#so i find no point in investing in parallels tbh

[michi-chelle]

to play or not to play slow damage

[esther-dot]

Do you have any suggestions/meta recommendations for introducing someone to jonsa? My sister was the one one who got me into asoiaf a decade+ ago & while my journey has led me to jonsa, the idea of a jon + sansa romance was completely foreign to her when I finally brought it up after the end of season 8. She’s an absolute blank slate & I want to give her everything but I have no idea where to start!! I bow to your wisdom 🙏🏼

Our minds work in such unique ways, it’s hard to say what would be the most compelling bit of evidence for a specific person? We recently had a fandom poll and everyone is pretty enamored with Jon beheading Slynt, which happens to be my favorite bit of evidence because it involves minimal interpretation, no reading of the author’s mind, a simple wish for a hero and Jon fulfilling the wish. It’s a unique connection between Jon and Sansa.

What makes it feel romantic is that we then have Sansa say “no one will ever marry me for love” and if the pattern holds of her despairing only for Martin to be showing the audience that she needn’t despair (no heroes -> Jon decapitates Slynt, no true knights -> Brienne exists, no one will marry her for love -> ???), she will marry someone who isn’t after her claim, but how will the reader know that person wants her, not her claim? Conveniently, Jon has been offered and already rejected Winterfell. Not just rejected it, said, Winterfell belongs to Sansa. Again, a unique connection.

I find that indicative of intent, one method Martin uses to make Jonsa feel embedded in their personal journeys while they’re so far apart. This will make the romance feel like it’s always been written into their story, not a last-minute development. But, I know that isn’t the line of thought that convinced others, so I will share a few favorite metas.

Find Sansa’s Husband

This one by Istumpy is a great angle to approach bringing someone into the fold. (That sounds a little culty…😅) Some may say Sansa is too young for a husband (we all think that tbh), but if you take seriously the issue of carrying on the Stark line, it is a great breakdown of contenders for her husband, and very accessible to someone who isn’t already invested in the idea.

I’ll include Jon and Waymar parallels because they too seem deliberate. Not sure why Sansa had a crush on this guy who happens to foreshadow Jon’s death unless there’s a connection being made there?

Jonnel x Sansa (1, 2) For some, this is the clincher. If your sister buys into the idea of precanon/history foreshadowing events in the series, this might do it.

Compatible dreams. Short, to the point, matchy matchy. Love. starkmaiden is also responsible for the work of art that is The Jonsa Compendium (not the first thing for a new fan to read, but a wonderful resource once you’re initiated).

Now the next one is one of the first metas I ever read (I was never involved in fandom before Jonsa), and I still adore it years and thousands and thousands of words of absorbed meta later. We didn’t get the predicted endpoint; however, this is where Jonsa began for many people because the OP predicted the Jon and Sansa reunion way before it happened on the show. The ability to predict something accurately makes me take that person seriously, and the OP called stuff very, very early. They even mentioned the NedCat of it all and then the show had Jon/Sansa cosplay them and recreate one of their scenes! Even though the conclusion isn’t what will happen, the argument for Jonsa as a romantic pairing is wonderful. It makes a great, overall case for them, and for many, A Time for Wolves is The Jonsa Meta.

Drifting-snowflakes made a series of posts that are very convincing. They kinda, look at what the show did and point out how that did and did not align with what we might reasonably expect in the books. If your sister accepts some of the broad ideas of the GoT ending, these are compelling arguments for what to expect in Martin’s. A Dream for Spring and Why Jon and Sansa will get married (1, 2)

If your sister is a lit nerd, cappymightwrite is the blogger she’d be drawn to. Here’s a post talking about the incest motif in the romantic movement and several posts about the Jon/Byron connection (1, 2, 3). That being pertinent to Jonsa for…reasons. 😬

A lot of us are fans of The Lord of the Rings and we all know Martin is a huge fan, so maybe your sister would enjoy the parallels between Aragorn/Arwen and Jonsa? I think the idea that Martin is writing his own, darker, more complicated version of that romance compelling.

Or, maybe a specific angle is too limited? Some people work best with a more comprehensive presentation. Here are posts that talk about several things all at once:

Jon Snow: The Silent Unknown and Unthought Answer to Sansa's Hopes

Book foreshadowing

Jonsa Endgame foreshadowing

Book hints in chronological order

Also, over the years I’ve noticed many, many Jonsas come to it via fic, so if she’s into GoT-verse fic, I’d rec thimbleful’s alternate s8 (that was written well before s8) because it’s been called out by non shippers as a great way to wrap up everything we’d been given in the previous seasons. Once Jonsa is something you enjoy, it’s a lot more likely you’ll read theories with an open mind.

Your closer made me laugh, and I’m sorry I don’t have one “this is the answer!!!” recommendation, but I hope one of those seems like something your sister would enjoy!

[hydesjackiespuddinpop]

My current feelings on the T9S ships

I made a list like a year ago but I can’t find it haha. And my opinions have changed a lot so I'm going to be doing an update. If I missed any ships, please let me know!

Jay/Leia - My favorite canon ship out of the newbies. Granted I’m not AS emotionally invested in them as Gwen/Nikki, like to the point of constantly thinking about them and writing for them (which is weird since they might be the ship I make the most edits for haha). I've written so many fucking metas on them it’s not even funny haha (check my #jl meta tag & also my #jled tag). They’re just so pure and cute together and super overhated imo. Love seeing these two young teens in love.

Gwen/Nikki - Otp of otps. They’re my Jackie/Hyde in this show. So much chemistry, enemies (well frenemies) to lovers. Even though I don’t like that the scenes with them lessened post-Step By Step, I still see signs that they’re endgame. I just hope the writers don’t queerbait me and have them be endgame haha. Also check out my #jhgn tag for parallels :)

Gwen/Leia - Even though Gwikki is my heart and soul, I love Geia too and their parallels to Formciotti (check out my #gled tag). Gwen is legit the girl next door and not to mention, besties to lovers! There’s clearly something between them. Imo, I think they’re the most queer coded dynamic on T9S. The idea of them being platonic hurts my soul.

Nikki/Leia - Even though are only a few fans, I couldn’t help but put them. They’re just very cute and I love their scenes in Summer Storm. I think they could been a really cute college romance sort of thing. Also the love triangle trope where both girls ditch the guy for each other is A+.

Jay/Ozzie - I'm putting them here because of Ozzie's reaction to Jay's flirting in the pilot 😂. Same as Nikkeia, I see them as a cute college romance but also lowkey endgame in a universe with Neia & Gwikki/Geia & Niknate as the endgames. Their energy gives me Fez/Kelso (Hannah has a post talking about it and I see tbh). Plus they were GIVING old married couple energy in Summer Storm.

Ozzie/Etienne - Perfect bbs no notes. If someone can make Ozzie smile the way he did in LS, then they’re a keeper. I hope we get to see Etienne in s2.

Jay/Nate - Also my personal Fez/Kelso. To me, they’re just as gay as Gwen/Leia and I wish that was acknowledged more. They’re just so funny and cute. Even though I ship Nate/Leia now, I wish that the triangle was Leia/Jay/Nate instead since Nate is basically in love with Jay. I mean it’s canon that Nate always lets Jay ride shotgun. Plus Nate literally ditched his girlfriend to go with Jay to see a used hot tub. Now you can see that as Nate being a good friend, I see that Nate wanting to hang out with bf and do something fun.

Nate/Leia - Talked about it here. While I still have the same issues with them (giving off plot device, screwing over Nikki, very few scenes of them alone), I realized that that’s moreso on the writing and the way it was executed. But I really love them and want to see more of them in s2.

Nate/Nikki - Had potential early on and some cute moments later, but they ended up being a mini J*lso. 1 & 2

[jyndor]

Listen I’ve been on the Rogue One fandom since the beginning and I’ve never been very much invested on RebelCaptain (I’m definitely not a hater btw!! most of my friends ship them but I was almost indifferent) but after seeing this people who got in the fandom watching Andor trying to talk shit about them or dismissing Jyn and Cassian’s connection - which is VERY clear - I’m totally invested in becoming a shipper lol and also the parallels between them in the show are so good. Maybe Andor is RebelCaptain propaganda after all XD

hi anon lol i understand they are actually very subtle in the film, it's definitely not like The Main Thing, and people don't have to ship it obviously - and I have some friends who don't ship it or aren't like, super into the rebelcaptain fandom for a myriad of reasons, but anyone who would deny that jyn and cassian have a connection of any kind, and that that connection (whatever it is) is fundamental to the story, idk it just feels like they didn't get the movie. i mean jyn's connections to EVERY member of rogue one are super important because the whole point is she's been abandoned by people who have been her home for her whole life, and so it makes her run away from the thing that her parents (all three of them) chose over her (in her mind) which is the rebellion. that's why cassian especially is so important to jyn - he doesn't leave her behind even when he should, he stays and he comes back for her over and over again. and he offers her a home, stands by her when no one else has done that. baze calling her 'little sister' as well as chirrut's undying support of her, bodhi's connection with galen even makes his connection with jyn feel like siblings idk. and kaytoo literally dies for her - and cassian of course. it's about the family who chose her. forget the romantic undertones of jyn and cassian's relationship, the whole film is about finding home after losing it.

andor is def rebelcaptain propaganda tho i mean they literally gave him a backstory closer to jyn's instead of keeping him a separatist child soldier to fit the rebelcaptain mirror theme. but of course if someone saw rogue one once or twice six years ago, and now is watching andor, they're not going to pick up on the agenda lol. but i'll be frank, there's always been a weird amount of the fandom that is like vehemently against them being romantic, a lot of fanboys tbh. the weird slash shippers who just have internalized misogyny and hate women being in ships anyway are common in most fandoms, but actually rogue one is a rare fandom where the biggest ship IS actually a mf ship.

I really do recommend the rogue one novel for so many reasons (I think it fleshes out the characters better than the film) but also like it doubles down on how important they are to each other.

[albatris]

aufhfjsjdufhdhs. thinkin about. throwbacks n coming full circle n stuff. in rental car. thinkin about. setups n reveals n such. eeuaugh

like

I've said it before and I'll say it again

Nat in the first chapter of book one waking up in a panic on the side of the road covered in mud with no memories. trapped and fearing for his life. convinced he's being toyed with by some twisted serial killer. and like. the fact that he laments that no one will find him, no one will even know to look for him, no one will notice or really care he's gone and he's. uhhh. not wrong, tbh

n then later near the climax of book one just?? Nat again trapped and fearing for his life, this time, like. in actual legitimate peril. and still convinced that no one will find him or look for him or care he's gone. even convinced at one point that Quinn was the one who sold him out

but just. in reality the fact that Quinn and Yvonne n Alex n Riley n Lloyd have all been trying so hard to find him and bring him home and they've all been so worried n. like. these people he doesn't even realise love him and consider him their friend and the moment he realises?? that he's been wrong and not only did people notice he was gone but they care so much and are desperate to make sure he's safe??? and the direct parallel to the Nat at the start of the story who's never had that???

hhhhhhh.

but also like full circle like. startings and endings being mirrors of each other. yeah yeah yeah yeah

the fact that both the first chapter and final chapter of the trilogy open with "Nat Finch blinked awake" and like. the fact that it even takes place in [REDACTED]!!! n the surrounding context of it being like...... the Moment after something completely enormous and profound has changed. the kind of symbolic moment of the ending of one phase of life and the coming in to another. the!!!!! fact that after everything that's happened it's just come back to this same starting point and everything's the same but everything's different

annnnnnnd throwbacks n reveals n like. recontextualising.........

like in the climax of book one it's kind of like!! ok, so Quinn is really, really weirdly emotional and invested in helping Nat not harm any of the innocent humans who are tangled up in this mess, n like. you have no emotional context for that aside from the fact that Quinn knows Nat wouldn't want to hurt anyone innocent

but like, for Quinn, someone who struggles so much with seeing other people as People and not just resources to be used n like...... with Quinn's often callous attitudes towards innocent people throughout the rest of the book, like. ok, it's a bit odd? like, despite Nat's feelings on the matter, it's way safer and more efficient for both of them if Quinn just lets him feed on whoever, if you take all the emotion out of it, that's logical. so at the time ur just kind of like. oh, okay, Quinn must care about Nat's feelings a Lot?? I guess???

but then in book three when you finally get some flashbacks of Quinn's childhood and it paints their reaction in a completely different light bc like. yeah, of course Quinn is having an unexpectedly emotional and stressed reaction to being so close to n involved with just. innocent people being basically trapped and left out as bait / distractions by someone who was meant to look our for them n have their backs?? basically being treated as necessary sacrifices?? this is basically what Quinn's parents did to them

of course Quinn is kinda fucked up abt it and while Quinn's care for Nat's feelings in this situation are a part of it, it's also deeply personal in an uncomfortable way for them

AND the fact that in that situation Quinn managed to turn the tables on their parents n basically bargain for their own life in exchange for their parents. and how much Grief and Confusion and Guilt that caused Small Young Quinn. as compared to how fucking Viciously and Relentlessly and Cruelly they go after Reuben March (who Orchestrated the whole book one climax situation). just like.... with the next context of how Personal that was in addition to Quinn being full of rage on Nat's behalf

dhdjskskskkskskskdjdhdhdhsh

I don't know where I'm going with any of this I just like this kind of thing ehehehehehehe

also this post is getting long but like...... the Foreshadowing (? not quite the right term but also brain blonk so I can't think of it) of like...... Alex becoming human again? like the satisfaction of that finally clicking into place in the epilogue after just the ways it's been sprinkled through the whole story, the setup for that even before you know that's where it's heading. I have talked about Honourary Human Alex before which goes into it in a bit more detail but just. aaah

AND the parallels between the way Human Alex is set up vs the way Vampire Yvonne is set up hehehehehhehehe AND the way Zeke plays into both of those arcs

not that I'm either confirming nor denying Vampire Yvonne

shhhh

[ashesandhackles]

i don't know if this one has been done yet - takumi and reira?

i ship it in a ... 'you do you' sense. I find Reira to be a very unenjoyable character that is difficult to be invested in, even when I recognise she is meant to be Hachi's parallel. She is Hachi - without getting to grow up and being enabled by everyone around her to remain in a stunted, child-like state. What made you ship it? Ren's line captures the ship in one line - "Reira says she wants to be happy, but she is perfectly content to just go to hell with you." The inability of these two to be together and how they inflict misery around everyone else due to their relationship is compelling.

What are your favorite things about the ship?

Reira was Takumi's sanctuary, and one he will choose above anyone else. He will put her on a pedestal (and he also has this Madonna-Whore complex thanks to his misogyny) that inevitably suffocates her, to the point Reira wants to destroy everything Takumi holds dear. It is massively unhealthy, and if I enjoyed Reira more, I would be SO on this ship.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

The muddled handling of Shin - Reira plotline really sours me on Reira. I really want to like this ship more tbh. The destructiveness and yet their inability to choose anyone else over each other is something that should ideally pull me.

[cescalr]

i was also thinking reverse falls

for Real reverse falls was so... Gravity Falls actually had this problem with a fair few of it's AUs, like a lot of the interpretations of the stan-went-thru-the-portal-instead (but ford still waited 30 years) or ageswap just made mabel and dipper into stan and ford again and it's just.... sigh.

(I also have Thoughts about those AUs - I've currently got some of my ageswap au Thoughts written up, actually, though none of the others.)

I had my own ideas for reverse falls a long time ago - i couldn't find it now, some art/writing journal i last touched in like 2015 and likely lost when we moved house - but I always wanted to explore the canon negative characteristics of our heroes like Mabel's selfishness and Dipper's ambition, Stan's criminality and Ford's egotistic tendencies, if i were to do a reverse falls AU. Also everyone who made dipper swap with gideon and mabel swap with pacifica SO missed the point. if anyone was swapping roles literally instead of narratively, then dipper would swap with Pacifica and Mabel would swap with Gideon. There's a lot more parallels there that are interesting. Dipper and Pacifica have - to very different degrees, but still - canonically fraught relations with their family members at various points, and they're both easily caught up in competition and they're both very stubborn, but they've both got the same potential for good in them, as well as ill. I'd need like, time to talk it through properly in meta or some such, but basically; dipper and pacifica parallel each other better than mabel and pacifica do (Mabel and Pacifica are literally foils, guys - and not in the two-sides-of-a-coin way, in the narrative way where they're not reverses of each other and more simply have characteristics that clash, which is not the same thing), and if you're swapping dipper and pacifica there's much less weirdness with the characterisation people automatically do to pacifica when they make her Pacifica southwest, which is basically just blonde mabel and is really boring. Pacifica's not like that! Pacifica stood up to her parents to save people. Pacifica is very outwardly self-centred and she cares about the appearances her parents have conditioned her to keep up, but she's more invested in actually helping people when you get down to the wire. When Mabel is asked by Bill in sock opera about sacrificing stuff for the sake of your sibling, I can't see a reverse!gideon being the dipper in the room - but I can see Gideon being Mabel, realising all the things Pacifica does, despite the front she puts up, and coming to his senses. There's also the idea that Gideon swapping with Dipper just doesn't really make any sense anyway - they share maybe one trait, but for the most part they're very different people. (that trait, by the way, I feel is showmanship. But dipper and pacifica share that, too, so like, moot point, right.)

Anyway, yeah. I'd rather do the whole thing like, swapping narrative function - antagonists, protagonists, villains and heroes and all that - but like... if i were to swap roles; Dipper's instigator-investigator-hero role, I wouldn't give that to Gideon. I might still have Gideon discover the journal, but I'd have Pacifica decide to use it to solve problems around town and get into other people's business. Maybe in this AU she decides to keep up appearances by actually doing the good things for the community her family pretends to. I mean, she didn't know her family were liars at the beginning, remember! Maybe her pride manifests differently as the protagonist.

Stan can stay basically the same in a Reverse AU tbh - just make him more realistic. Guy is a career criminal with a current, ongoing smuggling operation. Like, c'mon. Family loyalty can be a double-edged sword!

As for Ford, just... there's some real obvious ways. But my main issue is that I don't think the "will" situation is ever properly explained in a Reverse!AU. Like I don't want to make these entirely new characters with a gravity falls coat of paint, just as much as i don't want it to be canon with a redesign, you know? I've never read a reverse AU that got to the point of explaining the portal or why Ford is still trapped in there if he's evil and had control over "will", like it doesn't make sense. I think a Reverse AU needs the caveat of keeping Bill mostly the same, or maybe making the Time Baby the big bad. I mean, canon actually has an evil dipper that's got some fucked up shit to do with time-travel going on, from one of the books they released (i forget which one, sorry). But yeah - I don't know why nobody talks about that. It rotates in my brain like i can't get rid of it; dipper canonically goes evil or at least very creepy and worrisome at some point in the future of gf!!! he seems to be our normal good dip-dop as an older teen, but once he's an adult he's gone fully off the deep end. And I think that's interesting, because that would mean in a reverse AU, dipper as a kid should be fully off the deep end, but once he's grown he's a heroic sort of character. teen dipper should be weird and unnerving while adult dipper actually is genuinely honest when he says the future got fixed and he shouldn't worry about teen dipper, instead of sounding very scary and evil about it.

But yeah, I mean - reverse AU also doesn't really make sense with the choices it makes in regards to the side characters, like, what are you going to do with people like Susan? It's a roleswap au, so who's role is she swapping, if we're not going with a more, metatextual swap of narrative importance/alignment? People always swapping Wendy and Robbie seems odd to me. Some of the swaps seemed arbitrary, and that one especially with the way that robbie!Wendy got drawn was... hm. It really seemed to me that was just an excuse to draw an emo wendy redesign, which, babes, you don't need an excuse for that. Just draw what you feel like, you know. It's fanart, it doesn't need a whole AU around it to "excuse" it's existence - it's cool either way.

Idk, man. Yeah. Reverse AU always bugged me. It seemed like a wasted opportunity for some really neat character studies. But that's just me!

Man, that was a long post :D. I do want to gather my thoughts together about this stuff, actually. I probably will now, with the motivation to do so sparked. Thanks :).

[maggot-monger]

For the ask game: Gabriel/Sam!

OKAY god thank you i have been on such a journey with sabriel

What made you ship it?

sabrifer tbh, which i have liked for ages; the three of them reflect off each other in ways that i just find incredibly compelling. but forever i was never really into sabriel without lucifer being involved, until i reached a point where i was like "this ship is SO popular and i know it isn't JUST because it's a convenient side ship for destiel; if i am on board the sabrifer train i know there has to be something here that i'm missing." and there sure was! i found an incredible old meta about it (i tried to find it before publishing this ask but i can't, RIP) and asked some friends who were/are big into sabriel about it and started trying to imagine my favorite sabrifer dynamics without lucifer, and it really just ended up getting stuck in my head. idk it's one of those ships that did not occur to me while watching the show at all but that i studied my way into caring about a lot What are your favorite things about the ship?

i sound like a broken record but it's about the parallels, yknow? to some extent it's always going to be partly about lucifer for me but lucifer doesn't have to be implicated, he's just sort of floating around...but anyway, like, when i think about it, lucifer is NOT the best archangelic parallel for sam in a lot of ways — he is in a lot of ways, but there are a ton of ways where gabriel is much more. poking at those, and poking at their mutual broken faith (while gabriel is one of the angels sam probably had the most knowledge of growing up, seeing as how he is VERY famous!!!) is so compelling to me!! i think they make each other worse but i also think they could make each other better...there are freedoms hiding behind each of them and it makes me very happy when they are able to glimpse them Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

is this unpopular? idk. i really fucking love dark sabriel. i love that mystery spot was like that; it's so obsessive and cruel to do that to somebody because you want to teach them a lesson that you maybe wish you'd be better at too. for gabriel, imo, sam is a doll to be thrown around, a specimen to be studied, an effigy to be not really burned but close — but also someone to be legitimately invested in, one of the most interesting and personally significant members of the species gabriel literally was willing to die for. i kind of wish sabriel had taken off as The Dark Sam Ship sometimes lololol

i also think sam should get to be the more annoying one sometimes. as a treat. sam can be very annoying and it is cute when he is <3

[indiemovies]

i am honestly. having the best time here

unhinged nancy is something a long time coming and hopefully they'll write it in... god. she deserves it. and i really want to see it. s4 was such a good segue into a separate nancy plot, hopefully moving away from that godawful love triangle. because there’s something so terrifying for someone like nancy when interacting with vecna. the way that he can make you see whatever he wants you to, and the way that he picks up on your deepest insecurities and most shameful fears, the way there’s always an element of half-truth, and element of echoing some sentiment that you believe, no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise. the way that he can see through nancy’s curated shields and say “i never forget when i kill someone” or whatever the line is and !!! there’s the barely hidden accusatory undertone, and god, he shouldn’t be able to look at you and know the worst things about you but he DOES, and now these teenagers, who have been dragged through hell and back, have to deal with him

!!!! YEAH. ROBIN DID THE EXACT SAME THING W STEVE. they literally speedran a mostly one-sided enemies-to-friends trope and there's definitely something within the both of them that feels that connection. tbh, this feels more monumental than nancy having a queer realization or whatnot. robin isn't drawn to nancy because she feels like there's a possibility that nancy might be queer, she's drawn out of curiosity and a hint of awe, and she knows there's Something tm but like. this would be their heart-to-heart, though not canon in the least. some sort of edging around using explicit terms, but they're definitely talking about the Thing they've respectively kept wrapped up as best they can (for nancy, the most prevalent part is the guilt)

god that vISUAL- nancy calling home, not even caring who she wakes up at this point, utterly frantic and convinced that something's wrong, something bad happened, but no, nance, nothing's wrong, is there a reason you're calling at 4am for the second time this week? and what is nancy supposed to say to that? obviously she's not the type to openly admit that she's having nightmares about her loved ones dying in front of her eyes (or rather, the worst part might be seeing them dead and always being a little too late. too late to see who killed them, what happened, too late to do anything but mourn), but she's also smart enough to know that making up something that might suggest a return of the upside down would. not be wise. and i'd love to see some scene where mike and nancy collide a little. since the "no more secrets, okay?" moment in s1, they've kinda just been in their own orbits. their loss, the inevitable nightmares, everything is happening parallel, like their rooms are completely different worlds

okay ! and sidenote, i just. love the way your mind works. all these other points i hadn't thought of or hadn't connected, but you did !! and i totally agree the bouncing of ideas is such a vibe, so thank you :D

the ingrained misogyny when it comes to nancy wheeler ! even subconsciously, i feel like a large portion of the fandom watches nancy be mean to people and make mistakes without taking the extra step to think about how much she’s struggling and therefore making said mistakes, or struggling in the aftermath. and they see the surface level of her character, a sweet teenage girl in s1 who made some dumb mistakes and has boy issues. and then they see her, again, in later seasons wearing pink and facing literal sexism and find her to be a typical quick-to-snap feminist, or another liberal woman fighting tooth and nail for rights that today, women already have. why bother investing their time and thought into that sort of character? she's just another woman in the '80s, and for all that the show tries to show glimpses into her turmoil, or show how much she wants to break out of the mold, it's swallowed by her scenes with a boy. to the point where her biggest problems as an individual can seem like they revolve around who to date next when ! that's not it at all. and it frustrates me to no end that there are more fics about steve and his parents, who, sure, there are things to talk about. they're never home, he makes that one comment about his dad being a real grade a asshole, but jfc. there are more fics talking about how steve needs a hug and has ptsd, has bad parents, the whole lot, than about nancy and her very real, on-screen trauma. 197 works for "steve harrington has ptsd". "nancy wheeler has ptsd" isn't even a tag.

no offense, but the only things steve really experienced that nancy didn't was the russian interrogation, the demodog bus scene, and lighting the root network on fire. not that those kinds of moments can't manifest as trauma too! but for crying out loud, nancy got trapped in the upside down with a demogorgon nearby for a hot minute before any of them really knew what was going on. she stood in front of a car with her loved ones and fired her gun, and when that didn't work, she fully resigned herself to dying if the impact might be lessened for those in the car. she watched the parents of her best friend destroy themselves about barb's disappearance, and had to attend their dinners and pretend like she wasn't a main character of the tragedy. all these fics talking about how steve's so guilty about barb's death, he never swims in his pool anymore, like. jesus christ. some people are so determined to infantilize their favorite white boy that they really can't see the big picture. and this has definitely derailed itself to more of a this-fandom-can-really-suck rant, so back to the main point (apologies)

maybe that’s why the pennhurst scene is so crucial in the nancy robin relationship? because it shines light on everything nancy’s been forced to do, such as wear uncomfortable clothes and play a docile part to get even half of what she’s asking for. and all of a sudden robin’s juxtaposing that because she’s already been there and tried to conform, but she’s far past that now. so she stands up to a man of authority, isn’t shy about her exasperation for the situation, doesn’t lock down her every emotion so the men don’t have to deal with it, and figures out a way to get what she wants. and that’s what nancy’s been looking to do, looking to fight for herself and other people, but knowing that in her time, women don’t really get what they want without bowing down and suffering under a man

this! is a lot of writing my bad. i don't... know where i was trying to go with this part of the time. but i hope it gets the point across nevertheless, so i'll talk to you soon ish!

I GIGGLE AND KICK MY FEET AT EVERY MESSAGE FROM YOU at what point do we just collab and publish the nancy wheeler bible

YES vecna is so the perfect villain for nancy like i don’t necessarily think she’s a super internal character, but she tends to be very…..compartmentalizing. she’s able to face so many scary situations/monsters bc ever since s1 she’s been pretty good about separating her feelings from the situations i think. obviously a lot of her actions stem from her grief in s2, but even still, she kinda gets this facade going when the action starts, it’s like she turns off a part of her brain so she can be fearless and strategic. so vecna FORCING her to confront her feelings in order to face him is SO GOOD and would be so beneficial to understanding her character on a deeper level.

i love what you said about our idea of the ronance heart to heart….the thought of them both experiencing their sexuality differently like nancy’s being wrapped in guilt and robin’s being fear/shame, but both being able to sense it in each other and being able to communicate it to one another in some coded way and finding comfort and understanding each other…..yeah

I hadn’t thought about people’s inability to connect with nancy due to her issues of sexism being so contextual to the 80s they can be hard for people (or at least people who don’t understand we really havent resolved a lot of issues regarding misogyny) to relate to! i think that’s such a good point!!!!! i’ve seen some people acknowledge that it’s crazy how much her character has changed since the first season bc of the plot, but i feel like that gets twisted into normal girl → badass action hero when that may be true but it’s surface-level!!! there is such an edge of tragedy to nancy’s character because she shouldn’t have HAD to change like that, and although she may definitely be the most mature teen character, she’s still so young and the veneer of maturity and strength she puts on isn’t entirely a facade but it’s not the whole truth either! i think the stuffed animal that she “gave away” after season 1 reappearing in the finale signal that..she got rid of something she thought childish, and when she finds it again she lights up, wishes she could still be the kind of girl with the same stuffed animal she’s had since she was a kid, but chooses to give it up again. she’s so sad!!!! and this can be extrapolated to larger issues of misogyny with girls having to grow up too fast and having to appear adultlike to even have the chance of being taken seriously.

people being so much more willing to unpack and understand a male character’s trauma to the point where they make up trauma for him just to explore his character more while completely ignoring nancy’s plots and problems and obvious trauma yup yup yup! ALSO NANCY WILLING TO DIE STANDING IN FRONT OF THE CAR TRYING TO SHOOT BILLY ahhhh we could write a 10 page analysis on that scene alone!!!!!!

I LOVE YOUR ANALYSIS OF THE PENNHURST SCENE i think you’re dead on the money and i think that’s in part why they bond so much. i think before, maybe nancy resented robin’s supposed immaturity and goofiness and mistook for…not being dumb but not exactly as intelligent by nancy standards. but i think that moment just shows nancy a whole other side of robin and shows that she is capable and so smart, she just shows it in a different way. and i totally agree she is exhibiting qualities nancy has always craved for herself but thought they would hinder instead of help her…..ronance both admiring/being in awe of one another is so special to me<333333

I LVOE THESE TALKS I LOVE YOUR MIND!!!!!! your genius literally

[ribarukirikaindenial]

just random thoughts that i’m writing but sometimes i wonder if the daipa writers hit a wall or reached a point of non return by making nozomi win the grand festival thus making her a top coordinator and perhaps putting a halt in the rivalry between her and hikari

these are just musings about the nozohika rivalry and me wondering what nozomi has been up to ever since dp ended 

i understand why nzhk rivalry was written the way it was, nozomi being a kind of stand in for hikari’s mom (she is a prodigy, takes on a mentor approach with hikari, she even has the cat pokemon whose name i forgot like hikari’s mom), hikari’s development being about growing out of her goal and the pressure she put on herself because of her legacy since her perfectionism held her down so she had to learn to be relaxed, learn that losing is okay, etc etc. so hikari never winning against nozomi was part of that and they probably wanted to make the finals be about two characters we’re invested in, rather than having nozomi win against some random or another side character. 

the thing is, i’m wondering if the nozohika rivalry still had grounds to grow further post canon, since hikari never caught up to nozomi once and nozomi already being a top coordinator kind of feels like she is in a unreachable place, plus again hikari’s development isn’t about becoming a top coordinator per se (again, i understand why things are written the way they are but when i compare to snst or even shhr rivalries, the latters seem much more equal, haruka eventually caught up to shuu and we got to see how the ag rivals were doing during the mikuri cup in dp, plus we knew they intended to keep challenging each other in johto)

i guess it’s because we don’t know much about the kind of roles there could be in contests, i guess a top coordinator can eventually become a judge during contests?? but even there, it feels onesided in terms of making a rivalry out of that if the nzhk rivalry had to go further. 

also, i’m realizing that if nozomi takes a route of mentoring new coordinators by being a contest judge, it would parallel shinji becoming a gym leader lol (the snst and nzhk rivalries have interesting contrasts, after all).

i guess i’m just really curious about nozomi post dp. we never got news on her after all. i wonder if she is a prodigy that hit the jackpot too fast by becoming a top coordinator so young, and after her very first grand festival (i think she never competed in a grand festival before the one in sinnoh). she kind of reminds me of dande, in that way (he felt like he had no room to grow further and was scared because of it).  

what else could she do now? of course she can keep competing contests, but i wonder if she can find a rival that keeps challenging her. plus her already being a top coordinator means she has the upper hand in a way if her opponent is still beginning (her rivalry with hikari started with her already having a ribbon for example, so she was already a step ahead and kept being a step ahead until the very end, on the other hand shinji and satoshi started on an equal footing). 

anyway, i had to check nozomi and hikari’s last interaction in dp and i think they just say goodbye to each other and there wasn’t a promise to see each other in a contest again (i think). nozomi said she was going to kissaki city because suzuna wanted to throw a party to congratulate her for becoming a top coordinator and she asked hikari if she wanted to come. hikari refused because she wants to support satoshi for his last gym battle and for the league. and that’s how it ends, and in retrospect, it’s kind of sad :( i don’t really get “hints for the future” from their last interaction. in comparison with shinji and satoshi (and again, i know they are different dynamics and i’m not pitting one against the other etc etc), dp ended with a big hint for their future which was unlike anything else we’ve gotten at the time tbh. shirona talking about how they’ll climb up the ranks of the champion league, which is eventually what happened with shinji helping satoshi for the m8 etc, and satoshi promised to battle each other again. even in their reunion, i still got “hints for the future” vibes from the whole setting since the writers always keep their possibilities very open (satoshi could always challenge shinji’s gym in the future and get his badge, they promised to battle each other again, we know shinji is always welcome in masara town since ookido hakase told him so, so even outside battles, there is potential for many things). so the possibilities are endless there (good for me, and good for them!).

just a bit sad for nozomi. i don’t doubt that her and hikari are keeping in touch with each other, but i just wonder how their rivalry could grow further. my imagination is kind of limited, so i don’t have many ideas for how it could turn out after dp.

[pumpkinpaix]

Hi! Loving your meta on suibian :)) Just wondering what were your frustrations with cql, especially considered you've watched this in multiple mediums? (I've only watched cql)

Hi anon! thank you so much!

Oh boy, you’ve unlocked a boatload of hidden dialogue, are you ready?? :D (buckle up it’s oof. Extremely Long)

@hunxi-guilai please consider this my official pitch for why I think the novel is worth reading, if only so you can enjoy the audio drama more fully. ;)

a few things before I get into it:

I don’t want to make this a 100% negative post because I really do love CQL so much! So I’m going to make it two parts: the changes that frustrated me the most and the changes I loved the most re: CQL vs novel. (again, don’t really know anything about donghua or manhua sorry!!) Sound good? :D

this will contain spoilers for the entirety of CQL and the novel. just like. All of it.

talking about the value of changes in CQL is difficult because I personally don’t know what changes were made for creative reasons and what changes were made for censorship reasons. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to evaluate the narrative worth of certain changes when I don’t know what their limitations were. It’s not just a matter of “gay content was censored”; China also has certain censorship restrictions on the portrayal of the undead, among other things. I, unfortunately, am not familiar enough with the ins and outs of Chinese censorship to be able to tell anyone with certainty what was and wasn’t changed for what reason. So I guess just, take whatever my opinions are with a grain of salt! I will largely avoid addressing issues related to how explicitly romantic wangxian is, for obvious reasons.

OKAY. In order to impose some kind of control on how much time I spend on this, I’m going to limit myself to four explicated points in each category, best/worst. Please remember that I change my opinions constantly, so these are just like. the top contenders at this specific point in my life. Starting with the worst so we can end on a positive note!

Henceforth, the novel is MDZS, CQL is CQL.

CQL’s worst crimes, according to cyan:

1. Polarizing Wei Wuxian and Jin Guangyao on the moral spectrum

I’ve heard rumors that this was a censorship issue, but I have never been able to confirm or deny it, so. Again, grain of salt. 

The way that CQL reframed Wei Wuxian and Jin Guangyao’s character arcs drives me up the wall because I think it does a huge disservice to both of them and the overarching themes of the story. Jin Guangyao is shown to be responsible for pretty much all the tragedy post-Sunshot, which absolves Wei Wuxian of all possible wrongdoing and flattens Jin Guangyao into a much less interesting villain.

What I find so interesting about MDZS is how much it emphasizes the role of external forces and situations in determining a person’s fate: that being “good” or “righteous” at heart is simply not enough. You can do everything with all the best intentions and still do harm, still fail, still lose everything. Even “right” choices can have terrible consequences. Everyone starts out innocent. “In this world, everyone starts without grievances, but there is always someone who takes the first blow.”

It matters that Wei Wuxian is the one who loses control and kills Jin Zixuan, that his choices (no matter how impossible and terrible the situation) had consequences because the whole point is that even good people can be forced into corners where they do terrible things. Being good isn’t enough. You can do everything right, make every impossible choice, and fail. You can do the right thing and be punished for it. Maybe you did the right thing, but others suffer for your actions. Is that still the right thing? Is it your fault? Is it? By absolving Wei Wuxian of any conceivable blame, it really changes the narrative conclusion. In MDZS, even the best people can do incomprehensible harm when backed into corners, and the audience is asked to evaluate those actions with nuance. Is a criminal fully culpable for the harm they do when their external circumstances forced them into situations where they felt like they had no good choices left?

Personally, I feel like the novel asks you to forgive Wei Wuxian his wrongs, and, in paralleling him with Jin Guangyao, shows how easily they could have been one another. Both of them are extraordinarily talented sons of commoners; the difference lies in what opportunities they were given as they were growing up and how they choose to react to grievances. Wei Wuxian is adopted early on into the head family of a prominent sect and treated (more or less—not going to get into it) like a son. Jin Guangyao begs, borrows, steals, kills for every scrap of prestige and honor he gets and understands that his position in life is, at all points, extraordinarily unstable. Wei Wuxian doesn’t take his grievances to heart, but Jin Guangyao does.

To be clear, I don’t think the novel places a moral value on holding grudges, if that makes sense. I think MDZS only indicates that acts of vengeance always lead to more bloodshed—that the only escape is to lay down your arms, no matter how bitter the taste. Wei Wuxian was horribly wronged in many ways, and I don’t think I would fault him for wanting revenge or holding onto his anger—but I do think it’s clear that if he did, it would destroy him. It destroys Jin Guangyao, after all.

(It also destroys Xue Yang, and I think the parallel actually also extends to him. Yi City, to me, is a very interesting microcosm of a lot of broader themes in MDZS, and I have a lot of Thoughts on Xue Yang and equivalent justice, etc. etc. but. Thoughts for another time.)

Wei Wuxian is granted a happy ending not because he is Good, but because public opinion has changed, because there’s a new scapegoat, because he is protected by someone in power, because he lets go of the past, and because the children see him for who he is. I really do think that the reason MDZS and CQL have a hopeful ending as opposed to a bleak one hinges on the juniors. We are shown very clearly throughout the story how easily and quickly the tide of public opinion turns. The reason we don’t fear that it’s going to happen to Wei Wuxian again (or any other surviving character we love) is, I think, because the juniors, who don’t lose their childhoods to war, have the capacity to see past their parents’ prejudices and evaluate the actions of the people in front of them without having their opinions clouded by intense trauma and fear. They are forged out of love, not fire.

In CQL however, it emphasizes that Wei Wuxian is Fundamentally Good and did No Wrong Ever, so he deserves his happy ending, while Jin Guangyao is Fundamentally Bad and Responsible For Everything, so he got what was coming to him (even if we feel bad for him maybe). That’s not nearly as interesting or meaningful. 


(One specific change to Jin Guangyao’s timeline of evil that I find particularly vexing, not including the one I will discuss in point 2, is changing when Jin Rusong was conceived. In the novel, Qin Su is supposedly already pregnant by the time they get married, and that matters a WHOLE LOT when evaluating Jin Guangyao’s actions, I think.)

2. Wen POWs used as target obstacles at Baifeng Mountain

I know the first point was “here’s an overarching plot change that I think deeply impacts the narrative themes” and this second one is “I despise this one specific scene detail so much”, but HEAR ME OUT. It’s related to the first point! (tbh, most things are related to the first point)

Personally, I think this one detail character assassinates like. almost everyone in attendance, but most egregiously in no particular order: Jin Guangyao, Jin Zixuan (and by extension, Jiang Yanli), Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen.

First, I think it’s a cheap plot device that’s obviously meant to enhance Jin Guangyao’s ~villainy while emphasizing Wei Wuxian’s growing righteous anger, but it fails so spectacularly, god, I literally hate this detail so much lmao. I’ll go by character.

Jin Guangyao: I get that CQL is invested in him being a ~bad person~ or whatever, but this is such a transparently like, cartoon villain move that lacks subtlety and elegance. Jin Guangyao is very dedicated to being highly diplomatic, appeasing, and non-threatening in his bid for power. He manipulates behind the scenes, does his father’s dirty work, etc. but he always shows a gentle, smiling face. This display tips his hand pretty obviously, and even if it were at the behest of his father, there’s literally no reason for him to be so “ohohoho I’m so evil~” about it—if anything, this would only serve to drive his sympathizers away. It’s a stupid move for him politically, and really undercuts his supposed intelligence and cleverness, in my personal opinion.

Jin Zixuan: yes, he is arrogant and vain and likes to show off! But putting his ego above the safety of innocent people? Like, not necessarily OOC, but it sure makes him much less sympathetic in my eyes. I find it hard to believe that Jiang Yanli would find this laudable or acceptable, but she’s given a few shots where she smiles with some kind of pride and it’s like. No! Do not do my queen dirty like this. She wouldn’t!

Wei Wuxian: where do I start! WHERE DO I START. Wei Wuxian is shown to be “righteously angry” about this, but steps down mutinously when Jiang Cheng motions him back. He looks shocked and outraged at Jin Zixuan for showing off with no concern for the safety of the Wen POWs, only to like, two seconds later, do the exact same thing, but worse! And at the provocation of Jin Zixun, no less! *screams into hands* The tonal shift is bizarre! We’re in this really tense ~moral quandary~, but then he flirts with Lan Wangji for a second (tense music still kinda playing?? it’s awful. I hate it), and then does his trickshot. You know! Putting all these people he’s supposedly so concerned about at risk! To one-up Jin Zixuan! It’s nonsensical. It’s such a conflict of priorities. This is supposed to make him seem honorable and cool, I guess? But it mostly just makes him look like a performative hypocrite. :///

Lan Wangji: I cannot believe that Lan Wangji saw this and did not immediately walk out in protest.

Lan Xichen: this is just one part of a larger problem with Lan Xichen’s arc in CQL vs MDZS, where his character development was an unwitting casualty of both wangxian censorship and CQL’s quest to demonize Jin Guangyao. One of the prevailing criticisms I see of Lan Xichen’s character is that he is a “centrist”, that he “allows bad things to happen through his inaction and desire to avoid conflict”, and that he is “stupid and willfully blind to Jin Guangyao’s faults”, when I don’t think any of this is supported by evidence in the novel whatsoever. Jin Guangyao is a subtle villain! He is a talented manipulator and liar! Even Wei Wuxian says it in the novel!

(forgive my rough translations /o\)

Chapter 49, as Wei Wuxian (through Empathy with Nie Mingjue’s head) listens to Lan Xichen defend Meng Yao immediately following Wen Ruohan’s assassination:

魏无羡心中摇头：“泽芜君这个人还是……太纯善了。”可再一想，他是因为已知金光瑶的种种嫌疑才能如此防备，可在蓝曦臣面前的孟瑶，却是一个忍辱负重，身不由己，孤身犯险的卧底，二人视角不同，感受又如何能相提并论？

Wei Wuxian shook his head to himself: “This Zewu-jun is still…… too pure and kind.” But then he thought again—he could only be so guarded because he already knew of all of Jin Guangyao’s suspicious behavior, but the Meng Yao before Lan Xichen was someone who had had no choice but to suffer in silence for his mission, who placed himself in grave danger, alone, undercover. The two of them had different perspectives, so how could their feelings be compared?

Chapter 63, after Wei Wuxian wakes up in the Cloud Recesses, having been brought there by Lan Wangji:

他不是不能理解蓝曦臣。他从聂明玦的视角看金光瑶，将其奸诈狡猾与野心勃勃尽收眼底，然而，如果金光瑶多年来在蓝曦臣面前一直以伪装相示，没理由要他不去相信自己的结义兄弟，却去相信一个臭名昭著腥风血雨之人。

It wasn’t that he couldn’t understand Lan Xichen. He had seen Jin Guangyao from Nie Mingjue’s perspective, and so had seen all of his treacherous and cunning obsession with ambition. However, if Jin Guangyao had for all these years only shown Lan Xichen a disguise, there was no reason for [Lan Xichen] to believe a famously violent person [Wei Wuxian] over his own sworn brother.

Lan Xichen, throughout the story, is being actively lied to and manipulated by Jin Guangyao. His only “mistake” was being kind and trying to give Meng Yao, someone who came from a place of great disadvantage, the benefit of the doubt instead of immediately dismissing him as worthless due to his birth or his station in life. Lan Xichen sees Meng Yao as someone who was forced to make impossible choices in impossible situations—you know, the way that we, the audience, are led to perceive Wei Wuxian. The only difference is that the story that we’re given about Wei Wuxian is true, while the story that Lan Xichen is given about Meng Yao is… not. But how would have have known?

The instant he is presented with a shred of evidence to the contrary, he revokes Jin Guangyao’s access to the Cloud Recesses, pursues that evidence to the last, and is horrified to discover that his trust was misplaced.

Lan Xichen’s willingness to consider different points of view is integral to Wei Wuxian’s survival and eventual happiness. Without Lan Xichen’s kindness, there is no way that Wei Wuxian would have ever been able to clear his name. Everyone else was calling for his blood, but Lan Wangji took him home, and Lan Xichen not only allowed it, he listened to and helped them. To the characters of the book who are not granted omniscient knowledge of Wei Wuxian’s actions and circumstances, there is literally no difference between Wei Wuxian and Jin Guangyao. Lan Xichen is being incredibly fair when he asks in chapter 63:

蓝曦臣笑了，道：“忘机，你又是如何判定，一个人究竟可信不可信？”

他看着魏无羡，道：“你相信魏公子，可我，相信金光瑶。大哥的头在他手上，这件事我们都没有亲眼目睹，都是凭着我们自己对另一个人的了解，相信那个人的说辞。

“你认为自己了解魏无羡，所以信任他；而我也认为自己了解金光瑶，所以我也信任他。你相信自己的判断，那么难道我就不能相信自己的判断吗？”

Lan Xichen laughed and said, “Wangji, how can you determine exactly who should and should not be believed?”

He looked at Wei Wuxian and said, “You believe Wei-gongzi, but I believe Jin Guangyao. Neither of us saw with our own eyes whether Da-ge’s head was in his possession. We base our opinions on our own understandings of someone else, our belief in their testimony.

“You think you understand Wei Wuxian, and so you trust him; I also think I understand Jin Guangyao, so I trust him. You trust your own judgment, so can’t I trust my own judgment as well?”

But he hears them out, examines the proof, and acts immediately.

I really do feel like this aspect of Lan Xichen kind of… became collateral damage in CQL. Because Jin Guangyao is so much more publicly malicious, Lan Xichen’s alleged “lack of action” feels much less understandable or acceptable.

It is wild to me that in this scene, Lan Xichen reacts with discomfort to the proceedings, but has nothing to say to Jin Guangyao about it afterwards and also applauds Wei Wuxian’s archery. (I could talk about Nie Mingjue here as well, but I would say Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen have very different perspectives on morality, so this moment isn’t necessarily OOC for NMJ, but I do think is very OOC for LXC.) This scene (among a few others that have Jin Guangyao being more openly “evil”) makes Lan Xichen look like a willfully blind bystander by the end of the story, but having him react with any action would have been inconvenient for the plot. Thus, he behaves exactly as he did in the book, but under very different circumstances. It reads inconsistently with the rest of his character (since a lot of the beats in the novel still happen in the show), and weakens the narrative surrounding his person.

None of these overt displays of cruelty or immorality happen in the book, so it makes perfect sense that he doesn’t do or suspect anything! Jin Guangyao is, as stated, perfectly disguised towards Lan Xichen. You can’t blame him for “failing to act” when someone was purposefully keeping him in the dark and, from his perspective, there was nothing to act upon.

This scene specifically is almost purely lighthearted in the novel! If you take out the Wen POWs, this just becomes a fun scene where Wei Wuxian shows off, flirts with Lan Wangji, gets into a pissing match with Jin Zixuan, and is overall kind of a brat! It’s great! I love this scene! The blindfolded shot is ridiculous and over-the-top and very cute!

I know this is a lot of extrapolation, but the whole scene is soured for me due to you know. *gestures upwards* Which is really a shame because it’s one of my favorite silly scenes in the book! Alas! @ CQL why! ;A;

3. Lan Xichen already being an adult and sect leader at the start of the show

This is rapidly becoming a, “Lan Xichen was Wronged and I Have the Receipts” essay (oh no), but you know what, that’s fine I guess! I never said I was impartial!

CQL makes Lan Xichen seem much older and more experienced than he is in the novel, though we’re not given his specific age. In the novel, he is not sect leader yet when Wei Wuxian and co. arrive at the Cloud Recesses for lectures. His father, Qingheng-jun, is in seclusion, and his uncle is the de facto leader of the sect. Lan Xichen does not become sect leader until his father dies at the burning of the Cloud Recesses. Moreover, my understanding of the text is that he is at most 19 years old when this happens. Wen Ruohan remarks that Lan Xichen is still a junior at the beginning of the Sunshot Campaign in chapter 61. (If someone has a different interpretation of the term 小辈, please correct me.) In any case! Lan Xichen is young.

Lan Xichen ascends to power under horrific circumstances: he is not an adult, his father has just been murdered, his uncle seriously injured, his brother kidnapped, and his home burnt to the ground. He is on the run, alone! Carrying the sacred texts of his family and trying to stay alive so his sect is not completely wiped out on the eve of war! He is terrified, inexperienced, and unprepared!

You know, just like Jiang Cheng, a few months later!

I see a lot of people lambasting Lan Xichen for not stepping up to protect the Wen remnants post-Sunshot, but I’m always flummoxed by the accusations because I don’t see criticisms of Jiang Cheng with remotely the same vitriol, even though their political positions are nearly identical:

they are both extraordinarily young sect leaders who came to power before they expected to through incredible violence done to their families

because of this, they are in very weak political positions: they have very little experience to offer as evidence of their competence and right to respect. if they are considered adults, they have only very recently come of age.

Jin Guangshan, who is rapidly and greedily taking the place of the Wen clan in the vacuum of power, is shown to be more than willing to mow people down to get what he wants—and he has the power to do so.

both Yunmeng Jiang and Gusu Lan were crippled by the Wen clan prior to Sunshot. And they just fought a war that lasted two and a half years. they are hugely weakened and in desperate need of time to rebuild, mourn, etc. both Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen are responsible for the well-being of all of these people who are now relying upon them.

I think it’s very obvious that Jiang Cheng is in an impossible situation because he wears his fears and insecurities on his face and people in power (cough Jin Guangshan) prey upon that, while we, as the audience, have a front row seat for that whole tragedy. We understand his choices, even if they hurt us.

Why shouldn’t Lan Xichen be afforded the same consideration?

I really do think that because he’s presented as someone who’s much more composed and confident in his own abilities than Jiang Cheng is, we tend to forget exactly what pressures he was facing at the same time. We just assume, oh yes, of course Lan Xichen has the power to do something! He’s Lan Xichen! The First Jade! Isn’t he supposed to be Perfectly Good? Why isn’t he doing The Right Thing?

I think this is exacerbated by CQL’s decision to make him an established sect leader at the start of the show with several years of experience under his belt. We don’t know his age, but he is assumed to be an Adult. This gives him more power and stability, and so it seems more unacceptable that he does not make moves to protect the Wen remnants, even if in essence, he and Jiang Cheng’s political positions are still quite similar. He doesn’t really have any more power to save the Wen remnants without placing his whole clan in danger of being wiped out again, but CQL implies that he does, even if it isn’t the intention of the change.

It does make me really sad that this change also drives a further thematic divide between Lan Xichen and the rest of his generation. Almost everyone in that generation came of age through a war, which I think informs the way their tragedies play out, and how those tragedies exist in contrast to the juniors’ behavior and futures. Making Lan Xichen an experienced adult aligns him with the generation prior to him, which, as we’re shown consistently, is the generation whose adherence to absolutism and fear ruined the lives of their children. But Lan Xichen is just as much a victim of this as his peers.

(the exception being maybe Nie Mingjue, but it’s complicated. I think Nie Mingjue occupies a very interesting position in the narrative, but like. That’s. For another time! this is. already so far out of hand. oh my god this is point three out of eight oh nO)

(yet another aside because I can’t help myself: can you believe we were robbed of paralleling scenes of Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen’s coronations? the visual drama of that. the poetic cinema. it’s not in the book, but can you IMAGINE. thank u @paledreamsblackmoths​ for putting this image into my head so that I can suffer forever knowing that I’ll never get it.)

I said I wasn’t going to talk at length about any changes surrounding Wangxian’s explicit romance for obvious reasons, but I will at least lament here that because a large percentage of Lan Xichen’s actions and character beats are directly in relation to Lan Wangji’s love for Wei Wuxian, he loses a lot of both minor and major moments to the censors as well. Many of the instances when he encourages Lan Wangji to talk to Wei Wuxian, when he indulges in their relationship etc. are understandably gone. But the most significant moment that was cut for censorship reasons I think is when he loses his temper with Wei Wuxian at the Guanyin temple and lays into him with all the fury and terror he felt for his brother’s broken heart for the last thirteen years.

Lan Xichen is only shown to express true anger twice in the whole story, both times at the Guanyin temple: first against Wei Wuxian for what he perceives as gross disregard for his little brother’s convictions, and second against Jin Guangyao for his massive betrayal of trust. And you know, murdering his best friend. Among other things.

I’m genuinely so sad that we don’t get to see Lan Xichen tear Wei Wuxian to shreds for what he did to Lan Wangji because I think one of the most important aspects to Lan Xichen’s character is how much he loves, cares for and fears for his little brother. The reveal about Lan Wangji’s punishment in episode 43 is a sad and sober conversation, but it’s not nearly as impactful, especially because Wei Wuxian asks about it of his own volition. I understand that this isn’t CQL’s fault! But. I can still mourn it right? ahahaha. :’)

I’ll stop before I descend further into nothing but Lan Xichen meta because that’s. Dangerous. (I have a lot of Feelings about how there are three characters who are held up as paragons of virtue in MDZS, how they all suffered in spite of their goodness, and how that all ties directly into the whole, “it is not enough to be good, but kindness is never wrong” theme. Anyways, they’re Xiao Xingchen, Jiang Yanli, and Lan Xichen, but NOT NOW. NOT TODAY.)

So yes, I’m a Lan Xichen apologist on main, and yes, I understand my feelings are incredibly personally motivated and influenced by my subjective emotions, but no I do not take concrit on this point, thank you very much.

4. all of the Wen remnants turning themselves in alongside Wen Qing and Wen Ning

Okay, back to plot changes. This change I would be willing to bet money was at least partially due to censorship, but it hurts me so deeply hahaha. It makes literally no sense for any of the characters and it completely janks the timeline of events post Qiongqi Dao 2.0 through Wei Wuxian’s death.

It’s not ALL bad—this change makes it easier for the Peak Wangxian moment at the Bloodbath at Nightless City (You know. Hands. Cliff. etc.) to happen, which I did very much enjoy. It’s pretty on-brand for CQL to sacrifice plot for character beats that they want to emphasize, so like. I get it! This moment is a huge gift! I Understand This. CQL collapses the Bloodbath at Nightless City and the First Siege of the Mass Graves into one event for I think a few reasons. One, Wangxian moment without being explicitly Wangxian, which is excellent. Two, it circumvents the Blood Corpse scene, which I do not think would have made it past censorship.

I’ll get to the Blood Corpse scene in a minute, but despite being able to understand why so much might have been sacrificed for the impact of the cliff scene, I still wish it had been done differently (and I feel like it could have been!), if only for my peace of mind because the plot holes it creates are pretty gaping.

The entire point of Wen Qing and Wen Ning turning themselves in is specifically to save their family members and Wei Wuxian from coming to further harm. That’s explicit, even in the show. Jin Guangshan demands that the Wen brother and sister stand for their crimes and claims that the blood debt will be paid. The Wen remnants understand that Wei Wuxian has given up so much for their sakes, that he has lost his family, his home, his respectability, his health, all in the name of sheltering them. To throw all of that away would be the greatest disrespect to his sacrifices. Wen Qing and Wen Ning decide that if their lives can pay for the safety of their loved ones and ensure that Wei Wuxian’s sacrifices matter, they are willing to go together and give themselves up.

So. Why did they. All go?? For… moral support???? D: Wen Qing says that Wei Wuxian will wake up in three days and that she’s given Fourth Uncle and the others instructions for his care–but then Fourth Uncle and the others all go with them!! To die!! There’s also very clearly a shot of Granny Wen taking A’Yuan with them, which like. Obviously didn’t really happen.

Wen Qing, who loves her family more than anything in the world, agrees that they should all go to Lanling and sacrifice themselves to…. protect Wei Wuxian? Wen Qing, pragmatic queen of my heart, agrees to this absurdly bad exchange?? Leaves Wei Wuxian to wake up, alone, with the knowledge that he had not only killed his brother-in-law but also effectively gotten everyone he had left killed also??

I can’t imagine Wen Qing doing that to Wei Wuxian. Save his life? For what? This takes away everything he has left to live for. You think Wen Qing doesn’t intimately understand how cruel that would be?

(Yes, I’m complaining about all of this, but I’m still about to cry because I rewatched the scene to make sure I didn’t say anything untrue, and  g o d  it manages to hit hard despite all of that, so who’s the real clown here!!)

Anyways. So that’s all just like. Frustratingly incoherent. It’s one of several wrongs I think CQL committed against Wen Qing’s character, but my feelings about Wen Qing in CQL are pretty complicated (I love her so much, and I love that we got more Wen Qing content, but that content sure is a mixed bag of stuff I really enjoyed and stuff I desperately wish didn’t exist) and I decided I wasn’t going to get into it in this post. (is anyone even still reading god)

This change also muddles Lan Wangji’s choices and punishment in ways that I think diminishes the severity of the situation to the detriment of both his characterization and his family’s characterization. The punishment scene is extremely moving and you should read this post about the language used in it but. sldfjsljslkf.

okay well, several things. In the context of CQL, which really pushes the “righteousness” angle of Wei Wuxian (see point 1), I think this scene makes a lot of sense in isolation: both Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian are painted as martyrs for doing the right thing. “Who’s right and who’s wrong?” The audience is asked to see the punishment as “unjust”. That’s perfectly fine and coherent in the context of CQL, but I don’t think it’s nearly as interesting as what happens in MDZS.

Because CQL collapses both the First Siege and the Bloodbath into one event, Lan Wangji’s crimes are sort of unclearly defined. In episode 43, when Lan Xichen is explaining the situation, we see a flashback to when Su She says something along the lines of, “We could set aside the fact that you defended Wei Ying at Nightless City, but now you won’t even let us search his den?” (of course, this gives us the really excellent “you are not qualified to talk to me” line which. delicious. extremely vindicating and satisfying. petty king lan wangji.) Lan Xichen goes on to say something like, “Wangji alone caused several disturbances at the Mass Graves. Uncle was greatly angered, and [decreed his punishment]”. (Sorry, I’m too lazy to type out the full lines with translations, just. trust me on this one.)

Lan Wangji’s actions are shown to be motivated by a righteous love. Wei Wuxian is portrayed as someone innocent who stood up for the right thing against popular opinion and was scapegoated and destroyed for it, having done no wrong. (See, point 1 again.)

In MDZS, Lan Wangji’s crimes are very specific. It isn’t just that he caused some “disturbances” (this is just Lan XIchen’s vague phrasing in CQL—we don’t really know what he did). He steals Wei Wuxian away from the Bloodbath at Nightless City, after Wei Wuxian killed thousands of people, and hides him away in a cave, feeding him spiritual energy to save his life. When Lan Wangji’s family comes to find him, demand that he hand over Wei Wuxian (who is, remember, a mass murderer at this point! we can argue about how culpable he is for those actions all day—that’s the whole point, but the people are still dead), Lan Wangji not only refuses, but raises his hands against his family. He seriously injures thirty-three Lan elders to protect Wei Wuxian.

I don’t know how to emphasize how serious that crime is? Culturally, this is like. Unthinkable. To raise your hand against members of your own family, your elders who loved and raised you, in defense of an outsider, a man who, by all accounts, is horrifically evil and just murdered thousands of people, including other members of your own family, is like. That’s a serious betrayal. Oh my god. Lan Wangji, what have you done?

Lan Xichen explains in chapter 99:

我去看他的时候对他说，魏公子已铸成大错，你何苦错上加错了。他却说……他无法断言你所作所为对错如何，但无论对错，他愿意与你一起承担所有后果。

When I went to see him, I said, “Wei-gongzi’s great wrongs are already set in stone, why take the pains to add wrongs upon wrongs?” But he said…… he had no way to ascertain the rights and wrongs of your actions, but regardless of right or wrong, he was willing to bear all the consequences with you.

I think this is very different than what’s going on in CQL, though the differences appear subtle on the surface. In CQL, Lan Wangji demands of his uncle, “Dare I ask Uncle, who is righteous and who is wicked, who is wrong and who is right?” but the very act of asking in this way implies that Lan Wangji has an opinion on the matter (though perhaps not a simple one). 

Lan Wangji in MDZS specifically says that he doesn’t know how to evaluate the morality of Wei Wuxian’s actions, but that regardless, he is willing to bear the consequences of his choices and his actions. He understands that his actions while sheltering Wei Wuxian are not clearly morally defensible. He did it anyways because he loved Wei Wuxian, because he thought that Wei Wuxian was worth saving, that there was still something good in him, despite the things he had done under mitigating circumstances. Lan Wangji did not save Wei Wuxian because he thought it was the right thing to do. He saved him because he loved him.

He is given thirty-three lashes with the discipline whip, one for each elder he maimed, and this leaves him bedridden for three years. Is this punishment horrifyingly severe? Yes! But is it unjustly given? I think that’s a much harder question to answer in the context of the story.

Personally, I think that question underscores the broader questions of morality contained within MDZS. I think it’s a much more interesting take on Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji as individuals. This asks, what can be pardoned? The righteous martyr angle is uncomplicated because moral certainty is easy. I think the situation in MDZS is far more uncomfortable if you examine its implications. And personally, I think that’s more meaningful!

(Not even going to touch on the whole, 300 strokes with a giant rod, but he has whip scars? And they were also sentenced to 300 strokes as kids for drinking alcohol…? CQL is not. consistent. on that front. ahaha.)

God, every point so far in this meta is just like “here’s one change that has cascading effects upon the rest of the show” dear god, okay, I’m getting to the Blood Corpse scene.

So in MDZS, the Wen remnants (besides Wen Ning and Wen Qing) do not go to Lanling. After the Bloodbath at Nightless City, Lan Wangji returns Wei Wuxian to the Mass Graves. Wei Wuxian lives with the Wen remnants for another three months before the First Siege, where he dies and the rest of the Wens are killed (except A’Yuan).

(Sidenote that I won’t get into: I love the dead spaces of time that MDZS creates. There’s very clear gaps in the narrative that we just never get the details on, most notably: Wei Wuxian’s three months in the Mass Graves post core transfer, and Wei Wuxian’s three months in the Mass Graves post Jiang Yanli’s death. They’re both extremely terrible times, but the audence is asked to imagine it instead of ever learning what really happened, what it was like. There’s something really cool about that narratively, I think.)

The Wen remnants are not cremated along with the rest of the dead. Their bodies are thrown into the blood pool.

At the Second Siege, when Wei Wuxian draws a Yin Summoning Flag on his clothes to turn himself into bait for the corpses in order to allow everyone else to escape to safety while he and Lan Wangji fight them off, there’s a moment when it gets really, truly dangerous—even with the help of the juniors and a few of the adults, they probably would have been killed. But then a wave of blood-soaked corpses come crawling out of the blood pool of their own accord and tear their attackers apart.

At the end of it, the blood corpses, the Wen remnants, gather before Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning. Wei Wuxian thanks them, they exchange bows, and the blood corpses collapse into dust. Wen Ning scrambles to gather their ashes, but runs out of space in his clothing. Several juniors, seeing this, offer up their bags to him and try to help.

It’s just. This scene is so important to me. Obviously, it couldn’t be included in CQL because of the whole undead thing, but it’s such a shame because I maintain that the Blood Corpse scene is one of the most powerful scenes in the whole goddamn book. It ties together so many things that I care about! It’s the moment when the narrative says, “kindness is not a waste”. Wei Wuxian failed to save them, but that doesn’t mean that his actions were done in vain. What he did matters. The year of life he bought them matters. The time they spent together matters.

This is also the moment when the juniors finally see Wen Ning for who he is—not the terrifying Ghost General, but a gentle man who has just lost his family for a second time. This is the moment when they reach out with kindness to the monster that their parents told them about at night. It matters that the juniors are able to do that! That they see this man suffering and are moved to compassion instead of righteous satisfaction.

(Except Jin Ling, for very understandable reasons, but Jin Ling’s moment comes later.)

It’s also the moment that we’re starkly reminded that many of the adults in attendance were present at the First Siege and directly responsible for the murders of the Wen remnants, including Ouyang Zizhen’s father. We’re reminded that he’s not just a comically annoying man with bad takes—he also participated in the murder of innocent people and then disrespected their corpses. But what retribution should be taken against him and the others? What retribution could be taken that wouldn’t lead to more tragedy?

There’s someone in the crowd in this scene named Fang Mengchen who refuses to be swayed by Wei Wuxian’s actions. “He killed my parents,” he says. “What about them? How can I let that go?”

“What more do you want from me?” Wei Wuxian asks. “I have already died once. You do not have to forgive me, but what more should I do?”

That is the ultimate question, isn’t it? What is the only way out of tragedy? You don’t have to forgive, but you cannot continue to take your retribution. It is not fair, but it’s all you have.

okay. so. those were my four Big Points of Contention with CQL, as I am currently experiencing them.

Honorable mentions go to: Wen Qing’s arc (both excellent and awful in different ways), making 13/16 years of Inquiry canon (I think this is untrue to Lan Wangji’s character, though I can understand why it was done), Mianmian’s departure from the Lanling Jin sect being shortened and having the sexism cut out (there’s something really visceral about the accusations against Mianmian being explicitly about her womanhood that I desperately wish had been retained in the show), cutting the scene where Jin Ling cries in mourning for Jin Guangyao and is scolded for it by Sect Leader Yao (my heart for that scene because it also matters so much)

but now!! onto the fun part, where I talk effusively about how much I love CQL!! this will probably be shorter (*prays*) because a lot of my frustrations with CQL are related to spiraling thematic consequences while the things I love are like. Simpler to pinpoint? If that makes sense? we’ll see.

CQL’s greatest virtues, also according to cyan:

1. this:

[ID: Wei Wuxian, trembling in fear, screaming “shijie!” as Jiang Cheng threatens him with Fairy in episode 34 of The Untamed drama. /end ID]

I understand that this is like, a very minor, specific detail change, but oh my GOD, it is like. Unparalleled. Every time I think about this change, I get so emotional and disappointed that it’s not in the novel, because I think it strengthens this scene tenfold. In the novel, Wei Wuxian calls out for Lan Zhan, which like, I get it. The story at this point is focused on the development of his romantic feelings for Lan Wangji, so the point of the scene is that the first person he thinks of in a moment of extreme fear is Lan Zhan, which surprises him. That’s fine. Like, it’s fine! But I think it doesn’t have nearly the same weight as Wei Wuxian calling for his sister to save him from his brother. 

Having Wei Wuxian call out for his sister drives home the loss that the two of them have suffered, and highlights the relationship they all once had. Jiang Yanli is much more relevant to shuangjie’s narrative than Lan Wangji ever was, and this highlights exactly how deeply the fracturing of their familial relationship cuts. Wangxian gets so much time and focus throughout the rest of the novel. I love that this moment in the show is just about the Yunmeng siblings because that relationship is no less important, you know?

Calling out for Jiang Yanli in the show draws a much cleaner line through the dialogue. “You dare bring her up before me?” to “Don’t you remember what you said to Jin Ling?” It unifies the scene and twists the knife. It also gives us more insight into how fiercely Wei Wuxian was once beloved and protected by his siblings. Jiang Cheng promised to chase all the dogs away from Wei Wuxian when they were children. It’s clear that Jiang Yanli did as well.

Once upon a time, Wei Wuxian’s siblings defended him from his fears, and now one of them is dead and the other is using that fear to hurt him where he’s weakest. The reversal is so painfully juxtaposed, and it’s done with just that one flashback of Wei Wuxian as a child leaping into Jiang Yanli’s arms and calling out her name. Extremely good, economical storytelling. The conversation between shuangjie is much more focused on their own stories independent from Lan Wangji, which I very much appreciate. Wangxian, you’re wonderful, but this ain’t about you, and I don’t think it should be.

2. Extended Jiang Yanli content (and by extension, Jin Zixuan and Mianmian content)

Speaking of absolute goddess Jiang Yanli, I really loved what CQL did with her (unlike my more mixed feelings about Wen Qing). Having her in so many more scenes makes her importance to Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian a lot clearer, and we get to experience her as a person rather than an ideal.

On a purely aesthetic level, Jiang Yanli’s styling and character design is so stellar in CQL. The more prevalent design for her is kind of childish in the styling, which I don’t love (I think it’s the donghua influence?). And even I, someone who’s audio drama on main 24/7, personally prefer her CQL voice actor. There’s only a few characters in CQL that I look at and go “ah yes, that’s [character] 100%” and Jiang Yanli is one of them. I was blessed. I would lay down my life for her.

I’m really glad that CQL showed her illness more explicitly and gave her a sword, even if she never uses it! Her weak constitution is only mentioned once in the novel in chapter 69 in like two lines that I blew past initially because I was reading at breakneck speed and was only reminded of when my therapist who I conned into reading mdzs after 8 months of never shutting up oof brought it to my attention like two weeks ago. /o\

We never read about Jiang Yanli carrying a sword in the novel, though we are told that her cultivation is “mediocre”, so we know that she at least does cultivate, even if not very well. Highlighting her poor health in CQL makes her situation more clear, I think, and explains a little more about the way she’s perceived throughout the cultivation world as someone “not worthy of Jin Zixuan”. The novel tells us that Jiang Yanli is not an extraordinary beauty, not very good at cultivation, sort of bland in her expressions, and, very briefly, that she’s in poor health. I really love that description of Jiang Yanli, because it emphasizes that her worth has nothing at all to do with her talents, her health, her cultivation, her physical strength, or her beauty. She is the best person in the whole world, her brothers adore her, and the audience loves and respects her for reasons wholly unrelated to those value judgments. We love her because she is kind, because she is loyal, because she loves so deeply. Tbh, her only imperfection is falling for someone so tragically undeserving of her. (JK, I love you Jin Zixuan, and you do deserve her because you are an excellent boy who grows and changes and learns!! I can’t even be mean to characters as a joke god.)

Anyways, I just think the detail about her health is compelling and informs her character’s position in the world in a very specific way. I’m happy that CQL brought it to the forefront when it was kind of an easily-missed throwaway in the novel. It does mean something to me that Jiang Yanli, despite her poor physical health, is never once seen or treated as a burden by her brothers.

Something partially related that really hit hard was this:

[ID: two gifs. Jiang Yanli peeling lotus pods, looking up uncomfortably as her mother loses her temper about the Wen indoctrination at the table from episode 11 of The Untamed drama. /end ID]

D8 AAAAHHH this was VISCERAL. The novel is quite sparse in a lot of its descriptions and lets the audience fill in the missing details, so Jiang Yanli’s expression and reactions are not described when, after Jiang Cheng quickly volunteers to go to Qishan, Madam Yu accuses her of continuing to “happily peel lotus seeds” in such a dire situation.

“Of course you’ll go,” she snaps to Jiang Cheng. “Or else do you think we should let your sister go?”

This scene triggered me so bad lmfao, so I guess it’s kind of weird that I love it so much, but I felt Seen. Something about the way her nail slips in the second gif as she breaks open the pod is like. Oh, that’s a sense memory! Of me, as a child, witnessing uncomfortable conflict between people I cared about. I know this is an extremely personal bias, but hey, so is this whole meta. Because Jiang Yanli is often silent and quiet, it’s more her behavior and expressions that convey her character. It’s why the moment she lets loose on Jin Zixun is so powerful. We don’t get to see a lot of it in the novel, but because CQL is a visual medium, her character is a lot easier to pin down as a human as opposed to an abstract concept.

Anyways, in this moment, which I also think is a tangential reference to her weak constitution (it doesn’t feel like, “your sister can’t go because she’s a girl”; it feels like, “your sister can’t go because she couldn’t handle it”), we get to see Jiang Yanli’s own reaction to her perceived inadequacy. We see it in other places too—like how upset she is when Jin Zixuan dismisses her in several scenes, but this is the one that hits me the hardest because it’s about how her weakness is going to put her little brother in grave danger.

Last Yunmeng siblings with focus on Jiang Yanli scene that isn’t in the novel that I’m just absolutely wrecked over: the dream sequence in episode 28, when Jiang Yanli dreams about Wei Wuxian sailing away from her, but no matter how she shouts, or how she begs Jiang Cheng to help her, she can’t bring him back home.

I’m not going to gif it because I literally just like, fast-forwarded through it and started sobbing uncontrollably in front of my laptop, dear god.

I don’t know where the CQL writers found the backdoor directly into my brain’s nightmare center, but?? they sure did! IDK, I can see how this might be kind of heavy-handed, but it just. The sensation of being in a dream where something is going terribly wrong, but you’re the only one who seems to see it happening? But there’s nothing you can do? I feel like it’s a very fitting nightmare to give Jiang Yanli, who is acutely aware and constantly reminded of how little power she has in the world: not good enough for the boy she likes, not healthy enough to cultivate well, not strong enough to keep her family together.

The whole, elder siblings trying and failing to protect their younger siblings pattern is A Lot in the story, but there’s something particularly painful about seeing it happen to Jiang Yanli because of that awareness. All the other elder siblings are exceptionally talented or powerful in obvious ways. All Jiang Yanli has is the force of her will and the force of her love, and she knows it isn’t enough.

I care a lot about the Yunmeng siblings, okay! And I think CQL did right by them!

I’m only going to spend two seconds talking about Jin Zixuan and Mianmian, but I DO want to mention them.

Anyways, because we get more Jiang Yanli content, we ALSO get more soft xuanli, which is Very Good. Literally my kingdom for disaster het Jin Zixuan treating my girl right!! CQL said het rights, and I’m not even mad about it! I’m really happy that we get to see a little more of how their relationship plays out, and how hard Jin Zixuan works to change his behavior and apologize to her for his mistakes. The novel is from Wei Wuxian’s POV, so we miss the details, alas. Jin Zixuan covered in mud, planting lotuses? Blessed.

I think part of making Mianmian a larger speaking role is for convenience’s sake, but oh boy do I love that choice. Especially the Jin Zixuan & Mianmian relationship. Like, they’re so clearly platonic, and Mianmian is never once portrayed as a threat to Jiang Yanli. They just care about and respect each other a lot? Jin Zixuan’s distress when she defects from the Jin sect gets me in the heart, because it’s just like. God. I think there’s a lot of interesting potential there for her own thoughts re: Wei Wuxian. After all, she leaves her sect in defense of him, but he later kills a friend that she respects and loves. The moments shared between her and Jin Zixuan are minor, but they hint at a deeper relationship that I’m really glad was in the show.

3. To curb the strong, defend the weak: lantern scene (gusu) + rain scene (qiongqi dao 1.0)

I think I basically already explained why I love this so much in this post (just consider that post and this point to be the same haha), but just. Okay. A short addendum.

As much as I love novel wangxian, I really think that including this scene early on emphasizes why Lan Wangji loves Wei Wuxian so deeply. Of course he thinks Wei Wuxian is attractive, but this is the moment when he realizes, oh, this is who I love. Having that moment to reflect upon throughout Wei Wuxian’s descent is so excellent. I have enumerated all of my issues with the “perfectly righteous Wei Wuxian” arc that CQL crafted, but having this narrative throughline in conjunction with the novel arc would be like. My favored supercanon ahaha. (It would need some tweaking, but I think it would work.) It shows us exactly who it is that Lan Wangji sees and is trying to save, who he thinks is still there, underneath all the carnage and despair and violence and grief. This is the Wei Wuxian Lan Wangji loves and is unwilling to let go. This is the Wei Wuxian that Lan Wangji would kill for, that Lan Wangji would stand beside, that Lan Wangji would live for.

4. Meeting Songxiao

As much as I love the unnameable ache of Wei Wuxian never meeting Xiao Xingchen and learning only about his story through secondhand sources in the novel (and the really cool parallel to that where Xiao Xingchen tells A’Qing the story of Baoshan-sanren’s ill-fated disciples: both Xiao Xingchen and Wei Wuxian learn of each other only through the eyes of others, and that is Very Neat), I think the reversal that this meeting in episode 10 sets up wins out just slightly.

I said once in the tags on one of my posts that “songxiao is the tragic parallel of wangxian” and like. Yeah. Basically! If we take songxiao as romantic, the arc of their relationship happens inversely to wangxian, and that parallel is so much clearer and stronger when we have wangxian meeting songxiao in their youth.

The scene of their meeting really does have that Mood™ of uncertain youth seeing happy and secure adults living out the dreams that they’re afraid to name. Wei Wuxian’s eager little, “oh! just like me and Lan Zhan!! Right, Lan Zhan??” when songxiao talk about cultivating together through shared ideals and not blood is. Well, it’s Something.

When they meet again at Yi City, there’s a greater heaviness to it. So this is what happened to the people you once dreamed of becoming! Wangxian have already come to a point where they have an unspoken understanding of their relationship, but Songxiao have lost everything they once had. When Song Lan looks at wangxian, it’s like looking at a mirror of his past, and everyone in attendance knows it.

To me, that unspoken parallel is really emotionally and thematically valuable. All that good, and here is the tragedy that came of it.

okay, look! I managed to keep it shorter!! here are my honorable mentions: that scene where Jin Guangyao tries to hold Jin Ling and Jin Guangshan refuses to let him (it’s hating Jin Guangshan hours all day every day in this household), the grass butterfly leitmotif for Sizhui (im literally crying right now about it shut up), the Jiang Cheng/Wen Qing sideplot (look I know it’s wild that I actually liked that given that I headcanon JC as aspec, but I actually really like how it played out, specifically because Wen Qing and Wei Wuxian are NOT romantic—it sets up an unexpected and interesting comparison)

um. Anyways. I uh. really care about this story. And have a lot of thoughts, which I’m sure will continue to evolve. Maybe in 8 months I’ll return to this and go well, literally none of this applies anymore, but who knows! It’s how I feel right now. I cried literally three times while writing this because MDZS/CQL reached into my chest and yanked my heart right out of my body, but I had fun! *finger guns*

and like, I know I had a LOT to say about what frustrated me about CQL, but I really really hope it’s clear that I adore the show despite all of that. I talk a lot because I care a lot, and my brain only has one setting.

anon, this was like 1000% more than you bargained for, I’m SURE, (and I’m still exercising some restraint, if you can. believe that.) but I hope that you or someone out there got something out of it! if you made it all the way to the end of this meta, wow!! consider me surprised and grateful!!

time to crawl back into my hovel so I can write Lan Xichen fic and cry

(ko-fi? ;A;)

[boydgearloose]

DuckTales Theory: The Rightful Heir of Scrooge McDuck

With the finale on the horizon, I've been thinking a lot about where they could potentially take the whole "rightful heir of Scrooge McDuck who is destined to find the Papyrus of Binding" thing. After rewatching the whole series thus far a few weeks ago, it's been on my mind a lot, and with all the news we've gotten about the finale recently, I've managed to piece something together that I think is pretty plausible. I want to warn you guys right away that this post will have spoilers for the finale promo that was released on Monday, so if you haven't seen it and don't plan on checking it out, please don't read any further! That being said, let's get into this.

For starters, let's look at what we know about the rightful heir to the Papyrus of Binding so far. FOWL is taking all of the missing mysteries and it's included, but they can't retrieve this one on their own. In The First Adventure!, Scrooge wrote that it shall go to "the rightful heir of McDuck" and "that those who attempt to harm any of them will be incapable to getting it." Therefore, nobody in FOWL would be able to retrieve the Papyrus because none of them are Scrooge's heirs and they've all tried to harm him and his family in some way. Another thing to note on the topic of this particular episode, despite being the finale of the show, The Last Adventure! is a clear parallel title to The First Adventure!, where the Papyrus was introduced, so it's likely to be found in the finale.

Now, let's look back to The Split Sword of Swanstantine! At the end of this episode, it's shown that Black Heron has gotten a feather from one of the McDucks for some mysterious reason. Many assumed this would be a cloning situation, where they need to get McDuck DNA in order to replicate a "rightful heir" who hasn't hurt Scrooge or his family in order to get the Papyrus back. However, a lot of the fandom seemed to think it was Scrooge's feather. I personally don't think that is the case. In the episode, we see Heron swipe at all of the children.

She very well could have picked up a feather from one of the kids instead. Of course, the triplets are the first to come to mind because they are essentially Scrooge's heirs, so it would make sense if she was after one of their feathers. But then, I started thinking and realized that none of them really take after Scrooge entirely. Huey primarily looks up to Fenton and Donald (if you're looking for someone inside the family) and leans toward being a superhero/scientist rather than adventurer. We know from the last episode that Dewey wants to be a pilot and has always primarily looked up to Della more than anyone else in the family. Louie you could make an argument for, but he only really admires Scrooge because of his money. He doesn't like adventuring and would rather focus on strategy.

So who could the rightful heir be? Well, there's really only one choice and it fits infinitely better than the rest. I'm very certain that Webby is going to be the rightful heir who is destined to find the Papyrus of Binding. There is a ton of evidence hidden throughout the show since season 1 of this, and I've collected all I could find. I'm sure I even missed some.

First of all, let's get into Webby's character. From her first appearance, she's shown to idolize Scrooge and everything about his family. She's invested in McDuck history and dreams of becoming an adventurer just like Scrooge. In fact, the episode of the series that introduces FOWL way back in season 1 is one that focuses heavily on Scrooge's bond with Webby. There's also the part in A Nightmare on Killmotor Hill! where it's revealed that her perfect dream is quite literally turning into Scrooge. She also believed him longer than the other family members in 87 Cent Solution! There's LOTS of stuff in the show about Webby looking up to him, too much for me to even include in one post.

Season 3 is focused on legacy. We've gotten focus or are getting focus on the legacies of each of the triplets: Huey being a superhero (we could get more of this tbh), Dewey being a pilot and whatever's going on with Louie in the next episode. What about Webby's legacy? Well, it's very clear to me that it lies with Clan McDuck. The last Webby-centric episode we got was The Fight for Castle McDuck!, one that heavily focused on why she's a part of the McDuck family and heavily revolved around getting a placement in it (the whole statue thing). This episode really felt like it was leading up to her ultimate legacy being to follow in Scrooge's footsteps and become a great adventurer. It was also very recent and not counting the Christmas episode which was likely out of production order, the last Webby episode before the finale. (Also, I think it's important to note that the first season 3 episode that heavily focuses on FOWL has a Scrooge and Webby B plot. Just food for thought.)

Another important thing that I just noticed is that in the season 2 finale Moonvasion!, at the end of the FOWL reveal, the camera SPECIFICALLY pans in on Webby hugging Scrooge. This is a deliberate decision, as Webby could have easily been shown with the triplets of Beakley in this scene. But they chose to put Scrooge and Webby front and center.

Another thing to point out is that FOWL's intentions with the feather is obviously cloning, as mentioned before and theorized by many. In the finale for the promo, we saw two new characters with an interesting resemblance to Webby. It's very likely that May and June are the results of them trying to clone Webby through her feather.

However, they don't look exactly like her. Their color schemes and hairstyles are different, and we know by the casting announcement that they have different voice actresses. Therefore, I don't think FOWL has mastered the art of cloning just yet. They need a perfect clone of Webby, and much like Bentley and Buford (who appear to be clones of Bradford, I'm gonna be real), they're like Webby but not exactly Webby. I wouldn't be surprised if they were sent to the lost library for being "rejects," where they're later found by the family, explain why they were created and open up the exposition for The Last Adventure.

How does FOWL know Webby is the rightful heir? I don't know. I don't think we'll be able to determine that until we know more. But I feel like they somehow do and plan on making the perfect clone of her to retrieve the Papyrus before the McDucks are able to. This is a bit of a stretch, but maybe Beakley knows about this too and is keeping it from Webby because it opens her up to danger. Who knows?

And one more thing before we wrap this post up: remember when Frank said something from Last Crash of the Sunchaser! would come up in season 3? That had to be about him stating Webby wasn't family. It could very well be brought up again in the context that Webby isn't only family but the rightful heir of Scrooge McDuck himself!

Anyway, that's about all I have. I'm sure there's more evidence, and if you have any, feel free to respond with it or send it to me via DMs or asks! This will definitely be on my mind until the finale airs LOL

[cosmicclownboy]

As glad as I am that we're finally in Kybel territory, I am disappointed that the show flipped the previous soulmate dynamics, and Kyle is the one written to be pining yet again. After pining for Liz for so long, an offscreen relationship with Steph, and being taken for granted for the better part of 3 seasons, including this one, it's the last thing I wanted for him.

Really? I find it refreshing tbh.

We have Echo as childhood soulmate imprinting from Max and Liz's unaware.

With Malex it's high school sweethearts with imprinting from both Michael and Alex.

In both situations both the aliens KNOW.

With Kybel it's the human who falls first and the alien unknowingly imprinted on the kindness. The show takes a lot of stuff from one ship and gives it to the other so it's refreshing to have the flip of Isobel being oblivious. It makes Kybel it's own dynamic and doesn't feel like leftover het syndrome where the pairing is random. There is a build to it.

It's also very different imo Liz knew how Kyle felt and leaned into it for her benefit aka Max (she complex yo) but Isobel has no idea. And they directly have made the point throughout s3 that Isobel values and sings Kyle's praises. When she saves him in 3x13 she cuddles him alongside Michael. He is important to her.

Unlike Liz who can be selfish and steamroll without caring about the destruction she causes. Isobel is very invested in Kyle's emotional wellbeing she light ups around him. And whilst we go into Kyliz knowing he's going to be burned. I don't get that with Kybel at all they are to 'steal' Echo's phrasing orbiting each other.

I think with the Noah side of things it makes sense to slow burn Kybel a bit. And the parallel imo I posted with Malex/Kybel stands. Forlex and Anatsa/Isobel they are the mid ships. They aren't evil and as much as it hurts to see your faves sad guppy faces they gonna win in the long run so I can withstand it.

Plus for me I'm hoping my scenario happens where Kyle's like I'm going to kiss you in a minute and if you don't want me to please say. And then he strides up to her and dips her into a kiss.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Have you been asked yet to rank Trust eps? Cos I'm asking! But your the criteria for ranking I leave to you to decide.

Ahahahaha I’ll have you know I put way too much thought into this. :-D

Ok so first of all, there is no such thing as a bad episode of Trust. The whole thing is really tightly written, every character and plot thread has a purpose, and even the episodes that I haven’t watched over and over again are important to the overall story. And a lot of the impact of the show comes from things that are cumulative over multiple episodes.

That being said, I do have favorites. Since the definitive ranking of Primo’s outfits has already been taken care of, here is my ranking from least to most favorite based on some nebulous criteria of artistic/narrative effectiveness and emotional impact, my judgement of which is obviously highly subjective and also correct.

Under the cut because this got ummm unbelievably, ridiculously long.

10. The House of Getty (episode 1)

Sorry Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy, the pilot is my least favorite episode. Still think it was the wrong choice to open with a flashy (and, I can tell, expensive) sequence showcasing the death of a character we literally never see again. And, look, I’m an impatient viewer. If I don’t get someone to root for/emotionally identify with/otherwise catch my interest early on in a narrative, I’ll tune out. And Old Paul is not only unlikeable--far from a mortal sin in dramatic storytelling--he’s boring. I don’t care about any of his rich people problems, and I’m not the kind of viewer who can be kept engaged just by hating someone and watching them be terrible.

Some of the secondary characters in the Getty household do have interesting plotlines, but we don’t get to learn very much about them in the first episode. And I do think things get interesting once Little Paul shows up (although I maintain that the whole episode is more interesting if we understand what the stakes are for Paul getting the money), but if I had started watching this show with no context I wouldn’t have made it past Old Paul’s pre-coital erotica listening routine.

If this had been anything other than the first episode I might not have ranked it last, but extra penalty points for leading with your least interesting characters.

9. Lone Star (episode 2)

This episode is, I think, saddled by the fact that it has to do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of exposition and setup. It mostly works because Chace is an entertaining narrator, and once we get to Italy with Gail I think things zip along at a pretty good pace. Opens with an attempted rape to show how Bad the Bad Guys are, which is...not my favorite trope.

Once again, I think a lot of the information in this episode would have worked better if episode 3 had been episode 1. (We’d already know who Berto was when Chace meets him; we’d already know about the box of guns in the apartment; we’d know when certain characters are lying.) This whole show runs on the suspense of the audience being the only party who knows what’s going on with all the characters at once; I think trading mystery for suspense here was the wrong move. I also can’t help thinking there was pressure to front-load the well-known American actors in the beginning of the show at the expense of the strongest narrative choices.

Imo the best thing about this episode is the sort of...multiple competing images of Paul that emerge. His mom sees him as an innocent victim who couldn’t possibly have planned any of this. Chace sees him as a spoiled rich kid trying to swindle his granddad. Neither one of them has the complete truth.

Next we get into some episodes that are certainly not bad, but their greatness is more on the level of some bangin’ individual scenes than a whole package.

8. John, Chapter 11 (episode 6)

Again, this isn’t a bad episode. The main reason I put it near the end of the list is that the first time through I got sort of impatient during the first half. We, the audience, by virtue of our extra-textual knowledge, know that Paul can’t be dead, and we spend about half the episode before we know what really happened to him, which felt a bit too long to me.

This episode does have some fantastic individual scenes including: Leo talking Primo down in the farmhouse, Leo and Paul’s conversation about Angelo’s death, Gail being an absolute badass, and the meeting between Salvatore and Old Paul. A lot of these scenes are essential on a thematic level, but I don’t think the episode as a whole is the most streamlined.

7. Consequences (episode 10)

I debated for a while where to put this episode because the overall feeling of 57 Chekov’s guns going off in the space of one episode is SO satisfying, and the resolutions of some of the individual plotlines are delicious. Ultimately I would have liked more space for Paul and Gail and less Old Paul being grumpy about his substitute child museum’s mediocrity (although the scene with the bad reviews is hilarious). Once again I feel like the show creators felt they had to pull the focus back to Old Paul to wrap things up and I just. don’t care.

That being said. The resolution of Primo’s storyline? SO SATISFYING. And tbh I don’t dislike the scenes that exist with Paul and Gail; even the happy scenes have this poignant tone to them. I think they were trying to deal with the fact that his irl story is just...incredibly fucking tragic, and you can see a bit of the strain showing.

6. Kodachrome (episode 7)

I know episode 7 is not one of your personal favorites, but it’s the one where I think jumping between multiple plotlines/sets of characters is used to the most satisfying dramatic effect. It has this sense of dramatic irony that feels like some Shakespearean family tragedy. The whole episode, we are hoping that Paul Jr. will finally do the thing we want him to do, which is stand up to his father. And he does it--but at the absolute worst, most selfish and destructive moment possible.

Paul Jr. may be the literal worst, but I do have compassion for him in the flashbacks, mostly because it seems painfully apparent that no matter what he does, he will never be able to please his father. But he doesn’t seem to realize this, and he keeps trying, even as it’s destroying him and his relationship with his family. Credit to Michael Esper for his performance for making me feel a smidgen of compassion for this bastard.

I think the other thing this episode shows is how both of Paul’s parents keep putting him, a child, into roles and circumstances that he shouldn’t really be in. He’s wandering around through what seem like very much adult environments with his dad and Talitha in Morocco. In the Trust version of events he’s there when Talitha ODs and is the one trying to revive her while his dad is having a breakdown in the corner. Gail seems like the more responsible parent but there’s something about her bringing Paul as her “date” on a night out, and the understanding that this is a thing that happens regularly...to me the disturbing part is not so much bringing a young kid to a party with adults but the unspoken expectation that Little Paul will fill the void of companionship that his father has left empty. (Gettys expecting Little Paul to step in to cover for the failings of his father is a repeated theme, and it even plays into the ear thing. His family has failed to pay the ransom, so this is now a problem he has to solve himself.) Combine this all with Leonardo going, um, excuse me but what the actual fuck is wrong with your family? and I think it makes a very effective episode. And the last couple minutes had me yelling NOOOOOOOO GODDAMMIT because you can see what’s going to happen and you’re just watching it unfolding like a car wreck. Also has one of my hands-down favorite scenes, of Paul and Primo in the car waiting for the ransom.

5. White Car in a Snowstorm (episode 9)

The ~ D R A M A !!! ~ This episode is an opera. I mean this whole show is dramatique but episode 9 really leans into the vivid imagery--that snowy highway in the mountains above the sea, the all-white ransom exchange, Paul clinging to the pole at the shuttered Getty gas station, some Very Serious Mobsters throwing the ransom money around like idiots in a moment where you’re encouraged to be happy along with them.

This is also one of my favorite episodes for Primo and for Primo and Paul’s weird sometimes-alliance. Primo walking away from Salvatore to go tell Paul “they always pay in the end”? Primo and Paul teaming up to argue with Salvatore about why Paul shouldn’t die? Primo being all threateny to the doctor treating Paul because somewhere deep down he is worried (that’s my take and you’ll never convince me otherwise)? Primo dressing up to fake-scab on a postal strike in order to find a misplaced severed ear? All gold.

Fun fact: the letter Gail writes to President Nixon did happen in real life, but as far as I can tell the phone call did not. The real details of who convinced Old Paul to finally pay (some) of the ransom are considerably less cinematic. They’re the same amount of sexist though!

Ok now we are getting to the top tier...

4. That’s All Folks! (episode 4)

This is definitely the episode that took me from “ok this is fun” to “oh holy shit I’m invested now.” It’s the episode where we get introduced to most of the Calabrian characters and their world. It’s also the episode where we start to realize that Primo is not just a fun antagonist but is really a parallel protagonist to Little Paul, with his own set of relationships and motivations that we start to see from his POV. (I’d argue that, with the exception of his very first scene, we’ve mostly seen Primo through other characters’ gaze up until episode 4, and this is the point where we start watching him as like, the character whose pursuit of a goal we’re following over the course of the scene.)

This episode ranks high for capturing so much of the weird mix of tones that makes Trust work. It can be very funny. (I never fail to fuckin lose it when Fifty is on the phone with Gail the first time and when he’s talking to the thoroughly unimpressed newspaper switchboard operator.) It has this weird unexpected intimacy between characters you wouldn’t think would connect with each other. (Primo and Paul, Paul and Angelo; in retrospect the arc of the relationship between Primo and Leo gets started in that scene in Salvatore’s kitchen.) And it has one of the show’s absolute best record-scratch tone shifts when Primo gets the ransom offer. I remember saying “oh FUCK” out loud the first time I watched the end of that episode, when Primo comes back to the house, visibly drunk and clearly furious. We’ve seen him be violent plenty before now in the show, but always in a controlled, calculated way. This is the first time we see his potential for out-of-control rage-fueled violence and he’s terrifying!

3. La Dolce Vita (episode 3)

I stand by my claim that this episode (with a few minor continuity adjustments) should have been the pilot. Can you imagine a title card that’s like “Rome 1973” and then away we go with Paul snorting coke and taking racy photos and jumping on cops and fucking his girlfriend in what is definitely not proper museum etiquette, and then the smash cut to Primo intimidating and robbing and murdering people? And that’s the opening of the whole show? And you’re like how are these characters connected and then they meet each other and it’s the fucking sunflower field scene??

Anyway aside from the fact that I think knowing the information in this episode would have made episodes 1 and 2 more interesting...it’s just a great fucking episode. It’s kinetic and propulsive and funny and tense and violent and features Primo’s sniper skills and his ass in those cornflower blue trousers. I rest my case.

2. Silenzio (episode 5)

I’ll be honest, I went back and forth on the top two a bunch. Silenzio is definitely my personal favorite episode, and I’d argue that it’s the best written, in terms of what it accomplishes narratively, which is to keep you emotionally invested in both Paul and Angelo trying to escape with their lives, and Primo and Leonardo hunting them down. That’s so fucking hard!! And yes some of it is great acting but it starts from the foundation of the writing. It’s just such a perfect little self-contained horror movie, and it has this profound sense of fatalism to it, because you know from the beginning (if only by virtue of only being halfway through the series) that Paul is not going to escape, and you sort of know that there is only one way this will end for Angelo. And yet they escape by the skin of their teeth so! many! times!

It’s also the episode where you see how much power the ‘Ndrangheta has over people’s lives in this community: Salvatore is like God, calling his servants to him with the church bells. Combine that with the visuals of two characters running for their lives mostly on foot through this unforgiving landscape, and you really get the sense of this environment as a harsh place where most people have a very constrained set of choices, and the claustrophobia of that. You get the sense in this episode that everyone is trapped in these expectations of violence and duty and honor. Angelo did what anyone with compassion would do, and saved Paul from what seemed like certain death, and he’s doomed for it. At the same time Primo is doing exactly what anyone would expect him to do in response to a subordinate who disobeyed him. In some ways the end of the episode feels inevitable, unsurprising, and yet they do SUCH a good job of winding up the tension until the literal last seconds of the episode, and then releasing it with a big dramatic bang. It’s so good!!

1. In the Name of the Father (episode 8)

Ok I’ll be honest the ONLY reason In the Name of the Father edged out Silenzio for the top spot is that it is really clear they pulled out all the stops in terms of making this episode feel extra heightened in a show where everything is already heightened. Like, the cinematography is different? They still use handheld a lot but I swear there are more still shots and more extreme, editorial camera angles like that shot of Francesco looking upward in church where the camera is looking down from above him. I can’t tell if they actually tweaked the color grading or if the bright white and blood red just stand out against the Calabrian color palette which is mostly earth tones, browns and greens and blues.

There are just. So many layers to this episode. The imagery! The literal sacrificial lamb at the beginning, Francesco being guided by Leonardo through an act of violence against an animal, something that I’m sure they don’t even see as violence but just part of farm life, part of survival and in this case part of a celebration, but something that fathers teach their sons how to do as part of becoming a man in this world. Paul as the metaphorical sacrificial lamb later, drawing parallels to Jesus (the lamb of God), Isaac (a father sacrificing his son), any number of martyred saints, pick your Catholic imagery. The blood of the lamb on the tree stump and Paul’s blood on the stone. The communion wafer (the body and blood of Christ) and Francesco at the end with Paul’s blood and a literal piece of his body held in his hands the same way.

And then there is like, the suspense of watching everyone marking time through the steps of this community ritual that’s supposed to be a joyful, communal celebration, while we know that there is a secret ticking away under the surface. The slow unfolding of the lie told to one person spreading to everyone in the village, and then the knowledge that Salvatore knows spreading to all the people who’ll be in trouble for that. The relationship arcs between the main Calabrian characters...not resolving, but sliding into place for the final act. Primo finally being done with Salvatore. Primo and Leo’s alliance being cemented and Leo physically stepping between Primo and Salvatore, to protect Primo. (No one ever protects Primo!! Still not over it!!!!) The confirmation celebration as a mirror of the Getty party in episode 1, the parallels drawn between the 3 Pauls and Salvatore-Primo-Francesco and how Primo reacts to being passed over as heir vs. how Paul Jr. reacts. Little Paul having two whole minutes of screen time and managing to break your heart with them. Regina! Just...Regina’s whole everything. The music going all-instrumental for an episode and having this haunting, dreamlike but still tense quality to it. And the fact that we never cut away from Calabria to another plotline gives the whole episode this hypnotic, all-encompassing quality. It’s just. SO GOOD!!!!

[stray-tori]

TPN Final Volume(s) Thoughts + closing thoughts

I think these are Vol 18 thoughts that I never posted:

I will say, while the parallel between the manga’s sink scene and his breakdown with "I want to live" is epic, I also kind of appreciate how it goes literally unspoken in the anime but then at the breakdown he actually says it out loud. like the scene itself is........ UHHH something, but in concept I think that's actually really neat because it evolves and all that epic stuff. 

I really can’t get over how this was basically just a huge ass video game final boss emerging from nothing with a cool ass build up animation, just to have someone be like “You’re dead already” and the boss just. poofs into thin air. like I get what it was trying to say and I think the social commentary is pretty nice but boy it was so anti-climactic pff

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Mostly ending rambles

lack of mental aftermath/character development -- I feel like towards the end, really nobody got anything meaningful, it all just felt so... weightless and just happened. I did like the final chapters, I got emotional bc memory stuff always gets me; but it's all just rushed and nobody gets anything because there's 10 trillion characters. I don’t even feel like Ray or Norman got anything of substance - which could be me just not getting or connecting it.

It all just is: “Oh okay we’re doing this. Eh” like I just.... don’t care all that much. I may have even dropped it tbh if I hadn’t been reading in a group with a lot of shitposting (may have harmed my emotional investment to some extend too, to be fair)

especially in the final chapter, everything just ... kinda gets mentioned in passing and im like HOLD ON

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The circular story and the lack of narrative growth -- I think before s2 started, I once said “s1 Emma didn’t change her ideals, just her methods. I think it‘d be interesting if down the line, she had to change her ideals instead.” - but she just changed her method, again. S1 was a compromise, not a change. And towards the end it becomes another change of methods: Emma was very much a team person in the first arc. She never really tried to sacrifice herself, she seemed to always want to include everyone in the solution. Isabella in the manga even says that she learned that that was the way to do things from her children. But then the finale has Emma do what? Make that deal on her own, not tell anyone, leave them in the dark. No trusting them, no confiding in them; not even Norman or Ray.

The anime also did this to some extend, but at least she discussed staying behind with those she wanted to stay behind with and while it’s a dick move to tell the others as they’re literally in the gate, at least she did actually tell them.

I think what I find odd here the most is that... nothing changed. The person changed. It’s still an escape attempt and some sacrifices themselves so that it works out... Actually, one thing changed: Norman had to face them before leaving. They could say goodbye and they could even attempt some last minute efforts. They could punish him emotionally for deciding on his own.

With Emma, they don’t get any of that. They don’t get so say goodbye, they don’t get to discuss it or critic her or propose to just stay in the demon world, because they don’t want her to do that. I know that’s probably why she didn’t tell them -- but the narrative evolution effectively became... more secret-keeping. It seems counter-intuitive.

so ig the finale moral is that it's fine if I burden myself and sacrifice something dear to me to help someone else as long as I technically don't lie to anyone.

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actually, maybe you could go more into the "everyone is part of the promise, technically" angle and just have them discuss and come up with a reward that wouldn't absolutely destroy them. it would give them more agency, and also highlight their intelligence which was one of the major selling points of the story.

I get that’s not really possible because they probably don’t want to go through that whole mindfuckery again to adjust the promise.

I still think she should have told them, the promise was already done anyway, and I think it'd at least carry the message A BIT.

It’s literally Norman as it is now. There’s other options; they could stay, they could just pass through the gate (unless really only the Ratri clan can pass and all others - like Isabella after her deal - would have to make a promise to pass, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to be honest) but “because she’s kind she chooses the way of most certainty on her own expense”. I guess this actually heavily re-contextualizes this scene because it’s technically after the promise. Oh man, Emma...

I think maybe the anime’s approach of just going to get the children manually would have been the better way, actually. Now this would require a whole other segment of the story and the gate would have to be changed, most likely, but you could have probably have a “good ending” in the “small” scale of our cast and then establish that they’ll go save everyone else. As established by goldy pond, breaking the promise’s contents doesn’t really do anything, anyway. They could have used that to their advantage.

It’d be harder but at least it would be giving something up, a part of their ideals, if you will.

Or maybe they even decide as a group that it’s worth it and they’ll promise to find her again and it’s really wholesome and heartbreaking and AAAA- at least then it’d be consent and everything.

Idk if the message that it’s okay to sacrifice yourself as long as everyone’s okay with it is that much better but at least it’d show more narrative growth.

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The reward itself -- there’s really 2 sides to this: thematically and logistically.

In theory I really like the whole "payment is your family" thing and kind of like... re-contextualizing it. I also like how the way she phrased it made it sort of a paradox haha, it's smart. I honestly would have liked it though if she had even more pro-action in it, and came up with it herself? As in, promise dude is like: "okay. this is contradictory. what are we gonna do about it?" and then Emma has to come up with the memories. But maybe that’d give her too much agency in front of this god figure.

I like it in a bubble but I’m not sure how this sacrifice particularly connects to TPN as a whole. We have Ray’s thing with his early memories but other than that.... memories just haven’t really been a prominent theme iirc.

I guess if you want to be really nice, the story started because of Ray’s memories and it ended with Emma’s lack of memories which I guess is a circle but not a particularly good one dhsjds; it’s just funny to think about.

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also, Him said that she couldnt make future connections (or, he’d “take them from her world”) which.... made me think that either she'd periodically forget relationships/family she makes (which doesn’t seem to be the case bc her relationship with the old man seems fine) or that she just... literally wouldn't be able to interact with her old family? but she could absolutely fine so. Why was that part there to begin with?

I also would have found it funny if the moment they reunite the promise breaks and they all spawn back into the demon world. Though I guess we already established that breaking a promise doesn’t do anything (goldy pond).

And because it doesn’t, there’s no real consequence to the reward not working out as intended in the end. Emma angst good though.

If there was an actual “breaking promise” mechanic established, I personally think it would have been interesting if she literally wasn’t allowed to see them, but could still remember them. It wouldn’t take her memories of her beloved family, but imagining her having to avoid being found and hiding whenever they’re actually close is just really angsty pff- but yeah, since that’s not a thing, I can respect that it’s consistent even if I’m a little confused still about the “future connections” bit. If that wasn’t there, this whole logistics part wouldn’t really bother me tbh.

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also ray awkwardly trying to insert himself into the hand holding on the final page is so funny i can't

rip Ray honestly

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Final Thoughts

Lowart talked about this in his manga video, but I also adore how Norman basically becomes an embodiment of the narrative up until that point. Everything he says in the evil-blood reveal conversation is backed up by the previous narrative, which obviously makes it a lot stronger in the manga because it’s not just a moral argument on its own; it’s literally backed by the story we’re being told (i.e. demons will want to eat/hunt humans even if they don’t have to => goldy pond; etc.) -- sadly this amazing setup to challenge Emma’s ideals never really goes anywhere. “You can’t have everything you want” but she literally can.

In general his video puts a lot of things I also felt into words so, check it out if you want.

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The bunker raid deaths never really seemed like it impacted Emma at all, despite that being the biggest hit to her ideals in the story imo. And they didn’t even impact us at all, because there was a timeskip literally right before it.

Yugo and Lucas have changed since then and we don’t know them now. I wanted to see more of them and the others learning and training and becoming a family before losing them. it just felt really weightless because I didn’t really feel like a lot of his changes happened on-screen. Somehow he helps Ray get into GP off-screen (the last thing we saw was him saying it was impossible to get her back and next time he talks about the secret passage and is actively helping LIKE HOW DID WE GET HERE). It feels like singular disconnected movements of growth, but it’s not a graph, it’s just dots on a diagram.

Dare I even say it: Manga timeskip is more jarring than anime timeskip.

*drops mic*

*runs away*

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I think the anime had a point in what it tried to do, still, especially regarding cast size and towards the end, it just... mostly fell on its face really flat, which is a shame.

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I also... don't like the whole code solid thing?? what. human world was built up as it's not gonna be easy and then it was.

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Also the ghosts alerting Ray to hint him triggered the fuck out of me. AND THE NECKLACE PLS I JUST- anime was dumb too but at least she lost it in an attack ffs what is happeningg

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why

why did norman become a ceo at like 13

pls end my suffering

i just. my suspension of disbelief is shattered and i cant stop cry-laughing

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it's also rly funny for Ray's entire character premise to be wanting to save his two best friends and then his wish is: SEE BUILDING

while Norman gets this whole sincere and serious wish of just being with them. Like it’s super sweet, but it’s just funny when Ray’s next to him being emotional over sightseeing pfff-

Maybe his could have been “take lots of pictures with/of my family” or something, idk. if he really wants to he can even have “take picture with them in front of the thing” ashjds

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Overall: EH. GF will probably stay my favorite arc.

It’s been fun to read but not particularly impactful to me. I only really cared about the smaller character stuff, especially trio stuff.

[battlestar-royco]

IT'S BEEN 84 YEARS. LET'S TALK ABOUT NETFLIX'S SHADOW AND BONE.

8.7/10 ⭐️

spoilers for everythingggg under the cut! i'll be discussing its merits as an adaptation vs as a show, characters and plots, and the overall aesthetic and magic/world.

SHOW VS ADAPTATION:

i say this as someone who knows all the books very well and has been in the fandom for nearly a decade, so i'm biased. but. s&b functions better as an adaptation than as a standalone show. alina's plot moves so well, and satisfyingly renders so many iconic scenes and sites from s&b. the worldbuilding is also pretty easy to fall into, with a forgivable amount of voiceover/infodump. and, hurting budget aside, i mostly liked this visual interpretation of the gv.

(sidebar: the in-universe racism... doesn't work. i tried to view it in good faith but imo it was very heavy-handed. if it was framed like, "wow it's a SHU WOMAN saving the world!!!" it might've been better, but it's just racism without recompense. and it's a terrible look to make other characters of color racist. i just. why?)

as for the crows, however... i'm just not sure how strong they'll be for new viewers? i totally understand why they were included, and i really like certain connections the show made between the two series. it was a great decision to introduce the druskelle in the first Cut scene, and showing nina as a ravkan spy.

the new crows stuff felt in character, but i think the show is at its height when it sticks to the books. the first couple episodes switching between tgt and proto-soc gave me whiplash, but luckily it got more organic as it progressed. if i didn't know and love all the crows before going in, i wouldn't be that invested in them based on season 1. aside from a couple fantastic scenes, it really felt like the writers were trying to make fetch happen for like 4 episodes before they figured out what to do with everyone. plus, ravka is such a different vibe from ketterdam--tonally, sartorially, technologically, etc they didn't totally feel like the same world. it was pretty jarring. although i prefer the duo to the trio, s&b is alina's story and she is That Bitch who walked so the crows could fly. so i didn't hate their inclusion but the shoehorned content did at times disservice both plots, imo.

CHARACTERS:

way too many, which is yet another consequence of smushing everyone into one season.

MAL/ALINA/DARKLING: first and foremost, and i PROMISE i'm not saying this just to be a hater, but there needed to be less malina. i'll be the first to say that show!mal really has what book!mal wants. the new pre-fold scenes were so good. li and renaux have amazing chemistry, and their laughter over stolen grapes was a highlight. his stag plot was also good. THAT SAID, there were way too many keramzin flashbacks and malina parallels like.. 🤢🤢why do they want us to love mal so much. for what. they only needed the teacup scene but they clearly thought they were doing something with micro-aggressions and that meadow shot they showed like 6 times. knowing mal's original character, and how they scrubbed his show counterpart almost to the point of flawlessness, he's just never going to be my fave even though i do respect what they did with him. also, why were there like 5 fake deaths for this dude? boring.

the darkling was great. ben barnes knows what the fuck he's about, and he funneled manipulation and charisma into every scene. as for the backstory: at first i really wasn't feeling it, but i eventually did warm up to it and i'm so glad they showed it because oh god the cut and the creation of the fold were SO FUCKING ICONIC. also, love love love the baghra development. WE LOVE TO SEE OLD WOMEN/MOMS WHO AREN'T "EVIL"/"CORRUPTED" BY THEIR MAGICAL POWERS!!!!!!! BITCH! it didn't have to be 12 minutes long though.

i honestly don't have much to say on alina. jml was excellent in her role and very true to the book. without her book narration she feels much more consistently written.

TRILOGY CHARACTERS: i really felt the lack of genya and zoya. genya's character and actress are perfectly layered and effective, even though their roles are relatively minor. i'm so looking forward to her razrushost moment, but i wish they'd laid more groundwork for it. (and i hope throw out the wig and just dye her hair next season.) also like. WHY KEEP THE IRRELEVANT MEAN GIRL/DARKLING THIRST PLOT FOR ZOYA??? AFTER ALL THE EFFORT THEY PUT INTO IMPROVING MAL? they sacrificed so much for malina at the expense of other characters. finally, it was interesting how they decided to kill marie. i love the tailor magic flex. but also they clearly just did that to emotionally manipulate us and connect the crows so. hm.

CROWS: speaking of! the crows storyline felt a little like filler. honestly i wish they waited to roll crows into later seasons. i'd prefer little foreshadowings about them, a la the druskelle cameo or the references to nina and matthias. introducing the crows so soon makes the ice court heist feel less special. the recruitment was super tight and pragmatic, so this felt a little fluffy/fanservicey. kaz also comes off as sooooo old again. especially without the vulnerability of his book counterpart, he just seems like a 40-year-old in a 20something body.

i was pleasantly surprised to find jesper my favorite crow. like wow.... second amendment rights for jesper fahey only!! i like all the crows but book!kanej are my faves by a long shot. they felt a bit stiff tbh, like the actors were a little uncomfy with each other and/or their exposition-heavy lines. however, the one scene that felt EXTREMELY kanej to me was when they killed that dude in the church holy fuck oh my god. WE STAN AN ANGSTY BATTLE COUPLE WHO ARE BOTH DEAD INSIDE. highlight for sure.

and i actually kinda loved helnik? i know helnik is controversial for very valid reasons, but i thoughy their dynamic was fantastic and they were among the strongest performers. it was much less overwhelming than the constantly interweaving kaz/inej/jesper imo. they need to fire their location scout though. those green screen mountains and beaches were um. interesting.

aesthetic and magic:

i really hope they get a bigger budget for costumes, cgi, and sets next season! the keftas are serviceable, but they look a little cheap at times. i will also never forgive ANY of the crows' hats. it's mostly just a personal aesthetic thing but god i fucking hate them. the darkling was best dressed, but in general i liked the ravkan look more than the kerch. why were the crows always in the most elaborate getups? why couldn't they just chill in their waistcoats??? they never seemed relaxed in the way alina and co did; the clothes never felt worn or broken in.

favorite sets: the darkling's room, the crow club, all the grisha tents, the matthias/nina ship, the church where inej killed the squaller, outdoor fountain where they told the story of the black heretic. the lighting was almost always right for each scene, and there was so much detail in every one of them.

THE MAGIC WAS SO COOL! my greatest beef is alina's light--it often looked so fake, and it washed out jml. oftentimes it was fluorescent or blue, and it was used as a forcefield or orb. it's supposed to be sunlight bro. what is so hard about that? the darkling's magic looked good, other than the fold. i've always imagined the fold more like a huge black fog rather than a literal wall. so that was a bit game of thronesy, but not terrible.

and can we talk about the amplifiers? amplifiers are my personal favorite gv lore but season 1 barely gets into them. they never mention the bear zoya slew, nor do they establish the unique strength of the stag, sea dragon, and firebird. BUT THE ANTLER COLLAR FUSED INTO ALINA'S SKIN WAS SUPER DARK AND MACABRE AND I KINDA LIKED IT? ALTHOUGH I HAVE TO WONDER HOW TF IS SHE GONNA SLEEP???

if you made it this far, thanks so much! that's all i have for today.