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beelzeballing · 5 months

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actually i dont think ive posted my thoughts on ofmd s2 overall here yet have i?

ok here goes: i think it had incredibly high highs, and at some parts i genuinely enjoyed it more than i did the first season, episode 6 being peak imo. however, it had equally abysmal lows with some glaring writing-, tone- and pacing issues that all came to a head in the finale.

i once read someone say that, if you ever feel like a finale ruined the whole story, maybe you should take another look at the story. there were most likely cracks and problems all along, and the finale did nothing besides dashing the hope that these would perhaps be addressed later. very rarely do genuinely well written stories go completely off the rails in the finale and ruin the whole thing.

i think this is applicable here in some ways, SPECIFICALLY in regards to edward. good god edward was a MESS this season, and it's so sad because i loved the starting point! the kraken era was absolutely terrifying and iconic as FUCK but... they shouldn't have leaned so hard into the drama and trauma of it all. don't get me wrong, i loved that it did. it's one of my favorite parts of the season and i'm so glad we got it. but if they wanted this arc to work with the overarching plot as they wrote it, they would've had to lighten up the tone here CONSIDERABLY. had they played the kraken era for comedy then sure! edward's bad youtuber apology would've been funny. his fast redemption would've been less jarring. the lack of consequences less disturbing. but as it stands in the show, this arc is too dark to function with the later episodes.

i feel like they wanted to have their cake and eat it too here. they wanted the gritty drama of ed coming off the hinges entirely but also didn't want to deal with the aftermath of such a heavy arc in their silly pirate romcom. be that due to time constraints and budget cuts or because they were simply unwilling to, doesn't really matter in the end. the result is the same either way: a very tonally messy season with some accidentally troubling implications regarding abuse.

and mentioning troubling implications regarding abuse; izzy. my poor, poor izzy... his arc was absolutely glorious. i liked izzy the second he showed up in s1 and i was absolutely EATING this season up in that regard. and i think in this case, they genuinely did fuck it all up in the finale with that one stupid choice:

choosing to kill izzy was the DUMBEST thing they couldve done here.

ive talked about this over and over and over again. ive reblogged so many meta posts. and still i am left absolutely flabbergasted by how stupid of a decision this was. the fridging, playing at the fallen woman trope, killing the beating heart of the season and the character who delivers what is essentially a thesis statement, killing off the character whose arc is about coming to terms with his disability, having him die in edward's arms, comforting him and apologizing after an entire season of finding community and love outside of edward, the absolutely godawful pacing of it all, the extremely easy and obvious solution of just having IZZY become the new captain of the revenge to mirror s1 and hammer home how much he has developed since then in one go... i could go on. and i have. it was a stupid writing decision, completely fucked the tone and pacing of the finale and took away attention and time from things that really would've deserved a better wrap up (lucius and black pete deserved better)

now. the whole prince ricky & zheng plot line... yeah that shit sucked ass, sorry. they bit off more than they could chew here. i honestly think those are the arc words of this season:

✨️ bit off more than they could chew ✨️

right off the bat: i think he was good as a concept. bringing in a foil for stede who just doesn't Get It as stede does could've made for very good comedy and drama (and to be fair there is some of that). but that shit got away from them extremely quickly. nothing about how he's implemented past his first episode works, and i think this is very specifically because he's mostly played as the comic relief in his debut episode. making this completely bumbling fool, who gets his nose hacked off on his first job, the main villain of your entire season is... definitely a choice. idk. he didn't work for me at all.

ok wow mentioning shit getting away from the writers. this definitely got away from me. this was supposed to be a short lil post. well. i guess tl;dr i loved this season but jesus christ there was a lot wrong with it. if you want to hear more thoughts. ask box is open. be my guest. i have more to say so even if you dont ask i might add more to this at some point but im tired and have work tmrw.

#i was going to do shit today and now look at me.#0:18 at night #laying in bed #writing this shit #i havent even eaten.#christtttt #moogsin'#ofmd #izzy hands #our flag means death #ofmd meta #ofmd critical #ofmd s2 #ofmd spoilers #the izcourse #im not tagging any of the other characters cuz i shittalk all of them 😭#listen i love edward hes my babygirl but this season did him DIRTY.

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mecachrome · 15 days

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omg k i just saw ur top 3 landoscar moments post from october 2023... any changes/updates since then? new moments made it onto the list? or if not... favorite moment of 2024 so far? (i just like hearing (reading?) ur thoughts it's like reading an intellectual (but still sappy in my fave way) bedtime story 🥰)

hklsdfhlsfhd naurrr... this is so embarrassing why am i still deeply landoscarpilled 6 months later 😔

but honestly i have been thinking about this and the sheer volume of crasyinsane material and lore we've accrued since last year because now i'm like how would you even begin constructing a top 3....... the possibilities are endless!!!

in terms of pre-october content that i might have missed before, i'd say most of this ask still holds (lando's biggest fan dot mp4 will NEVER lose its insanity to me. quintessential landoscar meta as far as i'm concerned) but now i also desperately need 2 shout out portrait painting challenge...... when it came out i was of course susceptible to the "you look beautiful" bantz though mostly just wrote it off as shipbait and since then i've looked back on this video multiple times and been like ?! why was oscar's deference to lando so insane actually.... i've alr mentioned this b4 but 1) oscar taking lando's intro in stride and immediately responding i am ready lando norris 2) oscar playfully acquiescing and letting lando use purple after he'd already chosen it 3) >like 5 seconds later. "you like purple don't you?" "uhhhh... i can do now" (who says that.) 4) another stunning display of lando Nooticing and fixating on oscar's hair swoop and last but not least 5) the way oscar FOLDS OVER and giggles helplessly when lando tells him i've just done you all pink ??? like. OKAY. cheers

looking @ recent content..... personally i find 814 so fascinating because while there are many Discrete Moments i can point out that make my brain explode i also feel like to some degree the reason we (? or maybe just me. again i apologize for the nonsensical drivel i create) love to make parallel gifsets of them is because they have such an understated dynamic built off many minute unspoken habits and wordless exchanges and essentially Patterns so there is less of like... a need for spontaneous intimacy.... if that makes sense. it's about the consistency of reciprocal comfort... iterations..... palisades palisades......... ok this is totally not related to the ask i've just been rotating it in my mind

anyway 10 personable favs !!! arranged chronologically

finish the lyrics (oct 2023): a deeply obvious one but you can't Not include it 😩 i can't believe this came out a week after i answered that because seriously what da hell. @ OSCAR PIASTRI WHAT IS WRONG WITH YEWWWWWWWW. there are sooooo many things i could mention here that i feel have already been exhaustively expounded, the most obvious of course being the classic ojp Heart Eyes moment(s) (Many such cases......but also specifically the love story one) (like i'd argue silverstone was mostly responsible for getting 814 off the ground BUT this video was when their dynamic became the most "mainstream" and accessible to fandom as a whole... the amount of non-f1 fans i saw qrting reups of that clip!!!!) anyway but then you also get 👉 whatever the inside joke they have about old town road is. oscar saying "i reckon you'd be unreal in a karaoke bar in japan" which i still think is such a Line... just me ??? the way he verryryryyyy softly sings "yes" with lando at the end of their love story karaoke and the insane camera angle of him just out of focus. like. really in general there is just such a soft and lighthearted and Fun air to their dynamic in this video that makes me ;__; AND this is another prime moment of lando narrating oscar's firsts for him (singing on camera at mcl!!!) . ALSAURR lando tapping oscar on the bicep while sarcastically complimenting him. once again for two guys who never touch it compels me... actually i could go on about this video tbh like how oscar nearly falls off the couch giggling at lando playing the songs together and then it cuts to the next one and he's suddenly all flushed and his bangs have gotten all fucked up. he's so... they're so... let's move on.

splunk sim city challenge (nov 2023): many classic lines such as "i haven't even distracted you yet!" + oscar knowing his podium year and lando saying "you're a nerd!" + lando going ":) :o are you okay?" and so on... general setup of this challenge was crasy tbh. how it revolves around disrupting the other person's focus and the visual asymmetry of one being sat higher and having to lean over to distract them and how oscar just giggles goodnaturedly when lando sticks his cue cards in front of his face instead of getting annoyed and—SO ON. also forever obsessed with how oscar wordlessly lifts his eyebrows at lando at the end lol

that one sticker video (nov 2023): this video is insaaAAANEEEE to me. ANYONE ELSE??? first of all oscar and lando gingerly standing across each other on either side of the flower bed (while zak brown assumes a power stance directly on it lmfao) is already so visually overwhelming but then the way oscar glances up as he's removing the sticker from the cap, how you can seeeeee him calculating the move the entire time and being adorably pleased about it, @__@ the way lando grins at him afterward... (also crying at zb glancing at them and being equally charmed by their antics) wahhh TT__TT the vibes of this clip... immaculate

oscar thanking lando in their final post-race message (nov 2023): honestly the entire message in general but :__) one of my fav 814 moments OAT is oscar including lando in his thank you speech and lando not really expecting it and being genuinely touched by the gesture. lando is so endearingly fidgety the entire time honestly and the way he perks up a bit and wrings his hands together and playfully smiles at oscar when he mentions him... okayyy. anyway 2 me it's reminiscent of yes/no challenge "am i the funniest teammate you've ever had?" "(shyly) yeahhh... you're up there" (said in the same baby-ish voice as "so... lando?" UGH. UGHHHH) and how lando genuinely gets a bit awkwardly flustered by it like!!! god. wait ALSO i don't have the space for this so i'm throwing in end of season awards MMMM debatable + how gleefully lando threw oscar under the bus and in general just the incredible expression work going on for both of them during this exchange. God [2]

si rapid fire questions (dec 2023): this video was crucial in determining that oscar... well. is obsessed with accommodating and mirroring lando. many things we already knew (aka listening to whatever music lando listens to; insert prema lap "maybe i should move to an english team because the music's better" moment here) but equally important is oscar "stealing" lando's dinner, how lando presses him on the back to the future question until oscar just changes his answer to his, and of course as you know per my blog title NO I'M GOING TO KEEP YOU HAPPY is in my eyes top 5 most insane things oscar piastri has ever said. likeee... lando showing a bit of jokey remorse over enforcing his rules (don't even get me started about lando and game/challenge rules...) but oscar being sooo determined 2 honor his teasing 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 :melting_face: x100!!!

need to split this into two lists because apparently there's a div character limit 😔 continuing on

hilton spa ad (feb 2024): of course this pained me because of This Moment (specifically lando bringing his hand back down when oscar tried to lift it from beneath him 😮‍💨) but that is neither here nor there. obsessed with the salmon at the engineering table anecdote because the most logical explanation for oscar Not doing that anymore is because lando didn't like it... or he just eats different things now but we already know that he's adopted lando's preferred meal b4 so that's equally a lot 2 digest !!! also >the callback to their one million LOOK AT YOU/HIM moments >how they touch shoulders exactly Once when they sit down and then never again despite lando continuously leaning into oscar's space to get to the button... eugh. also just top tier oscar faces + hair 🥰

opening title behind the scenes (mar 2024): thinking about all the hilarious gifsets of this moment that i ate up deliciously 🧡🧡🧡 this was such a significant reminder of how 814 have just gotten like, exceedingly comfortable around each other & have learned 2 communicate via the most inscrutable expressions and noises and gestures that somehow suit Them perfectly x__x although i doubt they will ever really become ~effusive~ with each it's frankly even more devastating that they both help each other care less about maintaining appearances / how they often get so sucked into their interactions (see next bullet point) that everything else kind of just fades away in that instant.... all right ⚠️⚠️⚠️ maybe that's a bit of a stretch but we can pretend for the rpf lens!!! see also my tag spiel in this beautiful tuva gifset.

photo day antics (mar 2024): do you ever just...... what went on in bahrain. honestly. more from this weekend in a second but this video plus the accompanying photo encapsulate their dynamic so perfectly it makes me scream... how 814 are not only so annoyingly focused on each other all the time but also stand SOOO UNNECESSARILY CLOSE while every other teammate pairing is spaced out normally. yuki and checo glancing at them alksfdhdf 😭 truly so ridiculous that the poor photo person tried to get lando's attention and they pretended to comply for two seconds before oscar was lifting his foot to show lando his boot again. also why did it take oscar a million years to step away from lando and put a more appropriate amount of space between them...?! and even then it was barely that much........... (10 paragraphs of speaking later) I prefer really not to speak.

accidental waist grab (mar 2024): this gave me psychic damage so bad i should be lobotomized. we've already spoken about this perhaps erm excessively but why did lando feel the need to stand JUST as close to him if not closer after they broke apart. there was truly no need...... honestly the way this ship will have us looking up driver cams and staring at esteban ocon's ass as he gets out his car just for a single glimpse of their parc fermé dynamic.

bahrain post-race interview antics (mar 2024): You already knowwwww. the sky sports "he follows me everywhere" moment is equally important but the f1tv interview giving us horrifically natural banter (juxtaposing this with their previous interview moments...), lando's dumb faux australian accent and oscar playing along as always, and most of all them HIJACKING THE INTERVIEW & commiserating on camera together ❓❗️ lichrally the grid photo all over again. often when i have emotions over an 814 moment i worry that i sound overly He_Only_Got_Two_Eyes.jpeg but truly sometimes two people are just objectively insane. plus land of piastri/lando piastri.....

also runner up is the f1tv interview with lawrence aka lando's cooing noise @ oscar discussing lily (anyone else frame by frame color pick oscar's face to see how badly he flushed... no? just me?) + the beautiful self-aware surfacing of the CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS of their relationship...... !!! love when 2 guys expose and confirm their own sincerity in trying to verbally resist it. hem

is this anything. sorry eve LKSFDHLDHSF thank u for the ask & pls lmk what ur fav moments are too 🧡

#ask #i need to stop answering asks like this. sorry

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trutrustories · 6 months

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STUDY IN LOKI ROMANCE Part 1: Ouroboros

Since we're only a few days away from the last episode, I decided to COUNT DOWN everything we´ve got so far ( that can be interpreted very easily as romantic ) and discuss what the actual fuck is going on with second season. Because even though I shipped lokius practically from S1E2, I absolutely did NOT expect this kind of development. (Not that I´m complaining) Warning: This is gonna be LONG post, lots of screenshots, lots of SPOILERS, lot of "oh-my-god-they-so-cute" language, and little bit of meta. I originally thought that this post would be everything at once, but since I have just too many screenshots this time around, I´ll have to split it. so every post will be one episode. Color coding means:

IIIIIIIIII = anything, that coud potentialy be just acting choice.

IIIIIIIIII = everything else (tzn.: whatever was written, and/or carefully prepared by filmmakers. )

side note: I already wrote, about how amazing it is, that Mobius is unable to fight but fights anyway and how beautifuly, and ridiculously brave he is HERE. But this is about Loki/Mobius interactions, so I´ll try my best not to talk about THAT. (Even when I´m really happy, that s2 continues with this formula and Mobius is still his completely defenseless while aggressively brave self. I love him, btw.)

Soooo EPISODE 1, le´t go: 1)"Mobius It´s me!" few second in and we have slowmo chasing scene with detail on Loki, and Mobius and then THIS Loki´s heartbreaking look on his face here.

2) "Tell me, you recognize me!" (Loki trying to desperetly find Mobius, and then running towards him) Also If this Time slipping didn´t triggered anything external, but It´s just his own, unlocked power - I honestly don´t know, how they will explain that - does that mean, that he unknowingly unlocked this power, because he was send by Silvie into the past, and then he was simply desperete and Mobius couldn´t recognized him so his body reacted by time slipping to place and time, where Mobius would know who he is???

3) this very unexpected exhibition of touches (meaning Mobius practicaly glueing himself to Loki for this entire section)

I´m sorry, but my man here is like "no, I´m not about to let you have a personal space. NOT. AN. OPTION. let me hold you some more" xD

4) This scene in in an elevator first of all, that was a second time, he slipped and was RIGHT back with Mobius, the very next second. secondly: Mobius being scared for Loki and insisting he needs immediate help thirdly: Loki reassuring Mobius, It´s not that bad.

also this "we just had sex in a cabin" shot:

and lastly...

Big thanks to the film crew for this shot to give us an idea just HOW MUCH OF AN UNUSED SPACE was in the elevator! 👌

5) Mobius and Loki talking to OB. being perfectly coordinated team and smoothly working together, while standing on a same spot, but in a completely different time.

poetry... just poetry!

6) Distressed God and his Happy Face just so we know: how long is it, since their reunion? Because I would swear that not even five minutes ago Loki was in state of complete panic, and look at him now:

Look at him smiling, enjoying view at struggling mobius 💚

few minutes with this man, and HE forgets all about his trauma and just vibing.

me too, Loki. Me too 🥲

btw, this thing over here?!!!!

7) bickering, like married couple, part 1

8) "Mobius if I don´t make it back" and "You´ll make it back". What was it, what where you about to say Loki? It sounded important! next time TALK FASTER!

9) Mobius risking his life SKIN for loki and refusing to give up on him.

10) Loki saves Mobius in an epic fashion and they end up in a hug: also they roll around the floor together

I mean... this whole scene was absolute TOP! So yeah. That was a first episode. before the premiere I was litteraly hoping, that I will see our Loki and our Mobius together at least ONCE, before first end credits. I actually couldn´t believe my own eyes, holy shit!

#loki spoiler #loki season 2 #lokius #loki #mobius #mobius m mobius #loki and mobius #s02e01 #ouroboros

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pikahlua · 1 year

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Winner Stage-Left, or: Did you know any MHA character’s position in the frame is a spoiler?

(Subtitle: Who’s gonna stop me from converting other old Discord conversations into meta? You? YOU? Doubtful.)

Honestly it’s just embarrassing that I haven’t made this post yet.

I’ve talked before about horizontal and vertical design on the faces of MHA characters, but there’s another visual trick that’s ever-so-present in MHA--nay, in all of shounen manga and anime--that deserves at least a cursory discussion. Ever since I was a wee tyke, I noticed an odd tendency in anime to always place the winner of a fight (or...children’s card game) on the right of the screen. I never thought anything of it for a long time, but a few years ago a friend mentioned something about it to me in passing. This friend was very unfamiliar with anime but had somehow heard something about this phenomenon and its potential origins. Naturally, I had to look into it.

The research I did wasn’t as conclusive as I would have liked, but I did discover something about the topic. What I discovered was that in traditional forms of Japanese theater such as kabuki and noh, stage-left is considered a superior position to stage-right. Someone of a superior ranking to the other would stand stage-left. Sometimes this “superiority” would be as simple as social ranking or whatever.

But then you have various anime with confrontation via martial arts or sports or fights where "stage-left" can take on a different meaning.

As we explore this concept as presented in MHA, I would like to start with this back cover of tankoban #33.

For clarity’s sake, note that Izuku is looking towards the right of the page while Katsuki is looking to the left side. Stage-left is determined by looking to the left of an actor when they stand on stage and face the audience (in other words, from the audience’s perspective, stage-left is to the right). Izuku and Katsuki in the above page are facing each other, and so on-screen Izuku would be standing stage-right and Katsuki would be standing stage-left.

But what does it all mean?

(It means Katsuki is the hero in this moment.)

I wrote above that in anime confrontations "stage-left" can take on a new meaning. Specifically, the concept of what "superior ranking" is can be played with. We end up with the story’s hero often being stage-left. Or sometimes this positioning is broadcasting who will be the winner of the match. Go watch an older anime like Dragonball Z or Yugioh and take note of each match-up: who is standing on the left and who is on the right? Then guess who wins the match. The statistics are pretty clear on this: stage-left is most often (if not always) the winner.

But in many of these older anime, the positioning of the characters remains the same for the entire match. That’s not the case with MHA; Horikoshi loves to change up who is standing where throughout a match (or dialogue, if you will), so it’s important to pay attention to what’s happening when positions get swapped around.

With regards to the above image and the events of Deku vs Class 1-A, consider who is positioned where and when. Just think about these images:

Here in chapter 319, Izuku is stage-left. The depiction is supposed to prime us to believe he is stronger than Class 1-A, which technically he is--in a contest of each individual’s strength.

But then if you read chapter 320, you'll find that once the action starts, Class 1-A is almost always standing stage-left of Izuku, specifically when they're trying to talk him down.

The whole ice ramp chase sequence in chapter 321 shows Izuku fleeing towards stage-right while the others are stage-left and chase after him.

And then you have this moment, where Iida passes Izuku just to get more stage-right of him. This is an interesting way to play with the “winner” side of the stage. In order to save Izuku, Iida is elevating him from the self-destructive “Symbol of Peace" back into Izuku Midoriya their classmate. Izuku, their friend and one piece of class 1-A, is meant to be the “hero” they wish to save, not the loner Deku whom Izuku tried to become.

And then we get to think about what this staging means in the apology.

Katsuki stands stage-left, which we’d expect him to do as the forecast "winner." But this is such an interesting take on staging because Katsuki is essentially debasing himself by bowing to Izuku with his apology--but it’s in order to win, in order to get Izuku back, in order to achieve his goal of saving Izuku. It's almost paradoxical, but it's basically broadcasting to us the reading audience whom we should be cheering for: Katsuki.

This isn’t the first time MHA has played with positioning like this. The sports festival is one of my favorite examples. If you look at how the anime depicts the match-ups and who wins each match, the matches can be listed in stage-right vs stage-left format (bold names are the winners):

Midoriya vs Shinsou Todoroki vs Sero Kaminari vs Ibara Iida vs Hatsume Ashido vs Aoyama Yaoyorozu vs Tokoyami Kirishima vs Tetsutetsu (draw) Uraraka vs Bakugou

Tetsutetsu vs Kirishima (arm-wrestle tiebreaker)

Midoriya vs Todoroki Ibara vs Iida Ashido vs Tokoyami Kirishima vs Bakugou

Iida vs Todoroki Tokoyami vs Bakugou

Bakugou vs Todoroki

And if we take a closer look at the anomalous stage-right winners:

Midoriya vs Shinsou ends with Midoriya's victory, but Shinsou is portrayed as the hero we should sympathize with in the end. Thus, he wins the attention of Aizawa and the audience enough to give him a shot at the hero course, which fulfills his original goal in competing.

Todoroki vs Sero ends with Todoroki's victory, but the end is perceived by Midoriya as "sad," and the audience ends up cheering for Sero when it's all over. Todoroki is still a captive of his hatred for his father, and in that sense he is the loser.

Iida vs Hatsume ends with Iida's win on a technicality. Hatsume clearly has control over the entire match and only loses because she wants to, and even then only after she presents all the gadgets she wanted to, which achieves her goal in competing.

Ashido vs Aoyama can be considered an outlier with Ashido's win until we remember Aoyama as the unwitting traitor may have actually wanted to lose? Either that or this fight is meant as a joke to subvert our expectations because of Mineta's call to see Ashido's underwear at the start. Either way, even if Ashido starts on stage-right, she actually swings her way over to stage-left for her surprise victory at the end.

And then we have Bakugou vs Todoroki, which actually becomes Todoroki vs Bakugou as soon as the story makes it clear to us that Torodoki is wavering on whether or not he'll use his fire. Bakugou switches over to stage-left before the end, and the final non-clash keeps him there, even if that's not how he wants things to play out (he certainly would have a hard time considering himself the “winner.”)

Another one worth rewatching while keeping this positioning phenomenon in mind is absolutely “Deku vs Kacchan, Part 2.” Holy shit, they swap places so damn often, and it's always about what they're saying or doing in the moment.

What’s wild is how in the manga, this sequence is played with Katsuki stage-right...

...but in the anime he’s played as stage-left.

And just think about how that affects the portrayal. In the manga version, is Katsuki being portrayed as a victim who needs saving by hero (stage-left) Izuku? Is Katsuki’s despair the trial for the hero to overcome? In the anime version, is Katsuki’s anxiety meant to be relatable and sympathetic for the audience? Is Izuku’s ignorance of Katsuki’s true feelings the obstacle for hero (stage-left) Katsuki to overcome?

Stage-left is even played with when the boys are airing their grievances! Whoever is speaking gets to occupy the hero spot:

And of course there’s my favorite example from this face-off: the ending where stage-right Katsuki, refusing to lose, grabs Izuku's sleeve and forcefully switches them around to pin Izuku from stage-left.

We have a winner!

These examples, of course, are not the entire list. Read the chapters or watch the episode and count how many times they swap places. It puts that whole sequence in the anime where the camera swoops around the boys as they clash in the sky into a whole new perspective (like the story-boarders just gave up on all the position swaps and pulled out the 3-D graphics in protest.)

So give it a shot next time you read/watch MHA and see if you notice these positions. I obviously pay the most attention to the ones with Izuku and Katsuki (their stage positions get played around with a lot). Consider the first anime opening when they're drawn in one positioning as kids but swap when they hit middle school. And the creek flashback scene? Izuku offers his hand to Katsuki from stage-left. And in the PLW arc? Izuku vs Tomura in the sky? Izuku starts out stage-left, but they swap when Izuku goes feral and Katsuki starts panicking. Katsuki saves Izuku by traveling from stage-left. In the final panel of chapter 285, we see Katsuki still positioned stage-left as he’s stabbed, which highlights his heroism.

Oh, and here’s the new part I’m adding that wasn’t in the Discord conversation that spawned this meta: Katsuki vs TomurAFO. I just find it so telling wherever Katsuki is positioned.

Chapter 359: Katsuki is portrayed as stage-left.

Chapter 360: Katsuki is forced stage-right by TomurAFO...

...but the heroes pluck Katsuki back into stage-left...

...where he stays.

Chapter 362: Katsuki attacks from stage-left and continues to circle around TomurAFO to stage-left.

Katsuki is depicted as stage-left as he meets All Might’s vestige...

...but as soon as he expresses his desire for an autograph, he unexpectedly moves to stage-right...

...and takes a fatal blow.

Talk about a visual plot twist!

(I also happen to think Tomura’s positioning throughout this arc is very curious, and I will continue to pay attention to it.)

Have fun with the new lens!

#my hero academia manga spoilers #final showdown spoilers #meta #izuku midoriya #katsuki bakugou #tenya iida #shouto todoroki #for reference to potentially use in analyses later #just wanted to give y'all SOMETHING yanno?

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bambi-kinos · 1 month

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@yulia-k-blog

Sorry it took me a while to answer this, I wanted a short break from meta and there's more to write still. John and Yoko's relationship eh.

I think they had a genuine camaraderie and artistic connection. Yoko was doing something interesting when John was bored, frustrated, and angry. I think that her ideas genuinely excited him especially since she was using abstract thinking in her art, as well as focusing on audience participation in a way that John had never thought of before. What I noticed from reading about Yoko's exhibits and props was that she wanted to invoke reactions and emotions in the audience. Like she once constructed a box made out of plywood and stuck it full of pickles or something and the whole deal was that you were supposed to stick your hand in it. Feels creepy and gross but at least you felt something right? That's what she wanted.

Now whether Yoko's art was actually any good is a completely different question. She was not the only or first performance artist to be creating exhibits with the idea of making audience participation as the focal point. She wasn't the only or first abstract thinker to come out of Japan at that point either. John was kind of a dumbass for being so taken with her honestly because by the time November 1966 rolled around, Yoko wasn't doing anything new or even interesting. John met her at Indica because other performance artists setting up their crappy little exhibits there. Yoko's whole thing was that she came to the UK because she deduced that the British were more willing to put up with her half baked ideas. She couldn't get traction in the United States specifically because artists from France and Germany and other Western European nations had moved to New York City to GTFO out of their wartorn nations and find their fortunes overseas. So it wasn't just that Yoko was behind the curve and trying to play catch up, it's that the sophisticated international globetrotters in New York City spent a lot of time putting her in her place with regards to her art hustle lmao.

But anyway. John and Yoko, they had a genuine connection. I think that was real. John couldn't make anyone give a shit about her but hey, he was impressed with her. Can't fake that. I think Yoko had a genuine affection for him too, even if it was more like a Hollywood actress doting on her purse puppy a la Paris Hilton.

The problem is that this was manufactured lmao. Yoko pestered Paul for manuscripts in 1965 or thereabouts (yes it really was that early), he deflected her to John, and she began stalking John at his fucking house to the point he changed the phone number a few times and she sent him tampons, once jumped into his car and demanded a ride while Cynthia was also in it, and other crazy shit like that. Yoko was really, really desperate for his attention but she was also desperate for his money: she wrote up a goddamn contract with her then husband Tony Cox where they agreed to split the proceeds that they got from John Lennon 50/50. I don't know if this was before or after """meeting""" John at Indica in 1966 but Yoko's original plan was to steal everything she could from John and split it with her husband. What a nice lady looking after John's money for him like that, making sure it wouldn't get stolen, huh.

I do wonder sometimes if the Beatles thing got out of Yoko's control and if she was just as much along for the ride as Paul was. But anyway. Again, sorry, about myself, I editorialize.

Yoko wanted a patron and she decided to aim high for a Beatle. John wanted to escape the Beatles and go on a "fuck Paul" spree. They both gave each other that. And I think they both succeeded admirably in what they wanted to do. Yoko got to have her Beatle and she has never been without money ever since. John got to jump on the "fuck Paul" train and he never got off it, regardless of what his true feelings about the matter were.

It was not a phony relationship by any means. I think that John legitimately respected Yoko as an artist. He saw something there that no one else does. It's just that it was always lopsided. Yoko liked having John as her pet and he liked being her pet. It was never a relationship between equals like it was with John and Paul.

And I mean. To John's credit he did not want a relationship between equals. Multiple reports from the Dakota confirm that John actively wanted Yoko to handle everything and he resented the idea that he should take charge of his finances and his diet and his life. When Yoko fired John's lawyers so he would have no legal representation in her impending divorce plans (god that was a quagmire) he did not raise a peep as far as we know. What makes their relationship so baffling is that Yoko did so many awful things to John and the worst he would do in response is use their tarot reader Charlie Swan as a marriage counselor and vent his feelings about his wife before quietly returning to their dynamic.

How do you keep a man like John Lennon? How do you make him stay? Yoko shows us how! Ignore him! Do not speak to him for weeks on end! Insult him and call him names! Give him a limited allowance of money and unlimited drugs! Take over his legal and financial representation and absolutely do not allow him the choice to take it back!

tl;dr Cyn and Paul loved John and he ran from them. Yoko squeezed John for everything he had and he clung to her. That is their relationship.

#john lennon #yoko ono #paul mccartney #dakota days #my meta #beatles meta

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bestworstcase · 3 months

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hello ive been combing through some of your rwby meta and a thought struck me in regards to this line you wrote when talking about the Maidens:

"the last spring maiden died under circumstances that have left raven emotionally shattered more than a decade later"

ive been thinking a lot about your theory of summer defecting to salem's side, and assuming thats true my thought was: did summer defect during her secret mission with raven and kill the spring maiden, all in front of raven?

raven was presumably close to the maiden based off conversations in v4, and we know that she portaled to Someone in the flashback(?) ruby saw in v9. i thought maybe it could've been qrow but tbh knowing rwby thats seems too easy of an answer, and maybe it couldve been vernal but for some reason I had been thinking vernal came post spring maiden's death.

though if summer DID defect on her own terms, while we dont know the woman and v9's whole thing was that ruby (maybe by extension the audience) had her on this pedestal, outright murdering someone that she once considered "on her side" might seem quite coldhearted for what little we do know. but it may also explain raven's fear of salem and her desire to stay the fuck out of her way, beyond just summer defecting. because if raven was close with summer like it seems like she was in that flashback, either at that point or in past because i'd think the abandoning yang thing would put a damper on good vibes, seeing your friend and teammate turn tail against everything you know and murder a child (?) would be uh, bothersome.

im new to the spinning my own thoughts game but thought i'd take a stab at rambling. cheers!

mumbles in all things must die

yeah i’m as close to 100% certain as it’s possible to be that the person on the other end of that portal was gretchen rainart the last spring maiden; i think the possibility that it might have been qrow on the grounds that we know raven has a link to him is an intentional red herring. (and if it was qrow, it would have had to be a case of raven using him as a fast-travel point without his awareness, a la in V5, because otherwise that would imply he lied through his teeth to ruby when she asked him if he knew anything about summer’s last mission in V7.) (similarly, vernal seems to be around cinder’s age if not younger—she would have been like, ten or eleven at the time.)

based on what summer says in the glimpse (“if i get this right”) and what’s said of the last spring maiden (that she was young and scared), i think the plan was for summer to confront salem alone, with raven and spring at a safe distance on escape duty: kindred link gives raven some way of knowing when her bonds are in danger, so if summer gets into trouble or things go wrong, raven opens a portal with spring there to fireball salem in the face (as cinder did to ruby at haven), hopefully buying enough time for raven to jump through, grab summer, and immediately portal back to spring. neither of them would’ve wanted the spring maiden anywhere near salem, and sending summer in “solo” gives raven’s emergency save the advantage of surprise. yeah?

but what i think happened is summer found salem, and salem—who at the time was not participating in ozpin’s war—intuited that summer wasn’t here under ozpin’s auspices, ergo did not fully trust ozpin and might be open to hearing salem’s side of the story. so instead of fighting back, salem let summer see that she couldn’t be killed and then started talking. and whatever she told summer was convincing enough to make summer want… some sort of proof. something more than the he-said-she-said to tell her who she could trust.

like, oh, say… maybe the relic of knowledge.

conveniently, she’s got raven waiting for her with the spring maiden, who can open the vault to retrieve the lamp.

so she signals raven by whatever means for a portal out, and then either recounts what salem told her honestly or comes up with some lie justifying why they need to get the lamp. (“summer rose, telling lies!” <- hm.)

i don’t buy the common assumption that raven and/or summer used the first question, because a) ozpin never shared jinn’s name with anyone, and b) if summer had learned it somehow prior to joining salem, salem would have already known the “password.”

what seems the most likely to me is that the three of them did sneak into haven academy, opened the vault, and figured out that the lamp had some kind of passphrase. at this point, summer and raven split on what to do. if summer told the truth about what she wanted the lamp for, perhaps she wanted to bring it to salem in exchange for more information and raven thought that was too risky wanted to go confront ozpin instead. if summer lied, maybe implying she needed the lamp to find a counter to some defense salem had against silver eyes, this would have been the moment the truth came out and i’d imagine raven would react badly.

into the mix of this very high-stakes disagreement, add summer’s obvious resentment of raven for leaving and raven’s equally obvious inferiority complex toward summer, and you have the perfect recipe for an emotionally volatile argument to get out of control and come to blows.

and, points at the ozlem girls. points at vernal. i think the spring maiden got caught in the crossfire and was fatally wounded taking a hit meant for raven, and then summer fled and left raven holding the bag. raven either mercy-killed spring to spare her an inevitable but slow and agonizing death, or just couldn’t do anything to save her; the magic passed to her, she sealed the lamp back in the vault, and then ran. i think this was when raven returned to the tribe, because she’d already burned a lot of bridges by leaving her family whereas summer was the ideal, the paragon, the perfect huntress—the good mother—so who the fuck would believe raven if she told them that the spring maiden, her charge, was dead because summer rose betrayed them all for salem and murdered her?

they already blamed raven for tearing team strq apart. if she’d gone back to ozpin with the spring maiden’s blood on her hands, she would have taken the fall for spring’s death—and quite likely summer’s, too, because summer rose was the best of us, the silver-eyed warrior, and what’s easier to believe? that your paragon of virtue and hope joined the enemy, or that the prickly ex-bandit everyone is still mad at for blowing up her relationship with tai and abandoning her daughter is telling an obvious lie to save her own skin?

meanwhile summer also can’t go back home because she did kill the spring maiden and really, catastrophic failed detour to corroborate salem’s story or not, she was salem’s from the minute she chose to listen to what salem had to say.

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elialys · 9 days

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Per your lovely, lovely flawed show tag, I am curious what you think the flaws of Fringe are?

I’m sorry it took me so long to answer, I got distracted!

Fringe definitely had its share of flaws. I won’t even address the ones that can “be excused” by the fact that it was a show made before/early 2010s in terms of representations/inclusions, because you know, it is what it is.

I think my biggest ‘regret’/annoyance has always been the writers’ tendency to…shove traumas under a rug, or to not properly (if at all) talk about the consequences of some events that happened. I get that they had to make the characters go through a lot of drama because that’s the point of stories, especially on TV shows that have over 20 episodes per season, but the characters suffered through some terrible stuff time and time again, and they were just FINE. And it’s not like they didn’t know how to do it!

I’ve always loved the first few episodes of season 2 because they showed recovery. Olivia had a bad car accident, then she had to kill “Charlie”, and it took her time to get better from all of that, not just physically but emotionally, too. And yet, over and over again after that, she goes through horrible things and there’s…almost nothing? Like, I adore Marionette, I think it’s a brilliant episode through & through, but I still can’t believe Olivia went through all the shit she went through Over There (and coming back) and didn’t have some serious PTSD, on top of EVERYTHING ELSE she’d already gone through (aka why I wrote Shivered Bones). Peter too was barely allowed to mention what Walter did to him after he came back at the end of season 2, barely ever allowed to mention what Altlivia did to him either, except in some awkward bits of dialogue (I will discuss Peter’s character a bit more later).

Also, the whole REWRITING THE TIMELINE at the end of season 3?? Biggest cop-out. I mean, I’ve never hid the fact that any kind of ‘amnesia’ plot is honestly one of my LEAST favorite tropes, in anything. From the moment that season started airing and Peter reappeared being a complete stranger, I just disliked that so much on principle. But what will always pain me is how by doing so, the writers completely erased not just Peter but THE FIRST THREE SEASONS.

Like, poof, gone.

(adding a 'keep reading' because this is long 😂)

Conveniently, it erased Baby!Henry in the process, which the writers might have felt would be too much of an issue? Personally I would have loved to see that unfold. I know I’ve discussed this before on this blog, probably more than once, but they could have kept SO MUCH of season 4 the way it was, as far as the Bridge was concerned, could have come up with a brand new Vilain to do all the “NEW UNIVERSE” stuff Bell/Jones tried to do, while our core characters had to deal with the consequences of everything that happened in season 3 (including Peter being a dad, WITHOUT trying to force a stupid ‘love triangle’ down our throats, thank you). It would have made for great, impactful family drama, because who are we kidding. Anyone who loves Fringe typically loves it because it is such an emotional, family drama. So yes, I will forever mourn the universe(s) we had season 1-3, and endlessly daydream about what could have been.

Now let me talk about Peter Bishop, it’s been a hot minute. Peter Bishop, who was hated basically the entire time the show was airing, and still now is strongly disliked by a lot of viewers, and honestly, I can’t blame them? I’ve had over a decade to analyze his character, have spent hundreds of hours writing stories from his POV, explaining his traumas & mistakes, have written giant meta posts about him back in the days to explain his behavior, so I’m not exactly objective, but I’m also very honest about how flawed his character is. Not (just) as a human being, which is normal because humans are flawed. I mean, he’s flawed in the way the writers used him/wrote him.

He’s probably the most inconsistent of all the characters. He’s the character who suffered the most from the ‘let’s make this person act out a certain way to make sure it fits our plot’ syndrome. I will never forgive the writers for how…clueless (for lack of a better word), they wrote Peter in early season 3 during the Switch. Yes, Peter was traumatized as a kid, yes he was in love, yes yes, I know all of that, I’ve written endlessly about it to explain his cluelessness so I know.

Still, Peter should have figured it out. Peter as we saw him in season 1 and 2, especially second half of season 2, would have figured out. He figured out BY HIMSELF that he was from another universe, ‘just’ from his dad and Olivia’s weird behaviors and the fact that he didn’t go ‘POOF’ on that bridge in 2x18. Peter went to another universe, he met Olivia’s alternate. He’d just spent weeks running from his life, trying to accept the fact that he was lied to all of his life. At best, he was suspicious, at worst, he was paranoid (as was mentioned in 2x20 in Northwest Passage). Literally 3 days after he gets to THAT OTHER UNIVERSE, and 3 hours after meeting Olivia’s doppelganger, Olivia ‘I hide from my own emotions’ Dunham comes tell him he belongs with her and smooches him, so he goes home. Yet the writers want me to believe Peter would not have still been reeling from EVERYTHING that just happened in his life, and not be a bit on edge?

Like, ‘damn, the woman I love and have come to know quite well these past 2 years is suddenly SO DIFFERENT? ALMOST LIKE SHE’S ANOTHER PERSON? A BIT LIKE THAT ALTERNATE VERSION OF HER I MET 48H AGO, THAT’S NOT A COINCIDENCE AT ALL’. But nope, Peter just accepts it, EVERY CHARACTER on that side just accepts it, when Lincoln and Charlie keep on looking at our Olivia like “Is this chick for real? WHAT IF THEY SWITCHED THEM?”

I’m forever frustrated. It just doesn’t feel believable to me, never has. It feels like the writers went “we want everyone, and especially Peter, to be clueless the entire time so we can write our drama the way we planned it.” And that’s a shame, honestly, because that whole damn arc is already so good as it is. But it would been even better if Peter HAD figured it out, if he’d kept on pretending for a bit, if HE’D conned Altlivia the way she conned him. Like I mentioned before, Olivia already went through so much trauma during the Switch, they could have found ways to make her miserable upon coming back, without Peter having slept with her alternate for a few weeks—and the knowledge that he didn’t realize what was going on. More daydreaming on my part about what could have been.

I could go on when it comes to the way they wrote Peter honestly. The whole “maybe Peter has feelings for the other Olivia” crap in the second half of s3, and “the universe that will survive depends on which Olivia Peter chooses”, excuse me??? Altlivia basically abused him??? She used him in so many ways, including sexually. She wasn’t even herself, she was pretending, playing him the whole time. HOW IS HE SUPPOSED TO HAVE FEELINGS EXCEPT A LOT OF SELF-LOATHING AND MORE UNRESOLVED TRAUMA?

Anyway, I think you get my vibe and why I’ll forever be sad/mad about this. As a writer & storyteller myself, one of my strengths and favorite aspects of writing is figuring out the characters’ motivations, what drives them, and how it makes them behave. Peter’s character is just…wobbly, during those arcs. He’s inconsistent from plotline to plotline, and it feels off to me. He’s a lot more true and consistent to how I understand him in season 4, but in season 3, he’s a hot mess, meant as a plot device more than anything else, and that makes me sad. Characters are what drive stories and shape the plot, not the other way around. So yeah, I don’t blame people for always having such strong opinions/dislikes where Peter is concerned.

I could come up with more things, but this is already long enough 😂 In case that wasn’t clear, those flaws don’t stop me from having the deepest love for this show. What it did well, it did extremely well, and even all those years later, I still cry rewatching it, because the emotions were real. They're still real.

Plus it gave me Olivia Dunham, so really, it wins just for that.

#fringe #fringe meta #kinda 😂#also called 'ambre is ranting at 13 year old plotlines that made no sense'#meta

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starseneyes · 1 year

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Chenford REWIND - Lucy Chen / Tim Bradford - The Rookie - Season 2 Ep 2

"The Night General" AKA Somebody to Lean On

This one came in as a request, and it's one that I'm really excited to do. It's fun to take a look at post-Quarantine House Tim/Lucy in more detail, especially considering Tim and Lucy's movement in Episode 1 of the season via her standing up to him and his respect of her.

SPOILER ALERT: This episode and everything that came before it are fair game. If you wish to remain un-spoiled, please don't read anymore. I do try to write these as though I'm watching them for the first time without knowledge of the future.

Everyone squared away? Then we're ready to dive in.

"Chief Williams added another book to your Sergeant's Exam Reading List." "Split Second Leadership: Leading Men in the Line of Duty." "Men?" "It's from the 60's. How is this relevant to the 21st century policing?" "Ours is not to reason why, Officer Bradford. Read the book." "Yes sir."

At this point, only Tim knows why this is bad news for him. From the outside, it might look like he is being obstinate or lazy. But Tim is struggling.

My little brother has a learning disability. He's a genius with a learning disability. No, I'm not exaggerating.

My brother can't write or spell. He'll tell you an elaborate story with five-syllable words with perfect grammar, but the minute he tries to write it, it looks like a Kindergartner wrote it.

He had a teacher in college who insisted he was faking it and throwing his papers because he didn't have a written diagnosis from a doctor. He dropped out of school. He never finished.

My point? Learning disabilities can happen to anyone and it's easy to be quick-to-judge. No wonder people don't want to share. No wonder there's so much shame and stigma.

No wonder Tim didn't say anything. No wonder he honestly doesn't know... because, in his family, it would be seen as "less than", "not good enough", a "screw-up".

"If I have to suffer, so do you. So, you're going to read this out loud to me between calls. Only way I'm gonna get it memorized in time." "Or, I could drive and you could read it by yourself."

Admit it, Lucy. You're just looking for an excuse to drive! In all seriousness, it makes sense. But, again, it's easy to assume that Tim's pride in being the one to drive is getting in the way of him "taking this seriously".

"It's hard enough to listen to it without your editorializing."

Okay, I am totally with Tim on this one. Sometimes when we're reading to the kids, Matt will do this, and suddenly 10 minutes of calm reading has turned into 30 minutes of kids bouncing off the walls because they couldn't focus to finish the story straight through.

"You're gonna have to re-read all of this anyway to really memorize it." "No. I memorize best when I hear it." "Really?"

I love this shot. Lucy leaning over the book, tight on her face as she processes the information of how he processes.

My Middle is Autistic/ADHD with an auditory processing disorder and suspected reading processing disorder. Eldest is ADD or ADHD (final diagnosis later this month) and Littlest has her full testing for Autism/ADHD at the beginning of next month. I know a lot about people processing differently.

But as Lucy's wheels are turning, she realizes what might be going on with Tim. But how do you broach a subject like that with TO Era Tim?

Lucy's had fun poking at Tim with the parts of the book she likes (especially the value of every officer), but the whole reason she poked was because of Tim's apparent sense of superiority. Yes, she knows it's a veil, but it's still hard to poke through, at this point.

This is different.

"Why?" "Nothing."

Nothing is never nothing. I think I write this once every other Meta. On this show, nothing is never nothing.

"Boot!" "You might have a learning difference." "What?" "Technically, it's classified as a disability, but it really just means that you're wired to process information differently. In your case, through, through hearing, rather than reading." "I don't have a learning disability."

I remember the conversations with my husband for years.

I told him I suspected he was ADD (my mother, brother, step-father, and step-brother are all ADD/ADHD... the only reason we know I'm not is because my little brother wouldn't take his test without me and Mom taking it, too).

Matthew would shrug it off because he didn't have a "Disorder". But when he was 38, his mother let it slip to me that he was diagnosed at 8... and they never told him. They hid it. They didn't want the stigma.

So, he spent his entire life struggling and not understanding why. He got re-diagnosed at 38, and his first morning on medication, he let me sleep in. I woke to him lying next to me, tears in his eyes.

"The clouds are gone," he breathed into the space between us. And then I was crying, too.

He'd had these clouds his entire life and thought it was just how he was. He didn't know there was help. He didn't know his life could be better. All because his parents hid his diagnosis.

We put so much damn stigma on this stuff that humans are suffering unnecessarily for the sake of societal niceties. And for Tim, there's definitely stigma and shame associated with having a learning disability. It's how he was raised.

"A lot of people have them. I bet Isabel helped you in the Academy, read through the materials and stuff." "We're not talking about this."

Talk about wheels turning... we can see Tim's as he thinks about all the times he and Isabel sat up, her reading to him.

He thought it was the sweetest thing, and it became their thing. I bet she read him other things, too, like fiction books, or autobiographies on his favorite sports figures.

But thinking about Isabel (still a very fresh hurt) and the stigma of having a learning disability is too much for Tim.

Because growing up, any "difference" was called out as a failing. Yes, I know those of you in early S2 don't yet know all of Tim's backstory, so I am reaching forward a little on this one.

But, it's important to understand why Tim reacts so strongly and so swiftly.

Tim ends conversations before he can lose his cool. Losing control could lead him to become the person he hates most in the world, so he does everything to avoid it. But, he's been on edge all year.

Hell, for more than a year. Because ever since Isabel disappeared, he lost that one little piece of his life that made sense.

Then, this ball of sunshine came into his life, blinding him with goodness and light. He tried at first to temper it, but I fully believe that the longer he's in her glow, the more his eyes adjust, and the more he shifts to helping refine her rather than dim that glow.

"Watch your tone, Boot." "Oh, you don't get to call her 'Boot', Rex. You're retired. She's the police, now."

Boom, Baby!! Tim Bradford putting an asshole in his place will always be good television.

"Let's see your bail bonds license and the warrant on your jumper." "You let her talk to you like that?"

Bitch, you don't want to see how I'm gonna talk to you if you don't back off. Tim's not biting on the "camaraderie" angle, here.

As tough as Tim can be, as much of an absolute ass as he can be... he's a stickler for the rules.

"Look, the hole you're in has nothing to do with Lopez. But she's gonna pay the price when the commander's son goes belly-up halfway through training." "I told him it's not her fault." "Yeah, so tell him, again. Lopez bent over backwards for you. She protected your ass when any other TO would've sent you packing. You owe her your career." "I know."

Don't. Mess. With. People. Tim. Loves. Tim and Angela's friendship is one of my favorite relationships on the show. Tim just stood up for Lucy and here he is standing up for Angela.

Now, I'm not saying Tim loves Lucy, yet. We're a long way off from that, if these two get their act together. But, I think it's important to see his consistency.

Tim's Tests might make him seem unpredictable, but there's a reason and a rhythm for everything that he does. And when it comes to his friends—to the people he loves—he's always going to stick out his neck. Even if it means risking himself.

"Do you want me to read to you?" "No." "Come on."

Now that she knows he has a learning disability, she wants to help. Now that he thinks she thinks he has a learning disability, he wants to run.

Lucy is a gentle, kind, loving human. She wants to help. It's her default state. But accepting help goes against everything that was ever beaten into Tim.

It was fine when he was ordering her to read to him. But now that there's a stigma involved, he doesn't want it.

"You have to learn it." "I can do that on my own."

See? And Tim's not trying to be an asshole. He's trying to 'be a man', 'cowboy up', and 'do it on your own'. You know... all the bullshit men are too-often taught from boyhood.

He's shying away from Lucy's help because he's ashamed.

Alright, Future Rachel needs to tell you that Tim Bradford hasn't had an easy life. His childhood was less than ideal. His marriage seemed good until it wasn't.

Seeing the worst in himself is easy, but having others see him as weak in any way? He can't have that. He puts up all this bravado and these thick walls around his heart to protect himself.

Lucy just found another tiny crack in his defenses. And instead of letting her light in to help heal his hurts, he's afraid it will burn.

"Training for the rematch with Nico?"

Tim's blowing off steam. That fight was tougher than expected, and Tim's going to do everything he can to stay in top shape. But, he's also processing.

Lucy processes by talking things out. Tim processes with a punching bag and sweat pouring down his brow. The beautiful thing about people is how different we are, yet we find a way to coexist. We learn to speak one another's languages.

My husband's a BIG gift person. He loves to give and receive. I struggle with physical possessions because of how I grew up.

But I know that small gifts throughout the year help him remember I'm thinking of him (buying his favorite coffee... a latte from the local café). And he knows making me a chai latte at home, or holding me when I'm upset lets me know he's thinking of me.

We love one another. We just don't experience love the same way. Same is true for Tim and Lucy. We're in the phase of them learning how to speak one another's languages. This is crucial if they're ever going to be in a romantic relationship.

Tim greets her almost with a smile as he turns to face her.

"Here." "What's this?" "It is 'Split Second Leadership: Leading Men in the Line of Duty' the Audio book." "The book's out of print. There's no audio book." "Yeah, which is why I recorded one for you."

"Lucy Chen, will you marry me?" I mean, that's what he's supposed to say, right? That's what you would say, right?

Because, let's break this down for a second—she stayed up all night doing this. This morning when she asked him if he wanted her to read to him, she knew what his answer would be.

But then they had this stressful-ass day, and she had to wait for the file to finish rendering, which might've taken all day because audio files with any quality are a beast.

Look, I was a voice over artist for over 20 years. I only left the studio where I was a contract player because I couldn't afford a home studio and now live over an hour from the studio. So, I've done a lot of commercials, on-hold messages, and, yes, books.

The kids especially love my reading of "Elmo Visits the Dentist" that they can listen to on YouTube whenever they want. Why go into all this? I know how long it takes to read a book aloud at a pace that is easy for others to process.

Immediately after learning that her TO needed to listen to learn, she took the damn book home (because she was the one holding it the next morning) and she recorded herself reading it for him.

She likely got no sleep as she set it to render and upload into the device to hand to him while she got ready to leave for work.

I bet she even went home, grabbed the device, then ran back so she could give it to him.

This is a labor of love. No, she's not in-love with Tim. But she cares about him. And this ball of sunshine is radiating in his life more and more.

We are post Quarantine House. We are post Lucy calling Tim on the Isabel stuff she should have reported. We've established that they trust one another.

But this is next level. Six months into her training, and Lucy's already breaking through so many of Tim's walls.

"Uh, listen, I talked to Isabel and from what she said, it's clear you're a kinesthetic learner, which just means you need to listen while you're being active in order to absorb things."

Girlfriend just called up her future husband's ex like a boss. Again, she did this yesterday. Lucy wastes no time when it comes to Tim. Keep that in mind for the future...

"There's no shame in it. Really."

Watch his face. His jaw clench. His body relaxes as he sighs. His eyes soften. Because, all his life any sign of being "different" was weakness. Any sign of being "not good enough" was punishable by pummeling.

Isabel didn't realize he had a learning disability from what we can tell. She just knew that he'd ask her to read to him. My husband and I used to read to one another (pre-kids) and it was a tremendous act of love.

But Lucy put a name to it. And Tim's been spiraling out about it ever since. Because there's a stigma that comes with words like that, tragically.

"Honestly, it's probably why you excel at being a cop."

Tim absorbs her words. She doesn't think he's a freak. She doesn't think he's a project. She doesn't think he's broken. She thinks he's a good cop.

Her view of him hasn't changed because of his learning disability. This is so important.

My Middle has been Autistic his entire life, right? But we only got the official diagnosis when he was 5 because he stopped eating and was rapidly losing weight. A family member actually said "How can I be [related to] an Autistic child?" I said, "You've done a fine job the last 5 years."

Who he is didn't change with his diagnosis. But there are always people who recoil at it because of the stigma associated with it.

Tim was afraid Lucy would think of him differently... but she doesn't. She still sees Tim as the hard-ass, soft-hearted, semi-asshole she has to deal with every day for another six months.

And, strange as it sounds, that's the most reassuring thing Lucy could say to him.

"Thanks."

Lucy ducks her head in a nod as she leaves. It's so sweet. Lucy knows him well enough to understand this is difficult for him. She has a strong understanding of psychology, and a growing understanding of Tim Bradford.

Sticking around won't help him. Letting him get to work will help. She knows him well enough not to hover, and she knows better than to expect compliments from Tim at this phase.

Hell, that "Thanks" was unexpected and I'm surprised she was able to keep moving after she heard it instead of calling it out.

Maybe she just really needs the sleep after all she's done for him. She deserves it!

"Split Second Leadership by Curtis Philbrick, read by the best Rookie you've ever trained."

Tim can't help but smile at that. And it's a real smile. The kind the shows his teeth and reaches his eyes. The kind Lucy won't see, yet.

Lucy offered Tim a piece of herself when she handed over that audio recording. No, it's not romantic. But it is a gift, nonetheless. This was above and beyond anything required of her as a Rookie—she did it as a friend.

And Tim accepted the gift. I don't think we talk enough about this. Lucy sent him food one episode ago and he told her she "shouldn't have". But there's no fighting this gift.

Because the events of 2x01 were a big shift for these two that we don't talk enough about. Lucy making it to the halfway mark and doing well on her exam. Lucy calling Tim on his shit when he tried to distance himself from her by being extra assholery. Lucy going beast-mode chasing that fake cop.

And here we are in 2x02 and Tim who was humbled by Lucy one episode ago is now unintentionally wounded. Because he thinks she sees him as "less than". He thinks her opinion of him somehow lessened because he's been raised to see a "learning disability" as a bad thing.

When Lucy turns it around at the end and says it's his super power, that's powerful. She helped him see himself in a different way. The king of coming at something sideways has met his match. So, what could he say after a gift like that? He wouldn't reject it. He couldn't.

Because Lucy gave him the gift of a shift in perspective. And those readers who are from the future, like me, know he'll repay that gift in a huge way in that same room not too long from now.

They're not in love, yet. But they are on their way to friendship, and learning one another's love languages on the way. So if when they finally arrive at love, it'll be a deep love. It'll be a love that grows. It'll be a love that thrives.

Because true love often takes effort... but it's worth it.

Tim Pays it Forward

Look, Tim takes care of his people. We already know that. But I also like to think that Tim recognized something of himself in Rex thanks to Lucy's kindness.

Rex doesn't like asking for help. Neither does Tim. But if Tim isn't careful, he could end up like Rex.

Now, Rex likely didn't have a Lucy. But, he does have a Tim. And that's damn good, too.

As ever, thank you for reading. This one is one I'm super passionate about with my family history and the children I'm raising.

Now, I'm not going to pretend it's all peachy-keen. It can be really, really tough raising three neurodivergent children, and there are very bad days. But for Tim, his learning disability really can be a super power.

Also, oh, isn't it fun watching Tim and Lucy of Season 2 on their way? So much fun!

Hope your weekend's been lovely! Mine's been so quiet, it's lovely. Currently have three Littles in bed with me as we have a pajama/movie day. It's the little things!

See you on the next!

#Chenford #Lucy Chen #Tim Bradford #Melissa O'Neil #Eric Winter #Lucy x Tim #Tim x Lucy #Meta #The Rookie

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staliaqueen · 1 year

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Do you ship scalia or is it just something that you don’t mind seeing?

I ship scalia in a vacuum. I think it's a sweet dynamic with a lot of potential. Shelley and Tyler do have a lot of chemistry, so I can see why the writers wanted to explore that pairing. They have a very similar awkwardness/cluelessness that feeds into each other well (I think the same can be said about stira, which is a ship I like in a similar way, actually even more because of the tricksters/kitsune angle in their dynamic, and I also think there's some sciles meta in there about how they both got girlfriends that are so similar to the other lol) and I'm happy with how they really utilised that during their scenes in 6B. I've only seen the season once, so I can't even recall what the scene was about, but I remember the scene that sold them the most to me as a couple was that Malia face palm one lol. Where Malia is trying to communicate something but they're both just totally clueless.

This one:

The problem is the circumstances of when this pairing was explored. The messy way stalia broke up, the unfair way Malia's feelings about st/ydia was completely disregarded. Granted, this makes a part of me go "Stiles unfairly dumped you and got with Lydia without asking how you'd feel about it? Fuck yeah you should get with his best friend! Give him a taste of his own medicine! Fair is fair!" but that's more about me being a Malia stan than having to do with any ships lol. When viewing the show as a whole, it's just impossible NOT to compare scalia and stalia, and when you do, scalia so obviously comes in short.

Like, every single argument I can come up with for scalia potentially working better is disproven by what stalia was in canon. Like, "oh maybe Scott could help her with her werecoyote struggles and do it better because as a werewolf he knows what it feels like" but we literally saw Stiles help Malia with that and he did it perfectly! After hammering in for 2 and a half seasons that Stiles is Malia's anchor I can't see anyone buying how Scott could just replace him in that aspect. Also "Scott is so good and anti violence that he could help Malia get over her kill first ask questions never coyote thing in a way Stiles can't because he's very similar to Malia in that regard" doesn't work for me either. We saw throughout their relationship that Stiles and Malia felt the best about their violent tendencies and trust issues with each other because the other one could understand. They could tell each other "You're still a good person" and the other could actually believe it for once. They opened up to each other and told the other aspects of their trauma that they never discussed with anyone else! "But when I came through it, I learned something else... Control is overrated." "I said, 'I wish you were all dead.'"

Then there's the scira of it all too! I'm not gonna go too much into it since I'm mainly a stalia stan lol, but the way Kira was pushed out of the show is honestly so horrible, and the fact that scira was so huge and how Tyler and Arden kept talking about how in love they were AND the fact that the writers said that they didn't actually break up and Scott was gonna wait for her... it's all very frustrating. Add the fact that Shelley is a white woman and Arden isn't and, yeah... it's all very bad.

Plus the way season 6 not only sucked in general, but also how the writing was really bad at actually selling st/ydia and scalia. I really like what @bericas said in the tags of this post: #like on a real level#i just don’t understand what they wrote it like this#like#why would you do this#6a outside of the narrative telling us stydia showed stalia and scydia like crazy#and it’s so weird#if you’re gonna lie to me at least do it well. If they really wanted to make the endgames make sense, they really needed more time to do it. You can’t just decide to completely change your character dynamics for the last season of the show. Don’t know what the writers were on during that decision.

TLDR: I think they’re a nice ship in theory but they just don’t work in canon.

#malia tate #scott mccall #stiles stilinski #stalia #scalia #teen wolf #meta #twmeta #anti stydia #mal answers

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transhawks · 1 year

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My guy, Hawks is unraveling more and more each chapter and I’m just wading in it like a wave pool. Absolutely giddy. I’m not sure how correct this translation is, but someone said he told endeavor to stop dabi “at all cost” and if that’s true, what an absolutely buck wild thing to do. Because the subtext is pretty clear. He’s telling enji to kill his son.

Yep. No, it's very exciting when Hawks gets like this, like all aboard the Hawks-acoaster, murder attempts ahead. I have no idea if this pun works in Japanese, but man, was this dude spot on about creating a world where heroes have time to kill.

(badum-tsch. thank you, I'll be here all night.)

Giddy is really the perfect word for it. Hawks's premonition about cornered people is honestly about himself. He says he feels "Free" in 299, but also tells us that true natures come out when people feel cornered or feel finally free. And like, according to Hawks he's currently the latter, but he's about to be the former.

And that the people around him won't see his true nature until he feels cornered. Or at least the hero side, because Jin did and Dabi learned too late about what sort of person Takami Keigo is.

Between having to face his actions (Twice), his fantasy of heroism breaking in front of his eyes (the Todofam drama), and the immense amount of pressure on him at the moment, this is Keigo's time to break. Hence why I wrote that little meta on his veneer cracking.

So, yeah, after four and a half years of being one of the most complex and confounding and contradictory characters, to the point where my initial statement from my first meta, that Hawks is a character that says one thing, thinks another, and does something else entirely, still applies, we're finally going to see who he is.

And the fact we have Dabi involved, who we all knew would be involved in this from the moment we saw them in 191? Heck, even earlier?

And that's he's repeating himself - he said they need to kill the twice clones (and Toga i guess), and now he's telling Enji to put his son down? Yeah, that's the thing - that's who Hawks is. This is the man who smiled at another man and called him good and a friend and none of that stopped him from killing him.

None of that stopped him from singing his praises after killing him, either. One of the fascinating parts of his whole deal.

I think it's just going to be abundantly clear that Keigo is this ruthless person who just doesn't understand ties of friendship and family as well as other people. He tells us he understood his parents were broken, It was hinted at during the raid when he essentially told Dabi he wasn't reacting right to the death of a friend, but I think it showed that Hawks has a very set idea, almost textbook like, of human behavior and it needing to fulfill certain patterns.

This is, of course, very common in extremely abused children. And children raised in institutions have this issue. I also want to make it clear that Hawks believes he's doing the right thing. Or necessary things for the right reasons. That's a core part of his personality no matter what. He might be extremely ruthless and lacking in what others take to be humanity, but Hawks wants to be a good person. You can't understand him without accepting that he does awful things for what he believes are good reasons and manages to keep "sane" by telling himself that they need to happen or that he has no choice in the matter (removing his own agency to not take accountability).

Hawks is at once both extremely perceptive but also somewhat incapable of understanding some of the nuances of complex relationships. I don't think he truly understands why Jin picked the League over what he was offering him, even if he admires the kind of person Jin is (in a moment of self-awareness knowing that he isn't that sort of person and likely cannot be). And I am very, very sure watching Enji Todoroki reach out to his murderous, villainous, and likely in Keigo's eyes, irredeemable son at the expense of their society (and thus Keigo himself) will be the final straw for him. Because Keigo never got that from his parents. Keigo has done 'good' all his life, and is now shunned by the people (civilians) he's been breaking himself for.

That TV that so captured his attention as a child is about to lose its signal.

I don't think Hawks will able to understand why Enji would want to save someone who doesn't want to be saved. Remember what he told Jin? That when neither side (heroes or villains) don't want to give up, someone has to die? That's what he sees here, and the main issue is that Hawks will absolutely see this as Enji giving up. Endeavor isn't Endeavoring (which means Enji isn't doing the things Hawks likes him for). So, yeah, I think he'll either try to do it himself or snap and harm Enji (which would be a perfect time for Shouto to stop him).

So, yeah, I'm excited. I mean its awful that he's telling Endeavor to kill his son, but man have I waited for the follow breakdown when Enji doesn't do this for years.

#this is just what I'm predicting #I think Hamliet has very good theories on Hawks attacking Dabi #and I'm very eager to see them happen #hawks #asks #i know my view on him is very cynical but damn I've gotten a lot right about his manipulation and ruthlessness #I have a good gut instinct he's about to snap

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coldflasher · 1 year

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for the wip ask game. 7 and 11 and 17 x

7. do you outline before writing? if so, what’s your outlining process like?

i have honestly got out of the habit of outlining which is very bad, this is why i keep struggling and getting stuck because i am someone who NEEDS an outline, but instead i've been just coming up with random scenes on the fly which works fine until i run out and then i end up sitting there like the fish in bags from finding nemo like 'now what, genius'

but my outlining process is basically just 'sit down and brainstorm, stare at various different beat sheets and story methods and try not to go insane'

also i have to outline by hand, that is very important. don't know why but it all has to be hand written.

11. are there some wips that you just don’t think you’ll ever finish?

much as i hate to admit it, and prefer to live in denial land where i'm convinced that every wip will one day get the ending it deserves, there are plenty of them that will more than likely never see the light of day 😭 the most notable one that comes to mind is that at one point i was planning to do another sequel to aftermath, that giant 500k s1 rewrite i did where barry and len were dating from before barry even became the flash. i have maybe 20-30k of a direct sequel to that that's basically a mashup of s5 and s6, where barry vanishes in crisis and then in a moment of desperation and poor decision making, len sends their adopted son back to try and prevent crisis from ever happening, only for them to discover that him travelling back is what causes crisis in the first place.

i genuinely LOVE that fic and what i wrote for it, but i feel like i've kind of moved on from those versions of the characters and grown so much as a writer and there are just so many things i don't like about the original fic that spawned it that i just. don't see myself ever finishing it, unfortunately. i feel like aftermath is a very stark contrast in my writing journey bc it was basically the last thing i wrote before doing my writing degree so there's such a huge difference in how i wrote and the whole vibe of it. i'll always be fond of aftermath but also im moderately embarrassed by it as well, so yeah. but maybe i will post snippets one day or something, because i genuinely LOVED the dynamic i wrote between michael and len, it was so fucking fun.

also i once wrote a fic where coldflash get whammied by a meta and, under the effects of what is essentially a metahuman love spell, decide to literally run off to vegas and get married and team flash have to hunt them down and try to stop it. this one feels like a crime because i have like 90% of it written so i would just have to finish and then edit it BUT i wrote it so long ago (we're talking like 2017) that to get it to a state i'd be happy with, i'd probably have to rewrite it in its entirety, so. never say never though cos now i'm thinking about it...

17. what do you do to motivate yourself to write?

i honestly have been struggling with this forever BUT im doing camp nanowrimo right now and it's actually been so motivating. i'm fighting for my life here bc i lost the last three nano events i did, capping out at like 35k each, after a previously unbroken streak of almost a decade, but this time i was like COME HELL OR HIGH WATER I REFUSE TO FAIL THIS TIME. i'm like 3k behind, but it's fine, probably... rocks back and forth in a dark room

thank youu!

#answered

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essskel · 1 year

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Hi! If you don't mind me hop on the train of asks that's been going on - I want to ask one thing.

You say: 'it doesn't matter if Roche is racist or not. It doesn't really solve the politics of the factional warfare', but how exactly it doesn't? Is it not important, if the extermination of elves is not motivated by racism, and how it can furthermore make him realize how evil his job was pre-tw3 and change for the better?

From what I've seen in your Ves meta, you seem to be putting more weight and value on her, in regards of her motivations, than you do with Roche. Which seems to me like motivation does matter to you. I just don't understand how it can't be the case with him.

They're both pretty much do the same job, and they're a part of the racist military, but both of them are not motivated by racial bigotry.

And if you're going to make an argument 'but Ves didn't choose her job and doesn't take pleasure working under him', keep in mind that if Roche did offer Ves to serve in the military, the decision to stay was decided herself:

Ves: I'm a soldier because I do it well.

Geralt: Ever dreamed of a different life?

Ves: Finch, our marksman, once tried farming. But he just didn't have the hands for it.

Bet he'd get me right between the eyes from eighty paces off.

Ves: A hundred. I've tried cooking, darning, smiling like a doll, serving beer in a tavern. None of my things.

Her not being racist doesn't resolve the conflict she's been part of, but it can essentially make her reconsider her actions and future goals. Same with Roche.

If we're also talking about their moral compassion, and how Ves exceeds Roche in that sense, it's worth considering that the whole situation with the village - was the only instants of insubordination. She disobeyed because in her eyes Roche was acting out of character. Not because she was questioning his leadership. Even Geralt is surprised and doesn't understand why, an idealist like him, would not help those villagers? And that's obviously not because he didn't care. But because he had to maintain the fragile alliance with Nilfgaard. And Ves was not aware of that. After the whole situation is resolved, Ves still remains at his side. She didn't leave (although honestly the quest writing was dogshit. Roche should've told Ves the plan way earlier. She's his most important person and second in command, whoever wrote that quest).

Roche is a terrible guy, you can see it even at first glance, but if Ves was mindfully judging his leadership, then why didn't she do it before? Why didn't she leave him when Roche officially disbanded the Blue Stripes? Abandoning those innocent people wasn't the only terrible thng he has ever done, and if Ves intended to lead her own warfare without him, then she would've done it by now. Maybe she stayed because Roche is her only family and a father figure, but I don't think she would put her feelings above her morality.

She's as Roche a soldier. A soldier by will. And as him she burdens a lot of sins on her back. But I think I got carried away.

The point I was trying to make: Roche and Ves are both soldiers and share mutual sins, but it doesn't mean that both of them can't make up for the mistakes and change for the better. And the way they can redeem themselves - is to make the military less fascist.

My ask is a bit choppy but hope I got the point across. Not trying to be mean or rude. Just wanted to share my thoughts.

Thanks these are all great points! To get right into it I do actually think my arguments have been inconsistent, I’ll try to clear it up here. Also, I think that the post you’re referencing where I talk about Ves’ moral differences to Roche is almost a year old, and I’ve since evolved some of my thoughts on that, so I’m not surprised that it contradicts my more recent answers, sorry for the confusion though, maybe I should delete older asks. Also, however serious my tone may sound here, I'm not trying to correct or argue with you!! Pls don't think that, I'm just trying to make my stances on things as clear as I can.

TLDR attempt: the blue stripes upheld and inflicted racial oppression, to me that makes them racists, to others it doesn't because the racist actions were not motivated by racist beliefs. I disagree, but either way, they could still receive character growth and repent (highly doubt CDPR would do this, or do it well). However, writing that story would need a great deal of care, and hopefully the victim's voices, viewpoints, and empowerment would be centered, not the oppressor's past justifications - however one may define or interpret those justifications. (although it would still need to be discussed, esp in preventative work ie: how do we change societal norms and opinions so that this never happens again?)

and a more full explanation below the cut:

On the question of the racism perpetrated by the Blue Stripes (HAVE to mention that I don’t ever consider myself an authority here, im white, im an american, thats a very skewed perspective that is worthy of interrogation) what I meant more was that I don’t think the /debate/ over Roche’s status as a racist is constructive, because it always focuses on various definitions of racism or in-universe logic as opposed to the actual narrative, or intention of the writers.

Is it not important, if the extermination of elves is not motivated by racism, and how it can furthermore make him realize how evil his job was pre-tw3 and change for the better?

I think what I've failed to articulate is that I don't see anyone arguing motive or backstory, and neither am I. Roche's (and Ves) stated and observable character motivations behind his crimes were the protection of his country and those that he cares for. That’s the story we have to work with, that would most realistically be the groundwork for a redemption arc. It WOULD be different and matter if he was motivated and called to action by bigoted hate, but we know that he is not, so let’s not worry about that hypothetical for now.

With that in mind, it’s the debate over whether or not to label him a racist that I find to be leading to a dead end. I personally think that no matter Roche's motivations, he found it within himself to justify racially motivated war crimes, and that makes him a racist. I’ve seen other people say ‘no, he’s not a racist, he just ended up doing racist things because he wanted to protect his country, and it was impossible for him not to fight back against the Scoiatael.’ I don't agree, yet if we take either route, I think we both end up being met with the same questions of:

How would one go about delivering reparations for, or even just addressing a history of war crimes such as this one? How do ex-fascists seek recovery in the real world and what would it look like here? Why would Temeria, not Nilfgaard be a better ally to non-humans post-war? What would be the most respectful way to structure a story that tried to repair temeria's relationship with non-humans given how heavy and personal some of this subject matter is? How would the generational gap between Roche and Ves affect their respective character arcs? Is that even a story worth telling? What would a sympathetic tone to a redemption arc for these two be telling the audience about fascists?

like, as I mentioned, I think the overall narrative surrounding Roche’s character is one of a traumatized, propaganda-ridden solider from an impoverished background - there’s some probably sympathy to be found there, there’s potential character growth and discussion to be had, but to me … why does also acknowledging that his character’s past is one of ongoing racism change anything or render the redemption arc more or less distasteful? (this is not really me arguing that he NEEDS or deserves a redemption arc, just talking about the questions posed) It seems like people want to keep the ‘racist’ label off of fictional characters who aren't explicit villains so that positive discussions of them are less uncomfortable, but here, we’re still talking about someone who would likely have sat through a genocide so what are we trying to define away? Roche would need to atone for his racist actions, and is that not his own racism?

side note: I'm talking about myself here, I was sort of vague in my last ask where I stated that I believe Roche is a racist, and I should not have been.

Does that make sense? Idk. I’m mostly agreeing with you, and i’m not out to argue that a redemption arc would be indistinguishable in tone if Roche and Ves were secretly bigots, or that it would be equally realistic to achieve without feeling forced. It would be different, it would change this conversation, change how their characters were written on a technical level, how the framing of an acceptance of wrongdoing came about. But they weren’t, at least not as far as canon has shown us. I’m only saying that when I call Roche is a racist, and someone else doesn’t, a lot of the time we’re still going to end up with the same general route to growth and reformation for him and Ves or maybe even Temeria as a whole, because their backstories are mostly set in stone now.

Oh god this is getting long, ok onto Ves before I try to wrap up: She’s in the Blue Stripes by her own volition, you’re totally right and I wasn’t really addressing that correctly before. I think the reason I separate her a bit from Roche is that I feel she’s more of a commentary on the children of fascists/minors with hateful beliefs, or the products of second-hand propaganda - and vile as these younger generations are, their reformation feels more achievable through maturity and the development of personal morals.

She joins the Blue Stripes at a very young age after suffering horrific trauma. Fascist rhetoric coming from the man who stepped up to protect and arm her was probably very easily to adopt, especially because she’s coming from a place of privilege herself as a human. Fascists and hate groups and incels or whatever LOVE to make young social outcasts feel welcome because they recognize them as easy prey, and when these ‘young social outcasts’ have an existing bias of privilege - they’re white, they’re a man, ect - it’s scary how easy it is to indoctrinate them sometimes. Not saying this is play by play what Roche did, there’s no reason to believe that he’s lying about taking her in because he wanted her to be safe and nothing else, but the metaphorical shoe fits in my opinion. She is after all, not his daughter, but his very useful soldier.

I could go on and on about Ves’ reaction to Morril vs her fellow Blue Stripes, or the eye for an eye quest, but honestly she’s such a minor character that Id just be filling in gaps with head cannons and speculation about her slightly more progressive/thoughtful viewpoints, but I'm trying not to do that here. Pretty much everything I said in this post about Roche or ‘the blue stripes’ applies to her in my opinion. She’s a perpetrator of racial oppression, and her future growth would need to revolve around undoing that damage, while unpacking internal bias such as underlying bigotry would provide the framework and tone - for Ves this would probably be more specific to her relationship with Roche? But again this is hard to speculate with minor characters.

GOD sorry this is too long. ok damn I hope that clears up some of the contradiction and vagueness that you picked up in my earlier posts, but also maybe this is just an absurd amount of word vomit. Either way! I appreciate you sharing your insight, thanks for reaching out!

#OOF this is too long . I always think i’m not making sense so I write more but then I just write more stuff that doesn’t make sense #ask #anonymous #double shot

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doomednarrative · 2 years

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Same anon that wrote that big Hoffstrahm fic thoughts ask yesterday! I just wanted to say thank you to both authors who let comments on that ask and also to you for leaving such an amazing response to everything I had said about those fics. Knowing that Cosmo actually inspired some parts of Dies At The End is so fascinating because of just how different the two of them are! It’s interesting how Remy said that Cosmo was written around arguments, which is a form of communication, and that Adam wrote them as two people who COULD have had a form of communication with each other at some point in there lives, but they just didn’t add up to when they could actually speak to each other, ie how Strahm at the end could have reached Hoffman at the start and vice versa. I also liked how you pointed out that all of these fics seem to be based around choices, and that the tone of these fics really dictates the choices that could be made and the WAY they are made.

No problem anon!! I'll @ the two of them again here so they can see your response as well once I write the rest of my answer here.

It is interesting what ends up inspiring what, I agree! Truth be told it was originally Remy’s fic that made me want to write for Peter once I started gathering ideas for the Jigsquad au with Tibby. But reading Strahm Dies was what really cemented that I felt like I was on the right track with my own meta, and I actually told Adam after I finished the fic that I did save bits of it to reflect on while doing my own writing, which is true! I look back on parts of it while fleshing out my own story because Adam had some really solid insight on Strahm and that’s something I wanted to keep on hand for reference.

Communication as the basis of a narrative is honestly one of my favorite things. Placing two characters in a situation and seeing what’ll make them talk is ultimately always an interesting concept, hell it’s the whole basis for moving the plot forward in the first Saw movie too! Adam and Lawrence would get nowhere without doing so, and so it’s interesting to do the same thing to Strahm and Hoffman and see what makes them tick and what gets them to actually speak to each other. Remy did it with making them bicker, which is always fun to write once you get in the flow of it honestly. And Adam did an amazing job with forcing them to have to talk while Strahm was being held captive considering Hoffman was his literal only option, but even then he couldn't fully open up and accept the hand offered to him! it’s just...I can’t really put it in words, but I love how both of them approached it for their own fics.

I pointed out the thing about choices because tbh!! That’s where I come from with my writing! Oftentimes, as y’all will see with the fic I’m currently working on too, I derive my narratives from having someone make a choice and seeing where it leads them and what consequences it might have down the line! Writing for Hoffstrahm is so compelling for me for Exactly that reason, because it does come down to choices a lot! It comes down to what Strahm can chose to live with if he should actually try to have some sort of relationship with Hoffman, it comes down to what Hoffman decides to do with Strahm and if he actually tries to kill him, it’s all About choices in the end!! The motto after all is “Make Your Choice” for Saw, and that’s something I like to toy with a lot, so I tend to be drawn to those kinds of stories too. Even if we said that Strahm Dies and Cosmos are written about communication, they’re also about choices too in their own right when you examine them. Strahm’s choice to follow the rules of the tape in the beginning of Cosmos, and Hoffman’s snap decision not to kill Strahm in Strahm Dies are ultimately what leads to the rest of those stories happening. Without the choices, the narrative doesn’t even start, and I love that about them both!

Augh just... I could talk about this stuff forever tbh but I’ll leave it here for now. Once again I’ll tag @carouselcometh and @romanromulus in case they have further input, and so they can see your message again as well. (Also this is me letting you both know I did read your replies and I’m thinking about what you both said, it was some very good insight honestly!)

#ask #answered #kief rambles about saw #aughhh god hoffstrahm makes my brain go NUTS

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ghcstvalleychief · 2 years

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I could never get on board with Veg@s as a character because it felt like there was no through line with him and we were meant to feel about him however the individual scene dictated (he's evil, he's just a sad little boy, he's a romantic hero) with nothing to tie it all together. Whoever got pulled into his orbit be it Pete or when he and Porsche interacted would suddenly become similarly inconsistent (he just tried to kill you and Kinn, Porsche, why are you calling Pete to encourage him!)

Vegas is a sad sack of shit. He's a weak broken little boy who only wanted his Daddy's love. That's who he is, and that's fine. But that's who he's always been, and there was a time we didn't know that at first. By the end of this show, that's who we know him to be.

There was some inconsistency with the character. I will agree there. We went from Vegas willingly helping Porsche during the coup in the last episode to him willing to murder Porsche in front of Kinn to make a point in this episode. Granted, I think the point was to show that he couldn't be trusted. Remember when I wrote that meta post talking about how risky it was that Porsche even trusted Vegas to hold up his end of the bargain to begin with? I was right. Besides that, it still didn't make sense to me. There were times Vegas would act different around Porsche and it wouldn't make any narrative sense. After the fuckery of his failed attempt to ruin Kinn in 1x10, Vegas had no reason to continuously treat Porsche the way that he did. So, why did he? According to TPTB, Vegas never liked Porsche but that's not what it seems like when you watch this show. The show tells a different story.

Yes, he was manipulating him but what was the reason for his choices? At that time, everything had all come out (except for the drugging, that is). So, Vegas had no reason to keep up with pretenses around Porsche. The whole time Vegas and Porsche were together in the last episode, Vegas was treating Porsche like he did in the first half of 1x10 when they ran off together. But that shouldn't have been a thing if we're going along with the idea that Vegas NEVER liked Porsche and was only manipulating him, right? Let's not even get into the whiplash of him threatening Pete with more torture and terror only to turn around and cry and beg him to stay. I couldn't deal with that shit. I don't know what to tell you, because it doesn't make sense.

That's why I can honestly say the writing for this show went off the rails. It did, and I can painfully admit that. Vegas was interesting in the beginning because he was more consistent. His characterization was more consistent, but that changed once Pete got in that dungeon. Nothing made sense to me from that point forward. Don't even mention the B.S. of Porsche 'encouraging' this man to feel better, because it's only going to piss me off.

#anonymous #answered asks #vegas critical #kpts critical #what happened?#like .. seriously; what did we just watch?#kp spoilers #spoilers

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notesofarichlycolorednight · 13 days

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s2ep14 syren

there was a lot wrong with this one but it's honestly a lot of what i've already talked about.

it was too fast paced but this time, it was because it was trying to do too much. it had to introduce the akuma, but also introduce the discord between ladybug and chat noir, but also introduce power-ups and magic potions and the fact that kwami can't know the secret ingredients, and also show adrien being a snotty brat, and spent so much time doing all that, we didn't even really get to see how their power-ups worked and they didn't even get new powers. other than the ability to breathe underwater. "underwater lucky charm" is not a new power lmao.

they introduced a whole new character we've never seen before except for a split second in frightingale, and the fact that kim swims regularly, and that they're apparently such good friends this new character has a crush on him??? it's so forced and contrived. they literally couldn't come up with a more creative way to introduce a new character that swims? or idk actually sprinkle in here and there that kim likes to swim and has a partner he often swims with earlier???

everything felt too unnatural. none it flowed well. these power-ups, much like hawkmoth's akumas becoming more powerful, gives us a false sense of raised stakes.

the new transformation is fun, sure. and the kwamis changing to match is adorable. but like, it's temporary and doesn't even give them new superpowers permanently.

the one thing i will commend it on is the fact that they actually took the time to explain things to make it seem more natural when ladybug figured out where the akuma was. but, again, they had to squeeze it into such a short period of time, we didn't even get any time to spend with this new character, this new threat, or the supers new superpowers/transformations. we didn't even get to see chat noir's new transformation or plagg's underwater self except in the end card. does chat noir have an "underwater cataclysm?"

it was just really badly set up. and badly written.

what was preventing them from introducing us to all these things slowly? sprinkling them throughout the other episodes. all kim had to do was mention his friend he swims with once or twice. all the writers had to do was have master fu talk about how he's decoding the grimore, which contains power-ups that he currently working on when marinette goes to visit him for rena rouge's miraculous.

the fact that he's conveniently working on these potions and the one potion he's working specifically has to do with water powers is very convenient and doesn't feel ham-fisted at all! /sarcasm

the one thing that's also not explained and doesn't make sense to me is the fact that kwami are immortal god-like creatures that grant users powers through use of jewelry but they need guardians to make special potions for them to power-up? that doesn't make sense. who taught the guardians the potions if not the kwamis? where did this knowledge come from? the gimore couldn't have written itself. but then who wrote it and who told the first guardian all these things?

this is not to mention the fact that these power-ups seem very specific to only akuma situations, you know? further providing evidence that they designed hawkmoth as a villain first and foremost.

the power-ups have to make sense in the context of the overall meta-narrative you're telling about how these kwamis and superheros came to be, and how they work and interact within the wider world. if we're supposed to assume that nooroo is supposed to be used for good, then we can't assume that the villains ladybug and chat noir, and the other miraculous superheros, faced in the past were akumatized victims, right? which means that it doesn't make sense to base their power-ups on what an akuma might do, right?

aside: have i already mentioned the fact that ladybug's yo-yo cleanses akuma provides more evidence hawkmoth was always a villain. bc it seems like that's a very specific power based on the premise of akuma.

anyway, so why does it feel too convenient that their power-ups do suit the akumatized victim of the episode?

they really didn't think about this at all, did they?

it feels like creator saw that sailor moon had powers-ups but didn't or couldn't come up with new threats for each season, so tried to incorporate them. but couldn't come up with a clever way to fit them in unless for very specific akuma circumstances, and so here we are.

everything feels like it moves too fast, yet also feels incredibly contrived and doesn't make sense when you think about it for 2 seconds longer.

i also wanted to complain a little about adrien being a little brat. like i know i've talked about how i think they should make him a proper duexteragonist but not in a way that makes him seem irresponsible and unfit to be a superhero in the first place. at the very least, if you're not going to do anything with that as some kind of character arc, then what's the point? now, it's own, that's a value neutral thing you can put into your story. but like with coding, GIGO. you have to at least try to make it work within the wider narrative or it's just gonna fall flat.

the premise of master fu choosing ladybug and chat noir on the basis of them being kind is bananas to me. like obviously you want your superheroes to be kind and somewhat selfless, but that can't be the only criteria or they'll go and pull stunts like what adrien did. he pities himself too much and it pisses me off. and also does not demonstrate fitness to be a superhero. bc sometimes you need to set aside your differences to solve the greater issue.

the writers seem to have a complex about their two mains in opposite directions and none of it is good.

like yes, he's a teenager, sure. but they don't even try to weave that into the greater narrative. it's not something that adrien needs to work on to become a better chat noir bc he is still a teenager. it's just there for suspense and convenience.

i was gonna end with a funny quip that was lighthearted and has nothing to do with my critiques of the show, but i can't remember what it was now. boo

edit: i remembered! the way master fu boils the kettle and then pours the "tea" directly into marinette's cup 💀 no steeping, not teapot, just boiled leaf water directly from the kettle. unacceptable. an old chinese man would never make "tea" like that. is that how they make "tea" in france?

#chirp.ml #chirp.txt

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