the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.
capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.
now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.
and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.
and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.
and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".
it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"
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ok so ive never properly played genshin and don’t plan to but i know a bit about it’s lore and characters and i think it’s really neat. however i have thousands of hours on ffxiv. on that note please explain why graha and childe are similar. i only have very basic knowledge on childe and i gotta know
Fellow ffxiv enjoyer. <3
(anyone asking me about G'raha has a 100% chance of getting a wall of text and I'm not apologising for that. enjoy your wall of text)
I'm not entirely sure I'm not a case of a person with a hammer to whom everything resembles a nail, but I do think they are the same archetype.
Sweet characters who could have been perfect sidekicks (who still are perfect sidekicks) but listened to too many epic tales as kids and found themselves in a wrong place at a wrong time and now have to play a key role in some universe-changing story.
Both are defined mostly by their stubborness, they are not very suitable for the roles they've chosen and fail over and over again until they do it somewhat right (barely).
No matter how badass they look, their power is not their own, G'raha is a glorified technician of someone else's miracle and little else than a living key, Childe wields an art of old Khaenri'ah without fully understanding it. It's all borrowed from someone else who needed them to achieve a goal.
They do look badass, but mostly because they larp. I'm honestly not sure which one enjoys theatrics more.
Civilisations that created the magic they use specialised in perversion of the natural order of things. They try to use it in relatively noble ways and mostly hurt themselves but the flavour is there.
Both are unbelievably tragic and both somehow make their stories seem almost lighthearted. Complete absense of self-pity. I think that's what makes them both so charming, it's a rare trait.
Both have an incredible capacity for loyalty and love and an incredibly twisted view of what relationships look like. "I'll cross time and space for you, I'll die for you, I'll build a city for you, I'll live for you but please don't ask me to share my plans." "I'll sacrfice my own health and respect of my subordinates to keep my brother's happyness, probably my humanity too, but don't expect me to actually interact with him."
Both have something that looks like self-sacrificial tendencies bordering on suicidality while being, if we are honest, a self-serving trait (partially born out of low self-esteem but still self-serving). They want to live in an old myth and sacrificing oneself is a perfectly reasonable price for that.
Huge egos. And I mean Huge Egos. It's a bit less obvious in Graha's case but I know the type, you see guys like that in PhD programs a lot.
Huge dorks. Both of them.
Both are stuck somewhere between human and non-human and, hmm... their ability to remain human is the most astonishing quality of both. By all accounts, neither should have. They somehow did.
Both are incapable of lying to the point where a third of each fandom headcanons them as autistic. Both are somewhat all right with tricking people without technically lying (although Childe had more practice).
Both are secretive because no one would understand anyway.
FF XIV is a kinder story, so it's easy to overlook, but technically G'raha is a case of body horror, accepts the role of a villain for a while and hides from the player way too much. Hmmm... Where else have I seen it. Hmm. Oh right. That ginger guy from Genshin.
Minor things:
Both are little shits and enjoy annoying the hell out of people they dislike.
Abysmally bad fashion sense. There should be a name for this particular type and level of bad. I don't think I've seen this anywhere else.
And then there's the colour scheme. Red+black+white+blue and red+black+light grey+blue (it's an "anime magician" color profile, I think. black-red-white as alchemy colours + blue as pure magic/something elemental). Childe doesn't quite fit but still the combination is rare.
They way they talk. Dear gods. Who the hell talks like that.
Here's where the similarities end.
One is morally grey but ultimately a good guy (technically. I think the point of ShB was that Emet and G'raha are almost the same), another is a morally grey but still (kind of) a bad buy.
At every step of his story Graha is surrounded by people who love or at least appreciate him, Childe is pretty much on his own and surrounded by people who are either shitty or clueless.
G'raha is kind. Truly and astonishingly kind, in a doomed world he chooses to love everything he touches. Silly little priest of hope. Of all the things he has done this is the most wondrous, I think. Not the time travel, not the city he founded, just being able to remain kind after everything that happened to him.
Childe is... well, Childe. I think he is a deeply decent person (to the point of having a visceral distaste for any kind of unfairness) and he's idealistic but he's indifferent more than he is kind. Empathy usually develops only when someone has shown the person empathy first and, as far as we know, he didn't have much of that in his life.
Also G'raha builds things. Childe breaks things. Childe breaks pretty much everything he touches.
One is an archeologist and a mage and another is a warrior.
I think these differences are caused mostly by the settings they were put into. Childe raised in Sharlayan would have been a very different person. G'raha trained by a voidsent and shipped off to Garlean military would look very much like Childe.
G'raha also has a beautiful character development arc. I love his ShB role. He has this huge ego in the raids and is insufferable and then we see an older and wiser him with a bunch of actual achievements and a bad case of impostor syndrome (trying to do anything real always humbles a person, we all know that real world is held together by sticks and scotch tape. honestly, this change alone is beautiful). And he gets to be an actual hero when he abandons all hope to be Important and resigns to die as a nameless villain if it saves everyone and spares his loved ones from heartbreak.
Childe's character development is yet to happen and I'm not hoping for much but we'll see.
The only difference that definitely isn't created by setting is that G'raha is naturally manipulative. In a kind-hearted way and mostly for the sake of better larp but he isn't that straightforward. Childe is spectacularly blunt for all his mysteriousness.
As a bonus, they both compare main characters to stars, but in completely different ways.
"No doubt your heroism will be the star by which I chart my course," says G'raha to the WoL.
Childe mentions the morning star, which is, of course, pretty and a good companion to a lonely traveler, but also it's not a celestial body you can chart your course by.
It's a guy whose signature weapon is called "Polar Star" and his first artifact set was full of nautical themes, so I think he fully understands what he's saying. "You are my friend but I won't change anything in my life for you."
So I don't think his story will be anything like G'raha's, his life took a different turn very long ago. I do think they used to be similar as kids, bookish boys who dreamed of adventure and being special. So it's fun to compare.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. <3
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Another little inconsequential red hood thing and I'll admit that I'm decently biased but it irks me to see the whole "Jason can't shut up about his death/he makes his death everyone else's problem" take really frequently because he simply does not do that enough for it to be a thing in like any actual Red Hood story.
It's a thing you see sometimes in modern annuals/comics with large casts, particularly if a writer doesn't seem super confident with writing all of the characters that they're working with or if he's just a background character in this one, because with comics it's quicker to reduce a character to recognizable landmarks than to try and work out a whole new complex voice if you don't really need to, so it's tire iron, Jane Austen, Joker, and death, and it's all written out in dialogue because every character in a group event can't have their own internal monologue, but like. That's pretty much it. UTRH is the establishing event for Jason Todd post death so of course a lot of it is about his death, although it's arguably about the lack of response to his death more than his death itself, and he certainly makes it Bruce's issue but one beef doesn't make a trend. Plus if his death is anyone's issue beyond his own Bruce and Joker are like the number one guys whose issue it is. He THINKS about his death a ton in Lost Days, but it doesn't really reflect externally on any of his interactions besides with Joker, which again, that's justified and relevant beef. Teen Titans 29 is more about his place in the hero community/feeling like he was an outsider even before the bomb/Tim being the new robin than about his death, and side note, that being counted as an attempt on Tim's life also bugs me. He beat him up and then left of his own volition. That's not an assassination attempt its called a fight, albeit a sneaky and unfair one. But anyways. I can't speak on Battle for the Cowl because i haven't read it, both that and Batman and Robin 2009 don't really compel me, but it's entirely possible that's an outlier to my point seeing as I kinda sorta haven't read it and don't care to lmao. Even New 52 (although HIGHLY unpopular) and Rebirth/Dawn of DC/Whatever we're doing now Red Hood content don't really have him talking to people about it besides the occasional little quips. He might make stances that were developed because of his death other people's problem, like in the Mia Dearden Green Arrow situation with the "getting involved in other people's business" issue, but acting like he makes specifically his death everyone else's problem is ignoring all of the perfectly valid actually canon things he makes other people's problem. Most of the unpleasant traits he brings to the table are a result of his death and the sense of abandonment and betrayal that came with it, but that doesn't mean he's bringing his death into it when he acts unpleasantly any more than he's bringing his birth into it when he shows up in the first place. The consequences do not equal the event. All this to say it's irritating when people say the character is grating because he doesn't stop whining about his death when that kinda just indicates to me that they're working off fanon based on fanon based on kinda mid batman annual.
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