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#but it's pretty clear i think that the narrative ultimately does not. that the lesson IS that one for all is fine or individual suffering
ok-boomerang · 1 year
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Can I get your thoughts on this post claiming Mai and Toph are very similar (and that Zuko clicked with Toph immediately because she reminded him of Mai)? https://at.tumblr.com/i-was-talking-to-momo/everyone-else-took-a-really-long-time-to/nyh2nz26iuay
Toph and Mai are similar? That’s a hard no from me. And besides, the reason Toph and Zuko get along so well is because Toph and Zuko are so similar.
I can kinda see the post’s first argument, that Toph and Mai are similar in that they both lived sheltered childhoods and their parents didn’t understand them or allow them to be themselves. But that’s…where the similarities end. And these are also pretty superficial parallels, based on a character’s circumstances instead of their development. And since we’re talking about a story, character development matters most.
The reason that Toph and Mai are so unalike is that Toph is a fully developed main character with an arc, while Mai is just…not. That’s not even an anti-Mai argument, it’s more of a critique of the story. Mai had the potential to be an interesting character, but she’s really just a stereotype of a gloomy goth girl (intentionally juxtaposed with the peppy pink-wearing girl) and the attempt in "The Beach" to add depth to her character sort of falls flat because all we get is “I’m like this because of my parents” and nothing about how she might want to change.
Toph, however, changes a LOT throughout the series. She sometimes literally puts up walls to protect herself, but very quickly learns that she can rely on her friends and that it’s okay to need people sometimes. She has heart-to-heart conversations and recognizes when she's made a mistake (see "The Runaway"). Mai does not learn similar lessons.
Toph puts on a tough-girl image but deep down she cares deeply for her friends and even decides she wants to connect with her parents. Mai does neither of these things. Sure, Mai stuck her neck out to save Zuko, but only after she yelled at him for breaking up with her because he was trying to save the world and after she refused to reconsider Fire Nation supremacy. She’s not actually interested in Zuko as a person, and so I would argue that her love for him is actually pretty shallow. (Note: I do not think Mai’s rescue is solid proof of selfless love. A person can make a lot of sacrifices for someone and still treat them like shit. Just ask my mom!)
So why do Toph and Zuko get along so well? It’s not because Toph and Mai are alike—in fact, Zuko pretty consistently does not get along with Mai. It’s made rather clear in the narrative that Zuko and Mai’s relationship in the Fire Nation is supposed to show that Zuko got everything he could have wanted but it was still all wrong. Some examples just off the top of my head: Mai not asking Zuko “for his life story,” Mai refusing Zuko’s gift, Mai thinking ordering servants around is fun, Mai and Zuko fundamentally misunderstanding each other at pretty much every possible moment, lol.
But Toph and Zuko both had to shed the masks they wore and embrace the person they truly were. It sounds cheesy because Toph and Zuko have to learn to embrace the cheese. (Sokka, Katara, and Aang’s developmental arcs are very different from Toph’s and Zuko’s arcs—they're already big on cheese.) Mai, as a sadly underdeveloped character, never embraces the cheese. The best example I can think of is Mai and Zuko bonding over hating the world in early S3. But that’s just the thing. Zuko doesn’t hate the world, and accepting that is what jumpstarts his ultimate redemption.
Toph and Zuko also share superficial parallels—both from rich families, both the black sheep (seems important to point out that Mai is not a black sheep btw. That’s kinda her whole thing in “The Beach”). And Toph, of course, wasn’t around when Zuko was chasing the Gaang. That might seem like a minor plot point, but it’s pretty important! All she knows is there’s a firebender there to teach Aang and that he’s earnest and trustworthy. (That he has daddy issues like her is just a bonus!) Sokka, Katara, and Aang have history with Zuko that’s hard to forget, AND they can’t tell when people are lying like Toph can. Toph has every reason to want to befriend Zuko, while the rest of the gaang’s reluctance makes sense.
Finally, another reason I think Toph and Zuko clicked—Zuko is good with kids. Remember how he taught Lee how to fight with broadswords instead of scolding him? Remember how Zuko carefully praised Aang during firebending lessons? There’s a reason the fandom has Dadko.
Thanks for the ask! This was fun to think about, and I really did try to consider how Mai and Toph might be similar. But I just don’t think you can really compare a flat character with a well-developed one. Toph is much more than her “tough girl exterior.” But Mai’s apathy isn’t even truly a strength.
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From what I understand, Adrien and Marinette both get punished but for all the wrong or unimportant reasons?
Like Adrien gets punished for stealing the book for example which I think is pretty fair but the fact that he's constantly trying to push Ladybug even though she's already told him no isn't punished at all is wrong. It's even portrayed at all even though its clear he makes her uncomfortable. He's also supposedly 'perfect' even though he very obviously has flaws: he's immature and childish, stubborn in a not endearing way and his automatic reaction to anything not going his way is threatening to quit. He also has an unhealthy martyr complex. They should address his flaws and give him actual character development to make him more interesting. Also use him less as a convenient plot device
Meanwhile Marinette does get punished by the narrative for mistakes, but her stalkerish and obsessive behaviour isn't addressed at all and the way she treats Chat Noir isn't nice, yet none of these are really shown to be bad things. She's creepy and concerning and the fact that most episodes end with her getting her way regardless of whether she deserves it or not is really dumb. She never walks into the ditch and never gets humbled by her mistakes: she learns her lessons through telling Tikki she has learnt them and then never improves beyond that. We need to see her actually getting over these problems and pursuing an actual healthy friendship with Adrien as well as communicating with Chat Noir properly
So any kind of lesson learning or development happens where its unnecessary or doesn't ultimately matter at all
In conclusion: they're both bad. Imo Adrien is better than Marinette but better doesn't mean good, and he's probably only really better because he has less screen time so there's less time for them to make him bad
I did not intend to write so much I'm sorry
No, you make a lot of sense there.
The show typically runs on the rule of “He’s a little confused, but he’s got the spirit” with the way it handles certain characters.
Like you said, both Marinette and Adrien have flaws related to their own feelings of entitlement towards their respective crushes, but rather than acknowledge how uncomfortable it is, the writers make it seem like their main flaws are entirely unrelated to their behavior around their crushes. Well, either that, or act like it’s perfectly normal.
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They seriously show the characters acting in flawed ways, but choose to ignore those flaws in favor of punishing them for completely unrelated things, because God forbid the Love Square be seen in a negative light.
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pocket-size-cthulhu · 2 years
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Ok if you haven't watched Steins;Gate, you definitely, definitely need to, and don't read this until you have
Because I'm going to do spoilers
And you do NOT want spoilers for this show
So stop reading 👍👍👍
Ok, here goes:
...
Thinking about the massively successful masterclass in storytelling that is this show and coming up with a few thoughts
1. What our protagonist "wants" and what our protagonist truly needs are in direct opposition to each other
2. The story is perfectly cyclical
3. Our narrator is unreliable, which disorients us in a way that heightens the fun (or misery/pain) of watching it
1
I saw a writer on Twitter say that the most important narrative tension you can have in your story is between your character's goal and what they truly need. They need some kind of fatal misconception that misdirects them to a wrong goal, so that by pursuing that goal, they ultimately get straightened out and get what they truly need; whether or not they ultimately accomplish what they set out to do is relatively unimportant compared to whether they learn the important lesson in the end.
Okabe is a great example of this. His stated goal is to "change the world's ruling structure," but it seems pretty clear (in my opinion; Okabe is a pretty controversial character and there are a lot of opinions out there about him) that his goals are a) avoiding the pain of reality (which is why he hides behind his Kyouma mask and is a metaphorical Peter Pan, acting childish and immature) and b) winning esteem (another function of his Kyouma mask, as well as the acts he does with Ruka and Feris especially).
What Okabe actually needs is to accept and engage with reality as it is, and to cherish the moment and the relationships he has within it.
The fact that his goals and needs are in such direct opposition with each other gives the story a phenomenal amount of tension.
2
The fact that the story is cyclical is something else that builds tension in a really interesting way. Instead of the sort of edge-of-your-seat suspense of wondering what comes next, you're dealing instead with the horror and heartbreak of knowing what comes next. You're coming to terms, alongside Okabe, with the inevitable.
I think there's a special kind of good pain involved in a story about "un-doing." Trying to make right. And Steins;Gate explores "making right" through a lens that's uncomfortably close.
In fact, i think it's really brilliant that the whole situation was so innocently got into, and yet so excruciating to get out of. In undoing the kindnesses he had done for them before, Okabe is causing his friends immense pain--pain that they will ultimately not remember--in the service of the greater good. Things he can't explain. You see this unfolding with clear eyes because the story is a perfect circle.
3
Finally, i think it's SUCH an interesting choice to make Okabe an unreliable narrator. This unreliability on his part (not literal unreliability, he's the most reliable boy in the world) draws us into the story by eroding our sense of what's "real" and what isn't. I almost wonder if this effect is what's teased in the opening scene where he's talking into the TV, seeming to address the viewer, before you realize he's talking to what's on the screen.
Because of Okabe's "Kyouma" persona, you aren't quite sure what to make of him at first. You don't know when he's being serious and when he's joking around, or how much of what he says is true and how much is just part of the act. We see Kurisu reflect our confusion at the beginning especially: when he tries to tell her anything, she's confused and concerned and unsure if any of it is real. (Daru and Mayuri basically universally dismiss anything he says as being part of the act, unless they witnessed it themselves.)
This dynamic feeds a sense of mystery into the first several episodes. It's also really interesting to observe how his facade hinders him from really communicating--something we can intuit has happened with relationships in the past (not being able to process complex feelings or express care for his friends without hiding behind Kyouma), but something that seems to be new to him in the realm of "communicating clear information".
What's also really interesting about this is that as Kyouma starts to break down and we see more of Okabe shining through, Okabe's mental state also begins to deteriorate, making him an unreliable narrator for completely different reasons.
What's real? What's an illusion? What's a dream? What's real but, in a moment, one time skip away, won't be?
Imo it's this fudging of reality that's the cherry on top for this show. Even though the story is cyclical, you're second-guessing reality *just* enough not to be completely certain what's next.
I just love this show so much. I feel like it got a lot of love from a specific type of fan, but I've seen relatively little appreciation for it from fans who analyze story and character and storytelling devices. I just want it to be appreciated for the masterpiece that it is!
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gamey-geemer · 1 year
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Alright, so everyone knows the canon "This is totally probably true" stuff about Bard/Prince, Rogue/Thief and Muse/Lord being about Destroying, Stealing, and Controlling respectively, giving us 4 pairs remaining.
My proposal for those, as if nobody ever did exactly this with probably way better arguments than I have for something else.
Page/Heir: They create their aspect. John creates the wind that protects him from Bec Noir/Grimbark Jade, he creates the wind that clears the glitches, and going off of the idea that Blood represents connections and Breath is its opposite representing the freedom from attachment (not an unjustified idea for the same mythological reasons that Tibetan Buddhism was the foundation for the Air Nomads in Avatar) then he's the one who creates the freedom from the whole system set up by Lord English. Meanwhile, that I personally am aware of, Jake only uses his Page powers thrice, twice when he created his impossible Hope Field that managed to overpower both Grimbark Jade and Caliborn during his Masterpiece, and once that I don't really know about where he creates Hope in John in the Candy Timeline. As for Passive/Active, Jake is a self serving, even if we'll meaning, person while John is kind of the opposite, who everything he does throughout the entire narrative is for someone else, which is basically the dividing line of the active/passive split. Oh yeah, Tavros as a Page in one of the like 2 times he's relevant to the plot is him creating the freedom from Vriska, Equius doesn't do shit, Mituna burned his brain out creating a better fate/doom for all of his friends, and Horuss doesn't do shit that we know of. Also, it's pretty jank to have a destroyer class and not a creator class
Sylph/Witch: We really don't see Kanaya or Feferi use their fucking abilities throughout the entire series. We do see Damara as the Handmaid subtly manipulate Alternian society using her time power. Aranea manipulates Terezi into receiving her light, and Jade ultimately (save for her Green Sun powers, which give her loads of stuff outside of her Classpect powers) manipulates the scale of things and can levitate them. So needless to say I think that these classes are all about manipulation, finesse over raw power. As for active/passive, I like the symmetry of Witch being active since it sets up the human session to have only one active player in the beta and only one passive in the alpha (whoops did I just spoil my thoughts on Seer and Knight). I paired them also because more than any others these are linked by being about magic.
Mage/Seer: This is a fucking easy, they know shit. Mage might seem a bit weird, but since it drives from the ancient Persian word Magus, which was the priestly scholarly caste, it is sufficiently tied to academic knowledge. I already spoiled what I think the passive and active form are, but Rose tends to view the hard work necessary to acquire knowledge as a formality that she can skip. You see it in her regards to college for psychoanalysis, her quest in Sburb, how she treats the Troll romance lessons from Kanaya in the first timeline. Meanwhile, Sollux (while his eyes two fold have been ripped Open and he can't look away from their doom) studies. He studies how to be a ~ath programmer, he studies how everyone is going to die. Also, the Sufferer just awakens his visions of Beforan society and how people could be connected as opposed to doing any studying and coming to the conclusion that it's bullshit like how Tyzias and Stelsa do. Also, all three instances of Terezi using her mind powers (killing John, Deciding if she should kill Vriska, and charting the Retcon) were all to determine what course of action should be taken for the benefit of everyone else regardless of how it effected her. She was also entirely about using her abilities to better society by cutting out the criminals. Meulin doesn't do shit
And the last pair
Maid/Knight: These are kind of difficult since when I first started conceptualizing this these were kind of just the two that were left over. But then I realized, both Knights and Maids are typically relatively minor nobles signed into a life of servitude to a higher noble, either as a Lady in waiting for Maids or as the most powerful soldier in the case of Knights. They both are pretty much on the same spectrum of being brute force, since like Grimbark Jade says, the role of the Knight is to Weaponize their aspect in fights, and who's the only person who directly no shits given just uses their aspect to beat a mother fucker up with infinite raw power? Aradia. Dave and Aradia also both serve, serving as the cornerstone "Main person making sure everyone survives this fucking nightmare" people in their sessions, with Aradia ultimately doing so because one she isn't a dick, and two at the end of this she will get to see this whole place come crashing down (even if she isn't aware of that in the moment or even aware she wants to see that) while Karkat pretty directly serves by organizing all of his friends into an effective battle group. He weaponizes his friendship and connections to other people to their own benefits. Latula I don't think we see anything regarding her weaponizing or serving her mind, or Porrim with her Space powers.
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kohakhearts · 3 years
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can i just. ramble about the lost prophecy for a moment. my most loved and simultaneously detested chapter (ok well. the forest again is up there but that one’s just...fucked up. in a genuinely disturbing way. happy to talk about that any time too tho lmfao). anyway im going to put my thotstm under a cut because i have a lot of them but yeah im just Thinkng
anyway like - i dont actually dislike dumbledore as a character, but this chapter is like...the largest of many moments where i really question why he’s the moral centre of the series...uh, you could make an argument hes not, but then what are your other options? harry? snape? like...no, i don’t think that we need a “moral guide” in any story, but undeniably the narrative suggests that dumbledore’s morals are the Ultimate good, which is why it’s, like...something harry’s willing to die for. but he says in the lost prophecy to harry “five years ago ... you arrived at hogwarts neither as happy nor as well-nourished as i would have liked, perhaps, but alive and healthy. you were not a pampered prince, but as normal a boy as i could have hoped under the circumstances.” let’s not forget that in this very same book harry’s uncle quite literally strangles him - and that’s, you know, five years after his arrival at hogwarts. of course, there’s the fact of them learning in cos that he’s not supposed to do magic outside of hogwarts, but it is mentioned that the dursleys kind of like...backed off of harry in certain respects after he went to hogwarts, because they were afraid of magic. well, anyway, dumbledore also says right after this “five years ago you arrived at hogwarts, harry, safe and whole, as i had planned and intended. well - not quite whole. you had suffered. i knew you would when i left you on your aunt and uncle’s doorstep. i knew i was condemning you to ten dark and difficult years.”
what’s really interesting to me is that like...when he says this, harry doesn’t respond. what he does respond to is when dumbledore says he left him with petunia because she was lily’s last living relative: “she doesn’t love me. she doesn’t give a damn -” and dumbledore interrupts with “but she took you. she may have taken you grudgingly, furiously, unwillingly, bitterly, yet still she took you.” this is also the moment we learn that dumbledore was the one who sent the howler to petunia at the beginning of this book, and what did that say - “remember my last.” so...yeah, honestly? i’ve always found it kind of weird that the dursleys kept harry around, especially after he went to hogwarts. from what all of what dumbledore says here, it sounds a lot like they were threatened into taking harry. or. petunia was, at least. and in the very beginning of dh, there’s that moment where petunia looks back and harry thinks she looks like she has something she wants to say to him, but she doesn’t. this always felt kind of, like...strange. even if she did love her sister, it wouldn’t make that much sense for her in that moment to be thinking of lily, whom she hadn’t seen in, like, twenty years, when she had been housing harry for sixteen. if anything, it’s just that she (parallel to snape? lol. which, unrelated really but interesting - love in the prince’s tale how every time we see snape talking to dumbledore about harry he’s saying he’s just like his father, until dumbledore tells him harry has to die. and then he calls him lily potter’s son. just interesting. but anyway. i digress) never bothered to see harry as anything but lily’s son, but i really feel like...yeah, okay, they clearly had issues, but i don’t get the impression that petunia blames lily for forcing harry into her life. blames her for dying, maybe, but...dumbledore was the one who brought harry there. dumbledore gave her the mysterious letter. when she gets that howler, she’s described as, like, pale and shaking - clearly very afraid. she doesn’t show much concern over voldemort at, like, any point. even in dh, she’s not arguing against anything like vernon is, but she’s not exactly telling him why they oughtn’t be. which leaves me to think that the person she’s afraid of if they kick harry out isn’t voldemort (after all, she’s not stupid. it’s entirely logical to conclude that voldemort would leave her and her family well enough alone if they cut harry off entirely. sure, the wards protect them too, but realistically they’re probably not at any higher risk than any other muggles. in the lost prophecy, dumbledore says that voldemort chose sirius because kreacher had informed them that sirius was the person harry loved most. it wasn’t merely a matter of him being harry’s godfather. the emotional attachment was highly relevant in that decision). rather, i get the idea that she��s afraid of dumbledore.
and this makes sense, right? because in this chapter, the whole time, he’s talking about a plan. he had a plan. he had a plan, and he ruined it by caring too much about harry’s wellbeing. implying, of course, that the only way he could follow through on this plan was to neglect harry’s wellbeing. he says here that he hadn’t wanted harry to suffer at the hands of the dursleys, no, but there is the suggestion in his dialogue (and this is something that comes up in the beginning of hbp too, when he comes to privet drive. he says something about how the dursleys did better by harry than by dudley, because by spoiling dudley they made him unkind or whatever. this one really pisses me off lol but - whatever. not the point) that he would rather harry have been abused than spoiled and arrogant. i’m not the first to say it, and i can see why people disagree, but i really do think dumbledore’s plan relied on harry being abused. it makes a lot of logical sense. and i don’t think it’s a coincidence that the person dumbledore gives the task of telling harry he has to die to is snape, whose background is very similar to harry’s in this regard. an abused kid is a lot less likely to value his life...especially if one of the only adults who ever cared for him is the one saying it’s better if he dies.
and, okay, no one else does either and that’s just on weird narrative choices for the sake of plot convenience imo, but i do think it’s significant that dumbledore never really disparages harry for not trusting adults. he finds him after he faces quirrell, sure. fawkes saves him in the chamber of secrets. dumbledore suggests using the time turner. he comes to the ministry. but he praises harry for doing things on his own. in many ways, he sets him up to do so. he doesn’t even suggest trying to find a way to get harry out of the triwizard tournament. even in this specific chapter, when harry can’t look at him because he feels so guilty over having gotten others hurt or worse, his tone is described as kind, and his gaze is not “accusatory.” only in hbp do we really see dumbledore working with harry on something (when they find regulus’s locket) - and he does this with the awareness that he’s going to die, and harry will be left to do everything that remains on his own. interestingly, harry does feel betrayed by dumbledore when he sees snape’s memories. but it’s so fleeting. he forgives him just as fast. it seems that he wholly believes that dumbledore didn’t want him to die - it was just necessary. but dumbledore did at least try to give him a way to stay alive, with the hallows, if lily’s blood tying him to voldemort turned out to not be enough. harry’s entire life was planned out by dumbledore, and in the end he still forgives him, because he thinks dumbledore just didn’t have any other choice.
which is like...a huge gripe i have with harry potter in general, actually. there’s this ongoing theme about choices. right from when harry chooses gryffindor over slytherin (not about to say this was a bad narrative choice, but the impact of the story would’ve been a lot more significant if he had bee in slytherin imho but whatever) but time and time again we see like...sure, voldemort chose harry over neville, but otherwise...there’s only one interpretation of the prophecy. there’s no other way to rid harry of the piece of voldemort’s soul he’s carrying than for him to die. snape must be the one to kill dumbledore. it just seems misplaced, with this big theme of the power of choice, for so many things to just...only have one solution. and ironically, you know - in ootp before they go to the ministry, hermione says harry has a “saving people thing,” and in gof ron said he had a “hero complex” or something, right? and voldemort knows that too, but so does dumbledore. and when harry dies, dumbledore says he has a choice whether to pass on or go back, but he adds, too, that he thinks more people might be saved if harry goes back. so i think, honestly...that wasn’t a choice at all. and i think dumbledore knew that too, which is why he said it. but it’s funny, obviously, when everything else he did was to ensure harry would be willing to die...but in this moment, he wants him to live. in a way, i think that’s almost more cruel, to be completely honest. make him accept something, and find peace in it, then turn it back around...yeah. there sure are things worse than death, dumbledore. it’s what you did to this literal child lmfao.
anyway, back to the chapter in question, though. the line harry has about petunia sticks out to me, but so does this one, when they’re talking about sirius: “people don’t like being locked up!” and then he says “you did it to me all last summer,” but what really gets me about this is that harry wasn’t exactly locked up, then; he was just cut off. nobody was telling him anything. he felt trapped, and alone. but he had been locked up. in the cupboard under the stairs, in dudley’s second bedroom...i mean, in cos he was very literally locked up. to the point of needing to be broken out. and what’s really interesting to me about ootp as a whole is that, like...people are calling harry crazy, right? they’re saying he’s some sort of delinquent. that he’s dangerous and disturbed. and isn’t this exactly what the dursleys told people about him? isn’t this their entire cover story for where he goes to school? “st brutus’s secure centre for incurably criminal boys.” a “first rate institution for hopeless cases.” they tell him from the time he’s young that his parents were, like, unhinged drunkards who got themselves killed in an accident that was all their own fault.
here’s another thing - harry is really defensive of cedric’s death. for someone who was fed lies about how his parents died for ten years, that makes a lot of sense to me. his aunt and uncle lied to him about the circumstances of his parents’ deaths in such a way that robbed them of their honour and bravery; harry isn’t going to accept anyone doing the same to cedric, especially considering that they were all three murdered by voldemort personally, and that all three were momentarily revived by the priori incantatem. similarly, there are a lot of instances in this book where harry wants to turn to sirius, thinking he is the only person who could understand how he feels having his name smeared in the papers. and here, in this chapter, he puts his situation parallel to sirius’s again - in saying they were both “locked up.”
so, the interesting thing about this to me is that this whole time, harry is angry about sirius. he’s angry that sirius died. they’re talking about how sirius hated being locked up. they’re talking about how it’s dumbledore’s fault that sirius died. in this moment, harry is blaming dumbledore for sirius’s death - and as soon as he does, he turns it back on himself. when he says “you did it to me all last summer,” he’s no longer talking about dumbledore ordering sirius to stay in grimmauld place. now, he’s talking about dumbledore never reaching out to him after his fourth year. he’s angry at dumbledore for what dumbledore did to him. my points above are to say, essentially, that the things in this book that make harry so angry are not merely a matter of being angry at being called a liar or worse, or on behalf of cedric. he’s angry because the wizarding world has begun treating him exactly as the dursleys always did. and dumbledore is the very persona of the wizarding world to harry (and probably plenty of others; he’s pretty powerful and influential, never mind being headmaster of their school). he accuses dumbledore of locking him up. but the only ones who actually “locked him up” were the dursleys.
this isn’t the only place where certain things pop up that make me really stop and kinda go oh for this reason. there’s a line in dh, actually, while harry, ron, and hermione are on the run where harry thinks that he’s the one who’s dealing with their lack of food the best, because “he had endured periods of near starvation” in his time living with his aunt and uncle. it’s a total throwaway. by the next paragraph, it’s irrelevant, and it never comes up again. this specific line in the lost prophecy, “people don’t like being locked up,” is really grim to me. harry’s not talking about sirius here. he’s talking about himself. and dumbledore’s reaction to this is also really...something.
“dumbledore closed his eyes and buried his face in his long-fingered hands. harry watched him, but this uncharacteristic sign of exhaustion, or sadness, or whatever it was from dumbledore did not soften him. on the contrary, he felt even angrier that dumbledore was showing signs of weakness. he had no business being weak when harry wanted to rage and storm at him.”
and from here, he springs into his explanation, right? about his plan. but this specific passage does read like genuine remorse to me. maybe he’s feeling the pressure of having made the mistake of not telling harry anything, since it is ultimately his lack of knowledge that moved him to the ministry, but i think it’s significant that he’s reacting specifically to harry’s line about being locked up. and that he starts talking not first about the summer harry mentions, but about when harry was eleven. and he says harry had suffered in those ten years. he says he knew he would. if he’s showing remorse here, then...he’s feeling remorseful over what he felt he had had to put harry through for the sake of his plan. he’s feeling remorseful for leaving harry in an abusive situation.
i have no doubt that dumbledore cared for harry. if it’s not obvious anywhere else, then it certainly is in this chapter. he says “i defy anyone who has watched you as i have - and i have watched you more carefully than you can have imagined - not to want to save you more pain than you had already suffered.” then a little later “i have watched you struggling under more burdens than any student who has ever passed through this school.” we know from when they talk in dh that dumbledore considers harry a better person than he was. i think it’s easy to see, from dumbledore’s perspective, exactly why harry is so impressive to him. he holds the one quality dumbledore couldn’t, though he obviously wanted to: selflessness. he says so here, too, when he talks about what sacrifices he might be making by trying to maintain harry’s happiness, something he, dumbledore, wants for him. the end of this chapter, too, really strikes me for this: “you may, perhaps, have wondered why i never chose you as a prefect? i must confess...that i rather thought...you had enough responsibility to be going on with.”
but harry is, in essence, what dumbledore made him into. he’s explaining it all here, just to say, in the end, that harry’s fate is "kill or be killed.” and in dh, he says in snape’s memories that he suspects harry has already guessed, or at least knows on some subconscious level, that he’s a horcrux. by this point, the end of harry’s fifth year - it’s highly likely that dumbledore has already come to this conclusion, at least in part, himself. he implies it in snape’s memories, when they talk about harry needing to learn occlumency. he says something about knowing harry well enough to know that he won’t leave anything unresolved in the end, that harry isn’t like that (which is something he has in common with snape in the end; we see snape very dedicated to ensuring he has followed through on every last one of dumbledore’s orders, and he only dies once he has given harry his memories as was his “duty.” interestingly, they both also put all their faith in dumbledore, then feel betrayed when they learn that dumbledore hasn’t been completely honest with them but still follow on his orders anyway, for the sake of the greater good, even though they know dumbledore used them). looking at this in terms of child psychology, though...it’s abundantly clear that harry is very desperate to have adult figures in his life that he can trust, and who in turn trust him - but at the same time, he doesn’t want to be treated like a child, because he didn’t have a childhood.
anyway, my greater point here is this - harry is actually extremely affected by the dursleys’ abuse and he and dumbledore both know it is dumbledore’s fault it happened at all. but harry forgives him, and has a hard time blaming him at all, really, because he also knows dumbledore loves him, and the thing he wants above all else is to be acknowledged and loved for who he is. it’s why he doesn’t like being kept out of the loop, it’s why he can’t stand being “locked up,” or otherwise somehow stifled. and when dumbledore is talking about how much harry has suffered, so much more than any of hogwarts’s other students...that’s acknowledgement of everything he caused, and he does display real remorse for it here imo. but it doesn’t alter his plan. it doesn’t change anything. considering that dumbledore let his love for grindlewald blind him before, it’s no wonder that he’s a person, now, who values the “greater good” even above those he loves - because he does love harry, and even though harry often doubts this i think there’s never really a point where he doesn’t know on some level that it’s true too - but what’s really interesting is that harry, at this point, is not like that. i mean, he’s just played right into voldemort’s hands because he only cared about saving sirius, never mind that he knew it was a trap. the only person, in fact, that harry doesn’t mind sacrificing for the greater good - or the good of other people, those he loves - is himself. that’s why it’s so easy for him to forgive dumbledore in the end, i’d say.
but, yeah. i think this chapter is just...so interesting. and painful. it’s the moment, for me, where we most see how affected harry is by everything. it’s this huge culmination of his angry throughout this whole book, yes, but it’s more than that - it’s things he’s been repressing since he was a small child, anger at an abusive situation, guilt and confusion over what happened in the graveyard, and, most importantly, i think, grief for himself, which is placed equivalent in its parallel to his grief for sirius. it’s very fitting, too, when sirius was, after all, his last hope of having a family, or at least a parent, that was his own. before harry’s hearing, they talked again about harry living with sirius (in this case, if he really was expelled from hogwarts). it’s something they both want, but can’t have - and it’s something that no one else has ever offered to harry. sirius dying takes that away from him, and so his reaction to sirius’s death is not just about sirius, but also about a ten-year-old boy who had spent all his living memory (except, of course, for the memory of his mother being murdered) living in a cupboard and being told he was a freak and a waste of space. who didn’t know anything akin to happiness until he went away to hogwarts, where his life was put in danger again and again but at least here, finally, people cared about him. and it’s something most victims of abuse have to experience at some point (usually as adults, in the case of abused children). it’s a very, very poignant form of grief. and it’s cyclical, too; it doesn’t just “go away,” like any sort of grief or trauma. when i read this chapter, this is the grief i’m seeing. i think it’s why sirius’s death is the one that affects him the most, of all of them (dumbledore’s too; the mentor figure, the headmaster of the only place he ever called “home,” which he knows after dumbledore dies that he can never return to).
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curlsofsagesmoke · 3 years
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TMNT (2012) DID DONNIE DIRTY WITH THE HALF-ASSED LEADERSHIP PLOTLINE AND HERE’S WHY
not to turn into a tmnt blog or anything but I've been watching the 2012 version and I have some Thoughts about the weird leadership conflict subplot between Leo and donnie that the writers started going for and then abandoned. admittedly I've only seen up until a few episodes of season 3 so I don’t know if they ever do go back to this, but from what I've seen this plot had amazing potential but it was handled in a truly awful way!
keep in mind also that I really love this show. I watched it as a kid, I think it holds up pretty well even now. it does have its flaws (many, many flaws) and the worst flaw is the writing imo, which can be lazy, ignorant, or just straight up bad at times. 
with that out of the way, buckle up and hold on to your butts cuz here the heck we go!
you cannot talk about leadership in tmnt without starting with the leader, Leo. the writers gave him a really interesting arc at the beginning of season one where he was really eager to become leader (splinter gave him the job because he asked for it, after all) but then he started to realize the burden that came with the title and started to crack a bit under the pressure. the most well-known character conflict in the entire tmnt multiverse is the tension between Raph and Leo, and this iteration of the show is no different. Raph is very obviously upset about Leo becoming leader and he (and donnie, but we’ll get to him in a bit) tries to argue that he should be leader instead. ultimately he fails and this does create tension throughout the rest of seasons one and two.
this tension comes to a head during an episode where Leo, tired of Raph always questioning his decisions and needling him, decides to fuck off for a little bit, leaving Raph in charge (”New Girl In Town”). from a writing standpoint, this episode is important for many reasons, but in terms of this subplot it is a moment of crisis for Leo which he inevitably overcomes by accepting the burden and responsibility of leadership; and for Raph it is a moment of realization where he finally accepts that he wouldn’t be a very good leader and he doesn’t want the burden that Leo carries all the time. after this episode, Raph and Leo do have their arguments, but overall Raph is much more accepting of Leo’s position as leader and only calls him out when Leo starts to go on little power trips.
which brings us to donnie. donnie also argued that he should be leader in the first episode, but it wasn’t treated as seriously as Raph’s argument, and after that there wasn’t much conflict between Leo and donnie (except for the technology vs. tradition thing surrounding metalhead, but I’ll get to that later). donnie and Mikey are presented as generally pretty laid back. when Raph becomes leader in “New Girl In Town”, they exchange a lot of “yikes” looks in the background but are willing to follow his lead and give him the opportunity to actually be leader. of course, this comes to a head when they confront the villain of the episode, snakeweed, in the sewers. they’re getting their asses kicked, Mikey is knocked out, Raph is having a panic attack, and donnie is left to fend for himself against snakeweed.
instead of having that little “I must meet this challenge and overcome it” moment that you’d expect, Raph gives in to the panic and it’s donnie who not only incapacitates snakeweed to give them time to escape, but also snaps Raph out of his panic attack and tells him what to do (namely, get Mikey out of there and retreat to safety). it’s not given any more attention after this so it’s kind of blink-and-you-miss-it, but this is the first instance we see donnie reveal a bit of his potential as leader.
this is in direct contrast to “Mousers Attack!” which came a few episodes before New Girl In Town. that was the episode that introduced the a-team/b-team dynamic, and in that episode we saw that donnie, while attempting to lead him and Mikey, was able to come up with a bunch of plans to infiltrate dogpound’s operations but wasn’t decisive enough to actually commit to anything. thus in New Girl In Town, we’ve already seen very obvious growth in donnie and the way he approaches leadership, but it’s very much pushed to the background, and for good reason. this is simply laying the foundation for the big showdown between Leo and donnie.
the next significant moment of leadership potential we see from donnie comes in the episode the Pulverizer. donnie gets stuck with Timothy in the lair but soon  becomes willing and even eager to teach him the basics of self defense, because, as he tells splinter, he knows Timothy is going to keep putting himself in dangerous situations and he’d rather Timothy be able to protect himself. splinter tells him that anything that happens to Timothy will be donnie’s responsibility, and donnie accepts this and begins training him. at the end of the episode they all make it out okay, Timothy goes on his way, and donnie seems to have become just a bit fond of him.
significantly, this is the first time donnie is given full responsibility over the fate of another person, and we see that even though he doesn’t really like Timothy, he takes this responsibility seriously. here he shows great leadership potential, as well, though again, it’s not really commented on narratively.
the next significant moment is, as you might’ve guessed, The Pulverizer Returns. in this episode we find out Timothy has joined the foot and is willing to pass information on to the turtles. Leo and Raph jump at the opportunity, Mikey is ambivalent as usual, and donnie is the only one who shows any concern. this is most likely because the last time he saw Timothy, splinter told him Timothy was his responsibility completely, and he obviously takes that seriously still. the entire episode, he tries to get Timothy to leave the foot and his brothers to take this seriously, but his worries are brushed off until they find out the shredder is about to mutate Timothy as an experiment.
so they race off to save him, and donnie ends up in a warehouse without his brothers to help, weaponless (because of some bullshit lesson splinter is trying to teach them, and as a side note, this was the first episode where I started to seriously dislike splinter as a character, because the way he was written here is just awful). the villains of this episode are dogpound and fishface. if you’ll remember, these are two serious villains, and up until this point they’d only ever been subdued, never defeated, and even then the turtles had to double team them in order to win. so it was of course surprising and incredible to see that donnie, armed with literally just a broom, was able to hold off a squad of foot ninjas, dogpound, AND fishface by himself for a good while, all while keeping Timothy away from the mutagen.
then Timothy IS mutated and a bomb is activated, and in just two minutes donnie comes up with a plan and executes it, getting them all out safely. when he starts barking orders at his brothers, they don’t even stop to question him. they listen immediately and that’s part of the reason why the plan succeeds. so what does this tell us? it tells us that donnie has a very strong sense of responsibility, protectiveness, and determination; that he is extremely capable when he’s focused and is good at thinking under pressure; and that his brothers trust him enough to follow his orders when he does give them. these are all incredible qualities for a leader to have!
notably the episode after this is Operation Break Out, where donnie goes off on his own to rescue April’s dad from The Kraang and they only make it out because his brothers followed him and intervened. clearly, then, donnie’s not really ready to be a leader and still lets his emotions cloud his judgement, which is a narratively sound writing decision. the big donnie-as-leader showdown doesn’t come until the end of season two, anyway.
and then season two. the tensions between Leo and donnie aren’t as obvious as the tensions between Leo and Raph, but they’re there, even if no one explicitly challenges Leo’s position as leader any more. here’s a quick rundown of the two significant episodes:
“Follow the Leader”--> Leo wants to stick to the old, traditional ways, but his brothers insist on unorthodox methods of fighting. Leo eventually comes to accept this to a certain degree when he admits it’s a good strategy to use against the footbots.
“Metalhead Rewired”--> donnie upgrades metalhead’s AI and Leo is suspicious of it. on the trail of The Kraang, Leo blames donnie for a few of metalhead’s mishaps, but apologizes when they realize that metalhead was leading them to a Kraang mutant prison. metalhead sacrifices itself to save them. Leo is sympathetic here because donnie is really upset, but it’s clear that these two are still fighting over the tech vs. tradition thing
and then we get to The Invasion, the season two finale. the synopsis makes it clear that this is where all of these moments that I've been discussing come to a head: “Leo and Donnie disagree about their plan to stop The Kraang invasion. When Leo makes a critical mistake, he is separated from the team and Donnie must step up as leader.” So we’re off to a good start as far as concluding this character arc goes. I was excited to finally see donnie live up to his leadership potential (and I thought this could be a good way to give Leo some closure regarding his issues with holding the world on his shoulders/blaming himself for every mistake/basing his self worth on his position as leader).
but I was sorely disappointed! in the episodes, donnie’s and��Leo’s tech vs. tradition conflict comes to a head when Leo wants to flee the city (this seems very out of character for him) but donnie wants to stay and fight in his new combat robot, the turtle mech. this disagreement lasts until they are attacked in the tunnels and donnie is injured; Leo draws the Kraang robots away (I assumed this was his critical mistake: separating himself) to give the others time to escape. they go to April’s apartment to hide and regroup while Leo is hunted down and almost killed by the shredder. Raph and Casey rejoin the others, then shredder throws Leo through the window of the apartment, and they escape but barely. donnie then makes the decision to fight Kraang prime in the turtle mech (which is, I assume, his big leader moment, though of course it doesn’t even happen on screen). they fight Kraang prime and almost die, but Casey arrives in the van, saves them, and drives them out of the city. donnie apologizes to Leo’s unconscious body and says that Leo was right, and then the episode ends.
so. let me first say that this was quite possibly the worst way to end this really interesting and nuanced character arc that the writers had set donnie and Leo on. first of all, we barely got to see donnie act in any kind of leadership role. in Leo’s absence, they made most of their decisions as a team, where I had expected at least some sort of “I need to overcome my fears and anxieties and lead my family to safety” moment from donnie. secondly, Leo wasn’t entirely correct. yes, they ended up evacuating the city anyway like Leo wanted, but he was wrong about the turtle mech; it ended up destroying Kraang prime’s robot body thing. and donnie wasn’t entirely correct, either: the turtle mech was a great weapon that did some significant damage, but it wasn’t enough to stop the invasion. so we have these two characters who were both wrong in their own ways, both face the consequences, but no one ever discusses it.
so not only did we not see any significant character development from Leo; and not only did donnie not really get to act in any significant leadership role; but also worst of all, these two characters never got any closure! I'm a good handful of episodes into season three, and not one single character has even mentioned the tension between Leo and donnie during the invasion. everyone acts as if it never happened, so now as a viewer I'm stuck here waiting for the other shoe to drop or for one of these characters to finally snap, but I don’t think it’s going to happen, which sucks. in other iterations of tmnt (like the 2007 movie or the show from 2003) we get to see Donatello act almost like Leo’s second in command. I think that’s a really, really interesting direction the writers of the 2012 show could’ve gone in and I think it’s a waste of this subplot’s potential to just abandon it the way they did. I'm not sure what’s going to happen in season three, but I think a good conclusion of this arc would’ve been donnie and Leo confronting the argument they had, doing a little more maturing, and eventually donnie becomes Leo’s second in command. instead I'm really worried about how the writing of this show is going to devolve as I get further into the later seasons.
(as a side note: I'm currently working on a series of tmnt fics that addresses this issue, as well as the sometimes shitty ways the brothers treat each other and the stupid-as-fuck donnie/april/casey love triangle. so if that floats your boat, keep an eye out! I'll be reposting this with the link attached once I upload the first fic, so give my blog a follow or keep an eye on my ao3 account, heyassbuttimbatman)
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bestworstcase · 3 years
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I like your thoughts on how Rapunzel was handling things wrong in “Rapunzel: Day One.” The episode tries to imply that Cassandra is wrong for not sharing her feelings with Rapunzel, but is a Rapunzel really the person Cassandra should be opening up to? Rapunzel never respects Cassandra’s boundaries. Cassandra’s a private person. Rapunzel doesn’t respect that. And just because Cassandra doesn’t want to open up to everyone doesn’t mean that she’s bottling things up.
ok so this is gonna be a long one bc tbh i like. fundamentally disagree that RDO, the narrative of RDO, in any way positions cassandra as the one at fault for the emotional conflict between her and raps.
to digress a bit - while tts is not immune to Aesop Episodes (e.g. rapunzel's enemy or you're kidding me) wherein the characters close out the story by talking about What They've Learned, ultimately i don't think tts can or should be read as a morality play. it's a story where sometimes characters just... fuck up and the narrative doesn't waste its time on hand-holding or spoon-feeding us the moral.
anyway, i submit that RDO is what i'll call a False Aesop Episode. it follows the basic structure of an Aesop Episode (protagonist acts badly -> protagonist learns a lesson) but the lesson rapunzel learns is a bad one. it's like if you took... say, "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" as an aesop, the False Aesop here is rapunzel confidently eating a rotten apple and then being blindsided a few months later when the doctor who kept begging her not to eat food with maggots in it steals the moonstone from under her nose and runs off into the night with her new demon pal--
and that metaphor got away from me a little bit but you get the idea.
#1: constructing the conflict
the episode opens with cassandra. she's training; we see the sword fly out of her injured hand; lance suggests she take a break, and she answers, "thanks to rapunzel's little trick at the great tree, i have to relearn everything using this hand, so breaks aren't really an option."
she isn't harsh about it. her demeanor isn't all that different from her normal self—she even segues into a very typical concern (that the woods are dangerous and they should all be on their guard) and banters with lance a bit.
what this communicates, immediately and succinctly, is that:
1. cassandra's injury is severe. it's disabling. she's either in immense pain or she's lost all the strength in that hand or both.
2. cass is really upset about this, and not happy with rapunzel.
3. nevertheless cass is keeping her feelings more or less in check; the worst anyone could say about her is she's being a bit more curt than normal.
which is to say, she's acting quite reasonable. she's not taking out her hurt feelings on anyone else or being mean or lashing out, and she's not hiding her injury either. the most concerning thing about her behavior here is actually that she's focused on training so she can do her job instead of on healing or resting or taking care of herself.
then there's a pan over to rapunzel, who is angrily watching this play out while venting to pascal. "i get why cass is mad at me," she says. "she told me—" huge disdainful rolling of eyes here "—not to use the decay spell back and the tree, and i did, and she hurt her hand. but if she had just listened to me and stayed out of it, this all could have been avoided! and i feel like we could work things out, but she refuses to talk about it!!"
line this up against cassandra's behavior and spot the differences.
cass is focused on her injured hand. cass is upset because rapunzel accidentally mutilated her in the great tree. that's what this conflict is about for cass; her injury, and how she feels about being injured.
by contrast, rapunzel thinks the conflict is about them not listening to each other. she does acknowledge that cass was injured, but 1. she puts the blame on cass, and 2. has shoved the fact of the injury to the periphery of the conflict. it's not important, it's just a natural consequence of the real conflict, which is cass being mad and petty and refusing to talk to her about how she's unfairly blaming rapunzel for something that wasn't rapunzel's fault.
[i will add here that this behavior from rapunzel is 100% not knowing how to handle guilt and externalizing it as anger, and this thread of rapunzel burying her guilt gets picked up again in rapunzeltopia; it isn't that rapunzel doesn't care that cass is hurt, so much as she's just not emotionally equipped to process these feelings in a healthy way so it mutates into...this.]
and where cass handles her feelings in a pretty reasonable way, rapunzel rants and raves and draws cass as a literal monster with fangs and claws—she's stewing in her out of control emotions and concludes that she just has to find a way to force cass talk to her, which she does shortly thereafter by ordering—not asking—cass to come with her to search for parts to fix the caravan.
#2: the breakdown of communication
i've said it before but it bears repeating: cassandra might not be perfect, but she's a good communicator. in s1 and the front half of s2, she shares her feelings with rapunzel readily and frequently. when she tries to set boundaries with rapunzel, she's able to be clear and specific about what she needs. when she expresses frustration with eugene or her dad or rapunzel, she's very articulate about exactly what she's frustrated about. she can recognize when politer, softer refusals are being ignored and become blunter and more specific to ensure the message is getting across.
the moments when cass struggles to communicate are noteworthy because they're not normal. they signal that she's in acute crisis. think of how her unhinged rant about adira in RATGT heralded a complete emotional breakdown. she clams up in RDO because it's the only thing she can do to protect herself. because rapunzel is an inexperienced nineteen year old who learned all her social "skills" from a manipulative, egotistical abuser and nowhere in the series does that show more than in RDO.
rapunzel knows cass doesn't want to talk about the great tree, so she isolates cass from the rest of the group with the intention of forcing her to talk about it anyway. she's passive aggressive at first: chattering about inanities and trying to bait cass into 'opening up,' and acting vexed and guilt-trippy when she finds out cass brought owl along. she broaches the subject by going "too bad there's not an open-up-to-your-best-friend-about-the-thing-you-guys-are-fighting-about wand, huh?"
then she leads with "i know you're mad at me, but i did the right thing. i didn't have a choice," which... what can cass even say to that? she acknowledged cassandra's anger in one breath and followed up with "but you're wrong tho" in the next. that statement makes cassandra's feelings about her debilitating injury into an argument about Who Was Right.
this is a game that cass tries very hard not to play. "look, if you feel that way, then it's fine. we're good," she says, which is a statement that is not true at all on its face but - what it means is that if rapunzel wants to turn this into a debate about Who Was Right, cass will concede because that's not an argument she's invested in. cass does not want to put her feelings on trial so rapunzel can pick them apart and decide whether she deserves to have them or not.
so she disengages. the sun sets. they camp. rapunzel pokes her again, this time with a more direct approach: "cass, i need to talk about what we both know is going on between us."
and that's when cass throws up a WALL. prior to RDO, when cass is pressed on her feelings, she either: 1. opens up and explains to the extent that she's able (e.g. under raps or RATGT), or 2. flatly shuts the conversation down (e.g. cassandra vs eugene). but in RDO?
"there's nothing to talk about."
"i never said i was upset."
"what makes you so sure that you know how i'm feeling?"
this is cass falling off the end of her rope. this is a cass who spent the last year and a half with rapunzel running roughshod over every boundary cass exhausted herself trying to set. this is cass maybe a few weeks out from rapunzel screaming at her in front of all their mutual friends and then telling her "i am going to make decisions you don't agree with and i need you to be okay with that" when cass tried to open up about her deepest insecurities. this is cass spiraling into despair because she's seen that her best friend cares more about assuaging her own guilt and exerting her authority as a princess than she does about cassandra's feelings.
this is the moment when the friendship dies.
#3: the memory wipe, cassandra's apology, and the false aesop
the details of the tangled-but-cass shenanigans are not super important for the purposes of this discussion. suffice it to say that cassandra lashes out in the heat of the moment, seriously harms rapunzel by mistake, and spends the rest of the episode trying to repair the damage, then apologizes to rapunzel for hurting her. this is, obviously, the correct thing to do when you hurt someone, even if it was an accident.
you see the parallel here, yeah?
rapunzel hurt cass with magic by accident, and then made cass's hurt feelings all about her, blamed cass for the injury, twisted the facts to justify her own indignation, picked a fight about Who Was Right and invalidated cassandra's feelings, and pushed and pushed and pushed until cass blew up and lashed out at her.
cassandra also hurt rapunzel with magic by accident, and then she set aside her own hurt feelings from the argument they were having before to focus one hundred percent of her energy on brewing a cure and keeping amnesiac rapunzel safe, readily admitted her fault, and offered an earnest apology for losing her temper as soon as she could reasonably do so.
if RDO were a true Aesop Episode, this would be the lesson, and rapunzel would of course learn from cassandra's good example and reciprocate by apologizing for the accident in the great tree and her abysmal behavior afterwards—and in a reflection of how cass shared how bottling up her anger allowed it to erupt in a catastrophic way, rapunzel would probably confess that her demanding, selfish behavior came from a place of feeling awful about what happened and terrified that it would ruin their friendship.
but RDO is a False Aesop Episode. rapunzel isn't emotionally equipped to handle the intensity of her guilt, and she lacks the social insight and empathy to draw comparisons between what she did to cass and what cass did to her, so she can't connect the two situations in her head to understand what she's doing wrong. the true aesop flies right over her head, and instead what she learns is this:
1. she was right about cass being upset
2. backing cass into a corner fixed the problem
3. friends really do "just know"
4. being pushy and forceful was the right thing to do.
because the thing is, when cass apologizes for the accidental memory wipe, she truthfully explains why she acted the way she did—she's furious and she didn't want to talk about it, so she held it in as long as she could and then exploded when the pressure became too much—and for rapunzel, i think the explanation and the actual apology get conflated. meaning, cass says "i'm sorry for what i did out of anger" and what rapunzel hears is "i'm sorry for being angry."
and because of that misunderstanding, from rapunzel's perspective her own indignation has been validated and her behavior justified, because she was right all along and cass shouldn't have been angry with her in the first place and now everything is fine--
but it's not fine.
we're not supposed to share rapunzel's perspective here, because she's flat out wrong. nothing is really better and nothing has really changed, except that rapunzel got the talk she wanted and stops putting this intense pressure on cass. so as we enter the house of yesterday's tomorrow, rapunzel is taking it for granted that things are fine with cass, and meanwhile cass is still injured, still angry, still as aloof as she can be without getting rapunzel breathing down her neck again... and then she meets zhan tiri, who gives her everything she needed and couldn't get from rapunzel.
like, to my mind, this is the entire point of RDO, that rapunzel makes this catastrophic mess of trying to patch things up after RATGT and comes out of that mess wrongly thinking she succeeded. the episode is presented through the lens of rapunzel's perspective, but the lines are very wide and i absolutely think the intention is for the audience to read between them and understand the reality that rapunzel has sort of blinded herself to.
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The Story Behind Every Song on folklore - According to Aaron Dessner
By: Brady Gerber for Vulture Date: July 27th 2020
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The National multi-instrumentalist spoke to Vulture over the phone from upstate New York a few hours after the surprise release of Swift’s eighth studio album. (“A pretty wild ride,” he admits, sounding tired yet happy.) He was clear that he can’t speak on behalf of Swift’s lyrics, much like he can’t for The National frontman Matt Berninger’s either, or the thinking behind Jack Antonoff’s songs. (Here’s a cheat sheet: Jack’s songs soar, Aaron’s glide.) But Dessner was game to speak to his specific contributions, influences, and own interpretations of each song on folklore, a record you can sum up by two words that came up often during our conversation: nostalgic and wry.
“the 1″
“the 1” and “hoax,” the first song and the last song, were the last songs we did. The album was sort of finished before that. We thought it was complete, but Taylor then went back into the folder of ideas that I had shared. I think in a way, she didn’t realize she was writing for this album or a future something. She wrote “the 1,” and then she wrote “hoax” a couple of hours later and sent them in the middle of the night. When I woke up in the morning, I wrote her before she woke up in LA and said, “These have to be on the record.” She woke up and said, “I agree” [laughs] These are the bookends, you know?
It’s clear that “the 1” is not written from her perspective. It’s written from another friend’s perspective. There’s an emotional wryness and rawness, while also to this kind of wink in her eyes. There’s a little bit of her sense of humor in there, in addition to this kind of sadness that exists both underneath and on the surface. I enjoy that about her writing.
The song began from the voice memo she sent me, and then I worked on the music some and we tracked her vocals, and then my brother added orchestration. There are a few other little bits, but basically that was one of the very last things we did.
“cardigan“
That’s the first song we wrote [in early May]. After Taylor asked if I would be interested in writing with her remotely and working on songs, I said, “Are you interested in a certain kind of sound?” She said, “I’m just interested in what you do and what you’re up to. Just send anything, literally anything, it could be the weirdest thing you’ve ever done,” so I sent a folder of stuff I had done that I was really excited about recently. “cardigan” was one of those sketches; it was originally called “Maple.” It was basically exactly what it is on the record, except we added orchestration later that my brother wrote.
I sent [the file] at 9 p.m., and around 2 a.m. or something, there was “cardigan,” fully written. That’s when I realized something crazy was happening. She just dialed directly into the heart of the music and wrote an incredible song and fully conceived of it and then kept going. It harkens back to lessons learned, or experiences in your youth, in a really beautiful way and this sense of longing and sadness, but ultimately, it’s cathartic. I thought it was a perfect match for the music, and how her voice feels. It was kind of a guide. It had these lower register parts, and I think we both realized that this was a bit of a lightning rod for a lot of the rest of the record.
The National’s Influence On Swift
She said that she’s a fan of the emotion that’s conveyed in our music. She doesn’t often get to work with music that is so raw and emotional, or melodic and emotional, at the same time. When I sent her the folder, that was one of the main feelings. She said, “What the fuck? How do you just have that?” [laughs] I was humbled and honored because she just said, “It’s a gift, and I want to write to all of this.” She didn’t write to all of it, but a lot of it, and relatively quickly.
She is a fan of the band, and she’s a fan of Big Red Machine. She’s well aware of the sentiment of it and what I do, but she didn’t ask for a certain kind of thing. I know that the film [I Am Easy To Find] has really affected her, and she’s very much in love with that film and the record. Maybe it’s subconsciously been an influence.
“the last great american dynasty”
I wrote that after we’d been working for a while. It was an attempt to write something attractive, more uptempo and kind of pushing. I also was interested in this almost In Rainbows-style latticework of electric guitars. They come in and sort of pull you along, kind of reminiscent of Big Red Machine. It was very much in this sound world that I’ve been playing around with, and she immediately clicked with that. Initially I was imagining these dreamlike distant electric guitars and electronics but with an element of folk. There’s a lot going on in that sense. I sent it before I went on a run, and when I got back from the run, that song was there [laughs].
She told me the story behind it, which sort of recounts the narrative of Rebekah Harkness, whom people actually called Betty. She was married to the heir of Standard Oil fortune, married into the Harkness family, and they bought this house in Rhode Island up on a cliff. It’s kind of the story of this woman and the outrageous parties she threw. She was infamous for not fitting in, entirely, in society; that story, at the end, becomes personal. Eventually, Taylor bought that house. I think that is symptomatic of folklore, this type of narrative song. We didn’t do very much to that either.
“exile” (ft. Bon Iver)
Taylor and William Bowery, the singer-songwriter, wrote that song initially together and sent it to me as a sort of a rough demo where Taylor was singing both the male and female parts. It’s supposed to be a dialogue between two lovers. I interpreted that and built the song, played the piano, and built around that template. We recorded Taylor’s vocals with her singing her parts but also the male parts.
We talked a lot about who she thought would be perfect to sing, and we kept coming back to Justin [Vernon]. Obviously, he’s a dear friend of mine and collaborator. I said, “Well, if he’s inspired by the song, he’ll do it, and if not, he won’t.” I sent it to him and said, “No pressure at all, literally no pressure, but how do you feel about this?” He said, “Wow.” He wrote some parts into it also, and we went back and forth a little bit, but it felt like an incredibly natural and safe collaboration between friends. It didn’t feel like getting a guest star or whatever. It was just like, well, we’re working on something, and obviously he’s crazy talented, but it just felt right. I think they both put so much raw emotion into it. It’s like a surface bubbling. It’s believable, you know? You believe that they’re having this intense dialogue.
With other people I had to be secretive, but with Justin, because he was going to sing, I actually did send him a version of the song with her vocals and told him what I was up to. He was like, “Whoa! Awesome!” But he’s been involved in so many big collaborative things that he wasn’t interested in it from that point of view. It’s more because he loved the song and he thought he could do something with it that would add something.
“my tears ricochet”
This is one of my absolute favorite songs on the record. I think it’s a brilliant composition, and Taylor’s words, the way her voice sounds and how this song feels, are, to me, one of the critical pieces. It’s lodged in my brain. That’s also very important to Taylor and Jack. It’s like a beacon for this record.
“mirrorball”
“mirrorball” is, to me, a hazy sort of beautiful. It almost reminds me of ‘90s-era Cardigans, or something like Mazzy Star. It has this kind of glow and haze. It feels really good before “seven,” which becomes very wistful and nostalgic. There are just such iconic images in the lyrics [“Spinning in my highest heels”], which aren’t coming to me at the moment because my brain is not working [laughs].
How Jack Antonoff’s Folklore Songs Differ From Dessner’s
I think we have different styles, and we weren’t making them together or in the same room. We both could probably come closer together in a sense that weirdly works. It’s like an archipelago, and each song is an island, but it’s all related. Taylor obviously binds it all together. And I think Jack, if he was working with orchestrations, there’s an emotional quality to his songs that’s clearly in the same world as mine.
We actually didn’t have a moodboard for the album at all. I don’t think that way. I don’t really know if she does either. I don’t think Jack... well, Jack might, but when I say the Cardigans or Mazzy Star, those aren’t Jack’s words about “mirrorball,” it’s just what calls to mind for me. Mainly she talked about emotion and to lean into it, the nostalgia and wistfulness, and the kind of raw, meditative emotion that I often kind of inhabit that I think felt very much where her heart was. We didn’t shy away from that.
“seven”
This is the second song we wrote. It’s kind of looking back at childhood and those childhood feelings, recounting memories and memorializing them. It’s this beautiful folk song. It has one of the most important lines on the record: “And just like a folk song, our love will be passed on.” That’s what this album is doing. It’s passing down. It’s memorializing love, childhood, and memories. It’s a folkloric way of processing.
“august”
This is maybe the closest thing to a pop song. It gets loud. It has this shimmering summer haze to it. It’s kind of like coming out of “seven” where you have this image of her in the swing and she’s seven years old, and then in “august” I think it feels like fast-forwarding to now. That’s an interesting contrast. I think it’s just a breezy, sort of intoxicating feeling.
“this is me trying”
“this is me trying,” to me, relates to the entire album. Maybe I’m reading into it too much from my own perspective, but [I think of] the whole album as an exercise and working through these stories, whether personal or old through someone else’s perspective. It’s connecting a lot of things. But I love the feeling in it and the production that Jack did. It has this lazy swagger.
“illicit affairs”
This feels like one of the real folk songs on the record, a sharp-witted narrative folk song. It just shows her versatility and her power as a songwriter, the sharpness of her writing. It’s a great song.
“invisible string”
That was another one where it was music that I’d been playing for a couple of months and sort of humming along to her. It felt like one of the songs that pulls you along. Just playing it on one guitar, it has this emotional locomotion in it, a meditative finger-picking pattern that I really gravitate to. It’s played on this rubber bridge that my friend put on [the guitar] and it deadens the strings so that it sounds old. The core of it sounds like a folk song.
It’s also kind of a sneaky pop song, because of the beat that comes in. She knew that there was something coming because she said, “You know, I love this and I’m hearing something already.” And then she said, “This will change the story,” this beautiful and direct kind of recounting of a relationship in its origin.
“mad woman”
That might be the most scathing song on folklore. It has a darkness that I think is cathartic, sort of witch-hunting and gaslighting and maybe bullying. Sometimes you become the person people try to pin you into a corner to be, which is not really fair. But again, don’t quote me on that [laughs], I just have my own interpretation. It’s one of the biggest releases on the album to me. It has this very sharp tone to it, but sort of in gothic folklore. It’s this record’s goth song.
“epiphany”
For “epiphany,” she did have this idea of a beautiful drone, or a very cinematic sort of widescreen song, where it’s not a lot of accents but more like a sea to bathe in. A stillness, in a sense. I first made this crazy drone which starts the song, and it’s there the whole time. It’s lots of different instruments played and then slowed down and reversed. It created this giant stack of harmony, which is so giant that it was kind of hard to manage, sonically, but it was very beautiful to get lost in. And then I played the piano to it, and it almost felt classical or something, those suspended chords.
I think she just heard it, and instantly, this song came to her, which is really an important one. It’s partially the story of her grandfather, who was a soldier, and partially then a story about a nurse in modern times. I don’t know if this is how she did it, but to me, it’s like a nurse, doctor, or medical professional, where med school doesn’t fully prepare you for seeing someone pass away or just the difficult emotional things that you’ll encounter in your job. In the past, heroes were just soldiers. Now they’re also medical professionals. To me, that’s the underlying mission of the song. There are some things that you see that are hard to talk about. You can’t talk about it. You just bear witness to them. But there’s something else incredibly soothing and comforting about this song. To me, it’s this Icelandic kind of feel, almost classical. My brother did really beautiful orchestration of it.
“betty”
This one Taylor and William wrote, and then both Jack and I worked on it. We all kind of passed it around. This is the one where Taylor wanted a reference. She wanted it to have an early Bob Dylan, sort of a Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan feel. We pushed it a little more towards John Wesley Harding, since it has some drums. It’s this epic narrative folk song where it tells us a long story and connects back to “cardigan.” It starts to connect dots and I think it’s a beautifully written folk song.
Is ‘betty” queer canon? I can’t speak to what it’s about. I have my own ideas. I also know where Taylor’s heart is, and I think that’s great anytime a song takes on greater meaning for anyone.
Is William Bowery secretly Joe Alwyn? I don’t know. We’re close, but she won’t tell me that. I think it’s actually someone else, but it’s good to have some mysteries.
“peace”
I wrote this, and Justin provided the pulse. We trade ideas all the time and he made a folder, and there was a pulse in there that I wrote these basslines to. In the other parts of the composition, I did it to Justin’s pulse. Taylor heard this sketch and she wrote the song. It reminds me of Joni Mitchell, in a way - there’s this really powerful and emotional love song, even the impressionistic, almost jazz-like bridge, and she weaves it perfectly together. This is one of my favorites, for sure. But the truth is that the music, that way of playing with harmonized basslines, is something that probably comes a little bit from me being inspired by how Justin does that sometimes. There’s probably a connection there. We didn’t talk too much about it [laughs].
“hoax”
This is a big departure. I think she said to me, “Don’t try to give it any other space other than what feels natural to you.” If you leave me in a room with a piano, I might play something like this. I take a lot of comfort in this. I think I imagined her playing this and singing it. After writing all these songs, this one felt the most emotional and, in a way, the rawest. It is one of my favorites. There’s sadness, but it’s a kind of hopeful sadness. It’s a recognition that you take on the burden of your partners, your loved ones, and their ups and downs. That’s both “peace” and “hoax” to me. That’s part of how I feel about those songs because I think that’s life. There’s a reality, the gravity or an understanding of the human condition.
Does Taylor Explain Her Lyrics?
She would always talk about it. The narrative is essential, and kind of what it’s all about. We’d always talk about that upfront and saying that would guide me with the music. But again, she is operating at many levels where there are connections between all of these songs, or many of them are interrelated in the characters that reappear. There are threads. I think that sometimes she would point it out entirely, but I would start to see these patterns. It’s cool when you see someone’s mind working.
“the lakes”
That’s a Jack song. It’s a beautiful kind of garden, or like you’re lost in a beautiful garden. There’s a kind of Greek poetry to it. Tragic poetry, I guess.
The Meaning Of Folklore
We didn’t talk about it at first. It was only after writing six or seven songs, basically when I thought my writing was done, when we got on the phone and said, “OK, I think we’re making an album. I have these six other ideas that I love with Jack [Antonoff] that we’ve already done, and I think what we’ve done fits really well with them.” It’s sort of these narratives, these folkloric songs, with characters that interweave and are written from different perspectives. She had a vision, and it was connecting back in some way to the folk tradition, but obviously not entirely sonically. It’s more about the narrative aspect of it.
I think it’s this sort of nostalgia and wistfulness that is in a lot of the songs. A lot of them have this kind of longing for looking back on things that have happened in your life, in your friend’s life, or another loved one’s life, and the kind of storytelling around that. That was clear to her. But then we kept going, and more and more songs happened.
It was a very organic process where [meaning] wasn’t something that we really discussed. It just kind of would happen where she would dive back into the folder and find other things that were inspiring. Or she and William Bowery would write “exile,” and then that happened. There were different stages of the process.
Okay, but is it A24-core? [Laughs.] Good comparison. 
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portraitoftheoddity · 4 years
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So like I really like Steve and all and he's definitely got the right heart and that's what fandom likes about him, how he stood up to bullies and injustice with his fist raised. But recently I've rewatched avatar and Aang got me thinking, is going against the world fist ready really the right thing. Like Aang was no coward he still stopped Ozai but in most of his battles he tries for peace first. In fact Avatar as a whole talks about change in people.
Like Sokka turned from misogynistic to respecting women, and Iroh's love and patience redeemed Zuko. As much as I love Steve Rogers, fist fighting bullies and getting your ass handed to you or successfully beating them to a pulp isn't going to change them, and it sends a wrong message of fighting fire with fire and bullies don't learn when you punch them usually they get pettier. I agree Steve is right at not letting injustice go be it canon or fandom but Iove that scene in avatar when Aang got into a fire nation school and when a guy tried to fight him he was just like nooope but still managed to be on top as opposed to Steve (maybe just fan fic ver) who would try a punch. I mean I can see Steve screaming at the lies of the fire nation school instead of calmly informing the truth and throwing a dance party. Like Aang might be too pacific sometimes but is charging against people really a good lesson. Stand for what's right, but like in a chill way. And I'm not sure if this is just the fandom version of Steve but in TFS we did kinda see him in an alley fight against a just a ride guy. Sorry about the long rant but what do you think about Steve's fight me attitude being completely glorified in his fandom.
I apologize that I’m gonna gonna get a little long-winded here!
I agree with you that peaceful solutions are great to try first, but when it comes to this punch-happy version of Steve you reference, I think you’re kinda looking at a strawman version of the character, anon --  maybe from poorly-written fic or memes, but not exactly the Steve of film or comics.
Now, the respective approaches of both Aang and Steve are in part a product of the media they originated in. A show aimed at kids with a single overall plotline and arc is often going to aim for a peaceful solution and allow for linear character growth -- while comics, movies and shows developed around a character specifically designed to punch Hitler as a statement during WWII are less likely to have a core message of pacifism, and their structure and circular timelines make growth arcs more difficult to sustain. This doesn’t mean one character’s approach or the other is superior, just that they come from different contexts, narratively and in terms of medium. Plus, there are different kinds of fights, and not all are going to offer us the same options as solutions. Looking for ideological purity -- only ever opting for the ‘right’ solution -- can often lead to doing nothing when no ‘right’ solution presents itself, which can result in more harm than taking a less-than-perfect action.
Let us not forget that when an authoritarian army showed up to kill everyone and wipe out the North Pole, Aang does go all Koizilla with the ocean spirit and wipes out the Fire Nation fleet. Aang has fought people. Aang, albeit with the alibi of “a spirit was in charge”, indirectly kills people (Zhao ends up pretty dead as a direct result of Aang’s spirit rampage). This isn’t particularly glorified, but at the time there isn’t a better outcome presented. Doing nothing would have led to the massacre of the Northern Water Tribe.
That said, I LOVE ATLA and its messages of growth and compassion and I think it’s great to have a protagonist who opts to give people a way out.
...Which is what Steve does. 
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We see Steve do this more than once. In CA:TWS, Steve recognizes Bucky and tried to get through to him, to avoid a fight. One ensues, but Steve then refuses to fight him anymore once he’s disabled the helicarrier and saved everyone else, willingly putting his own life on the line to gamble on some part of Bucky’s inner self being in there and worth saving. He isn’t willing to put the lives of other innocents and noncombatants on the line -- protecting them is a priority, even if it means fighting Bucky -- but once that factor is out of the equation, he drops his shield and tries to reach him.
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In the same movie, a few scenes earlier, Steve appeals to the personnel of SHIELD -- an organization that has labeled him a terrorist and been hunting him -- and paints out the reality of the situation, giving the good people within the opportunity to react and rebel against the element of HYDRA that has infiltrated -- which they do! But there isn’t a magical lionturtle showing up to tell him how to stop the helicarriers from taking off and murdering millions of people without any casualties, so, yanno. He does what he can. 
Heck, Steve is occasionally teased by other characters for his speechifying -- not just to give pep talks, but to try to get through to people. He does this in the comics a lot. You’ve probably seen this page going around:
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It doesn’t always work out. But he tries.
You suggest Steve would punch someone who was wrong in Aang’s Fire Nation School, but I don’t agree with that reading on the character based on what we see Steve do. Steve very rarely is the one to completely initiate a fight. Usually he is reactive. He sees a situation where someone is being a jerk, points out the injustice, and if the person is insisting on hurting someone, Steve inserts himself to make sure it’s him instead of anyone else. Whether the jerk in question is a single bully or an entire army.
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You bring this scene up, but when Steve confronts the guy heckling in the movie theater (who is making a woman cry, I’ll add), it’s clear from the man’s posture when he stands up and Steve’s look of dread that while Steve has spoken up, the escalation to violence is not his choice. When we see him a moment later in the alley, he’s fighting defensively -- drawing the man’s ire, keeping him distracted. Steve is reactive in this entire scenario -- not the instigator. (and I think if Steve had Aang’s airbending, he’d love to dodge more punches instead of getting his ass kicked!)
The fact that Steve’s primary weapon is a shield -- a symbol of defense, not offense -- speaks to the fact his entire MO is protection. Violence not for violence’s sake, but to intervene in existing violence when there is no other recourse.
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But Steve also admittedly has a stronger sense of responsibility than Aang does at the series’ start. Aang dodges, but he also gets called out by other characters for running away from a lot of his problems instead of confronting them. Steve, if he were a bender, I think would likely be an Earthbender like Toph; solid, stubborn, listening and reacting (though ironically, he would lose his shit over the willful obliviousness and apathy of Ba Sing Se’s leadership). Steve feels a deep personal duty to always be in the thick of it where things are already at their worst. 
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If there had been no deus ex machina energybending option presented at the eleventh hour, would it have been better for Aang to die and doom the world than to compromise his morals and kill the Fire Lord? It’s a question of hypothetical principles vs reality of harm in that instance. Aang as a character is allowed by the story to adhere to his principles and get a happy ending. Steve as a character does his best, but ultimately has to compromise with reality when he has to, when it’s not just his life at stake, but many others should he fail to act in time. In those high-stakes scenarios, his cards are often limited.
Steve as a character doesn’t arbitrarily start fights. But he goes to where the status quo is untenable, or where a fight is already raging, and he takes a stand. If he can convince someone to step down peacefully? That’s ideal! But usually by the time Captain America has shown up, there are megaweapons primed and loaded and fascists already hurting people or robots trying to destroy the planet or a Titan about to wipe everyone out, so the ideal option is rarely still on the table. No dance party is gonna be enough to change Red Skull’s crazy nazi mind about killing everyone (which is too bad, because I’d love to watch Steve do the lindy hop). There is no ‘chill way’ to stand for what’s right at that point. 
And ultimately, I think we need both kinds of characters! I think it’s important to encourage diplomacy and compassion, to urge people to find common ground and to find nonviolent ways of diffusing and deescalating situations. To look at things from other perspectives, and to give people the option to learn and grow and be better than they were. I love a good rehabilitation arc, and think ATLA does this beautifully and has incredibly important messaging and philosophies.
But I also think we need stories that say, hey, when those options aren’t on the table? When no one is listening no matter what you try to say, when you’ve looked for a way around it and no lionturtles have showed up to save your ass? Sometimes, you have to put yourself in front of the guy swinging punches and raise you shield and stop him. Sometimes you don’t get the nice options that make you feel good; sometimes the world is messy and ugly; but sometimes, even if we can’t do the ideal thing, we can still do the right thing. Take action and put an end to the perpetuation of violence in the moment to protect the helpless. (Then work on rehabilitation and communication.)
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petruchio · 3 years
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i want to try to articulate my own dislike of mal in the grisha trilogy because i want to be clear that it doesn’t stem from a place of me having wanted alina to end up with someone else, nor would i really have been angry if she HAD ended up with mal if it had been written well, but i would like to take a stab at why i feel that it WASN’T. 
1. what was alina’s power meant to represent? this is honestly my main sticking point in the series as a whole. in my opinion, the way the “grisha power” is portrayed in the books is fundamentally antithetical to alina’s choices at the ending of the series. grisha power in the novels is portrayed as something innate, as something which is not separate from the self but merely an extension of the self, and as something which is essential for one’s health and, literally, lifeforce. “does the bird feel the weight of its wings,” etc., it is literally portrayed as something which is an essential part of one’s person. so -- this book is YA. YA, especially YA fantasy, tends to have some lesson to draw out to its young readers, some analog to real life meant to demonstrate something deeper. this begs the question then -- WHAT does alina’s power represent? what are its metaphorical implications? i think it’s crucial that she is initially only able to access her power when she LETS GO of mal and her unhealthy attachment to him. and at that turn in the story, she finds herself happier, freer, and healthier. so.... my question is what on earth are we meant to draw out of this, metaphorically, other than the idea that unhealthy attachment and obsession to others limits us and once we trust in ourselves completely we find our inner power? (i’d be fascinated if anyone disagrees or has different ideas about what the power and her ability to use it is meant to represent. but i have a hard time understanding it as anything else) we can further draw out some of the more literal metaphors -- regarding light and the sun. light which tends to represent joy, which reveals the unseen, which brings forth what is hidden. i think these are all pretty... on the nose metaphors. within her, alina contains this power to reveal what is hidden, to bring into the world joy and safety, and to bring balance to a world plagued by darkness. and her choice is to just... not? i just don’t think it tracks with everything else that grisha power is meant to represent.
2. what was alina’s arc meant to represent? this kind of ties into my larger issue with grisha power, but on a more individual level. you hear people justify alina’s choices by saying “she was a reluctant leader.” to which i say... then what was the point of the entire series? what did she learn? that actually her life was fine and she didn’t want to change it? i mean, power to her, but i again don’t think it follows with the portrayal of her discovery of her power (both her literal sun power and her ~internal~ power and strength) what was the point of having her have to “let go” of her attachment to mal in order to discover her power? what was the point of the line “there’s nothing wrong with being a mouse, unless you’re meant to be a hawk?” i just think these narrative beats don’t map on to her ultimate choice. 
3. the love arc of alina/mal is poorly written. in fact -- there IS no arc. she starts and ends the books in love with him. as a reader, i think this is one of the most uninteresting forms of romance to read. we have no sense of WHY she falls for him, other than the fact that they’re childhood friends which we are exposed to in a few flashbacks and stories about a vague “meadow.” but we don’t actually SEE any of this -- we basically have to take alina’s word for it that mal is amazing and perfect and he is the only person who sees her for who she “truly is” (which as an aside, i still don’t buy because again, if her power is something innate to her, he categorically DOESN’T see her as who she truly is and her whole person.) it’s hard as a reader to fall in love with a character if we don’t see the protagonist fall in love with them as well. plus, like i pointed out in her need to let go of mal -- in the start of the series, her attachment to him is framed as unhealthy and obsessive, as something she has to learn to let go of in order to become her whole self. i just don’t understand this metaphor, then, if the ultimate conclusion is that she was right to begin with.
4. i would like to draw a comparison here to the hunger games, which is a book i feel hits many of the same beats but does it (obviously perfectly) and justifies and explains katniss’ choices within the metaphorical and symbolic meaning and argument of the trilogy as a whole. i propose to break this down into three subsections and draw comparisons:
4a. the love interests. i guess mal is meant to be a sort of peeta like character, one who advocates for peace and sees the protagonist for HER not as a tool or a device. but again -- does he? i think this again ties into the idea of power as innate. none of katniss’ powers are necessarily innate to her. she’s not an amazing archer because she just happens to be so, or because she was just born that way. it’s something she learns and is forced into because of the poverty her and her family face, which again ties back into the larger social commentary of the series. she doesn’t become a symbol for the revolution because of some magical ~thing~ that she has, but because she is used and manipulated by the adults around her. but alina isn’t like that! she doesn’t learn to be a sun summoner because of the society she lives in, she just IS. she is also used as a symbol by the adults around her -- but because of her LITERAL power. so mal’s dislike of that aspect of her doesn’t read like peeta’s distaste for the capitol, it just reads like... he doesn’t like a part of her. then i guess you also have a bit of the gale mapped onto mal, as her childhood best friend. but i again feel that this is a poor analog. again with the distaste for the capitol vs. distaste for her grisha power. gale rejects katniss’ new life because it seems to him to represent the wealth and power of his oppressors. mal rejects it for apparently the same reasons -- but the power is represented as something internal to her. it’s different than wearing fancier clothes or living in a nicer house because of artificial social divisions. sure, the SOCIAL divisions between grisha and non grisha in the book are artificial. but she LITERALLY has a magic power. so again to my point about her power -- it just doesn’t make sense in context of how the power is described. 
4b. the villain. let’s imagine a hunger games where president snow is young and sexy and manipulates katniss by making out with her instead of just threatening those she loves. uhhhhhhhhhh. i just think this confuses the reader too much to be effective. once again, if this had been written a bit better i think it could’ve worked, but like. it wasn’t. there’s a reason people really thought they were going to end up together. in thg is that katniss is just.... some girl. she’s not snow’s only equal in the world, the one destined to balance his power, the only one who can understand his life and reality, his only immortal partner. again with the symbolism just not matching up to what seems to be the intention behind the story. okay, the darkling is evil. alina is good. so the solution is... kill him and stop using her own power? but the rest of the grisha and their powers are all fine? again, WHAT is the implication about power? it just doesn’t make sense.
4c. the choice at the end to live a peaceful life and reject the narrative which society has placed on you. this is where i think tgt really falls flat at trying to achieve and make a similar argument to thg. crucially, katniss’ choice is pretty metaphorically obvious. gale and peeta both hate the capitol, but have different opinions of the solution. peeta represents peace, gale war. (suzanne collins has literally said this.) katniss’ choice at the end of thg to live peacefully with peeta is a broader commentary on the nature of peace and the need to choose peace. but alina’s choice doesn’t read this way -- because in order to choose peace she literally has to deny a part of herself! a part of herself that is clearly an analog to finding herself in the series! 
these are all just some general thoughts about where i think tgt fails to really take on the implications of the power it seeks to portray. i think there are a lot of potential and legitimate criticisms of a lot of my points here, but i think overall it will always come back to the power for me. why was she sickly and sad before she discovered her power? why does she find joy and fun only once she is able to access a part of herself which she had repressed for so long only out of an unhealthy attachment to her childhood? if the power she wields is just too much for the world to handle, and same with the darkling, then why is grisha power portrayed as innate natural and essential? 
the realities of how power is portrayed in the grisha trilogy are why i ultimately believe her choice of mal and her choice to give up her power makes no sense and does not track onto the literal and metaphorical implications of the trilogy. 
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Text
Just watched Raya and the Last Dragon!
It's a good movie! In execution, it does have some flaws that are hard to ignore, and it's pretty average considering the "standard and general Disney formula with a few added twists". Overall, I really enjoyed watching it nevertheless.
I had some thoughts on the good things as well as some potential improvements so spoilers below:
Good things:
I really love that they tried to incorporate food and its sociocultural significance into the themes of unity and shared heritage.
I really liked Namaari and Raya, their respective flaws and struggles, as well as how their conflict was resolved. And I liked that their parents actually did have somewhat flawed but ultimately realistic views about the world while being well-meaning and just generally...not abusive.
I like that the parents don't technically die.
I like...the attempt at found family. It quickly dissipated but I liked it while it lasted.
I like the individual characters in the gang and wished they had gotten a bit more time than just "our families are dead".
I actually really liked the world building and lore! It was a bit convoluted but certainly interesting.
The premise makes for a good storyline and there were certainly elements of originality in terms of animation, design, and generally story flow.
THE FIGHT SCENES ARE GORGEOUS.
Speaking of gorgeous, the animation, magic and character designs are beautiful as well.
I like that there was some attempt at balance with regards to theme, and that it's tied to a relatable flaw in the protagonist (wish that was treated better but still) - the movie isn't really saying to trust everyone you see, it's saying that you shouldn't always, instantly mistrust someone because of a snap judgment, and that you shouldn't turn away when faced with the opportunity to know them and settle things peacefully. Mistrust and fear can cause as many problems as trusting the wrong person or trusting too easily, which I think is a nice and pretty straight forward way to put it. It has its flaws, but it's still pretty clear and direct.
Things that could have been improved:
Pacing - A lot of the plot-relevant information was kind of dumped out in spurts of long exposition by the protagonist within the first 30 minutes, and the scenes constantly skip between the more and less important moments in the story with little else to connect or aid much fluid transition. As a result it felt extremely fast-paced and kind of disconnected at times. This affects the story greatly.
Inconsistency in the themes reflecting off of what actually happens narratively speaking; in other words, a disconnect between the established world and the goal of the protagonist-
So the message was supposed to be something combined with "we're stronger together" and "know who you can trust/don't be so distrustful or judgmental of everyone"...which on its own is good, but I felt it was kinda misplaced and inconsistent with the fact that Sisu gets into almost as much trouble when she does trust someone as when someone else doesn't, and that Sisu alone has...a bit of all of her siblings' powers even as they're petrified, for some reason....and despite saving the world Sisu still "vanished" in some way and was summoned back with a call so Idk if her being trusted to use the stone "alone" held any weight or was meant to "save" her from sharing her family's fate... and Namaari alone is tasked with putting the dragon stone together...and there wasn't any indication that the dragons coming back would bring Sisu back to life and why...and there wasn't really a reason for the dragons to come back either if the people's trust was "enough" to make the world a better place...which it evidently wasn't, because the people and trusting/helping eachother despite the feuds and rivalries doesn't happen, there's just one small group of friends who happen to be nice and like eachother but they don't speak for the greediness and feuds of the tribes.
The issue of trust and its prevalence to the larger community - and its significance to the parents -
All in all, I feel like the movie's end message still went "generally, people are still unstrustworthy and need literal magical dragons to keep the world at peace, but it's up to those select few special people to trust each other and keep things together. You know. Just in case."
And yeah, I suppose that was maybe the point, but it was still...out of place, somehow? Ofc realistically, you can't exactly trust anyone, but it is a good balance of knowing who you can trust and being able to trust the right people by being able to look at them as, well, people. I think the movie was still...good at that. But one of the reasons why this falls apart is partially because of how some people behind the screen couldn't really decide how Sisu was meant to be written and what she was supposed to represent. This topic actually carries more into my next point-
Sisu's character, significance to the story, and portrayal-
I'm okay Sisu herself, but I can't get an idea of what she is supposed to mean and represent. If she was meant to be some kind of character foil to Raya then she shouldn't have been portrayed as right all the time "just because trust and kindness". If she was meant to be a kooky but wise mentor then...well, she almost fits that part, I guess. If she was meant to be a relatable flawed character that wasn't the source of 50% of the comedy relief, then don't have her traits go to waste and her revival be unexplained?
Throughout the movie, we see problems being caused because of distrust, yes - but we also see problems being caused because of trust, or rather, trusting the wrong person. But whenever we come across it, Sisu's small speeches or whining about how selfish humans are has to be right and we have to come back to trusting one another even if it causes more harm than good because...trust, I guess. There isn't exactly a point in the movie where Sisu makes the step of learning to trust the right person - we just have to take her word and tragic backstory for it, and be ok with her throwing herself into danger until she accidentally happens upon someone she can actually trust.
And there's still a difference between trusting your family/friends/loved ones, and trusting complete strangers or known traitors when you know you're in the middle of a war. Which the movie does not correct Sisu on.
(I contemplated putting in a piece about Sisu's and her family's design but decided against it because I feel others have talked about that way better than I could).
Sisu's nice speech on her family "trusting" her with the dragon stone has almost no real bearing on Raya "trusting" an established enemy. Yes, Sisu could have taught Raya to see more in people. But that's not what happens. Raya doesn't agree to this because she's curious about Namaari's past or sympathetic to her intentions. She doesn't do this because she has a bettered understanding of people or wants to have one. Raya only does it because...Sisu's family trusted her once, a long time ago, and even if they were petrified for it...Raya should...still...trust this enemy that's been on her tails, for some reason. Because "Sisu said so". Which is the movie's mainstream logic.
Furthermore, the other people in the group "trusting" Namaari in the end doesn't really hold much weight. They're not representatives of the different warring tribes, and they have no reason to really...trust Namaari except that their lives literally depend on it and that Raya did it. And...it's strange that just seeing Raya do it compelled them to do it without any further exploration of how this might have affected their world view or why they thought they should come to that decision.
This would have carried more weight if any of Sisu's attempts at trusting had been successful. Instead, it only happens to carry weight because Raya's tendency to not trust sometimes ties into those failures. Which leads me to my next point.
Lowkey blaming Raya by herself sometimes, without acknowledging her environment or upbringing (as well as others' during the war)
I get that the movie wanted to paint Raya's father in a sympathetic, almost heavenly light by showing that he only wanted peace and unity amongst the tribes, and he himself largely didn't believe in fighting unless it was absolutely necessary. I get that.
However, the movie also seems to sometimes suggest that it's "always been in Raya's nature to be aggressive"...while ignoring the fact that she was a child soldier and trained to prepare for the worst possible outcome since the beginning.
I feel it's strange to blame your protagonist partially for "the world being broken" when the protagonist was born and raised in this kind of world, and only taught this because she needed to survive and take her father's place.
I love the moments where protagonists are being called out for their flaws or mistakes, but in this case...Raya alone wasn't to blame, and the way her actions or paranoia caused ripple effects in the story, coupled with the fact that the story was unwilling to actually acknowledge Sisu as wrong because she needed to be a constant mouthpiece of the main lesson, was largely...accidental.
"Maybe it's broken because you don't trust anyone."
I like this on its own, in some contexts- but as stated above, there are instances when this can be very wrong, and it comes off more victim-blaming sometimes than constructive. If someone hurts you, you are right not to trust them. You're not responsible for what they do to you as a result.
"Why did you bring out your weapon? What do you know, maybe that person just wanted to talk to you?"
Yes, or maybe that person, who has long since been my established enemy and is currently carrying a weapon themselves, doesn't really care for whether I have faith in them or not - and my trusting or not trusting them can be my only line for survival.
The world is broken - however, it takes more than trust to put it back together.
Furthermore, I don't...like it when Raya alone is blamed for "breaking the world because she just never trusts people". This ignores the fact that the majority of the people around her were never trustworthy or attempted this in the first place. Raya accidentally broke the stone? She wouldn't have if she wasn't surrounded by people ready to attack her and her father. Raya accidentally caused Namaari's arrow to hit Sisu? Namaari had a weapon aimed at them and she has fought with Raya before, and Raya had no way of knowing for sure that Sisu wouldn't get hurt.
You can't...just say "why are you so untrusting?" To someone who has been fine tuned to fighting for survival all their life and can't afford to trust. If you're going to ask that, why not ask "why aren't people more trustworthy?" or "How can we protect you alternatively?"
The first step towards trust can be taken by someone who has been hurt before - but it's even more compelling when the first step to prove oneself trustworthy is taken by someone who has hurt that person before.
The idea that human nature is to fight and we can't really get along-and the fact that almost no clear reason was given for the fights except greed
Again, the warring tribes don't get to participate in the saving of the world. None of the people who were actually, directly responsible for the conflict get to resolve it meaningfully.
Raya says that they didn't need Sisu because they were strong together - but the dragons still return without the people properly reuniting. Which implies that the people only reunited because the dragons returned.
Does that...end greed? Do people stop being selfish? What will happen the next time any kind of conflict arises? The people still...aren't going to unite together to fight it?
People fight for more reasons than just pure greed and paranoia.
How does trust help us fix these conflicts between people in the same society - if the primary source of the conflict was greed and not paranoia, wouldn't humility then be the solution? Or reason?
The side characters are good but not memorable or too significant-
Because the near-ending has all five (or so) of them uniting the pieces of the dragon stone (well, technically, each of them giving up their piece to Namaari), the side characters don't...add very much. They add some flavor and time, sure - they're all diverse, interesting characters who share common backstories and are united by a similar cause. However...the idea of found family is teased at before quickly being taken away.
Raya doesn't trust these people to be part of the group just because she gains a better understanding of connecting with people or even to prove Sisu right (which she almost never is). She primarily does it because they're useful to her...and/or she pities them.
They come to connect for a bit, which was a sweet scene, but it was brief and didn't have an overall bearing to the story.
Everyone's families come back at the end, and everyone returns back to their families. There isn't exactly a hint that this helped unite the tribes, and that people learned from their example and tried reaching out to each other and helping eachother in their time of need.
I guess it was a neat way of showing that tragedy can bring people together as well as tear them apart, but again -people are going to fight if whether there is tragedy or not.
That's it for now, but if I ever do realize I left out something I might come back to this review.
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class1akids · 3 years
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I do wonder about the idea of ones body loving on is own as the ultimate heroic deed. On one hand, I do understand that as a hero, it is your job to put your life on the line for others. But at the same time, the story makes it seem like a hero shouldn't care or value their own life. Like at the start the heroes weren't standing around waiting for no reason. They were standing around because they knew they couldn't save bakugou and they didnt want to get hurt. But thats seen as something unheroic, despite the fact that their was actual logic in their decision. Its almost like if you value your own life as a hero, its considered a bad thing. Does that make sense? O get the idea that bakugou moved on hisnown or whatever, but when thats seen as the ultimate heroic deed, it makes me think that heroes shouldn't think about their own lives.
I like when the story sets up a relatively simple idea, but then it starts twisting it around. So yeah, All Might does say this:
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I don’t think what All Might is saying that moving without thinking every time is what makes a hero - only that it can be a sign of greatness - this ability of sometimes, very rarely, when pushed to the edge surpass rational thinking and go for something that may seem impossible or counter-intuitive, because it FEELS so right, that they just can’t not do it. At least that’s how I understand it. 
But the story spells out pretty clearly the dark side of this type of behaviour:
1. Aizawa point-blank tells Midoriya that being reckless and becoming a liability for others is not heroic, and it’s an important early lesson to teach Midoriya. 
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 2. There are trade-offs. A reckless save done may mean that next time he won’t be able to save. This is the dilemma of All Might’s reduced ability to keep his muscle form - he intervenes to save Bakugou, but it means his overall time is also reduced, so others may not be saved. Izuku breaking himself in self-sacrifice means he’s unable to save Bakugou when he’s being kidnapped - and on top of it, he is causing long-term damage to his arms which on the long run affects (should affect if not for plot) his ability to save. 
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3. Heroes sometimes die for others, but the pain they leave behind to their loved ones is real and should not be treated lightly. 
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And for this reason, the narrative teaches that a hero should not be unnecessarily reckless. That often thinking carefully and finding another way instead of just charging in heart full is the better solution. 
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And All Might acknowledges this - not sacrificing himself, making the smart choice, getting away is sometimes the best thing Deku can do. The right thing even. 
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I think in Midoriya’s case that “body moved on its own” moment came so early, because he had the full hero spirit, but not the power to back it up. He didn’t have the option of a smart play or to rely on his strength, only his heart. 
In Bakugou’s case though, he has had both a top-notch power and great tactical thinking. So he has rarely been cornered to the point where he was unable to rely on his quirk and battle sense to figure something out (and have someone else’s life on the line). Ever since he has made a conscious choice to save, he’s always found the means to do so without getting himself hurt. 
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Even in the current arc, against Shigaraki’s overwhelming power, Bakugou tries to remain tactical, instead of charging in recklessly; he goes for smart teamwork. 
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He saves in whatever way he can (destroying the quirk-erasing bullet) and tries to keep his cool even when Deku goes into rage-mode - not letting himself to be swept up in emotions, but instead coming up with a winning strategy using logic and trying to keep everyone as safe as possible under the circumstances (making sure that the injured got first-aid, making sure to keep Endeavor from overheating to give him the best chance - nobody is treated as less important)
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So his moment of “moved on its own” doesn’t come until everything else - all logic, all tactics, all power - had failed and it comes down to just a single moment, a single choice. 
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And it’s that moment where Bakugou is able to clear his mind to the point where his body moves on its own, FEELING rather than knowing that it’s the right thing to do. 
What makes Bakugou great is not this single moment, but everything else that leads up to it. All the work he put in his own power, in Deku’s training, every single move he made from the moment he decided to go with Deku to back him up - he’s not throwing his life away carelessly. It’s just the last step that he takes instinctively, having reached the end of the line, with the knowledge that there is no win-scenario in which Deku is not alive. 
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quickspinner · 3 years
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Hi, I kind of have some questions that I’m curious about. Let’s say ML is getting a reboot and you were a writer hired for the show. 1. What would you change? And which episodes would you remove? 2.How would you have written Luka into season 1? 3. How would have made the interactions between Luka and Marinette work? 4. How would you write Lukanette to be endgame?
I feel like this is an essay question on a final exam! 😆 I’m going to have to be general by necessity here or I’d be writing several pages of thesis for weeks. (edit: and even so it is super long and wordy, so just imagine how bad it could have been) 
1. What would I change?
Honestly, I don’t think I would change a lot of the basic premise. I like the show and I like the characters as a whole, but I would definitely tweak a few things in the storytelling approach. 
a) I would remove some of the restrictions they’ve placed on themselves, such as their commitment to each episode being as stand alone as possible. It’s possible to have continuity and still have an episode format where young kids can jump in at any point and understand what’s going on. You can have character growth and consistent timelines without making it so that anyone who misses an episode is lost, and you can have the occasional two-parter episode if you have a heavy point to make. If this ultimately ends up shifting the target audience a little older, then so be it, although I don’t think it’s especially necessary. I feel like one of the show’s big problems is that they’re trying to tell a story that’s outgrown their framework, and it’s something that should have been planned for from the beginning.
b) I would rework their ‘forumula’ of having Marinette make a mistake and then learn from it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the idea of ‘each episode should teach a lesson’ but they’re not committed enough to it, and it’s a mistake to think that just because Marinette is the protagonist, she has to be the one making all the mistakes and learning all the lessons. As a result we end up with Marinette suffering for no good reason and apologizing in situations where she did nothing wrong, and the ‘lesson’ she was meant to learn ends up muddled and confusing. It’s okay if not every episode has a lesson. As a parent I don’t ask that every single moment of my children’s entertainment be educational, just that it not be actively harmful, and the current presentation often is thanks to their determination to blame Marinette and the confusing messaging that results. So, follow through with that lesson formula most of the time, but let the appropriate character learn a lesson, and address it more clearly. 
Gamer 2.0 is a perfect example. The worst thing Marinette did was disregard Max’s feelings about the tournament so that she could play with Adrien, and they could have acknowledged that while also having Max learn the lesson that sometimes you have to learn to lose gracefully, and that just because effort isn’t rewarded the way you wanted it to be, it doesn’t mean it was without value. Or Reflekdoll; both Juleka and Alya had lessons to learn about communicating clearly and paying attention to other people’s feelings respectively. 
c) Expanding from that, I’d have the narrative hold people accountable more equitably across the board. A good 90% of my frustration with Adrien/Chat Noir is that the narrative never holds him accountable for his actions (I’m excluding NY here because I have a whole other essay’s worth of Stuff to say on that, but yes, I will acknowledge that it was at least a minimal step forward towards holding him accountable). What I mean by that is, there is never any doubt that Chloe is behaving badly. There is never any doubt that Lila is not a good person. The narrative makes it clear through their presentations, the other characters’ reactions to them, and the consequences of their actions, that the way they behave is not okay.
Likewise, the narrative never fails to condemn Marinette for her mistakes, often through ridicule and humiliation and sometimes by consequences far out of proportion of her actual mistakes. 
Adrien/Chat is never on the receiving end of that. None of the things he does that we’re all so salty about are ever that bad, certainly no worse than many other characters. However, he’s never held to account for it. There’s never any apology, and rarely any consequences. Copycat is maybe the closest episode to holding Chat accountable, but even so there’s no acknowledgement or apology required for Chat himself. Because, as per point b above, Marinette is the one who makes mistakes and learns lessons and so it’s her mistakes that we focus on. I was utterly shocked in Frozer when he leaned forward and told her to use her lucky charm instead of saying “hey, sorry I ran off and left you to face the villain alone, which might have gotten you seriously hurt if I hadn’t happened along in the nick of time.” It wasn’t fair of him to be upset with Ladybug in Siren when she agreed to do what she could to get Fu to fill him in (and followed through) but there was no apology for that either. He was right to be upset but he was mad at the wrong person, and at the end of the day he got what he wanted without actually having to admit that he did anything wrong or unfair, and that’s frustrating. Glaciator came close, when he graciously accepted Ladybug’s rejection, but there was no change after that to drive it home (and he wasn’t held accountable for lying to his friends to ditch their ice cream plan either). Again, none of these things individually make him a bad person or a horrible character, but it’s grating to see him constantly let off the hook, usually with Marinette having to take responsibility instead.
Not only Chat, but Alya as well, and we’ve actually seen Nino do some apologizing so that’s a positive start. Get past the idea that Marinette is the only one who can make mistakes and learn a lesson; the kids will learn it just as well from someone else. Go watch some 80′s cartoons, geeze, they were masters of the morality-based narrative. 
Let us see Chat (and others) apologize and then (per point a) improve his behavior, maybe getting upset and caught up in his feelings again but this time recognizing that they have a job to do first. Let everybody grow, instead of pounding on Marinette again and again and again. 
d) More time with the side characters. I don’t know how I’d manage it tbh, half an hour is not a lot of time, but I would love to see more of the friendships and especially the art club. Perhaps if the show were less focused on making Marinette the lesson of every episode, there would be more time for the other characters to grow and learn and be explored.
Which episodes would you remove?
I don’t think there are any episodes that I would remove...maybe Party Crasher because that episode was just...weird...but I did like the friendship aspect of it (this is one of those ones where their formula gets muddy and confusing, because...”don’t tell lies and make crappy excuses to your friends” is really what we were supposed to get from that? So, I don’t know if that episode was salvageable. Almost all the other episodes that really give me cringe (hello, Puppeteer 2) contained important moments that could have been delivered in a less upsetting matter if the points above were addressed. Stormy Weather 2 was pretty pointless, but it wouldn’t have been if there had been any actual continuity for a clip show to catch you up on. (while we were chatting today @verfound made a great point though about how Puppeteer 2 could have been used as a clip show as they walked through the wax museum, and I had to agree that would have been much more effective).
2.How would you have written Luka into season 1?
I honestly don’t think I would have? I think he came in at right about the right time. I would have maybe given him a cameo in Reflekta just to set up Captain Hardrock a little more, but other than that, I don’t think it was time for him to come on the scene yet.
3. How would have made the interactions between Luka and Marinette work?
I actually really like how things are now. I would like to see Marinette be more direct and honest with him. Right now, Luka consistently arranges everything so that she never has to admit anything she isn’t ready for. He addresses her feelings without her ever having to bring them up, admit to them, or voice them on her own, and while that’s very kind and I feel like both Luka’s perceptiveness and his kindness and desire to make her comfortable are very central to his character, I would like Marinette tp at some point acknowledge his feelings and her own to his face. Right now their relationship has a level of honesty that I feel like is lacking in most of the others, but it’s mainly due to Luka’s perceptiveness and willingness to be honest himself than it does with anything Marinette’s done, so I’d like to see her exhibit a little more agency there. 
4. How would you write Lukanette to be endgame?
Ooof...I mean, I feel like I addressed some possibilities for that in Finding Harmony and in Second Chance. Marinette has to get over her feelings for Adrien, either by recognizing that she’s just ready to let go (Finding Harmony), dating him and letting the relationship come to a natural end (Second Chance), or confessing her feelings to him and being rejected so that she can get through the heartbreak and move on. The push-and-pull situation the show has her in right now was sustainable for a while, and for seasons one and two it felt like there was some growth there so her constant flailing didn’t seem totally useless. It seemed like she was getting closer to telling him, like she was getting more comfortable with him over time, like there was still the possibility of him liking her back. Up through Despair Bear I was on board with the Adrien is oblivious/in denial of his feelings theory and all was well. 
But as he continued to choose Kagami over Marinette over and over then Marinette’s flailing began to be more pathetic and hopeless, and I became less willing to believe that Adrien had any real feelings for Marinette beyond friendship, and that’s where the ‘Whatever chance there was, I think I missed it’ conversation in Finding Harmony came from. There was a moment where maybe if she had been able to confess they could have been something, but she didn’t, and the moment has passed and now she has to move on.
So yeah, to me there has to be a breaking point of some kind that gives Marinette that push to start making an effort to get over her feelings (Puppeteer 2 would have been the perfect place for it, and I think it was after that episode that I actually started writing Finding Harmony). She’d have to put in effort, it would be hard, and she would do everything she was attempting to do in the NY special and more, and it would take time and support and it would hurt. There’d be Lukanette comfort and support just like there has been up until now, but they wouldn’t date until Marinette reached a point where she really felt free. 
Second Chance was more along the lines of what I expected to actually happen, in that Marinette and Adrien would get together for a while, and then post series there would be a breakup and a reunion with Luka where they rekindle their feelings. 
I haven’t written a fic where Marinette confesses and is rejected because I just don’t want to deal in that kind of pain. But, Miracle Queen is honestly an acceptable substitute, where she sees Adrien’s budding relationship with someone else and resigns herself to it and commits to moving on. I just would want season 4 to pick up at that point, and move her through that difficult time of trying to break all those old habits, trying to find a way to be his friend without indulging in ways that are unhealthy for her (like long tight hugs and sniffing his cologne). I don’t think rushing straight into another relationship is a healthy answer for either Marinette or Luka. This is something Marinette has to work through, and Luka can support her, but she has to do the work herself. 
So that’s my off-the-cuff, didn’t study, winging it exam answer. Hope it satisfies some of your curiosity!
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bladekindeyewear · 3 years
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Okay so, I have no idea who Aesma is. What does "Turning Vriska into Homestuck's Aesma" mean in this context?
I really don’t want to get into it much, as Kill Six Billion Demons is truly incredible from top to bottom so far and I think it’s more fun to go in blind.  Ideally, ignore everything I have to say and go read it some time.  (Be sure to read the text posts under every so-odd page, the sometimes-present hover-over alt-text too, et cetera.)  Like, don’t even read this post, even though it isn’t really a spoiler.
However, to sum it up if you want it.....
In the mythological pantheon outlined in K6BD, Aesma is the mother of chaos and quite seemingly the embodiment of the Id.  In stories of her exploits with titles like “Aesma and the Three Masters (and the lessons she never learned)”, Aesma is depicted as the epitome of willful selfishness and ignorant wickedness, a committer of atrocities both intentional and inadvertent -- and is also the most beloved of the Creator’s children by said Creator, not just for stripping bare the hubris of others, even the Divine, but for embodying the selfish drive of Life that distinguishes (and in this Creator’s view, should rightly distinguish) the living from nothingness.  She is selfish to the point of stupidity, egotistical in a way that is constantly self-defeating, and yet a paradoxically shining example of an attitude one must embrace in some respect to truly strive in life -- and an example none that live should believe themselves above.  Even the angels begin their prayers with her name in deference, though not exactly entirely admiringly.
You COULD say that some of the writers of Homestuck^2 love Vriska a bit more than the average fan, to say the least, and a little more than Andrew did.  And you could both judge from the story’s current contents and expect from the known views of said writers that they are PERHAPS more likely to focus on how awesome she is than the pain and suffering her continued refusal to learn anything will keep bringing down on everyone.  Showing her toxic flaws off, sure, but at the same time (in some crucial ways) having the narrative almost “forgive” them because she gets results. NOT that they've quite done so YET, not entirely! But they might.
That possibility worries me.
As far as Vriska went, the pre-Epilogue ending of Homestuck was pretty perfect for the story’s themes:  Vriska DID get to save the day, glory-hogging and fighting Lord English in the way she THOUGHT she wanted... but in the process was denied the Ultimate Reward, was in fact rendered irrelevant in the ways that ACTUALLY mattered and was left excluded from the happiness promised to those who decided that creating the next world and living in it mattered more to them than cosmic victory.  She chose relevance over everything else, and Paradox Space cursed her by granting her wish. (Never learning her lesson... and paying dearly for it, in ways she doesn't even realize.)
The Epilogues undermine her further.  They show that she was barely a cog in the machine that resulted in Lord English’s defeat.  They give her a second POTENTIAL chance at eventual happiness, but do so by “banishing her to irrelevance” and thrusting her into the “non-canon” storyline.  It was revealed recently in HS^2 that the history books of the Candy timeline didn’t even really give her actions any credit.
So... pretty much the worst thing I could imagine Homestuck^2 doing -- and I COULD imagine it doing this, unfortunately -- is taking this nigh-unrepentant abuser who has barely regretted her actions and torn the souls and potential out of characters like Tavros who were doomed never to recover from it, and “correcting” this ending a bit.  To have her potentially ruin an ENTIRE POST-VICTORY EARTH with another meteor apocalypse (or try to), to continue her same selfish attitude portrayed in FURTHER “heroic” light, and then have the narrative ITSELF imply that everyone should be thanking her in the end????
There are some good lessons to learn from Vriska’s better qualities.  However, K6BD’s mythological stories of Aesma treat her depiction VERY carefully, or I guess I should say heavy-handedly -- leaving NO illusions or ambiguity about the evil of her actions, the caustic ignorance inherent in the lessons she refuses to learn, turning a selfish perpetual-child into an almost-pitiable one that ultimately DOES “lose”... even as the story cautions everyone not to pity her, as to think oneself too much “better” than her is a grave and arrogant error.  That deliberate, clear nuance would be LOST if the same reverent narrative treatment were ultimately given to Vriska.  Homestuck^2 would become a vehicle to forgive her abuse, her choice of ignorance, as something that can be ultimately padded over or mulliganed at the last minute.  The stories of Aesma carefully depict her to show that if she had learned ANY lesson -- ANY at all in the multiple opportunities given to her throughout her storied life -- she could have been not just the Creator’s most beloved, but truly the greatest in every respect WE value.  And the tragedy that she does not is both unforgivable / deserving of mockery, AND a cautionary, frank depiction of Humanity itself as sharing that same blind failing.
Homestuck is another work that constantly tries to show the value in people who are flawed -- even dangerous.  (Unsurprising that they’d share this, given how K6BD began as an adventure on the MSPA Forums.)  Trying to blindly do the SAME to Vriska as Aesma, though, to finally end the story of the Homestuck series as one that gives her her “due credit”, risks communicating an awful lesson that her crimes were “worth it” despite trampling over the will of almost everyone else who exists, both inside and outside canon.  If it’s not done VERY, VERY CAREFULLY.
I hope they avoid this route altogether, and instead -- since it’s unlikely she’ll purely “die” achieving relevance at the cost of happiness again -- have her finally accept SOME degree of mediocrity in a way that actually learns her a fucking lesson for once, and doesn’t just let Vriska shut her sins into the closet and lean casually on the door, after a brief show of considering contrition or a disproportionately-small sob that her victims’ roiling, broken ghosts would roll their eyes at.
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autumnblogs · 3 years
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Day 44: Preoccupied about the same things as Trolls, revisited
Welcome back y’all! Before we get into this, I want to talk about the Condesce/Meenah as a parallel character to Mom Lalonde/Roxy. You can read a bit about @mmmmalo​‘s takes on Openbound, and why they think that Meenah is symbolically Roxy’s Doppelganger here.
I want to call attention to some specific similarities between them, and while I think it’s a bit of a stretch, Homestuck draws parallels between characters all the time.
Both the Condesce and Mom Lalonde are matriarch figures estranged from their potential offspring by dire circumstances and servitude to a patriarchal authority and his time-spanning plan - for the Condesce, that’s English obviously, but for Mom Lalonde, that’s Grandpa Harley - servitude to his design renders her a wreck of an alcoholic forced to endure the end of days with no means to stop them from happening, living with a daughter who wants nothing to do her.
Both Meenah and Roxy are rebels against a repressive order, inclined to shirk their assigned Role in service to someone else’s master plan, but ultimately, through some roundabout means or another, give service to it anyway (for Meenah, scratching the game, and ultimately ending up English’s glorified slave for eons in the end; for Roxy, at first refusing to play Sburb in hopes of spiting the Batterwitch, but ultimately ending up playing into her schemes anyway).
They are both rebellious spirits who are repeatedly forced to participate in Paradox Space’s Alpha Timeline all but against their will by hegemonic forces, slaves to a system that they exist in perpetual rebellion against, and by the end of the comic, they both get to help strike a decisive blow against the ultimate foe. Unfortunately, unlike Roxy, Meenah is ultimately the kind of person who chooses at practically every occasion to continue cycles of abuse instead of breaking them. There is ultimately no possibility of reconciliation between these estranged sisters.
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So, I see a lot of the Alpha Kids in the four Alpha Trolls who appear in this flash. As the Faux Heroic Himbo, the parallel between Rufioh and Jake is obvious. I don’t think that it’s fair to characterize Jake’s relationship with Dirk as being “cheating on Jane,” though that’s probably how Jane feels about the whole situation; I’ve always gotten the impression she feels entitled to him.
More after the break.
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The imagery here is an obvious parallel between Jake and Dirk’s big damn kiss, and Rufioh and Horuss’s - but between Rufioh’s bravado and general obliviousness, and Horuss’s clear triangular parallel with Dirk and Equius, we should expect that the situation is switched here - Dirk = Horuss, Rufioh = Jake.
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While it could easily just be a bit of extraneous characterization, I’m inclined to regard Rufioh’s characterization of the women in his life as “Dolls” especially because of his symbolic proximity to Lord English. (He is at best one degree of separation from him, as Jake English’s Alpha Troll Doppelganger) - and the fact that Puppets and Dolls are pretty much synonymous with each other in terms of the way that English interacts with them.
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More extremely obvious parallels.
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Both of the Zahhaks have hangups about dating down the Hemospectrum, and as long as we’re examining Dirk through the lens of the Zahhaks, allow me to speculate; I think that part of the reason Dirk chooses not to directly identify with the label of gay is less aloofly progressive futurism, and more that he is uncomfortable with his own sexuality.
As a guy who repeatedly appeals to reactionary ideals and rhetorical devices like “Western Civilization,” “Reason,” “Logic,” maybe there is a degree to which we can read Horuss and Equius’ self-repression through the haemospectrum into Dirk suffering from internalized Homophobia.
This is a real long shot, but I’ve always gotten the impression that Dirk is a bit of a bottom. Maybe his desire in building up Jake into a powerful counterpart, like English’s desire to transform Jake into a powerful rival, is built out of a desire to be Oedipally usurped by a former pupil - to have his Eromenos turn the tables, and become the Erastes in turn, in power-dynamic terms.
In Classical Civilization, homosexual relations weren’t unheard of, and were pretty reasonably common, but it was seen as shameful to bottom, especially for someone of a lower social standing than you were (Julius Caesar was mocked as the Queen of Bithynia when it was rumored that he bottomed for Nicomedes IV, which was a serious attack on his political career).
Wild speculative tangent over.
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Now this is interesting; Meenah is unwittingly drawing a parralel between Damara and Vriska. The main commonality between them is that, like Vriska (and also like Rose, and also like Jane - who is the fourth and final character in this particular set) her spite and resentment is used as the vector for English’s manipulation of their setting.
Like Vriska, Damara deliberately sabotages the ability of her session members to win, helping to create a powerful foe who forces a session to be scratched.
Like Rose, Damara descends into nihilistic substance abuse to cope with feelings of emptiness.
Like Jane, Damara’s actual feelings of emptiness come about as a result of feelings of rejection in relation to betrayal from within her close friendship circle.
Ironically, while Damara’s reaction is far worse than Jane’s, her anger is actually probably far more understandable - Jane is not entitled to Jake.
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The situation between Horuss and Rufioh is also similar to what will resolve between Jake and Dirk shortly - they are just basically incompatible, or at least they will be until both parties do some work on themselves, but a combination of an oblivious party who can’t stop talking about himself, and social timidity on the part of the other prevents the situation from resolving amicably.
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“As Long As I Know That I Am Free”
Sometimes, encountering our ancestors doesn’t have to be a source of tension, anxiety, expectation, and fear. Porrim models parental love for Kanaya in a way that, unusually for ancestors in Homestuck, is purely beneficial for her younger counterpart.
It’s okay to identify with roles and identities that have been corrupted or hegemonized by our culture. There’s nothing intrinsically bad about being a man, or about being a woman, as long as our embodiment of those roles is emancipatory to us.
Kanaya can still be a Mom, if that’s what she wants to be. Violence and money aren’t the only form that power can take.
Sometimes, learning the right lessons is just a matter of pausing for a second and being critical of all narratives; deciding for ourselves what we want to be. It’s the lesson that Porrim has to teach Kanaya.
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This is just objectively true.
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Aranea positions Rufioh as both a foil to Cronus, and to herself, further strengthening the Jake as Rufioh parallels.
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What I think is really interesting about all this, is if we want to read the other three trolls as Jake, Dirk, and Jane, that makes Meenah the Roxy of this group! And while Roxy has never been vicious or deliberately cruel, there’s a certain resonance between her persistent hassling of Jane, her meddling in the Jake English Sweepstakes, and the disaster that it provokes, and Meenah’s bullying - I even early on in my first readthrough took a disliking to Roxy because of what I viewed as exactly that - bullying her counterparts, assertively trying to get them to behave the way she wanted.
https://homestuck.com/story/5401
Oh man, where to even begin with Karkat riding off into the Penis Sunset. Like, the Sun in relation to Dave is persistently an icon of Bro’s surveillance of him, and then there’s his burgeoning affection for Karkat (he mentions story time with Karkat in the third Openbound suggesting that he actually took Karkat up on his offer to read through trashy Troll Romance).
Like, there’s probably something in Dave’s troubled psyche that’s on display here but damn if I know what it is. Maybe he’s ruminating on the fact that Bro would probably not be too accepting of his relationship with Karkat, hence the juxtaposition of the symbol of Bro’s hostility with the imagery of Karkat riding a dick?
https://homestuck.com/story/5404
I don’t really need to explicate much on what Rose is trying to say, I think but just in case, here’s a little rundown of what she’s trying to explain.
The apple is a symbol of an irreducible idea. Many ideas are reducible - as molecules are reducible to atoms, and atoms are reducible to quarks and stuff, so are ideas reducible to increasingly more abstracted and basic units.
The closer to notionally irreducible a thing becomes, the more difficult it becomes to express an idea, until at last, that which is truly irreducible resolves, and reveals to us the true, intrinsic nature of reality. For every complex idea, we can refer to more fundamental ideas, until at last, we arrive at an idea, which when probed, responds back simply, “It just does that.”
This, I think, is that to which we ought to give the name of God; that force so fundamental that it truly does just do that.
In the world of Homestuck, Symbols, and with them, Rituals - stories! Are manifestations of the primeval and irreducible ideas. Everything else is a universe in orbit around the Divine - the Aspects themselves, perhaps, or something more fundamental than the Aspects even.
What makes reducing these stories to the irreducible principles that they allude to so difficult is that you’re effectively trying to explain the electromagnetic force by comparing it to rubber bands, when in fact, the electromagnetic force is what makes the rubber bands behave that way in the first place.
As a Ritual, Rose’s drinking is pretty similar to John’s Dad roleplaying - an attempt at unity with Her Mom. Another empty signifier.
https://homestuck.com/story/5405
Dave is already really embracing his new role as the actually most sincere and straightforward member of the party. Lovin’ it.
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It’s kind of nice that Aradia and Vriska are getting along now. That’s gratifying for personal reasons.
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Ah yeah, I forgot that was ever addressed officially.
https://homestuck.com/story/5435
The man
HASS the ring.
https://homestuck.com/story/5440
And with the depressingly empty Void session established via a single flash, we shall conclude for the evening.
Tomorrow, we’ll get to know our little villain.
For now, it’s Cam signing off, Alive, and a little Annoyed that I wasted a couple hours playing the Outriders Demo this afternoon. Seriously, what an aesthetically bleak and kind of mediocre-looking class-based cover shooter.
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dillydedalus · 3 years
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april reading
oh yeah this is a thing. anyway in april i read about uhhh.... first contact (twice), murderers on skis & victorian church politics
the yield, tara june winch a novel about indigenous australian identity and history (now and throughout the 20th century) in three narrative strands. imo the narrative strand that consists of a grandfather writing a dictionary of his language (wiradjuri) in order to prove a claim to some land is by far the strongest, but overall i liked this quite a lot. 3/5
land of big numbers, te-ping chen a solid short story collection focused on modern china and young(ish) chinese people, both in china and the diaspora. i particularly liked the stories that had some slighty surreal or speculative elements, such as one about fruit that strongly evoke emotions when eaten and a group of people stuck in a train station for months as the train is delayed, which imo use their speculative aspects in effective (if not super subtle) ways to talk about society. 3/5
the pear field, nana ekvtimishvili (tr. from georgian by elizabeth heighway) international booker prize longlist! a short, fairly depressing read about a 18-year-old girl at a post-soviet school for developmentally disabled childred (but also orphans, abandoned children & other random kids) who is trying to get a younger boy adopted by an american couple. there seem to be a lot of novels set at post-soviet orphanages etc & imo this is a well-executed example of the microgenre, with the pear field full of pears that are never picked bc they don’t taste right as a strong central image. 3/5
the warden, anthony trollope (chronicles of barsetshire #1) ah yes, a 6-part victorian series about church politics in an english town, exactly the kind of thing i’m interested in. not sure why i committed to at least the first two entries of the series but here we are. despite this lack of interest (and disagreement with most of the politics on display here) i found this quite charming; trollope has a gift for an amusing turn of phrase & making fun of his characters in benevolent ways. 3/5
the lesson, cadwell turnbull first contact scifi novel set on the virgin islands, where an alien ship arrives one day. the aliens seem benevolent & share helpful technology, but also react with extreme violence to any aggression. they claim to be on earth to study.... something, but it’s never entirely clear what. the book makes some interesting choices (like immediately skipping over the actual first contact to a few years in the future, when the aliens are already established on the islands) but i thought much of it was kinda disjointed and confusing. 2/5
the heart is a lonely hunter, carson mccullers look, i get it, it’s all about the isolation & alienation (& dare i say loneliness) of 4 miserable characters projecting their issues on the central character singer, who is kind and patient and also deaf and mute, thus making him the perfect receptacle for their issues without really having to connect with him as a person and how that isolation hinders them socially, artistically, emotionally, politically, but like... i didn’t really like it. i didn’t hate it but i just felt very meh about it all. 2.5/5
acht tage im mai: die letzte woche des dritten reiches, volker ulrich fascinating history book about the last week(ish) of the third reich, starting with the day of hitler’s suicide and ending with the total surrender (but with plenty of flashbacks and forwards), and looking at military&political leadership (german and allied) as well as prisoners of war, forced laborers, concentration camp prisoners, and everyone else. very interesting look at what kästner described as the “gap between the not-anymore and the not-yet.” 3.5/5
firekeeper’s daughter, angeline boulley) i’ve been mostly off the YA train for the last few years, but this was a really good example of contemporary YA with a focus on ~social issues. ANYWAY. this is YA crime novel about daunis, a mixed-race unenrolled ojibwe girl close to finishing high school who is struggling with family problems, university plans, and feeling caught between her white and her native familiy when her best friend is shot in front of her and she decides to become a CI for an fbi investigation into meth production in the community. i really appreciated how hard this went both with the broader social issues (racism, addiction) and daunis’ personal struggles. there are a few bits that felt a bit didactic & on the nose (and the romance... oh well), but overall the themes of community, family, and the value of living indigenous culture are really well done & i teared up several times. 4/5
the magic toyshop, angela carter i love carter’s short stories but struggle with (while still liking) her novels so far. this one, a tale of melanie, suddenly orphaned after trying on her mother’s wedding dress in the garden, coming of age and awakening to womanhood or whatever. carter’s really into that. it’s well-written, sensual as carter always is, and the family melanie and her siblings are sent to, her tyrannical puppet-maker uncle, his mute wife and the wife’s two brothers, both fascinating and offputting (& dirty) make for an interesting cast of characters, but overall i just wish i was reading the bloody chamber again. 3/5
barchester towers, anthony trollope (chronicles of barsetshire #2) (audio) lol tbh i still don’t know why i am committing to this series about, again, church politics in 19th century rural england, but it’s just so chill & warm & funny (we love gently or not so gently - but always politely - mocking our characters) that i’m enjoying it as a nice little trip where people do some #crazyschemes to gain church positions or fight over whether there should be songs in church or whatever it is people in the 19th century fought about. it’s very relaxing. there also is a lot of love quadrangleyness going on and that’s also fun. trollope has weird ideas about women but like whatever, i for one wish mrs proudie much joy of her position as defacto bishop of barchester, she really girlbossed her way to the top. 3.5/5
semiosis, sue burke (semiosis #1) i love spinning the wheel on the “first contact with X weird alien species” & i guess this time we landed on plants! plant intelligence is interesting and the idea of plant warfare is really cool. i do like the structure, with different generations of human settlers on the planet pax providing a long-term view but this allows the author to skip over a lot of the development of the relationship between the settlers and the plant and locating the plot elsewhere, which i think is ultimately a mistake. i might continue w/ the series tho, depending on library availability. 2.5/5
one by one, ruth ware a bunch of start-up people go on a corporate retreat to a ski chalet in the alps, avalanche warning goes up, one of them disappears, presumably on a black piste, the rest get snowed in & completely cut off when the avalanche hits and then they get picked off *title drop* (altho really not that many of them). nice fluff when i had a miserable cold (not covid) but fails when it tries to go for deeper themes... like an attempt to address classism and entitlement sure... was made. also like what kind of luxury skiing chalet does not have emergency communication devices in case internet/phone lines are down...  i’d have sued just for that. 2/5
fake accounts, lauren oyler the microgenre of ‘alienated intellectual(ish) probably anglophone person has some sort of crisis, goes to berlin about it’ is my ultimate literary weakness - i almost never really like them, they mostly irritate me & yet i can never resist their siren call. this one is p strong on the irritation, altho at least the narrator does not ascribe much meaning to her decision to go to berlin after she a) discovers her boyf is an online conspiracy theorist (probably not sincerely) and b) gets a call that said boyf has died, it’s really just something to do to avoid doing anything else. but other than that it’s so BerlinExpat by the numbers, like she lives in kreuzkölln! put her somewhere else at least! there is one scene that elevates the BerlinExpat-ness of it all (narrator asks expatfriend for advice on visa applications, expatfriend assures her that it’s really easy for americans to get visa, adds “especially now” while literally, as the narrator remarks, gesturing at the falafel she’s eating) other than that, the novel is.... fine. it’s smart, but not really as smart as it thinks it is, which is a problem bc it thinks it’s just sooo incisive. whatever. 2/5
the tenant of wildfell hall, anne bronte this is reductive but: jane eyre: i could fix him // wuthering heights: i could make him worse // wildfell hall: lmao i’m gonna leave his ass anyway i enjoyed the part that is actually narrated by the titular tenant of wildfell hall, helen (which thankfully, i think, is most of it) because the perspective of a woman who runs away from her abusive alcoholic of a husband is genuinely interesting and engaging, while gilbert, the frame story narrator who falls in love with helen, is.... the worst. i mean he’s not the worst bc the abusive husband arthur is there and hard to beat in terms of worseness, but he’s pretty fucking bad. imagine if helen had found out that gilbert attacked her secret brother over a misunderstanding, severely injured him & LEFT HIM TO DIE & then (when dude survived & the misunderstanding got cleared up) apologised like well i guess i didn’t treat you quite right! she’d have to run away from her second husband as well! poor girl. 3/5
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