#or sympathetic villains who don’t get redemption at all because that’s the choice they made

[bluewithpurplepolkadots]

I think the weirdest fandom criticism I keep seeing is the insistence that distaste for certain redemption arcs is solely based on Christian based ideas of purity and suffering and like while a part of me gets this idea, I’m kind of like… the religion that focuses on and is literally famous for forgiveness?

You don’t think those defending often criticised redemption arcs, don’t have any potentially similar blind spots which can show in really ugly ways? That they are somehow immune from such influences?

Christian forgiveness, sometimes takes it too far and can push it to the detriment of victims in their communities and beyond. Especially when the abuser is more powerful in some way in their community. (And let’s be real: abusers by definition always have more power in some way, it’s when they get up the nose of someone with more power than them or those people give a shit /enough people group together against it that sparks can fly).

While I have experienced the anxiety from ‘all sins being equal’ and the resulting guilt: it also has very famously gone the other way and had people downplaying really horrific stuff. To dismiss those hurt. For after all: ‘we’re all sinners’.

Rather like in some of these botched redemption arc stories where the villain and hero almost always have to be bosom buddies: it can have communities make the victim have to interact with the one who hurt them instead of being allowed to at least peace out without losing everything they have ever known. That this will allow access to future and past victims because forgiving means forgetting to them. (Or at least pretending to). Because having a missing stair for new members or those unaware is apparently also fine?

But only being for punitive and worthless punishment can have Christian roots? The reverse extreme doesn’t have this issue? Nah mate.

Like maybe it’s more that almost any major religion or philosophy has its good sides or even ideas you can understand the root/benefit of: but almost nothing is above being exploited or abused by those in power. There’s nothing immune from corruption.

Personal interpretations can go to bizarre lengths. Leaving interpretations up to others to do it for you has its own obvious issues. It’s life and it’s messy just in general. Even trying to find a middle ground between the two methods and discussion can be hard. And you are going to fuck up sometimes. There’s no easy trickty trick trick or perfect level you can keep to forever for perfect results every single time you have to make a decision. You can fail by refusing to make one too.

Christianity has major political and social powers itself in a wider society to the point it’s shaped it for centuries, even affecting non-believers internally in ways they don’t think about.

The perfect religion or philosophy does not exist. It never will. All you can do is the best you can and keep trying. And even then like I said: you’re going to fuck up.

A redemption arc isn’t always good or a good idea just because you projected onto/lusted after the character getting or not getting it. It isn’t always bad it happened because you can’t personally relate or like the character either.

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

PROPAGANDA

CHLOE BOURGEOIS (MIRACULOUS LADYBUG) (CW: Child Abuse)

1.) Girl was done so dirty… She was starting to develop and could’ve had a redemption arc and then they made her even more one-dimensional than she was at the start, dumbed her down, and the creator on twitter claimed she was never abused and that she never cared about her childhood friend, only his status. And in a scene that thankfully got cut by editors, her father was going to disown her, adopt her sister instead (who is like a “nicer” replacement for her) and pass Chloe onto her abusive mother.

And then a male character gets introduced who is also at first an antagonist with a backstory that gets revealed later, also a childhood friend of the same character, but it’s acknowledged that he got abused by his parent and he gets a redemption arc and a romantic subplot and a spot on the hero team (which Chloe was excluded from because she was irresponsible with her power and revealed her identity publicly… Except he also did that)

This show is about girl power btw.

2.) Chloe was done so fucking dirty. So basically, the creator of the show (Thomas Astruc) created the character in the first place as a stand-in for his childhood bully (red flag no.1) Because of this, any development that she as a character got from the other writers (and it was a lot) got retconned, just because he hated her. Other, objectively much more evil, (male) characters (the main villain!) were portrayed as more sympathetic than her, because god forbid a hurt, abused, emotionally immature, unloved little girl be portrayed as anything other than an unlovable, unforgiveable unchangeable demon. Also she’s obsessed with clothes, shoes and handbags, because she’s a mean girl, don’t you see, so obviously the nice girls (who don’t wear makeup while Chloe does) are better than her.

3.) Stuck up spoiled rich girl is treated as worse than the actual villains of the show. At some point we get a glimpse into her awful traumatizing home life and she starts to be redeemed, but the second something doesn’t go her way she backslides and is suddenly even more evil and dumb. Also her father is incredibly neglectful but it’s portrayed as her somehow abusing him into doing what she wants and he’s so sad about his awful evil daughter. He gets a redemption arc but never actually becomes a better father. She’s seen as unfixable.

CHI-CHI (DRAGON BALL)

1.) okay so to start at the beginning, she was introduced as a young kid but they put her in a super revealing bikini styled outfit. pretty sure it was supposed to be armor too, so besides just being a disgusting design choice even in-universe it’s impractical. but besides that she was pretty charming as a kid, she was cute and funny and pretty tough, and had a cool gimmick in her blade/ laser helmet. even when she reappeared in late Dragon Ball, she was a bit abrasive but was overall rational and kind. she was strong enough to make it into the World Martial Arts Tournament, one of only 16 to qualify.

but come Dragon Ball Z and on, she’s reduced to just a shrill, nagging, aggressive wife and mother. all she gets to do is cook, worry, and berate her husband and sons. her physical strength is only used so she can comically hit Goku. sure its played for laughs, but he’s shown to be afraid of her. I only recall her leaving her house once or twice in DBZ. just the worst mother character stereotype, with nothing left to make her likeable. she’s portrayed as irrational but despite her aggressiveness, half the time her wants are completely reasonable. can’t blame a woman for not wanting her husband to die every other day!! her writing us ass but I still love her and she deserves better!!!

2.) So in Dragon Ball she wasn’t the BEST character to start out with. Toriyama hasn’t ever been the best at writing women or not making stupid fucking sex jokes about them. So she had to deal with that. The outfit she wore as a kid was… NOT GREAT. Let’s say that! Then in late Dragon Ball her entire character revolves around Goku and trying to marry him, which she gets by tricking Goku and getting beaten by Goku in a tournament in one hit. Not off to a great start. Then Z started and Toriyama just… gave her an ENTIRELY NEW new personality, and that new personality was just a stereotype of a tiger mom. Regardless of how correct she might’ve been about letting Gohan fight (and she WAS completely correct, he was 5-6 for a HUGE chunk of Z) the narrative frames her as a hysterical and unreasonable woman nagging at the menfolk and not letting them do things. So naturally people hate her without even considering why she’s upset because the story itself frames her as in-the-wrong. The whole franchise also just forgets that she’s a martial artist and never has her DO ANYTHING.

This is only scratching the surface, there’s a LOT more because the franchise is like 40 years old and we’d be here all day.

3.) GODDDD okay so full disclosure i guess shonen is such an easy pick but like. out of every shonen wife she was and is THE most hated by the narrative and creator (maybe tied with sakura omfg). shes always made out to be a beast, got her fighting skills shafted after she got married, was always played like she was hysterical for worrying about her kid dying in battle, and not to mention the creator actively HATES her. like toriyama just straight up hates writing her. its bad. its really bad. shes just “bitch wife” but for no reason :(

[kalinara]

I feel like Reva’s redemption in Obi-Wan Kenobi, already great in its own right, really shone a light on why Kylo Ren’s redemption in the Sequel Trilogy didn’t work for me.

Now granted, it was always going to be an uphill battle for me to find a Kylo Redemption narratively satisfying.  I’ve made no secret about the fact that I didn’t really think a redemption was feasible after the events of the first and second movie.  

But I’m not an immovable object.  I’ve seen good writers pull off plot twists that on paper I’d never have liked.  And sometimes, even a redemption arc can work for me.  

But let’s be honest here.  Kylo Ren did not have a redemption arc in Rise of Skywalker.  He was perfectly happy to keep terrorizing Rey with the force up to and until his super-magical mommy died for him.  And...no.  Sorry.  That really doesn’t work.

Redemption, narratively speaking, doesn’t need to be complicated.  Especially in Star Wars.  It generally happens in one moment of choice: Darth Vader saving his son, Din Djarin going back for Grogu, and especially, Reva deciding not to kill Luke Skywalker.

Reva isn’t more redeemable than Kylo Ren because her backstory is more sympathetic (even though it is),  She’s more redeemable because she made a choice.

Kylo Ren had many many opportunities for choices, and for the most part, he chose the most evil option each time.  He didn’t have to murder Lor San Tekka, but he did.  He didn’t have to kill Han Solo, but he did.  He didn’t have to torture Poe or Rey, maim Finn, defend the Starkiller, order the massacre on Jakku and so forth, but he did.  He didn’t have to hunt the Resistance to Crayt and try to massacre them to a man.  But he did.  And so on and so forth.

I think there was one time he chose not to shoot at his mom while she was floating in space.  Which, okay, maybe a fraction of a point for that.  But he doubled down afterward, so no.

The thing was though, no one made the choice FOR Reva.  Obi-Wan didn’t do some magical mumbo jumbo.  Luke didn’t talk her down.  Owen and Beru didn’t have her at gunpoint.  She just stopped.  It was a decision anyone could make at that moment, and she made it.  She stopped.

Kylo’s redemption didn’t work for me because it’s built into the privilege he’s had all along.  There was a constant assumption both within the movie (From Lor San Tekka, from Han Solo, from Rey - trying to repeat Luke’s triumph) and from fans that Kylo would follow in his grandfather’s footsteps.  Of COURSE, Kylo will redeem himself, it’s Star Wars.

It’s a guarantee because Kylo Ren is space royalty, because of Anakin.  Redemption is treated like an inheritance.  And in the end, Kylo gets his inheritance, not through his own choice, but through Leia’s actions.  And well, not every villain has a super powered mommy magically push them into being a better person.  

Reva’s not space royalty.  She’s just a woman who had been a traumatized child, who survived through holding onto her fear, rage, and hatred.  And then, as she stares down at an innocent person, having finally found the one way she could make her enemy suffer...she stops.  She looks at who she’s become and she decides to become someone else instead.  It’s much more satisfying.

There are folks who say the best kind of redemption arcs are the ones where you can follow the person afterward and watch them become a better person.  I think that’s true...sometimes.  I have no interest in Prince Kylo magnanimously sharing the bounty of his mother’s sacrifice.  (And thankfully, I don’t have to.  His redemption, and grateful reward, are much more palatable since he dies.)

Reva though?  I’d happily watch Reva do whatever she wants to do next.  Maybe she and Haja can team up and smuggle people out of Imperial hands.  Maybe she’ll pull a Mara Jade, and go out on her own...learn about who she is outside of Imperial control.  (I still think that’d be the best way to bring Mara into the Disney franchise.)  The possibilities are endless.

[glorytoukraine2022]

Hey everyone! I’m back with another analysis! This time I’m going to do a comparison of reformed villains from Elena of Avalor and Tangled the Series. The main reformed villains I will be comparing is Cassandra, to four reformed villains from the two aforementioned shows. If you’re a fan of both shows, you probably might know who they are.

First up, will be Cassandra vs Varian. I know this is an obvious choice I’m starting off with, but given that these two are from the same show, they’re the easiest to analyze. TTS does everything it can to push comparisons between Varian and Cassandra and make them seem like parallels. However, these two couldn’t be more different.

Varian didn’t want to turn to crime. He only became a criminal because he was pushed to it. When Varian lost his dad, he asked for help not only from Rapunzel, but the entire kingdom as a whole. But because of a false rumor going around the kingdom claiming that Varian had attacked Rapunzel. Rapunzel never cleared the rumor, nor did she follow up on Varian’s request for help. The King sent guards to chase Varian out of his home in order to cover up the destruction of the rocks, isolating Varian from society and any possible aid. Varian was still wron, but he literally had no other options left.

Cassandra, however? She was faced with no such situation. Her life was pretty stable when she stole the moonstone. Was it perfect? No, but if she was so unhappy, than she could have left anytime. She was even offered an opportunity to become a warrior of the kingdom of Ingvarr, but chose to stay because of her friendship with Rapunzel.

Like Varian, Cassandra too was mistreated by Rapunzel. I don’t blame either of them for wanting to leave her. Yet the show didn’t use any of these valid reasons as her motive for Cassandra stealing the moonstone. Instead, they decided to have Cassandra victim-blame Rapunzel for her own kidnaping.

The entirety of season 3, we see Cassandra gaslighting an abuse victim. Gothel didn’t kidnap Rapunze because she loved her more than Cassandra. She only cared about her magic hair.

Varian realized his actions were wrong long before the events of season 3, but nobody in Corona gave him a chance, leading to him turning to a Terrorist Leader. But when the Saporians revealed that they were going to destroy Completely using Varian’s chemicals, Varian turned against the Saporians to save Corona and it’s citizens, despite how the kingdom mistreated him, because it was the right thing to do. Cassandr, on the other hand, was about to rip the Sundrop straight from Rapunzel, despite her clearly being in pain.

For my next comparison, it will be Cassandra vs. Victor and Carla Delgado. One could argue that Cassandra saw the power of the moonstone as a power conduit and a means of respect, similarly to how Victor and Carla saw being Malvagos. However, given that TTS does seem to give a clear or specific reason for Cassandra’s theft of the stone, it’s honestly hard to say if power, respect or anything, for that matter, is Cassandra’s motive. “Destiny“, is also given as a motivation, but it’s hard to tell. Whereas Victor and Carla’s motivations for becoming Malvagos is clearly stated that they saw it as a means to gain power, in order to gain respect, which, quite frankly, makes more sense than anything that came out of Cassandra’s mouth throughout her entire villain arc.

Yes, Cassandra and Carla were both abandoned by their naristsstic, power-hungry mothers, but the way each of them reacted to it couldn’t have been more different. When Ash betrayed Victor and Carla by turning Victor to stone, Carla was devastated, and who wouldn’t be? Yet in that moment she saw her mother for who she truly was and turned against her, standing by her father when he needed her.

Now Cassandra? Let’s see, she went on a rampage to hurt her friends and others innocent people and ATTACKED her father. See the difference? One could argue that Cassandra was four when Gothel abandoned her whereas Carla was 19, but Cassandr’s memory of Gothel’s abandonment was repressed until Zhan Tiri showed it to her in The House of Yesterday’s Tomorow. Even though it happened when Cassandra was at a young age, when she remembered it, she was a 24 year old woma, and should have handled it with the maturity of a young adult.

Nobody is saying that Cassandra isn’t allowed to feel hurt. Nobody is saying she isn’t allowed to react badly. That she isn’t allowed to confront her father on the truth if she feels that he kept it from her. But you’d think she’d react in a mature manner. That she’d be willing to hear her father out and talk to him about it rather than straight out attack him!

Carla clearly wanted her mother in her life. She wanted a relationship with her. Cassandra also clearly wanted to be raised by her birth mother, but their mothers made their own choices. Ash and Gothel chose to abandon their daughters for selfish purposes. They can’t change who their mothers are, as much as they might want to. The difference is, only Carla has the maturity to realize that. She also realizes that she has her father, who loves and cares about her more than anything in the whole wide world. Cassandra disregards all of this.

From what we know about Victor and Carla’s childhoods’ Victor had fun days at the palace racing Esteban down the halls, playing hide and seek and cooking with him and Elena. Carla had fun cooking with her father as a child. But some of their lines from “Don’t Look Now”, tell us that their childhoods weren’t exactly peachy. According to Victor, if you had seen him as a child, he would have “always had a frown” because he was put down by others and was “treated like a clown” whenever he tried to stand up. And let’s not forget that him and his family were banished by Shuriki while Victor was still in his teens.

According to Carla, she and Victor were “always on the move“ and that the only thing that never changed was that she would “always feel alone.” The reasons she and Victor could never settle down was probably because they survived as theives and con-artists. If they were alwlays on the move, than Carla probably nevertheless had the chance to make friends growing up. And we’re suppoesd to feel sorry for CASSANDRA?!

While it’s possible she might have felt looked down upon like Victor, Cassandra had a pretty stable life growing up. Growing up inside a CASTLE! She was even allowed to train for the Royal Guard at age six! Victor and Carla had to resort to becoming con artists for a living, and Cassandra is pouting just because she didn’t get the job she wanted?!

When Carla nearly fell to her death after she was knocked over a ledge, Victor was terrified that he was going to lose Carla right then and there, causing him to realize that power wasn’t worth the price of losing his daughter. This gave him the incentive and courage to stand up to Ash for Carla’s safety, and end dark pursuits right then and there. Ash responded to this by turning him into stone. Heartbroken and angered by Ash’s betrayal, and realizing her mother’s true nature, Carla stands against Ash and reforms as well.

Victor and Carla may have once believed that power would gain them the respect they’ve always wanted, but in the end, realized that they never needed power. All they ever truly needed to be happy was love and family. Each other. That’s what I call a true, remarkable redemption. Cassandra didn’t seem to learn or realize anything based on her experience. To this day, I still don’t understand just what new insights and changes resulted from Cassandra’s “redemption.” All Zhan Tiri did was take the moonstone from her. There should have been more than that to her redemption.

Now, last, but not least, Cassandra vs Esteban. Now, I saved this one for last, because Esteban is the one I’ve heard people compare Cassandra to, and while I understand where they are coming from, I still have my objections. I’ve heard people compare Esteban to Cassandra based on the fact that they both had a desire to be noticed. While I understand this comparison, I still feel like Esteban is the more sympathetic of the two.

As much as Esteban wanted to be listened to, he always loved his family deeply. But he always made the mistake of trusting the wrong people, first Shuriki, then Ash, and then the Four Shades. He trusted them, only for them to go after the people he loved and wanted to listen to him in the first place. Cassandra wanted to be listen to, but she didn’t care if it cost her everyone that had ever cared about her. We see this early on in season 1, during “Challenge of the Brave”, when she tries to sabotage Rapunzel’s chances in “Challenge of the Brave” by stealing her weapon of choice, and in “Great Expotations“, when she breaks her promise to Varian that she would be his assistant at the Science Expo if he completed her Handmaiden duties for her, just so she could be on guard duty.

Both Cassandra and Esteban are ambitius and have sought to undermine their family/friends if given the oppourtunity, but I felt that Esteban was always more misunderstood whereas Cassandra was just willing to screw over anybody in her way. Think about it, even after Esteban joined up with Ash, he NEVER EVER wanted to hurt his family, and was always going out of his way to protect them and migiate harm. Cassandra, on the other hand? Went on a killing spree to murder her friends and cause as much destruction as possible.

I have also heard people comparing their redemptions and complaining about how they were both “last minute.” While I would agree in regards to Cassandra, I would NOT say the same about Esteban. As I pointed out in previous paragraph, Cassandra was still hell bent on hurting Rapunzel before Zhan Tiri grabbed the moonstone. Just before that scene, Esteban had just sung a duet with Elsa about how remorseful he feels for everything he’s done and all the people he’s hurt.

Iv’e also heard people comparing their “deaths”, claiming that Cassandra dying was a self sacrifice. NO. I REPEAT. Cassandra’s death in the TTS finale was NOT a self sacrifice! A self sacrifice is when you knowingly put yourself in harm’s way for someone or something else, knowing that you’ll be killed, or seriously injured in the process. Esteban teleporting in front of Elena to take Cahu’s time grain, was a self sacrific. Anna choosing to save Elsa from Hans in Frozen was a self sacrifice. Cassandr’s death was NOT self sacrifice. Cassandra and Rapunzel didn’t believe they were going to die or suffer any consequences by uniting the stones. The only person who they bellived would die was the person who United the stones, that person being Zhan Tiri. Cassandra’s actions were not self sacrificial, in any way, shape or form. What Esteban did for Elena in that moment was more powerful than anything Cassandra did in the finale.

All of these people I talked about above were better villains than Cassandr, with much better motivations, and are More worthy of redemption as have becom better people than she ever will be. If Cassandra ever grows in the futur, sh’ll be lucky if she ever gets at least half to where all these wonderful people are today.

I’m sorry if this analysis isn’t as good as my others so far. I stayed up until 3:40 AM writing this, so I apologize for any sloppiness or spelling mistakes you might see. I still hope you enjoyed my thoughts!

[natalieironside]

Natasha Wenden's story is sticking with me harder than I ever would have thought. Was there ever a version where she came to realize what a piece of shit she was and actually wanted to change?

(Spoilers)

Ah, my favorite & most interesting villain

Like I said in this here interview the other day: I believe that every human life has value and that nobody is so low as to be beyond redemption, but I'm stumped as to what we're supposed to do about people who've done terrible things and don't want to be better; I feel like a weakness of or existing models of restorative justice is that they only really work when all parties involved want to be there.

To take a peek behind the curtain: From the inception, Natasha was a character born dead. She always needed to die in order for the story to wrap up neatly, unless I wanted to write an entire other book-length section that was just about her life after the war, which; I think two redeemed Nazis per novel is pretty much the upper limit.

However: I wanted Natasha to be equal parts abhorrent and sympathetic. She's a person who found herself in an impossible situation, endured unspeakable suffering, and had to make a choice; it just happened that she made the wrong choice. She's a fundamentally small and pathetic person who chose what looked like the path of least resistance, which made her complicit, which made her a monster; and she would never, ever admit to making the wrong choice.

Natasha always could've walked it back, but (I intended; I hope) the path of redemption being open to her makes her lack of a redemption arc that much more poignant. The final showdown between Natasha and Mags was supposed to be Mags engaging her ultimate foe in a battle of wits and being soundly defeated. When Mags says "Fuck this, I'm going back to bed" before pulling the trigger, that was a "Kiss my ass, you sanctimonious bastard" moment; a final admission of defeat disguised as a snappy one-liner.

So, to answer your question: No. I always knew Natasha was going to die. But it was important to me to give her the kind of death she got, first of all because fascists don't get to die heroically in my stories, but second of all because it underlines how small and pathetic her life was.

And, as for what it would look like for Natasha to realize what a piece of shit she was and actually want to change: Well, that's what Jules is. Jules isn't *quite* on the same moral low ground as Natasha, but Jules is still, in no uncertain terms, a murderer. The key difference between them is that, one day, Jules decided she couldn't take it anymore and made up her mind to go do the next right thing.

[luimnigh]

Do you think Cinder's story will be about ending the cycle of abuse or whatever?

I mean I think that’s a major part of the whole show’s story. One of the major themes of RWBY is Legacy, what we get from those who came before, and what we leave behind for those who will come after. And part of that idea is improving on and exorcising the bad of what you inherit.

We’ve already seen Blake and Weiss break the cycle. I think the cycle will totally be further broken.

But Cinder’s story specifically, while I do think will also break the cycle of abuse, I don’t think will be about it. 

If anything, I think a major theme in Cinder’s story will be Redemption itself. 

Cinder is introduced to us as this scheming villainess, all confidence and swagger. We see her abusing the much more sympathetic Emerald, we’re told her motivation is solely to gain more power. And when we’re given the origins of our villain team in Volume 3, Cinder’s is held back. 

Cinder’s origins are held back from us for a massive chunk of the series. 

She kills a main character. She makes it a mission to kill another. She nearly kills a third. 

We are given every reason to root against her. 

And then... we’re shown her backstory. We’re shown the abuse that went into making the Cinder we know. We’re shown her trying her best to work inside the system, trying to escape the “right” way. We’re shown her abusers trying to take that away from her, and in the heat of the moment she kills them. 

And we’re shown her being branded as irredeemable for it. 

That’s the entire reason why Cinder is a villain, why she’s a bad guy. Because she made a mistake as a teenager and was told she could never walk back from it. That the thing she wanted most, her freedom, would never be hers. That running is “all she’ll ever do”. 

All the hurt, all the pain that Cinder Fall has caused throughout the series is because she doesn’t think she has the choice to be better. Because society says she has to pay for her mistake, and pay on their terms, and that means sacrificing the one thing she’s ever wanted. Freedom. 

And she wanted to be a Huntress! She wanted to help people! She could have done so much good!

RWBY is genuinely saying that if you brand someone as irredeemable, incapable of being better... then they will accept that being good, becoming better, is not an option. 

That even if you don’t like it, even if you have every reason to root against someone... you have to give them the chance to be better. 

[katzkinder]

Touma and Tsurugi

Aight, so. I have had this post sitting in my drafts for AGES, contemplating whether I should even post it or not, and... I think I will.

Time to talk a bit about what is probably the most controversial character in Servamp, outside of a certain yippee ki-yay motherfucker. I’m partially writing this as part of my own means of moving forward, so forgive me if this seems disjointed or spacey. Unlike my other posts, which are written in one sitting, this one’s going to be strewn together over the course of multiple days. Formatting might be a little wonky too because of that, especially since I haven’t been feeling at 100% these last few days.

Anyway! Let’s hop into it! In usual Kat format, this probably won’t make much sense! Preemptive warning for all the usual stuff that comes parcel and package with Touma and Tsurugi. Child abuse, neglect, PTSD, you know. All that... Fun stuff... Not all of these are mentioned or even implied but... Yeah. Just in case. Under the cut because it is Very Long.

Gonna also preface this by saying that I am not, by any means, excusing Touma’s actions or behavior. I’m taking him to task today and tearing the dude apart because he’s such a well crafted depiction of how abusers can love the people they hurt, and how they can be sympathetic because they are human, while still being awful, and I want more people to appreciate that. You don’t have to like him by any means. Lord knows I don’t.

But it’s also disingenuous to write him off as a villain hellbent on hurting others for the sake of hurting, especially when that’s exactly what he wants people to think of him.

Touma’s cruelty and his stubborn refusal to rely on anyone but himself is absolutely a defense mechanism meant to protect himself from those with seemingly kind intentions. The man grew up in an incredibly abusive household, where physical and emotional abuse was the norm. Like a hedgehog, he spikes himself up, lashes out at those around him with his words, digging into any weak point he can manage to find because if he doesn’t let anyone in, if he keeps the curtains closed shut, he will be safe, he will be safe, no one will ever have the power to hurt him again.

Like, no healthy person acts like that. He wants people to think he’s vile. He wants people to hate him. He’s, in his own words, “a villain with a pedigree.”

And then there’s his relationship with Tsurugi, and how that plays out. Despite how awfully he’s been treated, Tsurugi... Wants to stay with him. Not because he can’t imagine any other way of existing. Oh, he knows it’s there. He can leave any time he wants to. If he gave even the slightest of inklings that he wanted out from under Touma’s thumb... Junichiro and Yumikage would grab him and go. We even see Yumi offer within canon to pay off all of Tsurugi’s debts, which are... The thing tying him to Touma the most, from an outsider’s perspective.

He wants to stay because... Touma is his family. Because if he’s a godawful person who abused the hell out of him... He’s still his savior and someone he cares for deeply. Even when, by all rights, he’d be better off kicking him to the curb.

Truth be told, back when we all thought Touma was dead, I was actually really disappointed in that particular story decision. It seemed like such a copout way to deal with him as a character! Like, having the abuser sacrifice their life to save their victim as one final act of grand redemption and proof that they were a “good person” all along... Fuck off with that! I want Touma to live. I want him to live and grow and become better than he was, but to always know, in the back of his mind, what he has done and who he has hurt and how he made someone he loves suffer.

And I’m glad that we’ve already seen a tiny glimpse of change in him, when he removes Tsurugi’s collar. He sets him free. And that made me so happy.

Going to get a little Too Real with y’all right now, but I... Spent the majority of my formative years in an abusive home. I’ll spare you the details, but my mother and step-father were not... Good people. I met with my mother again when I was 13, and I was ecstatic, because that’s my mom! She was my mom, and I loved her. Less than a year later, though... She vanished. Promised she would only be gone for a year and then... Nothing.

I was fine with that. I was hurt, but I could live with it, because she had already abandoned me before. What I couldn’t forgive, though, what I couldn’t overlook, was her doing that to my little sister. At least, I thought I couldn’t... If I’m honest with myself? I know that, if she ever came back into my life, I’d hug her neck and cry and tell her how much I missed her, and beg her not to leave again.

The story of Touma and Tsurugi... Is one that resonates with me on a very deep, very personal level.

I want Tsurugi to get the happy ending, and the happy family, I know will never be available to me in the form I want it to be.

I want Touma to grow, and to heal, and to overcome the hand life has dealt him and that he felt he had no other choice but to play with.

I could have easily become someone like Touma. Instead I am like Tsurugi, because I had people who loved me and wanted me to thrive despite my circumstances.

I talk a lot about this series, go so in depth with it and its characters, love it and this fandom and the people I have met through it so much because it... Has helped me grow, and it has helped me heal.

Which is fantastic! Because Servamp, at its core, is a story of healing. Of learning to let go of the past and move on towards a brighter future. It doesn't mean you have to forget where you came from... Just that your past doesn’t define you. There's always time to change.

Not even just with Touma and Tsurugi.

With Shuuhei and Sham. With Lust pair. With Lawless. With Kuro. With Sakuya. Even... With Mahiru. Every single time... There's something in their past holding them down and hurting them so terribly... And they can't grow as a person until they deal with it.

Servamp has helped me deal with mine. Thank you so much, everyone.

[moonlightreal]

This is the “author’s note” I found on the amazon pages for the pretty hardcover Night World books.  My memory is that it was just there, the book-blurb at the top by the cover picture, was this. 

Like a bonehead I just copied the text without grabbing a screencap or noting the date.  The amazon page now has the publication date is December 2016 so this bit of optimism was just before Ms. Smith vanished.  Of course we don’t know when it was written or whose idea it was.  Was Strange Fate really finished or was someone just feeling hopeful? 

NIGHT WORLD Dear Readers, It’s hard to tell you how much the re-release of the Night World books means to me. It has allowed me to come full circle, to complete a cycle that began with Secret Vampire. It has allowed me to finish Strange Fate, which grew into an epic that included roles for almost every Night World character. And Strange Fate allowed me to show the origins of the Night World, the apocalypse that threatens to destroy it, and even a possible future in which the evil side of the Night World prevails. I am often asked how I conceived the idea for the Night World series. It began when I wanted to write stand-alone novels that would combine horror and romance. But I wanted more: I wanted to do a series in which this Night World—a vast, secret world that exists within the everyday world—would slowly reveal itself to readers. That’s why the first book is called Secret Vampire: the inhabitants of the Night World, composed of vampires, shapeshifters, witches, and other supernatural creatures I wanted to invent, are hidden from humans. A vampire is necessarily a secret vampire … because of the laws. I also wanted to write about a new kind of forbidden love. That’s not easy—most good forbidden love topics were old by Shakespeare’s time. But with this series, I could create the possibility of forbidden love simply by saying that the laws of the Night World prohibit a Night Person from falling in love with a human. But I still needed one more ingredient. I needed the rise of the soulmate principle to actively force Night People to fall in love with humans, no matter how hard they fought against it. Voilà! Then it was just a matter of making up interesting characters and setting them loose in my head to see what they would do. I often begin like that: sitting in a quiet room and searching for a sparkle in my mind that could become my new heroine. Sometimes it’s easy and a whole character shimmers before me. Sometimes I only get the faintest firefly glimmer of a new girl, and I have to hold my breath and see if that glimmer will materialize into a three-dimensional person. Heroes and anti-heroes are easier. It’s just a matter of picking one that will be a true soulmate for my heroine. I have a whole collection of these characters in my mind, all trying to crash the party. And they’re usually bad boys. The settings and in-depth plot development are another layer of work. But often the characters just run off and do what they want, and I have trouble keeping up with their antics on my keyboard. One thing I always do is look carefully at my characters and plot from all angles to make sure I’m not plagiarizing a book or series that I may have read before. That’s just normal procedure for ethical authors: we make sure our stories aren’t too much like another story we might have read. Of course, there are many ideas that have been around since the Babylonian myths, and many characters that are archetypal. But, really, it’s almost impossible to take many things from the body of another author’s work—say, someone else’s character(s) or plot or story device—without actually intending to do so. I can’t imagine wanting to do that. I wish I could say every author felt the same. Poppy North is a character I examined very carefully. I wanted to make sure she wasn’t too much like Bonnie McCullough, another petite character of mine from The Vampire Diaries. I didn’t even want to plagiarize myself ! But Poppy convinced me that she was a tough little squirt who by high school had already planned out her future, which is very unlike Bonnie. Poppy was going to marry her mysterious friend James—she just hadn’t informed him yet. Also, unlike Bonnie, she had a fatal flaw in her small body. In Secret Vampire, I knew I was dealing with a serious issue: terminal cancer in a high school girl. So I did a lot of research before deciding on a type of cancer that would be truly inoperable and give Poppy only a month or two to live. I went to several hospitals to talk to nurses in oncology wards. I always brought toys for the hospitalized children, but the whole subject was so heartbreaking I was almost afraid to tackle it. Once I did, though, I found that Poppy was even stronger than I had imagined. In the book, she makes the only choice she can to go on living, and she never looks back. Poppy is one of my favorite girls, and she ushers in Ash Redfern, who quickly became one of my favorite bad boys. Ash has a murky past of womanizing and … well, more womanizing. Ash returns in Daughters of Darkness because he has been ordered by the leader of all vampires, Hunter Redfern, to bring his three runaway sisters back to their cloistered vampire island. But when Ash locates his sisters, he runs straight into the human stargazer Mary-Lynnette, and the sparks begin flying—literally. Mary-Lynnette is a character I made up when I was a kid, and I’m always surprised by how many people like her and Ash together. Mary-Lynnette spends most of the time expressing her feelings for Ash by kicking him in the shins, but their dialogues are some of my favorite passages in the whole series. Ash, in turn, escorts Quinn into the series. And Quinn (who does have a first name, though he rarely uses it) is one really scary guy. A vampire since 1639 A.D., Quinn is sharp, cold, humorless, and heartless. Unlike Ash, who is mainly guilty of an incredibly long series of one-night stands, Quinn enters the series as a human slave trader. That is, he provides vampires with young girls, and he doesn’t ask questions about what happens to the girls afterward. This led to a problem: How on earth was I going to redeem this villain enough to make him someone’s soulmate in The Chosen? I really sweated over that. My first task was to make Quinn more sympathetic. The best way to do it seemed to be by telling a bit of Quinn’s own tragic story: how he falls in love with sweet Dove Redfern, and how her vampire father decides to make Quinn his heir. Dove’s father is Hunter Redfern, one of the most important vampire leaders in Night World history. This is the same Hunter Redfern who, nearly half a millennium later, sends Ash to drag his sisters back home. The same Hunter Redfern who sends his daughter, Lily, after Jez in Huntress. The same Hunter Redfern who tries to turn Delos into a merciless killer in Black Dawn. But, as a boy, Quinn doesn’t know anything about the Night World, and he is deeply in love with gentle Dove. When Hunter makes him a vampire by force and then when Quinn can’t save Dove from being killed, Quinn’s heart freezes over. For four hundred years it accumulates ice—until he meets Rashel. That’s another favorite scene of mine: when Rashel, a dedicated vampire hunter since (guess who?) Hunter Redfern killed her mother, encounters Quinn. A group of Rashel’s fellow vampire slayers have captured Quinn and plan to torture him, and Rashel is left alone to guard him. Quinn, feeling old and tired despite his youthful appearance and great power, gives himself up for dead—and is a little glad to do so. Rashel, however, can’t stomach the idea of torture. When Rashel talks to this most-hated vampire and hears his story, she deliberately sets him free. And that astonishes him. But it’s the soulmate principle working its magic. I loved making two such strong-willed enemies succumb to the silver cord that connects them. I especially loved hearing Quinn warning Rashel not to let him go—and then protecting her when her comrades arrive back in time to see that she’s let him loose. I really loved writing about Quinn and Rashel’s soulmate sequences. As Rashel enters Quinn’s mind, she sees “thorny scary parts” but also “rainbow places that were aching to grow” and “other parts that seemed to quiver with light, desperate to be awakened.” She begins to think that people ask so little of themselves. If the mind of a slave trader can look like this, an ordinary person must have the power to become a saint. It is with this revelation (and much penance on Quinn’s part) that Quinn is redeemed. That’s the thread that binds all the novels together: redemption. The possibility of a second chance. Everyone has choices to make, but even the most evil of vampires can choose to atone and be redeemed. It may not necessarily stave off punishment in this world or the next, but redemption is possible. I’ve been asked who my favorite characters are, and the answer always changes because it depends on the book I’m writing. Right now my favorites are three characters from Strange Fate. As for my favorite couples in the published books? Morgead and Jez—I suppose. Who would find themselves at greater odds than a vampire gang leader and his onetime superior, a vampire who finds out she is half human? I learned some cool martial arts moves as a bonus for writing about them. Then there is Keller, one of my all-time favorite heroines, and Iliana, the beautiful Witch Child, and Galen, ruler of the shapeshifters: the love triangle in Witchlight. Keller starts out seeming brusque and businesslike, but the love of Galen and of the unselfish Iliana help to heal her inner wounds. And I can’t forget Thierry and Hannah, and Circle Daybreak. I created Circle Daybreak because the Night World witches had only two clans: Circle Twilight and Circle Midnight. Those, like Thea in Spellbinder, who belong to Circle Twilight are not-so-wicked witches (that is, they don’t want to exterminate all humans like the darkest witches, those who belong to Circle Midnight), but they are still wicked enough. So what was to be done with all these new soulmates, when Night World law said that they must be put to death? Someone had to make a place for them where they would be safe, and I decided it was Thierry, one of the oldest vampires, and Hannah, his Old Soul soulmate, who has lived hundreds of lifetimes without ever reaching the age of seventeen. They are the ones who revive Circle Daybreak, where humans and Night People can forget about past tragedies and concentrate on a brighter future together. Although Thierry is an old vampire, he isn’t the oldest vampire. There is one older, the one who Changed him. She provides another thread that binds the series: the pitiless Maya. Maya is the first vampire, the witch who finds the secret of eternal life—and chooses to use it for evil. But there will be plenty more about her, including a look at the young Maya, her sister Hellewise, and their mother, Hecate Witch-Queen, in the upcoming Strange Fate. And so now I’ve come full circle, back to Strange Fate. But I can’t finish until I add the other joy that the re-release of Night World has brought me. It’s brought me into contact with you by e-mail. Night World fans write so many intelligent, articulate, courteous, exciting e-mails! I love to get messages from “old” fans, who say my works “got them through high school.” Thank you for them! And messages from new fans, who say they have just read all my reissued books—and are impatient for more. Thank you! And the messages that simply demand: “When is Strange Fate coming out?” Thank you, too! With a full heart, all I can say is thank you, thank you, and thank you again! I never thought I would have a chance to write an open letter to all Night World fans, and I can only wish that you knew how grateful I am … for this second chance. Sincerely, (LJ Smith signature image) P.S. I love to get e-mail, letters, and messages. Visit me at ljanesmith.net!

[kitkatopinions]

Do you know what would’ve been at least a nice little touch to that fight. If they gave us a frame or two; at least a frame or two of winter and looking a little sad about fighting Ironwood. Like after using the bs sparkle slash or while during the run make sad eye contact. Something. 

Honestly, sympathy, hesitation, confusion, or sadness would’ve made Ironwood’s fall to villainhood so much better. I would still be frustrated that the jump to villainhood was so jerky and out of place, and I would still be frustrated feeling like his character was assassinated, but it would be so much better and swallowing that pill would be easier. Fans keep talking about how Ironwood is good because fighting former allies has more interest than just random evil people who are evil for evils sake. Ignoring the fact that their antagonists should be developed and have more to them than one evil collective, RWBY missed their opportunity with James. I may not like the idea of him as a villain, but it could’ve been a really good arc regardless of my own personal desires for his character. But the interesting things that come with an ally-turned-villain barely happen at all in RWBY.

You don’t have Ironwood grappling with these moral choices, instead he’s sure of everything and smiling and chuckling, removing the interest that having a torn villain figure would bring.

You don’t have Ironwood being partially right - a trope I really enjoy - which makes for a more sympathetic villain, and therefore one with more interest.

You don’t have Team RWBY, Qrow, Oz, or Winter grappling with the realization that they’re going to have to hurt someone who was a friend, someone who comes from a place they all understand.

You don’t have any denial from some of the characters he was closest to. None of our protagonists just refused to believe it and kept saying there had to be some other reasons, something forcing him to do it.

You don’t have any redemption! And I know that we’re supposed to think that Emerald and Hazel redeemed themselves, but A. They didn’t. And B. There’s just something special about a fallen hero who then redeems themselves.

You had no one trying to talk James down and trying to help him, they all gave up on him quickly, or waited for a while, but then gave up on him. So it feels like none of them were even his friends (for Oz and Qrow) or even cared about him (for everyone else.)

And most importantly, you had no “We did this” or “Are we the cause of this?” From the heroes. Yang and Ren temporarily questioned things, but each were treated as acting out of line and quickly walked back on their statements.

This means there’s no real weight behind Ironwood’s fall. He’s treated just like Watts, just like Cinder. You don’t get the feeling that this was a man they once cared about, with Qrow resolving to kill him with no second thoughts and Ruby coolly denouncing him to the world. The lack of emotion makes Ironwood’s fall even more unbelievable than it already was imo.

[shaymcsudonim]

Malevolency

A rant on psychology and wild speculation on the motives of the Dark Triad.

More under the cut.

(Trigger Warnings for trying to find good qualities of fictional mass-murderers)

The dark triad as Personality Traits, and the Dark Triad’s personality traits.

Part 1: Selfishness, Callousness, Button-Pushing.

I took no psychology classes whatsoever in school, and therefore was completely blindsided when I learned that the phrase ‘Dark Triad’ is a psych term. These three personality traits (self-centeredness, sociopathy, and manipulativeness) are called ‘dark’ because they are thought to be particularly malevolent.

Specifically, as the fandom has already deduced, Black Clover’s Dark Triad has Dante as Narcissism, Xenon as Psycopathy, and Vanica as Machiavellianism.

Like most things in psychology, this strikes me as complete and utter bullshit. Personality traits are just that: traits. A trait is merely a descriptor; it holds no moral value.

Narcissism, for example, means that someone is self-centered. This could mean that someone with this trait is monstrously selfish, since they might only care about their own desires. However, what of someone who cares primarily about their reputation? Or about their own adherence to a moral code? Or an artist who only cares about their art and how it reflects on themselves? Preoccupation with the self doesn’t necessarily equate to positive or negative behavior.

Sociopathy, as the second trait, primarily implies a lack of empathy. But, in all honestly, if someone is only a good person because they can mirror neurons to simulate the feelings of others… then they aren’t really a good person in the first place. Empathy as a morality chain fails when empathy fails, especially when combined with xenophobia. Would sociopathy potentially make it harder to learn helpful social habits? Perhaps. Or, a lack of empathy could lead to a more considered and logical approach in determining what is owed to other people, an approach which would not fail with faltering emotions. After all, Agape, the highest form of love as reckoned by the ancient Greeks, was characterized by the presence of caring and the lack of emotion.

The third trait, Manipulation, is probably the most neutral of the three. After all, being able to read people and predict and/or guide their behavior is a valuable skill for anyone. If a school principal, for example, is skilled at reigning in the behavior of their students, through positive and negative reinforcement, we would call them a ‘Good Leader’ rather than a ‘Manipulator’ but it mostly comes down to the same thing. A con man is a ‘Deceiver.’ A showman is merely ‘working the crowd.’ Social manipulation itself is merely a tool, and can be employed for any ends, moral or immoral.

So, to summarize, the so-called ‘Dark Triad’ of personality traits are not inherently moral or immoral, but rather descriptors of various personality styles found among characters of any given archetype.

Part 2: Dante, Xenon, Vanica.

Okay, so I’ve mentioned this before, but the Dark Triad have not met the expectations that I had for them as villains. Specifically, they show more heroic traits than I would have guessed.

That brief flash that we got of Yuno’s infancy in the Spade Kingdom offered a glimpse at the young Dark Trio. Dante, Vanica, and Xenon were high-ranking soldiers who worked together. They’re wildly unpopular, because of their violent methods. Yuno’s parents and those loyal to them hold the three siblings in contempt.

Honestly, I suspect that this might just be garden path foreshadowing. There is an incredibly strong possibility that the Spade Royals are evil. (They sent the Dark Triad to crush a rebellion. Why was there a rebellion? What policies were they rebelling against?)

Not evil in the sense that the King and Queen are outwardly malicious or unkind to most of their underlings, no. And, of course, they both love Yuno and are doting parents.

However, those traits say jack-shit about the Spade-King and -Queen’s moral character.

The fact that the Zogratis siblings are relatively young, that they work together at the same rank despite being related, doing a job they’re absolutely apathetic about with as much gratuitous violence as possible… to me, that hints at some sort of conscripted service.

Clearly the Spade Kingdom is aware of demons, as it mentions that two of the demons from the current arc used to be humans from the Spade kingdom. I would consider it a strong possibility that Nacht learned the Devil Binding ritual in the Spade Kingdom, or at least that the ritual itself is a Spade Kingdom technique.

I bring this up to say this: there is a strong possibility that the Zogratis Siblings were gang-pressed into becoming devil hosts for the benefit of their kingdom, with the threat of their siblings being killed if any one of them rebelled.  

Because, while they certainly seem to have been twisted by their life experiences, the Zogratis siblings show far more compassion than I anticipated, towards each other, towards their enemies, and towards their devils.

When they form their plans to take over the continent, the siblings are able to do so without egos clashing or jealousy over power differentials among themselves (when Vanica, at least, could draw our fewer percentage points of Megicula’s power than Dante could of Lucifero’s). When Xenon saved Dante from Yami, he cradled him in a horrifying bone cage, instead of carrying him by impaling his limbs as he did to Yami and Vangeance. It’s subtle, but I don’t get that undercurrent of hostility towards each other that I expected to see before the time-skip.

When talking to their enemies, Vanica remains relatively hostile, but Dante and Xenon almost seem sympathetic, at times. Dante tells Asta that they should be able to understand each other because they’re both devil hosts, Xenon tells Yuno that he’s not weak, he’s just facing an overwhelmingly strong opponent.

In terms of their devils, we haven’t seen much of how Xenon operates, but Dante and Vanica seem much more cooperative and friendly than I ever would have guessed. For example, Vanica said that she cursed Loropechika ‘for Megicula,’ not in exchange for anything, or under threat, but presumably simply because the demon asked. Not only that, but Vanica doesn’t seem distressed in the least when Megicula possesses her. The two of them even have a friendly conversation, where Vanica explains her desire to change plans, Megicula asks clarifying questions, an accord is reached, and Megicula even throws out a parting compliment. The two of them are clearly drift-compatible, despite their obvious personality differences. In that same vein, Lucifero and Dante speak in a cordial, straightforward manner, though we only see a single conversation between them. (There is also the fact that Lucifero didn’t seek out a different host after Dante was defeated).

And so, this brings to my mind my current theory for why the Zogratis Siblings went berserk and massacred the spade royals and most of the palace guard:

The Dark Triad were considered sacrificial soldiers for the sake of the Spade Kingdom’s prosperity. Their colleagues and superiors viewed them as dead soldiers walking, and treated them with all the courtesy they were thought to deserve (ie none). The Zogratis siblings were isolated and kept under rigid control, to keep them in line.

However, the High Ranked Devils that they hosted reached out to them in genuine partnership, which possibly even turned into friendship.

Various members of the Dark Triad have stated that they’re enacting their plan because they want to fight whatever humans survive in a post-apocalyptic demon world, but I’d bet that a large part of their motives also involve freeing their friends from the afterworld.

Are the Zogratis siblings evil? Yes, I’d say so. After all, good qualities don’t erase their crimes: Dante slaughtered his liege Lord and most of his colleagues, Xenon massacred half the Golden Dawn, and Vanica cursed who knows how many people at Megicula’s behest.

But I expected the Dark Triad to be very different people than they are. I thought that they’d be siblings in name only, constantly fighting and jockeying for power, looking to usurp each other or push each other down.

Instead, they seem to care for each other.

I expected the Dark Triad to be constantly at odds with their demons, contracts held together by duct tape and spite, each only biding their time before stabbing each other in the back.

Instead, they seem to understand the value of teamwork.

And, it’s just, if this is what they look like, when they’ve fallen so far as to work for the virtual extinction of their own species. What were they like before the Spade Kingdom broke them?

I could very well be wrong, but we’ve gotten so little from the Dark Triad’s perspective that something horrific is almost certainly waiting in the wings. 

Especially after Nacht said he didn’t care what their motives were. Nacht hates redemption arcs, and thinks anyone who has ever made a mistake deserves the harshest punishment possible. He seems to think that most of the Black Bulls are irredeemable, describing them in harsh, unforgiving terms, when we know them to be good people. 

And the Dark Triad, while they most certainly aren’t good people... individuals like them don’t usually develop into misanthropic extremists in a vacuum. Something drove them to make the choices they did, and I’d bet that a large part of it had to do with Spade Kingdom Society as it functioned under the Royals. 

We’ll see how the rest of the arc pans out, I guess.

[wandaposting]

wandavision: the criticisms post

tl;dr: i liked the show, but there were aspects that were annoying and dumbfounding to me and here’s the post that covers That ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

this was gonna be my comprehensive wandavision review post that had both cons and pros, but the cons kind of ran away from me lsdfjs SO YOU’RE GETTING THIS FIRST. if you find my views diverging from yours in either direction, you’re valid, please don’t shiv me. this is just how i Feel in a somewhat shitposty (as per usual) format. 😔

the big con list:

the way wanda’s actual villainy gets brushed away by the narrative: or specifically the way wanda strolls past the people she mentally tortured and traumatized for a week to apologize to monica, who then goes “gg girl i would’ve done the same :)” and then wanda leaves that entire mess—that she caused—behind her and bails lol. that scene is a microcosm of my problems with this show’s attempt at portraying what the creators have described as her ““complexity””. they want us to feel sorry for her, but not in the way that we can sympathize with walter white while still acknowledging he’s broken bad. rather, this show seemed to want to paint her as more of a victim than the people she victimized. they still want her to come out looking heroic and triumphant and rewarded from her journey with new powers, a new superhero outfit, a new superhero moniker. and that falls flat when you realize she’s basically been a self-absorbed asshole throughout the course of this show. she was confronted no less than four times, and told point blank that a few thousand people were suffering under her control. that is not something we can excuse with depression and denial. that means that at multiple times she is making at least the subconscious choice that her happiness matters more than the wellbeing of her meat puppets, which includes children, across the span of a week. i don’t see monica rambeau “doing the same thing.” the fact that they made her say it while the townspeople glared on in miserable silence just rubbed me the wrong way. if they really wanted to make her responsible for westview, while also wanting her to come out looking remotely good, they needed to invest in a much more substantial redemption arc for her than “i didn’t mean to, gonna go self-exile now.” or even holding everything else constant, they could’ve delivered a more nuanced take where westview was in dire straits before her arrival. the westview she initially drove through already looked economically depressed, so i don’t know why they didn’t just follow through with this. but they could’ve made it so that by granting herself happiness and prosperity, she could’ve spread that genuinely throughout the citizens. instead of hex vision waking norm up in horror, you could’ve had him begging to be put back under. that way, her decision to accept and face reality head on could also be reflected by the people of westview. where everyone, perhaps aided through wanda’s mind link, decides they shouldn’t let fantasy consume themselves at the expense of improving their actual reality. there’s still moral ambiguity, there’s still mistakes being made, we can still side-eye wanda for doing the equivalent of drugging people, but at least these npc’s would've gained something from wanda blundering into their lives. but no she made 3 thousand people suffer through the literal plot of Get Out, giving them life-long ptsd and trauma with nothing good, and i think that’s bad. if she has more haters after this series, i can’t even blame them. but apparently she has a shit-ton more fans after this series, so... OH WELL, IT IS WHAT IT IS sdkfjkls

TYLER: which brings me to the thought that, if this show had hayward acting like a three dimensional human person with the bare minimum intellect required to run SWORD ... instead of an incompetent jackass scooby doo villain ... a lot of us would be spamming #HaywardWasRight. tyler hayward might legitimately be the worst villain mcu has ever produced, like edging past malekith. is he supposed to be an analogue to real world tr*mp appointed deputies? unlike agatha, he’s not even entertaining to watch. he’s the ted cruz of the mcu, which is bizarre when he was introduced as the strict but not particularly vexing or unreasonable successor to maria rambeau in episode 4. it ended up feeling extremely contrived how the show attempted to aggressively signal us with “hayward bad” and “wanda good, actually” through the lens of monica, darcy, and jimmy. it’s like they had to make hayward come across as Extremely Dumb in order to make wanda come across as the more sympathetic party, when she was the one doing [gestures vaguely at wall of text above].

and SPEAKING of agatha: she also ended up being the exact kind of simplified reductive cackling “gimme ur powers wanda” evil super witch that i didn’t want her to be. that’s all.

the theorybaiting: i didn’t care about the lack of mutants/doctor strange cameo (lol what happened, charles murphy)/multiverse/blue marvel/reed richards/mephisto/nightmare/chthon (altho we did get the darkhold wink wonk) so much that it ruined my experience. ralph bohner was disappointing, but i got over it. my issue here is more that they deliberately baited a more interesting story than they delivered, and i think they shot themselves in the foot with that. the first 7, even 8 episodes had set up this atmosphere of mystery and intrigue, only for them to wrap up all these questions with the most boring, uninspired answers possible. question: what does hayward want and what is he up to? answer: hayward is simply a stupid dingus. question: who is agatha harkness and what is she up to? answer: an evil witch who just wants to steal yo powers. question: who is fietro? answer: lol boner. question: was it wanda all along? answer: yes, but no it was actually agatha, but actually yes, but she didn’t mean to and is kind of sorry and now she’s gonna fly away so have fun with your ptsd, westview. ????????? yeah they could have ... done some of that better.

the pacing in the end: i remember when they said it was gonna be “around 6 hours,” and we got 4 and a half hours of actual content instead... they should have given us that extra 1 and a half hour to flesh out the finale. the sitcom portion was fun, it feels like the sitcom portion was prioritized in the writing room, and that the overarching narrative beyond the sitcom suffered to accommodate it. when it came time to break away from the format, they stumbled. so in the beginning, there were segments that felt authentic to the era but were fairly critiqued as “dragging on” ... and in the final episode, we had... the final episode. monica and wanda’s ending conversation felt unsatisfying, both wanda’s apology and monica’s acceptance of it rang particularly hollow [also gestures vaguely to wall of text above]. the appearance of white vision should have had much more of an impact on ... everyone, especially wanda. except the dude just dips and no one mentions him ever again. i feel like hex vision being revealed as the the vision that had always been ~part of her should have also had more ... fleshing out. darcy and jimmy basically ended up having no arcs in this show. they served as stand-ins for the audience, and because they were written to feel sorry for wanda (in a situation where she was absolutely deserving of more scrutiny), the audience too gets manipulated toward doing so.

there’s probably more to add but i’m running out of brain juice BUT THOSE WERE THE BIG ONES STORY-WISE

[problemswithbooks]

The hypocrisy of some villain stans on here. If endeavour cannot atone for abuse, how can a villain atone for murder and other crimes? It makes me almost wish he has a tragic backstory so that they can be quiet. I don’t want that tho I want endeavour to be something like bakugou backstory where it’s society and his own ego.

I mean, I think hypocrisy is kind of the bnha fandom’s middle name. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fandom with so many opinions that fully contradict each other when looked at side by side. 

That said, everyone has different life experiences that paint how they interact and interpret the media they consume. People are free to hate Enji’s redemption but root for the villains if they want. Sometimes things characters do hit to close to home and people just can’t get behind the author’s writing when it comes to them. I just wish people would realize that instead of acting like it’s a moral failing to like certain characters. 

Everyone talks about the so called “Moral Event Horizon” or the point where a character can no longer be redeemed, but that line is not the same for every reader, and can very from story to story based on the framing the author chooses to give. Enji abusing his family is a step to far for some people, while Shigaraki and the LoV’s global destruction and high kill counts might be to much for others.

Tragic backstories don’t work for everyone when it comes to making a character sympathetic and I’d say that’s just as true for LoV fans. I’ve seen multiple say that if Enji was given a sad backstory it wouldn’t change anything because he’s made his choices. They say the same about Hawks, even though he canonically has one of the worst backstories in the story, only losing out to Shigaraki. Yet, their number one defense for the LoV is their tragic pasts that forced them into certain roles (even though that really only works for Shigaraki). 

It wouldn’t matter if it turned out Enji was abused by his family just as much as he abused his, because at the end of the day they just don’t like his character. He did the most evil things according to them and he needs to be punished, generally in the same ways they proclaim are inhumane and cruel when people suggest them for the LoV (like prison or losing all relationships and being forever shunned by everyone). 

Hypocrisy happens because everyone has built in bias from their lived experiences. You can believe so strongly that the bad victim, good victim mentality is wrong; that abuse victim who lash out in less then good ways should still be heard and cared about, but really it just depends on whether or not they lash out in a way you find acceptable. Hawks was abused and ended up joining a corrupt system that LoV fans hate, so he gets little sympathy from them. His abuse and grooming put him on a side they hate so, when it comes to Hawks he needs to be punished.

When Dabi’s abuse leads him to kill thirty people single handedly and set his little brother on fire, he gets a pass because he was abused and he’s just processing it in an unhealthy way. It becomes Shoto’s job to save him and for everyone to forgive him because he was neglected as a child. Punishment would be wrong in Dabi’s case.  

And again, that’s their right to believe that if they want. They have obligation to like Hawks, Enji or any other character. My issue with this mentality is that it often manifests as people insinuating or out right insisting that the characters people like reflect their morals. That somehow liking the LoV or wanting them saved makes you a better person, while liking the Heroes means you’re terrible and must love RL cops (or at least that your making content of that character promotes bad things like glorifying abuse). Yet will be offended or laugh when that thinking is turned back at them--that it’s stupid to assume they support murder because they like a fictional bad guy.

I think it comes down to people not being able to realize that their hate boner for a character might have an effect on how they talk about them, to the point where they openly contradict their own past words and treat them way differently then the characters they like. Even when it comes to things that they tout as universal ideals, like how punitive punishments are bad and redemption is always possible.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

I personally think Marlon is more interesting of a villain than both Lily and Minerva

Hmmmmm.... I both agree and disagree with you, mostly because I don’t personally consider Marlon to be a “villain,” more so an antagonistic character.... which might sound like the same thing, but for me, the difference is Marlon could’ve been redeemed, but Lilly and Minerva were too far gone for that... y’know? 

So I agree that Marlon’s role was more interesting than "dingus lady is evil” and “brainwashed beyond repair” because he was presented as someone we could trust who ultimately betrayed us, but in the end showed genuine remorse for his actions before his death. Lotta complex layers to Marlon, which I covered in my character study of him. 

But then fucking Lilly.... I don’t know what happened to Lilly. I don’t understand what they were trying to do with her. Like.... okay, here’s Lilly, you remember her? Well, she’s leading the delta, the central villains of the story. She’s trying to manipulate you into joining her fight because she believes she’s on the “right” side.... but then she attacks the school and kills Mitch. 

Which yeah, I’ve talked at length about why Mitch’s dead is shitty in its execution... but did ya see Lilly after she killed him? She actually looked a little shocked, maybe a tiny bit remorseful? before getting angry and yelling for them to take and kill whoever they have to.... and then the damn scene where she has Clementine at gunpoint. It was like they were trying to set her up to be sympathetic like she wasn’t actually this evil lady who wanted to kidnap and kill kids, but was desperate because her home was being threatened and this was all she could do to save them....

....and then they threw that away in ep3 by making her completely unredeemable. Sorry, but if you’re someone who can just cut out someone’s tongue for talking, then you’re too far gone and I have nothing for you. She’s just a mustache-twirling villain now who gets off on the sound of her own voice, praises her asshole father, and seems to take joy in forcing Minerva to relive her trauma by telling the story of the twins. 

Oh, and she wants to cut off Louis/Violet’s finger, spits on James and calls him “it,” she’s two seconds away from murdering Tenn, and then she nearly kills Clementine, like..... then they want you to feel bad for her when she’s begging for her life? Sorry, but no. Most people aren’t considering Lilly in that choice of whether or not to to kill her, they’re thinking about AJ, and the people who DO consider her, want her fucking dead.

AND if you do spare her, she murders James with the most punchable smug face. 

Then they try to get you to see things her way in ep4? she tries to act like “let bygones be bygones, Clem!” like...?? You’re trying to make her complex but all you did was make her inconsistent because you didn’t know what you wanted her to be.... and that kinda made her annoying and unthreatening, sorry. 

Oh, and then we got Minerva. Been having some discussions about her recently, both on here and in the discord, and why everyone loves her so much and why they felt she should’ve had a kinda redemption arc and all this. I’ve heard the defense side.... which I don’t necessarily disagree with? but like.... I guess unpopular opinion time. I’ve come to my own conclusion about Minerva and her role in the canon story. This is what I got- it was pretty clear from the moment we meet her that she was never gonna get that. 

She was never plopped in to be a story of redemption and “hey, so she’s a little brainwashed? we can totally fix that! Tenn, come over here and snap her outta it!” like no.... she’s too far gone from the beginning. She’s given up and accepted the delta as her people. She’s a story of tragedy, of what would happen to everyone else if the delta wins. Nothin’ in the text promises that we’ll get to sway her to our side. 

Hell, Clementine can be like, “Not too late to come home” and Minerva just... nope, delta’s her home now. Like, I’m not saying she doesn’t care about Tenn and the others, because she clearly does.... but she just wanted them all to give up and come to the delta. Don’t fight, just surrender... and that makes sense given what these people have done to her. 

Then she does a fake-out where she betrays on the boat, and that solidifies that she’s never going to help us. Or, well okay, she believes she’s helping us by forcing us to get caught and telling everyone to just do what they say, or else. 

And then ep4 she’s just.... crazy now, I guess? She lost everything, she gets bit, and loses her fucking mind. She follows us to the bridge so that she can murder her own brother. 

She was always gonna be a tragedy. There was never going to be a happy ending for her, and I can see why that would piss the Minnie crowd off. They heard all about her from ep1&2, and then they showed two seconds of her in the trailer for ep3 and they clung onto her... but then all this happened. I get it, I get why there are a lot of Minnie lives/redeemed Minnie au’s. 

But personally, within the context of the canon, I think she works better as a tragedy than someone redeemed and “fixed.” I know that steps on some toes, but that’s how I feel. Doesn’t mean I think the au’s are bad-- in fact, I encourage you to create as many au’s where Minerva gets the treatment you believe she deserves it if makes you happy. 

Would I say Marlon is a better antagonist though...? Hmmm, I dunno. I like Marlon more than I like Minerva, but they’re both tragic in their own ways and serve the story just fine. They’re both better than Lilly, for sure. I think I agree that Marlon’s the most interesting of the three because there were hints that there was room for better change in his character. But, AJ took away, and now we’ll never know. Marlon’s death was necessary for the story to progress, though, sooo....hmm. 

I dunno, it’s an interesting discussion though, anon. 

[helbertinelli]

I wanted to see the new Jedi Order AND the New Republic in the sequels. But no, instead we got A New Hope 2.0, Luke 2.0, and Darth Vader 2.0. This is so disappointing.

Yeah, the sequels were disappointing. There were so many better ways to continue the story of SW (although personally I think they shouldn’t have continued it), but they chose to go about it in the worst way possible. They had no idea why SW was loved and they focused on the absolute worst things and then switched to new things when the first thing didn’t work rather than to try to fix the thing that didn’t work.

Like they were for sure that people loved SW for Vader so they gave us a guy who wore a costume that looked similar to Vader’s, but the character himself had no personality, he had some lame motivation to join the dark side, and he wanted nothing more than to stay evil. People didn’t like Kylo and then they were like okay, well Palpatine was in all 6 films, they have to like him. And then they brought back Palaptine.

But they missed the fact that the people loved Star Wars for the story. That the characters in SW were just characters without the story to tie them all in.

Everyone loved Luke saving Vader and Vader wanting to be redeemed. The sequels tried that story with Rey and Kylo, but 1. There was no reason for Rey to want to save Kylo. He wasn’t her father, he had no relation to her other than the fact that he killed Han in front of her and he tortured her and her friends. 2. Kylo didn’t want redemption. Every time he was offered the chance to do something good he turned it down and it was like 2 or 3 times that this happened. Vader didn’t. Yes, he didn’t accept Luke’s help at first, but he did in the end. And after Palpatine died, Vader wasn’t like “Okay, I’m taking his place now. Join me or you’re nothing to me“ to Luke. Vader did want to rule the galaxy with Luke right after he found out he has a son, but he gave up on that and realized that he needs to come back to Luke rather than to have Luke joining him. He realized he needs to make the right decision because his son is important to him and he can’t lose his son. Rey wasn’t important for Kylo. She was literally no one to him. They had no relationship at all, except what Kylo said: “My grandfather worked for your grandfather so we’re a dyad” (I legit had to pause the movie because I couldn’t stop laughing... they even ripped off Space Balls omg). Maybe the sequels would have been better if the two were related (either siblings or cousins). But they were just strangers and Rey just decided one day that she wants to save Kylo for some reason and then she decided that she’ll go back to trying to kill him and they kinda switch back and forth between that and it’s just a complete mess and doesn’t even come close to the story of Luke redeeming Vader that they were trying to rip-off from the OT.

People loved Vader being mysterious and intimidating and they loved the idea of this powerful Sith lord wearing a mask (like the Sith of the Old Republic did). And the sequels tried to copy that aesthetic, but then they reveal Kylo’s face right away and he’s not intimidating at all and the whole mystery around his identity behind the mask goes away too. And his entire thing is to be whiny and throw a tantrum when things don’t go his way and destroy everything around him. I guess they were trying to copy Vader choking people with that, but the scary thing about Vader was that he would choke people but he’d put no energy into it and he’d stay calm and it was kinda unnerving how calm he was when he was choking the life out of someone. This is why Vader was intimidating and menacing. He didn’t lash out like a spoiled child and destroy his toys. He was in control even when he wasn’t and he was calm and made it seem like taking someone’s life was no issue to him.

Anakin’s backstory is loved by people. The way someone who was a Jedi and good became a Sith and took down the entire Jedi order and basically destroyed everything his world was about in the process was extremely complex and well-written and Anakin is somewhat of a sympathetic character because a lot of people can see that he made the wrong choices for all the right reasons (he just wanted to save his wife and their unborn child... children as we later find out). Kylo’s turn to the dark side is just he was contacted by Snoke, who whispered bad things to him about Luke, and for some reason Luke decided that the only way to deal with this is to for some reason kill Kylo in his sleep??? (yeah I also don’t understand why the guy who spent 3 movies trying to redeem Vader and refused to fight Vader and was about to let himself get killed by the Emperor because he was convinced his Sith lord father was actually good and would save him, is now like “You know, my nephew has to die. He can’t be redeemed.”). And then Kylo’s immediate reaction to this was to kill everyone else in Luke’s temple because I guess they also needed to rip-off Order 66 (out of all things that happened). Kylo isn’t sympathetic in this way because 1. He had a loving family and a good support system with Han and Leia and even Luke to some extent. He wasn’t like Anakin who never had anyone to talk to and who had to keep his life a secret from the Jedi and who grew up a slave and who was desperate to save the only family he had left. Kylo’s life was good and they said it was good in the sequels too. 2. He got threatened by Luke and his very next choice is to go kill a bunch of innocent people. He never showed any ounce of remorse for his actions. At least with Anakin, we see that he’s torn apart when he’s pledging himself to Palpatine and he’s basically hurt and haunted by his actions starting from then on. Kylo just killed a bunch of people and he’s going around like “yep, just another Tuesday...“

And aside from just doing a bad rip-off of a story that was already presented in the same universe, they also messed up with other characters that were beloved.

Luke, who never gave up on his father and who even abandoned his training (I think) to go save his family, is now the guy who wanted to kill his nephew at the first sign of the dark side and then his solution was to leave his family behind and never see them again.

Han is a deadbeat dad who left his wife when things got hard and went away on a road trip with Chewie to avoid any responsibility.

Leia is always sad and she desperately wants to forgive Kylo (they basically gave her Padme’s personality for some reason, when she’s more like Anakin). Like I can see Han forgiving Kylo (because he does have a big heart despite his rugged exterior), but giving what we know about Leia’s character, she wouldn’t forgive Kylo. It took Leia a long time to come to terms with forgiving Anakin and she wouldn’t even talk to his Force Ghost when he came to apologize, even though she knew he’d never see him again. There’s no way that she sees Kylo basically turning into Vader 2.0 and she’s like “there’s still good in him.“ Like he destroyed an entire system of planets, that had to bring back some painful memories for Leia. She actually had to watch Alderaan be destroyed. And he killed Han. I know their relationship was ruined in TFA, but TFA also made it clear that Leia and Han were still in love. There’s no way she would have forgiven Kylo or thought he was still good after he killed his dad and her husband. And he tried to kill her too if I remember correctly. He fired on her ship, which made her float out into space. Leia isn’t like Luke or Padme. It would be difficult for her to forgive Kylo for basically turning into her worst nightmare and taking her family away from her and killing so many other people too.

And then they bring back Palpatine too because I’m guessing their thought process was “well he was in all 6 movies that people loved, we do need a good villain.“ And it made no sense. Palpatine died like twice in ROTJ. He got destroyed by the reactor that Vader threw him in and then the entire Death Star exploded into tiny particles. There was no way for the Death Star to be crash landed on Exegol since it basically blew up in all directions in the middle of nowhere in space. Bringing him back basically invalidated all of Anakin’s story because him dying to bring balance to the Force was for nothing. He didn’t balance anything, Palpatine was never defeated. They really didn’t need Palpatine to be the villain of TROS. You could replace him with any other random villain and nothing changes. They only brought him back to make a reference to the old movies and have people watch their movie for nostalgia. But I honestly don’t know who was nostalgic for Sheev.

Anyway, it’s embarrassing that they had a good story that they tried to rip-off and they still managed to fuck it up. Like how hard it is to rip-off Star Wars and still have a good story? Didn’t Disney actually accomplish it before in a Phineas and Ferb special? I don’t know why they couldn’t do it this time around too.

But for real, they should have showed the New Jedi Order and the New Republic and show us how Luke and Leia were changing the world for the better and how they were fighting to keep the world a better place rather than to give us a watered down version of the First Galatic Empire vs Rebels but with worse characters and a worse story this time around.

[grayintogreen]

In all my Lucien chatter, I feel like I have to answer a certain question:

Do I Find Lucien A Sympathetic Character?

Short Answer: No.

Mid-Length Answer: No, but he’s a compelling, tragic one, and those two things are VERY different. You can be a tragic character and a compelling one without being sympathetic.

Long answer: Hoo boy.

Here’s the thing. Everyone has a choice to not be a dick. If the world is a dick to you, you don’t have to be a dick back to it. If you get broken and pushed around and treated like shit and every attempt to reclaim agency just leads you into YET ANOTHER THING that makes people kick and spit at you, you can continue to yeet yourself at the world and overcome it. You do not have to suck the first eldritch monstrosity that offers you powers’ dick and become a massive toolbox to do it. Doing that makes you a bad person. It does not make you sympathetic. It makes you a person who makes bad choices when they could have definitely made other ones. It makes your circumstances deeply tragic. 

That being said, I have made this joke once before and I will make it again- Molly is kind of like Lucien’s Tyler Durden. He is free in all of the ways that Lucien is not. Free of the Somnovem, free of his past, free of the anger that’s colored his attitude for years, free of literally EVERYTHING but the thrill of just doing what you please. Molly once said “joy can fill an awful lot of a person’s life.” Well, so can hate. That’s what makes Lucien genuinely tragic (and viscerally human)- he doesn’t have to be sympathetic. I do not feel the least bit bad for his schmuck ass, but I do feel like he’s a tragic villain, who clearly can only be truly happy and at peace with himself and the world when he has nothing else in his head. Molly and Lucien are the same person and I stand by this, but Molly is a fresh start and a clean slate that Lucien is too much of a hopped up arrogant pissy bitch with a god complex to ever consider on his own. He doesn’t think he should give the world a pass on what it did to him by taking a different path, and he won’t. Not unless he has some kind of epiphany about what it was like to be Molly and how liberating and freeing that is, but since the Nonagon is more present within Lucien than Molly, that won’t happen.

That’s the thing. Lucien is the middle ground between “Molly” and “Nonagon.” Molly is the potential to make better choices and the Nonagon is the guy going BURN THE ENTIRE HOUSE DOWN WHOO LET’S GET WEIRD (like a shoulder angel/devil combo except the angel is doing heroin and planning bacchanals), and guess who is making all the calls right now? Hint: it’s the crazy one. Part of me is still holding out for the parts of him that are Molly to wrest back control, but I’m also pretty sure Lucien is gonna eat the Star Razer before that becomes even remotely likely, and you know what? That’s fair. I respect that.

But on the off chance that Lucien is allowed the opportunity to dial it back and we get to see what he’s like without the Nonagon bullshit (probably still a dick, but so was Molly more than half the time, if not a mostly harmless one), he’s still not going to be a sympathetic character to me. I don’t find Essek to be a sympathetic character either (an adorable, affection-starved idiot, yes, but he’s got his poor little rich boy schtick going on and that’s a whole other thing), but I love him!! You don’t have to be sympathetic to be a good, compelling character and worth a redemption arc. You just have to have the capacity to change and the desire to do it. 

But as of right now, Lucien/Nonagon just wants to see the world get rekt, so he’s a bastard man and I am only sad that he’s too much of an idiot to realize that he definitely had options and that’s one of the myriad reasons I love him. He’s garbage. It’s delightful. Compelling characters that are just awful and have reasons to be awful (even if it doesn’t justify being awful, because NOTHING justifies being awful) are fun to me, because even if you think they’re actual children, you can still see how they got there. In many ways, that makes the monsters scarier- you can see how easily you can become them.

And on the converse, it makes the monsters less scary because you can see how easy it is to turn them to your side with the right attitude (see: Essek). The Mighty Nein (or at least Jester) kinda tried to do that for Lucien? But he rejected it and doubled down on his bullshit, which... I mean fair. I don’t think they gave him the fair shake they gave Essek, but Lucien sure as FUCK didn’t deserve it, and I don’t feel bad for him about that either.

Anyway. Tl;dr I love Lucien to itty bitty pieces. He’s my favorite NPC (followed closely by Essek and Artagan, who are also flash bastards). But he is a shitheel bastard and deserves whatever is coming to him, and if he does get a redemption arc, it’ll only be because the Molly side of him got admin control, which, again, PROBABLY NOT GONNA HAPPEN. I’ve made my peace with that. 

[wizardysseus]

i was thinking about once upon a time (abc) in bed this morning so i decided to write this list

subject to change, since awhile ago i was in the middle of season 6 when they took it off netflix and i never quite got around to picking it back up. i’m gonna finish if it kills me i promise

top 5 things about once upon a time

5. anna frozen

when ouat introduced frozen characters, most fans decided the show had jumped the shark. they were not wrong. however, it was this very thing that allowed the show to be fun again! after an excruciatingly bad season 3 (we will get to that), bringing on anna and elsa literally transported directly from their own unaltered story in cheap ass versions of their unaltered movie costumes allowed the show to let loose and do... basically whatever it wanted. this became the hallmark of the show for those who stuck with it: absolutely not making sense at all, but being fun about it. post-season-three ouat becomes a totally different soap opera from season one, but by god you are never bored.*

personally, the flashback episode where anna annoys rumpelstiltskin and gets the better of him and he’s so fucking mad about it is like top 10 episodes**

4. 2x16 “the miller’s daughter”

this episode is just another personal favorite. it exemplifies what this show was really good at when it was good, and also where everything went wrong. i think cora is a great example of a good ouat villain, i think the twist on the rumpelstiltskin story is great, i think the dramatic beats really work.

...and in typical ouat fashion, cora immediately dies and two more villains we don’t care about at all are introduced. (sonequa forgive me you know i’m in love with you but tamara was nothing. it’s not your fault.) yes we get that great scene of snow aggressively doing archery practice while listening to “bad reputation” but was it worth killing off a compelling villain just as you’d dug into her story?

3. the commitment to regina’s redemption

and lana parrilla in general. i mean i’m gay and she’s hot but the worse the show got, the more acting lana gave it. and this is just speculation, but i think lana is more comfortable with drama than with camp? because regina becomes a much more interesting character as someone conflicted and on the path to redemption than as a villain. and by god, they were gonna redeem regina.

if only she had been gay we really could have had it all.

2. rumpelstiltskin

the sweet spot with rumpelstiltskin for me was seasons one and two when he was unabashedly bastard, there was an attempt to make him sympathetic but nobody except belle actually liked him, you weren’t quite sure how much he knew, he was pulling all the strings, and he was just really fucking weird. it will surprise no one who follows this blog to hear that that is my type of wizard.

1. season one

it’s a good season. it’s a good season. there are some bad things about it, but it was extremely watchable. it was doing fairy tales with occasional disney nods in a (mostly) cohesive fashion. the lore and the magic hadn’t sprawled out of control yet. it had the strongest relationship, imo, between emma and henry, and emma and snow. as for iconic episodes, most of the greats are here, plus sebastian stan as the mad hatter and giancarlo esposito as a series regular. the crowning moment for me is the scene at the end of skin deep, when regina confronts gold in the town jail and he reveals that he remembers his real name (after beating the shit out of belle’s dad with his cane obviously). god. that is some good television.

worst 5 things about once upon a time

5. the adoption politics but everyone knows this one.

4. WASTING the talent

you had the love of my life sonequa martin-green and gave her nothing. you somehow scored oded fehr as jafar and gave him nothing. you had giancarlo esposito and regina literally forgot he existed. i will kill you

3. rumpelstiltskin.

it’s no secret that robert carlyle was acting circles around most of the cast; my opinion is that the showrunners felt that if they committed to either his redemption or his villainy, they would never find someone else with the talent to fill his shoes as bastard wizard. so they flip-flopped on him every half-season, which ruins his story longterm, slowly kills the light in robert’s eyes, and gets reallllllly old. it’s also no secret that my favorite rumpelstiltskin is bastard wizard, but they screwed over belle BIG time in the process and for that i will never forgive them.

also like. the rumpelstiltskin fairy tale is antisemitic to begin with and they did not minimize that by comparing him to a lizard and naming his storybrooke counterpart mr gold. they just. did that.

2. THE FUCKING NEVERLAND ARC GOD IN CHRIIIIIIIIIIIST THAT HALF-SEASON IS EXCRUCIATING

1. captain hook

*it’s my opinion that if you are bored, you’re watching a hook-centric episode. every time i dropped the show and forgot about it for months at a time, it was because i had been in the middle of an episode about hook and just could not get through it. how do i describe all the things i don’t like about what killian hook jones did to the show? with subpoints!

1a. the episode where gold gives him back his hand and he never changes.

**this is actually the same episode i mentioned about anna and, like i said, it’s one of my favorites and not at all boring. look, i’m not pretending this list isn’t subjective as hell.

remember when hook blackmailed mr gold into magically reattaching his hand, which gold has been keeping in a jar, because hook has a date with emma and wants it to go well? but also, gold tells him that if he reattaches his hand with dark magic, it will turn him evil? and then hook spends the episode doing evil things, only for mr gold to tell him “i was just messing with you! the hand was not evil, you gave yourself permission to be evil ;)”

yeah, that’s basically hook’s mo.

1b. episode where emma tells him his brother is lying to him and he learns the exact wrong lesson from this and never changes.

so emma goes to the underworld to get hook back after he dies (while being evil and doing villainous things). they find his brother down there, too, and emma senses that he has a dark secret (because he does) and is lying to them (because he is). but hook always idolized his older brother, so he won't believe her. when emma confronts the brother directly, hook interrupts to rant to her about how he knows what this is ~really all about.

actual dialogue:

HOOK: i don't need proof to know what's really going on here. emma, when are you gonna admit that this isn't really about my brother? EMMA: what else would you think it was about? HOOK: us. you think if you can prove that liam is a villain, then i’ll somehow feel like i was less of one.

who... would EVER come to that conclusion. and why is the lesson he learns at the end “perhaps i do deserve saving after all” (another direct quote), and not “NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU, BECAUSE EMMA WAS LITERALLY RIGHT ABOUT YOUR BROTHER LYING TO EVERYONE”????

1c. the emma dark one arc, where hook never changes.

this would be the arc that leads up to the above underworld arc, and it is deeply dumb, entertaining, and hard to explain. suffice it to say, during this whole arc, killian (along with emma) has all the powers and ~~~Darkness~~~ of the dark one (formerly rumpelstiltskin). unlike emma, he is not aware of this for most of the season. the moment he finally finds out, he turns on emma and goes through with all the revenge plans he’s apparently been holding onto since season two.

it’s supposed to be sympathetic, because emma made this choice for him to be a dark one, which is clearly awful, when he didn’t want it. so i get that. but on the other hand, it is..... boring. because (a) it's nothing we haven't seen him try to do and fail at before, his motivations really aren't that complex. and more importantly, (b) he was the dark one the whole time! the only thing that changed, that made him act evil, was finding out about it. at that point, it's not the ~~~Darkness~~~ making you do evil things. it’s just you. because you’re a dick.

how is this arc resolved? well, he dies. after the underworld arc (which i very much enjoyed tbf), a sizable part of robin hood’s death episode is devoted to people telling emma to slow down and grieve for killian, since at least two arcs have revolved around her inability to let hook go when he is literally dying or dead. (it’s been said a million times but being his girlfriend really sucked the personality out of emma and i miss her.) and in the end he just... comes back anyway. no explanation given; he says it must be a reward from zeus for killing hades... while he and emma make out literally in front of the coffin of robin hood... who actually died fighting hades. killian died half a season before. while he was evil. and emma reverts to tearful girlfriend.

it’s insulting. it’s grating. and it is a Killian Hook Jones Guarantee that his episodes will involve some measure of this.

like, is it more or less the same shtick that the writers kept giving rumpelstiltskin, too? backsliding and screwing over his love interest who gets less and less say in the matter? yes. definitely. the crucial difference is that i, personally, love rumpelstiltskin, while i find hook boring and not self-aware. but clearly i have had a lot of fun complaining about him! again, this is not an objective list.

conclusions

this show ran for 7 years. it got cancelled not because it deserved to, but because no one liked the soft reboot. it was on until 2018.