#just because at least the offscreen development leaves the character alive

[pico-farad]

I hit episode 90 of Vrains! Season 2 is long, so I'm stopping here to put down some thoughts.

But before that, I wanted say that I was blown away by the response to Secret Identities AU! I didn't even know the Vrains fandom was still alive, but clearly I was mistaken. I plan to make a part 2 going over more characters and changes I'd make, but I'm going to hold off until I've finished the series, so that I can factor in the larger arc of the story.

For now though, here's my thoughts on the second third of Vrains (up to Aoi vs. Bohman). I had too much to say again, so this part will cover Soulburner and Flame.

Critique is meant in good taste. I don't think the Vrains writers will be offended.

All Vrains season analysis posts

⇀ Soulburner

Well, I saw this coming. With a protagonist like Yusaku, the writers need a character who can engage him and generally fill up that "Yugioh friend" role, which was sorely missing in Season 1. Naoki, Go, or Ai? Not marketable enough. They needed to make an anime boy, and they sure did.

That said, I was expecting more from Yusaku and Soulburner's relationship, it's a little... nondescript. They had the same problem in season 1, where the writers don't leave room for the characters to just be characters and bounce off each other, it's all just plot and duels and exposition. At least season 1 had the excuse of Yusaku's trauma alienating him from others, but not only has Yusaku already resolved to overcoming that barrier, but Soulburner is one of the only people who can connect with him because of that experience.

I really would have liked to see them connect more on both being victims of the Lost Incident. Season 1's emotional conflict resolved with Yusaku putting his trauma behind him, so Season 2 needs a new emotional conflict. This would be an excellent use of Soulburner's character, except they've made the strange decision that Soulburner has also already overcome his trauma... offscreen.

Don't get me wrong, the Soulburner vs. Blood Shepherd episodes are good. Having Soulburner and Flame trick Blood Shepherd with their acting is a fine gotcha, but think about what we could have gotten if Takeru was allowed to grow through the story itself -- Yusaku and Flame both encouraging him, Takeru finding strength in Yusaku, the only person he knows who has been though the same trauma as him, but was able to stand up to Hanoi nonetheless. Instead, we don't even get to see Yusaku's reaction to Soulburner's backstory, he's stuck outside the bubble.

I can see why people like him though. Both his designs are good, he gets some funny lines, some good duels. I like his trait of fanboying over the heroes who saved Vrains, EXCEPT that the duels vs. Go and Blue Girl were unforgivable and I WILL go deep into that in their sections, mark my words anime boy.

Most of all though, I like his relationship with Flame.

⇀ Flame

He's funny. Like if Jack was five inches tall. I like how he just casually puts words in Soulburner's mouth. ("Prepare yourself! Soulburner never shows mercy!" "What? I didn't say that." "You didn't?") Flame thinks he's the Ratatouille rat in this relationship, both of them think they're the one calling the shots, and that's great.

I wish that element of their relationship had come back in the Soulburner vs. Windy duel, which is another case of introducing an interesting challenge for the characters -- in this case, the idea that Flame should want to be independent of Soulburner -- only to once again go Psych! Bamboozled! They were just acting the whole time!

Ah yeah, they sure tricked me into thinking we would get some good character development...

It's a shame, because I think Windy actually does raise an interesting point. The audience is biased towards thinking of Soulburner as the one who calls the shots -- he's the one who plays the cards, who declares attacks and announces effects, while Flame is the one who looks like a mascot and provides standard Yugioh audience commentary. It makes complete sense for Windy to instill doubt in Flame this way, because the conflict between the Ignis and humans is that humans think AI should only serve humans, and Ignis believe in their own free will.

For reference, here is the exchange that happens (paraphrased) after Soulburner refuses to listen to Flame's advice not to set a card (though this is just part of the act)

Windy: Don't you want to fight using your own will, Flame? Partners are just a nuisance. That's why I got rid of mine. Soulburner: Nuisance? During the Lost Incident, the captured spent every day in an unimaginable situation. Despair, day after day... When we were freed, we were so happy that our hope became reality! But you stole that away from your partner because you thought he was a nuisance? Flame: Windy, we were able to be created because they spent day after day enduring despair. We should be thanking them. We have no right to steal their hope!

Flame's rebuttal to Windy is so bizarrely essentialist. The Ignis don't owe anything to the Lost Incident victims, much less gratitude. They didn't ask to be created, and they are not responsible for the crimes of SOL. The message should have been something like "I chose Soulburner with my own free will."

Flame does not owe Takeru anything, but he chooses to be his partner, because the whole point of the Ignis is that they have free will. That is the proper resolution to Windy asking "Don't you want to fight using your own will?" The answer is no, they choose to fight together. Even if Soulburner appears to be the one calling the shots because he wears the duel disk, they are equals, and the reason Soulburner takes the lead is because Flame trusts him. 5D telepathy chess undercuts that.

⇀ Lost Incident Victims, and Alternate Season 2 thoughts

The more I think about it, the more I wish they used the different Lost Incident victims to explore different reactions to trauma. Yusaku used it to fuel him and his revenge, Takeru went down a route of self-sabotage and lashing out, Jin shut himself down, and Spectre, uh, decided to be Like That lmao.

Here's the set-up that I would have done for Season 2: after Jin is kidnapped, Yusaku decides to seek out the other Lost Incident victims to see if any of them have been targeted too, which could give them a clue on how to get Jin back. This is how he meets Takeru. 

Yusaku has to learn how to connect with people, which follows up on the season 1 finale, where he resolves to open himself up to others and tells Revolver that he wants to be friends. By befriending Takeru and helping him overcome his trauma, and eventually the other Lost Incident victims too, it builds up to the reprise of Yusaku vs. Revolver, where Yusaku finally succeeds in connecting with Revolver, who he realizes is another victim of the Lost Incident.

Jin and Miyu get to be actual characters this way, too, rather than just damsel devices. I'd also pay to see the deranged interactions Spectre would have with Yusaku.

[fivekrystalpetals]

In terms of writing, dabi > shigaraki atm. As a shiggy stan it does annoy me a bit. Shiggy was amazing back in 2020 but now you have people calling him mid tier villain and I can’t disagree with it. I blame it on deku’s arc and afo still being alive.

Yeah, sad as I am, I have to admit you are right. To be very honest, (and this is for me personally) I haven't had a memorable chapter the whole of 2021 save for maybe Touya's backstory. Ever since the War Arc got over, the manga feels as though the author has a checklist of items he got to finish and he is more focused in bringing the story to an end rather than writing coherent connecting arcs. The manga now reads like a different story altogether compared to the arcs written (and I especially loved) in 2019 and 2020. Even before that, the arcs were plenty interesting even for someone like me who isn't much invested in heroes. 

The manga these days seems to be going at a breakneck pace (at the cost of much needed heartfelt moments between the kids such as aftermath of war where??) yet if you look at the overall picture, the story hasn't moved anywhere at all. We are at a standstill both on the heroes and the villains side. (I have many complaints about how the much awaited traitor plot was handled but I don't want to get into all that discourse so I will leave it at that lol)

Coming to Shigaraki, I guess this is all we will get to see from his pov, anon. The MVA arc and the War Arc (ch. 270 and Ch. 281 stands out both in writing and art) were the highlights of his character arc. Now that he is fighting for control, if I have to say, going forward his body will be taken over completely by AFO (so that Hero Deku can jump into save him). Meaning, he will simply become a puppet at the hands of his master and if we get to see him, it will be from either Deku, Spinner (and rest of LoV) and AFO's pov. I doubt we will see his coherent thoughts again (or at the most, we might get to see more of baby Tenko like we saw in Ch. 334). Most of the villains' side of the story, we will get to see from Toga, Touya and Spinner ig. Of course, AFO will pop in to mess up everything from time to time. I am waiting for the LoV to split away from AFO and his useless inefficient decisions.

I really don't want to compare Shigaraki's and Dabi's writing tbh, but the one common problem with both is that the abusive father figures are dominating the plots. We get to see more of Dabi because Endeavor isn't with him. But the rest of the Todofam? Do we never get to see any of their povs? Even Shouto has been shoved to a side in favor of his Dad who does nothing but feel pity for himself and how things turned out because of his own faults he isn't ready to admit yet. I have been seeing him from forever; I don't need more panels dedicated to him to know that He Is Sad. I really wanted to know the reactions of the rest of the family members (esp. Rei) post Dabi Reveal. Give me Natsu, Give me Fuyumi; I want to know what they are thinking about their long lost brother and their little brother who are the ones suffering the most atm. Shouto's "He is me" line was a good one esp. as he thinks back to his encounter with Dabi in the woods. But that was about it. I wanted at least a panel or two of Shouto talking to his Mom and his siblings before they went in to confront Endeavor. Why was all of that done offscreen? idk.

Also, the latest chapter? I know everyone seems very happy with it but is it just me or the Dabi we see in here either has had a big leap of character development or he is very out of character? I expected at least a scene between him and the rest of the League wherein they demand where his loyalty lies and then he realizes he has got to choose a side/he can't keep whittling himself away in the name of revenge/he has got people who care about him in his found family (and he cares about them too in some ways, of course coz Dabi isn't all that huge at showing emotions. The way he burnt down Toga's old house of abuse was sweet tho.) You know The Realization MomentTM before he starts warming up to the League? If I have to bet, that has been done offscreen as well :(

[purplerose244]

My thoughts on Ninjago the Island!!! 🏝🏝🏝

So, gotta be honest... this is not a Blind reaction thing, I actually watched it in French first so I know most of the stuff already 😅 It's entertaining, it got great animation, but nothing more than that in my opinion 🤷‍♀️

Still there is stuff I liked or I want to point out, and finally I'm seeing the English version so I can actually understand what the HECK they are saying 🤩

Alright, nothing else to say, here we go!

UNCHARTED

I haven't actually seen anything Clutch Powers related before Ninjago, is he always like this? I love that he is a jerk honestly, just wondering 😂

Press F for respect for intern Dwaine (at least he seems to like being... used?)

Clutch: It's just a bunch of rocks! It's not alive!

Totem: I'm about to end this man's whole career

Wait, Misako is part of the explorers club? ... that would have come in handy in season 11 to get the scroll of Forbitten Spinjitzu from the club instead of begging uncle Powers for it... *sighs* I don't mind plot holes in Ninjago like most fans I think, but if you wanna make Misako relevant again at least pay attention to the details 😅

Wow, after the end of season 13 I would've thought Wu was going to go through a midlife crisis, not Misako 😂😂

Oww, everytime I hear I get 😢 Bless your soul Kirby, always in our hearts 🖤🖤🖤

Well hello Brian

Always nice to see you 😊

Twitchy Tim must have been pretty interesting to voice 🤔 I like him enough, he's fun and all, maybe not at the level of the characters we got last season

Okay, the place is called the STORM belt, there are LIGHTNINGS, and the sand of the beach is BLUE. Are we gonna address any of these similarities to our Bluebell here or not? 😅

Wait, Tim was giving a hot air balloon tour, does that mean other people where with him? What of them? Are they dead? Did he let them die on the island?... am I reading too much into this? Probably 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Alright, the part of the boats? SO COOL 🤩🤩 I literally can't say anything bad about the animation at this point

Why did they think leaving Kai, Jay and Cole on one boat was going to be a good idea 😂 Also Zane just randomly doing sick tricks on his vehicle, love that nindroid

I'm guessing Nya is keeping her water abilities for her season 🤷‍♀️

Yep, yep, this is why the creators try to keep Pixal out of the adventures, with her everything is way too cool and easy to access to 😎😎

Twitchy Tim: There are statues that become alive!!

Lloyd:... so it's a season 2 stone army ripoff, we've seen worse

It's a cute episode overall 👍

THE KEEPERS OF THE AMULET

OKAY THE INTRO IS SO FREAKING COOL 🤩🤩🤩🤩

So Twitchy Tim has temporarily taken over Jay's role of spazzing out and complain about worse case scenarios... in another occasion they might have bonded over this, maybe 😂

Okay, survival position? MOOD

Nya: DRAGOOON 😱

Me: DRAGOOOOOOON 😍😍😍

Why am I not surprised that Jay was the one that named him Zippy? 💙 Also HE'S SO CUTE 💕💕💕 Love how in every adventure, we always get very different types of dragon in this show 👌 I'm a simple person, I see a dragon... 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

Oh-oh, it's the "Lloyd's done with this crap"'s face

This means serious business... am I that used to LEGO characters that this way of crossing arms on the chest looks almost normal to me? 😅

Soooo, Master of the Mountain clearly gave Cole too much development... because now he got demoted to "the one who is always hungry" 🤦‍♀️ I'm all for Cole's endearing love for cakes, which is super relatable, but if you're gonna push it on his fun side, at least be coherent 🙃

Is it just me or it feels like the writing of this special was made by someone different from the one of season 13? Like, it's not bad, just less engaging and witty. For now. Maybe I'm being premature 🤷‍♀️

New way of nerfing powers, we got... weird, sucking power totem thingies... OKAY

My gosh I really can't say anything about the animation, look at that! It's all cinematic with such a light! YES!! 🤩

I'M SORRY

WHY ARE WE LOOKING OVER THIS??? IT LOOKS LIKE COLE'S LAVA PUNCHES BUT THEY ARE JAY LIGHTNING FEET??? IT'S A GREAT IDEA AND I WOULD LOVE TO SEE IT AGAIN??? WHY ARE WE IGNORING THIS??? 💙💙💙💙

So they at least addressed that lightning isn't a Jay's thing only anymore 😅

Alright, Jay having a mental breakdown because of a bridge because it always breaks, that's the Bluebell I know and love 😂😂 Nya telling him to keep moving was cute too 💙❤💙❤

Okay, I'm sorry but this really bothers me, what kind of lightning can instantly knock out the MASTER OF LIGHTNING??? Like, my gosh, really??? I hope they give us an explanation, like it's some sort of special lightning, because this really doesn't sit right with me. Jay is lightning proof, we've seen it in Skybound, we've seen it in Sons of Garmadon, I DON'T BELIEVE HE WOULD JUST BE KNOCKED OUT LIKE THAT 😡😡😡

Soooooo, storm amulet? Being one with the lightning? Is that the reason why Jay got to be the sacrifice? 😅

THE GIFT OF JAY

Alright, I am kinda looking forward for this one, what did Bluebell actually say or do to get him into trouble this time 😂😂

Oh, he just... introduced himself... well that was underwhelming

SENSEI👏YOU👏ARE👏A👏FREAKING👏GOD👏STOP👏GETTING👏KIDNAPPED👏BY👏RANDOM👏VILLAINS👏

Bring ooooon Lloyd Grills 💪

Okay I did like the little speech, definitely resonates with how Lloyd survived this long even though everything wanted him to give up, even his father... I'M NOT CRYING YOU'RE CRYING 😭

Jay out there making the real questions 😂

Awwww Edna used to call him gift of Jay? I can totally see it, so cute 💙💙 Makes even more sense if Libber actually left Jay at the Walkers' door...

Pff, Jay made the connection I would've done honestly 🤷‍♀️ Like, him being the master of lightning really didn't give these dudes any impression or inspiration? Any cool idea, full Road of El Dorado style? 🙃🙃

Lloyd out there abusing of the animation budget 💚💚💚

Somehow these ninja never actual sneak in, it's always a huge mess everyone knows about beforehand 😂 It's familiar though, I'm used to it and happy with it 👍

I might not be the biggest Misako fan, but you know what I am a fan of?

LEGO HUGS 😍😍😍😍😍

Dang it uncle Powers, you just got here to make a mess did you 😅

Not the first person of the fandom to say this, but Jay looks absolutely lovely with that flower crown 🌺🌺🌺

Oh poor greenie

Lloyd just has the worst luck 😓

Jay: Why would I be the gift?

Kai: Yeah who would want Jay?

Nya: Huh, me?? 😡

Got some very good Jaya for this little special, can't complain 💙❤💙❤

I mean, not matter how big of a snake Wojira might turn out to be, we've already seen the biggest and the second biggest snake of all so 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Whoa, at last... IT WAS THE FIRST SPINJITZU MASTER THAT HAD SOMETHING HE SHOULD'VE TOLD WU A LONG TIME AGO!! 😱 Wu, you got pulled a Wu, how does it feel? 😂

Again, Jay freaking out, kinda my jam it's too funny 💙💙

Wow Kai way to be hominous offscreen 👏👏 I miss talking about my flame babe, this really isn't his time 🤷‍♀️

THE TOOTH OF WOJIRA

So when I first watched this I was genuinely, really excited about knowing the truth behind all this. It turned out very different from what I first thought, but at least in this case it's okay (besides I was pushing with the lightning meaning just to see Libber again 😅😅😅)

I feel like the guys get their powers stolen or blocked so much it takes them a minute to remember "Oh wait I can literally burn my way out" 🤷‍♀️

SPINJITZU YAY 🤩

I... forgot that Misako knows how to fight 😅 She knows how to do spinjitzu too if I remember correctly...

NYA BEING LIKE "OUT OF THE WAY IMMA SAVE MY BOYFRIEND AGAIN" ❤💙❤💙

Gotta love how they were all crazy worried about Jay, like, this is something that never changes through the show. They really care so so much for each other 💕💕💕

Ooohhhh, okay, so Wojira does seem to be the main villain of next season according to the story. I remember Tommy saying that we needed to have faith and this is probably why. The special was okay, nothing too much, and hopefully that too much we will see in Nya's season 😍😍😍

What the- pff, I didn't notice this the first time 😂

At this point I can't tell if that one short with the chicken of the movie carried a hate or a love for chickens in the actual show 😂😂

Nice to see Jay standing up for himself at least for a little while 💪 Also Lloyd being "He's our trouble", aww family 💜

THERE IT IS

MY BRUISE HEART IS SOARING 🖤💙🖤💙

Gotta give props to the voice actors, voicing an explanation while fighting must be pretty hard! WE ARE BLESSED WITH AN AMAZING CAST!!! 🤩🤩🤩

And there he is, our favorite jerk... shaved Ronin 😂 He does look a little weird, but it's fair, new animation and all. Not the weirdest until now 🤷‍♀️

I genuinely had to make a mental check to see where we are with Ronin now, like, he started as a villain, then a partner, he betrayed us, became an ally, he hunted the ninja, then joined them, that timeline was erased, he was around in SoG and... wow this man is chaotic 😂😂

Yaaaay, Twitchy's last minute redemption act! Lloyd is too good at motivational speeches 👏👏

A bit of Lava OTP/BrOTP

Cause it's good for the heart ❤🖤❤🖤

Okay, Scooby doo reference, why not? Also honestly, I'm confident Ronin has seen A LOT of jails and prisons... probably won't stay behind bars for long 😅

Mammatus: sorry for imprisoning you and almost killing your friend

Kai: no biggie, that's how we make friends in this show

Alright the "And Clutch Powers" gag made me chuckle 😂 ... wait where is he- DANG IT UNCLE POWERS

Okay, this is the last time I say it I promise, but I mean. I MEAN

THE ANIMATION GUYS 😍😍😍

Aaaaand sensei you jinxed it 😅 But you apparently awakened Nya's season so I'm gonna forgive you on this one 😉

FINAL THOUGHTS

There are a few little details that bothered me a little, and it wasn't as exciting as I maybe hoped it was going to be, but it was fine. Enjoyable still. These characters make me like the show, even when it got nothing too impactful 🤷‍♀️

But I got triggered about that lightning thing with Jay 😅 I guess I'll just fanfic whatever I had in mind...

Don't have to repeat myself about the animation *chef's kiss*

The writing was really less engaging, a little normal in a way? Idk just a feeling. Nice to see Ronin again though, I really like him. And nice to see Jay freaking out, I really like that too 😂

To be honest I wanted to put down my thoughts on this one because I REALLY wanna do the same with Nya's season 🤩🤩 I already know that Maya is gonna be there and I am so HAPPY already!!! 💙💙💙

So that's it from me! Thank you for reading me ranting, see you next season! 😊

[phdna]

Curious about your thoughts as a long time comic fan: what do you think of the whole White Wolf narrative that marvel seems to be taking with Bucky in the MCU?

I simply love him and his arc as the WS in the comics, and am unsure about making him the white wolf, even though it's very clear that his journey to becoming the Winter Soldier in the movies is quite different from the comics. Idk, what do you think?

Yeah, so. I do have Thoughts about it. I started writing about it and ended up writing you a whole novel, sorry lol

The tl;dr version would be that I don’t know that I vibe with the White Wolf thing. The longer version... is long.

Since I grew up reading about perma-dead Bucky, his Winter Soldier arc in the comics was always going to be a hard sell for me - how can you convince me that undoing decades of canon is Actually A Good Choice and not just a gimmick? Ultimately, what won me over is how careful Brubaker was to pick a theme and follow it across its many facets. We see Bucky as a child struggling with the shame and regret of feeling like he can’t live up to his father’s orders. We see Bucky as a teenager being trained to follow whatever cruel order the army gives him because it’s For The Greater Good, and at the same time, we see how desperate he is for Steve’s approval at all times and how that’s tied up in his head with respect and authority and a lot of unresolved issues with his father. Then comes the Winter Soldier, and Bucky’s entire existence becomes about following orders, even though there are some orders he can’t be made to follow. Then comes the BuckyCap days, in which he more or less feels like he has no choice but to pick up the shield, but he starts exploring his agency in small and big ways. And then he becomes the Winter Soldier again, but - crucially - this time he’s taking the name that represents him at his most powerless and he’s reclaiming it in a wonderful way because only Bucky can be the Winter Soldier - there’s no other hero I can think of who has the gruesome skills and the modus operandi of an antihero combined with the idealistic, almost naive attitude of a Golden Age hero. For me it works because it’s amazing to have Bucky figure out that his identity includes everything he’s ever been while at the same time being something he can choose by himself according to what he wants and needs from life. It really is just a very beautiful way to wrap up this entire theme.

Now, the MCU. For all the changes the MCU has made to Bucky’s character, they’ve done a decent job of keeping this theme more or less alive throughout his appearances imho, which makes me very happy! It’s less well-developed because he’s not given too much screentime, but even fans who have never picked up a comic book got the theme from the subtext in the movies - how Bucky’s story is about agency. TFatWS explored it further. But I just don’t see what the White Wolf adds to this theme? I mean, it sure is a way of having him leave the Winter Soldier mantle behind for a while before he’s ready to take it up again. But he could, y’know... be Bucky. There’s no need to come up a whole new identity to him.

The thing is, imho, that people who aren’t into comics don’t have any reaction to the White Wolf because it’s not a household name, and people who are into comics are like “Why. He has nothing in common with 616!White Wolf.” Nobody is going to hear “Bucky is the White Wolf” and go “Oh my god that is awesome I’m gonna go talk to all my friends about this right now!!!” So the MCU really needed to develop the White Wolf angle like they do whenever they introduce a new mantle to the MCU, but they never do develop it, they just seem to expect the fans to come up with a plot in their heads with almost no clues to work with. To be honest, I’m still not even 100% sure whether White Wolf is a hero name or a civilian nickname! Because titles in Wakandan culture seem to be a big deal and come with a specific duty, but Bucky is implied to have been essentially a civilian under royal care and protection, not someone who was expected to do anything in particular. I had initially guessed that was just a code name to avoid other people finding out his identity, but if it’s a code name, then Marvel sure is clinging on to it more than they’ve ever done with other code names used in the MCU. (”Natalie Rushman” doesn’t follow Natasha all over the MCU!)

Of course, if we had a movie exploring Bucky’s days as the White Wolf, or even if we got a single poignant scene specifically about what being the White Wolf actually means, then sure! That could’ve been interesting and meaningful. But almost all of the White Wolf saga happens offscreen, so imho this detail doesn’t explore anything as much as it adds a random unconnected subplot to the Bucky’s main plot. And I don’t think everything in the MCU has to be Very Important! For instance, I think these random name drops could’ve worked if they were just fanservice, you know? It’s hard because Bucky doesn’t have many mantles, but I don’t know, maybe have him be The Sargeant and people would guess that’s a reference to The Captain or whatever - at least it comes from his corner of the 616 instead of stealing a Black Panther character who has nothing in common with Bucky.

Basically, I find the whole thing to be WAY more confusing than it’s worth being. I’m sure there are fans out there who are making amazing things with this concept, but it’s just not for me. I wish Marvel had 1) developed this mini-arc better, 2) picked another name and made it just a fun easter egg or 3) not given Bucky a Wakandan title at all and just let him spend his time between HYDRA!Winter Soldier and hero!Winter Soldier as Bucky Barnes.

So. Yeah. I have many thoughts and they’re not very positive! I can’t say that it bothers me enough for me to spend much of my time feeling bad about this storyline (the way I do with other storylines I dislike), but whenever I do stop to think about it I just have a hard time understanding where this story even came from and why Marvel keeps bringing it up. I don’t think it’s even a bad idea, it’s just so random that I find it more... weird than awful, I guess. Thinking about it doesn’t make me go “THIS SUCKS, I HATE IT!!!!” just “...okay. sure. why tho.”

...now I’m thinking about it, this whole post could’ve just been “???????????” and that would’ve summed up my feelings just as well.

[gascon-en-exil]

Your view on fandom is fair enough. I'd like to add that while Edelgard would make a good villain (and does on two routes), Dimitri, in his madman phase, makes an even better villain. I didn't enjoy his redemption arc because it was clumsily done and an absolute drag to actually play through, so instead I enjoy the idea of a formerly kindhearted man losing himself to the point of becoming an irredeemable beast.

This doesn’t work very well however, in large part because, like Claude, Dimitri just isn’t important enough to the plot outside his own route. 

In VW it’s treated as a major reveal that he’s still alive at Gronder, but after you defeat him he’s killed offscreen by Edelgard’s forces and that’s that. He’s an almost random obstacle and not even the focal point of that chapter, and his motivation is then posthumously validated by Dedue taking it up and reappearing in Enbarr to help Byleth’s army and take his revenge. In SS Dimitri’s only Part 2 appearance is Byleth (probably) dreaming/hallucinating him being remorseful for his behavior after the offscreen Gronder battle, which is even less villainous and more tragic because he never opposes the player. It is considerably more random however, and as such Dedue carrying out the same role that he does in VW feels less natural although one could infer the same events happened to trigger it. 

CF has Dimitri fully sane, with the easy visual symbolism of him still having both eyes, as he was never separated from Dedue and forced to go on the run by Cornelia. It would be overly generous to call him a hero antagonist however, as - again like Claude - he’s only relevant to the one chapter and gets no development outside it. There’s a symmetry to Edelgard getting to finish the hit she ordered in the Prologue by killing both of the other leaders, and Dimitri gets to shine in the tragic role of a leader defending his homeland from conquest via his reactions to the deaths of the other Lions and especially his secret death scene with Dedue, but he’s still not important or developed enough to be an antagonist much less evil enough to be a villain. One of CF’s structural problems is that its conflict lacks focus, with only Rhea even somewhat established as an overarching threat outside of the chapters where you fight her. That’s exacerbated by the route’s short length and breathless pacing, not to mention the hype for the postgame war against the Agarthans which is narratively unsatisfying to say the least. It really is just Edelgard and her precious teacher vs. the world, with Hubert having the supervillainous time of his life in the background.

With all that in mind I don’t see where Dimitri works as a villain. The opposition between Byleth and Edelgard is always front and center because the concept of an Avatar and lord fighting was the basic concept the game was built around. Even in AM where Byleth matters least and the protagonist/antagonist relationship works much better because Dimitri and Edelgard are both actual characters, the self-insert still plays a disproportionately large role in shaping events. This is a much bigger issue with AM than its pacing, which is easily the best of the routes and ends on a much stronger note of finality compared to VW and SS which have to keep going after Edelgard dies even though her war drives the plot of every route. That’s why she’s the antagonist for 3/4ths of the game, and why her being the source of the main conflict makes her villainous through her methods and the methods of her allies. 

Dimitri and Claude are bit players outside their respective routes, but one of the big reasons that people praise AM’s writing is that Dimitri’s character arc directly ties into the opposition between him and Edelgard through their history and her alliance with the people who perpetrated the Tragedy of Duscur. (This stands in contrast to Claude whose arc and motivations have nothing whatsoever to do with Edelgard, leaving her as only an obstacle to his ambitions with awkward implementation on account of VW being mostly a copy and paste of SS.) Parts of Dimitri’s development are rushed, but there’s an appreciable back-and-forth between him and his advisors as well as his established support network of full characters (read: not Byleth) who can criticize his actions and facilitate his growth. There’s also his framing, which is that of a traditional FE lord from start to finish with the subversive detour in the middle through his mental deterioration and eventual recovery. In their ending tapestries Edelgard is the red-draped conqueror with the smirking sorcerer in black behind her throne, Claude the yellow (in FE terms, neutral) statesman, and Byleth literally deified as the full realization of the self-insert fantasy - but for Dimitri the blue lord his ending involves playing with orphans in an image as benevolent as it is mildly saccharine.

And at least Dimitri has an arc; Claude has the aforementioned problem with his goals not aligning with the main conflict of his route, whereas if Byleth or Edelgard ever change at all they’re done by the end of Part 1 and after that they’re just seeing their stories through to the end. Another common critique of CF is that no one ever seriously questions Edelgard’s actions or challenges her in a meaningful way: Randolph and Ladislava’s death are almost comically unimportant, her response to the nuking of Arianrhod pivots not on the people who died or the betrayal from within but on her immediately lying about it to the Strike Force to further scapegoat Rhea*, and while before the final battle she raises the potential for conflict with Byleth being connected to the goddess and her children nothing comes of it other than Sothis’s Crest stone disappearing at the end for no apparent reason and Edelgard still getting her happy ending with Byleth anyway. While all that may be preferable for a power fantasy compared to AM repeatedly beating Dimitri over the head with his failings until he grows as a person, it’s not great for characterization. I also maintain that Hubert is a better center for CF as a power fantasy anyway, as he’s much more straightforward about his morally bankrupt actions and lacks the tonally dissonant scenes Edelgard has that are intended to play up her romance with Byleth. (He has comparable scenes of course, but they’re all confined to the support system where that sort of thing normally occurs and aren’t part of the main story.)

So to sum up, everything in FE16 outside of CF frames Edelgard as its main antagonist, and even in CF despite some commitment issues the signs of her villainy are still present. Dimitri by contrast is too secondary a character outside AM to ever be a proper antagonist, and too morally undeveloped and tragically framed in them to ever be a villain either.

*While CF Chapter 16′s title, “Lady of Deceit,” superficially refers to Cornelia, there’s some heavy irony in that it could just as easily apply to Edelgard herself considering it contains the most blatant instance of her lying to her supporters. Even before that, the chapter only happens because she feints toward Fhirdiad but secretly plans to besiege Arianrhod instead, to the confusion of several in the playable cast.

[ks-caster]

It’s Like Watching Fanfiction – An (Un)Necessarily Long Critique of The 100 Seasons 6 and 7

Ah, the familiar cry of the content-starved fan, particularly as our favorite shows descend into the depths of mischaracterization, unexpected ships, hiatus, abrupt cancellation and shock-value death endings. I’ve said it myself about so many of my shows, while wanting to spend some time watching the characters but not wanting to re-hash episodes I’ve nearly memorized: “I wish I could just watch fanfiction!”

But the further into seasons 6 and 7 I’ve gotten, the more I’ve come to realize that my dream of having new and exciting possibilities for the characters come miraculously to a screen near me wouldn’t be the pleasant experience I’d imagined.

Now, depending on the type of ending you like – hopeful but with a lot of lose ends left to your imagination, or bittersweet but more definite, you could consider either seasons 1-4 or 1-5 their own complete stories.

Both seasons 4 and 5 ended in a way that suggested an unknown but likely positive future. They could have been considered conclusions for the main characters’ developmental arcs, and while season 5 went a little off the rails in terms of offscreen character development and sudden new characters, they both stayed fairly close to the original concept: survivors living in the ruins of the apocalypse. All four (or five) seasons emphasized the importance of the found family dynamic (although those dynamics shifted radically in season 5 due to the time-skip, they remained an important source of character motivation).

But seasons 6 and 7? Those feel like I’m watching fanfiction. And I don’t love it.

A story told on a whole new planet with a new environment, culture and cast of original characters was always going to feel like an AU – it sort of is, no matter how you swing it. If that was all that had changed, then I think the story would still feel cohesive.

If it weren’t for the timey whimey bullshit.

Now, fun fact: when reading fanfiction, I love time travel stories. I haven’t posted any myself but I’ve sought out and read them voraciously, for every fandom I’m in. I love the idea of characters meeting themselves or their friends at radically different ages, plot points and levels of experience and the way that changes things for both groups. (Yes, I’m also a Whovian if that wasn’t blatantly obvious). I also love a good amnesia arc. And I DID think that the Josephine/Clarke body possession thing was pretty cool.

So why did season 6 and most* of season 7 fall as flat for me as they did?

The simple fact is that some things – and characters’ emotional dynamics are one of those things – are so much easier to get across in writing than on screen. A good actor can make us feel the character’s emotions, but unless the film goes full-on Clarke’s mind space, we can’t really know what they’re thinking in individual moments. For the most part film as a genre has ways around this, but if it’s mishandled, then the emotional beats come off all wrong. (See for reference Tony Stark’s funeral where half the actors didn’t know what was going on due to Disney’s spoiler fears.)

If you’re going to include time skips in which things have happened and character dynamics have changed, you cannot handle it wrong.

Which brings us back to seasons 6 and (so far) 7 of The 100. So far to date we’ve had all of this occur either offscreen or asynchronously enough to be confusing to an audience watching the episodes in real time:

Jordan’s entire life prior to meeting Napkru in the waking world

Octavia’s character development while living on Skyring with the Diyozas

Hope’s first 22 years of life, on Skyring and (I presume) Bardo

Echo, Hope and Gabriel living on Skyring for 5 years with Orlando

Going back a little further, we also have the season 5 timeskip, which brought us Spacekru as found family, Clarke adopting tiny!heda, and Octavia building Wonkru. Now season 5 took care to show us Wonkru flashbacks and dedicate time to show Spacekru and the Griffin family loving on each other, making inside jokes etc. But it was still incredibly jarring for the audience in a lot of ways, because at the end of the day, we’ve spent four years with the character dynamics and development doing one thing, and no amount of telling us that they’ve had 6 years to do another thing while our time with them only lasted about one year in comparison is ever going to undo the importance of “show don’t tell.”

Let’s take Bellarkers’ beef with Becho for example. (Disclaimer: Since I don’t really have a strong opinion either way on the popular Bellamy ships, I hope that I’m representing what I’ve read from other people accurately.)

I understand cognitively that Bellamy and Clarke knew each other for one year (during which they were in a lot of intense situations that really didn’t leave them the emotional space to figure out how they felt about each other outside of “I don’t want to lose this person”) and Bellamy and Echo knew each other for seven years (six of which they had plenty of low-stress time to get to know each other, grow and mature side-by-side, etc.).

But that doesn’t compute on an emotional level when I as a watcher went straight from watching Bellamy and Raven tearfully eulogizing Clarke on the ring, to him turning up with a coffee mug and a plucky attitude to rescue her the second he finds out she’s alive and in trouble. I don’t think that could compute emotionally for me without having spent the last few years watching the dynamics shift and Becho happen. And that was with the writers giving me as a watcher an episode at the end of season 4 where Bellamy stops Echo from killing herself and connects with her on an emotional level, and then one at the beginning of season 5 where we got to see the spacekru dynamics, including them being together.

So we’re watching this show, many of us for the found family character relationships (god knows it’s not for all the positive happy feeling I get from watching *checks notes* ah, yes, characters having to constantly choose who to kill off in a string of increasingly huge and horrible genocides. *Side-eyes my life choices for getting into this fandom in the first place.*) Okay, we’re watching this show for the characters, and between seasons 4 and 5, many of those dynamics radically shift offscreen. Becho is the easiest and probably most talked-about example (well, and the Blake siblings, but the radical change shown in Octavia’s character between 4 and 5 makes that at least a little easier to choke down) but there are plenty of others, take your pick.

Although it makes perfect sense for a lot to change between separated groups of people in a half dozen years, it makes a lot less sense to an audience watching week to week, particularly when the show’s limited amount of screen time was too focused on plot to really delve into those changes and let us see and understand them. That was what made me think that the show was headed into jump the shark territory in season 5, but I really wanted to know what happened to my faves (Octavia, Raven and Memori, to be specific) so I kept watching.

Our fandom’s excellent writers spent the hiatus crafting mid-time-skip vignettes and missing character moments, and I spent the hiatus reading them. And I remember thinking that it would have been great if even a quarter of this content could have been put into the show to ease the audience into the dynamic shifts – but of course they’d never have the screen time to do all of that.

Especially, coming back to the main point, since written fiction allows the audience to see inside the characters’ heads, while television (usually) does not. It’s much easier to write a scene in which, say, two characters who have known each other for 7 years show that they’ve gotten into a relationship some time before the scene, and convince the audience that their relationship is good and healthy and genuine, than it would be to produce one for TV.  

And then we come to seasons 6 and 7 – the 2-part AU longfic, stuffed full of OCs, loosely connected to the “science” of the original show, and heavily reliant on memory-bending time travel as a plot device.

As season 6 airs, the audience hasn’t really had a chance to process all the radical changes from season 5, and already we have a Marper child running around furthering the plot, and Octavia walks into the Green Flash from Pirates of the Caribbean and walks back out with a personality transplant.

Meanwhile, Clarke gets an actual personality transplant, and it takes even the people closest to her a concerningly long time to notice. Now, if I’d read that in a fic, the writer might’ve taken care to remind me as a reader – particularly after a long hiatus between seasons – that with the exception of Madi none of Clarke’s friends have seen her for more than a couple of weeks in 6 years, so them not noticing for a while that she’s behaving strangely isn’t really all that strange. But on TV, I don’t get to see Gaia’s thoughts when Clarke lets Madi go to school despite the danger – Tati Gabrielle’s facial expressions can only do so much to make up the difference. Because the time spent apart was not (and really could not be, based on the structure of the show) properly acknowledged on screen, scenes like that one leave audiences floundering and pointing out bad writing.

Having watched 7x02 The Garden, I think if I went back and watched season 6 after Octavia returns from the Anomaly, her conduct – especially around Bellamy – would make a lot more sense. (That was the plan for this weekend actually – but my damn Wi-Fi conked out…) However at the time it just seemed weird and unnatural. Had it been the only example of off-screen or asynchronous character development, it would have been a lot easier to swallow. However, season 5 happened, meaning both that I was still getting used to all of the new dynamics and that I had a higher standard for Octavia’s off-screen development, because we got enough bunker flashbacks that I felt like I at least understood Blodreina.

What would have made the whole thing make a lot more sense a year ago would have been if the hair and makeup department had made an effort to make her look older, so that we could see time had passed for her. Now, Marie is 33 in real life, and so was the Octavia who figured out that up is down and got Davy Jones Locker to send her back ran out of the Anomaly, so yes, that is what an actual 33-year-old looks like, and the media has distorted my perception of age. But from an audience perspective, I saw an actress playing a 23-year-old go in, and the same actress playing the same 23-year-old come out.

Gabriel pointed out that her hair was longer, but that only accounted for a few months of time. Since she went in looking dirty, wounded and exhausted, and came out clean, healthy and energetic, she could have passed for younger before I would have thought she was older. (In fact, I want to say there was a theory circulating at that time that the Octavia who came out of the Anomaly was actually a younger version of herself, and she was missing memories because she’d never formed them. I don’t remember whose theory this was though. If you know or if it’s your content I’m referencing please feel free to let me know and I’ll edit!)

In addition, the shifting loyalties in Wonkru near the end of season 5 complicated the character situation – in season 6, the majority of Wonkru peeps (lookin’ at you, Miller and Indra) switched over to the commander’s side. While Indra didn’t really have enough screen time to express an opinion about Octavia, Miller was very clear in season 6 that she was anathema now – which although that was probably a semi-reasonable step for his character, it just felt like someone took his Bellamy-and-or-Clarke-following season 1-4 character and popped it into his season 6 costume without taking the time to address the road he took to get there.

Post-lockerAnomaly Octavia had to face and slay her demons. (Grumbles and links the interested reader to this POST from @osleyakomwonkru regarding that horseshit.) Afterwards, she shows a major shift in personality, particularly towards her brother. Because we as the audience wouldn’t see her time on skyring for about year in real time (or learn that she was ten years older and therefore a lot more mature, the chemical changes of which would account for at least some of the difference even if she couldn’t remember anything else) we had no choice but to associate her change with the slaying of Blodreina, which seemed like a ham-fisted way of forcing her a quick and slick redemption arc and prepping The Blake Siblings to go back to being ride-or-die for each other in season 7.

Raven’s season 6 personality was also radically different from her 1-5 development – while I understand her having a remaining beef with Clarke and being emotional due to Shaw’s death (RIP!) the fact that the writing in season 6 reduced her to the nagging shrew trope until they needed her to do a coding deus ex machina just added to the feeling that I was watching someone take the characters around, change them to their own preferences (even if that preference was to push some into the background and make them tools for the B-plot) and toss them into an AU story. Which I could have enjoyed more if I had been reading it and therefore seeing inside the characters’ heads – and if I hadn’t paid for the privilege with ad revenue instead of voluntary clicks of the kudos/like/reblog/comment buttons.

Another issue with time skip relationship is exposition for the lesser known characters’ backstories. Both seasons 6 and 7 have so far had dramatic character mother death reveals that were conveniently not told to their most important people specifically because the appropriate time to tell those stories would have been during the offscreen time skips. I will (grudgingly) accept Echo, an adult making a conscious (and familiar) decision to change up her personality to fit into and survive within her environment, choosing not to tell a traumatic story that reminds her of her past. (She’s my next meta – stay tuned!)

I will not in a million years, however, believe that the Clarke Griffin who I watched for four seasons be set up as the blatantly obvious “compassionate mom-friend protagonist” adopted a traumatized 6-year-old, moved into said child’s village, burned or buried the bodies of everyone who lived there, and never ever brought up the child’s dead birth parents.

No way. The ONLY reason that could have possibly been scripted in that way was because that conversation needed to be there for plot reasons and the appropriate time for it to have been had was during the 6 years they spent off screen. Similarly, while (again) I’ll buy that Echo chose not to talk about her mom’s death with Bellamy before he decided to be a dick about it, I fully believe that the timing of that conversation was only there because if it had occurred on the ring where it would have been more appropriate, the audience would have missed it.

Now, picture this: if the scene with Madi had been in a written fanfic, Clarke could have said “you didn’t lose me,” Madi could have said “I didn’t mean you,” and Clarke could have remembered Madi telling her the story of her birth mom dying in her arms. Then Clarke could have mentally made the decision that she didn’t want Madi to relive that in an attempt to empathize with her, and she makes an effort to convince her that she’s fine. In just 2 or 3 paragraphs a written story could have effectively conveyed both the exposition and the emotional beats of the scene, concluding with Clarke making a (maybe misguided but still sweet) attempt to be a good mom by not dredging that up for Madi (or something – I’m not defending the crappy and inconsistent writing of Clarke’s parenting we’ve on screen so far).

Moving right along, we had a lovely flashback montage of Hope and Dev, which was sufficient to make me (and several of the tumblrs I follow) care about Dev at least enough to be saddened by his death. However, what we didn’t get was a damn crumb of flashback showing Orlando and Anomalykru developing any kind of familial relationship between him agreeing to train them, and whatever dynamic we were supposed to pick up on at the end of that episode. I got a little protective big sister vibe from Echo and Hope but that’s it. They apparently expended their allotment of emotion-inducing flashbacks on the dead guy, and failed entirely to make me give a shit about (as it turned out) the next dead guy.

Now we’re going into an episode with Octavia on (presumably) Bardo in the promo, so I’m guessing we get to see her skyring-self link up with her return-to-Gabriel-with-clean-hair self. As least with Octavia’s jumping storyline it seems like the writers have consistently made some kind of effort to fill in the blanks.

But we’re also looking at the rest of the season where Echo, Gabriel, Hope, oh hi Jordan I forgot about you again, Diyoza, Octavia, and probably Bellamy and Hoth!Kru (AKA team let’s follow Raven onto a strange planet without putting on suits or having an exit strategy, yay!) have all experienced asynchronous development over periods of multiple years. Given the show’s track record from seasons 5 and 6, I strongly suspect that this won’t be handled any better, meaning that the final season of this show is going to try not only to resolve all the plot points, but to toss in a bunch MORE offscreen character development and hope we catch on.

Beyond character development jumps, we also have Raven and Murphy losing their seasons 1-5 development in season 6 only to have to re-learn and re-change back to who they already were in seasons 4 and 5. Murphy learned to value his spacekru family and stop putting himself first 100% of the time, and yet his arc in season 6 happened. Raven has always been involved in the big life-or-death decisions, and had her being-the-bad-guy moment in season 4 with the rationing, but as we saw in 7x03 the writers really wanted to… redo all of that for her? The girl blew up a bridge full of guys and flash-fried a 300-person army when she was 18; blood on her hands may not be fun but what’s with seasons 6 and 7 acting like it’s something new?

While I’m aware that Jason said his seasons are individual movies (don’t admit that you’re bad at continuity buddy ‘cause that’s what it sounds like) seasons 1-5 and 6&7 are clearly telling separate stories (or 1-4, 5, 6-7 if you prefer). The trouble with 6&7 is that unlike seasons 1-4 (and sort-of 5) we no longer know the characters. Every time someone sits still too long, character-development wise, plot comes along and hits the reset button, tosses them into a wormhole for a couple of years and they come back with the same face but no continuity. It was difficult enough to deal with in season 5 – between 6 and 7 I just can’t keep up. (Even writing this meta, I have to keep going back because I remembered another character who fell into this trap.)

Now if a fanfic writer had done the exact same thing – same plot, same time skips, same organization – it would have played out completely different to the readers. We could have gotten to see inside the character’s minds when they arrived back on screen, seeing things with new, older eyes. We could have had minimally invasive flashbacks to show important exposition (like the disaster that was the conversation about Madi’s mom) and verbal descriptions to point out differences like Octavia’s ten-years-older body. Additionally, the plots of seasons 6 and 7 are so different yet full of overdone callbacks to the earlier seasons – if a fan was writing their own AU story but still wanted some of the trappings of the original plot I’d get it, but on a TV show written by the same people it just feels like they ran out of ideas.

Watching seasons 6 and 7 is exactly like watching fanfiction would be – but without the written and fan-made advantages of fanfiction, they fall flat.

*I do like season 7 better than season 6 because the content of the individual episodes containing Murphy/Emori/Raven and Octavia/Diyoza/bbyHope was still enjoyable content, so 2 out of 4 I have liked so far, despite this very very long rant I’ve just written explaining why as a whole I rather hate the season overall.

[linkspooky]

Where do you think Norman's arc will go from now (that he's met Emma and Ray)? Also, how do you think the story will end?

So, the two most important facts about Norman’s arc is that one, he’s the character of the trio between Ray and Emma with the least flaws, and two the majority of his arc has taken place offscreen. This is not a criticism, this is pointing out where the subversion with his character is going to come from. 

So when analyzing Norman you have to take into account that both Ray, and Emma sort of believe Norman to have been the best of the group. Even if Emma is the moral fiber, it was Norman who did the vast majority of the planning for the escape. That was why Norman was taken away from them in the first place, for story purposes it was to show that it was in fact not all Norman which led to their success and both Ray and Emma are strong and capable in their own right. In the end all three of them are equals with equal capabilities. 

However, the fact that Norman was taken from them and that he also chose to sacrifice himself resulted in both Ray and Emma sort of putting Norman on a pedestal. Especially when it came into terms with their perception of him and their assessment of themselves. While it makes sense for them to remember him in an idealized light when he sacrificed himself, now that it turns out he’s actually lived Norman the real person is going to compete with the image of Norman both of them have been carrying around this entire time in order to motivate their actions. 

Norman not only put the finishing touches on him and Emma’s plan while knowing that he would die soon, but he also correctly predicted Ray’s actions and told Emma how to save him. 

When they’re escaping, as he watches the scene in front of him Ray hallucinates Norman for a moment to come to terms with the reality of the situation. Norman also speaks what are probably just Ray’s own feelings on Emma that he himself can’t admit and can only see coming out of Norman’s mouth.

In the second arc when Emma has a near death experience after being shot, it’s Norman that she imagines as the one who stops her from falling and also swims up with her back to the surface. It’s his image that literally guides her back to life. Except, we know Norman is not a ghost that can magically appear to either of the two at the time because he’s still alive in both cases. 

The trio is an extremely tight knit family, and they all believe in each other’s strengths of course, but of the trio we’re shown the least of Norman’s flaws, and that makes sense as both Ray and Emma admire him so much and this story is mainly told from the perspective of the children. Norman sort of becomes the symbol of their survival and escape, even though technically it’s never been Norman from the start, it was always Emma’s ideals of saving everyone, of escaping with their whole family that guided them and Norman was the one most driven to make those ideals a reality out of his love for Emma. 

Not only do the characters in the story treat Norman as a symbol though, now Norman himself has taken on the role of a symbol leaving his original name aside and calling himself William Minerva instead. Someone who was a literal symbol, because he was a made up person that James Ratri created to inspire children to escape from the plantation system.

In the first chapter we’re reintroduced to Norman and his situation as posing as Minerva the entire chapter he’s drawn without a face while all of his followers for the most part are detailed. This is more than just to preserve the twist that Norman has taken to posing as William Minerva. It’s also symbolic of what Norman is doing, he’s casting his own identity aside and forcing himself to play a role which he thinks will be of greater benefit to everybody else in the long run. 

He’s playing the role of an idealized hero, a children’s fairy tale hero when he still is just a child himself. 

So, a lot of Norman’s role in the story is concealed but there’s some very important hints to take from the introduction of his character. While Emma is the ain character, remember it was originally Norman who was introduced as the supporting male lead, the one who found out about Connie at the same time, the one who promised to escape with Emma at the same time. It was originally Norman who made the promise to escape together with Emma.

And eventually instead it became Ray who escaped with Emma, while Norman sacrificed himself intending to die and be eaten there. What happened instead was a reversal of their situations. Ray had Emma, and the rest of his family as support while enduring the hardships of the next year, whereas Norman endured it all alone.

Norman had only one accomplice and even that person he failed to protect them during his escape, which he had to figure out how to escape from an entirely second plantation all on his own. 

What I’m pointing at here is Norman is originally set up as the supporting character to Emma and the main one at her side, but he gets separated from her for the vast majority of the time after the first arc, and not only that but afterwards Norman had to endure a bunch of trauma all alone. His response to that however, has been to ascend to a position of power instead and make himself out to be the savior of the neverland, rather than showing any signs of being a traumatized kid who has been separated from his two closest friends and the rest of his family for a year and a half and forced through terrible human experimentation alone. 

Now finally, returning again to the opening chapters, what exactly is Norman’s main flaw? Ray’s is his tendency to always rely on sacrifices, both himself and others and his willingness to dirty his hands, which combines with a low self image he has viewing himself as worth less than his two friends because of what he was willing to do and the guilt he had already carried. Emma’s flaw and strength are one in the same, her naivete and willingness to believe in others puts her in reckless danger but it also allows her to take paths that nobody else would try to take to save everyone, and also to not give up in circumstances where most others would give up. Emma is vulnerable and she constantly exposes herself to danger and that’s not something that can be brushed off easily in a world that’s constantly trying to kill them, but also it means that he wearing her vulnerability on her sleeve makes her the most emotionally developed and the empathic of the other two boys and because of that she’s able to easily imagine the situations of others and constantly tries to offer them to join her side. It’s Emma’s unrealistic dreams that drive the three to try to make the world into a better place.

Then, where are Norman’s flaws in that? In a way Norman seems to strike a perfect balance between the two. He’s calculating and cunning like Ray, and yet at the same time he also is somebody who wants to hold up Emma’s ideals. Even in the first chapter, Ray demonstrates that Norman has a critical thing when it comes to thinking that Emma is lacking. 

Norman’s the smartest of the three, Ray can compete with Norman in terms of brains but he’s the most well studied. Ray even says so later that it’s not like he has raw genius he just studied his hardest even though he hated studying because he wanted to be a tasty meal that he could deny the demons. and Emma of the three is the most flexible because she’s constantly changing her ideals. 

Also, not only that but the first tag match in the first chapter ends with a one on one battle between Norman and Emma. Which is clear foreshadowing that while Norman and Emma start out as each other’s closest ally, and Norman as Emma’s supporting male lead that eventually the two are going to disagree with each other and probably have to compete with each other which is why Norman was separated from the plot for so long and so much of him still remains a mystery. 

In the 4th chapter, Norman gets some more foreshadowing to establish his flaws. The first thing is Norman mentions over and over again his main motiation is Emma, who Norman sees as a better person than him. (This is a theme with the trio gosh guys stop comparing yourselves to each other). Norman feels guilty for being scared only of his own life when Emma was crying not for herself but for the sake of her family. From that moment forward he swore to be the one to bring Emma’s ideals into reality no matter how far fetched they are.

Norman’s actually more logical and more driven by cold blooded reason than Ray, however Norman doesn’t wish to be like that so he makes most of his actions for Emma’s sake rather than following his own ideals. Norman’s statements in chapter four are rife with foreshadowing. 

“I’ll use myself to accomplish it.” “I’ve always managed to accomplish what I set out to do.” “So, what are you going to do? Emma and I are insane. We’ve completely lost it.” 

All of these statements which seem perfectly innocent at the time because they’re a part of Norman’s speech to motivate Ray, and his declaration of Love for Emma, but they’re also words in a different context that could take a much darker turn. The Promised Neverland tends to play the long game when it came to foreshadowing, reveals about the demons taking on the characteristics of what they eat that became relevant this arc were foreshadowed as early as the Goldy Pond arc where one demon ate the brains of another and then started to hear two voices in its head instead of just its own. 

“I’ll do anything…” is a recurring theme for Norman. 

At which point I must mention, the difference between Norman and Ray’s flaws. Ray is a pragmatist, he believes sacrifices are necessary and is willing to dirty his own hands to make those sacrifices. The difference in the flaw then lies in the ideals. Ray is a pragmatist, whereas Norman is still an idealist because he believes in Emma’s ideals to this day. Whereas Ray makes sacrifices for the sake of survival and accomplishing realistic goals, Norman’s flaw is that he’ll sacrifice to bring Emma’s lofty ideals into reality. He’ll do it for the sake of ideals.

And as early as the first arc, Norman is referred to as willing to do “Anything”. However, that was when Norman was surrounded by his family and in a much mentally healthier situation, so his definition of “Anything” has probably changed between then and now.

See Norman’s flaw is that his ideals aren’t his own, they’re Emma’s. Not only that, Norman is constantly criticizing himself for not being as selfless as Emma is in his eyes. Which is not really fair criticism that Norman is levying on himself, for example he gets upset when he a child gets afraid of dying. 

He has trouble seeing with himself individually as a person, and dealing with his own weakness. Especially when he’s usually relied upon to be the level headed one of the three, the best of the three, the leader of the three, etc. etc. And his way of coping with his feelings of powerlessness in those situations is to go back to tactics. 

So, when Norman gets more and more upset he tends to instead of working through those feelings buckle down and see everything as pieces on the board. He believes absolutely in every situation he can overcome with tactics and making use of everything around him. Not only that his appointed task is not even for himself and his own ideas but rather to make Emma’s dreams a reality because Norman doesn’t see himself as good of a person as he sees Emma as. 

So, right away that’s a combination of 1) Norman having a natural tendency to go to extremes especially when it comes to using people, situations, and everything present to get what he wants out of a situation. and 2) somebody who adheres himself to ideals and is intensely dedicated to bringing those ideals into reality even if those ideals are not his own. 

So, it’s easy to see why after being isolated from his two moral compasses and then traumatized in a child experimentation lab, that Norman’s way of dealing with this trauma and turning it into something productive another piece on the board has been to completely shed away his own identity as pose as someone else (Norman doesn’t really believe he’s a good person like Emma is), that person being the lofty ideal of William Minerva rather than an actual person, and two once again saying that he’s doing all of this to bring Emma’s ideals into reality. 

Neither of these things are necessarily harmful on their own. WHen they’re together Norman and Emma make a good team, Emma being the one who makes the ideals and Norman the one who wants to use strategy and tactics to bring them to life. However, Norman has been separted from Emma for a long time and making these decisions all on his own, and there’s been a clear case in escalation in the stakes Norman is dealing with.

The first thing he does in the chapter he’s reintroduced in is burn a platnation to the ground with the comatose mass production children still inside. I’m not going to discuss the ethics of this, but Norman himself feels guilty for not being able to save those children which shows the weight he’s currently taking on his shoulders and the decisions he’s making. 

So Norman in the year he’s been apart from his family has gone from, “I want all my family members to escape alive” to “Burn everything down to the ground and rebuild a paradise from the lost ashes”. I’m not making a moral judgement on Norman’s philosophy, especially since he’s rebelling against a fundamentally corrupt system based on child murder and human farming, however, his views are extreme and they’ve only become more extreme the more pressure he’s put on himself to carry out those ideals for every child he takes in.

So then you have the breakdown of the trio again. Emma, the reckless idealist, Ray the pragmatist, and Norman the extremist. Norman is now the most  in the know, and the one of the group with the most resources but that doesn’t mean Emma and Ray are going to go along with him and follow out his plan. 

Otherwise, the story would have been split up on focusing between Norman and Ray + Emma on their journey to reunite with one another. However, there’s one important thing to notice about this latest chapter. 

Norman talks about again in front of Emma that all he wants is to make her dream come true, living with her family and being able to care for them in a world that’s not actively trying to kill them. This brings a smile to Emma’s face.

Then Norman says that he’s been preparing all this time to make Emma’s dream a reality, and not only after losing their base does he have a plant to do it, but he also has resources, contacts, and measures in place to carry it out. It sounds too good to be true, after losing their hideout and Yugo and Lucas, they find Norman again and the same old Norman who seems to have everything figured out and only wants the best or his family. 

Yet, this is what Norman suggests.

Genocide, to simply wipe out all the demons and make this second world a paradise for humans, because if all the demons were gone there would be no reason to feed on humans anymore. And the author even takes the time to panel out Emma’s changing reaction, from a smile, to a hesitant face, to a slow look of horror. 

This isn’t what Emma wants to do. Norman’s strayed far from Emma’s ideals in his methodology. Emma is going to reject his answer, because Genocide of an intelligent species is a net wrong no matter what ends you’re trying to accomplish with those means. 

The kids have been killing demons all along, but can they really kill every single demon in order to build a world better for them? When things such as child demons and demons families exist? That’s what is weighing on Emma’s face. Her ideals are clashing finally with Norman’s need to go to extremes to bring those ideals into a reality and it’s going to cause a conflict between the two of them. That’s what’s registering on her face right now as Norman says with complete confidence all they need to do is wipe out every last demon to get the happy ending they want. 

That’s the direction I think Norman’s arc will go from now on! Thank you for sending the ask, anon. 

[mycroftrh]

(Absolutely massive Rise of Skywalker spoilers below!)

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Okay, I must admit I’m legitimately confused by all the people saying Rise of Skywalker had Rey “just there to redeem/further the development of a man”.  It’s a valid criticism of the movie - when applied to Leia.  Leia died, as far as I can tell, to give Kylo a long-distance kick in the butt, with no further purpose to her death, and that’s one of my biggest issues with TRoS.  But Rey?

Rey gave Kylo about fifteen seconds of Force-first-aid and precisely nine vaguely encouraging syllables* - after having just killed him, and only because she was guilty about Leia - and that was basically her only “redeeming” interaction with him in the movie.  Otherwise, her plotline is not about him at all, and she doesn’t seem to be mentally/emotionally preoccupied with him at all, either.  She’s focused on training, then finding Sidious, then defeating Sidious.  Kylo keeps turning up, because he was set up as a main antagonist and tbh mostly because he’s being used to provide exposition, but she just kicks his ass and leaves.  At the end, she doesn’t know what happened to him after she left him in the middle of an ocean barely alive and doesn’t seem to care, he just shows up and helps her - entirely of his own accord.  She didn’t even ask him to, let alone plead with him to come back to the Light for her, or any of the things that everyone else seems to think she did.  And then he died to save her life, which is the exact opposite of how fridging works.

* ”I did want to take your hand.  Ben’s hand.”  Nine half-hearted syllables.  That’s it.

I mean, my number one biggest issue with TRoS is that in what’s supposed to be the “Skywalker Saga” it basically turned out in the end that Skywalkers weren’t important at all.  Or at least only as supporting characters.  The Final Battle was between two Palpatines and Ben wasn’t even THERE for the climax, he was busy climbing a cliff offscreen.  Nothing in TRoS was about Kylo/Ben, certainly not Rey’s arc.  He was an exposition-providing irritation in the earlier part of the movie and provided some minor aid in the latter part.  (While he did resurrect her, it’s arguable that wouldn’t have been necessary in the first place if he hadn’t been there to act as a battery for Sidious, and either way that’s after-the-fact wrap-up.  The only clear aid he provides in the actual defeat of the Order and Sidious is taking out the Knights of Ren, which took like a minute and a half and Rey could have done it just fine.)

Compare Luke in Return of the Jedi, who spends the majority of the movie (basically everything after Han’s rescue) devoting himself entirely to redeeming Vader.  He surrenders so that he can get to Vader do give him a redemption speech, he refuses to kill Vader despite great pressure to do so from absolutely everyone he knows as well as his emotions and his need to save the galaxy, he chooses to submit to torture rather than fight and potentially harm Vader, it’s his torture that leads Vader to turn to the Light, and then it’s Vader, not Luke, who (temporarily, apparently) defeats Sidious.  Luke’s ACTUAL only function in most of RotJ was to redeem Vader, both in terms of plot and in terms of what he was mentally and emotionally preoccupied with.  Rey’s focus and plot-role was the complete opposite.

I have admittedly only seen TRoS once so far (the last couple weeks have been quite something for me) so I may have missed something, but tbh it feels like everyone else was somehow watching a completely different movie than I was.  It... kinda feels like they’re assuming that since Ben and Rey kissed each other this must have been a Reylo fanfic, and therefore they’re assuming it must have followed the plot of whatever their least favorite Reylo fic was, without actually... having watched and seen what the plot of the actual movie actually was.  Which was very much not that.

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(Absolutely massive Rise of Skywalker spoilers above!)

[im-the-king-of-the-ocean]

For the Halloween asks, could you do 1 with the child being familiar!Zelda and/or Reya? I'll leave the others up to you

Since I got to choose, I decided to tie this fic in to a part of what I’m doing with Pieces.  This story is (currently) canon to the overall Piecesverse.  I intend to have Reya, Kanjigar, and Nomura appear in the larger story.

I didn’t plan on giving the au that name, it’s just the one that stuck and I rather like it.

(also I wrote a trick or treating fic with familiar!Zelda and barbmura already last year)

A few things you need to know:

Reya maintains her origins as the bio daughter of Draal and Nomura whose birthstone was the result of their drunken shenanigans one night.

Draal died offscreen prior to any story starting.  I will not go into details on this (it’s still under development).

Reya is being raised by Kanjigar for the most part.  However, she has once a year visits with Nomura on Halloween.

The Amulet of Daylight and the role of Trollhunter do not exist in the Piecesverse.  Thus, neither are the reason anyone is alive or dead.  I will also not go into more detail on this.

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The man dressed as a young Obi-Wan Kenobi halts.  His puts a firm hand on the shoulder of his charge, keeping her next to him.  His eyes narrow as he surveys the neighborhood.  Nothing seems out of place (and he’s been through enough of these Halloween Nights to know what constitutes normal for them).  He determines that they’re safe (or, as safe as they can be) and removes his hand from his granddaughter’s shoulder.

She looks up at him.  “Is something wrong, grandpa?”

Outside of the fact they shouldn’t actually be here?  No.

Kanjigar shakes his head.  “No, Reya.  I was simply getting my bearings.  Remember, we have to be careful on these nights.”

Reya nods her head vigorously.  “I know the rules.”

Stay close.  Be careful to maintain her disguise, no matter how uncomfortable she finds her glamour mask.  Don’t interact much with the human children.  Especially don’t say anything to them that could be construed as odd, off, or wrong.  It is of the utmost importance that no one realize they don’t belong.

The two start walking again.  Reya sticks close to her grandfather’s side, but she can’t help but glance at the human children rushing about the streets, approaching houses in the hopes of receiving candy.  They’re so different from herself, from trollkind in general.  It’s hard to believe she shares a relation with them.

Half a relation, Reya reminds herself.  She’s not fully part-human, after all.  She’s part changeling, which is half-troll, half-human, which makes her half-half-human.  Reya thinks for a minute, remembering her fractions.  So, that means she’s roughly a fourth human?  She keeps forgetting.  It doesn’t seem important most of the time.  At least, not to her.  She kicks a pebble along the sidewalk.  It’s certainly important to everyone else.

For as long as Reya can remember, secrets have been a part of her life.  There are things she knows.  Things she can’t ever tell someone about.  Ever.

She can’t tell anyone back home in Trollmarket about her shape-shifting abilities.  She can never let them see her change her colors.  She must always have the exact same coloration out in public.

She must never let slip that her mother is still alive, instead of gone like her father.  If she ever talks about her mother, she must stick to the story Grandpa Kanjigar taught her.  If anyone were to find out her mother is a changeling, horrible things will happen.

Reya doesn’t really understand all of it, though she adheres to the Rules regardless.  She doesn’t see how she’s so different from the other whelps, just because she’s part-changeling.  Changelings are trolls, too.  They started out as trolls.  Sure, they were changed a little, but they are still themselves deep down.  It’s like how she can change her coloration or make slight alterations to her appearance.  No matter what she alters, she will always be Reya.

Other trolls, they don’t see it that way, Grandpa Kanjigar told her over and over again.  His face would always shift to a solemn expression.  A long, long time ago there was a war and, he usually hesitated there, changelings did horrible things.

Because they were bad?  Reya asked once when she was very small, scared that that meant she was destined to be bad too.

Because that’s what they were taught to do, Kanjigar reassured her.  You are nothing like them, Reya.  He always hugged her close during these moments.  You are kind, curious, and good.

But, my mother?

Is complicated.

Reya and Kanjigar reach the safe house.  Its windows are dark.  No candy-seeking children approach it, but the two of them do.  Kanjigar knocks.  A special knock that was agreed upon a long, long time ago.

A woman with green eyes opens the door.  Her green eyes are the only constant trait Reya knows about her mother.  Every year they come to visit her, she looks drastically different.  Reya knows her mother has to have lots of disguises.  Like Reya herself, she must hide her true nature from troll kind.  But, unlike her daughter, Nomura must also hide from other changelings, who would seek to harm her if they ever found out that she was in contact with Reya and her grandfather.

Nomura squats down in front of her daughter.  Her eyes search Reya, looking for the true appearance behind all the magic concealments.  Reya knows her mother isn’t the most affectionate person, but she does love her.  If she didn’t, Reya believes Nomura wouldn’t try to really see her.

“He teaching you well?”  Nomura asks.

Reya nods.  “We had a lesson on throwing knives yesterday.”  She pouts.  “But I’m not allowed to dip them in poison yet.”

Nomura smirks.  She tussles Reya’s hair between her bony horns.  “That’s my girl.”  She stands back up, and makes eye contact with Kanjigar.  “Do they suspect anything?”

“No.  Yours?”

“Nothing.”

“Good.  Let’s get going.”  Kanjigar gestures.  Nomura exits her safe house and locks the door behind her.

She hands Reya a large pillowcase.  “You’re going to need this.  The houses around here are giving away a lot of candy this year.”

Reya takes the pillowcase.  She smiles at her mother.  “We’ll get even more since our costumes match.”  She’d planned it herself.  Her, her mother, and her grandfather are all costumed as Star Wars characters.

After a troll traded Kanjigar old tapes of the films, Reya had become obsessed with them, with the idea of an entire galaxy full of strange beings that all got along with each other.  More or less.  Sure, there was technically fighting in the movies, but no one batted an eyelash at how a lot of background characters were different species.

Reya, quietly, wants to live in that galaxy.  

Also to have a lightsaber and pretty much all of Padme Amidala’s clothes.

Since she can’t have any of that, Reya settled for dressing up as a mashup of Leia, Luke, and Han Solo (hair like the first, with a stone crystal cut to glow like the second’s lightsaber hanging from her belt, and the general aesthetic of the third).  She’d badgered and prodded her grandfather until he agreed to set his glamour mask to give him an appearance like Obi-Wan Kenobi’s.  Then, Reya got Kanjigar to contact Nomura ahead of time to make sure she dressed up as Padme.

Reya reaches the first house.  She knocks at the door.  Her breath momentarily catches in her throat as it opens.  She wonders if this is going to be the moment she, and her family, are found out.  But then the human smiles, says “aren’t you just the most adorable thing”, and gives her a fistful of candy.

She gets to move on, return to her grandfather and mother, and pretend for the rest of the night that they live a happy, peaceful life with none being the wiser.

[rwbyconversations]

“It was never about that,” or why Sun went to Menagerie

One of my favorite characters in RWBY is the absolute madlad himself, Sun Wukong. Be it his constant charisma, Michael’s consistently great vocal performance, his fantastic weapons and two of the better fights in their respective volumes, Sun has constantly been near or even in the top ten list of my favorite characters of the show. Perhaps the largest reason for that though is how Sun is a very consistent character in his own right. 

One of the more controversial choices Sun has made however was his following of Blake to Menagerie in Volume 4. Following this Sun got accusations of being a stalker, of only going so he could have sex with Blake, of being someone who didn’t care for Blake as a person beyond wanting what he couldn’t have. To which I say, “It’s OK for you to have bad opinions.” 

Regardless. I think this take on Sun is quite unfair, and as such, today I’d like to explain why Sun went to Menagerie and why he wasn’t doing it just to kiss Blake. Also be warned that the end of this post has spoilers for Volume 6 Chapter 1. Thanks to @fakebrandon for supplying many of the images in this post.

(how can anyone hate this pure lad istg)

1) Miscommunication and Sun’s bullheadedness

You know how I said Sun’s a consistent character throughout the whole show? I wasn’t kidding, even as far back as Volume 2.

Sun may not be as good a leader as Ruby, but he does get the core idea of what Ozpin taught Ruby (and she subsequently taught Jaune) in Volume 1- strength in unity. Ruby phrases it as how the leader must put their team before themselves, Sun instead sees it as working together as a group to overcome what one person cannot. His ideals are consistent about this- Sun always tries to help and when he can, he gets people involved. It’s quite fitting then that Sun is one of the students who takes charge during the Fall of Beacon, trying to get everyone out along with Port and Oobleck. 

Butting his head in is one of Sun’s most enduring traits, one fitting for the Monkey King. Unfortunately it’s also one that causes him no end of strife in Volume 4 when he goes after Blake. 

Sun, I love you, but what possessed you to think this was a good idea beyond the cool factor?

It’s largely due to miscommunication that Sun follows Blake- in his own words he thinks she’s going on a “one-woman rampage against the White Fang!” Sun’s moral compass refuses to let him sit by while he thinks Blake is risking life and limb on what’s effectively a suicide mission. Notice how Sun’s crush on Blake never comes up in the conversation, in fact barring Sun making a few cases of verbal innuendo, it’s never addressed directly in Volume 4. Sun is a bit flirty during the Sea Dragon fight with his quips- 

Keep in mind how Blake looks in these GIFs... we’ll be coming back to this later

But he doesn’t take it past that. He doesn’t even go for anything intimate like a hug once the Grimm has been destroyed. Sun goes for, of all things, a high-five. 

While yes, Sun could have approached Blake in a less foolish manner and gotten himself a few less slaps in the process, it fits his character to be so brazen. Sun’s always been someone who wants to help his friends, and that brazen, cocksure attitude was what Blake needed when she was recovering; someone who wanted to help her, but didn’t want anything from it. Keep in mind that Sun never tries to take advantage of Blake while she recovers, no hugs, kisses or even finger guns. Remember, he thought she was going on a vengeance mission, his crush never factors into it on a conscious level- no doubt it influenced his decision to stick the rest of SSN on a bus to offscreen land on a subconscious level, but Sun as a character has always remained true to his roots of getting involved for better or for worse. And in this case, for the better. And his following Blake is just nailing that trait of his to the wall.

2) Blake needed someone to help her learn to stop running

Blake had a bad habit of running from her problems in the early days of RWBY- she ran from her parents when they left the White Fang, she ran from Adam when he became a kill-happy psycho, and she ran from Beacon when said psycho decided to help Yang on a radical weight-loss program involving her limb. The one time she refuses to run at the Fall of Beacon, Adam punishes her for it with a gut-stab and a fresh amputation. So once she could, Blake ran. She ran before Yang had even regained consciousness from the wound sustained for Blake, apparently only staying on Patch long enough to make sure everyone on-board got out alive before running for the hills. 

While Sun followed Blake because he assumed she was going to war, Sun serves a vital purpose in Blake’s character arc of getting her to stop running from her problems and, at least partly, get her to stop blaming herself for the actions others take.

Blake only really proves Sun’s point during their confrontations across the last third of Volume 4- Blake is aggressive, outright slapping him twice, hard enough that he felt pain from it, something Arryn herself has felt was out of character for her. Even in spite of that he puts himself at risk to secure the scroll, taking a nasty shot to the shoulder in the first confrontation with Ilia. When Sun wakes up, Blake immediately begins making his injury about her and why she left, even ordering him to shut up at one point.

But Sun doesn’t give in to anger or snap at her like Adam would. Instead Sun waits for her to finish before calmly and gently calling Blake on her bullshit. Sun bluntly tells Blake that while she can make her choices...

This is Sun at his most solemn and quiet as he speaks to Blake, Michael kills it with his performance here. Sun only puts the pressure on Blake to finally make her realize the flaws in her self-loathing, to pull her out of the darkness that she believes her past with the White Fang has drenched her in and into the light of acceptance and redemption. Or as Like Morning Follows Night put it:

Life's not a game you can play to get even We all make mistakes, but we need to move on I know that you hate where you strayed Forgiving yourself is the only way Just look ahead, yesterday is gone

The kicker is, this works. Thanks to Sun helping to pull her out of her funk, the Blake we see in Volume 5 is much more balanced as an individual. She still looks on the past with regret, but now is more set on striding forward and changing the future, emboldened by the mistakes of the past. While Ghira and Kali would have pulled Blake back from the brink with the time, acceptance and love that only a parent can provide, and please do not assume I am undermining the valuable part they played in Blake’s recovery, Sun not just placidly taking Blake’s crap gives her the reality call that neither Ghira or Kali could have provided. Kali and Ghira gave Blake a home to recover in physically, and Sun gave her the confrontation she needed to confront her past emotionally. Sun was the only person Blake met at Beacon who really could provide that reality check- Weiss would be shot on sight, Ruby would be too pure, Yang too caught up in her own deep-rooted issues. Sun was the only person able to break her walls down and let the light shine on her dark psyche. The mindset that Sun helps her develop is a mindset that Blake carries into her next song, This Time, a duet with Ghira.

This time The ways of the past we'll get over We'll climb Enlighten a new state of mind And now I'll stand with you shoulder to shoulder Out of the ashes a new flame ignite Rise up from shadows and into the light

That lesson that Sun teaches Blake goes on to play a vital role in Volume 5- Blake uses those teachings to reach out to Ilia, to be there for her even though Ilia won’t want her to be there (Blake also spells out in this scene what I spent the past few paragraphs saying- she tried to push Sun out but his refusal forced her to better herself). 

And when Blake finishes, Sun just has this quiet, almost proud smile on his face. The student has become the mentor, and Sun’s proud to see Blake stepping up and resolving to help someone like he helped her. After all, you should always get your friends involved.

This guy is a literal ray of sunshine and even if you don’t ship them I hope you can appreciate how well their dynamic works. 

3) “It was never about that!”

I hope by this point I’ve made it clear that Sun’s intentions were far from romantic when he followed Blake, and that they were the last thing on his mind when he was on the island with her. Sun’s his usual charming self at a few points but barring an awkwardly hilarious scene with Ghira, Sun never tries to put the moves on Blake during Volumes 4 or 5, unless you want to classify “the moves” as helping beat up on Blake’s abuser. 

“All women are queens Adam!”

“If she breathes, she’s a THOT!” 

Sun and Blake have a lot of adorably cute moments in the Volume 5 finale as the Battle of Haven winds down. In those above GIFs of Sun saying “My hero!” Look how exasperated Blake is. Now look at her.

Her smile is genuine, it reaches her eyes and her ears perk up. That’s a smile of genuine gratitude. Remember when I told you to keep her stiffness in the V4 GIFs in mind? Still do that, but remember it in this case.

It’s only now after nearly two entire volumes that Sun actually offers a flirtatious line towards Blane- “No promises,” he quips as he rushes off into battle, giving Blake the chance to be the hero and help save her team from Hazel, Emerald and Mercury. He even tugs Blake towards her team after all the fighting has ceased, letting Blake have her chance to finally reconnect with her team- Sun, again, getting friends involved when he can.

This is the most intimate thing Sun instigates all show and he only does it after expressly earning Blake’s trust and admiration. Also dayum Sun you smooth boi

Sun sadly leaves the party in the next episode, since now that he’s helped Blake he has to go help the team he ditched in Mistral. Sun, as Michael put it in a panel pre-Volume 6, pulls his head out of his ass and decides to help his own team. They were fine while he helped Blake, but now that she’s back in the team’s safe hands, Sun needs to sort his own business out. Also he might just hate the cold, not ruling anything out. 

You can tell how close Sun and Blake have gotten just by the proximity of which they stand beside each other. When they spoke on the boat in V4 there was a large gap between them, but now they’re almost bumping shoulders.

Blake and Sun’s conversation serves as the capstone of Blake and Sun’s development across Volumes 4 and 5. Sun gently tells Blake that she doesn’t need him now that she’s back with her own team, and Blake is almost... resistant to him going. She’s grown used to Sun’s presence, a far cry from how she was in Volume 4, and part of her isn’t really ready to let go of her friend just yet. Sun obviously is holding a candle, but their conversation ends on a bittersweet note, with both acknowledging that Blake has some baggage to deal with, but Sun is confident that Blake can handle herself with the aid of RWBY. That said, he doesn’t rule out a reunion and another chance to rekindle that spark, confident that they’ll reunite. And Blake...

“Platonic” my ass, Blake’s even doing the Princess Diaries heel-lift!

While leaving Blake at the train to Argus, Neptune weighs in and feels like Sun is letting Blake go. Sun bluntly shoots that down, saying the line “It was never about that.” Because for Sun, it was never about pursuing Blake romantically when he went after her. Sun saw a friend, an ally who he cared for deeply, diving into a well of self-loathing and running off on what he thought was a suicide mission, so he dived in right after her to pry her free from the darkness. Does Sun care for Blake romantically? Without a shadow of a doubt. But Sun did not see a girl wrought with depression and anxiety and saw a romantic conquest, he’s not some shallow blunderhead like some people like to portray him as. Was he insensitive in his not coming forward immediately? Perhaps, but the two have moved on from that incident. 

To conclude, Sun is a fundamentally good person, a literal ray of sunshine who saw a friend of his in peril and put his own life on hold to help her. While Sun was likely influenced subconsciously by his crush for Blake, his overriding desire to help a friend in need was the primary motivation- in fact, Sun barely even touches Blake outside of friendly banter scenes. He never has an obvious romantic intent with Blake and only has her best interests at heart. Along with Blake’s parents, he provides a stable foundation for Blake to recover, and she in turn helps him get over the grudge he had with Ilia without him ever realizing it. Sun never seeks to take advantage of Blake in her fraught state of mind and his bond with her is a lifelong commitment to have each other’s backs. Come rain or shine, I know they’ll meet again and it’ll be like these two companions never parted ways to begin with. 

Because that’s Sun, at his core; you should always get friends involved, come rain or shine. And when he’s around, you bet he shines.

Thank you for reading.

And of course, never forget the raw glorious power of the gun-chucks.

[clusterthoughts]

My take on Avengers: Endgame **SPOILERS AHEAD**

To get the ball rolling, I’m gonna start with the bits I didn’t like just because overall I fucking loved Endgame and I’d like to end on a positive note. But just because I loved it does not mean I am not well accustomed to Marvel giving me holes to pick at. STEVE’S ENDING When I first watched it; it rubbed me up the wrong way. Now I’m actually mad about it. Don’t get me wrong - I knew they had to find a way to write out Steve Rogers but literally anything else wouldn’t have shit on years of character development. Fans: clearly Steve and Bucky would be the only natural romantic partners for each other Marvel: romantic love is not the be-all-and-end-all. Friendship is just as important Fans: okay well can you give Steve and Bucky solid screen time as friends? Marvel: sTEVE NEEDS TO BE WITH PEGGY THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE AND TO ABANDON ALL HIS FRIENDS FOR IT Fans: ...k I recognise that Steve’s trauma was that he felt like his life had happened without him and he had left behind the love of his life and honestly: fair. I’m Stucky trash all day long but I know the fucking company I’m dealing with here. I’d have accepted The Power Of Friendship with open arms. But a major part of both Steve and Peggy’s on-screen storyline was accepting that they needed to make the most of the life they had now and move on. Significant portions of their screen time was dedicated to that healing process. Steve created a life for himself in the future. He had a found-family (despite Marvel continuously found-family baiting us but I’m being considerate to their established shitehawkery here) he had friends and a purpose. But the main thing of note here is that Steve and Bucky’s friendship was constantly painted as the single most important thing to them. It was enough to pull Bucky out of seven decades of mind control. It was enough to make Steve drop everything (including Tony) to go and find him. They are with each other ‘till the end of the line. Steve Rogers is a man out of time but so is Bucky Barnes. Except Bucky spent the whole time being tortured and used as a murder machine. I refuse to believe that Steve would just leave him alone in the future. And he is alone because there has been zero suggestion that Bucky has a relationship with anyone except maybe Shuri and the Sam and Bucky being friends thing is just here now and we must like it or else (I love it but give me context damnit) And I know that Bucky knew what Steve was going to do because he told Steve he would miss him even though as far as they were concerned he was only going to be gone for five seconds but they, at the very very least, could have shown them having that conversation. The other parts of this that completely fly in the face of Steve’s character development: everyone lost someone. Everyone. Why does Steve get a do-over? Tony doesn’t get a future and Nat doesn’t get a future. Why does Steve get a new one? In what world would Steve comfortably accept either of those things? Peggy moved on and got married and by Steve re-writing how the timeline occurred he denied a women he respects and admires her autonomy. Finally, Marvel really expects me to believe that Steve ‘If I see a situation pointed south, I can't ignore it’ Rogers goes back to the 40’s and knows Bucky is alive and being actively tortured, knows HYDRA is in SHEILD, knows the Starks are going to be assassinated, knows Nat is in the Red Room and just... does nothing. The Russo Brothers wanted a Steve and Peggy ending from the start, and even when it became obvious that it wasn’t what the fans wanted, they refused to let go. Steve’s ending would have been very sweet if he was any other type of person but he wasn’t. It makes no sense at all to his character development and everyone involved deserved better. Speaking of deserved better... NATASHA’S ENDING This wouldn’t have left such a bitter taste in my mouth had Nat ever, even once, been treated with respect in this franchise. In terms of storyline I’ll admit it made sense. Someone had to die for the soul stone. It had to involve two people who loved each other. And I most certainly didn’t see it coming and the audible sobbing from the audience would back that up. It would have been heartbreaking had Nat been a well loved, well respected character. But she wasn’t. Nat was used as an eye-candy prop for Tony. She was the first person who really tried to be there for a struggling Steve. She was shoehorned into the role of Bruce’s love interest. She gave Clint his atonement. The five years where she worked through her grief were done offscreen despite them being recorded. Her skill set was not shown in this movie in lieu of giving her emotional depth. Yet she was left alone for years to believe that she was some type of monster who didn’t deserve nice things. That she had to dedicate her life, and then give her life, to redemption she no longer needed by any merit applied to the men of the franchise. If you consider the movie as a stand-alone it was a necessary evil but realistically Marvel never did right  by her right until the very end. As much as I hate Marvel’s dedication to romantic love being the only motivator; traumatised women needing to sacrifice themselves to be worth anything at all is worse. Natasha’s story never belonged to her and that’s what makes her ending bitter as opposed to just sad. NOW ONTO THE THINGS I LOVED Tony and Nebula’s interactions were so sweet. It really just solidifies how much of a good guy Tony is and it’s nice to see someone treat Nebula like a decent person who just needs some love for once. I have seen a lot of people complain about Thor’s storyline but I actually agreed with the decision made. I am not necessarily thrilled with the execution - the ball was dropped because the Russo’s aren’t Taika Waitti so the humour was clearly a copycat attempt and the fat jokes were overdone. Also handing New Asgard over to Valkyrie I liked but it was really throwaway. The reasons I’m not including it in my Things I Didn’t Like List is: Firstly, Hemsworth specifically looked for Thor to become comedic relief because he didn’t agree with how stiff Thor had been presented in the beginning. Thor’s mother died. His father died. His brother died. His best friend died. His home was destroyed. Half his people died. AND THEN the snap happened. Thor felt personally responsible for everything. During the fight in infinity war, for everybody else is was prevention, but for Thor is was already revenge. Only for them to lose which, as far as Thor is concerned and for all that he’ll believe, is because he should have gone for the head. And people just??? Expected him??? To be fine??? Accurate depressive episode is accurate. And I’m so glad he got to speak to Frigga. Firstly because I love her and secondly because she was dead right. You’ll always fail at being the person you are supposed to be. Thor has to make peace with the person he wants to be. (On a side note: Frigga and my therapist would be friends) Also when he killed Thanos the first time I heard someone in the cinema say “they do know this is a 3 hour movie right?” And I was inclined to agree. Gotta give this movie props for never having me feel like I could guess what was gonna happen next despite me being able to guess what was gonna happen next. Brilliant writing. I love Scott Lang. I don’t have much to say about that. He is a great dad, super funny, blends well with the others, when he got super big I whooped. His reunion with Hope was actually perfectly sweet without taking away from the mission. This is a We Love Scott Lang Zone only. The scene where the push time through him was hilarious. I did not see the Banner/Hulk thing coming and equally did not realise how much I needed it. Super funny and good for him for embracing both. Tony! Stark! As! A! Dad! Jesus wept it was so much more wholesome than I ever could have hoped for. I can’t even pick out one part it was all perfection. I love you 3000, Tony Stark. Hawkeye. My baby boy. I love him to death and I am purposely ignoring his time as a big ol murderer. It was very very extra wrong but leave me alone. I was glad he was given more screen time in this movie. I recognise that Rocket isn’t strictly speaking a “real” “person” but I enjoyed him so immensely in this movie. Him and Nebula holding hands just knocks me every time. KORG!!! I would give this movie 10/10 exclusively because Korg was in it. I truly loved the scene where Tony figures out time travel and I’m also very glad that instead of Pepper putting the foot down because he had a family now and he promised so many times he’d give it all up she knows that he’ll never rest and he needs to do this whatever the cost (sob) Rhodey’s A1 time travel humour ~chefs kiss~ I! FUCKING! LOVED! EVERYTHING! ABOUT! THEM! GOING! BACK! TO! NEW! YORK! AAAHHH! Hulk and the stairs!!! I genuinely yelped when Steve said “hail hydra” that was genius spec!!! “You’ve got to be shitting me” STEVEN GRANT ROGERS!!! “I can do this all day” “yeah, yeah, I know” was fucking hilarious!!! “Bucky... is... alive” further yelping on my part!!! “That is America’s ass” and all Steve/Tony/Scott interactions about America’s ass were just great!!! Thor using the hammer to restart Tony’s heart!!! Loki where u gone!!! “Do you trust me?” “I do”!!! 1970’s WOO TIME-TRAVEL ROAD TRIP Hey, Stan Lee I just love Tony/Steve scenes (Civil War? Never heard of him?) they bring me true, unadulterated joy Everything about Howard and Tony’s interaction was so wholesome I think I need to take a shower in dirt to counteract it Peggy Carter you are an agent and you mean to tell me that 220lbs of Prime American Beef can just stand in front of you and you don’t even see it out the corner of your eye? LOOK UP, DAMNIT (If you have your reunion now the dickhead might not go ba- sorry, sorry. Where was I?) JARVIS!!! Can someone please for fucks sake give  Nebula a break? Mediocre Natasha mourning is mediocre (sorry x2) YES BRUCE YOU BEAUTIFUL SONOVABITCH aaaaaand Yikes! (Poor Rocket did not sign up for this shit at all) (Gamora is too good for these fuckos) When I asked for someone to give Nebula a break I didn’t meAN FOR FUCKING NEBULA TO DO IT Everything about the Steve/Tony/Thor v Thanos fight scene was so ~deep inhale~ aesthetic but... *WHEN STEVE USED MJØLNIR I WAS READY TO GODDAMN RIOT. HOLY FUCK. WHAT A SCENE. WHAT A MAN. IVE HAD SEX THAT DIDNT GIVE ME AS MUCH SATISFACTION. I WOULD HAVE THAT MOMENT TATTOOED INSIDE MY EYELIDS IF I COULD. EVERY TIME I REMEMBER IT MY BRAIN MAKES THIS NOISE: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ~ahem~

FUCK OFF AWAY FROM THE SHEILD THANOS The scene where Thano’s army is charging in from the dark clouds and you can see Steve standing in front of the sun is so beautiful I’d marry it. I don’t have the right vocabulary for how beautiful that was but fuck me Sam: on your left Me: ~pterodactyl screech~ Honest to fuck it was a moment of sheer magic seeing everyone come back (I made grabby hands during everyone’s return) Next, I’ll quote a girl I met in the toilets after the movie - “If I marry the man of my dreams, have beautiful children, and die in my sleep at the age of 99 I still won’t be as happy as when Steve said ‘Avengers Assemble’” Girl, same. Fucking same. It was erotic and I’m genuinely fearful Marvel will never produce as magnificent a line again. TONY AND PETER I shed a tear at how sweet that was. I need back into the dirt shower. Their hug!!! Peter’s babbling!!! Tony’s whole face!!! CAPTAIN MARVEL. I’ve got to give this credit. I love Captain Marvel. I think Brie Larson is a god amongst men but I really didn’t want the movie to be about her and how she saves the day. That would really take away from all the years of hard work done by the original six and it really wasn’t her fight the way it was to everyone else. The amount she was involved and the way she was involved was truly perfect in my opinion. It was the edge they needed but no one was overlooked in the process. I was really very happy about this. The girl power scene was probably pandering but I don’t give a fuck I was well and truly pandered The team work for that fight scene was magnificent, the pacing was magnificent, the visuals were magnificent. BE-YOU-TEA-FULL When Thanos got the stones like honestly Russo Bothers you had me there. I fully panicked Doctor Strange’s lil finger. Remarkable. I’m gonna take this moment to say: the call backs they did to old scenes and old lines in the franchise were really tasteful and well done. This always felt like the accumulation of years of work and I’ve got to applaud it. TONY MOTHERFUCKING STARK, FRIENDS!!! You funky little maniac. I AM IRON MAN!!!!!! AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!! But oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck I knew this was going to happen but that did not make it hurt any less. There was open crying at this point in the cinema. It was the perfect death for him, to be honest. If it had to happen I’m so glad it was like this. Full circle. Honourable. Surrounded by those who loved him. Part of the journey is the end and I LOVE YOU 3000 I am going to miss Tony beyond belief. His funeral was stunning. I am so glad literally everyone was there (HEY HARLEY). Great symbolism for it being a funeral for the Avengers as we know it, too. Also Happy’s interaction with Morgan was so soft I have melted. I am no longer here. And finally, Sam Wilson Is Captain America AS! IT! SHOULD! BE! I would like to thank the academy, Jesus, and whoever took over Steve Rogers considering the Steve we know would never have gone ba- SORRY X3

[snow-storm27]

Game of Thrones, or, How to Mismanage Your IP

           This has been coming for a long, long time… Now that it’s over, it’s time to address what I feel went wrong with Game of Thrones.

In April 2011, HBO premiered what would become one of, if not the, most influential television program of the 2010s: Game of Thrones.  Based on the book series A Song of Ice and Fire by author George R. R. Martin, the series began as a gritty, grimy, medieval fantasy drama, rooted mostly in the feudal politics of managing money, conventional weapons of war, arranged marriages, and the ever-present threat of backstabbing noblemen.  However, the show has consistently had underpinnings of a far higher fantasy, with rumors of zombie hordes in the far north and legends of historical, but now extinct, dragons.  As the seasons went on, these two fantastical elements began to slowly take center stage.  In the finale of season one, dragons were reborn into the world, and after four years of once-a-season appearances, the nefarious threat of the White Walkers took center stage in an episode late in season five, as they prepared their army of the undead to mount a threat against the living.

The show slowly progressed from a low fantasy drama about politics and conventional warfare to a high fantasy struggle of the living versus the dead, aided by dragons and giants and other supernatural forces on either side.  However, despite the increase in both budget and viewership, Game of Thrones has reached its end not with a triumphant bang but with a dull whimper.  Why has this happened?  Three major themes of the development of the show have ultimately contributed to its downfall: adaptational changes, overtaking the source material, and poor treatment of minorities within the show.

I.                Changes Made in Adaptation

As with any adaptation of a book, or any other work for that matter, certain changes must be made.  George R. R. Martin is quoted as saying, “I knew that, when writing a book, you’re not constrained by a budget.  You’re not constrained by what you can do, in terms of the special effects technology. You’re not limited to any particular running time.”  He is correct.  In his book series, he describes people of fantastically large stature, and creatures beyond the scope of reality, and often he describes creatures and events beyond the scope of what HBO’s CGI budget can pay for.  While his written creations may be as different and varied as he chooses, two major CGI creations have dominated the show: dragons, and direwolves.

The dragons are largely faithfully recreated.  They are the symbol of House Targaryen, amazing beasts rendered in picture-perfect, hyper realistic computer graphics.  They grow incrementally each season, mandating new art and new computer models and more money to render with every passing year. Starting as newborns the size of housecats in the final moments of the first season, the dragons are the size of aircraft throughout the final season.  These creatures have been stated as a major draw of the show, especially to casual fans and fans who have not read the books.  The dragons are huge, dramatic creatures, and whenever they appear, they dominate the action, flying and breathing fire and generally creating a spectacle.

Conversely, the direwolves are treated as an afterthought at best.  They are kept offscreen most of the time, are seemingly forgotten about when not absolutely essential, and have been largely killed off to save money in the CG budget, but more on that in a minute.  This really smacks of poor analysis of the books, is the issue.  The Starks in the novels are subconsciously creatures known as wargs, or, humans that can psychically link with other creatures, feel their feelings, use their senses, and other related abilities.  Each Stark gets a direwolf at the beginning of the story, episode one in the show.  These creatures bond with their owners and allow the protagonists to develop their own psychic powersets.  There is no hint of this in the show, except in the oft-forgotten Bran storyline from the early seasons.  Dragons get to be large and in charge, yet the direwolves, described as nearly the size of horses in the books, are relegated to being somewhat-large domestic dogs in the show, before being killed off.

Part of the tragedy of the final season is that the last living direwolf that has stayed with his master, Jon Snow’s wolf Ghost, is summarily told to leave and head north with Tormund Giantsbane, who has never interacted with Ghost before, at least not in any measurable capacity.  Jon sends him away without so much as a pat on the head because he was too hard to animate, and Jon never really bonded with him. Ghost has been a fan favorite for years, with every second of screen time met with joyous reactions from the fanbase. And yet, he gets sent to a farm upstate by our ostensible hero.  It’s hard not to feel that the direwolves as a whole were completely useless and wasted. They are a thematic tie to our heroes’ home of Winterfell and a reminder of better days gone by.  In the show, they are a liability to be ignominiously killed off for shock value.

Speaking of killed off for shock value, how many characters die in the show before their time in the books?  Around season five, this became less of a rare occurrence, and more of the norm.  Ser Barristan Selmy, a point of view character with a compelling arc in Dance with Dragons and an actor who is a fan of the books, gets killed off in season five episode four in a confusing back alley brawl that doesn’t even happen in the books.  King Stannis Baratheon, a major character in both book and show, first kills his daughter, who is still alive in the books, leading to the suicide of his wife, who is still alive in the books, and he is summarily executed by a character who isn’t even in that location in the books.  At the end of season six, after the time covered in the books, Queen Cersei blows up an entire cathedral full of about a dozen named characters, all of whom are still alive in the books (every Tyrell except for Olenna, Lancel Lannister, the High Sparrow, the entire Sparrow movement). These are merely the more dramatic deaths that occur in the show but not the books.  I didn’t even touch the bizarre treatment of Dorne in the show, the characters that were excluded despite being key focuses of the plot (such as Arianne and Quentyn Martell, Victarion and Aeron Greyjoy, and Young Griff), entire plots that are cut and pasted with different names.  For a more complete list of dead characters, see http://mentalfloss.com/article/65078/dead-game-thrones-tv-characters-who-are-still-alive-books.

Deaths and direwolves are not the only changes made in the process of adaptation, but oftentimes the characterizations of the characters must be changed to better fit the narrative told on the screen.  However, these changes rarely make characters more compelling, no.  They often just serve to make characters either more aggressive or less likeable, seemingly at random.  Brienne of Tarth is a devout knightly figure in the books.  She is a point of view chapter in Feast for Crows, and one of her chapters contains what is arguably the thesis statement of the entire series: War is Hell.  It’s hardly an uncommon theme of fiction set during wartime, and author George R. R. Martin was himself a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War.  It is baked into the books that war is never a good thing.

In the show, Brienne of Tarth is an aggressive, seemingly areligious bully.  She swings her sword and rather cruelly pushes around her squire, Podrick, under the guise of tutelage.  Setting aside the fact that Podrick is a child in the books and an adult sexual fanatic in the show, itself a confusing twist of the character, Brienne is charged, as a knight, to protect and defend the weak.  She seemingly traded off her obligation to help those weaker than herself for additional combat training because she gets into a lot of fights that she does not face in the book.  She fights the Hound at the end of season four, gets into a high-speed chase a few episodes later against Littlefinger’s men, and by the end of season five she beheads Stannis after a battle at Winterfell before smugly rubbing it in Stannis’s friends’ faces in season six.  She is rude and arrogant where her book counterpart is kind and just and faithful. Brienne is hardly the only character to undergo such changes.

Brienne’s chosen king in season two is Renly Baratheon, younger brother of Stannis and Robert Baratheon.  He was made more charismatic and sympathetic in the show, less aggressive and more progressive. This had the effect of making the Tyrells, a rather power-hungry house in the books, into a group of kind angels in the show.  A scene was added to showcase the charity of Margaery Tyrell in season three, because the audience was supposed to like them more.  Conversely, making Renly nicer and more likeable made Stannis, his killer, far less likeable. Setting aside the fact that Stannis is in both works for far longer than Renly, incentivizing writers to make him a more tolerable character, Stannis’s positive character traits are stripped from him.  Where he was a caring, if emotionally stunted, father in the books, in the show he is downright abusive and murderous.  In the books, Stannis’s relationship with religion is tenuous at most, but in the show he is portrayed as a zealot.  Stannis ultimately dies a child-murdering religious fanatic, humiliated in battle after being deceived by a foreign temptress with a foreign religion, itself a complex and uncomfortable situation that will be discussed in more depth later. Stannis’s character had to die so that Renly’s could live for all of four episodes in season two.

The show’s relationship with religion is very lopsided as well. Religious characters, such as Brienne, Sansa, Davos, and Jon, often lose their religion in the show where they are still devout in the books.  Meanwhile, religious organizations and priests are treated as insane or villainous, despite their more nuanced portrayals in the books.  Examples include Stannis, who goes from nearly an atheist to a fanatical champion of R’hllor, the Sparrows, who go from a group of concerned albeit religious citizens to violent puritanical moralists with a homophobic streak, and the Hound, who in the books is implied to become a silent monk who finds peace, but in the show is incited back to violence, with an implied message that “real men” are violent, and peaceful religion is namby-pamby kid’s stuff.  George R. R. Martin is not a religious man, but he handles the subject with far more nuance and a wider array of perspectives than the show does.  It would be easy to place the entirety of the blame in the hands of D. B. Weiss and David Benioff, the showrunners.  I wouldn’t say that they are entirely to blame, but I would say that these major changes in theme, character, and sensitivity in the show can largely be attributed to the two of them.

Really, it’s unfortunate.  The books handle a great deal of subject matter with care and sensitivity, but the show seems unable to deal with the inherently morally ambiguous work without drawing hard lines between the “good guys” and the “bad guys”.  Renly is Good, Stannis is Evil.  Religion of any kind is Bad.  Tyrion Can Do No Wrong.  Stripping the subject matter of its nuance leaves the whole experience feeling hollow and frankly lesser than both the books and other dramas on television. It’s honestly sad to see such a rich, developed world be reduced to such moral absolutism.

II.              Passing the Books

It was inevitable that the show would, one day, pass the books. Shortly after the release of the first season, the fifth book in the series was published, all the way back in 2011. Since then, eight seasons have come and gone, and the story of the show has finished.  Meanwhile, the last book published is still the fifth, Dance with Dragons.  The next book, The Winds of Winter, is still some distance away, but its plot, as well as its distant successor, A Dream of Spring, has been loosely adapted by the show.  Very, very loosely.

While some early story beats of Winds could be reasonably predicted, from season six onwards, the show went off of an outline from George and the creativity of the show’s writers. It could be easy to presume that Jon Snow, seemingly heralded as a chosen hero in the books, will return from the dead in the next book.  Similarly, the general story of the White Walkers marching south and attacking the living could be predicted.  Daenerys heading to Westeros could be predicted.  These are long-foreshadowed story threads that would be disappointing to see unfulfilled.

However, once the show ran out of material to adapt directly from the books, the writing suffered.  Twists began to appear almost for their own sake, such as Ramsay suddenly killing his own father, and Ramsay killing Osha, and Ramsay killing Rickon. Honestly, the show got way more mileage out of Ramsay than the character deserved.  Brutal scenes of horrific torture and death can only go on for so long, but not with Ramsay around I suppose.  Meanwhile, characters went from developed people to stock tropes almost immediately.  Sansa stopped being an empathetic and caring young woman and she became a frosty ice queen, mistrustful of everyone around her.  Bran stopped being a sweet little kid with psychic powers and he became an emotionless robot, taken from scene to scene to exposit new information.  Arya stopped being a sweet, if misguided, girl and became an autonomous shape-shifting mass murderer.  Jon stopped being a wise, calm commander and became an easily duped and often ignored loser.  And those are just the Stark kids!

Otherwise brilliant Tyrion has not made any good plans since season four. He gets passed across Essos in season five, then he fails to preserve the peace in Meereen in season six, fails to launch a successful campaign against Cersei in season seven, and jeopardizes the more successful campaign against Cersei again in season eight. His wight-capture plan was an unmitigated failure in season seven.  It was an attempt to gain support from Cersei that never came, it ended in the death of Viserion, and it seemed to only exist to set up the scene in the Dragonpit where all our big actors shared some screen time for half an episode.  And yet, despite his constant failure, Tyrion is still propped up by Sansa and Jon and Jorah as a brilliant mind with outstanding potential.  He shouldn’t lose his position as Daenerys’s Hand because he’s still smart, despite all evidence to the contrary.  It feels that Tyrion’s sudden loss in brain cells is due in part to no more existing book material to use that demonstrate his genius.  His failed plan in season six is remarkably similar to Barristan’s book five chapters, which I guess they needed to steal to give Peter Dinklage something to do for another year.

Jaime’s book arc deals primarily with him falling out of love with Cersei, and it happens across the end of book three and book four.  This arc is stretched out and seemingly ignored across seasons four, five, six, and seven, until finally he leaves her in the finale of season seven, only to turn right back around and head back to King’s Landing again to die in her arms, negating his entire emotional journey four episodes later.  There are superficial similarities, such as his sojourn to Riverrun in season six, but a story is more than its locations and characters.  Jaime’s arc is really bizarre in the show.  He seemingly recognizes Cersei’s mistreatment of him early in season four, but then just kind of ignores it or puts up with it for four more seasons of the show.  That’s not even getting into the change from his and Cersei’s consensual sex scene in the book (gross though it may be) into an act of rape in the show that the showrunners, writers, and directors can’t seem to agree is or isn’t rape, which is utterly baffling and sickening.  Jaime’s arc in the books is about self-acceptance, coping with physical disability, and recognizing bad relationships.  In the show Jaime just sort of doesn’t do any of those things. He never feels absolution about his messy past, he seemingly becomes a competent swordsman lefthanded over a couple of sparring sessions, and his recognition of Cersei’s abuse is just muddled by his own horrible treatment of her.

I feel that the character who suffered worst due to lack of available book material though is Daenerys.  Daenerys is established across the beginning of her arc as a liberator and a revolutionary.  She’s an inspiration to all around her, the Mother of Dragons and Breaker of Chains. She frees slaves, deals with harsh consequences of complex political maneuvering, accepts her role as potential ruler of a continent and does her best to become worthy of that title.  The last book ended with her having visions in the Dothraki Sea as she embraces her heritage as a conqueror.  A similar scene ends season five for her, as she is captured by Dothraki.  Since then, she has gone on to return to Vaes Dothrak, she killed the khals, she claimed all of the present Dothraki, she spontaneously learned how to ride Drogon, she returned to Meereen, handed it over to Daario for some reason, and she headed to Westeros.  She then sniped at Jon Snow for a while before apparently falling in love with him, saving him from a horrible wight-capturing plan, saving Winterfell from an invasion of zombies, and promptly turning evil just because the people of the North like Jon more than her, just so she could become a bait-and-switch final boss so a man could swoop in and be the real hero.  Theories abound that she would become her father, a Mad Queen, so to speak, in the books, but little evidence has been offered for that. Furthermore, several changes in other arcs have made hers play out differently.

In the books, Tyrion is allied for a time with a young man named Young Griff who claims to be Aegon the Sixth, son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia Martell, who was supposedly killed as an infant during the Sack of King’s Landing during Robert’s Rebellion.  He claims that that baby was traded out, and he is the heir to the Iron Throne.  He leads the Golden Company, and it is somewhat anticipated that he will somehow supplant Cersei in the forthcoming Winds of Winter, and he will likely come into conflict with Daenerys when she lands on Westeros.  And they’ll have elephants in the book too, unlike the show. Tyrion is abandoned by the Golden Company when he is captured by Jorah, and later they join a sellsword company near Meereen as a battle is about to begin, but that is neither here nor there. The point is, the Aegon plot got split a few different ways.  Tyrion did not support Aegon, but Daenerys.  Young Griff is not Aegon, but instead Jon Snow is for some reason, so Daenerys comes into conflict with him.  And the Golden Company that Daenerys will be expected to defeat is in Cersei’s hands, not Aegon’s.

Aegon’s storyline is long and complex, changing many presuppositions about the backstory, as well as affecting many characters in the present.  The Dornish story in the books largely deals with him as well, and his removal from the show’s narrative further makes the Dornish subplot irrelevant.  This large removal has radically altered large chunks of the narrative as it effects the characters, the overall tone and themes of the story, and it thoroughly robs Jon, Daenerys, and Tyrion, ostensibly the main three characters, of any semblance of whatever their future plot in the books may be to compensate for this excision.  Cersei must become hyper-competent, somehow securing more money for the Iron Bank in order to net the Golden Company as a reserve army out of nowhere.  Jon post-resurrection pivots into first filling out Stannis’s book role of recapturing Winterfell from the Boltons before seemingly completing his own arc of stopping the army of the dead, only to pivot once more into becoming Aegon, the highly revered prophesied king of Westeros who comes into conflict with Daenerys.  It’s just a mess and running out of book material really caused the writing to have to bend over backwards to attempt to look like the books while completely losing the characters and motivations and relationships that made the show one of the most successful on television.

I’ll admit to being a book fan first, but the show suffered most when it was divorced from its subject matter.  With no real material to draw from, the show just circled the drain in season six, redoing or reintroducing new arcs for old characters.  Jaime’s trip to Dorne tried to combine his arc from Feast for Crows with the Dorne arc from the same book, but it didn’t work, so season six sent him to Riverrun because it looked like the book.  They hadn’t done the Kingsmoot yet, so that went into season six, despite having far less gravitas and far less significance.  (As an aside, Euron is the ultimate wild card in the books, a pirate warlock bent on world domination, and yet he’s just Cersei’s lapdog/bootycall in the show, which is depressing.)  Stannis didn’t take Winterfell, so they gave it to Jon.  It is sort of expected that Cersei will destroy King’s Landing with wildfire in the books, but that would mean no conflict in the South for Daenerys, so I guess she just blows up Baelor’s Sept because it is superficially similar to something in the books.  Ultimately, these hollow reimaginings of events from the books just serve to cheapen the narrative for book readers and muddle otherwise interesting arcs from the show.  It would have almost been better if the show had fully committed to being fan fiction after season four or so.

However, there remains one more damning mark against the show, the real elephant in the room.

III.            Minorities in Game of Thrones

The worst-kept secret about Game of Thrones is that it treats its nonwhite, LGBT, and especially female characters horribly.  As a disclaimer, I do not claim that all shows must aspire to some fictitious degree of “wokeness”, or else it is a bad show by any stretch of the imagination. I think that for conflict’s sake, all characters must in some way face compelling obstacles that they must overcome in order to have any semblance of a plot.  However, over time, certain patterns begin to develop in the show that leaves one suspecting some implicit biases of the showrunners.

Persons of color in the show suffer disproportionately compared to white characters.  By the end of the show, the only living character who isn’t white is Grey Worm, a castrated soldier who is a former slave.  In addition, his love interest, with whom he was one of the most stable and emotionally balanced couples in the show, is brutally and seemingly randomly killed off mere episodes prior to the finale.  It was questionable that Euron’s fleet would randomly capture one person who happened to be the only black woman in the cast, and then kill her and only her that same episode.

A single episode prior, during the Battle of Winterfell (like, the third or fourth one in the show, the one with the zombies), the entire Dothraki army is killed offscreen.  An entire legion of ethnically diverse characters is killed to demonstrate how intimidating the wights are, I guess.  Or maybe, they were okay all along, because some Dothraki are just kind of at King’s Landing two episodes later.  The writing was crazy inconsistent in the final season.  In any event, it kind of makes Daenerys’s arc in Essos largely pointless if her armies of ethnic soldiers are just used as cannon fodder for one mildly interesting, dimly lit, shot, and then the remainder are shown pillaging the terrified, white, populace later on.

Meanwhile, Daenerys’s arc smacks of white savior tropes.  Setting aside the racially dubious shot from season three where the blindingly white Daenerys is raised up by a very nonwhite crowd in adoration, it was never made clear in the books whether the peoples of Essos were darker skinned or not.  In a show where one’s bloodline and the purity thereof is of paramount importance to many of the major characters, racial sensitivity in casting should have been a higher priority.  Daenerys’s entire arc, and the sympathies of the audience, change dramatically if Daenerys is supposed to be a liberator of the oppressed, but she is presented as merely a white savior bringing civilization to the backwards and savage brown people.  Aside from not representing the books and not playing well on television in the 2010s, Daenerys looks like a monster because she is constantly at odds with the only minorities in the cast.  She seems almost like a white supremacist, dictating that it is her right to rule due to her family’s heritage.  Having a startlingly white woman with pale hair announce to her black former slaves that she is the only person with the right to rule looks really racially insensitive.

Also in her arc, Xaro Xhoan Daxos in Qarth is not a black man in the books.  He is also not dead in the books, nor did he spontaneously steal her dragons in the books. While that change in story may be entirely coincidental, the fact that a major character’s plot was changed to feature a sneaky, greedy black man instead of a kind, albeit self-interested white man is suspect.  The fact that that man dies as a result of the change raises further eyebrows.

Across the sea, Areo Hotah is changed from a white man to a black man.  He is heralded as a tremendously successful warrior in the books.  In the show he is killed without a chance to demonstrate any skills other than standing around looking intimidating, which feels stereotypical of a black man.  Meanwhile, the other Dornish folks are also distinctly not white, and they are all killed in the adaptation as well.  Oberyn suffers the same grisly fate as his book counterpart, but Doran is unceremoniously killed despite being a master-class schemer in the books. Meanwhile, his daughter and son, Arianne and Quentyn Martell, have their subplots extricated entirely due in part to the removal of Young Griff, while his other son Trystane is also randomly killed on a boat in a scene that is played for laughs.  His killers, the similarly Dornish Sand Snakes and their mother Ellaria Sand are brutally murdered on-screen by Euron and Cersei, who isn’t even near them in the books.

It would be easy to pass this off as mere coincidence.  After all, people of all colors and backgrounds die all the time in Game of Thrones.  However, something I find interesting is that as Game of Thrones was winding down, Weiss and Benioff pitched a series to HBO about what would have happened if the Confederacy had won the Civil War.  While interesting as a thought experiment, it feels strange that creators with such little regard for racial sensitivity wanted to cover such an inherently racial subject as that for their next project.  It has seemingly been dropped in favor of their Star Wars trilogy, but I remain skeptical.  These creators have inspired little confidence in their treatment of minorities, which is deeply troubling and will render the show very difficult to enjoy for any length of time in the future.

Next on the list is the show’s poor treatment of LGBT characters. This is a little less prevalent, but no less obvious.  There have not been many prominent LGBT characters in the show.  Beginning in season one, Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell are gay.  The very next season Renly dies and Loras hits on his also-gay squire.  His squire then turns him in to the show-only Sparrow Inquisition in season five who, only in the show, have a tremendous hatred for gay people.  Loras spends the next two seasons in chains, largely offscreen, then he is humiliated at a religious trial before being incinerated by Cersei.  So, yeah.  Our gay men main characters either die or betray each other to religious inquisitions. Not awesome.

In season four, we are introduced to Oberyn Martell.  In the books, his bisexuality is rather implicit, but in the show he is introduced in a brothel, attempting to recruit some mixed-gender company for himself and his paramour, Ellaria Sand.  Already the show falls into stereotypes about the promiscuity and near infidelity of bisexuals, but I guess both of them are into it, so it’s not so bad.  Oberyn dies in the books in about the same way he dies in the show, which is fair enough for an adaptation.

However, then Ellaria briefly hooks up with Yara Greyjoy in season seven.  Yara had demonstrated her interest in women in season six, but it all felt rather forced, as if the depiction of a woman’s romantic or sexual interest in another woman was for show, in order to titillate the audience.  It would hardly be the first time the show used the female body as an excuse to excite a presumably male audience.  In any event, the very scene after Ellaria and Yara get together, Yara is captured by her uncle while two of Ellaria’s children are brutally killed before her eyes.  Ellaria and her third child are also captured, then poisoned and left to die in front of each other in the next episode.

There are no transgender characters in Game of Thrones.

Olenna Tyrell and Tywin Lannister share a scene in season three in which Olenna insinuates that it is a natural part of life to experiment with one’s sexuality.  She implies that Tywin is somehow weird or abnormal for never even considering some homosexual experience in his life.  Tywin is astonished by her suggestion.  Due to the show’s framing of the Tyrells as a more heroic house than the Lannisters, sympathies should theoretically be with Olenna.  However, the show falls pretty hard on the side of Tywin.  By the end of the show, the only character with any same-sex attraction left alive is Yara, who is sexually promiscuous, aggressive, refuses to truly disavow the rapacious practices of the Ironborn, and is left unattached romantically at the end of the show.  All the other characters have died, often gruesomely and on-screen.  The show, which prided itself on being subversive and different, instead seemingly gives everyone a heteronormative, socially acceptable ending, presuming they live.

The discussion of LGBT and nonwhite characters pales in comparison to the utter failure of the show with regard to its treatment of women, however. The show’s gross depiction of repeated, ongoing sexual violence directed towards women in particular is frankly disgusting, and it spans all the way back to the very fist episode of the show. On her wedding day, Daenerys is raped by Khal Drogo.  In the book, the matter is a little more complicated at the very least.  By modern jurisprudence, it’s not like Daenerys could consent at all, as she is a minor in the book, but at least she has some small say in the matter.  In the book, Daenerys and Drogo certainly do not get off on the right foot, but Drogo doesn’t rape her at least.

Also in the first episode, Tyrion is shown cavorting with some sex workers, clearly put in the show to mainly introduce Tyrion’s dwarfism, but secondarily to titillate the audience.  The show continues to use the female form to distract from large amounts of exposition to such an extent that critics coined the word “sexposition” in order to describe the sheer number of sex scenes used to accent plot information. The entire setting of Littlefinger’s brother practically exists to convey information about plot while enticing casual fans with nudity.  Everyone’s motives were revealed here: Littlefinger, Oberyn, Tyrion, Tywin, even Varys, a man who categorically cannot engage in sexual intercourse.

The use of the female body to convey information to the audience is entirely inequitable.  The number of times male genitalia is on screen can be counted on one’s hands, and there would be fingers left over.  Furthermore, the male body is not used in the same way, as a tool to excite the audience.  In fact, the preference seems to be for male genitals to be used to shock or disgust the audience rather than anything else.  Hodor’s prosthetic penis and the Braavosi actor checking himself for warts is about as far from titillating as one could get.  But I digress, there are far worse things in this show’s treatment of women than just the lack of male genitals.

Back on the subject of sexual violence, it seems as though the show cannot film a scene of consensual sex.  The complex sexual dynamic between Jaime and Cersei is shifted into an entirely different, far more concrete, and far less comfortable one in season four when a scene of consensual sex in the books is transformed into a scene of male-on-female sexual violence as Jaime forces himself on Cersei despite her protests, and the scene in question fades into the next to Jaime stating “I don’t care” to her pleas.  The scene is truly horrifying, and when I saw it as it aired in 2014, I was left appalled that the show would throw away such major characters’ entire personalities, but of far more significance was my horror that the writers, directors, and show runners couldn’t decide whether the scene was a consensual sex scene or whether it depicted an act of rape.  It is disturbing that adults of seemingly average sensibilities can’t understand such a basic concept as consent.

Furthermore, rape is used as a tool and a plot element far more often than it ever needed to be.  Sansa is nearly raped in season two, Jon stops an attempted rape in season eight, the Dothraki rape a conquered city in season one, and when Daenerys protests, she is just told to not get in the way.  The Ironborn are notoriously rapacious, as a civilization of pirate raiders, and Yara Greyjoy only agrees to give up their reaving lifestyle in order to form an alliance with Daenerys, which is presumably off the table after her death in the finale.  No change in the culture in-show occurs, and it is just accepted that sexual violence is a part of life for the characters, from episode one all the way to episode seventy-three.

The show’s fraught relationship with sexual violence is best demonstrated through the arcs of two characters: the show-only prostitute Ros, and the vastly altered story of Sansa Stark.

Ros is an invention of the show, a prostitute at Winterfell in the beginning of the show who relocates to King’s Landing for greater business opportunities.  She is introduced alongside Tyrion to further his arc as a philanderer, and she is again shown alongside Theon to demonstrate his affinity for sex workers.  After relocating to King’s Landing, she takes a job at Littlefinger’s brothel, where she features in several “sexposition” scenes across season two.  By the end of the season, she is seemingly promoted to overseeing the other workers and essentially providing acting lessons for them.  It’s somehow the most respectful thing the show does for sex workers, demonstrating that they are actual people with careers and aspirations, no matter how untraditional.  It would have been subversive to allow a sex worker to get to enjoy some semblance of status for a change.  Perhaps she could have been a foil to Bronn, both unlikely lowborn folks with unglamorous jobs who nonetheless manage to rise high due to their wit and cunning. However, whereas Bronn manages to make increasingly ludicrous demands of the Lannisters before being gifted a castle in the finale of the series, Ros faces a much darker fate.  Rumors abound that the actress behind Ros, Esme Bianco, desired greater screen time and pay, as many actors do after a few seasons of a hit television show.  This demand was met with her character being written out of the show in a truly barbaric fashion.  She becomes essentially middle management at Littlefinger’s brothel when she is contracted out by Varys to spy on his political rival.  She accepts the job, and when she is discovered, Littlefinger hands her over to Joffrey for target practice.  The last we see of Ros, she is bound, tied to Joffrey’s bed, and has been shot by a crossbow through the chest and groin.  The overarching message of Ros’s arc seems to be that women who try to take control of their situation are disregarded and removed with great prejudice by stronger, smarter men.

Even more fraught with unfortunate implications than Ros is Sansa’s storyline.  For the first four seasons, Sansa’s storyline largely follows that of the books.  She is a young woman who is engaged to Joffrey Baratheon, a sadist who insists on having her physically abused for his own pleasure.  She manages to escape from the situation with the assistance of Littlefinger, essentially a medieval pimp with an unrequited crush on Sansa’s mother, and whose affections have seemingly transferred to her daughter by the time of Cat’s death.  In fact, once they escape King’s Landing, he forces a kiss on her in the Eyrie’s courtyard, which is a precipitating cause of Littlefinger’s murder of Lysa Arryn.  So Sansa briefly stays in the Eyrie at the mercy of a pedophilic pimp at the end of season four.  But then everything changed between the filming of season four and the filming of season five.  Sophie Turner, the actress behind Sansa Stark, turned eighteen.  I know this because she is literally four days older than me, and I also turned eighteen in there.  Also, the show passed her book plot, and desperately needed to give her something to do, so they took a horrible, tragic plot from the book and gave it to Sansa.

In Dance with Dragons, Sansa’s childhood friend Jeyne Poole is given to Roose Bolton, the traitorous warden of the North, to disguise her as Arya Stark and marry her to his bastard son Ramsay Snow, in order to legitimize the Boltons’ hold on the North.  While she is there, she is forced to marry Ramsay, and he abuses her horribly.  We do get confirmation on the page that she is sexually abused by her new husband, which is horrible, but no actual scene depicting a sexual assault occurs. Meanwhile, in Feast for Crows, Sansa Stark is learning the politics of the Vale in order to marry the new Lord of the Vale for the stated purpose of riding north with the Vale’s knights to liberate Winterfell.  Littlefinger orchestrated both the events with Sansa and Jeyne, and Littlefinger would never endanger Sansa knowingly because of his weird fascination with her.

The show thought that the best version to handle these plotlines would be to send Sansa to Winterfell in order to be raped on-screen by Ramsay.  This scene plays out in perhaps the most-despised episode of the show.  Meanwhile Littlefinger’s defense of this change is that he, a master of spies all over the country, didn’t know that Ramsay, a notorious serial killer and molester, was a notorious serial killer and molester.  It strains not only his credibility as a spymaster, but also the premise of the show that Petyr Baelish wouldn’t know about the most obvious villain in Winterfell, much less that he would give Sansa away from his custody on bad information.  Furthermore, it is downright offensive that this change was made in the first place. The show had faced a similar scandal the previous season, turning a scene of consensual sex into a scene of seeming rape.  They should have known better.  Furthermore, the Vale setting could have been much better integrated by simply not changing things like that.  Maybe Sansa’s season five could have been spent learning how to do political maneuvers, and then the Vale could ride north and be a surprise extra army for Stannis. They could lose and Sansa could still end up going to Castle Black on the run from Ramsay and his forces at the beginning of season six, all without the frankly gross and unnecessary rape scene. There were so many other ways it could have gone.

In season eight, Sansa credits her rape at the hands of Ramsay as a formative moment for her that was essential to her growth into the strong and powerful woman that she became.  I feel that this not only gives Ramsay far too much power in a storyline that didn’t need it, but it seems like the writers just giving themselves an unwarranted pat on the back for a deeply unsettling and unpopular change to the narrative.  The change to Sansa’s story in season five turned her into a victim, seemingly for the benefit of Theon’s character arc, as he ends up having to save her from Ramsay’s clutches.  I credit Sophie Turner and Alfie Allen for their powerful performances, but they never should have had to give the performances that they did.  It is just sad and a waste and a really disgusting misuse of the characters and the actors.

However, the character that I feel was most mistreated by the writers was Daenerys Targaryen, who was thoroughly misunderstood by the entire creative team and her entire storyline suffered tremendously as a result.  To begin with, the scene of consensual sex that she has with Drogo on their wedding is turned into a rape scene.  Already, we are off to a bad start.  Then, when her incestuous, abusive, unstable older brother is killed by Drogo, her reaction is relatively passive.  The writers would later cite this moment as proof that she must be crazy, because her abuser died and she had no reaction.  Later, she was very much neglected in season two because her dragons were expensive to animate and her adventure in Qarth is admittedly a little bit strange.  However, her visions with the Undying are fundamental foreshadowing to the rest of the narrative.  These were cut out, and I understand why.  They could often be a little esoteric and strange, but without those visions, she seems adrift and aimless.  She instead has visions of turning away from the Iron Throne, and meeting Drogo and their unborn child in the afterlife beyond the Wall.  These scenes were evocative, and I’ll admit I enjoyed them at the time.

Later, she enters Slaver’s Bay, from seasons three through six. This part of her story was deeply criticized in the books for feeling like a waste of time, especially in Dance with Dragons where she has mixed success ruling Meereen, and a bunch of other characters go on great quests to find her and are generally disappointed with what they find.  It is easy to feel a little less than enthused about that arc. However, the most damning critique of Daenerys’s liberation quest in Slaver’s Bay comes from the mouth of Tyrion in the show’s finale.  He cites her killings of the slavers and masters, or upper class, in Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, and claims that every time she killed these horrible people, she felt a little more empowered to do whatever she wanted and got a little more crazy and detached from reality.  This culminated in her killing of the Dothraki Khals, which garnered her a Dothraki army.  Tyrion alleged that the adoration went to her head, and she felt empowered to do anything, and Jon presenting even the idea of a challenge to her rule caused her to somehow lose her mind in its entirety, torching King’s Landing in the process.

This sequence of events is fundamentally ridiculous.  Perhaps she felt gratified from receiving praise, but that does not lead to insanity.  Furthermore, her defining character trait, and a constantly restated goal of hers, is that she wants to help the people on the bottom.  She gives water to the dying people of Slaver’s Bay, she opposes the fighting pits to preserve the lives of the poor who might otherwise be forced into them, she fights the slavers over and over again, not to mention the obviously good deed of freeing the slaves in Slaver’s Bay.  In America, Abraham Lincoln is often cited as one of, if not the, greatest presidents who ever lived, for preserving the country while also outlawing slavery.  (As an aside, I am aware of the Thirteenth Amendment’s exception in the case of prisons, which is a problem that we are still dealing with in 2019 with the school-to-prison pipeline and the issue of private prisons, but Lincoln made a big step, and that should be recognized.)  Our society places a high value on freedom, and therefore freeing slaves should be an unequivocally heroic deed.  And yet the narrative punishes Daenerys for doing this, constantly.

In season six, Tyrion criticizes her approach, and claims that reparations should be made to the slave holders, and the plan should have taken longer to occur.  Essentially, Tyrion would rather be kind to the slavers and leave people in chains for longer because freedom would be inconvenient.  Such a thorough undermining of Daenerys’s message is given to Tyrion, ostensibly the show’s main lead, two seasons ahead of his criticism of her entire arc.  Furthermore, no real reason is given why she turns against the common people of King’s Landing.  Sure, she could be a little annoyed that Northerners seem to like Jon more, but those are his people.  It makes sense that his friends would like him.  And yeah, sure, Tormund’s comment about how he’s so cool for riding a dragon would definitely be obnoxious, but that’s hardly a reason to go insane.  The seeming reason for her sudden descent into madness would be the sudden deaths of her advisors Jorah and Missandei, as well as the spontaneous, poorly executed death of Rhaegal.  In addition, the actual betrayal of her confidantes Varys, Tyrion, and Jon would make her descent into madness seemingly justified, rather than an instability.  You’re not insane if everyone around you is actually out to get you, you know.  But, her issue should be with her advisers, and Cersei.  A sensible solution during “The Bells” would have been to destroy the Iron Fleet, destroy the scorpions, kill the Golden Company outside the gates, and then fly Drogon to the Red Keep to kill Cersei.  It is fundamentally out of character for her to turn Drogon, a sentient weapon of war, on the poor, destitute common folk of King’s Landing.  She wants to be a liberator, and up until that very moment, she was a liberator.  Who is liberated when all the people are dead?

In the finale, she gives a very uncomfortable speech that implies that she will kill all the nobility in Westeros before taking her army to take over the world.  The imagery in this speech feels very similar to speeches given by Nazis, given the identical, orderly, masked troops in front of the black-clad and impassioned speaker.  In addition, the shot of her approaching the stairs while Drogon’s wings unfurl in the background was very well-made, and successfully made her look like the actual Devil.  Later, in her scene with Jon in the throne room, she makes a desperate plea for him to join her in her global conquest.  I understand her desire to keep Jon close, after all she seems to love him very much, and he is handsome and charming and all that.  But in her plea to him, she makes a very out-of-character argument that she and Jon have the power to enforce their will upon the world, for the betterment of mankind. Jon asks her why others can’t choose, and Daenerys seemingly says that they are just more important than the rest of the world, “They don’t get to choose.”  What?  Daenerys is all about the common people, or at least she was until she found they were very easy cannon fodder for Drogon.  But it seemed that she was more interested in hurting people loyal to Cersei specifically, even in her discussion with Jon.  So, her sudden disregard for the common people of the world remains completely bizarre.

And then she dies.  Jon kills her, and Drogon flies off with the body.  The entire “Mad Queen” storyline came right out of nowhere after the threat of the White Walkers was dealt with startlingly fast.  It seemed the writers wanted a twist ending, so the Night King was killed surprisingly fast, then Cersei surrendered so Daenerys, a generally kind, good-hearted person could spontaneously become the villain of the piece in the last two episodes.

The writers said in an Inside the Episode feature that when a Targaryen is born, the gods throw a coin and the world holds their breath.  When Daenerys was born, the gods threw a coin, and they allege it landed on madness.  I don’t buy that, because for seventy episodes, she had been a good, fair, just, kind ruler.  Sure, her callous disregard for abusers, rapists, and slavers might be a little cold, but in all fairness, it is hard to feel sympathy for abusers, rapists, and slavers.  Her love of the common people, slaves, and the poor has always been her predominant character trait.  It’s ridiculous to believe that suddenly, she’s just evil now.  The writers blame her flip-flop on her Targaryen genetics.  And maybe the history of inbreeding has damaged her genome some.  But then, if Targaryen genes are the problem, why would Jon be a better fit as king, like all the characters argue for?  He’s a Targaryen too, why has his coin landed on goodness?  It feels very much that he is trusted because he is a man with a penis. Varys says as much when he decides to support Jon over Daenerys, his status as a man will make him easier to support among the lords of Westeros.

In universe and in real life, Daenerys is torn down because she is a woman.  The writers turned her evil because of her seemingly random emotions, which is a stereotype about women, that they are too emotional to be in charge.  Daenerys is given no credit despite her humanitarian accomplishments, yet Jon is supported because he is a man.  To Daenerys, being a Targaryen is a mark against her, a sign of her madness.  To Jon, being a Targaryen is a mark of legitimacy, it makes him the rightful king of Westeros.  Furthermore, Jon’s legitimacy isn’t even all that important, because he gets randomly shipped off to the Wall and Bran becomes king anyway, so I guess both Jon and Daenerys were just red herrings all along.

In Conclusion:

Game of Thrones ended with a resounding whimper.  The defining television program of the last decade has ended, and most fans are just glad that it’s over.  Given the rushed pace of the last two seasons, the directors are probably just glad it’s over as well.  HBO offered them more money for more episodes, but they turned it down.  I’m not optimistic for their take on Star Wars in a few years.  I feel that the actors did their very best, and they deserve praise, but they had really bad material to work with.  And, ultimately, that is the point.  Game of Thrones, as a television show, is already showing its age, and it ended yesterday.  The early seasons especially are awful towards, in particular, women, and the casual abuse of women makes rewatching it unpleasant. Later seasons make wild changes to the plot from the books, the writing suffers as a result, and it feels that without source material, Benioff and Weiss can’t write an original story that respects the lore.  Hopefully George R. R. Martin will finish the final books, and we’ll get a more complete ending.  But for now, this show is what we have.

Allegedly, there are a few successor shows or prequels in the works. The one that has been more formally announced has a woman at the helm, and a woman in the role as the lead. With no specific source material, hopefully that will require more quick thinking, better writing, and better treatment of women.  The cast is far more diverse already.  Hopefully it stays that way.  The legacy left behind by this show will be complicated to navigate.  I have no interest in watching this show again.  Maybe I can get excited about a future project in this universe, but as things are, Game of Thrones was the defining show of the 2010s, and as it leaves its audience with a messy legacy of unfortunate implications in its treatment of the source material and its minority cast members, that is just a shame.

[cometsweepandleonidsfly]

“Let me ask you this: What prompted Dany to burn King's Landing? In the moment, that is. The allied forces of Dany and the North had won. In the interests of time, let's leave aside the fact that it was comically easy to kill a dragon only a week ago, but this time, the dragon deftly avoided every projectile and Dany destroyed every scorpion without even breaking a sweat. That was the first laughable moment in an episode that, ultimately, was anything but funny, given how it left the HBO drama's unreliable reputation for quality in smoldering ruins.

In any event, when Dany rested her dragon on a King's Landing wall and realized that she was victorious and the Iron Throne was (probably) hers, what — right then and there — prompted her to decide to burn the city?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

There was no proximate cause, no essential reason for the character to take that horrific action at that moment. To say that a character — or a person — has mental illness in their family tree and thus has no control over their actions is astoundingly reductive and plays into harmful and lazy stereotypes. It's also just boring writing to make a character do something stupid and then handwave it away with "Something, something mental illness!"

That's not only offensive, that's a generality that does nothing to justify that drastic action in that particular moment. All in all, the show has done a piss-poor job of explaining why Daenerys would decide to destroy the very prize she had set her heart on ruling a decade ago. We watched eight seasons of a woman at least attempting to use or think about power differently. Until she didn't. Because … reasons.

Because she had been burned by personal losses? No, sorry, that won't fly. The deaths she's endured recently have certainly contributed to her current mental state, but in the past, we've seen her go through horrific experiences and major grief without murdering thousands of people. Even when she has made mistakes, it was usually in the midst of making strategic decisions that were designed to her get to the next stage of her plan. "Because she was angry" doesn't work, because we've seen her be furious while also demonstrating restraint and realistically assessing the best way forward.

Inescapably, infuriatingly, what we're left with is apparently the central message of Game of Thrones: Bitches are crazy.

Here's how little the show thinks of Dany and how ill-served she was in "The Bells": Once the attack on King's Landing began, we didn't see her face. A core character was reduced to a vengeance-fueled cypher. All we observed, for what felt like pummeling hours, was dragonfire roasting citizens, knocking down buildings, and terrorizing soldiers and civilians alike. Despite Emilia Clarke's superlative acting abilities, we didn't see Dany for the majority of the episode's running time. She was just a faceless, personality-free supervillain, the kind you see in a by-the-numbers blockbuster. We'd been invited to understand Dany's point of view for all these years, but as the endgame approached in "The Bells," the writing made her less interesting than the purple potato known as Thanos.

In its best moments, Game of Thrones has been so much better than this, but every season has been uneven, and this season has been the most slapdash, rushed and insulting of all. At this point, I don't care what happens in the series finale, because the show has already destroyed its legacy, as far as I'm concerned. Of course, a good chunk of that legacy has to do with how ill-served its female characters have been, and the show went out of its way to double down on that in "The Bells."

Brienne was last seen wearing her robe, crying over a boy who broke her heart. The show took the beauty of Jaime knighting Brienne and — again, thanks to tin-eared, threadbare writing — turned it into a bad subplot on a crappy soap opera.

Game of Thrones used to be intermittently interested in exploring and complicating Cersei, which makes sense, given how tremendous a performer Lena Headey is. But this season especially, Cersei has been reduced to a flat, one-dimensional villain, one who is mostly offscreen, except in the occasional scenes in which she smirks or drops smug, acidic commentary. Cersei barely spoke in "The Bells," except for when the show was about to kill her off.

Sansa wasn't even on screen. Everyone in Westeros has made mistakes in their time, Sansa included, but at this point, she's shown more wisdom than most of the characters left alive. She's the most level-headed leadership material the kingdom has at the moment. So, of course, she sitting around tending the hearth in the North and hasn't been given much of interest to do (aside from being portrayed as disloyal to Jon Snow). Not surprisingly, the continually ineffectual Jon Snow wandered around in "The Bells" and once again, didn't really accomplish much. And the show is apparently just dying to put a crown on his head. Because … reasons?

If the show had given us more than a couple minutes of Arya and the Hound actually interacting in the past few episodes (or seasons), maybe her decision to forego revenge on Cersei — you know, a huge part of the motivation that has driven her for years — would have made more sense. It's not that I needed her to kill Cersei, but once Arya was in the Red Keep, the writing for her was abrupt and took the path of least resistance. Maisie Williams gave a terrific performance in the episode, but the messages "The Bells" was sending were so depressingly incoherent that it was hard to care about any of it.

"The Bells" was full of sound and fury that signified nothing, aside from an ungainly sprint to the finish line. It made me feel ill to see so much effort and money wasted on such trivial, silly, nihilistic and sexist storylines. And honestly, the men didn't fare much better: All that character development of Jaime was apparently wasted, and I'm trying to come up with a list of good decisions Tyrion made lately and I'm not coming up with much. This superlative cast deserved better.

In "The Bells," there were moments that could have contained emotional resonance, but that potential was overshadowed by decisions that Benioff and Weiss set up and executed with little or no foresight or thoughtfulness. At this point, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the Game of Thrones creative team thought spectacle would make up for the lack of well-honed concluding character moments. As impressive as the visuals in "The Bells" were, they were ultimately hollow: The explosions served mostly as a reminder that Game of Thrones likes to kill people in large numbers when it runs out of ideas.

Landing like enormous chunks of masonry were so many adolescent, superficial takes on what could have been meaty themes. If it was saying anything, "The Bells" appeared to be stating that cycles of oppression and abuse can't be undone. Rulers are always self-serving and driven by greed and paranoia. Most people can't see beyond their own self-interest. The little people will always get crushed. Douchebros like Euron Greyjoy will always wear leather pants.

So much money spent, so much time spent, all for a show that never knew how to write its women consistently well and that had immature conceptions of how to end their tales. The best-executed major plot turns are moving and tragic because they feel surprising and yet inevitable. Given the right kind of in-depth character development, we could have wept for the choices Daenerys, Brienne, Sansa or Cersei made. I grind my teeth when I think about what this show turned out to be versus what it could have been. At its best, its characters have given us moving and wonderfully complex moments, but "The Bells" was Game of Thrones at its worst, and it did untold damage to the show as a whole. It's going to be hard to think of the show without feeling nauseated by what it did — especially to its women — in the home stretch. “

[larksinging]

aaand, if customers would stop interrupting me, talk about some post denny aus! just like, anyone you havent gone as in depth with before with how dennys affected them/going to affect them and where they’d be at afterwards

okay lemme go over the more in depth ones briefly first

veronica’s post denny au involves going to the big little lies world with madeline, along with tbh the rest of the heathers cast. because, lets be real, modern era california is better than 80s ohio suburbia. sorry! anyway thats mostly “the girls deserve to be happy and alive, so” 

laurel’s just involves going back to her world, with the assumption that sara would show up and bring her back onto the legends. but they get the timing wrong and so sara doesn’t show up for a few months, after laurel gets shot by dinah. sorry! she’ll be okay eventually, just upset. 

maive’s involves going back to sara’s world and joining the legends, because it’s What She Deserves. i don’t know if i have much to say about this, because its... pretty straightforward. most of the interesting parts involve adjusting to hanging out with the canon legends -- and during s2 of legends, no less. actually that’d be interesting, since the version of amaya that maive knows is from a much later canonpoint. and then that means she’s involved in the whole spear of destiny thing 

okay hmm others

winter’s... honestly i fell behind on the series so i cant reflect much on it, but im not sure how much stuff would change? winter hasn’t had any HUGE revelations on denny, he did most of his character arc before coming here. maybe he’d be more willing to reach out and try to make positive relationships

ivypool’s... i don’t know? her arc after her canonpoint gets all sorts of weird. maybe shed have more perspective from the denny weirdness to not be as upset about dovewing leaving? or hell i bet the weirdness of lionclan would give her a better understanding of twigpaw later so she can be a bit nicer about some of the later skyclan issues. 

mothpaw.... if nothing else, she’d have gained some confidence that’d let her stand up to sweetbriar a bit more. but beyond that depends on how tigerclan stuff develops. her post denny au could be WILDLY different depending on whether tigerclan ever finds out about tigerstar

nyssa’s is hard too, because 90% of her arc after her canonpoint is offscreen, so nothing about denny much would change it. maybe if anything she’d... make more of an attempt to talk to sara, at least once, so they can get a bit more closure. she might also grudgingly get more involved in some star city stuff to deal with some of the stuff laurel-2 might’ve mentioned. 

maria’s, oh boy. on the one hand, she could go back to her world, and just... end up as some kind of positive fixture of silent hill? but im not sure if that would make her happy, since so much of the town is being isolated and in danger and she deserves better. i don’t think she’d go to lucille’s world, but hey maybe they can both roadtrip to someone else’s world. i feel like she’d be happiest somewhere where she can have a quieter life, but has at least SOME supernatural stuff so that maria’s not totally out of place. true blood world here she comes!, though actually maria might be a unique place because she’d probably exist on denny for as long as silent hill exists on denny 

[stargazer1682]

Star Trek Picard - Season 1

Where to start?

Re-watching the DS9 episode, “Past Tense” recently, a line from Bashir really stood out, which personified everything wrong with Star Trek Picard - “But it makes you wonder, doesn't it? Are humans really any different than Cardassians or Romulans? If push comes to shove, if something disastrous happens to the Federation, if we are frightened enough, or desperate enough, how would we react? Would we stay true to our ideals or would we just stay up here, right back where we started?" According to STP, the answer is apparently, no, we don’t stay true to our ideals; and we do go right back to where we started, or pretty damn near close.

There are just so many logical inconsistencies. I mean, Christ - just, everything about Raffi, from her ambiguous chemical dependency, her resentment about her living conditions versus Picard’s, when such things are no longer supposed to exist in Star Trek; or at least not in the Federation and most definitely not on Earth.

The unwillingness of the Federation to help Romulus when their sun was going to go nova. I mean, this is the Federation, for crying out loud; yes, the Romulans had been cold war style adversaries of theirs for centuries, but humanity and the Federation are supposed to have been above such pettiness when it came to actual, desperate need for help. Plus, they had managed to find themselves allies against the Dominion; which would surely count for something.

Of course, one of the chief excuses for the Federation not to help Romulus, was the so-called synth attack on Mars - which turned out to be orchestrated by the Romulans; because when your homeworld is in danger of being destroyed, risking a massive death count of your own people, why wouldn’t you take the opportunity to screw with the people who are in the best position to save your sorry asses?

And why did the Romulans do it? Because of some stupid ass cult/shadow organization within their shadow organization that are afraid of artificial lifeforms, because of some psychic acid trip bullshit they all share. So they need to ensure the Federation bans synthetic life and concocts the most asinine plot to engineer this; and to add insult to injury, it works! The Federation falls for it!

I mean, honestly, the synths were decidedly not sentient; yet there’s not the slightest doubt that they appear to act on their own, which again, they’re not supposed to be able to do, but they do and not only that, they inexplicably and out of the blue frag an entire planet, killing themselves in the process and all for no apparent reason; and the Federation assigns blame to all forms of artificial life and bans them from the Federation? Bullshit. Seriously, how many Vulcans must have died from brain aneurysms trying to wrap their heads around that kind of logic?

Never mind some of the inconsistencies that crop up later; like Rios’ holograms (are those permitted with the Synth ban?), or the bullshit that Riker and Troi’s son couldn’t be cured, because the only cure had to be cultivated in a positronic brain; you know, the thing that successfully existed in only three androids, and they couldn’t possibly go anywhere else or develop the same cure some other way. Nope, this is the darkest fucking timeline, which means all of the characters we love now live shitty, depressing lives.

Speaking of which, 7 of 9 appears; having left behind all of her friends and the promising life suggested by the end of Voyager, because the writers felt the need to torture-murder Icheb, so that 7 could run off and join the fucking Power Rangers, or whatever they’re called.

Then there’s the main plot of the first season, meandering as it is. So Bruce Maddox managed to replicate Data’s programming by using a single positron from Data, which somehow contains everything that made Data, Data? What?? How is that supposed to make any sense? Seeing as he apparently got that positron from B4, why not just say he reversed engineered the programming Data tried uploading to him? And they always come in pairs. WHY?? So the plot can happen, and so one of them can die; and Jean Luc Quixote can put a crew together and go chasing windmills, or rather, borg cubes. But it can’t be the crew he used to have, because why enlist your friends who have the proper resources to help you; when you can contact the burnout who hates you for somehow ruining her career by sticking to your convictions and retiring; and then spend five or six episodes out of a ten episode season just putting the rest of your crew together….

So then we find out the Romulans have in their possession a decommissioned borg cube, because again, the Federation are complete fucking morons now and in addition to their xenophobic policies and stupid laws regarding AI, they’re fine with Romulans having a borg cube… because, reasons…. Why the Romulans, who are supposedly so afraid of artificial intelligence, even want the cube or what they’re getting out it completely escapes me. We also find out the Borg now have space folding technology that makes their ships redundant and should pose the greatest threat the galaxy has ever known, but whatevs…

And now we’re on the planet of the androids, with a large number of Data’s offspring, essentially; and another flippin’ Soong who looks exactly like Arik; making at least two generations of his descendants, and probably more, who apparently got nothing from their mothers - but that’s okay, because my personal theory is that Arik, brilliant geneticist that he was, just cloned himself to perpetuate his work, rather than have kids the conventional way…. But more importantly, it turns out that some aspect of Data is still alive, on a floppy disk or something, chilling in his own personal limbo. Did Maddox’s work bring Data back to life, or would Data have been stuck in this virtual realm within B4 indefinitely? And why, out of all the other new androids that were built, let alone the planned “golem” Maddox was creating to put his own mind inside, did they never give Data a new body? Sure, Brent Spiner is older and looks relatively different from when he originally played Data, but they’ve now established that this new batch of androids can age and are somehow “organic artificial life” - which, in its own right, is the dumbest fraking thing they could have come up with. So why not put Data in an older body, and have him greet his old Captain, instead of introducing yet another carbon copy Soong? It would have been everything Data every wanted, making him as close to being human as possible, but instead, he just wants to be turned off and die… again…

But I get ahead of myself, because they have to have the big climax, where the Romulans that have been chasing Picard and Data’s daughter halfway across the galaxy to find the android homeworld, finally find them! But wait, are the Romulans a decimated, nomadic people; or are they still a strong empire, with a huge fleet of ships? Doesn’t matter. The Romulans must destroy the androids, because of that acid nightmare they all had, about how artificial life will destroy everything. Agnes knows, she’s seen it and it scared the shit out of her too; so much so that she killed her dad, Bruce. Wait. What? She wasn’t his daughter? They were boning? Well, bully for him, I guess, but still, it drove sweet… bland… cardboard cutout Agnes to be a cold blooded murderer; which means she’ll eventually go to jail soon, so it has to be pretty serious. It’s not like they’re just going to ignore that she killed a dude, and move on like it never happened, right?

Data’s children want to know about this vision, and one of them has…. (sigh)… “practiced the Vulcan mind meld”…… (Sigh) Just… seriously, fuck these writers…… So the android leader sees the visions and sees the dimension inhabited by… I don’t know, Doc Ock? And they understand, it wasn’t a vision warning organics about synths, it was a warning to synths about organics. So to prove to organics they aren’t the threat they fear them to be, they are going to become the threat the organics fear them to be; and Picard and his “crew” are under arrest. But of course, they get free, because Agnes sucks and has loyalties to no one and lies with ease, despite her otherwise innocent demeanor. And blah, blah, blah, the synths and organics decide a stalemate is preferable to the machine tentacles that are coming out of the rift in space. Riker has somehow taken command of a ship and gets to the android planet just a few hours behind Picard, and then promptly leaves after going through all that trouble, rather than staying long enough to make sure the Romulans don’t come back; or at the very least, check out this new civilization populated with the “descendants” of a close, late friend….

And now Coulson is alive again as an advanced LMD… I mean, Picard… is an android… but you know, with none of the advantages of being an android….. Because if you’re going to be an android, you might as well be an android who looks, feels, sounds and has all of the same physical limitations of a 90 year old human male… Is Synth-Picard going to have to get up five times in the middle of the night to pee? And the synth ban is conveniently lifted, offscreen, with barely any effort, like it was really no big deal….

But none of it really matters, because let’s face it, the whole thing was a hallucination caused by Picard’s Irumodic Syndrome.

[pilotheather]

aye, really starting to loathe the “yaz kills either graham/ryan whilst under the dalek influence” like-

1. first of all. hate this presumption that graham/ryan have to die. personally, im fine with companions dying - clara’s penultimate exit in face the raven was done beautifully, i think, and i will FOREVER resent them not leaving it like that. however with graham and ryan? literally, i just feel like... it’s so cheap. it offers nothing, babes! and it’s just infinitely LESS interesting than if you just kept them alive.

all the companions, in my opinions, still lack development. i do love them! i really am warming to them. but we’re two seasons in, and the fact of the matter remains they just... haven’t gelled too well with the show proper and they aren’t as fully realised as they should be by this point. and frankly, its not one singular problem moreso it’s an interwoven web of issues (hence it’s hard to really unpick that, without unravelling the whole mess) that have affected the show completely. the point is, despite being here so long, they just still feel so unexplored as people and a little unknown to us and idk!!! i think killing them, wouldn’t offer much in the way of anything interesting - other than, like i said, a very cheap way to instigate tragedy, and springboard some trauma-induced development for yaz&13 - because we aren’t really gaining more than we’re losing here, man.

clara’s exit in face the raven WORKED because it had been building up to it all season. i also dont like amy/rory’s exits (but that’s v potentially my own biases) but theoretically, i can see the vision for that- and the reason why that would be so tragic, is BECAUSE amy&rory are so fully formed at tht point that that loss hits. im not sayin graham&ryan dying would NOT be sad, but it’s... just too soon, still, for me. and when, narratively speaking, they’ve been setting up them thinking about leaving anyway? at least, ryan has? just doesn’t feel quite right at all and just like i said: a pointless attempt, at taking their exits, and doing weird tragedy shit with it for the sake of it.

especially when the ALTERNATIVE is they can stay on in the same way martha did: on earth, totally fine, and with the opportunity to reappear in later seasons. they can progress offscreen in ways that can be satisfying, in the way martha did. she moved on; she became someone different; and yet that change was still guided by what we had seen. same can be done with ryan and graham, finishing their stories and making them all the more satisfying.

2. piggybacking off of that. literally, this scenario of yaz killing them: what would that DO for yaz exactly? like.. what big payoff are u expecting from her? you’re just... horrifically traumatising her. and im wondering, like- where would that leave her in s13?  because she’s supposed to still be here, then, and supposedly travelling with the doctor. and again it just feels so damn cheap: because yaz really does still feel like she’s at the beginning of her story, despite being here for two years (and god am i a little mad abt that; it’s so, so sad that she really could be replaced with a cardboard cutout for most of s11). explore what we HAVE of her, first, before trying to go so damn dark with her. it’s not going to have the payoff you want. you have to work a bit more, to do something like that first. using some fucked up shit like that, just as a springboard for character development it just- it feels so damn lazy to me...  and again, i do not feasibly see how this could properly segue into s13 on that damn note. like the conse

3. and just... god in general. i just. okay again with chibbers and his writing. literally i dont want to sound so negative abt chibnall bc like SOME ppl really do just fucking attack . KILL. over every damn thing, without a breath and its like... okay babe. okay. and i mean, granted i can be a little like tht with moffat tbh - and so  i get ppl do get a little FERVENT when it comes to shit they dont like but- BUT MY POINT IS. i really dont hate-hate this era of who. s7 will still be my least favourite, even if i do still regard this all as bottom of the pile stuff- and that is frustrating, because it really does have potential! but anyway god. what was my fucking point. oh yeah. chibnall. if this was the case.... if this really did fucking happen. god no offence but fucking hell i do not trust chibnall to treat such a heavy scene well enough. not with the way s11 and s12 have been. and its just because... again this is all the WEB OF ISSUES with these seasons... but all of it just boils down to: every single script really needed a second or third pass over. ITS LIKE, things are kinda right, but its always jsut...wrong and its soi many things that just dont quite work and  instead all work in tandem to bring this ship down.

too many companions, leading to a bloated tardis; leading to none of them getting enough focus; leading to weaker characters whose dynamics with each other aren’t always hitting. there’s swathes of s12, where the doctor is just completely disconnected from the companions altogether. she just doesnt talk to them. and there’s a difference between her being detached, and her just.... LITERALLT FORGETTING THEY EXIST. i remember- was it ryan who disappears at one poimt, and she JUST DOESNT NOTICE? and then all of them disappear in fugitive? like its just so... the companion-docgtor relationship is so INTEGRAL to the whole show!!! it makes story beats less effective; not even that, the whole energy is brought down, because they just don’t TALK properly (and the dialogue... good god, is it stiff: and whilst i hated 11′s era of mutated LOL THAT’S SO RANDOM. THE HORSE IS NAMED SUSAN. BOWTIES FEZ FEZ HOW MANY MARKETABLE RANDOM SHIT CAN WE THROW AT THE PAAAGE it felt like characters were bouncing off each other... there’s now these long pauses, places where it should have been snappier, awkward remarks thrown in there and then) . it, again, bloats EVERYTHING bc half the time you have to just give stuff for these ppl to do and its like man, why! why ! its all so.... sloppy in a way that’s sad bc it was ALMOST right. things are ALMOST right here but it doesnt QUITE work and it needs pulling together into something neater, tighter.  AND GIVEN ALL OF THAT. i do not think, with the way he’s been handling things, this man would ever be capable of pulling off something as fucked up like that in a way that has any weight even disregarding the two above points

4 lastly. just fucking dont kill ryan man. c’mon. how many main, black characters have we had? hmm, let’s see. martha, mickey, danny, bill. we’re going at a 50% survival rate, with the other two facing pretty poor treatment in the writing room in general. no, im not letting it go: you cant literally refer to mickey, who was the first, like, leading black character on the show, as a fucking DOG repeatedly.  if you’re gonna decide to diversify the tardis, pay your dues; dont fucking axe him for what, again, really just feels like empty emotional tortureporn. ryan deserves better.