#and like impulse is a pretty selfish person from the start but they *did* genuinely like and care about the rest of the party. they were | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bornetoblood · 9 months

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@littlealeta making a new post for this just cus I feel a little bad tagging onto this post ad infinum I hope you don’t mind :)

A lot of the things I have to say on this are pretty complicated (and I’m a little stupid) so sorry if this is like... uninteligable (also dw you’re not being mean! This is a pretty light hearted discussion about a video game I’m really not taking it to heart). I hope you don’t mind me doing the same right back at ya.

I don't really mind Vincent not saying he has a girlfriend since he's confused as to what he wants in his life, plus Rin and Catherine both threw themselves at him not Vincent. I think the game often gets viewed wrongly, a lot of people seem to think that if you have a partner, you should settle down with them and not think about breaking up with them. The game is trying to tell you that while it's not okay to cheat and betray your partner, it is okay to not have serious relationships.

My problem with Vince not telling Catherine he has a girlfriend doesn’t stem from the fact I expect him to settle down or think that’s best for him (the true freedom ending is my favourite for a reason) I have a problem with the fact it is a very serious betrayal of Katherine’s trust. While there are extenuating circumstances (the like... demon shit) Vince’s reluctance to come clean to both the girls purely stems from him not wanting to face consequences, which is selfish. Again I don’t think this is bad from a character standpoint, I find it very compelling, but it is immoral.

The problem is moreso how both Catherine and Katherine are written. They're both selfish and overly controlling to your character in different ways that it's just hard to fathom why Vincent would want to be with either of them. I wish Katherine was written to be less selfish, like why would you want to marry and have children with a man who drinks, smokes, lives in a messy apartment, and spends money impulsively? And Catherine had such rapey and yandere vibes from the start, which doesn't make sense because again, the game is focused on cheating and the idea of whether you want to live a free or traditional life. So why make both women so mean-spirited to the protagonist, one of them even raping and sexually assaulting him? And Vincent isn't even concerned about it? At least make Catherine's evilness more subtle and maybe not really come up until later in the game as Vincent starts pushing her away more and have Vincent not remember what happened between him and Catherine at the bar at all.

I agree and I think Full Body remedied the points with Katherine specifically to an extent. The scenes we are shown of Kath and Vince at the begining of their relationship genuinely makes me wanna see if they can make it work like that again! I think Kath wants to marry Vince cus they’ve been together for 5 years and they’ve both drifted apart over the years and don’t want to acknowledge that. The K endings read to me as the rekindling of their dynamic that had been dampened over time if that makes any sense. The deal with C is that I think her malice is already a slow burn (the SA point I fully agree on btw even if it is kinda ambiguous if they ever actually had sex when she says they did ((cus of the whole demon thing)). I think theres a relitive suspension of disbelief with C because she is supernatural. I think C nad K are both pretty compelling and both can be good for the Vince that ends up with them (the Vince that wishes to settle down and rekindle his romance and the Vince who wants to be king of hell).

But isn't that what all the characters in the game do? Is challenge women and each other? If they weren't, wouldn't we have Vincent agreeing to settle down with Katherine from the start? Sure Vincent has a problem with speaking up, but it doesn't mean he doesn't wish to rebel against the pressure women place on him. Personally, I can see Vincent's point here. He's often pressured by women to live a traditional, old-fashioned life of finding one partner and settling down with them. Vincent doesn't care about serious relationships, he just wants to take his time hooking up with women until he finds the one he truly loves. Like I said, cheating is never okay. But we've never seen Vincent make a move on Catherine.

Vincent may be jumping to conclusions about women here, but that's all he's ever known, since both Erica and Katherine and even most Catherine players are pressuring him to settle down and to stay with the one he's been with for a long time, even if she may not be right for him.

Vince being a guy who wants to sleep around and not settle down is the same Vince who wants to settle down with his family, or be with no one at all, we get to pick which Vince he becomes and the game is about Vince self discovering into the ending we pick for him. He is all and non of these things. Vince, and the other men in Catherine, experiencing pressure from women does not excuse thier treatment of them and I do not blame the women for this, it’s society as a whole that places this importance on marriage and women are more so affected by that expectation (that was created by men might I add). Marriage may be right for Vincent Brookes and it might not be. There is no right way to climb the tower.

Like Katherine, Erica can be well-intentioned at times, but just some of the things these two say just sound very morally biased, especially regarding relationships, mostly about the importance of being tied down. It's why I cannot stand any of the women in the game. They all just seem so shallow and narrow-minded. Maybe it's because I'm not someone who is focused on going after the idea of marriage, but I don't see how it's a problematic thing to not want to settle down, get married, and have a family, especially in the 21st century. Maybe that kind of thing is different in Japan, but here in the western world, where Catherine is set, those things aren't important anymore.

I’m also adverse to marriage for myself, the talk in Catherine about the importance of marriage all sounds the same to me. But it is the same coming from every character in the game, which is why I don’t hold it against Katherine or Erica and still fully enjoy them (Erica specifcially being one of my favourites I love that she takes 0 shit from anyone). Also sorry if this is pedantic but Catherine is set on Mars in an amalgum of the US and Japan (like Ace Attorney ((not the Mars part)). It being a made up setting allows it to make its own culture, which happens to be one where society deems marriage very important. I wish the characters ‘happy endings’ didn’t tend to end in marriage too but that seems more like a general thing with how Atlus decided to write the game than a specific character issue if that makes sense.

Again, I do agree that Vincent isn't written as well as he could have been but with what they had, I think they did a decent job, especially compared to characters like Shinji, Jerry Smith, and Arlo the Dinosaur who are just shallow and/or inconsistent characters. I just find everyone else shallow for the reasons I mentioned in the other post and I just can't find myself connecting to their characters. Orlando even goes back and forth between saying his ex betrayed him and he betrayed his ex. Like, am I supposed to even sympathize with this character? Is he a victim or not? I don't even know what exactly happened between him and his ex.

I ADORE these character inconsistancies. With Orlando specifically it’s implied his use of their finacies in the scam was a betrayal of sorts (like he lost their life savings by getting tricked) and his wife leaving him cus of this was also a betrayal. I love it because there is no good or bad guy here, it’s humans in a human scenario where they both made mistakes and I find that deeply compelling. Orlando’s struggle with blaming his wife and then himself for the totality of the situation is soooo fuckin cool I feel like I’ve known people like Orlando.

Like with Archie and some of the other sheep, trauma is not always an excuse to be an asshole. I went through some trauma, Vincent has gone through way more trauma, and we still care about others and want to do the right thing. We're not perfect, but at least we're willing to help others which Vincent's friends rarely do, at least they're not as empathetic with him.

I despise Archie and I would dance on his grave, but what I do love about this side quest is that it shows off how compassionate and loving Vincent is. He forgives and loves unconditionally no matter how awful a human being is and is always there to help them. When they die, he becomes quite shaken.

Here I think we are simply after different things in these characters. Archie’s trauma does not excuse his actions and never will but they do contextualise them and make him sympathetic. I can empathise with how he has come to the conclusions he has due to his past even if those conclusions are harmful and wrong. This is what I love in characters, messiness and humaness. This goes for all of the patrons for me btw. I agree that Vince’s interactions with the sheep bring the best out of him (tbh I think they showcase his more confident and heroic side in a much more natural way than Rin does lmao). Vincent finds comradre with a group of other traumatised, also misogonistic men. They learn together. Get better together. They open up to each other in a way society has barred from them outside of this life and death scenario and they are better people for it. They remedy their biases and they have each other now ( have i mentioned the bar patrons are my favourite part? cus they’re my favourite part).

I don't see the problem with the game showing another side to Vincent. I think it was Atlus's attempt at showing Vincent's more likeable side (which I think they did a good job with compared to the original) but it also tracks because we've seen Vincent being mentally stable and compassionate like this toward the other sheep. Rin is the only character who's consistently nice to Vincent, so it makes sense that Vincent would be at his best with him. Rin is perfect because he's an angel. And he does have flaws, he refuses to forgive Vincent after he apologizes for pushing him away. That was a cowardly and cold move considering how close they were. I think I just like that Rin is the only character who actually shows empathy and support for our main protagonist when everyone else hardly did.

My problem isn’t with Vincent showing another side, it’s that I think this shift is sudden and jarring. Vincent acts sooo differently in the Rin cutscenes (even when he’s with his friends he was stammering next to like 5 seconds earlier). Like I said I thnk this is done better in regards to his slow gain in confidence with the sheep. Rin is the only character who is pretty much always nice to Vince and, yes, it is because they are an (at least allegorical) angel but I do find this... boring and not very compelling. Flawless characters send me to sleep sorry I just can’t personally see the appeal in someone who has no room to grow. I feel like an angel character can have compelling flaws but they just didn’t do this with Rin and thus their scenes do not grab me the way the rest of the cast’s do. I am aware this is my personal preference but I do like my characters with a little more going on. Rin refusing to forgive Vince for having the literally textbook transphobic response to seeing them naked is not a flaw, in fact I think they reacted too mildly. While Rin is not explicitly trans I hope you understand I’ve seen the whole: Character is she/her’d, character is revealed to have a penis (shocking!!! violent and/or disgusted reaction expected!!), character is he/him’d like a billion times and I am a little sick of it actually.

I suppose my point here is that Catherine is about the relationships between damaged people. Navigating those relationships through the hardships is what I find compelling about the game and Rin distictly lacks that dimension. Vincent works for and cultivates his healthy support system by the end of the game. He gets closer to his friends, to other men, to himself- regarless on whether he chooses to persue romance. Rin throws a pretty hefty spanner in this for me in a way that could of been interesting but feels underbaked. I get why people like these additions but it runs in direct contrast to all the things I find interesting about the game soo uhh yeh.

#uuh yeh i like this game but i have problems with it like a lot of problems but that is okay #anyway fun fact about me is that my favourite character from anything ever is Astaroth of all people??? dont ask me how that happened #his lack of motivation aside sadism #genderfukery #and use of puns have enraptured me #anyway thanks for the talk! feel free to respond to this but i do have to sleep soon its late and i have work #again hope im like making sense here my brain is fried and im an idiot #the rat speaks #reluctant catherine tag #catherine game #yes #tw transphobia #just for that bit in the middle i know i cringed HARD when i got to that scene so #tw misogyny #for the discussion of characters diagnosed with it/j

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technoturian · 1 year

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I just watched three seasons of HBO’s Barry and I can’t help but feel like it’s the mirror image of Netflix’s You; similar in idea but also the complete opposite in execution.

You starts off pretty blatantly telling the audience that Joe’s the bad guy. Joe is explicitly a villain protagonist. Joe is not meant to be rooted for. Joe is not a reliable narrator and here are all of the ways he is trying to manipulate you into relating to him spelled out for you, by him, in his own words.

And then somewhere after the first season... something happened. The writers seemed to fall in love with their creature. Joe keeps getting into these situations that don’t just blur the line or make him into a more nuanced person but straight up muddy the message and narrative of the show. You begins by telling us that Joe is a selfish, obsessed, amoral person who will do anything, anything to get what he wants. But more and more the narrative tries to ‘aww gosh’ him into being some kind of unlucky underdog and at times they even go so far as to make him out like some kind of unlikely hero. It no longer felt (at least, to me) like his narration was the only unreliable one here, instead it seemed like we were supposed to root for him, just a little. I began You wanting to watch Joe burn himself to the ground, as it seemed the show wanted me to want that. I wanted to revel in his downfall. I stopped watching You because more and more it seemed like we were supposed to be happy when he scraped by yet again, and that wasn’t the show I signed up for.

Now Barry is a whole different animal. Yeah, he’s a killer! Yeah, he hurts people! But it’s funny! It’s a funny show! And look at how earnest he is. He feels bad about it, you guys. And look at how manipulative and abusive the authority figure in his life is. He’s being gaslit and browbeaten into doing these things and he just needs someone to put him on the straight and narrow. He keeps trying to get out but they pull him back in. You want him to turn it all around. When he is triggered by his past memories and experiences pain and vulnerability and when people like Fuches (or even his fellow actors) prey on his trauma you feel bad for him. You want him to earn forgiveness and redemption, even as he does awful things.

Then the show takes a turn... A planned turn.

I honestly don’t know how I feel yet about season three. I don’t know if I feel lied to, exactly. It’s more like Barry didn’t spoon feed me what I was supposed to feel about all of it the way You did. I chose the interpretation that made me root for Barry, and then it became clear that he wasn’t going to get better, he was going to get worse and that made me feel gut-wrenchingly disappointed. When I thought about it, I realized that Barry is a lot like Joe in terms of internal monologue. A lot of excuses for what he does. A lot of desire to be a “good person” and imagining this great life he could have where he leaves it all behind, but not a lot of effort in making actual changes or amends for his actions. His effort goes into minimizing his own culpability and into achieving what he desires most. Barry wants to be good but he doesn’t want to make sacrifices. He fights against every sacrifice he’s forced to make with anger and frustration and fear. And when he’s kicked down and desperate, he will revert to his worst impulses.

And yet I didn’t relate Barry at all to the idea of a villain protagonist in the beginning. I genuinely liked him. But why did I trust Barry? Is it because the actor just made him more likable? More relatable? Is it because he has really good excuses in his backstory and they show you how those things traumatized him? Because his people-pleasing personality masqueraded so conveniently as actual care and respect?

And the conclusion I came to was that I was supposed to feel that way. I wasn’t supposed to like Joe so I felt manipulated when the show attempted to finagle some sort of investment in him from me. But I was supposed to like Barry, I was supposed to be disgusted by him, I was supposed to feel conflicted, I was supposed to make up my own mind.

You presented me with a monster and then kept trying to tease how human he is underneath it all. Barry presented me with a deeply human character and forced me to reckon with his monstrous actions.

#HBO Barry #Barry HBO

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t4t-lumpygrab · 2 years

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I think the episode Bad Timing is a good microcosm of the way LSP as a character is handled. In the episode she has a character arc where her jealousy and impulsiveness and unprocessed issues (I’d also add that there’s an element of homelessness related trauma affected her actions, she moves in with her new partner immediately so her paranoia could partly be due to her being dependent on him for housing. ofc. this would require the writers to actually like.. engage with her character anyway) cause serious devastating harm to someone she cares about.

And instead of letting her sit with this and grow from it, and exploring how serious guilt would affect her as a character, the episode ends with her memories being erased, making her into the person she was at the start of the episode. So the episode ends with all her development and any chance for her to ever develop from this experience being removed.

And that’s pretty much how ever single more serious LSP episode or moment is treated. I’m not saying there’s no growth, but each time they reset her character development and never allow her to progress in the way the other characters do. I mean, LSP was introduced in the second episode of the show but barely grows as a person over 10 seasons, because they keep resetting her back to square one as they value the comedy she brings as a selfish and self absorbed annoying character over the character writing she could have as a fully fledging character.

Male side characters such as Lemongrab and the Ice King who are also introduced as complete silly joke characters never get this treatment by the way. So I do think there’s a bit of a bias going on here that the writers are convinced the audience will never be as invested in understanding LSP as a character and appreciating her on a deeper level so even when they do give her more serious episodes they do it in a way that doesn’t threaten to change the character and the status quo of her personality. Which is why in a show like Adventure Time who’s draw is that even side characters get to have their own stories LSP feels so hollow and shallow.

Also in the episode LSP does a truly terrible thing to someone and faces no consequences. This is a recurring theme with her character. Most of the comedy with LSP revolves around her hurting or insulting or harassing people and not facing any consequences. There’s episodes like “The Monster” which are all about her selfishness hurting people, with her seemingly realising that at the end. And then there’s “Gotcha” and “Bad Timing” where she has to learn that lesson all over again (until she unlearns it) and dozens of other episodes where she keeps learning the same lesson over and over with no change.

I’m not saying this sort of repetitive character who is defined by their worst traits can’t be done, but LSP is marketed as likeable and charming when she’s so unpleasant! It shows that the writers don’t take any of her actions seriously. The idea that she should idk, take responsibility and mature over the series doesn’t occur to them. Because like I said, she’s viewed as little more than a prop for comedy. Sadly the comedy... is trash.

Like the romantic harassment of Finn that keeps. fucking going. Is awful. She was establish to be 3 years older than Finn in “The Eyes” in the first season, when she has her 15th birthday when he’s 12, making a lot of this later seasons “comedy” very creepy as she was an 18/19 year old hitting on a 15 year old. But I guess the writers forgot that women also age and decided she’s a permanent teenager. But in that case what the fuck did they think her relationship with Lemongrab, who was established to be over 18 in the first episode he appears in, was? I genuinely think they just forgot to age her and let her grow as a character until they magically made her an adult to ship her with a male character and further his development. Like it’s a whole mess of a situation. As it is it’s sexist anyway as “Man gets harassed but bc he’s a boy it’s funny and okay!”. I mean, AT gets so much praise for the scene where Pb beats up Ricardio but then “Breezy” (my personal least favourite episode in the entire show) gets a pass from most of the fandom? Weird!

And also Breezy is just so annoying to me as like. God. Imagine if instead of whatever the hell that was Finn and LSP talked as friends and she helped him with his issues and for the rest of the series they interacted as friends with mutual respect for each other? And in Elements she could emotionally support Finn when he loses Jake and play a more active and less annoying role and just AAAA Imagine if she was like.... actually taken seriously as a character and didn’t have her development either completely erased or never allowed wouldn’t that be something?

#adventure time #lumpy space princess #lsp analysis #YEAH #charliecore

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littlelonelylovelyx · 15 days

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2:15 am

You are my favorite person. You have become the first person I think to tell news to. You do make me happy. But you also make me so…insurmountably sad and confused. I don’t think you’re a bad person, or that you do it on purpose. At this point I’m just not sure you are emotionally willing to show up for me in the ways you claim to want to. Maybe you aren’t capable, and that’s not your fault. I’m so sorry if you ever felt like you couldn’t express your emotions or that they didn’t matter to people they should have mattered to. I really wanna tell you that all of this is okay, but it’s not. Your words and your actions don’t match up and it is deeply painful.

I want so badly to believe you when you say things to me, but then…you disappear or seem so cold and uninterested with no explanation, and that is triggering for me. My triggers are my own problem and my own responsibility, and I do my best to keep it in check, but sometimes I fall short. I’m sorry for that. I know it can be too much.

We have a pretty severe communication problem which usually ends in exactly this: me typing out my unbelievably loud feelings at 3 am and you getting overwhelmed because it’s a novel. But a lot of the time I don’t feel like I can openly communicate with you without you disappearing and avoiding whatever it was for days on end…I know that sounds a little harsh and critical but I’m not trying to be. I’m just trying to be honest.

I never expected you to be as disgustingly open and vulnerable as I am. Most people aren’t this way. I don’t know how to be any other way. I didn’t expect you to just hand over your trust or your time or your heart. I was willing to try and earn that. I just never felt like anything I did was good enough. I didn’t expect instant serious commitment or that we needed to be attached to each other 24/7. I like talking to you, I’m genuinely interested in what makes you you and how you live your life. I think a big part of my problem with being too much is that you do keep yourself so closed off from me, so when do share things with me it’s exciting and I just always want more of that. I apologize for that too.

I am…a lot. We both know that. I can be impulsive and thoughtless, reckless and selfish and loud and basically…insane. But im also really capable of truly, deeply loving someone, and being a safe space. I will always be that for you, just in a different sense i suppose.

I do wish we could figure this out. I wish I was more secure, less anxious and messy. I wish you felt safe and comfortable and able to trust me, and talk to me. I’m so sorry if I made you feel like you couldn’t. I will always regret that.

This isn’t me leaving, I’m not doing that again. This isn’t me trying to attack you. I’m always going to be here for you and I’m always going to love and care for you. I just…can’t take the “you seem to want me one day, you don’t the next” anymore and I’m so sorry for that... I told you a few weeks ago that we could be friends who check in if that’s what you want/feel more comfortable with, and we can. But I think I need to draw some pretty severe boundaries with you, and god I hate that so much… this is turning out to be so much longer than I thought and I apologize for that too. I wasn’t sure when we would speak again and sending you all of this would be absolutely insane. being as this is where we started, it seemed fitting.

lol I’m gonna sleep now, okay byyyyyyeeeeee 🖤

#dear K #personal #rambles #writing #mine

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wasntmeanttobe64 · 4 months

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Maybe I'm a bit of that gay meanie character in pop culture..

I stopped taking anti deps cuz they made me into a zombie, and kinda depressed if I’m alone. Now I have anxiety talking to algerians, maybe bc of the language or whatever, I’m just rly shy ig, sometimes mean. I have anxiety when I’m hanging out with a group of people, and i don’t rly talk anymore, like in the office or something, unless I’m one on one with someone. I think i’ve been like this in middle school too, so I’m used to it. During quarantine, no one really called me or checked up on me that much, probably because I’m too much, and the people I did have I stopped being friends with bc i thought they didn’t care about me that much. I just didn’t know how to fill my own time or be by myself. After quarantine, I moved back to lebanon, and I’ve been pretty much lonely, so I learned how to fill that time, but my social anxiety was bad, i m,anaged and had people to hang out with eventually, but I’ve always felt I don’t know what to say most times, like idk how to respect group talking without interrupting or being awkward, so i just sit and listen, and my medications helped me be comfortable just sitting and contributing when i can instead of always thinking about how awkward I am. The meds don’t work like that for me anymore, not like in leb, but I still manage. I guess I just have some learning to do, and I’m learning… Never rly felt comfortable with people, I like to listen, and not say anything, and that can be boring or mean. When I am myself and I react as Id like, my anxiety is huge, because I say things that make me look dumb, I interrupt, Im awkward cuz i always feel like I’m hurting someone by not acknowledging them in the group. I hoard conversations if I had the power. I’m not comfortable sharing anecdotes or jokes anymore with a group, I’m more comfortable with one on one but i still prefer to just listen bc I’m .. scared? Ig? Bc the moment I start to be myself, I’m impulsive, random, i don’t make sense, I deflect and never rly open up. But the reason I’m awkward is bc I’m very judgmental to people and what they tell me or tell each other, and I genuinely just think “this guy is a loser, I don’t want to talk to him, i want to talk to that other guy” or “oh my god that’s so cringy everyone must hate this person so I hate him too” and it’s so obvious i can’t hide it so i get awkward. I genuinely think I’m mean spirited, judgmental, devalue people all the time, selfish, etc. I can’t control my impulses, which include sexual impulses. My go to in every group dynamic is to judge people out loud and make them feel lesser, cuz everyone reminds me of a part of me i don't like. And I don’t like myself.

I’m genuinely a mean person, like I don’t have common decency, I don’t see people as humans, I don’t say thank you to waitresses, i ignore them and make them feel like shit for interrupting my friend. It’s like, I want to make whatever person I’m with like me most. I get jealous very easily. If we’re in a group, and I just talked with you, and then you go talk to someone else in the group, I get jealous and I make it obvious. It’s rly bad.

—

im just a bad person with people lol that’s why I get anxiety and be awkward, it’s from hiding my judgmentalness and jealousy with people

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sergiovinazzi · 3 years

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Stolen - Lando Norris x Reader (Chapter Two)

2.9k words, rated E for everyone :)

Lando’s voice, amplified by the TV speakers, echoes around the humming Red Bull garage. “I’m fine but I’ve been better. I can say that I’m not in perfect condition, I’m not gonna lie. Some work to do mentally of course. I talk about that a lot, and mental health and mental strength is very important. I’ve not been sleeping that great and so on… not ideal and I’m feeling a bit sore, but I’m not the guy in the worst position after Wembley. I’ll work on it, I’ll make sure I’m in the best shape possible, and I feel like I can still go out and focus on what I need to do, and that’s the main thing.”

Your mind races as you listen to the boy plastered across the many screens revisit his experience at Wembley. He sounds awful; something about his cadence making it even more obvious that he is really, truly shaken up. The wavering pitch, awkward pausing, fumbling for words; everything about the way he presents himself is serving as a brutal reminder that being physically unscathed is no indicator that harm was not dealt. Even as the interview moves past the topic of last week’s Euro Final, you notice the shift in demeanor and your heart aches. You worry that bringing the watch to him is a bad idea, that it could prompt unbidden memories and disquieting feelings. You understand how big of an event Silverstone is from your dad’s tangents alone, especially for an English team with an English driver, so you reevaluate whether your decision to come was selfish, one made solely to alleviate your own sentiments of guilt rather than to verily right your believed wrongdoings.

On the journey to Silverstone, your dad had made multiple attempts at lessening your stress, even opting for variations of the if he steps out of line I will put him right back in his place father speech. Unfortunately fruitless, your father’s attempts mean you remain just as anxious as when you had first discovered that you managed to obtain a stolen wristwatch.

You’re not sure whether it’s the crisp morning air or your nerves that sends chills across your flesh, but your attempt to ground yourself subtly doesn’t go unnoticed by your dad as he passes you in the garage.

“Time is ticking,” he informs you, a smirk playing on his lips. “No pun intended.”

You roll your eyes in an attempt to downplay your apprehension, but your voice gives away any and all signs of the false confidence you hope to portray. “Can you do it for me?” you plead.

“I can’t just stroll on over to the McLaren garage without an invitation or proper reason, especially not a couple hours before free practice starts. It doesn’t look good.”

“It’s not like me walking in there instead would look any better,” you retort, gesturing to the Red Bull logo plastered across the chest of your black polo. “Your branding isn’t what I would call subtle.”

“Look, the McLaren team are a good sort. They’ll help you out if you just explain the issue and show them the watch. I’m sure Lando will understand too, he seems like a pretty nice bloke,” your dad reassures you.

Sighing, your eyes meet the floor, fingers intertwined with each other as you fidget incessantly. Before you can speak up in further defiance, however, an additional set of footsteps grow nearer and you freeze at the voice which speaks up.

“Christian, how much longer until our media slot?”

You lose your breath momentarily, locking your gaze onto your shoes as you wait for the person to pass by.

“About five minutes, Max,” your dad replies. “We were just about to head over.”

When you hear the footsteps grow fainter, you risk looking up, thankfully being met with only the observance of your father. You don’t even realize that you’ve tensed your body until your dad points it out.

“Relax,” he says. “He’s not going to say anything here, especially not on a race weekend.”

Nodding, you feel your shoulders ease up but you remain quiet.

“Anyways, like I said, our media briefing and interviews start soon and we’re after McLaren this weekend so they should already be back in their garage,” he says, realizing that you still appear troubled by the task ahead of you. “I promise you, everything will be fine. Just go over there and I’ll meet you back here when we’re done. The quicker you head over, the quicker you’re done with it and we can all move on." With that, your dad walks away and you reluctantly leave the Red Bull garage, adjusting your shirt as you straighten up.

You take a brief glance at your phone, turning it off after you try one last time to keep the picture of the boy imprinted in your mind. Eyes darting rapidly, you attempt to scan the paddock for anyone looking remotely like him while you make your way towards the bright orange and blue indicators of the McLaren garage.

The frequency of orange-clad individuals grows the further you stray from the safety of Red Bull’s garage, and you feel your heartbeat begin to increase. Worried that someone would stop you before you could approach the one person you had traveled all the way to Silverstone for in the first place, you quicken your pace.

You’re mere meters away when you spot him. Pushing past a few people while trying to keep your eyes trained on him, you watch as he turns around to talk briefly with the woman next to him.

Huffing, you muster up the little confidence you have and tap him on the shoulder.

His confusion is evident and the blonde woman next to him does not look pleased to have been interrupted. The silence is palpable as they stare at you, expecting an explanation for the abrupt ending of their conversation.

“Hi,” is all you can deliver. You’re at a loss for words while the woman next to him seems to lose what little patience she has with you. Everything you had rehearsed beforehand, gone. Your mind is foggy and your mouth feels dry as you try to compose yourself. “Um, can I talk to you for a second? It won’t be long, I promise.” Your voice breaks at the end and you wish you had never agreed to get on that stupid red-eye to Silverstone in the first place.

Lando offers a look of sympathy and then turns to the woman next to him. “Charlotte, could you just give us a second?”

Pursing her lips and turning on her heel, the woman walks away, heading towards the mouth of the McLaren garage. She’s far enough away that you’re out of earshot, but close enough that you feel her gaze linger as Lando turns back to face you.

“Hey, don’t worry,” he tells you with a smile. “We can take a picture if you want or I can sign some stuff for you.”

“What? No.” You shake your head, mentally slapping your palm against your forehead and forcing yourself to get a grip. Idiot. “Fuck, sorry, that sounded so rude! It’s just-” you rush to explain.

“Oh no, it’s okay!” he stammers. “I should’ve guessed from the Red Bull shirt anway.”

You both share an awkward laugh before you compose yourself and reach a shaky hand into your bag.

“This is going to sound so weird, but I was online shopping for a new watch the other day because I lost mine, and I’m pretty sure I bought the one that was stolen from you. I didn’t know anything about it, I swear. I just...well, here,” you say, offering the watch and its temporary box to Lando.

He looks at you, taking the box only to go wide-eyed at the contents inside.

“I have all the information that I was able to get, but the ad was taken off of eBay and I really wanted to do the right thing and give it back to you. Please don’t be mad.”

“What the hell?!” he exclaims, earning a few looks from people passing by and catching Charlotte’s attention once more. “Sorry, sorry. How did you get this?”

Amused, you laugh quietly while he studies the watch intently. “That was my dad’s reaction too. Basically there was a listing for it on eBay and it was sort of an impulse buy,” you explain. “I didn’t see the news coverage of what happened until afterwards and I felt awful. I’m really sorry you had to go through that, I genuinely had no idea.”

Shrugging, he plays it off. “Nothing I can’t handle.” It’s hard to miss his sudden change in attitude from the interview you watched moments ago and you can’t help but wonder whether he has your or the watch’s presence to thank.

There is a brief moment of silence between you both before he continues. “How much did you pay for it?”

“It was so cheap, honestly,” you say. “Nothing compared to the original price, I’m sure.”

Charlotte, alerted by Lando’s attention-grabbing reaction to being reunited by his watch, returns to where the two of you are standing. “Oh wow, did you find a replacement watch for him?” she asks you, clearly impressed by the apparent likeness.

“No, Charlotte”, he corrects her. “It’s my one. Look.” He hands the watch to his PR manager, who receives it so gently you think she’s afraid it might shatter in her hands. Flipping the watch between her fingers, she studies the small engraving on the underside of the face.

“Oh my god,” she whispers.

Lando nods. “It’s the exact date it was given to me, there’s no way anyone else could know that and make a copy of it.”

You feel the need to justify yourself to her. “It was listed online and I bought it before I knew anything about the situation. I didn’t even really know who Lando was until I saw what happened on the news, I swear.” You anticipate her anger or disapproval, preparing yourself to withstand the lecture you’re about to receive and mentally promising that, as soon as it’s over, you can run back to your dad and tell him you just want to go home.

But it doesn’t come.

“I can’t believe it!” she exclaims. “We all thought we’d never see it again and you found it on accident.” The smile she gives you sets your mind at ease. “Technically, this is a police matter now, so I’ll have to hand it over to the right people, but this helps us tremendously. Did you get any information about the seller?”

You explain the situation to her, about how the listing was taken offline but you have a printout of the messages and address the seller gave you, which you hand her from your bag. She lets you know that someone may get in touch soon to ask questions but not to worry, that it’s only a formality. Eventually, she asks if you’d like to watch free practice from a spot in the mobile hospitality unit, but you politely decline, explaining that you needed to get back to your dad in the Red Bull garage instead.

Charlotte smiles fondly at Lando and presses the brim of his cap down over his eyes. “Come on, you, we have to go and get ready now anyway.”

He takes off his hat, cheeks flushing as he makes an effort to quickly brush the curls lining his forehead, placing it back on and dismissing Charlotte with a wave of his hand. “Okay, just give me a minute.”

Once the two of you are alone, he pulls out his phone. “Do you have Venmo? I’ll pay you back, it’s not fair that you had to waste your money.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it.”

Lando seems unconvinced. “It’s really not a problem.”

“Seriously, it’s all good.”

“Well,” he continues awkwardly. “I have to go, but are you here for the whole weekend or...?”

You shake your head. “Just today. I’m not into Formula 1, I find it a little bit boring.”

“Seriously?! The fastest cars in the world and you’re calling it boring? Why even come to something like Silverstone if it’s so boring?” he feigns offense, doing air quotes as he imitates your apparent disdain for the sport.

Laughing quietly, you shrug. “I have family at Red Bull, so it was basically just luck and convenience that you were in the U.K. this weekend,” you clarify. “I don’t really understand Formula 1, that’s all.”

“Fair enough, it’s not for everyone I suppose,” Lando replies. “So who in your family works at Red–” The end of his question is drowned out by the sound of his name called by an evidently disgruntled, impatient engineer.

He sighs. “I’m sorry, I’ve really gotta go, but, um,” he exhales with a nervous laugh. “I still feel like I need to repay you in some way. Do you want to go get a drink after the race on Sunday? I’m busy for the next few days but Sunday night I’ll be free. Only if you want to, of course, I don’t want to, like, pressure you or anything.”

You laugh, appreciative that the nervousness was shared. “That– Yeah, that sounds fine. I’ll give you my number.”

He types your details into his phone before apologizing once more, thanking you again, and rushing off into the garage.

——

On Sunday, you let your dad believe he’s the one who convinced you to stay for the entire race weekend, but it’s the promise of Lando’s company later that night and the endearing text messages on your phone that prompts the desire to see this weekend through. You had spent the previous nights on your phone, going through driver and team Instagram accounts, as well as the F1 website, to get an idea of what to expect. Typically, it would pain you to look through motorsport news pages, especially with so many of the reports centering around Max and his vie for the championship as of late, but you manage.

You notice almost immediately while settling into your spot at the back of the garage that the energy does not match your own. You are enthusiastic and eager, while the rest of the team is stressed and rushes around you. Presumably, it’s because race day impacts their livelihoods and paycheks whereas it only dictates your family’s dinner topics, but, nevertheless, your excitement refuses to simmer.

Unfortunately, if it was weird for you to be seen at the McLaren garage before the first free practice, it would be infinitely more suspicious for you to be lingering around on race day, so you were not able to catch Lando at all since your initial meeting on Friday. However, you made sure to message him good luck beforehand, to which he thanked you and expressed excitement for your upcoming night.

“If you need anything, just ask. I’ll be on the pitwall,” your dad says, snapping you out of your whirring mind. He notices your obscure behavior, quick to comment on it. “Is it weird? Being here after so long?”

You nod, shrugging. “Unusual, for sure. So much has changed since the last time I came and watched, but I’m excited, though.”

“Well, it’s always good to have you here.”

Reciprocating your dad’s grin, you silently send him on his way. He exits quickly and leaves you to your own devices. Though, your own devices look to consist of impatiently waiting for the race to start and scrolling absentmindedly through your phone. Ironically, your boredom with pre-race antics appears to create quite the dichotomy against the chaos exuding from the garage you find yourself encompassed in.

Regardless, your attention is regained when frequent cuts are made to the drivers in their cars, and you recognise that the race will be starting soon. You are temporarily startled when the cars begin moving without hearing an official announcement, but quickly realisee that it is merely a formation lap and no one else around you seems to be paying all too much mind to it.

When the cars return to their positions on the grid, you watch eagerly as the lights flash and the announcers begin yelling. You keep your eyes trained on the orange car towards the front of the grid, watching Lando so intently that you almost miss what happens to the cars in front of him.

Your eyes go wide as you watch the events unfold: the Red Bull car out front collides with what you identify as a Mercedes, spinning and slamming into the barrier. Gasps chorus across the garage as the screens replay slowed clips of the crash as an announcement states that the safety car has been deployed. They replay it from every conceivable angle, your astonishment at the severity is present upon your first viewing, but it’s only after the sixth clip that it clicks in your head that the person in the car is Max.

“For the second time this season, Hamilton and Verstappen clash and tangle on the opening lap, but, this time, it is ending in dramatic consequences for the championship leader.”

If you had perceived the pre-race behavior in the garage as chaotic, this was a whole new level of absurdity.

People rush around you while orders are shouted and frustrations are verbalised.

Your dad is angry.

The last time you recall him behaving like this was when your younger sister had broken the wine glasses he had bought for your mother on their honeymoon. You, however, ignore his yelling and remain encapsulated by the TV, releasing a breath you didn’t know you were holding as the events unfolding finally, finally register in your brain.

Car number 33 is in the wall and out of the race, and your ex-boyfriend is inside, silent and unmoving.

____________

tag list @lovebynorth @its-astrotea-love

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sketching-shark · 3 years

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I think it's the ironic fact that JTTW fans already know how DBK and Sun Wukong's friendship broke apart but are more curious on LMK versions of Sun Wukong and the Six Eared Macaque were friends alongside falling out.

HA! Well, while it often does seem that way, I'm going to go ahead and be a complete snob in a Journey to the West purist kind of way by wondering how many Six Eared Macaque fans would consider themselves more JTTW fans or more Monkie Kid fans, or if they feel they're a mix of both...

I've seen a lot of people argue that these two works of fiction are their own thing and that as such Monkie Kid (and associated fanworks) shouldn't be expected to follow the canon of JTTW, and fair enough for some parts. I've also, however, seen people who argue for this complete separation seeming to use it as an excuse to not acknowledge or learn about ANY original aspects of characters such as Sun Wukong and the Demon Bull King, or even very important deities such as Guanyin and the Jade Emperor, and who as such end up making some pretty gross generalizations/assumptions about them even though they are of great religious and cultural importance.

For example (and while I know a lot of the fun people get from fan works is in exaggerating certain traits), Sun Wukong seems to often be presented with an "inherently" evil/thoughtless/chaotic character, while his intelligence, deep love of his family, genuine efforts to become a better person, & many acts of saving lives, as presented in JTTW, aren't even mentioned. I feel like a lot of this is due to the way he acts in Monkie Kid (while I maintain that this version of Sun Wukong seems to be Bad End Monkey King, he does do a lot of deflecting his issues with a show of humor/a carefree attitude & does seem really bad at communicating due to a fear of making things worse). Even so, the popularity of Thoughtless/Evil/Selfish Sun Wukong that doesn’t really allow for any of the nuance or a display of his beneficial traits as shown in JTTW does make me wonder how many people have been exposed to a good translation of og classic Sun Wukong...As I've said before, I've noted that a number of Chinese people on this site have expressed frustration with the fact that a good chunk of the monkey king’s Western audience seems to be getting their impressions about Sun Wukong, the Demon Bull King, the Six Eared Macaque, etc. from some mix of Overly Sarcastic Productions, Monkie Kid, and social media instead of from at least a translation of the original text, and it is true that a LOT of the nuance of these work and these characters can be very easily lost, especially if your drawing your information of them primarily from a cartoony version of the original source.

That would be an interesting poll though...out of curiosity, how many of you fine folk have read the break-up & fight between Sun Wukong and the Demon Bull King either in the original text or in a translation, or is your exposure to them primarily through Monkie Kid?

Again, I need to make it clear that I'm not Chinese & didn't grow up with the story, but I will admit for my own part that reading the DBK/SWK break-up in the Yu translation actually made me more curious about how their dynamic is going to play out in Monkie Kid than I am curious about what's going to happen with Mr. Macaque.

This is primarily because besides SWK’s fight with Princess Iron Fan and DBK being given a LOT of page space in JTTW, there seems to have been some serious stuff that went down between the three of them in the events post-JTTW and pre-the main plot of Monkie Kid...the last we see of DBK in JTTW (if memory serves correctly) was him being hauled off by a host of heavenly warriors to be judged for his crimes of not giving SWK the palm leaf fan & also eating humans. When Monkie Kid starts, however, we are told that DBK had emerged “from the Netherworld” & immediately starts wrecking everything around him. What this suggests--if Monkie Kid is something of a fan continuation of JTTW--is that DBK ended up being executed by the heavenly forces, but managed to fight his way out of the underworld in a manner somewhat similar to SWK, who we are told he is equal in strength to in JTTW. In that beginning fight of Monkie Kid DBK is also shown as so enraged that he won’t stop his path of destruction until SWK buries him under a mountain for 500 years. It’s never said in the show, but--and this is important--this is basically exactly what Buddha did to SWK to start him on the path of atonement. So there seems to be some very intentional parallels between SWK’s havoc in heaven & DBK’s havoc on earth, which may suggest that one of the things Monkie Kid SWK really wants is for his former dear friend, his sworn brother, to find a way like him to be less violent and thus ultimately less vulnerable to destructive and self-destructive behavior, and that the way he tried to start this was by giving DBK the same treatment he got when he was a raging warlord.

We are furthermore told that it was right after DBK was sealed that SWK disappeared for all those centuries, and while the impulse may be to write it off as him just wanting to enjoy himself (given a lot of his behavior in the show’s timeline), given the indications that this SWK may be deeply depressed, I feel like the answer could be something a lot more tragic...there seem to be a number of clues in Monkie Kid that while the journey of JTTW happened, something made it end disastrously, with SWK either assuming or knowing that Zhu Bajie, Sha Wujing, Tang Sanzang, and Bai Longma are dead. And per JTTW, this wouldn’t be the first time that he’s experienced a horrific loss, given the war with heaven and the burning of Flower-Fruit Mountain. And then right after THAT, it seems DBK emerged from the underworld, and so Sun Wukong was put into a horrific position: either murder his sworn brother, or let him continue to rampage & harm and/or kill who knows how many humans. SWK ultimately gives up his staff to do the repeat of “500 years under a mountain in solitary confinement route,” which as per JTTW he considers better than the alternative, but he immediately follows that by exiling himself. In JTTW SWK is a really sociable person who makes friends wherever he goes, but man, for this SWK...his life must at that point just feel like one failure after another, that in spite of all his best efforts he wasn’t able to save anyone he really cared about, and now he just trapped someone who was so important to him under a mountain & fated him to suffer the same things he had when he was in that position. How much more does he have to hurt his fellow yaoguai? How many more times does he have to choose between yaoguai and humans, feeling like no matter what he decides it’s just going to result in pain for him and/or his loved ones? I can easily imagine super sociable & easily upset (he cries a LOT in JTTW) SWK feeling like after sealing DBK, he just can’t do this any more. He just...can’t.

This is all just speculation, but knowing the JTTW backstory between SWK and DBK does, at least for me, make their Monkie Kid relationship a lot more intriguing than it might be otherwise. Especially now that DBK seems to actually be making some small steps to quell his constant rage & lust for power. He even saves SWK and Qi Xiaotian from an explosion/nasty fall in the season 2 special! The Bull family weren’t really present in season 2, but I really hope they make a comeback in season 3 (if/when we get it) precisely because Red Son, Princess Iron Fan, and especially DBK have such an involved history with SWK. Plus it would be really fun to see two old warlords trying to awkwardly make amends with each other & struggle to be good teachers & positive role models to their student & son.

In any case I feel this potential is more interesting than whatever fanfic The Six Eared “I’mma Plagiarize The Demon Bull King’s Backstory Of Being Best Friends with Sun Wukong” Macaque is creating lol.

#monkie kid #journey to the west #lego monkie kid #lmk #lmk sun wukong #lmk dbk #lmk six eared macaque #anon answered

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lesbianrobin · 3 years

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What do you think are the good and bad aspects of each season of ST?

ok 1. thank u for this question omg and 2. this answer may or may not be a mess, but either way it’s long (almost 7k words lmao) bc i’m insane, which is why it’s under a cut. it’s still by no means an exhaustive list but these are the things that just kinda came to mind.

also i realize you asked “good and bad” and i wrote this whole post as “strengths and weaknesses” which um. is not Exactly what you asked. but close enough <3 i also ended up including a lot of au ideas ksjdckmn bc like i personally hate when people say a certain plot or whatever was bad without suggesting anything that could have improved it yknow so whenever possible i tried to provide Some idea for fixing the issues i had with the show!!

season 1

strengths (this is probably gonna be the longest section but that’s because a lot of these strengths also apply to s2/s3 by default)

nostalgia and authenticity

this one’s pretty simple, but i think that season one did a good job of blending classic eighties media homages (such as the many many e.t./el parallels) with explicit pop culture references (such as mike’s yoda impression, mentions of the x-men, etc) to create a show that’s essentially dripping in early eighties nostalgia without it feeling too forced. before st, i think the most popular depiction of the eighties in mainstream media was that overly exaggerated neon scrunchie aesthetic from the mid to late eighties, and it was usually done in a comedic sense first and foremost. st took a different approach, instead focusing on the early eighties, a time that’s often ignored in favor of going either Full Seventies or Full Eighties, and i think that this choice likely resonated with adults who lived through the eighties and hadn’t yet seen something that felt quite so accurate to their own adolescence. a lot of young people who watched st were totally unfamiliar with this period of time, unfamiliar with books/movies like “stand by me” that st borrows from heavily, and i think st lent more seriousness to the eighties than most young people had experienced so far, and this was refreshing and interesting!

the use of dnd in the show is also quite genius in a way i’m not sure i can articulate?? it isn’t something Everyone would have played at the time, but it’s something that existed within a different context back in the eighties than it does today, and it really lent a sort of authenticity to the naming of the show’s sci-fi elements. like, of course these kids would name parallel dimensions and monsters and superpowers after these similar things in their favorite game! it just feels so real and it grounds st in our reality moreso than you might expect from the typical sci-fi or horror universe.

utilization of existing tropes

almost every single character in st clearly originates from some popular trope. the plot itself is riddled with classic eighties movie tropes. almost every single element of stranger things can be clearly traced back to some iconic eighties film or just to, like, overused horror/sci-fi/mystery/coming-of-age movie tropes in general. this might sound like a bad thing, but it really works in st’s favor! starting off with familiar tropes gives st the ability to easily create a lot of complexity and make a big impact by selectively deviating from those familiar, comfortable tropes!! while el’s whole plot, hopper’s character, etc, are all examples of this in action, i think the steve/nancy/jonathan plot is the greatest example. even from the start, the fact that good girl barb dies while nancy is off having sex with her asshole boyfriend is an incredibly thorough inversion of the most well-known horror movie trope in the book. how often do girls in horror movies have sex for the first time, walk home alone in the dark of night, and live to tell the tale? nancy and jonathan’s dynamic at first glance is a sort of classic “good girl meets boy from the wrong side of the tracks, discovers he’s actually got a heart of gold” thing, but instead of following this well-trodden path, st diverged. nancy is brash, impulsive, and at times downright insensitive. jonathan is angry, bitter, and actually a bit of a creep at first. while they have the capacity to emotionally connect and support one another, they can also bring out each other’s darker side, which is not what we’ve come to expect from that initial tropey dynamic.

in addition, steve, the popular rich asshole boyfriend, is actually... a human being! unlike the cartoonishly evil jocks that we’ve come to expect (especially from eighties movies), steve has complexity. despite his initial immaturity and selfishness, he’s also kind to barb, he backs off when nancy says no, he’s gentle and sweet when they sleep together, his first big Dick Move of the season is in defense of nancy, he realizes the error of his ways after the fight and does what he can to fix it, he’s worried about nancy when he sees that she’s hurt at jonathan’s house, and to top it all off, he ends up saving both nancy and jonathan’s lives when he could have just walked away, and the three of them all work together to fight the demogorgon. like... steve began as the most stereotypical character of all time, and by the end of the season, he had one of the most compelling and unique arcs among the whole cast!

finally, at the very end of the season, instead of dumping steve for jonathan as expected, nancy ends up getting back together with steve, and they’re both on friendly terms with jonathan. i realize that i just kinda. summarized s1. but my POINT is that i don’t think the dynamics between the monster hunting trio would be nearly as fun and interesting had the characters of nancy, steve, and jonathan not been set up to follow certain paths that we already had charted in our own heads. like, within the first couple episodes of s1, it’s pretty obvious that nancy and steve are gonna break up, nancy will get with jonathan, and steve will either die or go full evil or just never be seen again. like, duh! you’ve seen this story a million times! you know that’s how it’s gonna go! so, when the story DOESN’T go that way, the impact of each character’s arc and the relationship dynamics become stronger due to their unexpected complexity and authenticity.

distinct plotlines separated by age group

this one’s rather obvious, but the way that the adults in s1 were essentially in a conspiracy thriller while the teens were in a horror flick and the kids were in a sci fi power-of-friendship story and all three converged at the end... wow. brilliant showstopping etc. not only was it just really well done and unique, it also gave stranger things near-universal appeal. like, there’s genuinely something for pretty much everyone in season one!

casting

obviously this applies to every season sorta by default, but when i think about what made season one So successful, i always think about the cast, and not just winona ryder. yes, she’s absolutely amazing in the show and it’s very doubtful that st would be as big as it is today without her name being attached to it from the start!! however, i think the greatest determining factor in st’s success is the casting of the kids, particularly millie bobby brown. like... el is just absolutely incredible. she’s amazing. this has all been said many times before so i won’t harp on it, but millie and the other kids are all So talented and charismatic and i think their casting has been instrumental to the show’s success.

strong visuals

the way that multicolored christmas lights which have been around for decades are now kinda like. a Stranger Things thing. jesus christ. those lights are probably the biggest stroke of stylistic genius on the show.

atmosphere and setting

this is probably like. the least important one here for me sdjncdsc because i think s2 and s3 both had like Even Better atmospheres and shit but s1 was good too and it laid the groundwork!! i know a lot of people would have preferred st be set somewhere more Spooky with lots of fog or giant forests or whatnot, and while i do enjoy thinking about alternate st settings and how they might alter the vibe, i think hawkins indiana was a good choice. as the duffers have said, placing stranger things in a fictional town allows them more flexibility than if they’d gone with their original plan of using montauk, new york. besides that, i think the plainness and like... flatness... of small-town indiana just Works. like, the fact that hawkins is never really scary on the surface is a big part of the horror in the lab’s actions and their impact. hawkins isn’t somewhere that people just disappear all the time. it isn’t somewhere known for strange occurrences (prior to s1, that is). it isn’t somewhere shrouded in mist and secrecy. hawkins on its surface seems like the sort of place with no secrets and nothing to fear, and that’s the point! the lab is out in the open! it’s right there! everything is so close to the surface, yet so far out of the public eye, and i think that really works.

the byers family’s whole deal (specifically the joyce/jonathan dynamic)

this is going here bc i miss it so bad in s2 and s3. i’m not one of those people who believe The Byers Are The Whole Point of the show, because st is and always has been an ensemble, and el, hopper, and the wheelers are just as instrumental to the plot as the byers, but ANYWAY, i do think the byers were one of the most interesting aspects of s1. joyce’s difficulties with supporting her sons as a poor and (implied mentally ill) single mother, jonathan’s stress as a result of having to earn money, care for his brother, and keep the house in order when his mother is unable to do so, and the resulting tension between them when will’s disappearance and supposed “death” brings the situation to a tipping point? holy shit! it’s so good! that argument after they see will’s “body” is just incredible and gut-wrenching. their relationship feels so real and messy and i think it’s just... good. also winona ryder REALLY acted her heart out and she carried a lot of s1 which i think people often forget to mention so i’m saying it here.

weaknesses

pacing/timing

ok so pacing is probably going to go in each season’s weaknesses, to be honest, because i think they all had a blend of some good and some bad pacing. good pacing is invisible pacing, though, so i probably won’t be putting it in any of the strengths sections and will only be focusing on it in the weaknesses. i’m also probably not going to talk about weird day/night cycle things, just because i don’t want to get nitpicky on timelines because that would require going back and rewatching things to double check timing which i don’t wanna do at the moment lmao. anyway, when i think of bad pacing in season one, i primarily think of two things: nancy’s little trip into the upside down and subsequent sleepover with jonathan, and the sort of staggered nature of the climax in the final episode. the latter is simple so i’ll explain it first: while i understand that each group’s respective climax is like part of a chain reaction and that’s why each big moment happens separately and at different times, i think that st is strongest when the whole group is together, and i think that makes the stakes feel higher too, so i’m not In Love with the way s1 separated everyone and gave each group their own climax.

okay, now on to the nancy/upside down thing! idk if i’ve ever talked about it before, but i think the worst decision made in s1 by far is the inclusion of nancy’s brief trip into the upside down, wherein she dives headfirst into another dimension with absolutely no backup, watches the demogorgon chow down, freaks out and runs around for a minute, and then leaves. like... what the fuck? even putting aside what an idiotic decision this was (because i do think nancy’s tendency to rush into things headfirst is an intentional and consistent character trait), it just kind of destroys any remaining suspense surrounding the demogorgon and the upside down, and it accomplishes basically nothing besides scaring nancy enough to have jonathan sleep over, which is lame. i will break it down.

like, first of all, nancy just getting to waltz in and out of the upside down and get a good, long look at the demogorgon makes the entire thing far less mysterious, and by extension far less scary. like... before this scene, we the audience haven’t got a good look at the demogorgon. we’ve seen its silhouette briefly and we’ve seen a blurry picture of it, but nothing more, and i think that is far more effective at building fear than this jaunt nancy goes on which gives us a full view of the thing and makes it into less of a horrifying nightmare and into more of a humanoid animal. like, maybe this is just me, but i found the demogorgon far less intimidating after that scene than before. it also lets nancy and jonathan know For Sure that they’re right without providing any crucial information that they need to fight the demogorgon (aka it’s unnecessary to the plot), which removes a very compelling story element (the faith nancy and jonathan need to have in order to keep going against a vague and poorly understood enemy, the doubt they might have about each other and their own sanity, the possibility that they might be wrong, the trust they need to have in each other) a bit earlier in the plot than i believe is ideal. at the end of episode 5, nancy goes into the upside down and jonathan doesn’t know where she is and it’s intense!!! you’re thinking like, oh fuck, not only is nancy missing and fighting for her life now too, jonathan might be implicated in her disappearance!! some people already think he’s the one who killed will and people know that he took creepy pictures of barb and nancy before they both disappeared, maybe this is gonna cause some serious problems for him!! maybe nancy will find will in the upside down and she’ll help him survive!! fuck, maybe she’ll actually die!! this is huge!! and then episode 6 starts and they’re immediately like oh nevermind jonathan found the tree and got nancy out and she’s fine. my point with all of this is that nancy entering the upside down could have done A Lot in the grand scheme of the plot, but all it did was just... get jonathan to sleep over so he and nancy could have some awkward romance moments and steve could see them together and pick a fight. which could have honestly happened at Any point while nancy and jonathan were working together to hunt down the demogorgon, without ruining the demogorgon’s and the upside down’s mystique. so yeah <3

weird behavior and dumbass decisions that make no sense (aka the whole camera thing)

gonna go off about the teen plot again sorry but: why was nancy so unbothered and quick to forgive jonathan for taking those pictures? girl what the fuck are you doing? why wasn’t that a bigger deal? why was jonathan’s motivation for doing it so weak and why did they just kind of forget about the whole thing? why did nancy TRACK HIM DOWN AT THE FUNERAL HOME while he was PICKING OUT HIS BABY BROTHER’S CASKET to be like hey can you tell me what’s in this creepshot you took? it’s insane. it’s so insane. i mean i think the funeral home thing is hilarious and i don’t mind it being in the show necessarily but like my point here is that i think a lot of character decisions in s1 just kind of.. happened because they Needed to happen for the plot. like, they wrote this plot that required jonathan to be secretly taking pictures of the party and required him and nancy to work together after seeing something odd in the pictures, but they didn’t like... really consider what that event would mean for their characterization and relationship. the whole thing was sort of just dropped with minimal discussion and i think it did both nancy and jonathan’s characters a disservice and was really mishandled.

lighting and saturation/color grading

i am literally begging horror/sci-fi shows to let me see shit. i GET IT okay i understand that when you’re doing cgi effects it helps to keep the lights down and i’m not mad at any of the lighting in the demogorgon/upside down scenes!! i’m really not i think the demogorgon scenes in s1 all look sick!! but like... dude. the colors. where are they. why does everyone look like a vampire. i know blah blah this was probably an intentional stylistic choice intended to mimic film at the time blah blah but dude a lot of old movies are very colorful!! please just let people have color in their faces so everyone doesn’t look like a sheet of paper!!! also i’m white and not a professional lighting designer so yknow grain of salt but i think lucas was kinda poorly served by the lighting sometimes in s1. not Hugely so, not to the degree that i’ve seen poc be poorly served by lighting in other shows, but there were some times where it felt kinda like the lighting setup was just not designed with darker skin in mind.

horror

i just personally don’t find s1 very scary like... ever. i don’t think they were really Trying to be extremely scary yknow so i’m not counting this as a big deal, but i do think that each season has improved on the horror aspects. i think s1′s horror lies more in the mystery and the unknown than in what’s seen onscreen, and as i’ve said already, i think s1 kind of fumbled that suspense ball.

season 2

strengths

the possession plot

i’ll warn u rn this whole s2 strengths section is probably gonna be really short bc idk like. how much there is to really say i feel like it’s all so self-explanatory skjncmn. anyway yeah the possession plot!! eerie as fuck, and noah OWNED. so did winona tbh and finn and sean etc but like. noah. wow! i think the possession plot helped the show maintain a good amount of tension and suspense throughout the season, and a lot of scenes with possessed!will are flatout disturbing to watch. in a good way. i think the mindflayer and will’s possession were far more genuinely frightening than s1′s demogorgon, and it provided a new layer of depth and intrigue to the antagonist besides just “bad monster want eat people.”

tone and aesthetics

halloween season... literally halloween season. halloween season. that is all.

actually i will elaborate a bit and just say that i think s2 did a good job of having the sort of foreboding vibe that s1 was often going for, but without the annoying darkness and desaturation. so points for that.

also st2 is like one of the best Autumn pieces of media ever like it just. like steve and dustin on those train tracks with the fallen leaves all around them.... god. god the vibes are unparalleled. all of the halloween stuff also really contributes to the nostalgia st runs on yknow it makes you think about childhood and trick-or-treating and you kind of get transported like damn... i remember going to the rich neighborhoods to score the good candy..... idk i just think the whole thing is incredibly effective.

“babysitter” steve

by sending nancy and jonathan off together, the show created a problem: what to do with steve? this problem pushed them to create the unconventional and unexpected duo of steve and dustin, and the world is so much brighter for it. seriously though we all know steve and dustin are great i don’t need to argue that point. all i’ll add is that i think allowing steve to grow in this way, serving as a mentor figure and becoming genuine friends with someone so unexpected, really took the originality of his character to the next level. no longer content just to defy his archetype, in s2 steve begins branching out in ways that never would have been considered in s1, creating an incredibly complex and interesting person from the sort of character that most shows would have simply written out or killed off for convenience’s sake. and it works and steve and dustin are such a joy to watch and i love them. <3

the lucas/max plot

so first of all max mayfield is the most perfect baby girl on god’s green earth and idk what i would do without her but anyway. i think lumax is the best romantic relationship in the show and not just because they’re the only ones with like an age-appropriate approach to the whole thing. it’s also because their relationship accomplishes more than just putting the two of them in a relationship!! lucas and max spending time together motivates billy to do his evil shit, providing more conflict in the narrative, and it also helps establish max as part of the group in a relatively natural way while giving both her and lucas a great subplot. lucas (and dustin) has a crush on the new girl, they start spending some time together, and lucas ends up needing to decide whether he’ll keep the secret of the upside down and lose her, or risk both of their lives by telling her the truth. that’s a pretty big, character-defining decision that he gets to make!! max has to choose whether to trust this boy she barely knows and endanger herself, or to walk away and stay safe, yet another great character-defining choice that also contributes to the sense we get as an audience of max as somebody who’s incredibly lonely and desperate for love and connection. this post is way too long already and i have a ton more to say so i’ll stop now but yeah i think lumax really Works in the show without ever distracting or detracting from the overall plot and narrative in the way that some other ships (coughjancycough) often do.

balance between the normal and abnormal

s2 i think did a pretty solid job of melding daily life with more fantastical sci-fi horror elements. i enjoyed seeing so much of the kids at school in the first few episodes!! you really get a strong sense of where they’re at in life, what their daily lives are like, and you get a sort of gradual shift into madness that makes everything feel more grounded than i think it would if they had just leapt straight into the horror shit, yknow?

the el and hopper dynamic

go back and rewatch s2 and tell me that’s not one of the most moving portrayals of parenthood and trauma and growing up that you’ve ever seen. you can’t. or well you can but i won’t listen. i really can’t imagine stranger things without el and hopper’s relationship, and it’s my absolute favorite part of s2. their whole dynamic is so beautiful and complex, and gives them each amazing personal arcs in addition! the black hole scene is literally one of the show’s greatest moments of all time. any given scene between the two of them in s2 is just guaranteed to be heartwarming as well as heartbreaking, and i think that makes for an incredible show.

weaknesses

flashbacks

okay this applies to Every season they All have too many flashbacks but in s2 specifically... please stop showing me shit from season one. i watched it. i know what happened. you don’t need to spoon feed everything to me!! flashbacks can be a really helpful way of delivering information to an audience, but st has a bad habit of not only being kinda demeaning in how often they flash back to shit that the audience already knows, but they also have a bad habit of using flashbacks almost as a crutch to avoid having to deliver information subtly and naturally.

you know i gotta say it... the lost sister

this is so sad. the lost sister really is like a great concept for an st episode, and i’m not mad about the idea of st taking a break from the normal action to focus on one story for a full episode, but the execution of it was just dreadful. kali and her crew feel very over-the-top and stereotypical, and its placement in the season totally kills the tension and excitement that was built in “the spy.”

i think the lost sister honestly could have gone over far better, even with the stereotypical fake-feeling gang kali has, if they had just swapped it with “the spy” like... ok, the end of episode five has el setting off to find kali and will collapsing on the ground seizing. right? imagine if, instead of immediately following will to the lab, we’d followed el. we don’t know what’s happening with will, but it’s a very simple cliffhanger that leaves us on edge without making us feel cheated by the show cutting away. we follow el on her little journey, everything happens much the same as canon, and then at the end, el sees hopper in scrubs. she sees mike, screaming, sees that they’re both in danger. holy shit!!! what the fuck!!! what’s happened since we left will seizing on the ground??? we feel el’s fear and confusion. she decides to go home. and then... boom. “the lost sister” is over. now, we rewind, right back to will seizing on the ground, and “the spy” commences. we learn how they got into the danger that el saw in the end of “the lost sister,” and we sit on the edge of our seats all through “the spy” and “the mind flayer,” KNOWING that el is on her way back to save them but not knowing when she’ll arrive!! idk i don’t think that would have necessarily saved lost sister but i think it may have alleviated some of the issues that i and many others have with it, timing-wise.

the nancy/jonathan sidequest

once again, the idea of nancy going off on her own little mission to find justice for barb after s1 is like. amazing. genuinely i love that plot for her and i can’t imagine anything better for her to have focused on in s2. unfortunately though i think her and jonathan’s little trip to see murray was just kind of... lame. the whole thing just felt like an excuse to get the two of them alone together, yknow? which is fine i guess people contrive all sorts of situations to get characters alone together for romance reasons but in this case i think it just really doesn’t work for me because of what it’s juxtaposed with. like, will is POSSESSED, and jonathan is just off on a mini road trip and sleeping with his bestie, and jonathan never seems to communicate to joyce/will that he left town, and joyce never like... thinks to tell him that will is like sick and fucked up and they’re looking at him in the lab??? like it’s so weird i know joyce always forgets about jonathan when shit’s happening with will but jfc you’d think at some point in that like... 72-ish-hour period where jonathan was out of town she would have thought about him. like at least once. maybe i’m forgetting something and she mentioned him sometime and i missed it but even still, i hate the juxtaposition of nancy and jonathan just like cheers-ing at murray’s place and sleeping together and whatnot while everyone else is dealing with possession or trying to hunt down dart yknow? it feels really boring in comparison and i think it could have been done far better. like it was SO insanely easy for them to get into the lab and get an admission of guilt and escape with it!! i think it might have been a lot more engaging if maybe someone from the lab tailed them to murray’s place and they had to like lose the tail and race to get the recording out to as many news outlets as possible before they got caught, or something like that. the tension in their plotline is completely resolved in episode four!! episodes five and six are just them screwing around and addressing envelopes. while there were a lot of strong ideas in this plotline (i really enjoy nancy going out of her way to get justice, and the fact that they have to water down the story to make it believable), i just think the focus on nancy and jonathan getting together hindered it a lot without adding a ton to the plot or their individual characters.

season 3

strengths

starcourt mall as a setting

while i don’t think the mall was utilized quite to its full potential (something i could make a separate post about if anyone’s interested), i do think that starcourt was a genius addition to the series. i’ve said this before, but building a new mall is a literal Perfect in-universe justification for a significant leap forward in fashion and aesthetics, and it provides a great location for characters to just... be characters. idk how else to articulate this i just think that the mall is a great setting to let people interact with each other and to bring people together who may not have been otherwise (i.e. scoops troop). not to mention how sick it was to see the mall get wrecked toward the end kdjncdkm like they were able to do so much more with the mall in terms of like The Finale than they could with just the byers house or the cabin or the school or even the lab. i love all the back tunnels they run through it’s such a fun like acknowledgement of how this glitzy eighties mall is just a real place where employees get shipments and take out the trash and shit idk it’s all about the perfect facade and what’s hidden what’s underneath what’s hiding in plain sight etc etc i’m just saying words now. anyway.

willingness to experiment and go against expectations

gay robin. neon aesthetics. giant fucking meat monster. i know some people hate both the neon and the meat monster but i personally think they were kind of amazing and like. yknow regardless of personal tastes i think it’s impossible to deny that s3 had a lot of incredible visuals, and they’re all visuals that just wouldn’t have been possible if the show were too afraid to stray from its s1 aesthetic. robin being canonically gay (and her resulting friendship with steve) and the season’s striking visuals are two things that most everyone (besides like homophobes skjncdknm) can agree were great, right? and they were both departures from where the show began and what we all expected!! so yeah i think while some of the experimentation in s3 wasn’t ideal it was also that experimentation that allowed for some of the season’s strongest elements to come about.

the hospital sequence (and the season’s action/horror scenes in general)

this one is fairly self-explanatory. while they may have underutilized the “body snatching” element of the season, the hospital sequence with nancy and jonathan fighting off their possessed bosses did an amazing job of building tension and creating a genuine sense of really intense and personal danger.

in general i think that s3 melded action and horror rather well, particularly in the sauna test, the hospital, and when the mindflayer busts through the roof of hop’s cabin. horror can come from many things, and in this case, st elicited horror largely from the feeling of helplessness, and it was really effective for me personally. i think it worked better for me than s1′s brand of horror because it doesn’t rely so much on a lack of knowledge or a sense of suspense that inevitable disappears upon a second viewing.

the body horror we got in s3 was also really fun! that’s it i just think all the blood and guts and slime were fun and i would like more of them. once again, the impacts of body horror are less dependent upon the viewer being in the dark or unsure as to what’s happening, and as such i think it tends to be a little more effective at eliciting reaction in the long term.

timing and mechanics of the battle of starcourt/finale

i think the battle of starcourt is just fucking awesome, and beyond that personal opinion, i think it’s the most high-stakes and intense finale of all three seasons, and this is for two main reasons! 1. el is out of commission, and 2. (almost) everyone is in the same cental location. this means that (almost) everyone is in danger all at once, and they are all working together at the same time to fight the same threat. s1/s2 have their groups more fragmented for the finales, and while i understand why in each case and i wouldn’t call either season’s finale necessarily weak, i do think the centralized nature of the s3 finale just Works on another level. in s1 and s2, large segments of the cast are already perfectly safe by the time el dispatches the primary threat. in s3, however, everybody save for dustin and erica is still in danger up until the last moment, and el is seemingly (you can def debate how much power she still had in her when she peeked into billy’s mind and whether the memory broke the mindflayer’s hold on him or if she was actually controlling him to some degree) completely vulnerable. this increases the tension and raises the stakes, making the finale a real crescendo to fortissimo as opposed to a series of little mezzo forte moments. i hope everyone reading this knows music idk how else to phrase that my brain is stupid.

emphasis on friendship and adolescence (but in a different way than s1/2)

this is definitely a controversial one but i think that s3 really did like... show a side of friendship that had been more or less unexplored thus far in the show. el and max were amazing, and i think it’s really nice that we got an opportunity to see the kids have some growing pains as well as see them support each other through Normal Adolescent Stuff like boyfriends and breakups instead of just like. death and trauma. this is maybe just a personal preference, but i think it can be really enlightening and provide a lot of depth when you get to see how characters respond to normal everyday conflict and not just how they respond to giant world-ending conflict!! letting el use her powers for goofy teenage shit like spying on boys and messing with mean girls at the mall is not only fun for her and the audience, but it also really emphasizes just how much those powers are a part of el, making it that much more devastating when she loses them at the end of the season.

weaknesses

tonal dissonance

so this is like. obvious. but it must still be said! i won’t go on and on about it since we all know this so i’ll try to like talk about it from an angle people don’t usually? anyway. it seems to me like they were maybe a little worried about s3 being too dark. while the choice to really lean into humor was definitely driven by the sorts of eighties teen films from which s3 drew inspiration (like fast times at ridgemont high), i think it was also done in an attempt to alleviate the more troubling implications of some events in the season, particularly the russian bunker plot. like, yeah, st can be incredibly dark, but if they’d played the whole “children being stuck inside of a foreign military base, tied up, tortured, and drugged” thing completely straight without the humorous elements that exist in canon, it had the potential to be like... disturbing on a new level. steve and robin don’t have powers like el yknow their kidnapping/torture doesn’t have any sci-fi elements to sorta soften the blow. they’re just innocent teenagers being brutalized and traumatized by grown men. so anyway yeah i think maybe the writers were concerned about this storyline coming off as too dark and they wanted it to be a little more whimsical but they ended up pushing way too hard in that direction and creating extreme dissonance at times. this goes for joyce/hopper/murray/alexei too, but to a lesser extent. i think the ridiculousness in that group felt a lot more like... realistic. but still.

newspaper plot

once again i feel like i don’t even need to say this skjdncmn we all know it was insane how the show basically ended up delivering the message “while misogyny is a serious problem poverty and classism are not” and i’ve said it on this blog a million times so i don’t need to repeat myself. i’ll focus on another weak point of this plot: the fact that it completely separates nancy and jonathan from everyone else. once again, the show’s preoccupation with j/ancy held them back! like... can you imagine a version of s3 where nancy and jonathan both worked in the mall? i have a lot of ideas about this possible au and like how the plot could play out differently if they worked in the mall but first of all it’s just more realistic, second of all it further utilizes the mall as a central setting, and third of all, it would bring everyone together. as it is in canon, nancy and jonathan were unnecessarily isolated from the rest of the group, and this isolation was detrimental to both of their characters. like, they only ever get to interact with each other! if they’d gotten summer jobs in the mall, they could have had more interactions with the kids/steve/robin, and they absolutely still could have had a similar argument! maybe in this case, nancy notices the rat thing (or something else odd) herself when taking out the trash behind the mall, and she wants jonathan to ditch work with her to check it out bc she thinks it may be related to the lab. jonathan doesn’t want to ditch work because he needs his job, nancy argues that they’re working shitty mall jobs anyway and who cares if they get fired, and we get more or less the same thing as s3 without the cartoonishly over-the-top misogyny. i mean honestly i think the rat shit could have been cut entirely it didn’t rly... accomplish much of anything. in my opinion. like imagine s3 without the rat plot you literally would not be missing anything except it would be more surprising when the dudes melted into goo at the hospital. so yeah i think it would have been better if nancy and jonathan had jobs at the mall, weren’t isolated from everybody else, and were maybe absorbed into the party’s plot or the scoops troop’s plot from very early on, allowing them to interact with more characters and have a less... dumb.... plot. like god splitting up nancy and jonathan between the party/scoops troop would have been So Much better i just. sdkjcnksdmn anyway yeah.

briefness of group reunion/separation of groups

remember in s2 at the beginning of “the gate,” where mike and hopper had a confrontation and max and el met for the first time and el hugged everyone and steve and nancy had their sad little moment together outside... where’s that energy? obviously the s2 reunion wasn’t that long either, but it made space for some significant emotional moments to take place. s3′s reunion had some hopper/el/mike resolution, but besides that... there was nothing, really. i just think that the whole group getting together in s3 was SO exciting and powerful the way they did it (with both the scoops troop and the adults having their own Big Moment reconnecting with team griswold family), but the emotional potential was more or less squandered.

i also think in s3 at times they were really stretching to keep everybody separated even though it made no sense. and like... in s1 the separation worked bc nobody else knew that (x group) was experiencing weird shit too, and beyond that, each group (as i mentioned in the s1 section) was sort of operating within their own genre and bringing something unique to the season. they’ve stopped doing that though! now, the groups aren’t separate bc each plot is tonally/structurally different, the groups are just separate bc... they need to be, because it’s a big ensemble cast and you can’t just have them all be together for a whole season or it would be way too difficult to coordinate things and keep the show dynamic. all this is to say that i’m excited for s4 because the location differences make it so there’s a Reason for each plot to be separate at the beginning, and i think that’ll work better.

general ridiculousness

i dont mean like i think it’s bad that they made jokes this is just me lumping in all the dumb shit like hopper not worrying about el and not wanting to check on the kids, him and joyce bickering long after they both know they and their children are in danger, max seemingly forgetting that billy is a racist abuser, etc etc. i think many of these are just a symptom of the show 1. trying desperately to keep the groups split up a certain way even though it may not make any sense, and 2. trying to fit into a certain genre/trope mold when their actual characters are more complex than the tropes they’re imitating. this is so fucking long already i am not gonna elaborate further rn but i trust u all know what i mean.

soooo... yeah, that’s about all! i mean it’s not all there are definitely many more things i could talk about and i know i focused sorta disproportionately on the teens which is my bad :/ but i’m done for now. thank you for asking, and apologies for the delay in responding!! i’m sure some people reading (if anyone read this far) will disagree with some of what i’ve said and that’s alright like i’m not The Authority on st or anything i’m just trying to talk about like my own thoughts yknow? so yeah luv u all i hope someone enjoyed reading this!!

#asks #em talks #lesbianrobin.canon #stranger things #if u actually read all this i love u and im sorry #these r just my opinions!! and im sure i misremembered some shit my brain is swiss cheese #i did my best tho

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johannas-motivational-insults · 3 years

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So I don’t mean this argumentatively, I’m just genuinely confused & would like to understand this. I also struggle with empathy & take things very literally, so that could be part of why I’m not understanding. But where is Catra shown to be empathetic or compassionate? I understand that her abuse informs a lot of her actions and that’s why she is impulsive, lies, and manipulates others in the earlier seasons- they’re survival tactics that she got from SW + growing up in the Horde.

But I didn’t notice her going out of her way for others unless it could also benefit her in some way. I’ve also seen people say that she died in the process of sending Glimmer to Adora, & therefore deserves redemption because she made the ultimate sacrifice, only to then be saved and effectively made to work on her behavior and become a better person. And that would be all well & good, except we don’t really see her working on her behavior, except in the scene where she’s telling Adora that she’s working on her anger, and in the scene where she asks her to stay. I’m also not sure that she actually died, though I have heard a lot of people saying that. And I get that it’s called a redemption arc for a reason, & that the implication is that she will continue to work on her behavior and be better, but I just don’t know that we saw enough of that in the show.

So the thing with Catra is that a lot of this is pretty subtle. And as I said in the other ask that I assume you’re referring to with this, she’s often driven by a mix of selfish and unselfish motives. You’re correct that a lot of the times she does things for other people could also be seen as selfish moves because there’s something in it for her too, but that’s not always true and even when it is it doesn’t mean that that empathy or care for other people isn’t there.

Some examples of times when she shows empathy/care for others while also helping herself:

Gives Adora the sword so she and Glimmer can escape in 1x09, which is a kindness to Adora but also allows Catra to keep her job and her power (even if it breaks her heart to give up on bringing Adora back)

Warns Entrapta to stay out of Hordak’s sanctum and chases Entrapta down when she defies her in 2x03, which seems to be a mix of not wanting to deal with an angry Hordak herself and protecting a rather oblivious Entrapta from getting into trouble

(Note that in both of these examples she does this in a rather brusque or mean way, hiding her concern, but the subtext is there if you watch closely)

However, there are also many instances where Catra helps other people despite there not only being nothing in it for her, but when it’s actually against her own interests. Here’s the ones I can think of off the top of my head (but I’m sure there’s more):

Lies about Adora’s whereabouts and then her identity as She-Ra early in season 1 to protect her from the Horde, even after she’s promoted to Force Captain, which is dangerous not only to her career but to her life and limb

Tries to comfort her abuser Shadow Weaver when she sees her in distress in 1x04 and 1x10, the former instance right after Shadow Weaver gears up to attack her and "drag the truth” from her mind (anyone less empathetic would run away or even gloat)

Brings Shadow Weaver her old badge in 2x06 as a final favor when SW is about to be shipped away for good, despite it possibly being something that could get her in trouble and there being nothing in it for her (and in fact if she’s as selfish and callous as some say she’d deny SW this closure out of spite)

Turns down Scorpia’s offer to break her out of prison in 3x01, which seems to be entirely for Scorpia’s benefit as Catra has nothing to lose at this point (people just don’t see the compassion in this because she drives Scorpia away in a mean way to ensure she actually leaves)

Doesn’t tell Hordak that Scorpia “broke the recordings” that were inside Emily in 4x06, lies and says there was nothing, which turns Hordak’s anger on her instead of Scorpia (this perhaps is also motivated by guilt over how she just yelled at Scorpia and said awful things to her -- like I said, Catra is complicated -- but alleviating her guilt doesn’t help her situation at all so that’s borderline)

If you want, there’s a whole tweet thread of instances of Catra showing care and empathy for others. Some of these are weaker than others and the list may not be complete, but they’re all there for your consideration.

In addition to the things she does for other people, a lot of this is in her body language. If you really watch Catra, you can see that being cruel does not come naturally to her and she feels conflicted about a lot of her choices (or is straight up haunted by them, like her nightmare about betraying Entrapta in 4x03). Likewise, you often see her expression soften when she sees someone in distress. There are so many examples, it’s something baked into her character and it’s evident throughout the show, even when she’s at her lowest. But I think people often miss these moments because she usually shoves that initial reaction down and reacts in a way that on paper just makes her look like a cruel villain. For instance, she has a particularly guilt-stricken moment in 4x12 when Kyle calls her out for treating her old squad badly before she reacts by shoving that guilt down and reasserting her power, as that’s the only thing protecting her.

You have to understand that Catra was taught both implicitly and explicitly that compassion and vulnerability are weaknesses. And throughout the show, oftentimes when she does open up or do something for someone else it results in her being hurt/betrayed. Shadow Weaver in 2x06 and Double Trouble in 4x13 teach her that trusting people and allowing them in is dangerous and only ends in pain and devastation (and with Shadow Weaver, it teaches her the same lesson about showing mercy). When she spirals into her homocidal/suicidal breakdown starting in 3x03 it’s because she finds out Shadow Weaver left her to join the rebellion, just like Adora, and that Bright Moon is now harboring her abuser (as she understands it). Thing is, that all happens just as she’s starting to open up to and actually befriend Scorpia, and even though Scorpia isn’t the one who hurt her it still reinforces that pattern that vulnerability and kindness comes before a horrible, life-shattering event. Because of all this, she hides the empathy and kindness intrinsic to her actual character under layers of power and cruelty to protect her broken heart from being hurt again and protect herself from getting removed from power, because that’s the only thing keeping her from becoming someone’s abuse victim again after so many years suffering under Shadow Weaver’s heel.

I totally hear you about wishing there was a bit more to Catra’s redemption arc, but much like the rest of her emotional arc a lot of it is implicit. I’m very glad they added that one moment where she talks about working on her anger as well as her mini arc with Perfuma in 5x10 that culminated in Perfuma’s speech about learning to be vulnerable so you can be happy. But there’s lots of smaller moments buried in the season too, where we see her conflicted and struggling with these impulses of protecting herself vs. opening up or showing kindness. I mean, her half of 5x06 was basically about that too, though that’s only the beginning of this journey. Having Melog around was great too because they not only mirror her emotions for the audience to see but also help her process said emotions. Basically, the redemption is a process for her and a lot of it is not super explicit but in the end I think we have all we need to understand who Catra really is and that she wants to do better and is going to continue to in the future.

Really, Catra’s redemption arc is not so much about making up for what she did (which I and many others wish there was more of but oh well) as it is about rediscovering her true self and honoring that, learning to be vulnerable and kind again. In the end, her willingness to open herself up to potential rejection and loss and her kindness and love motivating her to help Adora get to the Heart and complete her mission are what ended up saving the universe, and that was a very intentional choice by the creators. Catra’s journey is not about coming back to Adora, it’s about coming back to herself, and I think that’s beautiful.

#spop #she-ra #she ra #catra #catrademption #redemption arc #catradora #abuse survivor psychology #asks #anon

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surveillance-0011 · 3 years

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TBOI Headcanons: Horsemen

Death

He/him

He’s...nice. Not a good person by any means but he’s the most polite of the bunch. Kind of strange though. Creepily calm, a bit sarcastic, and he has a pretty morbid view on the world.

Reserved and usually grumpy. He can be rather chipper off-duty, though. Putting up with the others takes a lot of energy from him.

Tired....

A bit neurotic but good at coming off as a down-to-earth guy.

He’s the most book-smart of the bunch and he’s fairly wise. A bit emotionally stunted, but he tries his best to be mature and make the right choices.

Death is more than a bit nihilistic and pessimistic. He has a hard time just... caring, mostly about himself.

Not to say he’s completely apathetic, he can be pretty empathetic but he tries not to act on that too much because if he did his job would have broken him by now.

He likes to think he’s got it all under control, but he does not. He’s more prone to pettiness and stupid decisions than he’d like to admit.

That being said he’s been pretty good with like. Growing and maturing though. He’s changed more than he realizes in just in the past.... decade or so ago. A bit of a late start for an immortal but hey at least he’s slightly less of a scumbag.

It’s usually not easy to anger him unless he’s really tired or something’s already set him off. When something does piss him off badly he’s a bit prone to freaking out. He’s not very good at handling his emotions.

Sees his own job as a necessary evil, because hey, someone’s gotta do it.

Interested in botany/gardening, as well as literature.

Genuinely nice- or at least polite- to the kids when he’s not supposed to be murdering them. He sees no reason to go out of his way to do so, especially since unwarranted cruelty towards others has only bit him in the ass.

Famine’s older brother. The two have always had each other’s backs.

Diligent, and always considers the logistics to things instead of acting on emotion alone.

Protective of the other horsemen.

Pretty short tbh

His horse’s name is Chili.

Famine

She/he (bigender). You can use both interchangeably or only use one set, she doesn’t care. Fine with they/them too but it’s never really clicked w/ him enough to be preferred.

Usually prefers more masculine terms (brother, sir, mr...) but fine with anything.

.Flips between bouncing off the walls and having no energy whatsoever.

Impulsive, she’s got terrible judgement and has the most idiotic of ideas sometimes.

Fairly easygoing, tries to forgive and forget and doesn’t let little transgressions get to her

Actually pretty damn sad. Needs some self care but never looks after herself.

I mean she’s optimistic and usually happy but like. There’s always just a bit of sadness, you know? He’s dealt with a lot and it’s definitely taken its toll on him.

Disaster Lesbian

Tries to be a graceful loser but she can get a bit more competitive than she’d like to admit.

Has a hard time relating to others and considering how they feel, at least when it comes to anything more complex than “bad thing happened now I’m sad/mad” He’s a drifter by nature, always onto the next big thing for a quick thrill.

Eats a lot. It’s never enough.

Plants and a good deal of food will decay if she touches them, or even gets too close to them.

Like his brother he has some interest in nature. Famine is more on the adventurous side, though. She’s tried to live off the land a few times with varying success.

Named her horse Frisk

Pestilence

He/him

Calm, quiet, but also a pessimistic jackass.

Always in a bad mood. I mean, he’s permanently sick with just about everything contagious and deadly. You’d be grumpy, too!

Surprisingly high pain tolerance. A good deal of his nerves have probably just.. shut down or something. Or maybe he’s just numb to everything after a lifetime of pain.

Sleeps a lot

Dislikes his situation a lot, but doesn’t mind the company of the others.

Lazarus is terrified of this dude. The other kids are mostly grossed out or annoyed by him.

Likes to be alone.

Fairly smart, but comes off as absent minded bc he’s pretty much too sick to function. He slips up a lot and he’s pretty damn clumsy

Probably the most rational of the bunch, when he’s not in airplane mode.

He’s also got a fairly strong moral compass. He doesn’t really like fighting the kids unlike War and Famine. Or just having to go up against people in general. Hell he hates the fact people get sick because of him. At the very least Pest has higher standards and is fairly transparent

But that isn’t to say he’s a good person. Yeah he doesn’t go out of his way to hurt others for shits and giggles and He’s Not Conquest but he doesn’t ever object to any of the shit the kids are put through and well. Yknow he still does kill them. He will also encourage some of War’s antics when it’s against someone he dislikes.

Tries to be as supportive as he can for the others. He knows he can’t do too much without overexerting so he tries to be encouraging and comforting as he can.

This compassion usually isn’t extended to humans, though.

Not very emotive, the only emotions he ever really expresses would be disdain and mild concern.

Not very fond of Conquest but they don’t hate each other. They actually work together well, too.

Friends with Mahalath. They’re pretty close!

His horse’s name is Moses.

War

He/it

He’s not very friendly, he’s pretty defensive and always on edge.

Out of all the horsemen, he’s probably the one closest with the Beast.

Lots of scars n injuries, it’s practically stitched together

One gold tooth

Impulsive, prefers solving issues through violence than through reason.

He can be fairly clever, though.

Intentionally angers/upsets others, likes causing problems and ruining things for people.

Desires wealth and power

Gets burnt out pretty quickly.

Emotional, insecure, and sensitive, and he hates this part of him. Definitely overcompensates for it.

Explosive temper, quite literally. Catches fire when upset and explodes if it’s more intense. Damage done to him also makes it happen. It’s not entirely voluntary but can be held off, and his “sobbing” sprite is him doing exactly that (but he’s probably also trying not to cry lmao). In the Ultra War fight, however...

Its daily routine leaves a lot to be desired. It wakes up, goes to work, then it goes home and just. Sits and rots.

Also, his diet is god awful. Please just eat a fruit or vegetable for once maybe you’d feel better goddamn.

He cannot remember if his horse is actually a horse or not but uhh he named her Bellum.

Conquest

He/they.

High and mighty sort of attitude. Can be very selfish. Stubborn, set in his ways. Gets defensive if you call him out or tell him he’s wrong.

Gay + nonbinary but in the closet (and denial) about both of those things. They’re trying to unlearn years’ worth of internalized bigotry.

Used to be worse, now trying to unlearn his toxic behaviors. But he’s still awful.

Doesn’t remember anything before their death. However they’ve held very strong Christian (specifically Catholic) beliefs all their life and they have a pretty black and white way of thinking.

Very cold and clinical. He has a bit of a temper but there’s a sort of calmness to everything he does even when he’s pissed.

Just as argumentative and aggressive as War but like more of a threat.

The others call him Connie sometimes, especially Death, who practically almost always calls him by this nickname.

Doesn’t harbor ill will towards Pestilence. They might have been overshadowed, but it’s not Pestilence’s own fault. If anything, being out of the spotlight has been good for Conquest, even if they do miss the attention sometimes. The only reason the two dislike each other is because their personalities clash.

Now if there’s anyone he hates that would be the Headless Horseman. Fuck that guy amiright

Very protective of Death. The two are close, Death is probably the only person who is consistently nice to him.

Utterly terrified of needles (hypodermic, not sewing needles, though he’s not good with sharp objects tbh) and medical stuff makes him anxious

Seems very... off. Just weird vibes but no one can pin point what about him is wrong.

Oh uh and his horse’s name is Josephine.

#the binding of isaac #binding of isaac #tboi conquest #tboi death #tboi war #tboi pestilence #tboi famine #tboi headcanons #long post #some of this is tentative but for the most part this is just. here to stay

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fenristheorem · 3 years

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My OC, Fenris

... and the Eldarya AU that she’s in, because I just can’t see her in the original Origins storyline with her differences from Guardienne/Erika. And I think my AU has some pretty interesting ideas. I’ll explain it after I introduce her.

Yea, I know, Fenris Theorem, Fenris, it all connects, huh? Hehe. I like the name, that’s all.

(This page is informational, so it’s written in a bit more of a note-taking fashion rather than a story fashion. It’s written in a very choppy manner but it’s comprehensible despite not having any stress on having it beautifully written.)

This page just introduces you to my OC. I decided to create a page on her for the poll (now ended) because I think some people will really like small excerpts on her story with Lance, but obviously you need to know about her before deciding that for sure. You’ll notice that some theories I may have posted on Lance in the past are a part of this AU - these theories have been in my mind and I posted them only because I thought they could exist in the actual plotline (it’s where a lot of my theories come from, and then some ideas fit into the AU, and then some ideas could exist in the actual plotline as well based on what I observe), so this is where some of those theories come from.

For the poll - if anything, I would recommend reading the paragraph titled “*Her story in Origins (where many things are explained in moderation, because if I went in-depth I wouldn’t need to write stories on this):” above all else because that describes what I will be writing if the poll results shows that that’s wanted. Everything else is just extra information for you to know my OC and the AU better. The paragraph is at the bottom of the post.

Above all else, this is an AU, and a fantasy world. I like to try to give rationality and logic to a lot of things, so you’ll read a lot of me explaining things, but at the end of the day it’s all fantasy and can be perceived - and therefore approved or unapproved of - in a multitude of ways. If you like my AU but find it illogical in some ways, that’s no problem! Just enjoy reading about it if you enjoy the ideas within it. 😊

~ This is long so continue below the cut ~

A lot of this information can be a bit vague at first but it comes together when I explain the basic plot.

Her basics: She goes by Fenris but her actual name is Dakota. However, people usually call her Kota, or occasionally Ko (Fen is used later for Fenris, first by Ashkore / Lance, but later when she was discovered by the guard as well). She was 18 when she came to Eldarya via mushroom circle (like Guardienne/Erika). The guard test placed her in the Obsidian guard - she’s very happy with that outcome. Was in a relationship with Valkyon before leaving him for Lance (*explained later).

Physical Appearance: Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of her and nothing in Eldarya describes her and her clothing very well, so you’ll just need to imagine the physical features that I describe on Eldarya’s Guardienne sprite. Also, she’s pretty flexible with how she styles her hair and dresses, so I don’t think a single picture of her would describe her well.

Fair and light in skin tone, perhaps a slight tan-ish tone. Thin, but broad shouldered. She’s well-muscled (later on, less so when she first arrived), which gives her a bit of thickness, but not too much. Nicely curved. About 5 ft. 5 in. (167.64 cm). Dark hair, but not exactly black, with brown-hazel eyes. Her hair is medium-length and is usually braided in a multitude of styles. Her eyes occasionally glow a brilliant gold (explained under ‘abilities and genetics’ and ‘her story in Origins’).

Usually wears dark, ancient / tribal-like clothes (think Norse Vikings) with thin, form-fitting but strong armor around her forearms, lower legs (below the thigh starting from knees) and chest/midriff. She wears a good amount of red, blue, gold, silver or dark green clothing and accents with the black base for color. Usually nothing over-the-top, she likes to have her own unique style and express herself but doesn't like to draw unnecessary attention. Doesn't like most faux fur as it doesn't look nice in her opinion, but may wear some that she likes occasionally. Is more likely to wear real fur from hunted animals, but doesn't wear it too often. She wears a sword on her hip, and has a few semi-concealed daggers placed on her body (thigh, boot, torso) for quick use if needed.

Personality: She has a wide spectrum of how she acts depending on people, situations, what she knows, and her current mood. She's typically quite calm, and doesn't seek for trouble or drama, however, she does like to hear the recent news/gossip from around the guard; to stay updated on things, know what may effect her, try to think ahead and just for the sake of knowing. She's very curious and typically observes the situation around her, but in a very subtle way. Is a planner and likes to think ahead, and usually knows how to react to anything because of her observations and forward thinking. Around friends, she's very kind and welcoming. They can talk about anything to her and she'll keep her mouth shut - she has a good loyalty streak (but it does have a limit). However, she doesn't have any friends that are like family to her, but on the day she does find friends like that her loyalty will truly be endless. It's ride or die, and she'll always stand by their side. She has a major independent streak and can’t be around people for too long, otherwise she’ll crack and get a bit irritated more easily. She likes her alone time. In general, she's very cordial with people. Again, she doesn't like to cause unnecessary trouble or drama - she's had a rough past (discussed under ‘history’) and quickly shuts down anyone doing so in a professional but aggressive, don’t-argue-with-me sort of way. She can be harsh, cold and withholding - especially with people she genuinely dislikes - but doesn't like to act this way. On the note of people she dislikes- it's hard to get her to truly dislike someone, but it can be a bit easy as well. In general rule, as long as someone is conscious of the reality of the world around them and doesn't seek to cause issues, she's fine with them, but the instant someone starts continually spreading rumors that are clearly false, or acts (especially in a way that hurts others) solely in their selfish interests, or takes part in willful ignorance (purposely ignoring an issue that you know shouldn’t be ignored), she keeps note of that person and reminds herself to be wary of them in the future. They could be a source of trouble or misinformation that may need to be stopped, and she won’t be very forgiving. However, this is just a general rule, it doesn't always apply - remember she can change based on the situation and what she knows. She recognizes that sometimes people dislike things that are good for them, or like harmful things, and sometimes the villain is actually the hero, history and set rules are created by the winners and anyone against it is considered the villain, and sometimes you need to be cruel to be merciful. She's fully aware that sometimes the bad of life is good, and may defend that, but she's always sure to think long and hard about it before giving a decision like that. A lot of terrible things have happened to her, so she tries to avoid being a source of those terrible things for the world. She feels emotions very deeply and can be a bit impulsive, but fortunately she’s not typically hurt or gets others hurt due to her impulsivity. Again, she is very curious and observes things a lot, so she can usually get a good read on anything new she comes across and work from there, or she can use other information she knows and apply it to the situation. That being said, she won’t drag her friends or anyone else into her occasionally dangerous impulsive decisions. She’ll offer it if they’d like to join her, but she won’t pressure them. Their safety is their decision, and she’ll do her best to protect them although she can’t truly guarantee it. Being in the Obsidian guard, she can’t really condone anyone to risk their safety for fun, especially if it’s her idea. She has a good sense of responsibility when she works for what she believes in, and will sacrifice some of her comfort and fun making sure that she follows her responsibilities if needed. On the topic of her guard - when she first came to Eldarya and joined the Obsidian guard, she wasn’t too bad of a fighter upon basic training, but it was when she started training with Ashkore / Lance where her skills greatly improved until she was perhaps the best fighter in the guard, rivaled only by a few other warriors - including Valkyon. She’s not against helping others improve, but she’s very careful with what she tells the guard - if anyone knew her skills were due to Ashkore, she’d be in massive trouble and may be treated as a complete accomplice. She doesn’t like to lie unless truly necessary, so she’ll usually withhold lots of damning information, and she thoroughly thinks over everything she says, any possible answers to theoretical questions, how her words can connect with other things, and how it might be taken from someone else’s perspective, before revealing any information. Did I mention she’s very cunning and smart, especially after knowing Lance? She has prior knowledge in how to utilize sarcasm and wit, but that’s also improved after meeting Lance.

She changes in time to be quite a bit more harsh and unforgiving when she starts working with Lance.

(For media reference, think of Lagertha from Vikings and Octavia from Netflix’s The 100. She’s a bit of a combination between the two, both in personality and appearance, although Octavia represents her a bit better in appearance.)

Abilities and Genetics: When she first came to Eldarya, she had no idea of her faery genetics. She never felt as though she belonged with humans and always felt that something was off, but she truly thought she was human genetically - until the guard had her take a test and realized she apparently had some faery blood in her (like what actually happened in the original plotline). She went a good while not knowing about what her genetics were, until Lance told her she was a dragon. She learned her abilities under his mentorship, and found that - to be more specific - she’s a shadow dragon. Her shadows appear usually like a pitch black fog, but can be manipulated into almost any form; hard or soft, thin or thick, curved or straight. It has a bit of a cold feel, but she can’t actually control the temperature of her shadows. She can adjust the color of her shadows along a grey-scale until it looks like any grey or silver, even looking like normal fog, but she can’t make it lighter than silver. She can also make pre-existing shadows darker or lighter depending on what she wants. Being a dragon, she also has a dragon form and can shift into a half-transformed body (like what’s seen with Tia). She has premonitions and prophecies as well. This ability typically manifests in dreams and can come to her the night before it manifests in reality, or even sometimes years in advance - there’s really no way to know. She struggles a lot trying to learn this - and to learn the difference between a premonition dream and just a normal dream - and has some basic understanding of it’s rules. She has absolutely no control over when she has these dreams, but she can occasionally put herself in a bit of a calm, meditative state where she can observe her surroundings enough to faintly feel energies, and from there she can receive some premonitions. When she receives premonitions or prophecies while awake, her eyes glow a brilliant gold - this stems from a more spiritual side of her genetics (*explained later). This ability to very hard to control, though, and can rarely be done despite her persistence in it.

History: She... didn’t have a very peaceful life. Since her birth, her parents had basically been at war with each other. She grew up under a distinct combination of good influences and bad influences from both parents, but for the most part her mother was her major support as her father failed to be there for her. Neither extended family had much impact, but her father’s family knew of the terrible things he did and didn’t do anything. She continues to hold a grudge against many humans for being forced to live an endangered upbringing when she and her mother were so clearly crying for help. However, she’s aware that this is also what drives her some days, as she didn’t live through all of that just to die shamefully with an unlived life. In time, her grudge against humans has calmed, but it flares back up whenever she’s reminded or learned about something terrible that humans have caused or do currently - it’s a continuous battle and she has a hard time giving an honest opinion on humanity due to her complex emotions. She came to Eldarya when she was 18 (like Guardienne/Erika) and the rest is history (*and is explained below).

Relationships: Miiko is... alright. It’s a bit of a love hate relationship sometimes, but Fenris is usually quite cordial with her. Nevra and Ezarel were irritating at first, but Nevra’s lovableness and Ezarel’s humor slowly grew on her. She liked Valkyon when she first arrived and somewhat quickly pursued a relationship with him. She didn’t mind Leiftan - he was always very kind and left her alone while being cordial (remember, she’s not an angel in this so Leiftan wouldn’t be into her like how he was with Guardienne/Erika). Karuto is like the good father she never had, but she puts her foot down with him on occasion - she doesn’t like to be told what to do, scolded, treated like a child or anything. This is only because she views him in a bit of a fatherly way, and doesn’t want a repeat of her original father. She makes sure he knows that she truly appreciates him, though. Jamon is a bit of a brother if anything, but he’s really just a close friend / colleague that she likes a lot. She appreciates his gentleness and protectiveness for everyone. Ewelein is basically a second mom, she reminds Fenris a lot of her mom back on Earth and has a deep respect for the Elf. Chrome is a bit like an irritating little brother, but she also has a sisterly affection for him. Ykhar and Kero are the panic colleagues; she has a hard time seeing them doing anything else than panicking. She worries a bit for their health as long-term stress is destructive and tries to be as comforting and as nice as possible with them without betraying her personality and morals. Karenn and Alajea are close friends, almost sisterly, but not exactly so. She’s a bit closer with Karenn than she is with Alajea. Cameria is similar to Karenn in the way that she has a bit of a sisterly relationship with Fenris, but in more of a battle partner way. They have a tendency to train together a lot, and they heavily trust each other to have their back in war. Huang Hua is a bit of a friend / leader - she respects the phoenix a lot and has a bit of a close friendly relationship with her. Feng Zifu is a bit of a father figure in the manner that she respects him a lot. She likes to listen to his advice and appreciates his formality.

The AU: So before I explain the plot of the AU, I need to explain a few basics of how I set up the world. In this AU, the crystal breaking could destroy Eldarya, but if it’s shattered in a certain way with certain spells and chants, it’ll release the spirits of the dragons (who sacrificed to create the crystal) and allow them to retain a sort of half-living form - basically they’re alive but... not? It’s weird to explain. Why does the crystal breaking in this way not destroy Eldarya? The sacrifice allowed a release of energy that originally created the world and then primarily manifested into the shape of the crystal that maintains that world, so this ritual that would be preformed upon it’s shattering would basically allow the energy of the dragons to maintain the world while allowing them to roam around in a different form - hence why they’d be half alive in a way. They’d be physical, but they have additions and limits on what they can and can’t do because they’re still technically dead. However, this isn’t common knowledge (because the guard protects the crystal, they’re the ‘only’ source of ‘accurate’ information on the crystal and both Yonuki Kaze and Miiko have stated that if the crystal breaks Eldarya will fall), only Lance has figured this out (and many of his mercenaries believe him or are working with him because of his destructive habits), so due to this, his ambitions are sort of split in two; destroy the crystal to revive the dragons, and destroy anyone who may try to stop him. In terms of history, Lance in this AU witnessed Miiko (and Nevra - there’s a history behind that that I won’t go into right now) sacrificing dragons to the crystal when he was a part of the guard to try and maintain balance and confronted her about it, only for her to threaten him (in basic; she was convinced sacrificing was the only way to keep balance, and that’s because Yonuki Kaze influenced her into thinking that, so from her perspective Lance coming along and saying it was wrong and had to stop was basically him saying to let the world die) to not tell anyone and stay out of it. Lance then spent a while researching and devising an idea on how to actually balance the world and this included destroying the crystal in a specific way to release the energy (technically there are two ways; the sacrifice was supposed to happen with dragons AND angels, so the ritual was devised to work with the two, but a ritual originally for two races used only with one is basically a ritual preformed improperly, and therefore bound to yield improper results - hence the infertility of the world and shiftiness of it. Undoing the ritual would allow the world to stay while “canceling out the sacrificial imbalance”, but if an angel or demon were to willingly sacrifice - preferably alongside a dragon at the same time - then it would be solved in that way as well). Lance tried to explain this to Miiko later, only to barely get past “I have another idea” before being shut down again. He kept quiet because he feared for himself and his brother (and the only reason Lance could have known that dragons were being sacrificed - without being a dragon himself - is that Miiko said it during the sacrifice he saw, so he didn’t want to raise suspicion onto him and his brother). Later on, Lance is sent to lead an army in a foreign land and is nearly killed, but he saw a chance to escape the guard and took it. From there he’s been Ashkore.

Basically this AU - instead of being “oh no, he’s trying to destroy the world because he’s angry and hurt” - is actually more like “if you had listened the world could be stabilized and also a powerful race could be revived.” It takes the trope of hero and villain and twists it, so the villain is actually a bit of an underdog, villainous hero while the hero’s are - in a way - villains who are heroes because their damning stories haven’t been revealed in a wide-spread manner. Overall, it’s supposed to blur the lines of good and bad, and right and wrong - showing that both sides have good and bad within them, and which side is ‘good’ can depend solely on perception and one’s life anecdote.

*Her story in Origins (where many things are explained in moderation, because if I went in-depth I wouldn’t need to write stories on this): Dakota came to Eldarya by accident via mushroom circle and was placed into the Obsidian guard. She adjusted in time (and willingly took the potion in episode 13 to ease her family / mother of pain and worry) until she got used to things and entered into a romantic relationship with Valkyon. She was sent on basic missions and such and met Ashkore a few times in war (and around the guard), and then she met him accidentally while alone later on outside of the guard. He offered to train her (more like threatened if she didn’t?) and she accepted in time. They trained at night, which was a bit of an issue as she now shared a room with Valkyon and, therefore, had to sneak around. Her skills quickly improved, and her relationship with Valkyon began to decline as he began to become a bit confused / suspicious about her sudden and seemingly random upturn in skills. There were feelings of neglect as well. This carried on for many months and Dakota learned more about Ashkore as well as herself. He eventually admits that she’s a dragon and that he’s investing some of himself into her because of that, and she does her best to explore her abilities with him after that. Eventually she accidentally discovers his actual identity, but keeps quiet about it. As they grow closer, she begins to ask more about him and his reasoning, and he explains his motives for going after the crystal while brushing on the topic of why he’s ruthless to some, but leaves others alone. As she discovers the truth about the dragons and Lance, she realizes that her feelings to the guard were based on lies and false implications, and she begins to grow mentally and emotionally closer with Lance. She becomes less empathetic / sympathetic with Valkyon and eventually sleeps with Lance. This happens a few more times and they enter a sort of limbo where they don’t talk about their relationship with each other but know there’s something heavy going on. Back in the guard, she’s still with Valkyon, and she begins an internal war on what exactly her plan is knowing that she’s sleeping with two guys on the opposite side of a war and that it can’t continue. Her and Valkyon break up in time and she invests her full time into training with Lance, expressing interest in joining his cause. They begin to work together and he gifts her with a specific outfit / armor (that can alternate between identity concealing and revealing for her comfort and safety) so she can go on missions with him. They develop an elaborate scheme to allow her to go on long-term missions with him without suspicion from the guard. She’s eventually sent on a mission and it’s on that mission that she discovers her relation to an ancient dragon named Fenris, and then expresses her interest in taking that name to Lance and the rest of his allies that she’s met (from then on she’s known as Fenris with Lance and Dakota in the guard). Back at the guard, she continues training with Lance and maintaining some sort of odd relationship with himin secret. She’s found elaborate ways to get out of the guard without their suspicion so she can spend many days at a time alone with Lance in a cabin he has hidden in the forest. Over the span of many months / years, she goes on missions with the guard to foreign towns / establishments that are attacked by Ashkore - whether she knows that prior or not - so as she trains she also has actual encounters where she needs to truly fight Lance without actually hurting him while looking as though she’s truly trying to hurt him. When she’s allegedly away on some missions from the guard, she wears the armor that Lance gave her to campaign with him and this occasionally leads to her fighting against the guard if they’re around. In this time and when they’re alone, Lance and allies calls her Fenris as she’s requested them to do. Eventually they go to Memoria together and find out that they have a deeper connection than they think - Fenris (who was an ancient dragon that Dakota took the name of due to her relation with him) and Tia actually knew each other and had a complex history that carried forward to Lance and Dakota / Fenris, and there’s a prophecy of sorts surrounding them. Their relationship after that is still complex, but is more stable as they confirm an attachment to each other. Lance’s identity is eventually revealed to the guard, and sometimes later Fenris is revealed as well, and Lance - in very short, important seconds - offers her to join him completely outside the guard’s walls. She accepts and they flee the guard for a while and plot. Eventually they attack the guard in a final push and get to the crystal, successfully breaking it with... some losses. From there is the skip to ANE, but New Era is... complicated. I haven’t yet thought how she fits into ANE, as many things would be different. Maybe I won’t put pressure on creating her story in it, but if I do I might list it here. Her story in ANE would need to be based off of her story I have here in Origins.

If I write excerpts of this, there may also be many more adventure scenarios that are written but aren’t mentioned here (Lance offering to “help” the guard bring down another greater threat and then turning his forces on them in the midst of war for his own gain, sending them on a wild goose chase, the guard tracking them through rough, unforgiving landscapes trying to catch them, etc.) depending on how the details of her story manifest.

I apologize; that’s a lot to read but I can be very specific and this AU has a lot of important detail that separates it from the original Origins storyline. And this talks over my OC’s details and an AU, which is a lot since there’s not a lot of referencing because I’ve never talked about either before... However, if you’ve read all the way through this post - congrats, and I hope you’re interested in it!

Again, writing excerpts about my OC and her storyline in this AU is an option you can vote on in my writing poll that determines what I’ll write now so I can post later when I can’t access my Tumblr for a few weeks, so if you’re interested in reading about this then please read the info I have about the poll here and feel free to vote!

#eldarya #eldarya oc #oc #fenris oc

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sepublic · 3 years

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G1 Starscream Ramblings

The interesting thing to me about G1 Starscream, specifically the one from the cartoon is… He very much gives me ‘young upstart vibes’, the hot-headed rookie that’s fresh into war, just graduated, and is eager to fight and prove himself. Especially with his line about how ‘his time will come’, I get the vibe that Starscream sees Megatron as almost being outdated hardware, some crankety old-timer whose come and gone and outlived his prime (eventually literally as of the movie), which fits with how Megs was around since the beginning and founded the Decepticons from the start.

And it’s this disrespectful, irreverent attitude, that constant questioning because he lacks experience and assumes it’s way simpler and easier than it actually is… It all just (star)screams new, fresh recruit who thinks he’s all that, wide-eyed and idealized and thinking he can take on the entire world, instead of being a battle-hardened veteran who’s been humbled and is more prone to the realities of war and its complexities. It’d play into Starscream being so power-hungry, wanting instant gratification and glory, and always being impatient about this sort of thing without really thinking things through, he’s an impulsive brat.

Maybe he’s even the Cybertronian equivalent to a rich brat who got where he did thanks to his family’s high-end connections, and so there’s always that judging from more experienced soldiers about how Starscream is clearly operating on a lot of privilege, wearing shoes multiple sizes too big for him, and generally making a fool of himself as he parades around, treating the whole situation like an opportunity for fame and adulation, like he’s some celebrity indulging in the fun, and not a general and a commander who has to keep fighting for the cause, make the right and mature calls, all that.

Because it’s worth noting that a lot of times in G1, he ends up acting out-of-line and doing costly maneuvers that hinder the Decepticons- Most notably, trying to bury the Autobots and accidentally awakening them in the process. And it’s this eagerness to get into fighting and prove himself that leads to Starscream short-sightedly wanting to focus on attacking the Autobots because they’re right there, picking a fight- When Megatron, who is older and more level-headed, has to steer this brash new kid in the right direction, set him on track with the proper agenda and mission. Maybe whip him into shape a bit, and this could all play into Megs’ patience because Starscream is just a dumb kid, so he’s willing to give him some more doubt- Give Starscream some time to actually cool down and taste reality and he’ll surely fall into line.

He’s like some kid who grew up on military propaganda and bought into a bit too well, saw himself too much in those glamorous posters and manufactured, idealized images; So he’s pretty disappointed that it doesn’t turn out the way he expected it to. Starscream is like that popular kid in high school who always had a clique trailing behind him, and he kind of took it for granted how much he meant to these people because clearly their worlds revolve around him, which makes him all the more blindsided when he turns for help and his ‘friends’ immediately abandon him at the drop of a hat.

All of Starscream’s ‘friends’ and social situations were blatantly manufactured and brought up by somebody else, but he thinks it was all him so he’s in for a real shock when Starscream is by himself- And people don’t immediately fall in line at his beck and call, so he falters. He’s out of his environment, just graduated all of his usual tricks don’t work, try as he might to stubbornly reapply them like a hammer with anything that looks remotely nail-shaped. It’s this kind of idiotic hypocrisy that makes Starscream not realize that people who do put up with him only do so because they have to, and/or they’re opportunistically kissing up to his façade the way he does with others. Starscream’s grandiose imagination and outlandish, fantasy ‘ideas’ straight out of fiction and films that clearly don’t work in real life, clearly need to be reined in.

I also like to think that similar to that comparison I made earlier, he DOES have connections- Maybe it’s a Team Rocket situation, where the character is incompetent… But they had a parent who the leader greatly respected, and so they begrudgingly put up with their kid’s foolish antics and incompetent failures out of respect for that posthumous minion’s last wishes. Kind of like Hopper from A Bug’s Life really wanting to kill his brother, but because his mother explicitly told him NOT to on her deathbed, he kind of has to force himself not to because he still feels beholden to her- But there’s certainly no warmth on his end just because that person he respects, was fond of this dude he hates.

It could factor into Megatron constantly tolerating Starscream as a thorn in his side… And really, Starscream seems to be even more of an idiot at times than Megatron, what with Megatron going into a spiel that one time about how Starscream lost because he lacked strategy. Perhaps Starscream is, like, SUPER skilled in combat, a beast and a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield; And if he’s doing so well and he’s so strong, then surely this means he’s fit to be leader, because obviously the Decepticon who’s the best fighter should lead, right? It’s a gross oversimplification of a narrow-minded worldview… And I imagine Starscream also somewhat got where he was because of privilege, so he kind of takes a lot of things for granted here about how the Decepticon faction works and its hierarchy and rules.

Perhaps Starscream being an utter beast in combat contributes to Megatron keeping him around- He IS useful, he just needs some proper guidance and a good head to productively channel that ability. He’s confusing fighting ability with actual tactical leadership and charisma, but beyond that, Starscream clearly knows how to get out of a scrape, and has no reservations about playing dirty to add to his already potent combat skills as-is. So Megatron still has some hopes for Starscream, while sternly warning him not to make him regret his decision in further tolerating his nonsense- Because Megatron likes to think he’s a forgive and forget kind of guy, but only to people who justify themselves in his eyes as being strong and powerful, traits he actually respects.

Maybe Megatron even sees a little bit of his young self in Starscream, and so there’s that hope for a pay-off; That if he just gives Starscream a chance and proper guidance, that if the kid has someone who can set him on the right track and help him figure things out- Then he can really live up to his potential! Because that’s what Starscream is- Potential. Raw, untapped potential, clumsily thrown about and unrefined… But it’s there and Megatron would hate to make a waste of it, especially since this whole conflict is about resources; Even the hedonistic Decepticons have to be mindful of how they use things, how efficient they are.

Of course, having his constant patience and mercy, his tolerating, waiting in eternal hope for his investment into Starscream to finally pay off… Megatron is tired of giving him second chances, tired of how ungrateful this brat is, and how his failures keep adding up. So when Starscream straight-up throws him out to die, coupled with his reformatting into Galvatron… And Galvatron’s had about enough of this, he’s done and sick and tired of Starscream’s antics. After having people put up with him for so long, Starscream really begins to overestimate just how important and useful he is to them, that eventually he’ll reach a point where his negatives outweigh his positives, but he never considers this and believes he’ll always be allowed back into the fold after each betrayal…

Literally everything about Starscream’s coronation yells in-over-his-head kid who really has to compensate for his lack of leadership and respect from others by playing up the adulation and the glamour, but… If he HAD been given a chance to actually lead, his reckless impatience and short-sightedness would’ve definitely led the Decepticons to ruin, and someone would’ve had to stage a coup. Even Starscream’s use in combat would stop paying off for him as he becomes too much of a liability.

And it’s this inexperienced, clearly insecure demeanor that makes Starscream impatiently yell at the Constructicons to get to the point. He really can’t make up his mind and stick to it, so even though he has this music being played in the first place, Starscream just as quickly regrets and finds it annoying because he’s not particularly deliberate nor thoughtful about what he does. He knows what others think of them, that they don’t respect nor take him seriously, and it gets to his head and makes him irrationally angry because he doesn’t know to handle this, he expected this to be so much easier, to be as simple and done as THIS. Starscream really isn’t equipped to handle actually navigating around people from a charismatic standpoint and earning their trust, especially given his history as backstabber who has no concept of loyalty and bonds because he’s arrogant enough to think he can do it all on his own.

And when faced with genuine adversity and reality, as we see… Starscream very immaturely fumbles and trips, and then defaults to begging and pleading because he hasn’t built up much of a spine, and he’s still an idealistic kid who clearly hasn’t built himself up and his fortitude all that well. He’s promising with snot dribbling down his nose that he won’t screw up this time, please give him a second chance he didn’t MEAN it, he seriously did not expect nor consider the consequences of his actions, nor how they could backfire and blow up in his face.

Starscream is an upper-class snob who doesn’t really get it, he’s eager for approval because he’s young but also clearly selfish and ungrateful about it, because he’s always entitled to that thing and so when it DOES come around, it both means a lot, but also it’s about time, he was waiting for so long just to get the bare minimum he was owed, don’t pat yourself on the back for doing what you’re already meant to. And when things go wrong, Starscream blunders and starts to doubt himself because he was pampered, privileged, and sheltered, constantly told he was amazing- And so he doesn’t actually know how to handle failure and was always used to things coming easily to him on a silver platter, while having someone else to clean up the mess for him and protect him from the consequences. Starscream doesn’t appreciate the actual work that it takes for things, he’s basically spoiled and out of his environment in this military setting where nobody is having it.

Of course, when Starscream IS spared and recovers, he then silently fumes because he totally would’ve succeeded had THIS happened, or if this other person hadn’t screwed up- And then he fails to learn any of his lessons and keeps trying to take over and take charge, because obviously he knows better and he thinks all of his ideas are the best in the world. When faced with past failures, he doesn’t learn he just denies them as soon as they’re not being shoved in his face anymore, like a child who wet the bedsheets and is now frantically hiding them. He has no real clue nor idea about what he’s doing, but as soon as it’s over he again takes for granted the safety net that his fellow Decepticons begrudgingly provide, and wants again continues to test their patience and resources.

So, when Galvatron DOES come around and kill Starscream- The Decepticons are clearly elated, and if we’re being real here… They were all probably thinking of ways to assassinate or depose Starscream, or at least play to his ego so he could remain a figurehead who occasionally goes out into battle doing the one thing he’s good at, while his oh-so-loyal lieutenants do the dirty, unglamorous work of actually being a tactician and leader for hm. Starscream wants all of the power and fame, but like- NONE of the actual work and responsibility, that’s too much for him to actually work on so he just stamps his foot frustratedly when others don’t treat him with the respect he deserves, because he DOES recognize his own potential and expects other to revere Starscream for what he could be, VS what he actually currently is… And because he’s so caught up in the idea of what he thinks he’ll inevitably be, he never works on his current self so he can actually get to that point.

Like I said- Galvatron killing him saved the Decepticons a LOT of much-needed stress and headaches. It got that young brat and upstart out of the way so they could all get to business and not have to deal with his nonsense anymore, because he ain’t getting any deader! There was some hesitation about what COULD be lost if they did away with him, but now he’s gone and so all they can do is just reap the benefits of Starscream’s death! It’s almost relieving- Like YEAH, we were prepared on how to handle this… But then Galvatron came and made things so much easier, he got this off our hands and he’s clearly bold and decisive and knows what he’s doing, taking out Starscream made him VERY popular, in addition to basically being Megatron with a new coat of paint;

Up until his lava-bath fried his circuits… And then Galvatron basically became the Decepticon Leader Starscream that everybody feared, ironically enough. And then it was Cyclonus who had to do the job of looking after this dude, who was less a reckless young upstart and more like a senile old veteran gone mad and blindly waving his cane around; And then complications get worse when Starscream somehow returns as a GHOST, because why not? Sure, let’s go with that, we already have Galvatron seemingly saving us from Starscream, only to become the new one… Let’s compare him with the original and see what happens, why not? There must’ve been a lot of collective groans of exhaustion at each and every new development.

The Decepticons must be so exasperated, it really feels like they’ve been on a downward slope, outlived their prime and golden age since the Battle of Autobot City… Yet despite Megatron’s failures they remember him fondly because he did a lot of other things right, was otherwise charismatic, and seemed pretty close to actually winning, all things considered. And so the Decepticons are too caught up in their delusional nostalgia and what-ifs, the way Starscream is about his own future, to really remember that Megatron kind of screwed them over with that risky, costly maneuver that clearly didn’t pay off.

#transformers #maccadam #starscream #transformers g1 #g1 starscream #megatron #decepticons #ramblings #meta

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thetypedwriter · 3 years

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Lore Book Review

Lore Book Review by Alexandra Bracken

Lore by Alexandra Bracken was one of 2021’s most anticipated YA novels and it's easy to see why. The plot summary itself is enough to pull you in with the intriguing concoction of calling it the combination of The Hunger Games and the Percy Jackson series.

What’s not to love when you fuse the illicit danger of Katniss Everdeen with the mythological enchantment of Rick Riordan’s masterpiece?

Turns out, quite a lot unfortunately.

Before I get into why this book didn’t live up to the insurmountable hype it built up, I’ll attempt to give a basic summary. The key word being attempt as a good portion of this novel’s plot was a mind boggling and convoluted mess.

The book takes place in modern day New York which Bracken likes to remind you every other paragraph with small snippets about how the city that never sleeps smells like sewage and is yet still the best place on earth apparently.

Don’t get me wrong, I love New York as much as the next person, but the pandering to the Big Apple got annoying after awhile.

Within the cantankerous city lives a girl named Lore which we are introduced to by means of her kicking ass in an underground Chinese restaurant’s fighting ring.

Pretty strong start.

Lore’s world (and the reader’s frankly) is tipped upside down when Lore’s long lost childhood friend, Castor, reappears to warn her that he is looking for her. Terrified, Lore is then at first unwillingly thrust back into the world in which she was born-a world dominated by violence, bloodlines, and the Greek gods who are very much alive and out for vengeful retribution.

In a very exposition-dump heavy conversation, we learn that Lore is the last of Perseous’ line with the rest of her family having been horrifically murdered, that a week long event called the Agon occurs every seven years in which the original nine Greek gods or their reincarnated selves become mortal for seven days, and that a series of killing often happen because if you kill a Greek god you then become that Greek god as well as inhabit their powers, abilities, and immortality.

Well, until the next Agon that is.

The currently reincarnated God by the name of Wrath is attempting to end the Agon by killing all the other Gods, but in order to do it he needs to wield a special weapon called the Aegis.

Unfortunately, only the Perseides can wield this shield (for some reason) and thus, Wrath is out to get his hold on Lore as the last of her line so that he can bring this eons old competition to an end with himself as the sole victor and only remaining God.

Confused?

I’d be surprised if you weren’t.

Now, I love Greek mythology. I’ve read the classics and would say I’m fairly up to date on the stories, the legends, the gods, and the stories they represent. I’m not an expert, but I would say I’m knowledgeable on who the major figures are and what they stood for.

I genuinely think this book would have been miserable for anyone that didn’t know anything about Greek mythology.

Bracken does a terrible job of explaining what the hell is happening at any given point, and she often throws out allusions and references to Greek mythology without bothering to explain a single shred of information about it.

In addition, after this laughably and poorly explained world and plot at the beginning, it is almost never explained again. It’s brought up, as are names and titles and weapons and relationships, but it’s never explained in a way that’s feasibly understandable.

At the beginning of the novel Bracken lists who all the important characters are, their bloodlines, and their titles.

I soon figured out why, as every other sentence a name like Wrath or Reveler or Tidebringer or whoever was brought up, and it was impossible to keep track of so I didn’t even bother.

Even Lore brings up that the names are ridiculous, which I appreciate, but the meta moment of clarity doesn't make it any better.

Also, what Lore and her friends get up to over 90% of the novel is a muddled mass of bewilderment.

Why do Lore and Castor and the others need to find Artemis? I don’t know, but sure, whatever, sounds good. Why was Lore the last of her line again? Oh yeah, right, okay, I guess. Wait, Castor died? Oh, he didn’t? Why not? Oh, we’re not going to explain it. Sure, sure.

Throughout this entire novel, what the characters are doing and what is happening is almost impossible to follow with the way it's presented and the way Bracken developed her world. I think this was a really cool idea that had very poor execution.

Points for the originality and the inclusion of Greek mythology, but all of the positives were taken away when that originality was flushed down the drain with a lack of explanation and logic.

Lore very much reminded me of a shoot-em up, bang-em up action movie. Almost every other chapter was some sort of super intense, super climactic fight scene, chase, theft, break-in, etc.

Now. I do think action scenes are hard to write and I think Bracken actually did an incredible job of writing action in a way that was entertaining and thrilling.

However, when the action takes place every ten pages it gets really old, really quick. Towards the end, I downright started skimming the fight scenes, because they lacked so little depth and stakes and we had read so much action at the end point that it had lost all vigor and vitality.

Continuing with the action movie metaphor, most action movies focus solely on the bright explosions and the crazy fight scenes as their selling point of the whole movie, often to the detriment of the characters, plot, and development.

Now, some people like this. I am not these people.

I find action movies boring as most of my enjoyment from consuming media comes from the characters and the developments they undergo.

My biggest criticism with Lore, other than the astonishing storytelling, is by far the characters. I just...didn’t care. About any of them.

Bracken tried to make Lore come across as a strong, opinionated, fierce, angry female character and while sometimes she succeeded, more often than not I found Lore temperamental, aggravating, impulsive, selfish, and shallow.

Bracken very much invoked the tell-not-show strategy that makes any book hard to get through. While there were some decent moments of showing instead of just stating, more often than not, Bracken would tell us that Lore was strong by having other people say it or others calling her weak.

I appreciated Bracken’s feminist agenda and how strongly Lore felt about gender inequality, even if it was a bit heavy-handed at times. Still, I did appreciate this inclusion of civil rights on this front, even if some of the circumstances to incite it were ridiculous or over the top.

In addition, I hated that there was all this backstory that we were just told but not shown. Like in my last review of Wilder Girls, Lore suffers from an intrinsic failure of getting me onboard with these characters and their relationships by telling me how I should feel about them instead of exposing them through action.

I was told:

Lore and Castor haven't seen each other for seven years, but my gosh, Castor is just the best and is so beautiful. Ensue obligatory YA romance.

Lore has a best friend! Yeah. Her name is Iro. Here she is! Um. Okay. Why was this necessary?

Miles is just the coolest best friend ever. Like, look how cool and chill he is. How funny is it that he has no idea what’s happening? Really not funny at all. He was a useless character used to build empty stakes.

The list goes on and on, but Bracken will throw out some sort of fact or relationship and just expect the reader to go “Okay!” Which. I didn’t. On any of those occurrences.

Often Bracken would do this in the use of flashbacks at the most inopportune times (during a fight scene, after someone was injured, right before a huge revelation, etc). These flashbacks were the worst. I do not care for adolescent Lore and child Lore was somehow even worse.

The romance in this book, much like an action movie, is off to the side and really only there to fulfill the trope of having a romance.

Lore and Castor are boring. I don’t know what else to say. Castor is too perfect to be likable and Lore is the opposite. Nothing about their romance was unique or well-crafted.

The kiss between Van and Miles I also saw coming a hundred miles away. I also thought it was pointless as Van and Miles had known each for six days and had had maybe two conversations. So. No. I didn’t care at all about the romances.

It actually made me laugh and scoff simultaneously at the end when Lore is looking at Van, Castor, Iro and Miles and smiles because she realizes that these people are her family.

Ummm. Sorry?

Castor disappeared for seven years and you’ve been reunited for seven days. You’ve hated Van your whole life until this week. You also haven’t seen Iro in seven years and she tried to kill you at least twice in this book. Miles is...fine, but again useless. I don’t even know why Bracken included him except to make Lore worry about him which she only did about half of the time.

Phew.

I know this review has come across largely negative, so this might be surprising, but I didn’t hate it. It lacks substance and depth, but it was entertaining.

Just like an action movie.

If you want some hyped fights and a plot that really doesn't matter and characters that won’t stick with you, but a fast-paced narrative that keeps you on your toes nonetheless, then you would probably enjoy this.

It’s like the equivalent of watching a James Bond movie or one of the millions of the Fast and Furious. Bracken tries to develop the characters, but at the end of the day, most of the story is made up of cool fights, magic, and weapons. If that’s your speed then you would probably really love Lore.

Recommendation: Action, action, action. If you want some high intensity, get-your-blood-pumping enterprise then this is your novel. The writing is fluid, the adrenaline-inducing scenes are non-stop, and everything else falls to the backdrop of external fights and villainous monologues. If action is not your preferred genre, then your best left to get your Greek mythology needs from Percy Jackson or the Song of Achilles instead.

Score: 6/10

#lore #alexandra bracken #6/10 #ya fiction #YA Books #YA literature #book blog #book review #top books #teen books #Teen Romance #teen fiction #Book Recommendations #YA Book Review #ya book rec #popular fiction #popular books #greek mythology

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boycottyashahime · 4 years

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Hello! Anti-Sessrin person here. You said if this couple becomes canon it will ruin Sesshomaru's character development. I would love it If you could elaborate on that because you're always so eloquent and smart. It's ok if you don't feel like it, though. Have a nice day!

I've actually been looking for an excuse to sit down and write out a cohesive post on my thoughts about this. Contrary to what the shippers want to believe, my interpretation of Sesshoumaru and Rin's relationship doesn't have anything to do with my moral objections to child grooming. I happen to think there's plenty of evidence for a filial interpretation in the text.

First, I'd like to preface my little essay here by saying I'm going off the manga alone. I haven't seen the anime in a long time, because I dropped it when I got a little tired of trying to reconcile the inconsistencies between the two mediums. So, if you read this and have an impulse to say, "hey, what about that thing in episode such-and-such...", keep in mind that I probably just don't remember what you're thinking of.

So, let's go back, alllll the way back, to Sesshoumaru's first appearance. Here's a guy who tears off a dude's head for no other reason than to get the attention of his subordinates to demand a boat. Here's a guy who's spent a long time looking just about EVERYWHERE for his father's remains, not to pay respects, but to plunder them. Here's a guy who feels ENTITLED to rob his dad's grave for treasure he deserves simply for being his father's son.

Sesshoumaru begins his journey as a selfish, spoiled, entitled brat. He doesn't fit the usual profile of a kid throwing a tantrum on the street because he wants the expensive toy sitting in the window; he's very posh and very reserved, but fundamentally, his motivation comes down to the simple fact that he wants Tessaiga. It doesn't even really have anything to do with respect and admiration of his father, otherwise he wouldn't have been so eager to rifle through dear old dad's bones to get at a sword when he had another heirloom right there at his hip. Only Tessaiga was representative of the sheer destructive force he wanted to wield, so he ignored the fact that his dad didn't seem to want him to have it.

This is important, because at first, Sesshoumaru doesn't seem to think of his father in terms of the guy's intentions or the steps he takes for the sake of his sons. Like most rich spoiled kids, Sesshoumaru views the Inu no Taishou in terms of his prestige and how that priviledge can be appropriated for selfish ends. Sesshoumaru wants Tessaiga not because he needs it, but because it's a birthright, and reinforces his legitimacy. When it's clear that Tessaiga seals Inuyasha's youkai blood, keeps him from going berserk, Sesshoumaru loses interest in Tessaiga - it's just a crutch for Inuyasha, and there's no prestige in taking it from him or using it for himself.

Sesshoumaru doesn't start to REALLY consider his father's intentions for the swords until later in the manga, when it comes out that Tenseiga was originally part of Tessaiga, and Inuyasha was meant to get the Meidou Zangetsuha attack eventually as well. It's at this point that Sesshoumaru starts to question if daddy actually HATED him, to give him a rather neat power disguised in a lame shell, but only to develop it so Inuyasha can have it instead, even after Inuyasha already got Tessaiga in the first place. It kind of looks to Sesshoumaru that Inuyasha gets all the powerful cool shit their father left behind, and that there might have been some favoritism coming down HARD on Inuyasha's side.

Above, you can see Sesshoumaru has two interlinked but distinct issues that are addressed throughout the story - his lack of compassion and empathy, and how tied his identity is to his father's favor and prestige. These two are somewhat separated in the narrative; there's a kind of pause in Sesshoumaru's development while a bulk of the middle of the story deals more with other characters and their development, but there is a little bit of a thematic connection between the two halves.

We'll start with the development of Sesshoumaru's compassion since, well, that's where the story begins working on his character. Right before Rin shows up, Toutousai let's Inuyasha's group in on the sword Sesshoumaru carries around and what it does, indicating that Tenseiga requires a compassionate heart to function. A bit ham-handed, but RT isn't very subtle most of the time, so we'll allow it. This sets up the next few scenes in which Sesshoumaru is unable to move and must play captive audience to a little girl doing the literal opposite of what he's used to. Sesshoumaru's habit is to show up and kill things, with no thought to the years of history, relationships, thoughts, emotions, etc that he's snuffing out. But while he's reclined injured in the woods, Rin demonstrates actual LIFE and the preservation of it, that part Sesshoumaru never gets to see. It's made all the starker by how BAD Rin is at caring for herself, let alone the strange monster she found in the woods. She does exactly nothing to help Sesshoumaru, despite how hard she tries, and is even injured by others in her attempts. She is the very picture of vulnerability, the opposite of the strong and capable Sesshoumaru.

This is a stark contrast, because anything less wouldn't be enough to create the necessary awareness of Rin's struggles that Sesshoumaru needs in order to use Tenseiga on here. And I know I've said this before, but I really cannot stress enough how obvious I think the symbolism is when Sesshoumaru uses Tenseiga for the first time; a phallic object gives life to a child, and the object's owner looks after that life throughout the rest of the story. He's not very good at looking after it, and it's clear that he's not sure about taking responsibility for Rin at first, because she pleaded for him to come back for her when he and Jaken left her behind to requisition a sword from Gaijinbou. To me, it's reminiscent of a teenager who knocked someone up, and ended up having to learn to give a crap about the result.

But, even if you don't accept that symbolism as particularly significant, Rin being a child, and human, and weak, unable to survive on her own, are important characteristics to how Sesshoumaru's compassion develops. Sesshoumaru is one of the strongest characters in the series, and he rarely has to worry about his own safety. And since he's in the habit of just murdering everyone he comes across if they're in his way, he's never had to worry about the safety of anyone else, either. When Rin comes into the picture, though, Sesshoumaru is faced with the uncomfortable reality of vulnerability in general. Through her earnest and incompetent attempts to foster survival in a world that can and does crush her, she's opened his eyes to how the disadvantaged, those without a powerful youkai lineage to rely on, have to struggle.

Rin herself has nothing to offer Sesshoumaru within this context of supreme vulnerability. She's not a friend, because she can't offer mutual support or use a skill to their benefit as a team. She's not a lover, because, well, she's a child and sexual/romantic attraction are conditions that wouldn't allow Sesshoumaru to extend his compassion beyond just her. As a mostly helpless kid, Rin has to rely upon Sesshoumaru and his power to survive, and Sesshoumaru employs his strength to keep her alive, getting nothing but a sweet smile out of it all. She gets all the benefits, he has all the obligations. This is PURE compassion - using one's advantages to another's benefit because you care about them, and not because you derive something from it as well.

This is why making Rin into Sesshoumaru's lover is a REALLY thoughtless take. It puts conditions on the compassion and muddies the message.

Moving onto Sesshoumaru's continued character development in the latter part of the story, the sword drama starts back up with slow, when Toutousai shows up and offers to reforge Tenseiga into a weapon. Sesshoumaru discovers that because he got angry enough to break his primary weapon in defense of Kagura's honor, he's triggered the next evolution of Tenseiga into something that can murder. Which is what he wanted at the beginning, yay! I want to point out here that Toutousai says Tenseiga noticed a change in Sesshoumaru's heart - anger for the first time for the sake of another. This implies that what Jaken said about Sesshoumaru getting tangled up in the fight against Naraku because Naraku kidnapping and using Rin to manipulate Sesshoumaru hurt Sesshoumaru's pride is actually accurate; he just really hated the thought of Naraku trying to use him, even if it was a failed attempt.

After going through HELL to develop the Meidou into a full circle (literally), Sesshoumaru then learns that the Meidou belongs to Tessaiga and Inuyasha, and that it's supposed to be handed over. Now, part of Sesshoumaru's angst over this idea, I think, is not just "did daddy love Inuyasha more?", but also the assumption that Inuyasha would have to KILL him in order to retake the Meidou Zangetsuha into Tessaiga. Thinking that your father meant for your little brother to kill you at some point to take your stuff is a pretty disturbing thought, to be entirely fair to him. This is why, when Sesshoumaru jumps into the meidou to take back control of the Naraku-possessed Tenseiga and breaks it deliberately, he spends the rest of the time in there moodily resigned to disappear. He genuinely believes that his father meant for him to die at this point, and even after they get out of there, he seems genuinely depressed.

This is Sesshoumaru's lowest point as a character. He's lost something he thought his father had meant for him, at his father's own wish, and he can't help but question why his dad would give him something just to take it away and give it to Inuyasha. It looks for all the world like favoritism, and since the Inu no Taishou is dead, there's no asking him what the hell the meaning of all this is.

This is all leading to one of the most infuriatingly ridiculous scenes I have ever seen in a manga - when Magatsuhi has crushed Sesshoumaru and everyone thinks he's been killed/absorbed, Magatsuhi is blown apart and rendered unable to reform by the shiny new sword clutched in Sesshoumaru's newly regrown arm. I could talk your ear off about how having Sesshoumaru stop being an amputee is erasure of consequences for his actions, or how being given back an arm is kind of a slap in the face for actual amputees, and where the mother f*ck did that sword come from anyway, but that's not what this essay is about, so I'll just keep all that to myself. The point of this is articulated by Toutousai when he says that Sesshoumaru had to let go of Tessaiga and his father's heirloom to stand on his own as a daiyoukai.

We've already gone over how Sesshoumaru is one of the most powerful characters in the series, who rarely has to worry about his well-being. He's just really strong without having to try. Sesshoumaru had already learned that he didn't need Tessaiga ages ago - he knew this when he learned that Inuyasha needed Tessaiga to keep from tearing himself apart eventually. But when he thought he had been passed down something from his father that was truly meant to be his, only to put all this work into it so that Inuyasha could have it, that embittered him again. It's not that he wanted the sword necessarily, but the thoughts and consideration of his father, who seemed to be putting everything he had into Inuyasha.

But his previous experiences protecting and considering someone (in some cases, multiple someones) weaker than him should have tipped him off. During the very battle in which he got his new arm and sword, he was actively helping those around him avoid Magatsuhi and keeping them close because he had a plan and the strength to carry it out. He was willing to take the extra step to protect Inuyasha and friends before trying to take care of Magatsuhi though, and that was the point. He put everyone else's needs ahead of his own, even Inuyasha's, and he did it without even thinking.

Toutousai just articulated what Sesshoumaru should have already intuitively known by that point. He never needed his father's heirlooms, the swords, his dad's power. They were unnecessary for him from the start. Inuyasha needed a leg up, because his own BODY could kill him after a while. But Sesshoumaru always had the capability of being great on his own. He just needed to finally separate his ego from who his father was and become his own person; stand on his own as a great youkai. While I don't agree with the execution, I can get behind the big lesson - don't rely on your daddy's wealth and influence to prop you up, and do the work to build a personality and identity of your own.

Which is ANOTHER reason why making Rin into a lover would be a thoughtless take. It would walk back Sesshoumaru's final lesson about being his own person apart from his father.

So, there you go. A comprehensive post regarding my take on Sesshoumaru's character development. I could add in a bit about Sesshoumaru coming to understand his father's consideration and the lengths he went to for the sake of protecting Inuyasha by having to give similar consideration to Rin, but I think this post is long enough, and that one statement on that aspect pretty much sums it up. Let me know if you would like me to elaborate on any of this, or if you would like to argue any of the points, I'm up for it. Might take me a minute to respond, mind you, but hopefully it won't take as long as it did to draft this behemoth.

Take care.

#inuyasha #rin (inuyasha)#sesshomaru #sesshoumaru #character analysis #character development analysis #i pulled out all the stops for this one #anti sessrin #i know this doesn't match the perfect prince characterization Sesshoumaru usually gets #but i just calls it as i sees it

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