#nightmare gets redeemed in my future arc!

[waddledoodledee]

Halley: Good evening. I believe I heard your name was Reclusa, is that correct? That cloak of yours caught my eye, it’s quite gorgeous. Was it perhaps a gift to you?

[vakarians-babe]

Sorry if I came off as rude, I guess I’m just looking for a little clarification. You say you like Cullen bc you enjoy his redemption arc, but how can he have a redemption arc if you think he did nothing wrong? You’re free to have your own opinion, but isn’t the whole point of a redemption arc that a character grows and rights their past wrongs?

I don't think you came off as rude, so don't worry about that! I also get what you're saying, but my about post actually doesn't say that I like Cullen's redemption arc, but that "I personally find his struggles with addiction, trauma, and the typical notion of ‘redemption’ to be really relatable." I personally have come to think that Cullen has already redeemed himself and needs no 'arc', and here's a little bit of why (it's long, sorry).

Cullen goes to join the Templars as a child, around 12-13. At that age, Templars are the heroes for a lot of kids--nuance is not really a thing a preteen understands, or at least not any preteens I knew, myself included. From that point, though, he's raised in what is, for all intents and purposes, a militant arm of a cult. He is trained as a child soldier, fed propaganda about mages, ultimately fed lyrium in what we know to be a method of control. By the time he's 17-19, his approximate age range during Broken Circle, he nevertheless still does not see mages as inherent enemies. He doesn't buy into the propaganda--until, that is, the Circle falls, and he is ultimately tortured in many different ways by people he thought he was protecting.

After this, reeling from the trauma of this experience, he is forcibly isolated and sent to Kirkwall in a move by the Order to shape him into something malleable and hateful. The letters from his family are kept from him, which, imo, is a standard tactic of abuse and manipulation. The Order wants him to feel alone. They want him to feel empty. And he does. He arrives in Kirkwall and, I would argue, descends into a lyrium spiral, wherein he takes more lyrium to drown out the nightmares and to feel safer from another Kinloch, which requires in turn more lyrium, and more, and more. But he still never really says things that...aren't true. Even 'mages aren't people like you and me' is....uhh...right, and I think people interpret this line in a way that is deliberately scrubbed of nuance. To me, it reads as Cullen saying that mages are different from other people, that they are not like non-mages. Him not knowing he might be talking to a mage Hawke is just game mechanics, and if we can excuse dwarves being able to dream in DA:I against all of the worldbuilding, I'm fine with Cullen not being able to tell that Hawke is a mage.

But I digress a bit, sorry. By the time Cullen gets to the final battle with Meredith, his worst nightmares are repeating. The Circle is falling all over again, just like Kinloch. He has spent nearly a decade in Kirkwall being fed this hatred and kept from any real meaningful route to therapy or healing, which, in addition to being fed religious fanaticism and tethered by drugs, does irrevocable damage to a person. And then, when it comes down to it, when he is presented a choice between Meredith, the Order, her hatred, and quite literally anything else, he chooses 'anything else.' That, in and of itself, is enough 'redemption' for me, even though I don't think he needs redemption after breaking out of this cult that has controlled him for the better part of 15 years. He does clearly spend more time grappling with the guilt he feels and the question of 'have I done enough to better myself? have I done enough to deserve a future?' Which I think is a common trauma response that says already that this person is changed, and also a marker of long-lasting issues like PTSD.

In the end, I can't bring myself to blame him or fault him for the things inculcated in him by the Templars and the Chantry. He's right about mages, he's traumatized by his experiences, and still he ends up seeing through the Order's propaganda and freeing himself, after which he struggles with the idea that he has not redeemed himself enough to deserve living the life that the Templars tried to take from him. That's what I mean when I say I enjoy his struggles with the typical notion of redemption. For Cullen, and I think for many people who have experienced trauma that led them to hate, anger, and pain, this sisyphean task of redeeming oneself according to the outside world will never be enough, because it always feeds back into the question of 'do i deserve to be good.'

Cullen did nothing wrong in being failed and abused by a predatory order that attempted to shackle his mind through drugs. He broke through that of his own accord the first time he was presented with a choice, and every moment since he has been wrestling with the fear instilled in him by his very real trauma and his desire to be different. Whatever hurt he caused, I still can't fault him. And maybe that's because of my perception of shared trauma, but it's my take.

Ty for reading!

[tiodolma]

do you know of any complete mergana slowburn besides ‘you can’t fight fate’? do complete mergana fics even exist?

by "slow burn" you mean one where there’s a lot of pining, fighting and not really getting together that quick right? There are a lot of complete MerGana fics!!!! You just gotta start at the oldest (especially in ffnet) and give the fics a chance.

I'm actually still at circa 2012 in ffnet and im reading thru a lot and seriously a lot of gorgeous long fics. The normal lengthed fics are so cool and good too and i often take a while to recover and open a new fic.

tbf "you can't fight fate" is ridiculously long and big so we gotta lower that as the standard but okay i will try

AN ATTEMPT AT LONGFIC (COMPLETE) MERGANA FICS

.................................................

AO3

The curious case of Merlin and Morgana by kessilover - 19 chapters. this one absolutely my favorite and first real taste of the toxic dynamics and complicated healing process that MerGana will have to go thru if they get um redeemed together. AU where after Camlann event, MerGana wakes up in an alternate reality where Morgana is pregnant with Merlin's child.

Bound By Fate by Araminia16 - 54 chapters explicit. MerGana deal with Morgana's actions in the prequel to this. Slowburn in the way that they are still toxic and heavily attracted to each other. Secrets are revealed, Morgana and Merlin both deal with each other's righteous fury. and the future is rewritten

No Other Way by MonJoh - 12 chapters. Morgana and Morgause figure out that the key to Camelot is Merlin. Personally this is one of my favorite Magic Reveals.

Destiny's Path by MonJoh 11 chapters. Merlin accidental magic reveal that causes him to get banished. He ends up following aithusa's trail and rescuing Morgana.

The Witch, the Warlock, and the King by AngryPurpleFire 10 chapters. Merlin in the Dark Tower. Comes to an understanding with Morgana. This one is an honest exposition of Camelot dynamics.

The Tricoloured Dragon (Y Ddraig Dri Lliw) by jaqtkd 2 chapters but around 49500 words. The English King Uther is determined to bring Pagan Wales under his control and offers an alliance to the most reasonable of their princes. Balinor accepts his offer instantly and even offers a son and a ward to the king as security. It all seems far too good to be true. - not a slowburn per se.. but it's still long.

LIFE IN MOMENTS SERIES (FFNET) - a cool and very compelling series tbh.

A Lion and a Unicorn by Mnemosyne77 30 chapters and first part of a series. This one is truly a slow burn. Morgana has a nightmare where Merlin is dying. You should check this out.

A Life in Moments by Mnemosyne77 101 chapters. Part 2 of the 'Life in Moments' Trilogy and sequel to 'A Lion and a Unicorn'. Story told in oneshots, drabbles and longer story arcs across multiple time lines. Contents list is in chapter 101. Believe me, you'll need it.

A Haunted Lake by Mnemosyne77 Part 3 conclusion of the 'Life in Moments' trilogy. Down a deep forest path, through a crop of oak trees, and beside a vast field of wildflowers, there is a lake. It's a wondrous thing but the locals do not go near it after dark.

FFNET FICS

Challengers by brickroad16 14 chapters. I remember liking this a lot. and this has been recced many times so I put this here too.

Throw Out the Script by Eidolon02 37 chapters. I remember this being really cool too. Merlin reveals his magic to Morgana in s2. He teaches her and they become close (and pine a lot for each other). Even on this fic they keep clashing in their ideals and struggle to keep the balance. Please check it out!

A Witch's Hormones by Angela-Bennet 30 chapters. both merlin and morgana and the rest of camelot is sexually frustrated coz of some supernatural annual fertility event.

Resistance is Futile by Duchess Emma 16 chapters It's March 18 and our young lovers must resist the magical pull of fertility for three days or else their magic will be revealed. Yes, it is quite salacious. Now COMPLETE - this is kind of like "A Witch's Hormones" but a different kind of take. It's pretty cool

A Thin Line by Duchess Emma 31 chapters - Merlin and Morgana wake up handcuffed together in Cenred's dungeon. They have to put their hatred aside and work together to get out of this predicament. Will Merlin finally admit his magic? It's a thin line between love and hate. Very thin. - this one also explores their dynamics and what they can do when pushed into a desperate situation where they have to work together. also a pretty sexy fic as they try to fight the attraction they have with each other. merlin is frustrating as usual.

Semper by WingedWolf121 5 chapters. you are the Princess of Cornwall, who holds magic that in Camelot would get you killed. You will learn the art from the most powerful of teachers, Nimueh. If only this serving boy with the vivid blue eyes did not distract you so. Merlin/Morgana - I remember this was quite a slowburn. I dont remember much details but i thought this was cool too. I've seen this one getting recced by others

Heartlines by WalkingWit 37 chapters Modern Mergana AU A modern university AU set in a world where Uther is the British government, Morgana is his rebellious ward, Gwen is her indecisive roommate, and Merlin ends up as roommate to the king of clotpoles himself, Arthur Pendragon. A bit of swearing involved. - idk if you are okay with modern au but i like this one a lot. they remember their past life in this. so cool.

The Dark Tower by WalkingWIt 12 chapters Morgana captures Merlin, imprisoning him in the Dark Tower, and he comes to find they're not so different after all. Both are alone. Mentions of Freya. - this one is interesting as well

The Camelot Records Tour Modern MerGana AU - 16 chapters. Merlin and Morgana are both the singers and composers in their respective bands. Their groups were contracted to go on tour together. Repulsion and Attraction occurs.

ALSO IF YOU WANT 2 VERSIONS OF MARRIED MERGANA MAY I RECOMMEND YOU SPARROWS MAGICIAN'S TWO GORGEOUS SERIES

"Bliss" Series - Canon Compliant (multple fics) - Morgana returns to Camelot because of a prophecy post s3 (iirc). Merlin and Morgana gotta settle their differences.

and

Unwelcomed Arrangements 26 chapters - Unions of peace come from marriage. Uther must give away his ward if he wishes to make peace with Merlin king of Magi. Unfortunately, the new bride is already in love with another, and her dreams foreshadow destruction. Merlin has to find a way to save everyone, and win his new brides heart. AU, Royal!Merlin

.................

This is all I got for now. Like I said before. I'm still slowly, very slowly getting thru MerGana fics. I think I missed one complete Modern AU in this list but I honestly cannot remember anymore. The longfics, drabbles and normal sized fics keep meshing in my brain. I hope I can do a 2nd sweep of both fanfiction sites someday but. ah. I doubt I'll even finish within the year. I'm still overwhelmed by the magnitude, the diversity the richness of it all.

Hope you enjoy these longfic recs. And I do encourage everyone to explore. I'm just a very new Merlin fan. I just got here in Dec 2022. Everything about MerGana is new and amazing for me, even the 10+year old fics (Especially those fics tbh).

anyway someday i really hope i can make a better fic rec list. but how can i do that when i sometimes just want to rec everything on ffnet?? lol

Good day. And also tyvm for the ask.

[chiyuki-hiro]

Things I Want For Frozen 3 ((And A Little Bit Of What I could See Happening))

First things first. I’m just putting my personal thoughts & feelings out into to void. If you don’t like/agree with some of the things I put here, that’s fine. Just please be respectful.

- I want a redemption arc for Hans. Yes, I’m starting off with what is probably one of my most controversial opinions in the Frozen fandom. As for why I want a redemption arc...there’s a few reasons for that. For starters, seeing as Hans didn’t actually kill anyone, I could see it as being a bit easier to redeem him, as opposed to how Disney has been trying to redeem/victimise their other villians in the recent movies we’ve been getting ((Especially if the info I’ve heard about A Frozen Heart is meant to be taken as canon)) 2. Disney has made it pretty clear that they want to tell more complex stories & I think redeeming the man who betrayed Anna in the first film could be a bit more of a complex story to tell 3. I just like Hans & want to see more of him. ;-; 

All that being said, I’m aware this most likely won’t happen, due to the fact that it’s probably going to be viewed as too difficult of a task & Hans isn’t loved as much by both the Disney company & by fans. 

- I want Elsa to remain single. There, I’ve said it! I’m not really sure if I feel like Elsa is aro/ace or not but either way, I just don’t really see Elsa having an active interest in romance. Also I feel like if she does get hooked up with someone, fans of any of the other ships involving her will get pissed & the whole fandom will become a shit show.

- I want to see Elsa & Anna actively work twards solving a problem together. It’s gotten pretty annoying for me that the movies we’ve gotten so far love to have these two sisters get split up & come up with their own separate plans, one thing leads to another & somehow the day is magically saved! Can I please just have one time, where Elas & Anna both work out a plan by talking to eachother & working things out as a team?!?

- I want Olaf, Kristoff & Sven to have a narrative reason to actually be in the plot. Seriously, Frozen II did these boys dirty. by having them just be there, but not really serve any purpose to the main plot. Also, Olaf was annoying in F2 & that crime needs to be fixed.

- Last but not least, I want F3 to have memorable songs. I’m sorry but, the songs in F2 didn’t really do anything for me & I can maybe only remember one or two of them, at most. For me F1 did a much better job with the songs. And yeah, I know it became this whole thing for people to hate F1 because of how stupid popular Let It Go was but, just because something is popular & played to death, doesn’t mean it’s bad.

As for what I can actually see happening in Frozen 3... this is pretty one is pretty obvious. A wedding for Kristoff & Anna. Not really shocking since, a good portion of F2 had Kristoff trying & failing to propse to Anna right up until the end. That being said, I think the wedding will most likely happen at the begining of the movie, giving Kristoff a bit of his own story line where he’s just wed the queen of Arendelle & now has to face a very real future as the soon-to-be-crowned-king-of-Arendelle. Which I can only imagine will be a bit of a nightmare for our “Reindeer King.”

[takerfoxx]

The Owl House, Season 3, Episode 3, "Watching and Dreaming," SERIES FINALE!

Well folks, the much-anticipated finale to The Owl House has finally dropped. Quite a bit...prematurely, true, but at the very least they had time to wrap things up with some measure of foresight.

So, how was it?

...you even need to ask?

Yeah, I loved it. No, it didn't really break away a whole lot from established norms for these finales. The bad guy gets an eleventh hour powerup and turns into a Kaiju, the misunderstood trickster antagonist is made to see the error of their ways and has a redemption arc, the hero has their big heroic sacrifice only to be resurrected with a Super Saiyan powerup, and we have a big fight. The bad guy is finally defeated, everyone is reunited, people get to work rebuilding, and we have the future epilogue touching base with everyone's happy ending. Nothin' we ain't seen before.

But it was still glorious.

Obviously, a lot of moving parts, so here's some personal highlights.

First, only my usual followers will get this, but I got a huge kick about how things started with basically the Restless arc from RD. I mean, the main characters being confronted with their deepest fears through personal nightmares? Sign me the fuck up! And lol, Luz was willing to accept that everyone hates her, but Amity misquoting their geeky hyper-fixation? Never!

I also like how it was the actual characters instead of dream copies, only controlled by the Collector. That was neat.

Part of me was bummed by how little Camilla and the Hexside gang had to do. Basically, keep everyone in the Archives safe until the reformed Collector came in with the save. I get it, it's the finale, but I really wanted to see Camilla go after Belos with la chancala. But then, things did start with Luz, Eda, and King, so it's fitting that they ended with that trio as well.

Okay, look. I'm a jaded, cynical guy. I've seen it all, and I know my tropes. So I knew there was no way in hell that Luz was actually dead. Still, when they've made me care that much about a character and pull things off that well...I was a little concerned. As if in, I kept telling myself that she wasn't dead, that she would be resurrected in minutes, it's a kid's show, yadda yadda yadda. Still. It did affect me. Well done.

Oh, the Titan! You know, I had forgotten the hints about them being caught in the in-between world, but we finally get to meet King's...dad? Mom? Parent? It wasn't super clear. I'm guessing gender-neutral being who appears rocking the Dad-bod because that's what Luz expected. Voice by Arin Hanson, no less! That was a pleasant surprise.

Also, does this confirm that Hooty is basically the Titan's grave worm? Wow.

ANYWAY, it was nice to finally meet the big guy. And it was cute how they were there watching the Owl House along with us, and Luz ended up being their blorbo. I mean, if your dying act was to reach into your favorite show and empower your favorite character to finally earn a happy ending, wouldn't you take it?

And okay, look. I know this is kind of hypocritical coming from me, given that Hordak is one of my favorite She-Ra characters, but I'm so glad that this show took such a definitive stand against not only redeeming Belos, but also shutting down the idea that just because the hero has done superficially similar things to the villain, it means that they're somehow the same. I always hated that trope.

I also love how it made it clear how some antagonists can be redeemed and others can't. For all the harm that the Collector did, they're still a little kid with no real concept of mortality. It doesn't make what they did okay, but it did give them a path to do better. And I loved how they immediately tried to redeem Belos with the power of friendship, only for the show to be like, "Yeah, that don't work with some people."

And in the end, the hero didn't bother justifying herself to Belos. She just stepped back and let the people that he hurt literally curbstomp him to death. And it was beautiful.

Now, again, much like the Human World montage in Thanks to Them, I would have loved for certain things to have room to breathe, like Camilla meeting Eda, all the reunions, finding out what happened to Odalia, repairing the Boiling Isles, etc. But with what they had to work with, seeing the healing happening, seeing the sort of people everyone would become (of course Eda would go with a giant hook), really felt right. It was a well-earned happy ending.

You know, it's funny. When this show first started, I often complained about how its episodic nature made it difficult to really get invested, and I still stand by that. But man, once the fetters came off, things really kicked into high gear and this show became magical! Yes, it was prematurely ended, and I would have loved for season 3 to have as much space to be as awesome as season 2. But what they gave us was still incredible.

Goodbye, Boiling Isles. I loved the time I spent with you. Here's to the brighter future you helped build.

...you have no idea how hard it was to find this screenshot.

[cherrybombfangirlwrites]

Tropes Tag Game!

Tagged by: @space-writes thanks!

Tagging: soft tagging | @witherednightmare | @nikkywrites | @zoya-writes | @ryns-ramblings | @enchanted-lightning-aes | @friendlyneighborhood-writer | @wherearetheplants | @oh-no-another-idea also Open Tag for whoever wants to play!

Bold the tropes that you write and italicize the ones you want to write in the future!

Found Family | The Chosen One | The Martyr | Surprise, Bitch! You thought I was dead | Enemies/Rivals put together for a project | Teen gets kidnapped; parent goes on killing spree to find them | Happy Ever After | Black and White Morality | Fight scene turns into a make-out session | Only one bed | The airport/train/bus station love confession | AUs | Amnesia story | Villain and hero fall in love | Love triangles | Bookworm falls for the bad guy | Killing off the audience’s fave characters | Smalltown falls for Big-City | Princess kisses a frog & gets Prince Charming | Villain redeemed | Protagonist beats “best in the world” | Enemies to friends to lovers | It was all a dream! | Coming of age story

Explanations under the cut!

Found family is a big one, it’s in all of my writing and I have families of all sizes and shapes (or at least I try to, 😅).

I italicized The Chosen One on the condition that it has a fun twist on it and said chosen one has to deal with all the trauma that comes with their destiny. I don’t like plain old boring and typical Chosen One trope lol.

Surprise, Bitch! You thought I was dead! is pretty much all of Fractured Stars Falling. That’s it, that’s the last three books of the series XD.

Enemies/Rivals put together for a project will be fun in TCIO and Galaxy Des especially with V x Nightmare and Nova x Astra. I’m a little excited for the comedy that will result. I haven’t planned any of it out yet, I just know it’s going to happen at some point

Teen gets kidnapped; parent goes on a killing spree to find them, not so much my original fiction, but this is all over in my fanfiction XD. This happens multiple times with Steve/Bucky and their daughter (my oc) Stacy, it’s a problem at this point XD.

Happy Ever After. I do like a not so happy ending, but I’m also a sucker for the happy endings. Especially if the characters had to work for it and do get it in the end.

Only One Bed I’ve only done once so far, I plan on writing a scene in Sleeping Beauty’s Bodyguard, but it is going to happen and I do have it panned out so I bolded it.

Villain redeemed, there’s quite a lot of that in TCIO, lots of villains and heroes crossing over to the other side, and even one arc that switches over but also switches back!

[clonecumber]

You know, I think I’ve pinned down one of the things that bothers me the most about basically everything in Imperial Commando, but especially Kal (and to a lesser extent Rav, Vau, and Mij):

I’m in a weird mood tonight so don’t click under the link if you aren’t prepared for Some Shit I Guess.

Kal wants to set up a sort of halfway house for the clones, a safe space for them on their way to freedom, or a permanent home, or whatever. The place is, in his own words, “for clones”. Very much as a means of “redeeming” the whole fucked up system on Kamino he participated in. Which, fair enough.

And then he populates it and places it under the leadership of...Kamino instructors?

?????

Like, really. He’s the final voice on everything there. He’s in charge. He’s gracious enough to listen to his “boys” (also the ones most emphatically loyal to him) in council, but Vau and Mij are primary advisors as well, along with ex-Jedi Bardan, and that’s an uncomfortably large number of non-clone voices about steps to take for the development, future, and amount of risk acceptable for a clone safehouse, in my opinion.

And it’s just like...he somehow is incapable of conceptualizing that he himself might be a trigger or a perceived threat to the same people he ostensibly set this place up for? A face of their enslavement? Of the establishment that made them the way they are? Because Kal did that. He killed a kid under his care and screamed abuse at toddlers so much Niner remembers it strongly and first as late as Hard Contact and ran children through traumatizing, dangerous, literally life-threatening ordeals they had No. Choice. but to endure. And it absolutely killed some of them, some of them brutally, and left survivors that would have to remember that forever. They weren’t volunteer soldiers. They weren’t mercenaries. They were enslaved, indoctrinated, dehumanized children and he did that. At least part of it, which is more than enough. Who cares if he hated every second of it? Who cares if he had to drink himself into a stupor every night to cope? Who cares? He still did that. His face is the face some traumatized young man sees when he has nightmares about Kamino. His armor, his helmet, his walk, the sound of his voice. He is Kamino. Yeah, and you can argue until you’re blue in the face the complex moral situation Kal found himself in, sure. There wasn’t really a right answer, sure.

But the fact he hated his job doesn’t excuse him doing the job, you know?

And I’d hope someone as genuinely horrified by what they were made to do as Kal supposedly is would also be able to acknowledge that...hey, you know what? Maybe these men don’t ever want to see my face again. Maybe the best thing he can do for them is stay away. Kal could have set up Kyrimorut and gone and homesteaded somewhere else with the kids he trained who still managed to love him, taken his family and clan and left the safe house under the care of any one of the highly competent men who are also clones and know what their people need. (*Gasp*). Funded it from afar. He could have done that. Easily. So easily. But he...what?

Needs his face to be etched firmly in the minds of everyone he “saves”?

Can’t even fathom that his actions on Kamino might have been so traumatizing for people not himself? 

That maybe his - and Vau and Mij and Rav’s, people he so readily invites in - presence in the safe house might actually be preventing these people he so badly wants to help from coming because the Cuy’val Dar are the nightmare they’re trying to get away from?

Is a total control freak who cares more about his redemption arc than actually doing the right thing by the people on whose behalf he keeps shouting at everyone else for taking advantage and not caring enough about?

Is a total fucking hypocrite when he yells at Zey for Maze’s decision to bring Zey in, even though there are four Kamino trainers already in residence? Like, you can’t say one symbol of oppression is better than another Kal. You especially can’t say that. (No, I will not ever be over that.)

Anyway. It just drives me up a wall.

This has been weird idle thoughts after some totally unrelated conversation.

Also: Niner for the hypothetical actual clone halfway house (we can dream) dorm parent. He and Jaing can argue about it.

[rjshepofftheshits]

More luxu rambelings???

I just can't bring myself to let luxu go from canon BC I just love him sm. I know people want him to just be bad, no redemption arc but my middle name is redemption au so obviously I'm doing one for kingdom hearts

lol i say i love him then proceed to torture him for several paragraphs

I'm in the " people deserve to be able to redeem themselves " and " you are under no obligation to forgive someone for their actions" can and should coexist camp. ive applied this in this au to xemnas, ansem and even Young xehanort ( ill rambel about him later but tldr he doesnt go back to the past at the end of kh3 like hes meant to, a replica of him does purely because i wanted to keep him in the future but ill elaborate on the story reason for it later.)

Post kh4 luxu definitely falls closer to the " no forgiveness" end of that scale. AU Xemnas worked hard and eventually endeared himself to people, even kairi who he kinda got killed. ok maybe hes not totally forgiven, maybe he never will be but he's at least accepted by the majority. Ansem has his own little neich and a casual but friendly relationship with riku, provided he doesnt talk to much. YMX is acting like a kid, finally having the normal youth that was ripped away from him by MOM . Luxu on the other hand just sort of....gives up. He's not su#idal or anything he just sort of stops caring. the norts try to bring him round, show him if they can do it he can too but... He's broken beyond measure, he doesn't have the strength of will to try any more and loses a sense of self/ego. If someone tells him to do something, he does it, if they tell him to go , he leaves without protest. im not even sure hed defend himself if attacked, he probably just stand there and take it or maybe try to run? after going through this nightmare existance for the last 250+ years , for him to be the only forteller left ,for all the misery he caused only for it to mean nothing in the end is soul crushing. needless to say his sense of self-worth is lower than dirt. Luxu really seems to believe he deserves this dogs abuse for what hes done.

I cant imagine how lonely he was before kh4 but now after its all over and hes burned every bridge hes ever walked, hes completly desolate and renounced by everyone. worst part is, its kinda his own fault.

i think he tries to go back to radiant garden, if for no other reason than getting yelled at by people you know is preferable to being compltly abandoned and outcast. he feels a little comfort from being in the castle but the radient garden gang are none to happy to see him. Ienzo is pleasant if short, surprised to see him . the others however are not, ranging from dismissive, rude and cold attitudes from even and Aeleus right up to outright hostile and violent from Dilan. Dilan is normally pretty calm all things considered but when he sees Luxu standing before Lord Ansem, asking for forgiveness and to stay with them for a little its fucking on sight . Aeleus escorts him out before Dilan can REALLY hurt him but not before reminding him he isnt welcome there anymore. He accuses him of just apologising to assuage his guilt and not because he's actually sorry for all the shit he put them through, which isn't untrue but he really is sorry if you would just hear him out for 5 seconds . Understandably Aeleus shuts the door in his face. He might want to apologise but they dont want to or arent ready to hear it and he knows trying to force that on them would do more damage than good .Luxu still hangs around castle town for a few days licking his wounds in both a literal and figurative sense before deciding that the others are right to be angry and gives up on them.

(just imagine that simpsons clip with bart and lisa "you can actually pinpoint the second his heart rips in half")

whats even worse about all this is that i imagine post kh4, luxu has no keyblade. think about it, all the other fortellers have their own keyblades but luxu gets the master of masters old one. its already covered in scratches by the time he gets it so it cant be made from his heart like all other keyblades, it has to be MoM's. and since MoM is gone now in this au, that means his keyblade is gone too. so lets sumarize. luxu has : no friends, no home, no keyblade and no purpose. i imagine he's feeling pretty low

but because im horrible im going to make it worse.

You remember the subplot of maleficent looking for the book of proficies? well after all this she still hasnt found it but she does now know Xigbar is luxu and who luxu really is. So, understandably she decides to ask him a few friendly questions on the subject by which i mean string him up and slash him with vines until he tells her what she wants to hear.

Listen ive been talking consistantly about how broken and at a loss luxu is but if theres one thing to bring back his defiant streak its this bs from maleficent. homeboy has been holding his tongue for nearly 3 centuries, hes not going to break for a dramatic witch and her pet furry.

Frustrated with her lack of success maleficent takes him back to radient garden and threatens to chuck him off a cliff into an abyss or maybe the water treatment turbines. Luxu is still defiant, even weak and bleeding from her interrogation. He doesn't want to die particularly, he's never read the book of profocies but she doesn't know that. if it means fucking with maleficent then he's happy to go and nip her dumb plans in the bud.

now in my little headcanon its my oc shep whos looking out for him. she has a similar backstory, being burdened with a great task, much older than her physical appearance would suggest so she feels a little kinship with luxu, despite how he's hurt her but for the sake of keeping this somewhat canon compliant so other people can enjoy it lets say dilan takes her place.

Sorry to the luxu stans out there I'm just whumping this man for his life.

Just when it seems like she's about have Pete fling him over the edge something bonks Pete in the head and clatters to the floor. Luxu might be weak from injury or bloodloss but he's not stupid, he might have to crawl but he's getting away from these assholes, kicking Pete in the shins for good measure. Absolutely no prizes for guessing who it is that's come to rescue him.

The radiant garden gang cannot stand maleficent. Ok they gave up their hearts but SHE was the one to drag radiant garden into the darkness, squatting in their home like a frog for 10 years. Dilan is still mad as hell but he's also not just about to sit there and let that arrogant witch have her way. They can't beat her, not even with the 5 of them but thankfully she's not looking for a fight. She and Pete retreat for now, promising to come back for luxu and some answers. Even Even takes that shit personally and is ready to throw hands with her if she ever comes back. Luxu is just sort of sat in stunned silence even as he's ushered into the castle to have his wounds treated.

Things are a little bit tense but they can't exactly leave luxu to die from infection or exposure. Until someone makes a joke Like " damn even didn't know you had it in you" followed by some bravado from a usually fairly risk adversed Even, and a little alughter all round. Even Dilan has a small smile and for maybe just a moment everything feels normal again for luxu like maybe there's a little hope after all.

on that topic i think i will call this the golden au after Kintsugi, the art of repairing broken things with gold. It's not the same as before but the breaks are part of its beauty

There's a quote I'm fond of that is "

You don't need another Human Being to make your life complete, but let's be honest. Having your wounds kissed by someone who doesn't see them as disasters In your soul, but cracks to put their love into, Is the most calming thing In this World." And damn if luxu doesnt appreciate having a little love poured into his cuts...even if it is followed by stinging antiseptic and some admonishing words.

[oflosechesters]

for anyone curious, the following meta and the elaboration below are in relation to this post. i posted this to another blog of mine, but i felt i should share it on my personal as well.

okay, i actually genuinely don’t wanna shut up about the significance of miracle because it’s possibly one of the most redeemable qualities of the spn finale. it’s actually really important, even if you don’t like the circumstances surrounding it.

at first i just sort of went off about it in some tags:

#this is the only good thing about that entire finale #it is the one thing i actually loved from a meta perspective in terms of dean's archetype #so i gotta have the puppy snuggles on the blog i'm so sorry #other than that this is largely a finale free blog lmao #i actually have a Lot of feelings about dean being given a dog #and naming the dog miracle #am i gonna end up writing meta about a dog? possibly #in broad strokes: dean has always been the archetype of a soldier #but never once has he been allowed to be a veteran #the dog very much is representative of that #it's very commonplace for veterans to have emotional support animals #dogs in particular #the way miracle launches into dean's arms after dean's just woken up is indicative to me that it's commonplace #likely after nightmares #which means that (for me) dean's PTSD is being subtly addressed #which means when i retcon the disaster of a finale for my portrayal miracle is absolutely staying #spn 15.20

but there’s so much more to it than that. 

the thing about the dog, if we’re staying within the context of the canon, is that this is a dean who has lost everything (keep that wording in mind, because we’ll be coming back to it). the war is won, and he's come home, but the cost was high. we also know that dean has canonically suffered from PTSD since the end of s3, though it’s not always been explicitly addressed in the following seasons. regardless, it's an aspect of his character that is widely established and recognized.

much like in s4, and after the purgatory storyline in s8, dean’s PTSD is shown to manifest itself largely through substance abuse, anger management struggles resulting in bouts of extreme violence, and nightmares. it’s a thread throughout the narrative whether it’s consistently addressed or not. more importantly in terms of the dog: dean is never allowed to heal, because the war wages on.

by the series finale, the war is won, but the cost is castiel’s life. what does the dog have to do with castiel, you ask? more than you might first think. i don’t want to get too deep in the paint, so i’m going to focus primarily on 13.01, dean’s grief arc in early s13 in general, and some key aspects of s15.

returning to the concept of being left with a dean who has lost everything, i want to point out a choice of dialogue in 13.01. the following is said during a scene of mourning, after they’ve lost castiel, and dean is left to wrap his body for burial.

dean [voice breaking]: we’ve lost everything. and now you’re gonna bring him back. okay? you’re gonna bring back cas.

this scene is the beginning of a several episode long grief arc where dean is depicted classically as a mourning widower in terms of cinematography (viewed on bended knee from above, distant and distraught after the death scene itself at the end of s12), and is then shown to slip into apathetic suicidal tendencies. his substance abuse reaches such a low that he quite literally drinks himself to death, but death will not take him, despite his wishes. he rages at sam for being able to move on so easily, in 13.03, patience:

dean: and what about cas? sam: what about cas? dean: he manipulated him, he made him promises, said, “paradise on earth” and cas bought it. and you know what that got him? it got him dead! now you might be able to forget about that, but i can’t!

the grief arc firmly establishes castiel as being representative of dean winchester’s hope, and the will to live. this is reinforced throughout s13 – s15, as it is further mirrored in later episodes, such as in act 3 of 15.09, the trap, in which sam is shown alternate futures. in every future where dean has lost castiel, he is shown to have lost his hope, and his will to continue on.

dean: no, sam. it doesn't matter. sam: what are you saying? dean: what i've been trying to say for months. it's time... time to stand down. sam: you want to quit? what's happened to you, dean? ever since— dean: ever since what? we lost pretty much everyone we’ve ever cared about? ever since the mark made cas go crazy? ever since i had to bury him in a ma’lak box? ever since then?

these follow an old tradition within the writing of spn that can be pointed at as early as 5.04, the end (“cas, too?”): castiel is always singled out apart from the rest. castiel, an angel, who saw worth in dean when dean couldn’t see it in himself. an angel who became his best friend, and loved him when dean couldn’t love himself. castiel, who saved him the moment they met, and saved him in death, as seen in 15.18, despair. given everything preceding this, it’s evident that this is not a small loss for dean. when they lose cas, dean loses the will to go on.

in losing cas that final time, cas’ confession — his assertion that dean is full of love, not anger — finally seems to break through. when fighting the main antagonist of s15, he is called “the ultimate killer.” at one time, dean would’ve agreed with this. but after cas’ confession, he denies it, and firmly says, “that's not who i am.” because that’s not who cas fell in love with. point being: castiel’s sacrifice affects dean enormously.

at the end of all things, when dean crosses the threshold from soldier to veteran because the war is won, he has a dog and he names him miracle; which harkens back to a scene when dean indirectly referred to cas as ‘his miracle,’ because truly: who’s been performing miracles in dean’s life over the past 11 seasons? the name holds a heavy weight and bears a large significance in the face of his loss.

by the end of s15, we now have a dean that is allowed to rest, and in resting, he is allowed to begin to heal. and the thing that is representative of this crossing of the threshold from soldier to veteran is giving the veteran an emotional support dog. that dean names miracle. something that is saving him, day by day, even in small ways. it’s just not only important for dean's development and healing after finally making that transition, it’s also the lasting influence castiel still has, even in death. it’s absolutely heartbreaking, especially when one considers how many of dean’s nightmares, stemming from his PTSD, canonically revolve around losing castiel — as is shown in early s8 through the purgatory storyline; therefore it is not incongruous to assume similar nightmares would crop up after the events of 15.18. and we’re shown this.

the dog jumping into bed for cuddles after dean wakes up is just so telling. but the way dean wraps around the dog, clinging? it’s the most telling.

granted, there is every possibility that i am giving the show too much credit (as it’s been shown we, as fans, are wont to do). but the concept of death of the author was quite literally pushed into the narrative of s15, and i personally like to think that no matter what else happened in 15.20, certain things remain significant and have bearing on the story, even if unintentionally so. that’s sort of just always been spn’s way of doing things.

[swampgallows]

I'm having such a hard time with it because I'm wrong, i think. ive been in my own hole about it so long that im just wrong. i don't know. i didn't want him to be redeemed but... i guess i just wanted him to actually suffer.

i think that's it. if he had to die, i wanted him to die knowing he was wrong. i can believe for myself and my own interpretations that deep down he always knew he was wrong, or that he always hated himself, that he was always fearful, but that's just my interpretation. the canon that is laid bare with no subtext is that he truthfully does regret absolutely nothing and believes he was right about everything.

is permadeathing him a way to silence the people who also unabashedly believe this? absolutely not. so what does his death accomplish? what did garrosh actually accomplish, and did it outweigh the drawbacks by any margin? DID he bring the horde glory? DID he provide a better future for anyone? didn't he, like his father, give his best gift to the horde by killing himself? at least grom's was a sacrifice. garrosh's was straight up suicide.

according to the raid's mechanics, garrosh was subject to the torment of the conglomeration of souls that were casualties of his warmongering, their "retaliation" unleashing "tyranny" upon his soul. in turn, his soul itself shatters, splintering into shards that rain down on the raid. my theory is that all of garrosh's regrets and burdens have splintered away, leaving only his lucrative anima—his rage—in the shackles. once dormazain is defeated, the only remnant of garrosh that remains is the anima of pure congealed rage. hence the cherry jello appearance in the cinematic.

geyah says "he fears so much... that his rage will consume him and all that would be near him" which is literally what the dungeon journal description threatens:

Defeat Dormazain before Garrosh is pushed too far, reverberating Hellscream and destroying the torture chamber and everything along with it.

in my own personal "story", it hurts when people who do wrong things continue to do wrong. it hurts knowing my abusers go through their merry lives completely ambivalent to how they eviscerated mine. my pain and suffering is irrelevant to them. and for fantasy, it's very difficult to find this to be a satisfying arc, even for a villain. i legitimately cannot understand how a villain "sticking to their guns" is more rewarding than watching them spend their last moments in utter defeat.

garrosh might have killed himself "on his terms", but he was never truly defeated. in canon and in the fanbase there are people carrying that torch with zero self-reflection or scrutiny, the same way garrosh behaved throughout the majority of his history. explaining away garrosh's radicalism as old god corruption didn't stop orcs or real life humans from that worship. an incel quoted this fully and visibly corrupted inarguably evil garrosh in a "manifesto" before shooting his classmates; there was no pause between "mountains of skulls and rivers of blood" and the validity of his own actions.

my abusers are not sorry that they hurt me. my abusers have gone on in their lives having children, getting married, or simply getting along. they did nothing wrong, and i was the crazy bitch who just couldn't get with the program.

garrosh as i originally met him and empathized with him in outland, in 2007, as a suicidal teenager at the height of the onset of my mental illness—nightmares constantly, panic attacks before i knew what they were, hypnagogic hallucinations of shadow people and auditory threats, chronic insomnia, bullied relentlessly by students and staff alike—was a character seeking a reason to live. he had "fallen into a deep depression" because the only person he lived for, the only person who kept him "balanced", was about to die. garrosh was shamed and reviled by his village for his namesake, and shamed and reviled even more so by those outside of it for his weakness and illness. even when you help him with the practical problems, you discover that the real issue is garrosh losing the only connection that matters to him. garrosh has "lost his heart", consumed by fear and terror that his anger inherent to depression, isolation, and all the resentment of being saddled with a lifetime of struggle, will forever alienate him from others.

thrall arrives, and is finally a new connection. and with that, a new path arrives with him.

a man is suicidal because he fears he will ruin everything. in a bid to win back control of his life, he proceeds to ruin everything. he is punished for ruining everything, and, in a bid to win back control of his life, he commits suicide, and everyone is thrilled that he does it. many say "i wish i had never helped him in the first place. i wish id just let him take care of it back in nagrand." in a half-hearted attempt at poetry, garrosh is killed (in life) in the exact same place he first expressed his wishes to die, although in a "perfect universe" where he was never born.

it isn't framed as a tragedy, because garrosh was evil. but it's also framed as badass and heroic, because he died on "his terms" for "what he believes in". but he is still evil, so he got what he deserved. but he also did nothing wrong because he was doing his best, but his best was always the worst, but he was a hero, but he was a villain, but he was very important, but he was also better off dead.

what in gods name is supposed to be the takeaway from this story

[shadlad24]

Tumblr Master Post

(Third Mensiversary)

Hey, guys! So, instead of the usual monthly post, I decided to consolidate everything. From now on, I will update the following list and reblog it every 22nd. Enjoy!

Please note that Tumblr either cannot or will not preserve my formatting. So, I have used Google Docs as well. Please click on this link if you’d prefer that. It’s open to all. Thanks!

My posts are almost XWP-related and can be categorized into eight main categories (The pic below is merely for record-keeping and visualization purposes; scroll down for the actual links):

Questions

Curious— Why does everyone think Gabrielle/Renée O’Connor has green eyes?

A Favor to the God of War?— What in the world was the favor Ares wanted from Gabrielle during “Sacrifice”?

Smoking Gun?— Why did Hope knowing Solan’s name give her away as his killer?

Good Luck, Kid!— Why was security so bad in “Maternal Instincts”?

The Love of Your Love— Wasn’t the second verse of this song frustrating and hurtful to Gabrielle?

The (Many) Problem(s) with Ares— Why does so little about Ares’s character make sense?

Hard Ask— Can I PLEASE get a willing, able, AND reliable beta-reader for my Xena fanfic???

The (Many) Problem(s) with Ares [Reblog]— Three more questions about the god of war

No Way— Is the titular image of “Xena: Warrior Princess” what it seems?

Episode Reflections

Random Thoughts While Watching XWP— funny moments from “A Family Affair,” “Them Bones, Them Bones,” “Married with Fishsticks,” and “Coming Home”

Observations from “Sins of the Past”— fifteen things I noticed while watching the episode for the second time (first after completing the series)

Running Commentary on “A Family Affair”— just what it sounds like XD

Concluding Thoughts on “A Family Affair”— a defense of Hope and Gabrielle

Echoes Across the Years— how Solan’s last conversation with his mother echoed Gabrielle’s first with the warrior princess

Redeeming “Fishsticks,” Part 1— how the adults and themes in Gabrielle’s dreamworld held great significance

Redeeming “Fishsticks,” Part 2— how Crustacea’s monstrous children were re-imaginations of Hope and The Destroyer

Fault— my thoughts on the series finale

Good Luck, Kid! [Reblog]— a fun little extension of the original post showing the impression Gabrielle made on Hope

Original Fanfic Excerpts

The Mother of Hope, a collection of one-shots exploring Gabrielle’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences with/about her daughter

Disparity— Hope’s and Gabrielle’s conversation during the final commercial break of “A Family Affair”

Somewhere— Gabrielle searching Tartarus for Hope while Ares was harassing Xena and Solan in “God Fearing Child”

Super Challenge— the entire Rift Arc summed up in a single conversation, the lines of dialogue coming from each of the twelve Rift episodes of season three

Aperture— Gabrielle’s thoughts the night of her wedding

The Daughter of Duality, Hope’s life story from her perspective

My Great Hope— Seraphin prepares her goddess for childbirth

Hope Rising— Baby Hope makes a terrible mistake

“Tears of a Goddess: Blood Rain,” a one-shot exploring “Motherhood” from the goddess of love’s perspective

Useless— Aphrodite agonizes over what to do when alone with Gabrielle and Eve

Tears of a Goddess, a story in which Aphrodite comes clean about the large part she played in Gabrielle’s life behind the scenes

Gabrielle Rages against Xena— the bard finds herself at Aphrodite’s temple, heartbroken and lost after the series finale

Aphrodite Ribs Gabrielle— Aphrodite complains about Gabrielle’s mishaps throughout the show

Rapprochement, a story about Xena and Gabrielle hashing out The Rift Arc before finally coming together as a couple

The Answer— Xena reminds Gabrielle of who she is

Divine Intervention— Aphrodite blesses Xena and Gabrielle’s union

Adventures in Moving Forward, a chronicle of Aphrodite’s and Gabrielle’s adventures together post-AFIN and all my other XWP stories

Stranger— Aphrodite protects Gabrielle from a mob in Brittania

The Betrayer, Gabrielle's untold experience during “The Deliverer.”

Disturbance— Xena makes an unexpected suggestion on how to stop Gabrielle’s recurring nightmare

Deception— Khrafstar fills multiple voids in Gabrielle’s heart

Defilement— Reality slips away from Gabrielle with the loss of her blood innocence

Desecration— Gabrielle becomes one with darkness

Dissolution— The return of Gabrielle’s hero brings about only more tragedy

Fan Theories

Soul Orbits and Psychic Echoes— how Xena and Gabrielle got their children through equal and opposite people and circumstances

Shazam!— how Xena might be able to come back after the series finale

Man-Killer— what really happened to Toris

An Unsung Hero— Aphrodite being Gabrielle’s guardian angel throughout the Rift Arc

Infamous, Infuriated— why Xena engaged in the GabDrag (and BardBraining)

Solving Some Problems with Ares— answering two of my own questions about the god of war

Odd, Sort of Beautiful Symmetry— how we ended up with Annie and Harry

Soul Orbits and Psychic Echoes [Reblog]— an extension of the original theory that focuses more on Solan and Hope themselves

Solving More Problems with Ares— answering my next questions about the god of war

Episode Cracksubs

The Comedy of Amphipolis— “The Haunting of Amphipolis”

What in the Gurkhan?— “Who’s Gurkhan?”

Them Bones and Boneheads— “Them Bones, Them Bones”

TL;DRs— cliff-notes version of longer posts

TL;DR #1: Soul Orbits and Psychic Echoes

TL;DR #2: Infamous, Infuriated

TL;DR #3: The (Many) Problem(s) with Ares

Funny Little Moments— (Five:) a series highlighting overlooked silly things from each episode, illustrated in pictures and cracksubs / (More:) summation posts showcasing additional funny moments from each episode, in half-season chunks

Five Funny Little Moments #1: “Sins of the Past”

Five Funny Little Moments #2: Chariots of War

Five Funny Little Moments #3: Dreamworker

Five Funny Little Moments #4: Cradle of Hope

Five Funny Little Moments #5: The Path Not Taken

Five Funny Little Moments #6: The Reckoning

Five Funny Little Moments #7: The Titans

Five Funny Little Moments #8: Prometheus 

Five Funny Little Moments #9: Death in Chains 

Five Funny Little Moments #10: Hooves and Harlots

Five Funny Little Moments #11: The Black Wolf

Five Funny Little Moments #12: Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts

Miscellaneous

Golden Ticket— Renee O’Connor’s initial responses to me on Instagram

Bath Time— a fun self-challenge involving making a story from recently downloaded/screenshot images in just a few minutes

Mensiversary— review of my first month on Tumblr

Confirmation/Affirmation— Steven L. Sears’s essay of support for my Furies theory

K.O.— Renée O’Connor liking my comment about ^

Hooray!— The Mother of Hope is finished (kinda)

Aww…— a quick picture post to try something new while I was bummed about the deadly tech bug that obliterated my posts for weeks

Second Mensiversary— review of my second month on Tumblr

NOOO!— a lamentation related to The Mother of Hope

The (Many) Problem(s) with Ares [Reblog/Response]— answering a reader

More Funny Little Moments #1: Season 1, Episodes 1-12

*Other

Black Hole— a poem about depression

It’s Nothing— a poem on invalidation

What the?— the beginning of the bug :(

[themidnightcircusshow]

How do you solve a problem like Amahl Farouk?

First, let me go on the record as saying I like that Farouk ended up redeeming himself. I think it fits with the themes of the show, and it’s very Charles Xavier type logic.

But the fact that he got off scot free is weird. We never saw him redeem himself, only Division 3 suddenly siding with him, and after seeing just how much suffering he’s caused over three seasons (including suffering that has already happened and therefore cannot be erased), the fact that he just gets to go on his merry way is so absolutely strange. Charles says he and David don’t have to take Farouk at his word, but we do because we never see this change of heart. We never see Farouk prove that he now loves David more than anything else.

So it’s my belief that our!Farouk needed to be the one to stop past!Farouk.

Let me explain.

The destruction of David is because he becomes single-mindedly obsessed with getting revenge against Farouk. This isn’t solely his fault: it’s perfectly possible that Future!Syd’s manipulations led to him focusing on Farouk instead of on his own life, or it’s possible David would have returned to hunting Farouk no matter what. But there was a time when David didn’t want solely to destroy Farouk, and then Farouk killed Amy and all bets were off. David’s obsession with Farouk cost him his sister, arguably one of his closest friends because he was too occupied with that to notice the nightmare chicks that ended up killing Ptonomy, and slowly then all at once cost him his relationship with Syd. He was too focused on Farouk to notice his own failings, and was too ready to blame Farouk when others had genuine concerns. Someone who was a pacifist in season 1 becomes ready to commit massacres against his own friends. Someone who was gentle and patient and kind ends up leading a teenage girl to her death in order to fill his goals. David’s arc makes it very clear: revenge will only lead to your own destruction. David could not be the one to kill Farouk for the sake of himself.

(I do not doubt that revenge would have been why David destroyed the world. In fact, I think it would have been very interesting for David’s supposed heel turn to have been him succeeding in killing Farouk at the cost of everyone else).

And then we have Charles. It’s sort of obvious: you can’t have one of the most famous pacifist characters in pop culture to suddenly be down with murder without changing a lot about him. However, in Legion specifically we have already seen Charles use his powers to kill someone, and it landed him in a psychiatric hospital with what is most likely PTSD based on his flashbacks. Charles knows the trauma that comes with killing someone intimately and it made him borderline catatonic. I highly doubt he’d be able to kill someone again and be able to walk away. And I don’t think he would have been able to live with his son living through that same trauma either. 

And then there’s Farouk. Our Farouk, who apparently has grown to love David so much that he’s willing to turn good (but how good?). Who stopped Syd from killing David (but created the circumstances that made her want to). Who shows his love for David by encouraging David to succumb to his worst impulses, by murdering the people David loves, and turning the others against him. The only way for Farouk to truly redeem himself was not to simply promise not to possess David while staying in the lap of luxury so really, why would he want to? It would have been to truly sacrifice himself for David. He needed to be the one to punish his past self for his crimes, not even his future crimes but his current ones. He didn’t even have to kill past!Farouk, just do something to make sure that he could never in any way harm David. (Putting his consciousness in the monkey would have been a nice symmetry, or trapping him in one of his plays). We’ve been told Farouk is redeemed, but we haven’t seen it. This would have been a good way to show how his character has changed.

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Higurashi Sotsu Ep1 and 2

After what’s felt like an eternity, we’re finally back to our good old fashioned anime about trauma and murder :)

Like with my posts about Gou, this will contain spoilers for all of the original series.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut.

Continuing on from how the second half of Gou went back in time to show Satoko’s descent into villainy, Sotsu is starting off by going back to Onidamashi and showing what was happening from Rena’s point of view, as a way of basically doing it’s own version of the answer arcs from the VN.

This isn’t 100% the same as either Onikakushi or Tsumihoroboshi, but effectively these two episodes were still almost entirely taken from material in the VN, which reminds me of how I still think that this show is more of a reboot than people would like to admit. Even if in practice it’s probably still better to just read the VN first and then watch all of this. I just feel like a lot of VN readers are going to end up kinda bored with this because of how much of it is just retreading stuff from the VN, like with the first half of Gou.

Anyway, I’m entirely on board with this being a new take on the answer arcs, and thus far I think the execution has been done really well. Rena ended up getting kinda sidelined in Gou, so I like how they’re really focusing on her perspective in this. It’s obviously not quite as in-depth as the VN, especially if this arc is just going to be one more episode long, but like with Gou I think they’re doing a great job of getting across the characterization and development without many internal monologues or anything.

Although this ended up basically playing out the same way as Rena killing Rina in Tsumihoroboshi, it turns out that this version of Rina has gone through the same sort of character development as Teppei did, and now she’s way more sympathetic than she was in the VN, with her wanting to cut ties with Rena’s father out of sympathy instead of just being out to extort all of his money no matter what. The way that this new series has been going about ‘redeeming’ it’s more evil characters has been kinda polarizing with people, but I think it worked out really well here. Partly because they don’t really spell out whether or not Rina has gone through the same process as Teppei with getting traumatized by nightmares of previous loops, and we just see her being a more sympathetic person instead. I think it also makes Rena’s actions here even more tragic, since in this timeline Rina would have left them alone if she’d done nothing, and by the time she found out about that she was already past the point of no return. It doesn’t exactly erase or make up for all of the shit that had already happened between Rina and Rena’s dad, though. It still makes sense why Rena ended up snapping like she did.

Which gets into the whole topic of Satoko injecting her with the syringe, which basically sealed the deal on Rena irreversibly going insane in this arc. In practice she ended up just going down the same path that she already did in Tsumihoroboshi without needing to be injected with anything, but it still raises the possibility that she might have been more willing to abandon her plans if she hadn’t been injected.

Sorta like how the VN was already about the inherent tragedy of how in a perfect world none of these things should have happened and nobody should have resorted to murder, this adds an extra layer of dramatic irony with how Satoko’s looping has caused a situation where the external forces triggering people’s insanity have been slowly going away, but because she’s so intent on keeping Rika in the village by mentally breaking her through continued tragedy, she’s having to go out of her way to force all these things to happen, when otherwise all of these loops might have ended up being ‘perfect’ if she’d just left it alone.

And just for the record, a lot of people seem confused by it, but I think Gou already made it clear enough why Satoko is trying to convince Rika to stay in the village by subjecting her to repeated torture. From a meta perspective, it’s all just about setting up the premise of Rika going through the original arcs again so we can have a part-sequel/part-reboot, but in general her whole plan with this seems to be to traumatize Rika enough that she’ll accept the idea that she’s being punished by Oyashiro-sama for wanting to leave the village. Obviously it’s a pretty extreme and convoluted way to try and convince her to stay, but Satokowashi went to great lengths to show how Satoko tried basically everything else she could think of to stop her without resorting to violence.

And yes, the point of ‘she should be able to just talk to Rika directly and work things out that way’ is an intentional part of the whole tragedy of the situation, lol. If this was a story where people were willing to calmly open up about all of their problems and achieve peaceful resolutions, basically none of this entire story would have happened. And honestly, at least on an abstract level, I can totally relate to that feeling of being willing to do literally anything instead of just talking to people openly, no matter how much extra time and effort it takes.

I also just don’t even think that ‘just talking about it’ would even be enough. Partly because Rika is really dead-set on leaving the village and would prefer to take Satoko with her instead of staying in the village just for her sake [which is the entire premise of what happened in Satokowashi], but also partly because in the long run this is more about Satoko’s personal trauma and her inability to accept leaving her childhood behind. No matter what she does, she’d have to eventually contend with the idea of her friends moving on in their lives, or the village itself changing.

She doesn’t just want Rika to stay with her, she wants to keep everything the same forever because this is where she feels safe and in control. And that’s just not something that you can actually achieve without, well, the ability to loop through time, lol. That’s also why I don’t really think it’s ‘unreasonable’ that Satoko was so willing to sit through Rika’s loops, and to enact her own loops. The looping isn’t just something she has to put up with to achieve her goal, it IS her goal. She isn’t exactly aware of it since she’s so focused on the point of keeping Rika with her forever, but what she wants is to keep repeating this time period forever, and that’s what she’s doing. 

Funnily enough I wasn’t really onboard with the idea of Satoko being the villain for most of Gou, but I guess by this point I’m a Satoko apologist, lmao. I just think her whole character arc makes a lot of sense, with her doing everything she can to cling onto the present and avoid the future, but obviously I also get why people think she’s irredeemable.

Either way, I’m kinda curious to see how the next episode goes, since it seems like there’s just going to be one more episode to this arc. It feels like there’s a lot still left to be covered, but maybe I’m over-estimating it. I think they still have to cover the flashbacks with Rena after she moved, her getting more paranoid about Keiichi until finally killing him, and then whatever happened with Rika and Satoko at the end of the arc, so hopefully that’ll fit nicely into one more episode.

I’m still curious to see what happens when we see Rena’s perspective on her fight with Keiichi, though, since there’s been so much speculation about it partly being a hallucination from Keiichi as he rapidly descended into L5 when Rena attacked him. There’s also still the possibility that they’ll reveal that this is an entirely separate timeline to Onidamashi, but I think that’d be a bit convoluted for no good reason. It’s be enough of a twist to just show that the fight scene went differently to how it was originally presented.

Other than that, I think that Rika probably ended up killing herself in despair at the end of this arc, and Satoko kills herself to jump to the next loop. I think that’ll all be pretty straightforward, but hopefully it’ll lead to an epilogue scene with Satoko and Eua.

After this, I guess the next three episodes will be the answer arc for Watadamashi, going by the Sotsu blu-rays being split into sets of 3, 3, 5, and 4 episodes. Unlike how this arc was very straightforward and predictable for people who’ve read the VN, I’m really excited to see what happens in the next arc, since Watadamashi was kinda confusing in a lot of ways, even after we found out about the Satoko stuff. But we’ll get to that when the time comes.

The third arc should then be an answer arc for Tataridamashi, but it’ll be interesting to see if they fit in Satoko’s perspective of Nekodamashi there as well, or if they push that to the final arc, or if the Nekodamashi arc will overlap both arcs. Either way, the fourth and final [unless they reveal more episodes or even another season later] arc will probably then continue on from the end of Nekodamashi and show however things manage to wrap up after that point. It’s really hard to tell how much time they’ll actually need after that to wrap things up, though, which is why I’m not sure if they’ll actually be able to finish things in these 15 episodes, or if we might get more later. Unless we get some major curve balls, I don’t really think it’d be that hard to wrap things up that quickly, but we’ll see.

Anyway, Sotsu is off to a great start, and I’m excited to see where it’s going to go, but mostly at the moment I’m just relieved that the last four months of my life are over now, and I can go back to live-blogging about anime where kids murder each other, lmao.

[hellsbellschime]

1I feel for Jamie so much. Right now he resents himself, what he has become. It is not how others see him, I disagree. It is how he sees himself. He tried to kill Bran, but he saved a million people. His reckoning with what he did to Bran has not come yet; for all he knows so far Bran is dead, and not by his own hand. Meeting him again will be a great moment for him (arghhhh, the show took that away from us!) He has come to the realization that what he has become was because of Cersei. Therefore

2 he chose to leave her and not return yet in search of himself. He is going through an identity crisis, not exactly a redemption arc, because his crimes are frankly, at least as I see them, not that great (apart from what he did to Bran and his reasons for it that are seriously messed up). In this he is very similar to Jon, not Theon. I also do not see how Theon can redeem himself by saving Jeyne. Jamie did not actually kill Bran, but Theon killed those boys. What Theon did is hugely evil.

3 He destroyed WF and created a power vacuum in the North that allowed for the Bolton coup. Had Theon not attacked WF there would actually be no RW. Indirectly, Theon is responsible for the murder of the Northmen at the Twins, of Robb and Catelyn. So no matter if he regrets it or not, no matter if he feels remorse, his crimes are much more heinous than Jamie's. He might redeem himself by sacrificing for the Starks but it won't undo anything. So in my opinion there's a stark contrast here.

4 Jon and Jamie save lives; they are not perfect and have made mistakes, sometimes grave ones, and there's a lack of morality in Jamie highlighted by having sex with Cersei in the Sept. But is his lack of morality inherent in him, or is it acquired after so many years of addiction to his toxic sister? Theon by contrast chose to kill when time came to decide. He chose to do harm, unlike Jamie. Sorry for the rant, I just had to put this opinion out there and give another twist to the dialog.

I mean, I don’t think it’s fair to blame Cersei for who Jaime is. She is definitely a nightmare, but even she thought that Jaime’s reaction to Bran catching them was inappropriate and too much. So how can she be to blame for what Jaime did to him? And Jaime didn’t have sex with Cersei in the Sept, he raped her in the Sept. Not to mention, if Theon is indirectly responsible for everything that happened at the RW then Jaime is indirectly responsible for literally everything horrible that has happened in the series. He may not have successfully killed Bran, but that was his intention, and if indirect responsibility is in consideration then he’s responsible for the murders of thousands of innocent children and smallfolk in general now. 

For me Theon has done hugely evil things, but the potential for his redemption is different because he has actually lost his sense of entitlement whereas Jaime has not. Theon’s only hope for redemption now is that people won’t see him solely as the man who did all of those terrible things, and that even though he’s done so many terrible things he can still do something good for someone. And that’s why his narrative arc means something for me. He’s saving Jeyne Poole who is essentially a nobody. She’s not anyone important to him, he has no emotional ties to her, and he’s not going to go down in the history books for coming to the rescue of Lady Jeyne Poole. She’s expendable and no one really cares about her for her, which is why the fact that Theon is risking his life to save her is actually so meaningful. There’s no glory in it but it’s the right thing to do, and it will mean literally everything to her. Theon began his journey in a similar state of mind to Jaime, he was arrogant and believed that he deserved a lot more than he got in general, and especially when it came to the respect of other highborn people. Now Theon has suffered enormously but has also genuinely changed. He’s not the person he was before because he doesn’t want to be that person, and he’s doing the right thing because he actually wants to do the right thing. He may be beyond the point of redemption, but that doesn’t mean that all of the choices he makes don’t matter anymore, and for me I think it’s more meaningful to have a character who is making choices that aren’t being made in exchange for something else, but are just simply their own choices. And it’s especially meaningful for Theon’s character arc that he’s making the much harder choice because it’s the right choice, even though there is a very strong possibility that he’ll just suffer horribly and die and ignominious death as a reviled asshole instead of gaining any favor with anyone else besides Jeyne. 

Jaime on the other hand is still in the glory and respect phase of his emotional development. Contrast the fact that Theon is saving Jeyne with the fact that Jaime is trying to save Sansa. Saving Sansa WILL bring whoever does it glory, whoever does that likely will go down in the history books as saving the lost princess of Winterfell, and it will be especially memorable and attention getting if it’s a Lannister who does it. There are thousands of people he could save now, but he’s not saving them, likely because there’s nothing in it for him. Jaime wants to keep his promise to Catelyn but it’s because he wants to be known as someone who does keep promises, it’s not because he actually cares about keeping promises. Even now he’s broken his promises to people a hundred times, but because people don’t know that he’s made those promises and because it’s not something that will actually make him look better and he doesn’t care that much about something that won’t change his image in the eyes of others. Theon’s perspective on what matters and how people see him has evolved, but Jaime’s hasn’t yet. 

That’s not to say that it’s impossible for Jaime to evolve in the future, but the problem is that all of his motivation to change is external. Even when it comes to his dream about his mother, he’s not doing that because it’s what he himself wants, he’s driven by the idea of other people seeing him in a different way than he wants to be seen. He’s still extremely invested in the perception of others but he’s not actually putting in the groundwork of just being a decent person to everyone and earning his reputation through that. And that is truly how all of the best characters have earned their reputations for being good people in Westeros. He and Theon are different because they’ve both done evil things, but Theon has an understanding that the things he’s done are evil while Jaime still excuses himself. Theon murdered two innocent children, but the brutal reality is that the world won’t care or even really remember them. But what’s different now is that Theon cares and remembers them, and it haunts him even though the smallfolk are seen as mostly dispensable by highborn people. Jaime tried to murder Bran and threatened the life of Edmure’s baby, but in his mind it’s still the ends justifying the means and these are things that he rationalizes and excuses by saying that he was somehow forced into these choices. That’s not to say that Jaime is incapable of change or finding some measure of decency, but his motivation for his own behaviors and decisions is entirely different than Theon’s, and he’s much further away from becoming a truly decent person than Theon is.

[duelofthefatesmp3]

i DO actually wanna know how youd make kotor 3 !!!!!

this ask has been sitting on my inbox for so long on PURPOSE! i wanted some time to re read the revan book + watch some swtor gameplays so i could give a concrete answer about why the book and swtor arent satisfactory and what i would do instead (im not like. a storytelling god so i this is just my PERSONAL idea). under the cut!

to begin with, what's wrong with revan the book and swtor, mai?

i am very fond of swtor i think it was such a nice idea to have an "open" world game set in star wars old republic time. but ultimately, it was not a good conclusion to revan and meetra's storyline! now, i don't really know what happened in the development of the third kotor game (if there ever was a plan for one) but it's clear they dropped the ball on that and decided to start a whole different project. i don't think we can blame disney for that one, because it was announced on 2008, launched in 2011, and disney had just bought star wars that year. so who knows.

the thing is that it's painfully evident that a bunch of the story that was gonna be in the third game, ended up in the book + misc parts of swtor. much of the book feels like a gameplay.

now, it was clear when the book was planned that they wanted to keep revan's story open so when the game came out, they could have a cool Revan storyline so he could make a cool villain appearence and draw in some of that kotor nostalgia. which ehhhhhh. uh. i don't really think did any favors for revan's character. he didn't have a satisfactory arc (I'm not saying "a happy ending" because good arcs aren't always happy) but at least some closure?

revan went through many big events in his life. we didnt need to keep his ass in stasis for his fun villain moments 300 years later. we already had what we wanted from him: jedi turned sith turned jedi again to defeat a terrible threat. that was it we could have let it there and it would have been cool! but then they decided to drag and drag his story just to leave him right where he was before. he just suffered a little more in the in-between.

you could say he finally redeemed himself of all of his crimes this way, but wasn't that the whole purpose of the first kotor game (and would have been the purpose of the 3rd?)

swtor does not centre revan in his own narrative. he's a side character for the player to experience. and look, i get it, we've had a different protag on each game, why not have another one in this one. well, because the protagonist has no personal relationship with revan. meetra was one of his closest friends, and fought with him. there is a connection that can be exploited. but the swtor protagonist is just some guy 300 years in the future who happens to stumble into revan and his life. not even his descendants get to fully interact with revan.

also, there is the fact that revan is not the centre of the game itself, only of a particular storyline. and it's weird, because swtor could have happened without revan's involvement.

ms. meetra surik, ms. bastila shan, women of the world I'm sorry

so it's no news that star wars is misogynistic as fuck right. cause it is.

so you decide to make your gender neutral protagonist a guy. then you decide to make your other gender neutral protagonist a woman. cool. now let's guess who gets underdeveloped, turned into a plot device without reason, and promptly fridged in the most unceremoniously fashion just to fullfil some manpain moments. which one do you think got that treatment.

i know the revan book is supposed to be about revan, but why make meetra go through a whole arc just to undermine her character and turn her into the faithful servant of the guy? she leaves everything behind for him, sacrifices herself for him, hell not even dead is she not serving the guy. and she was the second game’s protagonist! she beat up a bunch of powerful people and now she’s just meh, there? she had so many interesting ways to interact with revan (meeting kreia, revan’s first master, encountering another force consuming entity, etc.)

meetra went through a whole arc about dealing with the guilt of doing something horrible and having the consequences of it cut her from the force. we see her broken, then slowly come back to the world and reconnect herself with the force, then stop running and face the consequences of her role in the war. thats such a cool character with tons of potential! and nothing happened!

then we got bastila who is. a whole deal. so you make her go through a “promising jedi who defeated revan, to questioning reluctant companion, to fell into the dark side, to was redeemed thanks to her bond to revan, who helped her come back because he’d been through the same experience” arc, and then you decide to push her to the side to have a baby?? which is... its clear that the writer didnt know what to do with her (or with the other characters outside of canderous) so hey, lets get her to marry revan and have a baby.

my ideal kotor 3

to preface, im not a game developer, so some of my choices could be stunted by what a kotor rpg can do lol. of course, it would follow the same mechanics and have the same format as the first two, because consistency!

the fun way to start the game, would be from scourge’s perspective. we get to play as a sith! i’d even say you get to change scourge’s name and gender and looks (i know sith have different looks)

in scourge’s storyline, we get from his arrival to normound kaas, to his talks with nissyris, to his missions working for her. in some of these, we can make scourge lean into the dark or the light side! fun! plus we get some exposition with dialogue options. it all continues untill we get to nissirys story about the emperor. we get a fucked up cutscene of his childhood and then BOOM when its over, we see revan waking up from a nightmare and their pov starts.

ok, as for revan’s story, since we’d have to pick it up from where kotor ended, i’d have a little cutscene of revan back into the ebon hawk, with bastila, and them telling the crew to take them to courascant. then cut to a council meeting where revan and bastila get scolded in private, then rewarded by the republic. i would also like to see some revan mournink malak’s death mayhaps. since he was their childhood friend and all.

i would 100% scrape the marriage and two years passed part. as the book said, the council had no use for revan aside from the legend(tm), so why would they stay in courascant. revan was very alienated from the jedi at that point, despite being back in the “light side”

then like, to revan asking around for meetra and other jedi from the mandalorian wars, we can cash in that atris cameo, then revan starts to have these visions about the sith emperor, and maybe we could get a playable dream sequence about revan’s fight with mandalore the ultimate (I KNOW I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IT.) and we get the whole exposition to mandalore telling revan that the sith are behind it all. i believe we should get a bunch of these flashback/dream sequences of revan’s past doing shit. cut to revan burying the mask in a planet, then back to the present. we see a bunch of mission and juhani scenes trying to reach him, but he keeps pushing them away. revan and bastila meet canderous, travel to the ice planet, meet clan ordo (god i love clan ordo) you get the whole quest, you decide weather to spare veela or not, maybe you get a cheeky mandalorian companion (force sensitive mando oh?) and leave canderous behind.

we can visit like, a couple more planets searching for clues maybe, etc. then when reaching nathema, you are forced to go alone as revan, get to explore nathema a bit (raiding ancient location yay) nathema as a location can be so fun because you can have it weaken you hp bar and also you cant use the force (which, in game is pretty cool)

then we get to scourge and nyssiris arriving to the planet, they fight but since theres two of them and revan doesn’t have the force, they beat the shit out of them, and while running away, they get in a fight with bastila and the companions in the ebon hawk (ebon hawk shooting game my hated). bastila manages to get a glimpse of revan’s thoughts before they take them away. but the ebon is so ruined it takes bastila, t3 and the mandalorian a while to fix it, and they get stuck into the unknown regions for a while. the ebon hawk is left in an outer rim planet with t3 fixing it, bastila and the mandalorian run back to the jedi council, only to get caught in the middle of the jedi civil war. we can have bastila choosing to hide in courascant and trying to make sense of what she saw, reading texts about the sith empire, trying to plot a course to where they took revan (more atris! but shes pissed at her now)

cutscene to meetra’s pov, leaving malachor v behind, getting calls from everyone at the hawk (atton my beloved) but just as she’s leaving she gets a force message from revan, calling for her to find him and sending visions of normound kaas. then, through her force bond with visas, she tells her not to go because they’re gay and in love and whatnot.

then boom, she gets intercepted by bastila’s ship, with the mandalore and the other mandalorian (yes i do love having a bunch of mandos on board) and they go on their way to find revan.

now i want there to be an underlying message of “we can’t take our friends with us because we have to do this ALONE we’re powerful JEDI we don’t need our FRIENDS.” meetra gets asked if she wants to bring any friends and she’s like “no. we have to do this alone.” along the game you get constantly contacted by other game characters, you get the chance to talk to them or ignore them.

so, we get back to nathema, and meetra has a whole “holy shit this is just like darth nihilus but ten times worse. but i beat darth nihilus. i can do this!” then she finds peace in this place without the force, we get a whole speech about how the odds arent against them, they find a way to normound kaas, and get going.

in normound kaas i thought about them getting a whole mission about how to infiltrate the citadel, only to get helped by scourge. he joins the party, we get a little flashback of all the years he spent trying to make revan remember and they storm the citadel. we get to fight the dark council members, fun! then we get to free revan and the game switches povs. bastila hands the mask to revan and he has a cool “yes im revan im pretty cool” then a nice heartfelt yet rushed reunion with everyone.

then have a small CONVERSATION WITH MEETRA where she talks about the sith triumvirate she defeated and revan is impressed with her and is like “we are the last hope of the jedi, we’ve learned to walk between light and dark, we’ve done horrors but we can still make things right, our experience has made us more powerful etc.

then they fight the imperial guard, ALL OF THEM, meetra revan and scourge make it into the throne room, they all fight the emperor. meetra shows the emperor that she has seen the void, she has cut herself from the force, and she’s not afraid of him, revan supports her, talks about redemption and hope  and NOW.

NOW. how the alternate endings could go:

if you decide to take scourge through the light side, he manages to form a forcebond with meetra and revan since they’ve both teached something about the duality of the force, they get 100% stronger, but its still not enough. UNTIL. a bunch of ships (jedi and mandalorian, even non republic ships) arrive to dormound kaas, the gangs from each game storm the room and together they make the emperor and his guard a bunch of punching bags. they beat him! (unknow to them, this was a backup body because the emperor can do weird shit like that, and has only debilitated his plan, but he’ll come back dont worry). then they fly back to the republic, to tell the chancellor about the sith threat, and preparations for the war begin. meetra and revan get to live happily ever after for a while, then they die away from the jedi or the sith (waaah im thinking about them helping canderous rebuild the mandalorians, and them doing it since they killed so many mandos in the war)

BECAUSE IN THE END KOTOR IS ABOUT LEARNING TO PROCESS TRAUMA AND RECOGNIZE YOUR MISTAKES AND LIVE WITH THE GUILT WHILST TRYING TO FIX THE MISTAKES YOU MADE ALONG THE WAY. AND ALSO TO HEAL FROM TRAUMA YOU NEED A SUPPORT SYSTEM SO EVEN THOUGH IT MAKES SENSE TO YOU YOU SHOULDNT PUSH PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU AWAY. AND THINGS AREN’T BLACK AND WHITE ITS COMPLICATED SO YOU DONT END UP BACK ON SQUARE ONE YOURE A CHANGED PERSON.

or

if you decide to dark side scourge further, he betrays revan and meetra, they all die, and the emperor unleashes his angry lightning or whatever on everyone + a bunch of visions of all the enemies of past mocking them, and their loved ones suffering. and since you’ve had that “im not calling my friends bullshit” no one comes, you die there, and the emperor is only stalled for a few years. swtor ensues. scourge becomes the emperor’s hand.

now you could of course bring revan and meetra up in swtor, but maybe only as force ghost guides, or have some of the other characters of the game have relevance (visas tries to heal the miraluka planet 2021)

WELL THAT WAS A LOT OF WORDS. HOPE THIS IS SATISFYING ENOUGH

[erazonpo3]

Intro to my infodump on Alphecca but also I’m getting more and more shameless about it so I’ll probably dump a lot of other shit too later but back to the point: I never tend to stop mutating characters in my head but for all intents and purposes Alphecca is at a point where I’m satisfied with how fleshed out she is in my mind, so I figured I’d write it down. 

SO basically a rundown:

Alphecca’s main purpose is to be the “Season 1” villain, in which her part in the story can be expanded but mostly wraps up in a self-contained plotline, and has relatively low stakes so that there’s room for the narrative to escalate. That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t pose a threat as an antagonist- because she absolutely does- but simply that her behaviour of terrorising people and raising bodies is already the status quo, and she has no grand design or plan of action. Cassandra steps in to change that status quo for the better, but her failing to do so won’t leave anyone any worse off than they already are. Yet with that being said, Alphecca is also built to be Cassandra’s antagonist specifically, so of course there has to be a resolution there.

Alphecca as Cassandra’s antagonist

Alphecca exists to be a foil to Cassandra, so that when you put them together their differences shine brighter. Where Ilione is a foil to Cass in that she’s largely her polar opposite: extraverted, very emotionally sensitive, inexperienced etc, Alphecca is a foil to Cass by being very similar to her but for a few glaring differences. It’s worth noting that while their personalities are pretty different, they share a same jaded perspective on life and struggles with mental health that stem from an ugly ZT origin story. 

Both women were approached by Zhan Tiri during a time they felt powerless, and sided with her over loved ones in an attempt to regain control over their life. They were encouraged to embrace malice and sadism, had their faith in their loved ones undermined and had those insecurities stoked, and all this instability created the perfect storm for them to be easily manipulated and betrayed. Zhan Tiri operates as a cult leader does, seeking out vulnerable people and cutting them off from their remaining support networks until they have nowhere left to run, even if they want to. 

It’s not to say Cassandra wasn’t making her own choices, but this kind of gaslighting shouldn’t be dismissed either. Some people will forever lack sympathy for her, but that’s exactly the point of Zhan Tiri’s manipulation- if nobody’s willing to help you out of the hole you’ve dug for yourself you’re going to be stuck there to rot, so you may as well keep digging in the hope that you might hit gold eventually. 

Alphecca and Cassandra are both victims to Zhan Tiri’s super fun form of control, but the major difference between them was that Rapunzel remained willing to help Cassandra out of that hole. Alphecca didn’t have a Rapunzel, or a Varian, or a Eugene, and instead over time she became twisted and warped into a menace who doesn’t need Zhan Tiri’s encouragement to do terrible things anymore. And that’s what makes these two foils to each other; Alphecca is the monster Cassandra never was but could have easily become if she was never shown compassion. 

Thus the only person who can stop Alphecca is someone who can empathise with her, at least to some degree. In fighting terms, Alphecca has a bottomless bag of tricks up her sleeve and the nature of her undeath makes her essentially immortal. She cannot be conquered, only slowed down, and the more pissed off she gets with you the more volatile and dangerous she becomes. 

Cassandra initially sees Alphecca as a chance to prove herself, both as a force for good and as someone who can rid the world of Zhan Tiri’s legacy. However,  it quickly becomes apparent that Alphecca cannot be defeated through conventional means, because otherwise warriors like Adira (who has encountered Alphecca before) would have been able to deal with the problem. Considering that Alphecca herself has sought out her phylactery to destroy it- with an extra thousand years of hunting up her sleeve- but failed to do so, makes it apparent that she can only be stopped by being reasoned with. But for a lich who hardly remembers the human experience, that’s pretty difficult. 

It ultimately means the only person who can stop her is Cassandra, because the only person who can reason with her is someone who can empathise with her from a place of camaraderie rather than condescension, and recognises that the cycle of violence needs to be broken by compassion and not just violence but harder.  

The Storyline

Basic plotline goes like this:

Early on into her journey Cassandra learns about the bone witch that roams the wilderness and terrorises innocent villagers, desecrates the dead, is probably a cryptid because legends have existed about her for generations, et cetera and so on. When evidence appears that this witch is real Cassandra and decides to investigate, because this is a pretty straightforward “good guy stops the bad guy” situation for her to jump into. (By this point Ilione is also tagging along). 

Their first encounter with Alphecca is pretty tame. They intercept her at a mausoleum, she does a fancy music number/generally has a good time fucking around with them, but ultimately skulks back into the shadows at the end. It’s sort of all in good spirits and Alphecca isn’t ‘defeated’ by any means but still bows out as a show of good sportsmanship. 

Their future encounters are a lot less nice. 

The more Cassandra continues to pursue her, the more pissed off Alphecca gets, and when Alphecca gets pissed off she begins to embrace her sadism and her outbursts become more violent and cause more collateral damage. She lowers herself to underhanded tactics like throwing Cass into a nightmare reality a la Tromus and becomes increasingly sinister. The ‘tentpole’ of this plotline probably marks the shift from Alphecca as a trickster figure into a more dangerous one as Cass and Lio learn that she was also a disciple of Zhan Tiri. 

The situation ultimately comes to a head by the finale, by which point Alphecca is very much unhinged and out for blood. She becomes fixated on Cassandra and does her best to hit below the belt, sniffing out her insecurities about her past with the moonstone and bludgeoning them with a metaphorical sledgehammer, and basically tries to goad her into a complete spiral. 

This is the emotional climax, and the underpinning of Cassandra’s character development in becoming emotionally sound enough to shake it off. It’s at this point she understands what Alphecca is doing; Alphecca is caught in her own eternal maelstrom of emotional torture and latches onto anyone she can drag down with her for the small amount of pleasure it brings. She’s able to recognise those feelings because she can empathise with them and knows exactly what she needs to hear in that moment. 

There’s probably some extended backstory revealed by this point too, going into a little more detail about the way in which Alphecca was caught in Zhan Tiri’s web down to becoming a lich, but of course what’s more important is the resolution. 

With Cassandra getting through to her, Alphecca is able to pull herself together long enough to ease the situation back down again and have a more honest conversation about hope and humanity and compassion and all those good things. Cassandra admits that she can’t do much to ‘fix’ her, but starts by continuing Rapunzel’s legacy and showing forgiveness and compassion to someone who doesn’t think they deserve it. (Alphecca isn’t entirely regretful of all her actions, but does acknowledge that she ought not project her pain onto others anymore.) 

Alphecca Post-S1

Alphecca doesn’t really get a ‘redemption arc’ because honestly I don’t want her to be redeemed. It’s not really a moral stance so much as I believe she’s genuinely disinterested in being a better person, she just has the selfish desire to be able to live happily again. And that’s kind of all she needs. She doesn’t care much about other people, but she’s working on herself and that means squashing the sadism. 

I think it also continues to make a good parallel to Cass: Cassandra is trying to do better not only for herself but by others because she sees it as her own social responsibility, whereas Alphecca just wants to do better for herself and if other people benefit from that, that’s just a bonus. 

Alphecca doesn’t join Cassandra on her travels either, although she does make appearances as a reoccurring character. Cassandra is upfront about the fact that while she wants to help Alphecca, she needs to help herself first, and the damage Al inflicted on her is slow to heal. They’re both in danger of dragging each other down in their own spirals so it’s best that they give each other space, but it’s also very important that they’re able to share their experiences.  It’s a minor struggle between Cassandra and Ilione that Lio doesn’t really understand a lot of Cass’ struggles, although she does try to be sensitive about it. Alphecca provides that alternate perspective: Lio can provide support but little empathy, while Alphecca can provide empathy but little support. 

I’ve also got more Alphecca stuff living in my brain regarding her origins, her own foray with Death and her association with lesser and greater deities, her relationships to other ZT cultists, et cetera et cetera but I’ll probably stop here to keep it succinct. 

But basically over the course of this plotline Alphecca goes from wacky evil villain to really tragic but still evil villain to not really evil villain but still kind of a jerk neighbour that shows up at your house asking for your wifi password acquaintance.