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crowtrobotx · 11 months

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OMG YOU REMINDED ME i’ve been meaning to cry into your asks about how good chrysalis is. it’s been bouncing around my brain for weeks now. like you perfectly capture the side of karl that i’m most infatuated with— which is just how he cares for people even if he’s stubborn and ruthless and yk. just karl heisenberg. ITS SO SWEET. but you also never lose the grit of his character.

AND THEN KRIS AND LOTTIE TEAR ME APART they’re sooooo fucking well written they’re so fleshed out they’re so. real. you balance your beautiful descriptions with clever and heartfelt dialogue so perfectly. like i can’t wait for every next word i read i get so excited about it.

i got too caught up in how obsessed i am with your writing i forgot i had like. an actual question— what was your inspiration for writing the fic? bc your overall theme of how science can create both terrible and beautiful things is really interesting and i love it. and i really enjoy how your characters embody this.

me personally, my inspiration for my fic came from seeing how different ethan and heis were and how their deal would’ve never worked out. bc karl simply doesn’t understand what it’s like to love someone— he’s never had someone to care about (as far as we see in the game). so ethan’s bleeding heart goes completely over his head. so i was wondering what would happen if heis DID understand ethan. what if he DID have someone to care about.

and i was wondering if you thought the same? (don’t spoil anything if you don’t want to) but will that motivate his actions in a different way when it comes to the events of the game?

anyway ily and your stuff mwah ❤️

🥺

PLEASE oh my goodness thank you so much for the kind words. You have no idea how much they mean to me! I am trying to be better about being dismissive of any compliments because I still genuinely feel baffled that people who are not me are enjoying this so much but I am so so so so glad for it all the same.

I’m honestly very happy to hear you say that you think I don’t “lose the grit” of his character because that’s something I’ve honestly struggled with trying to balance! I mean, that’s kinda crazy to say, because this is a dude who was on screen for like ten minutes lol but I feel pretty strongly with the way he swings wildly between homicidal rage and moments of stark vulnerability, there’s something resembling a person capable of love and care under there. We never got a backstory for him and I think most of us are on the “he was taken as a child, not an adult” train, so I’m always trying to depict a battle between a kid who was robbed of any opportunity for a “normal” life, the adult who came from that and has been warped into both a weapon against his will and a person hellbent on survival at all costs, and a guy who, under kinder circumstances, might have been a decent if quite a bit eccentric dude. And that’s really hard! I often worry I’ve gone and made him too soft and that I need to focus more on him behaving like a violent toddler but I always soothe myself by remembering that Capcom didn’t exactly flesh him out which is both deeply frustrating but also leaves room for almost endless possibilities.

And hngggg loving on my original characters is like, so incredibly validating for me thank you <3 I have spent a long time thinking about those two before I even wrote a single word and I’m touched that you and others can tell and seem to enjoy it. I think I’ve mentioned it before but I’ve spent the last decade plus exclusively writing poetry, not prose, so I think sometimes that comes out with my descriptions and general style. It’s kind of a harder transition than I imagined but I’d like to think I’m getting better chapter by chapter lol.

Anyway, that’s enough about me. I love your stated inspiration for Heisenberg Principle – it totally comes through in your work and I absolutely agree. It’s actually quite similar to Chrysalis, at least in part. I, too, don’t think Ethan would have ever accepted the proposal. I say this with zero hate in my heart for the folks who were gunning for a team up DLC but I actually would have been furious if they’d done that and it hadn’t ended with Karl betraying him and a black screen with “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING” on it popping up lmao. Yes, Heisenberg is meant to play at your heartstrings because it’s clear he doesn’t want to be there and anyone can sympathize with that – but I thought it was pretty clear that the player was meant to notice the hypocrisy in his massive rant about how he’s not like his siblings or his “Mother” while he proceeds to commit unspeakable horrors. (I’ve seen some folks argue that it’s ‘not that bad’ because they’re corpses or whatever but like…. Come on, man.) I tend to view his interactions with Ethan as hugely manipulative. Karl’s a living weapon. He sees Ethan as another living weapon, one he can use to dispatch with his siblings, and Rose as THE living weapon to kill Miranda. Miranda has used Heisenberg as a tool his whole (?) life so why should he think any other human relationships are different.

Which I guess leads to Chrysalis. I was also hugely interested in exploring what that confrontation would have looked like if they both had someone to protect/love and more specifically if they were both fathers. My longtime Heisenmoots can tell you I’ve been singularly obsessed with this idea since like…. Day one lol. I am hoping that it will flesh out some of his canon interactions or at least make them more interesting while also perhaps maybe change the way he ultimately interacts with Mr. Ethan “Loses a Hand Biweekly” Winters. There’s a bit of personal inspiration in there, of course. Lottie is, for example, the daughter I would want if I had one: kinda feral, smart, authentic, a little weird. Kris is in part an exploration of my own chronic illness/disability struggles – many Heisenberg fics involve the reader/OC becoming a lord (which is COOL and AWESOME and I love all these characters, to be very clear) but I wanted to look at a story where that person doesn’t mesh well with the Cadou, where through no fault of their own they succumb to it like so many other nameless folks before. Not saying I was trying to be ~edgy~ but I also thought it would be fun to subvert the traditional “Karl and OC make a vessel” story which, again, I do not blame anyone for writing because it’s right there. And, yes, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say I just love this queer old man and I wanted him to have something, anything good in his life.

I feel like I’ve been rambling like a lunatic lol I could say so much more but I’m afraid I sound totally unhinged. Before I shut my trap, I’ll say that like many I felt there was a lot to be desired with how little backstory and motivation we were presented in this otherwise compelling game. There is something they’re trying to say about parenthood and something they’re trying to say about fairy tales and it all just… leads nowhere. No, RE has never been about satisfactory/deep character development but sheesh there really is the skeleton of something crazy good here. The whole of Chrysalis is leading up to that confrontation (I believe @vodkafolie called it a Dad Battle which I love lol) and I don’t want to spoil too much but it’s going to be both about that whole idea of ‘what if he actually did pick up what Ethan was trying to throw down’ but also the whole idea of love as madness and is there a point where in trying to preserve that love you can cause too much destruction and squeeze to hard and crush it like a bug in your palm.

Again thank you thank you thank you for your kindness, mwah right back ily2 <3

#asks #chrysalis (fan fic)#mourningstarmace #thank you thank you thank you again

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bellamygateoldblog · 4 years

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i will never be over the way this show has continuously tried to frame bellamy and clarke as heroes and good people, or the way the fandom has almost completely embraced and supported that narrative

the amount of times i’ve read “[clarke] saved everyone’s ungrateful asses” makes me seriously consider turning evil. like aren’t y’all bored? don’t you have a different sentence you would like to say for a change?

i want to talk about this but i probably don’t remember a lot of the details of this show so if im forgetting something or get something wrong i apologise, but i never have any desire to rewatch past s2.

clarke isn't even the hero of her own side, she took power of them using the military force of the grounders, someone else’s people, she’s forced them into alliances without their knowledge that weren’t in their best interest (while she literally had no idea what they were even going through because she’d abandoned them after upsetting their entire political structure, and this leader she’s bowing to is responsible for the slaughter of their children, has broken an alliance previously with them, has hung the threat of genocide over their heads, and who isn’t even wanted in power by her own people- dragging skaikru into that conflict, too), she’s sacrificed them and what’s best for them in order to cater to/concentrate on the grounders newest demands or pursue her own personal mission, she’s lied to and patronised them, she’s abandoned them and surrendered them to die while they were under her protection and responsibility, and in Book 2 (and these aren’t her people but in canon she’s their leader anyway apparently despite trying to blow them all up a few days before...) she’s abandoned them again, and is speaking for them without consent or any connection to what’s happening with them again,.........her inner circle/her ‘friends’ have to be extremely careful to remain important to her or on her team or they’ll be sacrificed, harmed or become acceptable losses to whatever her newest goal is too (but hey at least she says she cares about them) all while acting very ‘woe is me’ about the whole crushing weight of responsibility she shouldn’t have.

but she’s the hero, she’s beloved, she’s special, she has relationships that were never built, she and only she saved everyone again and has all the lines telling us so no matter how dishonest those statements are.

like this is where i personally see what you said in your ask most: when it concerns clarke.

bellamy on the other hand...i don’t place him at all on the same level as clarke when it comes to this. clarke has privilege that bellamy just never had as a character. and i think that does probably play into why i like him.

him being a hero to the delinquents/the 48 is completely believable to me. he was the original leader, he got them through a tough time, he chose to put himself on the line for them, and he’s the one who stayed. i also think it’s reasonable that fandom might romanticise him this way because he is one who has been shown to value the one life as well as the many of his people, a guy doing his best and making big mistakes along the way, a mixed complex bag of good and bad, i find him very likable and i love the toxic/pained/vulnerable ones lol but more than anything i find him to be one of the more interesting/entertaining characters on the show (Book 1).

we also see him torment himself with his own mistakes instead of just having other people do it for him/remind him like we see happen with clarke- and we all know fandom loves equating that with a “redemption arc” and as much as i personally dislike seeing pity parties i do like self-awareness and responsibility in characters that goes beyond a 3-second-long puppy dog look or straight dismissal of someone else’s pain, and for the most part bellamy’s expressions of this don’t come across as demanding sympathy from others but from genuine self-loathing and an honesty to himself, internalising the effects of his actions/childhood.

i know i personally prefer The Flawed Protector over The Tortured Saviour nobody asked for (same white male hypocritical moral hero in a woman’s body).

i don’t believe in assigning “hero” to any of them though like that’s the whole entire point of the show lol “there are no good guys.” and i also think a major chunk of fandom/shippers have warped bellamy’s character so much that it isn’t even him anymore, so this man they’re celebrating as a hero/good person isn’t even bellamy sometimes.

all of the genuinely “good” and kind people are dead.

i don't think i'd say bellamy was ever framed as a hero. like he was just never important enough to be, he’s just not put into those positions (despite being the male lead), clarke is. as the protagonist ig. bellamy...he’s the protector/knight of the heroes, but not the actual hero himself (applies to octavia too i think, where she acts and he reacts).

like take mount weather, clarke becomes empowered by her “wanheda” status, bellamy’s (and monty’s) part in that is lost...clarke is “bearing it so they don’t have to” (rme) which simultaneously strips the other boys from claiming the ‘victory’ of saving the 48 while still leaving them with the guilt, like it suits how i see clarke perfectly that she’s the only one to refer to the genocide (and shutting down the CoL, i realised) as “i” while monty and bellamy say “we” and it was clarke’s actions that got them to that point in the first place, but this is one of those times she’s clearly The Protagonist. if that makes sense lol.

bellamy is on the opposite side to clarke in s3 and s7 and he needs to be moved to her side in order to be on the ‘right’ one. now i don’t agree with that one bit mind you (when it comes to s3, idc about s7 lol) and i didnt see it that way but imo that’s how the show wrote it, to the point he was either demonized endlessly by fandom or woobified in a way that denied him his own agency. during s5 i don’t i think anyone was framed in a good light. i can see this applying in s6, though- where he was his absolute worst self yet, betraying his own development, failing at every point to “do better” despite claiming it, but still was given that reasurring line that they did better and saved people and was in that “heroic” position i guess? but is that because he was back to being clarke’s “good little knight” tho? (but do we claim s6??? do we really??? do we claim it ladies???)

s6 was 100% dedicated to making clarke look good/like a 'good' or sympathetic person. the bodysnatching plot (and the s6 sheidheda plot because if it was supposed to be about bellamy and address his s5 actions he would’ve been present to experience/observe those consiquences himself but he wasn’t lmaoooo. instead it was to tell the audience ‘actually clarke was right last season and here’s another reason to feel bad for her and how those ungrateful bitches were treating her’) has no other purpose for existing. clarke's character has consistently been elevated at the expense of everyone else's. but im not sure the writing did a very good job convincing me she was a good person if it was trying to do that LMAO like my interpretation of her is so fitted to canon, and no amount of throwaway lines telling me how good she is did anything to change what i saw yk? and in s6, combined with being patronised by the writers, i found her to be at some of her most obnoxious.

i don’t agree with placing bellamy and clarke in the same boat tbh. like they just come from completely different places and come across differently, especially in the way they interact with other characters.

in my experience this fandom (on tumblr) is extremely skewed in favour of clarke, like ive never seen a fandom so obsessed with their protagonist. there’s A LOT of clarke stans who stan her for being one of those “deserves better :(” characters, selfless and heroic, and support that view that she’s the superior character, entitled to other character’s devotion, love and validation yet doesn’t have to reciprocate any of it. the CL/BC ship war was just a bunch of people fighting over clarke, who deserves her more, which character is more toxic to her, which other character would 100% be her bff supportive of that relationship, treating her as a passive whose actions don’t take affect. im not sure how much i blame the writing for that because if so many of us are capable of recieving her character in this way then...why aren’t so many other people? how is there such a massive disconnect between the ways we see her?

and imo a lot of the bellamy love in this fandom comes from shipping him with clarke too rather than being because of who he actually is.

#the 100

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