#lordjarman

[raayllum]

What really makes Rayla's ghosting f*cked up to me is the Silver Groves reasoning behind it. It was the simple fact that she was the only member of the team who survived (to their knowledge). Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I'm getting the impression that they (Ethari obviously being the exception) expected her to die on the mission as "redemption" for her parents supposed cowardness.

To me I think it's worse, somehow, because I don't think the Silvergrove expected Rayla to die for her parents' sins (at least not on that level, but Rayla does internalize a lot of it that way in 3x08 pretty directly).

The Ghosting is a punishment for if you don't die, or 'kill' yourself (die in the line of duty accordingly), we'll kill you ourselves (metaphorically in the show, more literally in the book one novelization). Public collective shaming and ex-communication and all that. There's a reason, I think, why people have been able to pretty smoothly read aspects of religious, particularly Christian, trauma onto Rayla and her attitudes towards sacrifice/suffering and the response(s) of her village to her.

That said: the Silvergrove wasn't wrong to be mad or grieving. They'd just lost 5 members of a clearly close knit and fairly small community, all of whom had families/loved ones. However, the issue is:

They had no way of knowing any of what had happened was Rayla's fault

They had no way of knowing she hadn't just been captured and escaped, or injured and taking a longer time to get home

She was 15 years old

As Callum says, "You didn't even give Rayla a chance to explain herself," which means it's a collective punishment without a trial

Rayla states that "They think I ran away, just like my parents" which means there probably is a societal shame/linking "guilty by association" aspect coming into play, too

Thereby, what the Silvergrove based their entire, seemingly irreversible judgement on was 1) everyone else on Rayla's team died in a timely fashion and 2) for whatever reason, she didn't, and they assumed it was because she was too afraid to die for their cause (when if anything, Rayla is routinely a little too willing to die for any and all causes she thinks is worthy of it) despite having zero tangible evidence for it.

Runaan and the other assassins were counting on having the element of surprise, wanted to make it home (ofc / "I promise I will return your heart to you"), and expected to: "We can accomplish this mission without sacrifice" (1x01). But once Rayla lets Marcos go, as Runaan says, "You let him live, but you killed us all" (which yes they could've, at any point, just called off the mission for their own wellbeing, but they were 1. already bound and 2. Moonshadows don't usually work like that, nevermind Moonshadow assassins).

Which could be decent, if still brutal, grounds for Ghosting Rayla, but like - the Silvergrove doesn't even have that, with even less proof than they had for Lain and Tiadrin (egg stolen, no bodies found).

It's like... either you all die for the good of the cause, or you all survive, and anything in between is unacceptable. Nothing like an extreme, steep hell heaven divide y'know?

[smokestarrules]

Someone in the TOH fandom theorized to Dana one time that Lilith was never given an EC sigil because Belos hated her so much that he didn’t even want to give her the “honor” of being included in his genocidal draining spell. Do you think this could have a grain of truth to it?

I think that a lot of Lilith's life is what you could call a self-fulfilling prophecy, including that detail itself.

I've always kind of gone with the assumption that Philip recognized Lilith as the woman with "Luzura" from all those centuries ago, and he'd probably understand the significances of finding her again. Her being allowed into the Emperor's Coven in the first place was very likely on purpose, and her becoming the Head of the Coven was definitely on purpose. Philip wanted her close, just in case.

And he also probably remembered that she didn't have a Sigil when they first met.

[mechanicalchickens]

Since the S1 teaser confirmed that Atlas was still alive at the time Rocky joined Lackadaisy, I wonder what their interactions were like. It’s clear Rocky is loyal to Mitzi and practically worships the ground she walks on, but I don’t think there’s been much info from the comic or the series that he and the big guy had any meaningful interactions with each other. How do you think they would have felt about each other?

If we assume what happened in the teaser is how Rocky joined Lackadaisy in the comic timeline (I don't think there's anything contradicting this? but it's been a while since I've done a full reread), I think that whole interaction falls into Atlas's whole modus operandi of finding desperate, isolated people with nowhere to go and a skillset that he needed, and tying them to him by providing 'stable ground' of sorts. It's hard to say what Atlas thought about it, how much he cared about the building blocks of his empire -- we barely know fragments of Atlas, not enough to get at his interiority.

If I had to speculate, I'm inclined to go more with Zib's view of it being purposeful entrapment, which certainly implies a certain malevolence in Atlas (beyond the baseline indifference to human life required to be successful at organized crime). I do not trust that bitch even if he's bones. Zib might be biased due to his past romantic entanglement with Mitzi, but his other insights have been spot on.

In that case, Rocky might be viewed as a relatively minor asset, a musician that will stick around no matter what. If Atlas held genuine regard for the strays he picked up, then he might think of Rocky a fraction more, but either way, I think him and Rocky probably didn't interact much.

On Rocky's part, I think the 'warmth' surrounding Mitzi in the teaser trailer could suggest that Rocky views Mitzi as the primary cause of him finding a new home - she's the one who stops to compliment his music, Atlas seems a bit more checked out (Mitzi could probably relate to being a poor musician, I wonder if in that moment she saw herself in Rocky at all?). Rocky hasn't really talked about Atlas, and I don't think he's too broken up about his death -- he pretends that he killed Atlas on Mitzi's orders just to scare Wick, I can't imagine he would do that if Atlas meant a lot to him.

[pdaliceliveblogs]

Asks pt1: future plans

I am! I’m trying to assert myself enough to confirm that I am only going to do other shows that interest me instead of just avoiding the blog for a million years!

I am avoiding the blog for a bit, though, because I’m graduating from college next month and doing research into MFA programs and it’s all a mess.

I will consider it, but the thing is that a low-stakes storyline isn’t super in my wheelhouse? Also, “low-stakes” is the only thing I’ve ever heard about its storyline, and that’s right here; I didn’t even know it had a plot. It’s probably very good but I’ve never heard anything that made it seem like it’s to my taste...

I’m afraid I’ve already watched Kipo! I did really enjoy it, but yeah, it’s off the table because I’ve already seen it.

I’m not sure I’m going to be doing Amphibia at all! That’s what I was referring to at the top of this post-- I’m just. Not interested? I’ve had a lot of requests for it, but I’ve also seen a lot of spoilers, and the animation style really doesn’t appeal to me, and I have a little bit of a sense of dread when I think about blogging it u_u And the last time I tried to blog something I knew I wasn’t going to like, it was Symphogear, and I think I earned myself a lot of bad feeling by not enjoying the thing people wanted me to enjoy. I don’t know, I’m worried about it.

...but I do think Dead End looks fun!

[smokestarrules]

Luz declaring herself as belonging to both the Demon and Human Realms when defeating Belos was such a beautiful climax for her character development. She spent half of S2 and a literal 2/3rds of S3 believing she HAD to choose one over the other due to her guilt complex, something Belos only further reinforced with his petty gaslighting. So this declaration was not only a perfect conclusion for her growth, but a satisfying defiance of Belos, even more so since it was her last words to him.

Yes! Luz's story has always been about being unsure of where she feels Right and finding a place where she can comfortably be herself, and for the show to bring her to both Realms in the end is incredibly powerful. She can have the Demon Realm and she can have the Human World and she can have loved ones in both. It's okay. She can live her life the way she wants to.

[raayllum]

I'm torn with Claudia. The humane part of me wants her to stop walking her dark path before she destroys herself completely and find some measure of peace. The fucked-up part of me wants to watch her to lose it and go on the warpath and cause lots of chaos. Is that last one wrong to hope for?

Not at all! I do think we'll see her warpath arc next season, since as Ezran stated/foreshadowed

We all want peace and we all want love. But violence tests us. In a twisted way, it converts us to its cause. Because pain and loss feel so terrible inside, you want to hate. You want to hurt someone else.

Given that Rayla cut off her leg and the trio cost her the chance to save her father's life (since if/when Viren survives, I don't think Claudia will know for a while), I think she'll start chasing Revenge. (Which may lead to even more fracturing with Terry, as "I always believed in you because you had a reason" but we shall see...) And then maybe Soren and Viren will work together to try and bring her home, but maybe only in s7 - so who knows?

But yeah, I don't think ever wanting characters to go through "negative character development" or "fail" means we don't like them or don't understand/sympathize with them. Too often, I think, fandoms can have a tendency to moralize, well, everything, but in this case the choices writers make regarding their favourite characters, i.e. "This Bad Thing happened to Character A so therefore the writers hate them / are punishing them."

And don't get me wrong, I've definitely seen shows where a writing team just did not know what to do with a character, so they just heaped tons of pain on them and/or under utilized them, and who is shown on screen with discussed/processed trauma vs who isn't is definitely a discussion worth having, because none of that exists in an apolitical or aracial space.

However... by no means is the "punishing" angle what's happening all the time, either. What I think it comes from is like, some base assumptions and also a lack of literary understanding for some key aspects I'm gonna do my best at articulating clearly:

1) Operating under an assumption that if you like a character you should only want 'good' things for them, and for them to be a 'good' person, because you are also a 'good' person. This doesn't seem super moralized on the surface, but it explains a lot about "how could anyone like that villain" or offense to "how could anyone want that character to fail" and it's like, idk how to explain that failure and therefore conflict and tragic figures are Just Interesting, Brenda, even if they aren't your personal cup of tea. (I say, as a diehard Macbeth and literary Judas enjoyer lmao.)

2) Ignores catharsis and tragedy as elements of storytelling / as its own desirable genre. Sometimes, you want to watch a thing where you know the whole time everything is going to go horribly wrong for certain characters, or all the characters, and that's what's fun about it. The desirable outcome for every story or character is not a happy ending, nor are all characters or stories built for a happy ending, either. It can be upsetting, of course, when a character we like doesn't get the (happy) ending we hoped for, but that isn't necessarily always the same as a bad ending, y'know? Substantially bad things happening to a character doesn't always mean a narrative hates them; a focus on them is still a focus.

All of this to say: I don't think it's wrong at all to want, or be interested in, Terrible Things happening to a character. It's a thought experiment like any other, and pushing characters to their limits, revealing how they respond under intense or painful experiences - whether than pain is physical, emotional, or something else entirely - is fun and interesting. There's a reason there's are entire genres for Horror and Drama and tearjerker films after all.

Like I've been waiting and wanting for Claudia to snap and become a fully fledged villain since S2 because it was very clear to me just how much she was already Skewed in S1 and S2 made it clear to me that, unlike her brother, she would not be getting on a better path any time soon. Sometimes mess and hurt and mistakes is more interesting than healing, and sometimes it's the opposite (and those things aren't mutually exclusive either).

Like going into S6, I want everyone to Fail so badly (except, arguably, Claudia - who still isn't going to be getting what she actually Needs - and Aaravos, who's going to get exactly what he wants). Watching how characters and their relationships can fall apart, how their own consistent flaws and patterns, can lead them to make awful but understandable mistakes? That's my shit. And getting to see how they do, or don't, come back from that in the season, and in season 7? Chomping at the bit, I'm so excited.

I also don't think that hoping for another end, though, is worse than being excited for a tragic end, because while tragedies are about sadness, they are also - at their core - about Hope that maybe it won't end badly this time. If a tragedy cannot provide catharsis to a viewer, for some reason, then they are still fulfilling their purpose in nurturing hope and indignation in the face of perceived unfairness - that a character could try so hard and still be doomed; that we ourselves often take on tasks that feel insurmountable, that we can take on what looks like a losing battle and still, somehow, win. And maybe we don't - maybe they don't. But tragedies, if nothing else, teach us resilience and the merit of telling a story when you already know how it ends, and the skill of it lies therefore entirely in the execution (sometimes literally).

Basically: hope for whatever you want for whatever character you want, even, or especially, when it's 'bad'. It's what we've always done for a reason.

[raayllum]

I like how Callum and Claudia have absolutely zero chill about hurting each other at this point. He blasts her away from Ez, she throws a fucking ROCK at him and slams him face first onto the ocean floor. And then there's Cal trying to suffocate her at the end of the fight. Absolutely no love lost between these 2 dorky morally grey mages. I love it.

One of my favourite things about Callum and Claudia since S2 has always been the similarity of them both being Very Loyal, and very selectively loyal people, with that loyalty just having never... extended to each other when it really mattered. Callum doesn't take Rayla's allegation that Soren is trying to murder Ezran at face value, understandably, but he still absolutely throws Soren and particularly Claudia (who at that point hasn't done anything knowingly wrong to him) under the bus with the illusion plan, which would've been really mean if they'd turned out to be 100% genuine!

Like Claudia still clearly cares by 2x07, but Callum decidedly doesn't (since she put Ez and Rayla in danger more than once, and so did her lies) but then they don't see each other all the way until 4x08. And like, Soren didn't know whether she was okay/alive/whatever (4x07) so there's no way Callum knew either, but while he's spent two years in borderline agony over hoping Rayla was okay (and his reaction when he first sees her again says it all), he's just scared and then pissed at Claudia whenever he encounters her again. Is she still in the collapsing tunnels of Umber Tor? Will she get to the surface safely after he takes away her means of breathing? Callum doesn't know and he does not care. That bridge burned a long time ago.

"Callum would never hurt me" mmhm not without looking you dead in the eye first, that is

[raayllum]

Finnegrinn and Kim'dael's characters, I've realized, are polar opposites of the philosophy's regarding their respective Primal. Finnegrinn is a sadistic control freak who goes to horrible lengths to assert his power on the Ocean and its inhabitants despite his arcanum revolving around accepting that no one can control everything. Kim'dael, who's people preach accepting the inevitability of death, has drained and spilt the blood of countless innocents in a desperate attempt to escape her own mortality. Quite an interesting parallel.

Aah fantastic point!! I love it, thank you for sharing it!

It really goes to show how Callum and Rayla contrast them in particular. For Rayla, she's too comfortable in some ways with sacrificing her life for others (or for anything, really), whereas Callum struggles with feeling not in control / not having answers about Rayla in s4 to steadily being okay with that uncertainty and finding the truths that matter to him.

Guess it's a good thing Finnegrin never lived to meet or team up with Kim'Dael, huh?

[raayllum]

If Claudia does find out about Callum and Rayla's relationship, she's DEFINITELY going to use them to torture each other. I can already see her rubbing the fact that Callum used dark magic and essentially sold his soul to Aaravos for her sake in Rayla's face. And she's going to have a field day using the fact that Callum may end up being a danger to Rayla due to Aaravos's possession to torment him. With how much grief they've caused her, deliberately or not, the possibilities are there.

I mean, I do think Claudia would use them against each other — she already wanted to with 2x07 ("She can lead us to Callum and Ezran") and outright did so to Rayla in 4x09 with the moon fam, arguably twice given the fakeout coins.

That said, a lot of the information above is info she just doesn't have access to. I think she'd be very angry upon learning Callum's done dark magic because "why is it okay when he does it but not when I do" — which is a thorny in-universe stance to begin with, simply because Claudia doesn't always use dark magic for good/necessary things, and whether Callum's use of dark magic to begin with was good is debatable. Is compromising yourself and possibly, subsequently, the fate of the world really worth the life of one person? Callum and Claudia both think so, but they'd absolutely disagree on which person the other has chosen to save; both hate Viren and Rayla respectively, after all

I also think Claudia learning Callum's been possessed would deeply disturb her, to be honest. Mostly because it'd cause him to act in ways she finds unpredictable, but also because if Aaravos can do that to him, what's stopping Aaravos from doing that to her if Claudia did ever choose to step out of line?

That said: Claudia rubbing Callum's lack of moral 'purity' in his face and decrying his actions is in character, I think. She'd definitely taunt and maybe tempt him ("my path isn't so difficult to understand how is it") even if her view of those temptations is flawed/missing the mark. And Claudia tormenting Rayla verbally with her being unable to save Callum (or Ezran) is on par, I think, given their interactions ("I can protect you from the elf" -> Rayla attacking Claudia to protect the boys), I just don't know if Claudia would feel secure in using the possession angle to do so.

But we will have to see! S6 may prove her to be far more comfortable with the possession concept than I'm thinking, if she finds out at all

[smokestarrules]

It’s kind of a wild realization on my part, but it just clicked to me that Tibbles is one of the main reasons Luz and Amity became an item. They’re shared love of Azura was one of their biggest bonding points in S1, and Amity only came upon the series due to buying them from Tibbles when he was trying to pass the author off as a witch. That capitalist pigs terrible scamming made Lumity official.

Diversity win! A capitalistic pig is responsible for one of the most beautiful queer love stories in animation!

[smokestarrules]

This is just a wild theory on my part, but do you think the real reason Boscha made Willow the primary victim of her bullying was out of jealousy over how close she and Amity were before Amity’s parents forced her to cut Willow out of her life?

Oh, I don't think that's a wild theory in the slightest. Boscha is canonically unhealthily obsessed with Amity's attention, and she's also not stupid as to think that they were ever genuinely as close as Amity and Willow were. Singling Willow out specifically and especially having Amity join in would have been the ultimate rush of power.

[smokestarrules]

Rewatching the fight scene in “Thanks to Them,” I noticed that after taunting Luz, the first member of the Hexsquad Belos lunged at was Amity. He likely knew about Luz’s relationship with Amity at that point and definitely wanted to hit his “fellow human” where it hurt the most.

Yup! Philip's very good about ascertaining any 'weakness' in a fight (something Lilith probably learned from him) and it goes all the way back to the beginning with him very likely trying to kill Evelyn Clawthorne. He's very predictable in his cruelty.

[raayllum]

Part of what makes Finnegrin and Kim’dael stand out from the other antagonists in TDP is that they aren’t connected to the cycle of revenge and retaliation that forms much of the conflict in the show. They aren’t victims of war, they didn’t suffer any loss or were victims of a great tragedy (aside from Finnegrin losing Shelley but even that was more of a setback to him than a major loss). They’re just selfish people who misused the power they gained to the point of becoming dependent on it.

It's true that the bulk of the Cycle is connected through war directly, but I'd argue that misuse of power and perpetuation of violence (not entirely in general but close to) are crucial parts of the Cycle on a literal level. (There's also Freedom on a metaphorical level, but we'll get to it when we get to it.)

Finnegrin misuses his power over Scumport, the ocean, and the crew, citing that "the chains are just for show". He hates being restricted ad kept out of territory he thinks is rightfully his and rightfully his to rule/control/conquer. This isn't too different from Viren 1) torturing Runaan as a prisoner in a way that mirrors Finnegrin's treatment of Callum, 2) Viren's desire to return to and conquer Xadia, and 3) using the corrupted human soldiers as "this was all just a distraction". Finnegrin's mistreatment of Elmer is linked by Soren himself to being similar to Viren's mistreatment of his son, a form of abuse that escalated as Viren's power hungriness did as well. We could argue that dark magic itself is inherently built upon a concept of misuse of power, which is why Finnegrin, Viren, and other humans (and elves, including Kim'Dael and Aaravos) who were so inclined turned toward it in the first place as solutions to their problems when they didn't necessarily need to. People who want power will also always misuse other people's suffering and grief to fund their platforms and ploys, after all.

Then you have Kim'Dael, who misused primal magic and used dark magic to prolong the lives of herself and the rest of her ilk, but Queen Aditi also arguably misused her power in binding Kim'Dael to the mercy debt. The safest route would've been to just kill her (and maybe we'll find out why she didn't later) but that's not what happened, and the collar-chain clearly doesn't stop Kim'Dael from slaughtering innocent people, it just gives her a conditional interest in not knowingly slaughtering the entire royal family line. Like Finnegrin, Kim'Dael lost elements of her freedom because of a Xadian monarchy, and they're bitter and resentful over it, trying to right the perceived or literal wrongs they've endured.

I think in a lot of ways the two cogs that spur the Cycle into being what it is are the Desires for Vengeance (and arguably to not feel powerless in the face of grief, which Amaya notes) and the Desire to Escape.

Escape consequences (Viren offering the soulfang spell), escape pain (Claudia curing Soren), escape grief (Claudia reviving Viren / Viren saving Soren / Callum saving Rayla), escape feeling helpless (all of the above really but particularly Terry killing Ibis: "You have to promise you'll signal if you need help [...] I couldn't let him hurt you"). Then there's the desire for vengeance, which focuses on making sure someone can't escape you; the Xadian side tends to outright perpetuate this more, but we see humans as well - Viren sending shadowy assassins after the other Pentarchy leaders for snubbing him, Harrow and Viren killing Thunder as revenge for Avizandum murdering Sarai, etc.

Kim'Dael kills to escape both her literal binding and the inevitability of death. She perpetuates the cycle through bloodshed and violence. Finnegrin seeks vengeance and escape as well, having a score to settle with Domina Profundis that he wants to end in murder.

I think this is part of the reason why Aaravos' quest to get out of the mirror features both of these drives so strongly and arguably makes them synonymous with each other (at least for him): he wants to escape to enact vengeance.

This is because the only thing that break the cycle, in a lot of ways, isn't love or power or magic - it's ultimately Freedom. Real, true freedom, to make your own choices in ways that don't hurt other people. Why Callum gets his wings, why Rayla's binding is undone, why Ezran has to be a (child) king that doesn't strike back. Some of the Freedom is symbolic, some is literal, but I do think that's the core in ultimately breaking the cycle. Both Finnegrin, Aaravos, and Kim'Dael want freedom - but they also want to have the freedom to hurt people ("You want to hate; you want to hurt someone else") and that's why they'll never be truly free, and both stuck in and perpetuating the Cycle for other people until they decide to break it.

[smokestarrules]

Ironwood killing Jacques before going after Winter is so funny to me because James didn’t even have to. Bastard was locked up and wouldn’t pose that much of a threat due to being a complete wimp. He killed him because Jacque was THAT annoying. He had already decided to go after Winter once he escaped and then was like “oh one more thing”.

And I think it's especially interesting because it's another time with those two characters that Jacques is actually the one in the right. There's no reason to kill him. He's a piece of shit and deserves worse, probably, but the fact that Ironwood takes the time to take him down specifically because he's so detached from reality and has decided that he's the only one allowed to make decisions about who lives or dies is less about Jacques himself and more about Ironwood losing the last shred of who he used to be.

[raayllum]

There's a twisted irony in the parallels between Viren and Karim's arcs. Viren is confronted with the reality of what his life as a dark mage has cost him and at the end would rather die (again) than use dark magic again. Karim, by contrast, has adopted the mindset of the same man that destroyed Lux Aurea and caused the decline of his culture in the first place, becoming a zealot willing to murder his only sibling to do what he feels is right even as it costs him everything he loves.

Karim and Viren have always had their similarities, so I think it's interesting that Karim is now following even more in Viren's footsteps (hiring a ghost Moonshadow-y being for a dire stealthy task to sow political discord; being presented an army to use as leverage for the throne) while Viren decidedly splits from the path.

In some ways it makes me wonder if Karim is being given Viren's political path of darkness (everything I do is for my people to have a bright future and regain their lost glory) while Callum is being given Viren's personal one (everything I do is to protect my family, however dangerous, however vile) - the same theme from one brother-mage-advisor but split down the middle between two more brother-mage-advisor-princes.

[raayllum]

I wonder is Kim'dael will continue to be an independent enemy or if she'll meet up with Claudia and help her try to release Aaravos. 'cuz she seems like the type of person who would be ecstatic to play a part in potentially causing the end of the world. Plus, Aaravos may be the only other being powerful enough to remove her binding. What do you think.

Yeah, given that Kim'Dael heard Janai said "and I will never free her" there is both incentive for Kim'Dael to try and kill Janai (and have Karim safely stowed away for him to be king) or for her to help Karim in his conquest... but I could also very easily see her deciding to get the heck of dodge and look for other solutions, figuring the two siblings will probably end up destroying themselves. I don't know if that'll lead her to Aaravos directly, but I've long since thought that the Moon fam getting to defeat her Together will be an element in the S7 final battle Aaravos adjacent-ish eps, so we'll just have to see!