Going buckwild at the way Hilda The Series portrays adulthood and loneliness. Kaisa has no one to go to to ask for help getting the due book back, even though all it would take was someone she could minimally ask to knock on an elderly lady’s door and ask for a favour; she’s in the library after hours, is shown to have no allies aside from the woman who raised her and who she lost contact with. Johanna is only ever seen working or caring for Hilda, and her lack of a life aside from those two activities is pointed out by her own daughter when she thinks that this is going so far as to affect their relationship. The bell keeper lives alone in a small cabin on the edge of town, barely within city limits and away from everyone, a house barely even inhabitable and clearly only a place to sleep and eat. He works a solitary job and he’s the only one in the town still working it, meaning he’s probably overworked and forced to pull inhumanly long shifts. Victoria hyperfocused so hard on her projects that whatever friends she had before - and she must have had some from college time at least - lost contact with her, and she never made any other connections in Trolberg, anything that would tie her to the city and it’s inhabitants and make it so it wasn’t worth it to live by herself at the top of a hill. Even when that was over, she still chose to isolate herself somewhere abandoned and keep what was essentially another machine she’d built as her source of company, something she could understand and control instead of an unpredictable human being. Gerda works a job she likes but is shown to be disregarded by the person she works the most around, her abilities and intellect thrown aside for the good of someone she has to bear because of a hierarchy she was forced to accept in order to keep working. She’s appreciated by the town, but other than the main characters, we don’t see anyone paying her any mind when they don’t need something from her.
Meanwhile no kid has ever been alone in Trolberg. The mean kids are a group, the good kids are a group, even the gloomy teenage girls are a group. One of nightmare inducing entities, but a group nonetheless. All children in that world seem to operate on a ‘no man left behind’ code, looking out for each other even if they aren’t exactly fans of one another, helping even grown ups without asking why and working together. And this logic seems to extend to the adults who work around children too; especially the Raven Leader, who we see that through the children works as a vital part of the community and a way through which it comes together.
This isn’t very articulate but do you see the point? Do you see how clever that is? That a show about growing up has these themes? You can be magical, kind, strong, intelligent, competent, but none of that will make you truly happy if you don’t keep the most important thing from childhood? If you don’t keep your friendships, your bonds, something to tie you down to your reality and your community? The adults in the show all made their choices, and it’s okay to want to be alone, we all need it and some more than others (this is coming from someone who needs it a lot), but isolating yourself completely is the one thing that will make growing pains truly painful. I’m just so emotional over it. It’s so subtle and so clever considering the whole Mountain King plot that Hilda is willing to change species because she feels detached from her main relationships and surroundings. I love this show so much.
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I'm making a note about medici, because I tried to watch it but found it so dull I could hardly get through the first season. Can you reccomend any historical shows or films that do pass the vibe check?
off the top of my head, some personal favorites are:
season one of Kingdom (킹덤) 2019 (period horror set in the Joseon era)
Barbarians (Barbaren) 2020 (arminius, baby!)
Heneral Luna & Goyo (philippine revolution)
Showtime’s The Borgias (all time favorite forever)
Wolf Hall (2015) (an adaption of Hilary Mantel’s novels)
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I'm gonna be honest I've been mulling over the cut dialogue post for the entire day because what I want to know is the direction of the developers.
Part of me isn't sure whether if the cut dialogue was cut content for the sake of cut content (i.e. time/budget limitations, it was too much/unnecessary for the scene, etc) or whether it was a change in tweaking Volo's canon character. (i.e. making his villainy closer/a foil of Cyrus.) (for the most I'm still not sure if the cut dialogue is considered "canon" or not, but for the most part until we see official content that contradicts it I will consider it as "canon" Volo.)
Because I don't know about you, but it's really telling something about his character.
I'm a descendant of the ancient Sinnoh people! I revere Arceus, the almighty god, and I will demonstrate his power to all living things in the sky, the earth, the sea!
Yes! As the avatar of Arceus, I will house that power and bring its gospel to Hisui! I won't let you, an outsider with no history here, get in my way!
Okay so, this passage is the part I want to delve into. A couple of points:
"Avatar of Arceus" - this pretty much explains the Arceus cosplay in the final battle. I mean it was assumed already if you know how iconography and symbolism works, but it pretty much plainly explains that Volo sees himself as a god or in the very least, as a standing representation of Arceus itself in the physical world.
"I will house that power" - again this is just a rewording of what already exists in the final scene, where Volo states he wants to "use Arceus' power to create a new better world". Note he doesn't say he will defeat Arceus, or kill it. I know it's common interpretation in fan circles that Volo kills/takes Arceus power, but it's important for us to remember that canonically, Volo DOES NOT want to kill Arceus. His reverence may be strong, and he does have this weird religious ecstasy brainrot, but he does not wish to actually kill it. Volo is a religious zealot.
And the parts that are bothering me the most are these lines:
"I will demonstrate his power to all living things in the sky, the earth, the sea! / ...bring its gospel to Hisui!" - this part is what I'm ruminating on the most. Because with this passage, it's making me rethink all of my previous interpretations on Volo, and I fear we may have been misinterpreting him this entire time.
This is again where I want to emphasize I don't know for sure if this is a character rework or cut content, because here Volo makes no mention of a "better world" by using the power of Arceus.
Because yknow what that sounds like right? Like Christian/Catholic preaching. Specifically the word "gospel" is used here, and he makes mention of "demonstrating his power to all living things". Like spreading the word of God? He makes no mention of this gospel of Arceus being love or light however, which makes me worried what this implies...
And this is what's bothering the most about this. Volo from this dialogue, may not be a saviour wishing to create a better world without suffering because his God designed a flawed world that included those things.
Volo is a religious zealot that believes the world is flawed because of other people, not because his God made a flawed creation. And that the cure to removing this suffering is recreating his own biblical flood and killing everyone and spreading the word of Jesus Arceus.
That's why Volo has a hard time trusting others in Pokemas because other people are sinful/backstabbing and cannot be trusted (albeit heavily influenced by whatever Traumatic Thing™ happened in his villain backstory that as of writing this, has yet to be revealed) but if this is canon to his character, it's a HUGE difference from what we were all interpreting. He's not staging a divine coup for the people, he's your Catholic pastor that believes if you don't believe in god you're going to hell. He's the holy crusader that is willing to hurt entire groups of people in the name of god, believing this harm he's doing is "righteous" because he's doing it for Arceus.
If this is what Volo's idea of a "better world" was like the entire time, damn I really hope he loses and gets a redemption. A world where everyone follows the gospel of God through force? Maybe there's a reason he's a villain.
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sometimes it drives me literally insane to see romance requests that are like
--I want a romance wherein it's basically the happy epilogue throughout the book
--I want a romance that has great communication and they never withhold anything from each other ever
--no "miscommunication trope"
The last thing is just a general gripe about how so many of the things people say are tropes are not tropes, and it's pedantic and snobby but like. Miscommunication is so broad. It's not a trope. People are miscommunicating. WHAT are they miscommunicating about? Is one of them keeping a secret identity from their partner? Because a secret identity romance iS a trope. Is one of them withholding their feelings out of fear of rejection?
Because people DO miscommunicate. Often writers do write it clumsily. If people miscommunicate for no reason, sure, whatever. But if they miscommunicate BECAUSE of a REASON--like, often it's not even miscommunication lol. It's the hero keeping his dire supernatural secret from his wife because she'll die if she finds out (honestly, valid to me, but whatever). It's the heroine finding it difficult to trust the hero with her heart because her dad left when she was young (maybe cliche in theory, but actually a very real thing that happens).
If all you want is plotless nothing wherein everyone is happy and nobody makes mistakes, I personally have a hard time thinking of it as a book, because there is no story. It's just vibes. And essentially EVERY time, people have to mess up and make mistakes in order for there to be a plot.
I just don't understand the point.
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