! we see his fatal flaw laid bare in a way that we would normally only expect the narrative to do so for its heroes, and it’s an incredible and shocking moment, being forced to briefly see things from the other side.

it’s hard for me to hate beckett as i watch him dying, and honestly it’s hard for me to hate him in general, because tbh i do resonate with him in some ways. obviously, his actions as a character are awful (and in particular, there’s no avoiding or diminishing the unequivocal evilness of the slave trading thing), and that’s what makes him a villain. but at the root of it all, i kinda just see a guy who’s sought to prove himself for so long that now he’s at the helm of this incredibly powerful and dangerous position that he cannot lose because he’s nothing without what he’s worked for, but even as he’s surrounded himself with people he can use as tools he has no one he can truly trust, so he projects this cold and calculating persona at all times because he has to, because it’s how he maintains control and he has to maintain control because without control he knows he’s already lost, but as tightly wound as he must be, he somehow manages not to break his composure even at the very end and goes down with his fucking ship in a moment that’s weirdly heroic… like. you don’t have to like beckett, but i do think he deserves respect. in a fandom full of wacky, fun, exciting characters, i know it’s not exactly intuitive to focus on the one decidedly un-supernatural, un-thrilling character… but in a story told by, about (and arguably for) pirates, beckett maybe rebels the most of all, by refusing, right down to his last moments, to succumb to a narrative that was never for him in the first place. and i think there’s something to be said about a character who-- villainous or not-- sticks by his principles till the end even as the very world around him bends to different rules, who doesn’t run from the law when it no longer benefits him but who acknowledges that he’s lost and owns it.

83 notes - Posted March 21, 2022

i made a quiz that’ll tell you which of jane austen’s seven heroines you are - enjoy!

255 notes - Posted September 8, 2022

things i wish i could tell every young person on the internet (alternate title: an open letter to myself at 18)

- identity labels are an option, not a requirement, and they aren’t the only thing that define you.

- you’re also always allowed to change your mind about them, and you should never feel anything but proud of yourself for doing so.

- it’ll only do you harm to view your trauma(s) and mental illness(es) like immutable personality traits. you deserve to accept that things will get better.

- if you’re cishet, that’s okay! you don’t “have” to be queer to prove you’re not a bad or boring person.

- fiction does not equal reality, and fandom is a hobby, not a venue for activism. “problematic” fanfiction has literally no effect on society, so don’t ever feel bad about enjoying what makes you happy!

- try, above all else, to be kind to yourself. you deserve it.

319 notes - Posted May 26, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

i’m not just a “villain apologist.” oh no no... when i say i like a villainous character, i not only mean that i fully support all of their evil actions and believe them to be totally justified and tremendously sexy, but also that i partake in the same evil actions irl and thoroughly enjoy it. “but you can’t like that character, they murdered someone!” yes, and? i murder at least one person a week for fun, what’s your point

369 notes - Posted April 8, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#this is so funny #year in review #can i just say i fully agree with my longest tag LOL #also damn i forgot i ever posted about encanto that one time?#i love my top post too it's extremely valid lol

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