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canonicallyobserving911 · 1 month

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Buck & Eddie: 7x4 and 7x5 stills in episode order???

When the two separate synopses were released for 7x4, I wondered how 9-1-1 was going to fit everything into the episode that was released via the BTS stills but then I realized they wouldn't be able to especially since the length of each one (without advertisements) is only 42 to 45 minutes. Also, it appears there will be three main storylines, i.e. Athena and Harry, Hen's life changing news and Buck being bothered and bewildered.

After considering all of the information that's been released, a few days ago, I figured the stills of Buck and Eddie in Buck’s loft, the ones of them talking in the firehouse gym and the one of Eddie and Bobby's conversation wouldn't be included in 7x4. Additionally, I remembered the way 3x5 "Rage" ended with Buck and Eddie still on the outs and they didn't reconcile until the end of 3x6 "Monsters" when Buck made Eddie talk to him. With OS recently commenting on someone's IG post about how the two pictures of Buck and Eddie in the loft are from 7x5, it added confirmation to my analysis.

Since I'm a visual person, I like to see things in their totality instead of in increments the way the BTS pics have been released. Therefore, I've put all the stills together in a way that IMO, could be how they'll play out during each episode and there's one picture of Buck by himself that was released but I believe it deals with something else. I've included it at the end because I'm going to do a separate post on it.

Before I delve into this, here's my UNPOPULAR OPINION. I ship Buddie and only Buddie but I have to admit, I'm not really excited about this storyline because IMO, the audience has seen it before in 3x5 and 3x6 when Eddie was temporarily partnered with Lena (post linked here). Sure, he didn't leave the 118 but Eddie did have a new work partner who Buck was clearly not happy about. Also, even though Eddie didn't tell Buck about her, it was evident by Buck's reaction, he was in fact jealous since he thought he was being replaced and it seemed to be part of the reason why he filed the lawsuit (not the only reason but part of it). Reminder, he was ok with being the Fire Marshall until he heard Lena call Eddie's name in 3x4 then once he saw her, he asked Bobby, "You replaced me?"

At this point, in six years, I hoped Buck and Eddie would be at a place in their partnership where they can actually discuss things like adults instead of Buck lashing out. Please don't misunderstand me because I get it, Buck's worried about being abandoned again so it's understandable and this time he doesn't have anyone to cling to. But if they would let him go back to therapy like he went on his own in season 4, maybe he could spend time working on himself and this storyline could have been avoided. Will I change my mind before Thursday... honestly, I'm not sure.

Back to the regularly schedule program...

7x4 "Buck, Bothered and Bewildered"

Based on the look on Buck's face in the stills from them at Air Rescue, IMO, it's likely this scene could happen first because he seems to be bothered and bewildered by how close Eddie and Tommy are. Hopefully there's a scene before this one that explains how they became fast friends but it's also possible it'll be another scenario where Eddie magically contacts Tommy or vice versa and they start hanging out but the audience won't see it the same way we didn't see how Eddie magically got M's phone number? 🤷🏽‍♀️

Full disclosure: I don't trust Tommy Kinard and I've already posted about my reasoning (linked here) and I may elaborate on it but I really don't want to because I'd rather not focus anymore of my attention on the character.

Buck's face in the stills below while he's at the firehouse, appear to be hopeful like he got his "Eddie" back but when he sees him walk away, he gets that sad look in his eyes like he's being left behind again. That's why IMO, it happens before the basketball court scene but after them being at Air Rescue.

I tried to put the pictures below in order but since there's no context for when some of them happen, I added them where I thought they should go. Also, since Buck's bag is still on his shoulder in the third picture with him holding the basketball, I figured it happens before they start playing. Maybe Chimney hands it to him and he looks at Eddie and Tommy like him and Chimney are going to win the game.

IMO, Buck will have a conversation with Maddie before the end of the episode and that's when JLH's leaked script will come into play. Also, I believe Chimney will be the one to tell Buck he's acting irrationally then he'll ask him if something else might be going on. Reminder, he's going to be on the court with them and he'll witness the event.

It appears 7x4 will end with them still upset with one another just like 3x5 ended with them not talking.

7x5 - "You don't know me"

I've already completed a post on the title of the episode (linked here) but I do believe multiple people will say, "You don't know me" throughout the episode, including Eddie possibly saying it to Tommy.

When the episode begins, Buck and Eddie still won't be communicating just like they weren't in 3x6. Also, since there aren't any stills that show Tommy and Eddie discussing an available job position at Air Rescue, the only information that was made available came from one of the promos that included Bobby telling Eddie, "I can't tell you how to feel about this job, only you can do that" so it appears Eddie's going to be presented with the option to leave the 118 again either at the end of 7x4 or the beginning of 7x5 but I think his conversation with Bobby will happen at the beginning of 7x5.

Now, ever since TM (showrunner) released the two pictures below in advance of season 7, they've always perplexed me and it's mainly due to the looks on their faces, more so Buck's because he doesn't look angry or frustrated, he just looks tired like he's retreating or giving up. Initially, I didn't speculate on the pictures because I had no idea what was going on and I'm still not sure but based on the things that have been released regarding the episodes, IMO, Buck will apologize just like he did in 3x6 followed by him telling Eddie that he'll have his back if he wants to leave the 118 and go to Air Rescue. Reminder, the last time Eddie left in 5x10, he told Buck in front of Hen and Ravi but the audience only caught a glimpse of Buck's reaction.

I believe the stills below will happen towards the end of the episode and it will be similar to their conversation that happened in the firehouse in 3x6 with a little bit of the 3x9 kitchen scene thrown in. My reasoning is because they're at Buck's loft and Buck will be sitting alone probably pondering what he should do next since it'll be a strong possibility (for him at least) that Eddie will leave and he'll have to find a new partner.

I think Eddie will say something similar to the things he said in 3x6, "I forgive you. Just don't let it happen again" but this time it'll be different and more along the lines of how they talked in 3x9 (related post linked here).

This is where their dynamic seems to change because unlike 3x9, Eddie's not leaned against the counter, he's actually touching Buck's shoulder and his waist the same way he did in 3x1 during Buck's surprise welcome back party but they're the only two present 👀.

When I saw the picture above, I had an immediate reaction to it because it reminded me of something the audience has seen before. I'm not going to include my thoughts on it in this post but I will do a separate one about it.

The point of this post is to illustrate with the BTS stills how the scenes in the next two episodes with Buck and Eddie could play out. Will they finally take the leap at the end of 7x5 and become a CANON couple or will the show continue to delay the inevitable? Only the showrunner, writers, producers, actors and actresses know the answer to that question. Hopefully, they will start their romantic relationship because it's been six years and there's no reason to keep delaying it.

#buddie #eddie diaz #evan buckley #911 abc #911 season 7 #911 season 7 speculation #911 spoilers #911 speculation #911 on abc #the buckley diaz family #buckley diaz family #911 meta #anti bucktommy #anti tommy kinard #anti eddiemarisol #anti eddietommy #chimney han #bobby nash #maddie buckley

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starlight-bread-blog · 1 month

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"Katara Just Needed To Heal Zuko's Scar"

I understand why this argument is being made. After all, she offered to heal Zuko, and so she does. So why are the shippers trying to paint it as some romantic moment? It's a reasonable question. But I'm gonna try to answer it.

Zuko and Katara weren't in love in this scene for two reasons: Firstly, it's their first conversation, making any romantic development feel rushed and unnatural. Secondly, as fictional characters, they don't possess hidden feelings, unless the writers have confirmed otherwise.

So what argument is being made? The argument is that this moment is an example of ship baiting and could have served as romantic build up if the writers decided to go down that route, and I'll explain why.

1# Just because an action was necessary, doesn't mean it can't be seen as romantic

I know how this sounds, but hear me out. Let us take a look at another show, where you'd least expect to see a romantic connection, and the action was completely necessary. I want to discuss Rick and Morty's Beth x Beth.

Beth is the last person who'd have tension with Beth, clearly it's disgusting. And she really did have to install that chip. But the thought did cross your mind, they did get together, and this scene was romantic build up, despite not being romantic in-universe.

Now that we've looked at the most extreme example ever, it's time to look at a classic: Aladdin. One of the most iconic moments in the movie is when Aladdin simply offers his hand to Jasmine so she'd get on the flying carpet, asking "Do you trust me"?

Aladdin isn't asking if Jasmine trusts him because they're deeply bonded, he asks that because she's scared to get on the flying carpet. And he isn't reaching for her hand because he wants to hold her hand, he reaches because she'd needhelp getting on it. And yet, it's universally recognized as an incredibly romantic moment.

Very often writers use the mundane necessities like casual touch to set up romantic tension. This narrative approach allows for the gradual planting of the idea in the audience's mind, even in situations where intimacy may not be overtly present, adding nuance and depth to romantic storylines. And in fiction, it's everywhere.

2# The set up wasn't just necessity, it was an intimate moment

In this section I won't try to prove the gesture was romantic, I simply think it's crucial to understand the scene before analyzing it. Katara offering to heal Zuko's scar wasn't a necessity, the touch was the necessity after she already made the offer. This leaves us with a scene that begins with Katara thinking of Zuko as "the face of the enemy", and ends with Katara attempting to heal Zuko's scar.

The moment became intimate the second Katara brought up her mother, and Zuko, who doesn't normally share his emotions, make and effort to connect. Thus, they began to view the other differently, as someone similar to them.

Still, this is their first conversation. And Katara is under no obligation to be even somewhat nice to him. But she decides to use her spirit water on him, and if she had, Aang would have died. That's how important the spirit water is. Saying she "just needed to heal is scar" is quite reductant in my opinion. Choosing to heal him in and of itself is a radical and intimate decision.

Still, non of what I said so far is indicative of romantic build up. Nor is giving other examples from fiction of necessities being romantic indicative of this one being too. So, it's time to finally talk about the touch.

3# The action wasn't actually necessary, to the point where it makes very little sense

Let's remember how Katara did heal using the spirit water:

She bends the water straight on Aang's back and starts bending it. I repeat: She bends the water straight on the injury.

So writers, please do tell me, if Katara wanted to heal Zuko's scar, where is the water?

No water and no healing, becsuse it wouldn't look as intimate/shippy with water. Instead, what we got is two shots highlighting the pysical touch between them with soft violin sounds in the background.

In literature, what isn't in text isn't important and should be disregarded. Here, on paper Katara is healing Zuko's scar, but in practice there is no water and all of the focus is on the touching. Therefore, it's signaling the viewers that even though she just needs to cure him, it isn't important. With Katara's thumb on Zuko's lips, with a close up shot on the contact, the only thing that matters is, apparently, their pysical touch.

Additonally, they were interrupted before Katara could do actually anything anyway. In a universe where this scene wasn't ship teasing, Katara would take out the water, almost lay them on Zuko's scar, and then Aang and Iroh would break them out of the cave. Logically, Katara's hand shouldn't have gone anywhere near Zuko, and if it did, it should have looked incredibly unappealing.

But it didn't. In this already very intimate moment, the show puts all the focus on the pysicality of the healing, rather than the healing, and breaking its own logic to do so. Thus, they made it look a lot less like a simple necessity, but rather an act of pure intimacy, as often done in fiction when portraying romantic tension. And that's why this scene was ship baiting.

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salamisatos · 4 months

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late to the party?

I recently finished Xena's first season and it's the first time I'm rewatching it since I was a teen. And I'm just overwhelmed. I finished "Is there a doctor in the house?" last night and spent my whole day thinking about the episode and the season as a whole.

The thing is, I missed tv so much without even realizing it. Halfway through the season it hit me that we did used to have mid-season finales and the storyline would go a certain way to 1) give us a twist or 2) plant the seeds for the finale. What a joy, truly.

Anyways, from what I could remember the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle was never just implied but I thought they had only started to add more things in later seasons but it's so clear that this build up starts as soon as season 1. It was a very pleasant surprise, actually.

The start of Gabrielle's hero journey is breathtaking. I love a good "young and naive sidekick that tries to keep their heart pure even after witnessing the horrors of the world" trope. She starts like that and it's so painfully clear how much Xena wants to protect that and at the same time in later episodes we also see how much she respects Gabrielle's worldview. I also love that when she goes back home to figure herself out after freezing facing a dangerous situation it's 100% her choice. It was an amazing choice to put this moment right after she starts becoming more and more competent in battle, taking more care of herself because I feel like it was such a turning point for her. It's like in that moment she fully understood how high the stakes were and it's heartbreaking to see Xena come to the realization that she can't help Gabrielle with that. Ugh, I love it.

Speaking of Xena, I love how through the season we see her getting more and more fond of Gabrielle but really keeping her at arms length because she thinks she's not a good person. They are always doing things kind of separately, mostly Gabrielle staying behind and what not. I also love how this power trip and bloodlust she gets into feels almost like an addiction and it's such a painful struggle. She's trying so hard and Gabrielle is so ready to vouch for her, to absolve her of all her wrong doings, even us as audience feel so much in the way she's trying to do what's right and then bam they hit us with Callisto.

AND IT'S SO GOOD! like the literal personification of everything she did wrong. and they show us in such a nice way how much Xena understands and accepts that what she's doing is basically the bare minimum. She's not going to be absolved of anything, she's doing what's right because it's the right thing to do because she doesn't want that pain and suffering anymore and not because people will cheer and forgive her on the spot. She won't cheer and forgive herself on the spot.

It blows my mind how she's as caring as she's tough. I feel like often in media people still struggle to balance this line with the "strong female character" and here I felt it was done so naturally. In the last episode we see her using so many of her battle techniques but this time to help heal people. People she doesn't even know. We see her so practical, rationally teaching medicine as we know it to Hippocrates lol but then it all comes crashing down so painfully when Gabrielle gets injured. Like, that's her guide, her northern star, her partner and best friend. The scene where she's trying to get Gabrielle back is just so so so strong. She's like a cornered animal, no one is going to help her, she's at her most vulnerable and everything is so raw and desperate it truly took my breath away.

I don't think that's when she realized she really loved Gabrielle, I think she's known that for quite some time at this point but it was the first time she actually had to face what it would be like to really lose her and it was the worst thing that has ever happened to her.

Anyways I don't even know if I'm making sense, I just felt a lot of things and decided to let it out. I just love them so much it's crazy. And they love each other so much it's even crazier.

#long post #xwp #xwp personal recap #xena warrior princess #my text #also it's been ages since I typed so much english lol

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beyondmistland · 3 months

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In your opinion, would Princess Viserra's fate have changed if she had been promised to Lord Manderly's heir, and not to him?

That is to say, if marriage to the Manderlys were necessary to formalize a pact with the North, perhaps a handsome husband of the same age who would make her Lady of White Harbor would be more interesting to the young princess.

I won't hold back. NOTHING about Viserra's storyline makes any sense short of all the characters having a stroke.

Perceptive and compassionate Alysanne, who previously demonstrated considerable matchmaking skills, suddenly becomes very bad at it. (Don't get me started on Elio Garcia's attempt to defend Alysanne's OOC behavior as her being jealous of her own daughter's beauty.)

Jaehaerys suddenly becomes an absentee father from the 1950s rather than, you know, a medieval king for whom his daughter's marriage is of the utmost political importance.

Septon Barth? Grand Maester Elysar? Both MIA.

Theomore Manderly? If he was truly canny, he would have seen the offer for what it was and declined it.

Its true, the best way to tie the North closer to the south (and more specifically the Iron Throne) short of House Stark is House Manderly. However, marrying Viserra, a princess (and the prettiest one at that) to Theomore entirely defeats that purpose. One, a fat man old enough to be your grandfather is hardly appealing on a personal level, especially to a teen princess who knows just how attractive she is. Two, any children Viserra had would come behind four wives' worth of stepchildren, practically guaranteeing that the future Lords of White Harbor won't share any direct blood ties to House Targaryen, which brings me to my third point. Marrying Viserra to Theomore more or less dooms Viserra's line to obscurity and she herself to a life of dependency on the charity of her stepson.

What, then, would have made way more sense? Marrying her to Desmond, who, as Theomore's great-grandson, would probably be fairly close in age to her, not to mention higher in the succession.

Now, to answer your question, yes I absolutely do believe Viserra might have lived a longer (and perhaps even fulfilling) life if her parents had picked someone other than Theomore Manderly to be her husband. Remember, the whole reason she was even out and about the night of her death was because she wanted to have fun one last time before resigning herself to her fate. If she had instead been looking forward to her wedding she wouldn't have had any incentive to sneak out, which makes the chances of her suffering a tragic accident the way she did in OTL astronomically lower.

Thanks for the question, @diegoedil

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #asoiaf criticism #house targaryen #fire and blood #volume 1 #viserra targaryen #jaehaerys i targaryen #alysanne targaryen #good queen alysanne #house manderly #theomore manderly #matchmaking #marriage

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mauesartetc · 11 months

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Have you seen vivzi's tweet regarding the mille situation?

Oh yeah. Though to be clear, it's not just one tweet; it's a motherfuckin' thread (with screenshots below for posterity).

I won't go over this whole thing point by point, but one aspect that jumps out at me is how Viv deflects responsibility from herself onto the viewers. If your audience doesn't fully "understand" your characters, that's a problem. It's your job as a writer to make them understand, and do it in the story you're telling, not on social media. Can't help but see shades of how gobsmacked Fennah was that his audience didn't get how one of his characters represented toxic relationships, despite that character amounting to a harmless, childlike pet.

While Viv's response doesn't demean the audience like Fennah's, it does come off as a tad arrogant, as if Millie being perceived as flat is the viewers' fault, not hers.

The second thing that stood out is the list of Millie's qualities: "She is resourceful, she has strong family ties and memories, she has sibling rivalry, she's excitable and hyper focused." Only three of those are actual personality traits, and I can't even remember her being "hyper focused" at any time. To me, that would suggest working long hours on some kind of project, too engrossed to notice hunger, thirst, or how much time had passed. I guess you could make the argument that she worked tirelessly to become the skilled fighter she is, but we never see that in the show. I'm not even sure how "strong" those family ties are considering Millie didn't even hug her mom when she saw her. Basically, this smacks of telling rather than showing, trying to convince us this is the case rather than letting us see for ourselves.

[Edit 6/10/23 Forgot to mention this tidbit: "we are literally on 3", meaning the third episode. Girl, no. You were literally on ten episodes total, and eleven/twelve (depending on whether or not the pilot counts) with the release of Western Energy. That's way too long to go without properly developing one of the main characters.]

Also, "we found more storylines that influenced Blitz"? You mean you created more storylines with him as the focus. You chose to follow those paths in Season 1. It didn't just happen to you. "Whoops! Tripped over this random plot! Guess I have to use it in an episode!" Obviously Blitzo is the main character so it makes sense that he'd have the most plots centered around him, but it's extremely telling that y'all gave absolutely none of the focus to Millie.

Let's look at the seven episodes of Season 1. Blitzo could be the focus of three, Moxxie could get one, Millie could get one, Loona could get one, and Stolas could get one, and you could save extra story ideas for Season 2. There ya go. Yes, seven episodes is a pretty short season with not much wiggle room to fit all the juiciest stories in, but there's definitely space to tease what's coming. Imply that there's more to these characters and this world than meets the eye. Make the audience hungry for more. This is a fan-funded Youtube series, after all; it's not like any networks or streaming services are threatening to pull the plug if the metrics aren't up to snuff.

Finally, the "this is a male-led show" excuse for female characters being underdeveloped is so weak, especially for an adult show that prides itself on social progressivism. You've got a handful of queer main characters and a trans side character, but fleshing out the women was a step too far-? Y'all are all about spotlighting LGBT stories, but anything resembling feminism that goes deeper than '90s-style "hey, this chick can fight!" girl power? Whoa, that's a bit too much, buddy.

Call me crazy, but shouldn't viewers get the impression that all of a story's principal characters have inner lives, regardless of gender? What is Millie like when she's alone, isolated from her relationships? What does she think about? How does she entertain herself without anyone to brawl with, or anything to hack into with an axe? The show hasn't given us any hints.

Honestly, if you're not good at writing female characters, you're allowed to say that. Yes, it's embarrassing to admit when you're a woman yourself, but if you grew up in a culture that promotes internalized misogyny and prioritizes masculine wants over feminine needs (which many of us did, let's be real), it's understandable. That shit's hard to unlearn. What might make it easier when it comes to characters, though, is what I like to call the Ellen Ripley method.

Challenge, Viv: Write a nuanced male character. Give him strengths and flaws, likes and dislikes, quirks and hobbies, strained relationships and happy ones.

Now make him female.

It really is that simple.

We'll have to wait and see how much that defense regarding Hazbin Hotel truly reflects reality, though if I were a gambler, I'd bet Alastor and Angel Dust will dominate the story and leave Charlie and Vaggie on the sidelines.

#vivziepop critical #helluva boss #helluva millie #helluva critical #writing #ask #blacklilly27 #female characters #representation

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dinadumas · 6 months

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Hiiii~

Dear novels lovers, I sincerely want to recommend you one of the best works I've read. So if at the moment you are in search of something interesting don't pass by!

This novel actually has a manhwa with the same title, so if you're not interested in the novel you can find and read the manhwa! It does not have any plot discrepancies from the original.

"Turning" by Kuyu (쿠유).

It's a novel in the bl, fantasy, and omegaverse genre.

Wait wait. Those who now thought that the omegaverse is not interesting or poorly written, you are sorely mistaken! The novel itself doesn't pay that much attention to this genre, so you won't feel any discomfort while reading it! I even forgot about this genre at times. (Although most of the hot scenes are related to it, but you'll be satisfied, I promise.)

There are approximately 970 chapters in the original, and 305 are available in English (free).

If you are already a bit interested, please read the description first~

Yuder was a commoner Omega who rose to the top with his ability.

When he woke up again after being falsely accused and executed, he was back 11 years ago before everything began.

He must not repeat the same mistake he did before.

A chance to get back……

To survive, and to save the world, now he had to save the man he had killed!

Are you more interested? Jesus, I love you already. Keep going!

If you want to hear the opinion of someone who has already read all the chapters available in English, @armed-teddy-bear answered some questions especially for you!

Q : Dear reader, please tell us what you liked most about the novel "Turning" by Kuyu?

Teddy : It’s hard to pinpoint a single part of it, since all of it is perfect in my eyes. The characters are well-written and never act like walking tropes with no common sense, the worldbuilding is one of the best I’ve ever seen, the intrigues are taking and all well-linked together to form an enduring mystery and drama that, as of 300 chapters, is still just as interesting…

If I really had to pick, I would say the relationship between the two protagonists is honestly a high point. Heavily influenced by the past only Yuder can remember, it still manages to progress naturally while never having a boring moment. Every scene where the two of them interacted became one of my favorites.

In short, I would say: If you think you’ve read a novel like this before, no you haven’t. In my opinion, this novel is the best you could achieve in the genre of rebirth/time travel.

Q : Do you think the omegaverse genre is ruining the novel?

Teddy : It’s not a problem to me at all. But there are a lot of people who are uncomfortable with it. I don’t understand why exactly, but it’s like that.

On the contrary, I think the way Turning handles it makes it even more interesting. It hasn’t played too much into the story that far, so it could even be ignored by people who don’t like it, but I think it adds to the story quite a bit by adding more worldbuilding to the “awakeners” characters and the powers of this world.

The reason given for why it happened in universe is also good in my opinion. 👍

So it’s a complete OK for me!

Q : Can you highlight any flaws in the novel?

Teddy : I became the number one fan overnight. In my eyes, Turning can do nothing wrong.

But if I try to see it from someone else’s eyes… Maybe the length would be too long for someone else. You have to wait 200 chapters for the main couple to kiss for the first time, and at times you see characters and situations being set up.. and then you don’t see them begin to unfold for another 50 chapters!

There’s also a very, very large cast of characters, some of them named only to never properly appear… although that can also be seen as a quality! The novel feels very realistic and profound thanks to this, as allies and antagonists fade in and out of the storyline in accordance to the plot, never overstaying their welcome or standing uselessly in the background of a scene.

The supporting cast is also characterized and explored, even if they don’t stay for long, meaning that every character is inherently interesting. It’s thanks to this length in chapters and depth in characters that the novel gains in worldbuilding and intrigue with each new chapter.

Q : Please tell potential readers why they should not pass by this novel?

Teddy : Not reading Turning means passing by a novel that can and will satisfy anyone!

If you don’t like romance, then you’ll find your happiness in the worldbuilding, magic systems, and political plots.

And if you don’t like worldbuilding, magic systems, and political plots… well, think again! I thought I didn’t like those either before, but reading Turning, I found myself on the edge of my seat with every word. Everything is explained clearly and logically when it comes to intrigue, making it easy to understand and all the more interesting — but that doesn’t mean it’s lacking in emotions either! This novel masterfully meshes both plot and character building, making each moment count.

But most importantly, you’ll miss reading the developing relationship between Yuder and Kishiar, which I think is the biggest appeal of all. I’ve never rooted for a couple more in my life. Despite a past together filled with pain, they still manage to be one of the healthiest and most sincere relationships I’ve read in a long time.

So, to whoever is listening, please read Turning. You definitely won’t regret it.

Wow if you read to the end we really appreciate it! Thank you for your attention.

Please read Turning~

#manhwa #novel #turning novel #turning #yaoi bl #Boys love #bl manhwa #bl novel #터닝 #Teoning #Please read turning #Please

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lizzybeth1986 · 5 months

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Liam and Olivia: When You Prefer The Side Character To The Main

Series - TRR's Alternative LIs: The Romances that Didn't Happen

Previous: A Brief History of Alternative Romances in Choices

A/N1: My apologies for the length of this one! There was a LOT to explore, and even more that I had cut out from my initial draft.

A/N2: This essay operates on the premise that Liam is not the "favoured LI"/"golden boy" of the team - an argument I have made in detail in other Liam-centric essays. I am not interested in arguing those same points in my comment box/reblogs. Visit the Liam section of my meta masterlist if you want to learn more about that.

CW: Mentions of non-consensual kissing. Mentions of the plot against the MC in TRR1. Very fleeting mention of the "infertility subplot" TRH pushed onto Hana.

(Screenshot from HIMEME's YouTube channel)

As I mentioned in the previous essay, TRR (along with ES, to a far smaller extent) was the only series that seemed to make an attempt to pair even their popular LIs with another character. It also was (along with TCaTF) one of the very few books that hinted at an alternative romance in the first book itself.

This section of the essay series will perhaps be the longest, since Liam x Olivia got the earliest hints, and was built up first. While the other three pairings were introduced or hinted at in Books 2 and 3, the reader got to see glimpses of a possible Liam x Olivia pairing from the finale of Book 1 onwards.

Why An Alternative LI?

TRR is, essentially, a story that hinges on the likelihood of an arranged marriage. The character that makes this entire story possible, Liam, is expected to pick a bride by the end of his social season, whether he is ready for marriage or not. The ending of Book 1 itself ties his ascension as a king to marriage.

(Screenshot from Skylia's YouTube channel)

To prove Madeleine's point, the finale actually shows us that until he picks a fiancèe, he literally won't be addressed as king, but still as Prince Liam. So while this point does get heavily retconned later on in the series, the original story itself required Liam to be married sooner than any of the other LIs.

But Liam's story doesn't just hinge on needing a good Queen for his kingdom. His arc - at least in Book 1 - involved learning that being a good king doesn't mean he needs to sacrifice his own desires or romantic sensibilities. If that were the case, he could have just been stuck with Madeleine. No - the story was supposed to be about Liam learning to validate his personal aspirations without hurting his political position. It was essential then that the woman he picked was someone he either was already in love with (the MC), or someone he grew to love over the course of the series.

When you take this context into account, having an alternative romance becomes not only convenient, but essential.

And if the MC doesn't choose Liam as her endgame...who better for this "romance" than an old friend who has always held a torch for him?

A Romantic Rival

(Screenshots from Skylia's YouTube channel)

As most of the fandom remembers the first book and the trajectory of the Liam and Olivia relationship in it pretty well, I'll try not to go into too much detail. The Olivia of Book 1 has two parallel storylines: the one with the MC, where they first start out hating and then learn to like each other...and the one with Liam, which begins with Olivia assuming she will win the social season, but becoming more and more resigned to the MC's chances of winning as her position in the competition declines.

There is obviously a lot more focus on her dynamic with the MC, for two reasons:

1. Until the MC chooses an endgame, an LI will never show more interest in another person. It will always be the alternative LI whose interest initially drives that side-story. Making an LI reciprocate that interest can result in a negative impression of them, as fans could potentially believe that their love for the MC is not genuine or special. This is the case for all LIs in the series, not just Liam.

2. Narratively, the first book wants to make Olivia's love for Liam their big character reveal. It is the first time Olivia actively opens up to the MC, and is canonically the beginning of their "friendship". So very little emphasis is placed on her emotional attachment to Liam until the Coronation (with her cactus gift and her confession to the MC before leaving), and even less on how Liam feels about her.

Whatever little we do get of Liam and Olivia's dynamic before the finale is focused on their childhood friendship. We learn from Liam that she was a sad, lonely child when they met, heartbroken by her parents' death and the negligence of the aunt who was supposed to raise her. Her attachment to Liam emerges from his support of her when they were children, and we later learn in TRH that he not only supported her, but often empathized with young Olivia and comforted her in ways that didn't give away her vulnerabilities.

Olivia claims at the beginning of TRR1 that "everyone just assumed Liam and [Olivia] would get married one day". Given what we learn later about Constantine and the Nevrakis family (and the fact that no one backs Olivia's claim at any point in the book), it is possible she was exaggerating. But it is also true that until the MC gains more popularity and Madeleine makes her entrance, Olivia is assumed to win the social season quite easily. In the same way that Madeleine is positioned as the "political" rival in Book 1's story, Olivia is viewed as the "romantic" counterpoint to the MC.

From Liam's end, there is actually very little shown about his thoughts on Olivia. It is clear that he cares for her, wants the MC to think well of her and understand her circumstances. While as a child, he comforted her when she was called a cactus by reminding her that they were tough plants that no one messed with; as an adult he is pained by her vindictiveness towards people who haven't even harmed her. There is plenty of grounds here for some sort of relationship, but enough there that shows why the MC who will marry him would be a slightly better fit.

The second half of TRR1 focuses on softening Olivia to an extent - having her and the MC optionally bond over their dislike for Madeleine (who is viewed as the "bigger bad" at this point) and having her only occasionally approach Liam for his company. Her feelings for him come to the forefront only during his Coronation, around the time she withdraws due to the blackmail exposing her parents' attempts to assassinate King Constantine.

This moment in the series completes Olivia's transition from antagonist to a possible friend. The reveal that Olivia loved Liam all along ensures that the MC can sympathize with her for not getting the man she loves, and allows the reader to envision her as a future ally.

To some who already vouched for a Liam-Olivia endgame before the finale, this moment was a confirmation. To others who didn't exactly see Olivia's actions towards Liam as rooted in affection, this moment was a revelation. Whatever it was, this moment made her extremely popular in the fandom.

But this scene also had a more important purpose - it provided players not interested in Liam, a possible out from the situation. The ending of TRR1 hinged on Liam choosing the MC as his future bride, then being forced to accept someone else when the scandal broke out. Book 2 allows the MC to explore what she wants without the expectations of a social season. The prospect of a titled lady who genuinely loved Liam being his potential endgame would make it easier for fans of other LIs. It sounded like a perfect ending for everyone.

The (Unwanted) Kiss, and What It Says About the Fandom

(Screenshots from Danni Stone's YouTube channel)

A scene that often gets ignored (or conveniently forgotten) when discussing Liam x Olivia in TRR1, is the kiss in Lythikos.

The Lythikos Ball in Ch 8 is already a social battleground of sorts for Olivia. She wields her power as hostess here - monopolising Prince Liam's company, and humiliating the MC and her friends with the worst seating and ice-cold food. Things come to a head when - while dancing the Cordonian Waltz with Liam - she forces a kiss on him, completely disregarding his ability to consent.

I use these precise words to describe this incident for two reasons. First, because canon refused to do so. Second, because most of the fandom refused to do so.

Different characters in the story respond to this incident in different ways. A shocked "what a bold play!", a sarcastic "Olivia's growing up, how sweet", and an enraged "she's gone mad with power here!" emerge from the ladies of the court - all focused on Olivia's intentions and actions. None of these responses ever address Liam's end of this situation.

Even more interesting are the options the MC is given to address the situation when Liam speaks to her later.

(Screenshots from Danni Stone's YouTube channel. This is the second dialogue option)

She either speaks to Liam like nothing happened, or engages in victim blaming. Personally I think both options are as bad as each other. Neither of these options include "are you okay?" or "were you comfortable with that?".

Liam's answer to the MC's (optional) accusations is perhaps the only time the issue of consent is even barely addressed (and even here Liam is duty-bound to think of Olivia's welfare over his own comfort). It is appalling that it takes the MC practically victim blaming this man for that to happen. And it is equally disturbing that Liam's response is so apologetic, so contrite, as if this entire situation was his fault.

The kiss is viewed as a number of things in the book: an affront to the suitors who have no power in Olivia's estate, or a political blunder. But what does it mean to the man who had this kiss forced upon him? Would he really feel comfortable or safe around her again after that? The writers clearly didn't know, nor did they care. And most of the fandom was only too happy to follow suit.

The few times this kiss was spoken about amongst the fandom, the question of consent was barely ever addressed. The kiss was either brushed aside as unimportant, seen as an indication of the "love and passion" Olivia had for Liam, or viewed as a manifestation of her jealousy towards the MC. Liam is sometimes seen as "clueless" for not "noticing Olivia's feelings...I mean, she literally kissed him!!" All of which could be true, but it doesn't erase the fact that his consent was never given, nor his comfort with the situation ever considered.

It is doubly ironic given the fandom reaction to the MC's plight in Applewood, after Tariq attempts to kiss her without her consent (though this situation involves significant privacy violations and dark conspiracies, and Liam's does not). The MC's situation was (rightfully) viewed as horrible and potentially traumatising, and many were upset that the emotional impact of it wasn't adequately addressed in the story. It wouldn't be surprising if Liam's situation wasn't viewed on the same level - given the difference in contexts - but the fandom and canon rarely saw this as something that happened to him, without his consent.

Ironically, the fandom never really considered Olivia planting a whole smacker on Liam's mouth as possible "proof" that she could engage in creepy, entitled behaviour...but they did often view Liam as "creepy" for...complimenting diamond-option outfits, or saying romantic-coded dialogues that the MC would reciprocate by default (again - I don't deny this is a problem and those lines should have been coded properly. However one cannot deny the doubt standards here). Olivia was the one who forced a kiss on the object of her affection in canon, but Liam was the one who got so many "abuser" and "harrasser" (and worse!) depictions in fanfic when TRR2 and 3 were out.

I will be addressing this particular scene again in another context, in a later essay in the series. I would like my readers here to not forget this scene, or the (lack of) outrage around it. It would be helpful to ponder over why Olivia's behaviour here is largely viewed as no big deal, especially when other side characters (and at least one main character) could be villainized for far, far less.

Olivia and Liam in TRR2 and 3

(Screenshots from Skylia's YouTube channel)

TRR1's finale and TRR2 show a small shift in Liam and Olivia's dynamic. Now that he is engaged, and in love with a woman who isn't Olivia, their interactions become sporadic and awkward. To ensure that Liam won't be viewed as a cassanova, the narrative keeps their interactions to a minimum. Group scenes that involve Liam often leave Olivia out, and group scenes that involve Olivia exclude Liam.

However, to address the "romantic potential" from TRR1's finale, the book shows Liam and Olivia interact in at least one scene in Ch 10. Here, they have a short, stilted conversation that leaves Liam concerned about Olivia's well-being, and that makes Olivia grieve over her unrequited love for him to an equally concerned MC.

Olivia's story in TRR2 largely centers around establishing her character (snarky, prickly, warriorlike. Much of this is actually a deviation from her writing in TRR1), strengthening her relationship with the MC, and integrating her into the core group.

Olivia's feelings for Liam get addressed again after the MC makes her final choice of LI. The MC's acceptance or rejection of Liam's proposal results in a bit of tension between the two women. If Liam is the MC's choice, Olivia admits to her heartbreak despite being truly happy that Liam has found love. If not, she reveals a slight resentment that the MC could so easily throw away the love that Olivia so badly wanted. The narrative allows Olivia her complicated, ambivalent feelings towards the Liam x MC match, and expects the MC to understand and sympathize. By default.

If you don't choose Liam in TRR3, his romance with Olivia does start here. And by this I mean that Liam is now allowed to reciprocate her affections.

(Screenshots from the Skylia YouTube channel (Drake playthrough). The screenshots aren't in order. 1st Liam x Olivia scene is the handholding at Applewood (5), 2nd is dancing at Vegas (1st two), 3rd is Liam asking Olivia for a dance at the finale ball (middle two), and the last is Liam asking Olivia out (6))

Even in the playthrough where Liam is marrying the MC, his default is to trust Olivia, show her kindness and staunchly defend her to people who suspect her motives. Liam advocates for her innocence in TRR3 Ch 2, even as her family becomes one of the prime suspects. The MC may vouch for her by choice...but if she does choose to suspect Olivia, it is Liam who pushes back against the idea.

By this point, the MC and Olivia can cement their friendship if the former has worked on gaining her trust. If not - the book has already created an inbuilt mechanism to ensure Olivia's loyalty anyway. It is tied to her gratitude and affection for Liam, the one person who consistently believed in her from childhood. Whether the MC makes an effort to win her approval or not, Olivia respects her. Her emotional attachment to Liam as an old friend, and loyalty to her king, ensures that her support is gained by default throughout.

Outside of his own playthrough, though, the narrative does slip in a few extra scenes where Liam shows an obvious romantic interest in Olivia. It's small - he isn't exactly yelling from the rooftops that he loves her - but it is definite progress where he seeks her out for support, dances with her and eventually asks her out to dinner at the finale. The scenes are few but prominent, and leave no doubt to the reader that Liam fully intends to court her.

So...why is Liam still single in the Drake, Hana and Maxwell playthroughs of TRH?

Writer Bias

When you read enough interviews and watch enough livestreams from the TRR team, one thing becomes very, very clear. They love their TCaTF callbacks. And no callback is more beloved to the writers than the repurposing of Zenobia Nevrakis' sprite to create her descendant, Olivia.

In this section, I will focus in particular on Kara Loo, COO of Pixelberry and one of the head writers of the TRR/H/F series. Going by several interviews and social media posts, Kara wrote most of Olivia and Drake's scenes and dialogues (along with "some of the Prince's speeches"), and was in fact the driving force behind how Olivia's character came to be, in the original series.

"...when we were creating Book 1, we wanted an evil redhead to be your antagonist, and Kara said, "Oh, what if we used Zenobia, but the twist is she's a Nevrakis descendant?"" - Jennifer Young, Looking Back on The Royal Romance (Sept 2018)

Kara has openly admitted before to having a fondness for Olivia's particular character type. In an interview with Daily Dahlia, she spoke of Val, one of the TCaTF LIs, in glowing terms that perfectly fit the way Olivia has been written as well:

"I love writing Val Greaves in The Crown & The Flame. I love writing for characters that are a little meaner and will really just say what they’re thinking, even if it isn’t exactly tactful." - Daily Dahlia's Interview with the Pixelberry Crew (Sept 2016).

The love for mean (and white! Don't forget white) women among the team, is pretty clear when you look at the kind of reception TRR's mean white women get.

Notably, Kara does have the occasional nice thing to say about Liam too. In an interview before the release of TRR2, she spoke of how "considerate and loving he is", how "there is nothing mean or selfish about him". As a Liam fan who kept seeing him bashed left and right after the TRR1 finale, those words initially felt like a massive relief.

But now, seeing the way the team treats nicer and more diplomacy-oriented characters in the series, this fulsome praise for Liam's selflessness gives me pause. It reminds me too much of how most of the team swore up and down that Hana would be their choice of LI to marry in a livestream, at the same time that they were slamming an infertility subplot on her in the books. Looking back with the knowledge of how the writers would treat Liam later, praise like this seemed less focused on finding him lovable, and more on ensuring that he gave constantly to the MC without ever getting much in return.

While Liam's treatment is not as bad as Hana or Kiara's, one must take note that the team - esp the head writers - have never really hesitated to throw Liam under the bus or retcon entire chapters and backstories to make characters like Drake seem better than him (eg. The narrative choice to have Drake claim Liam was leading the MC on when they first met in TRR3, which has led to more than one attempt to rewrite the bachelor party).

Part of this could be attributed to just the fondness for a specific character type. But I do think that with Kara in particular, ideology also plays a role in her preferences. There are at least two interviews from the team where her liking for darker, more violent storylines has been mentioned. In TRR3 the team affectionately called some of their brainstorming sessions with Kara as "Kara's trail of bodies" (one idea was to kill off Madeleine in Lythikos), and in the TRF livestream they mention that she initially wanted a war storyline.

This leaning towards a more militaristic mindset shows...in the care that Kara takes for Olivia's dialogues and especially her spy scenes (tho such scenes actually don't contribute much to the plot). In contrast there is a subtle disdain for the more diplomacy-minded characters shown in scenes where Olivia's ideologies are measured up against theirs (eg. Any scene where Hana and Olivia are supposed to work together, or the vast difference between the "valiant" Lythikos tournament and the "ridiculous" Castelserraillan flower competition in TRH3).

Even though it is often the diplomacy that saves the day at the end, the framing always highlights the militaristic way of thinking more positively. Given that Kara writes a lot of Olivia, and a fair amount of Liam, it's pretty obvious now where her (and the team's) particular bias may lie.

Because of this bias, it became far easier for TRR's writers to lean into popular fandom myths when it suited them, or pander to a particular section of the fandom. Which is the subject of my next section.

Fandom Entitlement

Olivia often has two types of fans - the ones who wanted to ship her with their MCs in canon (and couldn't), and the ones who wanted to be "bestieeeees!" with her. The frustration of the former was rooted in the fact that wlw had only one romantic option, but I will not be talking about them.

The latter were found in plenty among the Liam, Drake and Maxwell stans - all of whom either viewed her as an ally to win over (Liam), or as someone to push onto Liam, so they could romance the men they preferred in peace (mostly Drake and Maxwell. Some Hana stans but not as many).

As I'd mentioned in an earlier section, Olivia's final scene in TRR1 allowed people who didn't want to romance Liam, to envision a narrative 'out' for themselves. By the time Olivia reappeared in TRR2 Ch 5, she'd gained a cult following among many, many fans. A lot of them were actively rooting for the start of a romance between Liam and Olivia, and very few resented her for her feelings or begrudged her past actions.

But there was one downside. The intent among the majority who rooted for this pairing, was more about "getting Liam out of the way", than any actual romantic potential. Because of this, certain Liam x Olivia stans (ironically, the Drake romancers were the loudest voices in this group) felt a ridiculous level of entitlement towards this pairing.

A number of readers insisted on having Liam fall for Olivia immediately, wanted him to show feelings for her instantly, and complained when he didn't do so while his (optional) romance with the MC was still on.

Olivia's sad, longing gazes in TRR2 propelled many a reader to complain about what an awful situation poor Olivia was in and how insensitive and uncaring Liam was (even in the face of screenshots that clearly showed him worrying about her desolate mood). One of many examples comes from a post in Feb 2018 - a Drake stan's written walkthrough of TRR2 Ch 10, and ironically the following lines were made above a screenshot set that clearly showed Liam noticing how sad she was and worriedly asking the MC about that:

Liam finds you and as always, can’t help fawning over you. This time Olivia is right there and he is like, Oh yeah, Olivia, you are too here, hi. She definitely notices, gets upset, and leaves because she really does love him and she is third choice at best.

This was not the only one. There were multiple posts like these, and they often positioned Olivia as a figure of sympathy, yearning for a love that would never be hers. Liam in these readings was always positioned as someone who "didn't care" and later, "didn't deserve Olivia".

When he did start showing an interest in Olivia in Book 3, it went largely unnoticed by most of the fandom, even though he was romancing her in at least 3 out of 4 playthroughs. There were very, very few posts made about any of these romantic moments. Instead, from Chapters 3 to 10 of TRR3 - where Liam didn't show any indications of heartbreak re: the MC - certain Drake/Maxwell fans made posts complaining over his not pining over the MC, or theorizing that some of his friendly attempts to educate the MC about the country had to have been done with more than friendship in mind.

This section of the fandom often got insane amounts of pandering from the writers themselves. When TRR3 returned from a hiatus post Ch 9, we were suddenly hit with more scenes involving Liam's "heartbreak" (it featured sporadically in all three of the other playthroughs, but you could tell it was tailor-made for the Drake one because it got referenced there waaaay more) before the big battle with Anton. Fandom spoke far more on these scenes than on the ones they got for Liam x Olivia.

What was completely missed was that such "heartbreak" scenes happened because there was a demand from readers who weren't even Liam stans in the first place, and the same stans didn't hesitate to flip and label him "desparate" or "pining" or write fanfic where he was an absolute creep in response to a thing they asked for!

As for talk of the Liam x Olivia ship post TRR3, the phrase "sloppy seconds" started to be used often to address the pair after the series ended, and there were quite a few posts claiming that Liam didn't deserve such an incredible woman like Olivia.

(Edit Source: the playchoicesconfessions Tumblr blog)

Using the pining subplot that nonLiam stans had asked for, some of the same people would insist that Olivia "deserved better than to be sloppy seconds" (at some point after TRR3, I noticed that even some Liam stans would say the same!). This argument often came hand-in-hand with the lie that Liam never cared for Olivia enough (as one can see in the edit above). It also often hinged on the premise that the MC was Liam's first love, that he wouldn't (and shouldn't!) ever get over her, and that anyone else would rank as second best to him. And while I agree that Olivia deserves a partner who would wholeheartedly love her, this argument seemed to come from people who were eerily reluctant to imagine Liam leading a happy life without the MC.

Tbh, the fandom at large has always had a very confusing relationship with Liam as a character. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said that from TRR2 onwards, making Liam a scapegoat was a very popular reading from the fandom. He was often expected to live up to impossible standards - way more than the other male LIs - and criticized incessantly for dialogues and action that the other two could easily get away with.

Many fans were (rightfully) frustrated by how Liam could have romantic lines by default (which the MC would by default reciprocate, to their chagrin) all through TRR1 - while ignoring romantic default dialogues from Drake - but also complained when Liam responded more calmly than expected to her rejection of his proposal. They also didn't like that he could be largely neutral/merely friendly towards the MC for most of TRR3. Damned if he didn't, damned if he did.

I'm not saying that this was the viewpoint of the entire fandom. There were people - yours truly included - who pushed back against such a biased view of this pairing. Against a view that insisted on centering only Olivia's feelings, while either badmouthing Liam for not returning her love, or ignoring the times when he did. There were people who pointed to canon for proof that he cared.

But enough voices vouched for this other, more unsavoury reading that "Olivia deserves better than to be Liam's sloppy seconds", that it became quite popular. That it became the accepted view in canon too, when the writers began work on TRH.

Olivia x Liam (not), TRH and Beyond

As we all know by now, Liam x Olivia did not happen in TRH. After a dance and an invitation to a date in the finale, Liam was back to being single and uninterested in any romantic relationships (like all the other LIs). It went to the point where he was ready to appoint the MC's future child as his heir (heir apparent, not presumptive. The fandom mockingly dubbed him "Rumpelstiltskin" for this). At the time, I imagined that perhaps the narrative was trying to erase the pair altogether, since no other LI got paired up either. It would be fair.

This wasn't exactly the case. In fact, in my opinion, what they managed to do was much worse.

(Screenshots from the HR Gameplay YouTube channel. Liam is renamed "Rayden" here)

Savannah's bachelorette (TRH1 Ch 7) has the MC and the ladies "address" certain pairings that were hinted at in TRR3. One doesn't get addressed at all, one addresses the LI by name only if the playthrough isn't the one where the MC is married to him.

Olivia's is the only one that got addressed regardless of whether the MC was married to the man she had wanted or not. And looking at the scene now, I really, really wish they didn't write it at all.

If the MC encourages Olivia to talk about her feelings for Liam, the latter shows anger and resentment over Liam not choosing her twice over. This, despite the fact that he did attempt to date her the previous book. This, despite the fact that he never indicated interest until he actually felt it. This... despite the fact that not returning the feelings of someone who likes you romantically is a normal, natural thing that said someone should accept without judging other person!

In fact, the fandom was more than willing to view other LIs "not returning feelings" as normal, natural and blameless...so why did only Olivia get sympathy and praise for her unrequited love, and why did only Liam have to be criticised for the same?? Even in THIS scene??

Liam x Olivia would not be referenced for 3-and-a-half books after this, until the very end of TRF. Over the course of the series, the team tested her compatibility and possible chemistry with at least two side characters. One was Jin, the Auvernese spy that Olivia fights with in TRH1 Ch 19. While they did seem to have some banter in the first book and a smattering of scenes in the second, interest quickly died down and Jin was written out of the story once the Auvernese royals' scandals were exposed.

TRH3 then hinted at Amalas x Olivia as a pair, peppering hints as early as the introductory chapters. There had been a few murmurings among the fandom for the same, since a number of wlw were fond of Olivia, and people liked headcanoning her as bi or lesbian (in fact, when the team claimed in a TRH1 livestream that having Olivia as an LI would "soften her" too much, the fandom protested). Amalas x Olivia was met with more approval than Jin x Olivia, and in TRF you could encourage Olivia to ask either Liam or Amalas for a dance.

Liam himself never got any other options for romance (understandable, none of the LIs did), and in fact had several aspects of his story chipped away, chunk by chunk, to benefit other characters. In the end, Liam is treated like Olivia's "alternative LI" than the other way around.

It was a pretty ironic ending for a pairing that people felt so entitled over in the beginning. After years of protests against Olivia being Liam's "sloppy seconds" just because he chose her after being rejected by their MCs... the narrative didn't mind treating him like some sort of "consolation prize" (one of two) for Olivia. And as expected, nor did the fandom.

Conclusion: Could This Pairing Have Worked?

Much as I dislike it now, I did think Liam x Olivia had some potential back then. Politically and emotionally, Liam and Olivia were opposites in many ways. There was a lot you could explore. Their background history and the sweetness of their childhood story had the potential to add layers to their dynamic.

But for a pair like Liam x Olivia to work, romantically, some things would need to change:

1. Respect in the writing room for both their ideologies, not just Olivia's. If you view one with adulation and the other with disdain, that will eventually show in the writing. These two could have been a solid power couple if the team could just set aside their boners for violence and knives once in a fucking while.

2. THE KISS. If you're going to have that kind of a scene around, especially in the context of TRR1's larger story, it needs to be addressed. From Liam's point of view. With Olivia openly regretting it and atoning for it, and Liam getting to choose how to handle that. It isn't just enough to assume they spoke offscreen, and then pretend the forced kiss never happened or that that violation meant nothing.

Olivia was wrong. Olivia crossed boundaries. Olivia disregarded Liam's consent. Liam was the victim here, not the person the MC should be shouting at - even by option.

If a romance should proceed between the two, that kiss deserves to be addressed with a lot of sensitivity and respect to Liam's own experience.

3. BALANCE! Between their perspectives, their viewpoints, their beliefs. Which would only be possible if you equally valued both characters.

4. Respect for Liam's feelings and his romantic choices, whatever they may be. Liam knows what he likes best. Him not returning Olivia's feelings is not a crime, nor does it make him any less of a caring person. Him falling in love a second time, seeing an old friend in a new light, should have been embraced as a concept.

Loving someone else deeply in the past shouldn't make his feelings for his second love any less genuine. But most of the fandom adopted such a way of viewing the Liam x Olivia relationship because it allowed them to pity Olivia and blame Liam (again) - and the team validated those sentiments out of excessive care for one character, and a lack of it for another.

Changes like these four would have definitely made for a better-written alternative romance. But given the kind of team and the fanbase TRR had, none of the changes I mention here would ever have a hope of becoming a reality. Olivia is too popular, too beloved to her writers and fandom, (and too white!) to be viewed with even this much of a critical eye. And tbh, once the fandom has marked a character (esp a character of colour - customizable or not) as a scapegoat, they would enjoy bashing them too much to stop. From then on, it would only be a matter of which excuse, which nitpick, which set of double standards, would work best.

Liam and Olivia had potential. And the narrative was able to get that story to the point where the two could at least have a first date. But team TRR squandered all its future possibilities in the mad rush to pander to a portion of their fandom, with a clear bias for the side character...and so we will never know how a more balanced portrayal would've looked like.

A/N3: I have quoted posts that have actually appeared on Tumblr, but without any identification marks. All of them are one among many such posts - either lost to digital decay or hard to find. I do not want to call out any of the individual posters - I want to make it clear that many of these posts are indicative of a fandom-wide problem. Do not try to find out, or harrass, these posters.

Next - Maxwell and Penelope: When You Like the Side Character So Much, You Gift Her A Shiny New LI

#essay series: trr's alternative LIs #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale #king liam #liam rys #olivia nevrakis #trr meta

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visceralcoma · 5 months

Text

Because OP blocked me. I decided to make my own post to debunk every single one of their points. source in case you wanted to see their foolishness directly.

Transcript:

"buh buh buh Dreadwolf not Baldur's Gate 3" You're right, Dreadwolf won't be Baldur's Gate 3. Dreadwolf won't be a game where the creators were so uninvested in a non-white woman's story that they refused to actually finish her storyline and then declared that her being condemned to slavery was the ending she "deserved". Dreadwolf won't be a game that's obsessed with victimizing and slaughtering members of an oppressed minority, all while portraying them as leeches and criminals preying on the people providing them with refuge. Dreadwolf won't be a game where an entire foreign culture is portrayed as irredeemably savage and evil, and where a character of that culture's "good" ending is to abandon her culture for that of western-/white-coded society. Dreadwolf won't be a game that constantly romanticizes emotionally manipulative and abusive white men, placing them at the forefront of stories while constantly portraying women in positions of power as evil and stupid bitches. Dreadwolf won't be a game that vilifies a matriarchal society, especially one of dark-skinned women, while at the same time treating them as sex objects even in the context of them abusing prisoners. Dreadwolf won't be a game where the amount of story content and dialogue a character receives is dictated entirely by their skin colour. Dreadwolf won't be a game where an evil character is heavily queer-coded, with a backstory filled to the brim with allusions to homophobic stereotypes about gay men being manipulative and predatory. Dreadwolf won't be a game that uses a female character to paint a male character as being totally awesome and totally smart, then writes that female character as not only a total bitch but short-sighted and stupid as well. Dreadwolf won't be a game where the roles of recurring characters and whether they return as playable characters or reduced to shallow villains isn't dictated by whether or not they're white. So yeah, Dreadwolf won't be like Baldur's Gate 3, because it is not made by and for shitty people.

Lets go down the line of their "points"

Isabella, when she was given to the Qunari in DA2.

City Elves, insanely victimized and deemed criminals by in world humans. And they (and Dalish) are often slaughtered in the narrative by humans.

Qunari, Tevinter, you can't go five minutes without someone calling Tevinter evil or deeming any Qunari as a savage. And Iron Bull's entire arc is about him leaving the Qun as the "good" ending.

Cullen, Samson, Anders, Solas - their stories are pushed forward, despite the fact their narrative counterparts get the shit end of the stick. Vivienne, Calpurnia, Wynne, and Merrill

Rivain. and Isabella nuff said. In the comics she throws slaves overboard.

The black main character (Vivienne) in DAI has much less content in comparison to any of the white faves.

Samson is an evil character with a tranquil as his partner. As a templar he was part of the oppressor group and could be seen as grooming the mage turned tranquil. Especially when you remember that Templars often abused tranquil, and then what happens in DAI to tranquil.

Merrill vs Solas in terms of the Eluvians. Or, Morrigan vs Solas. Take your pick.

I present to you, Varric, Leliana, Cullen, Samson, as recurring again over multiple games. All white, or at the very least light complected. Then the ambiguously brown characters who only got cameos: Alistair and Zevran. And then the sole brown/black character cameo got shunted to multiplayer only, Isabella.

This person clearly never played dragon age and are pretending to in order to make this post for clout.

#bg3 #dragon age #baldur's gate 3 #dragon age dreadwolf #bioware #larian studios #baldur's gate

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bubblesxo · 30 days

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i dont know if you will see this but i am a big fan of your g!bruce meets the batfam!!!! I literally have tumblr just for this series (and now that I’ve tried it im beginning to love it ngl) . Annyywaayy ive just read the new chapter and it’s so good!?? Like i am really excited for the next chapter!!!

Oh and I haven’t watched gotham ( im planning too ) but i sometimes mix the twins????? Like your explanations are good dont get me wrong but yk when your reading and you need to check which ones which? Yeah … and like i want to fix that idk how .do i just like memorize the twins personalitys??

also in this au is theres 2 jokers??????? I saw you once mention Jerome(?) being revived or something

ps .im that great at English sorry .

oh wow wow wow thank you so so much!! i'm really glad that you're enjoying my story so much! it really means a lot to me. <33 i think your english is good! but if you need/want me to clarify anything i say here, just let me know and i'll try to rephrase it for you!

okay, so in the Gotham tv show (this has spoilers for all 5 seasons, so read on if you're okay with that) the way that they approached writing the joker was actually really up in the air in the beginning. this is because they didn't have the rights to use the name "joker," and so fox (the company that made the show) planned on making a bunch of smaller characters in the show as a kind of easter egg as people who could be the joker or who resemble him in some way.

this changed when cameron monaghan (the actor for both jerome and jeremiah) guest starred in s1e16 "the blind fortune teller." in it, the character of jerome is introduced as a 17/18 year old boy who travels with the circus with his mother, who is a snake dancer. he is meant to be one of the aforementioned joker-like characters in the show and wasn't actually supposed to be included again after that episode, if i am not mistaken.

however, the viewers LOVED his performance and jerome came back in season two as a member of the maniax, a group of arkham inmates who were broken out of the asylum. i won't go too into detail about the actual plot, but in seasons two, three, and four, jerome shows up in at least a few different episodes with very memorable storylines each time.

it isn't until season four of the show that jeremiah is even revealed at all! jeremiah and jerome are identical twin brothers, however, jeremiah has been in hiding for years under the fake name "xander wilde" in an attempt to escape jerome, who wants to get revenge on him for lying to their mother about what he (jerome) did when they were children. basically, jeremiah lied to their mother (lila, who jerome is revealed to have killed in 1x16) that jerome tried to kill him, causing jeremiah to be sent away and be adopted by rich people and get to go to a well-funded private school where he could live out his best life as a child prodigy (which was jeremiah's end goal to this), whereas jerome was left behind in the circus that they lived at (haly's circus, the same one that dick grayson later was raised in before being adopted by bruce). during this time, jerome was horrifically abused by his mother, his uncle, and his mother's many romantic partners. this eventually caused him to crack, which creates the character we see in the show.

here's an easy way to remember the difference in their personalities:

in the standard american deck of cards, there are two jokers: one that is black and white and one that is in color. in this analogy, jeremiah is the black and white joker and jerome is the one in color.

this is jerome:

he's got a *very* boisterous personality. he's outgoing and charismatic and, of course, severely messed up in the head. he *enjoys* the pain he causes people and does it with little to no reservations. he thinks things through less thoroughly than jeremiah but jerome always has a plan and is actually quite smart. i couldn't do him the disservice of calling him the dumb twin, despite some points about jeremiah that i'll get back to later.

anyway, jerome has a grand plan for all of gotham: he believes that, fundamentally, everyone in the world is like him and is also at least a bit crazy inside. he wants everyone to tap into their inner selves and let themselves run free / go crazy. he successfully ensnares huge hoards of gothamites with his persuasive way of speaking and interesting flare to his words. he amasses a large cult following, all of whom are very similar to him in the sense that they all demonstrate similar signs of instability.

here's some more gifs of him.

jerome kind of invented the iconic "HAHAHA" signature joker laugh in the gotham universe, even though he isn't the one who goes on to become "mr. j" (gotham's version of the joker) in the end (that's jeremiah, though i have a lot to say about that).

jerome's always smiling, a genuinely creepy smile that throws people off at first but can be really scary once you know what you're looking at. he single handedly turns gotham into a madhouse on multiple occasions and is the one who basically spread the "crazy" to the general population (for short: genpop).

he's a classic cult leader in the sense that he can mesmerize a whole room with his magnetic presence but also will ruthlessly cut down any of his followers if they so much as upset him (or even if they're just being annoying or could have a greater purpose, like when he stabbed a follower in the gut to take their blood to draw a frowney-face on bruce).

that reminds me, another important thing to know about jerome is that he has an iconic stapled-on face! this is because he died once (in season two, though he came back to life for season three onwards) and one of his followers tried to revive him using some insider medical knowledge from doctor hugo strange (who is just... a whole thing. ew.). he thinks that he failed at doing this and steals jerome's face so that he can wear it on television in an attempt to control jerome's followers (spoiler: this doesn't work).

however, it turns out that jerome *was* revived from this, and he's pretty upset that some dude stole his face! so he uses a staple gun to re-attach it after he gets it back (and kills the guy who did it). his face is later punched off by jim gordon but reattached more properly during his time at arkham afterward (the carnival scene happened in season 3 and jerome came back with a kind-of healed face in season 4).

here's some gifs with jerome's messed up face!

jerome is the colorful joker because he's very much expressive. he lets out every single emotion he feels---unless he's trying to deceive someone, at which point he is a phenomenal liar. (in season 1 when we are first introduced to him, he almost successfully gets away with the murder of his own mother.)

jerome is funny and laughs a lot and is *loud.* he's also absolutely insane and incredibly cruel, as well as impulsive, but he's able to curb his instincts if he feels like he can pull off a big plan.

jerome is a showman by nature. he's a product of the circus and it *shows.* everything he does is like an act, something that is acknowledged by many people in the show.

he's a funky lil dude. totally crazy, but kind of adorable at times.

he's also SEVERELY traumatized from his horrible past and has huge trust issues.

so, yeah. jerome is colors! remember that.

unfortunately, pookie died in season 4 and doesn't seem to have been revived this time </3

now, onto his twin brother jeremiah!

jeremiah is, at least at first, presented to be the complete opposite of jerome. he's calm, collected, and seemingly sane---at least at first. bruce trusts him at first and he even befriends him for a period of time before jeremiah betrays him.

jeremiah is a genius engineer, and, when looking into his past, we can assume that he was a child prodigy. he worked with thomas wayne before he died and designed the wayne plaza building under the aforementioned alias "xander wilde." he also locked himself in an underground maze for ~6 years (i believe?) and never went outside, instead sending his proxy (ecco) out to act in his place during business transactions.

as seen here, jeremiah seems to be the complete opposite of showboat jerome:

when we first meet jeremiah, we are told that he is totally sane, but we can later see that this is not the complete truth.

i'll use jeremiah's project as a metaphor for this. jeremiah was building a set of generators which could make energy harvesting and usage much less expensive and much more bio-friendly (if i remember correctly). bruce promised to fund his project and jeremiah accepts his offer quickly.

after jerome dies in season 4 after kidnapping bruce and jeremiah, he left behind a concoction of chemicals that seemingly make jeremiah go insane. this is a play on joker toxin / joker venom from the greater dc universe.

however, after jeremiah reveals his new self

he says that the spray did not actually change who he actually is, but just gave him an altered appearance. there are a lot of fan theories about this, but the general consensus is that the spray likely lowered his inhibitions, which gave him the kick needed to reveal his true self.

even his complexion resembles the joker he corresponds with: black and white. he is the black and white joker because he isn't as expressive, is way more calculated, and is more cruel and less happy. even his skin is paper white.

here's some gifs of what he looks like after those "slight cosmetic changes" :

that looks a lot more like the joker we know and love today, right? bleach-pale skin, red painted lips, green hair. he's instantly recognizable as the stereotypical joker now.

remember when i mentioned the generators? let's go back to them. the entire time that the generators have been around, they've also been perfectly functional as powerful bombs. their ability to be used as bombs does not undermine the fact that they can also be used as generators, and both of these things were true at the same time *for the entire time they have existed.*

it is in this way that jeremiah's paradoxical nature has always existed. jeremiah is crafty, cunning, and absolutely vicious. he has no care or concern for human life in general and will sacrifice most people in his life if it means that he will get what he wants in the end.

this is shown both before and after the joker toxin in how he lied about jerome when they were children (which caused jerome to be heavily abused) and in how jeremiah willingly killed one of his most devoted and beloved followers, who was being ransomed, just because someone put him on hold and it was personally easier for him to just kill him than sit on hold on the phone for a while. (he also has a vicious streak, though, because he immediately moved the demolition of the bombs up to immediately once he was out of the blast zone because those people inconvenienced him.)

something that's important to realize about jeremiah is that he has an issue with being called crazy. jerome does, too, but he eventually comes to accept the term, almost like he's reclaiming it, but jeremiah is *violently* against it. that's one of the things that set him off in the previously mentioned interaction.

both jeremiah and jerome are obsessed with bruce, though in different ways. jeremiah sees bruce first as his best friend and later as the "brother [he] could never have, that jerome could never be." jerome just sees bruce as a particularly entertaining and interesting kid who he enjoyed tormenting who he would eventually kill.

anyway, despite jeremiah being crazy (or, depending on who you ask, just less inhibited) he is still crazy smart and calculating. he thinks through everything before he does it and his master plans seem like they go on forever with 10000 parts to them and backups and contingencies galore.

the only time that jeremiah ever really seems to break out of this is when he's fighting with bruce. while he still does have a greater point to make or something he's trying to accomplish, he thinks through things less with him and shows his impulsive and rash side a bit more, which is interesting because jerome showed his thoughtful and contemplative side when faced with the obstacle that is bruce thomas wayne. i love parallels and contrasts, especially in these two characters! i just love writing about twins, they're always so interesting.

some important things about their relationship to one another:

even though jerome kidnapped jeremiah and seemingly strapped a bomb to his neck (after breaking into his house and telling him that he would kill him), jerome doesn't seem to actually want jeremiah to die. instead, as we later find out, he wants jeremiah to unleash his true self and carry on his legacy of chaos and cruelty in gotham for him after his death. this is why he left behind the laughing gas for him.

(the fact that jerome thought to do all of that shows that he really was a smart character and that he truly did understand the world around him well. he knew exactly what would happen in the event of his death, i.e. bruce offering to fund jeremiah's work and jeremiah accepting, as is shown when jerome has the joker venom in a present box which claims to be sent from wayne enterprises.)

jeremiah *hates* to be compared to jerome in any way, as he thinks of himself as "the face of true sanity." he actually has an entire notebook full of jerome's ideas, which he says he will outdo and perfect, thus defeating his brother in the end, which i don't know if i agree with, but whatever.

i think that it's because of the reputation that jerome got at the circus. jeremiah wanted people to think of him as better than jerome and as the perfect child, which he succeeded at. to him, jerome is synonymous with crazy, which i've already mentioned that he hates to be called.

okay, just one more part to talk about. the infamous, much anticipated Mr. J!!!

in the series finale, it is revealed that jeremiah, after falling into a vat of acid, is horribly disfigured and pretends to be in a vegetative state for the whole ten years that bruce is on his quest to improve himself before becoming batman. he does this as a way of waiting for bruce to come back to gotham so he can continue to be obsessed with him.

however, though this is jeremiah, it seems that he has actually gone through immense mental trauma sometime during this time (perhaps during his fall into a vat of chemicals), which has caused him to sort of lose his sense of self. he once says that there was "another me" [another him] once, which is, of course, referring to jerome. this implies that jeremiah sees jerome as an extension of himself, almost, and almost makes it seem as if mr. j is a whole different entity of his own.

hopefully this clears everything up a bit for you!! let me know if you have any questions or want to know anything specific about the characters and i will be glad to oblige!

thank you once again for being so kind as to leave this ask!! it really made my day. thank you for enjoying my fic, i hope it continues to live up to expectations. i have a lot of fun things planned (and i am very happy that you decided to look into these characters more, because they are actually extremely important to the plot as we get more into the actual story!). <33

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jagged--dust-jacket-analysis · 24 days

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(Spoilers for HBH Season 2)

So I just finished season two of heart break high and I have SO much to say. but for this post I'm talking about Spider.

If you happen to be a long time follower of mine you know I'm a WHORE for redemption arcs. I eat them up. I also love characters who are so damaged and broken, yet have such potential to change for the good.

And I think that's Spider.

I feel like this season did such a good job with his storyline. They really put their all into his character, and he's instantly shot to my top characters.

Spider is a classic case of "toxic masculinity." A hormonal, sex obsessed, teenage boy with misogynistic takes. He doesn't take SLT's seriously, especially the parts about emotional topics. And so it's easy to hate him, especially in season one. Still, then the show gave us glimpses of Spider being a sorta decent person. It's clear to us that he's not irredeemable. He's just being a dumb teenage boy.

And then season two.

In the beginning he's being his usual self. His Misogyny amped up right from the get go. He ditches SLT's. He doesn't like the mushy gushy "wokeness" (though, those aren't his words) of it. He claims it's a class blaming men for all the problems in the world and storms out.

He and a bunch of the SLT's boy's leave in favor of Coach Voss's C.U.M.L.O.R.D.S (Don't ask what it stands for, I can't be bothered to remember). There, Voss teaches them a bunch of "masculine" things. And tries to open their eyes to the "woke agenda."

Eventually Voss's group and SLT's get into conflict and solve it through a sports match of (football?). This is when Spider starts to fall in love with missy.

I adore there relationship. Their subtle flirting from that point on is just adorable and awkward and hilarious. Their rivalry just adds os much to the relationship. Eventually they start to be hookup buddies. But Spider refuses to have "actual" sex. (I use quotations because the notion is dumb, but you all know what I mean).

Missy is confused, and feels like Spider isn't all in with her. So she shows up to his house in a risqué outfit to turn him on and eventually sleep with him.

Only to find his mom home and having dinner with him.

This introduction of Spiders mom is so crucial for his development.

At first, she's introduced to us as this strong willed woman. A feminist who won't stand for any man's bullshit. Missy and her hit it off right away, lightly making fun of Spider throughout the meal. And it's all really harmless. Until it's not.

Spiders mom confides in Missy that Spider's an IVF baby. That she's worried about Spider and his "dangerous b.s." She talks about dreams she's had where Spider is arrested for committing some of the vilest acts imaginable against women (if you catch my drift). She talks about this all, right in front of him. To his face! And more yet, she even asks if all problems would be better in the world if All men were erased from the planet. And while she doesn't come out and say it, it's implied this would include her son.

This really shows us why Spider is the way he is.

Because imagine. The one person on the planet who is supposed to love you unconditionally, thinks you're capable of some of the vilest shit ever. Raises you and let's you know that they think you're going to grow up to be terrible and assault people. That's fucked up.

And Missy says it best: That's what they think [you] are, that's what [you'll] be.

After a whole lifetime of being told how terrible you will be, how awful you are, you just begin to become what they've ingrained into your mind that you already are.

Obviously, Spider doesn't assault anyone. But he becomes misogynistic. Has very biased views of gender roles and the world. Say's things like that. Becoming the type of man his mother always told him he was.

It also makes sense why he thought SLT's was a "man hating" class. Because he grew up in a household with a mother who genuinely just was a "man hater." He was projecting.

But Missy tells him, it's not too late to decide who he wants to be. He doesn't have to be what everyone say's he is. And thus begins Spiders fantastic character development.

He starts to amend his ways, become better. He get's rid of his sexual posters, stops saying super Misogynistic things, he even says he'll drop out of the School Captain race.

And yes, he does lash out when Missy says they could never be together. He reverts for a moment. Goes back to the only coping mechanism he's ever known. But eventually, he finds his way again.

It's obviously not a fully fledged "redemption" arc. But it's a phenomenal start. And it really gives me hope for season three!

#heart break high #hbh #hbh s2 #spider #spencer white #spencer spider white

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thebreakfastgenie · 4 months

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I only wanted the audience to go through the experience of feeling what it’s like to be in that relationship with somebody where you caused their death. How does that make you feel? How does the audience feel identifying with that character?

Alan Alda said this about Hawkeye's storyline in the finale during All We Have Is Now, and I think it explains a lot about that episode. It had to be Hawkeye, and he had to do something bad. He couldn't just see something bad happen, like Jerry in The Billfold Syndrome--he had to be an active participant.

At its best, MASH asks the audience hard questions. That's what Alan Alda was trying to do in the finale. We're not just supposed to cry because Hawkeye is in pain, we're supposed to be uncomfortable with what he did. Maybe we can justify it, the same way Hawkeye does--everyone would have been killed if the baby's crying gave them away, he didn't mean for her to kill it, it was an accident--but the point is that we have to try to justify it.

Hawkeye is a victim, yes, but he's not entirely innocent. MASH has previously shown us soldiers in distress over the things they've done--remember the bomber pilot in Dear Sigmund? Even sweet, christlike Arnold Chandler probably didn't know any more about the people he dropped bombs on than that other pilot did. MASH has also reminded us that everyone in a war is a victim, even the people who gleefully participate, like Colonel Flagg. What happened to Hawkeye is bad, but what happened to the baby and its mother is undeniably worse. We don't see the mother (played by Lang Yun) again; of course this is because Hawkeye is the main character, he's our American doctor hero, but it's also because we aren't being asked to empathize with her, we're being asked to empathize with Hawkeye.

Hawkeye doesn't break because of something that's done to him or because of something he sees. He breaks because of something he does. Maybe something we can imagine ourselves doing. It's easy for the audience to say "I would never kill someone," but how certain can you be that you wouldn't hiss at a mother that she had to keep her baby quiet, if the circumstances were life and death?

In order to confront the audience with the reality of war in this way, it has to be Hawkeye. It has to be the character we love the most. We have to see someone we love, empathize with, maybe relate to, do something both unimaginably and mundanely awful. Hawkeye's always had a strong moral compass as far as human life is concerned, and he does this anyway. Why? Because the audience needs to know that I would never isn't true, isn't enough, won't protect you.

Alan Alda holds Hawkeye responsible for the baby's death, and I'm not sure the audience usually does. I think we like to see it as a tragic accident, and certainly he didn't do it on purpose, but that doesn't absolve him of responsibility. We do this because we struggle to accept the truth, to do what Alan Alda is asking us to do: empathize with someone who caused the death of an innocent. Maybe that's one reason Alan Alda is so critical of Hawkeye: he sees him more clearly than we do.

#mash #m*a*s*h #mashposting

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duhragonball · 8 months

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Dragon Ball Super Movie 2: Super Hero (2/5)

This line might just encapsulate the entire movie. "Yeah, sorry, folks. They made me the star of the movie this time, so it probably won't be as good. Why are you all cheering? Did Goku walk by or something?"

Last time, we set up the main villains of the story. Now, it's six months later, and we find Piccolo sparring with Pan near his house. Yeah, Piccolo has a house now. I remember when they revealed the house in an early promotion for the movie, and everyone was nuts about it. Piccolo has a house! What's inside? Look, he has a mailbox! What kind of mail does he get? What a time to be alive.

So Pan is three years old, according to this movie, so I think the idea here is that this is set just before the 25th Budokai and the finale of Dragon Ball Z. So Super Hero represents a turning point for the franchise. Up to now, every story told under the Dragon Ball Super brand has been set during the ten-year-gap between DBZ Episodes 288 and 289. But now we're at the end, which means the next movie, anime, or manga arc has to make a big decision:

A) Set the story after the 25th Budokai, and work around Goku's decision to train Uub at his home village.

B) Ignore the "End of Z" continuity altogether and just keep trucking along like it doesn't matter.

C) Just keep telling stories in the small time interval between Super Hero and the 25th Budokai and hope no one calls attention to it.

D) Jump back to the beginning of the ten-year-gap and tell stories out of chronological order.

I think A or B is the most likely option, since they wouldn't have jumped this far forward in time for Super Hero if they were worried about staying inside the ten-year-gap. I also suspect that they'll try to respect the "End of Z" lore, if only because they've mentioned Uub a few times in the DBS anime, and Uub actually had a cameo appearance in the manga.

But no matter what happens, Things Are Going To Be Very Different. In theory, Toei/Shueisha can do just about anything with the franchise now. They could kill Bulma, or give Majin Buu a whole new transformation. I guess they could try to steer the storyline towards the events depicted in Dragon Ball GT, but I'm pretty sure that ship sailed when they turned the Pilaf Gang into children. The point is that anything is on the table.

But back to the matter at hand. Pan's whole deal now is that she trains with Piccolo at his house every morning, then runs off to attend preschool until 1pm. Piccolo thinks she's showing great promise as a martial artist, even more than Gohan did when Piccolo first trained him, and Gohan was a year older back then. Pan thinks that qualifies her to learn how to shoot energy blasts like Goten and Trunks, but Piccolo says she has to master the fundamentals first, which means Pan has to learn how to fly, among other things.

This is Pan's character arc for the movie. She's not a major player in this story, but she still has an obstacle to overcome, and by the end of the movie, she succeeds. This is a big leap forward from the Pan we saw in GT, who remained static through the entire series. I guess she sort of learned a life lesson in the TV Special, but she was 110 in that story, so I think the implication is that GT Pan was a bossy twerp for a full century, which isn't exactly satisfying.

The weird thing is that we saw Pan fly all the time when she was a baby. In the DBS anime Baby Pan flew out into space, and she'd float around the house and such. I guess she forgot how to do it, or it got harder as she grew up and gained some weight.

Pan asks if it's true that her dad (Gohan) could be even stronger than her grandfather (Goku) if he tried. Piccolo says that used to be true but he isn't so sure anymore. Pan says she's never seen Gohan in action, and Piccolo explains that he hasn't had to fight, but if the need arises, Gohan will fight when necessary. Then he sends her off to preschool. A short time later, he gets a phone call from Pan's mom, Videl.

Okay, so let's unpack all of this. Piccolo has a cell phone, but he just leaves it in his house while he's training outside, because his Namekian hearing can pick up the ringtone from hundreds of yards away. Also, he holds it like a weirdo, dangling it from his fingers like he found it at a crime scene. Also, the case looks like a cartoon character. This is Penenko, an in-world fictional character that seems to be very popular. Its like a cross between a penguin and a cat, and it has a green tie like Yogi Bear, which I think is a classy touch.

As for Videl, she needs Piccolo to swing by the preschool this afternoon to pick up Pan. This is because Videl teaches a combat sports class, and they're having a tournament today, so she can't make it. As for Gohan, he's too busy working on a scientific presentation, and he hasn't come out of his study in days. Piccolo is annoyed with this, but he agrees to pick Pan up. Videl offers to buy him lunch, but he reminds her he doesn't eat food, so Videl considers buying him a Penenko plushie instead. Piccolo doesn't want one, though, because he already has a pile of them in his house. Presumably those plushies represent a whole bunch of past favors he's done for Gohan and Videl.

Okay, more importantly, let's talk about Videl. This is her only appearance in the movie, save for a still image in the closing credits where she comes home to find the house has been damaged. Still, this conversation tells us a lot about what Videl's been doing ever since she and Gohan got out of school. She's teaching a "combat sports class". This makes sense to me, as she must have given up the vigilante work around the time she was pregnant with Pan. But teaching students how to fight would be easier for her, since she could set her own schedule and arrange for the students to train independently when she's not available. It's the perfect career for the new mom with a talent for whippin' ass.

The thing is, Videl's not just any martial artist. She knows basic ki techniques, but besides that, she's the daughter of a world famous celebrity buttkicker, and she earned a reputation of her own as a crimefighter. So this can't just be any old "combat sports" class. I mean, they're participating in a tournament for goodness sakes.

So this is my Videl headcanon: She's teaching people to fight crime. And not just any crime, but the rocket-launcher-weilding maniacs she used to fight when she was in high school. Videl stepped away from that life to focus on her family, but she's still got one foot in that world. It started as a self-defense class for women, and then she decided she could show them more advanced techniques, until eventually she had a cool stable of badasses.

The tournament she's talking about isn't some fun little romp, although to her it would be, and it's barely beneath Piccolo's notice. But to everyone else, it's some kind of hardcore mixed-martial-arts event. Videl brings her students in and they're all wearing kick-ass uniforms to represent their school. What kind of uniforms? Here's a hint:

GTH. That's the name of Videl's dojo. The Go To Hell Combat Club, so-named because you have to go to hell to learn the combat style of Mr. Satan's daughter. Imagine going to some indy wrestling show and instead of wrestlers out comes a bunch of MMA guys all dressed like Pan from this movie. It probably looks cooler on grown adults, which is why Pan likes to wear it.

So what's Videl wearing when she leads her squad to the competition? Oh, we already know the answer to that question, because we saw her return home from the tournament.

I mean, it makes so much sense when you think about it. remember, we saw Videl wearing regular clothes when she called Piccolo. She must have changed into her Battle of Gods red-devil dress specifically for the tournament. She might have a different outfit for fighting, but this is what she wears when she's in the corner for her students. She's like a sexy ECW manager, which explains the red leather dress, black tights and white go-go boots. She's so over-the-top with this thing that it makes the Great Saiyawoman outfit look dull by comparison, because she's trying to get over this image of smash-mouth combat supremacy. It's the same reason Mr. Satan wears the cape.

This is a weird tangent, I know, but for so many years I've heard fans lament the way Videl was depicted in Dragon Ball Super, and they're absolutely right, but I'm a "yes and" kind of guy when it comes to this stuff. There's nothing wrong with having Videl be a housewife as long as it doesn't preclude some other, cooler lore from happening off-screen. And Super Hero seems to be holding out an olive branch to the fans. Yes, Videl has a life outside the home. She teaches martial arts, so she clearly hasn't given up fighting altogether. How and how much she fights is left to the viewers imagination, and I can imagine a lot.

Anyway, I need to commission some art of the GTH school looking cool. Videl's in the center of the group with a riding crop or something. Gohan's in the background with a snack tray. He made Chex Mix for the whole class because he's a sweetie.

Back to business, Piccolo decides to head for Gohan's house and confront him over this. He knows Gohan won't answer the door, so he just flies to the window of his study and scrapes the glass with his fingernail to get his attention. This fucking rules.

Gohan's working on a study of a newly discovered ant species that glows yellow when threatened, like a Super Saiyan. Piccolo isn't even a little impressed, but he agrees to pick Pan up from preschool anyway. He asks why Gohan never trains anymore, and Gohan gives the stock answer about how nothing bad will happen, and even if it does, Goku and Vegeta will surely deal with it. I mean, that is what happened in the last movie, but they cut it pretty close in Resurrection F. Piccolo uses his clothes-altering powers to make Gohan wear his old training outfit, but that's about all he does.

I don't really understand this constant back-and-forth about whether or not Gohan trains enough in DBS. Obviously, Gohan let himself go in Res F, and then Gohan asked Piccolo to train him again to get him back in fighting shape. Then they made it look like he'd slacked off again leading up to the Tournament of Power, except he did really, really well in that arc. And now it's like he's slacking off a third time.

I mean, there's time for that. We're talking about a five or six year period here. It just seems odd to me that no one mentions we've been through this cycle before. I think the disconnect is that Gohan trains, just not often enough to satisfy the likes of Piccolo or Vegeta. He'll stop training for months or years at a time, so that he can concentrate on his biology career, and then he whips himself into shape when he has the time. This movie pretty much confirms that pattern, but each time it comes up, the characters always act like we haven't been here before.

Gohan offers him another Penenko plushie as thanks for picking up Pan, and Piccolo insists that he never liked them. I think it is very likely that Gohan and Videl do this to him on purpose. I mean, Videl knew this tournament was coming up, and she could have made other arrangements, but this way Piccolo feels obligated to be involved with their family. If they just invited him over to things, he'd probably decline, but this way he feels like they need him and he can act all put-upon, but he still gets to spend more time with Pan and such. Also they might be trying to fix Piccolo up with Pan's teacher, but we'll get to that later.

So now Piccolo just has to get in as much training as he can until 1pm, right? Wrong, because as soon as he sits down to meditate, some new guy shows up and attacks him. He refuses to identify himself, but the Red Ribbon pack on his uniform pretty much gives it away. Plus, this guy has no ki signature, so he must be an android or cyborg like Gero's creations.

So they fight, and it doesn't go well for Piccolo. At one point he asks why he can see words appear whenever he gets his. I thought this was a cute fourth-wall-breaking joke, but in fact this new guy has a holographic projector that makes the comic book sound effects appear behind him.

The mysterious attacker only refers to himself as a super hero, and after he blows up the butte Piccolo is on, he flies back to his base, thinking Piccolo is vaporized. But Piccolo escaped unseen, and he decides to trail this guy and find out who he's working for.

This leads Piccolo to a secret base inside what I believe is a crater. It looks like the crater is full of lakewater, but it's actually a holographic illusion. Piccolo finds a goon in his size and swipes his uniform.

Inside, he finds the bad guy command center, where the new android reports to Magenta and Hedo. Piccolo learns that his name is Gamma, and there's actually two of them. Hedo already watched Gamma 2's attack on Piccolo via a remote feed from 2's eyes, and his only feedback is that 2 should have done a cool pose after killing Piccolo. Gamma 1 is more concerned that Piccolo might have survived because 2 was too sloppy to check for a body.

Sure enough, 1 reviews the footage and discovers evidence that Piccolo escaped. And since Magenta insisted that the Gamma's wear RR patches on their costumes, there's a real risk that Gamma 2 tipped their hand to the enemy. Gamma 2 isn't worried, though, because he still overpowered Piccolo, and the end goal is to defeat Dragon Team, so if this escalates the conflict, then so much the better.

And that pretty much sums up the Gammas' characters. They both play the superhero role they were designed to resemble, but 1 is more cautious and responsible, while 2 is more carefree and funloving. Earlier in the film, we see pictures of Hedo at some sort of autograph signing, and there's a character who looks almost exactly like the Gammas there, so I assume he designed his androids to look just like that character. Hedo doesn't seem too concerned with originality.

Carmine agrees with Gamma 1's concern. Their enemies have the combined power of Goku, Vegeta and Majin Buu, not to mention Mr. Satan. Apparently, the Red Ribbon Army still isn't clear on how powerful he is. If they find out about the Red Ribbon too soon, it could jeopardize everything, no matter how powerful the Gammas might be.

Hedo disagrees. Once he collects enough combat data from 1 and 2, he can simply upgrade them and create even more Gammas until they have enough power to tip the scales.

Apparently, Hedo doesn't think it would take very long to get more Gamma's manufactured, which is why they have these two booths already set up. This makes me wonder if Gamma 3 and 4 are already in there, just waiting for Hedo to activate them.

As for Magenta, all he wants to talk about is Hedo's other project-- Cell Max. This leads to a heated discussion over the value of the project.

Basically, Magenta considers Cell to be Gero's greatest creation, and while the RPC has Gero's notes on how to make Cell, they were too complex for anyone to reproduce the experiement. This isn't much of a surprise, since Gero never finished Cell the first time. When Gero learned that it would take decades to complete the work, he turned it over to his computer and moved on to working on his other plans. That computer never finished, because Krillin and Trunks destroyed it and the embryonic Cell back in DBZ Episode 145. However Magenta got the data on Cell, it must have been sent to him before then, but it would have only represented the earliest stages of the project. No wonder his own scientists couldn't get very far with it.

The only reason Magenta even considers it worth pursuing is because a completed Cell showed up to menace the world. Magenta thinks that Gero must have pulled it off somehow. What he doesn't know is that this Cell came from an alternate future where Gero's computer had time to complete the project. So Magenta knows what the finished Cell is capable of, but he doesn't have a complete recipe to make a new one.

But Dr. Hedo is even smarter than Gero, which is why Magneta hired him. The Gammas are fine machines and all, but what Magenta was really hoping for was that Hedo could take the notes on Cell and figure out how to build a new and improved model. And to his credit, Hedo was able to do that, but not completely. He created Cell Max's body and made him far more powerful than the original Cell, but he's still not done because his brain takes a long time to develop. I don't know if this is like a programming thing or Cell Max needs time for his brain matter to grow complex enough to support his mission.

At any rate, Magenta just wants to turn Cell Max loose right now, because he's so high on the prospect of unleashing such a powerful weapon. But Hedo warns him that they won't be able to control Cell Max the way he is now. If they activate him now, Cell Max might easily run wild and destroy the world, which defeats the purpose of using him in the first place.

Hedo's argument is that they don't even need Cell Max, so instead of wasting time on him, they should focus on the Gammas, who are more than powerful enough to carry out Magenta's plans. They can defeat Dragon Team, then the rest of the world will fall to the Red Ribbon Army, and then Magenta can reveal Cell Max to show off his power to the world. Magneta seems to buy into that idea, at least for now.

The thing is, we really don't know how long it would take for Hedo to finish Cell Max. It took Gero's computer decades to finish the original Cell, so maybe most of that time was spent developing his brain, and yet that Cell never did follow his programming completely. So maybe Cell Max would be uncontrollable too, no matter how much Hedo tinkered with him.

Then again, Hedo built the Gammas in just six months, so he's demonstrably smarter than Gero ever was. It's possible that he could finish Cell Max's brain in a matter of weeks and make him fully obedient. He just doesn't want to spend the time because it's busy work and Max doesn't look like a super hero, so he's not very motivated to complete the project. It kind of makes you wonder what Hedo could have accomplished if he'd given it his full attention.

Needless to say, all of this freaks Piccolo out, so he excuses himself and finds a quiet spot to make a phone call to Bulma. She tells him Vegeta has been away for three weeks now, training on Beerus' planet. And Goku went along with him, so they're both unavailable. Piccolo asks her if she can use that device Whis gave her to call him, and she says she'll see if she can reach them that way.

I just want to pause here to admire Bulma's yellow jumpsuit. This is definitely one of her hottest looks, perhaps because it's so workmanlike and unsexy. She just makes it look cool because she's Bulma. She just got done welding a quantum computer to a ham radio or something.

In the meantime, Piccolo leaves the RR base to go to Korin's Tower and get some senzu beans. He's still in the mindset that Goku and Vegeta will be the ones to take care of things, but he has to do as much as he can in the meantime to improve their chances.

As he flies through the holographic lake, we get a nice exterior shot of the base. So yeah, it does look like a couple of craters, although I'm not sure what the use was in disguising the inside when you can see all this stuff built up around the outside. I guess they have some sort of phony mining operation set up if anyone snoops around.

And that'll about do it for now. I've still got a couple of image spots for this post, so let's show off the photos on Gohan's desk. Pretty cool.

And here's a cool shot of Cell, since he came up in conversation.

#dragon ball #2023dbapocryphaliveblog #dragon ball super #dragon ball super super hero #piccolo #pan #son pan #gohan #videl #magenta #carmine #dr hedo #gamma 1 #gamma 2 #gth 4-life

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