#morally ambiguous protagonists

[cock-holliday]

THE funniest take I saw about yellowjackets so far was that the ambiguity of the wilderness is "laziness" on the writers' part and that it is "clear" the writers "can't decide if there is something out there or not." Hello? Are nuance and ambiguity and lack of brightline answers engaging storytelling? No, it's bad writing. Did Jonas survive in the end of The Giver? Was Nick 's perspective trustworthy in The Great Gatsby? Was Will Graham a good guy? Are the characters in Squid game? Idk, it wasn't blended up and fed to me gerber style so I can't tell.

Is something controlling the girls? Are they doing everything entirely themselves and pretending it's something else because they are just evil? Are they trying to survive and they assuage their guilt with the idea that something is making these decisions, not them? Is it somewhere in between?

Thank you Lottie Yellowjackets for stating the fucking thesis, "Does it matter?"

[idkaguyorsomething]

it’s quite fascinating how, up until this point, despite being framed as the traditional protagonist, jodio is given mostly traits that are associated with previous villains in other parts. think about it, he demonstrates greed, ambition, and a tendency towards excessive violence and short-sighted decisions. he’s even explicitly diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and calls himself a sociopath, traits that are often associated with villains due to the lack of empathy it causes (which is a whole can of worms about the stigmatization of mental health in popular fiction, but i’m willing to give araki the benefit of the doubt and wait to see which direction he takes the story and that trait in particular in).

on the other hand, dragona is given the most traits we associate with classic heroism, being the leader and mediator of their group who advocates for holding back when jodio gets out of hand and the one that gets to experiment with the macguffin, as well as being nicer and having almost as much focus dedicated to them as their brother. the fact that, as a dark skinned person of color with an ambiguous gender identity, they’re also a rather nontraditional hero, especially in a japanese piece of media, adds another interesting layer to this.

there are two main parallels we can draw to these two: giorno and bruno, and dio and jonathan

jodio and giorno both obviously embody a lot of dio’s traits, being ruthless and power-hungry, although jodio is certainly more emotionally open and driven by personal gain than reserved and idealistic, more like a young dio than most of his sons were. whereas dragona, as a calmer team leader who follows the rules but still needs the protagonist to bail them out of a tight spot, has tons of parallels to bruno, but the fact that they’re set up as the underdog brother with more traits the story associates with heroism when their brother is a clear reference to dio brando of all characters should not go unnoticed

what i’m trying to say is that upcoming emotional drama is inevitable and it will HURT

[homowithoutsapiens]

y’all ever just see the absolute worst take about a media you love and wanna like. snatch it out of their hands. like no that’s not for kids give me that. you can have it back when you’re old enough for critical thinking skills

[ceasarslegion]

I think a good practice to have is seeking out media that gets hate and harassment campaigns against it on purpose in order to see it for yourself before you cast judgement

Because to be honest, 9 times out of 10, what I find is that its a case of something trying to make a point, doing it badly, and then the internet decides that it must be Actually Against It.

And i dont know guys, i dont think a piece of media making a point badly is at ALL the same thing as a piece of media saying the OPPOSITE thing

And I think we should stop judging things based on posts and start judging it on what it actually is

[bodyisabattlefield]

In the Forest

He awoke, like he always did, surrounded by a meager oasis of life. An island in the sea of death that his campsite was. He watched a small flower, eager for life, unfurl itself to reach out to the morning sun. 

Some part of him wished the life embracing him at night would love him as much during the day. The other part of him knew that was unreasonable. After all, who would follow a trail of death? 

The worst part about it was how much he loved life. How long he would stay, half awake, admiring the beauty of it all, before inevitably waking up enough to start the vicious cycle of absorbing the life energy of everything he touched, everything that came close. During his daytime trek through the mountains, a path of grass and ground cover lay dead in his wake, the constant sound of scurrying haunting his ears as animals escaped the foreboding aura of death that plagued him. 

He wished, in this contrast, that he could stay asleep forever and let the forest swallow him whole.

[oceandiagonale]

So I know I said that I was going to lean a lot more into the existential horror of her situation with Spare, but I'm starting to think I might be too good at it because I am genuinely starting to feel sorry for her and feel like a monster for what I'm doing to her. Heck when thinking through on the implications of a few things I even had thoughts of "wait but that would mean...oh jeez". Which I think k is a sign of good horror writing but I'm a very empathic person so I feel really bad for her.

One of the things that I realized is that she never learned how to learn. I know that sounds like nonsense but it is a real thing in early childhood development. All of her knowledge is just uploaded into her brain and covers everything Arceus thinks she should know. Info important to her mission and stuff a little girl should know. If she ever needs to know something that Arceus didn't consider he just updates her. A scene early on has her realize that she doesn't know how to tie her shoes. Arceus just gives her full knowledge of shoes so that in a second she goes from "not being able to tie them" to "could probably make a designer shoe with the right tools and materials".

So yeah her only frames of reference for knowledge and skills is "nothing" and "master" because Arceus went for overkill because why not? As such she has a hard time grasping different levels of knowledge and competence from various people because she herself has never experienced the gradual growth and understanding of learning something new.

Naturally this makes interactions with other people hard. It also means that for any knowledge she doesn't have that Arceus didn't give her she has no frame of reference for learning. No understanding of trial and error, building foundational information and working up from fundamentals, etc. She has to learn that learning is a thing.

And that's just one of many things that are wrong with her creation. Another is that she doesn't feel that human life has any inherent value so there is definitely going to be a scene where she tries to kill villains and someone has to stop Spare before she does so. Because she literally doesn't understanding why she shouldn't kill them.

You also mentioned that hopefully Spare's mother could be of help to her? Hoo boy, Spare has enough mother issues to spontaneously resurrect Sigmund Freud. For starters Spare doesn't really view her as her mother but as a victim whose life was rewritten against her will in order to accommodate Spare like some sort of parasite. Spare also feels guilt at her mother loving her because she knows it is artificial and that she has no choice but to love her. At the same time she wants to embrace that love and compassion (because Spare is ultimately a scared kid in over her head even if she can't understand that) but tying into the previous points that makes her feel guilty because she feel like doing so would take advantage of the poor woman for her own selfish reasons.

The more I go on the more I feel like Spare would look at WIP Cream's situation and ultimately go "Wow, wish I was put together that well."

OH NO that’s like gifted kid syndrome but infinitely more fucked up, I feel so bad for this kid D’:

(like at least gene is allowed to be bad at things - sometimes very bad at things - and actively works on learning, especially new battle styles etc. that didn’t exist when celebi made him 😭😭😭)

I mean if someone stops her from doing violence (not as a treat 😔) she might have to start learning about people at least -- because it’s not like arceus is going to show her any of that stuff, right??

@theoryfan205 

[stars-in-my-damn-eyes]

me coming out of my well to shame myself or whatever

[austeregreen]

I like to think that I am neither a protagonist nor an antagonist of the story. That no external force compels me to be heroic or villainous. That I am this secondary, morally ambiguous, flawed character with small but stable group of fans who hate to love me and love to hate me and are always there for me, no matter where the plot brings me.

[multifandomshorts]

Dialogue Prompt (Love and Self-Hatred)

(Credit if you use)

"No, I don't love myself. I'm a monster."

"You're not a monster!"

"And if I was? Would you love me any less?"

"...No."

"Then I don't need to love myself. You love me enough for both of us."

[quiescentdestiny]

.

[joncronshawauthor]

Heroic Journeys in Modern Fantasy: The Rise of Flawed Protagonists

Once upon a time, in the kingdom of modern fantasy literature, a new kind of hero began to emerge. Gone are the days when heroes were as spotless as a knight’s freshly polished armour. Today’s fantasy protagonists are more akin to a warrior who’s been through a few too many battles and perhaps one too many visits to the mead hall. They’re flawed, complex, and as perfectly imperfect as a spell…

[forthegothicheroine]

What to Read After Dracula

If you want to read more Stoker: Dracula’s Guest and Other Stories by Bram Stoker

If you want more foundational genre-defining gothics: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

If you want homoerotic vampirism that’s both intriguing and problematic: Carmilla by J. Sheridan le Fanu

If you want a gothic heroine fighting against the villain trying to possess her: A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott

If you want a protagonist entering an extremely fucked up old money home and fighting for their freedom: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia

If you want basically the same plot as Dracula but a lot more batshit and can put up with 1800s racism: The Beetle by Richard Marsh

If you want a modern take on Dracula that acknowledges the sexual assault subtext: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix (note: this one is very hit or miss, people either love it or hate it)

If you want academics fighting ancient evil and an actual implied cameo by Dracula: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft (my personal favorite Lovecraft!)

If you want morally ambiguous mad scientists: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson (and read the rest of the stories in it while you’re at it!)

If you want rootin’ tootin’ Americans fighting gothic monsters: Pigeons from Hell by Robert E. Howard

If you want a gothic mystery with a spooky villain: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

If you want an implied polycule where a nerdy lady does all the real mystery solving: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

If you want the kind of vampire romance Dracula has become in pop culture: A Taste of Blood Wine by Freda Warrington

If you want something campier: Haunted Castles by Ray Russell

If you want something sexier: The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

If you want something weirder: Blood 20 by Tanith Lee

If you want to read foreign bootleg Dracula: Powers of Darkness or Dracula in Istanbul, both creatively mistranslated from Bram Stoker

[akecrow]

People can come up with all the inverse theories they want, but the reality of how rogue became an insensitive game is that no one was there to clock it production wise. Only one writer, smaller developer, in the shadows of unity, time crunch. Ultimately they went with the fan service route of Haytham and to include him and the other ac3 templars they had to fit into a v small timeframe that already had canon info. They wanted haytham and for you to go against the assassins so bad they disregarded the sociopolitical time period. Why would you want to work with Lawrence Washington, William Johnson, and Christopher Gist when they were real life slave owners?? Like I just can’t compare the assassins and templars here because almost all of the assassins are fictional while the templars literally house real life evil people yknow 😭

[wehaveallgotknives]

I’ll stop goncharov posting soon but can I just say how fascinating it is to me that the genre we picked was cold war mafia movie? because if you had asked the internet a month ago what kind of film tumblr would invent, if tumblr were to invent a film, the answers would have been way more woke. a queer coming of age romance or a sexy heist with a super diverse cast or live action infinity train or whatever.

instead, the hive mind, the collective, latched on to something with much narrower boundaries, with stricter rules. no cold war mafia movie would have “good gay rep” or “a happy ending”, like you might expect tumblr to want. we want, we made, something rife with hidden truths, deception and manipulation, suppressed and sublimated emotions. it’s a movie rife with symbolism and suggestion, a text that needs to be unpicked and puzzled over, not one that spoonfeeds us a morally pure protagonist.

the website famous for our shithouse reading comprehension made this complex metatext about methods of interpreting an ambiguous artwork and that’s given me more hope for humanity than I’ve gotten from the internet in a long goddamn time

[writing-with-sophia]

Endings

An ending in a story refers to the conclusion or final part of the narrative. It is the point where the events, conflicts, and character arcs reach a resolution or closure. The ending provides a sense of completion and brings the story to a satisfying or thought-provoking conclusion. The purpose of an ending in a story is to tie up loose ends, answer lingering questions, and bring a sense of resolution to the narrative. It can provide a finality to the conflicts and challenges faced by the characters, offer insights or revelations, or leave room for interpretation and reflection.

Here are some common types of endings:

Resolution: This type of ending provides a sense of closure and ties up loose ends. It offers a clear resolution to the conflicts and questions raised throughout the story.

Twist or Surprise Ending: A twist or surprise ending presents an unexpected turn of events that may challenge the reader's assumptions or provide a shocking revelation.

Open Ending: An open ending leaves some elements unresolved or ambiguous, allowing readers to interpret the conclusion or speculate about what might happen next.

Circular Ending: A circular ending brings the story back to its starting point or echoes the beginning, creating a sense of symmetry or completion.

Epilogue: An epilogue is a section that occurs after the main events of the story and provides additional information about the characters or their future.

Cliffhanger: A cliffhanger ending leaves the reader in suspense or anticipation, usually by ending the story at a critical or unresolved moment, enticing readers to continue to the next installment or chapter.

Bittersweet Ending: A bittersweet ending combines elements of both happiness and sadness, often leaving the reader with a mix of emotions.

Ambiguous Ending: An ambiguous ending leaves the reader with multiple interpretations or unanswered questions, allowing for personal reflection and contemplation.

Catastrophic Ending: A catastrophic ending involves a tragic or disastrous event that dramatically alters the course of the story or leads to significant consequences for the characters.

Reflective Ending: A reflective ending provides a moment of introspection or contemplation, allowing characters to reflect on their experiences and lessons learned.

Happy Ending: A happy ending concludes the story with a positive outcome, where conflicts are resolved, and the characters achieve their goals or find happiness and fulfillment.

Tragic Ending: A tragic ending involves a sorrowful or devastating conclusion, often characterized by the downfall of the protagonist or significant loss.

Moral or Lesson-Based Ending: This type of ending aims to convey a moral or lesson to the reader, providing a clear takeaway or message that aligns with the themes or values explored in the story.

Reconciliation Ending: A reconciliation ending involves the resolution of conflicts and the restoration of harmony between characters or within a community.

Transformational Ending: A transformational ending signifies a significant change or growth in the characters, where they undergo a personal transformation or achieve self-realization.

Metaphorical or Symbolic Ending: This type of ending employs metaphors or symbols to convey a deeper meaning or reinforce the themes of the story, leaving the reader to interpret the symbolism.

Poetic or Lyrical Ending: A poetic or lyrical ending uses language and imagery to create a sense of beauty or evoke emotions, often leaving a lasting impact on the reader.

Reflecting on the Future Ending: This ending provides a glimpse into the characters' future or hints at what may come next, leaving room for imagination and continuation beyond the story's conclusion.

Irony: An ending with irony involves a contrast between what is expected and what actually happens, often resulting in a surprising or unexpected outcome.

Circular Journey Ending: This type of ending brings the story full circle, with the characters returning to a similar situation or place but having undergone significant changes or growth.

These are just a few examples, and endings can often be a combination of different types or unique to each individual story. The choice of ending depends on the author's intention, the genre, and the desired impact on the reader. A well-crafted ending can leave a lasting impact on the reader, leaving them with a sense of fulfillment, emotional resonance, or a desire to contemplate the themes and ideas presented in the story. It may evoke a range of emotions, from satisfaction to surprise, depending on the type of ending and the journey the reader has taken with the characters.

If you want to read more posts about writing, please click here and give me a follow!

[toskarin]

the best yoko taro trademark isn't the morally ambiguous anti-villain protagonist, it's not the recurring themes of mass suicide, and it's not the misery twins. but you already know what it is

that's right: it's the thing where you're doing a gay little chuuni run towards something while your companion yells at you and the camera drags back a little bit to soft-track as the big thing sways slightly to the side