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razorblade180 · 1 year

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Played and beat Arrowfell

Let me get the two extremely petty part out of the way. I’m very surprised this entire thing isn’t voiced acted. Like even if a person may have been busy, voice matching would totally be fine with how few lines a majority of the characters have.

Second petty thing. All these cool and unique weapons/semblances that fit a narrative and yet no one thought of a decent idea for ironwood ever.

Anyways, I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect going into this but the best way I can describe this game is this: If RWBY had 24 episodes a season, then Arrowfell would be the canon filler arc. And I don’t mean that in a bad way.

It’s no secret RWBY has no real fluff and sometimes goes a little too quickly for it’s own good. This entire game is their first big mission as licensed Huntresses and that means exploring the kingdom, meeting different cultures, casual dialogue with Ace Ops, and instances of someone teaching them ways to use their skills better. Ya know…all the things that build a world and character relationships. Like I’m not gonna say everything in here is perfectly done but having all of this before the apocalypse hit in V7 and V8 would’ve made them hit harder in my opinion.

I don’t know if I missed a piece of dialogue or something but JNPR isn’t in this game at all and don’t know if they had an excuse. There’s plenty of NPCs asking for help or trying to give you something so I don’t really know why 4 of them can’t be the team. Not mad about it, just confused.

The game itself is pretty engaging for the most part. Levels have areas you’ll eventually go back to with better upgrades and for the most part the map design is pretty easy to understand where you are especially when what kind of enemies are located in them. Game took me 5 1/2 hours and that’s me getting 97% of everything so it can definitely be faster but at the price of missing out on level up points you really want to make things not take forever.

I am going to be brutally honest and hopefully someone can answer this for me. There was never a time a I thought “I should use Yang” outside of puzzles. There are so many situations where it makes sense to use or combine abilities between the other three. Never Yang💀

The best characters literally go in name order. Everyone exists to support Ruby and it shows she’s the only one who can dodge, highest normal attack damage and has the best reach. I leveled everything on her before anyone else because of this. Weiss is really good for crowd control and Blake had great uses for stationary targets and bosses because her clones attack/distract with the rest of the team. They should’ve given Yang a counter but they didn’t. Just a heavy ground pound that isn’t even the strongest attack in the game. Weiss has the strongest single hit but it costs the most aura but ya know, things die.

Last part is the music. Maybe I miss RWBY music, but this soundtrack is pretty good in my opinion. This might be a testament to how much the show is influenced by video games because every track felt like the show, but completely at home in the level it was in at the same time. Even when certain game mechanics are at play to make this a competent game, my brain went “this could exist or happen in the show.” And the more outlandish parts of Arrowfell that exist for game design has the characters go “well this doesn’t feel normal” which I thought was funny.

I payed 30$ for this and honestly I had a very good time with it. I think the price is pretty reasonable considering how this looks and the few regular animation scenes. Some new characters have semblances and others have weapons that will make OC creators go “go damnit I did that.” (Myself included) but it’s alright. This game will completely break your legs if you’re not paying attention but feels pretty rewarding when you’re handling ambushes easily.

I say there’s only 3 parts about this game is one specific jump that thankfully only has to be made once. Rooster Teeth continues to do the same thing when it comes to their women antagonist any time they introduce a man. Also the fact everything happening here and everyone you meet do not matter at all because Atlas doesn’t exist anymore. Who the hell knows if any of those people are alive.

8/10

#rwby #rwby arrowfell #razor rambles

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melody-of-lost-souls · 2 years

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Hey!

So on Quora, once I accidentally crossed paths with ss pages (nothing new since their everywhere 😐).. And I couldn't help but wanted to cry at the amount of invalid points they made.

They said that Sasuke never denied Sakura's love proposals.

Bruh WHAT 👁👄👁????? The first time that she proposed, didn't he literally call her annoying?????? And rejected her in the most "brutal" way possible????? The second time called her annoying again?? Then when she tried again during War Arc (is this girl even human??? She seriously cares about Sasuke's D in the middle of a war, while people are dying right before her eyes????) Didn't he SPECIFICALLY SAY THAT He found absolutely NO REASON for him to love her, and likewise he finds no reason for her to love him (she doesn't really love him anyway since she views him as a pretty prize to show off 🤦🏽‍♀️). And then put her in the most violent genjutsu??? And how the hell is that romantic?? There were lots more of other genjutsus he could've used..

2. Sasuke never denied Naruto as a brother.

I'm starting to wonder if we watched/read the same series/chapters of Naruto.. First of all, didn't Sasuke say that he only had ONE brother, which is Itachi? And didn't Sasuke literally call Naruto an outsider??? And then Naruto, himself, later on said that he and Sasuke weren't brothers???

3. Sasuke and Naruto are reincarnated brothers. They are spiritually related.

😔😔 **sighhh** but I thought Hagoromo(???) Said that they were reincarnated by chakra? And if they were reincarnations of Indra and Ashura, then I'm pretty they would've had the same attitude and the same personality... They are reincarnated by chakra; spirit and chakra are very different things... And anyway, Naruto said that he isn't Ashura and Sasuke ain't Indra. And Naruto also said that he felt like he was being watched or haunted??? If you're spiritually reincarnated you wouldn't have that type of feeling.

I think that's all they added.

This fandom is so stupid. If those SS/NH stans weren't so annoying (some of them are ok) this whole nonsense wouldn't have happened. It's not only them, honestly. I'm embarrassed to say that a certain part of SN/NS fandom are toxic. And other ships attacking or defending their ship because of SS/NH peeps or just to stir up drama.

BONUS! When you make valid points about the ship not being healthy or it not being romantic, SS stans back up and say "tHeY hAd SmEx ThEy HaVe A dAuGhTeR" (I'm pretty you see that all the time when you see SS stans lurking in our tags) And then discarding Salad because apparantly she gets in the way of their ship. WoOooowii this is so new!😒😒 Their said proof of ThathuThaku is literally set aside and used when they're being uncovered. That reminds me of someone using a certain person for his popularity and unbelievably attractive looks to make herself feel good and make other girls jealous of her.. I wonder who that is??? 🤔🤔

Hello Anon! So sorry for you to have gone through that hell of SS nonsense...

I did actually read some SS meta post to see if I find some valid points for their ship. I read them in 2 times of my life, when i was an SS and as a SNS shipper. Both times i found them very ...icky and a big "You are reading and fantasizing too much". trying to find a fifth leg on a cat, which YOU OBVIUSLY WONT FIND.

And i saw this items you mentioned here, and some more that will make you laugh and cry xD 1- Sasuke didnt deny Sakura confession so it means he loves her ¿¿¿ He said THANK YOU, to those feelings and literally then he leaves, like saying Bye. Thank you and Bye. Actually that kinf of response is A MEME, cause it shows in some way that that confession didnt reach your heart, its a dry responde. THank you. Actually you can see a lot of memes when someone confess to the other something like this X: I love you! Y: xD thank you. Think about it, would you respond this way to someone you love? Kishimoto is very good at narrative and writing dialogues. And he is very good at also creating mystery and doubt in the characters. If Sasuke loved her or liked her at least, his reply must have been "Sakura...I..." (showing a grief face) "Im Sorry Sakura but..." HE HAD to show insecurity and doubt to how replying those feelings of the girl he loves(?) And maybe show confussion too. Something he never did. He always knew about her feelings and always give a fuck, if he loved her all the way round, his responde MUST HAVE BEEN other. That Thank you meant, Thank you for loving me but i cannot love you back. and he after that actually left. I can agree he showed here FRIENDLY feelings for her, like I appreaciate you as a teammate so for that reason i thanks to you also those times we shared, but that thank you also mean to cut the page in there and with that he cut bonds with her. If this is the girl you love desperately and who saved you from darkness (as SS claims) from a psychological pov, you do not cut her that way and dont wash her memories that quickly. -Ups he couldnt actually do that with one person

Sasuke was actually able to be absoluty doubtful on vote1, with that "Naruto ...I" which ONLY GOD KNOWS what the hell he wanted to say. How can he show this insecurity to a boy, a not the girl he loves?

2. Sasuke never denied Naruto as a brother.

Well nothing to add in here.

Sasuke is a very i dont know if say possesive, but he is very clear and sure about the roles and people who belong to his family ( i know naruto is his family too) in a structural way of the word. He is very sure who his father was, his mother, and who is his brother figure. I know i said and i repeat, that itachi took the roles of parent figure, but in terms of how is Sasuke family built, he knows very well what "place" has all of his relatives whom he share blood and clan. He also took the "brother" word in a very special meaning, that word is associated to a different situations and contexts in which Naruto doesnt fit at all. Something i will add is from naruto perspective of how antis saying HE DOES consider Sasuke as a brother/. Naruto is an only child as I am. I cant speak for all only child because is stupid, but you cannot consider someone as brother if you never had it and if you dont know how that works. We dont know what is sibling relationship, which follows certain parameters. We can love a person and saying "its like a sibling" but we just say it because of the sake of say it and because we pressume that maybe thats how a relationship of sibling is. But siblings for example live together for certain years, that only item can change all of our relationship with another person, and still will be different if we are not related by blood. See Mikasa and Eren for example, despite living some years together and considering each other sometimes as "siblings" that relationship as sibilings didnt work at all. So, assuring Naruto and Sasuke are brother because naruto say it, its stupid. And i ask to that people if they see their brothers and sisters that way, then ...go to therapy.

3-Sasuke and Naruto are reincarnated brothers. They are spiritually related.

Well these is somehow related to the previous point. The fact that they were brothers "before" (lol) doesnt mean anything because THE ACTUALY CHARACTERS whom we share episodes and know from episode 1, are the ones who we must care, and they are not brothers by any BY ANY MEAN. They did not share any context of siblings to be brothers, and the fact that they have the chakra of some old-mighty-powered ninjas who happen to be brothers...doesnt mean anything to me. You see, i watched an anime long ago called Uraboku, was a bit of BL. But there were 2 main char. One was an oooold warrior (bishonen ofc) who always looks to protect his beloved lover , a woman. It happens that in that era, actuality, this woman reincarnates as a man. But this man WASNT HER. he has the essence of her, but he had his own personality and convictions and the other part of this couple, the old warrior understood this, that he wasnt her. But still he would protect him. if Sasuke and Naruto fell in love, was because of their own experiences and stories, that they could find comfort on each other and peace...which this is basically how a sane relationship should start. The reincarnations things, of Indra and Asura was to justify their power ups. Because in any case, we must also consider Madara and Hashirama as brother AND WE, ALL FANDOM KNOW VERY WELL, that they are not brothers at all.

4-"tHeY hAd SmEx ThEy HaVe A dAuGhTeR

I laugh that they always pull this card, the sex card. yeah they fucked , but gaiden proves 98% they not lol. But yeah okay lets take it, they fcuked so...whats up?

Since when having sex is meaning of love and hapiness? And they cannot pull the culture card, because that excuse fall on its own weight. Marriages like this, forced and for the sake of what society could say, tend to have sex twice or once to have kids and thats it. but even you have vast examples on daily life where people sleep together after a party or disco does that mean love? Its funny they reduced their princess and their trophy to a pair of sex machine. Concluding i will add some points i saw on meta posts, which are hilarious. -Sasuke is obssesed with Sakura eyes. -Sasuke lied to sakura all the time¿

-Sakura is Sasuke moon because she confessed at night¿

-Sasuke cannot love , after vote2 he was able to love sakura¿ Basically naruto made of cupid.

Have a good day :)

#antiss #antisakura #sasuke and naruto are not brothers #thank you next #sasunaru #narusasu #sns naruto #sns

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why-this-kolaveri-machi · 3 years

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whumptober day 9: take me instead

still here, still doing this! ‘twas nice to take a break for the last 6 months but i think i’m ready to come back.

summary: set after titans s2. jericho’s spent years as a mind without a body--enough to think he’s not in real danger from the villains the titans fight on a regular basis. it isn’t until dick puts himself on the line to save him that he realises how wrong he’s been.

warnings: SPOILERS for s2. serious body horror including gore and mutilation. a whole scene of this is inspired straight from a nightmare i had, so please be cautious as the descriptions are graphic.

take me instead

Leave him alone! I can… I can give what you want, and more. I’ve seen and done things you couldn’t even imagine.

Take me instead.

It’s the last thing Jericho remembers for a while.

When Jericho is next aware, he’s sitting at a familiar workbench next to his father. Slade is taking apart and putting together guns of increasing complexity at a steady pace, not looking at Jericho once, but the silence is familiar and almost… comfortable. There’s none of the cloying dread or desperation that he felt while spending six years trapped in Slade’s head; the guns might as well be fishing rods or model airplanes to the curl of warmth in Jericho’s chest.

“I want you to be ready,” Slade says in the manner of someone already in the middle of a conversation, “for this next mission. I know that it’s on short notice, but there’s something in the next room that should help you.” He finally turns to look at Jericho, and he realises with a jolt that Slade’s actually smiling. For a long, dumbfounded moment, Jericho stares at his father, at the beaming smile, the crinkle of crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes.

“Go on, then,” Slade says, tilting his head at a door that Jericho didn’t notice before. A part of Jericho is pulsing with anxiety (remembers that endlessly white prison, dead-but-not) but it’s smothered by a haze of contentment and a ready, easy trust that has him get up, open the door, and step through.

There’s a long metal table with a body on it. The reason it’s a body and not a person is because it’s covered with a long white sheet and the shapes underneath the sheet are… unnatural. The angles too sharp, the girth too thin, everything too still to be anything that’s alive. Jericho’s not sure why Slade thinks a corpse would help him with anything, but he moves ahead as though compelled, again, and lifts the sheet away.

The body is on its back, naked, limbs splayed awkwardly. It’s emaciated to a degree that the skin is worn down to the bone in some places: the fingers are literally skeletal, and so are the jutting crescents of the hips. There are enormous festering wounds on one thigh and one arm, excavated through layers of skin, fat and muscle like craters filled with… slough, and pus, and other disgusting things, and still bleeding--

--still bleeding--

Jericho’s been avoiding looking at the face until now, and there is a slow, sad sort of resignation in his chest as he lifts his gaze to see skin cleaving to the skull, eyes huge and watering in nearly abyssal sockets. The body’s lipless mouth moves.

“Jericho,” Dick says.

There’s no moment where Jericho’s jolted back to reality; just a dawning horror. There are a thousand questions crowding in his throat but the one he asks is: “Did… did Slade do this to you?”

“No, he--Jer--” Dick coughs, and Jericho watches with sick fascination as his ribs glide underneath his skin. “You have to get away from here. Now.”

“Not without--” you, I can’t leave without you “--knowing what he did to you, how could this even--”

There’s a chill in the air, so sudden and fierce that it slices through his skin and numbs his lips. The room he’s in--that he’s hardly paid any attention to so far--warps and twists, the edges where the walls meet the ceiling blackening like it’s a photograph that someone’s taken a flame to. Dick twitches on the table, trying to move, and bloodied spittle sprays his chin as he says, “Leave! Now!”

“I don’t--”

I SEE YOU.

The voice, female, is both a whisper in his ear and a roar that echoes inside the collapsing room. Dick lets out a scream that frankly Jericho would’ve never guessed he had the strength for and an invisible force pushes Jericho to the door that he just came from. Jericho tries to fight back, twist and get back to Dick, but before he knows it, he’s stumbling through the door, falling to his hands and knees. He jumps to his feet, unaccountably angry at Slade, the world, and mostly Dick--who, despite having far less experience with this slippery, in-between world than Jericho, just tossed him aside like it was nothing at all.

Overachieving bastard.

He whirls around to confront his father, but Slade has disappeared, and so has his workroom, and any semblance of a place at all. Instead, Jericho stands in the middle of ever-extending blackness that might be a cavern, given the way his footsteps echo eerily and the weak light that filters in every few metres. Dust motes float lazily in those little beams, and their presence makes the whole place somehow creepier than the complete absence of light.

“Dick?” Jericho’s voice is small, uncertain, but the word echoes nonetheless, making him flinch. Once the echoes die, however, there is only silence.

He picks a direction and keeps walking, because, honestly, what else is he going to do? It doesn’t take long for a human shape to materialise in one of the pools of watery light, and Jericho isn’t entirely surprised to see that it’s Dick. This Dick looks… whole, though, strong and broad and dressed in his Nightwing suit sans mask. He’s got his escrima sticks out as though anticipating an attack, and he’s not really looking at Jericho.

Jericho’s about to call out to him when a shape swoops in from the darkness straight to Dick. It’s moving with incredible speed, claws extended and glinting in the light, but Dick is faster. He swings his sticks around and knocks it to the ground, only to bring them up again to block the next attack.

Soon Dick is at the centre of a storm of black, punctuated by the rustle of cloth and the screams of the creatures dying as his sticks turn into swords. He’s barely finished skewering one creature before he’s lifting the sword--still dripping with gore--and plunging it into the heart of another creature. Jericho watches, open-mouthed, as Dick fights with a frightening combination of grace and force, his body twirling and leaping like he’s dancing but his thrusts sharp and brutal, driven by pure anger. Jericho can hardly countenance this… force of nature with the man who melted in his arms when he gave him an unexpected hug, or the one that came to seek absolution from his mother, half-wrecked by guilt and anguish.

He could’ve kept watching forever (Dick could’ve kept fighting forever) when he feels a bony hand like icicles rest on his shoulder and hears I’VE FOUND YOU, LITTLE ONE

“No! Jericho!” Dick stops for the second it takes him to shout Jericho’s name, and Jericho realises why Dick had been such a storm of movement: it takes only a fraction of that second for the shadow-creatures to overcome his defences and… tear at him. Blood and gore spray in a messy arc as his arm is torn clean off his body but Dick’s still standing, staring at him, shouting--

Jericho’s knees shake and his stomach’s turned to water but he shakes off the hand on his shoulder and runs--away from whatever it was that spoke to him, away from Dick, whose shouts have died and been replaced by the sickening, wet sounds of ripping flesh.

He runs, but there’s Dick again, younger now, crushed between two panes of glass like an insect in a display case--

YOU CAN’T RUN FOREVER.

--turns a corner, and Dick’s on a rack, an actual rack, and at each corner there’s somebody turning the pulley and stretching his limbs until his shoulders and knees pop out of their sockets, and, and, is Batman one of them? And one of the others, his face is half-shrouded in scar tissue--

ALTHOUGH, and now there’s a hint of amused menace, THAT MIGHT BE FUN, TOO.

Jericho sets off again, heart thundering in his chest and pulsing in his neck, panic scraping his breath through his throat and nose. It’s been so long since he’s had a body to call his own, but his mind can’t forget what it feels like to be truly afraid, to look at a threat and think: that’s going to really hurt, or i’m going to die, or both.

Along the way he feels little nudges from Dick, helping him pour on the speed. When these nudges stop, and he’s run out of corners to turn and reached one where he can only huddle, he turns.

There’s a woman standing there: tall, almost statuesque. Her skin is grey and her hair hangs limp past her shoulders. But her eyes are luminescent: pools of algae on water that reflects a coal-black night. There is naked hunger in the way she looks at him, in her smile full of mossy, pointed teeth.

HE’S RIGHT IN A WAY, she says. HE BURNS SO BRIGHT, AND HIS PAIN SO EXQUISITE. BUT HE IS ALREADY BURNING OUT. YOU… she steps closer, YOU WILL LAST FOREVER.

Jericho feels frozen as she reaches a bony hand towards him. HIS SACRIFICE WILL HAVE BEEN IN VAIN--HOW DELICIOUS.

He feels a familiar ice-cold pain along his throat, razor-thin, and a deeper, hotter pain that’s boring into his stomach. If he closes his eyes he can imagine that it’s Slade on the other end of a sword, eyes wide in horror and--and betrayal--

“No.” The pain in his stomach stops, and Jericho opens his eyes to see Dick’s back in front of him, the pointed end of an icicle emerging from his middle and dripping blood on Jericho’s feet.

And Dick still--

“While I’m still here, in my head,” Dick growls, “you don’t get to touch him.”

The woman screams--it’s a horrible sound, full of rage that buries itself like needlepoints in his eardrums--but Jericho has no time to linger as he feels the hardest push he’s gotten from Dick yet, and a sensation like someone’s reached into him and pulled his stomach clear out of his body, and then--

then--

he’s out.

For a long, surreal second, he is just a mind floating without a body, threatening to vanish into the ether if he can’t ground himself in somebody else’s head. He casts frantically for the nearest person and enters--and to his relief, it’s Rose. She must know something of what’s going on, because she immediately steps back and lets Jericho take over her body.

They’re in the Titans Tower, and he can see Kory, Rachel and Gar crowded around something--well, somebody--on the floor. At his choked, “Dick,” they immediately part, and there’s Dick on the floor, curled around nothing, ashen, eyes open and unseeing. He’s shaking minutely, but besides that there’s nothing to indicate that right now, inside his head, he’s being torn apart over and over and over again--

“He won’t let me help him,” Rachel says, her voice trembling, tears streaming down her face. “She wants you. He says he won’t let that happen.”

Jericho crashes to his knees next to Dick. He gathers his head onto his lap--tries to ignore how cold he feels and banishes all memories of his wasted body on that cold table--and kisses his forehead. “Please,” he says, tears spilling to land on Dick’s face and slide down to his ears. “Just--please.”

He’s not sure what he’s asking for. But he thinks Dick will find a way to give it to him anyway.

#titans #my fic #dick grayson #jericho wilson #a byronic cupcake

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justalitlecreacher · 3 years

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Ok as much as I hate the events of the Rako Hardeen arc in Clone Wars and deeply wish that the council/Obi-Wan had at the very least told Anakin and Ahsoka what they were planning, I feel like the arc represents a very important turning point in Anakin’s fall and actually shows an important bit of character growth from Attack of the Clones.

Tl;Dr: The Rako Hardeen arc is my favorite and least favorite arc in all of Clone Wars because while it puts Anakin through unnecessary pain it also gives a lot of insight into why he may have fallen in Revenge of the Sith and shows some important character growth

Ok; the most important part of this post/analysis (I think) is to remember how close Anakin and Obi-Wan are. Anakin was placed in Obi-Wan’s care at the age of 9 and from then on Obi-Wan practically raised him. In Attack of the Clones we see Anakin refer to Obi-Wan as the closest thing he has to a father not once, but twice, and one of those two times was directly to Obi-Wan.”OBI-WAN: Why do I think you are going to be the death of me?! ANAKIN: Don't say that Master... You're the closest thing I have to a father... I love you. I don't want to cause you pain.”(Attack of the Clones) and later to Padmé “...He's [Obi-Wan] like my father,...”. This is especially important because when Anakin leaves his mother to become a Jedi in The Phantom Menace, Obi-Wan is literally the only friendly/familiar face in the Temple. Plus in the comics (disclaimer: I have not read all the comics just bits and pieces) we get a glimpse of Anakin training with the other padawans and it’s made clear that at least some of them don’t like Anakin at all. One padawan even refers to him as “just a slave” when shit talking him during training.(which like super fucked up; they def should’ve gotten in trouble cause that don’t seem very Jedi of them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Anyway; we’ve established Anakin and Obi-Wan’s bond. So let’s turn our attention towards someone who deserved so much better; Shmi Skywalker. Her death in Attack of the Clones was the first major turning point in Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side. There is really no excuse for Anakin’s actions after Shmi’s death; he goes to a very dark place, and likely taps into the dark side of the force during the massacre of the Tusken Raiders. But that’s not what we’re talking about rn so back on track.

I bring Shmi’s death up to say that while Anakin was tracking down Obi-Wan’s “murderer” I didn’t fully realize that Obi-Wan had disguised himself as Hardeen and I was genuinely worried that Anakin was about to unalive an innocent man. I really believe that the only thing that stopped Anakin from trying (and maybe succeeding) to kill Obi/Rako was like he said: he knew that Obi-Wan wouldn’t have wanted him to. This is important because the last time Anakin lost a family member he brutally murdered an entire village of Tusken Raiders, children included, and I think it’s safe to say that Shmi “the biggest problem in the universe is nobody helps each other” Skywalker would not have wanted that. I’ve finally arrived at one of my main points; this arc shows a crucial bit of character growth by showing an Anakin that is capable of thinking his actions through and not just reacting out of anger even after the loss of one of the most important people in his life; something he was previously shown incapable of when his anger and grief blind him. This turns this arc into an sort of midway point on Anakin’s fall; he’s clearly tempted to give into his anger and pain again, but he is able to resist this time. A younger Anakin may have killed “Hardeen” then and there.

This scene really contrasts with Anakin’s actions in Revenge of the Sith in a way im not sure how i feel about yet. On one hand it has potential to make Anakin’s actions in Revenge of the Sith feel too out of character. We just saw Anakin able to see past his own emotions in the wake of the death of a loved one so what makes this different? On the other hand this arc can be used to show just how desperate Anakin is to not have to feel that way ever again. It’s also good for showing how much influence Palpatine has had on Anakin in the space between this arc and Revenge of the Sith. As for why Anakin may be unable to think past his own feelings in Revenge of the Sith when he appeared perfectly capable in the arc, a likely reason is that there really wasn't anything Anakin thought he could do for Obi-Wan anymore because he believed him to be dead, but with Padmé, Anakin knew she could be saved if he could just get her the proper care. But his fear of being exiled from the Jedi Order, and his increasing lack of faith in the council led him to believe that he had no choice other than to trust in Palpatine. And no hate to Yoda but im sure when Anakin did try to reach out (even as vaguely as he did) Yoda’s response of “Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.” didn't appear to be very helpful (especially considering that he is well aware that listening to Ahsoka’s visions and responding appropriately saved Padmé’s life (not sure if Anakin knows about that though)). These three episodes show pretty well how/why Anakin may have felt that he had nowhere to turn but Palpatine.

These groups of episodes actually show negative character growth (is that the right term?) in Anakin. He goes from commiting mass murder rated E for everyone to understanding that his loved ones would not want him to seek revenge in this way, but then he backslides into this lightsaber is rated E for everyone by Revenge of the Sith. Logically he should know that Padmé would never have wanted him to do what he did; he has to know what he’s doing is wrong, but he’s incapable of seeing another way out because he cannot handle even the thought of losing Padmé. He’s too desperate to not lose her, and so sure that there’s no other option that he manages to convince himself that he needs to do this for her. I find this entire arc really interesting but unless i want to be here all day the most i can do here is point out that it exists and that it peaks in the Rako Hardeen arc. Surprisingly i do have a life outside of writing long posts, and i lack the time and energy to analyze all of Clone Wars and write about every event that led to Darth Vader (there are so many). On top of that i actually haven’t seen all of Clone Wars; just the episodes most important to understanding Anakin’s fall.

Onto my next point, we just talked about the growth Anakin showed in this episode; now onto why i believe that this arc was instrumental in Anakin’s fall. (Disclaimer: I do not think that removing this arc alone could have saved Anakin, but i do believe it would have helped a good bit). I’ve already touched on Anakin and Obi-Wan’s bond so im not gonna do that again.

Ive said it before and i will say it again; it was super fucked up of Obi-Wan and everyone else on the Council to use Anakin’s (and Ahsoka’s) reactions Obi-Wan’s “death” for their own gain. It was super manipulative and they absolutely knew what they were doing. Obi-Wan even explicitly says, “Keeping Anakin on the outside was critical. Everyone knows how close we are. It was his reaction that sold the sniper. I'm sure of it.”(Deception season 2 episode 15). He knows just how devastated Anakin would be by his death, and he uses like Anakin and his mental and emotional well-being mean nothing to him (I know this isn’t true but its probably not hard to believe that someone doesn't care about your feelings when they’ve just tricked you into thinking they’ve died for their own gain). The Council really proves time and time again that they do not care about Anakin’s (or maybe anyone’s; Anakin was far from the only one close to Obi-Wan left unaware of his deception) mental or emotional wellbeing, but tbh i think this is the worst example of how callous the Council can be. And on top of all of that it was Obi-Wan who decided to keep Anakin in the dark Obi-Wan who should have known better; if we assume that Anakin is at least 20 in Clone Wars; Obi-Wan has known Anakin for at least 10 years, and has practically raised him from the age of 9, and yet somehow, somehow he had this idea and didn't see a single thing wrong with it. (And they really picked the worst possible person for this; like yea let’s trick the most unstable Jedi we have into thinking his closest friend/ father figure was murdered)

This arc’s main purpose (IMO) is to really show the beginnings of Anakin losing faith in the Jedi and putting more and more faith in Palpatine. Anakin trusted Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan betrayed that trust. Beyond that Palpatine is able to make Anakin begin to doubt how much the Council is telling him if they didnt tell him something as crucial as this. We even see Anakin parroting Palpatine’s “concerns” of the council not telling Anakin the full truth the Obi-Wan and the end of the arc. This arc is instrumental is establishing Anakin’s loss of faith in the council and shows how much he trusts Palpatine and sees him as a real friend.

Anyway I’m sure I had more I wanted to touch onand if I remember I will definitely edit this post but for the now I just wanna say. A) I love Obi-Wan a lot; this arc just really was not it. I do not understand how he thought this was in any way acceptable but I do still really like him. B) i fully understand that Anakin’s actions are his own and he does take a share of the blame for his own fall.

#what am i doing?#anakin skywalker #obi wan kenobi #rako hardeen #star wars #clone wars #deception arc #clone wars deception #long post #ramble #im so sorry except im not #i hesitate to use the word hyperfixation but not a day has gone by that i havent thougt of Anakin Skywalker at least once #in so long #i have a problem

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musical-chick-13 · 3 years

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And Theon bc I love him

WHAT A COINCIDENCE I LOVE HIM TOO (this answer is gonna be a combination of books and show)

Send me a character and I’ll tell you the following:

• Did they live up to their potential? / In what ways was their potential unachieved?

-I would say yes. The only negative I have about his general arc is his death (which, see below). But Theon from the very beginning was, though not a particularly nice person, still relatable. Feeling othered, wanting to be accepted by an immediate environment that doesn’t accept you, isolated from and ostracized by your family, and the tension that comes between serving the different types of familial relationships in your life. Theon has no idea who he is, tossed aside by his blood family for not growing up with them and being “soft,” aka sort-of moral and having emotions that aren’t selfish rage or smugness (which, yep, that second part is a mood, see: my entire childhood and how no one wanted to be around an “emotional” “soft” child). And from there, he spirals out of control in a way that, while certainly not admirable by any stretch of the imagination, is still understandable in the context of the narrative and his characterization. And from there, after going through hell and quite literally losing himself (even to the point of straight-up denying rescue), he builds himself back up gradually, to the point where he expressed extreme regret for what he’s done, helps an innocent woman escape a truly horrifying situation, acknowledges that his family is generally garbage, and (in-show b/c again books aren’t finished), helping to restore his sister to power, rescuing her after his PTSD relapses while confronting Euron, and ultimately opting to protect the Starks come hell or high water in order to genuinely atone for what he’s done. He is no longer conflicted because he wants to do the right thing, and that right thing is defending the kingdom from the White Walkers and making sure Sansa and Bran are safe. And it’s no longer about fulfilling a duty or finding a family to fill the void. Because now he has found himself. I will contend that Theon has one of the best, most nuanced, most organic redemption arcs of all time. I will forever be grateful that I got to see that piece of storytelling unfold.

Although, I would love to know what he thought of Dany. A missed opportunity, that.

• How they negatively and positively affected the story.

-Positive: His arc of identity and finding where your loyalties lie ties into the overall theme of “How do you find yourself in a world where goodness, authenticity, and honesty are often punished and increasingly rare?” And it proves that governmental politics aren’t the only defining factors in decisions: familial politics can be just as difficult and dangerous, which adds yet another rich, complicated layer to the overall story. He has a genuine, honest-to-Drowned-God redemption arc, which is...not really present anywhere else in the story (no, Jaime is not on a Redemption Quest, I will die on this hill). But I think the biggest draw of Theon’s presence is that it deconstructs the whole “Character Revenge Fantasy” idea. He does bad things. We want him to be punished. But not like that. No one deserves that. How far is too far? What does retribution really look like? Given how easily that idea can be abused and go off the rails, is retribution even something to strive for? What is the point of using extreme violence/torture/mutilation/breaking someone’s psyche when it doesn’t really accomplish anything? Isn’t atonement and genuine justice a better option? It certainly was for Theon. He could only piece himself back together and do anything meaningful once he was out of his abusive environment. All of these are imporant questions that are posed by his existence in the narrative.

-Negative: Idk if I have much to say here. My biggest problem is his death (see below), but that’s not really a negative story effect so much as...being disappointing and narratively irrelevant. I gotta say, his introduction via his sister was...really weird. I genuinely have no idea why GRRM wrote that. It never came up again or had any kind of narrative ramifications and kind of cast a strange, uncomfortable light on his relationship with Asha/Yara for the remainder of the story. I can ignore and enjoy their later relationship it if I don’t think about it too hard, though, so I guess I’ll chalk it up to GRRM having a Bad Idea.

• What my favorite arc for them is.

-All of it?? Theon’s journey is kind of...one big arc, which is why I think it works so well. He has this overarching redemption plot which spans the entire series and informs every decision he makes (for good or for bad, depending on where in the aforementioned journey he is). The redemption arc isn’t bogged down with side plots or other pieces of narrative clutter, meaning it has time to grow and, thus, be gradual and realistic. If I had to choose a specific point, it’s probably when he tries to reintegrate back into society via supporting Yara. Gaining the Iron Islands’ support for her ruling, spiriting away with Euron’s fleet, and ultimately rescuing his sister after her capture. He can’t just go back into society. He’s scared. He has really bad PTSD. But he recognizes that putting his home in good hands is something bigger than just him because it’s Yara’s home, too. I just...I really love family relationships, y’all.

• What I think of their ending.

-I’m not really sure how I feel about this one. I get that the series is GrimDark™ and that people who make the right choice and fight for good die all the time, but Theon dying just felt...wrong. To me.

And, like...I get it. It makes sense to parallel his original descent into villainy (cemented by executing those two boys and pretending they were Bran and Rickon) with him dying to protect Bran himself. It ties into the whole very common trope of completing a full redemption arc by committing a completely selfless act at great personal cost. It’s kind of like the whole Missy thing in Doctor Who (which...hoo boy, that post is coming, make no mistake), where selfishness is directly opposed by making the ultimate sacrifice with no motivation for personal gain. And the fact that the last words he ever heard were “You’re a good man?” I cannot even begin to describe how much that makes me sob. But...honestly, I’m really tired of this idea that redemption has to end in death in order to be achieved or “complete.” I think it’s much more poignant to have a redeemed character live to help build a better world. Because what’s the point of telling people to be better if the “reward” is death? No one’s going to want to reform themselves if they think that’ll be the result.

I think the thing that Bugs Me™ the most is that Theon never really got to have a moment of peace when he was alive. Sansa gained the North’s love and at least had a secure childhood. Ned and Cat were happily married for years. Arya had parents who loved her and a good relationship with Jon. Jon fell in love with Ygritte and found his Night Watch Bros, and Robb (in show verse) had some very happy moments with Talisa. Davos put great stock in what he considered fulfilling friendships with Stannis and Shireen; Brienne was treated respectfully by Renly, Catelyn, and Sansa; Missandei and Grey Worm had each other and their friendship with Dany, who herself had many personal successes in her quest for the Iron Throne and saw the death of her abusive brother. Cersei even had moments with Jaime (who himself had several notable military victories and at least some time with Myrcella, as well as being gladly and deeply in love, however dysfunctional that love was), times when she successfully fought off enemies (including her dad), and some sweet moments with Tommen, as well as a huge victory via blown-up sept at the end of season 6. Theon was treated as a second-class family member by the Starks his whole life by being “traded” to them as a condition of war resolution AS A BABY, is immediately disparaged and mistreated by his immediate family when he tries to return to them, makes terrible decisions that almost cost him his conscience completely, is brutally tortured by Ramsay, is on the run with his sister from Euron almost immediately after, and has a PTSD attack that ultimatly results in him having to launch a rescue mission. And then he fights ice zombies. And then he dies. He never really...got to be happy at all? There was never any kind of “win” for him. Not even survival. The narrative couldn’t even give him that.

TLDR: Theon’s death seemed less shock-value-y than others (like, for example, Shireen or Missandei or, heck, Melisandre even), and it isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen. It’s narratively-informed and it makes sense as an emotional through-line, but, ultimately, Redemption Cemented By Selfless Death is a tired trope, and I honestly thought this story (which...you know...serves as a deconstruction of common fantasy tropes/book tropes in general) was better than that.

• When I wish they had died. / If I think they should’ve died.

-So here’s where we get personal™ kids.

So, it’s no secret that I am...severely mentally ill. I’ve talked about expression/presentation of mental illness in regard to Cersei a lot on this blog, and how that (as paradoxical as it may seem) helped bring a sense of comfort and emotional resonance to me. Theon, post-Ramsay, has, I think, a very clear case of PTSD. Theon is one of the few characters I’ve seen where his mental illness isn’t the cause of the bad, violent, dangerous choices he makes. It only takes root after he has made the decision and conscious effort to better himself, and it, rather than demonizing him, serve to humanize him. His trauma didn’t define him. And although a PTSD attack led to him unintentionally losing Yara to Euron’s capture, he makes every effort to rescue her, a goal he does end up achieving. It is so rare I get to see a character who goes through these things, successfully fight them and come out with positive qualities at the end. Like...switching topics a bit here, Jaime going back to King’s Landing to (try to) escape and ultimately die with Cersei made sense to me because, as Jaime says, he is a hateful man. He never made much of an honest effort to be anything else. And he never truly wanted to be good; he just wanted to be liked. He wanted to adopt some personality that would make him feel less disconnected from the rest of the world. But Theon...genuinely feels remorse for everything he’s done. He makes a concerted effort to do everything in his power to improve the lives of people he believes are good and deserve to be safe. So, just...killing him off in a Completely Selfless Sacrifice (like...you know how a lot of mentally ill people put themselves through suffering-like OCD rituals, bottling feelings, self-harm, even suicide-in a misplaced attempt to “help” or “protect other people”) seemed antithetical to everything we saw of his arc.

Ultimately, with such a humanizing, empathetic portrayal of trauma and mental health struggles, seeing Theon be killed off just...pissed me off. I am so tired of seeing mentally ill characters die. I really want to believe that I can live through and thrive in spite of the things that afflict me, and I get example after example of characters not being allowed to do that. It feels awful, quite frankly. And it makes hope that much harder.

I also just feel like...there was nothing the story gained from his death? I get the thematic parallels as mentioned earlier, but it didn’t really move the story forward in any significant way. It didn’t motivate other characters to do anything, it had no political ramifications, it didn’t serve to contribute to any kind of happy ending or commentary on society, it just...was sad. Again, I thought this story was better than that.

#theon greyjoy #got #my son #mental illness in media #meta #redemption arcs #tw: self harm mention #tw: suicide mention

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starfighter10 · 4 years

Text

tlou2 opinion

So I really had to share my opinion(rant) on the last of us part 2 and boy I have a lot to say. I am gonna dwell deep into this one, so bear with me if you can and want to

But before that I have to share the feelings I hold for tlou1.Back when I finished tlou1, I knew I experienced something truly magical. I was pleasantly surprised by the beautifully crafted story, the execution of the characters, the music, the gameplay , and the effort that went into shaping the journey of the game,the character arcs and bonds. You could see and experience the uniqueness and passion that went into the first project. This game immediately became a favourite of mine.

When tlou2 was announced, my expectations were skyhigh,was elated to continue Joel and Ellie's journey and how it unfolds. The bar set by the first one was exceptionally high and probably impossible to achieve, but I had trust and faith in naughty dog, thought they couldn't go wrong with this one. After experiencing tlou2 , I am speechless.... not in a good way. I have no words to express my disappointment,frustration and anger I feel right now. I don't even know where to begin.... the absolute mess of a plot, the original characters being blatantly ignored, retconned and disrespected in favour of new bland characters, the plotholes in the story, the false advertising and marketing, naughty dog's hubris, making a complete mockery of your fans who are paying money to play something but getting baited for something else. I am utterly heartbroken and angry.

The plot - the driving force of the game is over ambitious, lazy,sloppy and nihilistic. It felt forced. Naughty dog bit off more then they could chew with this one. Tlou2 could have gone several ways in terms of plot with the existing characters, yet we get the cliche revenge plotline with the character abandoning the quest altogether to realise revenge isn't the answer. This trope has been done several times before, with more finesse and better execution. The writers aim for the " Ellie breaks the cycle of the revenge" but it really fails to achieve this as she blatanly annihilates several characters,npcs along the way in quest of her revenge. The damage has been done practically speaking. According to naughty dog's logic , I should expect Nora's sister or a random npc's friend/relatives in tlou3 hunting down Ellie in their revenge quest. Also Abby's quest literally does nothing for me. This character was so poorly written, executed and shoved down our throats, I didn't have any sort of attachment or empathy for her. I simply don't care about this character.

The circumstances that lead to Joel's death was out of character as well. Since the trailer drop in 2016, I was prepared for his inevitable death. Thought he would probably go out like the badass he is, maybe sacrificing himself for Ellie/tommy. The Joel I know from tlou1, a hardened survivor who has fought tooth and nail to survive the past 20 years would NEVER end up in a situation like that. Joel was intensely alert, critical,clever and intuitive. The argument here may be that he has softened in Jackson, but I feel at this point this should be 2nd nature to him. Something that is automatic. Yet the writer's now want you to believe he is a dumbass who would trust a group of strangers, make small talk and introductions and end up in a situation like that. One of the bigger issues was the constant reinforcing that Joel wiped down the fireflies in cold blood and doomed humanity for death by robbing them of their cure for survival,Ellie believing the cure would have been a guaranteed sure shot success ..... WHY? This retcons the first one completely. The beauty of the tlou1 was it's moral ambiguity and uncertainty. We were constantly hinted that fireflies is a mess of a group whose agendas weren't clearly known, whose actions caused the sacrifice of many people for the sake of a slight possibility of a cure.They were power hungry and were cruel enough to send a 14 year old girl to her death with no remorse,consent or any proper investigation or medical research. Joel initially negotiates to find someone else, gets shut down immediately, gets his means of survival snatched and was practically marched to his death. He had no option but to wipe clean these people who planned on killing someone dear to him, for something that is uncertain or in vain. And yes this was a selfish decision on Joel's part, and that was the beauty of it. The moral ambiguity. He was right or wrong or both - open to your interpretation. BUT NOW NAUGHTY DOG WANTS TO TO ERASE ALL THAT DEVELOPMENT. The active reinforcement that Joel was a cold, ruthless murderer who killed fireflies and deprived humanity of its cure? Trying to erase the fact that he was surviving and trying to keep his dear ones safe in this cold, brutal and unforgiving postapocalyptic world. So that we sympathize with Abby and enjoy golfing the tf outa Joel?. Ellie seems like a different character in this one, but again this character is immediately pushed to a whirlwind of traumatic events right from the start of the game. I missed her spark of joy,humour and enthusiasm. The treatment of the main chatacter in her own game is utterly cruel and disappointing, and seemed unfair to me. By the end, Ellie is broken beyond repair. Though she thematically chooses to be the better person and gives up on her vengeance and hate, she still manages to be on the losing side as she ends up losing her father figure which was her closest bond, loses Dina and the kid , she doesn't have her community, her people, her fucking fingers as well. Why? So Ellie could suffer a little more and be unable to do most important thing that bonded her to Joel. Not to mention she loses her switchblade too, her mother's final memory. Surprised that ND spared her mother's letter . Feel her pain and despair. Why does Ellie get such a shitty,depressing, worthless, futile and a hopeless conclusion while Abby not only gets her revenge successfully, forms a close bond in Lev and gets to escape possibly to a fresh start. Ellie? Nah she gets to suffer alone. Her BIGGEST FEAR has become a reality by the end. The least they could do is let Ellie have some solace and calm, surrounded by her loved ones on that farm,her trying to recover from her trauma slowly but surely, it's what joel would have wished for. But no, she is left all alone, absolutely traumatized, all by herself with nothing to look forward to. Oh and tommy is whole new character in every scene. So keep your eyes peeled for various versions of tommy throughout. The character inconsistencies are ridiculous.

The gameplay, beautiful sceneries, and new characters like dina and jesse are few of the positives of game - leaning more towards Jesse. Dina felt perfect for Ellie and Jesse did manage to lighten up few of the moments. The space shuttle cutscene, the museum flashback sequence, ellie and joel's flashbacks were the only parts that remotely captures the magic and beauty of tlou1. I got emotional watching them. The space shuttle sequence hits you with the feels. Joel slaying a bloater with a machete was cinematic art. (Hot too)

Abby... the forced deuteragonist, is an utter failure of character execution. Her character was forced onto us, felt hasty and lacked real build up. She starts off on the wrong foot by killing one of the most popular characters. If ND really wanted this character to work, the only possible way would have been to play her point of view and backstory prior to her mercilessly killing and torturing a guy who just saved her life. What was ND thinking? That a few hours of her pov,forced out of the blue background story, her getting to play with dogs while ellie has no option but to attack the dogs, the abby-lev bond which is pretty much discount or the walmart version ellie and joel would be enough to side with her over ellie and joel???? The part where they force you to play as abby against ellie? It made me sick. I felt cheated and disgusted.

The false advertising to make us believe joel is alive and good? That this is an ellie and joel centric game?To tug at your heartstrings like this. A complete mockery of the fans who waited 7 years to see their favorite characters get horribly treated,retconned, disrespected and thrown under the bus in favour of new unlikable characters. Butchering the heart and soul of the last of us - Joel and Ellie's bond. The fact that these two don't even get a heart to heart before his death, that Joel dies uncertain of ellie's future, maybe thought he could not save Ellie in those final painful moments, that she had never forgiven him, Ellie never getting her closure with Joel, or really getting to tell him how much he meant to her.... all these thoughts legit made me shed tears. Broke my heart. This is how much ND wanted to honour and respect ellie and joel.

The game's conclusion is hollow, futile, worthless and depressing. And in my opinion, this is non canon. This is the only way I can cope with this unsastifying conclusion. It is immaturity I guess... but I will feel better about it.

Though I utterly despise tlou2, tlou1 will continue to remain one of my favorite pieces of work in fiction. JOEL FUCKING MILLER WILL ALWAYS BE THE BADDEST BITCH AND NOTHING WILL CHANGE THE LOVE I HAVE FOR HIM.

If someone actually read it all the way, thank you for your time and effort. Really needed to rant and let these negative emotions out.

#the last of us #the last of us part 2 #tlou spoilers #tlou #tlou2 #tlou joel #tlou ellie #my rants #ellie #joel miller #joel

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yaboylevi · 4 years

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Does Eren's question mean that he has a cruch on Mikasa?

Mmm, I’ll try to explain how I read the scene.

Short answer: No, I do not believe Eren has a crush on Mikasa and the scene, albeit presented in a romantic light from Mikasa’s pov, it was not on Eren’s part. Same as usual, I’d argue.

I will expand on this under the cut, but I just want to reiterate that this is just my interpretation, as one of the anons said, and I am aware everyone is free to have their own, even if they might puzzle me. You are free to disagree, but please don’t send me hate messages.

Upon reading the chapter the first time, I didn’t feel romantic vibes. It was actually quite tragic and disappointing for me to see one of my favorite characters (Mikasa) completely misunderstand my favorite character (Eren), in spite of how close they are supposed to be. I was so depressed and disturbed by the whole chapter, that even if I read it at 5 AM and I could’ve slept another 2 hours before having to actually wake up, I just laid in bed restlessly, absolutely depressed. I even tweeted about it lol.

Anyway, I was pretty busy that week, and only later I found out most people interpreted the scene as Eren being in love with Mikasa. It was a shock for me. It was literally the opposite of what I personally understood.

- Eren’s headspace

Let’s first talk about Eren and where his mind is in this chapter.

I felt discomfort and anxiety throughout the whole chapter. I am a pretty empathetic person, so I realized why I was feeling like that only later, after rationalizing chapter 123: Eren’s memories (which we know are horrible and gruesome and depressing) were being triggered the whole time he was in Marley and it was disturbing to watch.

He looks distressed and uncomfortable. His gaze is often unfocused (or, well, not focused on the present) and he is constantly spacing out - Armin notices but doesn’t seem to care or understand why. Honestly, it is cringe-worthy seeing Eren’s friends’ behavior. They should know what memories Eren has of this place. I do not know if anyone reading right now is familiar with triggers and what they do to a mind affected by PTSD. It’s enough to know that you feel like suffocating because you are fundamentally battling a panic attack and you ideally would want to get away from the source that is triggering you. So, imagine being in a situation you can’t escape from and everything is triggering your worst nightmares. Literally.

Even here, I’m ashamed no one in canon (and almost even in the fandom?) realizes or bothers to be understanding and careful, even when Eren makes a disturbing comment about it. Mikasa admits to it when it's all too late.

The ice-cream scene, just like the one I’m supposed to analyze in this post, is rose-tinted through Mikasa’s glasses, until we are faced with reality and are asked to reflect on Eren’s emotional state, again and again.

Reality is not a happy trip in a foreign country. Reality is a crowd of grown men wanting to hang a child because he’s different. Reality is people wanting to kill them all. Reality is Eren being triggered by ice-cream. Imagine being unable to look at a certain food because it reminds you of people being abused and brutally killed, something that you have actual memories of.

It’s just really frustrating seeing Mikasa looking at Eren, with this dumbfounded look on her face, every time Eren’s eyes seem to scream “help”.

The strain he is put under for the whole time culminates in him crying while looking at the war victims’ homes. Here at this moment, Mikasa enters the scene.

- The “eremika” scene

At this point, Eren’s reminiscing about an awful part of his past, and has a pretty clear idea of what will happen in Marley in a close future. We can be certain of this because he voices both of these topics out loud.

Eren is visibly distressed. Honestly, I’m pretty sure his voice in this scene will be quite telling of his emotional state in the anime. The direction his thoughts go, when expressed out loud, and the expression on his face are self-explanatory. Or should be, at least.

It doesn’t matter that Mikasa hasn’t seen him cry, she saw Eren wipe his face and noticed that there is, again, something wrong, but she doesn’t even ask him if he’s alright. She either doesn’t comprehend the depth of Eren’s pain, yet again, or she isn’t brave enough to ask. I believe it’s the former.

The whole chapter revolves around Mikasa’s inability to see Eren’s true feelings. Chapter 123 opens with this concept. And it is also quite clear that everything is retold from her point of view, so we shouldn’t complacently accept a surface reading of it; we are instead invited to have a deeper look into the events, both by Mikasa’s initial lines as well as the not at all subtle visual storytelling. So yeah, she has a perspective on Eren that is wrong. I think we should keep this in mind.

That’s why the moment she thinks ice-cream can make Eren happy, she is wrong. The moment she thinks Eren’s question has romantic implications, she is wrong. The moment she wonders if a different answer could’ve prevented Eren from choosing this path, she is also wrong...

Let’s go back to the scene.

Eren opens up on his own, even if Mikasa didn’t ask. He’s always been open throughout the time-skip (and even before), but I believe at this moment he has reached the breaking point since landing in Marley. He is at the most vulnerable. Like a dam finally breaking, his walls, that he had tried to keep up until that moment, fall and his feelings/thoughts spill out, after being mostly silent all day.

His short monologue is a direct continuation, or out loud repetition, of what he had been thinking about only moments before and that had caused him to cry. I believe the future he has decided upon also plays a part in it, but he doesn’t voice it, just offhandedly acknowledge its existence with that “Not yet.” comment.

Seeing a family living in poor conditions because of a war they didn’t even have any say in, has triggered Eren’s memories of the past. His and Mikasa’s and Armin’s past. They only had each other, as family, because the adults weren’t there anymore, unjustly killed, like many others. They had experienced first hand what it meant to lose your loved ones, to live a life without enough food, enough rest, enough protection. Without freedom.

Mikasa doesn’t say anything to this. She doesn’t know how to reply, and, thanks to the chapters dedicated to the time-skip, we know this has been going on for years. It’s honestly…disappointing.

And even before the time-skip, we know that she sometimes projected her insecurities and wishes on Eren, misinterpreting him really badly, to the point of making situations romantic when it really weren't.

The scene in chapter 123 is no different, especially because, as I said, it is explicitly a chapter told from Mikasa’s point of view where she also explicitly says she hasn’t been seeing Eren correctly.

There have been a lot of parallels with past chapters in this recent arc, and even 123 wasn’t lacking in this department: if the ice-cream scene parallels the ocean scene, with everyone having fun, while Eren is in emotional pain and discomfort; This other scene parallels chapter 50. At the ocean, Eren’s words gave pause to everyone, but in chapter 123 nobody, quite frankly, gives a damn about Eren to the point that they forget about him. Similarly, in chapter 50 Mikasa had managed to express her feelings for Eren’s existence (gratitude, acceptance and unconditional love - not necessarily romantic), and managed to surprisingly help him because she understood his needs on a basic level. In chapter 123, she doesn’t understand Eren’s pain and so she doesn’t say the right thing (that, btw, wouldn’t have changed Eren’s mind about his future actions, imo).

Just like in chapter 50, Eren is in an emotionally fragile moment, and what he needs, unconsciously, is the reassurance that he is loved, that someone cares about him for who he is, even if he feels undeserving of it.

I believe he is feeling despair on both occasions.

Of course, we can only guess about what made Eren cry in this new chapter, because we don’t have access to his mind this time around, but I’m sure it’s a mixture of things: knowing how ineluctable their future seems, and whatever it entails is upsetting for Eren as well; empathy for someone else’s painful condition because he’s been there before; probably also sadness, because he knows what he himself will cause to happen (as implied by that “not yet”) as well as that his time with his found family and friends is about to end; the bonds he will have to break, something that breaks Eren in return.

So it’s honestly not that surprising that he searches for comfort. I guess he’s been struggling with what he has seen in his future because he would have never thought himself able to kill innocents. His mindset used to be about protecting himself and his loved ones and innocents from being robbed of their freedom, yet he knows he is about to become someone who takes away that freedom, along with lives. For him, life equals freedom, because when you are born you are intrinsically free. So his future actions must have been weighing heavy on his mind and heart.

I find it fitting and incredibly sad that he asks Mikasa what she thinks of him now, after talking about families being robbed of their freedom and how much pain this causes.

Mikasa has always been family to him. So has been Armin, but Mikasa is somehow different. She has lived with him, he has directly invited her to be part of his family, he admitted he childishly rejected her familial care because he was jealous but after this admittance, he embraces it. Opening Grisha’s book together was an important moment exactly because they are family, and that was their home.

They are constantly compared to family. It doesn’t matter, in my opinion, that Mikasa holds also romantic feelings for Eren. She primarily sees him as family, too.

They are what is left of the Yeager household, and the story has highlighted this.

So I believe that in his pain in 123, Eren seeks something, a word of comfort, an assurance that he is not just a killer or a failure, and that he is Eren, someone who has been trying to do the right thing since forever, someone who has done the right thing often, someone who is deserving of the care of the girl he once saved (even if the question clearly implies he doesn’t think he deserves it). In chapter 50, Eren invokes his mother. I am sure he is searching for the same kind of warmth here too. The warmth of his family.

The scene, to me, felt a lot more about Eren’s feelings of self-hatred and Mikasa missing the point.

The entirety of the chapter is meant to show how Mikasa didn’t understand Eren: both by ignoring some signs and misunderstanding others.

He is suffering, but she thinks he is asking her about her romantic feelings.

She blushes, yet Eren has just finished crying and becomes teary-eyed once again.

He is distressed and looks haunted, during both of the rose-colored scenes with Mikasa.

His questions are almost needy. Yet, she fails to understand what Eren was in need of: comfort, understanding, an “I care about you because it’s YOU”. Something that she implied later in chapter 112, when it was indeed too late.

- The two choices were possibly both wrong

Eren presented two options and I think they were both partially correct but at the same time incomplete, because Mikasa’s care for Eren is comprised of many facets. We don’t know what he thinks of Mikasa's answer because we don’t see his reaction to it. However, he seems at peace, later on, falling asleep next to the closest members of his found family, meaning he is content with and values the way their relationship is.

Eren surely doesn’t regret saving Mikasa. He also surely considers Mikasa his family, as I stated before. But there are certain kinds of expectations in being family and in being someone’s savior. You will always care about someone who literally saved your life. You will always care about family because they are…well, family. No matter how messed up they may be, they will always have a small place in your heart, whether it’s bad or good.

“You’re my savior” might imply a dependance or sticking to someone just to repay them. “Family” might have the meaning of “it’s my duty to look after you because it’s simply what family members do”. Both also imply that Mikasa will be hurt even worse by what Eren is about to do.

These weren’t the answers Eren needed, perhaps.

As I said already, I believe that what he searched for, was a different answer. If Mikasa had told him she cared about him as a person, as Eren himself, Eren would have felt reassured - because he would be loved for the neutral quality of simply existing. That’s also what made him feel better, when hearing Carla’s words at the end of Uprising. That he was loved, cared for, and worthy of existing just for being born. No expectations, no burdens. An “I stick with you because I love you (romantically)” could have held the same meaning, potentially, because love is love, but in no way this means Eren wanted a romantic answer or that he feels the same way. Besides, that’s not the reason Mikasa cares about Eren, that’s just a side effect, imo.

And I don’t believe Mikasa, at the question “what am I to you?”, believes she should have responded with “you are the love of my life”. That would’ve been so out of place, because Eren is not the love of her life. He is more. I think family well describes it, but her half-assed, panicked answer wasn’t truthful or as powerful as her words were in chapter 50, so they had no real effect and felt unsatisfying for everyone, honestly.

I always stated that if Eren fell in love with someone else, their love for one another wouldn’t change, because the strongest feeling Mikasa feels for Eren isn’t romantic love, and romantic love is something that has never been in Eren’s mind when it came to Mikasa, as shown countless times (or rather, the lack of romantic undertones on his part re:Mikasa should be proof enough, imo).

Anyway, I could be wrong, but I can’t see it any other way. I think it’s a very complex scene to analyze and there is way more than meets the eye, especially because we aren’t granted access to Eren.

I am a great fan of Mikasa, but this scene and chapter made me reconsider her a lot, unfortunately. I strongly believed she had resolved and understood her complicated feelings for Eren in chapter 50, so she had reached a less biased view, but there has been a regression. The same happened with Armin, his character arc was about him growing confident in himself, and learning to always pay close attention to his own realistic reading of the world, but he has just become unsure of what he has to do and lost his cynical edge.

And finally, I want to quickly address another two points so I don't have to talk about this scene anymore until new information is revealed:

The “perfect timing” comment: I interpreted it as Eren knowing what was about to happen and being depressed but used to his memories being correct. Proof, for me, is Mikasa being confused at Eren’s comment, just like she was at the “not yet” one. Besides, they had already been interrupted by the old man and he didn’t seem to mind, so this “perfect timing” has nothing to do with their friends “ruining” the moment. He willingly invites them to join in and finally, he is content and relaxed, when he is with all of them. He loves them all.

Mikasa’s comment about “if only I had said something different”: I think she may have realized that it wasn’t a romantic situation - because clearly, her romantic inclinations have clouded her judgment. That she had failed to understand Eren’s feelings and his reason for bringing up Mikasa’s care for him. I don’t sense a “I should’ve told him I loved him”. Because honestly, familial love IS love. Platonic love IS love, too. If Eren wasn’t “saved” by the purest form of love, I don’t see how any other type of love could’ve changed anything. That panel, revisited by the current Mikasa, focuses even more on Eren’s tears. Eren’s deep sadness clashes with Mikasa’s initial frivolous reading of the moment. So stating that she believes she should’ve confessed, means going against what the chapter has stated to be…not right.

Thank you for reading all of this, if anyone has managed to! :)

#mikasa ackerman #eren yeager #snk 123 #snk spoilers #snk meta #snk #Anonymous

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blackfemmecharacterdependency · 4 years

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I.T. & Grace Monroe (Again) Chat

Thank you for such a great response! I can’t every imaging the suspense waiting a week for each episode! Lemme tell you the first season I was annoyed with tulip but understood when she was used to expose the trains true meaning /use. MT/Lake story was equally annoying but I appreciated how they used her brattiness to reenforce the methods of the train. What seems impossible to handle in real life becomes more palatable on the train...it brakes it down into bite sized pieces for the passengers to understand and consume. It’s a vr problem solving machine(who would want that). But the major flaw becomes visible to me, by the end of season 1, adults do not fair as well as kids. Amelia did not fair well, her mind was so fixed on the outcome she wanted, that she overlooked any lessons from the train. She forced a square peg into a round hole and her numbers started rising. When she ran into Grace as a child even though is seems like a brief interaction, Grace was already primed to become another Amelia. Her background of affluence, she knows exactly how adults change the world around them to their liking. She already knew the game to be played, so seeing someone with power and influence in that train car , save her, control the enviroment (like her parents would) and have the most numbers she knew what to do. I think she was there to learn not to live to please others, not to feel abandoned and powerless, that not all attention and power is good, that she can stand alone in safety. When she met Simon, she was right back to her old behaviors. What was sad is that by the last episode of that season you know that his real life situation was full of hate and abuse. Grace fell into her enabler and Simon thought he found a mirror. They trauma bonded. It looked like he even developed romantic feelings for her. Still every chance the train sent her to learn those lessons she literally did that opposite of what she wanted. She did what she and Simon agreed to do, Simon looked like he was the mastermind behind all of the Apex rules. I can imagine them trying to figure out how their gang would run with Simon saying something and Grace agreeing then adding to it. I bet Simon felt judged, inferior and misunderstood in real life, because he just could not adapt to seeing Grace form a bond with Hazel and Tuba. The fact that his numbers were decreasing along with Grace’s at one point due to him following her lead was a telling, he was there to learn to find and accept the similarities with the train’s life forms (sorry I forget what they called them) and to build a found family based on that. His attacks on Grace were so brutal, he went to the cat with intent to find something to make Grace fall back inline, to force her back into his ideal world. He rallied the Apex kids to turn against her. He couldn’t even accept the conductor, the ‘god’ of his reality when he met her he just wanted what all adults wanted on that train, to make his world his way. So many adults do this, it’s got to be the reason the train exists right? Catch them as kids, teach them how to find the solution to their problems and send them back into the real world to teach others. Like a gigantic roomba for mental health issues lol. I didn’t expect that Simon wouldn’t make it but there was no way he would have ever left that train on his own. Grace was his way off, and I think he knew that deep down. Makes you wander just how bad his life was, or if he just had an untreated psychosis. Grace’s relationship with Hazel and Tuba became stronger the moment she accepted what she wanted and not what was good for the gang. The years that passed and the numbers that accumulated were undone in a few weeks by that bond, and Simon was watching his world crumble right before his eyes. I really love watching interracial couples on screen, and it’s been great to see how they made Grace and Simon. BwWm (or any combo of black and white or biracial) relationships don’t all have to be racism struggle or forbidden love. It can be as unique as this, scared kids in a new environment. Love it!

You know, to be frank, I shipped this as a ship before it became a season. Whenever I saw them last time, I was like, “Well, they seem cute n’ cozy.” Then, of course, whenever they were revealed to be a hate group, I was like... Well... I hope we find out more because I definitely fucking feel a way about them now. I don’t have very good history with hate groups. My activism hasn’t allowed it, my hometown didn’t allow it - I just have too many bad experiences with hate groups and so since I was reading them as such, my main purpose of watching their season was to see how the train was going to help to change them.

I honestly was like, “Ship be damned,” by the time we got to 6-8 and was just hoping for maybe some friendship building and growth together as better humans. Like. I could care less about a ship on just about any given day (which is why even whenever “my ships” fall apart (and mine always involve Black girls, so that’s like a what 98% failure rate, just because creators never like to see Black girls or women happy anyway), I’m usually fine with it not taking place IF the girl is in a good place and/or there aren’t hella people around her all boo’d up while she’s the strong single. Shadowhunters, looking at y’all bitch ass with a hard side-eye. You as well, Glee. You as well, Battlestar Gallactica and True Blood... Y’all killed the bitches for really no reason. ANYWAYS, I was fine with them not being a ship if it meant growth...

I was shocked that he died, but I also didn’t feel as hurt as I would have had he not done EVERYTHING in his goddamn power to overthrow and murder this girl. Because, I had to repeatedly be like, “This dude is technically a goddamn child,” but then again, so is she. They never grew up in any healthy environment, and I ABSOLUTELY envision Apex creation and building exactly as you did. See, it’s something we got as older Black women looking at this story that the girls just be missing. The signs were so obvious to me that he was the muscle and she was the face, but a lot of people were extremely convinced that she had somehow strong armed this poor, innocent boy into her belief system, even though she literally was always the one with the soft voice.

They read this as manipulation a lot, and perhaps because I’ve been in situations where I knew, “If I don’t charm this person, it is gonna be a very bad day, indeed,” I just didn’t read her actions as harmful. I didn’t see her using her charms to get someone killed or anything dangerous. Only to cheer him up when he was moody, get him to go along with something that wasn’t bad for him at all, etc. So, I mean, whatever, if it’s manipulation, oh well. We do it on a daily basis in the real world whenever we try to let folk down gently as to not get shot on the side of the road, so I’m never jumping to any conclusion that any girl, especially not a Black girl is manipulating somebody without actual evidence, which, I saw none of. She was labeled as his motivation for being a villain from the moment she appeared, so the petty Black fangirl in me rejoiced that canon shot that all straight to hell, and then I received icing on the cake when she not only did not die, but got a redemption arc? YASSSSS BITCH. GIVE MAMA MY THANGS!

I’ve seen a few “fix it fics” and AU’s, but only reading a few of them. I didn’t need anything fixed. I’m just enjoying a little side content (as best as i can anyways. I generally check out if anybody feels like they about to rewrite to go ahead and try to make Grace look responsible for any of that boy’s shit. That fuels my wrath. Because, people really think that they only do shit like this theoretically with fiction, but you not gon’ make me believe that the same people who want to overlook Grace’s trauma, and the way that Simon intentionally harmed her, or downplay her guts to face him head on and try to speak to him about changing and being wrong and not even attack him? (Which, tbh could have been because it’s her instinctual response to protect and care for him, because she’s been doing it since they met and also, nobody is convincing me that he *changed* into this person. That person was always there and Grace had to manipulate his ass into staying docile), but to try to take away that aspect of the story, which is super important to escaping abuse, escaping cults, and building up self - I can’t commit to stories like that. Those are the same people I equate with the people that my ex was COMPLETELY right about whenever he told me that people were always gonna believe him over me because he’s white, smart, and nice. And if we’re being 100, they don’t have to be all three to get people rally behind them while they literally try to hurt and kill you.

So, I just appreciated that the story rallied around the right one and that they didn’t make any room for for blaming his target, although fans will lie and say that they did. That’s just the regular degular misogynoir coming out to play. After leaving a situation in real life with someone like this and having SO MANY GODDAMN PEOPLE try to tell me how the fuck I was wrong, I don’t have patience for that shit. Honestly, if a roach dog monster could have melted and disintegrated Josh, I’d have had a fucking party. And maybe Josh was emotionally and mentally stunted and still a boy dealing with trauma, so that’s where my gray area comes in. It’s like, it’s sad that he chose not to change, but also like, had he been real and did what he did, I definitely would say he should die and not feel bad about that. So, gross scene, but I haven’t a lot of sorrow about it, either. He didn’t give ME much room to feel that bad for him, personally.

Girl, I’ve talked more about Infinity Train on this blog than any other series. Lol.

#answered #andromidagalaxie #Chat w/ Nesha #Infinity Train #infinity train grace #grace monroe #BFCD Reviews by Nesha #submission

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littlemisssquiggles · 4 years

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This one is probebly simpler to answer but possibly now but, which of Salem's faction do you think is close to a point they might be kiled off? For me Hazel is currently safe atm, Cinder is neutral point she already had two fakeout deaths but possibly still has some plot. It is a toss up between Watts and Tyrian given both have a point that could be there end. Watts being executed by Ironwood as a show of force to Salem and Tyrian's desire to please Salem by recapturing Ruby.

Hello again Crystal. That’s actually another good question and I do agree with you on your predications to some degree.

I believe Hazel will be kept around since there is still some unresolved business between him, Oz and Oscar. I have a feeling we could potentially get a rematch between these three characters. Not to mention that as of V6, there also seems to be a growing connection between Hazel, Emerald and Mercury. Particularly Emerald. I quite liked Hazel’s display of empathy towards Emerald where he was willing to sort of take the full brunt of the punishment from Salem for their---well technically Cinder’s failure---at retrieving the Relic of Knowledge during the Battle of Haven.

I feel like this could potentially lead into Hazel becoming a sort of fatherly older brother type character for both Emerald and Mercury. Both of these kids have been victims of not having a proper support system throughout their lives with Mercury being a survivor of child abuse at the hand of his own father and Emerald never having a family to begin with. Not to mention that Hazel still has his own inner demons to heal from regarding the death of his sister. This is why I love the idea of there being more potential moments for these three---Hazel, Emerald and Mercury---to bond since I can actually picture the prospect of their relationship being exactly what they need in a sense.

Mercury never felt the love of a devoted parent---particularly one that’s male. I can easily picture Hazel filling that void since he practically had to be both an older brother and a father figure to Gretchen. He definitely acted like one during his outburst at Oscar back at Hazel.

“…She was only a child! She wasn’t ready!”

I’m actually curious to see how Hazel would react and treat Merc upon learning his backstory of abuse. The same could be said regarding his response to learning that Emerald has never had a family before and had no one (outside of Cinder) to look out for her. Bottom-line, what I’m getting at is that I think a strong family dynamic could develop wholesomely between Hazel, Emerald and Mercury. Through Emerald and Merc (or at least Emerald), Hazel could potentially have a second chance at being a better big brother by looking out for the two teenagers partnered to work with him (to some extent). So yeah, that’s where I see Hazel’s story potentially going along with him making amends for his relationship with Ozpin through his connection to Oscar (maybe; not sure).

Regarding Cinder Fall---to be honest, Cinder could go either way for me at this point. For me, Cinder could either live long enough to see herself overthrow Salem and become an even bigger threat to Remnant than the Wicked Witch (see my Red Queen Cinder Fall headcanon right here and here) or…she can succumb to the Grimm inside of her and practically transforming into inhuman monster in the process. I can’t help that feel like Cinder’s descent will come at the hands of the very Grimm arm that has now fused completely with her body. Notice how back in V7, during her clash with Winter Schnee, even after Winter had succeeded in cutting off Cinder’s Grimm arm, rather than the arm just falling limp to the ground, it regenerated back into the place on Cinder’s body.

It was like watching a lizard grow back its own tail. The Geist Grimm arm has become so integrated with Cinder’s biology that she’s able to regenerate it---rather painfully--- at will. I can’t help but feel like that right there is a clear foreshadow either for Cinder’s rise or fall. Like I said, Cinder could either end up surviving yet again and ascending to become a powerful Grimmoire (half Grimm, half human hybrid) to overthrow the likes of Salem and take her place as the new Red Queen and leader of the Grimm (after pilfering Salem’s magic in the process)…OR…she could lose what little shred of humanity she had left---finally giving herself fully to accept the full power of the Grimm that’s become a part of her; literally becoming an abomination of man that our heroes will have no choice but to slay.

Cinder could either live or die in my books and it can work either way. I just like the prospect of her overthrowing Salem and becoming a worst final boss than her more intriguing than her being killed off. But that’s just me.

Regarding Arthur Watts---not going to lie; apart from Hazel, Watts is the second member of Salem’s Inner Circle who I legit like and wish to believe in his redemption. The way how I see it, Watts could either end up being redeemed through begrudgingly offering to aid our heroes for his own self-preservation upon learning the full truth about Salem and her intentions with Relics or…he’ll just spend the rest of his years in prison to make amends for his actions against Atlas or something along those lines. I believe Watts could possibly live through the potential Fall of Atlas. But again, this is just my opinion.

This leaves Tyrian Callows. Again, I’m going to be honest, I think Tyrian could be the one most likely to be next on the chopping block in regards to main villain deaths. For me personally, the only fitting death I can picture befalling Tyrian is if he were to die somewhat ironically.

What I mean by that is… imagine if…Salem was the one who ends up killing off Tyrian in the end or rather, it’s a case where Tyrian fails in his mission against our heroes and he becomes so distraught at the mere thought of dying by Salem’s hands as a result of failing her a second time that the Scorpion Faunus just offs himself.

Picture it…Tyrian is given another opportunity to redeem himself for failing to capture Ruby Rose. But he ends up failing a second time after being thwarted by the combined efforts of JNR and potentially Qrow Branwen. Maybe it’s even a case where Tyrian does succeed in capturing Ruby and our little red rose is literally whisked away to Salem’s castle by a Winged Beringel while Tyrian is left to fight Ruby’s allies and prevent them from going to save her.

That could be another interesting take. Even though Tyrian is defeated and possibly killed, Ruby still becomes a prisoner of Salem to some degree. That’s another cool thought for the table of potential possibilities.

Going back to Tyrian---a part of me wishes to believe that Jaune might contribute to Tyrian’s official defeat. In V7CH5, Vine suggested to Jaune that he should try ‘extending his aura’ and this was followed up in the next episode---V7CH6--- when we saw Jaune training with Nora while Oscar observed and kept check of his aura levels on his Scroll. As remarked by Oscar, Jaune was able to recover and replenish his aura levels immediately after taking damage.

“…Nice. Your recovery is getting faster…”

Bearing that in mind, I have a feeling that that little detail is going to come back at some point during V8 particularly in respect to Tyrian Callows. In V7 CH7, during the attack on Robyn’s election victory party, we saw that Tyrian was able to use his semblance to cut through an individual’s aura. If it’s been established that Jaune is able to quickly recover his aura then currently, everyone’s favourite Arc boy is the only one who has an edge over Tyrian.

At the moment, Jaune’s semblance is the perfect counter to Tyrian’s since even if the Scorpion Faunus is able to cut through Jaune’s aura, his attempts will be proven futile since Jaune will just recover his aura immediately after taking damage. Thus, my hunch now is that Jaune may play a part in Tyrian’s ultimate defeat. I think the only way for Tyrian to truly go down for good is through death considering the fact that his whole backstory has been him constantly evading capture.

To stop a cold-blooded killer, you basically have to kill the killer, right?

I’m also curious to know if we’ll have Qrow getting a chance to enact revenge on Tyrian for killing Clover. After all, it was his own weapon that Tyrian heartlessly used to murder Clover and frame the Branwen man for his death. Wouldn’t it be the most fitting karma if Tyrian receives his comeuppance by having Qrow blindside him and cut him down from behind using Harbinger, just as how he did Clover.

I’m not saying that I’m all for Qrow murdering Tyrian---I guess what I’m more picturing is a better rematch against Tyrian that parallels the events of V4 where he made his first appearance to the RNJR group. During that encounter, RNJR was completely powerless against Tyrian leading to Qrow’s intervention.

Personally I’m digging the concept of a reverse parallel to V4. In that season, we saw Tyrian fail to capture Ruby for Salem resulting in him being defeated by the efforts of Qrow who came to his niece’s aid after her and JNR were overpowered by Tyrian.

In V4, it was Qrow who came to RNJR’s aid when Tyrian arrived to take Ruby. What if…for V8, it is JNR who end up coming to Qrow’s aid after Tyrian succeeds in capturing Ruby?

Picture it. Perhaps…it’s a scenario where Qrow was out doing reconnaissance alone in Mantle with only Ruby. However things take a turn for the worse when Tyrian leads an ambush against the two. If I recall correctly, Qrow was inspired by the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. Well in the Wizard of Oz story, I remember there being a part where the Scarecrow is ripped apart by the flying monkeys who were successful in capturing Dorothy for the Wicked Witch of the West.

Perhaps… there could be a RWBY equivalent to this in V8 where Qrow gets brutally injured during an ambush by Tyrian Callow who leads his own army of Winged Beringels, resulting in Ruby being captured this time as a powerless Qrow could only watch helplessly as his niece is whisked away to become Salem’s prisoner.

As for Tyrian, he arrogantly stays behind to finish Qrow off and further mock him over the events of Clover’s death; ultimately leading to Jaune, Nora and Ren all arriving in time to save Qrow this time; just as how he saved them in V4.

I think that could potentially be a neat scene to see; dontcha think?

Tyrian facing off against Nora, Jaune and Ren again alongside Qrow---I’d love to see that. Heck yeah! I’m definitely digging the idea of Tyrian facing off against a stronger Team JNR who actually give him a good run for his money this second round; especially Jaune with his semblance.

I like the notion of JNR succeeding in defeating Tyrian with Qrow getting his chance to finally cut Tyrian down for what he did to Clover.

Basically what this squiggle meister is trying to say with my jibber jab is that I don’t expect Tyrian to survive for another volume.

Of all the villains in Salem’s army, he’s the one I expect to see go down next; more so than Cinder Fall since I’d like to believe there is a sliver of a chance that Cinder could survive long enough to see herself rise higher and succeed beyond the likes of even Salem. If Salem is the Black Queen then I am 100% on board with Cinder becoming the Red Queen equivalent to that; becoming a more heartless, blood-thirsty and monstrously power-hungry threat beyond the likes of what Salem set in store for her. I’m all for the satire of Salem basically creating her own worst enemy in Cinder. Consider me a firm advocate for that headcanon.

Beyond that, my money is on Tyrian to be offed next. As for how he’ll die, that’s anyone’s guess. If I had to picture it, I can see Tyrian going out one of two ways. Either Salem is the one to kill Tyrian or… Tyrian commits suicide in a twisted ‘I’d rather kill myself than face the anguish of crawling back to my beloved goddess after failing her a second time’ type of deal in the event that he does fail to capture Ruby a second time.

As weird as that may sound, imagining the look on Tyrian’s face at the prospect of being killed by Salem makes me curious. Tyrian literally worships Salem so how would he feel if she was the one to kill him. Will he be genuinely stunned or will it be another example of him accepting everything in the name of his divine goddess; even if it meant his own death.

Or…since I brought up the prospect of Tyrian succeeding to capture Ruby for Salem…perhaps…it can even be a scenario where, after Tyrian is defeated and completely overpowered by the efforts of JNR and Qrow, knowing that there was an off-chance that the heroes might use him against Salem to find Ruby, Tyrian commits suicide out of spite; thus eliminating the group’s only chance at finding and rescuing the captive Ruby.

This could’ve been a cool idea if Ruby was taken all the way back to Salem’s castle in the Dark Domain and since the members of Salem’s inner circle were the only ones who knew the whereabouts of where Salem resided, finding Ruby would be a wild goose chase---granted that Salem kept her alive long enough for her comrades to save her.

When I look at it like that, colour me intrigued because these concepts aren’t bad to ponder on. But again; this is just me once again putting my thoughts and ideas out there.

Overall, I hope I was able to answer you again Crystal. Please let me know if I did with your thoughts on my thoughts, thanks.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2020)

#squiggles answers: rwby #ruby rose #tyrian callows #jaune arc #qrow branwen #rwby theories #rwby volume 8 theories #crystalandbrass #squiggles answers

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tfw-no-tennis · 3 years

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mtmte liveblog issue 16

here we go, the crux of the pain...

ok I'm not prepared for this but I gotta rip the bandaid off, lets go

oh!!! magnus flashbacks!! I honestly thought these were shown later...this is such cool setup for the next arc tho I love it

and the tieback to the scavengers ark, showing fulcrum’s flashback but from magnus’s perspective, as the guy labelled with ‘ultra magnus’ blows him up...

and like, I love that those flashbacks are so vague, and you don't even really know why you're being shown them - I feel like when I first read this I assumed it was to show a bunch of times where magnus almost died but didn't even though he was expected to die - like here w/overlord - but we’ll soon find out that's not quite the case...

and I like the little details that don't add up, like the second flashback-magnus having his autobrand at an angle (which current-magnus would obviously hate), and the ‘witty banter’ remark about 3rd flashback-magnus, which could very well be genuine

oh god oh christ the shot of the lost light flying away from the wreckage of the pod and you can see rewinds broken camera just floating there...fuckgin kill me bro

tg wiping off mangus’s leg because ‘he hates dirt’ tailgate ;_; ily

drift just chillin with 0 legs left

augh poor tailgate, he’s uniquely unprepared for the horrors of battle after sitting out the whole war

oh god, chromedome is standing on the outside of the ship being sad, I already cant handle this

ohhhh god cd talking about him and rewind looking at the stars together ;_; excuse me while I cry my eyes out

chromedome, you have the worst goddamn coping mechanisms

never over rodimus’s office having flames around the door. my guy

magnus invented a font? that makes so much sense somehow

rodimus is worried about his dad :(

damnnnnn rung with that absolutely BRUTAL read on rodimus, oof. way to kick someone when they're down...ouch

but really, rodimus’s hero complex is so fascinating, especially bc he’s aware that he has it to some degree, and he’s not necessarily a bad person, so he tries somewhat to avoid playing into it, but that's a difficult thing to do...

brainstorm hugging his briefcase like that at the funeral...hhhh

swerve, the ‘case quest’ sounds like a spectacularly bad idea

god I'm so sad this whole issue but rodimus giving this big impassioned funeral speech that seems like its about rewind, only for it to REALLY be about some guy who turns into a tripod....really funny

godddd chromedome and brainstorm sitting together, and cd staring at his (remaining) hand....bro :(((

super interested in the fact that rodimus is religious, even though he’s not really overt about it, and it’s not touched on much in the story

rung staring intensely and accusingly at rodimus....jesus that's intimidating

chromedome is clearly uh. Not Coping well, which anyone could see after his “speech” about rewind

brainstorm giving cd that Look :( oh man oh god

GODDDDDDDD the reveal that chromedome has been through this THREE TIMES before, and every single time has chosen to forget, and the whole thing w/the innermost energon...im fucking devastated m8. god

hhhhh and brainstorm saying that he knows cd will go through with it, because they've had this same conversation multiple times before...fucking kill me

also brainstorm and cd’s friendship is so AUGHHHHH my heart man. earlier on they're friendly assholes to each other but now we get to see that they both have a lot of deep emotions

oh god and now the whole thing with drift. hhhhhh this issue HURTS man

thinkin abt how brainstorm, while talking to cd, said that he thinks that drift ‘has the urge to name names’ but really, drift threw himself on the sword and took ALL the blame, even though cd even said, a lot of it was on him for going into the cell without telling anyone...plus brainstorm (and as we later find out, rodimus) is involved as well....AUGH

and drift being cast out so harshly seems rough, even though we know what he (and the others) did was bad

also looks like magnus is reanimating himself over in the medbay...i love all the symbolism with magnus’s hand this issue

OH GOD OH NO I CANT HANDLE THIS. REWINDS GOODBYE MESSAGE IS SERIOUSLY THE BIGGEST TEARJERKER IN THE STORY

‘you and me apart strikes me as intensely wrong’ I'm literally weeping. hello. I cant fucking handle this

NOOOO GODDDD I seriously cant deal with rewinds message overlaid onto drift leaving the ship, and being attacked as he goes, and then ratchet helping him up with ‘you're a better person now - stubborn and frustrating but wonderful!’ over the panels AUGHHHH my heart cant handle any of this. my organs are shutting down as we speak

god I'm just ugly crying @ the end of the message.... ‘one more thing - one last thing - because I don't say it enough...I love you’ AUGHHHH

and its rewind himself who says the ‘I love you’ ;_; LOOK HOW HARD I CAN CRY!!!!!!!!!!!

and the panels of chromedome retracting his needles...he was ready to go through w/it just like brainstorm said but rewind was able to convince him otherwise from beyond the grave ;_; its about the LOVE man

like...rewind might not have known about cd’s past husbands and all the bad coping mechanism nonsense surrounding all that (or maybe he did? unclear) but either way, he knows chromedome so well by now, and knows that he’d be devastated by rewind dying, and so he leaves him this final message....additionally, I feel like rewind, being an archivist, would loathe the idea of being erased from the memory of the person who cares for him the most, and his goodbye message succeeded in preventing that

next, to give us a break from extreme emotional devastation brought about by gay robots, we check in with magnus, who has decided he’s had enough of all of this nonsense and has vacated the premise, somehow

aaaaand right back to being hit by a metaphorical emotional bat, because it looks like tailgate’s gonna die posthaste!

I really love how the character profile descriptions change periodically

SO...this issue...this ARC....GODDDD. I mean its clear from my liveblogs that this destroyed me emotionally, phew....

I will say, I think the writing here is so excellent - this little 3-issue ‘arc’ felt like it had been built up to perfectly from the very beginning, and it all came together in a well-paced and devastating conclusion here

I mean, this isn't the end of s1, we still have remain in light, but a lot of plot points wrapped up here. I don't know much about comics but I feel like they can get cancelled pretty fast, and idek how many issues mtmte was ‘guaranteed’ at this point, so I really commend jro & co for being able to construct such a fantastic story with a solid conclusion, while also setting up a bunch more plotlines for what would hopefully be future issues

I will say. I'm super glad rewind ends up coming back, and also that things get a lot gayer soon, bc this would have been devastating to read in a whole different way if it was just a bad ole str8forward bury your gays situation

but since it isn't, then I'm free to be extremely emotional about it, oof

I feel like I've articulate a lot of my thoughts already so ill end here and say: this slaps, cant wait to re-read more

#ive read this series thru twice but it still Gets Me man #lj rereads mtmte

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rapeculturerealities · 4 years

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I moved to Los Angeles to become an actress at 24. These are character descriptions of roles I have read for: “thin, attractive, Dave’s wife”; “robot girl, a remarkable feat of engineering”; “her breasts are large and she’s wearing a red sweater.”

I stuffed my bra for that last one. I still did not get the part.

After a while it was hard to tell what was the greater source of my depression: that I could not book a part in a horror film where I had three lines and died on Page 4, or that I was even auditioning to play these roles at all. After dozens of auditions and zero callbacks, my mom suggested I get breast implants. From her perspective, I had walked away from a coveted job at Goldman Sachs and chosen a profession of self-commodification. She wanted to help me sell better.

But I wasn’t drawn to acting because I wanted to be desired. I was drawn to acting because I felt it would allow me to become the whole, embodied person I remembered being in childhood — one that could imagine freely, listen deeply and feel wholeheartedly.

I continued to audition and continued to fail. My depression deepened. My self-esteem plummeted. My boyfriend would get drunk and punch holes in the wall next to my head. I let him. He spat in my face. I let him. He dissolved into tears in my arms. I let him. And then I sifted through the ashes of his anger and his father’s anger before him to help him uncover the forgiveness he needed to move on. I was auditioning to be “Dave’s wife.” I was “robot girl, a remarkable feat of engineering.”

After a day of running from men with chain saws in audition rooms and a night of running from the man I shared a bed with, I decided I was done auditioning. I felt I had to write my way out of these roles or I wouldn’t find my way in the real world, either. I could not be what I could not see onscreen.

So I went to the library in downtown Los Angeles and started reading books and watching films about how to write dramas for the screen. I clung to Jodie Foster in Jonathan Demme’s “Silence of the Lambs,” to Holly Hunter in Jane Campion’s “The Piano.”

But aside from a handful of exceptions, I was overwhelmed by the number of dramatic narratives that murdered their female characters.

In “The Big Heat” she has a pot of boiling coffee thrown in her face and is then shot in the back. In “Chinatown” the bullet tears through her brain and out her eye. And in case this seems like a trend of the past, consider the more recent noir “Blade Runner 2049,” where the holographic femme fatale is deleted and the remaining women are stabbed, drowned and gutted like a fish.

Even the spirited Antigone, the brave Joan of Arc and the unfettered Thelma and Louise meet tragic ends in large part because they are spirited, brave and unfettered. They can defy kings, refuse beauty and defend themselves against violence. But it’s challenging for a writer to imagine a world in which such free women can exist without brutal consequences.

We live in a world that is a direct reflection of these stories we’ve been telling. Close to four women a day are murdered in America at the hands of their partners or former partners. One out of every four women in America has been the victim of a rape.

I am one of those one out of four. Our narratives tell us that women are objects and objects are disposable, so we are always objectified and often disposed of.

There are centuries of trial and error inside the “hero’s journey,” in which a young man is called to adventure, challenged by trials, faces a climactic battle and emerges victorious, changed and a hero. And while there are narrative patterns for the adventures of girls — “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Wizard of Oz” — those are few and far between, and for adult women, even less so.

Even when I found myself writing stories about women rebelling against the patriarchy, it still felt like what I largely ended up describing was the confines of patriarchy. The more fettered I felt inside the real world, the more I turned toward science fiction, speculative fiction and lo-fi fantasy.

I eventually co-wrote, produced and starred in two microbudget films, “Another Earth” and “Sound of My Voice.” Both stories left reality just far enough behind to give me the mental freedom to imagine female characters behaving in ways not often seen onscreen.

I emerged from the Sundance Film Festival with offers to act in projects I would never have been allowed to read for a week prior. Most of those roles were still girlfriend, mistress, mother. But there was a new character on offer to me as well, one that survived the story.

Enter, stage right: the Strong Female Lead.

She’s an assassin, a spy, a soldier, a superhero, a C.E.O. She can make a wound compress out of a maxi pad while on the lam. She’s got MacGyver’s resourcefulness but looks better in a tank top.

Acting the part of the Strong Female Lead changed both who I was and what I thought I was capable of. Training to do my own stunt work made me feel formidable and respected on set. Playing scenes where I was the boss firing men tasted like empowerment. And it will always feel better to be holding the gun in the scene than to be pleading for your life at the other end of the barrel.

It would be hard to deny that there is nutrition to be drawn from any narrative that gives women agency and voice in a world where they are most often without both. But the more I acted the Strong Female Lead, the more I became aware of the narrow specificity of the characters’ strengths — physical prowess, linear ambition, focused rationality. Masculine modalities of power.

I thought back to the films I watched and stories I read burrowed deep in the stacks of the library. I began to see something deeper and more insidious behind all those images of dead and dying women.

When we kill women in our stories, we aren’t just annihilating female gendered bodies. We are annihilating the feminine as a force wherever it resides — in women, in men, of the natural world. Because what we really mean when we say we want strong female leads is: “Give me a man but in the body of a woman I still want to see naked.”

It’s difficult for us to imagine femininity itself — empathy, vulnerability, listening — as strong. When I look at the world our stories have helped us envision and then erect, these are the very qualities that have been vanquished in favor of an overwrought masculinity.

I’ve played the Strong Female Lead in real life, too — as an analyst at an investment bank before coming to Hollywood. I wore suits, drank Scotch neat and talked about the women and the men I was sleeping with like commodities on an open market. I buried my feminine intelligence alive in order to survive. I excelled at my linear task of making more money from a lot of money regardless of the long-term consequences for others and the environment.

The lone female V.P. on my floor and my mentor at the time gave me the following advice when she left to partner at a hedge fund: Once a week, open the door to your office when they finally give you one, and place a phone call where you shout a string of expletives in a threatening voice.

She added that there doesn’t actually need to be someone on the other end of the line.

I don’t believe the feminine is sublime and the masculine is horrifying. I believe both are valuable, essential, powerful. But we have maligned one, venerated the other, and fallen into exaggerated performances of both that cause harm to all. How do we restore balance? Or how do we evolve beyond the limitations that binaries like feminine/masculine present in the first place?

In 2014 I went back to the library and encountered Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower,” a sci-fi novel written in 1993 imagining a 2020 where society has largely collapsed from climate change and growing wealth inequality. Butler’s heroine, the 17 year-old Lauren, has “hyperempathy” — she feels, quite literally, other people’s pain. This feminine gift and curse uniquely prepares her to survive the violent attack on her community in Los Angeles and successfully encourage a small tribe north to begin again from seeds she has saved from her family’s garden.

Butler felt to me like a lighthouse blinking from an island of understanding way out at sea. I had no idea how to get there, but I knew she had found something life saving. She had found a form of resistance.

Butler and other writers like Ursula Le Guin, Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood did not employ speculative fiction to colonize other planets, enslave new life-forms, or extract alien minerals for capital gains only to have them taken at gunpoint by A.I. robots. These women used the tenets of genre to reveal the injustices of the present and imagine our evolution.

With these ideas in mind, Zal Batmanglij and I wrote and created “The OA,” a Netflix series about Prairie, a blind girl who is kidnapped and returns seven years later to the community she grew up in with her sight restored. She opens up to a group of lost teenage boys in her neighborhood, telling them about her captivity and the inter-dimensional travel she discovered to survive it. It turns out these boys need to hear Prairie’s story as much as she needs to tell it. For the boys face their own kind of captivity: growing up inside the increasingly toxic obligations of American manhood.

As time has passed, I’ve come to understand what deep influence shaping a narrative has. Stories inspire our actions. They frame for us existences that are and are not possible, delineate tracks we can or cannot travel. They choose who we can find empathy for and who we cannot. What we have fellow feeling for, we protect. What we objectify and commodify, we eventually destroy.

I don’t want to be the dead girl, or Dave’s wife. But I don’t want to be a strong female lead either, if my power is defined largely by violence and domination, conquest and colonization.

Sometimes I get a feeling of what she could be like. A truly free woman. But when I try to fit her into the hero’s journey she recedes from the picture like a mirage. She says to me: Brit, the hero’s journey is centuries of narrative precedent written by men to mythologize men. Its pattern is inciting incident, rising tension, explosive climax and denouement. What does that remind you of?

And I say, a male orgasm.

And she says: Correct. I love the arc of male pleasure. But how could you bring me into being if I must satisfy the choreography of his desire only?

And I say: Good on you. But then how do I bring you into being?

Then I hear only silence.

But even in the silence I dream of answers. I imagine new structures and mythologies born from the choreography of female bodies, non-gendered bodies, bodies of color, disabled bodies. I imagine excavating my own desires, wants and needs, which I have buried so deeply to meet the desires, wants and needs of men around me that I’m not yet sure how my own desire would power the protagonist of a narrative.

These are not yet solutions. But they are places to dig.

Excavating, teaching and celebrating the feminine through stories is, inside our climate emergency, a matter of human survival. The moment we start imagining a new world and sharing it with one another through story is the moment that new world may actually come.

#sexism #misogyny #entertainment #workplace #strong female leads #voices

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neven-ebrez · 5 years

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15x01, a look at the future through the past

Back home! I watched the episode last night and rewatched it just now. I’m sorry to say that I was baseline bored on most levels but the second time through things felt better (yay!) even if the bland factor was still there for me personally (I’m bored with most ghost stuff from SPN these days). Imo the characters basically served the plot of 15x01 instead of the other way around which is very Game of Thrones-y and 1000% not what I’m here for but I won’t talk about the details of that because I’m sure no one wants to hear that and I’m also sure things won’t stay that way long so I’ll talk about some other things instead. There are some things I can tell are a thing but I don’t know exactly what the shows means in depicting them, and others where I’m more confident in my interpretation so here we go.

I’m like 99% sure the demon in Jack is actually Chuck and that he’s basically trying to maintain his torture (I mean... the guy admitted to being a torturer ffs) of the Winchesters with the best viewing seat possible as it were (he even tells Dean point blank he’s a “fan”). For some reason only Dean and Cas got the focus for this (torture) tho and not Sam. With Dean it was the demon reminding him of how dark and brutal Dean can be himself (via his time with Alastair). Dean blows that off pretty quick and isn’t too visibly effected, commenting that it was a long time ago. With Cas the torture came in the demon’s possession of Jack himself, Cas saying bluntly that he can’t even look at Jack and that demonic possession is basically defilement. Cas is clearly more effected and Dean’s harsh “Jack is DEAD!” tonally recalled S13 in many ways. Also oddly the demon admits Dean is gorgeous but not the same is said of Cas, with the demon insulting him instead. Two interactions. Two wildly different responses. It’s the demon putting Dean and Cas at odds without any interaction needed from them themselves, though the latter comes in spades and is the only focused on “true” conflict of the episode, set against soft Sam/Dean exchanges.

The blend of Cas’ angelic nature along with his human nature was also heavily, heavily highlighted in the episode. It was probably the most highlighted thing in fact. Cas smiting and healing. Cas shooting a gun and throwing rocks. Cas tells Dean he wouldn’t starve to death in the crypt (which, on a side note, has huge Buffy vibes for me, along with Belphogor (sp?) calling the Hell rip or whatever the “Hellmouth”). Cas can see the demon’s demonic face easily despite episodes like 14x01 (also written by Dabb) where he can’t see a room full of them (I think I argued back then that Cas was willingfully trying to ignore and was annoyed with his angelic nature). Cas’ angelic side gets another highlight when Sam accidentally shoots Cas and he doesn’t get truly injured. This particular scene seemingly serves no other purpose other than to highlight Cas’ difference (as non-human) in general. Emotionally tho, Cas’ human side is on full display. He’s worried about the town’s people. He’s annoyed with both Sam and Dean for different reasons at different points. Cas bodily removes the demon from sharing the same space as him because the demon upsets him. Cas can not even LOOK at “Jack” but Dean (and Sam) can. As I said, it’s similar structurally to how S13 handled Dean dealing with Cas’ death in comparison to Sam moving on from it. It functions to show that for Cas his relationship with Jack is different from Sam and Dean’s, however otherwise similar in the fact that TFW all see Jack as their child, their family. It’s exactly like how Cas is different to Dean as compared to Sam.

Back onto demon “B” whatever tho. Interestingly, we never see the demon smoke into Jack. Then he just “”happens”” to know every spell needed to help the Winchesters but for Dean and Cas two things are required for sacrifice/gathering. In each, one component is dead-like and protecting (salt, goofer dust) and the other channels life/creation (a heart and angel blood). Each time there’s a duality in play. Curiously Sam is not involved in any of this with the demon for whatever reason, making the demon (within the season’s structure as presented so far) a primary component of Dean and Cas’ differences. They are tests of free will for them specifically in a way. What will each person “freely” give/obtain for the demon? To me, it just all screams this thing/demon is really just God fucking with them in every way he can but while maintaining some ally aligned position physically. It’s Chuck’s literal MO.

Also. The show is back to Dean blanketly treating Cas like shit. Which we know happens in waves constantly but as a Cas fan it’s still annoying to watch for the umpteenth fucking time. And they haven’t even pinpointed the *exact* reason here for all the snapping (yeah, pacing, I know). The audience has to do some connecting the dots here I feel. They have to have a certain understanding of how Dean needs Cas. I *think* the takeaway is that Dean uses Cas as an emotional punching bag when he’s actually mad at himself and that instead of getting so angry with himself these days that Dean’s decided yelling at Cas is a better/healthier way for him to deal with himself. Which is absolutely unfair and devastating to Cas, but it’s what Cas (unfortunately) has become to Dean. It’s like when he told Cas he was dead to him at the end of S14 because of Jack killing Mary. Dean’s really mad at he, himself, for ignoring the warning that was always there. Not really Cas. But Dean has yet to apologize and/or rectify this. This is the (ongoing) problem for Dean and Cas. Point blank.

At this point if I was Cas I’d just leave and not come back. He doesn’t deserve the way Dean constantly treats him. Dean doesn’t “need” Cas like this but he’s become comfortable using him like this. This is so jarring from the understanding Dean shows Cas in late S12. And from the grief arc he has in S13, followed by the relief he shows when Cas returns. Dean never learns how to properly “claim” Cas, however. Looks like this time instead of killing Cas the show (like in S8) is gonna have Cas choose to stay away (after 15x03?) I guess, prompting Dean to do some reflecting or whatever following this (What is Cas to me? Why do I actually need him? How should I treat him?). But honestly I’m not thinking of the reflecting right now. Or the “after” or whatever. I’m just thinking about how shitty Cas is being treated RIGHT NOW and it 1000% makes me wanna just drop the show and not watch anymore until it’s over. I’m just not interested in torturing myself for months watching this slowly drag out but apparently I’m so masochistic and love Cas so fucking much that I will. GODDAMMIT

Onto “pipes” I guess. This is where I point out that I don’t know what the show is going for here but I’ll throw around some ideas. Pipes had a lot to do with the episode. Sam thinks he hears water flowing in a pipe in the crypt and they think they can escape through the sewers. Wrong. Later, Sam tells the sheriff that a pipeline burst near the town. Lies. And lastly there’s a plumbing truck outside the home where the clown ghost slaughtered the birthday party (uh... where’s the bodies btw?). So everywhere we have the imagery of pipes bursting and needing to be fixed. Which, water has nothing to do with Hell, not really. I guess the Hell “rip” is kinda acting like a burst pipe?? Water is usually associated with angels/Cas/change tho. My best guess is that it’s repurposed Michael imagery since good ol’ Bel-whatever let us know Michael’s cage door is busted open and he’s just sitting there for now apparently. I’m not confident in my interpretation here at all though. All I can tell is that busted pipes as imagery (something likely associated with lying/wrong) for something is a thing.

In general I’m going to say 15x01 didn’t even feel like a Dabb episode to me. I honestly wouldn’t have guessed he wrote it. Since I didn’t care about the random people under attack (women running and scared and not tougher is always a hard sell for me personally) I found myself frequently saying “why aren’t they doing _______?” a lot during the episode. Ghosts needing to run? Why? I mean, I get the show wanted to show how the magical border worked but this could have been done in many other more effective ways utilizing tension more. It almost felt like the show didn’t know what to do with its S1 self and so visually everything ended up looking so very incredibly cheesy and not just in the way the colors are no longer desaturated. It literally looks like the show can’t go back into what it was. We saw this visually with a sign that cropped up in several shots as Sam and Cas tried to get the girl and her mom to safety. It was a cul de sac sign.

Here’s a video on why cul de sacs as a design became popular. In short, following the rise in popularity of the automobile neighborhoods are designed for safe car use, above all else. They don’t want outsiders passing through and they want things to be slower. When cars got popular streets were redesigned away from the traditional city “grid” (where accidents happened at intersections most commonly) with features that instead had safety in mind. I choose to interpret this as a visual comment on the show’s design. The Sam n Dean show is like a city grid, dangerous, while the Sam, Dean, Cas, Rowena, and Jack show offers more “safety”. That’s why we get it framed like this imo, between Sam and Cas. Things looked one way before Cas, and another after. Things have changed from the grid and they aren’t going back, for a variety of reasons.

Since the episode title recalls the movie Back to the Future I thought we’d have more of a visual/dialogue tie in tbh. I’ll try to talk about what we thematically did tho. BTTF is a movie about a boy overcoming his impulsiveness to be an alpha male who isn’t scared. This wasn’t a goal of the boy himself necessarily but it was an effect had upon him just the same by the story and his experiences. The movie bookends on this character development. In between the movie is about the disconnect of generations, how kids don’t see their parents in the way they see themselves and vice versa. It’s also about trying to set right familial relationships into proper categories. Marty’s mom, Lorene, accidentally falls in love with her own son instead of Marty’s father, George. Marty’s existence is then threatened and he must spend the movie trying to understand his parents and help them fall properly in love, thus saving and changing himself and them. We only get shades of these themes in the episode, like when the demon (in Jack’s body) calls Dean gorgeous and it makes him uncomfortable. Divorce (unhappy marriage) is also touched upon with the sleepover/makeover girls. In BTTF Lorene and George do not have a great marriage as George lacks confidence but Marty’s interactions with George in the past help change this in the future and their family is much better for it.

We are told in PR that Dean’s “conditioning” and him changing from that is a big part of what SPN is and has always been about. This is similar to how Marty must learn to properly deal with bullies (as he sees his father as weak and overcompensates to distinguish himself from him) and not letting them have power over you. Chuck is like Biff in this structural comparison. Biff is someone we watch become depowered over the course of the movie and I feel this is similar to what the show will likely do regarding Chuck. I could go further in depth here but these are the general thematic points this episode alone addresses. Only with Marty’s character development does he stand to have a happy life with his girlfriend, Jennifer. Back to the Future ends with another call to adventure and its script is widely regarded as “perfect” by many. Quite the structural comparison for SPN to be making. We’ll see. We’re currently stuck in the past for now. Onward, to the future...

#spn speculation #15x01 #zerbe discusses things #final themes #duality #alchemy #narrative structure #back to the future #pop culture references #destiel for ts #if you squint #cul de sac storytelling #the spiraling narrative of supernatural #spn criticism

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nadziejastar · 4 years

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i hope this question is alright. i noticed that what broke isa’s character for me when saïx was given agency is that his berserker mode no longer made sense. rather than seem like pent up rage against his abusers, it seemed to just be saïx again being a total douchebag. saïx always came off to me as someone with ptsd, maybe c-ptsd and suddenly giving him agency against xemnas and the apprentices is a strange take. i can elaborate more but the 300 character limit is brutal lol!!

i hope this question is alright.

Perfectly alright.

i noticed that what broke isa’s character for me when saïx was given agency is that his berserker mode no longer made sense. rather than seem like pent up rage against his abusers, it seemed to just be saïx again being a total douchebag.

I completely agree. Saïx’s characterization in KH3 was nothing like I was expecting based on all the past games. It was totally incongruous with his depiction in all the other media (games, novels, manga). It was ridiculous. I was completely baffled over why he was acting the way he did, why he was apparently completely in control of himself during his fight, and why he was being treated like a totally normal guy, when he obviously was not.

saïx always came off to me as someone with ptsd, maybe c-ptsd and suddenly giving him agency against xemnas and the apprentices is a strange take. i can elaborate more but the 300 character limit is brutal lol!!

Feel free to elaborate as much as you want if you feel like you have more to say. But from what you’ve said in the 300 character limit, I couldn’t agree more. Saïx absolutely seemed to have PTSD to me, too. I would say Axel did, too. Something very awful happened to them both, leading them to join the organization. Though I think Saïx had gotten the worst of it. Axel’s anger seemed to stem primarily from the way Isa was so abused. It’s why he had the patience of a saint with him. I don’t know exactly what happened to Saïx, but it sure as hell wasn’t him becoming an apprentice to look for Skuld.

I also found it really weird that Xemnas showed up as soon as Saïx stopped attacking Lea. Seriously. It was instantaneous. Since the Norts were all supposed to share a heart and consciousness, it actually makes sense. But oddly, Xemnas had no reaction whatsoever to Saïx just standing there refusing to fight Lea. He didn’t scold him or call him a traitor or anything. He didn’t acknowledge him whatsoever. It was downright bizarre. To me, it’s just evidence that Saïx’s fight got drastically rewritten at the last minute, but they left certain things the same, making it into nonsense.

Lunacy: A term describing insanity, once considered to have been due to changes of the moon, now used legally and colloquially but not by clinicians. In the middle ages, the symptoms and behaviour of those with mental disorders or defects were often ascribed to demonology or witchcraft, and some sufferers were cared for by monastic orders.

Belief in the “lunar lunacy effect,” or “Transylvania effect,” as it is sometimes called, persisted in Europe through the Middle Ages, when humans were widely reputed to transmogrify into werewolves or vampires during a full moon.

It really, REALLY bothered me that everything cool and interesting about Saïx—the berserk mode, the lunacy, his vampire-like design and personality, the X-shaped scar—all of it has been entirely removed from any story context. It’s all just random aesthetics that have no meaning now. He’s just a normal guy who was kind of a douchebag. That’s it. That’s what he was reduced to.

NOBODY in good faith could possibly argue that Saïx’s concept and design don’t fit the backstory of a test subject waaaaaaaay more than his canon backstory. It’s literally impossible. Saïx’s lunacy fits being a human lab rat. I suspected that he and Axel were test subjects even in the original KH2. Because it just fit that well.

Honestly, it pissed me off that apparently, we were supposed to see that Saïx was only pretending to fight Lea to the death, in order to keep up appearances. He needed to seem loyal to Xemnas so he could bring back Roxas or whatever.

It’s honestly the stupidest thing ever. I’m a big fan of the manga Berserk, so I enjoy reading up on the history of berserkers and such. And I find the idea that Saïx was just putting on an act the whole time to be ridiculous and it spits in the face of what it means to be a berserker.

Berserkers would slay anyone who got too close. Friend or foe. Isa wasn’t aware that he was fighting his best friend. That was the whole point. Isa’s heart was strong enough to regain some control before he killed Lea. That is very much in the spirit of this series.

Xemnas: My friends! Remember why we have organized–all the things we hope to achieve. The strength of the human heart is vast. Soon, though…we will have gained power over it! Never again will it…have power over us.

The heart is the most powerful thing in existence. All Xemnas wanted was to gain power over the heart. This was what he said while looking up at the giant heart-shaped moon. The same moon that causes Saïx’s lunacy.

Roxas: Love is a power?

Xaldin: None you or I will ever grasp. Nor will they, for long. The love between them will wither and die. Love never lasts.

Roxas: But you don’t have a heart. How would you know?

Xaldin: I have eyes, and a brain. We have no further business here. Try not to dawdle.

Roxas: That still doesn’t explain what love is… Is love fighting to protect what’s most important to you? Where does its power come from?

Throughout all of Days and KH2, Xemnas did have total control over Isa’s heart. He turned him into a very powerful killing machine who felt like his only purpose in life was to become stronger.

I love Roxas and Axel. I’m sure Saïx would scoff at that. Call it a trick of my artificial memories. But the time I spent on that clock tower was real.

But he was incapable of the power of the heart—love.

Roxas: I found out about love on today’s mission–that it’s something powerful.

Axel: That’s true. It is. But I’ll never get to experience it.

Roxas: Nobodies can’t love?

Axel: You need a heart, man.

Roxas: Right…

Axel: Love is what happens if there’s something really special betweentwo people.

Roxas: You mean, like, if they’re best friends?

Axel: Well, you can care about your friends, I guess, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

Love is the greatest power of all. It’s a power even Xemnas cannot control. He has power over “nothing”. That was what Isa’s fight with Lea should have been about. Very simple.

It’s why Isa stopped attacking Lea when he looked into his eyes, just before he finished him off.

It’s why he was just standing there like a mindless zombie and the camera zoomed in on his face when Xemnas began attacking Lea.

It’s why Isa was the one shown standing there behind Xemnas right before he tried to finish Lea off. This was what Isa’s character arc was set up for ages ago. Ever since KH2FM+. Literally over a decade of build-up for this moment.

Saïx emotionally abuses Axel and his two friends for an entire game. Then, he spends the entirety of the next game trying to kill him, and succeeds at the end. Then, in the grand finale, they have a lukewarm reconciliation at the last minute. Does this feel like a satisfying and well-thought out story that fits in with the themes of Kingdom Hearts? NO!

The entire fight was supposed to be a dramatic demonstration of how much Isa LOVED Lea. He loved him so much he was able to break free of Xemnas’s control, to protect him. Nobody could ever convince me that Saïx/Isa had a good character arc in KH3. He didn’t. It was abysmal. I actually found it offensive, it was so bad. It’s because the setup for his story was so good and they turned it into such trash.

#kh meta #kingdom hearts 3 #KH #kh saix #anti-kh3 #kh isa

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teffyjeffy · 5 years

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(Most of) JoJo’s Bizzare Adventure: Stardust Crusaders but almost everybody are kids having fun at recess.

Want a random JoJo post out of nowhere? No? Okay well here you go anyway!

A lot of the time when I was watching JJBA I felt like I was watching a very dramatic retelling of what was actually two kids playfighting.

“My guy punches super fast!” “Oh yeah? Well my guy can stop Time!” “Oh yeah?! Well, mine can too! I just discovered it!” “WELL MINE CAN DROP A ROADROLLER ON YOU” “THATS CHEATING”

Anyway, the idea started to snowball, so please enjoy my masterpost of (most of) JJBA Part 3 where the Stardust Crusaders are a group of 9 year old rascals who met up one day during recess. This is just for fun ^_^ also these are all copied and pasted from discord so the structure is a little jumbled. Enjoy!

Oh, and Spoilers are ahead.

“I can punch super fast!”

“Well I can use cameras and TVs as crystal balls, but I need to break them!”

“Mine can shoot flames, ooo ooo and-and I can control them at will!”

“Mine has a sword that can stab anything”

“MINE HAS AN ATTACK THAT IS UNBLOCKABLE AND ITS AREA EFFECT IS THE WHOLE PLAYGROUND-“

“No Kakyoin that’s not how we play. Youre not allowed to have an invincible attack”

Kakyoin’s introduction:

“I have an invincible attack”

“That’s not how it works Kakyoin but you’re cool, so you can keep playing with us”

The insect stand “Tower of Gray” was when the group was bothered by a fly on the school bus and they got a little too rowdy in their attempts to kill it, which pissed off the elderly bus driver. Thus the kids agreed that he was responsible for bringing the fly onto the bus in the first place. They got detention.

Jean Polnareff’s introduction:

“I have a sword that can pierce through anything!”

“Okay Jean, you can play with us, but you have to promise to stop pushing Avdol into the wood chips, he doesn’t like it.”

The stowaway girl is actually a 5 year old girl who wants to play with them and they hate it at first but they eventually warm up to her. The monkey with a ship stand was actually a retelling of the groups trip to the town’s public swimming pool. The boat was just an inflatable tube and the monkey was a chipmunk. And the original boat that blew up? That was the group’s original inflatable tube that got popped because the 5 year old wouldn’t stop gnawing at it

Later, the kids SOMEHOW convinced their parents to let them stay in the same hotel while the parents all hate business trips to go to. They “promised” not to pillow fight, then everyone except for Jean went to go get snacks while Jean went to explore the new room. Unbeknownst to them, the previous guests of the room accidentally left their daughter’s doll behind. Jean HATES dolls. He accidentally stumbled upon Child’s Play when he was surfing channels way too late at night without his parents knowing. Fear turns into aggression and someone from the hotel staff goes to check on him. He finds Jean and realizes it’s the same kid who shot him with a water gun earlier. Jean is kicked out and the parents have to pick their kids up. Jotaro and everyone else weren’t happy.

Rubber Soul is actually just that one bratty kid who thinks it’s sooooooooo funny to mimic other people while also making fun of the person they’re mimicking. It makes them feel “powerful.” Jotaro encounters Rubber Soul when the latter is mocking Kakyoin one day, while Jotaro is playing with the 5 year old; he then chases Rubber Soul all around the playground, and when he finally gets him, he busts his teeth in. They were only baby teeth though, they grew right back, which saved Jotaro from a brutal punishment. He was still forced to go without dessert for a month. He didn’t complain though because his mother was dealing with the flu at the time. He would give all his desserts to Kakyoin, which his how Jotaro discovered Kakyoin’s creepy habit of juggling maraschino cherries in his mouth.

J. Geil was somebody who used to play games with Jean’s sister. When she found out he sucked at party cake and teased him for having “Two left hands”, J pushes her into the mud and never plays with her again. Jean has held a grudge ever since.

Hol Horse is Geil’s “New friend” which pisses off Jean. Hol Horse, being a member of the wrong crowd, beats up Avdol and J. Geil just goes along with it. Jean is all “Avdol why are you even here, you had nothing to do with this!” And Kakyoin’s like “Should we call 911?” And Jean responds “Not yet, I need to beat up these guys first!” And Kakyoin calls 911 anyway.

The Mirror stand is just J. Geil going “Made you look” and punching your shoulder.

And Hol Horse’s stand is just a nerf gun. The reason it hurts is because he likes to get right up in your face before firing it. It’s ineffective if you’re too far away from him, because the dart bullet loses momentum and hits the ground harmlessly.

Jean eventually gets back at J. Geil by chasing him into the middle of a group of kids, then pointing up at nothing, shouting “Made you look,” and poking J. Geil in the eyes, which causes him to cry like a baby. And later, Jean is like “Oh yeah, I totally stabbed him with my sword!” when Jotaro asks him what happened.

Then Hol horse runs away because he realized J. Geil was a total loser.

The Empress stand was just Joseph’s retelling of his parents taking him to the doctor’s office so they could deal with a wart on his arm. He hated how boring the actual process was, so he pretended that he bested the wart in a game of wits and tore it asunder. Jotaro was grossed out.

(Btw in this AU Joseph is only a grade older than Jotaro, instead of being his grandpappy)

Wheel of Fortune is just the result of a very nasty game of tag with a brat who wouldn’t leave the group alone.

Enya is the crazy cat lady at the end of the street whose house the kids were forced to pass one day when they missed the school bus.

Steely Dan is the snobby “Cool Kid” of the playground, and a sore loser when the kids don’t play the way he wants them to. So Jotaro gives him a black eye.

The Sun is a kid who likes to fry ants with a magnifying glass. But Joseph likes bugs, and seeing this made him cry. So Jotaro, Kakyoin and Avdol plot to destroy the magnifying glass, which they thought was really funny. But at that point, the magnifying glass had to be returned to the science lab, so the kid was spared.

Or, in another interpretation:

“Hey guys, I wanna play! My guy’s power is that he’s literally the sun!!! ”

Joseph: “Wow, that’s pretty powerful-“

J,K,&A: “YOUR POWER IS STUPID, GET LOST”

Death Thirteen was the result of the kids being forced to deal with a baby who was throwing a tantrum while they all waited to get on the giant slide at the County Fair. Kakyoin was especially pissed.

I have nothing for the Judgement stand.

I don’t have anything for High Priestess either.

And Iggy is still a dog, but I’m getting rid of his tendency to fart because I just HATE IT

N’Doul isn’t blind, he wears glasses and can’t see shit without them. And he has a water pistol. And he hoards the playground’s sandbox.

Oingo and Boingo are a 6 year old and his 1 year old brother and they’re just the cutest little demon spawns.

Anubis is a dog that snatched Jean’s toy sword in its mouth, and the sword’s power to transfer souls was just Jean fearing that the dog had rabies. Jotaro rolled his eyes but convinced Joseph to help him buy a new toy sword to shut Jean up.

Mariah... I dunno man, I didn’t really care for her arc and it definitely doesn’t fit the “kids playground” scenario I’m going for.

ALESSI IS WRITTEN OUT COMPLETELY. HE IS NOT ALLOWED ON THE PLAYGROUND.

The D’Arby brothers are known for being the cheaters of the playground. So Jotaro scares the eldest brother in a game of Go Fish, and it messes D’Arby up so much that it triggers his Asthma and he he has an Asthma attack.

Pet Shop went down as the day when Iggy had a fight with a seagull and got pecked the ever loving SHIT out of. Jotaro tells the story at every Christmas party.

The younger D’Arby battle happened on a day when he and Jotaro were playing video games together. They accused each other of cheating, which resulted in Jotaro insulting him for liking dolls before pummeling him and consequently getting kicked out of the house. Joseph gave him a high five though, so it was worth it.

Vanilla Ice was the toddler who didn’t bother to move out of the way if you got in his path while he was driving his toy mini jeep. But if you asked Jean or Avdol, they’ll tell you that the toddler deliberately puts people in his path to run them over. And the occasional dog.

And finally, DIO.

DIO was a kid who got transferred to Jotaro’s school after being expelled because the principal of DIO’s previous school couldn’t get him to leave two of the students alone, by the names of Johnathan and Erina. He was pen pals with Johnathan, but that was the only connection DIO bothered to maintain.

Jotaro thought DIO didn’t even deserve the title of “School Bully.” He thought DIO was just a weird freaking kid. Despite that, most of the kids were scared of him, Jotaro’s friends included.

DIO loved to utilize the classic “Time Out!” whenever he played with the kids, and if they didn’t abide to the time out, they got a knuckle sandwich.

Jotaro was the first kid in a long time to just say “Nope.”

That’s when he learned that DIO was a kid who liked to screech like a banshee when things didn’t go his way. As well as throw a whole bunch of pencils (seemingly from out of nowhere) at any person that he upset with.

The road roller in this AU is the closest thing to a lethal heavy weapon that you can get on the playground: a frickin BIKE.

And DIO is like “TIME OUT SO I CAN SLAM THIS BIKE ON YOU” And Jotaro goes “Nope, your time out is cancelled because you’re a freak and also you tried to bite Joseph which was just gross, anyway-“ and he punched DIO in the leg, pushed him to the ground, and kicked woodchips in his face.

They both got expelled.

A few years later, on his way to middle school, Jotaro bumps into a kid named Josuke...

<============ TO BE CONTINUED

BONUS JJBA BATTLE TENDENCY

The Pillar Men are a reflection of the infamous day when three highschool bullies showed up to the playground. One of them beat a kid named Ceasar in a Rock Paper Scissors match; in responce, Joseph (who at the time was only 4) went apeshit. He kicked the first highschooler off of the carousel at the County Fair. Then he located the second highschooler, tied up his shoelaces, then lit them with a match. Finally, during the school’s annual science fair, he tracked down the third highschooler, who had just finished rigging a student’s baking soda volcano to blow up in his face. Joseph threw a bunch of rocks that he found outside at the highschooler, and then proceeded to lock him up in the school’s astral observatory. The first two highschoolers fled town after that, but rumor has it that the third one is still stuck in the abandoned observatory.

#jjba #jojo part 3 #stardust crusaders #au #jotaro #dio #kakyoin #avdol #joseph joestar #iggy

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gojira007 · 5 years

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So About That Slap

So I was originally just gonna do this as a comment on @thankskenpenders‘ post but

a) I’d already reblogged that post twice to highlight the on-point comments from @robotnik-mun and @starsandpawprints so doing it yet a third time with my own comments felt kinda tacky? Plus their comments wound up feeding into my own so doing this as my own post means I can refer you more easily to both of what they had to say (read ‘em here ‘n’ here respectively)

b) This got kinda super-duper long

And just to preface this with some stuff that I do think is important for context

1) I do not now nor have I ever condoned or approved of the way Jon Gray or Karl Bollers were treated over what happened in this issue; the harassment they’ve both faced even now about this plot point is utter bullshit on every level and I want to be crystal clear that none of what I say or how I feel here is meant as an attack on them at any level

2) I’m very aware that this is older than Old News; the comic is literally over, the moment itself happened 15 years ago, and even at the time it wasn’t really The Biggest Deal no matter how the fandom took it. This isn’t meant to be any sort of Definitive Final Word or whatever on the whole thing; it isn’t even necessarily meant to be Me Venting My Anger. But I do have Feelings on it even all this time later and hey! Since the topic’s come up again? I felt like putting them down.

All that having been established? Let’s dive right in!

So I’ll say upfront I actually agree with a lot of what TKP has to say on the matter! Not just that the reaction to it as a whole was ridiculously over-blown at the time (and I will admit upfront that at the time my feelings on the topic were pretty raw), but that textually speaking, we’ve been building up to this for a while! On The Page, there is in fact a lot that informs why Sally does what she does the way that she does (and for that matter I actually do think Jon Gray’s art for the scene really works; I know some have complained that the zippy cartoony look undercuts the drama of the scene but I actually think it places the exact right emphasis on the intensity of the emotions and the violence with which they swing as the scene progresses)! For that matter I agree a lot with what @starsandpawprints said about how brutally unfair the situation is to Sally when you actually step back and take a look at the circumstances surrounding it! And to be clear? I’m a big Sally fan; not only am I already inclined to relate to and sympathize with her character but I think that notion of Sally struggling with these exact sorts of personal issues is a fascinating and worthwhile story to tell with her that could have lead her down some interesting and meaningful paths.

However, I also think @robotnik-mun is onto something when he points out that the overwhelming majority of the audience saw Sally’s actions as unsympathetic and unreasonable. Only I’d take it one step further: the problem isn’t simply one of perception, but of framing.

For one thing? As much as we’re all picking up on how ill-considered Max’s choice to put all of this on Sally’s head now of all times is, nothing within the comic itself actually suggest that this is meant to be taken as a poor choice; although Alicia airs her concern over the matter, nothing in the comic suggests that Max’s confidence that Sally can handle it is meant to be regarded as unfounded or foolish (we even get an absolutely-adorable shot of Sally looking super-happy and flashing the V-for-victory sign to go with it), even as it does ultimately prove to be mistaken. Likewise, there really isn’t anything in this comic or the prior comics that specifically goes into detail about the strain Sally’s relationship with the rest of her friends is under; we may perhaps infer that fact if we’re so inclined from the bare facts but the truth is nothing in the “Home” arc thus far has really delved into it with any real detail. Which makes sense! Sally isn’t our point-of-view character here (which poses a problem of its own admittedly but we’ll get to that), we only have so much space in any given issue of this comic, it’s easy to see why that element wouldn’t be deemed relevant enough to go into detail on. It just also means we the reader aren’t given any reason to view that as a factor in Sally’s emotional state of being; all we have to go on, all the story focuses on, is her fear of losing Sonic again.

And the thing is? That’s kind of just how she’s been written for a while now.

Again: at the strictest level of what’s on paper, the idea that Sally is suffering from PTSD (and quite possibly Depression, something the fantastic @sally-mun has explored in some really interesting ways) is pretty easy to support, but in the framing I’m not entirely sure it scans. This exact kind of Emotional Reaction when it comes to the idea that she’ll lose Sonic has in fact been THE go-to Thing Sally has been doing for the last few years in the comic at this point; what happens with The Slap really doesn’t seem all that far removed from how she acts during all that asinine Love Triangle Nonsense with Mina right up to her teary farewell to Sonic in #125. Which in turn makes it feel a lot less like this is the repercussions of deep-seated trauma rooting their ugly head but rather that as far as the writing is concerned this is just sort of how Sally handles this stuff when it comes to Sonic, which is to say poorly. Indeed, even the way she’s restricted to staying in Knothole away from the fighting feels less like an example of her parents being unfair, and more like the entirely right course of action to protect her from her unstable Emotions, No Matter How Hard It May Be.

In other words, I don’t necessarily think this is a case of us being meant to sympathize with Sally that we just misunderstood; I’m really not convinced we actually are meant to sympathize with Sally here.

Which isn’t to say that one can’t! Again, there’s a ready-made case that one should! It also doesn’t mean I think this story hates Sally and wants us to hate her too. But a story is more than just raw data, and whatever we might be able to infer from that data, what reactions and feelings the story wants from us comes down to how it attempts to guide us through that data, and in this case it is really hard for me to see that being done in a way that is favorable to Sally much at all. We as the readers intrinsically know that she cannot be right to ask Sonic to stay: Sonic cannot be meant to Not Be Out Fighting because he’s the Main Hero of the book and that’s just flat-out what he does, to say nothing of the fact that it’s what he wants to be doing, and as the main character his is the point of view we’re generally meant to take, with the book again doing nothing to indicate that we shouldn’t in this case. Meanwhile, with no real reason to think of all the other factors that could be influencing Sally’s state of mind here, we’re really only left with the one explicit reason she offers, which is that she wants Sonic to stay with her where he’ll be safe. Not in and of itself an unfair feeling, but in this context? With a War going on that the rest of the story keeps insistently reminding us about? As part of a story where we saw that a single year of Sonic’s absence was enough to drive the Freedom Fighters to the brink of destruction? It’s exceptionally easy to read it as Over-Emotional Sally putting her need for Romantic Security over the safety of the rest of the planet. And while I don’t know that I think the story quite intended it to land that harshly? It’s really easy for me to feel like it at least wants us to be thinking in that direction.

Because the thing is we get zero insight on what else it is that drives Sally to this point otherwise. @thankskenpenders put it really nicely during a look at #88: “for a long while now, the main action the writers have permitted Sally is a series of sudden emotional outbursts. We rarely see the action from her perspective, as Sonic is the protagonist and the audience viewpoint character. So instead of being about Sally’s emotional struggles, it becomes about how Sonic can never please Sally.” By much the same token, what could have been a story about Sally finally breaking under the myriad emotional and psychological pressures that have been building up inside of her in the year she spent stewing in the belief that Sonic was dead while the rest of the world slowly but surely fell apart without him instead becomes a story about how unfair it is for Sally to expect Sonic to be something he fundamentally isn’t simply to make her feel better. We aren’t given her point of view; nothing prior to this story (and only one thing after this story prior to Flynn about which I have Decidedly Mixed Feelings but I’m trying to keep us focused only on what has already happened up to this point so I won’t go into that here) attempts to delve deeper into her mental or emotional state at this point in time; the framing of the story provides us no context to Sally’s reaction save the apparently-overwhelming strength of her Romantic Attachment to Sonic. Is that basically business as usual with this comic? Absolutely; that TKP quote above is in reference to an issue published four whole years prior to this one!

But that’s precisely the problem for me.

The Slap stands out as especially bad to me because it is the final breaking point where all the problems baked into the approach the book has taken to writing Sally over the years-simultaneously unapproachable and out of focus as a Main Character and yet constantly present, rarely if ever allowed to actually do anything of consequence but always available for a Big Emotional Reaction-came home to roost. It was a culmination of the bad direction they’d been taking her in for a long time, and as a result it felt the most difficult to reconcile with the character as I’d understood her; back in the day this marked the first point at which I basically dropped out of the comics for a while, keeping my finger on the pulse via online scans and fan reviews but absolutely not going out of my way to pick up and buy new issues as I’d been doing consistently for about as long as I’d been a fan prior to that point, and it was because I really just didn’t understand what they were doing with Sally’s character, my favorite character, anymore at all. These days I’m more sensitive to the Behind The Scenes realities that drove this choice, and also just older and more mature in general such that it’s not quite as upsetting. But I won’t lie (in case the preceding near-2000 words didn’t convince you already): even now I think it’s a pretty bogus choice all things told. One that could have worked? Sure! One that did? I don’t think so at all.

#sonic the hedgehog #archie sonic #sally acorn #sonally #analysis #gojira007

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