#but she is NOT racist simply based on what characters said in her book. like cmon now | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thenightling · 2 months

Text

The reality of "Cancel culture" is jus an annoying casual bullying to make people stop talking about various subjects

Last night I posted something that amused me about Spirit Halloween. It was about spirit Halloween now selling adult sized reproduction Ben Cooper Halloween costumes (Popular but very cheap kids Halloween costumes from the 1930s to the early 1990s).

This resulted in someone hijacking my Tumblr post about to give a "Friendly reminder" that we shouldn't buy anything from Spirit Halloween because Spirit Halloween is owned by Spencer's Gifts and "in 2016 Spencer's gifts sold 'Grab America by the p-ssy' shirts and they have yet to apologize!"

I don't care. Yes, it's disgusting that Trump said he could grab a woman by her p-ssy and get away with it. Yes, the shirt was in poor taste but I'm not avoiding a store because it's owned by the same people who own another store that sold a tasteless shirt EIGHT years ago!

I am tired of being told what I should or shouldn't interact with.

I run a Neil Gaiman's The Sandman Facebook group and I was called a TERF apologist and even Transphobe all because I won't ban the mention of J. K. Rowling. She is literally mentioned in episode 11 of The Sandman Netflix series. And Neil Giaman's four part story The Books of Magic is often mistaken as a Harry Potter rip-off even though it was published over seven-years before the first Harry Potter book was published.

Even though my group's very first rule is "No bigotry" I was accused of leaving transphobic content on the group. Someone in "The Trailer Park Pagans are at it Again" group even kept a bunch of posts from transphobes from within my Sandman group from before I could ban them (Most of those troll posts were less than eleven minutes old when screen grabbed) to make it look like I allowed that crap.

When Hocus Pocus 2 was released to Disney+ someone in my group decided to announce that Bette Midler was a transphobe and she "No longer felt safe in the group" if I talked about Hocus Pocus. Like simply mentioning a fictional character Bette Midler played will make her manifest in their bedroom.

I am NOT justifying or "apologizisting" anything Bette Midler has said. Liking those films is not based on the personal lives of the women involved.

I posted an ASMR video by "Jim's ASMR" based on The Sandman and someone felt the need to tell me how "Problematic" he is because he cheated on his wife in real life with other ASMR artists.

I posted a Nostalgia Critic video and get a lecture about how problematic Channel Awesome is (Yes, I know. I know. I saw the manifesto.)

I really like Danny Elfman. Recently there were some awful accusations tied to him from decades ago that I will not defend but thankfully it appears there was no real evidence anyway. But apparently I'm not supposed to listen to my old recordings anymore, even though he's not getting any new money for them. Annoyingly some people have even used his Oingo Boingo song "Little Girls" as "Proof" that he's a sexual predator even though the song was meant to be a call out to shame people in Hollywood who take advantage of underage girls. You're not supposed to like the main character of the song, and he's even caught at the end of the music video version.

I was told Netflix's Castlevania is problematic and I should avoid it because of some misbehavior of the show's writer. I LIKE Castlevania!

I've been told to avoid Tim Burton because he's "racist" even though I've seen him make a conscious effort to be a lot more diverse in his casting.

On Facebook someone tried to scold me for being Wiccan. They lectured me because Wiccans borrow from other religions and there for "Culturally appropriate." Well, name any religion that doesn't do that. I replied with more or less that challenge and got "If you acknowledge the problematic elements of Wiccan why don't you avoid it?"

Because I'm a f--king adult and I don't avoid all things that are "Problematic." All religions borrow from other religions. There's no pure and untainted form of Paganism. It's Neo Paganism for a reason. And most of it was reinvented or cobbled together in the nineteenth century, just slightly older than modern Wicca pieced together from ancient folk beliefs.

Spirit Halloween Spencer's Gifts J. K. Rowling Harry Potter Bette Midler Hocus Pocus Nostalgia Critic Jim's ASMR videos Danny Elfman Castlevania Tim Burton Wicca (My own religion!)

I've reached a point where I'm sick of being told what I should avoid even discussing because it's "Problematic" or offensive. Note: I am NOT justifying sexual abuse or J. K. Rowling's anti-Trans views.

I understand there's a valid reason to avoid some of these things if you have strong convictions about them and that's up to you but I do not appreciate my posts being hijacked to be given a "Friendly reminder" why you shouldn't shop at Spirit Halloween.

"Friendly reminder" YOU don't get to dictate what I talk about or where I shop, or what music I listen to. If it's problematic that's on me. It's not your business. If I want to listen to an ASMR by a man-whore who doesn't know who to be faithful so what? I'm not sleeping with him, I'm listening to his semi-hypnotic insomnia aid videos.

#Spirit Halloween #IF YOU COMMENT AGAIN ABOUT THE SHIRT SPENCERS SOLD IN 2016 I IWLL BLOCK YOU!!!!

7 notes · View notes

bookishfeylin · 10 months

Note

I don't want to accuse Sjm of Zionism, there is simply not enough evidence and it is a severe accusation because of the state of Palestine right now and can very easily be blatantly Anti-Semitic. But I do want to say with her track record of being racist, misogynistic, homophobic and with a tendency to write her white main characters as conquerers and colonizers (Its not confirmed but we can all get a picture of Feysand being primed for High King and Queen) it does rub me wrong.

Not to mention a lot of ToG has that same undertone. There's a conversation between Aelin and Rowan where they talk about conquering more lands after taking back Terrasen and she says that if she gets “bored of being queen she will conquer and gain more land to be empress". And once again I'm not saying this to accuse her of Zionism, but it doesn't feel right and Sjm is known to write in a way that mirrors her personal beliefs. I say this with only regards to her actions (through her writing) and not her beliefs as a Jewish woman.

There's nothing wrong with visiting her family in Israel, or even having a grandmother that still volunteers at a military base because that's her grandmother's actions and not hers. There is something wrong with the fact that she wrote Aelin as someone who's "taking back" her country and then contemplating conquering more. And Feysand possibly being High King and Queen when they treat PoC coded Illyrians like they're savages and you don't see them outside of the Mountains unless they're dying for Rhysand on the battlefield. It just all feels very colonizer to me.

I hope I'm not coming off as rude, the issue of Palestine is very close to my heart and reading ToG and Acotar and seeing some things mirrored in them has always kind of remained unsettled with me and I would love to hear your opinion on it.

Hi anon! Nope, you’re not rude! :) So a big disclaimer: I am a Black American. Any analysis I can offer on this is through that lens, fortunately or unfortunately. That being said:

While the pro-imperialist, pro-colonialist, and pro-"both sides" themes PERMEATING Sarah's writing do likely point to her beliefs or biases (even unconscious, internalized ones she has), so do the artistic works of many white creators, often in way worse and way more blatant ways than Sarah's books. How many of tumblr's beloved “children’s shows” feature the imperialist/colonizers/genocide committing villains be shown as redeemable, as sympathetic, and worthy of redemption while simultaneously declaring any victims of colonization/genocide who have the audacity to fight back as the REAL bad guy, or just as bad as their oppressors? And not just children’s shows—so much media in general has this same theme, where the colonizers are more redeemable than the colonized, often including a cautionary tale warning oppressed peoples to “be careful” in our liberation efforts so we don’t become “just as bad.” (See my on media tag for a lot of discussion on this, among other things.) Our media—our books, our television shows, our movies— are, unfortunately, FULL of colonizer/imperialist apologia. Full of some “they’re human too!” nonsense that I am TIRED of having shoved down my throat. My point is, Sarah's writing is more likely due to her being a white woman in western society rather than any support of what’s happening to Palestinians. She’s one white creator among many, and merely exists as a symptom of a greater problem in our society and white fans who argue that pointing this out and critiquing this disgusting trope of “oppressor is redeemable and sympathetic and HUMAN but oppressed aren’t” in their favorite cartoon is being a ~toxic anti puritan~ make this worse. So does her writing point to her own biases about the nature of oppression? Yes, but in a way that appears to be no different than most media made by white people in the West, and unrelated to her thoughts on the Israel-Palestine conflict specifically. But yes please be unsettled because these ideas are ALARMINGLY present in media.

#i hope I came off as nice??? I truly was trying to be very polite in my response #I just think her problematic writing is more due to her having biases like nearly every other white creator #And I don’t like jumping to ‘her works suggest she might support israel’#On media #SJM critical #anti sjm #anti acotar #ask #anon

18 notes · View notes

dontthinkaboutcookies · 1 year

Text

Annabeth’s blonde-ness is not important.

Some argue that Annabeth’s blonde hair is important to her character. While that is somewhat true, it is only the case because it is a feature that causes some people to underestimate her. That is relevant to one of Annabeth’s most important features— one that can be seen not in her appearance but in her behavior and actions— her drive to prove herself. Because of stereotypes about blondes and women, people judge Annabeth as soon as they see her. Annabeth Chase is intelligent, resilient, wise, skilled in combat, very experienced in fighting for her life and the lives of others while having limited resources. She is an invaluable asset to any team and a formidable, terrifying opponent to any foe. Yet she is constantly underestimated and dismissed because of her gender, hair color, and —especially at the beginning of her story— her age (Annabeth has a lot more experience with monster fighting and combat strategies than most her siblings did because she ran away from home when she was seven). But one of the things people love about Annabeth is her fiery determination. She’s quick to disprove people’s assumptions about her and has a commanding presence to those who know her.

I read a writing tip once that said that a character’s greatest weakness is related to their greatest strength. Annabeth has said before that her ‘fatal flaw’ is pride. As dangerous as pride can be, it can also be a powerful tool in motivating her. While she is driven by inquisitiveness and morality and loyalty, she is also, undoubtedly, driven by spite. When people first meet her, they don’t always expect much, and she can’t let them be right. Annabeth’s blonde hair is important solely because of the purpose it serves.

To think that Annabeth can’t be the same character if she does not have her blonde hair to motivate her is simply unfounded. It is no secret that black people face discrimination and that racists form opinions about them because of their appearance. Annabeth being a black girl stays very true to character. The motivation is the same. People are stupid enough to believe that physical features are relevant to what a person is capable of. Annabeth resents this and wants to prove people wrong. What’s important about Annabeth is not her physical features, it is that she overcomes people’s expectations of her in spite of the assumptions they make about her based on her physical appearance. (side note: Annabeth’s gray eyes aren’t important to her character. Despite being mentioned so often in her descriptions, they are described as “stormy gray eyes.” Yeah there’s the comparison between the intensity and emotion in her eyes and the intensity of a storm via them both being gray but c’mon, clearly what’s important there is that you can see her fiery determination in her eyes)

People were upset that Leah Jeffries was cast as Annabeth because they were expecting the cast to look exactly like the books described. But let’s be real. When we say we want a cinematic adaptation of a book, what we really mean is that we want an audiobook with stunning visuals to go along with it. But cinematic adaptations are inherently different from their source text specifically because of the different medium that is used to tell the story. While “show-not-tell” is an important aspect of quality writing, novels are reliant on narration and dialogue in order to convey information to the reader. But for cinematic works, the “show-not-tell” rule applies differently. Movies and shows aim to convey as much information to the viewer as they can through visuals. Movies that are heavily reliant on narration and dialogue are kind of a waste. May as well just listen to a podcast. Cinematographers take advantage of the fact that they can show you what’s going on without having to put it into words. Not to mention, lots of things happen more quickly than they can be described, like fight scenes, or scenes that are very chaotic and have a lot going on simultaneously. And new places might be described in several pages but on screen would only be dwelled on for about 10 seconds. So we can’t realistically expect them to be exactly the same and that is a good thing. The story is being told in a different way. Switching from novelistic communication to cinematic communication is a fundamental difference. There are improvements that need to be made in order to tell the story efficiently and effectively. Cinematic adaptations are inherently different from their source material and they are all the better for it.

What really matters is an actor’s ability to believably portray a character.

I have a friend who is an actress. She’s also a brunette; she told me her grandparents lived in the Middle East. She told me once that she was auditioning for a role as a murder victim. After her audition, she was told that her performance was the best but “Sorry, you’re just not White Trash enough.” So they picked the blonde actress over her. Because it was a one-episode character who barely had any screen time before dying and whose main trait was probably meant be “white trash. ” Would you really want to sacrifice the quality of the show for something as superficial as appearance?

Rick Riordan said himself that during the casting/ auditioning process, they weren’t looking for people who looked like the characters but people who were the right age and who could play the characters the best. Leah Jeffries was cast to play Annabeth Chase. I am fully confident in her ability to give us a great portrayal of Annabeth and I look forward to seeing her performance.

#percy jackson #annabeth chase #disney plus #in this essay i will #yes this post is very long and no I am not sorry

7 notes · View notes

sleepynegress · 2 years

Text

Quiet as it's kept when we talk about the racism that's inflicted upon us, those who inflict it are less likely to listen So, that is why is it so key, that white people speak up more than us. As Toni Morrison said (paraphased) it's a white problem, white people should solve it. THAT is why this post from Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series is so appreciated (as is his wife, who is speaking up on social media as well):

MAY 10, 2022

Leah Jeffries is Annabeth Chase

This post is specifically for those who have a problem with the casting of Leah Jeffries as Annabeth Chase. It’s a shame such posts need to be written, but they do. First, let me be clear I am speaking here only for myself. These thoughts are mine alone. They do not necessarily reflect or represent the opinions of any part of Disney, the TV show, the production team, or the Jeffries family.

The response to the casting of Leah has been overwhelmingly positive and joyous, as it should be. Leah brings so much energy and enthusiasm to this role, so much of Annabeth’s strength. She will be a role model for new generations of girls who will see in her the kind of hero they want to be.

If you have a problem with this casting, however, take it up with me. You have no one else to blame. Whatever else you take from this post, we should be able to agree that bullying and harassing a child online is inexcusably wrong. As strong as Leah is, as much as we have discussed the potential for this kind of reaction and the intense pressure this role will bring, the negative comments she has received online are out of line. They need to stop. Now.

I was quite clear a year ago, when we announced our first open casting, that we would be following Disney’s company policy on nondiscrimination: We are committed to diverse, inclusive casting. For every role, please submit qualified performers, without regard to disability, gender, race and ethnicity, age, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other basis prohibited by law. We did that. The casting process was long, intense, massive and exhaustive.

I have been clear, as the author, that I was looking for the best actors to inhabit and bring to life the personalities of these characters, and that physical appearance was secondary for me. We did that. We took a year to do this process thoroughly and find the best of the best. This trio is the best. Leah Jeffries is Annabeth Chase.

Some of you have apparently felt offended or exasperated when your objections are called out online as racist. “But I am not racist,” you say. “It is not racist to want an actor who is accurate to the book’s description of the character!”

Let’s examine that statement.

You are upset/disappointed/frustrated/angry because a Black actor has been cast to play a character who was described as white in the books. “She doesn’t look the way I always imagined.”

You either are not aware, or have dismissed, Leah’s years of hard work honing her craft, her talent, her tenacity, her focus, her screen presence. You refuse to believe her selection could have been based on merit. Without having seen her play the part, you have pre-judged her (pre + judge = prejudice) and decided she must have been hired simply to fill a quota or tick a diversity box. And by the way, these criticisms have come from across the political spectrum, right and left.

You have decided that I couldn’t possibly mean what I have always said: That the true nature of the character lies in their personality. You feel I must have been coerced, brainwashed, bribed, threatened, whatever, or I as a white male author never would have chosen a Black actor for the part of this canonically white girl.

You refuse to believe me, the guy who wrote the books and created these characters, when I say that these actors are perfect for the roles because of the talent they bring and the way they used their auditions to expand, improve and electrify the lines they were given. Once you see Leah as Annabeth, she will become exactly the way you imagine Annabeth, assuming you give her that chance, but you refuse to credit that this may be true.

You are judging her appropriateness for this role solely and exclusively on how she looks. She is a Black girl playing someone who was described in the books as white.

Friends, that is racism.

And before you resort to the old kneejerk reaction — “I am not racist!” — let’s examine that statement too.

If I may quote from an excellent recent article in the Boston Globe about Dr. Khama Ennis, who created a program on implicit bias for the Massachusetts Board of Registration for Medicine in Boston: “To say a person doesn’t have bias is to say that person isn’t human. It’s how we navigate the world … based on what we’re taught and our own personal histories.”

Racism/colorism isn’t something we have or don’t have. I have it. You have it. We all do. And not just white people like me. All people. It’s either something we recognize and try to work on, or it’s something we deny. Saying “I am not racist!” is simply declaring that you deny your own biases and refuse to work on them.

The core message of Percy Jackson has always been that difference is strength. There is power in plurality. The things that distinguish us from one another are often our marks of individual greatness. You should never judge someone by how well they fit your preconceived notions. That neurodivergent kid who has failed out of six schools, for instance, may well be the son of Poseidon. Anyone can be a hero.

If you don’t get that, if you’re still upset about the casting of this marvelous trio, then it doesn’t matter how many times you have read the books. You didn’t learn anything from them.

Watch the show or don’t. That’s your call. But this will be an adaptation that I am proud of, and which fully honors the spirit of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, taking the bedtime story I told my son twenty years ago to make him feel better about being neurodivergent, and improving on it so that kids all over the world can continue to see themselves as heroes at Camp Half-Blood.

Rick Riordan

#pjo #percy jackson and the olympians #annabeth chase #beautiful allyship #and the thing is he just picked the best actor for the job #that's literally it #something racists disingeniously demand often #rick riordan #leah sava jeffries

71 notes · View notes

nuatthebeach · 2 years

Note

What's your top 10 Harry Potter favorite characters?

To start off, just want to make it clear that while I like some characters more than others, I actually appreciate each and every one of these characters for the roles they exercise in the books. Appreciating vs liking do not always equate, and certainly nor do respecting vs liking. This Top 10 is purely based on my opinion, and the reasons that are subsequently provided are simply that - reasons - and not evidence. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Also, after writing all of this, I realized this ended up being a very long character analysis instead of being purely based on liking, so please enjoy this very chaotic list because I felt chaotic writing it for sure.

With that being said…

10. Lily - I know. Crazy. You must be thinking what the hell is wrong with me to put her last in the first place. I can already feel the backlash from fandom, but I’m kind of beyond caring by this point because this fandom is crazy as hell. My issue with Lily is that from my standpoint, she’s truly not developed enough for me to gravitate to her. The main characteristics that we get from her is that she’s smart, funny, selfless, and cool. However, not only do we not see real canon evidence of these traits (besides being selfless), but that’s pretty much all the details we get of her personality. I guess you could argue that she learned to see the nuance in people and overcame her stubbornness by falling in love with James - in this case, I agree, she had some development there, though how much of it was her “overcoming” her stubbornness and not just James becoming more “worthy” of her, it’s hard to tell. For the most part though, I think she was mainly written - by JKR, not fandom - as a plot device: a prize to be won by either James or Snape to determine who is more “worthy” of her love and a sacrificial lamb that must represent the ideal Harry must hold to successfully kill Voldemort - love. All in all, it’s a pass for me, sorry. Still makes the ranking though, so there’s that!

9. Snape - I know, I know. How in the world am I putting Snape above Lily in my ranking? I need it to be known I really dislike Snape from the bottom of my core. He is cruel, petty, and arguably never really cared about Harry beyond his “love” for Lily. I think Alan Rickman definitely made his character a lot more palatable because when I first read the books, not a single tear shed for him when he died (in contrast, it did while watching the movies, but that doesn’t come as a surprise since the two mediums are so different). However, saying this dude didn’t absolutely nail his double agent role and completely throw people off in his complexity is just simply dismissive. He’s just…really complicated, and reading that in books, not real life, is incredibly fascinating from a literary point of view. Don’t like him, but I don’t exactly hate him either.

8. Draco - speaking of annoying assholes. Honestly I kind of want to rank him lower but alas I went through a Drinny/Dramione phase ten years ago and unfortunately fanon Draco (who as we all know - regardless whether you like him or not - is very different from both book and honestly movie Draco too) seems to loom occasionally. In the books, he’s classist, racist, snobbish, spoiled, an actual bully, and a bunch of other adjectives I’d need a dictionary to pull out to describe him with. With that being said, his sixth year was quite troublesome for him and I don’t put a lot of blame for his actions and conflict there because he was a kid who like Ginny was manipulated by Voldemort in his own way, even if he played a more conscious role in it. I give him a 3/10 for personal preference, 5/10 for development.

7. Luna - I gotta say, when I was a kid, I liked her a lot for all the reasons you normally would gravitate toward a whimsical, strange, funny-without-trying character, and though I still appreciate all of these characteristics - and her value as friends to Harry and Ginny in particular - I see some flaws in her arc now. I am a firm believer that often times, whenever authors want their characters to appear more complex, they just tack on a tragic backstory (one we never really saw on scene) and call it development while keeping their characterization relatively static. Case in point, Luna. There’s no argument that she’s one of the most loved characters in Harry Potter, and I think the reason for that is because there’s simply nothing to not like about her. She almost doesn’t seem real. Though I can appreciate the beauty in that too because she - just like the things she believes in - are open to interpretation as well.

6. James - surprisingly, I don’t have a lot of strong feelings for James either way. This just seemed like a neutral area to put him in so here we are. He’s pretty decent. He reminds me of the perfect mix between Harry and Ginny: brash, arrogant, impulsive, but also caring and willing to do the right thing when it counts. It actually really surprises me when people bash James - a lot of the times, I think it’s because they only really watch the movies, which never show the positives of his character. He’s even shoved to the side further in DH2 movie with dead Lily saying “Always” to Harry in the Forest of Dean, which I’ve always considered a big fuck you to the supposed great love story that is meant to symbolize the main theme of love and everything it means to fight for it. He even has GREAT development mentioned in the books as well, considered he, I don’t know, changed by helping out Snape in the end, proving he’s not the senseless bully others make him out to be? And yet, people feel more sympathy for Snape even though he continues his petty rivalry by enacting it on literal kids who did nothing to him? Anywho.

5. Hermione - I’ve always had mixed feelings about Hermione, unfortunately because of the ever present shit show that is the movies. Seriously. Fuck the movies. With that being said, I actually think her characterization is not bad…it’s similar to Lily’s arc (but a lot more actualized in my opinion) in that she went from being stubborn and single-minded in some ways to understanding there is a lot more to life than books but rather friendship and bravery (her words, not mine). She’s smart, intense, scary, and compassionate, and honestly just writing about her gives me the chills. However, my problem with her character arc is that it just keeps repeating in every single book (SS, OOTP, HBP especially). She learns this lesson over and over and it makes me feel like JKR kind of didn’t know where to go with her after a while.

4. Neville - speaking of character arcs that keep repeating. I like his arc because it’s the typical shy/awkward boy finds grounding and confidence, which with me having gone through that myself (and lowkey still going through it lol), many can relate to this a lot. Because this arc is repeated so much though - particularly in the movies - he’s a bit overinfantilized and babied when he’s proven himself time and again that he’s actually quite capable. He doesn’t really have much flaws like in the case with Luna (unless you count being shy and awkward, which it seems he’s more endeared for it than anything), but overall a great lad.

3. Ron - probably one of the most developed characters in the books because both of his strengths and flaws are clearly shown page after page, time after time again. Also probably the most hated. And probably the most relatable. I’m, uh…starting to see a correlation. Honestly I could talk about him for hours, but to quote Ms. Marvel: Good is not something that you are, it’s something that you do. And Ron’s actions speak for themselves. He leaves the Trio in DH? He comes back and atones for it. He treats Hermione badly in HBP? He makes efforts to improve his “lack of an emotional range” (which is BS btw) by reading the book about How to Charm Witches. He has an argument with Hermione about Crookshanks and Scabbers? He offers to make up for it by helping Hermione in her research on Buckbeak. And c’mon. Don’t tell me that when you read the scene in DH of him crying (NOT being angry, jealous, petty) after killing the Horcrux that your heart did not absolutely shatter for this tender, precious moment of vulnerability that hardly any other character besides maybe Harry displayed in the books at that age. A King 👑.

2. Ginny - honestly, this one alternates with my number one sometimes but because I’m going with the answer I know in my heart is right, I’m sticking her here for now. This girl. If she were real, I’d give her my babies. She is almost the most developed female character in the book series, considering the little number of relevant scenes she was given. I say almost because I actually do think JKR missed the concluding bulls-eye with her arc, particularly in HBP and DH. I, like everyone else, expected her to do a lot more than she did (c’mon she’s one of the only kids connected to fucking Voldemort, that had to have counted for something?!?!). With that being said, she’s the only female character who has a consistent rise in characterization throughout the books: starting off as a bubbly 10 year old waving and crying to see her brothers leave, a shy 11 year old who can’t speak around Harry but can to her diary and trauma ensues, a quiet 12 year old who still doesn’t talk to Harry but is overcoming her reputation as the girl who opened the Chamber and was victimized by literal Voldemort himself, and so on and so forth to the flawed, stubborn, angry, petty, defensive but also caring, compassionate, funny, clever, sassy girl we have by HBP and DH. As the books go on, you really see her shine and become a woman in her own right. And interestingly enough, her arc doesn’t repeat, like Hermione’s and Neville’s does; it has a clear direction that journeys from Book 1 to the end. For all of these reasons, I notice a lot of people claim she isn’t very developed - and while I agree she could definitely be more - I’d also argue she’s one of the most obviously developed too. Plus, I’ve always been fascinated by her connection to Voldemort and wish JKR explored it more herself: from her wand being made of the same wood as his (while Harry’s is made of the same core…hmmm interesting) to the interactions being much more gendered and personal than I’d even argue Harry’s. If I had to read about someone’s relationship with Voldemort other than Harry, Ginny definitely takes the cake, sorry Draco. I could go on and on about her, but if you want more Ginny meta, just check out my other posts dedicated just for her.

1. Harry - …MAN does this boy deserve more recognition in his own damn franchise. I don’t think the book series would have been more interesting if it was told in literally anybody else’s point of view. He is so witty, caring, headstrong, brave, stubborn, and beautifully flawed that I can’t help but adore him. I will forever hate the Steve Kloves and company for making him appear one-note, static, and absolutely positively bland in the movies because the truth is that he has so much freakin’ depth. Order of the Phoenix was the book that sold me on him. He had every right to be feeling angry at not just the adults in his life but the system and those who keep it under cover and even with a lot of that hurt and anger he STILL let Bellatrix go after she killed the closest loving parent figure he bloody had. Like, dayum. And what’s even more heartbreaking than that is only after all of the death and hurt and suffering in Deathly Hallows did he even further surprise all of us by throwing the Cruciatus curse at a Carrow for just simply talking bad about McGonagall. Talk about a Reputation album Taylor Swift era. You just can’t help but root for him while also being just the tiniest bit (okay, a large bit) intimidated by him. Regardless, he deserves better and if you want more examples of my defense for him (or anyone I’ve mentioned thus far), you need not but ask.

Honorable mentions include Fred, George, and Sirius, who I do adore but my feelings still tend to stay in the neutral area such that they couldn’t make it on this list.

If you couldn’t already tell, my love for characters stem from the amount of development they go through - it’s not always based on their “likability” or “toxicity.” I think an environment like fictional books provides a safe medium to explore morally gray, complex, dynamic, complicated, nuanced characters, and to completely dismiss or even “cancel” fictional characters is a bit…well, naive. That’s why for others it seems a little contradictory to put Snape and James in the same list together, but to me, it feels appropriate considering the complex traits the two have.

This was fun. I might consider doing a Top 5 or Top 10 ship ranking if this gets enough attention or if anyone wants one.

Thanks for the ask!!!

#ginny weasley #harry x ginny #Harry Potter #thanks for the ask!#yes I’m a lightening era stan and what about it

32 notes · View notes

richmond-rex · 2 years

Photo

THE KING’S GREY MARE (★★☆☆☆) — reviewing the blueprint of all Ricardian novels

I debated with myself for a long time if I should try to write a review for this book. My dislike was so strong despite my already low expectations for the story, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to be impartial in my review. I’ve given up on trying to be impartial and instead decided to explain to you how I feel about this story. This is a not-so-short review of the historical fiction novel The King’s Grey Mare written by Rosemary H. Jarman. Read at your leisure!

The first thing I need to tell you is that this book is, as explained by @lady-plantagenet, a story about Elizabeth Woodville, but not about Elizabeth Woodville’s life per se. Although it starts at the time of Elizabeth’s youth at the court of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou (a theory that has been deemed unlikely by now) and ends at her death, the story follows a few other people near Elizabeth Woodville who impact on her life. The narration seems to be a strange mix of the third-person omniscient point of view and third-person limited. It’s like the narrator sometimes focuses on the thoughts of a certain person and that person impacts the way the narrative is told, even to the point of repeating what was said before. It sounds confusing, but Jarman strangely manages to pull it off.

The second thing about this book is that it was published in 1973 and you can tell how dated it is, not only by the way the author chose to make Elizabeth Woodville a platinum blonde to convey her superior beauty—which weirdly became the standard portrayal for Elizabeth Woodville since then—but also by some very touchy aspects of the story that are racist, sexist, xenophobic, as well as scenes based on dubious consent that are meant to be read as the epitome of romance. Although the author claims to be sympathetic to Elizabeth Woodville, I thought she made a perverse use of this historical figure, depleting her of all internal logical and sensible actions, rendering her only a pretty doll filled with spite in order to be a channel for a literal demon, Melusine. Even Elizabeth’s mother, Jacquetta, is described as possessing ‘a devil-virgin’s smile’.

[Elizabeth] rose naked from the water and came to him, her wet hair shrouding her body like a tumult of silver weed. This was Isabella, his bride, no longer the image of an untouchable saint, but wanton, mischievous, maddening.

It is a pretty passage, but Jarman’s depiction of Elizabeth borders on dehumanising several times. Not even the man who loves her (in this case, John Grey) sees her as a person, but as a nymph, a demon. Throughout the novel, Elizabeth’s unnatural beauty is used against her to associate her with the water demon Melusine. It’s like the author punishes her for her beauty, the uncanny cold beauty the author herself decided to give her. Although Jarman tries to excuse the inexcusable actions she imparts on Elizabeth Woodville as choices beyond her control (as, according to her, Elizabeth was simply an instrument of fate), that does not explain why she makes Elizabeth so cruel and devoid of any kindness. In turn, it allows other characters to treat Elizabeth with the utmost harshness because, according to the story’s internal logic and evidence, she deserves it. This is Edward IV at the time he was supposed to have fallen in love with her, for pity’s sake:

He flung down the knife and sprang up. His towering shadow blotted the sun. He cursed her, calling her wanton, bloodless, jade, a whore that should be a nun, though there was no cloister devious enough to hold her.

Really, in face of his treatment, only Jacquetta’s witchcraft and a love potion could explain why Edward married Elizabeth at all, especially as in this story Edward IV is undoubtedly already married to Eleanor Talbot (and Elizabeth knows it). Elizabeth Woodville in this story submits to her mother’s grandiose dreams of making her queen of England so she can take revenge on Warwick and the house of York who slew her first husband, Sir John Grey, at the 2nd Battle of St Albans. No at any time she’s loyal to the Yorkist cause, which feeds on the Ricardian claim that the Woodvilles were Lancastrians painting themselves in Yorkist colours in order to snatch the crown and soil the throne with their impure and grasping blood. Elizabeth not only engineers the deaths of Warwick, Clarence and Desmond, but also is responsible for the murder of Desmond’s two little boys, something I had never heard anywhere. I can only assume it’s the author’s moralising justification for the way Elizabeth would come to lose her two children. At one point in the story, a random character asks: ‘Why is the Queen’s Grace so full of hatred?’

Of course, there’s no explanation for Elizabeth’s unrelenting unkindness other than it makes Elizabeth’s enemies, especially Richard III, look better in comparison. Whilst Elizabeth made her tongue the ‘tool of blackness’, Richard’s benedictions literally lift her unspoken curses against Warwick. Whilst she rages, plots revenge and pinches her daughter so hard it breaks her skin, Richard of Gloucester is so good not even his enemies can find a sensible excuse to hate him. This is Dorset and Elizabeth about Richard at different points in the story:

‘Richard of Gloucester,’ he added disdainfully. ‘The King’s pet and popinjay. He sickens me with his talk of loyalty, his fussing with weapons, his book-learnt strategy. And Edward listens to him.’

‘The people love Richard! They love him better than they loved his brother [citation needed]. They admire him for his new statutes and his justice. Whatever the barons say, he has won the people’s heart!’

Jarman couldn’t be more impartial in her story even if she tried. Richard’s enemies hate him because he is so [checks smudged writing on hand] loyal, learned, and loved by the people. At some point, inexplicably, Hastings decides to ally himself with Elizabeth—Jarman blames it on Elizabeth/Jane Shore seducing him to the Woodville side because, obviously under the sexist logic in which her story operates, with the exception of a few individuals all women do is lead men astray. Even as Hastings takes Elizabeth’s side, he hates her so much that his decision is only explained by the author’s internal need to make Richard of Gloucester execute him in an act of undoubted justice. In the story, they even say Hastings got a trial before his execution, something that did not in any way happen in real life.

Hastings about Richard of Gloucester: ‘Tomorrow I shall engineer the killing of one who was dear to me, to a man I loved. One who himself loved me well, who rode with me against Lancaster, when he was a sickly stripling youth. Gloucester, who took my hand, not two moons ago – Jesu! who took my hand today! – saying: ‘Thank God for you, Will Hastings. Thank God for you, in these times of strife and madness.’

Hastings about Elizabeth Woodville: ‘And Elizabeth, upon whose coming I once looked with spleen and disapproval, shall be again supreme. Elizabeth, who put down venom like a ratcatcher throughout the court. Elizabeth, whose policies are loathed by me. She who broke her sovereign’s heart with Desmond’s death, and used her brother like the most skilled provocateur to bring wretched Clarence to a bubbling end. Elizabeth, who split the soul of Warwick until he knew neither day from night, nor friend from foe. Elizabeth, whose messages I meekly bear, whose will I wreak! [...] Woodville and Lancaster wench, you never warmed my lust. Yet to Edward, you were Bathsheba, Salome …’

It is absolutely vile to say the least. You could say the author is simply being ‘historically accurate’ in depicting men’s hatred of women if the text itself didn’t justify this hatred. In fact, Elizabeth truly did everything that Hastings is accusing her of in this story. Men’s hatred against women is morally justified in this novel at every turn, so it makes it even more stunning how kindly Richard III treats women, even the ones who acted against him. He welcomes not only his nieces but also Elizabeth to his court even if no chronicle ever said that he did welcome Elizabeth, and he treats Elizabeth/Jane Shore with remarkable leniency. At no point in the novel it’s mentioned Richard made Shore perform a walk of shame in the city of London, or that he wrote to Shore’s second husband trying to dissuade him from marrying her.

‘That is Lady Lynom. She was released from prison last fall. She is married now to the King’s Solicitor-General.’ ‘But she was a traitor! Conspirator and harlot – condemned by the King!’ ‘He pardoned her,’ said the man, dipping his head on his chest as if to weight his words. ‘He showed her mercy.’

Parts of history are omitted, bent and twisted to satisfy Jarman’s vision of Richard III as a tragic benevolent king who met his unfair end at the hands of a spiteful woman & her grasping kin and by the devious plotting of a man & his mother led by their delusions of grandeur. The story makes it clear that England becomes a worse place after Henry Tudor takes over, and, shockingly but not completly unexpected, his Welsh and Breton men are blamed for much cruelty. At Elizabeth of York’s coronation, Jarman makes them massacre civilians and, disgustingly and pointedly, a little innocent boy. All because they were unaware of English customs and decided to attack the population when confronted by English people and their traditions. I was shocked, but unfortunately, xenophobia is not an uncommon aspect to be found amongst Ricardians when talking about the Tudors.

Weigh my words, and before you run back to your mistress shed a tear. For England and Plantagenet; their curse is accomplished.

‘After today, I have had enough of Tudor’s England. We will leave at once.’

Weirdly, and this will sound like going off on a tangent, this novel also depicts a character of colour, a character described as a ‘moor’ named Salazar who came from Spain after Tudor’s victory. For no reason, he acts as the novel’s magical negro for two seconds. Jarman describes him in terms such as ‘tall, coal-black and mysterious, more elemental than man’, ‘he gathered her to his coloured breast’, ‘he looked down at her, so fair and small against his own dark mystery’. I am....... disgusted, but I feel like it was important to point this out. There was literally no reason for Jarman to include this character of colour whilst being racist about this addition.

Everyone who is associated with the Tudors is described as visually repugnant: Reginald Bray is a shadowy man who stinks and lives ‘like a hog’; John Morton has a ‘bulky body’, a fleshy face, ‘all wattles and dewlaps’, a ‘lizard eye’. Henry Tudor himself is described as having ‘dry, rust-coloured hair’, an almost lipless mouth, eyes that ‘were as cold as a preying bird’s’ — to sum up: ‘he looked like a starved infant offering macabre love’. He’s nothing but a paranoid mess who literally pisses himself on the field of Bosworth, a man not ‘altogether sure of his own manhood’ who coughs as though he had always had tuberculosis, who is constantly looking for reassurance in the pikes of his bodyguards, who uses Elizabeth of York as a baby-maker, and who betrays Elizabeth Woodville and kills her sons in the name of some obscure motto (‘Tudor must destroy Plantagenet’). Disappointing but not surprising for such a novel.

Accordingly, even ‘neutral’ characters are unable to offer any sympathy for the Tudors. This is John Grey thinking about child bride and rape survivor Margaret Beaufort when she was still in her early teens:

Secretly he thought of Margaret Beaufort with distaste. She flaunted at court as if her descent were of the most royal. Her bravado made no pretence at covering old history. The Beauforts were merely descended from John of Gaunt and his mistress, Kate Swynford. Bastards all, legitimized by Richard II with the proviso that none of the line should ever aspire to the Crown. Yet Margaret strutted like an Empress; her small black eyes could intimidate. There was something unnatural about her.

‘Didn’t you know? She wed and buried him almost within the year. She has a son, Henry, two years old. Poor Edmund never saw the child.’ ‘Holy Jesu! What killed him?’ ‘Margaret’s terrible learning, so they say,’ chuckled John. ‘With her philosophy and Greek, her disputations and dissertations, Edmund, unsure of his own wit, pined and died.

I could go on and on about the double standards about the Beauforts and all the other Plantagenet bastards who are depicted as noble and praiseworthy in Ricardian novels but I’m tired and this review is already long enough. In this novel John of Gloucester, Richard III’s bastard son, is a fine youth whose only ‘fault’ is his undying loyalty to his father and who is unjustly framed and executed by Henry VII, something that didn’t happen in real life. He engages in a little unnecessary and dull romance plotline with his cousin Grace Plantagenet, Edward IV’s natural daughter who is one of the only good female characters in this novel. She loves Elizabeth Woodville even though Elizabeth is nothing but unkind to her—she loves Elizabeth like a dog loves its master despite the kicks it receives, presumably because for a Ricardian author there’s nothing more inspiring than the motto ‘Loyaulté me lie’ and loyalty beyond reason is the noblest quality a person can display. Grace is so good she even tames wild animals that set out to attack her.

In contrast, fair-weather Elizabeth of York is a fickle, insipid girl who cries at every turn only to laugh scandalously loud at the next moment. Interestingly though, perhaps to prove her weak character, she doesn’t cry at her father’s death, only when she hears she won’t be considered a princess anymore. Of course, she also cries when she’s about to marry Henry VII and when she’s jilted by Richard III, the uncle she fell in love with. She’s a girl who says ‘how should I know?’ when asked about her brothers, who is ‘content to lie and wait, and reckon nothing’. Ricardian authors often make use of Elizabeth of York to prove Richard III’s worthiness but they don’t even bother to give her a full-fleshed personality. Irrational behaviour is, of course, a trait that the younger Elizabeth shares with her mother, who comes to regret her spiteful behaviour at the end of her life, after she trusted Henry Tudor only to be betrayed and imprisoned by him. Henry is the one ‘who should have earned all her hatred, all her destructive powers. She realized numbly that these had been expended on others less worthy of them’.

Perhaps the vilest thing about this novel is the way it blames Elizabeth Woodville for the death of her two sons. Jarman even has Elizabeth admit that much to herself:

I killed them. She twisted, shuddering [...] I killed them. I among others put them to death by whispers, destroyed my sons through word of mouth [...] The souls of those I love, Melusine! and their bodies too! I killed them. Like the Greeks, who, to ensure victory, act it out beforehand, I wrote their doom in chapter and verse. I cleared the road for Tudor, Beaufort, Morton. And the man who kept my sons safe I had killed with ignominy.

What else can I say? This story has all the hallmarks of a true Ricardian novel: Social justice warrior Richard III, too good, too cultured, too pure for this world? Check. Irrational, wild, vengeful and coldly beautiful Elizabeth Woodville? Check. Jacquetta the love witch of Luxembourg? Check. Despicable Henry Tudor who literally pisses himself on Bosworth Field? Check. Crying mess Elizabeth of York in love with her uncle? Check. Fragile as glass Anne Neville doomed to die from the start? Check. Woodville women serving a vengeful, bloodthirsty demon named Melusine who gives them mysterious powers? Check, check and check. It’s so extra, it even has Bishop Morton raising a young Thomas More in his household with the purpose to create a true story master to blacken Richard III’s name forevermore.

What I didn’t know was that Rosemary Jarman was at least original about the above points and every other Ricardian novel that came after Jarman’s novel in fact took from her story. I’m giving it two stars because the prose is truly beautiful at times, and there’s some interesting use of narrative foils (for example, Elizabeth Woodville and her ‘sin-eater’ Grace Plantagenet) that would be better applied to original characters than pigeonholed into historical figures. It loses three stars for poorly veiled historical innacuracy, awful characterisation, and sexist, racist and xenophobic narratives. The narration is beautiful but at times hollow in my opinion, unable to inspire any emotion. If you’re one who is looking for beautiful prose but who gets angry at the twisting of historical facts, this is not a novel for you. It will only give you a headache.

#oof.......#elizabeth woodville #margaret beaufort #henry vii #elizabeth of york #book review #rosemary jarman #the king's grey mare

44 notes · View notes

starseneyes · 2 years

Note

Having watched ADOW and read the books, what are your thoughts on it compared to Vampire Academy?

Hello, Anon! Now, I haven't read the VA books, so I feel like I'm a little deficient there when it comes to answering this completely...

That said, the biggest difference to me between the two is that Diana and Matthew's romance drives the plot forward on multiple levels. It's not just the emotional toll of their relationship, but also the political toll, the scientific toll, the toll on race-relations, and the problems of racist bias.

Dimitri and Rose do have a forbidden love because they are Damphir and he's technically her superior. But I would argue Lissa and Rose's relationship is more central to moving the plot forward than Dimitri and Rose.

Not to say there aren't complexities there. Like Matthew, Rose has a darkness within her, now, that can cloud her judgment and impede her actions. Like Diana, Dimitri has a fractured family and struggles to make lasting connections because he buries himself in his work. And in both cases, their initial interactions are not necessarily friendly... only for them to fall madly in love.

So, while Rose and Dimitri have a huge impact on one another, their relationship is more grounded in character. Matthew and Diana's affected both character and plot.

In ADOW, their relationship drives the drama forward. From the hatred of the witches for the vampires, the vampires for the witches, the tests Matthew's father puts Diana through, and her need to perfect her magic to even get them home because Matthew has a place for them to hide in time, but even that is a mess. Then, the complications of Blood Fever and how it relates to procreation. Oh, the whole thing is woven into the plot.

Rose and Dimitri, as of yet, are not driving the plot forward with their relationship. Even their one episode of being together changed them as characters, yes, but not necessarily the plot.

Even if they weren't sneaking around in Episode 7, and simply working together, the whole thing would have gone down the same plot-wise. Rose would still have sensed the Strigoi. They still would have gone to the Heretic's house. The Strigoi would still have followed them there. They still would have won that battle.

Lissa's actions changed the plot far more when she fired Rose, thus pivoting Rose's entire direction, yet again.

The simple act of Matthew and Diana choosing one another drives the plot forward. Matthew taking her to France incenses the Witches, who use it as political leverage. The Vampires use it as a sign that the deClairmont family is no longer fit for leadership. The Daemons see it as a sign that there can be intermixing of the species. It draws out Sophie, who finally admits to more than just her husband that her parents were Witches... which moves the plot ever forward.

Matthew and Diana's relationship drives plot while it molds characters. Right now, Rose and Dimitri's relationship is almost entirely character-based.

I say almost because, yes, Rose might not have survived the Mikhail Strigoi attack without Dimitri, and he wouldn't have gone if he didn't feel something for Rose. So, there are places where plot and character collide. But, thus far it's not like every episode is somehow propelled forward or shifted by Romitri.

In terms of romance, both are valid and beautiful and heartbreaking. Dimitri and Matthew are quite like-minded in their methods for controlling themselves, though I am more connected to Dimitri's struggle since it is born of abuse where Matthew's is a trick of blood.

And the fiery women they both fall for in Rose and Diana... the women who challenge the status quo and refuse to bend to the corrupt leadership. There's a lot that's similar, there.

But I feel attached to them in different ways. I see myself more in Dimitri and Rose, to be honest, but I prefer romances where two people work together and work through, which is the lure of Diana and Matthew. So, they're very different relationships and romances, despite obvious similarities.

I hope that makes sense! And if that's not what you were looking for, please feel free to clarify. Thanks for reading!

#Romitri #ADOW #A Discovery of Witches #Matthew Clairmont #Diana Bishop #Dimitri Belikov #Rose Hathaway #Vampire Academy #Vampire Academy Peacock #Forbidden Love #Bishmont

5 notes · View notes

mccoyyy · 3 years

Text

moving this to my new blog so I can pin it again lol

@stregoni-benefici you are completely correct but I just wanted to expand on this a little bit - also i’m putting this under a read more cause this got a lot longer than i originally thought it would be

sexism: smeyers treatment of female characters throughout the entire series is extremely problematic. like you don’t even need to read deep into the books to see that. the backstories of all her female characters all involve some form of trauma and are significantly more violent than the male vampires (Rosalie and Esme enduring physical/sexual assault meanwhile Edward dies of the flu and Emmett gets vibe checked by a bear).

she also creates the idea that a woman isn’t complete without children/being a mother. every female vampire in the series is desperate for children yet can’t, its mentioned in pretty much every book and extreme emphasis is placed on how tragic this is. a female character wanting children isn’t wrong or sexist at all but the way its written in twilight makes it seem like its something a woman has to do in order to be happy and smeyer pretty much cements this idea by making Bella suddenly desperate to have Renesmee despite showing no interest in children/audibly voicing her thoughts against having children in eclipse and the start of breaking dawn (i’m pretty sure Bella has a line of dialogue in the books where she says something like she didn’t realise it was something she wanted/needed until it happened bit I’m not sure I try not to read/think about breaking dawn)

there’s also the way she writes female characters, specifically Rosalie. its mentioned throughout the series that Rosalie has extreme mechanical skills and multiple degrees in STEM fields but its barely ever shown, and instead her characterisation focuses on being obsessed with her looks (first couple pages of this, written by smeyer for new moon), and being a ‘stereotypical bitch’. for the first three books most of her character/dialogue is based on being cold and rude to Bella. She is unnecessarily painted as the villain for having different views on Bella (quite literally) giving up her life and future to be with a man (which is a whole other can of worms). the same is done to the character of Leah in eclipse/breaking dawn. Leah is a woman in the Quileute Tribe, she has been severely affected by the Cullen’s presence in the area and is painted as a character that the reader is supposed to dislike simply because she doesn’t like Bella/the Cullen’s despite having extremely valid reasons not to

anti-Native - smeyers treatment of native tribes is horrendous. she has profited fr years off of of native american culture for years and has done so without any acknowledgements. furthermore, she also demonises native american teens (especially in new moon) by calling them wild, violent, dangerous and out of control and then uses these stereotypes to create a contrast between the self control and patience of the Cullen’s and make them seem more like the good guys, and the wolf pack being lesser. She does this again with the treatment of Jacobs character in new moon and especially eclipse.

Jacob starts off in new moon as Bella’s best friend. he helps Bella come out of a severe depression caused when Edward left at the start of the book. however in eclipse his character makes a complete flip and he becomes moody, temperamental, argumentative and disrespectful of Bella’s boundaries. his character becomes unrecognisable and despite smeyers claims of a love triangle, it is obvious what the outcome will be. I have seen countless instances of people on this site claiming they hate Jacob because he is a dick/disrespectful/just as unhealthy as Edward. this was done on purpose by smeyer as she uses Jacob to make Edward seem like the obvious and correct choice for Bella. if you need more proof of this, take the scene where Jacob kisses Bella without her consent and she breaks her hand when punching him, Edward swoops in and almost gets into a fight with Jacob for touching Bella without her consent. this is an obvious attempt to make Jacob seem like the villain and Edward the white saviour

there’s also the treatment of the native characters by the white characters in the books. multiple times in the series, the native characters are called/compared to dogs/brutes and have a distinct unpleasant smell. I don’t think I need to explain how this is racist. the pack also helps the Cullen’s/saves Bella’s lives and never receive any acknowledgement/are treated any better by the Cullen’s/anyone really. the pack are only ever used as a way to make the Cullen’s look better.

there’s also some pretty obvious similarities to colonisation with the Cullen’s entering Quiluete lands which then forces them to start phasing into wolves (and I’m pretty sure none of the pack actually want to start phasing). also, remember Leah? the only female member of the wolf pack? because of the change she effectively can’t have children? that has implications.

and to top it all off, after doing all that, smeyer has never once addressed this or even acknowledged the Quileute Tribe.

pedophilic - I mean even without mentioning breaking dawn its pretty awful. first of all you’ve got the blatant sexualisation of minors throughout the entire series. Edward is 17 throughout the series and smeyer is writing literal paragraphs about his chiselled abs. Jacob is 16/17 when she has him running about forks topless with a 6 pack. this is way more apparent in the movies but its still a huge issue in the books and lead to Taylor Lautner being confronted by adult fans trying to get him to sign their underwear, and being forced into being shirtless for most of the movies which made him extremely uncomfortable (Elizabeth Reaser (Esme) briefly talks about this in the ID10T podcast on spotify). and just as a reminder, Taylor was 16 when the first one was filmed and 17 for the second.

Breaking Dawn is a whole other can of worms. the glaringly obvious issue is Jacob imprinting on a literal newborn baby. now the concept of imprinting itself has racist elements to it, but its heavily implied in the series that imprinting will inevitably lead to a romantic relationship. Jacob imprinting on Renesmee and waiting until she is old enough to enter into a romantic relationship (never mind the fact that shes ‘old enough’ she will still technically be 5) is pretty much grooming. The same happens with Quil and his imprint, Claire (a two year old) where I’m pretty sure there’s a scene in breaking dawn where Jacob and Leah are watching Quil play with Claire and talking about how Quil isn’t going to date anyone because he and Claire are ‘pretty much inevitable’ (i might be wrong though, like I said I try not to read/think about breaking dawn)

smeyer has also written a spin off book (its like 250 odd pages) called the short second life of Bree Tanner (Bree is that newborn vampire killed after the battle in eclipse by the Volturi btw). In this book, Bree is 15 almost 16, and another character Diego is 18 which is definitely pushing the boundaries of ok. (also as a side note, funny how Bree and Jacob are literally the same age and smeyer states multiple times how Bree deserved better and is only a child (who straight up kills people), yet when it comes to Jacob he has to be a responsible adult and is vilified for every mistake he makes)

racist - smeyer refused to let Catherine Hardwicke (director of the first twilight) have a diverse cast because she ‘imagined them a certain way’ (white) and it was a fight to get Edi Gathegi cast as Laurent and had to compromise with smeyer to make Bella’s friend group more diverse. this woman straight up refused to hire more diverse actors and only agreed to when they were side characters/villains.

Also in the official companion book/guide to twilight, smeyer literally writes that vampire venom makes you white

‘the venom leeches all pigmentation from the skin into a more indestructable vampire form…regardless of original ethnicity a vampires skin will be exceptionally pale’ (official illustrated guide pg.69)

this is a whole lot of bullshit cause she is literally whitewashing characters, but when you pair this with the idea that vampires possess inhuman levels of beauty it becomes extremely problematic and implies that being pale/white is more beautiful than darker skin tones.

also, if we go back to Laurent’s character for a second. so Laurent is one of the only characters who isn’t described as white (in the books he is described as having a pale olive skin tone) and in the first book he comes across as pretty reasonable (warning carlisle about James/Victoria, travels up to Denali and tries out the veggie lifestyle) but in new moon, his characterisation pulls a 180° (sensing a theme here) and is suddenly trying to kill Bella as a favour to Victoria and is Evil™ despite in the first book he literally says to Carlisle he didn’t particularly like travelling with James/Victoria and was only really doing it for convenience. where did this undying loyalty come from? yet again, smeyer is completely disregarding established characterisation in POC characters specifically to villainise them.

and finally, we have Jasper. for some reason (that reason being that she is racist) smeyer decides to make Jasper a confederate soldier in his human life. if you don’t have a lot of knowledge on the american civil war, the confederacy were the side of the US that seceded from the union in order to keep their slaves. Jasper was a confederate soldier, and not just any soldier, but a major. Jasper was a major in an army that fought for 4 years to keep the existence of slavery (and don’t even try to say that slavery wasn’t the root cause of the civil war. states rights aye? states rights to do what). now there’s an argument out there made by certain fans that a lot of people joined the confederate army out of pride/were forced into it cause of conscription to try and head canon the racism away but like that doesn’t matter. there was literally no need to make jasper a confederate in the first place. if she was so desperate to have a civil war vampire then she could have made him a member of the union. its been common knowledge that the confederacy was racist for a long time now, smeyer has absolutely no excuses here.

a lot of these issues overlap and I have probably missed heaps of issues (so feel free to add on) but hope this helps explain why smeyer can *ahem* get tae absolute fuck

#smeyer deserves jail #writing this pissed me off so much brb im off to buy a dartboard and a coloured printer #twilight #anti-smeyer #twilight renaissance #twilight resurgance #twilight revival #dont fucking buy midnight sun #edward cullen #jacob black #bella swan #the cullens #wolf pack #jasper whitlock #jasper hale

435 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 3 years

Text

Doctor Who: Perfect 10? How Fandom Forgets the Dark Side of David Tennant’s Doctor

https://ift.tt/2URb21b

As recently as September 2020 David Tennant topped a Radio Times poll of favourite Doctors. He beat Tom Baker in a 2006 Doctor Who Magazine poll, and was voted the best TV character of the 21st Century by the readers of Digital Spy. He was the Doctor during one of Doctor Who‘s critical and commercial peaks, bringing in consistently high ratings and a Christmas day audience of 13.31 million for ‘Voyage of the Damned’, and 12.27 million for his final episode, ‘The End of Time – Part Two’. He is the only other Doctor who challenges Tom Baker in terms of associated iconography, even being part of the Christmas idents on BBC One as his final episodes were broadcast. Put simply, the Tenth Doctor is ‘My Doctor’ for a huge swathe of people and David Tennant in a brown coat will be the image they think of when Doctor Who is mentioned.

In articles to accompany these fan polls, Tennant’s Doctor is described as ‘amiable’ in contrast to his predecessor Christopher Eccleston’s dark take on the character. Ten is ‘down-to-earth’, ‘romantic’, ‘sweeter’, ‘more light-hearted’ and the Doctor you’d most want to invite you on board the TARDIS. That’s interesting in some respects, because the Tenth Doctor is very much a Jekyll and Hyde character. He’s handsome, he’s charismatic, and travelling with him can be addictively fun, but he is also casually cruel, harshly dismissive, and lacking in self-awareness. His ego wants feeding, and once fed, can have destructive results.

That tension in the character isn’t due to bad writing or acting. Quite the contrary. Most Doctors have an element of unpleasantness to their behaviour. Ever since the First Doctor kidnapped Ian and Barbara, the character has been moving away from the entitled snob we met him as, but can never escape it completely.

Six and Twelve were both written to be especially abrasive, then soften as time went on (with Colin Baker having to do this through Big Finish audio plays rather than on telly). A significant difference between Twelve and Ten, though, is that Twelve questions himself more. Ten, to the very end, seems to believe his own hype.

The Tenth Doctor’s duality is apparent from his first full appearance in 2005’s ‘The Christmas Invasion’. Having quoted The Lion King and fearlessly ambled through the Sycorax ship in a dressing gown, he seems the picture of bonhomie, that lighter and amiable character shining through. Then he kills their leader. True, it was in self-defence, but it was lethal force that may not have been necessary. Then he immediately topples the British Prime Minister for a not dissimilar act of aggression. Immediately we see the Tenth Doctor’s potential for violence and moral grey areas. He’s still the same man who considered braining someone with a rock in ‘An Unearthly Child’.

Teamed with Rose Tyler, a companion of similar status to Tennant’s Doctor, they blazed their way through time and space with a level of confidence that bordered on entitlement, and a love that manifested itself negatively on the people surrounding them. The most obvious example in Series 2 is ‘Tooth and Claw’, where Russell T. Davies has them react to horror and carnage in the manner of excited tourists who’ve just seen a celebrity. This aloof detachment results in Queen Victoria establishing the Torchwood institute that will eventually split them apart. We see their blinkers on again in ‘Rise of the Cybermen’, when they take Mickey for granted. Rose and the Doctor skip along the dividing line between romance and hubris.

Then, in a Christmassy romp where the Doctor is grieving the loss of Rose, he commits genocide and Donna Noble sucker punches him with ‘I think you need somebody to stop you’. Well-meaning as this statement is, the Doctor treats it as a reason to reduce his next companion to a function rather than a person. Martha Jones is there to stop the Doctor, as far as he’s concerned. She’s a rebound companion. Martha is in love with him, and though he respects her, she’s also something of a prop.

This is the series in which the Doctor becomes human in order to escape the Family of Blood (adapted from a book in which he becomes human in order to understand his companion’s grief, not realising anyone is after him), and is culpable for all the death that follows in his wake. Martha puts up with a position as a servant and with regular racist abuse on her travels with this man, before finally realising at the end of the series that she needs to get out of the relationship. For a rebound companion, Martha withstands a hell of a lot, mostly caused by the Doctor’s failings.

Why David Tennant Lost Hannibal Role According to Bryan Fuller

By Kirsten Howard

Staged: BBC Comedy Confirms Sheen & Tennant’s Double-Act Greatness

By Louisa Mellor

Series 4 develops the Doctor further, putting the Tenth’s Doctor’s flaws in the foreground more clearly. Donna is now travelling with him, and simply calls him out on his behaviour more than Rose or Martha did. Nonetheless the Doctor ploughs on, and in ‘Midnight’ we see him reduced to desperate and ugly pleas about how clever he is when he’s put in a situation he can’t talk himself out of.

Rose has also become more Doctor-like while trapped in another reality, and brutally tells Donna that she’s going to have to die in order to return to the original timeline (just as the Doctor tells Donna she’s going to have to lose her memories of travelling with him in order to live her previous life, even as she clearly asks him not to – and how long did the Doctor know he would have to do this for? It’s not like he’s surprised when Donna starts glitching). Tied into this is the Doctor’s belief in his own legend. In ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’ he holds a gun to Cobb’s head, then withdraws it and asks that they start a society based on the morals of his actions. You know, like a well-adjusted person does.

What’s interesting here is that despite presenting himself as ‘a man who never would’, the Doctor is a man who absolutely would. We’ve seen him do it. Even the Tenth Doctor, so keen to live up to the absolute moral ideals he espouses, killed the Sycorax leader and the Krillitanes, drove the Cybermen to die of despair, brought the Family of Blood to a quiet village and then disposed of them personally. But Tennant doesn’t play this as a useful lie, he plays it as something the Doctor absolutely believes in that moment, that he is a man who would not kill even as his daughter lies dead. It’s why his picking up a gun in ‘The End of Time’ has such impact. And it makes some sense that the Tenth Doctor would reject violence following a predecessor who regenerated after refusing to commit another double-genocide.

In the series finale ‘Journey’s End‘, Davros accuses the Doctor of turning his friends into weapons. This is because the Doctor’s friends have used weapons against the Daleks who – and I can’t stress this enough – are about to kill everyone in the entire universe. Fighting back against them seems pretty rational. Also – and again I can’t stress this enough – the Daleks are bad. Like, really bad. You won’t believe just how mindbogglingly bad they are. The Doctor has tried to destroy them several times by this point. Here, there isn’t the complication of double-genocide, and instead the very real threat of absolutely everyone in the universe dying. This accusation, that the Doctor turns people into weapons, should absolutely not land.

And yet, with the Tenth Doctor, it does. This is a huge distinction between him and the First Doctor, who had to persuade pacifists to fight for him in ‘The Daleks’.

In ‘The Sontaran Strategem’ Martha compares the Doctor to fire. It’s so blunt it almost seems not worth saying, but it’s the perfect analogy (especially for a show where fire is a huge part of the very first story). Yes, fire shines in dark places, yes it can be a beacon, but despite it being very much fire’s entire deal, people can forget that it burns. And fire has that mythical connection of being stolen from the gods and brought to humanity. The Time Lord Victorious concept fits the Tenth Doctor so well. Of all the Doctors, he’s the most ready to believe in himself as a semi-mythic figure.

Even when regenerating there’s a balance between hero and legend: the Tenth Doctor does ultimately save Wilfred Mott, but only after pointing out passionately how big a sacrifice he’s making. And then he goes to get his reward by meeting all his friends, only to glare at them from a distance. His last words are ‘I don’t want to go’, which works well as clearly being a poignant moment for the actor as well, but in the context of Doctor Who as a whole it renders Ten anomalous: no one else went this unwillingly. And yet, in interviews Russell T. Davies said it was important to end the story with ‘the Doctor as people have loved him: funny, the bright spark, the hero, the enthusiast’.

It’s fascinating then, that this is the Doctor who has been taken to heart by so many viewers because there’s such an extreme contrast between his good-natured front, his stated beliefs, and his actions. He clearly loves Rose and Donna, but leaves them with a compromised version of happiness. They go on extraordinary journeys only to end up somewhere that leaves them less than who they want to be, with Russell T. Davies being more brutally honest than Steven Moffat, who nearly always goes the romance route. Davies once said to Mark Lawson that he liked writing happy endings ‘because in the real world they don’t exist’, but his endings tend towards the bittersweet: Mickey and Martha end up together but this feels like they’re leftovers from the Doctor and Rose’s relationship. The Tenth Doctor doesn’t, as Nine does, go with a smile, but holding back tears.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

It’s a testament to how well written the Tenth Doctor is that the character has this light and shade, and with David Tennant’s immense likeability he can appeal to a wider audience as a result. It’s not surprise he wins all these polls, but I can’t help but feel that if the Doctor arrived and invited me on board the TARDIS, I’d want it to be anyone but Ten.

The post Doctor Who: Perfect 10? How Fandom Forgets the Dark Side of David Tennant’s Doctor appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3iaqbDk

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

65 notes · View notes

thegayhimbo · 3 years

Text

Top 10 Least Favorite True Blood Characters

Since I’ve finished my rewatch of True Blood, I’ve wanted to talk about the show and do several lists of my favorite and least favorite aspects of it. In this case, I am going to my top 10 least favorite characters on the show, and explain my reasons for why I hate them. This is just my opinion, and I’m doing this for fun, so don’t take it personally if a character you like is on this list.

With that being said, let’s get started! POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!

10.) Felton Norris

I can’t think of a single redeeming quality this guy had. He was racist, sexist, stupid, homophobic, violent, abusive, and a rapist. He was designed to be a truly reprehensible character, and the show accomplished that well. There’s still a part of me that loves that scene when Jason stakes him for a tree. It’s no less than he deserved, and it’s telling that even Crystal of all people doesn’t feel bad when he bites the dust.

9.) Macklyn Warlow

Whenever people talk about how a character only gets sympathy because they’re a conventionally attractive white guy with a sob story that the show exploits to get people to feel bad for them, Warlow is the first character that pops into my head. When I first saw this show, I felt “meh” about him. I thought it was pretty obvious he was suppose to be a villain and that the friendly face he put on for Sookie was simply a manipulative facade designed to make him look attractive to her. For the most part, fans seem to get this and are pretty dismissive towards the character, but there’s still a vocal minority out there that honestly believes Warlow was this tragically misunderstood character and that he was this great guy who loved Sookie and so on. I even had someone on Reddit try to argue with me that Jason was WRONG for wanting to kill Warlow and that it was bad writing that Warlow became a villain. Just based on that conversation, something tells me he identified with Warlow a little too much. 🙄

Macklyn Warlow is an example of every entitled manipulative “Nice Guy” and creepy stalker who feels owed a relationship from a woman and expects said woman to be the one to “fix” them and make them into a better person. This is a guy who spent more than 5000 years developing a creepy fantasy about Sookie in his head that was NEVER going to match up with the real Sookie Stackhouse. This is a guy who tried to systematically isolate Sookie from everyone she loved just so he could have him all to himself. This is a guy who ruthlessly slaughtered all the faeries at the night club just so they wouldn’t interfere with his plans for Sookie. This is a guy who (regardless of what Sookie’s parents were going to do) intended to take Sookie as a little girl and groom her into becoming his faerie bride. This is a guy who turned into an attempted rapist the moment he felt that Sookie was slipping away from him.

Warlow was never a good person, and him revealing his true colors in the season 6 finale shouldn’t have been a surprise. If people missed the subtle cues to his manipulative behavior, that’s on them.

8.) Crystal Norris

Crystal was an awful character in the books, but the show somehow managed to make her worse. I really feel bad for what Jason was put through because of her. Regardless of his flaws, Jason genuinely wanted to help Crystal because he recognized she was in an abusive situation, and even kept his promise to look after the werepanther tribe for a year at her request. And how was he repaid for it? Not only did Crystal withhold information from Jason that he should have known about, but she proceeded to come back into Jason’s life after being gone for a year, capture him, tie him to a bed, bite him multiple times without his consent, force feed him Viagra, raped him, and then had the other women of Hotshot rape him. Just.............. 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮

This was one of the most disgusting scenes in the entire show, and what was even more rage-inducing were the reviewers out there who tried to make it seem like this was Jason’s karma/comeuppance. Case in point, look at what reviewer Billie Doux had to say about it in her review of “If You Love Me, Why Am I Dying:”

“You know, I bet the old Jason would have been turned on by the prospect of a line of nubile young things waiting to have sex with him. Instead, it was actually pretty creepy. Generation Jason in Hotshot. After all the sleeping around he did in the past, it’s sort of karmic. I bet he’s sorry now that he ever made a pass at Crystal, because like Debbie Pelt, I sure don’t have a lot of confidence in Crystal’s intentions.”

Yikes! The victim-blaming. The idea that someone’s rape is karmic and that he deserved it. The idea that Jason would be “turned on” by being raped. I get that Billie Doux hated Jason (and meanwhile was perfectly okay overlooking Bill’s absuive and rapey behavior towards Sookie and other women, or even Eric’s womanizing behavior), but what she’s saying here is vile. She should be ashamed of herself for writing something like this. Of course, she’ll never apologize and acknowledge she said anything wrong here (because she’s that stuck-up and nasty as a person), but I’m still calling her out for it. She is an awful reviewer, and her True Blood reviews have aged poorly and promote rape culture.

But getting back to Crystal.....................yeah, I hate her character. I wish she had been killed off the same way Felton was.

7.) Sophie Anne Leclerq

Something about the way Sophie Anne was presented on the show never worked for me. I can’t tell if it was the writing, the acting, the way Evan Rachel Wood delivered her lines, or if it was just the character herself, but instead of finding QSA to be an interesting villain, I found her to be obnoxious. I tolerated QSA for the sake of the story (because like it or not, she does play an important role), but I have never understood how she became popular. I get why the book version of QSA is popular, but not the TV show version.

The biggest problem was that there was a disconnect between how the show tried to present her and how she actually came off. She’s suppose to be this shrewd and intelligent woman hiding underneath this shallow Paris Hilton facade, and someone you didn’t want to underestimate. However, that’s not how it translated to the screen. Instead, she comes off as a pretentious big bad wannabe that gets outclassed and outmaneuvered by characters like Russell, Eric, and Bill. And the times they try to make QSA look intimidating fall flat. Case in point: When QSA gets angry with Eric, pins him against the wall, and grabs his crotch. This is suppose to establish her as a force to be reckoned with, but not only is ERW’s line delivery awkward during this scene (to say nothing about how they had to use a jump scare to make this work), it also makes QSA look like an idiot for antagonizing someone like Eric who not only is 500 years older than her (and has seen more kings and queens come and go than QSA has), but is also a survivor who is not going to let the Queen screw him over. Even her information about Maryann and maenads sounds like something she looked up on Wikipedia rather than intrinsic knowledge she’s gained over the centuries.

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I didn’t find her character compelling or intelligent, and I was not sorry when she got killed off in season 4.

6.) Joe Lee and Melinda Mickens

IMAGE NOT FOUND

Out of all of the storylines in season 3, Sam’s association with his biological parents was probably one of the worst. Every time the show cut to the Mickens, it’s like everything would come to a screeching halt and the scenes would drag on and on. It doesn’t help that Joe and Melinda were unpleasant characters who were abusive, cruel, manipulative, and stupid. The result is I grew to hate them because of how much screen-time they ate up. To this day, whenever I go back and rewatch the show, I usually skip Sam’s story in season 3 because it was all over the place and I just didn’t care.

5.) Tommy Mickens

Remember what I said about Warlow getting sympathy because he’s a conventionally attractive white guy with a sob story that the show exploits to get people to feel bad for him? That also describes Tommy. I get that he was abused and that he’s had a rough life, but that doesn’t excuse him being a pathological asshole to every other person he came across. As Linkara once put it: “There's a difference between having a sympathetic backstory and actually being sympathetic.” Tommy may have had a sympathetic backstory, but that did not make him likable or interesting as a character. I deeply resent how much screen-time was given to him, especially since his character and story were not needed for a show that already had too many characters.

The one act Tommy committed that was truly unforgivable (and earned him a spot on this list) was his rape of Luna in season 4. I say rape because what he did in disguising himself as Sam and having sex with Luna without informing her about who he really was constitutes “Rape-By-Deception.” There was no way to come back from that, and it was hideously inappropriate that the show tried to make the audience feel bad for him right before he died at the expense of Luna. For all the complaining I’ve heard about how Jason’s gang-rape was glossed over in season 4, I find it ironic that barely anyone talks about how Luna’s rape was glossed over and how the show didn’t really explore her feelings about being violated in that manner.

To put this in the bluntest terms, I don’t feel bad for rapists, and neither should you.

4.) Hoyt Fortenberry

Let’s get something out of the way: I DO NOT LIKE ENTITLED “NICE GUYS.” AT ALL. Out of all the character archetypes out there, this is the one that gets me to hate a character instantly. Ross Geller from Friends. Xander Harris from BtVS. Dawson Leery from Dawson’s Creek. Ted Mosby from HIMYM. And now Hoyt Fortenberry. I am so done seeing these kind of characters, and I really wish future shows would retire them because they are irritating.

Hoyt has always been a character that made me uncomfortable. As someone who’s had to deal with Man-Children (i.e. Grown-Ass men who act like they’re 6 years old), I know for a fact that they can appear nice on the surface, but the moment things go wrong for them, or they’re forced to face hard truths, or they don’t get what they want, you get to see a nastier side come out to them, and it’s not pleasant. It’s why I wasn’t surprised when Hoyt’s story went the way it did in the later seasons. Even before his break-up with Jessica in season 4, I could already see signs that his character was immature and emotionally and mentally stunted. It doesn’t particularly help that he grew up under a mother who was racist, sexist, and bigoted in every sense of the word. You can’t be raised in that kind of environment and not expect it to impact you in a negative way.

But even with all of this in mind, the way he acted when Jessica broke up with him was AWFUL and there are no excuses for it. Plenty of guys go through bad break-ups. Most of them don’t stalk their exes at bars and expect them to take them back, or go join hate groups and debate about whether or not to kill their ex-girlfriend because they broke their heart. Hoyt’s behavior in the later seasons was not only creepy, it was borderline misogynistic. It bothers me to this day that the show never really held him accountable for how nasty he was, or had him go through any meaningful character development. It’s why his reunion with Jessica in the last season feels unearned and hollow. The Hoyt/Jessica relationship has aged poorly, and it’s one of those relationships where you can see the problems with it as far back as season 2. Too bad the writers never actually had the characters fix these problems, but instead proceeded to gloss over them. 😒

3.) Franklin Mott

I get that people liked Franklin as a character and thought he made for a great villain, but I’m sorry, I could barely stand him. He was too repugnant to enjoy as a villain. For all of his “funny one-liners” (which weren’t that funny to begin with), this guy was a SERIAL RAPIST and a SERIAL KILLER. I hate what he put Tara through, and I hate that there were times it was played for comedy. The poor woman got kidnapped, taken to a plantation, put in a slave gown, and was raped repeatedly by Franklin. And if his comments are anything to go on, this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this. Even that scene where he holds the phone over Tara’s head and quickly texts, all I saw was a rapist holding the phone over his victim’s head and subtly taunting her while hiding it under a sick sense of humor. 🤬

There are only two scenes with Franklin that I enjoyed: The first was when Tara bashed his head in with a mace. The second is when Jason shot him and killed him for good. I hated Franklin’s character, and I maintain that the Franklin/Tara storyline in season 3 was one of the worst arcs on the show. I know that’s an unpopular opinion, but that’s how I feel about it.

2.) Violet Mazurski

What was the point of Violet’s character? Why did she get so much screen-time when other characters who have been with the show since season 1 were killed off because the writers claimed they didn’t know what to do with them? The only reason I can think of is that she was a plot device to cause conflict in season 7 and make Jason’s life miserable. That’s it. There was no reason she needed to exist, and she is one of the many, MANY reason I despise season 7.

What makes her character loathsome is how much the show invokes double standards regarding female-on-male abuse when it comes to her relationship with Jason. The show doesn’t ever call her relationship with Jason abusive, but it was. She claimed Jason in a prison when he was not in a position to refuse her, and told him she would feed on him and fuck him as much as she pleased, and the implication was that Jason didn’t have a choice in the matter. Her behavior towards Jason when they get out is creepy, possessive, jealous, controlling, and both emotionally and sexually abusive. Jason expresses multiple times that he’s scared of Violet and never gets taken seriously by anyone. When Jason expresses a desire to start a family, Violet belittles him and calls him a “girl” for it (cause that’s not misogynistic at all 🙄😒), which shows she doesn’t respect or care for Jason’s wants or needs. And to make matters worse, the show tries to victim-blame Jason for wanting out of this relationship and for Violet’s behavior towards the end.

And don’t even get me started on Violet’s stans. It’s scary that there are people in real life who don’t believe women can be abusive towards men, and who watched this show and didn’t see anything problematic with Violet’s treatment of Jason. Or maybe they did, and still tried to justify why Jason deserved it. Either way, those people either need therapy or they need to educate themselves about what constitutes abuse. Until them, I want nothing to do with them.

1.) Bill Compton

Bill will always get the top spot for me with True Blood characters that I loathe. All you have to do is look through the numerous “Anti Bill Compton” posts to understand why I can’t stand him. But to give the general run-through:

He’s a manipulative asshole and rapist that both the books and the show try to pass off as a decent person. He is condescending, pretentious, cruel, sadistic, and abusive, and is rarely called out for his behavior. He weaseled his way into a relationship with Sookie by allowing two psychopathic drug addicts to beat the shit out of her so he could pretend to play hero, drug her with his blood (which was a powerful aphrodisiac), manipulate her into falling in love with him, and tried to cover it up when he was in danger of being exposed. He was QSA’s personal procurer for 35 years where he brought her humans to feed on, rape, parade around as her pets, and dispose of once she was done with them. His treatment of Jessica was neglectful at best and abusive at worst. And to cap it all off, he sanctioned a human trafficking ring in season 5 and tried to start a war between vampires and humans and got off scot-free for his actions. No prison time. No accountability. Nothing. And the show still expected us to like him after that, and root for him to get back together with Sookie after betraying her multiple times.

Whenever people ask me what character I think of who’s a walking embodiment of rape culture and abusive men who get flimsy excuses made for their behavior, Bill Compton is the first person who comes to mind.

That’s my list! Stay tuned for my Top 10 Favorite True Blood Characters! :)

#true blood #tgh opinions #bill compton #anti bill compton #violet mazurski #franklin mott #hoyt fortenberry #joe lee mickens #melinda mickens #tommy mickens #sophie anne leclerq #crystal norris #macklyn warlow #felton norris #billie doux #doux reviews #true blood spoilers

35 notes · View notes

lizzibennet · 4 years

Note

Is it bad if I see Percy as white? I always feel bad when I see posts about why poc!Percy makes sense bc I still just have the same picture of him in my mind :/ I'm not against it at all! It's just not the way i see him

it’s not inherently harmful to see percy as white. if i’m being honest, it’s what i think rick intended him to be when he was written. i think rick pictured a white boy too. that doesn’t mean he can’t be non-white or that him not being white goes against canon or cheapens his character. in fact, i think his character only has improvements if we read him as not white.

see hermione: some of the most defining features of her character were that she had frizzy, curly hair, that she was teased for a natural feature of her face, her teeth, so much she used magic to permanently alter it, and she was clearly one of the most intelligent students at hogwarts, but she wasn’t taken seriously and called bossy and annoying. are these struggles exclusive to black people? obviously not. do black people deal with these struggles more often than white people? absolutely, because of racism. it’s one thing to be teased for your hair when you’re white and another to be bullied for it when you’re black. the reading of hermione as black not only makes these struggles more believable, it also gives her character more layers as to why she works so hard and why she is so set on freeing house elves. her character is improved through this reading, so much so, in fact, that a black woman was cast to play her in the harry potter play. so even if jk rowling intended hermione to be white at first - which i totally think she did - she understood that this reading of the character is valid and makes sense, so she incorporated it into her canon.

the same can be said for percy: a genuinely nice kid who had a literal manhunt set for him when he was twelve, who has labelled a troublemaker for things out of his control, labelled violent for the disappearance of his mother that he had absolutely no involvement in, for who was clearly used to dealing with this from adults his entire life. again- are these struggles exclusive to non white kids? of course not. do non white kids face this more often and often in more severe ways? yes. it’s time we stop pretending they don’t. every single form of oppression exists under the weight of racism. non-white women deal with misogyny differently than white women, non-white men deal with toxic masculinity differently than white men, and non-white kids deal with prejudice because of their neurodivergences differently than white kids. to pretend it’s all the same is to excuse racism in those circles. intersectionality has to be considered in order to fully understand the situation. so does this mean percy can’t be white? of course not. does it mean that percy being a person of color gives his character more nuance in dealing with the issues named in the books? yes, it does. maybe that wasn’t a concern back in 2005 when the books were released, them dealing with neurodivergence was already pretty amazing for the time, but it’s 2020. if rick riordan is really set on writing fiction for the kids like his son who were ostracized for simply being the way they are, then he knows that making percy not white in the adaptation of the books would hold a different weight and meaning for all these groups he says he wants to help.

this is the case for non-white percy. it makes sense, and that’s not up for debate. it does. just because it makes sense doesn’t mean you have to adopt it.

but the thing is, why wouldn’t you?

if this reading enriches the character, why wouldn’t you at least entertain it for the sake of bringing up valid issues in fandom?

if, as you said, it’s just the way you see him and that’s all there is to it, that’s perfectly fine. but you have to remember we all live in a racist society. we all live under the pressure of it and we are all affected by it. seeing percy as a white boy in your mind is not the problem - the problem is denying that he could maybe possibly perhaps not be white, the problem is advocating against it, saying that he cannot possibly be white. he can, we’ve discussed it. why wouldn’t it be possible? is it because heroes are always white? is it because you’re so used to seeing heroes be white your brain just cannot marry the two images - a hero who is latino, black, native, asian? is it because these people are meant to stay in the sidelines?

you may think these things subconsciously. as i said, we all live in a racist world. we, white and non-white people alike, pick up on racist values from the moment we are born, and once we’re made aware of racism and xenophobia, we start a process of deconstructing these values that is lifelong. some of us have a TON of baggage that we need to deconstruct. so let’s say you have worked through the majority of it - you support blacklivesmatter and non-white artists, you think racist violence is outrageous, but you still can’t fathom the thought of percy jackson not being white. why? is it a visceral reaction you have? is it unconscious? why would you be so against it?

it’s important to question that, always, whether or not you think you’re racist. if you can honestly, truthfully tell me it’s not based on any sort of prejudice and it’s just because you sincerely imagine percy as white and that’s all there is to it - great, carry on with your day. but if you have any doubt on your reasoning, there may still be issues you need to confront. that’s normal and part of becoming a better, more respectful person. if you’re going around and advocating against non-white percy, questioning why would people think he isn’t white, replying to posts with Um Actually He’s Greek, then i desperately need you to ask yourself why, and reflect hard on your answer. “i just think he’s white” is seldom all there is to it.

tldr: it’s not bad to think he’s white, it’s bad to outright deny the possibility he could ever not be white, and to try to stop people who think he isn’t and tell them they’re wrong

#Anonymous #what is my ask tag again #pjo #percy jackson

606 notes · View notes

bookishfeylin · 2 years

Note

Hi again! Thank you for responding to my question and for being so sweet! <3 I'm new to your blog and have been scrolling through your posts and I feel so seen and safe here.

To answer your question, the reason I think Bryce is a WOC is because her biological father is white and her mother's skin color was never described. Her mother's description is very short and vague (long black hair, dark eyes, full lips) I think SJM did this intentionally to leave it up to the reader's imagination (If it's supposed to be her idea of representation, it's poorly done) But Bryce must have gotten her naturally tanned skin from somewhere, so I assumed her mom was either brown or black. There are only like two artworks of Bryce's mom and she has brown/tan skin in both of them so It's nice to know I'm not the only one who imagines her like that.

Aww, I'm glad you feel welcome here anon!

So based on your response, it seems like there are several issues at work here:

A) Fandom defaulting to view undescribed characters as white. Due to white supremacy nearly all of us (in the west, at least) default to believing a character is white when they aren't properly described. We are raised thinking of white people as the default human being, and sadly this has dangerous real-world ramifications, like doctors often struggling to identify signs and symptoms of some diseases on darker skin, because they were only taught how to do so on white people, and pulse oximeters (what we use to check oxygen levels in the hospital) being more likely to get incorrect readings on darker skin because they were designed with only white people in mind. This combination is deadly in healthcare. It's not intentional malice, it's simply our society so deeply entrenching in us that the default human being has pale white skin that we don't think about developing technology like pulse oximeters that work for dark skin, or expanding medical practices to correctly identify the symptoms of certain diseases on darker skin. It's systemic racism. So yes, we live in a society that teaches us all to view white people as the default human being, and people assuming Bryce and her mother are white when they very well could not be is a minor expression of that.

B) Stans and Sarah alike using Bryce to undermine POC when we discuss the racism in her books. Sarah's books do not... treat POC well. At all. I've discussed Sarah's racism, predominantly in the ACOTAR series, here, here, here, and here, but if you want more stuff about Throne of Glass specifically I recommend checking out @battlestar-royco's old posts tagged anti sjm/anti throne of glass from around 2018 or so. The point is, Sarah is not... well she ain't doing well in the diversity department, and it's one of the main criticisms she receives. And Sarah stans despise any criticism of her books or writing. So when Bryce was described as "golden skinned," some stans used that opportunity to insist Bryce was a woman of color, despite no textual evidence to indicate that, so no one was allowed to complain about the racist writing plaguing Sarah's books anymore. As you said, it may have been purposeful on Sarah's part, but not because she truly wanted to leave Bryce's race up to the imagination--but to deflect any criticism she's faced for her poorly written characters of color.

So it's a multifaceted issue. Bryce's race isn't ever fully elaborated on, so she can be imagined as a woman of color, and the fact that most people default to seeing her as white and pale regardless speaks to a larger culture that views whiteness as the default. But some stans argue that Bryce's mother's race not being elaborated on=a person of color=amazing representation. Which it's... decidedly not.

#ask #anon #sjm critical #on media #racism #crescent city

9 notes · View notes

popculturebuffet · 3 years

Text

Lilo and Stitch Crossovers: “Morpholomew” (American Dragon Long): Stop Trying to Make Am Drag a Thing (Commisson Done For WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people! And welcome to a brand new retrospective/story arc/thing from yours truly, comissoned directly by WeirdKev27. If you’d like to comission your own review or set of reviews like this one, it’s 5 bucks. Just contact me via my ask box or direct messages on this very blog or my discord technicolormuk#6550.

With Shadow Into Light in the books, Kev decided he wanted to comission something not duck related and a bit smaller as a buffer before the next big arc, ALL of three arcs from season 2 of Ducktales, and decided to go with something he suggested to be a while back as a possible future retrospective: The Lilo and Stitch Crossover episodes!

That’s right for the next three weeks, with TWO reviews this week since I had a spot open up and Kev paid for this one in full and way in advance, we’ll be taking a trip to Hawaii to visit everyone’s faviorte little girl, her best friend/pet/killing machine as they try to find homes for his 625 cousins.

I loved Lilo and Stitch when I was a kid: Disney admitely got their hooks in me on that one with their cool prequel comics in disney adventures. These comics set up the movie, showing Jumba creating Stitch and the events leading up to both getting captured. The movie did not disapoint with cool character designs, a drop dead gorgeous recreation of Hawaii, and a really heartfelt, heartbreaking and heartpumping story of loss, family, and ving rahmes voicing one of the few heroic child services workers i’ve seen in a medium, a refreshing change of pace. The film is a masterpiece and I really do need to watch it again sometime.

Given the series was a huge hit and that thsi was before the big lull in the late 2000′s and early 2010′s where Disney refused to make any tv shows based on their movies, a series followed, given a lead in by the direct to video movie Stitch.

The movie set up the basic premise; 624 capsules containing Jumba’s previous experiments, cousins as Stitch calls them, ended up raining over Kauai, awakening when dropped into water or any other liquid. Lilo and Stitch, with help from Jumba, his live in boyfriend Pleakley, her tought but fair sister Nani, and her boyfriend David, who dosen’t show up as much as i’d like but is my boy so he gets a mention here. But anyways our heroes try to reform the various engines of distructoin who all have unique powers and find them their one place they truly belong.

So yes the show was a Mons-type show clearly captalizing off pokemon.. but the slice of life setting as opposed to the shonen style of most shows following in pokemon’s wake, gave it it’s own unique feel: while our heroes did fight, it was more about shenanigans, adventures and what not with these unique creatures and the purpose is very heartflet: Lilo simply wants to give these guys the same kind of love and support she’s given Stitch and a chance to do good.

Opposing them is Gantu, the shark bounty hunter from the first film who, now out of a job, is working for Dr. Hamstervile, an imprisoned sceintest and a character I really don’t like that much as he’s not funny or a genuine threat or both and feels like a waste of time. Thankfully he’s not the focus and Gantu is instead partnered with 625, my faviorite Lilo and Stitch character. 625, as the name suggests, is stitch’s immediate prototype.. but unlike Stitch is too lazy and peaceful to be a real threat and isn’t even really a villian despite being on Gantu’s side. He’s busy making samwitches, his calling to the point when he gets a name in the finale movie it’s naturally Ruben, and snarking at gantu. He’s sadly not in this one but hopefully it’s JUST this one.

As you can tell I liked this show a LOT at the time. I haven’t watched it since, mostly because disney scarely replayed it after it’s run, but it was vibrant, fun and intresting and a nicely laidback and creative take. The fact I came into the franchise with the comics and thus 625, who was introduced there in fact, and had a hunger to know more about the other experiments certainly helped. It was great fun.

But while I grew up with the show and the four shows it teamed up with, i’ve never seen these episodes before these reviews. I wondered why for years as I caught the tail end of the kim possible one and saw images ocasionally, but never saw them.

Turns out it’s because in general Season 2 got screwed over. While Season 1 was pushed out the door fast and aired at a rapid pace Season 2.. was portioned out over several years, and the Recess crossover one, the last one aired and the last one i’ll be covering never even got to Disney channel, only airing on ABC kids, DIsney’s saturday morning block at the time I rarely watched. I did watch it’s predecessor one saturday morning though. Good stuff.

Since I couldn’t find any making of stuff for why these episodes happened, my best guess is DIsney wanted some cross promotion, and the shows used were chosen because they were the most popular at the time and honestly all 4 represent some of disney’s best, with Recess being in heavy reruns at the time, hence i’ts conclusion despite the show being finished before Lilo And Stitch the movie came out, let alone the series.

So yeah i’m taking this ride for the first time.. but I was happy to. While Kev pays for a lot of my work, I still have to accept the idea.. and this was a great one. It allows me to cover 5 amazing series and gage how much people would want to see reviews of said series on this blog in one fell swoop.

So to kick us off we have American Dragon: Jake Long, a series I waited forever to come to Disney + as I loved it at the time, badly need to rewatch it (Been busy ), and find it genuinely great: It’s a great teen superhero story about the magical protector of new york, with a charming lead, a great setting and horrifcally great villians in the violently racist magic creature hunting huntsclan.. and their top agent who happens to be jake’s love intrest Rose. It’s really excellent and i’m glad it’s now widely avaliable for all to see. I will say ahead that all four shows in this crossover arc are excellent, and were fine choices for this.

So what happens when an action comedy about a hip hop teenage dragon meets a slice of life show about aliens? Find out under the cut.

So we open at a fancy hotel where Lilo’s bringing lunch to her sister Nani when she runs into.. Keoni Jameson.

The second I remembered this kid all the hate just came flooding back, coursing through my veigns. Just pure liquid hatred for this little perosnalitiless little punk. Keoni is Lilo’s crush and local “stupid white audience stand in”. He has no real personality other than “generic cool kid” and “likes skating”, and just sucks the air out of the room anytime he’s in an episode. Keoni is part of a recurring problem in cartoons across the ages, one that’s slowly going away: the bland love intrest. Intorducing a character whose only traits are being cool for the lead to fawn over with usually no intent of either getting the two togehter or just ending it. IT’s annoying, it was in a good chunk of my childhood, I wish it’d stop. I cannot tell you how many shows used this trope. There were exceptions, American Dragon Jake Long actually used it well by not only making Rose a fleshed out character.. but making her jake’s nemisis in their other lives, and thus making things increidbly difficult on both once the truth comes out, with Jake grappling with if he can trust her or not and Rose grappling with the slow relization eveyrthing she was taught her whole life was wrong.

And again I have seen GOOD storylines using this as a tool: Dipper and Wendy ended with her having been aware teh whole time, but simply not knowing how to let him down given the age gap, and Regular Show rebounded the best from it: it turned the stop and start relatoinshpi of Mordecai and Margret’s relationship into a character flaw for him, openly explored it.. and ended up having him work past it and actually date her for a bit. Before she moved away, he got an even better love interest, then they destoryed the relationship in the worst way posisble and I wil lbe getting to that at some point. Some point.

So yeah even at the time it was done better, hindsight haas only made it worse and it made watching the first few minutes tough because I had to keep pasuing because I hate him so damn much. He just adds NOTHING to the show and is a blank yanwing void from which no good came out of and I was terrified he’d be in the rest of the episode. Thankfully while he drives the plot he’s only in this scene.. but it’s still one more scene than both 625 and Pleakly got. yeah both are missing, as is nani.

I did uncover one fun fact that made things a bit easier though: The crew ALSO hated Keoni. No really. Disney forced the character on them as they wanted an audience surrogate, and this abomination is what popped out. They DID NOT want him here and likely only used him as mcuh as they did because Disney forced it on them. And Disney would NOT learn from this as Star Vs got saddled with Alphonso and Ferguson soley because of network mandate. The two aren’t TERRIBLE characters but they aren’t great and feel as tacked on as they were. And part of this does fall on the crew: you CAN twist a stupid mandate like this to work well: Joe Murray was asked to add “A female character with a hook”, as in some sort of dumb gimmick to Rocko. He used those words, meant to create a superfical girl power cardboard cutout.. and created the wonderful Dr. Hutchenson, a bright cheery doctor, the series best sidecharacter.. and someone with a hook hand. But I won’t go too hard on them: they probably didn’t have as much room to manuver and the fact Keoni was sitll being shoved into episodes in season 2 tells me they likely had a set number of episodes he had to show up. I’m suprised they didn’t demand they have characters ask “Where’s Keonie?” any time he wasn’t in an episode. He was unecessary and it comes across with a massive chunk of unforutnate implications: that they didn’t think a series with a mostly hawaiann cast would work, that they wanted at least one other “nice” white character to offset myrtle instead of having the only major white character be a bully and antagonist, and that they thought tehir mostly white audience coudln’t enjoy a series without a white character, which as someone who was in the target demo at the time, I call bullshit on. As I said I hated him then, I hate him now and his involvement is the worst aspect of this episode.

So after Lilo fawns over him for a bit we find out this chonk of wood’s purpose in the episode: to set up the plot. There’s a massive Skate Competition coming to town with the prize being a really cool skateboard. This plot point itself.. I don’t mind. Jake is a skater, it’s part of his character and one of the things he loves doing in what minsicule spare time he has. And while it was a common trope at the time having a character skateboard really dosen’t harm most works. We’ve gotten great characters like Jake, Jackie Lynn Thomas, Branwen and Ronnie Anne Santiago out of it, and it feels like natural parts of the character, and frankly An Extremley Goofy Movie wouldn’t be NEARLY as awesome without having skateboarding bizzarley attached to the plot via the college x-games. Granted somtimes you get Rocket Power out of the deal but that’s the price you pay for the good stuff. I only regret it’s involved because Keoni has to be there and I had to pause multiple times to get through his scene. He’s just a sampler platter of terrible decisions made in 2000′s cartoons and he irritates me more than this guy.

And anyone whose read my Loud House reviews can tell you that is a high bar to clear.

So naturally Lilo wants to enter the Hawiann X-Games to get the board for Keoni. Though I will give the writers credit for having Stitch voice their thoughts and the audiences thoughts by having him take Keoni’s picture and throw it in the garbage. Where he belongs.

Lilo’s not great at it as they practice.. and said practice naturally ends up waking up a new experiment, 316.. who i’m just going to go ahead and call Morpholomew. Stitch eventually catches him though like many of the experiments he’s not actively malevelolent and is easy enough to get home.

Jumba gets to his schitck of breaking down what the experiment of the week does: In this case Morpholomew is a shapeshifter though he has a VERY intresting twist on those powers: while he can naturally morph himself into anything he’s seen or has a picture of, he can do the same to anyone he touches. It dosen’t effect their voices, but otherwise it’s a perfect recreation.

So Lilo instead of finding him a home right away.. decides to wait until after the compettition because we need him for the plot.

So at the Skateboard Competittion Lilo tries to enter, but finds she’s too young.. but since she has a picture of Keoni, which is a nice way to use her photo hobby from the movie for plot reasons and thus dosen’t feel like an ass pull. Why Keoni’s not in town to skate is as his dad left because it’d be too crowded.. even though the event is at the resort he owns.

So while Lilo commits identtity theft, our guest star appears. He’s cool, he’s hot like a frozen son, he’s young and fast he’s the chosen one, people i’m not braggin, i’ts the American Dragon. Jake is here for two reasons: the first is that Grandpa Long got reports of magical creatures out in the open, so naturally they need to look into that. It’s a clever way to get him, along with Grandpa, Fu, Trixie and Spud, over to Hawaii. The Dragon Council would defintely be suspcious hearing about this, and my guess to why they hadn’t sent another dragon over is they simply dont’ have one on the islands. As for why the Huntsclan didn’t get involved in any way, it’s simply too public for them. With the magical community in new york, they don’t have to worry about exposure because neither side wants it, so neither side can out the other. Here with a bunch of creatures out in the open it runs the risk of the Hunstclan being dragged into the light.. and given the populace dosne’t care about the “magical creatures” alongside them, it would make them look like the monsters they are.

Spud and Trixie tagging along also makes sense besides “they needed them for the plot”: While they’d obviously want to come to Hawaii, the skate competition is likely Jake’s cover for why he’s there, as well as one for why it’s just him and grandpa going with a couple of his friends so they don’t have to deal with manuvering around jake’s dad. That sad them never TELLING jake’s Dad is it’s own can of worms as it feels cruel, made things harder for jake and there was no real reason not to. At worst he’d want Jake to stop for his own saftey but given ther’es an active threat in the huntsclan for the first season and a half, NOT helping people would be the right thing and I feel he’s a sensible enough man to understand eventually.

And it’s stuff like this that already makes this crossover really work for me: they don’t really have to strain to get Jake over there or tell the audience heavily, the blanks fill in themslves. Or I am but that’s because it’s my job and I love doin it.

So everyone goes off to their corners; Jake to do a few practice runs, Foo Dog to bet on his friend because of course, Trixie and Spud to go to the beach (even though Spud’s terrified of sharks so I question why Trixie needs him for this), and in a delightfully adorable subplot, finds a lady to woo: local fruit stand vendoer and crankly old lady Mrs. Hasagawa.

I am here for this subplot: While Grandpa not focusing on the mission is weird for him that’s the entire point.. and their just really cute together. He’s smitten with her entirely because he sees her chewing out one of the people running the contest for making her sign too small. And he performs one hell of a romantic gesture by, while everyone’s back is turned, using his dragon fire to make an add for her on the skate ramp itself, and they have a lovely montage of their time together.. which also weirdly includes grandpa using his dragon fire on stage inf ront of everyone which makes no sense for his charcter but is so cute and does feature david I really don’t care. The writers of Lilo and Stitch probably weren’t deeply familiar with the show and likely just wanted a fun gag. Could be wrong there but it’s cute. He continues to act grossly out of character by trying to avoid going home at the end.. but again I find it simply because he’s in love, they have genuine chemstiry and I like to think they stayed in touch and he retired out there at some point once Jake was old enough to handle things himself. This may not be a ship I expected to support going in but I will die for it going out.

So back to the main plot, Lilo uses Keoni’s body to imitate him which... she’s only loosely called out on and realizes is bad by the end only because she gets stuck in another body. And that’s not even getting into the fact she BREAKS UP WITH KEONI’S GIRLFRIEND. Yes really.. she just does that to get her out of the way. She comes around and realizes she was wrong and tries to fix it which would be fine.. if hte episode didn’t try to cop it out by revealing “Oh she’s not his girlfriend, she’s just someone who keeps telling people that”. It just feels lazy and dumb and a way to keep Lilo’s crush on Keoni for reasons I DO. NOT. GET. But the identity theft is just brushed aside by everyone: Keoni never finds out, and Jake just brushes it off. The real issue is more her trying to bribe keoni into likng her which while something kids need to learn is not the only thing she did wrong here. It feels like they didn’t think all the implications out here and it hampers the episode

Speaking of which as Gantu captures Jake, he sees him transform into dragon mode and assumes he’s the experiment, Jake’s charactization is pretty shallow. And why yes it DOES feel weird writing sentences about a character with the same name thank you for asking. I wasn’t expecting a deep character piece or anything: This is a guest spot, the writers here are not the same normal ones for American Dragon. That’s fine. The problem.. is that they clearly did not get Jake. Grandpa being partly out of character is half the joke, Trixie actually gets a really nice moment towards the end, and Spud.. is eh. But out of them Jake just feels like a basic character description: He likes hip hop, he likes skateboards, he calls himself Am Drag despite that sounding like a good name for a drag act but a terrible name to shorten your title, he fights.. that’s it.

While jake is all of that in the main series, he’s also a kind young man who while sometimes irresponsible does the right thing when the chips are down. He’s someone weighed down by a responsiblity he didn’t ask for, often makes his life more difficult and often finds himself in trouble because his mother and grandfather won’t bother to tell his dad he’s a dragon. Yes that part still bothers me, and I don’t see why we couldn’t just have a superhero show where both parents know. But regardless this just dosen’t feel like Jake , like they just watched the intro and that was it. Jake feels more like a plot device in his own crossover.

That being said there is some good stuff: The minute Jake realizes some Sci Fi stuff is going on instead of hte normal magic stuff he tells him “The am drag’s show isn’t about sci fi” a nice meta bit and then breaks out. Meanwhile Lilo takes on his form.. and ends up stuck after badly botching her run again, as Gantu finds the real shapeshifter.

We get the best stretch of the episode from here though: Lilo awkardly tries to play jake and like jake we get a nice meta nod to how diffrent their show is as she’s worried about his belief in magical creatures.. and is startled out of her charade when Foo Dog talks, a really nice bit especially since it’s tame compared to the weirdness he deals with. Spud and Trixie have questions... only for Jake to show up and his agressive behavior leads to the best bit of the episode: Jake Vs Stitch. The catlyst is understandable: jake has no idea why Lilo’s taken his identity and Sttich is just protecting his best friend from harm. The animation is fluid, the fight is fun and quick and uses both’s powers stellarl. Whle “two heroes get into a misunderstanding and then fight” is a well worn cliche at this point, it’s moments like this that show why: you get to see two heroes who in this case never have interacted before or sense, duke it out, why each is special and it’s fun to watch.

Lilo breaks it up, and admits to the whole thing.. including the whole give Keani the board stuff. While Jake and Spud, being awkard with girls and a loveable moron don’t see the problem with that Trixie gets a moment to shine. As far as I can remember she really didn’t get much on the show proper so it was a nice suprise to see her mentor lilo her, telling her trying to give someone gifts to love you is not okay, she should just be herself all that good stuff. It’s a nice character stuff and tha’ts the kind of character interaction this episode needed more of.

With the misunderstandings washed away our heroes team up and storm gantu’s ship leading to another great sequence as Stitch rides on Jake’s back while the two keep him busy and Lilo gets turned back, Trixie complimenting her dress “Thanks I have 10 just like it at home”. It’s such a sweet and genuine moment” They head back out and gantu semeingly grabs morpholmew from where they hide.. only to find out when he gets back it’s spud, our adorable little blob monster transforming Gantu into a bunny and our heroes leaving. How does Gantu get out of being a bunny?

But it’s a nice enough gag. So we end the episode. We get another nice gag as grandpa had himself and his lady transformed to try and avoid going home, and Jake is fine with having lost out on the board what matters is he made a friend. Sadly we did not get a followup in ADJL., but spud does name our experiment, Morpholomew.

We end on Morph getting his home: a costume shop where he gets paid in fried chicken, he was shown to enjoy it throughtout the episode and changes people into things. It’s a nice little button to the episode and one of the funnest parts of the show was figuring out where the experiment would end up at the end.

Final Thoughts:

This episode is a really mixed bag. There is some good character interactions, two tremendous fight scens and Trixie gets a chance to shine for once if only for a scene or two, and the clashing genres end up making for some great jokes> The shows do go well together as while Lilo and Stitch is more laid back both have slice of life elements. And hasgawa X Grandpa is just oto cute for words.

The episode is held back by Jake and Lilo’s lackluster characterizatons: Jake is simply the theme song as a character, which in theory is awesome because that theme song slaps but in practice is pretty lame, and Lilo is selfish and irresponsible even for her in a way that dosen’t feel at all convincing. It drags down what’s otherwise a fun crossover and Morpholomew is truly a unique and wonderful experiment. Still if you like either show it’s worth a watch even if you have to suffer through Keoni for it. It’s worth it.. I just wish it was better and hopefully the next 3 will keep the good parts but take out the bad. Granted this was produced last so I could be wrong, but here’s hoping. Oh this episode also featured Miranda Cosgrove as the girl who claims to be Keoni’s girlfriend. This is also Keoni’s last episode meaning I do NOT have to worry about accidently running into him. Thank fucking christ.

Next Time On American Dragon Jake Long: Jake’s dad drags him and his friends on a camping trip and Jake ends up encountering the Jersey Devil. Now all they need is a sexy lady devil cake to lure it out... what it worked for the Cake Boss. And yes that happened, Allison Pregler did an episode on that episode. Check it out.

Next Time On Lilo and Stitch Crossovers: It’s the family, the family, proud familllyyy as the Prouds take a vacation at Peakly and Jumbas bed but not breakfast and we get some kind of squirrel demon for our experiment of the week. We also get Wizard Kelly appearing...

See you at the next rainbow.

#lilo and stitch #american dragon jake long #Lilo Pelekai #Stitch #experment 626 #jake long #luong lao shi #fu dog #trixie carter #arthur p spudinkski #gantu #crossovers #reviews #disney channel #morpholomew

27 notes · View notes