#the entire story has to do with atonement and ppl having to face the consequences of their actions : | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jaimetheexplorer · 5 years

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I brought down by niks latest interview.Saying "J never needed redemp.He was a guy who certain circumstances in his life e.g. Kingslayer so then he needed to redeem himself bc he did this horrible thing when killing the Mad King. Then N said the redemp arc where he had to be good guy, stay with Bri etc that's not GOT.You cant erase ur prev life.Jaime bel that redeem urself meant redeeming his past and he couldnt. He can't cut off who he was.The idea of leaving C alone is impossible to him" Wtf?

2/2 Downhearted anon. Just that interview makes no sense. In prev season interviews, wasnt Nik wanting Jaime to escape Cersei for good and be with Braime forever, like he was the biggest Braime shipper??? I dont understand. Does he think ppl don’t remember stuff? Its a shame theres no way to ask him about this.

Dear Downhearted anon,

I have to admit I read only a short excerpt from that interview, so I might have missed some of the other content, but, from what I read, this is what I can say.

There are different layers to his comments, IMO. One is the take on the story, and the other is the justification of the writing choices. And, as much as I might vehemently disagree with the former, what I take issue with is the latter.

When it comes to the take on the story, we have to remember that he has to talk about the actual content of the show. The show, unfortunately, did go with the idea that Jaime is essentially doomed to never escape his past. I do not believe that is his arc in the books for many reasons, and I think it was extremely underwhelming, nihlistic and unsatisfying even just taking the context of the show into account. But, unfortunately, nihilistic and unsatisfying is what we got. The show was aiming for romanticizing incest and abuse romantic tragedy with JC, in the end (I actually think there was a far more disastrous chain of events at play, which required multiple OOC developments for multiple major characters just to arrive to Jon killing Dany - but that’s a longer story), and it is what it is. He has to talk about the reality of the episodes, not the alternatives.

If you take most of Nik’s comments, and go back to read D&D’s and Cogman’s interviews from the past, you’ll notice that it’s mostly stuff that’s lifted straight from their quotes, even down to the language: “good guy/bad guy”, “he doesn’t have a redemption arc”, “it’s just life, and he has made some mistakes”. I don’t know whether this is because he had a “final season” briefing with them and came around to see things their way and agree, or because he was told this is what he was supposed to say about the story, or because even though he doesn’t agree with it, this is what was written in the end and so this is what he talks about. His reasoning for saying these things is anybody’s guess and kind of beyond the point. But, where before he used to have his own take on the character and his arc, he’s now basically regurgitating the party line.

For my part, I never completely disagreed with the idea that Jaime does not need redemption per se. Jaime doesn’t need atonement for slaying the Mad King, for sure. He needs recognition for that. He needs atonement for a other horrible things he’s done, but even those (e.g., pushing Bran, the incest) are more about moral gray areas areas than villainous behaviour per se, since he’s never committed atrocious acts just for his own selfish gain, or for power, or because he enjoyed hurting and killing. More importantly, I have always seen Jaime’s story as more of an identity arc, where redemption is just one component. In that sense, I can agree with the take that that he is a “complex character who, at times, has made some terrible mistakes”. Jaime is not, and never was, a straightforward villain who needs to atone for his sins. He’s a much more complex and layered mix of sins and honour, and goodness and idealism turned bitterness and cynicism, and a messy product of living most of his life in toxic and abusive environments who, in some situations, has committed some horrible mistakes that he needs to own up to and face the consequences of, and who is trying to redefine and reinvent himself in the aftermath of some life-changing events such as losing his hand, meeting Brienne and growing disillusioned with Cersei.

The problem is that, while D&D preach about Jaime being a complex character who does not need a ‘cheesy’ linear redemption arc, they also, in the same breath, justify an ending that shoves him precisely into a clear, black-and-white, simplistic category (”he just accepts he is a hateful man”) or display the psychological depth of a 5th grader (go check out their take on the sept scene in their Oxford Union Q&A and their inability to think in any more complex terms than “good guy/bad guy” or to understand that not all “bad” actions are equal). They’re not deep writers, and that shows painfully in their execution. But I can understand the “no need for redemption” arc, from a theoretical/philosophical perspective.

What I take far more issue with is justifying writing choices by attempting to play the realism card, or the adult writing card, or the “this is GoT” card, basically implying that everyone who dislikes or criticize it is being unrealistic, immature or unsophisticated for not accepting the only inevitable outcome to a story (I wrote a twitter thread about it this week). Just because your story has decided to depict things in a certain way, it does not mean that that is the only realistic option for the story, and that people who expected/wanted/hoped for something different were fooling themselves, let alone that it had to be written that way because that is how life works.

Sure, there are people who fail to break away from their (abusive, traumatic, toxic, what have you) past and move on, but there are also plenty of people who do, and who end up thriving. One outcome isn’t any more realistic or true to life than the others. And, while some might think this is a hyperbole, it is highly irresponsible, IMO, to say that being unable to escape toxicity and your past is “the way things are”, when there might be people out there who do struggle with trauma, toxic and abusive relationship (or know people who do).

On top of that, it is rather silly to imply that we were expecting some unrealistic, too-easy scenario, where Jaime flipped a switch and totally erased his past overnight. That implication is misguided, at best, and dishonest, at worst. We put up with four entire seasons of show-only “non-linear” storytelling when it comes to Jaime, and were incredibly patient with it. Wasn’t the point of those four seasons precisely to show that life is complicated and he couldn’t just let go of his past so easily? We watched that. It happened. Nothing about this was easy or unearned.

Had we been shown a Jaime who was 100%, stupidly and completely devoted to Cersei at every turn, cruel, evil, selfish and not caring about the innocents, of course expecting an outcome where he just leaves it all behind for a honourable wench or what have you would have been a ridiculous expectation to have. Indeed, back when Jaime did come across as that kind of character, nobody was expecting anything from him. He could have died with Cersei under those bricks and most wouldn’t have cared.

Instead, for years, we were shown a Jaime that did struggle between his toxic past/Cersei and his honour and, far more often than not, we saw his honour win out. While I can see an argument for saying that didn’t guarantee an outcome where he did break free of his past for good, it’s not like like there was no buildup or seeding for the more positive, less nihilistic alternative. So I don’t find it so far fetched to have expected the events of S7 to be the last straw that finally tipped the scales completely to the other side (especially considering how 8x02 was written very heavily to imply just that or, at the very least, did not seed any doubt).

By Nikolaj’s own admission in TONS of interviews, he had been fighting with D&D for years because he expected things to move in a certain direction and kept getting frustrated when they didn’t, or when they confused him. He wanted the exact same things we wanted for Jaime and in his relationships with Cersei and Brienne since SEASON 2. He might have resigned himself in the end to having lost the battle, but he behaved exactly like us for years. So, assuming he believes what he is saying, if I could talk to him, I’d ask him how is it that he got the same feeling of “expectation” for something that in the end never came? Maybe because the seeding for both options were there all along? Maybe because, if the seeding for both options were there all along, the alternative isn’t so far fetched and inconceivable after all? Maybe because if the alternative isn’t so far fetched and inconceivable after all, then what we got isn’t the only inevitable way this could go down? Food for thought.

Of course, I want to believe that he isn’t that tone-deaf and unsophisticated as an actor (and a writer) not to realize that the only problem with the way Jaime and JB were written in S8 was not the fact that they didn’t get a HEA. Ignoring the writing quality, for a moment, and just focusing on the writing choices, there were literally dozens of ways of writing a story that ended even in a similar tragedy (EVEN with Jaime dying with Cersei), that would have been far better and more satisfying than what we got. The problem isn’t that Jaime didn’t declare his everlasting love for Brienne or that he didn’t stay together with her. The problem is that we patiently waited through all the buildup and seeding mentioned above, for years, for a relationship that ended up being butchered within 30 minutes, destroying literally everything it ever stood for (first and foremost trust and respect - I am not going to list everything, but Jaime trying to sneak out without so much of a goodbye and being completely indifferent to her pain after she vouched for him and saved his life multiple times was not only OOC, but completely unnecessary to the plot, unless it aimed to destroy the foundations of their bond, way beyond the romance).

To conclude, I’ll leave you with GRRM’s own words, when asked about Jaime’s redemption arc that he, unlike the show, has explicitly stated he wishes to explore:

“I want there to be a possibility of redemption for us, because we all do terrible things. We should be able to be forgiven. Because if there’s no possibility of redemption, what’s the answer then?”

The show decided that the answer is that we don’t escape our past. We are doomed from the beginning and any attempt to change and move on is eventually futile (and that ended up being true of nearly every character in the show, not just Jaime). But that doesn’t seem to be at all the stance GRRM has on this whole thing, and I would dare anyone to tell me that GRRM’s vision and his writing are inferior, too easy, or less realistic than what we got from the show.

There’s no guarantee that Jaime will survive in the books, or that he and Brienne will get a HEA (although I do not rule it out at all). But the fact that the man who invented these characters and this world has a different stance on Jaime and redemption automatically invalidates any nonsense show people can say about how this was the perfect and only way it could end, and that expecting anything different from this series was wishful thinking.

#anon #koops answers

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papers4me · 3 years

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Fruits Basket,Se03, Ep 9 (part 2)

This ep hits the feels simply cuz we’re finally in tohru’s head! It shows tohru’s skill of reaching ppl’s hearts, not jst within furuba’s world but the viewers as well. However, while the emotion buttons were hit with tears, outbursts, suspense with the knife & cliff looming all over akito/tohru scenes, then tohru’s fall, fear of her death, another surge of emotions when kyo finally kissed her after their tragic encounter last ep, sth is still missing. For me personally, while the feels were 100%, the writing wasn’t.

-Minor writing Issues with akito/tohru’s “ face off leading to connecting moment”:

The akito/tohru scenes were more designed for the audience feel tohru’s pain more than for akito to connect with tohru. We were in tohru’s head more than listening to these two girls talk. That’s why the emotions hit us & we cried cuz we were listening to tohru’s heartbreaking monologue abt leaving her mom & hear her fear of being lonely without her mom. The heartbreaking visuals were all in tohru’s head. Akito didn't hear or see that. What akito heard was few sentences. Perhaps it is due to not having enough time to cover deeper dialogue between the girls, but akito was supposed to change her entire character, feels, demeanor, with one short dialogue. Tohru was talking to herself most of the time akito was facing her, the actual dialogue between the two was so short & touched upon their similarities briefly. Off course, akito slapping tohru multiple times was needed to indicate that “ look we know akito wont be won by tohru’s sincere words just like that on the spot, we’ll add slaps, multiple slaps to convey that it is logical that akito would refuse tohru’s words initially”. Unfortunately, once again furba uses violence to bridge gaps. tohru standing there weakly taking beating is such a bad taste that it bugs me that ppl are labeling it “ connecting”. I get that akito saw that tohru is after all similar to her & it led her to change, but it was done so quickly that we saw a peaceful, embarrassed, sincere smiling akito at the end of the ep. A new akito.

Furuba has this tendency to take long time building up dramatic character struggle & fix it in 5 or 8 minutes of the eps 20 min running time. The tools are: dramatic confrontation in a climactic style. Nothing is wrong with the tools themselves. They’re excellent story telling techniques, but the falling action is where the author’s skill at. Write drama & climax & raise the heart beat with suspense & emotions but the following consequences is what makes or breaks what you do. The ep needed to warp up akito’s realization for atonement so next eps will show her taking actual steps towards that. It also needed to wrap up kyo/tohru confrontation, so one of the two goals suffered on behalf of the other. kyo/tohru was established in the earlier ep, so it didnt suffer when it was wrapped, but akito/tohru is new thing brought in this ep only & was supposed to signal a new change! the villain getting redeemed. it worked in the emotions department, lots of ppl cried, but I felt it’s a bit weakly written. wished the girls “connected” by talking more before akito extended her hand. Oh well~ it is minor.

-Atonement vs forgiveness:

Akito is seeking atonement. Fixing her mistakes which means she’ll apologize to those whom she wronged & won’t repeat the horrible path of abuse. Atonement doesn't necessarily mean forgiveness. No one is obligated to forgive her just cuz she changed. Anyone who was bulled or abused understands how hard it is to accept the nightmarish past & move on, & look to see your bully/abuser doing well & has become a good person. It sucks to feel, “ oh so, I’m part of ur learning journey towards being a good person? Glad I could help in u realizing abusing ppl is bad, have a good time being good, me? I’m nursing my wounds & dealing with my nightmares that u caused, I’m doing way better now, but the wounds wont disappear”. Ppl might pressure you to forgive them cuz it’s the “ right thing” to do since it will help the abuser stay in the “ good” path. However, only YOU can choose how to respond. Only you can decide if forgiving them is helping u to cope or not. You dont even need to be part of their “ healing journey”. Focus on yourself & live. Seek happiness & understand that sadness is part of the deal.

On the other side, if you were once a bully or an abuser, regardless of what made you choose such a path: an horrible trauma, being wronged yourself or simply not knowing better, you gotta understand that you might not be forgiven. It is ok if you weren’t. It is the other ppl’s right. Focus on yourself. Become a better person, work to fix the mistakes, ask forgiveness & be understanding of whatever response you might receive & move on. There is nothing else you can do. You cant spend your life waiting to hear the liberating words of “ i forgive you”. Those ppl you abused weren’t liberated becuz of you for a long time, so it is understandable. Just focus on doing what you can to better yourself, atone, fix what can be fixed & live. Seek happiness & understand that sadness is part of the deal.

I like how akito embodies this themes of Atonement vs forgiveness, I just wish it was done with nice pace~ man! Now I’m really annoyed at the filler eps in se01 & 2! XD..-_-’’

-Again: don’t become the foolish traveler:

I cant say this enough. Tohru & kureno are the poster for kindness is an amazing virtue but don’t over do it. You shouldn’t put yourself in danger & die like the foolish traveler. There is a reason both tohru & kureno are in the hospital & the author is doing a good job explaining that. Akito’s knife that deliberately went deep into kureno’s body, could have cut tohru by sheer panic & anxiety. Be kind but preserve yourself, too. Momiji said it. kind ppl exist & those who took advantage of them do exist as well. Still you can be kind. Reach out to ppl, but above all be kind to yourself<3

Side Notes:

I get that a yuki/kyo confrontation must happen to mirror tohru/akito. From enemies to buddies/friends/not enemies/ cool with each other. I just hope against all hopes that the drama is toned down a bit. But whom am I kidding? furuba has a history of running like a loose bull! >_<...fine! I’ll change my wish, I hope that kyo’s “ making a turn” from his tragic past & choosing better path is done better than akito’s, as in with “ enough time within furuba’s world, not necessarily multiple eps”.

Guessing who will forgive akito from the wronged zodiacs? I already know yuki, hatori & kureno had forgiven her. I want kisa to be spared from all this delima. Kyo’s entire trauma is abt seeking forgiveness, so I can see him forgiving her. I wouldn't be surprised if there were future kyo/akito encounters due to thoru befriending akito! would love to see that! As for Isuzu, the character who got the most severe abuse ( attempted murder) from akito, I can see her refusing this. Why should she care that akito is now “good”? From her perspective: screw akito! I saw death! nothing is wrong with such perspective from a helpless victim.

This ep is where akito & tohru’s Japanese VA shined the most, but kyo’s Japanese VA didnt have the right to steal their crown with his broken voice upon seeing near-dead tohru!! I wasnt even focused on him! but his voice stabbed me harsher than akito;s knife in kureno’s body! What a performance!!! It gave me chills! I’ve always said kyo’s English & Japanese VAs are good. but that moment, kyo’s Japanese VA delivered beyond comparison! well-done!

I’m still holding on shigure’s character analysis. Gotta wait for the bigger picture. but boy, he’s so grey.

The studio ditched akito’s lean boyish design & opted for a girlish design with lots of lashes, cute runs & girl stye of sitting on the bench. ok, cool. but I hoped akito stayed the same in her design even if she decided to acknowledge being a woman. Not all girls are feminine? they could've kept her the same. She spent i duno 20sth years walking & carrying herself a certain way, Now, tohru changed her, so even her style is different?

Also, It seems I need to give up on my pathetic conclusion that yuki will chang his “ akito-like” hair style! XD. That was a nice theory, ok?XD. I mean having a different hairstyle from ur abuser whom u spent ur childhood with is liberating! but I guess... anime is anime.. T_T. they can become grandparents & still same hair! lol !

Momiji is kind but he is NO foolish traveler. He didnt solely let go of his mom, sister, & tohru cuz he’s blindly kind nor cuz it is the best option for them. He considered & respected the other person’s emotions, desires & stance. He acknowledged & respected that his mom didn’t need him in her life, that his sister needs to grow a bit older before choosing to connect with her, that tohru isn’t a toy he & kyo fight for & he just give back to kyo cuz he’s a gentleman. No, tohru’s feelings matter & her choice is hers. He also didn’t blindly forgive akito nor brush her cruelty or quickly accept her. He stood up with judgemental looks, disapproving of her, waited to hear her sincere guilt, then approached her with wisdom & advice. Momiji is the best example of moderate kindness.

#Fruits Basket #Anime Only #sleepy paper #part 2 #final season

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