#if you can't write conflict without assassinating someone's character you are ... a bad writer

[eponastory]

Bring the salt!

I need some for my fries.

Unpopular opinion

Character Assassination is cathartic.

Yep... that's right. I said it.

So, when I was writing The Medici Girl, I had someone comment about how they hated my interpretation of Ezio. They said that I made him an asshole because of the way he treated his wife.

Well, here's the deal... I fucking love Ezio Auditore da Firenze! He is possibly my all-time favorite character ever. But why did I turn him into an asshole?

For context, the story was basically a retelling of Assassin's Creed 2, only more historically accurate. The story is told from Contessina de'Medici's perspective for the most part, and she was married to Ezio before the events of AC2. He was in an affair (canonically) with another woman, making it Contessina's main conflict. So yes, Ezio's actions are pretty bad. That being said, I didn't intend to make him completely bad, but in Contessina's eyes... she saw him as someone in contention to her until he finally let his mistress go.

That is the purpose of character Assassination.

To a point.

But I wouldn't call exaggerating a characters traits and beliefs to the point of debauchery, Character Assassination. It's character exaggeration. It's like putting the speakers up to 11.

In the case that most Kat*angers use as contention for Zutara, all I've ever seen is writers exaggerate character flaws (which are canon) and dial them up because it is in character. It's just another form of conflict. Does it mean we are destroying that character to make our ship work? No. I don't see it that way because these are fictional characters, and it's just another part of being creative.

If anyone has a problem with that, it's likely because they don't understand how conflict moves a story or builds a character. It's actually one of the building blocks for any story. You can't have a good story without some sort of internal or external conflict, and if that means dialing up a character, then fine.

I do want to add that if you are trying to see a character from the pov of another, making the outside character look a certain way makes it more interesting.

But don't get your panties in a knot over it. Just move on.

Stay classy!

[pollywiltse]

I was semi-reading Valiant Ambition and honestly I feel like it's indicative of something wrong with modern society that so many people seem to be treating The Character Assassination - sorry, The Execution - of John André as a reliable source and a sane and reasonable assessment of André's character by someone whose hateboner isn't visible from space. It's not even like John Evangelist Walsh is an expert on the 18th century or the Revolution or André. It's like all these people prefer the idea of André as this manipulative-except-somehow-not-when-it-counts sociopath to someone who was, in fact, just that charming even though the evidence really points to him being just that charming.

I'm not just saying that because I'm an André partisan - 1. I've been in fandom for years; I know what unhinged hatred because some character wronged your fave looks like (where "wronged" doesn't necessarily mean actually did something bad as opposed being the canon love interest of the other half of your OTP or being more popular among the rest of fandom than your fave); 2. John Evangelist Walsh literally makes stuff up to make André look bad. Like I can give you specific examples where he makes claims that have no supporting evidence or conflict with the evidence that exists; and 3. I think D. A. B. Ronald's André-can-do-no-wrong version is equally bad, just in the opposite direction, and I would pay money to watch them cagefight. (Unfortunately Walsh is dead and if someone develops effective necromantic technology, I'm not wasting it on some obnoxious writer. I'm bringing André back.)

Tbh I feel like it was probably a warning about life in general that the two André books I know of that were published in the 21st century are this and the batshit Ronald bio. Like Flexner and Hatch aren't without flaws, but at least you get the feeling they're trying to be intellectually honest, even though Flexner needed an ancient Roman slave whispering in his ear "Remember thou art not clairvoyant or a novelist" the entire time he was writing. (Honestly I think even Sargent was attempting to be intellectually honest. He was just, you know, Victorian. The Tillotson bio is such a non-entity I can't even remember my assessment of it.)

I realize Philbrick's degree isn't in history, so you can sort of argue he doesn't count, but Richard Welch, who did the (disappointing, insufficiently proofread) modern Tallmadge bio is a literal history professor and he seems to have uncritically accepted Walsh's assessment of André as well.

I'm also confused why Philbrick (and this is actually kind of a Ronald problem too, except in a 4-d chess conspiracy theory way) seems to think that Arnold didn't care about André getting back safely. I think it's far more likely that neither of them knew what they were doing, that Arnold didn't realize that Joshua Smith was going to leave André partway through (because I think there's at least something of a modern consensus that if Smith had been with André, Paulding et al would have recognized Smith and not stopped them, but also if Smith was still there, André probably would have been less likely to tell them that he was a British officer), and that he overestimated André's ability to make it back to British lines in disguise. (I think for two reasons - one, that André clearly wasn't stupid, and two, I kind of have this theory that Arnold would have managed to make it back, because Arnold was a good field officer, which presumably requires the ability to think on your feet, but there's not really any evidence to think that was one of André's particular skills. And people are bad at realizing when other people can't do stuff that's easy for them. Also Arnold was better at threatening people than André.)

Like 90% of military (and political) history seems to be people in over their heads flailing desperately (plus personal drama), and that's probably a low estimate.

Also, is there evidence of Arnold being the unreasonably jealous type? Because I've read significantly less about him than about André, but honestly my impression of him when it came to his wives is that he'd literally have to walk in on them having sex with a lover to believe that they were cheating and then he'd probably cry a lot and wonder what he did wrong (and maybe then shoot the boyfriend, but I'm not sure he'd be fazed enough by one of Peggy's old flames that he would risk 20000 pounds and possibly his own skin by not making sure he got back safely, especially when there's really no reason to think that Peggy was into André at this point in time).

[a-pale-azure-moon]

Midnight Plays Azure Gleam: Chapter 6

Oh boy. A lot of stuff happened in this chapter and some of it left a very bad taste in my mouth. Of all the characters the writers could've assassinated, I can't believe it was this one.

The ending of the last chapter heavily implied that Arianrhod was going to be our next stop, but the opening narration for this chapter says that Count Rowe surrendered to Faerghus (in fairness, he did indicate he would do this in last chapter's interlude cutscene, but it's still a bit sloppy to write it this way). So the Empire's forces have retreated to former Arundel territory to regroup, and the Kingdom is going to make an offensive strike before they can attack again.

A soldier interrupts the meeting to say that the convoy transporting Count Rowe to Fhirdiad was attacked. Count Rowe has now gone missing. Dimitri speculates that Cornelia could be behind it, and at Dedue's suggestion, sends a separate unit to investigate the attack further.

Camp (Arianrhod)

Mercedes feels conflicted about recruiting former friends, since we're basically forcing them to turn traitor or die. Yup, exactly.

Relatedly, Dorothea says she doesn't really want to fight for Faerghus. Or at all, since she was only in the Empire's army for "Edie."

Miklan's here in camp, which is very weird to see. He's certainly a friendly individual. /s

An NPC soldier says she has orders to execute Miklan if he does anything suspect. So yeah, he wasn't lying about being watched.

Ingrid says when they were kids, Sylvain would sometimes show up with bruises or other injuries, and he'd say it was a "training accident" or something. But Ingrid says she knew what was really going on, and she wonders if Miklan is capable of redeeming himself.

Sylvain himself admits Miklan's put him through a lot, but he thinks his brother can be useful. He also says that if even someone like Miklan can redeem himself, he'll serve as a necessary symbol for Faerghus, both as a former bandit and as someone without a Crest.

Felix is still hissing like a cat over the Miklan situation. He mostly sounds mad about Dimitri not telling him his plans.

An NPC Knight of Seiros mentions Count Rowe's adopted son, who caused trouble at the Officer's Academy and was cut off/disowned. So can I expect to be seeing Yuri soon? (Please yes)

Seteth laments that Jeralt's working for the Empire. Hmm...

Ashe talks about Lonato. And still needs a hug.

Battle

Dimitri's intel confirms Byleth is working for the Empire (sob), and he wants Shez to handle them, given their history. Shez appreciates the gesture but says that a rivalry isn't worth losing a war over. Dimitri asks if Shez wants revenge for their fallen companions, and Shez says seeking vengeance for every fallen comrade would consume their life.

And....Dimitri.exe has stopped working. Our king needs a reboot. Perhaps even a full kernel re-installation.

Dimitri then suggests hiring Jeralt's mercenaries, if they can make a more appealing offer than the Empire. YES YES absolutely you should hire Byleth and then you can fall in love in this timeline too!

Arval thinks Dimitri has funny ideas. (Shut up Arval)

The mission objective is to defeat Byleth and the Death Knight. This is going to be fun. /s There's also a recruitment option for Bernadetta, which I guess I'm obliged to do for completion's sake.

(No offense to Bernadetta fans, but I personally don't like her.)

Byleth and the Death Knight appear after defeating the vanguard. Meanwhile, Bernadetta screams and locks herself in the center of the map, because that's what competent army commanders do. [Eyeroll]

Thankfully, there are some steps to make it easier to take on the Death Knight and Byleth, because attacking either of them immediately is a very bad idea (I found this out the hard way; my Leeroy Jenkins moment resulted in a game over). Unfortunately, these steps take awhile and are tricky to do because the map is big and there's only a few open paths to the areas you need to seize.

Byleth wants a rematch, almost sounding eager.

Once the outer strongholds are seized, you have to claim the inner ones. The Death Knight is lurking around the path to the inner strongholds, and catapults start firing at you too, making things even more chaotic and dangerous!

Now we can reach Bernadetta and "persuade" her, and in doing so, gain control of the center-most area. The next step is to lure the Death Knight to this area and trap him there and fire our captured catapults at him.

...Except Jeralt, Alois and a few randos appear to take out the green units guarding the Death Knight. Argh, of course. Luckily, my units were spread fairly well across the map and I was able to take out Jeralt's forces without too much trouble.

(Why is Alois here?)

But the Death Knight gets to break free anyway for "reasons." Seriously, what was the point of all of that beyond padding out the length of this mission? The Death Knight barely lost any health.

And just as I've got his health lowered, some enemy Priests show up and I'm unable to kill them before they can heal the Death Knight. I hate everything right now.

Finally, he's defeated and retreats. Time to deal with Byleth. Jeralt sends in some brigands for more backup, because this battle hasn't lasted long enough already.

Byleth hits so damn hard! All of my units are at low health, and even with ganging everyone up on her, this fight takes awhile.

Victory at last! And we go to a cutscene and...

Very cool shot of Divine Pulse activating, and a suddenly green-haired Byleth then delivering a megaton punch to Shez.

What. The. Hell.

Sothis is possessing Byleth?! What is going on?!

It's admittedly cool seeing Byleth's time powers activating from this angle. Shez stands no chance. Arval tells Shez to escape, and Byleth apparently takes back control of their body.

What is going on??

(This scene must be unintentionally hilarious with male Byleth. Just trying to imagine Sothis' voice coming out of his mouth is making me laugh.)

But I repeat: WHAT IS GOING ON?!?!

Shez wonders what they're really up against. Arval doesn't sound deterred. Shez mentions that they might be allies with Byleth before long, if Dimitri gets them to come work for the Kingdom. Arval sounds incredulous at the idea of allying with that "fiend," and basically calls Shez a coward while saying some vaguely sinister things. Jerk.

I got an A rank, surprisingly not due to going over time, even with that screw up with the priests. It was because I "only" got 1419 kills, when I needed 1500 for S-Rank. Grr. Dimitri got MVP honors again.

Post-Battle

Byleth called Sothis by name in the last scene, yet Sothis introduces herself here. Have Byleth and Sothis spoken prior to now or not? Which is it, writers?

HOLY CRAP THEY BROKE SOTHIS! HOW COULD THEY DO THIS TO OUR GREMLIN GODDESS?!

Seriously, she sounds almost cruel here. Sothis was definitely sassy and snarky in 3H, but she was never outright hostile to Byleth. At worst, she sounded like an angry mom when Byleth screwed up, but she never, ever referred to Byleth as her "vessel," nor threatened to take over Byleth's body. Sothis literally gave up her limited existence to give Byleth her power to save their life!

Byleth is understandably very confused and Sothis gives them no answers.

(I'm guessing from the context of this conversation, Sothis doesn't have complete amnesia, unlike in 3H. I am not opposed to Sothis having a vengeful side, given that Arval is definitely connected to the Argathans, but it needs to be contextualized much better than this garbage. And it needs to be done in a way that doesn't completely destroy Sothis' character! I'm am just stunned at how bad this whole scenario is. Absolutely stunned.)

Jeralt interrupts the scene, as Byleth "wakes up." He seems strangely chill with Byleth's hair and eyes changing color.

I want to hug Byleth so bad right now. Even with the "Ashen Demon" stoicism, you can tell they're troubled. With good reason!

Alois says he won't pull punches even against the Knights of Seiros. God. I'm more angry about what they've done to Sothis, but I am still unhappy with how they've reduced Alois to a Jeralt fanboy. I'm sure his wife and daughter were happy he gave up a steady job with the church to go wander they world as a mercenary. /s

Jeralt makes a vague allusion to Rhea. Just talk to your kid about your past already, damn you! Argh.

Back to the Lions, which is a relief except that Dimitri's leaving us to go back to Fhirdiad. Soldiers from Sreng have crossed into Gautier territory and are heading to the capital, and Duke Ifan's been captured. They also haven't been able to contact Matthias to confirm these reports.

Sylvain doubts his father could've gone down easily, but still knows something must be up since they haven't been able to reach him. Rodrigue notes that the situation is serious if they can't contact either Duke Ifan or Matthias, so Dimitri doesn't have much choice but to go.

(In light of the news about Count Rowe from the start of the chapter, this definitely smells fishy. A trap, perhaps?)

Shez (and Flayn) wants to tag along, but the bulk of our forces need to remain in Arianrhod. Dedue and Rodrigue will be leaving with Dimitri though, and Felix is given command of the army. He sounds very unenthused about this new responsibility.

And that's the end of the chapter. Honestly, the battle was more annoying than fun with all the running around, and the stuff with Sothis just put a huge damper on the enthusiasm I was starting to feel about the story. What a disappointment.

[clexa--warrior]

Fear The Walking Dead' continues its losing streak in Sunday night's episode 'Ner Tamid.'

Credit: AMC

Sunday night's episode of Fear The Walking Dead was a little bit better than the rest of this half of the season, and I think I know why: There was no Morgan!s

Morgan and Al are off doing their own thing, and miraculously we didn't hear from either one this week. That's good! Sadly, we also didn't get any Alicia. She remains one of the only characters I still like on this show, though the past few episodes have done their level best to character-assassinate her (she's probably off painting more trees at this point).

The rest of the episode was pretty much about as pointless as the rest of the episodes in Season 5. Charlie "runs away" from the convoy to go find some place for them to stay, so that they're not always on the move. Finding a place to stay is a really good idea. Running off on your own in the zombie apocalypse is stupid beyond all reckoning, and I wish the writers and producers would stop making the characters act like such absolute dunces every week.

It appears the real problem is June, who is apparently in charge of the caravan and its 36 members. She's driving them all hard, not letting them stay in one place long, no rest for the weary and all that jazz. Even John Dorie is like "Hey June, baby, I love you but this is ridiculous," but it falls on deaf ears. I'm not sure why June is acting like this, or why she's suddenly in charge, or why they have a caravan instead of a base to begin with, but that doesn't matter. Fear The Walking Dead just does stuff, and we're just supposed to eat it up without questioning anything.

I think that's the only way people can still enjoy this show--just don't ask any questions, don't think about anything too much, don't expect anything remotely like logic or realism or human nature to figure into it at all.

In any case, Charlie makes yet another new friend while out on her own. This time it's a Jewish Rabbi, Jacob Kessner, who lives all by himself at his old synagogue. All his former flock are now zombies, calling to mind Father Gabriel from The Walking Dead (though Kessner is much less annoying than Gabriel, who I still can't stand). Charlie thinks this would be a good place for the survivors to settle down, but things don't work out. Before the end of the episode, the safe haven is overrun and Kessner is out of a home. Shocking. We've never seen the survivors show up and ruin a good thing before! (That's sarcasm, by the way. Everywhere our heroes go falls apart, from the family on the island to the Mexican villa, to the ranch, to the kids' treehouse this season).

June and Dorie show up and there's some zombie action, but we know nobody is going to actually get killed by a zombie. That hardly ever happens on this show. The last time I can think of it actually happening was when Madison died, but she died offscreen so we didn't even see it. There used to be some great zombie kills in previous seasons, but there's no reason to fear anything in Fear The Walking Dead these days.

That applies to Logan and his group of feckless, toothless bad guys. At one point they chase Sarah and Dwight--who looks ridiculous clean-shaven, though I suppose it's symbolic of his being totally neutered by the do-gooder sickness that's befallen the entire cast--and almost catch them but the tank shows up and saves the day. Of course, why they were so worried and running to begin with is beyond me. Recall last week when Morgan and Al were faced with a dozen of Logan's thugs and nothing happened. They just blocked the road and that's all. Are we supposed to think that this week things are so different that they pose an actual threat now?

Of course, it turns out that the whole thing was just a diversion. Logan wanted to distract the convoy. Apparently he's figured out where the oil fields are and he wanted Morgan's group as far away as possible which, uh, kind of sounds like what he did in the very beginning of this season by having them fly off to the nuclear power plant region. They're running out of ideas so fast it isn't even funny.

Is there even a story here? I mean, there are things that happen I guess, but is there a story? Let's try to parse it all together, shall we?

Season 5 starts with Morgan and most of the crew crash-landing a plane because they thought they were helping someone but it was just Logan tricking them so that he could take over the mill. The first half of the season is spent trying to get a new plane or fix the old plane so they can fly it back. There's also a nuclear power plant that's going to melt down, and we meet a new character, Grace, who is trying to prevent that. Eight episodes are spent on this dual-plot, with Strand and Charlie ultimately saving the day by bringing propellers in a hot air balloon to the heroes who then use their years of airplane mechanic experience to fix the plane and then fly successfully back to their own area of Texas because apparently that region has zero roads leading. It is a mystical island within the state of Texas that can only be reached by air (unless you're Dwight or his wife who apparently both managed just fine on solid ground).

So that's the first half of Season 5. Crash plane, fix plane, fly out. Logan has the mill. Then, bizarrely, at the very end of the first half of the season Logan tries to make a deal with them. This deal is not struck, we discover in the Season 5 midseason premiere, and Logan goes back to working with the thugs. I can't tell if they're working for him or he's working for them, because the show has done such a lousy, inconsistent job at explaining things to us.

Speaking of which, we learn that during the break, during the period of time that occurs off-screen between the two halves of this season, that Morgan has discovered where Polar Bear's oil fields are. And I guess he's also figured out how to refine oil into gasoline. And I guess this is what Logan was after the whole time, but they just neglected to introduce that conflict in any remotely comprehensible way. Now, five episodes into the back half of the season, the entire plot seems to be "Morgan and group go around helping people more while Logan tries to figure out where the oil fields are." Five episodes of filler with virtually nothing of any importance happening. Alicia meets the guy painting on all those trees. Morgan and Grace try and fail to spark a romance. Logan is mad at Morgan but does nothing about it. They film a stupid PSA and put it on VCRs with generators wherever they can so that people know that they're out there trying to help people.

None of this qualifies as a story, at least not really. The story, if it had to be boiled down, would be the conflict between Logan and Morgan's two groups. But that conflict barely exists, as evidenced by the times they've actually encountered one another and done nothing. At least Negan did stuff. At least the Saviors posed a threat, no matter how badly produced Seasons 7 and 8 of The Walking Dead were. At least there was a story.

Here we just have people driving around wasting gas, talking on walkie-talkies, rarely having realistic conversations or actually interesting struggles or conflicts. It's all contrived. You could probably boil down the entire 12 episodes we've seen so far into two and not lose anything.

Just take away the whole entire plane crash plot and have them tricked into leaving the mill. Then have Logan realize what he wanted in the mill wasn't there and go to war with Morgan to get the map to the oil fields. The oil fields themselves would be useless to Morgan since he doesn't know how to refine oil into gasoline, but he knows that Logan is bad news so he keeps that information from him anyways. Have Logan kill some of the good guys, and have that test Morgan's resolve to be a good person. Have Dwight show up as one of Logan's dudes, on the other side of the conflict, and have that make him question whether he's made the right choice.

I mean, I think you could probably get eight episodes out of this conflict, and then you could twist things around for the second half of the season. Morgan could snap again, go full killstreak mode. He and Alicia could break into two different groups and the conflict could continue between them somehow. This is all just spit-balling. The fact is, it would be fairly simple to come up with a better story for Season 5, with better and more natural conflicts. Actually, I'd have introduced Logan as a sympathetic character and had him join the group, had his treachery not manifest until it was too late. Make the betrayal sting.

But this is all fantasy. I want the same kind of tense conflict that drove Season 3, with sympathetic characters on both sides and no easy resolution. But what we're getting is a bunch of badly written filler episodes with no real purpose and an overarching conflict that makes no sense. Meanwhile, we get things like Al leaving all her tapes in a safe and then not bothering to even shut the lock boxes, and that's how Logan discovers the oil fields. We get John Dorie shooting a bullet at a hatchet blade so that it can split in two and kill a pair of approaching zombies. That's the kind of vapid writing this show has now. It's just sad.

Next week, Logan will use the oil fields to wipe out half of all living things in the universe and the week after that Al and June and Daniel will send Skidmark back in time in a time machine they built out of spare plane parts, and Skidmark's job will be to kill Polar Bear before he ever planted the oil seeds that eventually grew into the oil fields, but little do they know that Polar Bear is waiting for them . . . . it's a trap!

I just . . . I can't. I don't know what else to say. What a sad joke Fear has become.