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rachelbethhines · 2 years

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Tangled Salt Marathon - Plus Est En Vous Part 3

We did it y’all! We’ve finally made it to the end! This isn’t the last review for the marathon but it is the finale episode of the series. And if I’ve planned things out right, it’s also the anniversary of the series' end and this particular episode. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate.

Summary: As Zhan Tiri attacks the rest of Corona with the combined power of the Sundrop and Moonstone; Rapunzel and Cassandra must finally set their differences aside and work together to defeat her.

This Is A Downgrade

This is not a terrible design, per say, but it’s so less appealing than the black void of nothingness that was hinted at all series long.

This a much bolder, sharper, and crisper design. It stands out and is menacing. Giving Zhan Tiri more definition and rounded features weakens that impact.

Also, why did they bother hiring a new voice actor just for her adult/daemon form? She barely sounds any different.

Just Because A Character Says Something Doesn’t Make It True

Maybe Movie Rapunzel was all about making dreams come true, but Show Rapunzel couldn’t give two shits about what other people want unless it benefits herself somehow.

She neve cared about Cassandra’s dreams, despite being in a position to help her. She doesn’t even give a crap about Varian receiving basic needs, let along what he may actually desire out of life. And any villain who doesn’t bend the knee to her, like Lady Caine or The Saporians, is fresh out of luck, because Rapunzel doesn’t care enough to even ask them what they want nor offer them help.

I bring this up because such hypocrisy undermines the tension of the scene. I’m less likely to care about Rapunzel getting flatten to a pulp if the show reminds me before hand that she’s actually a horrible protagonist who has failed to learn anything.

Since When?

If Rapunzel, or any other character for that matter, had been granted an ounce of competence this season Zhan Tiri wouldn’t even be a threat right now. Rapunzel herself has had numerous chances to take the goat-girl out of commission and didn’t. Heck, she wouldn’t have even had to use her powers to do it. She could have tied ZT up with rope and arrested her then and there in the Spire.

This Doesn’t Explain Anything!!!

Yes, Cassandra’s biggest flaw is her selfish ego, but that has nothing to do with her being Gothel’s daughter. She’s egotistical because Chris thought for some ungoddly reason that would make her relatable. Because Chris has an inability to understand that not everyone is him, ironically because of his own ego.

In universe, you could associate Cassandra’s need for constant validation with Gothel’s previous abandonment if you wanted to, but that still wouldn’t explain why she’s willing to throw away her relationships, career, morals, and common sense for it. Especially when she kept achieving that desired validation every other episode during the previous seasons anyways.

Said flaw also has nothing to do with any comeuppance here. She didn’t lose because she got cocky. She lost because of lazy writing that made her weakness ‘little girls jumping on top of her’ for no stated reason.

Then there’s the matter of Gothel’s biggest flaw being her control issues, not her ego. Sure, she’s confident in how she looks in the movie and the show flanderizes this into outright vanity, but it’s her pathological need to manipulate and control Rapunzel, born from her own fear of death, that motivates her through out the film.

Nor was it her ‘ego’ that ‘felled’ her. She underestimated that a thief would perform a selfless sacrifice to save his beloved, because Gothel never understood what real love was; only possession and control. Rapunzel was an object that she prized dearly, but she didn’t really love her; not the way a parent should.

And finally, Zhan Tiri had nothing to do with Gothel’s demise. That was all on Eugene and Pascal. Zhan Tiri didn’t do shit. If the show is trying to imply that Zhan Tiri was manipulating Gothel all movie long, and perhaps even before that as a disciple, then the series is doing a bad job of it.

This is suppose to be the ‘pay off’ of the disciples plot, and it’s such a piss poor reveal that I wonder why the show even bothered to include that particular subplot at all. I still don’t know why any of the disciples followed Zhan Tiri, nor what their relationship to Demanitus was. I don’t know how their story is suppose to connect back to the current conflict. I don’t know the mechanics of the magic system for the world, nor why the Sundrop and Moonstone is so special. And I don’t know how Zhan Tiri is suppose to retroactively fit into the original film.

As I said before, none of this dialogue makes sense in context, and the Gothel subplot should have been dropped from the get go if this was all they were going to do with it.

This Moment Isn’t Earned

There’s absolutely no reason for anyone here to be shouting Rapunzel’s name. Them risking their lives for what is now a worthless hunk of rock populated by nothing but ruins is already very stupid, but at least you could claim that they have an emotional attachment to what was once their home. But Rapunzel?

Rapunzel isn’t Corona itself, nor has she done anything to protect it. Quite the opposite in fact. Corona, and by extension it’s citizenry, are being placed in danger directly due to her own selfishness and incompetence.

And going beyond even that, there’s not a single person here who Rapunzel hasn’t screwed over in some manner individually. Let alone even apologize for doing so.

She went back in time and brainwashed her own boyfriend, rather than admit she was wrong in an argument. And then proceeded to brow beat him into submission for the rest of the season into doing what she wants.

She bullied her own parents and denied them agency over their own lives, because she didn’t want to deal with them getting a divorce. A decision that was never her business.

She completely fucked over Varian’s life; endangering both him and his father, all because she didn’t want to face responsibility for her choices and deal with the emotional fallout from them.

She betrayed both Adira’s and Edmund’s trust in her when she failed to stop Cassandra from stealing the moonstone... something they both warned her about. She also still refuses to confront her bestie over it even now.

She failed to do anything to protect the Brotherhood once Cassandra and Zhan Tiri stole the mindtrap. Therefore the Dark Kingdom characters all got doubly screwed over. Including Lance who cares about both Adira and Eugene.

She had plenty of time to warn the populace about the daemon that was planning on attacking their home and did nothing; Worse than nothing, she actively encouraged them to ignore it just so she could have some fun.

She abandoned Red and Angry, two orphans, multiple times and then shouldered their emotional trauma onto each other rather act like a goddamn adult. Only to gaslight them both into thinking she was ‘helping them to come closer to each other’ or some such bullshit.

She lied to Monty and to this day they still fight over it, yet I’m suppose to believe that he cares about her sorry ass?

The only people who she may have not screwed over is the Pub Thugs; but her relationship with the Pub Thugs was established during the movie before the series degraded her character. She still is placing them in danger in this episode though.

This Isn’t An Apology

Remember way, way back when I wrote The Secret of the Sun Drop review? Remember how I tore apart King Frederic’s non-apology? Remember when I ripped Rapunzel a new one for her lame ass ‘reconciliation’ with Varian during Rapunzel’s Return? Remember?

Because this scene is the worst of both of those.

Let’s start here.

Cassandra isn’t even trying to apologize here. She’s just throwing a pity party.

A sincere apology isn’t about you. It’s about your victims. It’s about who you’ve hurt and how you want to fix things with them. All Cassandra is doing here is spiraling into self deprecation mode because her self-esteem took a hit when she lost to Zhan Tiri.

Now her feeling depressed, isn’t the issue here. She’s valid to feel this way. The problem is that it’s just not enough to make up for what she did. But just like with King Frederic’s ‘confession’ in season one, both Rapunzel and the audience are now primed to coddle her because she ‘feels bad’, and that’s not an actual redemption.

Now This An Actual Breakdown; And It’s Still Not An Excuse

Cassandra stans love to pull out the ‘she’s a having an mental breakdown; you just don’t understand!’ as an excuse for her actions, but it’s one that doesn’t hold any water because of this scene.

Cassandra wasn’t having a breakdown before when doing all of that bad stuff; because this is her breaking point! This the point where she reaches rock bottom; because it’s the story’s climax.

People like to conveniently forget that Cassandra has been running around with the moonstone while listening to Zhan Tiri for over a year now; possibly going on two years given the timeline fiasco. She’s had more than enough chances to come to her senses, and people dealing with actual mental illness don’t have ‘breakdowns’ that last for years.

Real relapses are just that, relapses. They fluctuate. You have good days, bad days, middling days; and sometimes you crack and do stupid shit that you regret afterwards, but that's only sometimes. Your body can’t physically maintain that high emotional state 24/7 for a year’s worth of time. It’s just can’t. Sooner or later you will snap out of it and come back down to earth. And then you might relapse again later, especially if you don't deal with the issue, but that doesn’t mean you’ll have the same reaction exactly the same way over the exact same issue later.

Cassandra was fully in control of herself when she decided to steal, threaten, kidnap, drug, abuse, imprison, bully, assault, murder, and brainwash people. She just didn’t give a shit, and her crying now doesn’t solve anything. Low self-esteem isn’t an excuse for being a jerk and neither is mental illness.

Compare the above to this scene.

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Once again, Bojack Horseman gets right what most series nowadays get wrong, and I’m not even an actual fan of this show. (I’m not one for satire usually) But dang has it not earned my respect.

Being Vague About Cassandra’s Pervious Actions Here Doesn’t Erase Them From The Audience's Minds

Let’s review the list again shall we.

Stole a priceless and world endangering artifact

Victim blamed a woman for being kidnapped as a baby

Attacked her own father

Publicly threatened to destroy a kingdom if she didn’t get what she wanted

Assaulted a minor

Kidnapped a minor

Drugged a minor while unconscious

Used coercion tactics on a minor in order to gain intel

Violently abused said minor while in her custody

Imprisoned said minor, possibly retraumatizing him

Assaulted her former friends

Threatened to murder someone in front of their spouse

Attempted to murder her best friend on no less than three occasions

Assaulted, kidnaped, and attempted to murder an innocent woman just to blackmail said best friend

Stole another priceless and deadly artifact

Brainwashed four innocent people and forced them to fight their friends and family

A least two instances of identity theft

Attacked a crowd of innocent people simply for daring to defend themselves from her

Destroyed an entire kingdom, displacing hundreds of people from their homes, and mostly likely causing several injures and probably even killing a few people while at.

And we still don’t know what the fuck she did to Faith and the Keeper to get them out of her way.

And let me make something very clear, I’m not shaming the character for being a villain and doing bad things. I’m shaming the series for trying to gaslight its own audience by suddenly pretending like these things didn’t happen.

Admitting Fault Isn’t Enough. You Have To Take Actual Responsibility For Your Actions

The biggest complaint people have with Cassandra’s arc is the lack of true consequences. And keep in mind, consequences doesn’t automatically mean ’punishment’. It just means you need to deal with shit.

I don’t need Rapunzel refusing to forgive her or having her vindictively thrown in jail (though I wouldn’t blame the series if they went that route) but I do need to see Cassandra putting in the actual work that’s needed to make amends. Stuff that’s directly related to fixing what she broke.

Have her do community service. Give her over to the Brotherhood to deal with according to their laws, whatever those maybe. Have her placed on trail and let the people decide her fate. Maybe pay for property damage. Or heck a simple shunning from those she’s hurt. She can make up with Rapunzel, sure, but that doesn’t mean she can win over everybody’s forgiveness.

The Show Has A Real Problem With Nepotism and Hypocrisy

And yeah, we can’t talk about Cassandra’s lack of consequences with out talking about Varian’s, Caine’s, and just about every other villain's arc in the show as well.

Varian was given overly harsh and abusive punishment for daring to fight back against relentless abuse from his oppressors. And even after being released from that and being brought back into the royals good graces again, for no other reason that to stroke Rapunzel’s ego, he still took flak for his actions by the populace at large for over a year.

And you can’t claim that Rapunzel learned from Varian not to do that with Cass when you still have Lady Caine and The Saporian arcs unresolved. Caine, a woman who was orphaned herself by the royals oppression of the poor, is still banished on that slave labor island. The Saporians, a race of displaced people left homeless by the royals for generations, are currently locked up in the dungeon bellow them right now.... and I very much doubt that Cassandra and Zhan Tiri has been brothering to even feed them while in charge.

Once again, the series is trying to gaslight the audience into thinking that Rapunzel is this kind and forgiving induvial for not holding Cassandra to account but the reality is, she’s just doesn't care about anyone who isn’t Cass. And her obsession with her ‘best friend’ is due to her own validation issues and not out of any real concern for Cassandra’s well being either.

This Line Doesn’t Make Sense In Context

Who’s this ‘everyone’? What did they think of you? What time frame are we even talking about here?

Cassandra’s villain arc doesn’t work because it was never set up properly. We have no idea what the wider populace actually thought about Cassandra. We’re never shown any real instances where she’s mistreated by anyone, other than Gothel, whom she didn’t even remember. The only time people turn on her is after she goes villain and starts threating them, and that’s her own damn fault.

This Is Manipulative

I mean it is more of the same ‘using self deprecation to deflect from real criticism’ tactics as above; but it’s also manipulating the audience with a wish fulfillment fantasy.

I’m sorry, but Tangled the Series is lying to you. No one is going to come along and pat you on the head for being an asshole and say ‘There, there, It’s alright. Don't feel bad. You’re perfect just the way you are, flaws and all, and you need never change.’

Bullshit.

Relationships are a two way street. You both have to put in the work for bettering yourself. Otherwise you’ll either wind up alone, or trapped in a toxic relationship where one person gives and gives while other does nothing but takes.

This is my biggest issue with enemies to lovers within fandom, because 90% of the time it’s used as an excuse by the fans to never examine their own failings. They just want someone to validate them; not an actual loving relationship where you both have to compromise and work together.

Unconditional love doesn’t mean putting up with your constant bullshit and forgiveness doesn’t mean ignoring the problem. It means being open and willing to listen and to change, and that requires both of you putting in effort.

Saying Sorry To Rapunzel Isn’t A Redemption

I’ll give Cassandra this. At least she verbally says ‘sorry’ to someone. That’s more than what either Frederic or Rapunzel does. But it’s still not enough.

Steps that we’re still missing here are; verbal acknowledgement of how she precisely hurt Rapunzel, informing Rapunzel of how her behavior will change and how she means to make amends, and follow through on that promise.

What we have here is half of an apology. This might have still worked had we had time to see the other steps later, but we never do.

And of course this is all assuming Cassandra is being sincere here. What assurances do we have as the audience that Cassandra is being truthful? She has a past record of lying and manipulation, of making promises only to brake them later when it benefits her, and apologizing for this same offense over and over again.

Cassandra is a vindictive and petty person, and she’s like that to everyone. Who’s to say she won’t start shit again later? How has she learned her lesson here, when she didn’t learn it three seasons ago in Challenge of the Brave? What’s actually different this time, other than the higher stakes? Especially since the inciting incident for this apology is her losing; not her coming to the realization that what she was doing was harming others.

Rapunzel Can’t Forgive Cassandra On Everybody Else’s Behalf

If Rapunzel wants to accept this halfway apology because it makes her feel better, than fine. That’s on her. But she can not forgive Cassandra in place of anybody else.

Cass hurt more than just Rapunzel. She has a whole host of people to beg forgiveness from and we never even see her put in the effort. And for many of those people she has even graver offenses to make up for. Yet, watch as the show treats this as the conclusion to her arc, because the show only cares about Rapunzel’s feelings and no one else’s.

I said it before and I’ll say it again; the series has out grown both Rapunzel and Cassandra. They are not the two most important people in the story anymore because their conflict has the lowest stakes. I can’t give a shit that they’re friends again when there are people outside fighting for their very lives.... and they’re only in danger because of these two bitches!

What’s The Point Of The Yellow Rocks?

All they do is is the exact same thing that the black rocks have been doing since the series started. At least the red rocks did something new, as little sense as that plot point made, but these are just a recolor and nothing special.

Which leads to the bigger question of; What is the point of the Sun Drop then?

Why did Zhan Tiri have to go through such convoluted methods to steal Rapunzel’s powers if she never uses them? The yellow rocks are the same as the black rocks. The only incantation she uses is the Decay, which should be the moonstone’s power to begin with. You could argue that having both stones allows her to grow into a daemon, but why does she even need a monster form if she could have done all of this with just the moonstone anyways?

Ugh! It’s all so pointless!

That’s the main problem here. There’s no logical reason for the conflicts to play out as they do on screen. The ‘payoffs’ just wind up undermining everything that’s come before till you no longer give crap.

Sure, I could theorize all day long and fill in the blanks myself, but I shouldn’t have to. That’s the job of the writers and they failed!

This Is Gay Bait

Yeeeaaaah, that’s not how ‘best friends’ talk to each other. That’s not even how sisters talk to one another. You might tell you’re bestie that you love them or hype them up when they feeling down, but no one just tells their BFF about the moment they fell in love with them like its a long held confession. Heck, I don’t even remember the moment I and my best friend became friends because it happened so gradually and was so long ago.

The entirely of Cassandra’s and Rapunzel’s relationship is written, not as sisters rediscovering one another, like with Anna and Elsa or Gamora and Nebula, but as star-crossed friends to enemies to lovers/soulmates deal. As if it was a diet Catradora or Reylo.

Keep in mind, I’m not criticizing any of the ships here. Enemies/rivals to lovers may not be my deal, but I understand why it’s such a popular trope and if you ship Casspunzel then more power to you.

What I’m criticizing is the obviously contradictory and manipulative writing that’s designed to appeal to a certain demographic in order to exploit them without ever giving them any real representation. And it’s not the ‘big bad corporation’ or ‘capitalism’ to blame here, but the personal shittiness of the shows writers.

They knew better than to do this. They knew this was a mid-queal with a predetermined outcome for the romantic relationships. They are the ones that choose to make Rapunzel and Cassandra ‘sisters’. And they still put this in here, and quite frankly if you are queer, you should be fucking pissed at being screwed over like this; not trying to start pointless ship wars.

Empty Validation Doesn’t Solve Anything!

Okay, so we’re still in clear ‘gay bait’ territory and having Rapunzel simp after her abuser that just tried to murder her only minutes ago is also gross, because an ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t magically erase that, but there’s an even larger problem with this scene....

This doesn’t resolve the conflict!

Nothing is being addressed here. Cassandra’s validation issues are deeper than just needing to hear a simple compliment. Epically such a vague meaningless one, like ‘I think you’re pretty’ and ‘You’re special just because’. It’s hollow and worthless.

This doesn’t tackle the actual issues with their relationship. It doesn’t acknowledge why they fell apart to begin with. It completely side steps what either girl has done wrong and therefore fails at being any sort of satisfying conclusion.

Also, Rapunzel conveniently avoids actual consequences by saying something ‘nice’ and ignoring the real problem, yet again, so she never, ever learns anything.

It’s also just pure cringe. Even ignoring the whole ‘they’re sisters’ subplot, this scene doesn’t even work as a romantic confession because nothing about it is real. It’s so fucking generic and could have been said by any two characters in any piece of media. Slap this on any toxic het couple in any bland romcom and you wouldn’t be able to tell it’s not from there. They don’t even bother explaining, let along showing, what it was that made Cassandra laugh. It’s so vague and uninteresting.

To put it simply, the scene doesn’t work because nothing about it feels natural to the characters. It’s just as forced as the ‘break up’ that came before it.

Also, This Scene Just Looks Flat Out Ugly

I don’t know what the hell happened to the art direction in season three, but ugh!

Why do they look like fucking bobble heads? Why is Cass’s outfit that fugugly shade of brownish gray? Why is this scene awash with such atrocious lighting? Why is the background both too busy and crowded while simultaneously being too simple and flat?

This is suppose to be some heartfelt and tender moment but the colors are too harsh and the framing too uninspired to pull that sort emotion out of the scene. The lighting should have been either soft yellow, or cold black, with Rapunzel being the warm center... not this.

Who the fuck directed this scene?

You now what? Fuck it! Rapunzel should have had a yellow dress for season three if you were going this route. And Cassandra’s depowered suit should have been a darker gray/black or flat white/light gray to contrast with her. And get rid of that blasted red lighting! Make it blue, or green!

This Fight Is Boring Because It Refuses To Let The Characters Shine

It’s hard to convey with just screen shots alone, but the entire fight with Zhan Tiri is just the characters failing, one by one, to get a meaningful hit on the daemon as she just shrugs away their attacks.

Narratively speaking, the idea behind showcasing the battle this way is to build up Zhan Tiri as a credible threat while giving the side characters a final ‘hurrah’ before closing out the series. Unfortunately, the scene winds up being underwhelming and lacking in tension because it doesn’t effectively utilize the characters.

There’s no punch the air moments for the audience to cheer on. There’s nothing shocking here to fill us with dread and make us wonder fearfully what will happen to our favs. Then there’s the awful attempts at humor and bland dialogue that robs the story of any gravitas.

Yet worse of all is that seeing characters that should be good fighters and formidable opponents not doing the things that we know they are capable of.

I, of course, signaled out Varian’s scene here, but you can pick anybody.

The Pub Thugs know how to fight. They're wanted criminals who took on the royal guards to save their friend. Yet they’re ineffective comedic relief. Red and Ruddiger are freaken mutant monsters capable of rendering a person in two and they do nothing. Angry just... throws rocks, I guess. The Brotherhood does nothing despite being the best fighters here. I don’t even see Lance, and of course poor Cap has disappeared into the void for most of the season. The only guards here are Stan and Pete who are the worst at their jobs, ect and so on.

Ironically, Varian and Eugene are the ones to make it out of this mess of a scene the best, by shear force of personality, but both still have been clearly nerfed by the plot.

Meanwhile, Zhan Tiri is still as lame as ever because the series just will not let her shut up! She’s a big bad daemon now! Why does she need to taunt? Why not just let her be this unstoppable force of nature who doesn’t need to overcompensate by protesting too much bout how she’s really going to destroy them all, no really... Any moment now...

Why Isn’t This Sung?

It’s the bloody climax! We’ve been building up to this scene since The Great Tree! Since Queen For A Day even! Why isn’t the decay incantation sung here like it was the last two times we saw it?

Not singing the incantations in the finale, when they should have the most plot importance, saps them of any tension the same way the hurt incantation saps the characters of their lives. It weakens the impact of the incantations narrative conclusions and undermines their previous set ups.

Why Was This Cut?

https://kritterart.tumblr.com/post/611697079303192576

The original scene had Varian and Quirin reaching out to each other as they ‘died’ and, for reasons that I can’t even begin to fathom, it was cut and we just got a shot of Varian alone.

Why?

Just, why?

You can’t claim it was for time because the shots are roughly the same length and because you wasted three fucking minutes on the damn monkey scene earlier! You also can’t claim it was for narrative efficiency or because it made the scene read stronger either. To do so would just be stupid.

So that leaves us with only three options.

Censors

Budget

Chris is a dick

Some of the writers have gone on record saying that everyone was suppose to die this episode and have Rapunzel bring them back to life, only for the censors to step in and refuse to let them do that. Except... everyone dies this episode and is brought back by Rapunzel anyways.

Nothing narratively was actually removed and, to be frank, Chris was on his way out the door by this point. I very much doubted he gave a fuck what the higher ups said. Moreover, the censors never stepped in to stop Varian, a minor, from going through much, much worse in this show, so as to why they would object to him being held by his father for comfort during a the climax of the story is beyond me.

Then there’s budget reasons. It costs more to animated two characters onscreen as opposed to one. Except... its the fucking finale and the showrunners already wasted three goddamn minutes on stupid monkeys!!! Don’t tell me they didn’t have the money to animate this!!!

That leaves us just with option three. Now it’s no secret at this point that Chris Sonnenberg is an asshole to the fans of this show, particularly Varian fans. The drama has been immortalized on the internet forever and I won’t rehash it here again. There’s also the rumors hanging around the animation grapevine that he wasn’t that great of a boss, and we know for a fact that there was a mass resignation of crew members, most of whom were women, during the middle of production. We also know that he hasn’t been hired back for anything, by any studio, which lends credence to the rumors.

However, I don’t know Chris personally. I’ve never met the man nor talked to him and I have very little desire to ever do so. I can’t say what he would or wouldn't do just to be petty, but boy does cutting this scene just feel like a final ‘fuck you’ to the fanbase that carried this show.

This Is An Ass Pull

First off, Cassandra didn’t give a crap about Rapunzel’s well being when she took the stone. They had the setup for that to be her motivation, but then backtracked on it when it came to the actual reveal. Trying to double back now in order to retroactively pretend that what Cass did was actually a good thing is pure BS at this point. Especially when her supposed goal was to murder Rapunzel for the past half of a season anyways.

But of course this exchange is here because it’s really setup/justification for how they’ll wind up defeating Zhan Tiri later. It’s more poorly laid out exposition that requires you remembering a bunch of other poorly laid expositions from season two; the dullest of seasons, so you probably don’t remember it. And it’s all undermined later anyways because Rapunzel bypasses any all consequences due to plot armor.

Not to mention that we still don’t get any explanation for what the two plot McGuffins are or how they work, so there’s no reason to believe that this is what would happen anyways. We don’t even know why they have to be reunited. I mean, we’re having to take the characters at their word and they don’t have the experience or knowledge to back those words up, so it’s a set up that’s already been sabotaged by the narrative.

This Isn’t A Satisfying Payoff Because The Focus Is Wrong

What the fuck does Cassandra have to do with Rapunzel’s journal?

That was a gift to Rapunzel from her mother. Those words of advice were for her, not Cass. A woman who has next to zero connection to Adrianna and hasn’t been involved in the journal plot at all, because why the fuck would she be?

I thought this was suppose to be ‘Rapunzel’s show’ Chris? I thought Rapunzel was suppose to be the one who has an actual arc and learns shit. Why would she, in her darkest hour, give the personal advice that was meant to encourage her to someone else? Especially when that character has already come through their emotional low point and been comforted by her in the previous scene.

There is no narrative reason to focus on Cassandra here. We’ve already resolved her validation issues, as gay baity and full of bullshit as that was. The only reason to keep harping on this still is to proclaim that Cassandra is real the focus of the story.

It’s here to make her the protagonist instead of Rapunzel!

Geez... No wonder Chris got fired. You had one fucking job. Make a spin off about Rapunzel, and you blew it.

BULLSHIT

This doesn’t make any sense!!!!

At this point the series is not only asking me to ignore natural human behavior, but to ignore basic physics as well. How did that tiny shard manage to stay lodged onto her suit after being blown away, flung around, and hit by magical sunbeams for half a season? Especially, when she can so easily remove it with her fingers here. Is it made of Velcro?

How!?

Cass has it on her person right now and it’s not doing shit for her other than to sparkle. What do you plan on doing with it? Why do you think this is enough power to defeat a fucking daemon!?

Also ‘destiny’ still doesn’t mean anything. Neither of these two bitches have a destiny to fulfill. All of what is happing right now is either circumstantial, like being born with powers, or a direct consequence of their own failings, like the daemon being let lose.

Furthermore, this adds nothing to Cassandra’s arc because her motivations and goals were so clearly fucked over and mangled up for the past season and a half leading to this point. This can’t been seen as her relinquishing control and rectifying her past mistakes because we never found what this ‘destiny’ she’s been chasing after was nor what it meant to her.

Also why does this work!? How does it work!?

Why would the moonstone's powers manifest as Rapunzel’s glowy hair powers again? She’s not the sundrop anymore. That power is gone. She should logically have new powers that manifest differently without the influence of that previous power. Of course, that’s even assuming that touching the thing would give her powers at all, considering how Cass was wearing it this entire time and it didn’t work for her.

Why Won’t The Series Just Let Cassandra Be Cassandra?

Yeah, all through out this final episode the writers constantly have Cassandra steal Eugene’s lines and even straight up scenes from the Tangled movie.

I’ll get into why this so insulting to fans of the original later, but for now lets focus on why this diminishes Cassandra’s character specifically.

The Cassandra from season one and season two of the show, had like an actual unique purpose within the narrative and was a character in her own right with her own personality. She may have been clunkily intergraded into the cast, and in S2 denied any meaningful interactions with anyone other than Rapunzel, but she still was allowed to just exist as herself.

Then season three happens and suddenly Cassandra isn’t good enough for Chris. She can’t just be her own person anymore. Instead Chris has to force her to occupy everyone else’s stories as well instead of just giving her her own arc.

It isn’t enough for Cassandra to be the Captain’s beloved adopted daughter, now she has to steal Rapunzel’s backstory and be Gothel’s secret child who was also abused for no reason.

It’s not enough for Cassandra to have her own motivations for stealing the moonstone. She’s just evil because she’s now related to Gothel and she must now mimic the mother that she’s barely known for most of her life, cause reasons....

It isn’t enough that Cassandra is Rapunzel’s best friend. She now has to be Rapunzel’s star-crossed lover as well and up spur Eugene’s place as the most important person in Rapunzel’s life, despite the series also wanting to make them sisters.

It’s not enough for Cassandra to have a mind and will of her own and must therefore blindly follow another even bigger bad for zero stated reasons and must now ape Varian’s plans when scheming evilly.

Cassandra can’t have a goal nor purpose of her own outside of Rapunzel now. She must be after the protagonist's ‘destiny’ because deep down the creator wishes that she was the star of the show a not the character from a movie that he didn’t create and can therefore claim no ownership of.

Chris desperately wants to be recognized for creating an original character like Cassandra, but Cassandra just simply isn’t ‘original’. She’s not allowed to be original. Because Chris Sonnenburg has no faith in his creation. He doesn’t see Cassandra as an individual character but an extension of himself and his own ‘cleverness’. And his need to wedge her into everything is a reflection of how he feels like he needs to control everything and be made the center of attention even when what’s going on has nothing to do with him.

Why Should Rapunzel Care About This Explanation?

She has even less context for Zhan Tiri’s feud with Demanitus than we do. These lines mean nothing to her. Therefore they mean nothing to the audience. There’s no emotional investment for this conflict. So it remains uninteresting to till the last.

This Fight Is Also Boring

There’s nothing new here. Rapunzel is just hitting the monster the same way she hits everything in this show. She’s been reduced to a generic action heroine and anything that originally made her clever, funny, or relatable in the movie is gone.

There’s no tension either as Rapunzel’s reaction to finding everyone she knows dying is hardily a concern to her. Yes, she responds to it happening, but the pacing is so off and the mood whiplash from the fight so quick that it barely registers in the audiences’ minds.

Meanwhile Zhan Tiri is as unimpressive and obnoxious as ever. She doesn’t even get the benefit of being indestructible as she did before, because we gotta show Raps and Cass being mega awesome super heroes, because ‘girl power’ or something...

This Is So Lame

Oh let me count the ways in which this is stupid.

Way to go series, you made your main villain even more unthreatening then before. All that pervious build up during the last fight was wasted.

Speaking of the last fight, why couldn’t anybody else get a hit on her? A vial of toxic chemicals to the face launched at rocket speed has far more impact than a bonk on the back of the head. I don’t like the term ‘Mary Sue’ because it’s lost all meaning over the years, but Cassandra sure does fit a lot of the over powered tropes often associated with the term.

Rather than making Cassandra seem cool, this scene has the opposite effect because it has nothing to do with her as a person. This isn’t particularly clever, lots of other characters have used frying pans in the franchise and she’s never been one them really, and also it’s a stupid frying pan. It’s a joke, that’s the point! Both Zhan Tiri and Cassandra are made into a joke so the end result is just cringey to watch.

It’s yet another call back to the film and another instance of trying to make Cassandra into a Eugene rip-off. It doesn’t work because it lacks the context and build up of the pervious line from the movie and comes across as tacky.

This Isn’t Particularly Clever Nor Unique

A satisfying climax is the conclusion of the important elements that you’ve built up over the course of the story. This includes both character resolutions and tying up the various plot points of your narrative.

Tangled the Series lacks a satisfying ending because nothing here was set up enough to be impactful. Zhan Tiri is too lame. The Sundrop and Moonstone are too undefined. No one knows how magic works in this world. Most damaging of all, however, is the lack of character.

Vader turning on Palpatine works because redeeming his father has been Luke’s goal all movie long and desiring a relationship with his dad was a motivating factor for him since his introduction in the first movie.

Dr. Strange tricking the interdimensional monster with time travel, is the conclusion to him finding the time stone and using his greatest strength, his intelligence, to make an eternal sacrifice. Which brings his story arc full circle as he learns to be less selfish while still being uniquely and stubbornly himself.

Even The Black Cauldron, a terrible movie by all accounts, still manages to have a kick ass climax because the villain is destroyed by the very thing he instigated the conflict with by trying to find it. He wanted a world conquering weapon and boy did he get it... right in the face as he disintegrated. Plus Zombies!

Meanwhile, this ending doesn't tell me anything about the characters. The dialogue doesn’t harken back to anything rememberable. Zhan Tiri’s downfall has nothing to do with her own foibles. And the girls’ plan here is rather uninspired and honestly could have been done by anyone with a long enough rope. Rapunzel’s powers were not needed for this, and Cassandra adds nothing special to the proceedings either.

This Moment Lacks Emotional Impact

Rapunzel finally cutting her own hair should be this big, grand, and freeing moment. It should be the capstone to her story arc regarding agency and choice. But it fails to be that moment because the series has forgotten who and what should be the focus of the story.

Rapunzel cuts her hair here because it’s a practical solution to the problem at hand; defeating Zhan Tiri. It’s not a reflection of how she sees herself nor a deliberate decision to regain control over her life. Hell, it’s not even her own idea to do it. Cassandra has to be the one to think of it and hand her (or ‘kick’ in this case) the broken rock.

It also doesn’t ‘read’ well. I only just now noticed while typing this up that Rapunzel can only cut her hair now because of the stupid flickering light effect of her powers going in and out. That’s after watching the episode three times and slowly combing through it to analyze. How many casual watchers missed this on first watch?

This is almost as badly sign posted as the whole ‘Cassandra can only grab the moonstone cause of her burnt hand’ subplot.

The Final Fight Is Shorter Than The Monkey Scene

It’s precisely 30 seconds shorter. I counted. Heck, if you don’t count the shots of the rocks disappearing afterwards, it’s even less than that!

The climatic final battle between the main hero and the main villain is only two and half minutes long.

An hour and half three part finale to a three season, sixty episode show, has a climax of only two and half minutes.

Oh but it’s okay! We had time for monkeys!

Wait. What?

How did Cassandra die here? Both her and Rapunzel were caught in the explosion and Raps doesn’t have her shield powers anymore. It doesn’t make sense for one of them to die but not the other.

Well after combing this episode for screen shots, I and some of the other fans finally figured it out.

It’s really hard to see in the scene itself because of the lighting effects that cover everything, but Cassandra hits her head on the stairs supposedly. Even though she’s no where near those stairs when Rapunzel finds her. But like, it’s the only explanation that’s been offered up so far that makes sense.

Presentation matters. The audience has to be able to see what’s going on in order to follow along if we’re talking about a visual medium like television. Rather than being tragic, the following scene just winds up being confusing because we don’t know for sure how we got to that point.

Cassandra Dying Isn’t A Redemption

As I pointed out during the last review a redemption takes actual effort, and if you want a character to be redeemed through a noble sacrifice then the character has to make an actual sacrifice.

Let’s compare this to another redemption/sacrifice just show how hard this series fails.

Now a lot of people have issues with the new Star Wars trilogy and with Kylo Ren’s arc especially. Some of these criticisms are valid and some of them not so much. However, Ben’s ending here still follows the basic steps of a redemption.

He acknowledges what he did wrong on the bridge. He tries his best to rectify his mistakes, even when he didn’t have to. He could have run away. He could have rejoined the emperor. He could have started another war against Palpatine for his own selfish desires and personal gain. But no, he goes back to fight the monster he helped create knowing that he might die for it. Then when Rey dies, he willingly gives up his own life to save hers.

That’s a redemption. That’s a permeant sacrifice. You could argue that it’s not enough. That he hurt more people then just Rey. You could argue that his relationship with her was toxic. Sure, but you could say the same thing about Darth Vader and Luke, and his noble sacrifice at the end of Return of the Jedi.

As basic as Star Wars is with it’s storytelling; and I do mean the whole of Star Wars, it’s not a particularly complex nor deep franchise as far as the main movies are concerned; it still gets the fundamentals right. Every trilogy has it’s detractors, but they also all have their hardcore fans for a reason.

Tangled on the other hand, can’t even get the basics right. Cassandra can’t even verbally acknowledge what she did wrong. Her fighting Zhan Tiri isn’t some grand and noble gesture meant to make up for her past wrongs, because what other choice does she have? She could coward and hide, or run away, but she wouldn’t make it far when the daemon can kill everything and everyone in her path with just a few spoken words. And of course her dying here isn’t a sacrifice because it’s random. She doesn’t fight knowing or expecting to die; it just happens, and it’s Rapunzel who has to save her.

The series steals Cassandra's agency away from her until the very last. Had she actually knowingly died trying to save everyone first and then had Rapunzel save her; or have Rapunzel die and have Cassandra bring her and everyone else back, only to die afterwards because of it, then you might have had something here. But that’s not what happened and here we are over 60 salt reviews later.

This Is A Rip-Off Of The Movie And It’s Insulting To Everyone

This isn’t a homage or a fun call back to something you love. It’s a shot for shot recreation of the most important scene from the original film only with the showrunner’s precious OC shoved in place of the actual secondary character of the franchise, even as said character continues to die just a mere few feet away!

How fucking egotistical and petty can you get?

And trust me when I say, this is insulting to damn near everyone involved.

It’s insulting to Cass fans because it’s yet another instance of the show robbing her of agency and individuality.

It’s insulting to Casspunzel shippers and queer people watching because it’s yet more gay bait and not actual representation.

It’s insulting to Rapunzel fans because it once again makes her look like a self-absorbed asshole as she still continues to ignore everyone else but her ‘bestie’. Even though everyone else is dying too because of her obsession with being dumped.

And it is majorly insulting to fans of the original movie, Eugene fans, and New Dream shippers. This scene just pisses all over everything you may have hold dear about the original. It stands there and says that your favorite characters and relationships don’t matter. It says that the original messages of love, hope, acceptance, and yes, even redemption, does not matter. Only Chris and his ego matters.

What was originally a moving story about two people willing to change and sacrifice for the other because they accepted one another, and believed in one another, when neither had anyone else to turn to; is reduced to nothing more one man’s vanity project.

Fuck Chris Sonnenberg.

Meanwhile us Varian fans apparently are missing the point of the show, but hey, maybe that because ‘your point’ is fucking stupid Chris.

This The Very Definition Of ‘Plot Armor’

There’s no logical reason for Rapunzel to be able to use the power of the moonstone and sundrop together. We spent two seasons instilling the idea that touching both together would be bad. We even just defeated the main baddie by creating an explosion with the two powers slamming together. But here she is, just able to grab it like it was next to nothing... because, why? She’s ‘special’? ‘The power of love’? She didn’t skip leg day? What is it?

We had such a tightly written and well defined magic system in the movie, one that turned the original fairy tale into something that made sense, but now it’s nothing but contrived mush because of the series.

And of course the plot armor protects Rapunzel from more than just the exploding glowing stone. If I was seriously injured and dying and my fiancé was ignoring me just to save her already dead best friend, who had been trying to murder us all only a few moments ago, well, I would be seriously reconsidering marriage right now.

The only internal reasoning I have for this is that Eugene is in so much pain and so close to death right now himself that he can’t fully hear nor comprehend what Rapunzel is saying/doing here. But of the course the real reason because the writers are full of shit.

That’s all the room I have for the first half of the review on this post. The second half will be attached sometime this week. Happy Tangled Month!

#tangled #anti-tangled #tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure #anti-cassandra #anti-rapunzel

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mewhiphand · 3 years

Note

hello! who’s your favorite and least favorite characters in “gone” and why? favorite romantic and platonic pairings (canon or non-canon)? any headcanons for any characters?

hi!! thank you so much for the ask, apologies for the late response!

my personal favourites are (as you may be able to tell) drake, mary, diana and (sort of) caine!

i like drake and caine as characters and not, y'know, actual people, i think it's really interesting how they're characterised and i do love some moral greyness! drake, i think, should have been explored more as a 15 year old child who had his arm burned off and was used by everyone around him, rather than your typical cookie-cutter misogynistic villain.

caine is a popular one in the fandom, and i think for good reason! he's got some amazing lines, (even if the way he acts is not realistic for a teenager) and while i don't think, personally, that he was redeemed, and shouldn't be praised or romanticised, he was a....curious....look into how childhood neglect and abandonment, mixed with superpowers, can lead to a façade of overinflated self worth to hide one's true feelings of inferiority!

mary i relate to a lot, i was devastated by her death in lies! one thing that i think MG did really well was portrayal and representation of mental illnesses, like mary's depression and eating disorder. she was one of the most genuinely 'good' people, i think, and in terms of morality she's practically a saint!

penny and taylor are two controversial faves of mine also! i think penny deserved more scenes, i found her backstory so tragic but so fascinating.

and taylor, in my opinion, wasn't really allowed a lot of development which i thought was unfair! she was delegated to be astrid's opposite, the 'boy crazy' "ninny", as she's described. what happened to her was so sad and an unfitting end, i thought :((

least favourites would maybe be (controversially) lana - i feel like MG plays a little too much into stereotypes of 'tough badass' with her character as the series progressed, although i loved her in the first two books, and she became more of a plot device than a character. i'm also not the biggest fan of sam, i thought he was a little bland as a protagonist - i think astrid would have worked better actually!

dekka i LOVED until 'monster', which [SPOILERS] implied she still loved a 13 year old (brianna) when she was, what, 19? so that kind of creeped me out, but i didn't enjoy monster much otherwise tbh.

as for favourite pairings! ooohh this is interesting!

i'm a sucker for mary x dahra, i think there was such an opportunity there and instead of giving dahra a boyfriend, elwood, with a couple of lines and not a lot of significance, mary's arc could have been extended with her forming a true friendship and then relationship with dahra! both mary and dahra meet tragic ends, too, and suffer so much as they're expected to take care of everyone else :((

i also enjoy lana x dahra! they have a couple scenes interacting which i think is so cute!

i'm not a big fan of most canon romantic pairings, sam x astrid felt rather forced to me, i felt as though they should have broken up permanently as the series progressed and their dynamic felt rather toxic. diana x caine was the same for me, although many in the fandom enjoy it. i would've liked to see more interaction of the coates trio as friends!

i LOVED the little scenes we got of albert and lana, and cookie and lana as friends! albert is another one of my favourites, and i've always liked cookie's small but meaningful arc!

as for headcanons!

•caine likes shitty rom-coms. he always complained when diana made him watch them, but in his last moments, he remembers the time they spent together and dies happy.

•astrid likes opera, she watches the eurovision religiously (ha-ha) and little pete used to like to put flowers (especially daisies) in her hair when she was playing with him outside.

•sam almost drowned once on a particularly miscalculated surf, quinn pulled him out and that's when their friendship really developed! (i believe this goes against canon but it's so cute to me)

•lana likes to watch old westerns with her grandfather post-fayz.

•diana does become a hairdresser and eventually opens her own practice. she thinks of how she used to laugh with her female friends at coates when they talked about their future. she mourns the dead, and pities the living.

•mary and dahra's parents fund a support group for fayz survivors, which helps pay for legal cases, therapy and hospital bills.

•sam and quinn still surf with each other post-fayz.

•astrid gets emancipated, and deals with feelings of self-loathing after little pete's death. her parents join in for family therapy sometimes.

•connie mourns the loss of both her sons. one is dead, burnt to nothing but ashes, and the other's innocence was ripped away as he was forced to be a leader. she and sam have strained family dinners on occasion.

•hermit jim posthumously becomes a national hero (i'm so sorry this is devolving into shitposting-)

thank you so much for the ask, it was so interesting! :)

#gone series #drake merwin #caine soren #fayz #the gone series #diana ladris #michael grant #sam temple #astrid ellison

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nightwingmyboi · 4 years

Note

Can I ask why you hate Batman and Robin Eternal? (it was my first DC comic ever, my dad bought it for me in one of his trips even though I didn’t know anything about the batfam or comics in general lmao). It’s been so long since the last time I read it I don’t even remember what it was about (I do remember enjoying it in that moment but it may have also been because it was a gift and the drawings were cool lol)

Aww, that’s very sweet. There are certainly bits of the comic that are enjoyable. I’m pretty sure that I’m actually in the minority when I say that I don’t care for it...but since you asked lol, there are several things about these comics that really rub me the wrong way. This is pretty negative (and way longer than I’d planned), so be warned.

For starters, Dick Grayson was just...not treated well by his family members in these comics. It felt particularly brutal here specifically...I think because Dick would say very harmless things, and his family’s responses in return were so abrupt and unreasonably harsh. Like, Dick says that he’s glad to see Batgirl, and wonders what some kids are doing dressed as Robin...

Batman and Robin Eternal #4

And Batgirl bites his head off. Or, there were times where Dick would just be hanging out in the general vicinity, and people would just take shots at him out of the blue for seemingly no reason.

Batman and Robin Eternal #3

It felt like he could barely breathe without someone criticizing him for it. At one point, Dick confesses that he’s feeling discouraged, and Damian’s response is to punch him in the face.

Batman and Robin Eternal #22

Which is a pretty good summary of the family’s treatment of him in these comics to be honest. Just literally, lashing out at him for zero reason while he just takes it.

One scene in particular that really frustrated me was this one:

Batman and Robin Eternal #5

You know, that other time in this comic series where one of Dick’s family members punches him in the face while he, once again, takes the hit and does nothing to retaliate. Good times.

For context...the big bad in these comics is a villain known as “Mother.” Her speciality is brainwashing. She placed several of her “children” in high-profile positions in order to enact her plans, even managing to infiltrate Spyral. In a message left for Dick, Batman specifically explains that “Anyone could be under her control, Dick. They could be people you know. People you love…they probably will be” (Batman and Robin Eternal #1).

Unlike in Pre-52, Tim’s background is largely a mystery. He’s acting suspiciously. So, Dick takes it upon himself to investigate and ensure that Tim’s not one of Mother’s plants.

On Tim’s side of things, he’s upset that Dick investigated behind his back and found out where he’d secretly had his parents living for their safety. Dick unintentionally brought danger to their doorstep (though, notably, no one was actually hurt). But Tim’s pissed, and punches Dick in the face.

Not gonna lie, this was hard to take. I mean, even if Tim was in the right in this argument (which he lowkey isn’t in my eyes), that still does not make it ok for him to just punch Dick out of the blue when Dick is, as pictured above, just talking to him.

And the hypocrisy that Tim is displaying here is stunning. How he had previously told Dick off for keeping secrets from the family by going undercover with Spyral, when he in fact had a whole secret family tucked away in a corner. How he tells Dick off now for invading people’s privacy, when just earlier in this very comic he had planted surveillance devices in Stephanie’s apartment without her consent.

Batman and Robin Eternal #2

How Tim storms off and goes on a solo mission with Jason because Dick’s supposedly too personally invested and thus compromised, when he just got so emotionally unhinged that he lost his shit at Dick and punched him. Once again, may I just say, simply stunning.

But does Tim ever face any consequences for this behavior? Oh, of course not! Instead, we get Jason joking about how great it is to punch Dick in the face when he is not even fighting back.

Batman and Robin Eternal #7

And everyone collectively piling on to Dick and blaming him, even though he had legitimate concerns. Awesome.

Batman and Robin Eternal #6

Batman and Robin Eternal #7

And Dick just continues to take it. Not once does he stand up for himself. It’s so hard to read him continually get shit on, I’m sorry. And it’s crazy how they treat him this way, and yet still ultimately look to him for encouragement and rely on him to save the day in the end? You hate to see it.

I also didn’t like what they did with Cass. I know, I’m just full of complaints. But they really watered her down. With Pre52 Cass, you could actually describe facets of her personality. She was compassionate, had a very refreshing, sassy sense of humor, etc. She wasn’t just...mysterious action girl who has a dark past and cries occasionally. I mean, there were moments where I could see glimpses of personality (the time she visited the ballet being the main one), but on the whole she punched people when needed, and otherwise just stood there as people talked about and around her. Essentially a prop for the story.

Batman and Robin Eternal #24

Another thing that makes me so uncomfortable (that I couldn’t pin down until I read this post here) is the fact that this comics version of events makes it so that Cass’ own backstory no longer has her as the focus; it’s not about her emotional struggles and journey. By having Cass kill Harper’s mother rather than a random man, it makes the story about Harper, and about Cass gaining Harper’s forgiveness. So...more using Cass as a prop...as an element of someone else’s story in what is supposed to be her origin!

Honestly, I have no idea why Cass would want to stay with the Bat-family in these comics anyway...her previous mentorship with Barbara Gordon is nonexistent. She’s no longer Batgirl. The two people who were once her closest friends treat her horribly.

Batman and Robin Eternal #3

Batman and Robin Eternal #4

As if she’s barely a person. Once again, sooooo hard to read this. Why.

Yeah, I could go on forever nitpicking here. You probably got a sense of it already, but I absolutely despise how Tim is characterized here. Most of the time, he’s an ass. Jason also had pretty inconsistent characterization. And I really don’t like how the whole comic treats Robin like something Batman owns and is meant to benefit from, rather than as something Dick created. I don’t like how Cain was “redeemed” in the end, and that Cass took on the name Orphan instead of Black Bat or Batgirl. Once again, how is she connected to the Bat-family exactly? And I don’t like how Dick’s time as Robin is portrayed.

The existence of this comic...drives me insane...

It’s also the worst time to be doing a “Does Batman treat his kids like child soldiers?” arc considering it is coming on the tail end of Spyral, aka that one thing that Dick did because Bruce beat the shit out of him and forced him to.

Nightwing #30

Looking through Batman’s speech to Dick there...some of the things he says to Dick are so uncomfortably close to what Cain says to Cass. Really horrible parallel there. Why DC.

I really don’t know why Dick was so certain that Bruce didn’t do something shady with Mother, as was implied throughout the comic, when Bruce had pulled the Spyral crap fairly recently. Idk why they didn’t play into that side of things. Like, the fact that this arc ends with Dick comforting Batman about them not being child soldiers:

Batman and Robin Eternal #26

Instead of Batman stepping up to reaffirm to Dick that he was a good partner and a trusted ally when he spent the whole comic being insulted by his family and being told this stuff by his enemies (and flashback!Batman):

Batman and Robin Eternal #8

Batman and Robin Eternal #12

Just sucks. I mean, Dick had just recently sacrificed everything (his family, his friends, his life, his identity, everything) to do as Batman wanted and go undercover, only to hear this over and over? To hear that none of it was enough? That he could never be enough? And Dick never gets reassurance that this isn’t true. This comic is just agonizing in so many ways.

Obviously, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and I am not criticizing this to be a killjoy? Just venting. If you enjoy these comics, you are free to continue to do you. But I am never going to like them. And when I see people championing these books as the best the Bat-fam has to offer...oof is that hard to hear lmao! Surely we can do better than all this.

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treeni · 4 years

Text

Sanders Side Theory: Creativity’s Name and Roman’s Struggles

Theories Masterpost

Well, apparently some people were interested in my Orange side theory and stuff.

So let’s talk about “King Creativity” and why I disagree with every name theory I’ve seen so far and what I think instead. I’m not certain “King Creativity” is ever going to be named in the show, just knowing he existed is probably enough, but wouldn’t it be fantastic if there was a backstory episode? Or even aside episode?

First! Let’s start with the fact that I actually think it’s really interesting that everyone’s defaulting to Creativity being “King” when it is in fact Emperors who ruled Rome. Not a criticize, just interesting thought. Second, Kings were supposed to sit back and let their knights and armies basically do all of the physical work (Unless your Arthur, but it usually got him into trouble so! Moving on!) while you lead them as whatever supreme ruler title you take. However, a Crowned Prince was often at the head of said adventures and battles, in the thick of it all, but was basically indisputably the accepted next in line. (Approved by the courts and all that jazz, I mean historically it didn’t always go that way, but that was the intention). However, a regular Prince and a Duke could absolutely have a power struggle, especially in the situation where the Duke was previously “next in line” before the Prince’s birth. So if Roman and Remus ever did duke it out (also mini theory that Remus chose Duke for the fighting reference) I think one of them could/would become King, but I don’t think that’s who creativity was before the split.

Now I have a particular crowned prince in mind that creativity is named after, but lets not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s start by talking about some of the most popular theories and why I disagree with them.

CW: for before the “Keep Reading” section. There is mention of metaphorical and fictional murder, war, lgbt theory (not that, that should surprise anyone). Roman backstory (aka things he might regret now.)

Romulus: While I suppose it’s convenient in the fact that its sort of the names combined, Romulus is already the role that Roman is filling in his relationship with Remus. Twins that supposedly found Rome, but Romulus killed his brother Remus to do so and become the ruler. Romulus literally named Rome after himself. This isn’t a hint, this isn’t something that’s upcoming or anything, this is backstory. Roman is literally just a modernized version of the name Romulus. Remus’ banishment to the darkside was his metaphorical murder. It also suggests that Roman took an active role in sending Remus away, which also helps explain a lot of Roman’s current struggle with Janus. Can you imagine the kind of guilt he might be feeling if he was the one who decided his brother was evil and he was good and then he passed judgement? If the darksides aren’t evil, then Roman and he metaphorically murdered Remus, then he wasn’t the hero slaying the beast anymore. Instead, he’s suddenly the bad guy.

Buuuut Treeni, what about Patton??? I hear you say. It would have had to have been morality right?

And to that I say you’re WRONG! And also right. Patton’s kinda been shown to be the most accepting bean of the whole lot, he doesn’t really try to force the others away the way some of the other sides do. Instead, he puts his foot down on his own convictions and refuses to listen to reason. (I didn’t say he was perfect.) Still, he doesn’t try to physically push the others away, not Virgil when he tried scaring Thomas, not Janus when they argued and Patton was clearly distressed by the courtroom situation, and not even Remus when Patton was clearly scared of him (also defensive of Roman). He doesn’t need to, he’s self-assured in his own place and convictions that he doesn’t worry about Thomas pushing him out. Instead, Patton kinda takes the family holiday party route and will do his best to put out the emotional fires and stand his ground on his opinion to Thomas when he needs to. (The ONLY time I could find Patton sort of pushing someone away was when they were in his room and Patton asked Logan to stop. While that could weaken my argument about Patton, I think it strengthens it because it shows how big of a deal it was at the time that Patton tried shutting him down. Logan reacted the way he did by immediately storming off because it’s not something Patton does.) While it could absolutely be Patton’s influence that caused the split, it would be out of character (as he’s currently defined) for Patton to actively push a side away. (I’ll get into some of his more negative aspects in another post if ya’ll wanna hear about it.)

Remember, Roman was the one who tried shutting down Virgil with bullying tactics, Logan too sometimes. Then he tried to use the same tactics on Janus when he tried putting his foot down on maintaining a black and white view point of the world after Remus’ appearance. Keep in mind that Remus actively told us that he blames Roman for his banishment. He compared himself and Roman to Cain and Able. While c!Thomas and even the audience as a whole were sort of led to think of Remus as Cain because of the “dark and evil” association, Remus is telling us that he is Abel. Roman is his destroyer. (Before you feel too bad for Remus, that misconception was also on purpose because while Remus isn’t a liar, he can manipulate a situation with honesty. Again, another post if you wanna hear about why.)

So now there is some general understanding of the twins backstory, you’ll see why Romulus would be a terrible fit for their combined name because Roman is already Romulus. Period. He’s the one who betrayed his brother by “murdering” him and taking over.

Making Romulus the name of who creativity was before because the names kinda morph together would lazy writing compared to very carefully woven details the show has had thus far (particularly in season 2). Okay, that went on a bit of a tangent, so next!

Caesar: This is a person who brought about the destruction of Rome, not the creation of it. (With Rome basically being the metaphorical state c!Thomas is living in now with clear lines between good/bad, right/wrong etc.) While it’s not a horrible ideology, it would be moving forward in a historical timeline instead of backwards. If you subscribe to the idea that Roman and Remus cannot go back to who they were (even with some kind of theoretical re-morphing) Caesar might be who they become, but it seems unlikely that is who they were. Remember that both sides are individuals now and those individual traits they’ve gained since splitting may not re-mesh cleanly back into who they once were. I personally don’t think there’s any “going back” for Creativity.

If they show him as he once was, it would likely only be in either a backstory bit or in a temporary situation where the re-combining doesn’t hold. However, if Creativity ever did become one thing again, I think it would be something completely new and I think Caesar would be a good fit for that in particular.

Aeneas: Again, it would be kinda lazy writing comparatively. Instead of using a sorta combination of the names that had some historical basis, this theory is based entirely on the idea of a convenient ancestor who quested and failed over and over to create Rome. I could have bought this had it been from lesser writers, but Thomas, Joan and the whole team do not mess around in story crafting and really carefully woven in references. I am literally degreed in writing and analysis and I keep finding myself impressed at the layers.

The name Aeneas also implies that the character Creativity was specifically questing for a change and that seems doubtful given the resentment between the brothers. Aeneas was essentially a left-over scavenger trying to scrape together a new home from what he could from already broken pieces and that does not sound like what Creativity is implied to be.

If we look at child development, I would theorize that Creativity is the oldest side. In the creative process, there are two major steps, first is information absorption, then second is application. The first thing any child must do is learn, anything and everything. The world is a limitless and imaginative playground. New material is around every corner and there it takes a while before the distinction between reality and fiction to be understood. It was probably just c!Thomas and Creativity for a while and as the others emerged, they looked up to him. It could even be potentially argued that Creativity was literally their creators.

This would imply that Aeneas would be a pretty terrible fit for him in that case because there’s nothing broken that he’s trying to salvage. The kingdom is his and c!Thomas’ to preside over with the other sides as his subjects. (c!Thomas being the distant “King” and Creativity being the “Crowned Prince”).

So, with all of that out of the way on why some of these theories are probably wrong, what do I think?

I think Creativity’s name is Hector.

Now, hear me out on this. For those of you who have read the Iliad you probably know exactly who I am referencing. You just may not know why. So stay with me here.

1. First, for those of you who don’t know, Hector was the Crowned Prince of Troy, the leader of the army that the Greeks (the perspective we’re getting) are facing off against. He’s also cousin to Aeneas, but actually accomplished things during the war beyond being saved by Aphrodite. This means he’s also an ancestor to both Romulus and Remus (albeit technically less direct). However, Hector’s family is where the royal lineage of Aeneas comes from. Though we follow the story mainly from the perspective of the Greeks (and the gods because they’re TROLLS), the Greek’s are pretty villainous in a lot of their actions throughout the story and they are most definitely the invaders. In this case, I would liken the Greek army to “outside opinion” for c!Thomas. Others interjecting their views on to someone and breaking his own beliefs. In this situation, Creativity would have been his biggest defender and hero, retreating into magical imaginary worlds to escape judgement.

2. So lets get onto the character and why him, shall we? Hector will literally do anything for his family. The war takes place because his little brother, Paris (one of a whopping 49 brothers mind you) either kidnaps, has Aphrodite kidnap or runs away with the Spartan Queen Helen because he fell in love with her. (It varies on the version and she was forced into her previous marriage at about 13 anyway, so Helen leaving willingly for the guy who the gods deem is the most attractive man alive is a popular modern reading.) It would have been so easy for the Trojans to yeet Helen back to Greece, but they don’t and Hector’s defense of her and his brother is a big reason why. Hector even chastises his brother for the mess he’s caused, but still stands by him and defends him. He also defends the hell out of Helen and refuses to blame her for their problems. Then in Troilus and Criseyde (Basically published Iliad perspective shift fanfiction with OCs) he defends the hell out of Criseyde when even Troilus, (apparently one of the 50 brothers) the person who claims to be in love with her, wont. Hector’s truly an all around good guy, great leader and has a very distinctive and personal moral compass that doesn’t always align with what’s being told to him is right. You want a character representation for someone who led the sides despite their clear struggles? Someone with Roman’s charm and heroism, and Remus’ understanding and drive? Hector is probably it.

3. Hector’s death is both a huge symbol for the end of Troy, but also isn’t? Let me explain, narratively speaking, Hector’s death is the point you know that Troy is basically doomed. His end is the representation of the end of it all. His corpse was literally paraded around as Achilles’s dragged it on the back of a chariot for days to show their doom. There was a distinct “aura” shift from Hector’s death as all of Troy mourned his death. We as an audience know Troy is basically doomed from Hector’s death alone. Hector was a person that even the enemy Greeks hella respected as a warrior and leader. Essentially, this was the point that the war that had been raging for about a decade became serious. At the same time, it just simply isn’t the end of the war. There’s the whole horse thing still to come and all that jazz. Still though, Hector’s death is very much a symbol of “everything changes, but nothing does.” Which is the perfect symbol for the twins split to me. Just because they split doesn’t mean that all of the sides did immediately, yet it was still probably the turning point that drove a wedge between the “dark” and “light” sides.

4. The character Hector arguably died in the name of gay love. Okay, story time. So in the Iliad, Achilles is being a little bitch and refusing to fight anymore because drama between him and the king of Athens, but he’s their best fighter and the Greek’s are basically sorta loosing because of him not helping. His boyf- I mean best friend Patroclus goes out in Achilles armor and leads his army in his place because Achilles is a whiny baby. Except Hector kinda immediately kills Patroclus, thinking he’s Achilles with reinforcements.(This was full body armor baby and distinctive cause baby of a god and all that mocha frappe.) Of course, Achilles has to immediately get angry revenge for his boyf- BEST friend and ends up killing Hector. This would make the character Hector a great metaphor for Creativity if his split had anything to do with sexuality or even acceptance as a whole. (Though we know acceptance is definitely a part of it considering Remus.) We know that Remus wants c!Thomas to explore darker themes and the struggle of sexuality and acceptance could be a possibility in what is to come as a previously “off-limits” theme.

5. A big one is that the destruction of Troy is what eventually brought about the creation of Rome. Essentially Troy would be the metaphor of c!Thomas’ existence/mentality before the sides split into dark/light factions. Then Rome would be the metaphor of c!Thomas’ existence/mentality after the sides split into factions.

6.Finally, the name Hector literally means “to restrain” which would work well for Creativity as he was likely trying to reign in the others from infighting (and you can see how well that went with him being gone).

Cheers to another rant into the void. Huzzah! God this is nearly as long as some of my seminar papers. Do what you will with this information.

Please keep in mind that I adore Roman as a character. This post isn’t meant to hate on him. It’s meant to bring awareness of the layers of his character. Every Prince Charming was a villain to someone, every hero that slays the beast is a murderer from a different light.

I don’t bring these things to light to cause pain, I bring them to light to help bring awareness of what’s probably going through his head.

(Yes, in regards to the Creativity being made first thing, I DO even have a theory about existence order, I promise you I have theories about everything. My mind does not stop with this crap. I have theories on everything from what animal association Roman and Logan have to Virgil’s key role in Roman’s backstory. I’ve ranted about a bunch of these things to a few specific people so if you ever want me to go on a rant about anything in particular let me know. I didn’t expect anyone to actually look at the other theory post tbh. Inbox me if you want me to go to unnecessary lengths on something else.)

(Also, correct me on the Patton thing if I’m wrong. I took notes on a recent watch through, but I wasn’t specifically looking for his rejection sooo, if there are other moments of it you can find that didn’t jump out at me I totally accept criticism.)

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galahadwilder · 4 years

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Hey! I'm following you for ML stuff, but I finally figured out you were into Batman as well, took me awhile. Do you have any advice on where to start for people who want to get into it? I just want to know which Robin is which when I read fanfiction hahaha. Thank youu

So the first thing to know is that there is no single Batman comic that will explain the entire Batfamily, because there are so many of them that the Manor must be running out of bedrooms by now. The second thing is that I’m not great at figuring out a starting place—a lot of comics are sort of aggressively mediocre and I can’t exactly tell the standout ones from the bad. Anyone who has any suggestions for anon, feel free to comment with them!

(In terms of fanfic recs: read literally anything by @unpretty. They are a wizard. Their fanfic is so good it has literally won awards.)

Now, a brief introduction to every member of the Batfamily that I can currently remember—save Alfred and Batman, who I am assuming you already know.

The Robins

Dick Grayson (Robin I, Nightwing II, and Batman IV). Richard John Grayson was a former child acrobat, member of the flying Graysons, and the first child adopted by Bruce Wayne. He is a human disaster of a Hufflepuff who makes terrible life choices, leaves his Nightwing costume on the floor of his apartment where literally anyone can see it, and doesn’t know how to cook anything but cereal. Despite his terrible lack of self-sufficiency, actually gives amazing life advice and is the heart and soul of the Batclan. There are villains who are willing to kill to protect him.

Jason Todd (Robin II, The Red Hood II, Red Robin I, Batman III). Jason Todd is the ballsiest Robin, having met Batman while attempting to steal the tire from the Batmobile, and, upon being confronted by the Goddamn Batman, decided the best course of action was to attack him with a tire iron. Jason is passionate and impulsive, but also extremely studious and intelligent. Well-liked despite his abrasiveness. He is the first Robin to die in the line of duty; when he came back, he and Bruce had a falling out over not killing the Joker, and now their relationship is rather shaky. Jason uses guns and has moonlighted as a crime boss in order to better control Gotham’s criminal element from the inside, which works mostly because he has nerves of steel and the ability to spin stunningly convincing bullshit at the drop of a hat.

Carrie Kelley (Robin II.5): See “Elseworlds and Future.”

Tim Drake (Robin III, Red Robin II, Drake I, Batman Beyond II): Tim has the greatest intellect of the Batclan; however, unlike Barbara (see “Batgirls”), Tim’s wisdom score is through the bloody floor. He figured out Batman and Robin’s identities on his own, and after Jason died he walked up to Bruce and basically told him “I know who you are and I’m Robin now,” which... worked. Tim is the least physically gifted of the Robins, but he makes up for it in detective skills and tactical intelligence. He was the only Robin to still have living parents outside of the Batfamily, though they were murdered soon into his career. He dropped out of high school and was acting CEO of Wayne Enterprises for a time. He has crippling depression and is implied to be suicidal.

Stephanie Brown (Spoiler I, Robin IV, Batgirl III): see under “Batgirls.”

Damian Wayne (Robin V): Damian is the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul, and was raised—unbeknownst to his father—by his mother and grandfather to be an assassin, as well as to be the best at literally everything (for context: despite being a young teenager, he technically holds multiple unaccredited PHDs). However, this stunted his social development, so he is rude and abrasive almost constantly, though he has been getting better and his closest friends and family can see that he’s covering for a superiority/inferiority complex a mile deep. Damian has a constant need to prove himself and has taken up his father’s adoption habit, though he prefers animals. Animals are better than people.

Duke Thomas (Robin ??, The Signal): Duke Thomas was the first metahuman Bruce allowed into the Batfamily. Originally decided to take on The Riddler by himself at the age of... seven or so? Eventually joined a collective called “We Are Robin” and fought crime, unsanctioned. After his parents were driven mad by Joker Venom, Bruce took him in. He now fights crime in the daytime, unlike the rest of the Batfamily, using his nebulously-defined extrasensory abilities to augment his Batfamily training.

The Batgirls

Barbara Gordon (Batgirl I, Oracle I): while Tim may be the most intelligent member of the Batclan, Babs is the all-around smartest. Her intellect is damned high, and unlike most of the Batfamily, Barbara is actually capable of making good decisions. She just... decides not to, most of the time. Barbara is the daughter of Commissioner James Gordon and was the first Batgirl; she lost the use of her legs when Joker shot her in the spine, but refused to take a backseat in the Batclan’s war on crime and became Oracle, hacker extraordinaire who directs the activities of every single vigilante in Gotham from her clocktower lair. She has since regained the use of her legs and reclaimed the Batgirl mantle, turning Oracle into a living AI.

Helena Wayne (Batgirl I.5, Huntress I): see “Elseworlds and Future.”

Cassandra Cain/Wayne (Batgirl II, Black Bat I, Orphan I): Cassandra is the daughter of assassins Lady Shiva and David Cain, and had what is hands-down the worst childhood of the entire Batfamily (her father would shoot her in the leg, and if she flinched, he’d shoot her again). She was raised without spoken words, and as a result the language centers of her brain are more adapted for body language than words. This gives her a kind of combat clairvoyance where it’s nearly impossible for a human combatant to surprise her. After her first murder, she swore to never again take a life, and joined the Batclan to atone. I personally believe that she is Bruce’s favorite child and the true heir to the mantle of the Bat.

Stephanie Brown (Spoiler I, Robin IV, Batgirl III): the daughter of Arthur Brown, a criminal known as Cluemaster, Stephanie became a vigilante specifically to oppose her father and then just had a bunch of mission creep. She is brash, sarcastic, and reckless, but has oodles of passion and natural talent. DC editors hate her, so she ends up screwing up or getting pushed aside a lot, but she is much more competent than she appears and is extremely good at getting people to underestimate her.

Others

Kate Kane (Batwoman I): Kate Kane is Bruce’s cousin, dishonorably discharged from the military under “dont ask don’t tell,” though this has likely been retconned thanks to DC’s sliding timescale. She is actually specifically not connected to the Batfamily, being more of an auxiliary member by her own choice—as a military woman, she dislikes their methods and considers them sloppy. She uses guns, has her own rogues’ gallery unconnected to her cousin’s, and is extremely competent.

Jean-Paul Valley (Azrael I, Batman II): Jean-Paul believed himself to be an ordinary college student, but was in fact a genetically modified super-soldier created to punish the wicked through the use of magic and advanced technology. He eventually broke his conditioning thanks to Batman and joined the family, even taking over for Batman briefly after Bane broke his back. (This proved to be a terrible decision.) He fights using powered armor and enchanted medieval weaponry.

Harper Row (Bluebird I): I know very little about Harper except that she is openly bisexual and uses hilariously oversized sci-fi guns.

Claire Clover (Gotham Girl I): a metahuman with Superman-like abilities; however, the more she uses them, the faster her lifespan burns away. Last I checked, she was working with Bane for some reason to do bad things to Batman. Don’t know why. She’s odd.

Lonnie Machin (Anarky I, Moneyspider I): may or may not be the son of The Joker. Lonnie is a genius Anarchist, but not of the “bomb-throwing” variety—in fact, he detests bombers. Briefly acted as Tim’s Oracle, since, thanks to extensive neurological self-modification, he’s one of the few people in Gotham who is actually more intelligent than Tim is.

Helena Bertinelli (Huntress II, Batgirl briefly I think?): daughter of a crime family that got wiped out by a rival crime family. However, she didn’t know her family was mafia, and as a vigilante in Gotham ended up trying to operate under Batman’s rules. Wasn’t very good at that—she’s a bit too vicious and brutal, despite her attempts to rein herself in. Uses crossbows primarily.

Elseworlds & Future

Terry McGinnis (Batman Beyond I): the definitive future Batman. Thanks to Amanda Waller and superscience shenanigans, Terry is the biological son of Bruce Wayne. He wears a highly advanced batsuit that is closer to powered armor than a costume, which gives Iron Man a run for his money. Unlike Bruce’s obsessive preparedness, Terry’s skillset lies in improvisation.

Carrie Kelley (Robin II.5): the Robin of the dystopian timeline of The Dark Knight Returns. It’s been a while since I read DKR, so I don’t remember much about her.

Helena Wayne (Batgirl I.5, Huntress I): Bruce and Selina’s daughter from another dimension.

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gone-series-orchid · 4 years

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Sastrid, Caina, orc and howard, Quana, Mr Trentlake and me.

1. you! but seriously thank you for being such a constant presence on my blog, i love how you’re always willing to send asks and such! :)

2. orcward. i don’t personally ship it, but i totally understand the appeal. both boys are emotionally stunted in their own ways and it’s fascinating to watch them interact in light of howard’s feelings and how they complicate their existing dynamic in fanfics. i really wish mg had made howard’s crush on orc more explicit, even though it would’ve made the interpersonal stuff a lot messier, and mg arguably wasn’t that good at resolving the romantic relationships of the fayz (*cough cough* astrid and sam’s conflict in plague) in the first place, so maybe it’s for the best that it’s only implied. still, i think this ship reflects well on both howard and orc’s characters and gives both of them room to grow and change, even isn’t quite as appealing to me personally as orc and astrid’s relationship.

3. quana. tbh i think the way mg handled this relationship is more interesting than how it plays out in the actual books, but i do appreciate that quinn and lana have mutual respect and affection for each other despite their diverging paths. i’m curious as to when mg decided to not have their feelings bud into a real relationship, and why. still, i love how mature they are in handling their feelings, especially considering quinn’s considerable character growth.

4. mr. trentlake. he’s okay, i guess. lol

5. caina. the reason caine and diana’s relationship isn’t the last is solely because i’m more invested in astrid’s character than diana’s, admittedly, but i still think this relationship did a vast disservice to diana’s character. as i’ve stated before, i don’t think caine is a very interesting or deep character, and i think their resolution in light was very flawed. overall, this aspect of the series never really worked for me, even leaving aside its problematic elements. caine and diana don’t seem to have much in common aside from being morally ambiguous misfits, but they don’t gel well even then; diana has too much of a moral compass to become as invested in caine’s schemes as he does, and he has too little compassion for other people to understand the moral dilemmas she faces over the course of the series.

fundamentally, they lack communication and none of them really budge up on their respective values, so they don’t seem to grow for either better or worse under each other’s influence, either; it’s only the toxicity of the fayz that keeps them together, which ceases to be interesting after awhile, in my opinion. and this strangles any possible independent character development from diana in the womb because her character is too tangled with his. it feels like caine was initially meant to be a typical one-note young adult villain; mg trying to give him a budding sense of compassion rings false to me. while diana has a lot of potential, but is never is able to achieve any of it because she’s so wrapped up in her “love” for caine.

6. sastrid. okay, i know, i know–caina is a lot more abusive and toxic and messed up than sastrid, and i don’t mean to insinuate that it isn’t! but the way sam and astrid’s relationship is handled in the text bothers me a lot more than caina simply because it’s not in any way portrayed as problematic, despite the fact that it is in certain ways (while caina has flaws in its portrayal it’s always been portrayed as at least somewhat screwed up at its core, which is part of its appeal, i think). for instance, sam cheating on astrid and pressuring her into sex, then him getting exactly what he wanted in the next book with no real consequences and self-reflection. sam never admits what he did was wrong; they resolve their conflict off-page. and astrid stagnates completely after getting back together with sam, with all her character development regarding her loss of faith and reconciliation of petey’s death with her own role in it also occurring off-page. how convenient! sam the hero gets the beautiful female character and doesn’t get to suffer any consequences for his gross actions, and astrid just becomes sam’s girlfriend without any further growth.

i’m exaggerating a bit but ugh, i just found sastrid to ultimately kneecap any real development from astrid or sam; i think the series was ultimately meant to outgrow the romantic complications of the first book given the increasingly dark character development of the major characters, but the fact that sam and astrid get back together feels like the series regressing in a major way. it’s not developed organically at all and feels cheap and fanservice-y. though i may just be bitter because i think astrid becomes a lot more interesting than sam and it’s criminal that she gets this great arc in lies and plague only for it to spiral downward and stutter to an awkward stop practically the first page of fear because “the guy needs to get the girl!” having them get back together definitely felt like mg showing his authorial hand, and felt very contrived and disappointing.

thanks so much, emily! feel free to send 5 (or more) gone things for me to rank, if you want! :)

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javocjovian · 5 years

Text

The Road So Far...

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Sarasaurussex’s Masterlist

• Bingos • Bangs • Holiday Events • Other Works • Art

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Bingos:

2019

A Supernatural Menagerie A collection of short smutty Supernatural stories! Mostly for Kink and ABO Bingo, plus a few requests. | Chapter | Title - Ship , Kink/Tag/Prompt | ʟɪɴ��s | Ch 1 | Dress for Success - Destiel, Clothing Sharing | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 2 | Work, Work, Work - Sabriel, Rimming | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 3 | Bondage Therapy - Wincest, Bondage | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 4 | Fully Loaded - Sabriel, Breeding Kink (non-ABO) | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 5 | Two Feet Under - Sastiel, Footfetish/Breathplay | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 6 | Blood and Flesh, Mind and Soul - Mooseley (Sam x Crowley), Coming Untouched | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 7 | Sensory Overload - Sastiel, Scent Kink | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 8 | How To Make Sammy Sleep - Wincest, Domestic Kink | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 9 | Two Veils To Hide My Face - Wincest, Scent Marking (ABO) | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 10 | Wet Dreams May Cum - Debriel, Sleeping/First Times | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 11 | Getting To Know You - Sketch (Sam x Ketch), Friends to Lovers/Face Fucking | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 12 | An Angel and Demon In Us All - Meg!Sam x Castiel | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 13 | Exorcising Those Demons - Balthazar x Rowena, Fake Relationships | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 14 | Heaven and Hell - Megstiel, Squirting | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 15 | The Trap - Destiel, sub!Dean/Sex Pollen | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 16 | Ride ‘Em Cowboy - Destiel, Sexuality Crisis | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 17 | Ramble On - Destiel, Oral | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 18 | How To Train Your Demon - Dain (Dean x Cain), Caning | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 19 | Natural Born Leader - Calthazar, Societal Role Reversal (ABO) | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 20 | Whiskey and Spice - Dean x Ketch, Tattoos/Accidental Scent Bond (ABO) | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 21 | You’re Mine - Wincest (Demon!Dean x Boyking!Sam), Teasing | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 22 | Blueberry Pie - Wincest, Restraints (ABO) | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 23 | Down Boy - Wincest, Petplay | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 24 | It’s A Farcical Life - Sabriel, Sam Wesson | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 25 | Table Manners - Wincest, Voyeurism (ABO) | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 26 | Saving Grace - Castiel/Michael/Lucifer | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 27 | First Blood - Demon!Dean x Boyking!Sam, Bloodplay (Freespace) | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 | Ch 28 | BONUS | Dress For Success with Art by Purgatory-Jar! | ᴛᴜᴍʙʟʀ | ᴀᴏ3 |

A Close Shave | tumblr | AO3 | Square: Orgasm Denial Ship: Michael!Dean x Sam, implied Wincest Rating: E Word Count: 5,803 Tags: Orgasm Denial, Forced Orgasm, Aphrodisiacs, Multiple Orgasms, Edging, Teasing, Denial, Oral, Anal, Bondage Summary: Michael!Dean returns to his prisoner and has some fun. Part I not necessary.

Wherever I May Roam | tumblr | AO3 | Square: Roleplay Ship: Destiel, Cockles, Dean Winchester x Misha Collins Rating: E Word Count: 11,432 Tags: Angst, Hurt, Comfort, Heartbreak, Idiots to Lovers, Relationships, Emotional Sex, Realism, Condoms and Lube, Caught in the Act, Jensen & Misha & Dean & Castiel, Jared & Sam, Rejection, Arguments, First Time sex, Happy Ending, Fluff Summary: Sam and Dean get sent to another TV Land that’s slightly different than the last. In this version, Jensen and Misha are dating. Can Dean keep it together long enough to be rescued and avoid ruining his precariously platonic relationship with Castiel? (cue Sam laughing in the background)

Show Me Your Moves - sequel in progress | tumblr | AO3 | Square Filled: Neighbors Ship: Destiel (18yo!Dean x hunter!Castiel) Rating: E Word Count: 12,436 Tags: Top Cas/Bottom Dean, technically legal, age gap, enthusiastic consent, porn with plot, hand jobs, blowjobs, rimming, anal, fun positions, coming too early, multiple orgasms, cum licking, mentions of masturbation, lots of lube usage, horny teen Dean, mentions of abusive John, angst, apologies, Castiel is bad at talking, protective lil Sam, after-care, comfort, fluff Summary: While on a hunt, Castiel the slightly-OCD hunter keeps running into a cocky, sarcastic, drop-dead gorgeous eighteen-year-old named Dean Winchester. Turns out the kid is pretty good at punching ghouls, eating all of Castiel’s food, and getting dirty ;D Also appearing:sassy teen Sam (who volunteers at an animal shelter), Ellen and Jo, and a bunch of dogs. Mentions of John, Mary, Bobby, and Castiel’s angel family.

| SPN Kink Bingo Masterlist (ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ) | SPN ABO Bingo Masterlist (ɪɴ ᴘʀᴏɢʀᴇss) |

Bangs:

2019

Catch the Wind - Wincest Big Bang 2019 | tumblr | AO3 | WBB post | Ship: Teencest, Wincest, Wincestiel (at the end) Rating: E Word Count: 21,521 Tags: Flashbacks, Timetravel, Action, Angst, Hurt/Comort, John Winchester, OC villain, Choices, the Butterfly effect, Changing the past, Wound Care, Making out, Don’t wake dad, Guilt, Healing Sex, Threesome Warnings: Teenaged Wincest (Sam16, Dean20), canon level gore/violence, emotional parental abuse Summary: When a rogue angel Castiel once spared begins murdering angels on the West Coast, Sam and Dean help Castiel hunt the angel down once and for all. Along the way they find themselves in a place, they stayed in as teenagers. It brings back memories of Sam’s 16th birthday when he was being hunted by a delusional friend of John’s who was determined to stop the next King of Hell. Unbeknownst to Sam, Dean, or Castiel, the past and present are inexplicably intertwined, and sparing the angel in the past has unfathomable consequences for Sam and Dean’s future. Fate, chance, and redemption must all be confronted for the trio to move on.

Lost and Found - Supernatural Trope Celebration 2019 | tumblr | AO3 | STC post | Ship: Sastiel Rating: M Word Count: 12522 Tropes: Amnesia/Memory Loss, Reverse Sex Pollen, Deathbed Confessions Warnings: Mental Heath Issues, Mention of Suicide, AKF Summary: When Sam starts acting strange, Dean’s faith in his brother comes undone, and after a bad fight causes Sam to leave the bunker for good it seems impossible they’ll ever be able to reconcile. But Castiel suspects something more is going on. He finds Sam, only to discover his worst fear: Sam is not himself, and it might be too late to save him. Castiel enlists Rowena to help solve the mystery of Sam’s condition, cure him, and reunite the Winchesters.

Red and Gold - SPN Canon Big Bang 2019 | tumblr | AO3 | CBB post | Ship: Sabriel , Crowbriel (GabrielxCrowley), Crowsabriel (SamxGabrielxCrowley), background Destiel Rating: E Wordcount: 25,906 Warnings: Dub-con Summary: Back from the dead and acting strange, Gabriel finds himself in debt to Crowley. In order to free himself he must fulfill a contract by spying on the Winchesters, who are trying to shut the Gates of Hell. But after Sam catches Gabriel spying on him in the shower (naturally), the contract is voided and Gabriel finds himself enslaved to Crowley as payment. Sam figures out Gabriel’s deal with the devil and tries to help, but ends up caught up in it himself. Eventually, Sam and Crowley discover the cause of Gabriel’s strange behavior, and the unlikely trio of heroes and villains come together to save their favorite feathered frenemy from an even greater threat.

Black Mountain Side - Team Free Will Big Bang 2019 | tumblr | AO3 | TFW post | Ship: Wincestiel, Wincest Rating: E Wordcount: 7,792 Summary: Castiel gets injured on a hunt, causing tension between himself and Dean. Sam is forced to play mediator, but even he can’t predict how the night unravels. Held up in a shack in the mountains, the trio discovers how far they’ll go for each other.

Holiday Events:

2019

Chill Me, Thrill Me: A Supernatural Halloween Story Supernatural Trope Celebration (Halloween Edition) | tumblr | AO3 | Rating: T Trope: For Halloween, I’m Going as Myself Tags: Halloween Party, Costumes, Mystery, Monsters, Hunting, minor Sam Winchester/OC, Making Out, Humor, Holidays Summary: Sam and Dean Winchester get invited to a party on Halloween night, but they have no idea what kind of tricks and treats are in store for them.

What Really Matters Galentine’s Day Fic for @mrswhozeewhatsis | tumblr | AO3 | Ship: Castiel x Dean x Reader Rating: E Tags: Grace Healing, BAMF Castiel, Vulnerable Dean, Protective Dean and Cas, Bunker sex, Threesome, Dean in the middle, Sub Dean, Top Castiel, Power-Bottom Reader, Humor, Fluff, Smut Summery: Dean blames himself when you get injured in a fight. Luckily, you and Castiel know just how to bring him around.

2018

A Very Supernatural Christmas Party | AO3 | Ship: Destiel, Sabriel, mild Crowlthazar Tags: Christmas Smut, Destiel Angst (with a Happy Ending), Humor, Pranks Rating: E Summery: Gabriel and Castiel need dates to Metaron’s annual Christmas party.

Secret Santa Illustrated Fic | AO3 | Rating: G Summery: Crowley comes across a certain celebrity soul in Hell. Written for a fan.

Guess Who’s Coming to Thanksgiving Dinner | AO3 | Rating: G Summery: Sam, Dean, and the gang hit a roadblock on their way to Jody’s for Thanksgiving

Other Works:

Wet Dreams May Cum Debriel Creations Challenge @debrielcc | tumblr | AO3 | February Theme: First Times My Prompt: Sleep/Sleeping Ship: Debriel (Dean/Gabriel, Dean/Gabriel/Dream-Gabriel) Rating: E Tags: Somnophilia, masturbation, wet dreams, embarrassment, first time anal (Dean), hand jobs, prostate milking, wings, consensual, mild pain enjoyment, grace sex, grace bondage, induced sleep, bondage via induced sleep, soul fucking, dream control, dream sex, mind-reading, time-loop Summary: Dean has a wet dream about Gabriel, so Gabriel turns it into reality.

The Angel Who Would Be Human | AO3 | Ship: Gabrizar (Balthazar x Gabriel) Kinks: Shower Sex, Bath Sex, Blow Jobs, Sass Rating: E Summery: Balthazar becomes human for a week. Gabriel give shim a place to stay.

It’s Not Gay If You Don’t Hold Hands | AO3 | Ship: Mooseley, Destiel Kinks: So many. Crowley addicted to Sam’s blood, BDSM, Bondage, Shibari Rope, Cock Cages, Destiel Angst, Wing Kink Rating: E Summery: Set in an alternate universe following the conclusion of Season 9, Sam finds Crowley before he joins up with a newly awakened demon!Dean, and Castiel finds Dean before he can run off on his own. Note: This is my most popular SPN Fic from a few years ago, it’s an unfinished RP

Supernatural x Marvel Mini Bang | AO3 | Rating: T Summery: Mobster AU Crossover featuring the Family Business (Supernatural), the Avengers Assembly (the Avengers/Spiderman), and the L.A. Guardians (Guardians of the Galaxy). Also, Deadpool shows up uninvited.

»»———————————-　♛　———————————-««

Art:

Withheld - DeanCas Reverse Bang Art Withheld - DeanCas Reverse Bang Master Post

I’ll Always Be There - Wincest Reverse Art I’ll Always Be There - Wincest Reverse Master Post

Snowbound - Wincest Reverse Art Snowbound - Wincest Reverse Master Post

The Good, the Bad and the Fluffy - Wincest Reverse Art The Good, the Bad and the Fluffy - Wincest Reverse Master Post

»»——————————————-　♛　——————————————-««

34 notes · View notes

tearlessrain · 5 years

Text

time to subject myself to Dracula: The Dark Prince, aka another bad movie starring another dude from black sails. this time with 100% less horny on main because my only real motivation for watching it is it truly looks to be a whole new caliber of horrible and I have to see it.

witness my standards for incomprehensibly bad movies being raised prohibitively high in every way imaginable under the cut

I seriously doubt that.

this was made in 2013 by the way, not 1994 as the graphic design of that logo might suggest

oh good, once again we’re opening with an exposition narrator. except this time it’s a woman and she has less vocal inflection and emotional investment than an amazon echo.

I feel like she’s gonna tell me to turn left in 800ft

it feels like a dragon age epilogue, but just. worse.

WE ARE WATCHING A TRULY HIGH QUALITY MOVIE TONIGHT MY FRIENDS

I can’t even describe how bad this is, you really need the sound. that’s where the true lack of quality shines through. siri’s depressed sister is talking about pre-vampire dracula’s epic feats in battle to more weird sepia dioramas and the dying soldiers sound like they hired muppets to voice them

HOLY WIG BATMAN

also this dude is obnoxiously jovial considering he’s supposed to be dracula, even if this is pre-vampire

oh no dracula’s advisors, who all wear black hooded robes and scowl ominously, have betrayed him and killed his wife, how unexpected

someone drew these, looked at them, and thought “yeah that’s good enough to go in the final movie”

the characters are speaking both english and what I assume is... romanian or something? transylvanian? it’s not spanish or welsh I can tell you that much. anyway there are no subtitles and also no rhyme or reason to which they’re speaking at any given time so I hope I’m not missing anything important. probably not.

so like... they killed his wife, yes. and he went on a murderfest in what appears to be a church in revenge, makes sense. now a dude who... I think maybe he’s supposed to be a priest or something? but he wasn’t speaking english so I can’t be sure, then a voice over said “I have killed for god, the hand that fought for him will now be turned against him” but I’m unclear on who was speaking. this movie is an absolute clusterfuck and we aren’t even five minutes in yet. this is still the prologue.

now zombie alexa claims dracula was cursed with immortality “in punishment for his defiance” but I’m still not sure... what defiance. he killed the dudes who murdered his wife and that’s somehow not okay despite his apparent status as a war hero, a designation that implies a LOT of killing has already happened?

fucking finally, the title screen. usually a prologue clarifies what a movie is about but I went in thinking I knew and now have absolutely no idea what I’m watching.

a carriage drawn by friesians is rolling through a misty forest with wolf howling sound bites playing at random in the background to vaguely urgent music, now this is what I’m here to see.

nevermind the carriage is too slow so they’re leaving it because that’s a thing people do (?????)

“Lady Arwen, we cannot delay”

seriously though everyone’s mumbling so much I can’t understand them much better than when they were speaking whatever the other language was

BOOTLEG XENA RIDES AGAIN

but this time she’s accompanied by esme. we don’t know who esme is yet either.

there she goes

and now the knights are being attacked by hilarious squeaky goblin things? who I guess are led by this power rangers villain with, again, an unintentionally hilarious voice. it’s like a bad batman impression.

with every minute that passes I become less certain of what I’m actually watching.

they’re looking for the “light bringer” and telepathically overseen by the world’s most halfassed lestat dracula

they’ve also got some random prisoners in a cage wagon

okay the prisoners are being taken to dracula’s castle and I’m sorry for such an image-heavy post but I NEED you to understand the community theater level of set design/quality we’re dealing with here

“what is that?” cardboard and mod podge is my guess

so far the only thing esme has done is fall off her horse and be knocked unconscious, and now a Roving Band of Misogynists has appeared to harass Bootleg Xena 3.0 in the most generic way possible (the words “what ‘ave we got ‘ere” accompanied by a chorus of malicious cackling and some whistles have been spoken)

oooh no the ringleader of the Roving Misogynists has been given a name, and it’s ~Lucien~. I have a horrible feeling that I’m about to bear witness to the worst romantic subplot in the history of cinema.

oh for... I thought at least bootleg xena 3.0 would be a Strong Female Character and fight them off, but she just rapped lucien on the head with her sword and then they stole her very important box and left as obnoxiously as they came

OH NO SHE’S ASKING TO GO WITH THEM, SOMEHOW THAT’S HER PLAN I THINK I’M RIGHT SHE’S GONNA HOOK UP WITH LUCIEN AND IT’S GOING TO BE HORRIBLE.

“trust me” she says to esme, who, wisely, obviously does not.

I appreciate the timely thunderclap every single time the castle comes on screen

who the fuck are you, did you wander onto the wrong movie set

nope okay they’re not gonna explain that shot at all we’re just moving on to a shot of a weird angel shadow doing slow flamenco moves on the ceiling while ominously gurgling, and the prisoners being led into the throne room

“what’s happening to us?” I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW THE SAME THING, PRISONER #3

oh never mind that guy from before wasn’t a priest, he is remfield, chancellor of this kingdom, which means the last scene he was in makes even less sense

AKSLDGHJFGAKDLFJGHKAJGHFDKLFDS;GJokay so. remfield introduced himself then said “I will see that your needs are tended to.” then dracula in his new white contacts gets up from his shadowy throne, circumnavigates the cluster of prisoners, sniffs them dramatically, and walks back to his throne. remfield then says, “come, I will see that your needs are tended to” because proofreading is for COWARDS

now remfield is... literally giving the prisoners a tour of the castle and going on the “oh you’re our guests and many pleasures and adventures await you” speech and somehow the prisoners are accepting this despite the fact that they were just carted in on a barred wagon in shackles and got sniffed by a bad alucard cosplayer. they have a fucking harpist.

seriously, who the fuck are you

she’s just been twirling around in the background of this entire scene for no discernible reason no matter what rooms they go into

what the hell am I watching

yeah they’re just going for that incredibly suspicious food and also seem weirdly okay with the ambient clusters of scantily clad lesbians no one will explain okay they deserve whatever happens to them

WHOA TITS apparently this movie is a different rating than I thought

remfield: the newcomers have settled in

dracula: I d o n ‘ t l i k e s t r a n g e r s

then why pray tell have you brought them directly into your home in chains. I cannot stress enough how avoidable this situation was for you my dude

“just think sire, once the light bringer is in your possession no one need die again” “except those who defy me” [ominous chime as the angel shadow on the ceiling continues its sensuous flamenco dance]

meanwhile in the misty blue filter forest of eternal night, some guy in a tricorn finds a gold amulet that I think bootleg xena 3.0 dropped, and the power ranger villain rides menacingly in a random direction for a few seconds

I’m still waiting on whether this masterful display of cinematic calvinball has any cohesive story to it.

ah joy and we’re back to The Non-Adventures of Xena 3.0, Esme, and the Roving Misogynists

as an aside, I’m not calling her that just to be dumb, I’m calling her that because they still haven’t given her a name even though her sidekick got one in the first five minutes

they’ve opened the box and revealed... the light bringer, which is a wooden staff. because it is not shiny gold, the roving misogynists regard it with confounded disgrunglement and scoff at xena 3.0′s insistence that it can defeat dracula

these guys sound like what an eleven year old thinks gangs of ne’er-do-wells sound like. like cartoon weasels, if the weasels were also mediocre pirates who have heard of women, conceptually, but never seen one. like goblins in a pre-written D&D campaign run by a slightly overwhelmed first time DM.

HUR DUR WALKING STICK NOT TREASURE, WOMAN DUMB

it’s what cain used to slay abel, apparently. given that zombie alexa mentioned that dracula is the descendent of abel, this leaves us with the terrifying implication that someone did put at least some vestige of effort into writing this movie.

oh good she’s finally gonna fight lucien

no she failed again. please someone just punch the shit out of lucien so he’ll stop.

NO WHY ARE YOU MAKING OUT STOP IT GOD HAVE SOME STANDARDS WOMAN. STOP PLAYING FLOATY ROMANTIC MUSIC IN THE BACKGROUND THEY ARE LITERALLY STILL STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ENTIRE BAND OF ROVING MISOGYNISTS

I thought it might at least be a trick but no she is actually, genuinely starstruck over this profoundly mediocre olde-timey frat boy who called her “sweetheart” while she was trying to explain to him why the ancient dracula-defeating relic was important.

this guy.

we did it boys, we found a worse love story than twilight

also I just. I wish I could convey with words the way the roving misogynists react to every single thing lucien and sometimes xena 3.0 says like the world’s worst greek chorus in a literally neverending stream

lucien (post makeout and xena 3.0 explaining again that the relic is ancient and powerful and they’ve searched for ages to find it): well we may not be knights but we can respect that

[cacophony of rowdy but understated agreement]

lucien: what do you think boys, should we give it back?

[assorted grumbles of assent]

xena 3.0: hm, a thief with a conscience

[gruff mercenary-esque chuckling]

lucien: maybe even a heart

[chorus of “ooooooOOOooh”s and some whistles]

it just goes on like that in every scene they happen to be physically adjacent to, they never shut up but also never actually contribute or say anything meaningful

ah, the mysterious leonardo has appeared. I think he was the one they were trying to take the light bringer to so that’s handy

“what is happening here? what is this flirtation?? is this the people to share your sacred secrets with???” - leonardo, the only remotely rational person in the entire movie

oh he is schooling these idiots, finally someone with sense. it’s bouncing right off of lucien, but at least he’s saying it.

“the scourge” - leonardo

“scourge!” “scourge!?” “scourge?” “hrgghhg??” “hrrm...” - the roving misogynists

power ranger villain and his squeaking goblins vs leonardo, the most useless female leads of all time, and the roving misogynists. who will win.

not the people watching this movie, I can tell you that much.

oh no, the lightbringer isn’t working. this will do nothing to convince the roving misogynists that it isn’t a walking stick

oop, wilhelm scream

oh no lucien has picked up the light bringer

goddamn it he’s the chosen one isn’t he

yep he activated the stick and now we all have to suffer

oh xena 3.0′s coming for power ranger villain maybe she’ll actually do something

nope she bounced off him and now he’s grabbed her and hauled her onto his horse

“you’re coming with me” he says in his weird batman voice, to make sure the audience can tell that he is in fact taking her with him

and esme has yelled “no” to make sure we remember that she’s in the movie

wait what the. did lucien just yell “xena” is that her actual name what the fuck. what the fuck. I had to have misheard that. okay I can’t tell what he’s saying for sure but someone’s bound to say her name again at some point in the movie so I’ll revisit that.

and on that note, I think I’ll end here, because there ended up being a LOT more to unpack in this movie than I expected, it’s after midnight, and I’m tired.

tomorrow, we follow lucien as he presumably goes to save some lady he wildly disrespected and then made out with one time whose name may or may not actually be xena, and hopefully figure out what the hell is even going on with dracula, remfield, and their castle full of artfully strewn half naked harpist lesbians and dancing ceiling shadows. because right now I really don’t have time to unpack all that, and I have a feeling it will only get worse.

#this is #a masterpiece #no description of mine can hope to do it justice #hypnotically incomprehensible #tearless liveblogs

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violetosprey · 6 years

Text

BTD2 My thoughts on Cain

I covered my thoughts long ago on all of the “Till Death Do Us Part” game characters, but I never really took the time to talk about my thoughts about the main series “Boyfriend to Death” characters. I have actually talked about many of these characters through various different posts. But otherwise, there haven’t been that many posts dedicated specifically to certain BTD characters.

These posts will mostly be about my own opinions and views (a rough analysis more than anything). I may end up focusing on multiple aspects of the character, or just one particular one if I think it defines them best (we’ll see). For those that have read some of my other posts, there likely WILL be some thoughts I’ve stated before that I’ll simply be re-iterating here. But there may also be some new stuff in here if it happens to come to mind, or because I’ve simply not had the time before to go over such a topic.

It will take a while to get through all 8, so please have some patience and just check back later if it looks like I don’t have a post up yet for a character you’re really interested in. I will also be talking through these under the assumption that you’ve played/read all the routes (so I might mention but not go into explicit detail on a scene).

*major spoilers below, and this is stupid long…like anything I write*

Fun fact: Cain is my second favorite character in the entire BTD/TDDUP series. The ONLY reason he isn’t my #1 favorite is because I have an intense love for villainous male yanderes, so Marcus just has an unfair advantage here. If Marcus did not exist though, Cain would be my favorite hands down.

In some ways, Cain is very straightforward in regards to his characters. He’s THE bad guy. If he were in another video game or story, he’d likely be the final boss to defeat. His powers are ridiculous, he’s nearly 3000 years old I think, and I think his creator has implied that he’s not a fan of working under others. He’s had to as a torturer, but hasn’t seemed to like it (though maybe it depends on the other person/character). If his character just came off as too OP to you when playing BTD2, well that’s probably because he’s not supposed to be a push-over :P And the MC of all things in the game is CERTAINLY not a character implied to be anywhere near his caliber to take him on. What’s more, Cain can be considered a bad guy for the VAST majority of his life, and he shows no regrets whatsoever as to the monster he’s become.

Another fun fact is, I actually didn’t make the connection at first upon Cain’s introduction that he’s the Cain from the story of Cain and Abel. You do get some dialogue in BTD2 from Cain about his origins there, but in the event that someone is not familiar with the importance of this background, I’ll dip in a little here. Basically, in the bible you have the first humans, Adam and Eve, and their first sons following that were Cain and Abel. I’m not incredibly familiar with the full story myself, but what happened was the brothers needed (or maybe wanted- don’t remember) to make a tribute to God. Cain was a farmer, so he presented some of his harvest as tribute. Abel was a shepherd, so he slayed some of his livestock and presented it as a sacrifice to God. Between the two gifts, God preferred Abel’s. After this, Cain then murdered Abel. The significance here would be that following this tale of early human creation, that would make this the first act of human murder. So what Cain represents is the origin of one of the most extreme acts of violence on another human being. And when you ask Cain about his feelings on the matter in BTD2, he STILL does not regret murdering his brother after all these years. Apparently the bible doesn’t fully goes in Cain’s motives (so it’s fitting that in BTD2 it’s also left to the imagination), but jealousy is a common theory.

So the Cain we know of BTD2 was punished, marked, and sent to hell I believe. While likely being punished himself, he served a torturer in hell when needed. If you checked through ElectricPuke’s tumblr, you’ll also learn that he would have been used for big events of depression or war such as the black plague and the crusades. Most of the time, Cain was kept in line by the more powerful fallen angels in hell. He’s arguably one of the strongest villains, but not THE strongest person basically (Sam who pops up in one ending was confirmed stronger, but just is held back by rules and restrictions). Recently though, he was able to escape, and he does not plan to go back.

So what’s he do now that he’s out? Repent for his sins and come to terms with his years of torture to try to be a better person and go on a long journey of enlightenment *eyes sparkle*? Pfft, nope. He goes straight to tormenting humanity (likely both small scale and large scale, depending on his mood and what he can get away with without being caught) because that’s what he enjoys the most. That’s the thing about Cain. He does show moments in the game where he’s quiet, thoughtful, and perhaps even lonely. But when you look at him as a whole, he’s just a sadist that does whatever he wants to do. He’s a VERY charming character, but it’s best not to be fooled by this man. Sweet words may just end up being his way of manipulating someone, tempting them, into doing what he wants. He does this frequently throughout the game actually, encouraging you to join tell him your sins, join him in the bath, drink his wine, or join him on the balcony. But if you go back to many of these scenes and see what they lead into (often Cain getting rough and causing harm to the MC), you realize in your attempt to reach out towards the rose…that you forgot about the thorns underneath. Maybe that’s another reason Cain likes roses :P

The complexity to Cain lies in the fact that he’s difficult to figure out…especially when you NEED to figure him out to live. Cain is very fickle, and he gets bored fairly easily. On one hand, he does whatever he wants, and he’s most pleased when he’s tormenting someone. But he does have to still be careful about where he wanders because the other fallen angels ARE looking for him to a degree. And Damien’s aware of Cain’s reappearance and is prepping for whenever Cain decides to start causing mass genocide for the heck of it. How much damage Cain has caused since he’s gotten out btw, I’m not sure. We only know that the MC isn’t his first victim since getting out since apparently he likes to text “weird pictures” to Damien. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say these “pictures”…are likely of his victims after he’s done something horrific to them. Just a guess, but I’d bet good money on that :P

Back to what I was saying though, Cain is still restricted as to where he can go and how often. Damien can’t beat him, sure, but the other angels that can beat him he’s smart enough to avoid. He has to hide away in Tartarus for…who knows how long at a time honestly. That’s not something we learn in the game or are given hints to. Soooo Cain is even MORE bored when he has to sit around his house all day. He can read books, but he’ll probably end up reading his same stuff over and over again to the point where it’s unenjoyable. So what’s he decide he wants to do? Cain wants a pet (and he is the worst pet owner in the world).

Let’s face it, pets are companions that give you something else to focus on in your day-to-day routine and help even ease away some loneliness. But he’s Cain, so a fish, bird, dog or cat isn’t going to cut it for him. Why settle for smaller creatures like those when he could grab something that he can make conversation with, indulge in sexual pleasures…and listen to them scream when he tortures them? Cain makes it VERY clear that he sees the MC as nothing but a toy to him. You may not be a dog, but you’re just Pet 2.0 at best to him. He really doesn’t seem to have a high opinion of humans either honestly. Despite having been one, Cain’s not really all the impressed with what he sees. It’s not like Rire, who Darqx has stated likes humans and prefers to torment them over demons because it’s more interesting to watch something that’s so obviously inferior to you try to fight back. Cain does also like a victim that puts up a fight, but when he says the MC is “interesting,” it’s not explicitly because they are human. Actually, I forget who put up the post, but someone figured out that if you name yourself “Ashe,” then you get a few dialogue changes suggesting MC ISN’T human in this case (it’s a reference’s to Gato’s angel character you meet at the river). Cain can also turn you into a demon or a fallen angel, so he really doesn’t care about keeping you human. So if you wanted to think up an OC to use for Cain’s route, probably any species would work as long as it’s weaker than him (which would….probably be 98% of creatures that come across him anyway).

I fully believe Cain when he says his intention is to kill you in the end. While he’s looking for something more long term than when Rire “plays” with his victims, Cain’s “pets” just wouldn’t last very long. First off, trying to please him is infuriating. If you stay silent right after he’s kidnapped you, he’s unimpressed and kills you by ripping his tongue out. He gets furious if you yell back at him and storm off the kitchen, even calling you a child. Yet he likes if you say you’re not going to roll over for him when you take a bath together, and he gets turned on when you bring a knife and try to stab him. It seems if you want to survive Cain, you have to hit JUST the right notes of feisty and entertaining, while not going too far into a defiant state that's just too obnoxious for the nearly 3000 year old fallen angel to deal with. I myself, just kept getting abandoned and killed by Sam XD I never made him happy enough on my own. It doesn’t help that he’s one of the two characters where you don’t see his heart changes until the very end either. Kudos to whoever figured out those survival endings where you end up with Cain (alive I mean).

Speaking of his age…good luck with either of you relating to each other. That’s one of the hurdles here too if you’re trying to survive. I’ve always said that Cain is more likely to hold sympathy for you than someone like the demon king Rire, because Cain used to be human. That being said, there’s not a whole lot of sympathy for him to give. Like I said, he doesn’t really seem impressed with humans. And one difficulty with relationships where there are rather large age gaps is how life experiences and events (past and current) shape one’s personality and views. Basic example is an 18 year old and a 70 year old will have VERY different life goals and obstacles at the point in time of their lives. The 70 year MIGHT be able to relate to some of the 18 year old’s troubles since they’d have already experienced them, but at the same time they could just wave off those troubles saying “oh that’s not so bad, wait until you have to worry about this.” Meanwhile, the 18 year old of course isn’t going to be able to relate to later difficulties in life that the 50 year old has faced. I know I’m getting a little weird here, and you’re probably thinking “18 and 70 year old in a relationship? That’d be a disaster.” Well now the old man is nearly 3000 years old…you think he cares that much about your college exams, mortgage payments, or taxes you have to pay? Even the MC’s emotional trauma might just seem petty or insignificant to him. And if he picked up say…a 25 year old. You think the 25 year old version of him would have anything in common with a modern day 25 year old? Probably not.

And that’s another thing I like about Cain’s path. Your survival is based on two things: a) Either someone else comes and saves you after you’ve avoided danger long enough or b) your personality and Cain’s end up meshing. If Cain doesn’t care that you’re human, and he doesn’t sympathize or relate to you, you have to hope that you’re the kind of person that’s entertaining and pleasant enough for him. It also might help if the MC is a little masochistic (makes for a better slave) or has some dark thoughts (think of the painting in the one ending). There’s also two different ways this happens. If you get the ending where he turns you into a demon, Puke described that as him making you one of his minions. Whereas the ending where you turns you into a fallen angel, you’re more his equal. So demon ending I see as you are JUST obedient enough to not be boring or obnoxious, but it’s still like he’s just grown attached more to his “pet” to me. Like, he’s kicked you around and harassed you a bit, but when you betray Damien and stay with him on your own he’s like, “Awww that’s adorable. How can I say no to that face?” He’d probably still torture you a bit and keep you in a submissive role (but more playfulness there I suppose?). Is it weird that I could also imagine quiet moments where he’s petting the MC’s head on his lap while he reads a book? Fallen angel ending he’d probably have more respect for you and even treat you as a proper lover, rather than a sex toy.

Going way back to when I said I fully believed Cain when he said he intended to kill you from the start, I think it’s because he doesn’t really expect to end up making everyone he captures a minion or fallen angel (fallen angel probably even less). And let’s say he DOES like a person for quite a while, but never enough to turn them into a minion or fallen angel. He’s probably still eventually going to kill you because he’ll get bored of the same old thing and hasn’t gotten attached to you (this is probably more likely), or because you’re just getting too old to be durable for his torture. Yeah do you think he’d keep someone around when they’re elderly? He’d probably “pet his pet down” much sooner than that. I think he changes someone he REALLY likes into a minion or fallen angel so that they not only become more durable (if he keeps up his sadistic acts) but so they can live longer with him. Humans can barely live to 100. Cain’s so fickle though that my head canon is if he doesn’t grow attached to you after a week of torment, then he just kills you. I don’t think he has the patience to let someone prove themselves to him over a few years. That’s just my opinion though.

I’d have to replay ALL his routes again. Strangely enough despite him saying that he likes a little fight in the MC, it feels like there are more moments where he likes your compliance more. Weird, but I’d have to check into that. Still, with Cain it’s hard to tell whether that compliance just ends up making you too “yes-man” for Cain to really enjoy, or which moments you pick to be feisty won’t end up with you getting your tongue ripped out.

Overall, I think Cain is one of the more interesting characters in the series due to his backstory, charm, consistently evil persona, and survival difficulty. He’s one of the reasons I consider BTD2 more fleshed out than BTD. I know it’s not fair to compare the two games like that since BTD was made very quickly in good humor, but a lot of the characters in BTD2 have a little more to them going on that we get to see in the BTD guys (Strade, Rire, and Akira just doesn’t have as much screentime…I think). And out of the 4 in BTD2, Cain is definitely the most straightforward evil. Nothing really sympathetic about him. I may have said it’s possible that he gets lonely, but “being lonely” doesn’t mean you’re automatically a good person that people should feel bad for right away. Cain has not shown any remorse for what he’s done, and even in the survival endings where you end up with him, he doesn’t imply he’s going to stop being the villain in anyway.

#own post #I am SO sorry this is so long #Apparently I have not let myself talk about Cain enough...#btd2 #cain zeitgeist #electricpuke #horror game #btd

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Tenet Is Christopher Nolan’s Unofficial James Bond Movie

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This article contains Tenet spoilers.

Throughout the Daniel Craig era of James Bond, the influence of Christopher Nolan has been hard to miss. A year after Nolan reinvented Dark Knight mythology with Batman Begins, and created the industry term of a “reboot” in the process, 007 had his own back-to-basics reset in Casino Royale. And following The Dark Knight’s praise for reconfiguring its iconography again for a post-War on Terror world, Skyfall would receive similar acclaim a few years later for its chilly, realpolitik tone.

But no matter how many developments in the Bond canon end up attributed to Nolan’s influence, it should be recognized that Bond influenced him first. That fact is almost inescapable after watching Tenet, which just premiered on HBO Max. It’s the filmmaker’s latest time-bending thriller, and the one that most resembles a 007 flick. With its smoothly dressed secret agent hero, its allusions to British intelligence, and its plot about a megalomaniacal Russian seeking to destroy the world, it’s a wonder John David Washington never once drained a dry martini.

More than any of the films before it, Tenet crystallizes that Nolan has always been chasing James Bond. And with this new film, the Memento director finally went ahead and remade that character in his coolly nonlinear image.

For more than a decade, the 50-year-old filmmaker has not been shy about his admiration for the Bond movies that captured his imagination as a child. At the 2010 London premiere of Inception, he even celebrated the similarities between his work and the Bond oeuvre.

“The Bond influence on the film was very intentional because, for me growing up with the Bond films, they’ve always stood for grand scale action,” Nolan said (via BBC). Those early 007 films from his youth, starring Sean Connery, George Lazenby, and Roger Moore, all “stood for the promise of being taken some place bigger than you could have imagined.” In an Empire print interview from the same year, he confessed, “I’ve been plundering ruthlessly from the Bond movies in everything I’ve done, forever. They’re a huge influence on me.”

And you can see it in every action film he’s made since 2005, beginning with the groundbreaking Batman Begins. While his origin story for the Dark Knight might have influenced how grounded Bond producers took their own 007 reboot less than 18 months later, the Bond influence on Nolan’s vision of Batman was there from the outset. It’s even in one of the key appeals of all three of Nolan’s Batman movies: his desire to open Bruce Wayne’s world up and depict him as a jetsetting crusader living in a larger global community, as opposed to in a contained Never Never Land version of Gotham City. The desire to show exotic locales like Iceland (doubling as the Himalayas) and Hong Kong visibly came from Eon Productions’ depiction of Bond as an adventurer always on the move.

More specifically, Nolan’s reinvention of the Lucius Fox character (played by Morgan Freeman) was modeled wholly after Desmond Llewelyn’s Q, the gadget-making quartermaster and occasional sidekick of 007 across nearly 40 years of Bond movies. Similarly, the focus on the chic habits and hobbies of the ultra-rich in those films (and many others of Nolan’s films, actually) likewise stems from 007.

As the Batman sequels continued to heighten the tension throughout The Dark Knight Trilogy, the influences of Bond also became only more pronounced. With each new film, the villain of the piece got a table-setting prologue action sequence that acted in a similar fashion to Bond movies’ famed pre-title sequences, and Bane’s aerial hijacking of a CIA plane over Scotland in The Dark Knight Rises is particularly a much more sophisticated riff on the same concept that starts License to Kill (1989).

Similarly, Batman kidnaps a Chinese national out of Hong Kong in The Dark Knight by holding onto him as an airplane grabs a cable tethered between the superhero’s back and a balloon floating in the sky—thereby yanking both into the air. Lucius Fox says he got the idea from “a program the CIA had back in the ‘60s called Skyhook.” And it’s true, that program existed, but Nolan almost certainly got the idea from the 1965 Bond movie, Thunderball, where Sean Connery and Claudine Auger (or at least their stunt dummies) are yanked out of the Caribbean and into the wide blue yonder.

Even the third act twist of The Dark Knight Rises, where it’s revealed that Tom Hardy’s dastardly Bane is actually subservient to (and in love with?) the woman Bruce thought he cared for is taken more or less from the underrated Pierce Brosnan Bond film, The World Is Not Enough (1999).

Eleven years ago, Inception was simply more brazen about these lifts, with its finely tailored heroes never needing to don superhero threads, and with a third act in large part focused on a ski and snowmobile raid of a fortress taken right out of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), which Nolan just happened to call his favorite Bond film. At the time of Inception’s release, he also called the dream-based actioner “absolutely my Bond movie.”

Nevertheless, with Inception’s structure being more derived from heist thrillers than spy movies, and its hero being a family man haunted by past mistakes instead of an international man of mystery, the filmmaker’s thoughts on that being “my Bond movie” have softened over the years. In 2017, he told Playboy (via Business Insider) that he’d “definitely” consider doing a Bond movie one day.

One might assume Tenet is that movie, or as close to it as possible.

In both Nolan’s Batman movies and Inception, the filmmaker grafted Bond inspirations onto the existing structures of superhero lore and heist movie conventions. Yet with Tenet, Nolan finally embraces the spy movie’s form… while still situating those conventions within his own distinct obsessions and narrative sleights of hand.

Excluding the most recent Bond movies starring Craig, the 007 of the screen has always been defined by his impenetrable ambiguity. Connery’s Bond never talked about his childhood or parents, Moore’s Bond never had any lingering attachments to friends or lovers beyond the current adventure he was already in, and the only acquaintances in their lives were work colleagues like Q, M, Miss Moneypenny, and poor hapless Felix Leiter from the CIA. With two notable exceptions, we never even saw the inside of Bond’s flat for the first 50 years of cinematic exploits.

Tenet thus takes that idea of a mysterious presence as the lead character to its extreme. Washington’s protagonist is even rather cloyingly named just that: the Protagonist. He has no family, friends, backstory, or even 007’s defining vices of vodka and sex. All we know is the Protagonist came up through the CIA before being recruited into the Tenet organization, and he doesn’t like it when colleagues are killed—well, that and he’s more inclined to drink a Diet Coke than a martini.

Still, he nestles into 007’s world neatly throughout the film. When he’s scolded by a marvelous Michael Caine for wearing a Brooks Brothers suit to a meeting at a London club so snooty that you’re chided for not addressing your betters by their titles, the Protagonist quips, “You British don’t have a monopoly on snobbery, you know.”

“Well not a monopoly,” Sir Michael smirks. “More of a controlling interest.”

In essence, Washington’s Protagonist is an interloper infiltrating the rich and privileged world most 007 actors are depicted as walking through as if it were their birthright. While there was a roughness around the edges to Connery’s original (and best) Bond, the character’s smirk implies he was born with the silver spoon, only no one realized it until he took it out of some other less deserving aristocrat’s mouth.

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We likewise see Washington slowly assume that identity throughout Tenet, intentionally irritating the stuffiness of Sir Michael’s club, or joking about hot sauce in a high-end restaurant frequented by billionaires. Nonetheless, he assumes all the Bond airs smoothly and with minimal effort as the film progresses. After Michael’s condescension about his suit, the next time we see the Protagonist he’s wearing a tailored three-piece gray number which doesn’t look that far removed from Connery in Goldfinger.

And when he sits down to match wits with the film’s villain, a man named Sator (Kenneth Branagh), he Protagonist acts like Connery: a fella who claimed the privilege that was mistakenly denied at his birth. When the Protagonist is asked if he’s slept with the villain’s wife, the way he so subtly smirks while saying, “No. Not yet,” would do Connery proud.

But then Sator, perhaps even more so than the Protagonist, is what makes Tenet a near full-on Bond movie. Following in the grand tradition of British actors adopting bad Russian accents to play heavies, Branagh’s Sator lives the life of a super-evil megalomaniac on his yachts and high on his vices.

Those trapping may be more sophisticated than the Bond movies’ often comic book-level depictions of wealth and power—hollowed out volcanoes and swimming pools filled with sharks—but for all of Sator’s musings about the paintings of Goya and Freeport tax havens, or the F50 foiling catamaran sailboats he flaunts in front of the Protagonist, he’s still a Bond villain who wants to conquer/destroy the world. In his case, it’s because of the complicated science fiction methods of a future generation wanting to wipe us out. Still, Sator’s function is all so much fodder for a third act monologue.

Where this becomes most apparent is his relationship with his wife Katharine (Elizabeth Debicki). A woman trapped in a toxic abusive marriage by literal blackmail, Debicki’s Kat is intended to be more developed than a typical Bond girl (not to mention many of the leading roles for women in Nolan movies). We see her twisted relationship with Sator strictly from her point-of-view as a mother living under duress, with her husband threatening to send her to prison if she ever attempts to leave with their son. In fact, he twists the knife further by saying he’d only allow her to leave if he kept the child he doesn’t even care about.

However, the Protagonist trying to get to the supervillain through the manipulation of his lover is Bond movie plotting 101. The Dark Knight might’ve borrowed the Skyhook concept from Thunderball, but Tenet lifts the central romantic triangle conflict in total, with the hero pressuring a woman to spy on and undermine a villain who’s essentially middle management for the bigger threat (SPECTRE in Thunderball, vengeful future generations in Tenet).

There’s more complexity to Kat than Thunderball’s Domino, and she nor the Protagonist need a romantic rendezvous under the sea for her to turn. She’s already ready to do that long before the Protagonist shows up. However, she is still, at least in one scene, the damsel in distress who must be saved, and the woman who’s also tortured and beaten by the man who keeps her under constant surveillance.

At least, also like Domino, Kat gets to kill the villain by shooting him on a yacht. Kat’s victory over Sator is more satisfying, too, since she does it to quench her own thirst for revenge and not to save the hero.

“I’m not the woman who could find love for you even though you scarred her on the inside,” she says, drawing the gun. “I’m the vengeful bitch you scarred on the outside.”

For all of Tenet’s confusing misdirections and head-spinning discussions about introverted entropies, paradoxes, and parallel worlds, it is in essence a spy thriller right out of the 007 template. But does that make it better or worse? The answer might be somewhere in the middle.

Like all of Nolan’s spectacle films, there is something to be said about Tenet’s fidelity to in-camera stunts and action. Nolan’s seen enough Bond movies over the decades to know the images that stay with you and hold up many years later are the ones where actors (or stuntpeople) are doing it for real. So original death-defying imagery, such as when the Protagonist and Neil (Robert Pattinson) bungee jump upwards and above a Mumbai high-rise, or a third act climax in which filmmakers simultaneously shoot vehicles moving forward and backward, is thrilling stuff. (The movie finishing in a third act siege is also taken from Thunderball and numerous other Bond movies, by the by.)

But personally, one of the greater appeals about Bond movies is their unapologetic desire to have fun. With few exceptions, the atmosphere is relatively lighthearted in each 007 adventure, or at least playful. Tenet, like all of Nolan’s films, has a somber earnestness about it, which makes the slipperiness of its protagonist harder to hang onto, and the motivations of its villain less credible in a story about our descendants trying to wipe us out over climate change.

In many ways, Tenet is denser and less mischievous than any of Nolan’s brooding Batman efforts or Inception, which is a picture where the central protagonist is a grieving widower. It’s one of the reasons, I suspect, Tenet has left a lot of viewers cold. So if this really is the closest Nolan ever gets to doing a 007 movie, maybe it’s for the best.

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