#what a wildly contradictory character

[thegreatcaptainusopp]

Always thinking about Sanji’s role in the crew & in the story because it is so fascinating to me and so full of contradictions. On one hand he is very explicitly noted to be Luffy’s left hand man/wing of the pirate king & also part of the monster trio. He’s also very much one of the best combatants on the straw hats & is part of that hypercompetent fighting group that can pull these insane fighting moves as a normal (ish, without Germa) human being.

And yet, he seems to do everything he can to give himself handicaps while he fights. He refuses to use weapons and only will fight with his legs because he prioritizes his cooking over his fighting ability. He adamantly refuses to fight about half the world’s population, to the point where doing so would be considered wildly out of character for him. Everything about him works to reject his family history of warrior training/abilities & he constantly works to not use anything from his family even though it would make him a much stronger fighter. He prioritizes his sense of self over his strength as a fighter and always has and always will.

And yet, he’s very much positioned in the actual story and within fandom/fan understanding as Zoro’s equal & opposite. Zoro also very much sees him that way and fights him constantly at an equal level, and the trash talk is all part of the hypercompetitiveness that exists between them & implies that they view each other as equals. While Zoro’s bounty is usually higher there was a time when it was not, implying Sanji was once seen as greater threat & therefore is placed on the same or similar level as Zoro as a warrior.

And yet. Zoro is many ways is given these dues as a warrior while Sanji is not. Zoro is part of the worst generation, Sanji is not. Zoro usually has a higher bounty, Zoro had access to conqueror’s Haki. Sanji does not. Zoro’s dream is centered around bettering himself to be the greatest at a very specific fighting skill. Sanji’s dream has nothing to do with fighting or being a warrior. Zoro’s position on the ship is explicitly noted to be swordsman: a warrior. Sanji’s is a cook: not a warrior. There is this very specific divide with how these two are treated, even though they are also placed as each other’s equal and opposite.

And yet. Many of Sanji’s most notable moments in the story are of his fight& of his role in protecting the crew/being in a warrior position. Skypeia vs Enel. Water 7 on the train. Thriller Bark with his near-sacrifice. Sabaody where he goes down fighting. His fight vs Queen. Whole Cake. His reputation out of story is very much that of a warrior.

And yet. Equally his non warrior related character traits define him in everything. His relationship with women. His cooking. His family relationships. His two year training, which focused not on fighting but on…flying? His anger & complete lack of emotional restraint and tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve completely. His carefully curated appearance. His complete and total dedication to his found family.

And so on and so on. Everything about Sanji as a warrior/fighter and as a character seems to be so many contradictory things at the same time. It’s so so interesting.

[derinwrites]

The Three Commandments

The thing about writing is this: you gotta start in medias res, to hook your readers with action immediately. But readers aren’t invested in people they know nothing about, so start with a framing scene that instead describes the characters and the stakes. But those scenes are boring, so cut straight to the action, after opening with a clever quip, but open in the style of the story, and try not to be too clever in the opener, it looks tacky. One shouldn’t use too many dialogue tags, it’s distracting; but you can use ‘said’ a lot, because ‘said’ is invisible, but don’t use ‘said’ too much because it’s boring and uninformative – make sure to vary your dialogue tags to be as descriptive as possible, except don’t do that because it’s distracting, and instead rely mostly on ‘said’ and only use others when you need them. But don’t use ‘said’ too often; you should avoid dialogue tags as much as you possibly can and indicate speakers through describing their reactions. But don’t do that, it’s distracting.

Having a viewpoint character describe themselves is amateurish, so avoid that. But also be sure to describe your viewpoint character so that the reader can picture them. And include a lot of introspection, so we can see their mindset, but don’t include too much introspection, because it’s boring and takes away from the action and really bogs down the story, but also remember to include plenty of introspection so your character doesn’t feel like a robot. And adverbs are great action descriptors; you should have a lot of them, but don’t use a lot of adverbs; they’re amateurish and bog down the story. And

The reason new writers are bombarded with so much outright contradictory writing advice is that these tips are conditional. It depends on your style, your genre, your audience, your level of skill, and what problems in your writing you’re trying to fix. Which is why, when I’m writing, I tend to focus on what I call my Three Commandments of Writing. These are the overall rules; before accepting any writing advice, I check whether it reinforces one of these rules or not. If not, I ditch it.

1: Thou Shalt Have Something To Say

What’s your book about?

I don’t mean, describe to me the plot. I mean, why should anybody read this? What’s its thesis? What’s its reason for existence, from the reader’s perspective? People write stories for all kinds of reasons, but things like ‘I just wanted to get it out of my head’ are meaningless from a reader perspective. The greatest piece of writing advice I ever received was you putting words on a page does not obligate anybody to read them. So why are the words there? What point are you trying to make?

The purpose of your story can vary wildly. Usually, you’ll be exploring some kind of thesis, especially if you write genre fiction. Curse Words, for example, is an exploration of self-perpetuating power structures and how aiming for short-term stability and safety can cause long-term problems, as well as the responsibilities of an agitator when seeking to do the necessary work of dismantling those power structures. Most of the things in Curse Words eventually fold back into exploring this question. Alternately, you might just have a really cool idea for a society or alien species or something and want to show it off (note: it can be VERY VERY HARD to carry a story on a ‘cool original concept’ by itself. You think your sky society where they fly above the clouds and have no rainfall and have to harvest water from the clouds below is a cool enough idea to carry a story: You’re almost certainly wrong. These cool concept stories work best when they are either very short, or working in conjunction with exploring a theme). You might be writing a mystery series where each story is a standalone mystery and the point is to present a puzzle and solve a fun mystery each book. Maybe you’re just here to make the reader laugh, and will throw in anything you can find that’ll act as framing for better jokes. In some genres, readers know exactly what they want and have gotten it a hundred times before and want that story again but with different character names – maybe you’re writing one of those. (These stories are popular in romance, pulp fantasy, some action genres, and rather a lot of types of fanfiction).

Whatever the main point of your story is, you should know it by the time you finish the first draft, because you simply cannot write the second draft if you don’t know what the point of the story is. (If you write web serials and are publishing the first draft, you’ll need to figure it out a lot faster.)

Once you know what the point of your story is, you can assess all writing decisions through this lens – does this help or hurt the point of my story?

2: Thou Shalt Respect Thy Reader’s Investment

Readers invest a lot in a story. Sometimes it’s money, if they bought your book, but even if your story is free, they invest time, attention, and emotional investment. The vast majority of your job is making that investment worth it. There are two factors to this – lowering the investment, and increasing the payoff. If you can lower your audience’s suspension of disbelief through consistent characterisation, realistic (for your genre – this may deviate from real realism) worldbuilding, and appropriately foreshadowing and forewarning any unexpected rules of your world. You can lower the amount of effort or attention your audience need to put into getting into your story by writing in a clear manner, using an entertaining tone, and relying on cultural touchpoints they understand already instead of pushing them in the deep end into a completely unfamiliar situation. The lower their initial investment, the easier it is to make the payoff worth it.

Two important notes here: one, not all audiences view investment in the same way. Your average reader views time as a major investment, but readers of long fiction (epic fantasies, web serials, et cetera) often view length as part of the payoff. Brandon Sanderson fans don’t grab his latest book and think “Uuuugh, why does it have to be so looong!” Similarly, some people like being thrown in the deep end and having to put a lot of work into figuring out what the fuck is going on with no onboarding. This is one of science fiction’s main tactics for forcibly immersing you in a future world. So the valuation of what counts as too much investment varies drastically between readers.

Two, it’s not always the best idea to minimise the necessary investment at all costs. Generally, engagement with art asks something of us, and that’s part of the appeal. Minimum-effort books do have their appeal and their place, in the same way that idle games or repetitive sitcoms have their appeal and their place, but the memorable stories, the ones that have staying power and provide real value, are the ones that ask something of the reader. If they’re not investing anything, they have no incentive to engage, and you’re just filling in time. This commandment does not exist to tell you to try to ask nothing of your audience – you should be asking something of your audience. It exists to tell you to respect that investment. Know what you’re asking of your audience, and make sure that the ask is less than the payoff.

The other way to respect the investment is of course to focus on a great payoff. Make those characters socially fascinating, make that sacrifice emotionally rending, make the answer to that mystery intellectually fulfilling. If you can make the investment worth it, they’ll enjoy your story. And if you consistently make their investment worth it, you build trust, and they’ll be willing to invest more next time, which means you can ask more of them and give them an even better payoff. Audience trust is a very precious currency and this is how you build it – be worth their time.

But how do you know what your audience does and doesn’t consider an onerous investment? And how do you know what kinds of payoff they’ll find rewarding? Easy – they self-sort. Part of your job is telling your audience what to expect from you as soon as you can, so that if it’s not for them, they’ll leave, and if it is, they’ll invest and appreciate the return. (“Oh but I want as many people reading my story as possible!” No, you don’t. If you want that, you can write paint-by-numbers common denominator mass appeal fic. What you want is the audience who will enjoy your story; everyone else is a waste of time, and is in fact, detrimental to your success, because if they don’t like your story then they’re likely to be bad marketing. You want these people to bounce off and leave before you disappoint them. Don’t try to trick them into staying around.) Your audience should know, very early on, what kind of an experience they’re in for, what the tone will be, the genre and character(s) they’re going to follow, that sort of thing. The first couple of chapters of Time to Orbit: Unknown, for example, are a micro-example of the sorts of mysteries that Aspen will be dealing with for most of the book, as well as a sample of their character voice, the way they approach problems, and enough of their background, world and behaviour for the reader to decide if this sort of story is for them. We also start the story with some mildly graphic medical stuff, enough physics for the reader to determine the ‘hardness’ of the scifi, and about the level of physical risk that Aspen will be putting themselves at for most of the book. This is all important information for a reader to have.

If you are mindful of the investment your readers are making, mindful of the value of the payoff, and honest with them about both from the start so that they can decide whether the story is for them, you can respect their investment and make sure they have a good time.

3: Thou Shalt Not Make Thy World Less Interesting

This one’s really about payoff, but it’s important enough to be its own commandment. It relates primarily to twists, reveals, worldbuilding, and killing off storylines or characters. One mistake that I see new writers make all the time is that they tank the engagement of their story by introducing a cool fun twist that seems so awesome in the moment and then… is a major letdown, because the implications make the world less interesting.

“It was all a dream” twists often fall into this trap. Contrary to popular opinion, I think these twists can be done extremely well. I’ve seen them done extremely well. The vast majority of the time, they’re very bad. They’re bad because they take an interesting world and make it boring. The same is true of poorly thought out, shocking character deaths – when you kill a character, you kill their potential, and if they’re a character worth killing in a high impact way then this is always a huge sacrifice on your part. Is it worth it? Will it make the story more interesting? Similarly, if your bad guy is going to get up and gloat ‘Aha, your quest was all planned by me, I was working in the shadows to get you to acquire the Mystery Object since I could not! You have fallen into my trap! Now give me the Mystery Object!’, is this a more interesting story than if the protagonist’s journey had actually been their own unmanipulated adventure? It makes your bad guy look clever and can be a cool twist, but does it mean that all those times your protagonist escaped the bad guy’s men by the skin of his teeth, he was being allowed to escape? Are they retroactively less interesting now?

Whether these twists work or not will depend on how you’ve constructed the rest of your story. Do they make your world more or less interesting?

If you have the audience’s trust, it’s permissible to make your world temporarily less interesting. You can kill off the cool guy with the awesome plan, or make it so that the Chosen One wasn’t actually the Chosen One, or even have the main character wake up and find out it was all a dream, and let the reader marinate in disappointment for a little while before you pick it up again and turn things around so that actually, that twist does lead to a more interesting story! But you have to pick it up again. Don’t leave them with the version that’s less interesting than the story you tanked for the twist. The general slop of interest must trend upward, and your sacrifices need to all lead into the more interesting world. Otherwise, your readers will be disappointed, and their experience will be tainted.

Whenever I’m looking at a new piece of writing advice, I view it through these three rules. Is this plot still delivering on the book’s purpose, or have I gone off the rails somewhere and just stared writing random stuff? Does making this character ‘more relateable’ help or hinder that goal? Does this argument with the protagonists’ mother tell the reader anything or lead to any useful payoff; is it respectful of their time? Will starting in medias res give the audience an accurate view of the story and help them decide whether to invest? Does this big twist that challenges all the assumptions we’ve made so far imply a world that is more or less interesting than the world previously implied?

Hopefully these can help you, too.

[hot-take-tournament]

Nothing annoyed a younger me more than opening ao3 to look up my favourite character only to find so many fics that were so contradictory to how he’d actually act (mostly for the sake of shipping, but the way fandom sometimes treats m/m parings and feels the need to shove them into certain roles and traits is a completely different conversation that I will not be getting into)

I think a lot of this is because of people wanting these characters to fit into tropes and stereotypes that they were never made for, so they end up stripping them of all defining characteristics so they can fit the perfect mould, which is more of a bigger issue with fandom as a whole rather than a couple people mischaracterising my blorbo

But honestly? Good for them, it may be annoying, but they’re doing something creative that makes them happy and there is nothing more beautiful than that

I’m all for people doing whatever they want forever and if that means wildly mischaracterising my favourite guy, then go ahead and have a blast I’m genuinely happy for you, even though I can’t stand it and it makes me die a little on the inside

Something I will never get though is people trying to explain away/ justify/ just comply ignore any bad thing a character they like has done. That’s the best part of them! You’re allowed to like villains, can you really say you love them if you can’t accept them, war crimes and all?

Conclusion: make bad, cringey art. It doesn’t matter if it’s entirely self indulgent you made it for you anyway

(I still voted yes on the pole though, at that point they are just glorified oc’s, but who cares? I don’t have to read those fic’s or interact with those people at all)

on this blog we're big believers of "doing what you want forever"

but to be honest when it comes to mischaracterising i'm probably the worst for it, i'll just pick one character trait and just latch onto it permanently

like i don't even remember anything about sae niijima but whenever i put something in the microwave i still slam the table like YOU REHEATED LASAGNA YOU MUST HAVE HAD THE HELP OF A MICHELIN STAR CHEF

[the-obnoxious-sibling]

“Being a pirate is all about going your own way.” // “Come with me, Buggy!!”

is this post totally redundant after the similar post i made last week? idk. i guess the main difference is that this time i’m looking at the same topic in an unambiguously romantic light? the shipper goggles, as they say, are on, and i want to talk about these scenes in that context. so, if you’ll forgive me for repeating myself a bit, let’s talk about this again:

as much as i enjoy the heartbreak of “they always thought they’d be together but miscommunication tore them apart” takes on shanks/buggy, the very first flashback we get about them—the first things we learn about them at all, really—tells us this isn’t true.

and i think what we get is more romantic.

Chapter 19, Pages 12-13. i know last time i said they’re at most 12 here, but looking at these lanky-ass teenaged designs that’s nuts. i fully believe oda hadn’t thought through their ages/the timeline at this point, and they were originally supposed to be about luffy’s age when buggy got his devil fruit. which is not relevant to this post in any way, but it’s my post so i get to go off-topic if i want.

Shanks and Buggy have their own goals as pirates, and at this time they understand them to be mutually incompatible. Buggy thinks Shanks’ travel-and-adventure-oriented take on piracy is soft and foolish; Shanks doesn’t care for Buggy’s exclusively treasure-focused take. They’re sometimes friendly, sometimes not, they’ve fought side by side, but they know this time as allies and crewmates is temporary. (Buggy plans on taking his treasure map and the Devil Fruit and leaving the crew immediately.) Maybe they’ll become friendly rivals, ‘fighting to the finish’ when they run into each other like Roger and Whitebeard do, or maybe the next time they see each other they’ll literally fight to the finish. Who knows?

“That’s also what being a pirate is all about.” It’s very sensible behavior. Smart planning for the future.

Which means the contradictory ways they act later—Buggy secretly deciding to follow Shanks, Shanks bluntly asking Buggy to come with him—are not about these characters thoughtlessly clinging to the status quo. They are not in a “we were always together and I never thought that would change” situation. Deciding to stick together is a considered, emotional decision: “I know we don’t make sense together but I don’t care, I want us together anyway.”

Chapter 1082, Pages 8-9. i was cursed the moment i saw these pages with Unable To Stop Thinking About It disease; only time will tell if seeing it animated makes it worse or cures me.

This argument is a codependent breaking point. Buggy’s pinned all his dreams on Shanks, hoisted that poor boy up on a pedestal, and it all falls apart when Shanks reveals thoughts and plans that don’t match Buggy’s perception of him. He can’t bear to be around him now that the false image has been revealed. (Shanks, poor thing, seems to have had no idea any of this was happening.)

But if Shanks hadn’t said no to Laugh Tale in this moment—or maybe if he’d offered a soft no of, idk, “okay, sure, once we’ve got a strong enough crew”—Buggy would have gone with him, still projecting wildly onto Shanks. He’d convinced himself that being a member of the Pirate King’s crew was enough for him, that he didn’t need to be Pirate King himself if Shanks got the title and he was with Shanks.

…but would he have actually liked being a member of that crew?

Like, looking at the things the Red-Haired Pirates do, would Buggy have enjoyed being one of them? Wandering East Blue, hanging out in friendly port towns, collecting treasure here and there but spending a lot of time getting drunk and making friends with the locals? Eventually becoming famous for having a large, weak fleet of subordinate pirate crews Shanks has to sometimes physically step in and protect?

God, no, he’d’ve been miserable. Just seething with thwarted ambition, furious at the perceived disrespect. A real power hungry first officer stereotype, the kind of character that makes you think, Why’s he working for this guy if he hates him so much?

And Buggy must have suspected it would go something like that. But if Shanks hadn’t rejected Laugh Tale, he would’ve gone with him anyway.

(Better to be miserable with you than a loser on my own.)

Or say Buggy agreed to come with Shanks. Obviously his presence wouldn’t change the crew makeup significantly enough to skew the Red-Haired Pirates towards his way of thinking, but for the sake of argument: if he had convinced Shanks to do things his way, would Shanks have enjoyed the kind of piracy Buggy engages in? Taking over and destroying East Blue port towns, ordering your crew killed on a furious whim, single-mindedly hunting down treasure maps and single-mindedly hunting down treasure chests and paying no attention to anything along the journey? Eventually becoming the boss and administrator for a bunch of bounty hunters and mercenaries?

No way; most of that behavior is totally repellant to Shanks. If he let Buggy do that kind of thing under his banner, you’d be left wondering What happened to his morals? Why does he let this guy walk all over him?

And Shanks knew the kind of pirate Buggy was and wanted to be. But he asked Buggy to come with him anyway.

(Better to be miserable with you than have fun apart.)

It’s hard to see a way to make these very different styles of pirating work together. It’s probably doable… with a lot of compromise and honest conversation. The younger Shanks and Buggy had a point, when they said each going their own way was the obvious choice! It was certainly the easier one. Was it the happier one? Who can say.

[000yul]

me out loud: god i love dorothy arknights she’s so crazyyy me internally: ok but like im not using the word crazy like the way the worst kinds of men use it to put down powerful women IM NOT SAYING IT THAT LIKE THAT IN FACT DOROTHY Is SO horrifyingly rational and her actions make sense from a certain perspective it’s just that that perspective is so wildly misaligned with greater society when it comes to, say, respecting other people’s autonomy. which dorothy is definitely NOT doing when she's introduced however her actions are ultimately rooted in this perverse kindness stemming from her past pain that she has clearly not processed properly and argh. argh that’s so good ok. the way she’s just so extreme she gains this dangerous dangerous tunnel vision THE DISSONANCE MAKES FOR GOOD HORROR AND it’s good character depth is what it is and crazy is just a shorthand word i’m using for all of that, all these contradictory qualities crammed together in an unassuming jerboa package, because my thoughts on this are so messy and me out loud again: haha yea i love dorothy !

[hatosaur]

Quick question: with your expression on the current Palestine and Israel conflict, why do you still draw/repost Dina, an openly Jewish character?

i'm gonna do the kind thing here and assume you're just wildly misinformed/under-educated on the subject.

supporting the state of israel absolutely does not equate to the support or allyship with jewish people nor the indulgence in jewish characters (the batshit latter of which i'll be addressing later). these two things have fuck-all to do with one another, and the conflation of the two is fucking offensive. to assume that me being anti-israel and pro-palestine must mean that i'm antisemitic, or that me drawing dina is somehow contradictory to my support of palestine, is incredibly illogical, because what does dina being jewish have to do with the fascists nuking children and cutting off electricity, wifi and water from the numerous victims so that they can keep killing them with as little coverage as possible. like, really. tell me.

the simple state of being jewish sure as hell does not equate to supporting israel, i cannot stress this enough.

many, many, many jewish people are against israel and what it is doing to the palestinian people, and there are holocaust survivors who have come forward and stated that what israel is doing is very much akin to what was done to jewish people in wwii. it is genocide. it is ethnic cleansing. it is a government receiving funds, aid, and support to enact violence upon a native people. THE DEATH COUNT IS UP TO TEN FUCKING THOUSAND. i don't know how this hasn't clicked yet.

not to mention, why the fuck are we viewing the very real humanitarian crisis through the lens of liking a fictional character? or liking a media franchise? like, the druckmann shit be damned, why are we doing this right now? does no one realize how fucking INSANE it is we're even somehow relating a fictional character to a GENOCIDE?

as an addendum: if you're a zionist or a fence-sitter asking this question as a "gotcha" because i made a clear pro-palestine stance, it's got to be the most braindead, idiotic, simple-minded gotcha in the fucking world.

[breadvidence]

Toggling between I.V.V and III.VIII.XXI trying to square this character with himself—how do you start with "stoical, serious, austere", a man whose "laugh was rare and terrible", and pass through "you’ve got a beard like a man, mother, but I have claws like a woman"? Lemme say, I was far more blithe about this before I had to decide how many cock jokes he might conceivably tell in a 20k span. Meta flavored by authorial navel-gazing ahead. For a somewhat unnecessary context, I'm working on a modern AU that depends on the musical but is beholden to the Brick.

First: my favorite thing about fandom is watching people hare off in wildly different directions, and while there are interpretations of this character I'd flat disagree with (the conservative ones that think he's in the right, mainly), there's many many more I'd thumbs-up gleefully even as they contradict my own reading. Shit, I will go so far as accepting your Javert who is based on the premise that Jean Valjean in I.VI.II (1) means his compliments and (2) is making a good character assessment. I might someday write a second thing that has a wildly different version of the character in it—why not? This is a sandbox, you can dig more than one hole.

Anyway, I've come to a few different conclusions.

The comedic one: When "Jean Valjean stepped up to this bed, in a twinkling wrenched off the head-piece, which was already in a dilapidated condition, an easy matter to muscles like his, grasped the principal rod like a bludgeon, and glanced at Javert" (I.VIII.IV), all of the emotional stressors and situational whiplash of the past few weeks catch up to Javert, the flexing is too much, he has a small frontal lobe aneurysm, it is nonetheless large enough to impact his inhibitions, his inner cunt is released. The "stoical, serious, austere" man described in I.V.V becomes the one who plays—plays!—cat-and-mouse with Jean Valjean during the first Gorbeau encounter and later runs his mouth at all and sundry. The contrast between the descriptions in I.V.V and subsequent on-the-page behavior is a deliberate character development and entirely the fault of Jean Valjean.

More seriously—yes, it's character development, logically because of the events in Montreuil-sur-Mer. We do not see Javert "play" with Fantine in I.V.XIII in the way he "plays" with PM in III.VIII.XXI, and while I would argue that some of his rambling in I.VI.II hints at his shitty sense of humor, there's no overt witticisms; he laughs in I.VIII.IV but absolutely not from humor. Based purely on his Tome I behavior, sure, austere and serious. Related: M-sur-M really should fuck this man up: regardless of it being set to rights, for years a figure of authority was perverse, and he himself operated as a lower functionary of that perverse authority. You could argue that Jean Valjean didn't "count" as a mayor because he was a convict, but going down that road you can end up at an almost normal psyche (one where bad authorities exist), which is undoubtedly unacceptable in interpreting Javert, so. While he's ecstatic in the moment of revelation and arrest, in the longterm—what's the impact? Bitterness and instability expressed as humor, maybe, in the way you dredge comedy out of cognitive dissonance? I can see why correctly identifying a criminal would make any other cop more confident, and how (cruel)playfulness/humor could stem from that, but I can't help but think it's a bad sign psychologically in Javert's case.

Victor Hugo looked us in the collective eye and said, "I am going to describe this character abstractly one way and then have his concrete actions be contradictory simply to fuck with you."

I'm perceiving a contradiction where there isn't one. The style of his humor—which is very dry, even morbid—and of his play—fucking with helpless people—are not in and of themselves unserious. And if I'm not mistaken, the last time we see him laugh is in I.VIII.IV (oddly the other time is in I.VI.II, but it's lugubrious/sad bitch behavior). I'm not thoroughly convinced, but I'm not thoroughly convinced of the character development theory either.

An alternative completely different from the above that I have failed to think of, but which someone will helpfully put in the tags?

(My current plan for the project semi-affectionately titled DAMMIT is to 🙈 at I.V.V in preference of III.VIII.XXI—which is not my greatest yeehaw of a characterization choice, anyway (for DAMMIT, as I don't generally, I'm digging in my heels that when Hugo talks about honesty and Javert it is always with the understanding that it is a spy's honesty, self-contradictory and self-deceptive—a decision not unrelated to choosing to go the promiscuous/closeted route for his gayness, which is itself not unrelated to the fact that promiscuous/closeted plays best into contradiction as a central character trait... and is also the funniest option, banter-wise).)

[unagrancantidaddepanes]

ok i wasnt gonna do it i told myself no im just not gonna say anything on this drama but this is so MINDBOGGLING that i HAVE to make a post about this

i am gonna start by saying as someone on the arospectrum i personally see peridot as either fully aroace or arospec (i like headcanoning either one) and as in a qpr or plantonic friendship with lapis.

peridot has been confirmed to be intended to be read as aroace by a storyboard artist (maya peterson) that would focus on her character, i am not denying that,

however

she is also confirmed to be intended to be read as experiencing romantic attraction, by the OTHER storyboard artist who originally worked on peridot, jesse zuke, who has just as much authority to talk about peridots character, if not more since (to my knowledge) she was the original main storyboard artist for peridot

the intention behind what peridot is suppose to represent is fundamentally contradictory, there is absolutely no use fighting over it. this is so dumb to fight over YES both sides have been confirmed canon THATS WHY THIS IS DUMB </33

ive been trying to find as many actual sources as i can (which has been pretty difficult since A LOT has been deleted) but I finally found a transcript of one of jesse zukes posts that is deleted that everyone keeps referencing

from this reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/stevenuniverse/comments/5q738i/lauren_zuke_speaks_of_her_intention/

(jesse was formerly known as lauren)

anyone posts something shipping peridot, u get a load of comments saying "this is aroace erasure, shes written as aroace, a storyboard artist said so", anyone posts something about peridot being canonically aroace, u get a load of comments saying "shes not canonically aroace, she was written as experiencing romantic attraction, a storyboard artist said so" everyone is either one or the other it seems like NO ONE is acknowledging that both is true and really this confusion is the fault of the crewniverse ????

these storyboard artists BOTH focused heavily on working on peridot and creating her character, and their intentions behind what she is are completely contradicting.

i would love for peridot to be aroace. to me she IS aroace, but im not going to pretend like this isnt the most confusing most unclear way of confirming that. even if maya peterson intended for her to be seen as aroace, jesse zuke wrote her as the complete opposite and it would be stupid of me to ignore that. harassing eachother over this is stupid. your both correct, now shake hands and make peace with eachother lol, good night.

As an arospec person I am completely fine with people shipping peridot and I do not think it is aroace erasure, because while I would love to see an orientation like mine depicted in a character like peridot, im not going to ignore that fact the she was ALSO originally meant to be read as experiencing romantic attraction AND the fact that many of the crewniverse ships peridot with people or supports others doing it. it is not aroace erasure to ship a character that was literally intended to be read as experiencing romantic attraction by some of the people who worked on her character. rebecca god damn sugar, the creator of steven universe has made fanart shipping peridot. peridots voice actor has said she likes and supports people shipping peridot. its just that different people working on the show had wildly different intentions when creating her character, and didnt clear up a solid identity for her with everyone working on her

jesse zuke said in her post "cant speak for anyone else! many people are writing those episodes". just like if maya peterson and anyone else working on peridot intended for her to be read as aroace, other people working on her character with just as much authority were writing her completely differently. people are not seeming to acknowledge that these two things co-exist. it is not one or the other. even though they are complete opposites, somehow theyve made it so that its both at once.

she was simultaneously written to be both aroace and experiencing romantic attraction by different people writing her character, clearly because of miscommunication within the crewniverse.

heres rebecca sugars ship art btw since the first 2 were really hard to find, in case anyone else wanted some sort of actual evidence of it

also just wanted to bring attention to jesse zuke saying "anyone who wants to see the narrative they want is completely, 100% allowed to". peridot and her episodes were written to have multiple interpretations. this was written with multiple intentions. some of those intentions were aroace, some of them, like jesse zukes, were not. you are all correct peace and love

update i found a slightly longer version of jesse zukes post in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=oIl1sEQ4_iI

"I wanted to close the book on this - I am queer, and intend fully to write queer characters when I do"

this is pretty clear confirmation that peridot was fully written with completely different ideas in mind from completely different people. jesse zuke INTENDED for peridot and lapis to be read as having a queer relationship, in this post shes encouraging people to read it that way, meanwhile other writers had other intentions which are just as real and valid.

inconsistency and messy production in steven universe is not a new thing

[kitkatopinions]

I got into this argument recently over the whole “V9 is pro-suicide” thing (it is) and, despite the fact this other person agreed that Ascension is an allegory for suicide, they kept on saying that when I looked at the story through that lens I was “taking it too literally because it’s a fairy tale”

Like… what’s the point in even reading a story if you’re NOT supposed to buy into what they’re trying to say with said story? Am I supposed to ignore all of the characters and the literal world of the story saying that “Ascension is actually a good thing that people should go through” and how Ascension throughout the entire volume is framed as death?

Or how, before Ruby ascends in the first place, she literally says “I don’t want to be me anymore” after being brutalized and then drinks a substance she believes will actively kill herself?

I was told over and over again that “because Ruby chose herself it’s anti-suicide,” but the entire reason she gets to CHOOSE IN THE FIRST PLACE is because she killed herself? The entire thing is a glorified way of saying “if you like yourself, you’ll become a better person for it because you’ll magically realize that you’re perfect the way you are” when that’s literally not true and not how it works?

I’m sorry this is going on for so long. I just wanted to see a different perspective. V9 has consistently fucked me up as a survivor of suicide and I just don’t understand how people can vehemently say that there’s nothing equating to suicide or pro-suicide messaging in this story when they literally admit constantly that suicide is present in the narrative.

I am really upset about whoever this other person is admitting that Ascension is an allegory for suicide but taking the stance of 'but we're not supposed to think about it because this is like a fairy tale.' Does that person not understand fairy tales? Most of them have lessons baked into them. Does that person not understand how media works? Most media has something under the surface, some sort of meaning or intended takeaway or even accidental biases on the part of the writers baked into them. You can watch even the most stupid just there for pure entertainment piece of media - You can watch Alvin and the Chipmunks 2007 and still come out of it understanding that in-between the CGI Chipmunks singing songs and the bad charmless acting of the guy who played Dave (my sis and I believe that role should've instead been played by Brendan Fraser,) you're supposed to get the take-away that kids should be allowed to be treated like kids and not used just for money-making and that found family is valuable and should be embraced and not pushed away out of fear of commitment. RWBY should tell us something, it should have messages and takeaways, especially because the very start of rwby presents us with the conflicting beliefs of Salem and Ozpin - Salem insisting that mankind's passion and strength will always wane and darkness will take over, with Ozpin countering that mankind's victory will be found in 'the simpler things she's long forgotten, things that require a smaller, more honest soul' while we see Ruby. The entire thing is full of (admittedly contradictory) morals and take-aways and meanings. Some of them are bad, some of them reflect the biases of the writers, or the bigotry that Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross never deconstructed. It's not just there to be pretty lights, and it's actually imo wildly irresponsible for people to not try to analyze rwby.

"Yeah, Ascension is like suicide, but we're not meant to think about it" that person can fuck off. The trend of 'media isn't meant to be critically consumed or analyzed, it's just there for us to like and have fun' is the worst and it's destroying thoughtful media. I swear to God if the Lord of the Rings movies came out today people would be like "yeah I guess it's probably informed by Tolkien's time in war or whatever, but we're not supposed to think about it or take it seriously, it's just a make-believe story."

(I will be talking about Ruby's attempted suicide down below, please be advised and don't read if that sort of thing might be triggering to you.)

Also, on the note of "because Ruby chose herself in the end, it's anti-suicide' that really is just... Wildly wrong. Ruby chose to commit suicide. She thought that drinking the tea was going to essentially remove her from existence, erase all her memories, transform her body into something else, that she would not be 'Ruby Rose' at all and would instead be replaced by someone better. That is her hating herself, that is her wanting to die. Just because she thought something else would take her place doesn't mean she herself wasn't trying to commit suicide. Basically what the rwby writers wrote was the equivalent of a story where a girl pops pills in an attempt to kill herself, but is clinging to life, and while she's lying on her deathbed, her consciousness meets God and they give her the choice to either die or wake up, and she decides to wake up. Although this in and of itself would be incredibly dicey (irl people don't get to decide POST-ATTEMPT whether they really want to go through with it while getting the option to see their long dead mom and get assurance of her affection before they choose, and acting like that's the case is damaging especially to teens and kids,) the rwby writers make it worse! They make it worse by showing Ruby's closest friends including her older sister essentially sit around her bedside having smiling happy chats with each other and assuring each other that they'll be happy for Ruby if she DOES choose to die and that it's her choice and that it could be a good thing.

This is so damaging. And it's so damaging to show Ruby just coming out of it unscathed, smiling, having her role as a leader back and accepting it with happiness, having her struggles just waved away as if they hadn't happened. It's an allegory for a suicide where Ruby gets an 'are you sure about this' menu screen that people irl don't ever get, gets to see her mom and hear her mom say she loves her which people irl don't get, gets to talk to God and be told 'encouraging things' which is something people irl don't get, and gets to come out of it seemingly better than ever with no consequences which is something people irl don't get, and her friends and family don't have to grapple with what happened because they can just dismiss it as 'Ruby choosing to go to therapy' essentially somehow, and then the whole thing is just left in the past - while NEO COMMITS SUICIDE TOO AND IT'S TREATED LIKE A GOOD THING DESPITE THE FACT THAT THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE SHE'LL 'CHOOSE HERSELF.' Which just makes the allegory three hundred times more damaging if you ask me.

On top of how bad that is, we have the Paper Pleasers, we have an example of people that didn't come back as themselves, but as entirely new people. They killed themselves, and didn't 'chose themselves,' instead destroying their bodies and their memories, essentially wiping themselves from existence, and it was framed as an exclusively good thing that Jaune needed to recognize was just a part of letting people make their own choices - framed alongside not only the fact that Ruby herself had yet to choose to come back as herself but also the fact that Penny just chose to die in the last season after begging for death over and over and getting Jaune himself to help her commit suicide... That lesson is so much worse. The paper pleasers killing themselves was presented in the narrative of RWBY as a positive, good thing despite the fact that they did not come back as themselves. If what happened to Ruby is the equivalent of someone popping pills and miraculously surviving by meeting God and getting the choice to return, the Paper Pleasers are the equivalent to an entire village of people willingly drinking poison in an attempt to meet God because they believe they'll ascend and shed their mortal forms so they can no longer be damaged and may carry on their assigned duty and reason for living as perfect creatures, and... Where have I heard that before? And the rwby writers present it as a good thing they were right about! The rwby writers present suicide as not only a sometimes good choice that helps you grow, but a needed choice that you're worse off for not taking - and coupled with Penny, it's horrible.

People have this idea that because Ruby, Neo, and the Paper Pleasers believed that something would continue on living from the remnants of who they once were, it's not suicide, but... That's very much so the way I thought about suicide growing up as an evangelical Christian. When I struggled with thoughts of suicide in my early teen years, that’s how I thought of it, and realizing that my friends and family WOULD care and WOULDN'T be able to accept it and WOULDN'T think of it as a good thing was one of the things that helped me start to get better. If I had seen RWBY in those days, seeing volume nine and seeing them praise the suicide of the people pleasers while smilingly deciding they'd be happy if Ruby destroyed herself would've fucked me up, and as it is right now, it was still triggering and upsetting to me.

I'm so sorry that this season was hard for you as a survivor of suicide, and that people are being so willfully stubborn in their refusal to see how damaging it was. What the rwby writers may have been intending to make - a story about a suicidal girl realizing she is enough - is not what they actually put into their show. Instead, accidentally or otherwise, they glorified suicide in incredibly damaging ways, and the fans need to recognize that. They need to stop with their 'tree therapy' jokes and their 'drink the tea' cracks, and just accept that the writers got it wrong. Saying 'it's just a fairy tale so why would I think about it' is a ridiculously stupid cop-out. Like, if people aren't even thinking through anything in RWBY, then why are they even watching it? If people aren't engaging with it, aren't getting anything out of it, won't even try to think about the themes and morals and what's being communicated, then why watch it in the first place?

[cooler-ian]

This is about the "Diavolo isn't a himbo" post @midnightsunnyday He feels to me like he has no consistency, everyone reads him differently -

(More than the other characters, yes including Lucifer, ppl who hate Lucifer are usually aware of his “softer” character traits but choose to dislike his core personality, like me lol-). He's hyper intelligent, but he's a big dumby, but he's ~sexily seductive~ but he's a baby/manchild that is wildly incapable of taking care of himself without his malewife of a butler, but he's so “thoughtful” and """sees everything""". Barbatos sees him like a god apparently but he's such a dumbass-. All of these are true and contradictory traits that Dia shows throughout the events and main story (Events more so). He's a walking paradox, sometimes its jarring how he switches it up, so consistently. Do we remember how smooth he acted in the VR capture the flag event? (The one where Mc is the flag) all his “my dear” and smooth talking it came out of nowhere, I was pleasantly surprised but the way no other character was like "hey wait wtf?" No, they just act as if he's always acted like that, at least while he was being a menace they reacted even slightly naturally, but when he's just out of character they're just like, "ya there he is"

My theory is, Diavolo is a strangely multifaceted character in an anime dating game with 11 other characters. These other characters require their own characterization, you can't choose routes, so all of them have to be featured in every event. Speaking of- the events are short and to make this character fit in with these (surprisingly) equally multifaceted characters they pick out one of his character traits and flanderized it to hell and back for one event and pick another the next. But anyways ya I love him, what do you guys think?

! Reblogs >>> Likes !

[princesssarisa]

What are you thoughts on the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia?

I think it's a fascinating enigma.

While I've never read a convincing argument that Hamlet doesn't love Ophelia, it does seem strange that he never talks about her in the scenes that don't directly involve her.

Then, of course there's the unanswered question of why he treats her so cruelly. Is it out of hurt and anger because she's broken off their romance at her father's command, and/or because he realizes she's helping her father and Claudius to spy on him? Or is it a coldly pragmatic choice because of the spying issue– i.e. he knows she's not to blame, but he realizes he can't trust her? Or is it because his mother's remarriage to his father's killer has poisoned his mind against all women? Or is it all a ruse to convince the court of his madness? Or is he trying to drive her away from the court to protect her? Or out of fear that his love for her will weaken his resolve to assassinate Claudius? Or because he's disgusted with the whole human race and doesn't want to add to it by marrying and having children? Or some combination of the above?

Then there's Ophelia's side of the equation. Does she love Hamlet and go mad because he breaks her heart, as tradition has it? Or does she just accept his courtship because, until her father says otherwise, it's "expected" of her, and is her madness caused more by her father's murder, and/or as her only "escape" from the exploitive and contradictory demands of men, than it is by any feelings for Hamlet? Or can she even be viewed as an Anne Boleyn-style schemer who just wants to marry Hamlet so she can be queen? (Not that I like or agree with that last interpretation, but I have read it now and then.)

And then there's the much-debated question of whether or not Hamlet and Ophelia have secretly slept together, and whether or not Ophelia might be pregnant. Some scholars argue against it because it seems out-of-character for dutiful Ophelia, and because if Hamlet's cruelty in the nunnery scene stems from realizing she's lying to him and serving his enemies, it works best if until that moment, he idealizes her as a paragon of purity and honesty. He couldn't very well do this if she had already compromised her virtue with him in bed. But of course that's not the only possible motive for Hamlet's behavior, and other scholars have made equally strong arguments in favor of a sexual affair and of Ophelia's possible pregnancy.

It's a relationship full of unanswered questions, which different people answer in wildly different ways.

[tippenfunkaport]

Glimmer: I'm a mean girl! I'm a strong girl! I can fight my own battles! I NEED NOBODY

Also Glimmer: If I'm not less than half a second away from hug distance at all times then I WILL die

This is one of my favorite things about Glimmer: the dichotomy between her often wildly contradictory traits.

"I am a badass who is unstoppable and will fight God, because I don't give a crap what anyone thinks and... are you mad at me? I don't know, it just seems like maybe you're mad at me. Please, I just need reassurance at all times that you don't randomly hate me."

Just The Most character ever.

[lostangelssong]

Tron: TAS - the best character

I was feeling nostalgic tonight about one of my favorite series when I was a kid. And because it's late, and I'm awake I want to talk about it. Particularly, I want to talk about Turing - my favorite character from Tron: The Animated Series.

What? You don't remember Turing? He was a recurring villain in season one and had that awesome face heel-face turn in season two, during the episodes where Tron got reprogrammed. And he was voiced by Tim Curry to make it even more awesome! How can you not remember Turing?

No one thought that much of Turing during season one, both in the show, and as far as people watching it were concerned. He was a program that was vaguely reminiscent of Dr. Wily from the Ruby-Spears Megaman cartoon, but instead of being the main villain of the season, he was kind of like the Mandarin in Season 1 of the 90s Iron Man Cartoon - before he became the big villain in season 2. Mandarin that is - not Turing. So kind of like a recurring mad scientist character who stole every scene he was in back in season 1, but they used him sparingly, both because Tim Curry was expensive, and also because the action was focused more around Jet, Tron, Clu, and all of the other good guys, like cartoons often are. (Though the behind the scenes stuff I've found said that Tim Curry was actually totally on board with being on the show and he had a lot of fun with the role).

For example, there was this one episode in Season 1, where it was the obligatory Christmas Episode (TM) that every 80s and 90s kids cartoon was contractually obligated to have. But since the cartoon was set in The Grid, that meant that programs didn't really understand Christmas. So it was this whole mess of Clu doing what he did and trying to copy the User World to make the perfect system, people saying Christmas every five seconds until it stopped sounding like a real word, and Jet, who was agonizing about whether or not he would be able to be home with his family for Christmas. And in the midst of all of this, Turing swans in to "Steal Christmas" for some nebulous reason, complete with tacky glowing accented Santa Suit, because he's a program and what else would he be wearing? He also was trying to goad Tron into stealing Christmas back, even though it was completely contradictory to his plans, because Tron was the Champion and that's what he was supposed to do.

As silly as it sounds, that honestly was my favorite season 1 episode with Turing in it. Turing had these ideas about how Tron was the Champion, and he was supposed to fight for the Users, but then would also be Very Put Out that Tron wasn't actually doing things for the programs in the system, since the system is where he actually lived, and all his stuff was there. Turing would also go back and forth about if the Users actually existed, because he had never met his, or any other User personally, and how do you prove something is real without data, or evidence to back it up? So Turing, especially Season 1 Turing, would sometimes vacillate wildly between hecking up Tron's day, because who cared about the Users (and also just being a menace), and also going on about how Tron was supposed to protect the programs in the system, and if he wasn't, then he was Doing It Wrong.

Season 1 Turing was kind of a mess. And I don't think the writers really knew what they wanted to do with him. But it was fun, and when he would show up his appearances were always memorable. Tim Curry hadn't reached the utter unhingedness of his Red Alert 3 SPACE scene, but he was doing great work all the same. Think of Mal back in Captain Planet, but dialed up more. But then came Season 2 and all that changed.

Season 2 had this arc about midway through it where another program, Asimov, who was Distinctly More Evil than Turing could ever hope to be, got ahold of Tron and reprogrammed him. Asimov was kind of like the Mr. Sinister of Tron: TAS, as he was interested in code, and what a Program's code destined them to be, or gave them the potential to do, and what could potentially happen if you tried to mix the code of two different programs together. Asimov was honestly terrifying for a kids show, but that's a rant for another day. The point is, he reprogrammed Tron into a cross between Rinzler and The Terminator, and gave this whole long monologue about Tron's code dictating this and it being Tron's destiny to reformat the system, and how this is what he was created to do. (Aside note: Asimov was voiced by Peter Fricking Cullen, playing amazingly against type. Freedom is the right of all sentient beings, but apparently not if your name is Tron.) Also, this was a three parter (the only one in the series, actually), and the first part ended on a cliffhanger, with the reveal of reprogrammed!Tron, whose circuits were glowing red. I'm sure that me, and a lot of the other kids that watched it yelled at their TVs when they saw that.

So. All hope seems lost. Tron is a bad guy. The Grid is doomed, right? Wrong. Because in the beginning of the second episode of this three part saga, Turing shows up. He is incensed. His nemesis/frenemy/most boon companion (yes, he used that descriptor) has been compromised. And while he and Tron have never seen eye to eye, that doesn't mean that he is destined to do anything like destroy the system. So Turing, who is So Extra, breaks into where Jet, Clu, and the rest of Team Good Guys are and gives an full on presentation (complete with pictures) of why they are going to rescue Tron, and how he is going to take point. This leads to a lot of arguing and shouting about how Turing even knows this is going on, and Turing being downright offended at even the hint that he is working with Asimov. There's talk of friendship, and Turing points out that neither Jet, nor any of the rest of Team Protag will be able to reprogram Tron, but Turing will be able to, since he's Just That Good. Clu seems to be gearing up to counter all of the reasons this is stupid and why it won't work (and why they can't just call Flynn and get him to fix Tron), when Tron and Asimov show up, intent on annihilating everyone. End of the second episode.

This is the part that I remind you all that this was your typical Saturday Morning Cartoon and that meant you were waiting a week for all of this to get resolved, which is an eternity when you're in the first grade.

So. The conclusion. Tron was standing there about to kill all the guys and reformat the system. Asimov is winding up to give another long villain monologue. Team Protag is very conflicted, because Tron is their friend, but he also doesn't seem to know who they are. Jet believes in himself and gives a speech about friendship. Clu tries to do the same, but it's Clu, so that doesn't really work and he ends up just telling Tron to stop being dumb, but it does give a really nice insight into his and Tron's friendship. Unfortunately, Tron is unmoved by this, and his circuits seem to start glowing even redder. And then Turing steps up. And since this is an 80s cartoon, there aren't going to be any more friendship speeches, because the writers have figured that the kids are bored with all the talking and there needs to be action. So it figures that there would be an action sequence, right? Wrong. Turing doesn't give a speech about friendship, oh no. He basically gives fricking Asimov a lecture about how if this was Tron's destiny, he would have reformatted the system a long time ago, and Asimov clearly doesn't know what he's talking about since Tron is just standing around looking redder than Turing did when he tried to steal Christmas (and yes they actually bring that up). Jet uses the distraction to throw a disc or fire a laser or something at Asimov (because again, 80s kids cartoon), and that actually does cause Asimov to retreat. Turing takes the opportunity to apologize for what he's about to do, before knocking Tron out, and then undoing Asimov's reprogramming.

Turing actually does explain (while Clu and Jet watch him very closely) that sure, he could reprogram Tron into someone that was easier to get along with, but that would make him just like Asimov, and who wants that? Tron is understandably very upset when he finally is back to his normal self, and the implications of the reprogramming and getting better from it last throughout the rest of Season 2, though Tron does mellow out a bit after he gets better from being reprogrammed. And Turing ends up as a recurring good guy after that, and while he doesn't show up in every episode, he is a more frequent presence than he was in season 1. (Though we don't really talk about the weird arc he had in season three. It was dumb, and he got better, so it's better left forgotten.)

(So @teh-kittykat - how did I do?)

[lazy-toad]

I've seen a lot of people talking about how John and Arthur both seem to flip flop wildly between Arthur going 'hey I think we should trust this creature!' and John going 'No, we can't trust anyone or anything, have you gone mad?' and Arthur going 'This creature is obviously a vile monster that should be killed instantly.' and John going 'Arthur. What the fuck man. What happened to kindness?'.

And obviously at first, this seems to be fairly contradictory, and I struggled with that, because as much as their attitudes towards the people they meet seem to change on a whim, without much reason, it honestly doesn't really feel like it's ever out of character.

Naturally I was wondering why that was, until I re-listened to Part 27 and the pair are trying to decide whether to let the creature sacrifice himself, or to take him with them.

John says 'It's not callous to not bond with everything that enters our vicinity.' That's when it hit me.

The difference between John and Arthur is that whilst John likes to take his time to make a judgement of a person/creature, Arthur tends to have a much more black and white view of the world, and makes very split-second assessments of people/creatures, whether that assessment is 'We should become besties with this creature.' or 'Let's kill it with a big rock.'. Along with that, John's reaction is almost always 'Woah do you not think we should think about this a little first.'

Anyway that almost always explains why they never seem to agree on whether to trust/distrust something no matter which side of the argument they're on, because the issue isn't with the decision itself but with the way that they get to that decision.

[luna-rainbow]

Oh no I totally agree that it is undoubtedly fair, truly warranted, to criticize the way the attempt to rewrite his victim hood into him being at fault. I less so sent that ask towards you (bc I’ve followed you for a long time and know how you feel) and more so in a response to other anons. Truly, the erasure of Bucky being a victim sends me over the edge and the whole thunderbolts thing has me raging. That wasn’t really what I was trying to get at in my first ask. And I very very much agree that the whole ‘amends’ and Sam’s (ooc) line of basically tell him to man up and work harder, etc., was all rooted in toxic masculinity from the writers. I was more so trying to say that even though TFATWS did have some major issues, I don’t think Bucky was completely off from his prior characterization, unfortunately they did seem to teeter back and forth and be contradictory with his trauma. Especially considering some of the stuff the cast and crew have said in interviews that do lean towards Bucky being a victim. But when you look at a majority of his actual behaviors and personality, it’s pretty fitting unlike some people try to argue. While the whole going to Zemo thing was wildly unlike Bucky, I do think that him being shitty to Sam doesn’t really fall into the same category. I say that because some times, just real people, characters can be assholes and they have flaws, and you know in the end he knew he was in the wrong and partially didn’t understand Sam’s reasoning. So I do think that isn’t a mistake on the writers part but that’s just my personal opinion. In all, while I do think he wasn’t done justice or utilized properly, Bucky’s primary characterization wasn’t wrong. It was more so the way the storyline tried to depict him and how some of the other characters treated him.

Ah, thanks for coming back to provide more context 😅

To be honest, I credit Seb with 90% of Bucky’s characterisation in the movies and the show. Let’s face it, Bucky’s characterisation was pretty thin if we’re going off the scripts alone (including the movies). He was a plot device for Steve, not a fully written person. Seb was the one who made Bucky give the long weighty looks to Steve during the war, the child-like confusion during the conversation with Pierce, and those sad reflective half-smiles during CACW/IW/EG. He’s a small side character with an exceptional narrative importance, and a lesser actor would have just peeled off the lines and called it a day. Seb went hard into it - he researched vets and PTSD, he made headcanons for Bucky’s relationship with Steve and even his fighting style, for a character that had 15 lines in the movie with his name in the title and only 2 emotive scenes, he’s tried very hard to make it a believable, human emotional journey.

If you look purely at Bucky’s lines in TFATWS — particularly his to-and-fro with his therapist, Zemo and even some of the ones with Sam, under a different actor they could have been aggravating, petulant and caustic. Sebastian kept it consistent with Bucky’s journey up to now — he was weary, uneasy and always a little vulnerable under the gruffness. Sebastian is very good at doing vulnerable, and that alone saved Bucky from being a flat alpha male. Under a different directorial/writer team I would have said they did a good job with the consistency, but MCU directors since Russo’s are notorious for letting their actors take the reins with their characters especially for emotional beats. By and large, because they’ve been so lucky with their casting, that’s worked, but it’s going to fray at the seams eventually.

I think one of the reasons why people say Bucky was out of character (apart from some of the decisions) was that he had a period of healing in Wakanda, and when we saw him in IW he was smiling and friendly. When we meet Bucky in TFATWS he’s raw and nervous again, and something has made his recovery go backwards. The series then avoids the giant elephant in the room for both Sam and Bucky, which was how much hurt EG!Steve’s decision caused both of them…so while we can understand the context for Bucky’s anger, that context was never acknowledged to be true…and if we ignore that context, then there’s no reason his recovery should have gone backwards.

TFATWS was full of crappy contradictions like this.

[ladyluscinia]

Idk if it's just a coincidence, but all of the sudden I keep seeing those "Izzy stans are so obsessed with this random white guy that they ignore or flatten every other character (especially poc)" takes all over and it's annoying me so much. So:

First, I'm going to link bromelads most recent attempt to get some actually constructive dialogue going about fandom racism because it has a whole section on this point. Technically two sections if you count the linked drive file as separate.

And then I'm going to ask all my fellow Izzy Hands lovers to add on to this post their favorite deep thoughts / burning questions / fun headcanons / etc. about your favorite non-Izzy characters. I know you all have a bunch of them. Bonus points for other side characters instead of Edward or Stede.

I'll start.

---

So I'm fascinated by the glimpses we get of pirate culture / the Queen Anne / the general environment that Edward is coming from and still half enmeshed in because I personally find the narrative push and pull there a lot more interesting than the whole running from one world to another that Stede (and to a lesser extent his crew) has going on. Which naturally leads to me finding Fang and Ivan so fucking interesting.

(Mandatory moment of sadness that Ivan won't be in season 2, because I was really hoping to see where his story was going 😭)

Not sure if I can really hypothesize many "hidden" depths to Fang because the show openly hit a pretty wide range. He cries over his dog and nude models for Lucius, but also skins a man with a snail fork and seems shockingly chill about Edward making an abrupt 180 to "maroon all your new friends to die". He's an obedient henchman in 1x02 and 1x04, but he also takes basically no prompting to go for the jugular on humiliating gossip the moment Edward seems disinclined to enforce Izzy's authority. The man contains multitudes already, minimal sleuthing required.

I am really looking forward to how S2 addresses his loyalty to Edward over the crew. Like at the end of 1x10 Fang and Ivan don't even really look that conflicted??? They were buddy buddy with these guys yesterday - moreso Fang than Ivan - but also seemed fully aware that Blackbeard could decide he was done playing around at any moment and then he did. Whoo boy. I mean, one genre of fic I'm usually not interested in is "Lucius in the walls" fic (I know he's alive, I just don't really care for that approach), but I will make an exception if it really explores Fang specifically hiding him because that's a big thing given he is openly afraid of defying Edward.

Like... Fang is a pretty friendly dude, and I can't imagine someone to fool around with was that impossible to find on Blackbeard's leatherman express. So it's really cool that despite very much not being, like, his true love or whatever, Lucius is apparently offering Fang something novel on the acceptance and connection front but maybe not something that wildly diverges from what he's had before. And I do think it's interesting to rotate how that tension could be playing out in his mind. He's got to be used to the whole flow of making and losing connections - that's just pirate life, nbd - except this time it's supposed to just be whatever, only... it's not? He actually misses Lucius and those other fun guys??? Maybe even enough to stand up to Edward over it?!

And Ivan! Man, Ivan has all kinds of potential stuff going on that I feel like people could talk about. I would probably talk about it more, only with the news he won't be in S2 it always makes me wonder how they are going to get rid of him and what that's going to imply about him (which might be contradictory to what they were intending). Which makes me sad.

Probably the biggest thing is like... I don't think Ivan actually likes Stede or the Revenge crew much? I mean on a personal level. Like, his only real friendship bond appears to be Fang, he's not noticeably trying to make new ones, and he's kinda fed up with Stede's people a few times? I'm thinking of rooting to kill them after 1x02, and scoffing at them during the raid in 1x05. And to me this is a really cool trait. I love it when "good" side characters have independent personalities enough to find the protagonist mildly annoying or something, instead of every single one of them perfectly correlating "good person" and "protagonist's friend". It prevents protagonist POV from becoming tunnel vision and accidentally making them seem like the center of the universe. (This is part of why the spn fandom loves Kevin.)

Not liking Stede isn't a character flaw, you know? And if you analyze Ivan's POV with just kinda not being impressed with these guys as an option, that leads to some really interesting places. Because in 1x06 he's actively encouraging Edward to just kill Stede like he said he would, not just following Izzy's lead, and then in 1x07 and 1x08 Ivan and Fang disappear. They don't show up again until Izzy does, but they also aren't seen leaving with Izzy or showing up in scenes like Jackie's bar like you would expect if they were just his loyal henchmen or whatever. So what are they doing in that gap???

I've said before that the adventures of Fang and Ivan is a completely wild story squeezed into the background and gaps of this show with two fascinatingly insane guys at the center of it, and I still think that's true. Fang goes right into becoming besties with the crew while still definitely thinking Edward is going to have him murder all of them in a few weeks. Ivan watches Izzy get banished, sleeps on it, and then fucking bounces with his buddy to go meet up with him... And then they praise Edward's punch and mutiny Izzy later! It's fun to think about!

...but I suppose my interest in Fang and Ivan does connect back up with my Izzyposting fairly often (since I like analyzing how characters interact and relate, and these two interact with Izzy), so how about another character?

Oluwande.

Now obviously the well trodden path here is TealOranges thoughts and feels. Plenty of drama, development, struggles, etc. But actually what I most want to know about Oluwande is how he and Spanish Jackie know each other???

Like what was up with that??? 👀👀👀

Their interaction gives off sorta inner circle vibes to me. Jackie clearly suspects / knows he betrayed her, but she calls him over to chat like old friends and Oluwande is expected to play along to act normal. So like... Was that normal? Did he regularly sit at Jackie's table and chat about life with her? Jackie does not have the time of day for her own husbands' problems most of the time - she seems to reprimand Geraldo for expecting more attention than the others - but immediately asking after Oluwande's life doesn't ping "oh she's definitely onto us" for him???

I don't think he's a husband (feels like it would have been addressed) and them being related seems unlikely. He's got a good head on his shoulders but he's clearly not some notorious pirate or outlaw of great skill. Like Oluwande is just some guy! But also some guy that Jackie was personally invested in!

And then bringing Jim into this... So Oluwande is just some guy in Jackie's inner circle, finds out the new barmaid is out to kill Jackie's favorite husband, and just helps them out??? My dude??? He doesn't even get whirlwind romance privileges. He did all that for a mysterious yet compelling stranger and no shit is this man crazy enough for the Revenge.

My headcanon re: the murder is that Alfeo was universally loathed and literally only Jackie and his gang liked him. So when people (and let's be honest Jim is not the most subtle of assassins so probably more than just Oluwande) realized someone was legit after him, they pretty much shrugged and sent them good thoughts. Also I think Oluwande and Jim had a solid plan to get away with killing Alfeo that went completely sideways, which is how they ended up hiding on a pirate ship pretending they knew how to sail. Oluwande didn't actually intend to completely ruin his status with Jackie and he does lowkey regret it in some ways, so he's gonna be thrilled when Jim tells him all about how they are cool with Jackie now and he can go back to the bar to hang next time they are in Nassau.

Anyway that's another big thing I want from S2 Jackie is Oluwande backstory, because that would be such a treat.