#not try to convince people why these fictional people should be saved/redeemed

[haleigh-sloth]

I usually don’t share my specific thoughts about bnha but I need to get this thought out there so sorry if this is weird but….

Personally I think the thing most people forget about Shigaraki is that before anything, before afo before killing people Shigaraki was “taught” (abused into thinking) that every time he did something his father viewed as ‘heroic’ he was/would be punished for it cause it would be hurting the ones around him (it would affect his family). Of course this is the worst thing to be taught when you are 5 years old .

But this continued until his family was dead and then he met afo. Afo basically convinced this 5 year old child who was not in a position to tell him (afo) he was wrong and still had the idea of good thing = bad things going to happen, that heroism is bad and that as long as you are mad at the person you’re killing it’s fine (obviously not true but when you are 5 I don’t really think you would actually understand that it was wrong)

And then this way of thinking continued basically for like 15 years..

In simpler terms, afo seemed to convince him that, good thing/good deed = bad things going to happen/ no real benefit and, bad thing/bad deed = bad thing going to happen however you got treated badly therefore it’s ok if you do bad things too

the thing everyone’s needs to understand in my opinion is that people who talk about why villains think this/ that or people who just like the villains of the show, are not justifying that fact that they killed people but merely just explaining their thoughts/opinion of the matter and trying to get you to understand that when you are abused or/and manipulated it changes the way you think (not everyone can dramatically change their life the second they are not next to their abuser anymore)

((And in the end this show is. not. real! The villains did not kill a bunch of real innocent people, some people don’t seem to get that anymore and act as if that’s what happens…))

Sorry if there’s any mistakes in this, I kinda have trouble putting my thoughts into words that others understand heh. . . .

In response to this...

I mean, yes, I agree with everything here.

The reason I didn't dive into all of this is because, and I mean this in....some type of way...actually idk. There's no nice way to say this really.

Anybody who is just stuck on "They did bad things, they're evil because of this and they should die" is not worth arguing/debating/discussing things with for me personally.

I'm serious--I do not have the patience to explain the obvious to people who just don't care about these aspects of the villains. It's too tiring, and ultimately pointless because--they don't care.

If the conclusion someone has come to is "They killed people and they're bad and a sad backstory isn't an excuse and that's that", then I mean, I have nothing to say to counter.

Imo, everything you pointed out is very obvious, so anybody ignoring its importance is doing it intentionally and probably has no intention of changing their minds.

People write essays on tumblr about redeeming characters who do horrible things, why it's done in fiction, how it's done, how to tell when a character is set up for a redemption arc early on, but it doesn't matter. If someone doesn't want to accept a redemption arc in a character, there is nothing to be done.

I really do not mean to sound pretentious or anything....but honestly I don't have the energy or patience to explain old arguments that have been beaten into the ground and things that are just painfully obvious and shouldn't even have to be said (namely that none of these people are real and nobody has killed anybody--like I'm not gonna write an argumentative meta on that).

So yes I agree with everything you've said here, but I tend to intentionally leave these points out because if someone is still held up on the points you've made, I really don't have the patience to discuss with them.

[ladyblueberrymuffin]

Okay, I think enough time has passed that I can share my opinions on these two.

It could've been great. As it is, not really into it. And not because "Catra is abusive" or "It's toxic", or any stupid stuff like that. It's enemies to lovers, she's bound to do shitty things until her redemption arc, that's perfectly fine, I love messy characters.

My problem is that the show seems only interested in showing Catra's side of the story. She gets flashbacks, she talks about Adora all the time, we get to see all the ways in which Adora makes her life better. Adora... is kinda ignored.

I think that's why people don't like it. There is an unfair meta power dynamic. Catra is the more important one to the writers.

So we don't really get to see what Adora gets out of this relationship. We get to see all the ways Adora is accommodating to Catra, helps her feel comfortable after they reunited, lets her be her gremlin self, but where are the scenes where Catra does the same for Adora?

And people will talk about Catradora like this wonderful "I let you be yourself" comfort goes both ways, but it doesn't. That's my problem, it feels like it's always up to Adora to accommodate Catra, not the other way around.

I needed to see Catra really go out of her way to be a good girlfriend after her redemption arc. Like disgustingly sweet and trying her best every episode.

The most nice thing Catra does for Adora is talk her out of bad ideas. It happens in episode one, where Shadow Weaver is trying to convince her to leave her friends behind, and in the finale, where Adora is willing to die to save Etheria.

And like, offering counsel is certainly important in a relationship, but it doesn't really show this relationship in a good light when Catra's ultimate act of love is telling Adora "You're wrong".

Doesn't this feel kinda counterintuitive to her redemption arc? All the bad things she's done is because she was stubborn and unwilling to listen to Adora's ideas, but then her redemption is shown through her disagreeing with Adora's ideas anyway.

If Catra is allowed to be firm with Adora when Adora is being stupid, then so should Adora be able to be firm with Catra when she's being stupid, or antagonizing her friends.

This is a fictional relationship, so you're allowed to make them tease each other, or being mean to each other, but it can't be one-sided, because then it stops being cute, and just becomes frustrating.

The reboot introduced me to the franchise, and I delved deep, and really fell in love with the original 80's Adora, like I adore her (haha), my favorite superhero. And you know what? Reboot Adora is neat as well. So it bothers me double the show kinda seems disinterested in her and doesn't give her more agency.

I like that the 80s show focused on Adora more. I get Catra is interesting, but so is Adora, and I don't think the reboot really capitalized on it. I hope next time she pops up, maybe in the CG He-man show, or maybe in Masters of The Universe: Revolution (I am convinced this whole new season will be about her, and Adam grappling with the fact he has a sister, they're just hiding her from all the trailers, like they did with season 1's twist), she really gets the focus she deserves. You have a chance to really sink your teeth into her being a redeemed villain herself. In the DC comics, Adora was evil before she started questioning her loyalties to the Horde. Like, she killed people and she enjoyed it, her redemption arc wasn't much different from reboot Catra, so you really have a chance to make your main character as interesting as the villain.

[big-trouble-in-little-eldia]

Since this anon mentioned a blog, I assume that they found the post on here, so hereby a notice that I’ve answered the question! 

---

Q: This is pretty random, but I just happened to stumble on to ur blog and when I was lurking I happened to notice u said something about Jean being ‘self absorbed’ or an ‘inconsiderate’ a hole. Im not sure if the proper wording, but  I’m curious cause I’m not often on the ‘meta’ (or whatever click this is) side of aot fandom, but generally what makes u think this. Bc it seems like canon tries to convince us otherwise?

A:

Oh, hello!

I have a very death-of-the-author approach to all fiction, but especially SnK. What that means is that what Isayama said or intended and what was said in interviews should have zero bearing on how I interpret it; only purely what he has written in the story matters. And Isayama has a large problem with an unintended gap between what he tells us and what he shows us. He tells us Armin is a hero but he shows us he’s a villain. He tells us that Eren had no choice but shows us that he did. He tells us Jean is a redeemed man but shows us he isn’t.

Canon does try to tell you Jean is a good lad. What we are shown, however, is that he’s indeed self-centred and inconsiderate. Lemme bring up a few prime examples:

- Jean is responsible for the death of 1-2 billion people. He shot the thunder spear that prevented Reiner from killing Eren, which is directly the action that caused the rumbling. Still, he reaps all the glory of being perceived as a hero who stopped it. He genuinely thinks that he did a good thing. He refuses to self-reflect and see that he merely limited the destruction of his own actions, not that he saved people.

- Related, he only cares about what people did TO him. He only cares about what RBA did TO him, not what he did to RBA. He told his own victims that it was their fault the rumbling started (ch127) and takes zero responsibility for starting the rumbling until the very end.

- He has zero compassion for Reiner’s grief and can’t even talk about Bertholdt to him, yet expects infinite compassion for what happened to Marco when RBA showed much more compassion for their victim than AMJC ever did despite knowing that Marco’s death saved lives and Bertholdt’s death is why there’s a rumbling. No moment of reflection that if they’re the same, then that means he has hurt them and they are human beings with emotions. No “shit… I did this”. No bare minimum.

- I don’t think he even cares that he killed Bertholdt. Does he remember? Nothing about him shows he has any remorse or care about it

- The only reason he joined the alliance is that there was peer pressure. He was afraid that he’d be judged if he didn’t. He didn’t care about saving people until he realised that he’d be adored for it. See: how he told RA it was their own fault their people died and it was a gotcha.

He learned nothing. He got worse. He went from objecting to killing to being so proud of himself that he managed to forget he killed a billion. All of this is probably because Isayama genuinely thought he did no wrong, but death of the author leads to the conclusion that he only cares about himself and he has tendencies to blame his victims.

This linked post is worded a lot more harshly than this one, but it also elaborates a little https://curiouscat.live/LivianLynx/post/1132974315

[asharkapologist]

Anakin Skywalker Appreciation Week, Pt 1

(note: where I live, it’s technically still the 18th of July, so regardless of the timezone of anyone reading this, it was still posted on time! As of hitting ‘post,’ i’ve got like 50 min left of 7/18, but it’s submitted on time :))

This is the first time that I’ve ever participated in one of these weekly challenges, so I am excited, especially because Anakin Skywalker is my favorite fictional character of all time.

So, first day: Favorite film/show appearance.

Honestly, Revenge of the Sith--and yes, I think I like his portrayal here even more than The Clone Wars. I will fully admit that Revenge of the Sith is the movie in the world that has made me cry the hardest/most (although admittedly, I haven’t seen major tearjerker movies like Titanic or The Fault in Our Stars or The Mist or Requiem for a Dream. But that’s besides the point).

However, I didn’t just want to say that, I want to explain why. People often say that Clone Wars “saved” Anakin’s character, so why didn’t I pick that as my favorite show/movie appearance of Anakin?

Well, that’s an entire analysis that I could write, but part of it was just how...relatable or tragic Anakin’s fall is. He had so much potential, and yet with some very, very poor choices, he ruined his own life. (Yes, I am aware there were many factors in his life, but ultimately he made his own choices). And I just love the tragic hero trope, and that’s exemplified excellently in Revenge of the Sith. I also picked RotS because Hayden played Anakin’s fall really, really well.

People unfairly bash Hayden and call him a bad actor for the lines he delivered and the way he delivered them, especially in Attack of the Clones. Why? He didn’t write his own dialogue or give himself his direction.

Either way, I feel like the scene that shows how good of an actor Hayden is is this one:

(Sidenote: when I saw this scene for the first time, I cried. I won’t deny it.)

This scene is beautiful. “Padmé’s Ruminations,” the track that plays during this scene, is utterly haunting with its background vocalizing/wailing. The scenery is beautiful. There’s no dialogue, save from a repeat of one line Palpatine said earlier, and yet Hayden communicates Anakin’s emotions perfectly. How he’s conflicted. Looking out to the apartment of the woman he loves more than anyone in the world, thinking of what Palpatine, the only person he believes understands and can help him, said, but struggling with what Windu had told him. Wondering if he should get involved or not. His loyalties being in conflict with each other. All of that agonizing him, the very institutions and people he was most loyal to in conflict with each other. And the way he begins to silently cry as he decides what to do. You know exactly what he’s thinking. And Hayden doesn’t say a word. (In general, Anakin cries a lot in RotS. And I love that. Yeah, someone who’s as much of a romantic, as conflicted, as he is wouldn’t be silent and stoic. I hate it when people insist that Anakin in the prequels should have been stoic, intense, and violent. Bro, he was redeemed through the love of his son and because he loved his son. Luke said that Vader was conflicted. His fall would have been messy, and he would have had regrets. But that’s a post for another day).

So don’t tell me that he’s a bad actor. When he doesn’t say any George Lucas dialogue (and hey, even when he does, but that’ll be in another post), he kills it. And some of those smiles he gives to Padmé on Mustafar when he’s trying to convince her to join him are genuinely unsettling.

I also really like seeing pre-suit Vader.

In RotS, through Hayden’s stellar facial expressions, Anakin’s emotions are all very well communicated: joy, conflict, heartbreak, resolved, and utterly deranged.  

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 305: Worst Intervention Ever

Previously on BnHA: Shinomori, whose name took me an entire week to memorize, was all, “nice to meet you Deku, I’m ten feet tall, do you want to know how I died?” and without waiting for an answer explained that he kicked it from old age at forty thanks to good ol’ OFA. Deku was all “wait a minute, then how come All Might, who’s fifty-five and is definitely dyeing his gray hair, is still alive?” First and Shino were all, “we really have no fucking clue but we think it’s cuz he’s quirkless, JUST LIKE YOU!” So basically, since quirkless people don’t exactly grow on trees these days, Deku is probably going to be the last user of OFA. The chapter ended with Nana being all, “psst, Deku, about my grandson. Uh, can you kill him?” which is sure to lead to a very interesting conversation this week.

Today on BnHA: Nana And The Gang are all “so, Deku, how can we put this delicately. The thing is, we’re pretty sure that AFO really fucked my grandson up, so on the off chance you can’t save him, how would you feel about, you know... [throat slitting gesture].” Deku is all “idk you guys, I kinda feel like he’s really just a traumatized child at heart and he’s in a lot of pain and stuff and so I should try to help him.” The Vestiges are all “BUT WHAT IF YOU CAN’T” and Deku is all “BUT I WANT TO TRY, DAMMIT” and the Vestiges are all “well when you put it that way, we, uh, were just testing you, so congrats, you passed!” The chapter ends with First being all, “ANYWAY SO WHY DON’T YOU TWO SHY BOYS STANDING OVER THERE IN THE SHADOWS COME SAY HELLO” before we CUT AWAY FOR ANOTHER WEEK, goddammit.

seriously, Nana

just... have you met Deku?? look, if you really want Tomura dead, just sic him on the U.A. first years and tell Shouto and Honenuki that it’s a training exercise

oh my god lmao

we’re too far away to see Nana’s face here so I will just assume that she turned and is staring DIRECTLY INTO THE CAMERA for this one line lmao. “I just wanted to clarify in case anyone felt inclined to take my dialogue out of context and spend an entire week complaining about it”

oh my god?! are you all purposely trying to make me sad??

someone stop me before I launch into an impromptu rant about all my Tomura feels. WHY IS NOBODY STOPPING ME. oh my god but yes, exactly. he’s just in pain all the time. this is exactly why I think Tomura has such high redemption potential even though so far he seems to lack so many of the redemption arc essentials such as feeling remorse, wanting to change, and taking responsibility for his actions. the reason why I’m willing to overlook all that in his case is because Tomura has essentially had zero agency his entire life. AFO molded him into a killer by making sure he was in constant mental agony, and making it so that the only thing that even slightly relieved that agony was killing peeps. like, please don’t think I’m making excuses for him or anything, but if you take a child and manipulate their existence to make it virtually impossible for that child to grow up as anything other than a killer, and basically never give him the chance to be anything else, then no shit he’s gonna be a killer?? he’s basically never had the choice not to be. it’s never been an option for him. anyways I feel like I am EXPLAINING MYSELF SO BADLY but nonetheless I am prepared to die on this hill

anyway so now Nana is all “that’s a rhetorical question btw because Our Hearts And Minds Are One so we can feel everything you feel bro.” so yeah, that’s interesting

now Banjou is getting started on the “let’s try and talk Deku out of wanting to save Tomura because it’s insane” part of their OFA Mystical Space Void Reunion agenda

look, Banjou, I feel you, I really do. you guys don’t think it’s realistic that Deku can defeat Tomura without killing him. so if it’s a choice between killing Tomura vs letting Deku and everyone else in the entire world die, then duh, you think Deku should kill him. I get it! and if this were a real life mass murderer I’d totally agree with you. but the problem is that this isn’t real life, this is a sympathetic shounen villain with a tragic past who might as well have FUTURE REDEMPTION ARC RECEIPIENT stamped on his forehead at this point

so First is all “look, there’s absolutely no doubt my brother has fucked this kid up good and proper by now”, which, again, fair

though, that’s kind of exactly my point though. everything that Tomura is, everything he’s done, he’s done because of AFO. AFO has so effectively shaped his personality and his worldview by this point that it’s all but impossible to penetrate that. he’s AFO’s puppet. but the problem is that rather than treating him like a victim, you all are treating him like a casualty. like he’s already a lost cause. but good luck trying to convince Deku of that

WHOA WHAT, RANDOM SUPER-IMPORTANT AND BIZARRELY UNRELATED EXPOSITION DROPPED IN JUST LIKE THAT??

way to still not reveal Sixth’s name, btw. THE PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW, DAMMIT. but also so this confirms something we basically already knew already, which is that not even AFO can steal OFA. it literally can’t be taken away by anyone unless the owner wills it. SO SUCK ON THAT AFO YOU EGG

(ETA: so I have no idea why this was omitted from this translation, but apparently the Sixth’s name was revealed as “En”, which is obviously not his full name but at least it’s something. also he most likely has a fire or smoke-related quirk based on the kanji used, 煙.)

so Banjou is saying that Deku’s “lack of an iron will” could be a disadvantage against AFO. hahaha what?? Midoriya “I’ll break all of my bones without blinking an eye just to protect someone” Izuku lacks an iron will? do tell

he says this is going to be a test of Deku’s determination. well yeah, no shit. but just not in the way you guys think

OH HELLO AGAIN

darker hair again here! but I don’t trust the contrast in these scans at all after last week. his coveralls are way darker than they looked before too, and you can clearly see he’s standing in the shadows now

(ETA: yep, once again the raw shows that his hair is considerably lighter than what’s shown in these scans here. although there’s no mistaking now that his hair is consistently being colored in this slightly darker shade, and it’s not just the lighting.)

anyways lol First was saying something about how AFO can’t steal OFA, and they’ve spent all this time cultivating it as the ultimate weapon against AFO, and blah blah blah. go on then, keep lecturing

NANA GODDAMMIT NONE OF THIS IS YOUR FAULT

girl what?? you did everything in your power to protect your family, and AFO, fucked up man that he is, targeted them anyway. there is one person and one person only to blame for what’s happened to Tomura, and that potato-faced asshole needs a good kick in the balls

NANA GODDAMMIT DON’T MAKE ME COME OVER THERE

SO HELP ME GOD!! I WILL GIVE YOU THE BIGGEST HUG YOU’VE EVER HAD!! THAT IS A THREAT

so now Nana is all “I’m just going to call my grandson a Thing to ensure that fandom has only the freshest, grass-fed no-hormones-added discourse this week”

I don’t even need to drop into the tags to know exactly which specific people are going to respond to this, and what kind of posts they are going to write lmao. everyone’s all caught up in the “that thing”, and meanwhile I’m over here completely hung up on this “nay” that’s appeared out of NOWHERE you guys. look at that. she really said “NAY”

Nana, my love, my dearest, I feel you girl I really do. but he’s not an unforgivable manifestation of pure evil, Deku is exactly right actually, he’s a boy in pain. you guys need to stop questioning Deku’s shounen protagonist instincts here and just let him work his sparkly magic. “let’s try and convince Midoriya Fucking Izuku that he can’t save someone” is a plan that is NEVER going to turn out well you guys

“DEKU GODDAMMIT WHAT IF WE CAN’T SAVE HIM” lmao it’s like an intervention

“DAMMIT DEKU JUST ADMIT YOU HAVE A SAVING PEOPLE PROBLEM!”

RED ALERT IT’S ANOTHER CLOSE-UP OF THE BACK OF MISTER TWO BON CLAY’S HEAD OMG

(ETA: I was too distracted with freaking out about Two and Three to really appreciate how ridiculously handsome First looks in this panel. but on my second readthrough it stood out so much that I had to go back and add an extra bullet point just to talk about how hot he is. look at him. wtf.)

THAT IS DEFINITELY AN UNDERCUT. THE PLOT THICKENSSSS. also those are fucking exhaust vents on Mister Three’s neck. MISTER THREE COULD YOU POSSIBLY BE RELATED TO THE IIDAS, PLEASE TELL ME YOUR SECRETS I’M DYING OVER HERE

so now Deku is launching into what will undoubtedly be a “saving people problems require SAVING PEOPLE SOLUTIONS” heroic counter-speech!

I mean, they can already feel the “lol nah I’m gonna try and save him” feelings running through him lol. ~OuR hEaRtS aNd MiNdS aRe CoNnEcTeD~ and all that. this is just a formality, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love a good shounen protag speech

oh wait hold up, do you mean to tell me that the whole “hearts and minds are connected” thing I was just mocking just a paragraph ago actually allowed Deku to feel what Tomura was feeling?? like literally feel it??

YET AGAIN these Tomura feels are pounding on my front door you guys?? they just will not quit?? people my house is already full of feels, does it look like I need you to sell me any more of them?? -- what do you mean, they’re free??

AW YISS THAT’S IT DEKU. THAT’S SOME GOOD SPEECH RIGHT THERE

I appreciate the contrast here between the Douchebag Triumvirate of Overhaul, Muscular, and Stain versus the Misguided Twosome of Gentle and La Brava. never let it be said that Deku doesn’t know the difference between a redeemable villain and an unredeemable one

OH NO -- OH MY GOD

someone please help me I need directions to the OFA Spooky Galactic Nebula Realm in this fictional Japanese manga land. it’s not on google maps. I need to give these two babies a big hug and wrap them up in a blanket and treat them to some McDonalds Happy Meals please help

other things: (1) ENDEAVOR CHILLING OUT IN DEKU’S “PEOPLE I HOLD DEAR” PANEL LMAO NEON DISCOURSE EXTRAVAGANZA, (2) “ONE FOR ALL IS A POWER TO SAVE, NOT TO KILL” I’M ABOUT TO CRY DEKU I LOVE YOU SO MUCH HOW IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE TO FEEL ALL THIS LOVE, (3) [SLAMS HANDS ON TABLE] THERE’S YOUR MOTHERFUCKING IRON WILL!!!!!!!! -- I’m sorry, please don’t call security, I’ll be good

I just randomly remembered that Deku is still saying all of this in his muffled “FMMPHHMMPHMM” voice and I’m somehow cracking up lol. so actually it’s a very good thing Their Hearts And Minds Are Connected, otherwise they’d no doubt be all, “...what?”

(ETA: so I completely missed this on account of it literally not being visible in the scan at all, but in the raw you can clearly see Baby Kacchan and Baby Shouto fanboying over All Might in two of these panels, and excuse me, ma’am??

thank you very much Deku for including them in your montage, particularly since you’ve never seen Baby Shouto before lol. amazingly accurate image you managed to conjure up, all things considered.)

SDKFJLSKHG -- AS IF ON CUE???

HE’S SO ADORABLE HELP?? Trippy Space All Might looks like he’s about to cry, and First is all “don’t crack a smile... you have to be Firm and Serious here... dammit, don’t smile” omg

anyways! YOU GO DEKU. “MY QUIRK MY RULES, BITCHES” damn, son

KLJLKKHLG TRIPPY SPACE ALL MIGHT LITERALLY ACTUALLY IS CRYING ALL MIGHT HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME

“I JUST... [CLENCHES FIST] REALLY LOVE SAVING PEOPLE” FUCKING HELL LMAO THIS IS THE WORST INTERVENTION OF ALL TIME

Deku is literally all “sure, maybe I’ll have to kill him, but have you guys also considered, MAYBE NOT??” it’s no use Nana he’s too powerful

LMAO FIRST

“like I’ve been saying this whole time, you should definitely try saving Shigaraki Tomura.” “but, uh... First, didn’t you just -- ” “shut up”

(ETA: clearly it’s not just his brother who inherited those smooth-talking genes.)

so now Deku has turned back into a sixteen year old and his clothes have gone missing again. just OFA things

dskljdlsklgk

yes... sure... “testing” you...

HEY

FIRST OF ALL, DAMN YOU HORIKOSHI YOU MADE NANA CRY. even if I’m pretty sure they’re actually tears of happiness/relief. and SECOND OF ALL, “TELL MY BOYFRIEND I SAID HI” DJSKDLKJJL ANYWAY MAYBE GRAN, NANA, AND MR. SHIMURA WERE IN A THROUPLE

[SCREAMS]

WHY WOULD YOU END IT THERE?? WHY WOULD YOU END IT THERE!!!!!

(ETA: and two-to-one odds that we cut away to some other scene once they finally start to turn around next week. I’M CALLING IT NOW. giving myself a week to brace myself for the rage.)

fucking hell. well if anyone needs me I will be adding Horikoshi fucking Kouhei to the list of irredeemable villains, peace

[dangermousie]

Here it is - the moment my heart switches from like to love, for Crichton and the show, on every rewatch.

It is such a little moment. Aeryn and John escaped and Aeryn made contact with Crais, her superior officer. Of course, neither John nor Aeryn know that Crais wants to kill John because of the accident which killed Crais' brother (And this is so the Farscape ethos - John is doomed and hunted for a moment of pure bad luck that happened the moment he ended up here, a moment he did not know about and cound do nothing to change. As he said in a much later episode, they’ve basically found the map to the cruelty of the universe.)

And there is the scene. John is captive, peacekeeper guns all around him. Crais circling him like his personal piece of property (Poor John. This is only a start. This is not the Aurora Chair, not Grayza, not Scorpius, not Scarrans, not Harvey). John watchful and realizing the wrongness (and OMG his innocence breaks my heart) and Crais telling him he'll dissect him. And Aeryn speaking up and telling Crais (and I love this. She didn't have to say anything. She didn't have, she should know it's a risk in such a society) that she didn't believe John was capable of killing Crais' brother because he is not intelligent or brave enough. And Crais, crazy Crais, fixating on her and asking her in this tone 'just how much time did you spend with this human?' And. And. And. This is the moment I fell in love with John Crichton all over again. He gives this quick, intense glance at the situation and he speaks up (to Crais), quietly and a little bit desperately: 'Not much, not much at all.' Why? It's so hard to put into words. I think because in the middle of all this (where there is the probability of him being killed in a gruesome fashion) he speaks up for Aeryn automatically, without the second thought. Maybe because even though as an alien he has no idea what is going on, he catches on so quickly, judges it so quickly, recognizes the danger to her, before she does herself. Maybe it's the seriousness, and the intensity, and the reassuring little nod he gives to her. Even utterly helpless himself, he tries to save Aeryn. This Crichton is not yet the Crichton that will literally turn the galaxy upside down to save the woman he loves, not someone who will make impossible choices and bear it all, but it's all in there already, all the qualities, and you can see that. In a way, knowing how all of these people will end up makes it even more delicious. Seeing Crais, all neat and orderly, before he went so crazy and AWOL (and his dishevelment definitely paralleled his fall from grace) and way before he redeemed himself. Seeing D'Argo as a self-concerned, immature, angry being. Seeing Aeryn as Peacekeeper Aeryn Sun, not a complex evolving human being yet, not a woman, not a being of her own will. But the seeds are still there. I cannot imagine other peacekeepers speaking up for John, trying to save him a bit. When John says 'You can be more' that is the thing. There is a 'you' in her to be more. There is something to start with. She has a soul that is not warped past return. And the chemistry between the two? Amazing. Even in this first ep, where they are nothing more than reluctant allies at first, disdain on her part and confusion on his. Btw, that first meeting? I love it love it love it so much. I watched 'pilot' after I've seen S4 and I remember going, as Aeryn threw him against the bulkhead and hit him and then demanded his rank and serial number. 'John, meet the future mother of your child.' Heh. God. It amazes me how far the two will come and yet how organically. And it's so true about all the relationships. Watch D'Argo and Crichton interact here: the anger on D'Argo's part the 'he is crazy' on John's. They don't even tolerate each other and yet by the end they are the best of friends. I love that Farscape, even though its romantic relationship was so crucial (didn't David Kemper or someone describe Farscape as a 'love story') also had all these incredible, well-developed, organic, fascinating other relationships: friendships, familial. Another thing I love? John saves the day with his brain. God, how much do I love that. He is a scientist, not a military guy, not a 'space jockey' like his Dad. He is a scientist. And that is why he can never get used to collateral damage, to killing, no matter how much of it he does, he is forced to do. And the show never forgets that. Farscape is one of those rare fictions (because I am not just talking about shows, but movies and books as well) where I do get convinced that John is indeed brilliant. And that he loves the science, he loves discovery, he loves the work. Despite wormholes being tainted so much with everything else, he is genuinely excited, involved in working on them. I keep remembering the S3 finale where even though he is pretending to work for Scorpius, he can't help but get into it, where equations literally pour out of him in scribbles everywhere, on windows, on pieces of paper, writing on his own arms. John is an obsessive. Here it is yet small: he wants to prove his theory. And even in the middle of the escape he is excited that it's proven. His obsessiveness will of course be brought out spectacularly by his stress later on, and his feelings, but it's already here.   But to get back to what I was saying: I just love that he gets to win with his brain. And that is consistent. Because that is why he becomes the defacto leader of Moya. Not his amazing fighting prowess. He becomes quite competent in the later seasons, but he will never be pure warrior the way D'Argo or Aeryn are. It's his brilliant, crazy, completely creative plans. That, and the power of his conviction. John's conviction is an utter, absolute, contageous thing. It's not brought out fully yet, but I am struck by the foreshadowing of when he tells Aeryn to come with them, tells her she can be more, changes her life. It's the same conviction that will later have him walk into a Scarran station, unarmed, most wanted man in the galaxy, to get Aeryn out. And getting the Moya crew to come with him.   But then, all of John is already here, just not forced to the surface yet. His crazy humor as way of coping with the insane universe about him. The core of steel (he is lost and dazed in this new word which is great because he is in a way proxy for the audience, but he doesn't bend before D'Argo e.g. and he is adamant to D'Argo about taking Aeryn with them or no one escapes), the inner decency and basic kindness (that kindness will be almost beaten out of him but shadows will always remain) when he tapes up the broken eye-stalk of the DRD - “merely” a mechanical critter on Moya. Oh. GUH.

@mousieta I am so glad we are doing this!

[chocolateslatte]

🚨The Rise of Skywalker Detailed Review and Spoilers Ahead🚨

George Lucas: “If the boy and girl walk off into the sunset hand-in-hand in the last scene, it adds 10 million to the box office”

The “fairytale” we got: A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, there was a curse of pain and death in a family that just went on and on.  They were never able to break it and they all die, the end. 

Well, you did it JJ, you little punk...you ruined 40 years of cinema. Kids are coming out of theatres crying, they can’t understand. I guess this was the “fun and hopeful ending” you were speaking of during the press tours.  Are you on crack or something, or just sadistic....why would you promote it like that!? Did you forget Star Wars at its core is a story of hope, light, a fairytale in space for children? They did it...they united Reylo’s and Fanboys through hate. 

JJ you do realize tragical romances are only tragically romantic if there was romantic buildup? Romeo and Juliet married in secret, Anidala did as well and flirted in the fields. How was this supposed to be satisfying? A five-second beginning, middle, and end. How this went through multiple execs is beyond me.... I would have understood if Reylo was Rian’s creation. BUT JJ LITERALLY was the one who told Rian to go forth with it...he created Reylo so you can’t say the last Jedi derailed things on that front. JJ wasn’t brave enough for his own vision. This movie was like “the crimes of Grindlewald”, a lot of stuff happening that made me feel nothing. 

Okay, first things first. The OG trilogy was necessary, the prequels were necessary to set up that Vader did not start off bad. What was necessary about the sequels? They just dismantled everything the Skywalker family worked for. Why did we have to see ALL of our favorite characters die? Was the aim that a villain can only be redeemed through death? How original. I’m convinced what they were planning for since force awakens was a journey from villain to hero...but instead we got this a 10min redemption resulting in death a la Vader. Why call Adam Driver’s character a “Disney Prince”?When did Happy endings become so controversial? We go to the movies to feel hope, to escape reality...George Lucas understood that. JJ’s trilogy is uninspired, bland and contributes nothing to the saga. JJ went as far as to recon his own “The Force Awakens”.It had the chance to define generations but no. Literal and utter garbage. Rian made some odd choices but he was bold, unafraid and had the vision. HE knew emotion was at the heart of Star Wars.

WHERE DID THE SKYWALKERS RISE? MORE LIKE RISE OF PALPATINE,  HE BLOODY WON

BUT my problem is not with the ending, it’s the bloody entire movie. This movie made me realize that it's not Reylo that I am a fan of, it was Ben, Leia, Han, Ani, Padme, and all those other characters. I’m upset because this movie is not my Star Wars: of family, love and above all else hope. This is just a 2.5-hour video game with no emotions. This trilogy was all angst with NO payoff.

Okay, you will never ever convince me Palpatine was planned the whole time. This whole movie was retcon for the Last Jedi that pissed off the fanboys. Lucas films did not have an outline for the three films and Rian derailed whatever they wanted to do....except they didn’t even tell him what they wanted! This should be a cautionary tale of why you need to plan. Kylo ain’t bad, Snoke is gone....well pull out Palpatine I guess. This whole film is JJ’s mad scrambling.  Alright, I will humor you, tell me how Palpatine came back when he fell down a shaft and exploded....not *boom boom because of force*. The force in this movie is not canon George Lucas force, it’s just an easy out whenever JJ wants one. 

1. Opening Crawl: As soon as I saw this I knew all the leaks were true, I wanted to bolt from the theatre. When I saw them in August I laughed cause it was so ridiculous it couldn’t be true. How could Disney let a whole movie leak? The plot seemed like a bad fan-fiction. Actually, fanfics are way more true to lore. Anyway, so Palpatine “announces” that he’s back. Is this the shrewd Chancellor Palpatine we know? Certainly, not...why in the world would he announce it rather than keep on the DL and just attack. Yo Palps ain’t this dumb why would you let them (the resistance) prepare?? Because of plot...well okay. 

2. Did Last Jedi even happen:  this film is the sequel to the force awakens, like TLJ never happened...except it’s acting like there was some movie in between that JJ made. Okay, so why is Kylo trying to run Rey over with his tie fighter...he doesn’t really want to kill her. It’s just meaningless action shots.  And don’t get me started on exposition, the dialogue: “hey look its the Knights of Ren”. Except they do nothing. Cool cool.  Kylo’s character goes back to Force awakens era like no development had occurred...except he’s not even there he’s just messing around not even being a real villain.  JJ’s specialty is set-up and he does this beautifully....but he can not wrap up and follow through. 

3. Rose Tico: yup last Jedi never happened, she has nothing to do. She and Finn are irrelevant. Finn has reverted to being obsessed with Rey. Cool Cool.  I honestly feel so bad for the lovely Kelly Marie Tran. How did you relegate a relatively big character into the sidelines?? Why introduce two new characters this late. Rose could have filmed in for them...but alas we must snub Rian at every turn because that’s just how petty JJ Abrams is. ( don’t get me wrong Jannah was cool)

4. The Rise Of Poe Dameron: Finn has been relegated to a side character who does nothing and just yells “REY!”. It was a great setup, a stormtrooper who was force sensitive but doesn’t want his life to be fighting for nothing. You could have explored trauma, the discovery of the light but nope nada. Tell me the point of his character journey. So flat and static. And with Jannah and the ex stormtroopers they could have gone with the arc of these lost, sad kids coming together to find family. 

5. Leia:  Okay you’re telling me our Princess would give up on her son before he was born, just throw away her lightsaber and accept Ben’s fate? Cool alright. And she knew about Rey Palpatine and didn’t say anything...my princess would never.

6. Mary Sue Rey: Ahh Rey this girl feels no emotion in this movie...just like the audience. Sure she’s trained but she can just do stuff with the “force” that even Jedi masters can’t. Stopping a whole starship, something even Yoda could barely do...yup she can do it. Beat Kylo all the time except one, yup she can. Manipulate the force in mind-boggling ways, heal people...sure Luke couldn’t but Rey certainly can.  Cause she is the chosen one...hell even Ani wasn’t this talented and he had years of training. Poe and Finn have a genuine connection, Rey just seems disjointed (totally understandable why)...but if so the ending is even worse. She doesn’t even find peace with her friends. She’s not realistic and human like Luke and Leia were. 

 Force sensitivity in the galaxy:  What a perfect setup, the boy with the broom at the end of TLJ that was force sensitive. The message is that the power to use the force was spreading through the galaxy. No longer confined to the elite. People were hearing of Luke’s battle of Crate and rising.

7. Kylo/Ben: I still maintain that he, other than Ani was the most nuanced character in the whole saga. His arc from Force Awakens to Last Jedi had progressed. How great that even someone from the legendary line of skywalker and solo could fall to the dark again. He wasn’t flat, he was a tortured boy that was conflicted since the first movie. How great would it have been to see him as a conflicted supreme leader, which was set up in TLJ. But *gasps* a plot of his very own, no can do, this is the nature of JJ’s crush on Rey and Daisy. 

Disney released comics that made us sympathize with him, to see that all along he was manipulated by Snoke, and Palpatine the voices in his head. Neglected by those who were supposed to love him. Adam Driver was cast perfectly, he had almost no lines that weren’t related to Rey’s charcater arc. If he were a woman I’m sure everyone would be offended. That single line’s delivery “Dad-”

Come on Poe had more lines than him, and Driver according to JJ was half of the protagonist. He was pitched an arc opposite that of Darth Vader that’s why he signed. Man JJ really did do everyone dirty. 

8. Ben had no lines while redeemed other than “ow”...I am so sorry ADAM that this nasty ass JJ did this to you...this part was 100% improv by Adam, I am willing to bet my life on it. You know why “ow” was brilliant? Cause it meant he felt pain and emotion, he was no longer hiding behind the hardness of Kylo REN. Adam’s performance as Ben left me speechless, he was convincing as Kylo, intimidating...but as BEN he shines in the way only Solo’s can. The way his eyes become determined once he accepts he must give his life, and he does so happily for the love of his life. His soulmate. Star Wars and JJ never deserved the talent that is Adam Driver.

9. They are supposed to be equals in the force yet they missed the opportunity to fight Snoke together. Tell me how they are equals. He existed only to further Rey’s plotline. 

Oh and the other Jedi including Anakin whisper and help Rey...when his own grandson has been asking for help in distress for like 30years. Nice real nice.

10. Finally Reylo:  it felt unearned cause there was no buildup, JJ just threw it in for kicks forgetting all the P&P parallels he was shooting for. An afterthought. Driver and Ridley’s acting saved the day, they had no lines.  Adam Driver is truly one of the finest actors. You could see the difference between Ben and Kylo in his subtle gestures...the sass was pure Han Solo.  

11. And then the death: I wouldn’t even say we won, but at what cost. We won in no way. Had he died fighting I would have understood, but this death was so unnecessary and put in just for the fanboys. Let me say again I would have been okay with death had it been justified.  How is this any different than Vader x Luke. JJ can only copy not create. How crazy that you can just bring people back from the dead...Anakin is here like, am I joke to you? I could have brought Padme back say what???? What was the point of his whole fall to the dark. The force is infinite, that’s the whole point...once you know how to use it you can’t run out of it like juice. Oh, and Ben did not become one with Rey but rather the Force according to the Disney website. So why pray tell did he not appear as a force ghost? I’m convinced JJ was on crack.  

12. No Mourning BEN no acknowledgment:  5 seconds! And then she moves on from losing her soulmate, half of her soul. She loses it over Chewie but nothing, no emotion not even a second over her other half. Seriously? No one ever knows Ben came back...nada. JJ set up Reylo, time and time again he has said that he crafted the story around the romance. He was left scrambling after Last Jedi and this was a last-ditch shock ending. No Reylo theme song, no across the stars

13. Last Jedi told us you don’t have to come from a powerful family to be important. THE WHOLE thing was that you could be force-sensitive and be a nobody. Nobodies can become somebody. A Hero is not born but made. The force lives in all beings, not just powerful families. It inspired me, what a great message to young guys and gals. Kylo’s line, “you come from nothing, you are nothing...you have no place in this story” finally turns out true. You have to come from something to have a part in the Star Wars story. And Rey had darkness inside her cause she was human. Because none of us are pure, we are shades of grey. But no, it’s cause darkness only runs in families. In the Last Jedi when she wants to see her family all she sees is herself and a shadow (Ben) who joins with her. Please do explain this JJ. And if this granddaughter thing was set up I would have had no problem...but they pulled it from their asses. You can have nothing but mean something. But no pander to the fanboys. In the end, a Palpatine lived and all the skywalkers ended....and we are supposed to have hope. Palpatine really did win. 

14. Rey’s biggest fear was ending up in the desert alone, we were told “the belonging she seeks is ahead not behind” and “there’s someone who could still come back”. They mentioned she felt just as alone with the resistance. Only the other half of her soul understood her. This is truly tragic and sad...I am so heartbroken for her. And don’t tell me she isn’t there to stay...the soundtrack is called “a new home”. Enjoy the rest of your days being exactly where you started Rey....but hey at least you got a droid boo. I’m convinced this is not the balance JJ envisioned in the first movie. At one point in TFA Rey looks up sees an old woman alone, scavenging in the desert. This rattles her to the core and it starts her journey of wanting a better, different life. I am so sorry Rey. Okay so you may say she has the resistance and her friends...but let’s consult the last Jedi. In the end when everyone is on the ship...Rey is surrounded by friends yet looks more alone than ever. No one but Ben, maybe Luke, Leia, and Han understood her pull to the dark.

How sad that these two hopeless souls who had never known a moment of belonging and true love, found it for all but a few seconds.

I will quote: “preventing female characters with strong, compelling narratives from experiencing love, intimacy, and affection is just as regressive as reducing them down to sexual accessories. Assumes that women must choose between a romantic interest and depth of character”

Men really can not write good female characters, can they? A woman really can’t be a badass and end up with the love of her life

15. The Skywalker’s and Redemption: How truly truly sad that Han and Leia gave their life for their son who also died at a young age. ALL the Skywalkers and Solo’s have a tragic end. This is not what George Lucas wanted. What a tragic way to end this saga...they weren't able to break the curse. AND to all those troubled kids out there that lashed out and made terrible mistakes in their youth....doesn’t matter what you do dying is the only way out. You could have exiled him, made him pay in other ways. Nothing can be done to make up for your sins but death, no amount of good means that you can come home. To the young boys that get wrapped up in terror organizations, sorry the only way you can be redeemed is death...don’t bother changing and coming back. They could have exiled him, had him start an academy with Rey for Jedi kids. He could have spent the rest of his days redeeming himself. Why tell us he was literally preyed upon, haunted, and manipulated as a child. Even in a fantasy world, a victim of mental illness and abuse can not catch a break. Ben as a child could not fall asleep due to the demon-like voices in his mind. Everyone abandoned him in his time of need. Ben never desired power like Anakin, he went over to the dark because “the voice” of his grandfather promised belonging. I am shocked that this is the message Disney sends us. Oh and yeah you can totally take on the Skywalker name for kicks...the disrespect I swear

16. The worst bit is that I am 90% sure there was another ending that was scrapped.  There was a promo shot of Jannah in a field, soft lighting, lush planet. It was exactly like P&P. Daisy Ridley said the lasts scene was known to only Her, Jannah on that panel (Driver was away). Convinced Jannah was looking at Rey and Ben starting a new life away from the desert which she and Luke hate so much. Hence the production of “A New Home” soundtrack. Hence why the “Farewell” song played behind Reylo kiss was hopeful. Why Luke’s soundtrack when he became part of the force was not triumphant. Why the death scene was sudden and cut weird and no sorrow from Rey. CAUSE THEY SCRAPPED THE ORIGINAL ENDING LAST MINUTE.  Everyone knows JJ was still editing one month before. The concept art which was supposed to be released this month has been pushed to March. Why you ask? They need to remove the pages with a happy ending. He just didn’t have the guts, pandered to everyone and yet no one. He was successful in creating a beautifully filmed action-filled movie with none of the heart of Star Wars.

And then she goes and buries Anakin’s saber on freaking TATOOINE. He HATES Sand and Luke wanted to get away from there as soon as possible. Of course, a Palpatine would torture them that way. But nostalgia is the cash cow so. JJ can only generate nostalgia, not create original stories. IF he had any creativity she would have buried it at Padme’s grave.

The fanboys say “leave the romance for the romance movies”....have you seen the original trilogy or the prequels? Star Wars has always had hope and romance entwined with it. 

SO AFTER 40 YEARS...PALPATINE WINS...HIS BLOODLINE LIVES ON

...and people thought the prequels were bad 

JJ you also said that your goal was for people to come out of the movie feeling more hopeful and happy then they went in...yet here I am. My roommate literally had to console me and buy me ice cream. I am just so numb. I am sure the casual fan will enjoy this, as seen from the rotten tomatoes ratings. I think the critics were too generous with this one, 

Star Wars is very simple at its core, Good vs Bad and Dark vs Light. The kids are expected to understand that a Palpatine being the only one who lives is hopeful? That is the conclusion of three generations of Skywalker sacrifice...

This is how the Skywalkers are remembered...In Tragedy and Curse??

[fillorian-pocketwatch]

The Makings and Fate of Quentin Coldwater: What Were the Writers Thinking?

Trigger warnings: Quentin Coldwater, seasons 4 and (briefly) 5, mentions of suicide/suicidal ideation, outdated ideas about the purity of women.

General warnings: Spoilers for the show and the books.

Buckle up, darlings, and my apologies in advance: this is a rough ride, and I don’t recommend reading it if you aren’t in the right headspace for it right now.

I hope that those who do read it might drop some LGBTQIA+ positive book/tv recommendations in the comments as a pick-me-up for others. I will add some myself if I can think of some good ones.

So as it turns out, I ran into something entirely by accident: the inspiration behind the character of Quentin Coldwater.

I knew that Eliot and his "will-they-or-won't-they" dynamic with Quentin in the Magicians books were both borrowed from Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (Grossman has said so himself)--

but I didn't realize there was an actual preexisting character Grossman borrowed from for Q:

Quentin Compson, from The Sound and the Fury.

This explains so much for me. So much.

I ran across information about the character the other day while doing something completely unrelated (looking up some other book if I recall correctly), and when I saw the similarity of the two names and then learned about the first Quentin’s fate, I thought, could this be LG’s inspiration?

Further research revealed that yes, Lev has said as much in articles. And even if he hadn’t, the fact that he has written extensively *about* TSatF online makes it a relatively easy conclusion to draw.

While the two Quentins aren't actually much alike (at least on the surface; I haven't read TSatF yet, just in-depth summaries/analyses of it)--other than the fact that they are both mentally ill over-achiever college students, are preoccupied with the idea of another world (the world as they each wish it was), and constantly associated with symbolic clocks and watches--Quentin Compson's fate explains everything for me in terms of how to understand Quentin Coldwater's series-four fate.

Quentin Compson ultimately kills himself in the famous classic novel; he does so by drowning after jumping off the Anderson Memorial Bridge in Boston, Massachusetts. Today there is a plaque there to commemorate the character:

In the Faulkner novel, Quentin associates the smell of honeysuckle with his obsessions over his sister’s purity--an ideal he comes to feel let down by after she loses her virginity and then seems to lose herself further in the company of men he feels are unsuitable.

I can’t help but make a parallel with the “drowned garden” of season 4, episode 12.

Quentin makes the following speech in the drowned garden, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s the closest thing we get to a suicide note:

You know the worst part of getting exactly what you want? When it's not good enough. Then what do you do? If this can't make me happy, then what would? Fillory was supposed to mean something. I was supposed to mean something here. But it's all... it's just... it's random. It's so random that the only way to save my friends is to yell at a fucking plant! Honestly, fuck Fillory for being so disappointing. You know what, maybe I was better off just believing that it was fiction. The idea of Fillory is what saved my life! [laughs.] This promise... that... people like me... [weeping] People like me... Can somehow... Find an escape. There has gotta be some power in that. Shouldn't loving the idea of Fillory be enough?

But the idea of Fillory is not enough, in the end, because the idea of happiness is also not enough. And by the end of his time on the show, that’s all Quentin has: the trappings of happiness (or at least the ones available to him, the ones he thinks might get him there), without the actual emotion.

Maybe he realizes, in the drowned garden, that he is at the end of his rope. Maybe that is where he decides to give up.

That, in my opinion, is why he begins to seem so shut down: it isn’t uncommon for people to distance themselves emotionally as a precursor to suicide (hence Jason being accused of “refusing to act” toward the end of S4).

I think it’s also why he doesn’t stop to wait and see how Eliot is after Margo strikes the Monster with the axes: he has given up on the idea that the things he thinks will make him happy actually will, or that happiness is actually attainable for him in the first place.

Quentin Coldwater drowns not in the fading of honeysuckle; for him it’s peaches and plums. In any case, he is definitely in over his head, and the water that spills out of the mirrors after his death feels like an homage to that literal drowning of his predecessor.

The TM writers found ways, as the show progressed, to tie the books back in to the show; the way they did it, however, was often roundabout to say the least. Their takes on how different plot points should occur, or be interpreted from book to screen, were usually close to abstract. They did do it, in many ways, but theirs was far from a faithful adaptation.

It fits, therefore, that they would tie The Sound and the Fury into S4 the way that it appears they did.

It also tells me something about how blame for their decision can be distributed, because either the showrunners:

a.) really did their research re: Compson and put together that this was the character that inspired Lev

or, as is much more likely, they:

b.) discussed it all with Lev himself--or LG was the one to broach the subject to see what sort of take they could spin.

Whatever the lead-in to the decision, I think three things combined to give them the idea for Q’s fate:

1. Quentin Compson;

2. Alice’s description, in the third book, of watching an old god kill herself to make way for a new world (which was when Umber and Ember emerged);

3. The following lines from The Magician’s Land: “The truly sad thing was that Ember actually wanted to do it. Quentin saw that too: He had come here intending to drown Himself, the way the god before Him had, but He couldn’t quite manage it. He was brave enough to want to, but not brave enough to do it. He was trying to find the courage, longing for the courage to come to Him, but it wouldn’t, and while He waited for it, ashamed and alone and terrified, the whole cosmos was coming crashing down around Him.

Quentin wondered if he would have been brave enough. He would never know. But if Ember couldn’t sacrifice himself, Quentin would have to do it for Him.”

So, it appears, the group of writers (LG included, however actively) apparently decided to take Quentin’s thought from book three and put him in exactly that position: make the choice, or fail to make the choice.

But the need for him to make that choice was never horribly convincing. They were very mistaken if they thought it was. And no matter what, it was ultimately a horrible, damaging idea. It hurt the audience, and it killed the show. The only sacrifice that was made was made in the name of ego and “clever writing” that the writers thought was edgy and risky in some desirable way.

[Quote from vulture.com]

It's not so deep.

What they did, ultimately, was borrow from more than one outdated work, and use those as excuses to do the wrong things re: mental illness and LGBTQIA+ representation:

Evelyn Waugh’s characters fail, once again, to live their lives and desires freely and openly (What a waste to rehash the long-denied dynamic from Brideshead Revisited only to deny it again);

Quentin Compson’s legacy of suicide and hopelessness lives on (and this is made all the more offensive when you learn that Compson’s suicide was based largely on ideas of spoiled purity which were solely the burden of women to uphold).

They took what could have been made right and beautiful and instead used their story to perpetuate the same sad old traditions of queerbaiting and Burying the Gays.

Tragedy is not more profound than happiness (just ask Quentin Coldwater). I'd argue that to make something really beautiful, you need to mend what's broken.

The world is a broken place. It's easy to break things here.

The worst thing they did to Q, by far, was to use the beautiful concept of minor mending against him like it was the fuse on a stick of dynamite: the thing he’d spent his whole life seeking--his specific field, his special skill in the actual real world of magic--was what he used to kill himself. He killed himself by *fixing something.* We need no further evidence that Q had given up hope.

What a terrible message, and what a slap in the face to viewers who put their trust in this atrocious writing.

And they did nothing to redeem themselves after the fact, either. If anything, they made it even worse, somehow:

Eliot, by the end of the show, has even less than he started with.

Eliot, apparently, is us: left without Q, stripped of the comfort of a world we thought we knew. Utterly let down by the writers who had the power to make things different.

I hate to end this on such a terrible note. So let me just say that if you were let down by the show, and you miss Q, you’re far from alone! I see you, and I hear you, and I share your pain.

TM got it all wrong. But I have faith that others will get it right.

And no matter what, in the last book, Quentin lives, and has nothing but a whole world of possibility open up before him.

[raeseddon]

Why The Redemption Arc Debate Doesn’t Stand Up On It’s Own Two Feet

So, here's the thing: there's a narrative difference between having one single bad guy in a story who is meant to be a foil to the main characters in a long running narrative, and having a bad guy, or bad guys who can and should (occasionally) lead to character development on both sides.

It's very important to tell both types of stories, because it reflects reality. There are people you'll meet in life who are unmoveable; who represent everything you're not in a perfect reflection-- and there are people who you meet who are capable of change, and helping you change in the process as well. In other words, this is about why it makes sense for certain characters to get "redemption arcs" (prove they are capable of change) and why it doesn't make sense for other characters.

I wish there was a better way than $tar Wars to explain the distinction, but it's one of the greatest examples in modern fiction of this exact problem.

Everyone's going to have a different take on this, obviously, but speaking strictly from a narrative point of view, it's easy to tell when a writer, or group of writers don't know how to make that distinction. Let's look at $tar Wars-- it makes sense for Vader to be redeemed. As poorly executed as the prequels were, they tried to tell a story about how a traumatized kid was radicalized from being someone who wanted to really try to stop the terrible things that happened to him from happening to anyone else, to being someone who was manipulated into believing that wasn't possible under anything less than a totalitarian dictatorship. The prequels contextualized why Anikin/Vader was capable of standing up to Palpantine to save his son, who he had no idea was alive, and who rekindled the slumbering humanity Anikin/Vader never wholly lost. And as that rekindling of humanity unfolds, spearheaded by Luke's unwavering belief in it, characters like Leia change with him and start to believe that Anikin/Vader is capable of change as well. Narratively, Luke, Leia and Vader all benefit from Vader's role as a bad guy whose narrative purpose is to facilitate change in most of the main characters. It's his entire purpose, even if the prequels don't articulate that as well as they could. In order to tie in and makes sense of the original trilolgy, Vader had to have that role.

Then you have Mr. Daddy Issues, who had clung to a false idea of what his grandfather was, who was written in a way in the beginning that meant he was supposed to be a foil to all the other characters, who (subtextually) knew the truth about Anikin/Vader's life, about the sacrifices he made and why he made them. Rylo Ken, when he was introduced, was set up to be a true foil: someone whose narrative purpose should have been immoveable. He was the mirror to Rey, Finn and Poe (especially Finn, the former Storm Trooper, who was propagandized in the same way Rylo Ken was, but broke away from it almost immdiately in a narrative sense--something that is completely forgotten when his role in the narrative is grossly downgraded in favor of Mr. Daddy issues.) The reason Daddy Issues' "redemption" made no sense to so many people was because they caught on right away to the fact that he was meant to be a foil, that he was meant to be unchanagable--something that is completely thrown away five minutes into the second movie.

It's not about whether a character "deserved" redemption, it's about how much sense it makes from a narrative perspective; that the option is open to them. If a writer is going to open that door mid-narrative they better really make a good case as to why, because otherwise a good half or more of the audience will be left going "What the fuck was that?!" Which is exactly what happened in $tar Wars and so, so many other stories where the writers change direction mid-stream. There's rarely ever a convincing case made as to why, they simply expect the audience/viewers to accept that decision blindly, on a faith that often isn't there. God, I can't express in words how much I hate using $tar Wars for this but it's just... it did such a good/awful job of showing, not telling why the two different narrative paths are important, and it's ubiquitious enough that a lot of people will understand it.

You can argue it however you want, but beyond fanatical love of a character, there's really only one way the debate stands up and that's a narrative analysis. If the only reason a character is redeemed is because that's what the writer wanted, for me, and people like me, it'll never be enough. We need more than "because I say so" because we have the very, very low bar of asking for a story that makes narrative sense; that backs up its decisions with evidence and a solid argument. And yes, we know that's often too much to ask in these massive franchises who will give the fans anything they want. That doesn't mean it's a totally unreasonable request.

[apenapaperandadoofus]

Hmmm, your opinion does make a lot of sense, I also think that (when it comes to the story and narrative and music) the route was fantastic! (The Anons and yours) But I honestly can’t stand suit at all after the literal abuse he puts you through :/ I went through something similar irl for years and um Wasn’t all so Uwu top me daddy as you’d think Its just sad that people seem to completely ignore that (or in the worst case sexualize the abuse) but also hate Rika to death at the same time. 🍊

I just don’t like both of them, think their actions are inexcusable, hope they grow as ppl (well i guess both sorta did already?) and think their trauma isn’t excuse but an explanation. Ray is alright tho, think he is very cute, even if I have my complaints with him as well lol He awakened my love for soft boys and flowers haha :D But I’d rather go back and play through Jaehee’s Route again than to listen as Suit Screams at me again over the amazing music 🍊

(Also sorry for any mistakes I am not very good at writing in english D:) (Also I just wanna say I don’t want to come off as “I dont like that character so you can’t either” I honestly admire anyone who can love Suit and forgive him for what he did, Same with any other Character! Just do your thing and have fun :> ) 🍊

Ahh yeah i get it! Also I’m sorry if what I said offended you! And your English is great (English isn’t my first language either and I get some of the struggles PFTT)

I also don’t want to come off as trying to convince you to like him, I get your opinion and thank you for sharing it and I’m happy I can also get to share mine!

So let’s see.

I mean I’m not trying to justify everything that Suit does! And he does need to be held accountable, you’re completely right!

What he does is not good. It’s horrible.

And I mean I forgot to say this before, but Cheritz did glorify it a bit because Saeran just got away scot free (mostly in the SE)

I think because it’s fiction, and people know that in the end Saeran becomes better, that people (including me) are like ‘we can handle it because he gets better afterwards.’

The reason why I said I believed his route took place in longer time, is because I want to let there be a point where Saeran gets to cool off for a bit.

I know that romanticizing the whole abuse thing is not right, and I mean, it’s a horrible thing!

And I mean, unless you want the BE2, you have to sort of submiss to the whole suit thing, but if you want the good ending, you fight back and try to get Saeran to realize that what he’s doing is wrong. I think what I liked was that Saeran actually realized what he’d done.

In his route he does realize what he’s done, and I believe he feels guilty.

For me I just liked the whole suit storyline because it explained a lot of Saeran (it wasn’t just because I liked him topping me and all.)

There were points where I was like dude what the actual fuck.

I think Saeran is held accountable, but they should just show it more!

And I think the reason why people believe it’s sort of different for Saeran and Rika, (after story wise, because SE are a whole other thing) is because Saeran feels guilty, and I like to believe that he goes to therapy to better himself, to redeem himself.

Meanwhile, unless V stops fueling Rika, she doesn’t realize what she does is wrong. She actually thinks she’s saving people.

Once again, I apologize for what I said, because I don’t think I used the right wording.

I don’t like how Suit treats you.

If it were me irl, like I said, I would be done with him.

What I liked about the Suit arc was seeing how he developed, how he realized that the things he did were wrong, and him finally admitting that yes, he likes the MC.

The thing I liked was the whole denying and then realizing that he loves the MC part! I’m sorry for not wording it properly.

Like with Rika, I think Suit is an interesting character, but that doesn’t justify what he does. And I’m happy that in the end he managed to redeem himself and realize that yes, he did a lot of bad things.

I think the reason why we weren’t able to sort of see all of that it’s because the game is supossed to take place in 11 days, and they can’t add the whole thing in or else it would be super long.

And you’re right, the trauma doesn’t justify what he does at all! Trauma is not an excuse.

I don’t think they were trying to make it seem that way. Like with Rika, I think they were trying to explain why he became the way he is.

Now, remeber that for Suit, he does think that what he’s doing is ‘right’ I’m a sense.

He starved you because he believes that that’s how you should punish someone, he doesn’t think it’s a big deal because that’s how he was raised.

So that explains why he does it, but it doesn’t excuse it.

The reason why I would want a Rika route, it’s because I’d like to see her grow like Saeran did.

I think I loved Saeran’s route, because he does redeem himself. He tells the MC that what he did was awful, he sort of has a breakdown because he reslizes that he hurt the person he loved so much, and Suit was directing his anger and hurt towards them.

Also in the end he gets the MC out, out of a place he believed would keep him safe, the place he thought that was doing the right thing, he thought they were the good guys. And for him to realize that basically everything he’s been doing until now it’s not the right thing, I mean that’s big, and it takes a lot of courage.

I think that Saeran redeems himself a bit by doing that. The way he apologizes is by actions, actions that maybe you think are no big deal, or something he should’ve done a while ago,but for him they’re huuuge.

Maybe they should’ve added a bit of him actually expressing himself more but I’m sure they didn’t have time.

It’s super weird, because if Rika’s route was like Saeran’s, I would actually really like it. And it’s funny because I just hate V lmao, but that’s sort of different.

If they did to Saeran what they did to Rika in V’s forgive ending, I would be pissed, because like I said before, Rika just DOESNT realize that what she’s doing is wrong unless V comes up and stops fueling her need to do it.

If V just stopped doing that, it would be over far more quicker. And I’m not justifying what Rika did, not at all, but I just don’t really like V because he could’ve stopped it and he KNEW he could, but he didn’t because he was stubborn and was still lying to himself that his love could ‘cure’ her.

Also in the Forgive ending they just victimize Rika WAY too much, and that pissed me off a fucking lot.

For Saeran, they don’t really play the victim card that fucking much. Ray is the only one that actually does it (which is why with Ray I’m a bit like mehh) but suit does apologize in a good way, I mean, he wants to let the MC and never see them again. Saeran’s route is better at showing that he is sorry, and that he does try to better himself.

Oof anyway sorry for the long post, also it’s 5am and I woke up to write this, so that’s why I may have rambled to much.

Thank you for your opinion! I love seeing other people’s point of view!

Anyway I hope you have a good day, and remember to take care of yourself! And I apologize if what I said just wasn’t worded properly, it’s just my mind gets way ahead of what I’m writing and I have to try and get the whole thing pft.

[claracivry]

Self loathing with Maylor?

Here it is!! Thanks for the prompt ;) Some Maylor angst your way!

That takes care of that :) A reminder: My whumpee are Roger/Brian (Queen), Hook (OUAT), Loki (MCU), Illya (TMFU), Nightcrawler (Xmen-movieverse)...

A deal could be made for Ezra Miller’s flash :)

Just send me the character and a situation!!

Brian was crying in an uncomfortable chair, in a room he didn’t know, with horror in front of him.

Brian hated himselfso much in that moment. He wished he had never been born. Then at least….

He was such an useless human being. Pretended to be all that, pretended to be intelligent, and an artist, pretended to be a good friend, a good musician, a good person. But he was none of those things, really, washe? He’d fooled himself into believing he was something of a human being, maybe even managed to convince a handful of people. But the truth was, he was worthless.

He had always been. Brian had no redeeming qualities, he hurt those around him, he was so stubborn that he hurt the good things around him, fought too much,way too much… What led him to believe that his opinions or thoughts were relevant? He was a thorn in everyone’s side, and everyone would probably be better off if he was dead.

He claimed to be smart but he was extremely stupid in the things that counted. He was too blunt with Roger, he clashed with Freddie’s flamboyance and he was the opposite of John, who resented him for hogging all the songsand solos. He had a chance at being part of a band of a lifetime, andhe’d ruined it. The same way he ruined everything.

He had ruined things with Roger, too. The best companion that he could ever have hoped forand he had driven him away with his constant fighting, his need to bea perfectionist, his… being difficult always, his on and off depression. Brian hoped that, when this was over at least Roger wouldbe able to find someone better – someone that would make him happy without all the drama.

“It’s what you deserve, my love. Someone so much better than me, someone as sunny as you are.”

Or used to be.

Because now he was in a hospital bed, half dead because of a severe allergic reaction he'd suffered after eating the food of the restaurant Brian had chosen. The dish he had recommended. He’d been stupid. If he'd just let Roger pick they wouldn’t be in this situation now, and Roger would be okay. It was all his fault, because he always had to know better.

Their friends were very understanding. They said that he’d saved Roger's life with his quick action, and that Roger should be thankful. That he couldn't possibly blame himself for that, because nobody knew about the allergy, not even Roger himself. But Brian did, constantly, absolutely. He blamed himself because it had all been his fault.

They had almost lost one of the greatest people in the world because he’d needed to show him what he was missing out on. What was really good.

Brian cried for a while and then got up. Roger was probably better without him, anyways. He only brought hurt to those around him, through action or inaction. So he decided to get away from the lives he loved most, spare them those horrors.

Not right then, of course, it would be drawing attention to himself when it should be dedicated to Roger. He stayed, he helped Roger recover, learnt about the epinephrine and made sure he was back to his usual gorgeous self.(How on Earth could he have ever thought he deserved something as good as that? Someone as bright, beautiful and extraordinary as Roger )

And then… He had already made arrangements with another very good guitarist to replace him and he was going to move out of Roger’s. Maybe the others wouldn’t like it when they found out, but they would understand that it was for the best on the long run,  that they’d be a better band.

But Roger found out before expected.

“What exactly is this , Brian?”

“Roger, I…”

“You’re packing your things? You’re going to leave?”

“It’s for the best .”

“You leaving me alone is for the best? WHAT THE HELL.”

“You’ll find someone else.”

“I don’t want someone else! I want to know what’s going on with you!”

“Roger….”

“Don’t you love me anymore?”

“Of course I love you! It’s because I love you that I’m doing this!”

“You wouldn’t be leaving if you did. What is fucking going on, Bri, why can’t you look me in the eye and….”

“BECAUSE I Almost KILLED YOU! I was arrogant and I made you… You almost….”

“You can’t be serious!”

“Find someone better, Rog. Someone who really deserves you.”

“Brian, you a bsolute idiot! I know you didn’t fucking mean to give me an anaphylactic crisis, I don’t blame you. Move past it, Christ!”

“It’s not just that.”

“I don’t care what it is about. You made this movie in your head about how you're this incredible villain that hurts everyone, haven’t you?”

“It’s not a movie.”

“Yes, it is Brian.It’s fiction. You didn’t hurt me this time, it was nature. Biology. And if you’ve ever hurt me, you’ve apologized and learnt and grown. And I don’t want you out of my house! Our house.”

“Roger, I….”

“I know you think that you’re doing this for me. But please, don’t. Brian I know you never wanted to hurt me. And you didn’t. But you will if you leave like this. You’ll really hurt me.”

Brian’s eyes were watering.

“You can do better, Rog.”

“I don’t want better. Stop blaming yourself, stop hating yourself. Stop this cycle of horror.”

There was a hug. Brian felt like a huge weight was starting to disappear.

And then Roger took his eyes, looked at him with those bright blue eyes and told him.

“You love me, don’t you?”

A nod. How could he not?

“Well, this is me asking you to learn to love yourself.”

It seemed impossible, but for Roger… He could try to accomplish even that.

[spiftynifty]

TeeVee Podcast’s Voltron s8 review

I’ve been waiting eagerly for TeeVee’s review of s8. If you recall, their s7 review was what gave us the man getting choked up about Shiro’s relationship. 

The link to the podcast is here but if you’d prefer a sort of transcript, here are some of the highlights for me. I didn’t always catch who was speaking but I wrote down initials where I could. S=Shanon, A=Antony, M=Moises, C=Chip D=Dan. The panel is divided on their feelings on the season. 2 of them seem to have hated it, one liked it, one thought it was fine, and one feels mixed about it. Anyway here we go, some great quotes ahead. 

Under the readmore cuz it’s long. 

S: "After 7 seasons of a show that was going to be one of the animated series of the decade, they not only did not stick the landing, they fell on their butts, rolled off the mat, off the lines, into the judge's table and their leotard popped open"

"A lot of the plot was callbacks to things from seasons ago that we really probably didn't need to see again." "I wasn't entirely sure that they weren't gaslighting me."

Man Shannon is calling out some great points. She's calling out the dropped druid plot thread, and wondering what the point was of showing Lotor's past when he's dead, and nothing can change in his present and his redemption can't really happen.

A: "endings are hard. I was disappointed with this season [...] it was let down by poor plotting and that final battle made me throw my hands up in despair most of the time. But I have enormous sympathy for the EPs. Maintaining a longform episodic story is hard. And to pull off an ending that satisfies even MOST of the audience is harder yet. and let's not forget they were always upfront that vt always had 'editorial interference' from up top. Toys, the fact that it's aimed at children, corp resistance to some of the more modern social issues that they've tried to tackle. THAT SAID, we don't know what happened on this production, who had the final say, what they argued over. and I say this cuz a lot of the fandom drama over it assumes a LOT over how media and entertainment like this is made that simple ARE. NOT. TRUE. Some of the stuff I've read has been ABSURDLY offbase, like that there were different writers rather than just 1 the whole way through which ignores how TV is made. And if you think these writers just go off and write a script without talking to anyone first and then they come back with something that must be filmed without any changes, THAT'S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS. [..]we don't know who made these decisions. The studio isn't always the bad guy. Sometimes they rescue things that would otherwise have been a horrible mess. And unless you were IN THE ROOM, you don't know, and neither do any of us. So let's all bear that in mind. [...]You can't lay the blame OR credit on any one person. For any of this." 

They're laughing & making so much fun of the final 3 episodes and how baffling they were. 

"Don't even get me started on Voltron merging with Atlas [and the crew disappearing] that was a bad, bad idea." 

"But that was the ONE time Shiro was back with the team!"

a couple dudes are relatively ok with the Allura death because we've never seen a WOC heroically sacrifice herself for the universe and usually it's the Shiro hero character D: They also point out that technically she wasn't fridged so.. yay?

Antony and Shannon vehemently disagree. 

A: "My problem with that ending was more just that it was... not. good." he makes a comparison to RotJ where Vader still dies and it's his SON, who lives, who 'redeems' him. "This was none of those things. It felt like a terrible lesson. You can be so evil that you kill literally billions of people for 10k yrs but if you say sorry just before you're about to be executed it's alright, dw about it, we'll put the universe back to rights. NO, that's a terrible lesson!!"

S:"They had the LIONS. That's my problem. Throughout this series we've had stakes going up but there has always been a trading of ideas, what can we do, what can we figure out, up to the point where they wind up sacrificing the castle, but they go through steps before that 'is there anything else we can do’. And here, there's not even... she didn't even get to say goodbye to Coran! This is the one character, WOC, and she has sacrificed throughout this entire series. She lost her planet. She lost the last connection she had to her father in the AI. She kept LOSING things over and over to the point where she sacrifices her crown to help Shiro. and the thanks she gets is that she has to turn around and say nope I've got to away and fix all of this and apparently never see you all again. It really, REALLY REALLY bothered me. All of my friends who have CHILDREN who watch this show, universally the kids were upset and angry and tearful and HATED that outcome. This did not feel like a triumph. Having to lose Allura like that robbed any kind of triumph in the success of saving all the universes. And I think that's one of the reasons that this last part of the season sits so poorly with me. I feel like it should have ended in a triumphant way. even if it meant losing a couple of the team members or the lions. Of course that takes away the toy aspect which is why that's not an option. We already had several tragedy arcs in this series. Zarkon, Honerva, and Lotor had tragedy arcs. Why does Allura have to have one too? We've had enough." 

Antony & Shanon KILLIN IT on this podcast y'all.

C: "This series relies so much on 'oh wait, there's a new upgrade', 'oh wait, there's this new thing'" A: "Well that was the entire final battle." C: "So there's this handwavy Allura has to sacrifice herself. The heavy lifting wasn't done to make this an earned moment."

S: "I do think, whether it was at the direction of DW or WEP (Vld IP), without those little epilogue cards, there is the potential opening that Allura might be able to return.[..]It was open to interpretation."

One guy likes the Shiro ending for the surprising progress aspect, even though he's not thrilled about how it was put together. also he isn't convinced the epilogue wasn't planned. He likes a lot of s8 but all the stuff he likes is tied to stuff that he really didn't like.

S:"The shiro card is the other reason that I think those things were shoved in. For me, that turns Shiro's entire character into a token when he wasn't before. When they introduced his sexuality, it was done BEAUTIFULLY. There was this conversation with his significant other a mature relationship that ran into its problems and therefore couldn't happen anymore. Adam could've been Adele, and nothing would have changed about that conversation. It was not the defining characteristic of Shiro. It was just something else about him."

S: "And then s8 happens and Shiro is divided from everybody on the team. There are so few interactions of any kind that aren't just barking orders. or making plans. Keith is the prime example. Their friendship had been a backbone of this series and suddenly they can't even stand more than feet 5ft from each other. 

A: “It’s barely evident, yeah.”

M:”And the same with the rest of the main cast. And if they had set that up at the end of s7, that he’s going to go into the background a bit, it wouldn’t have felt as weird.

S: “And they didn’t! S7 was miraculous in the fact that even though he’s no longer in a lion, he’s still got a vital part to play in the series. And s8 erased that. It pretty much neutered him! And the kind of message is once you've revealed this character to be gay, we've gotta keep him out of the way. And if they had not put those end cards in, again the fact that he's a gay man is just the fact that he's a gay man and it's not any bigger or smaller aspect of his character, but they did not EARN him marrying random bridge crew member #3."

A: "and RETIRING! A man who LEFT adam because he felt he had to go and fight."

A: "He left the guy he loved before because of his devotion to"

S:"To fighting to making things right"

A:”To being a soldier and doing the right thing.”

C:”Isn’t the whole point then that he achieves that?”

M:”The fighting’s over and he can leave that behind and he can actually be happy.”

S: “He wouldn’t’ve. I don’t see it.”

M: “I violently disagree.”

C: “I think it was a nice endcap for his character."

Moises also likes this because it’s not a BYG scenario and he gets retired. Shannon is extremely exasperated by these takes. 

S:”For me, it’s like Tangled. You go through Rapunzel and Flynn, going through their adventures, getting closer, getting to know each other, they save each other, things like that. And then she’s reunited with her parents and then we get and endcap that says ‘for political reasons her parents decided they needed to marry her off to the prince in the next county, sorry’. That would’ve had people RIOTING. Thats not how you do a story with characters that people care about. And to shove shiro off onto this random character that we--his name is never spoken!”

A:”No he had like 3 lines in the entire season.”

S:”He had 3 line sin the season, you don’t know his name unless you watched the subtitles, and in the audio narration for the visually impaired, they called him Adam in the endcap. They called him Adam! They fixed that now. It feels like a hugely clumsy attempt to grab the woke points for a character that didn’t need them.”

Moises then talks a little about Shiro and Keith and how he and Shannon both thought there was something there, and still do, but they can’t know what happened behind the scenes and to theorize on the intent of that relationship is “conspiracy theory land” and trying to decide what the writers were prevented from doing is like “reading tea leaves and chicken bones”. He references people extracting things from his own writing. 

M: “As much as I wanted to see that relationship flower and flourish, the fact that it didn’t, look, it’s one of a million times that’s happened for me, with fiction, where things didnt turn out the way I wanted to see them.”

S:”I’m talking about 2 different things, as far as Shiro’s character, vs shipping  issues. I feel Shiro’s character was done a disservice that if they were going to end him in a relationship with another man, they didn’t earn it by throwing that little endcap on.”

M:”Yeah, they could have brought back one less robeast or something.”

S:”The other thing is, I think there is enough out there as far as interviews with JDS and LM to show that at the very least I think they meant to leave it openended. Again  if you take out that endcap, the last shot includes a shot of just Shiro and Keith, together, same screen, looking up as the lions go away, without saying anything further. I know I pie in the sky hoped that they were gonna kiss this season when we did our s7 recap and yes that was the shipper in me talking. I truly did not expect that they would be able to go that far. What I did not expect was for them to tear it down. And I feel like that’s what they did. Between the complete absence of interactions in s8, and then throwing that epilogue in there.”

Dan doesn’t understand how that could be because he sees no reason for them to do that. Shannon patiently explains about DW’s history with LGBT characters but Dan insists that the creators told the story the way they wanted to and he’s fine with Shiro getting a marriage even if it’s a character they don’t know. 

Overall the panelists love the show still, and in most cases prefer to consider it in the realm of s1-6 with a weak final double season (7&8) or that the show ends after s7. They would all love to know how long the NDAs last, a making of perhaps, to know what the heck happened and what changed along the way. Big mood my dudes. Big mood.

[writing-in-the-tiny-house]

Villains and Plot!

S1E22 Villains and Plot

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  The following is a transcript of this episode. The complete transcript can be viewed from the podcast website.

  [00:00:00] Devin Davis: Have you ever read a novel where the main character should lose like a lot, but because the story needed them to win and survive at the end, they just never did lose? Well, on the other hand, have you ever read a story where the villain was so awesome that he probably should have won, but didn't? Well, then let's talk about villains and plot today on Writing in the Tiny House.  Hello, hello, hello! Welcome back to Writing in the Tiny House. Welcome to the show. I am Devin Davis. I am your host and I am the guy living in a tiny house who is here to show you that writing that work of fiction that you have in your brain is completely possible, and you should do it. Today we are discussing villains and plot.

[00:01:13] Last week, I told you that we would be discussing villains in action. This is kind of that. I was thinking about what action actually meant and all of the points that I had written down fed more into plot rather than just action, because villains can do just about anything you want them to do. But in the overall scheme of things, they play a very important role in the plot.

[00:01:38] Don't you think? So today I don't actually have a lot of announcements because things have been going pretty smoothly and there is nothing new to speak about. So let's dive right in to villains and plot. I have a list of four pitfalls to avoid when structuring your villain and your plot when you go to do the rough draft of your book or the outline of your book. The first thing to avoid is the hierarchy structure of the villain and his henchman. The reason why this is kind of hard to avoid is because we like it. We like the idea that once a bad guy is defeated that there is another bad guy who is stronger, who is more talented, who has more magical powers. And then once that guy is defeated, perhaps there's a third bad guy who is the villain's right-hand man, until we finally get to the bad guy himself. The reason why this is so popular is because it's easy to see, and it's easy to structure a series around. You have book one of the little bad guy and then it just gets a little bit bigger until book three or book five or book seven or however many books are in your series. You finally get to nail the main villain who is behind this entire problem the whole time. It is also a popular way to structure video games. You have the bad guys and you have the henchman and the little fodder guys that are easy to pick off and are not a very big threat.

[00:03:29] And in doing those things, the main character, which is you, gains experience points and gets a little stronger and learns some new things. And onward, the story progresses. However,  this is becoming cliche. This is certainly a trope that has been done time and time again. And it is more common to see villains more like people.

[00:03:58] It is more common to see heroes more like people. Like I mentioned in the previous episode, it is more common to see a flawed, main character and to see a main character make some dark decisions. At the same time, it is becoming more common to see a villain with redeemable qualities, or to see a villain who is completely justified in what they are doing.

[00:04:23] And so this structure, this hierarchy structure that you have to beat down the fodder before getting to level two before getting to level three on up to the main big boss at the end, isn't new. It's not fresh. And so find another way to structure the bad guys in your story, especially in your trilogy or in the number of books that you're going to be writing that are related to each other. There are a lot of ways to do it. And at the end of this episode, I'm going to share with you one of the most delightful ways that I found in all of the fantasy fiction that I've read in presenting to you actually a group of five books.

[00:05:10] It is a quintet. So stay tuned until the very end to get that little tidbit. So the second pitfall to avoid ,and granted, you should be avoiding this anyway, it's a thing called plot devices. A plot device, and the reason why I bring this up, this is actually kind of bigger, fundamental writing, but a plot device is a thing that happens only because the writer needs it to happen because something else needs to happen later.

[00:05:48] A plot device is usually pretty contrived. It sometimes can come out of nowhere and all that it serves is for the plot to move forward or to save the main character or whatever. It's these little unbelievable things that happen in order for bigger things to happen later, but that is all the good that they serve.

[00:06:16]One of the most popular plot devices that I can think of is actually in the Chronicles of Narnia in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The children are there in this barren wasteland of frozen ice, and suddenly Santa Claus appears and Santa comes bearing gifts of lethal weapons.

[00:06:39] If you think about it, Santa does not belong in Narnia. There are not other people like Santa Claus that populate Narnia.  There are granted a lot of other fantastical creatures and a lot of fun other characters, but Santa Claus himself does not belong there. And the fact that he appears at the very best time and comes bringing gifts that all of these children are going to need to save the day at the end is the biggest plot convenience I have read in a long time.

[00:07:14] Granted it's in a children's story and. We can have more plot conveniences in children's stories if we want to. That's fine. But in the more grownup stuff you get to pay attention to your plot conveniences. Some people call this plot armor. It's when the main character simply has to live because otherwise the book will end too soon.

[00:07:36] And so against all odds, they always win. Or against all odds, they and their central group of friends will win or will come out unscathed and you simply know that just because you know the story. And so it makes things predictable and it makes things unbelievable to a certain degree. 

[00:07:59] The reason why I bring this up on a villain's episode is because not only do you get to think of your main character when you are mapping out your plot, but you also get to think about your villain. When your plot is filled with these conveniences and these devices that make the main character always win, you get to see on the other side of that coin or the other edge of that sword, what it does to your villain, or how it paints your villain with these plot devices. Sometimes it can make your villain come across as pretty dumb or come across as way too complicated, way too overthinking things and not realistic in that way. Or it can cheapen such a better deeper experience with that villain if those plot conveniences were not included.

[00:09:03] One of these favorites that I like to call out in fantasy fiction specifically, I like to refer to as the wild card. It's when the forces of evil are upon us. And it looks like the forces of evil are going to win. And we are all in dire straights, but something out of nowhere happens. And it's big and it was not foreshadowed to begin with and it's unexpected and it's a surprise. And to an inexperienced reader, it's probably super awesome. But to the rest of us, it earns kind of,, an eye roll. I read a book once, I don't necessarily want to call it out on the podcast, but there was a situation similar to what I described. The forces of evil were about to conquer this special, magical place. And from out of nowhere, there came a spell that transformed one of the types of magical creatures living in this place into these big warriors. And so these little rinky-dink fairies were transformed into this army of warriors. And the spell happened, and it lasted just long enough for the forces of evil to be abated and for the day to be saved. And then the fairies shrank back down to their normal little fairy selves. The reason why I bring up these things is because  you have thought all of these wonderful things through with the villain, you have thought about the awesome ways that the villain is going to come in and threaten the safety of this or that magical place.

[00:10:52] And to throw in a wild card ending really cheapens all of the effort and all of the believability and all of the energy that you have spent trying to build up a believable villain. And instead the reader sits back and realizes that regardless, the villain will not win and it can take them out of the story and it can convince them not to carry on with the series or even to finish the book.

[00:11:24]The fourth pit fall that you get to pay attention to is the villain's backstory. Backstories are wonderful. I love a good backstory. However, it has been used a million times that every bad guy was once an abused little boy or girl. Every bad guy, every bad girl, every bad woman was abused when they were little. And while psychologically all of that makes sense, it is also something that is commonly found in all of literature. And what it can do is make excuses for the villain. If you want the villain to simply be bad and to simply be awful, there are other ways to develop backstory to that. There can be something amiss when they were little and they were involved in things that simply fostered that thing that was amiss. There can be interests that they were exposed to when they were little that carried with them as they learned magic or as they learned business, if it's modern contemporary fiction, or it can be a lot of different things like that.

[00:12:35] If you want them to be abused when they're little, that is fine. It is something that happens all the time in fiction, though, when we do get a good backstory to a villain. And I have read enough and read a wide enough variety of fiction to tell you that not every vicious villain and awful person and person who is threatening to destroy worlds or whatever, not all of them were abused by their dads. There are other ways to do it and to find those ways is fascinating and it makes the writing so much better and so much easier to follow along. And it really catches your interest and holds it there when it is new and it is fresh.

[00:13:24] So let me take a moment with this book review. I'm going to be reviewing the Cleric Quintet by R.A. Salvatore. R.A. Salvatore was one of my very favorite authors when I was in high school. I have since, now that I've gained  some more experience in reading and in writing, I've come to find that sometimes his magic systems are a little bit convenient, but I'm going to talk about this particular series of five books. They're five short-ish books, I believe, or five average sized books. It's not a monstrous series, but the Cleric Quintet is about this young man named Cadderly who studies at a library and comes to learn the big mysteries of magic. And over the course of five books, you see it happen and you really come to understand just how powerful this young man becomes.

[00:14:25] And it was a really cool progression to see it over five books and to see actual power happen and to see the learning of spells or the manipulation of matter, or whatever, was really delightful to me. At the same time though, and this is the type of villain that I love to see the very, very most, this villain starts out with Cadderly studying at the same library. This structure didn't have a school. It didn't have classes, it didn't have teachers. It didn't have that type of structure. It just had this library of knowledge. And everybody from everywhere came to this library to learn and to gain more knowledge that way.

[00:15:10]There was another young man studying alongside Cadderly, they weren't friends. And this young man is kind of an awful person. He wasn't talented. He was clumsy. Granted Cadderly was also clumsy. But over the progression of these five books, you watch this untalented jealous, horrible man, young man gradually become the darkest, most threatening monster that comes about in book five. And it is delightful to see, and it was so fun to read. And that is the type of villain that I appreciate the very most, where you see perhaps an amount of foreshadowing, you see character traits and you see people in the very beginning of the story and you think maybe this guy is going to end up being something bad or doing something awful.

[00:16:10] And over the course of it all, you see all of the you see the background, you see the story unfold, you see the reason why this person chooses to be where they are. And you understand their attitudes toward this or that. It makes the villain so much more believable and so much more awesome.

[00:16:33] It is this type of villain that I am choosing to write in my current work in progress, or at least as part of it. Right now I have two half finished books. In one of them, that's totally how the villain is going to be unfolded. And the other one it's going to be different.

[00:16:49] But that is how it is in this book. So if you are interested in checking out the Cleric Quintet, please follow the affiliate links in the description of this podcast episode. And yeah, I give this, I give this entire work of five books. R.A. Salvatore has written a lot of books. And like I said, he was one of my favorites in high school.

[00:17:13]He was one of the Forgotten Realms authors. Did wonderful stuff. One of his characters Drizzt Do'Urden, who was a dark elf, is considered to be one of the most liked in all of fantasy fiction. And this is written by him. So go ahead and follow those links.

[00:17:30] I give these five books, easily, four out of five stars. They were so much fun. But I reflect on some of the things in there and there was an amount of convenience to them, but it was a great read. It was fast paced and the magic and the fighting in RA Salvatore's writing is so much fun. It is so easy to get caught up in all of those wonderful moments.

[00:17:53] And that is it for today. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode .Thank you so much for my patrons, for the generous donations that they give every month. If you are interested in becoming a patron to this podcast, there are perks such as early access to these episodes an additional episode every month or exclusive time with me and other top tier patrons that you can have access to. Just go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse and sign up for one of the tiers today.

[00:18:23]Follow me on social media. My Instagram handle is @authordevindavis. My Twitter handle is @authordevind. And please take just a moment to leave a review on whatever software you are listening to podcasts through. Thank you so much for your time, and we will see you next time.

Check out this episode!

[secretlyatargaryen]

So, um, Legion season 3.

Obviously huge spoilers ahead.

So season 3 goes full tilt into David being a narcissist and a bad guy (although to the show's credit they did it more subtly than I expected. David never actually becomes the destroyer of worlds, the evil acts he commits with his powers are mostly in manipulating people's minds when he can't deal with anything negative. Which is a good analogy for why a lot of abusers who become that way because of trauma and abuse do what they do. I still don't buy the way he got there as a character though. The show seemed to occasionally be suggesting that he had multiple personalities, and I understand that comes from the comics, and I could possibly even buy that the "Legion" persona, the narcissistic person who believes that "nothing that hurts me is real", is distinct from the David persona that we saw in season one, as psychologically dodgy as that is.

And I do think the show was TRYING to address the issues of abuse and redemption and how sometimes you can't save everyone and how shouldn't try to save abusive men. They never had Syd go back to David or forgive him for what he did to her, as hard as it was for her.

But that's also hard to reconcile with the rest of the way the show treats the topic of abuse and mental illness. Okay, so the show spent the whole season telling us that David's desire to rewrite the past was a symptom of narcissism (true) and what made him a villain (okay) but then in the end they had him...get what he wanted anyway? And present it as a good and hopeful ending?

The fixation on David's biological parents was definitely narcissistic, but then it seemed like the show actually brought into it in the end, which made no sense. After season two I felt like this show insulted me as a viewer and now I feel like it slapped me in the face again and tried to convince me I was stupid for believing what was presented onscreen. Which, okay, it's Legion. The show has always run on the idea that nothing you see onscreen might be real, but there has to be some narrative grounding somewhere.

I didn't like the suggestion that all David needed in the end was to be loved by his biological parents. I go pretty hard on nurture vs nature usually, but the thing is...he had loving parents before. His adoptive family loved him. They didn't understand him, which led to a lot of his trauma, but...that's life. X-Men and all its properties have always been about the trauma of living in a world that doesn't understand you. And Legion season one said that's okay. It doesn't make you a bad person. Season two said, well, actually, it does. Season three said you can fix it by resetting the whole thing. The show tried to say that the other characters weren't acting from the same narcissistic place as David was, but David was still never held accountable and never had to actually deal with his shit, because everything just got reset like he wanted it to.

Oh? Also? The show's insistence that some people can't be redeemed would have made much more sense if they didn't try to convince us not only that the mentally ill protagonist was bad all along, but that the Shadow King actually became a good person! That was completely ridiculous, narratively unearned, and insulting. David doesn't get redemption because of his abusive actions but his abuser, who the show had built up as totally sadistic, does? Because he said he loved David? The show said no to one abusive love story but then gave us another. The show demanded that David be held responsible for things that (in season 2, at least) weren't his fault, in order to make him a villain, but then they never held the Shadow King responsible at all. I think the show was trying to say that the Shadow King got redeemed because he chose redemption, but there was still no build up. Yeah, he repeatedly said that he loved David but you can love someone and still be abusive to them, and whatever the Shadow King felt for David was never shown as anything other than extremely toxic. The hypocrisy of the Shadow King showing us David's life to show his newfound empathy when during all those scenes he was the one who destroyed David's life was bizarre and offensive.

Speaking of troubled relationships, the show's increased focus on David and Syd didn't work, either, because they never felt like a believable relationship in the first place. I liked it in season one largely because it hit my hurt/comfort kink, but as I said before, it also came across as a male fantasy and an unbalanced relationship. From the beginning, he was emotionally dependent on her because she literally saved him. I saw a gif of the scene in the first episode when she saves him from the anti-mutant organization, and when she's holding out her hand to him, there's a flash of her as she was in the mental hospital, holding a hand out to him as he was in the hospital, and in both scenes she is standing over him and offering a hand to help him up. I remember noticing it at the time but thought it was an indication that what was happening was maybe in David's imagination. But I think the meaning is more symbolic, and it's really a brilliant visual way of showing the audience how David sees her, as someone who not only saves him from literal danger but who saves him from his life in an institution, saves him from the schizophrenia narrative, from himself. And given what happens later I feel like the show wants me to think that David was the unhealthy one in the relationship all along, and I want to tread very carefully when I talk about this because I've read some discussion and it seems like there's a lot of discourse over whether David actually raped Syd. And I want to make it clear that he did and that she shouldn't be blamed for it in any way. I also think that it never should have been her responsibility to fix David. But she was the one who told him in season one that she could fix him. In fact, she was the one who told him that he didn't need fixing.

I saw somewhere someone say that season one Syd was like David's medication, and season two was him going off his meds. But first of all, women are not and should not be responsible for fixing unstable men. And second of all, that wasn't what happened onscreen. In season one, Syd was like the manic pixie dream girl that told David he didn't need his meds. That what he thought was a problem was actually a super power.

That relationship worked when it seemed like they were both unstable (their initial meet cute and "Do you want to be my girlfriend?" "Okay, but don't touch me" works in the confines of the mental hospital, but as the grounds for a real relationship it doesn't work, on both ends. Syd never explains to David why he can't touch her until it's too late, and then she's all "this isn't a problem we have to address in our relationship, it's a super power!")

If season two is David going off his meds it's because his girlfriend literally told him he didn't need them, and then at the end of season two it's like "just kidding, plus you're the one in the wrong for not accepting that you're ill." God.

Again, that does not change the reality of what he did to her or make her somehow not a victim, but I still think the narrative had to twist things in unbelievable ways to get him there, and part of that was some bullshit regarding his relationship with Syd. And it's not that she's at fault, I think it's more that she's not written well. She does the "you left me, you don't appreciate me, also I'm irrationally jealous" thing that women written by men often do in fiction to advance a male character's plot and provide conflict. Like, he literally gets kidnapped (by her from the future!) and she accuses him of leaving her?? She tells him to lie to her, won't tell him why except that if she loves him he'll do it, and then tells him he's sick and doesn't really love her when he does those things? Like, maybe this is a commentary on what happens when two broken people initiate a relationship, but in the end the show definitely tried to present Syd as the healthy one and David as the "crazy" one. Again, I'm not saying Syd was really the abuser or whatever junk the man-boys of the internet are putting out there, but I am saying this narrative frustrated me a whole lot.

One commentary I read which I do agree with is that the show went off the rails when season two flipped the script from seeing the world from David's fractured perspective to presenting us with a crazy outer world instead of a crazy inner one. Which on one level I understand why, because it's hard to create a sustainable TV show with the premise of this show. Once David figures out that his powers are real it's hard to maintain the "is he crazy or not" narrative, so at the beginning of season two it's largely dropped, as is the conflict of David struggling to control his powers. Then at the end of season two the narrative becomes "he actually is crazy but in a different way, and now he's powerful and that presents a problem." Which, on paper, okay. But I really feel like the show missed an opportunity to show David struggling with the aftermath of finding out his powers are real, picking up the pieces of his life after the Shadow King is gone, and really dealing with what happened to him and what he is. That would have been a compelling and weird and wild journey without the constant narrative fake-outs. Maybe it's because I read him as a trauma victim in season one more than anything. Or maybe it's because of how season two introduced a lot of elements that I hate in fiction (time travel, self-fulfilling prophecies). But I do think that season one, even with its faults, presents a nuanced and empathetic picture of mental illness and healing that ultimately isn't delivered on.

But, the stylistics of this show! The dance numbers!

[bartsugsy]

I just wanna say, I'm so happy you're embracing your feelings towards Rebecca. It's just reached a whole other level of ridiculous now heh 😂😂😭😭.

this was probably the wrong (right?) time to send this message because i’ve been yelling about this theory all evening and….

i have some more Thoughts

ok, i think i sort of accidentally went back to trying to really fathom out her character again, but it always feels pointless, because i don’t know how we’re supposed to take her. i don’t know ultimately where her story should be or where it should be going. as far as i can tell, she’s there to further along robert’s story. that’s it. and that makes me annoyed because as much as i sort of just utterly despise her, why do i want to watch a female character help build up a male character without the writers even bothering to even try to make her character work in any kind of sensible way, or fleshed out, or even the slightest bit consistent? she’s so sloppily written and… you can sort of figure things out about her, but nothing that makes me understand why she is someone i would root for? 

like. i just want to know what the writers think of her. are we supposed to really be that invested in her? and if so, why haven’t they tried harder to make that happen by making her seem like more of a real multi-faceted character? as opposed to someone who, until literally two days ago, has never made a decision that someone else didn’t influence.

i just don’t really know where they can take her? because now she seems to have realised how shitty robert treats her and i enjoyed her earlier this week, tearing a strip off of him and rejecting him because she deserved to have a scene like that, but…

idk i’ve spent a lot of time talking about her with people today and thinking through her very thinly constructed character and it feels like they’ve started to do a 180 - they’ve had her take a stand against robert, they’ve had her stand fast in this one decision that she’s made by herself, against what other people have told her (yes with the prompting from vic, but she’s stood by it, so i’m sort of giving it to her anyway, baby steps etc). is that the extent of her character arc? where else can she go from here?

rebecca spent years - 5? years? 6? - idolising robert. She thought she was in love with him and she thought that she was the only one who knew him. She thought she was his aaron, essentially - the one person in her family who knew he was the sort of person who would cheat on chrissie, who was allowed to see all of him. i think she thought that she was more special to him than chrissie, and in that, didn’t actually ever see the real him at all.

earlier today i accidentally rewatched the first rob/rebecca kiss - the one that happened the day before ssw, rob’s inexplicable way to prove to himself that he wasn’t going to cheat on aaron that still makes literally no sense to me and almost annoys me more than The Incident because of it, but is saved only by the fact that it had less than zero effect on the story. the things that that scene - and the scene before it - did establish were: robert treats rebecca like shit and rebecca doesn’t really seem to notice. she just lets his words and tone mostly roll off her, still presses forwards and tries to see if he’ll give into her. she doesn’t stop or give up at that scene either. he strings her along just enough that she can just sort of blankly ignore the shit he says to her otherwise, especially when she brings aaron up.

and i think she must be jealous of aaron. it’s the only way her story works, in all honesty. for her to think that she was always something special to robert and to slowly be forced, over the course of the months of her returning to the village, to understand that the person she spent years she was to robert is in fact aaron dingle.

that and she must think of robert in a slightly delusional way - she puts him on a pedastal, ignores a lot of the bad things about him in favour of the good, because he really does treat her like shit. he’s occassionally genuinely nice to her, cares about her just enough, but largely treats her like a play thing - someone he can use to get his own way. he has so little regard for her feelings and she makes it so easy for him, lets him treat her that way, that he just continues, has really no respect for her (as little respect for her as i imagine she has for herself).

but despite every shitty thing he’s ever done to her, still she wants him. even after they’ve ostensibly drawn a line under things, she still makes promises to him, still tries to help him, still tries to stay in his life and bribes him to help her and… for all that i think she spent so many years convinced she was the person who knew him best, i think she blithely ignores so much of him in favour of this idea of who she thinks he is in her head.

this is literally the only way i can make sense of her continued responses to him, alongside both his behaviour to her on show and his canonical behaviour to her previously.

(i’m not really sure what to say about the first abortion anymore, because it 100% seems like something robert would do and i always stood by that, but in the light of her talking quite calmly about it to chrissie and saying it was the right thing to do, i sort of wonder if maybe rebecca was just throwing it in robert’s face for shock value, if she didn’t put up quite the fight that was originally implied, if it seemed a lot more of a joint decision? or maybe it wasn’t, but rebecca still recognises retroactively that it was the right thing to do? she certainly doesn’t seem to blame robert for it or any trauma she’s suffered relating to it when speaking to chrissie? which makes me think that she was trying to hurt robert and blame it on him, more than anything else?

idk, i feel vaguely uncomfortable about this line of thinking, hilariously enough, because i always want to make sure i’m holding robert as accountable as possible to his numerous fuck ups, but i think canonically speaking this is no longer as big of a fuck up as we once were led to believe it was. and at least that makes a damn slight more sense that she’d still continue loving him, wanting him in that same blind way as she does when arrives in emmerdale. no much more sense, but some.)

ANYWAY BACK TO THE TOPIC AT HAND

so i think rebecca is in love with this idea of robert that she has in her head, and there are ways you can parallel that with aaron and his relationship with robert during the affair

the difference comes from the second thing we know about rebecca, which is that she’s very easily led - and has shown very little agency at any point during her time on the show. where aaron would fight back against robert, rebecca never has - until recently.

we see him time and time again openly manipulate her. i won’t go into detail because i’ve done it already. one or twice.

(me: rebecca is such a boring character. also me: writes literal dissertations on her PICK A SIDE LO smh)

(me: liked rebecca before the Incident. also me: now writes thousands of words on why her character doesn’t work HYPOCRACY EVERYWHERE)

(me: knows that the character i thought rebecca white was was someone who despite everything, would ultimately do the right thing by the people she cares about and was largely better than giving into drunk, awful robert’s ridiculous seduction and had mad respect for her when she initially walked away, but also knew that she could potentially be at the mercy of Plot. also me: has been dealing with that and having to realign my every notion on who rebecca white is ever since because i am an obvious slave to canon and if she honestly didn’t do anything wrong that night, why the hell did she try to walk away in the first place)

(me: apparently has never held robert sugden to the same standard. also me: loves him anyway bc at least when he’s doing terrible things the show either invests in redeeming him or acknowledges that his actions are terrible. it took a long time for me to even like his character the first time i watched it but i got there and that time and backstory and the fact that it was so in character makes it easier to sympathise with than rebecca the walking plot device. still think he acted worse of the two of them that night, but as always, that’s just my take on it. but at least he’s shown remorse. she’s done nothing but imply she’s as big a victim as aaron in all of this. which. no.)

A N Y W A Y

She has the least amount of agency of any fictional character I’ve ever scene, has never been able to make a decision for herself that wasn’t somehow influenced by someone else… until this week.

Rebecca decides once and for all to keep the baby. Again, yes, Vic had to prompt her to take that step, but she’s still learning, she’s not used to being a grown adult person but she can totally take care of a living breathing child. 

she also, to my first point, has finally stopped buying robert’s bullshit. maybe it’s something about being pregnant and contemplating motherhood and one of his comments was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, but she’s been outright wary of him, completely unwilling to be around him, in a way she never was before. 

so…. there we have it. character development, such that it is. is it satisfying? sort of….? but not really? there’s still not much else to her, is the thing. and where else does she have left to go? she’s found a spec of agency, she’s realised that her feelings of love weren’t for the actual flesh and blood robert sugden, but the version of him she has in her head.

she’s on a mission to get aaron to see the same (not aware that aaron knows far worse things about robert), despite her determination just one day before that she didn’t want to get involved. 

but… again, where can this storyline develop that’s satisfying not only for robert and aaron but rebecca too? 

it’s my firm belief that actually the most interesting direction to take her in would be to take her character development to the extreme - have her go out for revenge. become a character that grows from having no agency to taking every single drop of agency for herself and getting her own back at the man who she held in her heart for years, but turned around and crushed it

(around the time she realised that not even a baby would make him want to be with her)

everyone around her thinks she’s keeping the baby because she thinks it’ll win robert back. but if she’s keeping the baby for her and wants robert out of her hair for good, or wants to teach robert a lesson, or wants to take revenge because robert is eventually interested in the baby and still has basically no concern for her…

to be honest, with the way she was able to still look at robert, to let every horrible comment he’s said to her go and still want to be with him, still actively try to be with him despite being turned down repeatedly, it actually feels like a more believable direction for her character to take than anything else. because… that blind desperation has to come from somewhere. out and out villainise her - they’ve built seven months worth of backstory as to how and why she could be pushed to the extremes and it would make her a hell of a lot more interesting. hell, it would be better constructed as a dive into soap villainy than chrissie’s turn ever really was (which was ok, but extreme and pretty out of odds with the character we’d seen from her before - i really don’t mind though because i fucking loved her scheming overdramatic ass). plus, rebecca deserves to be able to put robert through some pain 

(obviously not ultimately really hurt him in any way but, you know, still)

idk, it’s just. a more enjoyable concept. it would fit her character magnificantly, when all is said and done. she’s been so meek, so easily manipulated for such a long time, has made near on every decision around robert, that giving her this opportunity to really do a 180 and take is to a soapy extreme would be amazing.

will they do this? i’m assuming not? if we’re supposed to like rebecca???? and i still don’t really know if we are or not. 

what could they do instead? a lot of things that are less interesting, probably. and less satisfying for all of the characters involved. like. i guess she’ll just plod along, hating robert but staying firm in her decision?

or maybe she’ll start liking robert again which would make no sense but i guess the plot means that everyone forgives everyone else on a soap in one way or another eventually, but when ‘not liking robert’ is actually a genuine part of her character development… idk, is that satisfying? is that a good thing for her character? because i don’t feel like it is and i don’t feel like she should like robert again. he doesn’t deserve it from her. and i don’t have any interest in watching him make it up to her.

i don’t know. it’s 2am now and i want to sleep. i feel like maybe i’d be able to start comfortably theorising about her if i knew whether or not we were supposed to like her character. i do know that… there are a couple of ways they could take this storyline that would be ok with me, but this is literally the only way i could think of that would help save rebecca’s character and still make sense -

- but i just don’t think, regardless of what we’re supposed to feel, they really care about her enough to worry if she makes sense or not, so. she could really go in any damn direction (and i’ll be here once more, scrambling to make sense of an illogical character all over again)

(see, this is why i know i should actually just give up)

[obsessivedilettante]

Somehow love has been so idealized as positive and healthy form of bond, that the reality which is that lot of romantic relationships are dysfunctional on one level or another is denied. In the case of Kwon Joo and Tae Gu, the romance is impossible: she will never accept him but the attraction is real on his side (the writer pushed it since ep11) and it humanizes him a little bit. So playing with this fantasy makes sense, is not harmful and wouldn't be a first in fiction...

The issue I have is that people assume because there is attraction, it must mean romantic (or sexual). Tae-gu is definitely fascinated by Kwon-joo, but it’s because he views her as an elusive prey. For someone who seems to have had a fairly easy life when it comes to killing people (I mean, when you come right down to it, his father literally buys “unwanted” people for him hunt and kill, just as though they were toys), here is one that is intelligent and fights back. In fact, I think a large part of his giddy glee when he saw her wall of evidence and red string is the discovery that she has also been hunting him. She is no normal prey.

[More after the jump! My apologies to mobile users, and if you’re coming to this on my tumblr page and not your dash, Anon, you’ll probably need to click the post to get the rest of the answer since this theme doesn’t always put a “more” link when I use it on an ask.]

But she is still just that to him – prey. I can’t agree that his attraction to her “humanizes” him because the show has taken great pains to convince us that he’s not really human. He’s been repeatedly called a monster and the devil (and, to be honest, it’s easy to believe he is just that when he has taken such joy in killing anyone that has possibly hurt him or stood in his way).

To him, Kwon-joo is not a person. She is something to be toyed with, to be teased and tormented until he finally sees fit to give the final blow.

I actually think it’s pretty interesting that the show hasn’t placed him in any romantic or sexual light*. Even though he’s a young and handsome chaebol (at least, to those who don’t know about his murderous tendencies), he’s not been shown partying around with a gaggle of women, or even just one woman. When Jin-hyuk looked into his past, there was no record of a scandal, and I presume that includes scandals with women (or men – hey, I’m not gonna judge, but I know Dramaland and its heteronormative default). I very much doubt he often brings dates home, since he seems more interested in bringing dead bodies home instead. 

That’s not to say Tae-gu has no sexual desire, but it’s notable that his idea of power and dominance is through straight-up brutality and not through sex. He’s killed women before, but from what we’ve seen, hasn’t tried to rape them. Instead, he gets his jollies from the hunt and the sensation of crushing their skulls.

Which, again, is why I give a serious, serious side-eye to those who want to ship him with Kwon-joo. She is an amazing woman who’s worked hard to get where she is, even when no one else believed her. She’s careful and smart as she figures out not only how to save those under the Golden Time (okay, maybe not that careful and smart because c’mon stop going to creepy empty hallways without back-up!), but also in accumulating information that gradually lead her to discover that Tae-gu is the killer she’s been searching for all these years. To her, Tae-gu is the monster that we all know he is. He killed her father, he’s killed so many others – he’s ruthless and shameless. He’s evil and he must be brought to justice.

So for someone to go “eeeee, I ship it!” just because both characters have an obsessive determination to hunt the other feels like it trivializes just how much Tae-gu has hurt and damaged her life. Not just that he killed her father, but thanks to the cover-up by his father and Sang-tae, he made her lose her job and respect within the community. She was treated as a laughingstock and something to be scorned. Yes, she is strong and resilient, but he ruined her life. And he plans to ruin it even more, just for kicks. He knew that his visit to her apartment would scare her, and yet he couldn’t hide his laughter. That is what makes him happy – making her fear for her life.

While I don’t know how the final two episodes will play out, at this point in the show, there’s really no way that Tae-gu can be redeemed. There’s no “oh my mother abandoned me when I was a baby boo-hoo” story that can possibly excuse his murderous behavior. At this point, the only truly “honorable” thing he could do is either confess to his crimes and spend a lifetime in prison, or fall on his sword (kettlebell?) and kill himself.

Perhaps if this writer spent more time developing the characters, there could be some hope. But as it stands right now, he has shown himself to be nothing but pure evil. There is no goodness in him. There is no saving him.

It is true, though, that relationships are inherently messy and so many of them are filled with bad decisions. Maybe I would actually like rom-coms more if they didn’t try to convince me that two diametrically opposed people would suddenly fall in love and live happily ever after, just because the writers said so. Maybe I would suffer less from second-lead syndrome if the male leads weren’t persistently written in such a way that I would instinctively label them as abusive (either emotionally or psychologically, and even sometimes physically), and wish the woman would run the hell away and never look back.

Then again, I think “love conquers all” is utter bullshit, especially with romance. I will, however, happily accept more stories of love that is familial and platonic, because, to me, those are the most endearing and sustaining. That’s why I give only a vague side-eye to those who want to ship Kwon-joo with Jin-hyuk. Part of me understands it – they’re the leads, they’re thrown together, they have to learn to trust and rely on each other. It makes sense, since most dramas would probably go there anyway. But I love that there’s been no hint of romance between them, simply because there aren’t enough platonic male-female friendships represented in media, especially in mutual work environments (where platonic friendship actually makes the most sense, since dating in the workplace is incredibly messy and often ends in disaster, although you wouldn’t know it by most of Dramaland’s offerings).

So I’m not saying “kill it with fire” to a Kwon-joo/Jin-hyuk ship because I can see how these two co-workers, thrown together in a multitude of intense situations as they pursue the same goal, could be appealing to someone. Jin-hyuk has learned to respect Kwon-joo, and is not out to sabotage her. He actually supports her and listens to her.

I am saying “kill it with fire” to a Kwon-joo/Tae-gu ship because it pits her with someone who doesn’t see her as human and only sees her as a thing to amuse him until he decides she’s no longer worth his time. It diminishes who she is as a woman or even simply as a person. He is a monster, and I’m repulsed by the unspoken implication that she could “save” him because of the attraction (or supposed “love”) he has for her. Not that’s what everyone thinks when they consider this so-called ship, but it is the standard representation when we see this kind of dynamic in fiction – the “bad boy” that the woman will save through the power of her sparkly “I’m not like the other girls” vagina. (Again, Tae-gu is not some moody, broody chaebol/cursed vampire/hurt momma’s boy. He is an unrepentant psychopath who gets joy out of tormenting the most challenging prey he’s yet encountered.)

I get it, though. I know that it’s somehow so easy to default to crackling chemistry and want to ship all the things, no matter what, no matter how terrible they are. Some of the best (worst?) ships come from this.** The attraction is there, even if it is only sadistically one-sided. And even though I don’t read fanfiction, I know there are enough of the “oh hell no” ships out there that people are gonna ship what they’re gonna ship, no matter the logistics or actual characterizations. Maybe someone’s cooking up a theory that says Tae-gu will eventually realize the error of his ways and spend the rest of his life in prison pining for the one woman who got away. Or maybe someone’s embracing the insanity and is like “this shit is fucked up but damn the sex is hawt.”

In the end, I guess I’m just too fond of Kwon-joo as a character and a woman, and everything she represents in terms of her intelligence and desire to help people even as she longs for justice in her own life, to see her linked romantically to a murdering psychopath – no matter how gorgeous his cheekbones are.

*of course, as we all well know, Kim Jae Wook is hella sexy and I’m not gonna deny I’d probably do some terrible things for a few minutes in heaven with him, but that’s the actor, not the character.

**for example, even though I know, instinctively, that these two are terrible for each other and will forever end in tears, you can tear the LoVe*** from my cold dead hands. They are Epic and will always be Epic.

***Logan/Veronica from Veronica Mars, who I immediately started shipping**** from the first “Annoy, tiny blonde one, annoy like the wind” and still get a little tingly from that first kiss as the camera cranes outward and “Momentary Thing” plays.

****and I suppose someone could argue that “well you ship [problematic thing] so stop being a cry-baby about other people shipping [problematic thing], and besides, it’s just fiction*****, so who cares what other people do with fictional characters?” To which I say “dude this is tumblr I will overthink whatever the hell I want and also women should not be shipped with brutal psychopaths who only see them as a means for their sadistic pleasure, especially when those psychopaths have totally and unrepentantly ruined those women’s lives and will kill them after they’ve had their fun.”******

*****yeah, it’s just fiction, but stories matter and if I can smash one patriarchal belief that a woman can save a broken and screwed up guy just because he lurves her then I think I will have fulfilled a purpose that I didn’t know I had but I will gladly accept.

******is2fg no one tell me there’s a fanfic out there where Tae-gu is revealed to be a necrophiliac bc there’s not enough brain bleach out there to unsee that image even though it would probably make total sense, dammit.