#there has always been magic and it's not some deus ex machina that ruins the plot!!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rainhadaenerys · 3 years

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Saying that Daenerys is "nothing without her dragons" is an insult to GRRM's writing

I've already made several posts about this topic (see here and here), talking about all of Dany's talents that have nothing to do with dragons, about how she accomplished many things without using dragons, about how even to get the dragons she had to work hard, and so on. But I just remembered one GRRM interview that is relevant to this discussion:

Magic should never be the solution to the problem. My credo as a writer has always been Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech where he said, “The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.” That transcends genre. That’s what good fiction, good drama is about: human beings in trouble. You have to make a decision, you have to do something, your life is in danger or your honor is in danger, or you're facing some crisis of the heart. To make a satisfying story, the protagonist has to solve the problem, or fail to solve the problem – but has to grapple with the problem in some kind of rational way, and the reader has to see that. And if the hero does win in the end, he has to feel that that victory is earned. The danger with magic is that the victory could be unearned. Suddenly you're in the last chapter and you wind up with a deus ex machina. The hero suddenly remembers that if he can just get some of this particular magical plant, then he can brew a potion and solve his problem. And that's a cheat. That feels very unsatisfying. It cheapens the work. Well-done fantasy – something like Tolkien – he sets Lord of the Rings up perfectly, right at the beginning. The only way to get rid of the ring, the only way, is to take it to Mount Doom and throw it in the fires from which it comes. You know that right from the first. And if we'd gone through all that, and then at the end of the book suddenly Gandalf had said, wait a minute, I just remembered, here's this other spell, oh, I can get rid of the ring easily! You would have hated that. That would have been all wrong. Magic can ruin things. Magic should never be the solution. Magic can be part of the problem. (source)

GRRM doesn't write characters who just get everything solved through magic. He criticizes just that, the use of magic to solve the problems of the characters, without the characters having to make choices, think on how they'll solve their problems, etc. He would have been an hypocrite to say this if he had written Dany like that.

But the fact is that he didn't write Dany like that. GRRM gave Dany dragons, but he was very careful not to make dragons the solution to her problems, and sometimes, even make the dragons the source of her problems:

First, because Dany wasn't handed her dragons, she had to solve a magical puzzle (her dragon dreams and Mirri's clues about only death paying for life), make sacrifices and step into a pyre to hatch these dragons from petrified eggs.

Then, her dragons immediately cause problems: because she has them, Dany has to cross the Red Waste in order to avoid her dragons getting captured and her people slaughtered. The dragons didn't help to survive the Red Waste and to find a way out of it. Dany had to be resilient and show strength to keep her khalasar united to survive, and she had to be smart to send her bloodriders in different directions to find a way out of the desert (see details here and here)

In Slaver's Bay, Dany's dragons are not essential. In Astapor, her dragons were just a bargaining chip (it could have been anything else), and the success of her plan didn't depend on the dragons as weapons (because the dragons are still too small for that). In Yunkai and Meereen, Dany doesn't use her dragons at all, her plans come entirely from her own mind, from her own intelligence. She solves the problems on how to win those cities by herself (X, X, X, X).

In Meereen, her dragons don't help her to rule. And they cause problems. Dany has to chain her dragons because Drogo ate a child, she has to pay for the animals her dragons consumed, and she has to find solutions to all of those questions (how to hide that Drogon ate a child and how to pay for the lost animals) as well as solutions to how to bring peace and prosperity to Meereen all on her own (and she does this).

The dragons only help in isolated moments (like Drogon saving Dany in the House of the Undying, but considering that the Undying are also magical beings using magical power against Dany, I think that's fair). But GRRM has been faithful to what he said about magic, and he has not used magic and dragons as the solution to Dany's problems.

#daenerys targaryen #asoiaf meta #asoiaf #valyrianscrolls #grrm #my meta

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pocketramblr · 4 years

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The followup to the Thought™

"Ugh." You say, waving to the screen. "Look at that, now that's who should have been the main character-"

"Oh?" I say, a small glowing figure appearing in front of you. "I can show you that if you want, wish granted." I wave my magic wand, and you blink to find yourself watching a different universe's show.

It's about a blond boy, with a minor superpower that's difficult to work with. He only has one friend, with major anxiety. Both of them want to be heroes, which is about the coolest and nicest thing anyone can be in this world.

But the blond boy is only in middle school. He doesn't get the best grades, he's a bit of a class clown, a bit of a delinquent. He's not exactly cool or over powered, but his earnest, bright nature endears him to the watchers and readers of the story. He's nice, and not worried about competition. He'll put cheering up his best friend over studying- and he'll put just enjoying video games together over training his power on his own.

He doesn't, by the way, train on his own. He makes meager progress in the class provided, and works hard when he's thinking about it, but he honestly doesn't even know where to start with his power.

He takes the entrance exam, and by some manner of luck, manages to permeate through blasts and rubble while shoving other students out of the way. He's used to watching out for his best friend, at least, and that carries over in his natural, if clumsy, attempts to help others here.

With more luck, he is accepted into the school on those points. So is his best friend, though they're in different classes. He still doesn't have many friends, but they meet a new girl in his bf's class: she's gorgeous and powerful- the most raw energy in any of their quirks, and no anxiety or complications holding her back.

She's a bit of a ditz, though, a bit much for others to hang around all the time, so even though she should be a shoe in fit the most popular, she slides easily into their group instead.

The fandom likes her a lot, and you feel impatient. This isn't the story you wanted to see, not really.

"Don't worry," I say. "Time flies when you're actually a school story instead of a daily battle with villains story."

And it does- they compete in the first sports festival. The main character, to little surprise, doesn't do well. But he manages to keep himself and the others smiling and laughing through it, and that brings the attention of the mentor.

The mentor that you like, of course, the mentor you believe was right.

The mentor trains the main character. It's hard, but he can actually break down what exactly he needs to improve on, and now that he has support, the main character takes it seriously. Like all children do, he rises to the expectations on him when he's given the material to do so.

Not made to find the material. The kid would have never dreamed of just assuming and asking such a high ranking hero to focus on him. Rather like another boy, but we'll get to him later.

It's another year. The girl tried her best at the beauty pageant. The best friend tried his best at the liscence exam. The main character has still been training at his internship.

"His second year." You say, thinking. "Now this is when All Might shows up in the timeline, ten months before February in what would be Mirio's second year."

I raise an eyebrow, but wave my magic wand.

All Might does appear. The mysterious top hero, always in the background- ads, all over the mentor's office. They used to work together, but no one in this universe knows anything more than that.

The mentor and the principal happily tell the main character that the number one hero wants to meet with him directly! The boy is nervous, of course, excited, of course, and a tad confused.

But meet they do.

And offer his quirk, he does.

The episode and chapter end on that, of course, and you feel a surge of excitement. Finally!

You look around and realize others in this fandom do not see it that way. Many critique the twist as coming out of nowhere, with no build up that it was even possible, breaking the established rules for no reason. Many others are proud of how much the main character has to work at the difficult power, and do not want him to have a second before he masters this one. Some feel it's a trap- a secret test of character, or a villain in disguise who will ruin him. Some wonder if it's more metaphorical- he's offering the power of support and more guidance, maybe a connection, but not his literal superpower.

You do not know how to feel about it, but you know this will be for the better. He will be perfect for it.

At the beginning of the next update, the boy turns down the quirk. Grateful, more than he could say, but he's worked so hard for his own power and he's not even up to snuff with it yet. He's unsure he's the best option. The girl, after all, is used to weilding such power, maybe he should try her, maybe he should keep looking.

The top hero nods, and asks if he can visit again later, if he can find no other. The boy is a good hero after all, and maybe he needs to believe in himself as much as he is telling his friend to. It will be hard to train a second quirk, yes, but he can manage. It will make him stronger and pay off, after all.

The boy agrees, tentatively. No one can really say no to the number one hero, after all.

"Ok." You say, nodding. "There's an opening. It can build more, since that's how the story is here, way more slowburn."

I shrug. That's what happens when you start the story three years early, but whatever.

The story goes on. The main character does better in the sports festival, but not by any measure good. His friend finds a mentor, a character popular. Much warmer than the blond's mentor. The girl gets a really good mentor, a top tenner.

And then they start to get really good. They're used to training now, and getting it all bit individually and together. The mentor is motivated as of by fury, pushing more and more. And the main character grows to reach it.

Another year. They're seniors, now. Just one year left before they're pros, but they're already about at that level. They're called the Big Three.

The third year is different. Chaos every few weeks. A class of first years attacked.

"Oh, because All Might is still looking for a successor among the students- checking over the freshmen but they won't be able to compare."

I hum in a way that could be interpreted as agreement.

The sports festival. Finally, real victory. They do so well, even with one anxious at crowds. And one that is seemingly allergic to staying clothed. They do well.

The chaos continues, always at the sides. The others in this universe who follow the story talk about that and the offer the top hero made. Is he getting weaker? Did that power leak somehow and now someone wants it?

The tension grows, especially for you. If the hero doesn't give the main character the power before the summer....

The main character doesn't get the power before the summer. The hero falls on tv while the blond and his friends watch in horror.

After the summer, the main character decides to meet the freshmen. You wonder who will replace a certain someone's seat, or if this is playing the original quirkless hero storyline.

When the main character challenges the class of freshmen and you see that sparking green, you seethe.

"I said I wanted Mirio to have OfA! Why is he-"

"Actually," when I speak, you cannot. "You asked for him to be the main character. He still is. A beloved one, even."

"You know what I meant!"

"Perhaps. But then you asked for another change, and so I allowed All Might to meet with him a few days before he would have in the old timeline. He had a chance, he turned it down. Why are you mad at him having his own ambitions and autonomy?"

"He was supposed to take it! He's the worthier option, and you know it."

"What makes him worthy?"

"He works hard!"

"So does Izuku."

"He worked hard before he was offered everything by All Might!"

"Yes," I will admit. "Though, that's only because he met Sir before he met All Might. Were you so focused on how slow it was going that you didn't actually watch what he was doing?"

You will not admit to anything, still angry.

"He'll get another chance." I remind you.

You huff, but the story continues on.

The main character takes a liking to the boy you despise. So does the fandom, dubbing him the cutest little kohai. He's awkward and eager and sunny, like a fusion of the main trio.

He's also impulsive, and on their first patrol together they run into who will obviously be the big bad of the arc- and his abused daughter.

The fandom is split on if the story is going to go with a "In this arc, the blond must pass his experience on patience to a boy who it all about speed and too naive" or if it's "In this arc, it's the mouth of babes- the boy will inspire the main character to do good more impulsively."

You sit and wait for it to be "the boy will finally fork over the power he's now spent over a year working to hold and use to the real main character."

The raid happens. We finally see how the main character met his best friend. It's very sweet. The girl is a lead character and gets focus on her fight too, though the two freshmen working with her don't really. There's another funky freshman boy who turns out to be more like the best friend than we thought.

Finally, we get to the main fight.

And the main character is shot, quirk erased. For good, if the villain who's really not actually that good an example of a scientist is to be believed.

"Oh. What if the former top hero offers his power again, after this arc? It's about loss but always moving on?" The fandom asks. They aren't sure if the buildup to this is better than before, but it's certainly am interesting turn, and not as controversial as the last time.

The best friend saves the day by awakening right at the perfect moment to drag the teacher in. The quirk is kinda super deus ex machina for this arc though.

At the hospital, the mentor dies. The former number one hero is there.

The fandom wonders whether to hope or fear how long he'll wait to replace the mentor and the quirk.

You wait, knowing it's soon.

Then the freshman offers his quirk, and the fandom flips again.

"We should have known!" They cry. "He had super speed and strength the whole time, maybe the sparks are from his own quirk, but it's the same power! Oh, this hurts much more than just if it had been the retired hero!"

Once again, the fandom divides. Many can't bear to see the kohai they love shoved aside after this one moment. Will be be able to use his original power? Then they won't mind the strength for the blond. Some say to wait for his power to come back. A few pipe up about the possibility of him doing it quirkless. He has trained physically too, after all these years.

"No thanks," he says again. He does smile though- just like Sir told him to- and tells his kohai that he’ll do great things with the power, just like All Might did. Tells him that he already has.

You're past the point of fury now.

"Why?" You demand.

"Keep watching." My tone is cold. "Keep watching, the next five months where he does nothing but babysit a girl in hopes she'll magically make himt not quirkless again. He doesn't even ask if he can be a quirkless hero. He doesn't even go to school to keep training. You demanded the other boy figure it out himself. This boy doesn't. He just hopes the same thing that did this to him can undo it."

You don't know what to say about that.

"Neither took it seriously in middle school. That's the nature of middle schoolers. Neither of them tried to go solo quirkless, when no support was provided. But they're both good kids. Hard workers. Heroic. They love each other, honestly, they're friends. It's sweet. And it's sad that it took me doing this for you to see it."

I shake my head.

"Sir Nighteye never saw how Mirio was much more like Izuku than All Might. That was his mistake, because he didn't know the meaning of worthy. Not that it was his choice to make even if he had. There's no magic to this. OfA isn't Excalibur or Mjölnir. All sorts of people have had it. And All Might wasn't doing much to train before he found Nana ether, as much as he got into trouble. OfA is more about connections they have to each other. It's about people's relationships. As it happens, that just doesn't include Mirio and wouldn't be at its most meaningful if it did."

"You just are too much a Deku stan and hate Mirio-"

"Accuse me of hating Mirio again, and I will leave you here." I threaten, pointing my wand at you. "Now. Did you learn your lesson?"

You grumble, but you do nod.

"Good." I say, before waving my wand one last time. You're back where you were before, not a trace of me or magic.

The lesson, though, sticks.

#i said i was going to 'it's a wonderful world' you and so i did #hmcmverse #other main characters meta series

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deafeningwizardsquare · 3 years

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An iconic duo sharing a moment while people IT'S TIME TO TALK ABOUT SEASON 3.

As many of you may assume, this is definitely a Quidditch stan account. I adore the storyline, the characters are liveable and funny, Orion & Murphy & Skye are the true definition of "iconic", the dialogues are catchy, definatly my gallery is going to kill me one of these days for that and even if it's not free from the infamous plot holes and (in)famous presence of questionable people inside I'm fine with the final product.

So fine that I decided to restart again just for the Quidditch.

Lies, I have four account. Felix won't kill me if I spend most of my time with the Slyterin route in a Quidditch camp instead of, you know, earning house points.

The first two seasons had their strong sides (such as the characters's structure, a genuine good plot and an impressive mature way to talk about really huge things) such as their weaks (Ethan Parkin, Ethan Parkin, Ethan Parkin, way too much drama, SKYE, Rath'a logic that sometimes went on a vacation on the Maldives, Murphy and the zoom, Orion and his murderous Orionism and of course Penny that is everywhere at anytime) but season 3 is a big interrogative.

Is it good or bad?

Well, let me tell you: well but not so well?

Starting from the fact that this was supposed to be the season in which it is essential to test yourself to achieve a purpose and how SKYE HAS STOPPED BEING THE MANIAC OF THE VILLAGE(SCREAM!)

There are some weird stuff (no sense could just be a good synonymous but it fits better "boring") and honestly they are making me turn up my nose.

A lot.

The premises were objectively excellent and I will tell you, although they recycled the mechanics of "atomic bombs did much less damage than Erika Rath's bludgers" it must be said that the plot pretext was used well (hitting the captain it surely is a best plot twist than Skye's rips, it gave me a better impact and surely is a practical way to showing at the player what you are going to focus this year) because when the poor Orion made a presumably fatal fall (but it's the magical world of Hogwarts Mystery so let's avoid serious considerations) we could see that yes, Skye's development was a little bit too fast (with that genre of father with a certain mentality clarly the matter deserved a more concrete action on the material level of events but Skye remains human and the way of managing all that emotional tangle that the dear daddy had kindly offered her is justifiable since the method with which things are lived changes from individual to individual. Whatsoever if we consider that a conversation like the same that MC had with both father in daughter it's the deus ex machina of the TLSQ, show must go on, staying another second hearing Skye's existentialism's crisis could have ruined the mental stability of the palyers and we needed to move on for delevelopments it's fine. Rushed but fine. For who is Skye it can work) but effective thus allowing a relaxation on his part both towards Erika (best girl since forever) and towards Orion (some of their interactions are pure GOLD, the scene of the infirmary is one of these).

Above all seeing the team falter was a touch of class.

Funny how for Orion's sake everyone was ready to murder someone from the Rath's team and dying for the motherland while when the same thing happened to Skye nobody cared.

AT LEAST WE KNOW WHO IS THE TEAM'S FAVOURITE.

Good also the disciplinary measure from Madame Hooch (GO AND DO THE RESPONSIBLE ADULT THAT IS MISSING IN THIS GAME YES), nice to see Erika and Skye in the Great Hall doing the chores for detention "cinderella's style", good the secret-not-secret (as everything in this game DUH) and good that MC has embarked in his journey to obtain the leadership with your favourite partner in crime.

They give me "Mark Antony & Octavian" vibes.

Speaking of Skye and MC and since only now Murphy is remembering having a spoken role, let's not forget the former absolute protagonist of the scenes!

ORION AMARI.

Although the season had started in tragedy Orion in the lower chapters was the same good looking guy with an Italian surname, the most piercing of eyes and an enigmatic aura.

But since "enigmatic" perfectly rhymes with "problematic" it's been 7/8 chapters yet he disappeared with his superpowers and comes back just for doing screen time and for the fandom with all of his mysteries.

What happened to him?

Now, THAT was sa good point to start. Because you know everything about Skye, Murphy isn't exactly a closed book and Erika speaks for herself, but Orion?

What we know about him expect the old "I'm parent free?".

The fact that he lost hus spark and that maybe this could be a new opportunity to discover something else it's intriguing. He was never an authoritarian leader BUT aware and responsible of his position. And this made him perfectly functional to his role. Because he was the original guide of a team that needed someone who would put some limit on Skye and managed well all the dynamics that have happened in the span of 2/3 years.

Guys, he faced Ethan Parkin (a little parenthesis but IS ALWAYS AT HOGWARTS? That is, sooner or later he will start to work or do they get stuck in the air and bludgers in the ribs?) he and Rath had had babysitting Skye for the whole second season while MC was there like "MIND MY OWN BUSINESS, MIND MY OWN BUSINESS, MIND MY OW- OH DAMMIT!" and now things are getting complicated because we don't have many chances to talk to him and his rather arcanic tone does not help to clarify.

How MC will arrive at the objective (presumably to be a captain) is important. It's personal grow and characters NEED this. But Orion too is growing in a completely new direction. Don't overshadow him for ANOTHER Skye' drama prototype please.

What happened to him is not up to us mortals but we can do some hypothesis.

Orion, dear, WHAT HAPPENED?

You have a crush for Skye and you're thinking to visit a doctor? Did Snape attacked you? Ethan Parkin is (sadly) real? They served you some pineapple pizza? Italy won the Euro 2020 but you cheered for England?

DID YOU NOT RECEIVE THE SALARY?

Hopefully the triology of "yeah let's make a deja-vu and let's show to the players that we remember the whole 'heart/mind' stuff and that we are COHERENT' will end soon and we'll move on. Again.

Sigh, for now they were two pretty boring chapters.

Or should I say, the training with Andre, MC under the guide of coach Erika that singed "I'L MAKE A MAN OUT OF YOUUU" between a near death from fatigue (as if we were in The Sims), Skye doing what Skye usually do so screaming at people for (YOU HEARD THIS SCOMING) reasons and MC trying the hero pose as he/she was in Miraculous Ladybug were nice sketches.

BUT.

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ORION'S CENTRIC.

Give me a joy JC, and I'll may forgive you about all the messes that YOU crated in ALMOST four years.

:'l

#hogwarts mystery #andre egwu #erika rath #orion amari #skye parkin #murphy mcnully #hphm

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sometimesrosy · 4 years

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I guess last episode was the final straw for you? Was the whole past season just slowly deteriorating or was there one moment or scene or something that just ruined it? Sorry about all this, it really sucks that this show had such a chance to pull through and just didn't.

No actually. Final straw for me on a show is when I stop watching it. Sometimes those final straws have nothing to do with the show but with, say, my dish company dropping HBO (GOT) or my not being able to watch on a certain night. More often the final straw is an accumulation of issues in the narrative.

Like, when I figure out that there’s an “issue” with a show, I then keep watching it, to make sure I’m right and “find evidence” for that interpretation. I put that in scare quotes because if I’m not writing meta, the finding evidence is just seeing a scene and going, “yeah, no.”

So I guess that did happen with Madi’s story. But since it’s the last episode, I’m going to keep watching because I want to see what they’re going to try to do to pull all those dropped narrative threads together.

And I also can’t analyze the car wreck unless I see where all those wreckages land and which ones blow up and which ones make it out of the mess.

Everything was going fine until Bellamy came back.

Or, well, everything was FIXABLE until they brought Bellamy back and never attempted to bring the Bellamy, Clarke or Bellarke narrative back.

I just need to see what happens until it is no longer fixable for me. Even if they give Clarke some sort of happy ending through some cheap reversal (another reversal) I suppose it’s no longer fixable for me. They murdered Bellamy’s character with a brainwashing and gave up on him. Then they tortured Clarke’s character by sending her right back down that hell of love=death that she climbed out of in season 6.

It looks like they’re going to make it worth it for Raven and Murphy and Miller and Jackson, but they’re going to make Clarke sacrifice EVERYONE she loves and then herself.

And this is NOT the bittersweet ending we were promised. This is an outright tragedy for the hero and the secondary hero, and THAT’S who we’re supposed to identify with. But somehow, NOTHING Clarke did made anything better, NOTHING she sacrificed was worth it. She NEVER achieved her goal of being the good guy. Bellamy NEVER achieved his goal of peace or living a good life or protecting those he loved.

BUT, let me get to the end and see what they consider a “bittersweet” ending is.

I like this story, The 100. The abrupt about face from it being about Clarke, and her relationship with Bellamy, and how they save humanity in the apocalypse, to it being an ensemble show about those who used to be the secondary characters, and relegating the heroes down to just part of the ensemble, means that they stopped telling their narrative. The only one who’s had a consistent narrative is actually Murphy. Maybe Indra, although she has much more this season than usual. Raven’s story has been floundering the last couple of years. Octavia has faded as a character this season and gotten kind of blandified. Echo is just a Strong Female Character (and that is not a compliment.) Emori’s character was good though.

Except for Raven (who lost her focus before this mess,) it seems the closer the characters were to Bellamy and/or Clarke, the less their narrative was consistent.

Even so, it was enjoyable to watch the ensemble stories. Each separate episode was good. But as a whole, they didn’t have the narrative backbone.

This show was always told around the center of the duo protagonists, Clarke and Bellamy. Bellamy saved Clarke and Clarke saved humanity. The head and the heart. The leaders of The 100, doing it “together.” By removing the focus from Clarke and Bellamy, they lost the backbone of their story. Backbone. That’s JR’s word. And that’s what we saw.

TBH my first worry that they were not just wrapping up the side stories and building backstory was Bellamy’s episode on Etherea. Everyone was happy to see him, but the story was boring. It was a straight action piece and had no connection to the long term narrative or anyone else in the show. It did not convincingly show his brainwashing, but showed a vision of his mom and then expected us to think that’s all that was needed. It was a cheap reversal, not character development.

I still thought they could get things back, but they never did. And when they killed him, and had Clarke do it... for nothing... with no emotional weight to the scene and no resolution to Clarke and Bellamy’s relationship, the head and the heart, the backbone of the story except, “so much for ‘together’,” that was bad.

There were STILL possibilities to bring it back around, and I was waiting to see if they took them. Then Madi went to sacrifice herself, and yes that was in character, and Clarke lost her, and she ended up being tortured by Cadogan simply to see his daughter again and Clarke found her totally, permanently paralyzed.

I get it. We want Clarke flattened. We want everything to be taken from her and we want her to be responsible for ALL the death and ALL the trauma and ALL the destruction...

Why again? Why is she to blame for all this? When all along all these things were being forced upon her and she was trying to make the best of things andn choose the best of bad choices and keep everyone alive and she sacrificed herself again and again and to allow them all to survive? WHY? For her choices to be WRONG all this time and for her to lose everyone? Because she loved Madi too much? hmph.

Okay, let me see how it all ends up to see the “message” they are trying to send, their moral of the story, but I honestly don’t see how they can pull back from this madi storyline. the only way is another cheap reversal with a deus ex machina from some magic aliens or “and then she woke up” from some anomaly trip or fear simulation. Those are valid endings, but they are never really satisfying because it doesnt’ work the story through a deserved ending but places it on top of the story being told as a way to get out of a mess the storyteller got themselves into.

Oh also. That ‘inside man’ should have been Bellamy, not dumbass Levitt, with the fake love story. I mean rushed. Listen I HATE the “i fell in love while torturing you/being tortured by you” story. That is messed up. There is no resonance for that relationship.

Listen. I’m trying not to analyze too much because I need to know where they’re going with all this in order to analyze it, since they are no longer following the story they laid out for six seasons.

I was trusting they’d get back to the story until they brought Clarke and Bellamy back together and then they killed the heart of the story and the brain is now functioning without a working heart (coincidentally the exact state of Emori’s health right now,) and tore the backbone out of the narrative.

If there was more than one episode left I probably would be done, because I’m not into torture porn. And if there’s no transformation with the pain Clarke is going through then it’s just torture.

So now what? I don’t know. But they screwed up their story. I’ll get back to you when I process the finale.

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edelweiss123 · 4 years

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It still baffles me...

...that the writers of a kid's show who were willing to blatantly address various heavy topics on-screen such as revenge, war, torture, racism, famine, sexism, ableism, child abuse, abandonment, and fucking GENOCIDE, with gravity and aplomb...

...still somehow thought that "literal 12-year-old doesn't end up with his first crush" would be a deal-breaker. Like...?

Okay. First, a disclaimer. I am a die-hard Zutara shipper. I'm also really fond of MaiLee and Taang, independent of that, and really don't care for Maiko, but that's topic for a different post. None of the points I’m going to go over have anything to do with those pairings.

But EVEN IF I didn't feel that there were far better canon characters for Katara and Aang to end up with respectively...

Kataang, as it is written in canon, is sad and weird and uncomfortable to me, and here's why:

The Dynamic

Maybe if the characters had been, say, 16 and 18 when they first met, this wouldn't be a problem. But Aang is 12 and Katara's 14. And their maturity gap is far larger than a mere two years.

Aang, despite being well traveled and the burden of Avatarhood on his shoulders, is also a very *young* 12. Remember, up until the iceberg, he's lived a pretty idyllic, mostly responsibilty free life. He's only known he was the Avatar for like, a month, tops, before that. Sure, the other monk children don't play with him after this reveal, but it's well established he has friends all over the globe; he's a prodigy, yes, with all the pressure that can bring, but it doesn't appear he was pushed to master air so fast? He just very much enjoys airbending. And Gyatso is a loving guardian.

Which is why he runs away at the first sign of something difficult in his life--the possibility of losing Gyatso.

Compare this to Katara, who was born in a hostile landscape amongst a struggling people. She is, as far as she knows, the last of her kind, with no teacher to guide her. She suffers a traumatic loss young, and it is *explicitly stated in the show* that she stepped up to fill her mother's shoes at what, 7? 8? While her family grieved. Her father leaves, possibly to never return, when she is 11. She is laden with responsibility beyond her years. Her time and energy are not for her to spend on herself--she has too much to do. *She is not a child*

So of *course* she starts mothering this wide-eyed cheerful boy, who got taken away by the same people who murdered her mother within a day of meeting him. He's the Avatar but he's also an innocent kid in need of protection and care.

Now, does that mean she never acts immature? No--she *is* still a teenager, and prone to occasional bouts of typical teenager dumbassery. (see: waterbending scroll). But she does most of the chores and nags the others about their misbehavior and tries to console them when when they're down. She literally poses as Aang's mother at a PTA meeting. For fucks sake, at the end of Season 2, when she's holding a dead Aang sprawled in her arms and looking pleadingly at the sky, there is NO WAY you can convince me all those art students storyboarding that scene WEREN'T making an intentional reference to *La Pieta*--You know, that super famous statue where Mary is cradling her dead Savior son (before he gets resurrected) and that is widely considered one of the most poignant examples of MOTHERLY LOVE AND GRIEF in the whole WORLD.

And I don't know about you... but it's really, really creepy to me for a *romantic* relationship to result from something with that much mother/son energy deliberately coded into the show.

The Lack Of Development

At what point does Katara reciprocate the crush? It's very well established that Aang has a crush, of course. But we've got 61 episodes and basically no definitive evidence that Katara feels anything for Aang beyond platonic affection. There's the time a fortune teller says she'll marry a powerful bender and she's like, 'huh' (let's ignore the fact that Aang at the time is like the only powerful bender she really knows). There's the time she (almost?) kisses Aang in a cave because, you know, she thinks they might stay lost forever and starve to death if she doesn't (romantic!)

The other two times Aang kisses her--she's just kind of shocked after the first one, and gets mad after the second one because she *had just expressed a desire to not do so seconds before* And the fourth kiss is in the literal last 30 seconds of the show, with no dialogue, no lead-up, just a fade to black "welp this is happening, aaaand, SCENE." It very, very much has the feeling of "hero gets the prize/girl" instead of "two people who have been mutually longing for each other come together", and that's really, really gross to me. It does such a disservice to both their characters, but Katara's especially. It feels like she had no agency in this result, that they got together because Aang wanted it so much, but it matters so little what she wanted that we don’t even need to bother showing her wanting it.

The Stunting/Regression of Character Growth

What does Aang sacrifice? The answer? Nothing. 'Now, wait a minute', I can hear you say, 'he lost his entire people and culture! How can you say he's lost nothing!' I didn't say he's never suffered *loss*. But having something taken away from you and giving something up for another's sake are two entirely different things. Aang, in the end, gets everything he wanted--the girl he wanted, his pacifist morals intact and unchallenged, his culture eventually restored. Hell, he even somehow gets the Avatar State, despite never explaining how he manages it when it was EXPLICITLY STATED he couldn't do so without letting go of certain attachments. Wow, guess it turns out he never needed to sort out all of his emotional trauma to acheive inner peace and enlightenment after all--just needed a good acupressure session to get those chakras flowin'! One quick magic whack to the back!

I don't think 'the hero is always right' is a good message. The theme of 'just because you want something doesn't necessarily mean it's what's good for you, or others' is a pretty recurring theme throughout the rest of the show, and having the universe warp itself to accomodate the beliefs of the protagonist (lookin' at you, deus-ex-machina turtle) so he is always right, no matter what, means that he never has to reevaluate his beliefs, never really has to *grow* as a character.

Kya, Ursa, Yue, Iroh, Hakoda, Katara, Sokka, Zuko--hell, even Toph, who makes the decision to let Appa get taken so she can save her friends...

Over and over it's shown that Love is Sacrifice, and I think Aang should have been shown making some personal sacrifices for the sake of the world, instead of showing that the power of clinging to his absolutist morals is enough to solve all his problems.

I understand why the writers, despite showing many characters die off-screen, hesitated to show Aang killing someone, even someone unredeemably evil, because there would be no way to do it OFF screen, and it IS still a kid's show. (On that note: couldn’t they have just somehow...idk, trapped Ozai in the Spirit World or something? Have him literally sent to not-hell?)

BUT, that doesn't mean they couldn't have shown Aang doing something that made him realize that, as the Avatar, even if a necessary action went against his personal beliefs or wasn't what he wanted, his needs are superceded by the needs of the world he claims to love. He ignores this in S2 and nearly pays the ultimate price... but it's never properly addressed again. And thus, because that never happens, I honestly don't consider 13-yr-old Aang all that much more mature than 12-yr-old Aang, and I think that's a waste of potential.

And as for character regression...

Katara? Master Waterbender and war-hero? Who grabbed onto the first opportunity to explore the world beyond her tiny home, who fought for every scrap of skill and recognition she had--against a world determined to see her as lesser because of her race, her gender, her age? Who never backed down from what she thought was right, even when her own family and friends didn't support her? You're telling me that, according to canon, *that same Katara* was perfectly content to retreat to the South Pole and do nothing of note for the next 70 years except for being a good little housewife and healer? Get the fuck out of here with that misogynistic horseshit.

IN CONCLUSION

I could go on. I could talk about the unequal division of emotional labor between the two--with Katara constantly having to be mindful of not upsetting Aang too much lest he fly away and/or have an Avatar State tantrum. With Katara constantly reassuring Aang, but Aang, for instance, offering unsolicited advice about revenge instead of trying to understand what she needed, or kissing her without asking--twice!--and expecting them to be together without him ever even asking if that's what she wanted. I could talk about Katara not taking Aang to task for things he does wrong and Aang not being willing to see that Katara isn't perfect--how he puts her on a pedastal and Katara is afraid to leave it and break his illusions by being her real self.

But ultimately, what it boils down to, it that the most unrealistic thing about AtLA was not the magic, or the spirits, or the hybrid animals.

No, the most unbelievable thing about this show is that the ending was ruined just because more than creating a consistent thematic and emotional throughline, a couple of white dudes wanted to vicariously live out all of their "hot-for-babysitter" childhood fantasies.

And that's all I have to say about that.

#avatar: the last airbender #atla #meta #critical #anti-kataang #don't like don't read #a decade's worth of salt #and i might as well tag #zutara

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artemis20 · 4 years

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Artemis Fowl’s hideous movie: A firey review

Today I’ve decided to see the nefandous movie known as “Artemis Fowl”, just because my aim is to completely destroy that movie as that movie destroyed the book series. Caution for there will be spoiler from both books and movie. You can read my first impressions from the trailer here, and I can say that they did not change.

First thing: Disney decided to “unite” the first two books from the Artemis Fowl’s series in one movie, which is not a good idea at the core, but they failed completely, not only because of the alteration of the plot that such a cut requires, but also because the movie fails as a stand-alone, since it ends without the defeat of the villain, thus opening for a sequel, BUT IF YOU NEED A SEQUEL YOU COULD HAVE DONE ONE MOVIE FOR THE FIRST BOOK AND ONE FOR THE SECOND AS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

So now I’ll list the pro and the cons of the movie.

Pro (very few):

The Ireland is as always wonderful, I longed to see the green shores, visually it didn’t disappoint at that point. Fowl’s Manor was also ok, I liked the setting, less the colours of the building.

The graphic was actually great, I loved the representation of the LEP technology and the City of Haven. In general, all the movie was a pleasure for the eyes and a knife in the heart and brain for the story.

I actually didn’t mind the cast, since the beginning. I had no problem with a black Butler, or Juliet, and to me Holly didn’t seem too young, actually she was as I imagined her. Female Root didn’t bother me, because the change of sex didn’t affect the character, so kudos to that. The actors also I think they did a good job; the problem is the writing for some of them as I’ll show later.

I was so happy to see Foaly, I was really scared that they would have cut him. We’ve seen him very little, but he didn’t seem OOC.

The Haven part was okayish? I mean the plot of the LEP instability was from the second book and it was mixed with the Mulch-Holly encounter which was from the first book. The whole scene in the end kinda works, and it is one of the two watchable scenes of the movie.

The launch from E7 with the lava vamp was very impressive, I really liked it.

The kidnapping scene until the beginning of the Fowl Manor scene when Holly wakes up was actually good, can we pretend it’s the only scene from the movie?

The battle with the troll at the Manor was also okay, a little bit different from the book but not too much except for one thing: Artemis that shoots and jumps, and he doesn’t fail doing that. That character is not Artemis Fowl II, not in a million years. In the later books Artemis is forced to move a little to save his life, but he remains unable to perform notable physical task, he’s at best as able as us couch potatoes.

End of pros of the movie, total watchable time: ten minutes at most.

Cons (very long list)

The movie has problems since the beginning, the first scene is the abduction of Artemis Fowl I, so it seems okay, but then we see THE HUMANS ARRESTING MULCH DIGGUMS. That is NOT possible, the existence of the People is concealed and it remains concealed, if Mulch is arrested, half of the premise of the series, the reason why the LEP acts in the first, the third and the fifth book (which is stopping mud people from learning that fairies exist) is cancelled. I understand that they wanted to preserve the narration technique from the books, which is that the author is Artemis’s biographer, but it doesn’t work this way. Mulch can work as a narrator, but you can’t have him narrating it to humans. In later books, there’s a character who would’ve worked very good as the role of the listener, and is Dr. Argon, who works in a clinic in Haven, and he actually has this role in the last book.

Since the beginning the entire movie revolves around the search of this “Aculos”, which is the source of People’s magic. This thing doesn’t exist in the books, but the real problem is how it is used in the movie. It works as a deus-ex-machina at the end to resolve the father’s abduction, because they finished the time screen, but they still had to save him. So no mission on the Artic, no learning to become a team, just magical teletransport (which doesn’t exist but ok).

Artemis in the first scene is surfing. Book description of Artemis Fowl II: “Riding was the only form of exercise that Artemis had taken to. This was mainly because the horse did most of the work.” He’s also described as having “two left feet”, he is not the perfect specimen of humanity, he is the greatest genius that isn’t able to jump a rope.

The scene with the psychiatric seemed great (ignoring the reference listed in the following point), but it was completely ruined at the end: Artemis would’ve never stormed off that way, he is not a normal teenager, he is practically an adult in a teen body. He’s controlled, he doesn’t externalize emotion to people, he controls them perfectly and is capable of acting and disguise his true character if necessary, and he’s able to play the emotions of the people he has in front.

Angeline Fowl is dead in the movie. That completely cancels the reason that triggers Artemis’s redemption. At the end of the first book he gives back half of the gold obtained by the people for his mother’s health, and in this book his family is pretty much the only thing he cares about besides his goal. Until the fourth book almost all his good actions are triggered by guilty conscience, caused by thinking of what his mother would’ve wished he would be. Angeline is the first positive force in Artemis’s life, and her worsened health is one of the reasons that we see such an evil Artemis in the first book.

The worst part of the movie is the fact that Artemis Fowl Senior knows about the People and works to protect them. Oh boy, I cannot even begin to list how much every word of that sentence is wrong. First: the Fowls were never protector, only criminals (yeah in the movie we are told they are, but they are justified by their motives, in the books they are criminals who care only for themselves). Second: Artemis Fowl discovers the Fairy People all by himself, it is the first time that the readers understands how clever he is, Artemis begins from zero (or only with the tales and legends) and he discovers the existence of the People, he manages to have a Book and have it copied, he decodes it and learns the language and the rules and exploits them for his plans. The Artemis in the movie doesn’t do that, he has everything already prepared by his father (to the point that I actually was led to believe that Book! Artemis was the father, but not such luck unfortunately). He is not a genius, he’s a normal teenager. I repeat: THAT. CHARACTER. IS. NOT. ARTEMIS. I will call him Orion from now on, since calling him Artemis is an insult.

Mulch mentions Butler’s name. OH. MY. GOD. His name is SECRET! Only his family and his dojo master know it, and he reveals it to Artemis in the third book because he’s in a death-or-live situation. There is no way that Mulch knows his name.

Artemis Fowl Senior was not abducted by Fairies, it was the Russian Mafia. People don’t usually mess with humans, it’s Artemis II that goes and start the interaction by kidnapping Holly.

Opal Koboi (who doesn’t even appear in the first book) is revealed to be the villain almost at the end of the second book, in a twist similar to the Bellweather’s one in Zootopia. Revealing it at the beginning takes away the twist.

After the call, Orion doesn’t deduce anything about the kidnapper and makes no plan, which Book! Artemis would’ve never done, but we are in front of his dumber twin soo…

Why put the plot that Mulch is a giant dwarf? He is not so much taller than other dwarfs in the books, I don’t see the point of this plotline.

Another invented plotline: Holly’s father. Holly has a parent who died heroically but it’s her mother, and she died because of mud people. This, in the books, is another reason why Holly doesn’t trust Artemis the early books, but in the movie is the reason why Holly trusts him, because their fathers worked together, exactly the opposite. At the end of the book, Holly relates to Artemis’s pain of having an ill parent, but it is pity, not trust.

Again, Orion does nothing but follow instructions, ok, let’s move on.

Juliet is too young; also, why did they make her Butler’s niece instead of his sister I don’t know.

This point deserves a standalone post, however I will start mentioning it here: I’m Italian, I’m fed up with the stereotypical representation of my country. It’s racist Disney, stop it.

Because of the Book’s rules Fairies cannot enter in a human building without permission. If they do, they feel ill, vomit and on the long run they might lose their magic. In the movie Orion invites Holly in the Manor but she was not affected by the rule at all. Also, this is the reason why the LEP recruited Mulch, he entered in so many human houses to steal things that he lost his magic, so that rule doesn’t apply to him anymore.

I only noticed when it happened that Orion changed in a suit after half of the movie. Artemis had to be forced to wear jeans from his mother.

The scene where Butler defends the Manor is also in the books but here Orion fights, I mean he’s not Artemis, who would have observed from a window

Why Opal claim to act for the People? Opal doesn’t care at all about the others, she just wants the powers for herself.

Why are Orion and Holly bonding? It’s too soon, they literally have no reason to trust each other at this point. Also of course Orion is so stupid that Holly manages to make him take off his sunglasses, he’s lucky that she was not book! Holly, because she would’ve knocked him down.

Mulch enters the Manor and tries to open a safe, and Orion declares that’s “exactly what he wanted”. Since I still hoped that that character was Artemis, I thought that either the safe was a test to prove Mulch’s ability before recruiting him or a trap. No, instead it was the fact that Orion isn’t able to open a safe inside his own house. How am I supposed to believe that this person is a criminal mastermind? He’s just a normal heroish-movie teenager.

Holly isn’t able to heal Butler just to create drama, also the almost death scene is supposed to be in the third book.

Artemis’s mastermind plan to overcome the People technology: not present

At the end they are all friends, even if they actually needed four books for that.

As I said before the magical resolution that they use to save the father does not work. There is no tension, no scene, no action for something that it was constructed at the beginning of the movie. The reason of everything is resolved in a magical PUFF.

Now that I see him more Artemis Fowl Senior is too kind and invested in his son since the beginning. He is supposed to be rigid in his education until he’s saved (one of the reasons why Artemis is also so stern).

They changed everything but they cut some of the best scenes: the beginning in Ho Chi Minh, Mulch that knocks out Butler, Holly’s escapade…

Artic mission (and therefore the evolution of characters that happens there which is a lot): not present

Goblin’s riot (and the plan to put out Opal Koboi): not present

This movie has the characters named after the ones in the books, it has the setting and the technology, but it has nothing to do with Artemis Fowl II’s history. They did the absolute worst they could have done plot wise, firstly because Orion says that he’s a criminal mastermind but he’s not even clever and the only criminal act that he does is the kidnapping (but we know from the beginning that it’s for the good of his father and the world, where in the books we discover later that he wants to save his father). As I already said the beauty of this series is that it shows Artemis redemption, from villain to hero, it’s a long road and it’s done gradually.

Second: if you want to make a stand-alone movie of Artemis Fowl, you could just adapt the first book. Opal is of course the most important and interesting villain of the series, but each book works also as a standalone itself. Even without a sequel, ending the movie with the victory of Artemis against the People works well.

If you did want to adapt the first two book in one movie, there was only one way to do it well, and it’s Zootopia. Really that movie is a more faithful adaption of the first two books.

In the end they only managed to make a movie without not only a good plot, but also an ending. As I said at the beginning, the movie ends with Opal still on the loose, so congratulations: you achieved nothing at all.

#artemis fowl #af #anti disney #artemis fowl movie #long post #misadventures in the fandoms

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loopy777 · 4 years

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Is Deus Ex Machina always a bad thing? People who didn't like the finale of Avatar are always quick to point out the lion turtle, but I think we both agree the ending was both emotionally and thematically satisfying, and to me that's the most important thing. But my question is: if it IS satisfying, is it still a DEM? After all, DEM usually carries this idea that the ending is ruined and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, which the Avatar finale doesn't.

Coincidentally, I was thinking about this just the other day, although I wasn’t considering making a post on it.

I think what makes this discussion troublesome is that there are two very different operating definitions for “deus ex machina.” I tend to think of it in terms of the classical definition, so I don’t personally have any problem with it when it’s done well, but most people seem to be operating with something like the same kind of shorthand that has turned “Mary Sue” into a meaningless complaint.

The term translates to ‘god from the machine.’ Wikipedia can give a functional summary of how it was originally employed and the criticisms that arose about it even amongst those old-timey Greeks. My own take is informed by those origins and the Greek myths that I’ve loved since I first learned about them in grade school. In a setting where gods and magic are in play, I don’t see a problem with a god being so moved by the events of the story or the character of the protagonist(s) that they intervene in otherwise impossible scenarios. The key here is that the story needs to justify why the god/power is intervening here and not in all kinds of other situations; if a god comes along and raises someone from the dead, or hands over a magic sword, or whatever, then it needs to be clear why people still die and magic swords aren’t sold at every corner market.

The Lionturtle is indeed a deus ex machina in that it is a god-like power suddenly entering the story to hand Aang knowledge that he would not otherwise have been able to attain. However, AtLA firmly establishes that there are spirits in the world with god-like power. Hei Bai is the first at a relatively small scale (and was another spirit moved by Aang’s steadfast purity to enact a happy ending, hmmm…), but we also see Koh having knowledge that predates the existence of the moon and the ocean, Koizilla being able to smash a whole fleet with the help of the Avatar State, Wan Shi Tong being able to move an infinitely-large library between the spirit and material worlds, and an eclipse of the sun shutting down all Firebending. These are all powers that the normal humans of the setting do not have, but they are all exercised as a result of the intervention of the protagonists, so I think they’re perfectly fine elements to have in the story.

Just about the only thing that might separate the Lionturtle from these other examples is that it seeks Aang out, rather than the other way around. However, I think that’s an oversimplification of the situation, in which we had just gotten an full episode of Aang holding fast to his belief in the sacredness of all life, despite disagreement and harassment from his friends. He meditates in search of an answer, and it’s then that the Lionturtle reaches out. So I think Aang ‘earns’ its attention by his unique beliefs, his steadfastness in the face of painful opposition, and his action in seeking a solution via meditation.

Why does the Lionturtle not reach out to other people? Well, the only pacifists in the franchise are Air Nomads like Aang, and there’s possible evidence that they weren’t all as steadfast when push came to shove. However, I don’t think the fate of the world hinged on whether Gyatso or some other random Air Nomad killed an enemy while fighting; Aang is in a fairly unique situation in that regard. Theoretically, a previous Avatar might have faced the same dilemma that could have been resolved with Energybending, but as we saw of Yanchen, perhaps those Avatars didn’t really seek out another solution besides violence. The Kyoshi novel does a great job handling this, showing Kyoshi struggling with similar questions but finding her own answers that do not match Aang’s. Perhaps Aang really is the first person in an Age who merited the Lionturtle’s intervention. It helps that the intention at the time of writing was for it to be a technique only available to the Avatar, so that definitely limits the potential situations where it might have been relevant.

So we’re left with the question of whether Energybending itself conforms to the established rules of the setting. I personally think it does, quite handily. We saw examples of bending being taken away before, at least on a temporary basis. The death of the Moon Spirit takes away all Waterbending. The eclipse on the Day of Black Sun takes away Firebending for its duration. Ty Lee pokes Qi-points to disable bending even while leaving limbs otherwise functional (sometimes). Those all help clearly establish that bending is tied to the physical body, and specifically the Qi energies flowing through it. We see esoteric manipulation of those energies by way of Waterhealing, Lightningbending, and the time Aang’s spirit is knocked out of his body by physically crashing into a bear-shaped shrine/idol.

So yes, the Lionturtle is a newly-arrived god who imparts special magic to solve a problem that couldn’t otherwise have worked out so neatly, but all the elements are there to make it a workable plot element. If the Day of Black Sun had worked out, would people be complaining about how Deus Ex Machina it is for the gAang to stumble across information on an eclipse coming before the return of Sozin’s Comet that will take away Firebending and allow Aang to confront Ozai without training up to the a higher fighting level?

Well, not if Aang kills Ozai in that scenario, I expect.

The root of the way most people use ‘deus ex machina’ in modern times, I think, links to what Aristotle is said to have been alluding to in that Wikipedia article, and what Nietzsche also seems to be getting at. Specifically, they seem to think it’s better when a tragic story is allowed to end in tragedy, rather than an audience-pleasing happy ending getting tacked on in an act of weakness and cowardice. It’s fair to criticize this (I enjoy tragedy as well as happy endings, when it’s done right), but I think it can be taken too far into a desire for bleak endings in general. It would be more ‘mature,’ the thinking goes, for Aang to have to kill Ozai, be tainted, scream his angst to the sky, and show the audience that Life Is Dark even though it’s a trite message that doesn’t really follow from anything that came before. The thing about Tragedy that a lot of people forget is that it needs to be set up with as much care and earnestness as Deus Ex Machina, or else it’s just as hackneyed and immature.

AtLA is not a tragedy. It is not about the mistakes and flaws of the protagonists piling up into chaos. So the complaint about ‘deus ex machina’ doesn’t even really apply, according to the original controversy about it. Aang is not freed from the consequences of a flaw, because his desire for peace and life is something that’s consistently portrayed as good throughout the rest of the series. It’s built up in his culture, the appreciation for the Air Nomads that’s conveyed despite their flaws, the focus on his being the last survivor of a genocide, and even the subtitle of the series (providing you don’t live somewhere that got the much more generic “Legend of..” title that fits Korra’s more generic legend so much better). It’s not a tragedy if everything is working out until a last minute swerve when all the good things suddenly become bad.

That’s a Comedy, according to certain modern definitions. ;)

The only story that could end with Aang giving up his ideals to kill Ozai using the philosophy and ways of the Fire Nation is a story about how the Fire Nation is right- that morality is secondary to strength and necessity. And if that’s the story being told, wouldn’t it have been easier to just make the Fire Nation the heroes in the first place, slaughtering corrupt pacifist hippies who would rather we all die than fight to improve the world?

No matter how you look at it, people who criticize AtLA’s ending by calling it a ‘deux ex machina’ aren’t doing so by using the text of the story at all. They’re either glossing over how the setup for all the plot elements is all right there in the story, or else they’re doing exactly what the ancient Greeks criticize bad deus ex machina for in the first place by putting the wrong ending on a story. So most who use ‘deux ex machina’ as a criticism aren’t thinking about the nature of Story at all, I think. They’ve heard the term, mistake it for general criticism of ‘unearned’ plot points, and/or use it as justification for their own pretentious fascination with bleak endings.

So, to summarize my answer- yes, DEM can be a criticism in and of itself, depending on the definition in play. It can apply to AtLA, also depending on the definition in play.

But applying DEM to AtLA as a criticism just doesn’t add up.

#deus ex machina #story #tragedy #literary criticism #Anonymous

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dramioneasks · 5 years

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HP FESTS: TheMourningMadam’s Fests (Part 2)

Where Gods Dwell Fest 2020:

Forge of Aradia by WordsmithMusings - E, WIP - A dark and angst-filled twist on the story of Pygmalion and Galatea - an enchanting myth about a sculptor who fell in love with his own sculpture and prayed to the goddess Aphrodite to bring it to life. Only here the sculptor is Draco Malfoy, his hands are guided by his three best friends, Hermione Granger is in an abusive marriage with Ronald Weasley, and the Goddess Aradia hears their cries.

Her Only Sunshine by articcat621 - E, one-shot - He was the sunshine in her dark and lonely world.

Sweetest Downfall by BiscuitsForPotter - E, WIP - Seven years after the war began, Hermione is sent on a mission to take down one of the greatest threats to the Order. Rumor has it that this threat has some sort of special power that has made him unbeatable in a duel. Hermione's orders? Find the source of his power and destroy it. Based on a dark interpretation of Samson and Delilah; Written for TheMouringMadam's Where Gods Dwell Fest.

The Clouds, The Wind, The Stars and The Moon Know Not by fandomfairytales - E, WIP - Based on the Polish tale of Miranda and Hero. Draco is the crown prince of a rich island nation, plagued by powers beyond his control and dreams of a woman he has never met; he is stalked, pursued and eventually imprisoned the wicked goddess Astoria (Kosciey) ascended from the underworld.Hermione, a formidable warrior in her own right never put much stock in magic, but when the sun speaks of truths and dangers she had already dreamt, she must embark on a quest to save the man she loves from an impossible, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Tanabata by sleepygrimm - M, WIP - This is a story of a boy and a girl. The way they found each other. The way their love was a force greater than anything that tried to tear them apart. A story of tolerance, respect and trust. That Patience is all you need to deal with life's intricacies.

Taming The Fire by Imotales - M, 2 chapters - can one person change the tide of the war? Voldemort did with her power and politics . So did Draco Malfoy with his love. An old tale of love written for morningmadam's fest with a supernatural twist.The world burned with her power so did she. She remembered only one face. Could he save her? She didn't waned him to.

The Last Story by TulipsofIsolation - M, 9 chapters - The man could tell a story. That much was a fact. Yet he knew, had been there seen with his own eyes when they pulled Hermione Granger from the woods. She couldn't have possibly survived. Could she?

Anointed by TheMourningMadam - M, one-shot - The world believes he stole her away, dragged her to his own personal hell. Perhaps he did, but she eventually followed willingly, with her heart full of love. And now, with the world closing in, they make the ultimate sacrifice to ensure they stay together for eternity.Influenced by The myth of Hades and Persephone, though more figuratively than literally.

I Have You Etched on my Skin by DarkAngelOfSorrowReturns - M, WIP - She wasn’t a muggleborn, and she was magically bonded to Draco Malfoy.Wait, what?

Searching by pixiedustandbluebutterflies - M, WIP - Hermione and Draco’s hearts were tired of hatred and exhausted of prejudice - but the world wasn’t necessarily ready to accept a relationship between a muggleborn war hero and the son of a disgraced death eater. After years of turning enemies into friends, overcoming public scrutiny, and living through a very public engagement, they were ready to spend the rest of their lives together in peace.Unfortunately, sometimes those closest to you have other plans.

A Woman’s Truth by Charlie9646 - E, WIP - A tale of love, hatred, secrets, but most of all what family truly means.Our choices affect more than just ourselves.

How to Grow Anemone by augustine (aramyn) - M, WIP - May the Gods be ever in your favour.

Unveiled by GracefulLioness - E, one-shot - On the eve of her wedding to Ron, Hermione learns exactly what he wants in a wife, and it's more than she can bear. Running from him and everyone she loves, she finds herself turning to an old flame and wondering why they hadn't worked out.Based on the Hebrew myth of Lilith and Samael for TheMourningMadam's Where Gods Dwell Fest.

The Golden Girl and the Dragon by Art3misiA - T, 5 chapters - There's something developing between Hermione and Draco. The only problem is, her two best friends aren't happy about it and are determined to stop things in their tracks. But will they succeed, or will events take an unexpected turn?

Meet Me at Greenhouse Three by HollyBrianne - T, 3 chapters - A pair of star-crossed lovers, a whispered invitation, a date at greenhouse three. / Dramione fest piece

to seek the light of truth by sparrow_ink - T, WIP - A retelling of the myth of Eros & Psyche.An ancient artifact awakens in Magical Britain, and much drama ensues. Hermione Granger doesn't have time for nonsense like having her marriage arranged by a semi-sentient cup, only it seems she doesn't have much choice in the matter. How is she supposed to help replenish the population of magical Britain when she doesn't even know her husband's name, and she's never seen his face? And is she actually falling in love with someone who might as well be a ghost? Of course not. That would be ridiculous.Herein contains: a library as a bribe (a bribrary, if you will), too much magical chess and tea drinking, and more nonsense than you can shake a wand at. Enjoy

Killing Hermione Granger by NotSoSirius92 - E, one-shot - He intended to kill her. Falling in love was never apart of the plan.

Shriek by Rosella_Burgundy - M, one-shot - He wants her. He'll do anything in his power to get to the object of his desire.

Then We Found Us by CindyBarnard - M, WIP - Prompt: Adam and Lilith - Dark Festival: TheMourningMadam's Where Gods Dwell Hermione had a life plan, and it was going exactly according to schedule, thank you very much. If only her husband hadn't decided he did not like her plan. . . Which led to her finding out exactly what her husband had done... Maybe she would never have known his secret then, living in blissful ignorance. But he did have an issue and therefore she did find out. And now? Well, Hermione never did want to be the supporting character, did she? And if they did not want to change, then she would fix the problem. So she had to do what she had to do. Besides, the devil is not always wrong you know.

Living Death by Kyonomiko - T, 2 chapters - To Hermione Granger, forgetting who she is might just be worse than death. Looking for forgiveness, even absolution, Draco Malfoy gives her a hidden place in his world.

The Equinox and the Garden by Pandorascube - T, 4 chapters - One night at the Malfoy Harvest ball, everything changes.Modern retelling of Ariadne, Theseus, and Dionysus through Hermione, Ron, and Draco. Written in the style of Greek Tragedy complete with purple prose, Deus ex Machina, the three unities, and a poetic chorus of House Elves.

Accidentally in Love by grace_lou_freebush - T, 2 chapters - Theo is brewing a potion when Draco barges in and ruins his night. Now he needs revenge. A Dramione reimagining of the Greek myth of Apollo and Daphne.

Like Souls that Balance by savedprincess85 - T, 2 chapters - Hermione is captured. Harry and Draco must rescue her. Based on the Myth of Lancelot and Guinevere. Written for TheMourningMadam's Where God's Dwell Dramione Fest

This fest is onging.

#themourningmadam's fests #Fests/Exchanges/Challenges

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lesdemonium · 4 years

Note

Okay so I know this is not your usual content but your tags about the end of frozen 2? I have been feeling frustrated about the cop out ending since I saw it and I really want the full version of that rant

oh my god anon bless you

Fair warning to anyone about to read this: I’m going spoilers-heavy into Frozen 2, which I feel should be obvious because I’m talking about the ending. It’s also extremely long. I put it under a cut to try to be mindful, but I also know Tumblr is a dumpster fire, so for that I am sorry.

Okay, so when I say that Frozen 2 had a cop-out ending, what I’m referring to is the complete and utter lack of consequences. The entire movie we’re building to Arendelle having growth and facing consequences for the actions of their colonization and attempt to strip the Northuldra of their resources. This build up includes Elsa sacrificing her life to “drown” in the River Ahtohallan in order to see the truth and, more importantly, show Anna the truth. This build up includes Olaf being another sacrifice that Elsa made, that also spurns Anna on to make the hard choice. The hard choice is destroying Arendelle in order to right the wrongs of her grandfather.

Only, none of that happens, and the build up is for nothing. Due to magical Deus Ex Machina (literally defined as “an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as a contrived plot device in a play or novel.” which could not be more apt here), Elsa wakes up, jumps on a magical water horse, and saves Arendelle at the last second. Then, for good measure, recreates Olaf and, because “water has memory,” Olaf is exactly the same Olaf he was before, rather than Olaf the third or whatever.

From a storytelling perspective, this is cheap. Elsa and Anna’s sacrifices meant nothing. At the end, everything was tied up with a neat little bow, even though it didn’t make sense narratively-speaking for that to happen. And I do get it, from a capitalistic perspective. Elsa and Olaf carry this movie for the vast majority of their audience (even though, let’s be real, Kristoff stole the show in this one, and who wasn’t a little [a lot] into Anna being the smartest person in the room?). They can’t just “kill off” Elsa and Olaf. When writing this I was even thinking “Oh, but it would be interesting if the third movie was about them trying to save Elsa” but, honestly, that wouldn’t be a very long third movie and these characters are too much of a cash-cow for them to end a movie without them.

But by not destroying Arendelle, despite leading up to that for literally the entire movie (I mean, they evacuated the town in the first, like, 15 min! Come on!), the ending just feels cheap. There are no consequences to any of the actions, which makes it feel like they weren’t even sacrifices. “Oh, but the character’s didn’t know that, Zoe!” Dramatic irony only gets you so far; it shouldn’t be the basis of your entire plot and ruin re-viewing. Elsa’s sacrifice didn’t matter. Something magical swooped in and saved the day at the last second, which means she didn’t actually have to give up anything except a few hours. As a viewer, how am I supposed to trust a movie series after this? It’s the same reason why, after a while, the Marvel movies started feeling cheap and pointless: if no one is ever actually dead, then why should I care when they die? Where is the emotional payoff? They’re just going to come back, and maybe not even act like it happened.

From a child development standpoint, this becomes even worse. Movies are an extremely good way to practice emotions for kiddos. In movies, kids can practice seeing, feeling, and expressing any number of emotions, which if you’ve ever tried to explain emotions to kids, is very difficult (thank you, Inside Out, you revolutionized child therapy). And certain movies are better for this than others. For example, basically anything by Don Bluth is amazing. Movies that deal with heavy concepts such as death, abandonment, loneliness, grief, etc etc etc, but then have a happy ending are amazing for young children to watch and practice those feelings before they have to experience them at all (or to deal with what they already have experienced).

What I particularly like about Don Bluth films? The most devastating moments, they aren’t fixed. Littlefoot’s mom doesn’t come back to life. Charlie’s watch stops saving Anna Marie. But in all of those movies, they find happiness and peace, and it shows kids that even if bad things happen, things will be okay. Okay just has to look different now. That doesn’t mean it stops hurting, but the bad things that happened won’t feel as big for your entire life. Life will continue on and you will find new happiness and love.

Hell, that’s something we, as adults, need to be reminded of every once in a while.

Frozen 2 didn’t do this. Instead of finding a cathartic ending, they just fixed everything. But where, in real life, is a magic woman going to freeze over a flood to stop your city from being destroyed? “But, Zoe, this movie has a talking snowman, no one is looking at it looking for realism.” Five year olds are. For five year olds, fiction and reality do blur. They don’t want to just be like Elsa and Anna, they want to actually be them. This is not to say that kids are stupid--if you know me at all, you know that I think kids are some of the most brilliant confused little beings there are. They do the best with the information and the knowledge of the world they have. They know that talking snowmen aren’t real, but with young enough kids, when you read “The Old Woman Who Swallowed the Fly,” you have to say something like “but not really” after every page so they don’t think she’ll actually die and become distressed part-way through the book. Literally. We read a Thanksgiving-version of this to preschoolers once and the teacher said “But not really” every time, so that the kids didn’t go home afraid of their Thanksgiving dinner because of a book they read at school.

It’s because of this difficulty with parsing fiction from reality that makes movies and other media so important for practicing emotions. For that hour and a half that they’re watching the movie, it is real, and parts of it will carry on into their everyday life (and I don’t just mean singing “Let It Go” for five hours straight, I mean little girls seeing a black woman in a wedding gown and thinking she’s literally the princess from one of their favorite books, and paying kindness forward with their joy).

So with that in mind, wouldn’t it have been more beneficial to show Arendelle being destroyed? And showing the fallout with that? And how this is really sad, and we’re all really scared, but thank goodness we have each other and everyone was already out of the city. Thank goodness we are able to rebuild and take this opportunity to right our past wrongs, bring back the people we lost, and replace all the material items that were destroyed, because we have the people that matter most to us. Things will always be different, but, to quote Olaf, “We’re calling this controlling what you can when things feel out of control.” Let’s focus on what we can control, so we feel less hopeless. That line made me think that Disney was actually going to go through with this. But instead, because everything was fixed in some unrealistic way, Olaf’s words feel just as cheap as Elsa’s “death.” There was no follow-through, there was no hope for the children who have survived a flood, who will survive a flood, or any other sort of disaster. I mean, hell, we’re in the middle of a global pandemic. As a child educator, I would have loved to be able to point at Frozen 2 and go “You know how Arendelle was destroyed and everyone was really sad and scared for the future? But it was okay, because they still had the people they loved around them? That’s what this quarantine is like. Things are going to be different, and that’s really scary, but we will be okay, just like Anna and Elsa and Olaf are.”

And, honestly, I didn’t hate the movie. I did hate Frozen 1, but I think this movie did have a lot of strengths. But the ending was not, at all, one of them. They were building up to a really cathartic ending, and instead they cheated their viewers. Not to get too nebulous, because this is a related but technically different discussion, but helicopter parents are detrimental to kids for the same reason. If we spend all of our time trying to condescend to children that everything is wonderful and perfect all the time, nothing bad happens, and negative emotions are bad, then we are creating is kids that do not trust us (because they know better) and are ill-prepared for when bad things do happen in their lives.

#frozen #frozen 2 #please don't kill me #i still enjoyed the movie #i just think the ending was bad #hope this was what you were looking for anon!!#Anonymous

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fairestmusesismoving · 5 years

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Rumple

Welcome to my second TED Talk….hahaha sure to get me in trouble with so many people. This is even more loaded than Ruby.How I feel about this character?I mourn Rumple and all his potential because there was so much there. So many things that could have been done. All of it was wasted for what felt like a whispy teenager soap opera that had no real merit or consequence. Because deep down…I did like Rumplestiltskin. I hated his fans with a deep passion because they wanted to turn this interesting character into a defanged whimpering whisper of what Robert Carlyle actually gave us. Rumplestiltskin was this interesting “universal glue” who kept popping up everywhere to make everything work as the strangest deus ex machina storytelling device that worked… And he worked very well because he was established early on, established to have a certain set of powers, motive, and even a few limits. This was really great! We had some rules so we couldn’t go into the realm of the over powered mary sue! That was fantastic! Rumple was realistic as a powerful character and the fact his interests were aligning with certain groups at the time? Hey, we had a real neutral character!And then by S3 we had to jam on the breaks cause “Wow what do we do when we remove all drive for Rumplestiltskin since he has Belle and we killed Neal?””I dunno! No idea!”It was infuriating because had all of this been drawn out and everyone focused on different aspects of Rumplestiltskin rather than mashing him and Belle together like that scene in Space Balls , we could have had something that was worthwhile and not like some drastic whiplash from S1 that really doesn’t make sense considering the trauma of Neverland and Oz then….pretty much everything else. There’s trauma and then just using a character because you’re bound to pay that person since they’re still under contract and “well the viewers love them and we want money”.Rumplestiltskin is a victim of “too much, too soon”, and fans who tried to demand too much and realized way too late that maybe Rumple needed slower reveals.All the people I ship romantically with this character:By default I have to say Belle, even though I hated what Rumbelle became in the final seasons. It needed work. Both Rumple and Belle felt like they were hurting each other in ways that made no sense given the previous seasons. I’d detail in depth, but that’s not the point of these little evaluations, is it? Also I’d need to make an entire blog to contain every single moment evaluated to show each action and which character does what. It’s a lot.In the end I still have to give it to Rumbelle even though I wanted a lot more for it.I ship no one else romantically with this character. I especially do not ship Milah with Rumple. Sorry if that rustles jimmies. I am disabled. The behavior Milah displays around Rumple is abusive. Despite what some people may tell you on tumblr, ableism is offensive and acting in this way towards a person is abusive.You really can’t escape abuse in OUAT which boggles the hell out of me. When Milah engages in her acts of spousal abuse and ableism, it’s enough to make me go grab my inhaler because it really is how disturbing just how close and realistic her microaggressions are and how much they build up. There’s another scene in OUAT that sends me into this state, but Milah is in the second place position. Bolded because if you’re angry about my thoughts on Milah, maybe go read up on disability, ableism, and how couples treat disabled spouses after they’ve become disabled. It’s a huge topic and one that people don’t talk about. Considering I’m most likely to be abused by a loved one and that person will always be my spouse, it’s a healthy fear to have. Milah is that walking boogeyman.My non-romantic OTP for this character:I love Archie’s interactions with Gold. I love Henry’s interactions with Gold, especially in the “deleted” scene where Henry seeks Gold out to talk about Regina’s isolating him after Robin’s death. Honestly, Rumple needed to have more casual scenes with other characters because Robert Carlyle plays very well with other actors.Shots fired? Because Robert Carlyle acts in circles around Lana Parrilla, it often left her scenes seeming very childish and immature. It made the forced romance (it was Regina sexually assaulting Gold because he didn’t consent unless he was trying to get something form her but okay) even more uncomfortable due to her inability to stop yelling in an uncontrolled manner. Where Carlyle can channel and keep himself calm (or hell, any of the cast because I’d be redundant), it made pairing him with Lana a very poor choice very often.Why wasn’t Gold/Rumple utilized with other characters more? He was paired with the one-offs or guest characters fairly often, but never with anyone but Regina. This really did make the scenes look awkward. I’m saying that as an actor who has been trained to know what to look for. I noticed. It looks bad on the writer and director.My unpopular opinion about this character:I hate this strange Rumplestiltskin that people try to promote that’s weirdly romantic and mushy. I remember when there was an app on Facebook for Once Upon a Time and the Dearies RIOTED because Rumple wrote a letter to Belle shortly after the flashback events of Skin Deep. it was raw and very in character. He hated her but he loved her and knew that if he lost his powers, he couldn’t protect people he cared about. It was a good letter.The “Dearies” rioted until Adam and Eddy apologized and changed the app to have a letter that included instructions on “How to Use a Toaster”.Toaster Rumple is a Rumple I don’t want to exist and anyone who prefers Toaster Rumple? Butter my toast.One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:I want to fix everything about Rumple. From S2 and onward. Finding Neal so soon/intertwining Baelfire’s plot with Emma’s/giving Regina a happy ending ruined Rumplestiltskin as a character. That’s VERY shots fired. I’m going to get unfollowed immediately for that and I don’t know if I should be happy about that or what…Baelfire needed to remain independent. The key to Emma and the Charmings was how Rumple manipulated the curse caster to get to A Land Without Magic and was counting on Emma to break the curse. That’s where it stops for the big involvement. Baelfire should have remained as Rumple’s own plot and for something to keep driving himself that he could eventually invite people into as he slowly became comfortable with others.But the worst of it truly is Regina. Rumple often warned Regina about her own morality and while that seemed hypocritical of her, he wasn’t wrong. As the series went along, she never actually changed her ways and we were introduced to a growing body count to her name that complimented S1′s rape, child abuse, various instances of inflicting bodily harm (some with the intent to murder), and so much I’ve lost track of. Having this person being handed a crown while Rumple gets a death so he can be “united with Belle” but he gets a kiss from the woman he was never interested in but continued her incredibly predatory advances?Yeah no. But Regina can’t have that ending unless you get rid of the one reminding her “All Magic Comes with a Price.” I guess that price was getting rid of the person saying that magic might cost your morality. A Mary Sue Palooza!

#anti regina mills #rumplestiltskin #ask meme #mun on fire #Anonymous

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tirimsil · 5 years

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“Alicorns” are dumb

Please see “How fantasy works: Symbolic magic / thematic magic” for context.

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In Friendship is Magic, there are four basic pony races, defined here as cartoon horses who normally have cutie marks:

Earth pony, look like normal cartoon horse, much stronk, good w/ plants

Pegasus, have wings, can stand on clouds, fly, generate wind currents

Unicorn, have horns, can do telekinesis & other magic stuff

Stronk + wings + horn, eventually called “alicorn”

When the show was first conceived, the only “yeah I’ll take everything” ponies were Celestia & Luna, the mysterious Princesses of Equestria. There was no special term; both were considered unicorns in early promo material.

Lauren Faust made them like that to symbolize that they were unbiased representatives of all three pony races.

Because they were all three races at once, and so far as anyone knew at that time they always had been, and they were the only two around, they could not be racist in favor of their own race.

... of course, due to Half-Elf Syndrome, this would not completely stop racists from hating them for being two-thirds another race... but it’s a big help.

Now let’s get into the nomenclature of “alicorns”...

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The word “alicorn” originally referred to the material composing a unicorn horn, or to an entire horn intact. In ancient times, swindlers would pass off various animal body parts as alicorn, claiming that alchemical mixtures containing it would promote health and long life. The most popular actor to play alicorn was the spiraled tusk of the narwhal, and today unicorns are almost exclusively depicted with very similar spiraling horns.

Sometime around 1984, fantasy author Piers Anthony re-appropriated “Alicorn” as the personal name of a specific winged unicorn; he apparently saw it used in reference to a statuette of a winged unicorn in an ad, and had never heard of the word before then.

Anthony was a prolific enough author for this errant usage to quickly spread into the fantasy vocabulary of several languages - as in, several besides English, the only language where the word already meant something. Like “Pegasus”, it quickly changed from the name of an individual to the name of a species.

"Alicorn” eventually found its way into the brony fandom, where it became one of those words used obsessively to make sure everyone knows you know the word exists, even though Celestia and Luna are all three races and not only the two covered by the term, and the show lifted it from there.

Oh, right, let’s talk about that.

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We’re all aware that Twilight, originally a unicorn, later became an “alicorn” (with the first in-show use of the term uttered by Rarity) thanks to a Deus Ex Machina. “Here’s a song, have some wings, OK bye”.

I got childishly butthurt about that like everybody else, but I realized in hindsight that it should have been very predictable: The most popular MLP toys were always the most princess-y ones, and Twilight was the main character and easily the most popular of the six both with little girls and with poonhounds, so of course they’d make her a Princess (at least in form) so they could release a whole second toy to make, to use the industry term, “a buttload of money”.

Twilight transforming into an “alicorn” was only mildly a problem unto itself:

It questioned the viewers’ natural presumption that “alicorns” were always that way and not a transformation to begin with.

It threw off the balance of two to a race the main characters had.

It worsened the narrative underuse of Rarity’s unicorn magic by making her even more obsolete in favor of Super Twilight.

It was a very clumsy end to a very clumsy season.

Still, it opened the door for further alterations to the “alicorn” concept.

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What walked in the door was Cadance. She ruined everything.

Faust originally designed Princess Cadance (supposedly a royal family member) as a normal unicorn, the same way that Prince Blueblood (supposedly a royal family member) was a normal unicorn. I distinctly recall Faust’s immediate reaction to first seeing Cadance with a horn and wings was grumpy drunk-Tweeting, but don’t take my word for that.

The spinoff novel Twilight Sparkle & the Crystal Heart Spell, which was obviously written to send back in time to a little girl from the mid-1800s, clarifies that Cadance was born as a pegasus. She just kinda worldspawned in the woods like Minecraft. She beat an evil witch with the witch’s own magic that Cadance turned into love magic despite not being a unicorn and then Celestia showed up out of nowhere like Gandalf to just POOF make her “an alicorn” because apparently Celestia can just do that.

Also Cadance is adopted.

The adopted pegasus is an “alicorn” whereas the actual blood relative of the “alicorns” is just a unicorn. No wonder Blueblood has nothing but contempt for all living things.

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The malafest pit of corruption that is Cadance’s uterus had to make her kid (Flurry Heart) “an alicorn” right at birth.

Celestia and Luna said they’d never heard of a pony being born as an “alicorn”, which means Celestia and Luna weren’t born that way either.

This destroys the entire reason “alicorns” were ever conceived.

If Celestia and Luna were once any of the normal three races (presumably unicorns), then they are no longer race-neutral; racists will still treat them like the race they started as, and the public can accuse them of bias in favor of their original race, all the same as if they were never “alicorns” at all.

Of course, Twilight (unicorn) and Cadance (pegasus) would suffer the same obstacle, with a mild advantage to Cadance in that what her original race is may not be public knowledge since that happened off in the magic fairy forests of horse-Germany and only Celestia, Princess of Trolling, is a credible witness.

Only Flurry Heart, 15+ years down the line, could reasonably claim to be race-neutral... but who’s going to believe her? That’s never happened before. The greatest living minds and oldest memories of Equestria, Celestia and Luna themselves, said they’d never heard of such a thing. The public will much more likely forget any proof they ever had of Flurry Heart’s birth and presume that, like every other “alicorn”, she wasn’t originally one and that she’s trying to hide “what she really is”.

After all, racism is founded on delusion; it doesn’t matter what race Flurry really is, merely what parody of race she can be plausibly dubbed as.

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Race-neutrality was the only reason to have any “alicorns” at all and none of them can fulfill that purpose; not even the one who’s actually race-neutral.

Here’s what we got in exchange for that blunder:

Absolutely nothing

"Alicorns” gained no consistent lore or mechanics for how they occur, nor any clarification of how or even whether they differ from unicorns in magic or from pegasooses in flight.

There is no clear meta-reason why the writers even need them, other than as bland children of destiny, drivers of toy sales, and general fanservice.

None of the events centering around the game of Who’s The Next Alicorn adds anything particularly profound or even consequential, and none of the characters seem to really give a damn about “alicorns” in general. Nobody is even all that surprised to see Twilight’s transformation; they just go “Wow cool!” and roll with it. The only strong reaction is the characters’ horror when they see Flurry Heart’s wings and realize the show officially doesn’t give a shit anymore about making sense or having cohesive themes.

It doesn’t even benefit the people who make bad Mary Sue OCs on DeviantArt, because they were already making “alicorn” OCs when it was only Celestia & Luna. That’s where the show got the term from, after all.

What a complete waste of potential.

#mlp #g4 #g4 mlp #pony #my little pony #friendship is magic #alicorn #g4 pony

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arlingtonpark · 5 years

Text

Frozen 2 Review

You know, I’m starting to notice a trend with me and these Disney kid’s movies: I don’t like them.

And not because I’m not a kid, but because they really are badly written.

I’ll start with what I liked.

The animation was great, like in all Disney movies. Animation for Disney is like John Williams’ music in Star Wars - it’s good no matter what movie it is.

The song sequences, taken on their own, were show stopping. The action was grand, the singing was commanding, and the visuals were gorgeous.

…OK, now on to the stuff I didn’t like.

The movie starts off with Anna and Elsa playing together as kids. You know, before Elsa almost killed Anna. I don’t think this is bad per se, but I do think it undermines the gay subtext people read into Elsa’s character, and I’m sure lot of people will see that as bad, so I’m putting this in the “bad” section of this post.

Why do people read Elsa as a lesbian? Because she has to hide her powers, the thing that makes her different, like how gay people have to hide their gayness.

This has always been the case, but this movie really reinforces it: Elsa was only forced to hide her powers after she showed the capacity to harm others with them.

In other stories, people with superpowers have to hide those powers because they have powers, not because they can harm people with them. It’s about the power itself, not the burden of having them. This is a good metaphor for things like homosexuality.

In Frozen, things are kind of a mess. Elsa was forced “into the closet” because of the demonstrable harm she posed to others, not because she had the powers to begin with. Frozen 2 emphasizes this point: Elsa’s parents were accepting of her powers up until she showed they could be used to harm others.

Gay people are forced to hide themselves because people in polite society are expected to conform to certain standards. There is an element of rejecting nonconformity in Frozen. In that movie, people see Elsa using her powers and dub it witchcraft.

So there are some elements to the movie that support an LGBT metaphor, but other elements contradict that reading, so it all ends up being a big mess.

Frozen 2 is about how different groups need to get along and how past wrongs need to be made right.

The story opens with some storytime by Elsa and Anna’s dad:

Anna and Elsa’s granddad made contact with an indigenous group of people called the Northuldra. These Northuldra were not magical, but they were able to harness the magic that was endemic to their land.

Granddaddy had a dam built in the Northuldra’s territory as a peace offering. But during a celebration of its completion, a fight broke out and grandad was killed. Why the fight happened is unknown, but the forest spirits were angered and a mist overcast the whole region, locking it away.

And that is how Elsa and Anna’s dad became the king.

Seriously. That’s the payoff to the king’s story. Interethnic conflict and it’s all setup for how he got his cool hat.

I think that was smart!

Lots of awful historical events are glossed over for the sake of relatively trivial bullshit. I mean, I’m writing this on Thanksgiving. A holiday about being thankful is great! But the peace between colonists and natives that this holiday is built around is negated by…how there was no peace in the end. We all understand that on some level, right?

So I think this is a cool nod to how historical events, even historical atrocities, are mythologized.

The motivator for our heroes is uncovering the true history of Arendelle so the angry forest spirits can be calmed.

The true history is this:

Grandad actually hated the Northuldra. He built the dam to make them a vassal of his kingdom…somehow.

The ceremony was just a way for him to size up the Northuldra and determine their strength. He was the one who started the fight.

So…

Why did grandad use the ceremony to size up the Northuldra if that same ceremony was a trap to…kill them all, I guess?

Grandad uses the ceremony to learn of their numbers and strength, the same ceremony he uses to kill their leader and incite a conflict. You’d think the king would have learned the Northuldra’s numbers and strength before this. Just, you know, in the course of interacting with them and coordinating construction of the dam.

And why did King Grandad go to all the trouble of building the dam if he was just going to start a war with the Northuldra?

That’s a big ass dam! The king had it built and for what? Was he going to enslave them? That hardly seems worth it.

I guess the king was just a greedy bastard, but…he’s barely a character at all, so it’s just bad writing.

The point, though, is that the past!Arendellites did something awful and this needs to be set right. The dam still stands and its existence angers the forest spirits. But if the dam is destroyed, the water behind it will flood the area and destroy Arendelle.

So……

Arendellites of the past are big meanie heads.

This has repercussions through to the present.

This has to be made right.

That means destroying Arendelle.

Is this supposed to be applicable to our world?

White people of the past are big meanie heads.

This has repercussions through to the present.

This has to be made right.

That means…destroying white people?

Yes, the institution of racism still exists, and yes, that has to be made right. But no one is saying white people have to lose their homes. What is this movie even talking about?

Radical leftists, the ones who aren’t shitheads, want to sweep away the current order, but that’s because they want to replace it with a new one.

Reparative action means destroying the old order to replace it with a better one. This movie casts reparative action as just destructive.

I like to think of this as being like global warming. Many people think that to fight global warming we have to basically ruin our lives and sacrifice economic growth. We need to give up all our environmentally harmful practices and this basically means living Extreme Paleo. It’s that or a world with no ice caps.

But that’s not true. We don’t have to make that choice. We can have an environmentally sustainable economy and be just as prosperous as we’ve always been.

This movie seems to believe that making amends for the past requires some sacrifice by the descendants of the perpetrators.

If the racial hierarchy were destroyed, white people would no longer benefit from it, so in that sense they would lose out, but that’s not the same thing as losing your home!

The movie is clearly a commentary. It tries soooo hard to be topical and relevant; it only succeeds in being irreverent.

Why do the people at Disney keep trying to talk about racism? They suck at it! They have no idea what they’re talking about.

First Zootopia, now this. They keep trying and trying; I wish they’d stop.

Do they have any self-awareness? If they did, they’d realize they’re just confusing children with these badly designed messages.

The movie tries to be a social commentary. It does so by elucidating a dilemma that doesn’t exist. There is no trade-off between righting the past and continuing our livelihoods.

Ah, but you see, this movie is multilayered in how bad it is.

In the end, Anna decides to destroy the dam, Arendelle be damned. The dam breaks and the kingdom is about to be swamped.

And then, in an almost literal deus ex machina, Elsa swoops in on a magical contraption and uses her powers to BS the tension away.

So………

On one level we have the silly trade-off the movie proposes. Do the next right thing and fix racism, but lose your home. (If this movie were a person, it’d be an old man yelling at clouds.)

On another level, if we take this proposal for granted, we’ve got a completely uninspired message about how doing what’s right will never backfire on you.

*vomits*

Returning to the social commentary level, this means the message is that we need magic to solve the dilemma that doesn’t actually exist.

We need a special, almost magical someone who can BS away all the BS sacrifices white people need to make to right the sins of their ancestors.

(It’s not just the politics, this movie is poorly thought out in general.)

This movie has a very unsubtle theme about change. It’s so horribly done, I can’t believe it’s real.

By the end of the movie, Anna is queen now and Elsa decides to live with the Northuldra. That’s the only meaningful change and the implications of it are not shown to us.

The movie ignores the burdens of statecraft, so how much being queen now affects Anna’s life isn’t important to the narrative.

And we don’t see much of Elsa’s new life either. All we see is her frolicking on horseback through a field with a wide smile on her face. Really.

Elsa struggles with alienation in this movie, except we don’t really see it. We are told that she feels out of place, but there’s nothing in the movie to suggest a fundamental disconnect between Elsa and everyone else.

I mean, I get that Elsa’s magical and Arendelle isn’t, but Elsa doesn’t seem unhappy when the film picks up. Whatever angst she has in the first act is because of the voice she’s hearing. If she feels that Arendelle is a poor fit for her, it wasn’t communicated well.

This is to say that Frozen 2 is only tepidly about the dynamism of life. There’s no change for the worse, and what change for the better there is lacks gravitas.

Elsa’s decision to live amongst the Northuldra is another example of the writers not paying attention.

Another attempted example of change occurring is the unification of the Northuldra and Arendelle. A statue of Elsa and Anna’s parents, who it turns out were each from one of the groups, is erected to commemorate this newfound unity. Anna remarks that the races have “finally” been united.

Unfortunately, the implications of this unity are not shown, so it’s all meaningless.

You would think there would be an exchange of ideas between the two groups. Things like music, food, ideals, etc. We don’t see that. So the change that this movie talks a lot about just isn’t there.

Back to Elsa living with the Northuldra, I take it as implying that there won’t be much real coexistence between the Arendellites and the Northuldra. Because if there were a real cultural exchange, I don’t think Elsa would’ve made the move.

She felt she had to live with the Northuldra to feel more at home. This implies there will continue to be a meaningful disconnect between the two groups.

Instead of Elsa moving, why can’t the people of Arendelle integrate magic into their daily lives like the Northuldra?

Are human settlements just inherently anti-magical?

That’s problematic, because the Northuldra in general smack of being noble savages.

The noble savage trope is a stereotypical depiction of native peoples. The stereotype is that natives have a primitive way of life that lets them be one with nature. It romanticizes native culture.

Frozen 2 leans very heavily on the noble savage trope to communicate its ideas. The Northuldra are one with nature, but this is disrupted when the dam is built. Human civilization is a taint upon the Northuldra’s communion with nature, as represented by the forest spirits.

The whole point behind the noble savage trope is that the native way of life is uncorrupted by human civilization.

Exactly how the dam’s existence is a blight is never explained; the movie uses the noble savage trope as a cheat to get across why the dam is a bad thing.

“Why is the dam bad?”

“Uh, er, well, it’s civilization!”

The movie tries to be about how the races need to coexist, even as it sets one side up as being superior to the other, while showing no sharing of ideas or even goods.

In Frozen 2, “coexistence” means separate but equal.

This movie tries to do a lot.

There’s an arc for Anna about doing the next right thing, an arc for Kristoff and Anna about getting married, the social commentary about uncovering the true history and atoning for past misdeeds, and two major arcs for Elsa. One about her feeling alienated and another about her having this savior complex. She thinks she has to be the one to save everyone.

Subsequently, many plot beats feel half-baked and rushed. Elsa’s alienation wasn’t really established. Anna’s decision to destroy the dam wasn’t dwelled upon, so it didn’t have the emotional weight it could have.

Elsa’s arc about trying to go it alone is very badly handled.

The point of the arc is that teamwork is golden and relying on your powers is as valuable as a shiny penny.

But once again, it is clear the writers aren’t paying attention. One scene in particular was a galaxy brain fuck up.

A forest fire breaks out and Elsa tries to put it out. Anna jumps in because it looks like Elsa is going to be overwhelmed. You would think that Anna will get Elsa to drop putting the fire out and save herself.

But nope.

Anna is the one who needs to be bailed out. Elsa successfully puts the fire out.

Just, ugggghhhh.

Then later on, some rock giants are lumbering about and everyone has to avoid their notice. But Elsa tries to go off on her own again and follow them.

Because she thinks she can tame them.

Huh???

Elsa’s arc here is about teamwork, but trying to tame these things is just a stupid idea. With following the voice, it’s clear they have to do it if they want to get things to normal. It’s their mission.

Why tame rock giants?

The problem with this moment is that Elsa isn’t just being arrogant, she’s being an idiot.

Then we get to the finale and Elsa’s arc about teamwork just peters out and isn’t a factor in it. Everyone has a role to play in the climax, but it’s all serendipitous.

The kind of teamwork the movie tries to uphold up to this point entails not just trusting other people, but actually working together.

They learn they have to venture into the unknown. Elsa tries to go alone, but relents when Anna argues she should go too.

Later, Elsa tries to go alone to the mystery river and sends Anna away against her will. This is presented as a bad thing.

The lesson, so far, seemed to be that you can’t go it alone.

In the finale, they all go it alone while still working with each other. The finale emphasizes trust, while the rest of the movie emphasizes actual teamwork.

It’s not that they’re all a team working together, it’s more like they’re all playing off each other and making it up as they go.

Elsa learns the true history and communicates it to Anna.

Anna takes it upon herself to go dambusting.

Kristoff helps, but he doesn’t know what’s going on. Teamwork implies everyone is of the same mind. That’s not the case here.

The guards try to stop Anna, but they eventually choose to trust that this is the right thing to do. They don’t really know what’s going on either.

Then, just to really drive home how much they don’t care, at the very end Elsa uses her powers to save everyone singlehandedly.

Because you can’t go it alone.

You can’t just rely on your own power.

Every bridge has two sides, so even Elsa needs help from others.

(That bridge metaphor is the dumbest line in the whole movie.)

The people behind this movie obviously didn’t care. They put no thought in this. See Kristoff’s in-movie MTV music video.

Yes, really, that happened. In it, Kristoff laments being unable to really connect with Anna.

I’m about to sing a song lamenting the future of this franchise.

#frozen 2 #spoilers

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optimismrpt · 5 years

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hello! i have followed so many of your groups and i've always admired how well you structure and plan your plots. i feel like many groups these days get buoyed up on an idea but fail to make it past the first event. can you explain just how you plan out a plot, how your structure that plot progression, and any advice/practicalities on how to build a full narrative into a plot that has a definite start/end and can come full circle? any advice you have would be so amazing. thank you for your time!

Okay first off wow, thank you so so much! I try my best and I put A LOT of work into the rps I run. And it’s true it is very hard to get part the first two weeks, and even I, with all my structure and planning, falter sometimes! But sometimes things work out! And below the cut I have put some of my plotting tactics and strategies.

First off you need an objective in mind, something concrete that your character need to do, achieve, or get.

For example:

The team must find and kill Vronsky.

The team must relight the beacon.

The team must track down the war fugitive and bring him in for trial.

The passengers must discover who the murderer is.

I take inspiration from shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender which had a clear plot and timeline in mind from the very start. Ex. Aang must master the four elements and defeat Ozai before the comet.

And I take warning from shows like Supernatural: Dean and Sam hunt monsters for seemingly the rest of eternity.

One of these has a strong ending that will bring peace and resolution to watchers because it fulfills the starting goal. The other will go on and on until eventually people lose interest or they end in a ridiculous and contrived deus ex machina. (Not to get too off topic but if Supernatural had ended at season 5 it would have been an example of a good plot arc).

This is the problem I see a lot of rps facing. The plot is: weird town is weird. Or people do bad things for bad reasons. And there is no structure to it - nowhere to go. Start with the end in mind.

But I get it, sometimes simple can be fun! And not everything has to last for months!

Here’s what I do to plot my rps: plot point A to point B.

Point A: The very beginning of the rp. I like to set this within a month of the characters meeting each other, so they’ve known each other long enough t o have first impressions as well as know what they have signed up for whether it be a mission or a quest.

Example Point A: The team met in the capitol city three weeks ago and have been planning and packing for the long journey ahead. Today they exit the gates and start their quest.

Point B: the very end of the rp. This includes the climax and the resolution. You need to know if you want your team to be successful or not and you should have at least a vague idea how they ‘save the day’.

Example Point B: The team arrives at the top of the Great Mountain, are tested by the guardians and relight the beacon. With hope restored to the land they part ways, changed forever. The princes and crowned and the couples marry.

Once you know point A and point B you need obstacles. Obstacles can be people, monsters, the weather, the landscape, an event, and so on! This is what Joseph Campbell would call ‘The Road of Trials’ and like any classic myth it involves circumstances getting int he way of progress. These must be overcome. I view each obstacle as a plot drop and usually write about 6 to 12.

Here is the plot outline I wrote for my latest completed private rp @questbegunrp. It’s quite long so If you don’t want to read it scroll past the italic.

Plot:

Leaving the city - the team rides out and away from anderos’ capital city where they first met. This is the first week so it’s pretty much just a time for everyone to do initial threads and get started.

Plains of Anderos - while riding across the plains of anderos towards baine the group is attacked by wargs. They must fight off the giant feral animals, protect each other and their horses (and the dog).

Wrongly accused - the team make it out of the forest and into the kingdom of ironhaust. They stop at a small town and enjoy the moment in civilization. But one among them is framed for a crime and a mob attempts to hunt down the innocent team member. The team must save their friend from the gallows. Now is the time to lay low recuperate and gather information on what Wulf is accused of

Lost forest of Baine- The team finally arrives at the border of the entlands. They find that it is disorienting and filled with a thick fog. They must navigate through the confusing and threatening environment. ( view of the past )

Ruins - the team find the lost city of baine, now in a state of crumbling ruins. They decide to make camp there for the night but are force to fight when a group of bandits attacks and takes rosalyn hostage. The team must get her back.

Bridge - The team is attacked by a group of goblins just before they are about to cross the ‘blackfire gorge’. They choose to run hoping that they can cross the long wooden bridge in time to make is safely to the other side and some of them do. But the other are trapped by a flaming arrow and the bridge snaps. Six party members are left on the edge and six tumble to the river - swept away to the mines.

Mines- While the fallen half of the team nearly drowns after falling into the river and being swept into the underground dwarven watermills they safely arrive on a bank. This team struggles with injury and a lack of direction. While the other half of the tema enters the mines and searches desperately for their friends. Just as the leave they are attacked by living shadows.

Refuge - the team is reunited and with the help of their new guide they make their way to the remains of a onc great dwarven city. It is empty now but the wanderer has been maintaining it. This is the time for the team to express their feelings to each other as their destination grows near.

( Cemetery - Seer ( a view into their future ) the team arrives at a cemetery near the edge of the mountain. While there they meet two strangers: a wizened seer and a young man. The seer offers to show the team visions of their future.

Maze - a labrightn of stone and vine surrounds the base of the mountain, built by magic. There is no climbing over it so the team must navigate the maze together. But that isn’t the most difficult part: there is a Wyrm that live sin the maze. It can only see movement but if it finds the team it will eat whoever it can catch.

Statues of judgement - the final threshold. Living statues demand that each member of the team prove they are worthy of going to the final resting place of the council. Each team member must make a case for themself and for one other person.

Relighting the beacon

Resolution

Some of these ended up being cut but for the most part we got through this plot all the way to the resolution!

It is important to remember that a rp plot is like a growing, living thing. You do not have full control and you never can. Sometimes your members will do something with their character that will change the plot. Sometimes members leave and there is a huge blank space that you need to fill. You have to be willing to twist and mold the narrative to fill in blanks and meet the needs of your players. And that can be really really difficult.

For more information of how I run my skeleton rps check these two guides PART ONE and PART TWO.

#guide !#rpc #rpt #rph #rpo #rpa #how rigby runs a roleplay #advice !#rigby gives advice !#asked and answered !

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thecomicsnexus · 5 years

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AMERICA VS. THE JUSTICE SOCIETY JANUARY - APRIL 1985 BY ROY THOMAS, DANN THOMAS, HOWARD BENDER, JERRY ORDWAY, ALFREDO ALCALA, MICHAEL BAIR, RAFAEL KAYANAN, RICH BUCKLER, BILL COLLINS, ADRIENNE ROY AND CARL GAFFORD

SYNOPSIS + REVIEW

The premise of this story is very intriguing, in a nutshell: A Batman Diary appears, telling the story of how the JSA was actually working for the Axis. Now they will have to be processed through some public hearings to clear their names, with Helena Wayne defending them, and Richard Grayson acting as a counselor for the Jury.

There is pretty much no story in the mini-series. We are led to believe that the son of Senator O’Fallon (the one that asked them to reveal their identities), is behind everything with the help of “The Wizard”. However, this leads to nowhere as the real villain is Per Degaton who was only waiting for the 100th birthday of his former mentor, whom he killed. But in the moment he killed him, the victim fell into a time machine into the future. So now, Per Degaton (who is actually not responsible for the whole bat-diary ordeal), is waiting for the machine to re-appear so he can conquer the world.

Richard Grayson, who believes Helena is about to sully Bruce ‘s good name, wants to believe in the diary (after all, it has been proven it was really written by him). After hearing the JSA talk about their stories over and over, he meets Dr. Nichols (who was in charge of delivering the diary, under orders of Batman himself), this is when he hears about the 100 years club. And that is how he magically figures out Batman’s plan to ruin the JSA image in order to help Robin catch Per Degaton at the moment Professor Zee comes out of the machine, dying and pointing his finger at Per Degaton.

Why would one of the greatest minds on Earth-2... do such a thing? He could have asked ANYONE to catch Degaton when the time was right. Or at least he could have left evidence somewhere that the contents of the diary weren’t real.

And then Degaton kills himself??? That’s the ending?

(Don’t worry, he is alive again in the middle of Crisis).

It’s a shame, because for the most part, this story is very informational. But the overload of information is not properly distributed, and as a result we get the same story over and over, with the same point of view but told by different characters. You will feel ok with it during the first two issues, but then it gets very annoying.

What makes it even worse is that... THEY DON’T EVEN NEED TO TELL THE STORY OF ALL THEIR ADVENTURES! They just have to talk about the two things they have been accused of (working for Hitler, not preventing Pearl Harbor and sabotaging a formula that would make the United States missile-proof). The fact that they have a lasso of truth with them and it is never used... I don’t know... by the end of the story, while you appreciate the retelling of the Earth-2 adventures... you feel like you lost your time on a story that promised to be a thriller, and ended up being an absurd clip show.

Full disclosure: most often than not I am underwhelmed by Roy Thomas. Along with Gardner Fox, he is one of the writers I try to avoid when reading back issues. I try to avoid them, but I always have the feeling they will redeem themselves at some point, and to be honest, sometimes they impress me. But both of them seem to write for a very specific kind of writer that do not think too much about the plot. I am pretty sure Fox was writing for kids, but Thomas should have known better.

This is one of those cases where I feel betrayed by the writer in what seems to be a good story (Jeph Loeb comes to mind as well with his Deus Ex Machinas that break your favorite stories).

If you are interested in learning the story of the JSA and the revisionism on it up to just before the Crisis, this is the book for you. Just don’t expect to be satisfied with the solution of the mystery.

I give this story a score of 4

#jerry ordway #jsa #justice society #justice society of america #dc comics #comics #review #1985 #bronze age #america vs the justice society #batman #robin #huntress #per degaton

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