#make it grimdark?

[ashthehermit]

Harry Potter & shallow worldbuilding

I probably shouldn't wade into these waters, but once again, I am demonstrating that my self-preservation instincts are poor, and that my family refuse to listen to my rants anymore. [TW: Harry Potter and all that entails].

I was a little confused when I saw the trailer for Hogwarts Legacy (source of ire for me, and many many other people).  I had thought that it was supposed to be set in Victorian England, but honestly, it looked a lot like it was still set in the 1990s (or the early 2000s, the films never came down on exact dates).  Perhaps this is because the movies - upon which all subsequent media has based its design - relied heavily on Victorian and early 20th century design elements.  Think Hogwarts' gothic architecture; the ministry's early London Underground tiles; and the entire interior of Grimmauld Place.  This wasn't in any way a bad thing.  Harry Potter, as a story, made good on a sense of whimsy and old British aesthetics.  The wizarding world, having no need of technology, would not modernise its aesthetics at the same rate as the non-magical world.  It was a design choice that was of great consternation to my mother.  We went to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, she whispered to me 'why do they have wheelie suitcases?  I thought this was set in the 1930s?'

It makes me wonder now, why doesn't the world in Hogwarts Legacy look much different to its predecessor?  I suppose that they are wearing vaguely Victorian clothes, but shouldn't we be looking at some 1700s aesthetics, or is the wizarding world caught in a perpetual loop of Victoriana?

Truth is, the Harry Potter universe has fallen foul of the problem that irks most fantasy universes once they are analysed for too long.  It isn't logically coherent.  Like the history of Westeros, the history of the wizarding world repeats itself perpetually, never looking or behaving especially differently.  In a series of children's books that were focused on the life of one teen, the cracks didn't show.  Sure, Voldemort was in power twice, and before him there was Grindelwald (for all intents and purposes, Voldemort but European).

J.K. Rowling's world building is fine for what it was in the beginning (again, the life of one teen in Britain), or as fine as it could be.  The world was not greatly expansive, but it didn't need to be.  The best parts of it were whimsical and extensions of the cheerier side of Britain.  There was the Knight bus, a purple routemaster.  The entrance to the Ministry of Magic was inside a red phone box, one of the great symbols of British tourism.  The primary setting was a boarding school.  One of the most popular elements is the house system, which is just a more complicated extension of your average school house system.  It is touted as a categorisation of identity, but it obeys all the rules of school houses.  Siblings going into different houses is rare (to the point that it's only mentioned once) because family groups always go into the same house (unless your school just doesn't care about houses).  The bigotry in the series is also British by design.  It ends up being a simplified version of classism, that features more in subtext than text.  This being said, there isn't a great deal of specificity in the world building.  I still don't know where Hermione's home town is.  I only know that her parents are dentists and they like to ski.  Where does Malfoy live, apart from in a manor that has peacocks in the garden?  These are the kind of flaws you notice when you have analysed the story for as long as I have.

The worldbuilding gets thinner the more expansive it gets.  The students from Beauxbatons are more or less French stereotypes, Fleur especially.  Durmstrang is the same, but Bulgarian.  Much has already been said on Rowling's shallow naming conventions (Cho Chang, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and now Sirona Ryan).  Without the crutch of something being British and vaguely quaint, the world loses all of its charm, and all of its logic.

Fantastic Beasts, for some reason, begins in 1920s New York.  Most of the richness of the setting is achieved by production design rather than the script (incidentally, flashbacks set in Hogwarts still manage to look like it's the early 2000s).  Conflict in the story is wrought from an American government that is more anti-muggle than the British equivalent.  If it is allegorical in any way, I do not understand it.  But let's not pretend Rowling's allegory has ever been any good.  Claims that Lupin's lycanthropy was a metaphor for HIV and AIDs only serve to lessen the character.  At best, it's an allegory for general prejudice.  The assertion that Lupin, at the age of six, was attacked by Greyback with the express intention of passing on AIDs, is well, it's dicey.  Rowling might have intended to create an allegory for stigma around 'blood-borne conditions', but failed to consider the extra baggage that that allegory might entail.  

The same is true for Fantastic Beasts, where the nonsense is turned up to twenty.  There's a group of muggles who somehow know about the existence of magic.  They name themselves after Salem, despite the Salem witch trials being appropriate for neither this setting nor this geographic region.  Any commentary on the nature of the Salem witch trials is hardly a commentary on the nature of America at large, but rather a commentary on a single Puritan colony.  Rowling takes pieces of Native American culture for her lore, with no understanding of the cultural legacy at play.

It gets even weirder in the sequels, which zip through countries so fast there's barely any time for worldbuilding.  There's a circus!  Why!  I don't know.

For no reason at all, there's a deer that chooses the outcome of an election.  In a baffling moment, Grindelwald (as played by font of virtue, Johnny Depp) tells a group of wizards that they have to kill muggles because they are going to start a world war.  He is wizarding Hitler, and that isn't a subtle analogy.  In that same scene, Queenie Goldstein, a character heavily coded as Jewish, joins wizard Hitler because he promises her that she will be able to marry her muggle beau.  The man that just gave a speech about killing muggles, is apparently all for marriage equality!  By all means, it doesn't make any sense.  It’s far from being respectful either.

There are of course attempts to make the wizarding world more diverse in Fantastic Beasts, but without any attempt to make these characters more genuine.  There's an Asian woman, but she's Voldemort's snake and she's going to be beheaded by Neville in a few decades.  The second film has Zoe Kravitz!  Yay!  But she's part of a needlessly convoluted tale in which a powerful white man hypnotises a black woman to be his wife, and then she dies?  I don't know what to make of that.  It's not good representation, and by gum it isn't good storytelling!  The Fantastic Beasts trilogy has all the perspective of Emily in Paris.

Hogwarts Legacy can hardly improve upon this worldbuilding, because it comes from an unstable foundation.  I might have been more understanding had the game been set in say, not Hogwarts, or even a Hogwarts that was fundamentally different from the Hogwarts that we already know.  The worldbuilding remains as shallow as it ever was, and with all the bigotry retained.  Of course, the main story is based on a piece of anti-semitic folklore, expanded upon in the books, and even more so in the game.  The problem being that Hogwarts Legacy can only make sales based on nostalgia.  It can't be that different from the world of the novels, because no one is bold enough to alter the world and alienate people who want nothing more than to experience their childhoods all over again.  As such, the shallow worldbuilding is laid bare over and over again, to the point that it is no longer a setting in service of a series of novels.  It now has to be a real, coherent world, which it fails at.  We have to examine the nature of Hogwarts houses, and the mechanics of time turners (thank you Cursed Child), and the reasons why house elves don't want their freedom.  

They'll never get freedom anyhow, because Hermione's attempts at activism are used for comedy.  The world at the end of Deathly Hallows is not greatly different to the world at the beginning.  Voldemort is dead, but we are not assured of any big changes.  The world returns to what it was.  For all that The Legend of Korra may not have lived up to its predecessor, it made an effective attempt at showing that the world had been altered by the actions of our heroes.  In the Cursed Child, nothing is different.  The story spends all of its time looking to the past and imagining increasingly unlikely alternate timelines (Cedric turns evil?  Ron marries Padma Patil?).  Hogwarts Legacy does not set up the world of Harry Potter, nor does it fundamentally alter it.  The status quo is preserved.  Like Westeros, it cannot change. The new game does nothing with the world, and acts in its detriment.  Anyhow, it’s not a good work of fantasy.  J.K. Rowling loves the status quo.   That much is evident.  Don’t buy this game!  Support trans people instead.

[dramatic-dolphin]

me: i'm adding realism to this medieval fantasy setting

what people think i mean: grime, gratuitous sexual assault and murder, misogyny, child marriage

what i actually mean: everyone reads out loud, women are spinning wool all the time, peasants marry at 20, people wear colors.

[moongothic]

Madoka is the promise you won't turn from a child, full of hopes and dreams and the wish to save the world, into a bitter adult who just wants to hurt others and ruin people's lives

Madoka promised to be there for you to remind you of the person you wanted to be and to stop you from becoming what you sought to destroy

Madoka made that promise and became the very embodiment of it

[heuldoch7b]

extremely powerful archmage daemon prince in his raiments of unfathomable arcane craft

[xx-akubara-xx]

Beg: Page 112 -

For anyone curious about the paperwork - It's basically Peach making a Royal Decree to lower the military budget, and reducing the amount of palace guards that would have potentially offered her protection.

-

Next

Previous

START HERE

-

Masterpost of my Comics HERE

[redlyriumidol]

everyone on reddit being like "not my dragon age!! this used to be a grimdark serious game with NO JOKES!"

[time-is-restored]

do you guys every think abt death vs immortality as a thoroughline in like. literally all of the mechs albums.

old king cole is explicitly warped by immortality (never to forgive he would eternal live, his hands dyed red by gore - can be read a few ways depending on where u place the emphasis, but at the very least communicates that his wrath is facilitated By his immortality), and the olympians commit attrocities in order to hold onto their wealth and the immortality that it grants them (murdering arachne, yanking heracles' chain the second he tries to go freelance, having a monopoly on the acheron etc). the value they put on immortality and living forever, and the fear they have of ever possibly losing it, has completely warped their morals and priorities.

and while it comes up less in tbi, there's still significant emphasis placed on how odin has been in power for a century (both thor + the narrator bring it up, and there's also an emphasis on how long ago the bifrost project was started, and how 'no one left living' can explain its science). her villain monologue in rangarok iv places the extinction of asgard as an honour - a ruin that no one can possibly rebuild from is called 'apotheosis'. and as she says at the end, the idea that no one can possibly outlive her is a key draw for odin. asgard dies with her.

in hnoc, the only really immortal character is brian (and we only really know that bc of knowledge we get from outside the album), but the axis of life and death as a privilege vs a curse is still very present. 'mordred's gift to Arthur could be love in his own eyes / fating him alone to keep the life to which he clings', not only posits that the gift of survival isn't inherently good + kind (which the audience would immediately recognise as love, not possibly love), but places emphasis on the fact that arthur is now utterly alone. the station's death at the hands of mordred is hardly a happy one ('Its people damned, doomed by a man who's lost all his regrets'), but arthur's fate is arguably worse. severed from the finality and closure of death, what does he become? [insert that one cool theory abt hnoc arthur becoming old king cole here]

it's like. on a meta level, the reason we as fans don't put much emphasis on the depravity + cruelty of the mechs is bc the people portraying the mechs are all charismatic + skilled performers. in live gigs they're all portraying the fun side of their characters - roasting each other, bantering with the audience, making fun of the characters they're singing about, referencing off-screen violence - bc if they portrayed their lore too literally they'd be comitting felonies LMAOOO

but narratively, its like. literally every album is a meditation on the ways that the glorification of immortality can ruin civilisations - can ruin galaxies. whether its rooted in the fear of you specifically dying, or of being outlived, or overpowered or forgotten, or if its done for the sake of someone else's survival... it's all corrosive. if u refuse to accept the indisputable impermanence of life, you lose the ability to value it, and u numb urself to the reality of just how fucked up it is to cut another person's life short for any reason.

like. i do think some of the mechs started as good people, and some of them even might still have ethical standards, but i REALLY cannot stop thinking about how fucking. fascinating it is that this group of immortals who are KNOWN for basically considering nothing but how fun and/or violent any given activity will be, have basically filled their entire discography with songs about how their continued existence is corrosive and brings tragedy + ruin wherever they go.

so how self-aware are they? do you think those old morals + ethics still linger in their mind, when they're writing down these tragedies? they willingly self identify as liars + thieves + bastards, etc etc, and they seem to have no trouble identifying the 'bad guys' in the various albums (ie: humanising snow + cinders + rose, but not king cole), but do those concepts actually mean anything emotionally, or even theoretically, for them all beyond their dramatic potential? do they remember their lives before they were mechanised as it actually happened, or do they remember it as lyrics to a song? is it possible to be entirely self aware abt ur own capacity for violence (as jonny in paticular claims to be), if you no longer relate to violence as anything other than a narrative device - a means to an end, whether comedic or dramatic?

[ofbreathandflame-archive]

(heavy discussions on sa - this is actually an older post that i made like months ago, and was actually the first draft of the amarantha taboo post, so some things sound similar! just a heads up!)

you know i actually think there is a wider discussion to be had about rhysand's sexual assault - or sexual assault and trauma as it functions in the wider narrative. ive always felt that bc the story puts rhysand in this vulnerable position (i.e. a victim of sexual violence) the story always needs to like...make up for it, if that makes sense? 

what i mean is: the story creates this dynamic where rhysand is a victim; he has no power, control, or say - but it also has a very hard time reconciling to the fact that he was placed in this position. and so there's these weird placeholding pieces of information that often addle or confuse the narrative. and i talked about this before with rhysand's framing of his 'service to amarantha.' i also contributes to the moments of hyperviolence with rhys in the books, as if he constantly has to make up for the fact he was placed into these vulnerable positions in the first, implicitly.

the first book - and other books thereafter - imply that rhysand's court is specificially shielded from amarantha because he aligns himself (action word). rhysand's decision is framed as a 'sacrifice' which implies a choice (that he didn't really have). it always implies that rhysand is the one consciously 'one-upping' amarantha by 'agreeing' to be her 'right hand man' again - notice how despite the fact amarantha is characterized as a sexual deviant, she's rarely the focus. its what rhys 'gave' and not what 'amarantha did.'  

and this is fine if this is the way rhysand chooses to see what happened to him - bc then that's a trauma response. he can't acknowledge it so its better for him to rationalize it - that would have been great writing. 

but thats not how his sexual assault and role utm is discussed. 

other characters view rhys sexual assault as a statement of heroism (which ew) and not a just a statement of amarantha's capacity for sexual violence. tarquin literally says something along those lines. which again is implying that RHYS HAD A CHOICE. we can't frame this as heroism. he was raped, he did not sacrifice something...it was taken. 

in the initial scenario - where we remove the idea of autonomy (e.g. the idea that rhys purposely aligns himself with amarantha) he's a victim. but then - so is tamlin, tarquin, beron, kallias, and helion. in short - rhys being taken advantage of says nothing about him. it's a statement on amarantha's cruelty. but the story isn't satisfied with this bc...how would he be any different than tamlin whose vilified for being directly affected by his trauma, who 'sat on his ass for fifty years' as the book says. 

its the tragedy of how male sexual assault is rationalized in this series. the story literally purposely sets up a mirror position where rhys and tamlin are consistently compared for how they work through some of the craziest trauma ever known to man. the level of trauma the story is asking these characters to 'overcome' is actually quite insane. 

so the story ups the ante, it doesn't want rhys to be 'just a victim,' it wants him to be the MAN TM. bc tamlin and tarquin are 'just victims' so ewww. like even lucien is given another horribly written experience with sexual assault (which it literally has to bend the worldbuilding to accomplish) and then kind of position his complaints abt ianthe as whiny. or how tarquin's trauma is...not 'dark' enough for feyre. these men are often characterized as cowardly or not enough in relation to rhys. helion, thesan, tarquin, and tamlin are all consistently characterized as 'cowards' with little to no initiative or backbone.

so the story does that thing where it provides impossible situations: rhysand is the most powerful being in the world, he's so powerful that even without his 'real' power, he's still light years more powerful than the others when they're powers are ripped away. he can read minds, and has two wraiths that can literally walk through the walls and spy. he's often sent on missions on behalf of amarantha and can waltz in and out of the spring court without any issues (ie. its easy for him to convince amarantha he needs to go to the spring court multiple times. and then when he works for amarantha - he's the mastermind, not her. he's playing her all along and blah blah blah). but then it doesn't know how to write this dynamic with rhys and amarantha. and then it depowers him, while shaming the other men in the series for not doing 'enough' even when the most op character with all of those advantages isn't even able to over power her.

there's little introspection into amarantha as a character and as a villain -- and you'll notice she's hardly ever mentioned after the first book...despite the fact that she was literally the high queen of prythian and was the governing oppressive force for a half-century. as said in this post - the story isn't actually concerned about making a point about male sexual asault.

and that's why i talked about why that amarantha taboo is...kind of important to how the story chooses to conceptualize sexual violence/assault. the choice to create amarantha (and ianthe and maeve too) as these caricatures of sexuality - which is pretty much the case of all of sjm's villains. 

the story doesn't want to fully commit to a tactical scenario, because it doesn't believe that he's a victim in that capacity  - or at least that the victimhood is valid. bc its spends so much time invalidating the male trauma around rhys, the only way to make a distinction between rhys and the others to have rhys "orchestrate" his own assault to save everyone.

[doomdoomofdoom]

This one goes out to

transfems named Alice, Jessica, Lily, or Emily

transmascs named Kai, Noah, Tyler, or Elliot

any trans person named Alex, Sam, Aiden, Charlie, Riley or

any trans person who ended up with a common trans name, knowingly or not.

You're valid and clearly have amazing taste: These names are popular for a reason! Your name isn't like a username! They don't have to all be unique! You don't have to pick the specialest name and set yourself apart from every other trans person to be valid!!

All that matters is that the name feels right for you.

You've chosen perfectly. Keep it up!

[jaskersneakthief]

O⁠_⁠o★PONYVILLE MURDER PARTY!!★┌⁠(⁠★⁠ｏ⁠☆⁠)⁠┘

[psst- listen to general mumble's music..]

★| pls reblog! |★

[total-drama-brainrot]

psycho!noah au, what do the aftermath cast think? conversely if they dont know/dont see the show (isnt it implied to be canon in wt that they watch the show or atleast can?), how do they react to newly eliminated cast members telling them?

and then, at whatever point he gets eliminated or just whenever the cast sees him again, how do they react with that new info?

The justification I have for Noah remaining stealthed under his "stoic cynic" persona pre-reveal in this AU is a little convoluted, but I do have one. Vaguely. Which I'll try to outline here for continuities' sake.

So, to clarify; Noah only competes in Island and World Tour, just like in canon. Most things happen just like canon, with the exception of Noah lasting a little longer in Island so he and Izzy have more time to be menaces (I have no idea how I'll shift the elimination order to justify keeping him around, though). Noah's still eliminated fairly early and ends up on the Playa, where the other elimination fodder welcome him with open arms, because in Island they're only given access to the raw camera footage instead of the final cut!

I imagine it'd be pretty hard for a Brand New Show to have the manpower of a full professional editing team that can plan and prosecute the final cut of a whole ~20 minute episode in only three days (in-universe), so to keep the losers as in the know as possible in real time, they're given access to the same live camera footage Chris and Chef have, just without the confessionals.

Since the confessionals are, uh. Toilets. And no one wants to have 24/7 access to toilet stall footage.

Noah only ever really drops his ruse in the confessional, or around Izzy, so none of the losers have gotten the opportunity to see the real him in action; even when he is visible on camera, it's only during the stolen moments he shares with Izzy outside of challenges, wherein the two plot and scheme together like Pinky and the Brain. Given that the majority of them don't even bother to watch the live footage unless there's a challenge actively happening (or something else otherwise noteworthy), his true nature goes undetected amongst them as well.

And then, in Action, the show's budget and workforce increases. Suddenly, the editing team is thrice the size of Island's, and they are capable of providing a final cut of each episode within the span of 24~72 hours, allowing the show to air quicker. Which has the added bonus of allowing everyone in the peanut gallery access to the yet-to-be-aired episodes (instead of the live footage), keeping them up to date with the competition whilst also giving them the same perspective as the audience itself. Including people's confessions.

It's a good thing Noah didn't compete in Action, then. His mask of indifference lives on.

Then there's a year-long break between seasons, wherein Noah works under Chris as his personal assistant. Yada yada yada, World Tour happens. He knows that the losers are going to see his confessions. So now Noah has to choose between maintaining his persona at the sake of losing out on toying with the greater audience, or carrying on as he did in Island at the cost of revealing his 'true colours' (which, in this case, still isn't the real Noah so much as an exaggeration of his more deranged tendencies, since Noah's still essentially performing for the cameras; just with a different role).

Of course he goes with option two. He's primarily motivated by his own amusement- that was the reason for his whole charade in the first place.

(Alright, clarification over, time to actually answer the question.)

So the peanut gallery and steadily increasing number of World Tour Rejects are horrified when, in Noah's scattering of confessions- as he doesn't confess very often, so when he does it's a treat to himself and the audience- he mostly waxes poetic about how exciting each near-death experience the cast go through is, and all of the different ways he so wanted to cause the others harm (either in general, or themed around the challenges), being so much more expressive than anyone's ever seen him (concerningly so, to the point of it breaching the uncanny valley) and giddy over the prospect of performing Acts Of Incredible Violence against his castmates.

They're living in that same fearful anticipation the wider audience experienced through his tenure in Island; waiting for Noah to Drop The Act and fulfil his promises of brutal sabotage, if only to finally put an end to the constant looming threat of his self control snapping. They're horrified bystanders of a car crash waiting to happen (at least, they think they are. Noah's not actually gonna do any of the things he's suggesting, probably, but keeping the audience on their toes is one of his favourite games!) and each episode he features in is a test of both their patience and their own sanity.

Because, could you imagine watching your friends interact and be friendly with someone who (you think) is out for their blood, entirely unaware of the danger? that's literally what they're experiencing.

And Noah, because he's a little shit who thinks he's funny (he is), sometimes goes so far as to fake-out the audience by rearing up attacks against his castmates during challenges, only to shoot the nearest camera a wry wink and a sly smile as he carries on with the actual task at hand, the others none-the-wiser.

It becomes so concerning, in fact, that every new arrival is immediately checked over for any signs of injuries or Noah's Influence and hastily given the rundown on The Situation. Which is, more often than not, met with the same incredulity as Sierra's claims- until they're shown various clips of Noah's confessions, or the fake-outs and otherwise unhinged looks he teases the cameras with.

-

For the second question; I have no idea. I'm still workshopping how people will react to Noah, and how Noah in turn will react to them. Post-reveal p!Noah will, eventually, disclose the fact that he's not as bloodthirsty as he portrays himself as, but until then it's anyone's guess as to how far he'll take the bit- and who could/will get hurt in the process.

[spiribia]

i wish people would have more respect in general for the fact that things they consider taboo grimdark quirky distant theoretical ideas are things that at the same time can be deeply uncomfortable lived realities for other people that other people aren't boring prudes for not wanting to joke about or indulge in as a sexy fantasy

[askrarity-dime]

LOOK OUT!!

Cw, implied intercorse, violence, knife play, pain play, masochism

End of act 2.

Start of act 3

No beauty in pain.♡

[thegodemperorsmycopilot]

[heuldoch7b]

more batboy

[xx-akubara-xx]

Page 93

Embrace.

-

Next

Previous

START HERE