#It's about character development and the emotions Six rarely expresses | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bvlladonnas · 3 months

Text

is that AYO EDEBIRI? oh, no, that’s BEATRICE "BIRDIE" ROUX, a THIRTY-ONE year old OWNER OF CASA DRAGONES who uses SHE/THEY pronouns. they currently live in QUILPUÉ, and the character they identify with most is PENELOPE GARCIA FROM CRIMINAL MINDS. hopefully they find their own little paradise here in el país de los poetas!

BASICS:

full name: beatrice "birdie" clementine roux nickname(s): birdie (primary), bea, tris age: thirty-one gender: non-binary pronouns: she/they sexuality: if she ever told you she knew she lied (unlabeled queer) date & place of birth: march 6 in malibu, california occupation: owner of casa dragones faceclaim: ayo edebiri piercings: pierced ears – one lobe piercing, two helix piercings, and a conch piercing. traits: outgoing, warm, empathetic, intelligent, caring, independent (overly so), stressed, awkward, dogmatic similar to: penelope garcia (criminal minds), alice cullen (twilight), suki (avatar: the last airbender), aunt cass (big hero six), lorelai gilmore (gilmore girls), willow rosenberg (buffy the vampire slayer), janine teagues (abbott elementary), josie (bottoms) aesthetics: game nights hosted at her place, daybreak shining through the window after a night of gaming, bookshelves of fantasy novels (half are read), various papers strewn about a desk, a warm cup of hot chocolate on a cold night, and a comforting hand on your shoulder.

* warning for mild child neglect

BULLET POINTS:

– born to two young and in love parents in malibu, california, birdie was just what the two needed to complete their little family. as an only child, they have never for anything – even if their parents seemed to love each other more than them. – her childhood is spent traveling – italy, france, greece, nigeria, norway, mexico, nicaragua, even antarctica for a one-off trip, among others. she's homeschooled for most of her life, her parents reasoning that traveling was much better for her development than a typical school education would be. sometimes they question if their parents were right, but they can't do much about it now. – birdie's parents always encouraged her to explore her passions, which was usually something adjacent to fantasy, coding, video games, or whatever anime or tv show had pulled her in at that point. because of this they're wonderfully adept at random skills (see headcanons section). – in spite of this, they felt very isolated and alone growing up. turning to the internet was easy (when she had quick access to it), but her parents were often caught up with each other, & she had no siblings to talk to; plus, frequent moves between countries and cities meant she rarely got to make friends that lasted longer than her stay did. their saving grace was when they would travel back to the states to see their family, & they could talk to their favorite cousin, aviva. – this results in birdie becoming very independent and more-or-less self-sufficient from a young age. their emotions, their desires, their dreams, would all be controlled by her (because then she could never be disappointed). from then on, a forgotten birthday or a canceled lunch date from their parents couldn't mess with them as bad, because they could find solace in being alone. – birdie turns 12 and their parents decide that maybe it would be best for her if they settled down somewhere (they were right, she made way more friends). they decide on quilpe, one of their favorite previous travel destinations. she knows the place like the back of her hand now. – her life falls into place easily from there – when they graduate high school, their parents express a desire to begin traveling again, once again wanting to spread their love around the world. birdie, used to this, decides they'd like to stay in what they now deem their home – she gets a degree in computer science from the university, and quickly figures out those jobs aren't really for them. after much deliberation and more than a few career-anxiety-induced breakdowns, birdie takes out a loan to open up casa dragones (thank fucking god it's a hit or they would probably be back in america with their parents). – when their roommate leaves (the amount of horror stories she could tell...), birdie reaches out to her favorite cousin & says that if she ever needs a spot to go, birdie's got her.

HEADCANONS:

— got bullied kinda when she went back to school . they couldn't handle a bad bitch who liked dnd fr :/ – ran their high school's dnd group, went crazy as a dm. — great at coding & a lot of odd tech things – troubleshoots for the store's computers a lot of the time because those bitches like to shut down a lot (they're old). – loves having friends and having functions at her place because it makes them feel a sense of belonging <3 isolation as a kid went crazy – ^ also part of the reason they opened casa dragones. dnd and other ttrpg games were a big reason they weren't so lonely as a teen/younger adult, & birdie wants to make sure anyone else feeling like that has a place to just be themselves. – favorite video game (currently) is baldur's gate 3 (duh)

WANTED CONNECTIONS:

— regulars at casa dragones perhaps ??? mayhaps even coworkers ! — besties ... she's easy to get along with i think ! – who r u going to let them mentor. who is going to be the person they r so protective of and give wise advice to like a sage with tea in their hands — lit anything else idk. fwb. exs. enemies. frenemies. childhood friends . the world is our oyster guys

#valpohqintro #phew

6 notes · View notes

mintharaestermont · 1 month

Text

♛ → THE STORMLANDS present MINTHARA ESTERMONT, the LADY of GREENSTONE. when the dragons danced in the sky they thought the GREENS would still fly, but in the blink of an eye, they would all die. the TWENTY-SIX year old FEMALE who was DRIVEN & TRUSTWORTHY before they saw the first of the flames, is now COMPETITIVE & ENVIOUS after seeing the last. they’re often associated with sunset rays reflected off the ocean, breathless laughter after dancing for too long, ripped up papers thrown on the fire so they can’t be read. ( alisha boe )

✻ pinterest ✻ playlist ✻ character building ✻ timeline ✻ tasks ✻ wanted connections ✻

tws: mentions of death

history.

minthara estermont had both the great honour and the great burden of being born with many siblings. from a very young age, too long ago for her to remember, she developed a fierce competitive streak. Whatever her siblings were doing, she wanted to do as well, no matter if she was too small or too weak to fully participate. the best way to get minthara to do something is to tell her that she can't.

she was never the easiest sister. she loves her siblings fiercely, but is prone to needling at them, instigating scuffles and getting on their last nerve. minthara was a difficult child to grow up alongside, whilst also being staunchly protective, quick to take matters into her own hands when her brothers and sisters were upset.

minthara has struggled with an inferiority complex her entire life - but most of it is entirely in her own head. she has always been very loved, and was especially close with her father, who absolutely doted on her, but she was always too short sighted to see it clearly. she is her own worst enemy who invents scenarios in her own head that absolutely are not true.

of all her siblings, minthara had the most contentious relationship with her twin sister, myrcella. simply because they were twins, they were compared to one another since birth, and minthara hated it. there was rarely a day when the two were not at each other’s throats, usually with minthara instigating.

it wasn’t until myrcella died that minthara realised what she had missed out on. she did not realise how much her twin was a half of her whole until she was no longer there. she spent most of her life resenting being part of a pair, but now she very much misses it.

it was important to minthara’s father that all of his children were able to sail a ship, but minthara was never an exceptional sailor - merely passable. however, she is both a strong swimmer and incredibly agile, able to scale masts, climb ropes, and maintain balance fairly easily, so she is always able to help out. she does love being on the water, though, despite her lack of sailing aptitude.

one thing minthara is actually very good at is writing - particularly poetry, as she finds writing letters incredibly boring and hates that. she uses this to express herself, but is very secretive about it. she shares this with nobody, and will not put her name to anything she’s written.

minthara has always struggled with her place in the world, and how she can distinguish herself within it, and that has only grown since the death of her father and eldest brother. it is not a welcome change and one she is still struggling to adjust to. she’s a very unsure person who’s not quite sure where she stands or what her path in life is yet.

personality

basics

a lot of minthara’s personality is a direct contradiction. she’s feisty and confrontational, but also very sentimental and sappy. she can be an absolute spoiled brat, but she’s also very determined and hardworking. a lot of the dichotomy that exists within her comes from her not truly knowing who she is or where she fits in the world.

she’s an incredibly emotional person in the most dramatic and theatrical of ways. everything she feels, she wears on her face and isn’t shy about expressing it. if minthara feels a type of way, you’ll know about it.

she’s incredibly, stubbornly, unwaveringly loyal to the people she cares for. she rides hard for the people in her circle and clings on to them tightly.

her competitive nature is perhaps her most dominant trait. unfortunately, she doesn’t compete in the things she’s actually good at. she wants to be good at the things YOU’RE good at so she can prove her worth.

kind, but not nice, is a good way to describe minthara. if people she cares about are hurting, she will always lend a shoulder to cry on. she’s generous to a fault, and incredibly protective. however, she’s blunt, sharp, and can come across rude to those who don’t know her well. she believes in tough love, and is definitely the kind of person to tell you what you don’t want to hear, but it’s almost always coming from a good place.

if she dislikes someone, it’s likely she’ll never change her mind, and she won’t be shy about picking fights.

she likes people to think she’s independent, but minthara actually very much struggles with being alone. she does not enjoy her own company.

minthara is not an intellectual at all. she’s always struggled when it comes to academic matters, hates maths, and doesn’t much care for history. in terms of scholarly matters, she certainly isn’t going to distinguish herself. she is, however, very creative when it comes to music and writing and has genuine talent there, even if she won’t let anybody see it.

rumours

the contradictory nature of minthara’s personality means she’s a difficult person to fully know, and this has led to lots of misunderstandings about who she is. people who have only seen her rougher, more feisty side will regard her in a very different way to those who have seen her softer, more sensitive components. she can be difficult and sharp, but also generous to a fault and an incredibly steadfast friend. any rumours that exist about minthara are likely a result of these misunderstandings.

fears

minthara hugely struggles with the idea of being inferior to anybody. it’s part of the reason she’s so competitive - she wants to prove herself so badly.

her inferiority complex ties into her fear of insignificance. the root of this is likely due to growing up in a large family. she’s always fighting to prove her worth, and she’s not happy with just knowing it herself - she wants everyone else to see it, too.

other

minthara is a very tactile person who expresses her affection through touch. she’s a big hugger, even if she isn’t particularly gentle.

her eyes are very, very dark purple - at first glance, they appear black. you would only notice that they aren’t when very close to her or in direct sunlight.

minthara has spent her entire life on a mission to be the best at something, but she’s actually very private and oddly embarrassed by the things she does find enjoyment in and has a genuine talent and passion for. she wants to be good at things that other people find impressive, without much regard for what she actually wants out of life. she has a real skill with poetry writing, and has even published work, but under a different name that can’t be tied back to her, because the thought of that is just so mortifying to her.

she wears very simple clothing - think plain, one-colour gowns, usually in very light neutral colours or blue or green pastels if she’s feeling particularly flashy. however, she absolutely adores jewellery and uses this to dress her outfits up.

if you asked her, she would tell you that she has processed her grief for her brother and father, but this is very much not the case, particularly for her father. She genuinely believes that she has, but she’s just stuffed it down too deep to be touched.

she’s not overly fond of her name being shortened. she’s fine with “min” from those she’s very close to, will begrudgingly accept “minnie” from family members, but her absolutely least favourite is minty/minthy.

she should wear glasses - but minthara point blank refuses to do so in public. she gets by okay without them, but cannot read well when they aren’t on her face.

#✻ character building ╱ like an ocean in love ; wild with blueness #as ever will finish later

4 notes · View notes

publicabsent · 11 months

Text

🪴. CHARACTER SHEET.

full name. annette louise carli. nicknames. nettie. aliases. pipsqueak, little ghost, teen witch (hawkins au only.) pronouns. she / her height. 4'11″ age. ranges from 17-22 in most verses. she does not live past 28 in her main verse. zodiac. cancer. / july 21. languages. english, american sign language, can guess at latin-based languages (best with italian, not fluent).

physical characteristics.

hair. wildly curly medium brown hair, falls to between her shoulderblades. often pinned up & away. facial hair. n / a. eyes. a warm hazel color, ringed with the greener side of it. large & expressive, with doll-like lashes. usually obscured by her large glasses. skin. fair & freckled. body type. petite, bordering on scrawny. she looks delicate, like a stiff breeze would take her with it. she has very little defined shape, just enough to only be noticeable with a large skirt. voice. soft & stuttered. she's lived her whole life seen & not heard, which makes her using even a normal level voice an uncomfortable task. her voice isn't unpleasant, but rarely heard. dominant hand. right. posture. good, but methodically diminuitive. scars. many. little ones on her face, long scars across her upper arms, some around her ankles, one across her left palm. each of her fingertips are marred & warped by scarring. usually hidden by clothes & makeup. birthmarks. small beauty mark on her right cheek, near the outer corner of her eye. noticeable features. large, dollish eyes; freckles; her glasses.

childhood.

place of birth. unsure. hometown. none, really, due to the constant moving in her childhood. siblings. effectively none. she has a little brother, luca, who she has not seen since he was around five or six. she doubts he remembers her. their father took luca when he left, & annette cannot recall luca's appearance. parents. meredith carli, mother. a busy, strict woman who loathes what her daughter seemingly represents -- the loss of her husband & son, the inconvenience of dealing with a less-than-perfect child, etc. she would love nothing more than to be rid of annette, though she equally relies on the girl to keep house. samuele carli, father. was absent when he was around, to the point that annette does not remember anything of detail about him. she figures it must be her fault he left.

adulthood.

occupation. assistant librarian. current residence. verse dependent. close friends. within an isolated canon? none. & even in the verses that she has friends, she would not know if she'd call them close friends -- half due to guilt & half due to insecurity. financial status. mostly comfortable. license. no. vices. self-isolation. neglecting herself. on occasion she has been known to bake for hours on end, trying to pretend she has control. depending on her situation, she may "accidentally" burn the side of her hand to ground herself.

sex & romance.

orientation. asexual demiromantic. emotional role & sexual style. if annette can tell she's developing any sort of romantic feelings for someone, she tends not to do anything about it other than maybe retreat & blush when interacting with them. she doesn't always trust that other people can feel that way about her, so she needs a lot of reassurance. this goes for affection, as well, as she is very unsure & clumsy with that. love language. quality time & gift giving. less conventionally, she isn't very physically affectionate, but much like a cat she just ... likes to see what someone is doing. be close but not touching. proximity is big. relationship tendencies. annette is very insecure in relationships -- she needs lots of reassurance, & while she is easily overwhelmed by both physical & verbal affection, she is also wildly touch-starved. she is not accustomed to people wanting to be around her.

misc.

theme. little miss why so by the amazing devil, probably. or two by sleeping at last. hobbies. reading. writing. piano. baking. left or right brained. typically right-brained, though she usually uses her logic to support whatever creative or fanciful ideas she has. self confidence level. below zero.

#✽ ➝ about. ❜#long post /

2 notes · View notes

bullet-prooflove · 1 year

Note

I have an idea for a sub Mouse x dom reader writing piece but I need some advice.

The reader is a tall, commanding, high-ranking officer from the Norwegian Special Forces. she is like 6'4" and a friend of Will Halstead (maybe thats how Jay knows her) and she comes to visit Jay after she came back from a terrorism prevention job in the North Sea. She's friendly with Voight and they need some extra man (woman) power on a huge case, like the Yates one. See where is goes from there...

I was planning to write this but I'm really sick lmao (bronchitis or pneumonia) and I'm exhausted. I guess I'm tired of trying to find fanfics about rare (so to speak) characters that don't have the cliché sub female reader who's short and a pushover. I need a second opinion/POV.

Either way, I love your writing style and I know you don't like being restricted creatively (same), I was just wondering if you could write some sort of dom female military leader x sub Mouse one-shot. Kinda like inspiration points so I could see another writers POV on a topic like this so my writing doesn't end up dry and full of plot holes. I also just need reassurance that people will want to see something like this because at this point it's just for me. Mostly because my tastes and preferences are stupidly out of the gender "norm" and hard to find.

Thanks so much, let me know what you think (if you want!).

Hi!

So full disclosure this is not something I am going to write as it is very much out my wheelhouse - I have virtually no knowledge/experience of the military life esp command positions.

From my experience people love seeing their fav guys in a sub position, I have requests for Sub Will and Sub Connor and Sub Otis all the time. The trick is figuring out what makes them need that dynamic for it to come across as genuine.

An example is for Connor, he doesnt feel like he’s worthy of love, he needs someone to express it, to take care of him and make him feel like he is worth something to someone. The dynamic works for him on that level as it's the only way he can 'ask' for it.

With Will, he is so in his own head about his decisions, the choices he makes. When he has a bad day it's hard for him to get out of his own head, sometimes to the point where he simply cant speak and he needs his lover to bring him back to himself, to take control of the situation to vent his emotions.

With Brian he's more able to ask for what he needs but he craves someone else taking control because the decisions he makes endanger people, he needs someone else to take responsibility for a while. He needs to not have to think.

This will help you determine the kind of dom you are playing with. So usually I go soft Dom for Connor. A bit harder for Brian and Wil,l I feel like could flip flop either way.

Another thing you will need to consider in my opinion is Mouse's PTSD and how he would respond to certain dynamics. As someone who has been diagnosed with it twice for two separate issues I am very aware that there are certain situations and environments I wouldn’t put myself in again. - this is why I feel the way the show wrote him out was unbelievable.

So if you are planning to use terms like soldier or Sarge, which I believe was his rank, consider that these could be triggering. He has come along way in his experience with mental health, I would consider playing into that.

As for the character you are discussing. I feel Mouse would love how safe she would make him feel.

If you look at my writing over the past six months I don’t inc physical desc when it comes to female body type as I know it comes in all shapes and sizes, it's more appealing to your readers as they can imagine themselves or a char. I do add tattoos or scars because for me as a writer it helps me develop aspects of the reader character.

I hope all of this helped!

#writing process

6 notes · View notes

scribble-dee-vee · 15 days

Note

I am invading askboxes today! Please accept this question;

Which character, whether main or side, has given you the most trouble while writing them?

You may be slightly psychic, bc I was planning to post about writing different characters this week! Ty for invading this inbox 🌟

I'm going to take some creative liberties here and just kind of answer what it's like to write each POV character in Lost Letters?? They all present distinct challenges, so it's hard to pick just one askdlfjaskdf

Charles – listen this guy is incredibly self-contained and secretive; the other characters don't know his Entire Deal, and neither do I. I tend to learn key details about his character after a LONG TIME and MUCH EFFORT. He's also harder to write with a distinctive voice in the first person, because he's not a super flashy character. However, I think I can finally write him insightfully and subtly, as he prefers, after like,,,, six years of effort askdfjalskfj

Cecelia – she's ANGSTY, tbh, and it takes a little effort to access her other layers!! She's the POV character who requires the most prep work before a writing session; like, I have to go back and read a lot of her canon content to capture the right feel. Cecelia's interesting because she has a lot of complex emotions that she tends to mask under anger and bitterness. SHE'S rarely completely aware of what she's feeling, so I'M rarely completely aware. She's the POV character who tends to surprise me the most, though, and that's super fun! (Also super cathartic, bc she is soooo me)

Dale – he is superficially the easiest to write, because he's INCREDIBLY DRAMATIC and has 0 filter. However. HowEVER. Conveying deeper layers is a little bit difficult. Dale is,,, usually pretty self-aware, but he also wants to manipulate and misdirect the reader. Convincing him to express direct, straightforward, and polite information as a viewpoint character is a PROCESS.

TL;DR, it's hard to write repressed and/or deceptive characters in the first person?? It's also fun, tho, because it gives you a lot of room to develop them. At risk of sounding a little delulu, I definitely have my own relationships with these characters that inform how I approach writing each of their POVs!

#writeblr #ask #lost letters tag #oc: dale porter #oc: charles starkley #oc: cecelia starkley #my ocs #my BABIES #this is fun to think abt

1 note · View note

iloveabunchofgames · 1 year

Text

#JakeReviewsItch

As We Know It

by Jaime Scribbles Games, PMscenarios

Price (US): $14.99

Included In: Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality

Genre: Visual Novel

Pitch: Can love bloom in an underground bunker?

My expectations: Most of the visual novels I've reviewed have been extremely light on player input, so it's heartening that five of the 14 screenshots along the side of the Itch listing show some decision being made. They've also included a screenshot of the settings screen, which is a baffling choice. Did they envision a potential customer thinking, "I don't know. This game looks pretty good, but I'm not reaching for my credit card until I see visual proof that it has separate sliders for music and sound volume."

The developers asked for $2,500 on Kickstarter and ended up with closer to $3,000, which isn't that much money for a six-person team, but it's a heck of a lot better than your typical indie visual novel budget.

Review:

It’s sometime in the future. If fighting over scraps doesn’t kill you, the sandstorms will.

But things are looking up for Ashlynn and her mom. Or rather, down. They’ve been accepted into the underground bunker of Camden, where the showers are cold and the conversations are steamy.

In theory, at least. I completed four in-game weeks—about an hour and a half—and despite earning a few relationship points, none of the encounters with my fellow eligible bunker-dwellers seemed to be going anywhere.

My worklife fell into a similar rut. A cup of coffee in the morning, followed by a day of cleaning and filing at the clinic. There was a bit of excitement when a stomach virus hit our closed society, but two days later, we were right back to the old routine.

As We Know It is flat, repetitive, and devoid of character. Whatever intrigue there might be in the premise of love in the post-apocalypse is undone by pedestrian writing. Is there political corruption in the heart of Camden, or are good leaders sometimes forced to make bad calls? What are we willing to trade for security? The game raises big questions, but I’m not sticking around for answers.

+ Lots of choices. Most of the time it's easy enough to predict the outcome a choice will have, and it's easy to back up and choose again if you're not satisfied—helpful when trying to romance a particular character. + Outside of occasional comma splices, the writing is grammatically solid—a rarity in the world of indie visual novels. + Generally clean and competent presentation. I wasn't wowed by the audio or visuals, but everything is fine. + Big, bold character names at the top of text boxes, so it's always clear who's talking. (Okay, I'm really only mentioning this because I forgot to say something yesterday, when I reviewed a visual novel where there was rarely any indication about who was speaking.)

– Characters have personality traits, but they don't have personality. There's no life in these words. – Everyone has one pose, with changing facial expressions. Characters are drawn with slightly exaggerated features, but they're still pretty close to human proportions. The faces need to be a lot bigger. Subtly shifting eyebrows and lips aren't enough to create visual interest when most of the screen is filled with static backgrounds and static bodies. – The relationship point system is unintuitive. I'll share an emotional, flirty scene with a character and not see any change in my score. I'll bump into that character in the hallways and keep walking, and suddenly our love level has jumped up 20%...which doesn't seem to affect how we act or the things we discuss. – When welcoming newcomers to the city, the mayor talks about earning beads that can be traded for luxury items. Where's that game? How about a little life management and simulation in this dating sim? Instead, jobs are just a couple of mandatory, repetitive text boxes each day, and you're always provided with whatever you need, without any budgeting or decisions to be made. Boooring.

🧡🧡🤍🤍🤍 Bottom Line: Given the choice between life on the surface or returning to As We Know It, I'll take my chances with the sandstorms, thanks.

#JakeReviewsItch is a series of daily game reviews. You can learn more here. You can also browse past reviews...

• By name • By rating • By genre

#As We Know It #Jaime Scribbles Games #PMscenarios #Visual Novel #post apocalypse #Underground Bunker #Dystopia #Science fiction #Romance #Dating Sim #Ren'Py #JakeReviewsItch #Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality #Computer Game #PC Game #Video Game #Indie Game #Itch.io #Game Review

1 note · View note

leam1983 · 2 years

Text

On Characterization

I still have a crate packed with old Archie digests, somewhere. Near the tail end of my reading these, I'd started getting a kick out of seeing certain characters evolve (or devolve) in the context of a single issue. The most striking case, to me, was Mister Weatherbee.

Early Issues: your token Joyless Adult, even more stern than the kids' parents, dressed in the sorts of suits you would've found on Tintin back in 1925.

First Twenty Years: his body habitus gets locked in, but isn't as extreme as others will render it later on. What began as a bald and irate ride-sharing partner for Archie is now the heavyset principal that terrorizes the Andrews kid. He isn't terribly loquacious yet, his tendency to pontificate hasn't developed.

The Late Fifties: Samm Schwartz' predecessor renders Weatherbee as a monolith in a sack suit, a solid rectangle of a man with the alacrity and vivaciousness of the kids he's meant to shepherd. Fat jokes start to be seen in a few arcs, but aren't prominent yet.

The Sixties: Al Hartley and Bob Bolling run the show. The first one renders Weatherbee as a shape, an utter unit of a man, beset with too many neuroses to count and packing on all the precursors to Type II Diabetes the Flower Power years ignored. In the 50s, you could assert that Waldo was close to six feet for about three-fifty pounds, but Hartley scoffs at that deduction. His Weatherbee is clinically obese - morbidly so - and is oftentimes shown as being a slave to an underlying gluttonous penchant that leaves even Jughead surprised.

As for Bolling, he keeps the same shape he coined for the Little Archie strips, adds about two hundred pounds to the man and dresses him in sack suits that do nothing for his figure. Bolling's Weatherbee is sort of milquetoast, not quite packing the dynamism of the previous or of its following incarnations.

The Seventies: Samm Schwartz renders Weatherbee in a way that's at once more sedate and more expressive, with a more restrained paunch and a clear double chin. The character's signature lapel clasps start to underscore moments of self-satisfaction, Waldo's tendency towards self-aggrandizement being adequately exploited. Schwartz pulls the fifties' more grandiose characterization out of the mothballs, giving the principal an occasional Richard Griffiths-esque twang. He yells, huffs and puffs - and frequently outdoes the teens in terms of cartoon antics. He's also more of a pedagogue during this decade. Hartley's questionable closeness between the Bee and the kids is left well and truly in the dust.

The Eighties: Dan DeCarlo is a pinup guy through and through, and his designs for the Riverdale grownups betray a certain sense of constriction. In a way, it helps Weatherbee's case, whose color palette and proportions standardize into tones of brown and about two-fifty pounds. Only rarely does he deign to ink a "fat joke" strip, usually for his Archie and Me run.

The Nineties: Rex Lindsay is too busy trying to make the kids seem hip in order to care about the adults' proportions. Under his pen, Weatherbee is either slightly heavyset, morbidly obese, flat-chested or shaped like a reverse V. Proportions sometimes shift multiple times in the same story. The only mark of consistency is the little half-moon on the character's bald pate, meant to indicate a permanent spot of chrome-dome shine.

The Aughties and Onwards: the classic digest runs keep the same fluid dynamics, but the Chip Zdarsky serials shave ten years off of the Bee, while adding a bit of muscle definition. He's an accomplished outdoorsman now, with the calves to match. It's here that he's effectively toned down, perhaps as a result of the multiversal storyline that marked the years between 2018 and 2020. Having needed a steady emotional core to be believable as Geraldine Grundy's husband, he brings that mixture of empathy and no-nonsense rationality forward in setting perhaps better-suited for more vivacious spirits, like Jughead's zombie-themed limited Horror run.

It's strange, seeing how a medium needed almost a hundred years to go from "Golly, aren't adults boring?" to "Hey, guess what? Your authority figures have rich inner lives too!"

#character design #archie comics #mr. weatherbee

0 notes

curlsofsagesmoke · 3 years

Text

TMNT (2012) characters as dysfunctional family roles

here I go again analyzing a kids show that ended four years ago. anyway, I saw a tiktok by user doinbigthink where they gave a quick overview of the six kinds of dysfunctional family roles, and I immediately thought of tmnt bc it’s my current hyperfixation. so I spent almost an hour doing research and writing up this analysis, as one does.

as a preface: dysfunction in a family can be caused by anything from someone struggling with addiction to a parent being abusive or unavailable/neglectful to someone having narcissistic personality disorder (npd) etc. etc. Usually there is one person who is the root cause of this (very deep seated) dysfunction and the others in the family (often the kids) fall into these roles in order to cope.

Leo: The Hero

The Hero is often the oldest child. They cope with the dysfunction in the family by being high achievers or perfectionists, and they need a sense of control in order to feel safe within the family. They are seen as very well-adjusted, balanced, and high-functional and are often used as an example of how well the family as a whole is doing. They may allow this misconception to continue (whether consciously or unconsciously) in order to hide the family’s problems. They may be parentified as children (that is, forced to take on a parental role for their younger siblings) and usually feel a lot of pressure to solve the family’s issues. With Leo in particular, you see these two behaviors in the way he approaches leading his brothers as well as the way he obsessed over bringing Karai into the family for Splinter’s sake after discovering her true identity. As an adult, the Hero is often drawn toward romantic partners who are emotionally unavailable (again, see Leo’s crush on Karai) and tend to throw themselves into their work (Leo’s obsession with ninjutsu)

Leo: The Golden Child

The Golden Child is not a dysfunctional family role but instead describes a relationship that develops between a parent/guardian with npd and one of the children in the family. In these cases, the parent tends to favor the Golden Child because the Golden Child exhibits all the traits the parent loves in themselves. In Splinter and Leo’s case, these characteristics are their devotion to ninjutsu, their general temperaments, and their more spiritual/mystic natures. There are MANY examples of this favoritism in TMNT canon; for example, Splinter teaching Leo his reiki technique (the healing hands) in “the deadly venom” because everyone things Leo is the most capable of learning such an advanced technique (in the episode, Donnie says that he doesn’t think anyone else on the team could’ve done what Leo did, i.e. using the healing hands on himself and saving the others from karai). The parent has a volatile relationship with the Golden Child and often their love is conditional (that is, the parent will favor the Golden Child as long as the Golden Child continues to act like the parent). Because of this, the Golden Child often has trouble establishing an independent identity (see: Raph calling Leo “Splinter Jr.”, though I can’t remember if this happens in 2012 or just in the 2003 version). The Golden Child may also participate in the narcissistic parent’s abuse against the other children in order to protect themself (this is less explicit in canon, but I think that Leo’s leadership style fits this bill)

Raph: The Scapegoat

The Scapegoat is often the second child. As the name suggests, they are often blamed for things that go wrong in the family regardless of whether it was actually their fault or not. Scapegoats are often very aware of their position in the family and as a result they may feel rejected, isolated, and unlovable. I think a good example of Raph feeling like this is the fact that, early in the show, he only openly expresses his emotions to Spike. Scapegoats learn that negative attention is better than no attention (especially from a parent/guardian) and they often engage in high risk behaviors such as sex, drugs, etc. (in Raph’s case, his reckless fighting style and the way he seeks out fights, and this also explains his temper and overall angry demeanor). Because of this, they tend to get into a lot of trouble and are often singled out as the child who needs individual help (aka therapy) even though the root problems lie with the family as a unit. In cases where the parent has npd the Scapegoat is often pitted against the Golden Child. This is called splitting and it is another way to distract from the family’s deeper issues. I feel like I don’t need to explain the way that Leo and Raph are pitted against each other.

Donnie: The Lost Child

The Lost Child, as the name implies, often fades into the background. Usually this is on purpose in an effort to keep themself safe, as they might be scared to draw attention to themself or rock the boat, especially in an abusive household. They may often feel ignored or neglected and are often described as loners who have difficulty developing social skills or self-esteem. Like the Hero, the Lost Child is often used as an example of the family’s stability and success because they aren’t causing trouble. They tend to struggle when forming friendships/romantic relationships, and they are usually praised for not needing a lot of attention/being independent. Because of this, they feel safer when they’re by themselves. Although Donnie does cause trouble sometimes (see: all the times he’s blown some shit up in the lab, the Mutagen man thing, etc.), he’s not seen as the troublemaker. Raph (and Mikey, to a certain extent) definitely takes that title. Donnie is often alone in his lab---working, admittedly, but he still tends to isolate himself, and he is often seen as the most socially awkward of the brothers (see: his relationship with April). There’s also this very interesting exchange from the episode “Enemy of My Enemy” when they’re in the Shellraiser and Leo is about to take the stealth bike to help Karai:

Raph: Hey, the stealth bike’s my thing. Leo: Now your thing is sucking it up. Donnie: Hey! That’s my thing!

Mikey: The Mascot

The Mascot is often the youngest child. They use humor and goofiness to diffuse tension and distract the family from their issues, though when this works, they feel increased pressure to continue to step in when things become tense or volatile. The Mascot acts from a place of anxiety and trauma, and they may have bouts of depression. They also tend to feel as though they cannot express their negative emotions (because they often see themselves as responsible for their family’s happiness). They tend to bend over backwards for people with little regard for their own safety/comfort, and they are drawn to intense and dysfunctional relationships (whether romantic or platonic) where they will be called upon to diffuse tension. This can be seen in the way Mikey approached his friendships with both Bradford (pre-mutation) and Leatherhead. Mikey is also very rarely shown as being sad, angry, or depressed the way that the other three are, and it’s only in times of extreme emotional distress (like the season two finale) where he drops his humor. Even in the midst of tough battles or tough situations, Mikey tends to insert himself into the middle of the tension and is almost constantly cracking jokes or trying to keep things lighthearted. When he does show more negative emotions, it’s in (mostly) one of two ways. One, giving comfort or seeking comfort, usually from Raph (again see the season two finale, where he hugs Raph to calm him down after Splinter “dies” and seeks comfort from Raph in the Party Wagon as they’re driving away from the city). Two, acting combative with Donnie.

Note: Mikey and Donnie acting combative

This second one in particular is really interesting to me because both Donnie and Mikey exhibit a level of comfort/feeling safe with each other that they don’t display with the other two. Mikey only ever gets physical with Donnie (their little slap fight in “Turtle Temper” or attacking him at the end of “The Creeping Doom”), while Donnie only ever purposefully antagonizes Mikey to get a reaction (slapping him in “Turtle Temper”, which prompts the slap fight, or teasingly insulting him at the end of “The Creeping Doom”, which prompts Mikey to attack him). Mikey likes to get under Raph’s skin, but he never retaliates when Raph gets physical with him. Donnie does occasionally argue with Raph and Leo, but usually backs down after Raph threatens him with violence (see “New Girl in Town”), and with Leo it never escalates past a verbal fight (see the season two finale, “the fourfold trap”). Actually, it seems that in Mikey’s and Donnie’s relationship, they take on the roles that you usually see in Raph’s and Mikey’s relationship. Mikey antagonizes Raph and Raph retaliates; similarly, Donnie antagonizes Mikey and Mikey retaliates, but neither of them would act this way toward their other two brothers.

Splinter: The Root of the Dysfunction

I’ve made a lot of allusions by now to Splinter having npd, or at least some narcissistic tendencies. There are many times where he shows favoritism toward Leo or acts in a very stubborn or even self-absorbed manner. In the season one finale, for example, he refuses to help the turtles fight and only leaves the lair after april is kidnapped by the shredder. In “the pulverizer returns”, he makes the turtles switch weapons (for literally no good reason), they almost die in a fight and switch back, and as punishment, he takes their weapons away entirely; this isn’t addressed in the episode, but i do believe that if they’d had their weapons, they could’ve prevented timothy from being mutated in this episode. (Admittedly there are times when he apologizes, admits he’s wrong, and changes his mind, which is why I hesitate to say he exhibits fully narcissistic behaviors). There’s also the physical aspect of their relationship. He’s teaching the turtles ninjutsu, so you can expect a very physical relationship in the form of training, but there are times when he causes the turtles pain for the sake of pain as punishment (e.g. randori, which we see a few times, or when he goes for their pressure points, or when he trips mikey in the episode “monkey brains”, or when he stabs raph with his cane in the episode “turtle temper”, and these are just the examples i can think of off the top of my head). There has been discourse in the fandom about whether these characters (splinter and raph in particular) are abusive, and i don’t want to get into that. However, i think it’s undeniable that splinter raised his kids with the intent to turn them into child soldiers, and also i fully believe that this (plus his parenting style) is the root of the dysfunction in the hamato family.

#I cannot believe I spent 45 minutes researching dysfunctional family roles and writing this up #anyway #teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt 2012 #leonardo #michelangelo #donatello #raphael #splinter #Leo 2012 #donnie 2012 #Raph 2012 #Mikey 2012 #splinter 2012 #analysis

347 notes · View notes

obeymeluv · 4 years

Text

Signs they Love You

Back for my 1 post a week to prove school hasn’t totally killed me! When I get a semester break, I’ll post more often. In the mean time, feel free to leave me chats or PMs for stuff you want to see! :) Something nice and sappy for an okay Saturday

These turned out really long so I only did Lucifer, Mammon, Levi, and Satan. I have to get back to studying :/. Maybe I’ll have part 2 next week?

Lucifer

You wouldn’t be able to notice it because his pride wouldn’t allow you to. One of the brothers (or, to Lucifer’s extreme mortification, Lord Diavolo) would have to tell you

He’s not sure if it’s just the appreciation of you not being as totally chaotic as his brothers or genuine human naivete that has somehow worn off on him, but he loves you

Will be outed by sappy, soft stares that last 2 seconds too long.

Asmo and Satan are the first to notice and he LOATHES that

If he’s tasked with waking you up that morning, his knock will be firm but his voice will be gentle. Almost persuasive or commiserating

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by school workload, he may have a private conference with the teacher and grant you a minor extension. Will you know it was him? No. Is he happy to see you brighten up and refill with hope just a bit? Definitely. Is it worth the teasing from Lord Diavolo? ...Sure.

If he responds to texts in the wee hours of the morning when he’s still pouring over paperwork, he likes you.

Anyone who knows him can see how his eyes soften when someone else talks about you. There’s a fond slowness to his actions, how he glides his hand imperceptibly over his chest as if to feel where that emotion is coming from. Boy is whipped.

Should Lord Diavolo invite him out for a meeting, he will bring you back something small. Something he thought you’d like. Beel is upset. Levi yells “SIMP!” from the second floor and prepares for Armageddon.

Actually reminds you about assignments if you’re not already up on it yourself. Your success is his joy.

Is very keen on if/when you burn the candle too long and has a sixth sense for bad sleeping habits. Will put you on a stricter schedule for your own health

It may take almost all of the brothers to do it (or just help from Diavolo) but if he gets drunk on Demonus you’re getting a whole BOOK about why he likes you. He almost charms your memory away but everyone practically dog-piles on him not to because he needs to deal with his feelings.

You’re the only one he won’t chase out of his study when he’s doing paperwork. He’ll even set up a little fire if you like the fireplace.

How he confesses: tries to take you on a fancy date to Ristorante Six. Does not know that Lord Diavolo and Barbatos know about this (damn time-travelling butler!) and basically crash the date just to encourage him. Just long enough to encourage him.

Kind of an, “So you chose this idea, Lucifer? Admirable! I’m sure your date will be amazing! Enjoy your evening!” as Diavolo walks back to his table.

Does Lucifer deny it? Look and see how red his face is. If you’re really not sure, ask Diavolo. He will gladly yell, “I cannot lie!” across the restaurant.

Mammon

For all his talk, when he really, really decides he likes you, he doesn’t know what to say.

He can console himself with how obvious it is and how you made the best choice, but he has to show it! What to do?

Mammon’s kind of confused about it because he doesn’t really change how he behaves. You didn’t catch on already?! C’mon, human!

What, does he have to spell it out for you? Do an interview with Majolish?

His first tactic is to just be around you. Be subtle, and maybe cuddle a bit more than usual. Things to show he’s kittenish and at your mercy. Comfortable with you.

You don’t seem to be getting the hint so he throws the net a little wider by trying to find things you like or that you’ve been talking about. They mysteriously show up at your door.

It sends the others on a gossip train about who your admire could be and when they list off everyone BUT him, he wants to slam his head on the table.

Feeling tired? Coffee! Backpack heavy? Silly human, the BEST man can help you with that, OBVIOUSLY! Mammon jumps at the chance to do any little thing for you because he cares. His actions always speak louder than words.

Feeling kind of defeated and embarrassed, Mammon will go talk to the flock of crows that meander around the House of Lamentation’s yard when he really needs them.

For the next few days you’re accosted in the nicest way, birds chirping at you and dropping off various shiny things

You collect them, finally showing them to Mammon and he’s embarrassed that his representative animal has taken to courting you on his behalf.

He calls them to him, embarrassed and ready to rant or fall into the ground never to be seen again, when they start talking. Repeating all the things he’s practiced saying.

“Hey baby,”, “Hey human,” “Love you!”, “Silly! Silly!”, “Dummy, no, dummy!”, “My human.”

It’s broken and confusing, six or seven bird children cawing in your face and bobbing, but you get it.

Levi

Levi’s not the best at expressing himself but it counts, right? As much as he hates to admit he’s some kind of shy tsundere, you know what that is, right? He doesn’t have to say it?

Yes. Yes he does. His brothers are getting too chummy with you and you don’t understand his signals. Time for Plan B.

If you get invited to stand in line for a midnight release, he hopes you take it. Then it’s just you two hanging out in line? What’s this? He brought snacks? Totally not for the two of you BUT you an have some if you’re hungry. It’s whatever

When he’s not doing boss raids and playing with online friends, he’ll ask if you want to play something with him. A Player 1 needs a Player 2, you know?

I headcanon that Levi knows how to play some unusual instruments like the kalimba or a real ocarina. I could see him making you a song on one of those. Or just playing it because you inspire him. He’s very good with a harp and will play it when he’s in the mood.

Boy also likes to draw and paint. Especially loves watercolors. Would it be weird if he gave you a painting of you as a mermaid? Just you and the ocean. Beautiful.

Was there a really cute plush or knickknack you liked? Levi has his ways, regardless of how rare or limited edition it is. It will be yours.

He has a hard time understanding a passing comment of interest versus a genuine want because he genuinely wants everything he’s interested in, so if you hear a whisper about him almost securing something, stop and look it up. Make sure it’s not super expensive!!

Probably outed by Belphegor, who feels like Levi’s broadcasting all of his stress, frustration, and hope through his dreams. (”His dreams are weird. Just different ways of asking them out, and if he messes up it restarts like a simulation. My brain hurts.” he says to Beel)

You’re allowed to come into his super-restricted bedroom haven when everything’s too much. It’s very exclusive since the Mammon incident. Be happy.

Might go swimming in his big tank and pick a seashell or rock to make a necklace out of. He hopes you like it.

If he’s not outed by Belphie, some of his online friends made a game demo they wanted him to try. They specified it was two player so he asked you to join in. While he’s in the middle of bragging about how he knows people, knows developers, he totally misses the dating-sim like dialogue and the big reveal.

Doesn’t really kick in until he realize the characters look like you two. You’re busy saying ‘Yes’ to “Do you like me?” as Levi absolutely threatens to rip them apart six ways to Sunday. Almost in full demon mode, too.

Everything falls out of his brain and quiets in his throat when he realizes the characters are kissing and ‘THEY SAID YES!’ flashes on the screen.

“Y-You like me?”

“Yep.”

It was that easy all along. Levi thinks he’s going to faint.

Satan

Becomes aware of it pretty quick but ignores it for a looong time

Is it rude or foolish of him to assume you would also like him back?

Run away into books. A solid plan. If you don’t think about it, it’s not an issue

Oh, but it is an issue when you fall asleep after a mutual day of reading, forced in by bad weather. He finds his heart fluttering in a painful squeeze as he quietly whispers all the things he dare not say when you’re awake

It’s nervous poetry, and it’s beautiful

Satan tries to get himself back on track, to focus on reading, and he gets frustrated when he’s stuck on the same page almost an hour later

When you’re on the brain he just can’t do anything else

How does one show their affection? He’s swimming in books for a new reason now, as voracious as ever

He brews you a pot of Melancholy Coffee and is a bit disappointed you don’t know the meaning behind the bitterness. Wants to break the pot when Lucifer jokes about how it tastes exceptionally bitter to him as well.

Okay, so coffee didn’t work. What else do people do when they show their affections?

Asmo suggests a ‘not a date’ date and Satan sighs inside. Sounds like a lot of work and effort. It’s not that you’re not worth it, but he has a feeling that everyone will know and look at him the whole time.

Tries anyways. You guys go to a beautiful nature conservatory and take a tour of the plants and some indigenous animals

You’re starting to realize it now, he can tell. Satan tries to answer your question without saying it while you’re at school. You walk together, he offers to carry some of your books, and always requests that he be your project partner

Nearly there. If there was a single defining moment for him, he’d want it to be classic. He shows up at your door with a rose and asks you to go on a moonlit walk.

Mammon’s poking fun about how cheesy and cliche it is, Asmo’s gearing up to shut Mammon’s stupid mouth, and Satan just whisks you out the door with an aggravated sigh.

No matter what side of the house you’re on, Asmo throws up the biggest, gaudiest handmade sign that’s like ‘CUTEST COUPLE! 10/10!’

#Obey me!#Obey me x reader #Lucifer x Reader #Mammon x Reader #Levi x Reader #Leviathan x Reader #Satan x Reader

680 notes · View notes

captainmybeloved · 3 years

Text

(we all love cap and i’ve seen many posts talking about his development as a character- jumping on the cap analysis train and adding on!)

in season 1, it’s clear that captain is a private and inflexible person- such that any concealment or display of emotion is a strategic, calibrated revelation. however, his rigidity in schedule and tolerance towards himself and others changed when alison and mike came to button house- perhaps, after being stuck with people from vastly different generations from a caveman to a tory, all of which were dead and possessed mostly static personalities, the mere presence of new people who were alive changed him immensely- not to mention the new added benefit of watching tank documentaries every week!

I think that the arrival of Alison and Mike was definitely the catalyst for many instances of character development in almost all the ghosts, as they filled holes in their hearts that they didn’t even know existed. For example, Alison became to Kitty a sister, a truly good sister who cared for her and loved her unconditionally- but the relations between hearts are mostly unclassifiable (how does one categorise the relations between sweet scouts-master and grumpy closeted ww2 captain to the annoyed sweater-donning caretaker of button house? oh wait! gay uncles!) and this is perhaps what I truly love so much about this series. Found family is a hard trope to come by in the media, but the six idiots writes these flawed, utterly human characters so beautifully with staggering complexity, and, with humour undergirding every scene and line and character, it is truly a triumph of comedy and a celebration of humanity across the centuries. But coming back to captain’s character development-

- he grows exceedingly kinder and much more patient with Kitty, when in season 1 he grew frustrated and angry at her for disagreeing with him. in s3, however, he checked up on her when she’s upset, and with great sensitivity and patience, taking note of the obvious issue at hand and distracting Kitty from it, managed to sooth her fraught nerves and even made her smile.

- he becomes more relaxed and flexible around his found family. in s1, even if mike and alison did have a camping trip, in my honest opinion, i don’t think he would have joined them, or could have been persuaded to. he’s constantly tense and upright- seeing that he was before a military captain and any slip of emotion, any mistake, however slight, could have proved disastrous- and grasping his swagger-stick tightly and brandishing it in moments of shock- but i think his time spent bonding with everyone has made him much less anxious to maintain a stoic and confident appearance, and more carefree to express his emotions (’COCK SOC!’ [sits jauntily on the sofa arm-rest] [lightly taps pat’s arm with his swagger-stick’ ‘hUEHUEHUEHUEH- that’s very good- sticking his neck out-’) however slight or capricious.

- he improves his relationship with fanny! in s1, there was the whole messy affair with fanny constantly falling out of the window, and he was impatient and the most frustrated out of anyone else. however, in s3, they’re joking about the satirical stance of politics in Mecca! (i think. i didn’t catch quite a bit of it) captain also offhandedly mentioned ‘knowing her (fanny) the best out of anyone’ in episode 4, which is quite telling if you think about how cap rarely speaks about his connections with others.

- from s1 ‘sleeps in bed perfectly perpendicular to the head-board with his arms crossed and swagger-stick parallel to his left arm’ captain to s3 ‘paint me like one of your french girls’ captain

- even though he knows that mike can’t hear him, he still relentlessly helps him with his work, punctuating his work calls with remarks and words of advice. he even teaches him how to tie a tie! with a bunny analogy! how sweet

in summary: captain is beautifully written as a complexed and flawed character and his character development is organic and very realistically written- i truly love this character so much- thank you for reading<3

#bbc ghosts spoiler

46 notes · View notes

kitkatopinions · 3 years

Note

(Rabbithole Anon) Y'know, I was going to send in an ask about just they could have made a compelling way to show how some people may have become hunters through pressure rather than an age excuse if they wanted to say some people weren't ready (joining to protect a friend who wanted to be one, wanting to travel for a variety of reasons, it being a general expectation but the person being hesitant) but it led to me wondering wait, would certain careers require a hunting lisence?

Okay, I love this rabbit hole. XD It illustrates a couple of RWBY problems here and it's the fact that they often are lacking in the character development/character journey department, and that they're often lacking in the world building department.

We actually have plenty of characters that can serve as examples for people who maybe should've thought twice about entering the Academy (when they did.) There are people who entered the Academy for the wrong reasons/not noble reasons, people who entered the Academy during a time they might not have been ready, and people who would be full on dangerous with a Hunter badge, and most of our mains fall under one of these categories (though mostly the first two.)

Ruby - Two years below the standard age of her class. Whether or not she was at the skill level of a first year (she was,) and whether or not she'd received special training from Qrow (she had,) Ruby was still essentially a kid, and her mind and body both hadn't developed completely. Ruby should have been traumatized after the Fall of Beacon and been allowed to show that more as a character, she should've had straight up PTSD, she should've been allowed to have emotion in Volume 4 than Jaune's sidekick who makes sad eyes when she sees him grieving. Weiss - Her main motivation for joining Beacon was to reclaim her family legacy. Yes, her desire was to reclaim it and use it for good, but it was still arguably more about personal and familial glory. On top of that, Weiss has been blatantly anti Faunus and has never so much as addressed that. Weiss's character journey should have reflected more personal growth, and either her unlearning much of her Faunus racism and clearly changing priorities from her name and family legacy and onto the actual people in need, or her flaws should've led her into being more of a morally gray character who displays her selfishness and pride (in a way that's actually addressed and treated like a flaw.) Yang - She expresses admiration for people like Ruby who want to help people and be kind, but her main point in becoming a Huntress was getting thrills and going where the wind takes her. She didn't join Beacon for any sort of serious purpose, and even when she rejoined Team RWBY in volume five, it was to be with her sister and not because of her own morals (not that I think she's lacking in morals, just that her main motive was different.) This could lead to her having to figure out a lot of what she actually wants, being unsatisfied with being a Huntress in Atlas, being in over her head when things get serious, being more mentally exhausted than the others after long days, etc. Jaune - Wasn't ready to enter Beacon. Idk if he just wasn't allowed to go to a lesser combat school like Signal or if he flunked out, but he wasn't up to scratch to get into Beacon and cheated his way in. On top of that, he lacked in the emotional maturity department as well when he entered. Jaune was a little more invested in his own appearance than Ruby was, but still seemed to have similar good reasons for wanting to be a Hunter. And he did grow a lot. But he was much less prepared, skilled, or equipped to deal with the training or the career and it's a miracle he didn't die in the initiation. Granted, Jaune was handled arguably better than anyone else, since a lot of this was addressed, but these days it feels like it isn't actually playing a part in his character anymore that he's way below the people around him, and I feel like it should still be impacting him. Penny: Honestly, Penny seemed very newly born during the Beacon Arc. She might have been combat ready, but she also started spilling secrets to the first person who was a little bit nice to her, and was clearly naïve and childlike. Imagine if it had been Emerald that had befriended Penny instead of Ruby. Penny dying and then getting resurrected should've been deeply traumatizing for her and it should've made her undergo some major changes and been treated with importance in the show. Qrow: Literally wanted to be a Hunter in the first place to try and learn how to murder Huntsmen. He might have changed later and it’s not exactly relevant, but he arguably shouldn't have joined when he did either. Meanwhile, Nora's just one big mystery, because we don't know why she joined, and Ren likely joined for good reasons, but neither of them have ever actually talked about their motivations. The only character we can safely say joined for noble reasons and who was up to scratch and ready when she entered is Blake, who also had good reason to not fully trust the system she was working with, so there could've been complications and character interest there as well.

Please don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean I don't think the others should've been in school, I love that they were! I just think the writers should've explored the various ways they might've been not fully ready, not completely well suited to the job they took. The characters are allowed to be flawed and to flounder and it'd make them more full, nuanced characters imo.

On top of that, we have other Hunters to look to as well, outside of our main cast. Cardin, for example, was a terrible person, still in school and already abusing what little power he had to target a member of an oppressed minority group and blackmail other kids into doing his bidding, while plotting revenge on someone for correcting him on his anti-Faunus answer to a question. People like him should not be Hunters, and he was arguably our first sign (of many signs) that the position of Hunter can and will be taken advantage of and misused by bad people. And although the After the Fall/Before the Dawn books aren't canon, while reading BTD (I haven't finished it yet,) Coco and all her team members but Velvet also struck me as people I wouldn't want to be Hunters and wouldn't want to wield any sort of power. Coco is proudly described by one of her friends as sadistic, lets her unfounded opinions of people cloud her judgement, shows respect and admiration towards criminals, and enjoys her classmates being afraid of her. Fox is self-described as sadistic as well and is a bully who tried to use a classmate's phobia against them in a brute-like interrogation. And Yatsuhashi is leagues above the two of them, but also bullied Neptune despite saying the words 'I don't want to be a bully' and threatened him.

There are so many ways the writers could've explored people who went to Beacon too soon, weren't ready, or entered for the wrong reasons. Instead, outside of one conversation in season two about the girls’ motivations and Ren exploding that Jaune cheated his way into Beacon all the way in season eight, it seems like the only take away we're supposed to get is 'all these kids are officially the thing they wanted to be in the beginning and they're all amazing at it, woo!' No acknowledgement of the fact that they could use higher education still, that some of them are still immature or naïve, that some of them are still below the combat level they should be in, that some of them kinda haven't done super well since they left Beacon (cough Ruby cough.) It's all just... Flat, lackluster. And meanwhile, characters like Cardin were written out of the show easily. We've had plenty of examples of corruption in the Hunter business, but the show hasn't paid any attention to that and still is treating being a Hunter like the only true noble goal and the only good and non-corruptible way to defend people, despite the fact that it clearly isn’t. Being a Huntress is not better or safer or more noble in-universe than being an Atlas soldier/Ace Op/Atlas hunter. I’m not saying that all of this needed to be featured, but exploring the differences in motivation and how the Hunter lifestyle affected the various mains could really flesh out their characters. Instead, by the time everyone is heading to Atlas in volume six, they all pretty much have the same reactions to everything and the same motivations and the same beliefs. The rare deviation - like Ren in volume seven and eight - is treated as bad and a mistake that must be rectified, rather than... A natural consequence of the group being full of different people with different upbringings and different motivations that result in different opinions. That sort of thing is only ever explored as a problem that makes someone lacking, and it’s really weird and it makes the show feel... Juvenile, and lacking in nuance or depth when it comes to the characters, which is a really big shame, since the characters have a huge amount of potential and exploring the differences between them and their reactions to being in way over their heads would be - I think - the natural place to take their characters? Especially because so far their storyline has been... Not the highlight of the show.

But, as for how semblances and Hunters should impact the world building, there’s a lot to say about that! They don’t explore a lot in RWBY outside of what’s relevant to the mains, leaving the world building feeling flat and like the world itself doesn’t matter much. RWBY often feels more like a video game world than anything else, which I believe @why-i-hate-rwby-now has pointed out, so credit to them for helping me realize it. There’s one large location per continent and a couple small villages where they only really talk to a town leader and village blacksmith, or encounter a fight, relevant NPCs and characters only going to certain locations that can further the plot, characters only mattering through the ways they interact with the protagonists and seemingly getting benched with nothing to do if they aren’t currently plot relevant, health bars that can be monitored over scrolls, every weapon and semblance has a name even if that name isn’t ever mentioned in show or might not really make a lot of sense, frequently encountered enemies of various threat levels who the characters can plow down without remorse because they’re not sentient or don’t have souls... The list goes on. But one of the ways that it feels very video gamey is that the magical powers actually don’t seem to impact the world.

We know people can have auras even if they don’t have semblances (Mercury, Torchwick, Watts,) and we know lots of even grown people don’t have auras (the citizens of Mantle in danger of dying of cold while our aura having mains aren’t,) but also that auras can be unlocked, by well trained seventeen year olds (Pyrrha,) and we also know that semblances can be unlocked from a very young age due to trauma (Ren, Neptune in EU) but some people are born with their semblances (Qrow and notably Blake use language suggesting they were born with their semblances,) and some semblances are passed down or hereditary (the Schnees.) Semblances can be passive (Qrow, Clover, Ironwood in word of author,) and uncontrollable, or active (almost everyone else,) and some semblances have carried personal negative effects like in the case of Qrow who was even named for being bad luck and Robyn who said people were on edge with her because she can sus out the truth via skin contact when she wants to. Also Mercury’s father was able to somehow take away his semblance.

That’s... Pretty much the extent of our knowledge and it doesn’t tell us much. What RWBY does is give each character abilities that make them iconic and different from each other as fighters, with a shield function that wears down slowly to explain how they can take certain hits and keep going while also allowing them to eventually suffer higher damage when that shield wears down. They had a character get this shield ability unlocked to explain the existence and function of it, and featured some characters who didn’t have the super powered abilities like Roman, an early enemy meant to herald in new, harder enemies who are more plot relevant, and Mercury, who makes up for it by having higher speed and functions exclusive to him through his prosthetics. And then they seemingly built a regular world unaffected by these powers. It sounds like a video game. Civilians just don’t have this power or the shield because they act as non-playable characters. In a way, it almost makes sense to me in conception, because when RWBY was originally created, it was high on visual appeal, fight choreography, and character design. The plot elements were small and the character stories seemed to be pretty simple, the only real complication to this being the White Fang plot, which has always been a major blight in RWBY. But one of the reasons why this video-game feel kinda worked at the start of RWBY was because the story and characters weren’t meant to be the focus of the story, so although the world building at the start was definitely lacking, the audience knew that things like auras and semblances were meant to hype up and add interest to the main highlights of the show: Design and fight choreography. At least that’s what I assume. But in volume three, they started to lay the groundwork for more, bigger plots, more focus on the story, the characters journeying to the outside world, undergoing personal arcs, and that’s what V4 and onward started focusing on.

To be clear, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I started really liking RWBY for its potential and concepts after getting through the first couple episodes of V1, but I actually really enjoyed quite a bit of V4 and V5 even though the design drastically changed and the fighting had gone way down in quality because I found some of the new focus on characters and the plot to be compelling, interesting, or to also have a lot of potential (though I was let down over and over in regards to pay off later.) However, with the new focus on the characters and storyline rather than design and fight choreography, they really needed to do some legwork on fixing the aura and semblance systems and paying attention to world building and making sure the world felt well put together, nuanced, and real. And I don’t feel like they ever did that.

Why is Pyrrha able to unlock auras? Well, because the writers wanted to explain the concept of auras and used Jaune - the unprepared - to do it. But now, auras are actually an important part of the story - for example, the people of Mantle don’t have unlocked auras, so will die of cold, but it doesn’t affect our heroes because they do have unlocked auras. So who can unlock auras? Is it a learned skill or is it hereditary? If it’s a learned skill, why isn’t everyone eager to learn it especially in places where it’s life or death if they don’t like in Atlas? If it’s a hereditary skill, why aren’t the people who have that skill put on a pedestal and being pressured into using that skill to save civilians in places where having an aura is the difference between life and death? In either case, why aren’t there people who professionally unlock auras? Why aren’t they on the pay roll in Atlas and Mantle? If it’s a skill that all powerful hunters have, why aren’t our heroes (who we’re supposed to think are now more powerful than Atlas’s best) unlocking auras for dying children in Mantle? Why don’t specialists and longtime fighters with Qrow, Winter, Robyn, Maria, or James have this ability if it comes with skill, time, or talent?

Why are semblances unlocking or morphing in times of trauma so rare? Why didn’t the Fall of Beacon unlock loads of new semblances and new semblance abilities? Why didn’t Ruby get a new semblance upgrade when she saw Weiss getting stabbed? Why didn’t Weiss unlock a new semblance ability when her plane was crashing? Why didn’t Pilot Boi unlock his semblance during the same occasion? Why is it that Jaune didn’t get a semblance upgrade when the light bridges were disappearing? Why didn’t Blake get a semblance upgrade when Yang fell into the void? Why did Ren get a semblance upgrade because he was upset while with the Ace Ops after Oscar got captured, but Nora doesn’t get an upgrade while she’s electrocuting herself? If semblances sometimes unlock in times of truama, why is it that some characters like Oscar and Torchwick and Jaune pre-V5 who we know have encountered lots of trauma just still don’t get semblances? If you can train your semblance into upgrading, why is it that we don’t see long time hunters and fighters unlock more semblance abilities, like Qrow, Winter, Robyn, Maria, or James? It just doesn’t make any sense! And I get that stories always have things happening just because the writers want it, but in RWBY, the hand of the creator is so obvious that it’s ridiculous.

And then there are other questions. Do people avoid bad labor practices out of fear of causing a semblance awakening? Well, from what we see of the SDC, the answer is no. So why not? Why weren’t they worried about an uprising? Work rights becomes a lot trickier when you have to add in tons of qualifiers. Maybe it’s illegal to use a semblance at work, but the SDC also has a history of child workers like Adam who can’t always control it (like Neptune couldn’t control his,) so are there laws protecting child laborers? Perhaps not, since you know, they were already child laborers, so were already suffering unchecked. Are there laws forbidding the use of semblances in government buildings, non-combat driven schools, or parks and libraries? And meanwhile, how would any of this apply to people with a passive semblance? How do you figure out that someone has a passive semblance? How do people know if they’re born with a semblance? Are there people that spend their whole lives having semblances that never get discovered? Do people have semblance detection... Semblances, that they get paid to use or do so out of charity? Did the Schnees rise to power due to their powerful and hereditary semblance, perhaps? Are people discriminated against if they don’t have semblances or pressured to become Hunters if they discover they do have semblances? Shouldn’t civilians in Mantle and Atlas be joining combat schools in droves in the hopes of unlocking an aura so they can better survive? And shouldn’t there be discrimination against people with certain semblances? Outside of Robyn saying she’s personally experienced mistrust, and Qrow’s self-hatred, we don’t see any real prejudice against certain semblance types, or for that matter, any praise or extra significance pointed to certain other semblance types. It would go a long ways towards world building if there were things like people having to divulge their semblance or lack thereof before entering Beacon, or for people to have to register a semblance evolution, or for Emerald to have lied about her semblance because “everyone knows illusion semblances automatically draw suspicion,” or for Qrow to comment that he’d never seen Clover in a Vytal Tournament, only for Clover to say his semblance was deemed ‘cheating’ back when he was in school so he hadn’t qualified. And on the flip side, you could have things like semblances being judged as better and more powerful based on how useful it might be, Pyrrha keeping her semblance on the DL because it’ll just bring more unwanted admiration on her, Sun keeping his own semblance on the DL too because it always make people put a lot of expectations on him, while Neptune’s semblance leaks and he deals with people treating him like he’s selfish and cruel for not wanting to use his own “gift of a semblance.” And people like Jaune could be bullied extra because he doesn’t have his semblance yet, and people in the stands at the Vytal Tournament could be chatting about “when are they gonna pull out their semblances?” and get annoyed and pouty when people don’t. To be fair, we do get things like Mercury’s father having declared his semblance a crutch, but... Still. why isn’t there more of this?

And we see the need for Hunter protection in villages like Kuroyuri and the village that Team RNJR stops to help on the way to Mistral. Small villages outside of the four kingdoms fall to Grimm, or are in danger of falling to Grimm. Ships get attacked by large and dangerous Grimm, we see (corrupt) Hunters on the train to Argus, accompanying for safety, and we see that with a rise of Grimm activity in Mantle, Hunters are dispatched to help kids travel to school. In a world like RWBY, fighting is essential for survival outside of the Kingdoms, and became very essential in the kingdoms as well once schools started going down. You’d assume there should be Hunters accompanying everyone traveling outside of the Kingdoms, resident Hunters living in villages outside the Kingdoms as their on-hand protectors (and more than one Hunters seems to be needed.) Hunters also could be extra protection for anything that’s definitely going to increase negativity, like hiring Hunters to bodyguard funerals seems like something that could be normal in the world of Remnant, and for visiting graveyards (we see Ruby get attacked by tons of Grimm when she visited Summer’s grave in the red trailer.) On top of that, celebrities and rich people hiring Hunters seems like it’d become pretty common. But all that we see outside of Dee and Dudley are traveling Hunters stopping to help people out of the goodness of their heart while they go place to place, and Kingdom Hunters who are assigned to things like border control, clearing out Grimm near or in the Kingdoms, and things like that. What we see is a Kingdom-centered morality complex our protagonists are one hundred percent invested in, Hunters are Kingdom driven and anything outside of that is a kindness, a job they can take or leave in passing. And on top of that, it seems like there aren’t a lot of people in the Hunter profession, and I feel like there should definitely be more. There are people like Jaune who didn’t make the cut but accepted that, we can only assume that there are drop outs too, so like... How many kids are there actually in a year at Beacon? I mean, look at where the Relics were found in the forest during initiation at Beacon.

This gives us a rough idea of how many people are in each year at Beacon. Assuming everyone graduates school and there’s no drop outs and no deaths, that’s a graduating class of twenty. That’s a very small number, comparatively. The job of a Hunter is dangerous. We know of Hunters that died (Summer, Pyrrha, Amber.) We know a lot of Hunters that have other jobs that take a lot of their time (Glynda, Ozpin, Robyn,) and lots of people who quit being Hunters too (Maria, Tai, Raven,) and Hunters who aren’t always on the field like Qrow who was a teacher for a stretch and acted as Ozpin’s spy, the Ace Ops who became part of Ironwood’s inner circle and therefore had a bigger picture, and even all of Team RWBYJNR, who got their Hunter licenses but are also more concerned with bigger picture stuff (if you don’t believe me just look at volume eight where JRY stopped defending Mantle to go rescue Oscar, and Team RWBN + Penny, who were involved in big picture stuff like launching Amity and then saving Penny the Maiden/their friend.) So out of a class of twenty, how many of them are even staying on the field? For a show pushing the narrative that Hunters are the ultimate saviors who are the only true good defense for the world, that condemns even the notion of an army... Like they villainized sending Team FNKI onto the battlefield while also treating it like proof of Ironwood’s evil when he didn’t want to stay and fight when Team RWBY said to, and also made Ironwood’s desire to move into having a robotic army to get soldiers off of the battlefield part of his... Over reliance on machinery, which is full on suspicious considering their ableism towards Ironwood and the fact that he literally has to rely on machinery, but that’s a topic for a different post and this one is already so long. But yeah, my point is that we’re meant to see the army as bad. So if we’re meant to see Hunters as the only true and pure form of defense (which is already off because we know it’s corrupted,) there ought to be way more people in the Hunter field.

As for the schools, we only know of a couple of schools that exist outside of RWBY as combat schools that seem to act as basic training before people go to Beacon. We know of Signal, the school Ruby and Yang went to that Qrow was a teacher at for awhile (I have lots of teacher Qrow headcanons, but sadly Qrow being a teacher wasn’t very well explored,) and we also know of Sanctum in Mistral and (in the EU) Oscuro in Vacuo, presumably one of these existing in Atlas as well. I personally headcanon that there are a lot of these smaller combat schools littering the whole of Remnant (but then again, I also headcanon that the Kingdoms of Remnant are bigger than just one very large city, lol) and that a lot of people attend these schools even if they don’t go on to join one of the Hunter Academies, but this isn’t necessarily supported by canon, I think. But as for other schools...I think it’s fair to assume that there are at least elementary schools, since everyone can read, write, and presumably do basic math, and what we do know is that Ilia went to a prep school in Atlas (which was info dropped in Blake’s pre-V5 trailer, not even stated in the show proper,) so we can probably safely say that people who don’t go to the Huntsman academies go to some form of high school, but you’re right that we don’t see this actually in action. I personally always headcanon that Whitley had a tutor, since Jacques wanted to avoid too much outside influence.

I am so sorry that this response got so away from me and I myself got into so many rabbit holes as well. XD I just have a lot to say about the world building in RWBY (or sometimes lack thereof.) Although I admit that I’m not as into or as good at analyzing as blogs like why-i-hate-rwby-now, but yeah, this is... A very long post. Sorry!

#rwde #anti rwby #rwby bashing #rwby hate #this post includes some #pro ironwood #pro james ironwood #also it's not like I've done a lot of extensive research so please be kind #if I missed something #IW antis please leave me alone

24 notes · View notes

arbitrarygreay · 3 years

Text

I watched all of Killjoys with @mimeparadox! - This being my third time through seasons 1 and 2, I probably enjoyed Dutch-D'avin the most I ever have, really seeing what the show was trying to convey with that relationship. That said, I still do not like the show's attempt to make them do insipid romantic fluff at the end of S4 and S5. They still work best as comrades. - There is no best season of the show. S2=S3=S4 > S1 > S5. S2 is the best the show does with its class conflicts, having discarded the Pretty People Dramz of S1. S3 is the most coherent in its character themes, everything lensed through the tragedy of Dutch and Aneela. S4 does the most payoff for all of the relationships in the show.

- Oh, poor S5. This is the first time I've rewatched it, and I did still have a good time. Basically, S5's weaknesses all have to do with it being the final season. The Prison arc is actually quite fun...so long as it has nothing to do with The Lady. In general, the show is not as good as when it remembers that they have to tie things up and finish off this alien invasion storyline. They're great at the serialized character/relationship elements, less good at the serialized plot parts. - The Prison arc shows that Lovretta could definitely be the showrunner for a classic spy competence porn show a la Nikita. - The Lady is still great as Khlyen's third failure as The Worst Dad to Murderous Teenage Daughter. The reason I love her as a garbage fave, whereas Angel's Connor is a (hah) narrative killjoy, is that The Lady's behavior does not cause the other characters to betray themselves. For the most part, The Lady incites the others to do more competence porn, whereas Connor just incited tedious interpersonal Dramz (with maybe the exception of the return of murderous Fred). - mimeparadox and I have discovered across watching multiple shows that the best character archetype is an ultra-competent slightly neurotic uptight character getting blindsided by their Feelings (bonus points if said Feelings are romantic). We have named this archetype Paris, named after Paris Gellar from Gilmore Girls. The Paris is such a powerful type, especially as a Big Bad, that Killjoys does it twice in a row, with Aneela and The Lady. - Intriguingly, I finally saw what the show was trying to do with a series-long arc for Johnny. - In S1, the seeds are planted for the fact that Johnny wants to do more than survive, he wants to have a stronger emotional anchor than just being with Dutch (he is Dutch's gravity, but the reverse isn't true). In S1, this manifests in his being intrigued by Scarback spirituality. In S2, this manifests in his becoming more invested in Westerley's class politics (with Pawter) than Dutch's more self-centered investigation of the Hullen. And in S5, he decides that being a rootless Killjoy isn't viable in the long term. He doesn't want the warrant to be all. - Of course, the execution gets muddled, because Johnny on the mission Fun Train is entirely too compelling, as are his dynamics with everyone else on the team. Note how S3 and S4 aren't mentioned above, as in those seasons, with the exception of the Hackmod Arc, Johnny is focused on Dutch's war with Aneela and The Lady. The fact that there's no issue with the character dropping his series arc for two seasons shows that this arc isn't really critical to his character at all. - And that's exactly the conclusion that the show itself comes to, with the Oneyer absence tossed aside in the end for a "one for the road" of indefinite length. - Part of this, though, is not a betrayal of the series arc because at the end of the series, Johnny is not still simply a Killjoy, for whom the warrant is all. He's a new Level Six, and so has a purpose to genuinely care about (which also happens to enable his pursuing the other missions he wants on the side, like The Factory). - I got a better sense for Dutch's series long arc, too, which was really interesting, because she is never actually a hero in her own motivation. She is basically selfishly motivated from beginning to end, but just slightly growing the circle of who she considers under her protection. Dutch's driving motivation at the beginning of the series is to flee anything that might impinge on her personal freedom. Then, she decides to fight back instead of flee, which means that she seeks having just enough power to do so. S4 is about how she balks at the responsibility that comes with it, which we discover is rooted in how she's having an identity crisis about her biological family. In S5, she comes to a more stable place in her identity and how much responsibility she's willing to take on to defend her home, but grapples with some of the remaining things impinging on her emotional freedom (the loss of the certainty of Johnny, and then cycle of Khlyen's abuse). - Which is to say, it's pretty cool that we get to have a science fiction where where the central protagonist gets to be basically a shameless charismatic hedonist. She's all but said that she's basically outsourced her morality to the rest of her team. This is a rare character complexity for any genre show protagonist, much less a lady. And it makes the writing extra impressive for setting up the plot and world so that such a protagonist gets guided into doing heroic actions entirely on following a selfish priority through the incentive gradients. - This is all really only possible because Turin is a good boss, though. If she had a RAC supervisor who played power politics with her, she'd be toast (and probably quit the RAC to fly away in a heartbeat). Of course, that Turin is a good boss is meant to illustrate how the RAC is a an outfit that takes in misfits, people who are loathe to (and already failed to) play traditional social politics as opposed to mere sportsmanship competition (thing-oriented people over person-oriented people). They have to be the kind of people who could ever believe that the Warrant is all in the first place. - Killjoys never truly grapples with its politics. I stand by my previous stance that this is a good thing, because the very core build of its protagonists prevents that. This show, ah, kind of embraces ACAB as a good thing, nothing of which to mention how Delle Seyah and Aneela becoming allies therefore results in a "yasss genocidal girlboss aristocracy slay" conclusion? ("Colonialism is good if they appoint an emotionally invested immigrant warlord as governor") - Killjoys' broader wonky politics doesn't bother me, because FUN TRAIN! DO NOT STOP THE FUN TRAIN!! Seriously, there were definitely plot holes in this show that never went away, and I did not really care because almost every given moment of the show was delightful. The lore of how Hullen/The Green worked was laughably inconsistent, and I did not really care because the lore was whatever it was at the moment to enable storylines that were really fun. In fact, joking about the inconsistency of the lore therefore became its own pleasure, because it still did not detract from my enjoyment of canon. Altered Carbon shows how the prestige version of Killjoys would have been no fun at all. Down with Prestige TV. Which isn't to say that I've changed my mind on character vs. world-building as source for plots! I remain dedicated to my apathy to Wynonna Earp, which is a show which nominally builds its world/plot to service character, but leaves me cold. What Killjoys has, in contrast, is a rock solid world-building foundation, and then we watch the fireworks of character reacting to the setting and each other, with characters themselves serving as expressions of world-building. This is why Killjoys' writing is weakest when it has to plot for the sake up wrapping up plot and character threads, instead of plot as per how character interactions with the world organically develop. The way this doesn't contradict with the above is that Killjoys firmly declares what parts of the world-building are really important, which is the setup of institutions that determines the power-dynamics between any two given characters. Plot elements that aren't about that can be wishy-washy without therefore making the characters look incompetent. (With the exception of "stick a knife in the necks of all of the Hullen already!" because that's a very tangible action anyone can do, as opposed a squishy genre detail.)

#killjoys #killjoys syfy #syfy killjoys #category: tv #category: craft

38 notes · View notes

anxiouslynumbme · 4 years

Text

Thank you, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Some people don't realize how difficult it is to pull off what AoS had just pulled off. Putting out seven consistently great seasons is not an easy feat. At all. You might like a season more than others or think it’s better; you might have problems with some of them. But in my humble opinion, I don’t think you can objectively claim AoS had a “bad” season. Ever. Yes, even season one. Are they perfect? Uh, no, but that's okay and, you know, normal.

It is so hard to have a good final season, even harder to have a good series finale. And AoS gave us a fantastic last season and finale. Twice.

They gave the fans two satisfying endings. And you can choose one of them; you can carry on that season five was the actual end, or you can believe in the season seven one. That is so incredibly rare, almost unheard of; some TV shows can't even land one finale right.

Nothing is perfect and AoS is no exception, but this show is a masterpiece in its own right and it's definitely one of the best shows ever made. It is iconic. Even with its imperfections and flaws, 'cause the good things heavily and strongly outweigh anything else.

I absolutely loved the finale! Were there things I wanted to see but didn't get? Of course. I wanted a lot of things. But that didn't take away from how much I enjoyed and loved it. That has always been the brilliance of this show, the writing and its execution. They might not give you everything. . .’cause they literally can't. But they always give you the important and vital stuff; and that's as perfect as it can get.

All the character development and incredibly cool, powerful moments; the absolutely beautiful and amazing score! How they tied in everything with how season six ended; it was just pure genius. I could go on for days about all the little and big things I loved; or the things I wish we could've seen and just analyze everything to bits. And I might. Just not now.

'Cause right now, I'm just so overcome with emotions and love for this show that I want nothing but to try and express my gratitude for it.

This show helped me in ways I could never properly convey; it got me through so much, and I'm positive it always will. I love it more than words could ever describe, so it almost feels pointless to try.

Honestly, all I want to do is just say thank you. Thank you so much to the wonderful creators; and all the producers and crew, and anyone who had a hand in making this show possible. To everyone involved, thank you, thank you so much for the beauty that you created; you have no idea how much it means to all of us!

Thank you to the brilliant and insanely talented team of writers. Thank you so much for the friends and family and romance that you have given us through these stories. Thank you for the crazy, creative, clever, and painful story-lines. Thank you for the twists, the heartache, and the joy. To the writers, I'm in awe; I want you to teach me your ways; You are beyond incredible and you deserve way more credit and respect than you get; you’ve built and created this magical world and characters for us, and I'm so thankful for you.

Thank you so much to the best cast. Yet another rare thing to have, I've honestly never seen a chemistry quite like this. None of it felt like acting. The raw, sheer talent, the Oscar-worthy performances we had the privilege to watch. This unbelievably amazing and wonderful cast deserves way more recognition, way more love, and way more respect. These characters wouldn't have meant nearly as much, if it weren't for each cast member bringing them to life on screen. To this wonderful cast, I'm in awe of your talents and abilities; you deserve all the respect and love and awards!

This magnificent show deserves all the love and respect and awards in the world!

Thank you to the incredible AoS fandom. Thank you so much to the amazingly talented and kind people on here. You're all awesome and you made experiencing the show even more fun and special.

And thank you so much to the best characters. Is it weird to thank fictional characters? Nah, it most certainly is not. Because we all know they mean more than that. These complex; brave, loyal, powerful, intelligent, resilient, caring, kind, strong, funny, bad-ass characters; they made this show what it is. They mean so, so much to me. I love them all beyond words. To my favorite characters, thank you for being the best companions, friends, comfort, escape; safe haven.

For being the best family.

Thank you, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., I'll miss you and I love you. Always.

206 notes · View notes

ace-oreos · 3 years

Note

For the prompt ask if you’re still doing it- alpha gets back from being tortured by ventress, Fordo’s there to pick up the pieces, both mentally and physically

I have to admit, I was excited to do this as soon as I read it - putting Alpha in a more uncertain situation like that and seeing how it develops is really fun. It’s also very challenging, which is partly why it’s so fun. @shadow-hyder was a huge help when I was stuck halfway through trying to navigate Alpha in an emotional situation we rarely see him in.

Prompts like this that make me explore new aspects of Alpha’s character are my favorite. 😁 So many thanks to you, anon!

I feel like I should mention that I was listening to Nonstop from Hamilton... well, nonstop right around the halfway point. So there may be a few vague references in there. XP

tw: mentions of blood (nothing graphic)

The barracks block is empty and silent, and Alpha-17 can only be grateful. He’s not ready to face anyone else.

Luckily, Fordo isn’t due back from the Mid Rim for a few weeks yet - Alpha made a point of checking not long after he was discharged from the medbay.

(It still isn’t enough time.)

(The most he can hope for is that he’ll be able to pull himself together long enough to ward off any concern.)

He forces himself to shower, rinses the last of the caked blood from his skin. The water would almost be soothing if it didn’t make the wounds littering his skin sting and burn. Proper medical treatment wouldn’t go amiss, but the idea of admitting to his vulnerability makes his stomach twist and his throat tight.

It’s nothing I can’t handle by myself, he decides, shoving away the doubt that’s already wormed its way into his thoughts.

It’s nothing he can’t handle when he wakes from a fiftful doze some hours later, damp with sweat and breath coming short. It’s nothing he can’t handle when scars that are just beginning to form break open and bleed anew when he pushes a little too hard during a solo training session. It’s nothing he can’t handle when he can’t bring himself to let his guard down long enough to sleep and instead paces the halls at all hours of the night.

At first, the quiet is a relief - time to process his thoughts he wouldn’t be afforded otherwise. But it becomes stifling over time, the silence that both presses in and somehow leaves too much room for him to think at the same time. The stark walls don’t offer shelter so much a reflection he’s not yet willing to see.

He almost misses Fordo, some days. Other days he can only be thankful that Fordo isn’t here, because his brother is the only one who would see that he’s falling apart at the seams.

_______________________

Training becomes an escape, of sorts, and Alpha throws himself into it for hours on end. He can almost convince himself that nothing has changed if it weren’t for the twinge and pull of half-healed wounds that leave thin trails of blood on his skin when he refuses to let up.

(It wasn’t enough last time.)

He suspects Fordo wouldn’t approve, but it’s for the best.

(He won’t make that mistake again.)

(He isn’t any less of a soldier than he was before, and sometimes he even recognizes as much, but then he remembers feeling utterly powerless and he can’t bring himself to stop.)

Alpha can’t shake the feeling that he’s running out of time somehow, so he attacks it the only way he knows how: relentless, single-minded, determined to find the vulnerability at its source and eliminate it.

He doesn’t know what he’s trying to prove, but he does know - all too well - it’ll keep eating away at him until he does something about it.

_______________________________

It doesn’t take long for Alpha to find comfort in his voluntary solitude. Training alone after hours lets him breathe again. It’s… calming, almost; nothing like the uneasy restlessness that overtakes him when he slows down a breath too long.

(You don’t know when to stop, Fordo warned him time and again - but he’ll have to eventually, and he doesn’t know what will happen when he does.)

He’s putting himself back together for the first time in his life, and he thinks it might just work if he were left to his own devices.

But Fordo, being the sort who would give his life for a brother without a second thought, never met a challenge he didn’t like to puzzle out so he could piece it together again his way. It’s only a matter of time before he adds himself to the equation, so Alpha isn’t as surprised as he should be when Fordo arrives unannounced just before reveille.

“I thought you were slugging it out with the CIS in the Mid Rim,” Alpha says slowly, not bothering to hide his bemusement.

Fordo shrugs. It’s not like him to evade the unspoken question, but there’s something his face Alpha can’t quite read. “We took their forward operating base a few days ago. My squad can manage without me.”

“Fordo…”

“We’re winding down anyways,” Fordo dismisses. “This wasn’t much of a haul as far as those things go.”

Never one to dance around an issue, Alpha asks pointedly, “So what are you doing here?”

Fordo’s silence is enough of an answer. The carefully neutral expression is gone, and Alpha doesn’t like the look playing across his brother’s face now.

“You shouldn’t - ”

“- have bothered?” Fordo interrupts. “Don’t give me that osik.”

“Your men need you.”

“And my brother doesn’t?”

“I thought you could figure it out for yourself,” Alpha returns.

“I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t,” Fordo counters.

Alpha closes his eyes against the rush of anger that overtakes him. He wouldn’t be half as furious if he didn��t know there was gratitude somewhere beneath it. I don’t need your help. He doesn’t need Fordo’s help, except -

Except he does, and it terrifies him to admit it, and there’s no chance Fordo will be fooled by any sort of front he puts on -

“Udesii, ner vod.” Fordo’s hands are raised, placating. “I know it’s not what you want, but let me worry about you just this once.”

“Because I could jeopardize the mission?” Alpha grinds out.

Something he’s tempted to mistake for hurt flashes across Fordo’s face. “Because I care.”

He doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he doesn’t even try.

___________________________

It’s a mark of how remarkably Fordo knows him that he isn’t put off when Alpha spurns his attempts to help. He navigates Alpha’s temper with steady patience Alpha has never seen before and responds with diplomacy to rival Kenobi’s. If he’s frustrated, he hides it well.

A few days and Alpha doesn’t bother taking out his residual anger on his brother. It’s not really directed at him, anyways - he just happens to be a convenient target for the deep-seated disquiet that’s been threatening to overwhelm Alpha for weeks now.

Alpha doesn’t resist when Fordo drags him to the mess hall, more for his brother’s peace of mind than his own. It’s still too much of a crowd for his taste, but letting Fordo have his way spares him a great deal of aggravation.

Fordo doesn’t press him for conversation, which suits Alpha fine. Bad enough that there’s been plenty of time for rumors and speculation to circulate the ranks; the last thing he wants is to recount everything that happened after Jabiim. Some days Fordo relays his squad’s latest doings, and Alpha can’t help but smile despite himself.

It’s early enough that the mess hall is nearly empty aside from a handful of pilots just returned from a simulation. Alpha is forced to admit, however grudgingly, that Fordo might’ve been on to something, insisting that they come so early.

“You should eat,” Fordo adds halfway through what’s shaping up to be a long-winded account of a recent misadventure on the other side of the galaxy.

Alpha shrugs noncommittally in response. “‘M not that hungry.”

Fordo looks skeptical. “How long are you going to keep this up?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Alpha mutters, studying the table so he doesn’t have to meet his brother’s eyes.

“You’re impossible,” Fordo says under his breath with an eye roll to match. He shoves his own plate towards Alpha. “Go on.”

Alpha swallows a few mouthfuls without complaint. As is his standard now, it’s for Fordo’s sake more than his own. No doubt Fordo knows exactly what he’s doing, but his brother doesn’t question it.

__________________________

Fordo joins him to train now. He follows Alpha’s lead and goes about it in grim silence, but there’s something companionable about it nonetheless.

Alpha soon takes to challenging Fordo over the training droids. An organic opponent is more complex; another Alpha ARC means it’ll be a good fight. Fordo doesn’t hold back by any means, but he’s mindful that Alpha isn’t quite back to top form yet.

It would be a lot easier if he didn’t feel every pull and strain when he and Fordo are locked body-to-body or when he’s slammed to the floor because he couldn’t dodge his brother’s attack in time. Afterwards he’s careful to hide the new scars that have opened again, dressing the wounds when Fordo is out of sight.

He’s cursing at a length of bandages that he can’t quite secure one-handed when the door slides open. Bracing himself for the lecture, Alpha lifts his chin.

Fordo, to his credit, takes it in stride. “Let me give you a hand with that.”

Alpha fights the urge to pull away when Fordo touches his arm. He’s careful, gentle, but Alpha’s skin burns with the contact. Thankfully, Fordo knows what he’s doing and doesn’t take longer than he needs to; Alpha’s hands are shaking by the time his brother sits back.

“It’s okay, ner vod,” Fordo says softly.

It isn’t yet, but Fordo is here with him, and Fordo is hurting with him too. Alpha can’t express it, but he nods anyways, and he sees in his brother’s eyes that he understands.

__________________________

Fordo is unusually quiet, even for 0500 and barely six hours of sleep. Alpha still prefers to conduct their meals in near silence, but he’s become accustomed to Fordo’s idle chatter. Their corner of the mess feels odd without it.

Just as he’s readying himself to speak, Fordo draws a deep breath and says, “I got new op orders last night.”

“It was bound to happen,” Alpha answers like it doesn’t cut far deeper than he expected.

“Given the chance I would’ve sent this one on,” Fordo continues slowly, “but I’ve got a squad waiting for me.”

And we don’t have forever.

“Don’t worry about it,” Alpha assures. “I get it.”

A look of relief crosses his brother’s face like he had something to feel guilty about in the first place. “Vor entye, ner vod.”

Alpha allows himself a smile. “Someone has to keep your di’kute in line.”

Fordo laughs at that. “You’re telling me.” Then his face becomes pensive. “What about you?”

“I’m lucky to have made it this far without Kenobi asking when I’ve got time to help him win over another unsuspecting Senator. I’m sure I’ll have a new assignment soon enough.”

Fordo turns his fork over in his fingers. “We could always use another soldier.”

It’s not an offer he extends lightly, Alpha knows. He’s tempted to take him up on it, but…

“I appreciate it. Really, I do.” He hesitates as he mulls over how to phrase it. “But I have things sorted out now. And…”

Fordo smiles. There’s an edge of regret to it, but it’s genuine. “Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

“I will,” Alpha promises.

Fordo’s gone by the next morning. They don’t waste time on goodbyes; neither of them put much stock by promises that can’t be kept.

After so many days of his brother’s quiet company, his quarters are strangely empty. The silence isn’t the refuge it was, but it’s not hostile, either, like it’s still holding on to some part of his brother’s presence. It’s still comforting in its own right, but not in the way he’d imagined.

It’ll be back to the front soon enough. He can only guess what the war will throw at him next, but if he’s lucky, it won’t be long before he sees Fordo again. He hasn’t properly thanked his brother yet, and he’s curious to see if his brother’s squad lives up to their reputation. It’ll certainly be interesting, Alpha thinks.

Vode an.

#alpha-17 #alpha 17 #captain fordo #the clone wars #star wars #fanfic prompt #thanks for the prompt!#i had so much fun with this one #my askbox is open!

35 notes · View notes