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#fundamentally THESE CHARACTERS HAVE WHAT THEY WANT. like their arcs seem pretty done
extasiswings · 11 months
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I said this to others already, but to me this finale had a lot of 4x14 vibes tbh. Season 4 was severely hindered in it’s production due to COVID and i am, to this day, convinced that that’s also what made them tie it up with such a neat little bow before (at least in Bucktaylors case) undoing a lot of it immediately as season 5 rolled around. Essentially giving everyone the happiest ending they feasibly could.
And there’s something to be said about how mainstream tv seems to think that “happy ending” always equals “in a romantic relationship” whether or not the relationship itself is developed or healthy at all, but for two characters with character arcs so intertwined with their love life, it does make sense.
The thing is, to me this makes sense. Am I thrilled? No. But I’m excited to see what they do because I understand how this fits with the rest of the season and I’m not worried about it.
There were three big themes circling around Buck and Eddie all season. 1) missing the things that are right in front of you; 2) fantasy vs reality; and 3) Fear holding you back/preventing you from living your life. All three of these themes are tied together and need to be worked through to get to a place of Buddie canon and Buck’s “I’m already Christopher’s father” realization. But the last one is arguably the most important in order to get to the heart of the others and that’s where I feel like Marisol and Natalia come in.
Buck and Eddie both started the season single. But not because they necessarily wanted to be, because they were afraid not to be. Afraid to put themselves out there, afraid of being rejected, afraid of making mistakes. But being single out of fear is not the same thing as wanting to be alone or being comfortable with your life as it is, it’s just letting fear control your life. So the way I see it, if they had ended the season still single, that would have changed nothing from where they started.
For Eddie especially, this is a baby step but a necessary one. Whatever happens with Marisol, Eddie’s going to wind up on the other side with some confidence in himself and his ability to be a romantic partner and that’s what he needs to ultimately be secure enough to put himself on the line and really be honest with Buck. It’s low-stakes, it’s fluff, but I think it’s good for him.
For Buck, I disagree with the idea that he is inherently repeating the same mistakes. Yes, it’s not an auspicious start, but we as the audience see things that Buck doesn’t, and also there are some pretty key differences between Natalia and Taylor. With Taylor, they had a preexisting relationship. Buck knew going in all of the things about her that were dealbreakers for him, and instead of being true to himself, he told himself that he could “learn to live with it” and stayed with her for a year. With Taylor, he knew she was fundamentally a person whose values conflicted with his going all the way back to Dosed. He never should have dated her to begin with.
By contrast, he’s been on exactly three dates with Natalia. He barely knows her, and by all accounts she seems like a perfectly nice person even if someone who isn’t ultimately going to work for him (which is something that has been projected to the audience, but not for Buck). She hasn’t done anything wrong (it was pretty reasonable for her to feel overwhelmed and leave when Kameron crashed their date) and there’s nothing about her so far (in her personality or otherwise) that shows Buck is compromising himself and settling. Right now he’s clinging to a woman he wanted to date and get to know better anyway because she wants to be with him too and he’s feeling vulnerable—okay? He wanted to be with her though, I didn’t get the impression this was just about him being afraid to be alone (the way I felt about BT all through S4-S5). If they’re still together after the hiatus when they’ve known each other for more than five minutes and been on more than three dates, and we have actual evidence of him compromising himself where he shouldn’t? Then I’ll be agree that he’s repeating the same mistakes. But if anything right now I’m assuming this is his chance to prove his growth when he is ultimately put in a position to do better—that when something significant comes up he will be comfortable enough with himself to break things off instead of settling for what he doesn’t want. In the meantime, idk about y’all, but it takes me more than three dates to figure out if someone I’m interested in is going to be a good fit for me in the long run. And in a similar vein to Eddie needing to gain some confidence in his ability to be a romantic partner, I think Buck needs to be able to prove to himself that if he’s put in a situation where he’s settling, he’s capable of walking away. And for both of them I think those are important steps for them to take before they’re ready to be together.
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scribefindegil · 6 months
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ok i'm soooo happy you talked about the mind control thing with the divine tree arc. it rubbed me the wrong way a lot and is the reason why i still don't really like dimple, even though i know it's an important story point and all, i feel like brainwashing is a huge violation and it was never really talked about afterwards. it also rubbed me the wrong way when mob wondered if he did something wrong by stopping the brainwashing even though it made peopl happy, like i feel like that's so disrespectful to autonomy and such (even though, it is a fictional story)
i really like what you're doing with the brassica heresy, with tsubomi taking center stage bc she is one of my faves, i'm really excited where it will go!
Okay. It is possible that you will not like what I have to say. That's fine; you don't have to agree with me and you certainly don't have to like a fictional character who has done fucked-up stuff.
That said.
I feel like you're approaching this with framing that's pretty at odds with the themes of the show. Everyone agrees that the brainwashing was bad. A lot of Mob Psycho characters have done things that are bad. Pretty much everyone I know spent most of the Divine Tree confrontation absolutely furious with Dimple. But the question is: Okay, a character has done something awful. Now what? A lot of people would say that the only solution is punishment and rejection, that Dimple has done something too terrible for him to remain a sympathetic character, and he needs to be exiled or killed or imprisoned or otherwise removed from the show.
But Mob Psycho 100 believes, completely and utterly, with its whole chest, with every arc and with every character, that there is nothing you can do that is so terrible that you are undeserving of human connection, that you are incapable of changing for the better. It believes that there is no fundamental, ontological difference between the people you hate and the people you love, between a terrorist trying to take over the world and a kid who lashed out once and accidentally hurt his brother. Which isn't to say that actions don't matter; obviously they do, and they have consequences. But regardless of what they've done, everyone is just a person. Everyone can grow.
And, crucially, it isn't interested in punishment. Did the character realize their mistake and begin to change? That's what matters. The show doesn't have people constantly rehash the bad things they've done; it just gives them the chance to stop and choose a different path. And Dimple does. Dimple realizes that his goal of godhood wasn't going to make him happy, but his friendship with Mob was.
And people can have boundaries; people can decide that they don't want to be associated with someone any more; forgiveness, in Mob Psycho, is always a choice. But it's a choice that the characters continue to make because the show values kindness and transformation.
So like, yeah, the brainwashing was truly, deeply horrifying. And Mob loves Dimple anyway. And I do too.
(Also, to your point about the LOL cult: Mob is extremely anxious about doing the right thing and specifically about following social rules. And those people did seem to be happy, so of course it makes sense that the fear that he made their lives worse is going to eat at him. That's why Reigen's there, to reassure him, to tell him "You saved some people that only you could have saved," to listen to him tell his story and say that no, those people weren't really happy, and he did something good and important and necessary by breaking the spell.)
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charismat1c-megafauna · 7 months
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Crying screaming going insane over the fact that even if you THINK Hickey deserves the thirty lashes (or the twenty-three that he actually receives), it's still a difficult order to justify (even though Hickey was objectively in the wrong, although unfortunately it's not a massive leap in logic for your average white British sailor in the 1840s) because it's fundamentally part of Crozier's arc regarding alcoholism bringing out the worst in him. Sure, he comes to Silna's aid, but in the next episode, he wants to throw her out and abandon her, and even punishes his good friend for rightfully standing against him! It's a careless act of anger and cruelty that costs Blanky his leg, and ultimately his life (or at least, what might have remained had he not gotten gangrene). Ultimately, its the catalyst for Crozier's sobriety, his moment of "oh god I REALLY fucked up," and he's a better man for it, but it comes at the cost of his friend's life and Silna's safety.
Back to Hickey. I think we tend to let this moment slide because we know Hickey is a terrible person who does terrible things and we want to see him suffer, but Crozier continuing to up the ante as Hickey keeps talking is downright petty. The addition that Hickey be lashed as a boy is pretty needlessly cruel. And it leads to the moment where Hickey goes from a reactive nuiscance to an active threat. His homoerotic joker origin story. It's a moment where, like the Blanky situation, Crozier creates a future problem for himself.
It's a hard scene to watch (and the performances are incredible), and in that scene, it's kind of easy to see how mistrust of Crozier could breed in this environment. Flogging for an offense is terrible, but it's also expected. Hickey's flogging kind of pushes a lot of boundaries as to what is acceptable punishment or senseless cruelty, and we see different characters struggle with this. Crozier didn't just make an enemy of someone who previously wanted to be on his good side, he also created a martyr. It's just one of those things where nobody could have forseen the consequences down the road.
Don't get me wrong I absolutely love this scene and the way it furthers Crozier and Hickey's respective arcs and their dynamics with each other, but I think we can safely say Crozier acted from a place of malice, and it's just one of a few pretty fucked up things he's done, but we want to brush it off because Hickey is an acceptable target even though what happens to him is objectively pretty terrible.
I heard it said that flogging makes good men bad and bad men worse. There was no way Hickey was gonna come out of this normal, and in that instant, it's like fate was sealed. Crozier would never be able to be anything but a mortal enemy in Hickey's mind after that.
I love that this is a moment when Crozier crosses the line. I love that it seems to be more about taking out his feelings than serving a just punishment. I love the constant glances from Hickey and Fitzjames. And I love that this behavior escalates to Crozier going past the point of no return, leaving Blanky to the mercy of the elements and the Tuunbaq and abandoning Silna, and it's a huge moment of reckoning for him! He doubles back! He realizes he fucked up and he tries to change, and in some ways it's too late, but he still commits himself to changing for the better even if it kills him. Which. The DTs could have very easily killed him. It's just as much of a transformation for Crozier as the flogging was for Hickey.
It's so neat. These two men having these massive transformations involving deep personal suffering, and in Crozier's case, Hickey is a footnote, and in Hickey's case, Crozier is the cruel hand of God.
Or somwthing idk I'm like really sick and the nyquil hit.
Anyway I'm not going to bat for Hickey and saying he was right but I think we need to bear in mind that he's a sewer in the sense that he is the sum total of the society he came from and everything that was put into him- love and hate and betrayal and cruelty and everhrhjngi- and in the end, he is colonialism taken to its logical extreme. He's gonna fight God and then become God because he is Special (and Britain is going to conquer the passage and thus control the world because they have the power of God and anime- I mean uhhh they're doing it for queen and country so they are totally right and correct for trying to exploit a sea route for spice, right 🙄). Except he gets torn apart because nature doesn't give a shit.
Idk. Hickey gradually becomes warped into everything Wrong with the Franklin Expedition from the outset, and Crozier isn't a perfect saint who is right all the time and that's why I love this show. I'm gonna go to sleep now.
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i saw a post talking about neverafter slander on twitter so i went to check it out
here are some thoughts: (keep in mind, i’m not calling anyone out or saying your opinion isn’t valid if you agree with one of these points. try to read this as a light hearted discussion, like talking about a book with a friend)
a lot of it is people saying the season wasn’t horror enough and while i agree it’s not exactly as straightforward horror as the marketing suggested i think that that’s a take that is fundamentally misunderstanding what this is. it’s the horror season of dimension 20 which is a d&d show first and foremost. it’s not going to be following the beats of a horror movie because that’s not what they’re doing. when you run a horror campaign you fold in horror elements which they have been excellent at doing especially in the eldritch and existential categories
not to make assumptions but it seems to me that a lot of people making a big fuss about this haven’t played d&d for themselves. the things i have seen suggested the most for making the season more in line with the horror people were expecting involves turning the campaign into a more dm vs players situation (which is joked about a lot in fandom but in more of a meta humor way than is being suggested). this is something that anyone who has ever played in a bad campaign knows makes it a hell of a lot less fun to play and, i’m assuming, not so fun to watch either. the point of playing d&d is to work together to tell a story, if you go into to making a campaign with the goal of making your players lose, everyone is going to be miserable and your story is going to suck.
following that, some people are ragging on brennan for forgetting details and not having the lore entirely fleshed out. as someone who does unnecessary worldbuilding for homebrew campaigns every single time, i would just like to say on behalf of dms everywhere: it’s hard! there’s so much stuff to keep track of and so little time to keep the lore straight if you want the session to keep moving smoothly, i’m sure it’s even harder when you have a limited time to film the episodes/season
and maybe it’s just me, but i love horror movies (and other media) and neverafter is about as scary as most horror movies i’ve seen. it’s definitely better written than a lot of horror movies, we get to know the characters and are fully invested in them when bad things happen. it’s sort of on the level as the hellraiser reboot imo. some people make the point that besides the body horror, there’s not enough gore/blood kinda stuff, but i think gore isn’t truly horror, especially in a spoken format. it’s more of a shock factor thing, like a verbal jumpscare
and i’ve seen people saying that the pcs are too much like heroes/they’re too capable to be in any real danger, but in a horror movie, most of the bad things happen around the protagonist(s), they’re still thrown into the shit but most of the time they make it out. horror as a genre is so ill-defined anyway that people still debate if slashers and thrillers even count. plus, how many times in a movie has a side character been forgotten or something about the lore has been off? and that’s with multiple people overseeing the production.
jumping away from the “it’s not like the horror movie i envisioned” complaints, i’ve also seen a lot of people say it’s confusing??? and tbh i’m more confused about that than the campaign. to me it’s pretty straightforward, no more confusing than starstruck at the very least.
for the big picture: it’s different factions of people with conflicting (but occasionally overlapping) goals than all need to get to macguffin in order to reach whichever goal they’re aligned with
the pcs have their own character arcs which are very clearly laid out throughout the season
the minute details are there because that’s how you make your world feel lived in
and yeah, there’s a lot of potential in the stuff they could’ve done but didn’t. but i feel like that’s the whole point, y’know? this is the story they did tell, and the thousands of other ways they could’ve told the story live on like every retelling of a fairytale.
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Here's a collection of Trigun Stampede thoughts and observations I had from someone who has only seen this series, since big long posts rarely go over well lol. I'm really intrigued to contrast with the manga later and see if I get similar takeaways... I'm eagerly willing to expand on any of these if anyone is interested but for now they will exist as loose point forms! Hopefully this is coherent!
Firstly: Vash my beloved... please be nicer to yourself... please... you are so kind...
Meryl and Knives are the lead active/driving forces of the show, in contrast to most everyone else's passivity and Vash's reactivity
Meryl's influence on Roberto over the course of the story - she actually has him taking a pretty firm stance later on (which is likely the opinion he held all along, he just buried it), which brings me to the next point-
Conrad and Knives claim to be looking to the future but ignore the present - Roberto dismisses this because those who won't even save a life in front of them in the present moment won't save anyone (this is more in keeping with what Vash does)
The juxtaposition between Conrad and Luida's methods are great and I hope we return to that in the next season
I love Meryl. This is not an observation or analysis it is merely a statement of fact. :)
I wonder if we'll get more Zazie and Meryl interactions. Zazie seems to find Meryl intriguing at the very least. I also just like Zazie and think this could be a really interesting dynamic.
I would also like to see more of Rem, hopefully outside of the biased recollections of Vash and Nai... I still don't feel like I know anything about her :(
Ideals in the service of people (Vash) vs people in the service of ideals (Knives)
Most of the children in the series literally age too quickly. There's a lot to examine there.
Given the attempts to create Independent-like humans by Conrad and the rapid aging of these children... is the serum created from Plants?
Vash 🤝 Me: "Wolfwood" 🥺 (I'm kidding, I'm kidding... mostly.)
Vash and Wolfwood are not fundamentally different, as they first appear to be, but are actually quite similar in their drives (protection of others at personal cost) - the difference in their perspectives comes down to the scope of what they swore to protect (with Wolfwood's being far more limited, thus there are outsiders) and propensity to hope (Vash will act on hope without solid proof, while Wolfwood needs the proof but will jump on it if he sees it - interesting for someone who is associated with religion and faith)
Wolfwood's version of mercy is an unfortunate form of projection (aka Legato is a fucking idiot for thinking removing Wolfwood's attachments would lead him to be solely devoted to Knives. my dude, I am pretty sure that attachment plus raw survival instinct is the only thing keeping him going)
Vash: allows himself to get shot and reveals his scars / Wolfwood: >:O !!! / also Wolfwood: repeatedly takes hits either shielding people or just plain not dodging when he 100% could / Me: 😐
I wish we'd gotten some breathing room in the series. That's my number one gripe about it. Specifically, I wanted a little more time with Wolfwood to get to know him in the present before we got into him having the worst life of his fucking life in the span of two episodes... I also wanted to see a little more of this world that Vash cares about so much! I understand the manga and 98 series do this a little better so I'm excited to see that. Meryl's arc was great though!
Loved the really clever way the flashbacks are done!!! Nai is barely focused on at first, then as his character is slowly revealed, he gets the camera focus and childish behaviours more and more!!!
Huge themes of autonomy and choice. I think they're actually more the point than the whole morality aspect. It's not as important that Vash be perfectly moral and right than it is that his philosophy allows people the chance to choose and change for themselves - Knives' doesn't grant anyone that choice, and in fact, he and the people under him actively remove free will (breaking Vash's mind, the experimentation on Rollo, Wolfwood and Livio, what he did to... the Plants... etc.)
Vash is genuinely angry at Nai in a way he doesn't seem to be with anyone else. I do think a part of him can't forgive what happened to Rem or the emotional strain that comes with watching someone you love repeatedly do horrible things. I don't know if humanity could hurt him the way Nai has. The worst part is that I don't think Nai fully comprehends how badly he has hurt Vash. He looked so confused and hurt when Vash trained the gun on him for the first time. The "ominous piano playing" probably isn't meant to be ominous at all, once we see they used to play that piece together. Nai's been playing it on loop for so long. He wants his brother to come home. :(
The twins treat each other like an extension of themselves for a lot of the story, which is somewhat ironic for a couple of Independents. Vash blames himself and seeks to atone for his brother's actions, Nai thinks any differing opinion his brother has is a result of corruption instead of him being his own person. That is why it is a triumph when Vash finally asserts his identity away from Knives in episode 12, declaring himself his own person. That is why it is a tragedy when Nai would rather let his old self die, figuratively and literally, than accept that.
Nai did not want Rem dead. I stand by this strongly. His anger at her is I believe in part to justify her death in his mind.
Nai wants to return to a time of safety more than anything (the higher dimension is like an "egg", the ship's dome around the two as children, the quietness of the tree, etc.).
Tesla 🤝 Livio: products of human experimentation who really ought to be dead but apparently... aren't??? I am putting them both in my pocket and running away
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bithermal · 7 months
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"anyways I’m gonna stop before I rant about how there is a fundamental misunderstanding of anarchy"
I for one would love to read your rant about it tho, if you don't mind. :]
Ohhhh man ok bare with me. I am responding to this while there are fire trucks outside because someone set their apartment on fire.
For the sake of ease I’m going to break this up into talking about what anarchy arcs can look like, and what I’d think one would look like on the QSMP specifically or at least how it would actually affect the server. For reference I am a legitimate anarchist so if you’re wondering why this stuff gets under my skin that’s why lol.
Now most anarchy arcs on SMPs usually spawn from someone having a problem with the current leadership, status quo, or societal structure of the server. They want to overthrow or disrupt things because, for whatever reason, they don’t like them. That is technically the textbook definition of anarchism. However, a common mistake is that there is no long term plan. Most creators focus so intently on the overthrowing the government part they don’t stop and think ‘ok what am I going to do after I’ve completed this goal?’ And I can’t exactly blame them. The aftermath isn’t exactly as fun as the overthrowing part, but it usually just results in a new ruling party stepping into the subsequent power vacuum. Let’s take Technoblade on the dsmp for example: as much as I loved his character, he never had a follow up plan once he overthrew governments, and that’s pretty much exactly why he got caught in a neverending struggle of destroying L’manberg only for it to be built back up again. This constant overlooking of a follow up plan often leads to viewers misinterpreting anarchy as just destroying any sort of governing body and leaving the citizens to clean up the mess. Now there are other contributing factors, namely the existence of anarchy servers. They tend to cause most to have a pretty negative reaction when ‘anarchy’ and ‘minecraft’ are in the same sentence lol, but the point im getting at is there is a difference between textbook anarchy and political anarchy and that’s often overlooked by creators and viewers when discussing anarchy arcs.
Now as for what an anarchy arc would look like on the QSMP? Honestly, not that different from what Bad has been attempting. Remember, anarchy is fighting back against a ruling party. Who is the island’s ruling party? The Federation. Now unfortunately Forever is going to get caught up in the mix since he won the presidency and seems to be intent on keeping that title, but you can’t make an omelet without cracking a few eggs. Most of the other islanders aren’t exactly actively upholding the Federation’s ideals. They all seem pretty vocal about their dislike of the Federation. Bad isn’t exactly advocating for going after the islanders. In fact he’s done a pretty good job setting up a long term plan by aiding in the island community so much. intentionally or not, he’s helped to mitigate any negative effects that could possibly come from overthrowing the Federation. I think a lot of people hear anarchy arc and automatically equate it to a villain arc, when in reality the only people that Bad might be antagonistic towards are Forever, since he is unfortunately upholding the governing body by remaining president, and possibly Cellbit, Jaiden, and Foolish (as they are Federation employees, but I trust Bad to recognize their situations.)
I hope this made at least a little sense lol I tried not to get too political on a post talking about… Minecraft politics
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ladyluscinia · 4 months
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and okay okay okay i know you said you're done, i KNOW. but i've been discussing this with my friend and your post about how to rethink the kraken era and i think you could probably still do the leg with that if you made it, weirdly, more historically accurate? like. as far as we're aware, the real life israel hands was shot by accident when blackbeard meant to shoot someone else. that's why when he asked "why the fuck did you just do that" he got the nonanswer of "if i didn't they'd forget who i am"--because teach didn't actually have a reason to shoot hands, it was a mistake. you could absolutely keep izzy losing the leg as ed's darkest moment in a friendly fire situation--up until then he's targeting other people and is mostly mopey and neglectful and just not really a fun boss to the crew without being outright abusive, and then izzy gets shot by accident while ed is wildly ignoring gun safety and waving a pistol around on deck or something and ed. or izzy says "we shouldn't attack this ship, that's a terrible idea" and loses the leg during the attack, thus making it more indirectly ed's fault while still kind of being enough of ed's fault to make the plot go forward. either of those would be much more compatible with a "sorryboutyourleg" apology if you kept that or with izzy just brushing it off and moving on because he's knd of fucked up like that, because he could very easily compartmentalize that as not ed's fault. you could even get some interesting plot out of "izzy insisting it's not ed's fault and ed wanting to take that and just leave it be and also not being totally willing to do that because he does still recognize that it is in fact his fault"
(Post being referenced)
Yeah, an accident was one of the scenarios I was thinking could work if you really wanted to keep Izzy losing his leg in the story without having to deal with the fallout of it as something that Edward chose to do. Which has positives and negatives. It is easier and in-character for them to brush it into the past, as you point out, which might reduce the impact of it in the Edward-Izzy relationship. But the Crew-Izzy relationship using his leg as a point for them to all gather around and support was pretty well liked as an arc. Good addition of disabled rep, or bad look majorly disabling the S1 antagonist with "karmic" bad luck in what's still a romcom to everyone else? Things to consider.
Alternatively, Izzy lost his toe in S1 because that was Edward's response to getting pulled out of his hardcore denial/depression phase of Stede-grief. It sorta seemed like shooting Izzy's leg in S2 was an echo of that - what with it being prompted by Izzy confessing his love AND bringing up Stede again - but with everything else going on it didn't really hit like a true snap so much as an inevitability where Edward was waiting for an excuse. I do wonder if, in reframing Kraken Era a step to the left (no crew abuse / active pursuit of dying by mutiny) but still fundamentally as another form of avoidance via 100% focus on externalizing his pain without addressing it, that action as part of an actual "pressure has been building and finally snapped" point could still work?
It would probably need to be a real fight between them - something built up to where Izzy decides they need to yank down the curtains and address that thing they aren't talking about and damn the consequences, because the situation has become untenable for some reason. Maybe it is Edward spiraling into suicidality for real? Idk. I haven't actually figured it out, but I do think you could potentially go that way and have Izzy lose his leg due to a completely in-the-moment action that spurs whatever rock bottom moment Edward goes through in a way that doesn't feel like a premeditated strike or part of a pattern of abuse that we need to worry about repeating in less fraught circumstances. It would probably depend on how exactly Edward's mindset was framed, and there would be pitfalls to watch out for re: POC and abuse (and just sympathetic romance protagonists and abuse). Like my first instinct would be that Edward should probably pull the trigger for a reason that makes sense with something he's trying to do (even if that goal is clearly a mental health spiral like killing himself), not just to hurt Izzy. Again, things to consider both at a character level - how is this reflecting on Edward's characterization / arc? - and on a broader story level - what will this take to resolve and will it be worth the genre shift required?
I really just can't say for sure, other than, like, general writing advice, don't include limb loss as a character beat unless you have worked through the big implications of that with all characters involved? 🤷‍♀️ Which I do not think the S2 that we were given did.
And I guess dealer's choice for fix-it fics?
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scalproie · 6 months
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FINAL(?) THOUGHTS ON MK12
the story in general: enjoyable if you take it as face-value and dont dig deeper than the surface level, also if you dont have any passionate attachments to what came before.
the earthrealm champions storyline: genuinely liked it. Kung Lao/Raiden/Johnny/Kenshi's introduction and characterization were strong enough to carry them through the story. It was pretty easy to fill the gaps between timeskips and the dynamics were enjoyable
the outworld storyline: lots of players in this one but having a clear villain (shang) that ties everyone's motivation together makes it easy to follow. Overall I did like it.
the lin kuei storyline: as per usual, its isolated from everything else, but it's given NO screentime to actually develop, and even seem like an afterthought. I'd even dare say that with a little tweaking, you could remove them completely and the story would be no different. The only thing accomplished here is making explaining who the characters are harder than necessary, and I swear if I see one more person with vague knowledge of what theyre talking about trying to explain them to people who know even less and getting it absurdly wrong because of this game, I'm going to lose it. By far my biggest disappointment.
The timelines shenanigans: in a weird limbo where it's simultaneously too much focused on and not touched on enough. It felt like it was here for spectacle rather than smth they genuinely wanted to explore, but then again we have one interactions thats kinda sweet and satisfying. Overall, the entire story revolves around this so its pretty solid? but I also did not quite like it on a fundamental level. So it was... whatever.
INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERS:
Liu Kang: the closest thing we have to a clear protagonist, as he ties everyone together, which is fitting for his role both out and in-universe. I dont mind him even tho he is definitely flawed as its impossible to write a character with that much control as 100% good (we wouldnt have a game otherwise). Think he shouldve kept the white god hair tho.
Raiden: his role being switched with liu kang's was expected and the logical following of their storyline in mk11, I am more than fine with that. Raiden feels like himself in a different circumstance. I sure do wish his electricity was inherent to him and not the product of an amulet tho, I have no idea why this change was made. I did like him overall.
Kung Lao: Kung Lao is consistent in his characterization and this familiarity made me like him even more than usual. He gets really sidelined early on but I know the chapter system is to blame for that. There is a lot of cute moments involving him.
Johnny Cage: god, the writers fucking ADORE him do they? As one of mk's sole comic relief characters, I get he is the only one able to deliver a bit of comedy to the mix but fucking hell they almost abuse him in that regard. BUT they also give him a shocking lot of nuance too? The scene with his future ex-wife and everything involving kenshi? He gets a LOT of screentime and development and he is nothing BUT characterization, hence why, as someone who doesnt care that much about him, at one point it starts to feel really fucking unfair. Johnny is fine but I have to check myself because if I get too much exposure to him (which is inevitable) he genuinely starts to piss me off so fucking bad
Kenshi: he's fine. Kenshi here, like Johnny, is a character that isnt tied to anyone else, so the both of them having a joined development thats resolved in this very game is pretty good. I dont have a lot of things to say about Kenshi, he complete his arc and gets his job done in the narrative.
Geras: Geras has only been in one game prior so he does not have overwhelming expectations weighing him down. I really liked him here, his relationship with Liu Kang really does both of them favor.
Sub Zero: Bi-han fit the antagonistic role he was given well enough. Sadly it comes at the price of his already feeble reputation of an originally neutral character. But even when I lower my expectations, here he is given no nuance and no room for growth, not in a satisfying way anyway, as things are right now. The "depth" (read: one or two lines) he is given feels more like inconsistence on the writers' part than him having complex feelings. As usual, he COULD have been great, but he isnt. I'm really disappointed.
Scorpion: Utterly Unrecognizable. He is not fully Kuai Liang on account of being Scorpion, and he is not fully Scorpion on account of being Kuai Liang. This isnt a character, this is a checklist: 1) get the scar (Kuai Liang part) ✅️ 2) be shirai ryu (Scorpion part) ✅️. He is the only character to be given this treatment, or at the very least, the only one where its THAT noticeable because he is made of arguably the most popular characters of mk. We are missing CRITICAL parts of his and his brother's characters to make us care (his motivation comes from an unknown and unseen dead father that never existed before and such a massive big deal is never given development or focus, despite being all they're talking about), their entire storyline rely on nothing other than the HIGHLY popular rivalry between "Scorpion" and "Sub zero". No love and care was brought to his character, nor his brothers', nor his storyline.
Smoke: Smoke... sure as hell was there. Personal thoughts: but the more time passes the more I Do Not Like his characterization. He is written no longer as an equal to Kuai Liang but as what I can best describe as a sidekick, even moreso than usual thanks to him being written and played as younger than the brothers. Yet another thing I dont like about the Lin Kuei storylike. Literally miss (bi-han) after miss (kuai liang) after miss (smoke) for me. They're out.
Hanzo: genuinely ask yourself. Are you happy that hanzo is here? His presence in mk12 is the same as nrs holding up a cardboard picture of him so people wont be mad that he's absent. Everything that he had has been given to "scorpion" aka kuai. He cannot be important because he is young. And when we get a timeskip of him being finally being older then what? The only thing people want of him is dying and coming back as an angry wraith? That's all he is and will be? I'd rather have no Hanzo at all rather than him being stripped of what made him him and used in an unsatisfying way.
Harumi: Harumi went from being the wife of Hanzo Hasashi that dies to being the prize of Scorpion's character. She is finally given development but said development is so confined to the game she's in that it doesnt even matter to me, adding to the fact that they're going in a direction I find boring (to my tastes) with her.
Kitana: she was also there. Which is surprising because kitana always felt like... the protagonist when outworld was involved? While I understand her role, I personally am not that fond of her being relegated to a supporting character.
Mileena: she is an entirely new character with mileena as a basis. I think her story has holes but on the surface it gets the job done. She is definitely one of the more focused on character all the way til she gets her own chapter to conclude her arc, and she has plenty of relationships to bounce off of, so she's definitely one of the more rounded characters here. I dont mind her, but I cant hide personal pettiness that her popularity mightve been the reason why she's so important.
Sindel: I genuinely DID like sindel but I look at her and in the back of my mind there is always the devs' voices going "sorry sorry sorry". Still, I liked her. I liked her death also! It made sense and, while I think it couldve been done MUCH MORE EMOTIONALLY, Im fairly okay with the way it was done. Idk if her being a flawed leader is completely a feature or a bug but I did like it!
Li Mei: I literally did not care that much about li mei until the revelation that she and sindel used to be friends, and then a lot of things clicked together, so I would say THIS was good. Other than that, li mei is whatever to me.
Reptile: one of my main issue with him just boils down to him being hot. I do not mind him having one big monstery form and one human form, but the two are clearly not treated equally, and yeah yeah I know its easier with a human model or whatever BUT LITERALLY BARAKA EXIST. So him being "good looking" 75% of the time with sad backstory and an IMMEDIATE nice an easy going personality (even tho imo he should maybe be a bit angry and grieving that his fucking family died in the living forest until at least his own chapter) = the writers trying too hard for me to give him my sympathy. And I dont like being forced. Aka reptile lost most of his edge with me, it's like hes trying so hard to be likable he has no flaws and so he annoys me a bit in return. But I still like him. I SHOULD love him, so much even, but when I try there is always smth bugging me. I want him to be more fucked up, and no, eating a bug once (1) doesnt count, its what should be NORMAL for him.
Tanya: she's so weird to me. Tanya is mk12 is like, if she was from a mirror universe where she was the good version of an evil jade, if you get what I mean? She's not tanya in almost every way, yknow? Also, usually if you think the writing staff do anything with shipping in mind, you're reading too much into it, and shipping itself is not smth that's seen with respect... BUT THAT BEING SAID I genuinely wonder: if tanya/mileena had never been a thing, would they still had picked tanya for this role, or would they simply just have picked jade.
Rain: to fully appreciate rain you have to hunt down everything involving him in mk12, cutscenes in storymode, endings, intros... my man literally has SO little. But. What he has is literally so inoffensive to me, I actually quite like this rain a lot. He has his own thing going on and I like the direction it took!
Baraka: his inclusion feels like mileena's story was thought of first, and baraka's was built all around it to support it. No, I still dont like the tarkatans being a leprosy allegory now, and no, the new identity Baraka has doesnt do anything for me even if (or because) it was made completely out of nowhere for the purpose of mk12. People dont want SOME characters to suffer (even tho it makes for an interesting story), but when baraka is reworked into doing nothing but suffering, nobody bat an eye because he is no one's favorite. Also he is severely underused in story mode, where he could give us more insight on tarkat and the flaws of the regime, but doesnt. He also helps the earthrealmers out of the kindness of his heart but it really does feel a bit forced, especially when intros show he is not actually that kind in general. Still, just like reptile, I liked baraka.
Shao: funnily enough shao is given interesting depths in this story, but because shao has been an absolute fucking bastard in his 30 years of existence, nobody seems to notice or care. But I Do, despite myself I notice and care about whatever weird thing shao has got going on this time around. I know he has to be a lil bit problematic in there if I dig a little but nothing BIG on the surface so far??? And its the addition of MISGUIDED BUT NOBLE GOALS in shao that were previously non-existent thats so fucking weird to me. I'm literally looking at him under the microscope.
Reiko: Jobber Supreme. Reiko was funny. He is carried by his relationship to shao but it could legit be interesting so yknow what Im gonna let this silly fucking guy entertain me. What can I say, I like when villains have positive interactions and relationships.
Shang Tsung: Shang Tsung (both of them) was funny af. 10/10 no notes. Extremely entertaining. No fucking redeeming qualities. Critical amount of Kunt being served here. Evil and having fun about it. Caught being stupid in 4k by his own self. His plan(s) was pretty straightforward and I can appreciate that. I have nothing bad to say about Shang.
Quan chi: Quan chi was there to make funny faces and be mean gays with Shang Tsung. I dont mind him. Him being an outworlder and "turning white" is not smth I enjoy much tho, whats wrong with him being tied completely to the netherrealm?
Ermac: his design is something you eventually get used to. But as soon as you do he fucking get That Face. I swear I almost end up hating Jerrod in spite because of how they used Ermac. I cant deny it technically makes sense why they wouldve used him like that but I cant help it, I Did Not Like It. didnt liked it in mk9, dont like it now. I think I wouldve liked more the idea of Ermac being influenced by Jerrod rather than him being downright possessed by him. My opinion was much more scathing before the leaks but I have since calmed down a bit. But Ermac gets treated so badly in this game, he actually gets all my sympathy and more, compared to other characters.
Ashrah: Ashrah is okay. I like what she adds to the earthrealm team (and god know they needed her bc damn this was the no girls allowed club before she showed up) but I'm not sure I would enjoy her on her own without someone to bounce off of. Because she also was a character whole neutrality got removed to make her a fully good-aligned character. One thing that really endeared me to her tho was her "I've never had a home before!" line and the genuine happiness she showed there, I wish this part of her had been more explored. And she is also one of the characters that gets a lot more fleshed out in the intros to me. But still, like I said, Ashrah was okay.
Nitara: yeah the megan fox voice acting is objectively bad but it could also be way worse. I know its different bc this one is just an optional skin and not the character's actual voice but fucking listen to JCVD's voice acting. As for nitara, Im really sorry but it feels like she is just here to fill a niche, and said niche being "fanservice". So i'm really sorry for people who like her but yeah she is outshined by her VA and the "well she is a 3d era character that hasnt been shown for awhile so lets bring her back for the people" sentiment. As for her role in the story, I know we need jobbers but she is so isolated from everything they could remove her and it wouldnt change anything. Her personal motivation is not even given the time of day even tho it's the ONLY thing she has, so yeah Im having a hard time to care. Which is sad.
Havik: as soon as I saw his bio I knew he was going to be done dirty, the trailer he showed up in implied it but him having such a sympathetic backstory all but confirmed they were gonna go the "guy with good reasons to change the system fucking take it too far so you cant endorse him" trope with him. Everything with him seems a bit random (which is ironic considering he is mr. chaos) like, why is scorpion the one to give him his iconic open jaw look? (It also cements scorpion as the checklist character ngl). Anyway I do understand the reason for his inclusion as well as the story needing jobbers, doesnt change that I still think he's whatever tho.
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redheadedbrunette · 7 months
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Cool so I reread the series and I noticed a lot more than I did the first two times I read it which is fun. The relationship between Ben and Erica is more explored than I remembered which is good and I can definitely see her character arc a lot clearer.
X is still my least favorite book and there’s absolutely a corner that Gibbs wrote himself into on that one unless he’s entirely giving up on the idea of having Ben and co. be secret agents.
Ben’s a lot more of a competent spy than I remember too, which is refreshing.
I also completely forgot that all 10 of these books happen in the span of like a year and a half which is hilarious.
Oh and the age gap seems like something that would be a lot more of an issue if there weren’t only like 300 people in the world they could have contact with. Even Erica and Josh had a bit of a gap since she had to have been 14/15 or so while he was 17/18. A gap of 2.5 years would be problematic for normal kids but I think different rules would apply.
I'm so glad it was clearer on a second go around! Honestly, I didn't even really see it all that clearly until I reread the series a couple years ago (SSAS came out my first week of college) and had a lot more experience with how stories work on a fundamental idea. Erica's development is very much in the background, but when you're looking for it (excluding SSPX, but that's a different rant) it's so clear and interesting and I love it.
SSPX bothers me for SO MANY REASONS the biggest of which is that Mr. Gibbs puts the message before the overarching plot of everything, and then! It's not even a relevant message! Like, what twelve year old is hardcore believing QAnon (it's pretty obviously meant to be that or something similar). I feel like something could have been achieved and a message about privacy, like Murray makes getting a video of Ben part of some TikTok knockoff challenge, because that seems like a much more likely thing kids would do, but gotta make fun of people who remember what the news said two years ago and comparing it to what they say now! Can't have people with good memories! But yeah, it does shoot the series in the foot kind of, and I understand the reasoning behind why things were done the way they were! I just don't agree with it most of the time.
It's even funnier when you realize that it's not a year and a half evenly spread out, it's one mission his first year with five months before summer, one that summer, and seven his second year. Eight if you want to count SSGS and SSBI as different missions (I go back and forth as to whether or not I do). It's so funny. Please give poor Ben a break.
And yes! Ben is actually so much more competent than people seem to give him credit for sometimes. It's just that his skill set tends to be less flashy and useful in battle scenes, but he's very much the chess master of the group. He's the one planning and strategizing, and all the karate moves in the world aren't going to do you any good if you can't actually foil the plans.
My reasoning for why I'm okay with the age gap is because the narrative treats them as equals who are more or less in the same place in life. Like, yes she's two classes ahead of him, but for all intents and purposes, they're teamed up together constantly with others in Ben's class and I think Erica is the only one we really know about in her class (can't remember Chip's age, but he might be? idk, doesn't really matter). It's never dwelt on, and it bothers me when people try to make a deal about it! Like, they're not going to be in the same place in their lives forever. It's high school. Almost no one marries the person they dated in high school. I've long held that they'd break up sometimes after Erica graduates and starts her adult life while Ben is still in school (or something similar depending on how Mr. Gibbs decides to do things moving forward).
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Text
Hammering Out Some Thoughts About Maddie
(a.k.a. I have feelings)
What happened in Dark Web?
So, Ben Reilly (a clone of Peter Parker) comes to Madelyne Pryor with a mind to make trouble. He's frustrated about his identity and his feelings about Peter and wants closure and vengeance and whatnot. She seems into the plan and then does all the work. Magic shennanigans, demons in New York, the works.
Maddie's branch of the evil scheme involves kidnapping Jean, and trying to forcibly extract memories of Cable's early childhood from Jean's mind.
This doesn't work. Jean wakes up, and slaps Maddie. They fight a bunch, Jean appears to win said fight, then she turns around and just psychically hands over the memories in question.
Hmm.. Ok.
But why though?
This is the fundamental problem with this story. Why? Why is Maddie acting like this?
The first Inferno, where Maddie goes evil and brings hell to Earth etc, is noteworthy for being... well, for being a really ooc thing for her to do. In universe, it's a combination of an emotionally and psychologically vulnerable state and literal demonic forces that cause her to do all this. In reality, it's the writers wanting to get rid of her so they throw the Medea trope at her (i.e. woman is scorned, woman goes evil and mad, evily.)
Since then, Maddie has cropped up as a villain occasionally, with varying degrees of sympathy and nuance. Most recently, she appears in Hellions, and then the New Mutants. In the latter, she gets a lot of sympathy from the writing. She's still characterised as someone who plausibly has done a bunch of supervillain things, but ultimately just wants to get away from the people responsible for her trauma - i.e. Mr Sinister.
Maddie's actions at the start of Dark Web are a massive, stupid departure from this. This is a character who, the last time we saw her, had exactly zero plans to hurt anyone, and certainly wasn't on the brink of waging demonic war on New York. There was a lingering sense that maybe Ilyana's trust in Maddie might be misguided, but nothing like this. It doesn't make sense in universe at all.
Once again, this is a lazy decision from a writer, that has lead to Maddie acting ooc. And it's so underwhelming here because the only reason she's having this backslide and doing the evil villain schtick again, is so that she can have a change of heart and a redemption moment which she was already doing. It's stupid. It's so forced.
Autonomy
Both as a character being forced into weird tropey boxes by writers, and as a woman in universe, Maddie's main theme is a loss of autonomy.
Her memories were fake, decisions she thought were her own were decided for her. Her marriage and her child, all part of someone else's plan. Beyond this existential horror, she's also robbed of choices in a more straightforward way. Scott demolishes their relationship, Jean displaces her (from her perspective) and her son is literally taken from her. Then there's the freaking demons.
When she's brought back, both as a ghost-ish entity, and then physically later on, it's all unwillingly. Arguably, New Mutants is the first time in a long time that we see her make any big decisions from a position that isn't a) entirely devoid of meaningful choices or b) a magically influenced mental breakdown.
So, a lack of autonomy is the big theme in Madelyne's character. Gerry Duggan (who wrote the bits of Dark Web that concern this) seems to be aware of this on some level, but takes a different approach.
We get a bit of Maddie's inner monologue where she speaks about how her life is a sham. How she was brought into this world to be a replacement for Jean - or rather, for Jean's uterus. It's honestly pretty moving.
Now, you might expect, if you know your writing techniques, for this story that is openly presenting itself as a sympathetic take on a morally dubious character, that is clearly going to denoument with a resolution between her and Jean, to contain a character arc. i.e. for what this character believes and wants at the beginning of the story to change over the course of the narrative. For her to realise that what she wants is not necessarily what she needs.
But, my friends, this is Gerry Duggan. A rebel. A maverick. A girl boss. He doesn't believe in character arcs. He spits on your so-called writing techniques. He sees your theories of narrative structure and steps on them... in heeled boots... because he thinks it's hot.
Motherhood
Instead of doing a normal writing thing, what happens is Maddie gets the exact thing she was after (the memories of Cable) and yes, actually it turns out that is what she needed. That overarching theme of a loss of autonomy? Nah, fuck it. Her existential angst about existing only as an incubator for this baby and the entire rest of her life being fake? Whatever, let's just make the whole story about the baby anyway.
One of the difficulties with Cable and Maddie is that Cable has been a massive hulking Liefeld monster of a dude for most of the time he's existed in comics. His entire existence as an adult feels very detached from his origins. The contrast is deliberate, of course, but it does make it hard to reconcile the two eras of the character. More importantly, in universe, Nathan himself has lived a whole other massive life since he ever saw his parents. She's not actually that high up on the list of influences on him because, you know, time travel, space ships, Apocalypse oh my.
When teenage!Cable was around, it was hilarious to me personally and also was an opportunity to bridge this gap between the adult Nathan and Scott and Jean. But since teenage!Cable is gone now, that option isn't available for his birth mother. And with all this in mind, I do think it makes sense that Nathan himself wasn't part of the confrontation.
Now, obviously you can be someone's parent without being the one who gave birth to them. So, Jean and Cable feeling the way they do in canon about each other is not wrong, although it's not how I personally would've written the dynamic. But anyway, as it stands, Nathan has two mums, and one has spent more time with him than the other, but both have still lost him.
That's what this sharing of memories between Jean and Madelyne is, really. It's grief. It's mourning. They've both lost this kid and he's fine, he's okay so it really shouldn't hurt so much but also, it is tragic.
So, yes I really do like some of this.
The Other Woman
What I hated was Jean slapping Maddie.
When Jean stops the fight and offers up the memories, it's clear that she was willing to do this the entire time. She even says that she pushed for Maddie's resurrection. She's wanted to do right by her for a while. This is good, this is a really in character attitude for Jean to have.
So, then, why the fight? Why the beat down? I know, I know, It's a comic book. It needs action scenes. But I hated it. I don't want to see Jean slap Maddie. I don't want to see her defeat her in battle. Moreover, it doesn't make sense on a literal level (Jean is actually super down to help) and it's not like it's a thematically relevent beat either.
Jean being supportive of Maddie is a widely popular fan opinion, that is nice to see validated here. One reason it's so popular, is that it flies in the face of the writing between them back in the day, which felt sexist and like they were working on the maxim that "women all hate each other, am I right?". Ironically, the slap panel and the fight have some of that flavour to them. But overall, yes this is a better direction to go in for these characters.
In general, I'm a supporter of "let these characters hate each other" in a lot of contexts. For example, I think that neither Monet nor Bobby should be written as liking Emma Frost all that much. I don't think it makes sense for them to feel that way. A really big example would be Kwannon and Betsy Braddock. I think that whatever closure looks like for Kwannon, it shouldn't directly involve Betsy. She can resolve her feelings about her, without needing a big confrontation with her. I don't think endless apologising from Betsy would help, especially given how she didn't choose most of this either. I think it's something they need to deal with seperately. And, crucially, I don't think resolution here looks like friendship. I don't think Kwannon should ever have to like Betsy.
Now, you could compare Maddie and Jean to Kwannon and Betsy. Both cases are two women who traded lives. Both cases involve one woman being the centre of devastating pain and trauma for the other, mostly unwillingly but nevertheless something that you can't really get over. So, maybe you could say that Maddie shouldn't have to forgive Jean and shouldn't have to like her.
But I think it's different. Mainly because I think there's more symmetry between Jean and Maddie, and maybe because Jean's hurt towards Maddie is less visceral, more existential. I think it's very believable that they could reconcile.
That said, I am glad we haven't had a "maddie forgives scott" storyline. Let me tell you I do not care. You're allowed to hate your shitty ex lol.
Audience Reception
I would sort the reactions I've seen to Dark Web into three categories: positive, negative and whinging. Naturally, I'm in the third category.
A lot of the positive reception is simply because, finally, we got a positive portrayal of Maddie. Ultimately, Dark Web reinforces three widely held fan beliefs
What happened to Maddie sucked
Jean and Maddie shouldn't hate each other, and Jean wouldn't hold any ill will towards her.
Maddie shouldn't remain a villain.
And, well, yeah I agree. This is all on the right track. Fundamentally she should never have been written as two dimensionally evil, and the fact that this era of her character appears to be officially over is a good thing.
The negative reception tends to come from people saying "well, look at all this awful shit Madelyne has done. Why should she be redeemed, she's clearly evil." And, hmm, okay right. It's not like there are no "heel turn retcons" that I don't take seriously, but it's worth being more skeptical of writing decisions than that. These choices weren't made by a human-turned-mutant woman named Madelyne Pryor. They were made by a series of writers.
You could argue that what's canon is canon, and there's a case to be made for just coping with what's happened and moving on. I do think that argument works better when the thing itself wasn't so ooc and retcon-esque.
In Captain America 2015 (or 2017?), the writer finally revisits the "snap wilson" retcon - a change to Sam Wilson's backstory from the mid/late 1970s inspired partly by a fascination with exploitation movies and partly by a growing concern in American culture at the time about "urban crime". It's racist and awful and thank fuck they finally said "nah, that's not canon anymore."
Comics revisit past canon all the time. And I'd argue that grappling with bad, often bigoted, writing decisions of the past is a worthwhile thing for Marvel to do. It certainly seems like a more appropriate way to treat past canon than some of Duggan's other work.
And anyway, this isn't even a retcon. It's a reframing, a different perspective, and a valid one.
The Whinging
I've seen a few people land closer to where I'm at with this. i.e. that Dark Web is not good writing but still overall it's good that they seem to have changed direction with this character.
Complaints include:
The contrived heel turn that Maddie does just to facilitate the plot to a series that is all about redeeming her
The fact that this story should be about autonomy but is in fact about Jean and Cable
The way that focusing on the baby feels like a weird step if her angst is about literally only existing to grow a baby
The emphasis on motherhood as a redeeming feature of a woman
The fact that they make a big deal about Maddie working with the x-men as if she wasn't literally in the x-men before
Some of this rant was inspired by other comments I've read, some of it not. In general, a lot of people are on a similar page with this.
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Duggan is not a brilliant writer, but there are things he put in this that I did genuinely like. (You can't say I never say nice things). But overall, it felt like it ticked the basic boxes for what people wanted for this character, but didn't manage to do much more than that due to some weird and frustrating choices.
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bestworstcase · 2 years
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Something about redemption is how some mistake humanizing people who've done some damn bad things (slavers, abusers, the worst you can imagine). That is, they might change but for now we're getting into the head of who has been framed by the show as "the worst." A descenter claimed that it's because we're tired of the news humanizing monsters and letting them get away with awful crimes, especially when they're people in power who'd get far more than a slap on the wrist otherwise. 1/
2/ Sorry if that sounded too vague. It's just a thought. We seem to like uncomplicated, easy-to-hate villains because we desire catharsis we never get in real life. Villains who are shown to be human in tandem with being despicable seem to feel like it's Fox News trying to make a martyr out of a monster.
it’s the christian hegemony
um my feelings on ‘redemption’ are pretty negative because conceptually it centers forgiveness as the mechanism for emotional and moral change (and in fiction very often skips over the actual. changing. to go straight to the absolution-through-forgiveness and gag if i wanted to read a morality play i would just read a morality play you feel me?)—ANYWAY
the thing about having a problem with news stories “humanizing monsters” is that the. the monsters in question ARE, in fact, human; human beings who chose to do terrible, depraved, repulsive things yes but to deny the humanity of evil people is to suggest that humans don’t have the capacity for evil, which we do. every person on this planet has the possibility of evil inside them and it doesn’t do anyone any favors to pretend otherwise. and while there is a legitimate and very widespread problem with human interest pieces and basic empathy being weaponized in a propagandistic fashion, the issue is not “humanizing monsters” it is entrenched systemic and personal bigotry that affords humanity only to members of the hegemonic classes. gkdhshk we fix it by challenging the dehumanization of marginalized victims, demanding empathy and acknowledgment of personhood for the people harmed by this, not by trying to expand the categories of people who don’t get to be human.
(also frankly a society that can’t hold someone accountable for evil acts without stripping away their humanity first is a society that is deeply, deeply sick.)
as it pertains to fiction and fandom redemption arc #discourse the whole discussion inevitably plays out like this:
AGAINST: this character did horrible things and is irredeemable! 😡 how can you even suggest letting them off the hook?!
FOR: but this character has suffered so much 🥺 don’t they deserve forgiveness?
AGAINST: no!! fuck this character! they deserve to be punished for what they did! [optional: insert unhinged revenge fantasy]
FOR: but this character’s past suffering is already punishment enough! 🥺 they deserve a chance to heal
AGAINST: what about all the people they hurt, huh? HUH? why should those people have to forgive this character just because this character had a bad life?
FOR: but this character just needs love and then they can be a better person 🥺
on and on and on. in every fandom. about every character. even the laundry list of irredeemable wrongs the “against” side always comes out with sooner or later tends to sound the same. eventually someone on the “for” team will bring up zuko and everyone against will produce a list of all the reasons this character isn’t like zuko and could never be zuko. kshfbsh fundamentally both sides of this argument agree that forgiveness is earned through punishment/suffering and the point of argument is always, always whether the villainous character has been sufficiently punished.
fun game: every time you encounter redemption arc discourse—whether for or against—start mentally replacing “redemption” and “forgiven” with the phrase “try to become a better person.” like: does cinder fall deserve redemption? does she deserve to try to become a better person?
see how that changes the meaning of the question? how it reframes the discussion such that the villainous character is no longer a passive receptacle for redemption or punishment or forgiveness but an active participant in their own character development? and how by focusing on the agency of the villainous character we place the onus for moral change on them rather than on the heroes?
does cinder fall deserve to be forgiven WHO CARES WHY DOES IT MATTER—but if she wants to do better? if she decides to crawl out of the darkness she’s burrowed herself into, what does that look like? what does she do? how can she atone for the terrible things she did? how do her changing goals and different choices shape the world she lives in and what do the other characters do in reaction to that? what does healing mean to her? if the possibility of her joining the heroes arises, how do the characters navigate that situation and the countless fraught, painful, contradictory emotions that it’s bound to inspire? like—hfbfks i’m using cinder as an example here because she’s the locus of most of the redemption discourse happening in the rwby fandom, but these are general questions. fundamentally i just don’t care about the bizarre moral calculus of whether a character’s personal suffering does or doesn’t outweigh their wrongdoing and entitle them to forgiveness.
tbh personally i don’t—i never have—find any catharsis in uncomplicated evil villains; like, they can be really FUN? love a character who’s just a complete fucking shitheel for no reason. and it can also be very satisfying to watch heroic characters defeat them, but for me that satisfaction is no different from the satisfaction of watching a character overcome any serious obstacle. like, uh—i got the same sense of satisfaction out of jaune grieving in front of pyrrha’s memorial as i did out of blake and yang taking adam down, you know? it’s about the culmination of the emotional arc, irrespective of whether there’s a bad guy to defeat or not.
(and then there’s also the secondary issue a lot of stories have of like, is this actually an uncomplicated evil monster or is this a character who challenges a legitimately bad status quo but the story is written by neoliberals so they’re also going to like shoot a baby or something so the audience will know that challenging the status quo is something only #evil people do?—or the subtler but no less obnoxious variant of is this actually an uncomplicated evil monster or is this just some guy who has been designated #evil for having goals that don’t align with what the protagonists want? nothing will get me to sympathize with a villain faster than a narrative double standard or a narrative that is constructing a cartoonishly evil strawman because it wants to wibble about how challenging systemic evil is even worse than systemic evil.)
hdjfhdjs not to say that people don’t or can’t feel catharsis over seeing villains get their comeuppance because plenty of folks do! it’s just a very big Can’t Relate thing for me haha
i just go wild for characters who are interesting, and what interests me is emotional complexity and dynamic character development. morality doesn’t really… come into it except for characters who have fraught relationships with their own morality, in which case the fraught internal conflict is what interests me irrespective of the actual moral inclination of the character. (this is also part of why redemption discourse exasperates me SO much; all ethical bones i have to pick with redemption conceptually aside, making forgiveness the focal point and fulcrum of change just totally ignores all the interesting junk in favor of treating the character like a static object and it’s BORING.)
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twin-books · 2 years
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Adrien!
This is an ask directly related to this and I'm finally here to answer it. Or at least part of it. Tagging @non-canon-central because they also asked for Adrien but I was unable to get to him at the time. For some reason Tumblr doesn't want me actually tagging them I guess, so hopefully this freaking works??? So let's make one thing pretty clear; I don't hate Adrien but I do hate his character. That sounds like an oxymoron, I am aware. The best way I can describe this is, it's like the opposite of liking a villain's character but fundamentally hating them as a person. Like I love the idea of Adrien. I think he has plenty of fun potential and it wouldn't take much to make him more intriguing but I just hate how he's written. I'm sure that comes as a shock to absolutely no one. I say this about almost every Miraculous character. I wanted to clear this up because a lot of people seem to believe that if you talk bad about a character, and it isn't some kind of joke, that you just hate that character entirely. This isn't the case with me. Now I mentioned a while back that the only way I believe I could ever hope to explain my frustration with Adrien's character is by comparing him to other similar characters or similar character arcs. My goal is to compare him to a few characters. I tried to keep it to characters within his age range but there are one or two on here that are adults (though I would be referencing a lot of their childhood for at least one). Since I will be comparing Adrien to these characters this means spoilers will be very hard to avoid so I'm just going to warn you now. If you don't want spoilers for the following I suggest looking into these things yourself; Sonic and the Black Knight, Sonic the Hedgehog Archie comics, Sonic Universe Archie comics, Sonic the Hedgehog IDW comics, Mr Love: Queen's Choice the Gavin and Kiro story arc, Koi to Producer: Evol X Love the Mr Love: Queen's Choice anime, Ben 10: Alien Force, Ben 10: Omniverse, and Miraculous Ladybug. I was initially going to include Raven Saga from Webtoon but decided against it since it's not nearly a big enough franchise as compared to the others and the author would most definitely not benefit from it. I highly recommend reading it and then you can guess what character in there I found similarities to Adrien in but was just actively done better. I will most likely be splitting this into parts just to make it an easier read. Part 1: Mr Love: Queen's Choice and/or Koi to Producer: Evol X Love - Kiro (Helios)
One of the reasons I believe Mr Love: Queen's Choice's characters are comparable examples to Adrien (despite all the characters presented are adults through most of the story) is because it is an otome game, which means its primary focus is romance much like Miraculous. But also, much like Miraculous, it involves high actions scenes and beings with superpowers. It balances these things quite well whereas Miraculous (in my opinion) does not. And unlike Miraculous, it presents itself as a romance first and foremost, making it clear where their primary focus is whereas Miraculous doesn't really do that. In fact, most of its marketing is pointing at girl power. At least MLQC knows what it's about. Since MLQC knows exactly what it's about it may not come as a shock at all to you that they know exactly what their characters are. And there are two characters in this game that share quite a few similarities to Adrien. However a main difference is that both characters have a clear direction their headed towards but Adrien doesn't.
So let's talk about Kiro (Helios). This is the character I know the least as compared to the others. Most of what I have learned about him I got from the anime which I have learned is not entirely accurate but I will be referencing most of that (sorry die-hard MLQC fans, I am a very slow reader) as well as some scenes from the game.
Who is Kiro, exactly? And who the heck is Helios? Let's define him. Kiro is a mega popular popstar (so popular that girls practically fall at his feet) with a love for junk food and sweets (despite his agent forbids him from eating them). He's musically gifted, being able to pick up and play any instrument after a very short period of trial and error. He is also known to moonlight as a movie actor and a model. He's got a child-like wonder to him and a huge appreciation for superheroes, specifically ones without powers (Batmen, for instance). He shows affection and comfort through cute gestures and physical touch. He's, in essence, a big teddy bear. He's such a teddy bear that the narrative often compares him to one. This perfect teddy bear like nature is easily comparable to Adrien's perfect sunshine character. They both are hugely popular and beloved by their fans. They both show incredible talent, able to take on many tasks given to them such as modeling, acting, and instrument playing with ease. They both show comfort and affection through cute gestures (though Adrien's can be more grandiose) and physical touch. Pretty similar, right? Here's the massive difference; Kiro has flaws. Kiro has secrets. There are things he actively keeps from the MC and behavior one wouldn't associate with his supposedly perfect teddy bear likeness. There's actually a narrative reason why Kiro is presented to be so perfect. There's a reason why it's shoved in your face. We're gonna get into huge spoiler territory here for Kiro. This is your only warning.
Kiro is secretly a vigilante code-named Key (a name passed down to him by his father figure that taught him everything he knows). Key is an expert hacker. Able to hack through almost anything. There's very few things he cannot bypass. He likes to think of himself as a hero and loves to play the hero role (much like how Adrien took to Chat Noir so comfortably). Kiro prefers to use his own wits and hacking skills rather than his evol. That's right, he has evol, which in MLQC is the equivalent to superpowers. His evol is absolute charm. This was actually not fully a secret to us, the reader, but it's a shock to MC. It's heavily implied that Kiro used this power almost unintentionally purely because he's selfish. He longs for people to love him and his power responds to his wants. It's implied he's not aware how much he may use it but it could only be at his concerts. In fact, Kiro may have only been made aware of it when evolvers control over their evol was lost due to tampering with, I believe, electro-magnetic waves. Where, at one of his concerts, his fans began to tear each other apart to prove they loved him more. This is such a shock to him he quits being a popstar immediately because he can't bare the idea he caused that, even if it wasn't his fault he lost control. Now here's the really annoying thing about Adrien; I could totally believe he secretly has absolute charm with the way people just fall in love with him and he's just totally unaware of it but the problem is it's also pretty clear Adrien doesn't even want the attention he gets. And despite how obvious he makes that people blatantly choose to ignore it. This includes Kagami, Chloe, Wayhem, and nearly the entire class! He's not trying to hide it guys! It's pretty obvious he's unhappy with it! What is the purpose of this? To show he's so unfairly treated? How none of this is his fault? He couldn't possibly be unintentionally feeding into some of this because he's perfect and that would be too interesting of an idea. /s Ah, yeah, but I guess it ain't totally obvious because he's totally cool with Ladybug and his best friends giving him that same attention (except in season 4 I guess). Double standards much? What the freak do you want, Adrien?
But let's get back to Kiro because we aren't near done yet. Now here's a fun thing, Kiro actually possesses another evol. This evol he tends to refuse to use unless he has to. It is revealed to us and to MC at the same time. It's important to note that neither of us were aware of it until he had absolutely no choice. I'm gonna try to explain this without giving away too many spoilers because this game is awesome; Kiro refuses to use this power probably because it goes against what being a hero means to him. I should also mention that over using evol can be harmful and even deadly to the evolver. This is also why Kiro probably only ever used absolute charm. Keeping this all in mind, Kiro only decides to use it when he and MC are being chased by the bad guys and there's no way to escape. He has to painfully make the choice to use it on her when they reach the door to the heart of the issue which buys her some time while he fends them off. He risks her hating him just to buy her time so she can destroy the machine and save everyone. He also risks dying due to the sudden amplification of evol power. This self-sacrificing may slightly remind you of Chat Noir but the main difference being... Kiro actually had a reason. There is only about 2 or 3 times Chat Noir's sacrifices had ever made sense in the narrative and were presented as possibly the only action to take in that moment. I cannot stress enough to you how horrifying it is that almost every time Chat Noir self-sacrifices there are clear other avenues they could take and yet he immediately just jumps to the extreme. It makes you think Adrien just wants to die but something as serious as that is never at all focused on beyond one small comment from Ladybug in Lies! For Kiro there was no other option. If they entered the room together they would almost certainly be caught and since in this world they use guns, MC or himself could be dead before he ever got the chance to use his powers. And because MC effectively believes him to be dead after this Kiro takes on a new identity. An identity that isn't the perfect cuddly teddy bear Kiro or the heroic Key but rather someone akin to an anti-hero. Kiro becomes Helios; a cold, methodical man not afraid to use guns and his own power against the enemy. Helios even tricks MC into believing that he has no idea who Kiro is. He actively tricks her just to preserve her good memories of Kiro because there's no way MC could like this cold man, there's no way she could like who he really is. And he does state this a few times, that Helios is the real him even though he seems to almost fear this side of himself. It is MC who had to help him learn to connect Kiro and Helios and to not separate himself. He is Kiro and Helios.
This could almost be compared to Adrien's relationship to Chat Noir. Expect, rather than fearing this other side, he actively chooses Chat Noir over Adrien in most instances. He actively believes Chat Noir to be his true self and does not respond well to being turned away as Chat. This could be interesting and a great way to cause, not only outside conflict, but inner conflict. But this is not even explored. One could argue Kuro Neko did it explore it. But it really didn't. Instead of focusing on who Chat Noir is it, instead, chose to focus on how much Chat Noir loves Ladybug and how she needs him there for... no reason? No, seriously. They give absolutely no good arguments as to why she shouldn't just keep Catwalker around. The one good argument they possibly had they didn't even use. And that was that he freaking distracts her. No, instead their argument here is that he's "too perfect", whatever that freaking means. Excuse me? I believe, since your whole city is at freaking risk, that's exactly the kind of individual you'd want for the job. Never mind you want Chat Noir back for your own personal reasons (whatever those are because they do a very poor job communicating it). Why the freak would anyone turn away someone that's "too perfect"? The only reason I can think of is if she's suspicious of him but she so obviously isn't. They don't even try to explain why Adrien should even keep Chat Noir around if he's apparently only argumentive, not taking anything seriously, and effectively just another member of the team based on the visuals alone. The only thing keeping Chat around is cataclysm. That is it. And that's such a weak argument to stand on when literally anyone else could wear that ring. But no, that can't happen because we have to keep the status quo, I guess. That Ladybug is awesome and Chat is there to just make us laugh and give her an inspiring speech every season finale.
You know what's great about Kiro and Helios? That the narrative doesn't demonize Helios like Kiro does. It goes out of its way to show you how Helios is just as important as Kiro!
I don't get why it's so hard to just show that Chat Noir is just as important to Ladybug as Adrien without having to reference cataclysm or that it's because he's Adrien. How about it's because he's Adrien and Chat Noir? Why are the writers so afraid to merge these two together as if they aren't the same person. Heck, you even have one episode where you do just that but it's a what if episode so it's therefore non-consequential! And I hated Ephemeral but at least it bothered to do that despite pretty much every other episode tackling a similar issue absolutely refusing to do so! But this also required Marinette finding out he was Adrien and then only coming to love Chat that way. Which isn't entirely horrible but it just feels kind of shallow. I would have much preferred she realized she liked Chat but didn't want to "betray" Adrien in her mind so she refused to acknowledge it and then this reveal allowed her to combine the two and except that she has the best of both worlds. In many ways the romance of MLQC lends itself well to the character of Kiro/Helios but the romance of Miraculous seems to fight against the character of Adrien Agreste/Chat Noir. Probably because Kiro and MC's relationship feels like she (and the writers) have fully accepted and loved who he is where Adrien and Marinette's relationship feels like her (and the writers) love only one side of him and the other part is kind of just a small bonus. Oh, but don't worry this works the exact opposite way. Where Kiro actively loves MC, all of her (even though she can be kind of stupid), Adrien over here seems to only freaking like Ladybug. Like, yeah, he's nice to Marinette and he blushes around her occasionally but oftentimes that just feels like he's only blushing because their in oddly intimate positions often for some unknown reason. And also because he likes her as a friend. In Chat Blanc it feels like as soon as he realizes Marinette is Ladybug he suddenly recognizes this out of no where crush (that was barely hinted at). With Kiro he fell in love with MC first, before he found out she was a badass and then he fell even harder. Which makes it all the more ironic that he's willing to except all of her, even her flaws, but he can't seem to do the same for himself. In fact, Kiro even fell in love with MC in a similar way Chat did for Ladybug. MC was his hero. Someone who saved him and others by constantly being around to cheer people up despite the very dark situations of their childhood (which I won't get into because again, I'm trying not to spoil too much here). But that went from just outright admiration to genuine love. Chat's crush feels like he's just been holding Ladybug up on a pedestal the whole time except for kind of near the end of season 4 which I'm not sure why it had to take him that long.
I am not asking for Adrien to be exactly like Kiro. I am asking for him to feel like a sturdy character like Kiro. I am just trying to show that despite the similarities Kiro's character was able to find success where Adrien's character seems to only find failure. Kiro is most definitely not a perfect character. No character is ever perfect. But that's why we love them, isn't it? Because they're imperfect? So why can't the ml writer's seem to pull Adrien out of that bubble? Just let him be selfish without somehow justifying it! Also, keep in mind that this is just my interpretation of Kiro based on my experience with the game and anime. Some of this could totally be wrong or misinterpreted but it speaks volumes I am able to come up with all of this about his character based on what little I know yet for Adrien I have to compare him to characters to even try to explain why he annoys me! But that's just one of the successful characters I could compare Adrien to. The next part I'm going to talk about Gavin, also from Mr Love: Queen's Choice, and see how he also compares to Adrien.
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musashi · 2 years
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granted that i only really see it in the twitter/tumblr sects of the AA fandom i really just think it is a product of two things:
1. the black and white thinking prevalent in these spaces, the absolute lack of nuance
2. abused kids projecting onto miles, because miles has canon PTSD and is SO deliciously easy to relate to if you are neurodivergent in any manner. he really is made for Us.
i have FEELINGS about how meta this all is, and i don’t know if i can put them into words, but i want to try.
its SO fucking interesting because ace attorney is literally a deconstruction of the first point? it could definitely be more radical in how it treats retributive justice, but it does a pretty good lukewarm job at driving home the core point that the criminal justice system is inherently flawed and often fails to account for nuance, simply falling into a dichotomy of bad / good and perpetrator / victim. nuance is an intimidating thing, scary to face head on, and black and white thinking is much easier--there are monsters in the world, and they deserve to be punished. to challenge that and think otherwise is terrifying.
that... is miles’ fucking character arc? THAT IS MILES’ CHARACTER. these people who... so clearly see their own pain in him, are stuck right on the precipice of when he breaks free and finds his truth, his peace, his joy.
i have talked in depth about my own complex feelings on retributive justice and specifically karma as a force. but tl;dr as a person coming from a place of repetitive abuse, retributive justice and black and white thinking was like this armor for me--no matter what horrible things happened to me, all i had to do was be patient and wait for the universe to thrust it back upon them. the hurt was all worth it so long as they would be punished, not by me but by something greater and bigger than me that saw and memorized all the horrible shit they’d done.
and this is miles’ solace, too. there is so much trauma inside of him that he cannot erase or unravel, but what he can do is protect others who might be in his shoes. miles becomes a prosecutor because he personally wants to see to it that no one suffer the way he does, he wants to be this divine hammer of punishment that casts due suffering onto the worst of the world. this is easy, this is work that makes him feel good, this is a way for him to protect his younger self in protecting others. miles is an abused kid with a gentle, overflowing heart. he is not a bad person, not in the slightest.
but! he’s wrong. it’s not about bad and good, it’s not about black and white, it’s not about monsters and their victims. at the end of the day, crime is about neglect and tragedy and missteps. people do not do terrible things because of some inherent evil, they do terrible things because they didn’t have someone to offer connection and support. things are not always what they seem on the surface, either, and in all miles’ pain he lost sight of these facts, tunnel vision in his prosecuting career as a crutch for his own pain.
that’s game one--he fucks off, he processes it, he comes back better. he heals. miles makes great strides in understanding all of this, about himself and about the world. 
BUT DO YOU SEE WHY IT’S ALL SO IRONIC... i feel like the people who write these takes about manfred are truly just. they SEE miles and they RELATE to miles and they miss everywhere he went after his trauma. they miss the healing he did. they miss the truth he came to and the way ace attorney just holds up a big sign that says ‘THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IS FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN, WE NEED TO HUMANIZE CRIMINALS AND REHABILITATE THEM IF WE’RE TO MAKE A BETTER WORLD’ 
and still i read so much AA fic where the perps are just mindless monsters, catalysts to the abuse of others. manfred and dahlia are the worst by far, it’s like they’re stripped of their humanity entirely and exist only to cause pain unto others. it’s such a fucking uninteresting take, for me--if manfred von karma is a monster, then there is little to no narrative weight to everything he does to miles in the eleventh hour. if you make him a loving father and mentor, there is immeasurable fucking weight. 
i. yelling
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bulkyphrase · 2 years
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Multiverse of Madness disorganized thoughts
Overall: A pretty good Marvel movie! Fun and gross and a little scary in the way I want from a Sam Raimi movie and a Marvel movie. Continues to humble Stephen Strange in exactly the ways I want him humbled, and introduced a new character I love unreservedly. Wong (my beloved) present and respected.
I really liked Strange’s arc in this movie. He wants to do the right thing but he lets his arrogant surgeon thing get in the way. The fact that the movie’s climax involves him stepqping back and letting America Chavez come into her power and take care of Wanda? Love it. Contrast with Tony Stark who is also an arrogant white man, but never really learns from his mistakes.
Wong. I am one of nature’s sensible side characters it is so important to me that that Wong be the sorcerer supreme. Yes, please give this important job to someone who will (be charming and) take it seriously and not be distracted by movie plots. Even knowing he would live I almost screamed when he fell off that cliff.
I hate Mr. Fantastic because his powers are so disturbing to look at, and I loved that he died in the most body horror way possible. I cringed and cheered at that scene in equal parts.
I loved seeing Maria and Peggy, and I both loved and hated that they died. No real point here except that it was emotionally effective to introduce them and then brutally take them away.
I wasn’t sure that Marvel would require people to subscribe to Disney+ and watch the shows to understand the movies, but yeah. I would not want to go into this movie without seeing WandaVision and What If?
Music battle my beloved.
I hope America finds her moms. I hope she’s in every MCU project from this day forward.
Wanda. Is she dead? I didn’t hate her storyline if she is. TFATWS also had an arc (John Walker) where a morally decent but not amazing person was given too much power and went nuts, and I think that’s what happened to Wanda? Like, she’s not inherently a monster, but she’s so strong that no one could remain uncorrupted by that amount of power. “Very human character destroys self because they are given too much power” works very well for me as an arc, basically.
I wonder what other Wanda’s story was? Are those Vision’s kids? Did d she have powers before our Wanda took her over? What happened with Ultron in that world? What happened to Pietro?
All I’m saying is that if only humans of almost superhuman goodness should be trusted with superhuman power, Sam Wilson and Steve Rogers are the guys I would trust with that power.
The Illuminati. I know that’s a comics things that I know very little about. But I’m tempted to see them as people who made moral choices that they shouldn’t have made. Peggy went along with the “Stephen Strange euthanasia” plan the same way our Peggy went along with the “recruit Arnim Zola” plan - maybe it seemed like the only thing that could be done at the time, but it was not the right choice.
Fundamentally I am ok with movies that show the morally “hard” choice being the wrong choice. There are morally difficult situations in the real world, but blockbuster popcorn films should probably always prop up the conventionally moral choice.
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musclesandhammering · 3 years
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Every Single Issue I Have With S*lki (It’s Not Just The Selfcest)
Here goes. I threatened to post this a few days ago and never did, but I just saw a s*lki stan Twitter account claim that Loki caring about Sylvie more than the whole multiverse was a Good And Romantic thing and it pushed me over the fucking edge, so now you all have to read this. I’ve divided it into categories cause there’s just THAT much.
OOC Bullshit
• First and foremost, no amount of mental gymnastics you do will ever make me believe that this specific Loki- the one that just invaded New York, that just came off a year of Thanos Torture, that just got done being influenced by the sceptre, that was literally in the middle of a crisis already, and then on top of that went through all the trauma of Ep 1- would even be worried about a romantic relationship. That would be the furthest thing from his mind. Go back and watch how he acted in Avengers- you think that guy would abandon his previous mission to become a snivelling simp for a girl he’d just met 3 days prior? Yeah, there’s no universe in which that makes sense.
• “It’s very in character for Loki to fall in love with himself lololol-“ NO, it’s literally not. Out of all the characters in the mcu, I don’t think I can think of anyone that genuinely hates themselves more than Loki. He even referred to all his other male variants as “monsters” and said meeting them was “a nightmare” in this series. He’s got so much self-loathing, plus the fact that he genuinely thinks himself to be an evil backstabbing scourge- so there’s no evidence at all suggesting that he would ever develop a fondness for, or even be inclined to trust, another version of himself, after only knowing them for 3 days.
• Building on that, the whole concept of Loki falling in love with a version of himself just feeds into the annoying ass misconception that he’s a narcissist. No matter which way you stack it, he’s not. If you’re referring to NPD, he doesn’t fit the criteria, and if you’re saying “narcissist” just as a slang term meaning “selfish and arrogant”, that still doesn’t accurately describe him. But when creators like Waldron and Herron do things like having him fall in love with himself, it makes it so much easier for casual viewers to think that he is.
Shitty LGBT Rep
• It’s kinda sus that Loki’s are allegedly genderfluid and yet the only female-presenting variant we see (and apparently the only female-presenting variant there is, cause the male Loki’s all seemed unfamiliar with the concept) is treated as some kind of mind-bogglingly special paradox. Also very sus that, out of all the Loki variants, the one our Loki falls in love with just so happens to be the only female one. What a coincidence.
• The fact that the creators of the show went around bragging about Loki’s bisexuality and Marvel purposefully (lbr) allowed stories about Loki possibly having a male love interest to circulate, specifically enticing queer viewers to watch the show (you know, the definition of queerbaiting), and then instead of having a male love interest (Loki was the first queer main character, so it was the perfect opportunity) they gave us *gestures to this dumpster fire* this… it’s just a middle finger to LGBT fans. The fact that they would rather have this relationship with all its myriad of problems than have a gay relationship is just……. Very telling.
• While him being with a woman obviously doesn’t refute his bisexuality, the fact that they showed/talked about him being interested in 3 different women (flight attendant, Sylvie, Sif) and never even hinted at him being attracted to a man, definitely makes it seem like they were trying to cover up his bisexuality to smooth things over with the more homophobic viewers. You know? It’s like “I know you’re pissed that we sorta confirmed Loki as bi, so we promise we’ll never mention it again! Or even hint at it! As a matter of fact, we’ll give him lots of female lovies and make him seem as straight as possible! That’ll take your mind off of that horrible crumb of queer rep, right? Please please please keep giving us your money!!!”
• Aside from all the other issues, at its core, the biggest reason why I think I’m so irritated with s*lki is that it took one of the most interesting, complex, and diverse characters in cinema atm and squished him into a tired ass unnecessary heteronormative subplot…. Like literally every. single. other. protagonist. ever. Loki is such a unique character, and it’s so so so incredibly disappointing that they stuck him into that same boring cookie cutter romance that happens to every other character in every other movie I’ve ever seen. It’s a disservice, and it’s honestly just not compelling or entertaining at all.
Thematic Issues Galore
• His arc didn’t need a romance. With anyone. It was unnecessary and it didn’t make sense plot-wise. In fact, one of the reasons he was my fav prior to this was because he was the only big-name mcu character whose story wasn’t muddied-up by a romance that didn’t need to be there. So much for that.
• He wasn’t emotionally ready for a romantic relationship with anyone. Hell, just a genuine friendship would’ve been pushing it for him at this point. He was in such a bad state that any relationship he got into would’ve been toxic and unhealthy for both him and the other person, and it doesn’t make sense why the writers would want to put him in one when there were so many cons and essentially no pros (other than “Uwu aren’t they cute together”).
• Sylvie’s character in general was unnecessary and Loki’s character was robbed just by her being there. The whole show became about her post-Ep 2. They spent most of the time giving her backstory, building her up, telling us how awesome she is, trying to convince us to like her, etc when what they really needed to be doing was building Loki up- cause I gotta say, if I had to describe TVA!Loki in a few words, they would be Flat, Boring, and Weak.
• The romance overtakes the plot. They spend time portraying their supposed connection that could’ve been spent adding depth and complexity to literally any of the characters. They make the big Nexus Event them giving each other googly eyes on Lamentis when it could’ve been so many other way more profound things that speak to the fundamental nature of Loki’s. They have the climax of the finale be “oh no she betrayed him to kill He Who Remains” when it could’ve been something way more compelling (Loki having a moral crisis over whether or not to kill HWR, Loki contemplating the state of the multiverse and weighing the pros and cons of freedom vs order, Loki looking into some What If situations and getting emotional about what could’ve been regarding his family, Loki realising the gravity of HWR’s offer and finally coming to terms with how important he is to the universal cycle, etc etc). The entire plot suffered in favour of a romance that half of us didn’t even want.
• It essentially reduced all of Loki’s potential character growth down to “He did it for his crush.” He seemed to at least have some motivations of his own in Ep 1-2 (feeble as they were) but after Sylvie showed up in Ep 3, literally every action he took was just him being a simp for her. Why did he lie in the interrogation? To try to protect Sylvie. Why did he fight the minutemen and Timekeepers? To survive kinda, but mostly cause it was important to Sylvie. Why did he get pruned? Cause he got distracted trying to confess his crush to Sylvie. Why did he try to get out of The Void? Cause he thought Sylvie needed him. Why did he stay in The Void? Cause Sylvie was staying. Why did he try to enchant Alioth? Cause Sylvie told him to. Why did the multiverse get cracked open, leading to an infinite number of Kangs waging war on all of existence? Cause Loki didn’t wanna hurt Sylvie in their fight at the Citadel and then get distracted by her kissing him. It’s uninteresting and honestly pretty embarrassing.
• Throughout their “relationship arc” the writers do their absolute damndest to convince us that we should like Sylvie more than Loki. And you know what? It’s the most hypocritical shit I’ve ever seen. They preach and preach about how Sylvie’s life has been so difficult/we should feel bad for her/she had it so bad/poor poor sylvie/she had it SO much worse than pampered prince Loki…. But then they never even touch on any of Loki’s trauma of hardships (the ones that have been ignored for literally 3 movies now). They frame Sylvie as a good person and a Freedom Fighter after she spent literal decades/centuries mass-murdering brainwashed TVA agents and showing exactly zero remorse for it….. but then they make it their mission to constantly remind us that Loki is a terrible person and constantly put him in situations where he’s forced to acknowledge his wrongdoings/show remorse/admit to how “evil” he is for being a mass murderer for like 2 years. They show him on-screen having a wider range of powers than her, and perpetuate his whole shtick of being a “master manipulator” or whatever….. But then they make Sylvie “the brawn” more competent, intelligent, and physically capable than him. Tell me how it’s a good thing for a ship to be so narratively biased toward one character.
Missed Opportunities
• If they absolutely had to have a romance subplot, then they could’ve paired Loki with one of the characters that have already been established OR one of the characters that were a big part of the whole TVA storyline anyway. It would’ve been so interesting if they’d revealed that Loki had a history with some of the players from previous films (Sif and Fandral both come to mind). It also would’ve been really interesting if they’d given Loki a love interest that actually had some allegiance to the TVA as a whole (Mobius maybe, but not necessarily. It also could’ve been Renslayer or B-15). Hell, imo it would’ve been cool if they’d followed through with that “See you again someday” line that he said to the flight attendant in Ep 1. ALL of these characters have way more chemistry with him than Sylvie, and they were also already relevant to the plot without wasting half the show to give background info on them.
• If they absolutely had to have a hetero-presenting love story involving an enchantress-type figure, then there’s a whole Enchantress (Amora) that was actually Loki’s love interest in the comics. Plus, fans have been screaming for Amora to appear in the mcu for years. Plus, Tom literally pitched an Amora/Loki storyline way back in 2012-13. Also, Lorelei (another enchantress) is also one of Loki’s love interests in the comics, and she already exists in the mcu (she was on Agents of SHIELD). There were several different established characters for them to choose from. Creating a whole knew amalgamation of a character and going with the “she’s a Loki variant” storyline was just completely unnecessary and made no sense.
• They completely robbed us of a Chaos Twins dynamic. Had they handled Sylvie better and not forced her and Loki to smooch, the two of them could’ve had a really really complex and interesting sibling relationship. Loki could’ve stepped into Thor’s shoes and sort of used that new role to gain some self importance, and Sylvie could’ve finally had somebody to look out for her/teach her magic/be there for her. It would’ve been very aesthetically pleasing, the vibes would’ve been out of this world, it would’ve been way more profound than this bs, and frankly it would’ve been much more entertaining to watch.
• Loki’s relationship (read: obsession) with Sylvie completely overshadows all Loki’s other relationships in the show. Loki and Mobius were literally the focal point of the series in Ep 1-2, but after Sylvie showed up in Ep 3, they barely had any interactions with each other, and Mobius pretty much faded to the background entirely. Loki had the beginnings of a pretty interesting antagonistic relationship with Renslayer (with her wanting him pruned, then arguing with Mobius that he couldn’t be trusted), but after Sylvie showed up the dynamic shifted to focus on the history between her and Ravonna. Loki and B-15 started off very badly and openly disliked each other throughout Ep 1-2, and then in the end of Ep 2, Loki showed a little bit of concern for her when she was possessed, hinting that they might be inching toward a reconciliation- especially considering how obvious it was that Loki was gonna uncover the TVA’s sins eventually. There was so much potential for him to be the one to give her her memories back and convince her to change sides, but no, of course that honor went to Sylvie. In fact, after Sylvie showed up, Loki and B-15 never even spoke to each other again.
Various S*lki Fails
• If they were trying to convince us that this affection was mutual, they completely failed. There’s nothing I’ve seen that even hints at Sylvie feeling the same way about Loki that he does about her. At most, I’d say she has a slight endearment to him. She finds him likeable and she’s grudgingly fond of him, but she definitely isn’t in love with the guy. Maybe she thinks he’s cute and hopes that he gets out of this mess alright, but her mission obviously comes before him- whereas, it’s been confirmed multiple times that Loki cares about her above anything else. She doesn’t trust him, she looks at him like he’s an incompetent fool half the time, she shows little to no reaction during most of his confession moments, and she kissed him as a means to distract him so that she could get him out of her way. Look, all I’m saying is, when you get into a relationship where one of you is way more invested than the other, it never ends well.
• This goes without saying for a lot of us, but the selfcest is just straight up odd and cringey. If you’re cool with that sort of thing, fine! People can ship what they want! But don’t pretend it’s not at least a little bit uncomfortable. Yes, I know they’re not technically siblings so it’s not technically incest, and they’re also not technically the exact same person, but they’re similar enough that it makes things weird. And yes I know selfcest can’t happen in real life, so there’s no way to judge it morally, but neither can most of the other stuff that happens in these shows/movies (the Snap, Loki destroying jotunheim, superhero with powers being held accountable, mind control) and yet we still find ways to judge their morality, because they all mirror real-world events. (The snap= genocide; Loki destroying Jotunheim= bombing other countries; superhero accountability= weapons accountability; mind control= grooming and coercion). And lbr the closest real-world mirror to two versions of the same person (who may or may not share DNA, family, backgrounds, physical and emotion characteristics) being romantically involved with one another is incest. And you can be ok with that if you want- that’s your prerogative- but don’t get pissy just cause a lot of us are squicked out by it.
• The whole mirror metaphor (learning self love via each other) thing just fell completely flat. First of all, having Loki learn to love himself by looking at someone who mirrors him did not, in any way shape or form, require them to be romantically involved. But they were. Of course. Secondly, the creators have contradicted themselves so many times on whether Loki and Sylvie are the same or not, that it doesn’t even really register to the viewer that the mirroring thing was what they were going for. Finally, Loki and Sylvie are shown to have so little in common- and to have only the most bare minimum of similarities personality-wise- that it doesn’t even make sense that Loki would “learn to love himself through loving her”. Like? They’re nothing alike. So how would he make the connection that he himself is actually pretty cool, based on her alone? There’s virtually nothing in her that reflects him.
• I know the objective of the entire show was to convince us of how awesome and unique Sylvie is, but honestly her relationship with Loki just did the opposite. A hallmark of a Mary Sue is having her constantly upstage the male lead, and then having him instantly fall madly in love with her anyway. And that’s.. exactly what happened here. Everything they’re doing to try to force her character to be more stan-able is really just forcing her to look more like their self-insert OC. Which is exactly what she is. It would’ve been so much more satisfying if she didn’t have to try so hard to look cool, if they didn’t have to try so hard to make her backstory tear-inducing, if they didn’t have to turn our protagonist into a snivelling simp just to prove how incredible she supposedly is. Very much #GirlBoss energy and we all know how performative and cheap that is.
• The entire thing was too rushed, there was too little build-up, and it was nowhere near believable. As stated above, it’s ridiculously unlikely that Loki would canonically even be interested in Sylvie, and this show did nothing to explain why he was. He just suddenly was. There was nothing they showed us as viewers that would justify a guy as closed-off and preoccupied as Loki falling head-over-heels for a girl he just met. Their was no explanation, no big revelation, no reasoning, it just… kinda happened. And I’m also severely skeptical of any love story that has the characters go in this deep after only 3 45-minute episodes of exposition.
I’m sure there’s other stuff, so if anyone thinks of anything, let me know and I’ll be more than happy to add it. Tagging @janetsnakehole02 @raifenlf @natures-marvel and @brightredsunset800 for expressing interest. This is all your faults.
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flightfoot · 2 years
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I'm a little confused. Why do we "gotta" criticize ml characters for stuff they never actually did? Like, sure, it happened in a hypothetical scenario, and would have happened without intervention, but it's not actually part of the canon, and therefore not a part of that character's arc or something they can actually be held accountable for.
Eh, no one's obligated to do so. Had enough of people saying "You've got to hold Adrien accountable for X and acknowledge some terrible thing he's done and how he's slime and doesn't deserve to be Chat Noir!" or "Alya has to be held accountable for daring to put something on her blog without fact checking it first, and having the sheer audacity to question Marinette when she claims that Lila's a liar without backing it up." The amount of times I've had to defend Adrien from anons coming into my inbox and yelling about Syren and how he's supposedly responsible for mass death and blackmailed Ladybug somehow... yeesh. I hate that people have been yelling about it for YEARS with Adrien and Alya and that, especially with Adrien, you must recite all their flaws every time you talk about liking them. That same thing happening with Marinette would be just as irritating.
So yeah, no, if you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. It's often more fun to just coo over Marinette and Adrien being sweet or the whole class hanging out together.
What I DO think, however, is that Ephemeral gives information about Marinette's character, about her mindset and thought process. Plus, while Marinette didn't manage to go through with the plan due to outside circumstances, she did still attempt it - she had it all planned out, had Viperion listening in via headset, and even had him start the Second Chance before things went to crap within the main timeline, and she had to abort to deal with the time distortions.
And it is still part of Marinette's character arc. She still made a plan where she lied to her partner about something very fundamental, about something that their trust, their partnership is built on, something that she's been especially keen on reaffirming again and again: not purposely trying to obtain each other's secret identities without consent. And using a convoluted plan to get around any possibility of Chat Noir not complying with what she's asking, by having him give her his identity under false pretenses, seemingly without any thought given to whether it's right to do so. And with how easily and confidently she stood up to Su-Han at the end of the episode, it seems like she wasn't all that stressed about Su-Han flipping out and taking Chat's ring if she didn't do as he asked, either.
It's actually pretty similar to what Gabriel did to Adrien in Mega Leech, with him lying to Adrien about what kind of commercial he was filming (that it was propaganda for the Oxygen Project and not a perfume ad), because that way, Adrien wouldn't have the chance to object. Basically, getting him to do something under false pretenses because if he knew the truth, he may not comply.
She didn't go through with the plan, true, but that's not because of any realization she had about it being wrong to enact, but because they had to deal with time distortions and she realized that something must've gone so badly awry that Sass needed to use his power without a holder, so she needed to change what she was about to do in order to not have it happen again.
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