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cruelfeline · 4 years

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Anyone who hangs about Twitter potentially saw an unfortunate Hordak take cross their timelines today.

As is custom on this blog, I’ll be taking it apart for my own personal amusement (and for the amusement of any of y’all who like to watch me do so). I doubt the poster will see this, as they’re on Twitter and not apparently on here, but in case they do: this is for my own enjoyment and the enjoyment of followers; it absolutely does not need to be responded to if that’s not your cup of tea.

So, that little disclaimer in place, let’s see what we can make of this! Because this is on Medium, I’ll be using screenshots as quotes; just a heads-up.

So... this first bit isn’t really anything Hordak-related. It’s more... fandom drama, I suppose? Not really something I can pick apart. I can, however, give my own personal opinion on this sort of thing, for what it’s worth.

It’s true that people can and should be able to feel whichever way they wish about a character. And to talk about that character.

However: it is also true that people who dislike Hordak can be very unpleasant in making that known to those of us who enjoy him. Including descending into personal insults for no discernible reason. Add to that the fact that his character means a great deal to some fans for intensely personal reasons, and it is not difficult to see why some fans aren’t keen to see anti-Hordak content on their timelines, in their mentions, etc.

Censoring character hate isn’t a requirement, but in some circumstances, it can simply be a polite thing to do. It doesn’t take great effort, and it prevents people from experiencing just another bit of unpleasantness on their social media. And if you don’t want to do it? Well, that’s your right; but don’t be shocked when people voice their displeasure by replying to your words. Because that is their right.

And that’s all I really have to say about that.

Odd way to phrase things, really. These aren’t “reasons to forgive.” The first two scenes involve Catra’s asphyxiations and are things that would need to be forgiven, not things to forgive.

Though, y’know, I really only apply that to the first scene, where he assaults her without her necessarily doing anything wrong. Mind you, I believe he does it out of a combination of needing to maintain a hierarchy for safety purposes (this is a man who needs people to be afraid of him to maintain his own safety) and poor leadership skills mimicked from a narcissist, but it’s still a terrible thing.

However! The second time? After he asks her about Shadow Weaver? This isn’t torture-fun-times. This is Hordak neutralizing a threat to the entire Horde. Because that is what Catra is in this moment: a threat to the security and wellbeing of him and the entirety of the Fright Zone. She lies about a critical mistake. She proves herself to not only have poor judgment in serious matters, but to be very willing to lie about it in order to guard her own selfish motives. While I can’t condone the method Hordak uses, I do wish people would stop using this second instance of punishment as some sort of proof-of-torture. He does not do this for no reason. He does it because Catra released a dangerous prisoner into the wild and lied about it. And his concerns over it ultimately prove correct.

This entire qualification doesn’t have much to do with whether he deserves forgiveness or not, but it’s a point I want to make because it combats this idea that Hordak did this to an innocent girl “for no reason” or “just to be cruel.” That’s simply not the case; no matter how unpleasant the method, Hordak is a military leader punishing a subordinate for seriously endangering him and everyone else in the organization. Badly. I don’t know what the equivalent would be in modern military, but Catra’s error is massive. It doesn’t make what Hordak does right, but it does give a reason other than a simple “he’s a bad, bad man.” So.

Adding this scene is... actually kind of odd because he doesn’t really do anything to Adora here. And also: this scene is... what’s the word... meaningful-in-hindsight, so to speak. Essentially: in this scene, Adora is claiming that Hordak is responsible for stealing her, for robbing her of a peaceful life with her family. And Hordak is claiming that he neither knows nor cares who she is, and that she does not matter to him.

The interesting aspect of this scene, and something that OP fails to acknowledge at all, is that both Adora and Hordak are wrong.

let’s see if I can talk about this without crying... nope, already starting to tear up

Hordak never stole Adora; Light Hope did. Hordak did not orchestrate this unfortunate life for her. Rather, Hordak, a lost clone dealing with his own insecurities and fears and problems, found an equally lost infant in a field and gave her the only home he really knew how to create (and one that, for its flaws, was still better than the absolute nightmare he was “raised” in). In all likelihood, given Light Hope’s lack of understanding of infants, he probably saved Adora’s life by doing this: without him, she may well have perished alone in that field.

Hordak likewise does remember her, eventually. And she is not inconsequential to him: by saving her, he ends up saving himself, and all of his brothers. By forging this near-unknown bond with her all those years ago, by choosing to take in an infant rather than letting her die, he plays a key role in deciding the fate of the universe.

This scene that OP sarcastically claims is a reason Hordak shouldn’t be forgiven has a sibling:

The fact that OP apparently fails to recognize this and realize that these are the only two moments in the series during which Adora and Hordak directly interact, that they’re a pair, means that OP misses the connection between the two and the significance of how they misjudge one another initially. It indicates a lack of understanding of the themes of the show: themes centered around connections with other people, love, and forgiveness. Which, given the contents of this essay, is unsurprising.

Moving on!

Y’know, whether or not one believes, in terms of definition, that Hordak is a colonizer (I personally don’t for pedantic and clone-cult reasons, but that’s not really relevant to this post), it’s interesting that OP notes how Stevenson confirms that he is... but conveniently leaves out the part where she confirms that he did it because he was brainwashed.

That’s... an important piece of information to leave out when discussing whether Hordak should be forgiven or not. A very important piece.

And it doesn’t really matter whether he’s a colonizer or a conqueror; the reason it comes up is because people seem very stuck in the mindset of “if it’s a colonizer, it must die” without acknowledging any sort of nuance. There’s also the question of whether what Hordak did actually caused the same sort of upheaval and lasting damage we see resulting from legitimate colonization, and all of the implications of that, but this isn’t really the place to go into that. Honestly, I don’t really think SPoP as a whole is the place to go into that.

No. Hordak is not the person who taught her all of these things.

Shadow Weaver is.

Hordak did not personally teach her that Princesses are evil. He did not teach her that wanton cruelty is fine in getting one’s own way. He did not feed her propaganda.

Actually, as an aside: can we even confirm that Catra ever thought that Princesses where evil? I mean... she works with Scorpia, and she has no apparent morals to speak of. She does as she wishes for her own personal gain, not because she displays any sense of “fighting the evil Princesses.” And in terms of disposing of Entrapta because she was “manipulated” into viewing Princesses as evil: Catra disposes of everyone. She manipulates and uses everyone. That is one of the key aspects of her arc: she uses and abuses people for personal gain. She does this whether they are Princesses or not: just see Lonnie, Rogelio, and Kyle. Add to this the fact that Catra, from the first season, knows that she and Adora have been lied to, manipulated, and that the Horde is in fact evil, and... this entire line of reasoning falls apart.

None of this is an attempt to “absolve Hordak of blame.” Hordak just... legitimately had no hand in raising any of the children. That was not his role (and while I know that this was confirmed by Stevenson at some point, I don’t have memory of where; potentially the last podcast?). And Catra did not operate on any sort of propaganda that she actually believed in: she simply used and disposed of people as she saw fit because she cared more about her own rise to power than she did about those around her. This was one of her major character flaws, and really? Trying to pin this on Hordak, or even fully pin it on Shadow Weaver? It absolves Catra of the blame, of the intentional bad choices she made (as emphasized by Adora) and thus weakens her entire arc.

All in all: Hordak may have created a poor environment for the raising of children, but of note is the fact that only Catra turns out this way. The other kids, whatever their problems, are not in the habit of manipulating friends, lying to them, using them, and then tossing them aside. That is a Catra Problem. Part of this can be attributed to Shadow Weaver (who only treated Catra in the poorest way), and part of it is just... Catra being not-the-best.

All right. Now we get to the really disingenuous portion of the essay.

First, as just stated: Hordak is not Catra’s abuser. Shadow Weaver is. Hordak had no hand in raising her. Hordak did not direct Shadow Weaver to abuse her. Hordak did not personally feed Catra anti-Princess propaganda, and even if he had, we know by the first season that Catra sees through whatever propaganda she was exposed to and has no actual moral objections to Princesses. But that’s not the main aspect of this portion that irks me.

The main aspect that irks me is that this is not the scene Hordak stans mark as abusive. And I cannot imagine that OP does not know this.

But let’s talk about this scene, for a moment, before getting to the actual, legitimate abuse.

OP talks about his scene almost flippantly: “Hordak finds out Catra lied about Entrapta, he becomes angry and attacks her with a clear plan to kill her.”

Yes. Yes, he "becomes angry.” He becomes angry and attacks because as far as he knows, Catra killed Entrapta. This isn’t some annoyed “you lied to me!” moment. He legitimately thinks Entrapta is dead because Catra sent her to Beast Island. OP just blissfully glosses over the fact that Hordak is attacking Catra in rage and grief because Catra, as far as either of them know, killed his only friend and then lied about it for approximately a year. Like... how do you gloss over that in discussing this scene? How do you gloss over the enormity of what Catra did, and the unimaginable pain Hordak experiences when finding out?

So. The writeup of this scene is poor. It misses all of the emotion, all of the reality of what Catra did and what Hordak felt. But! That’s not even the unfortunate part of this portion. Let’s get to the real disingenuity.

This is the abusive scene. This is that stomach-turning moment when Catra removes a disabled man’s ability to move with dignity and without pain solely to force him to escalate a war for her own personal benefit.

Hordak is not a danger to her here. Hordak has not been a danger to her for a while because he has been holed up in his private quarters, trying to deal with the emotional fallout of Entrapta supposedly betraying him. He wants nothing to do with Catra. He wants to lick his wounds and gather himself and somehow heal from this deep personal pain that’s been inflicted upon him.

And that’s a problem for Catra because it stands in the way of her using the war as a way to best Adora.

So Catra identifies Hordak’s physical weakness and exploits it for the purpose of spiting her ex.

The fact that OP completely fails to acknowledge any of this is... well. Disingenuous. Absolutely so.

The next portion of the essay talks about people feeling that Catra was too easily forgiven and isn’t really Hordak-centric; I won’t really go into it here. Moving forward:

Ah, one of the most annoying questions I see asked. Let’s, again, acknowledge and move past the fact that Hordak was not actually Catra’s abuser...

When, pray tell, was Hordak supposed to show this remorse? When? While he was serving on Prime’s ship, trying to forget the pain of losing Entrapta, of failing to prove himself, of losing everything? Should he have done it while screaming in agony in the purification pool? Should he have done so while alone on Prime’s ship, trying to serve quietly while piecing together his memories?

Not only was Hordak simply not in a position, narratively, to go into a whole remorse bit, but he had other problems. Like, life-endangering problems.

The appropriate time to go into his feelings on Etheria and the Princesses and All of That would have been after Prime’s defeat, upon Hordak’s re-introduction to Etheria... but then the show ended. So.

Agh, vulgar. Taking a brainwashed, conditioned slave and bastardizing his triumph at finally seeing himself as a real person, instead claiming that his intent was to glorify his own misdeeds. No. Just... no.

Again: this is not the time for guilt. And it is a demonstration of why guilt and remorse were not front-and-center in Hordak’s arc during season five: his arc was about finally realizing that he was his own person, a person worthy of identity and love and care and freedom. And this arc culminated in him separating himself from his abuser and declaring his personhood.

That is what this scene is: not Hordak reveling in his makeshift empire, or in the terrible deeds he’d committed, but in declaring himself his own person.

I should hope that he is proud of doing that. I’m proud of him for doing that daunting feat, of defeating his abuser and defying his god and recognizing that he is worthy of more than what Prime thought of him. And I recognize Entrapta’s role in it: not as the sole inspiration for his change, but as someone who showed him a foundation of love and acceptance, someone who introduced him to the idea that he was worthy of care and happiness and affection simply because he was a living being, no strings attached.

Trying to shoehorn in some sort of claim that this is about pride in his misdeeds, rather than joy at finally accepting his own sense of self is a massive misinterpretation of this scene, a misunderstanding of Entrapta’s role in Hordak’s arc, and... can I say it’s disingenuous again? Because I’m going to: it’s disingenuous.

All right; we’re at the end. And while the first sentence here is something I absolutely agree with - the decision to forgive Hordak is personal and subjective both for viewers and for in-show characters - the whole conclusion falls apart from there.

It highlights another glaring omission from OP’s arguments: the fact that Hordak is a brainwashed clone slave.

Hordak did not choose to “spend his life trying to prove his worth to Horde Prime.” He did not choose the method of said proving: that Prime would look kindly upon conquering rather than some other task. And he did not choose to have certain concepts and ideas (all beings must suffer to become pure; all creatures, no matter how small, have a place in service of Horde Prime; failure is when something ceases to serve a purpose) conditioned into him.

Hordak was manufactured as a cultist slave. He was “born” with hardware implanted into his body against his will to better control him. He was indoctrinated and brainwashed to the point that he believed that Horde Prime was his literal god - and in a way, Prime was, because he could mentally invade and possess and physically control the clones whenever he wished.

Hordak was not allowed to have a sense of self. He was not allowed to have a name. He was not allowed to express emotions. He was not allowed to live without that life serving to glorify Horde Prime. Hordak was so absolutely sick with this mentality that he saw himself as a failure due to physical disability and assumed it was his responsibility to fix that.

The idea that Hordak simply chose to do what he did, that he had the same foundational morality and mindset as any “normal” person might, shows a glaring lack of understanding even the basics of his narrative.

Yes: Hordak did bad things. But he did them for legitimately tragic, nigh-horrifying reasons that this essay just ignores for the sake of... I don’t know? Trying to justify OP’s distaste for the character? I am uncertain. But it’s a mark of a poor essay, of a poor understanding of the character, and is honestly just disappointing to read when the show itself tries so hard to drive home its wonderful, hopeful themes through Hordak’s story.

Whether one forgives Hordak or not is one’s personal choice, but I certainly hope one makes said choice with better insight into his character than this essay provides.

#discourse #hordak #I wonder if I come off as too sassy in this but honestly this essay was a chore to read #so much was just ignored or misinterpreted #it was like a willful misrepresention of Hordak's character and I did not like it

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olderthannetfic · 3 years

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Escapade Vid - The Untamed

I could say this was my attempt at meta on an underappreciated character and that's why I wanted to vid Wen Ning…

Nah, I just think he's hot.

Wen Ning has this adorable babyface and big eyes. Just my type. And then he got a goth makeover and became a creepy zombie, increasing his hotness by ten thousand times. The Living Dead was everything I wanted except for dubcon possession porn, and it both irritates and cracks me up to see how many people find it OOC and badly made. I agree the colors are an abomination though--but more on that later.

I like Wen Ning the best because 1. He's hot and 2. He's one of the most competent characters and compromises his morals the least. Mianmian might be one up on him given how her story turns out, but in a whole series of craven idiots, I like the suicidally moral characters, especially when they're competent.

And also JC. Because I like his face. (What? I never said my Untamed feels were deep.)

I wanted to make this vid last year, right after Escapade. I spent forever finding a song, and I'm glad I did it then because it was a nightmare. I can find love songs easily, but I don't really care about WN/WWX, nor would most love songs fit that. It's clearly one-sided, but WN is also clearly totally happy to follow him around forever. Happy love songs are out. Pining angst is out.

WN is also motivated by high ideals more than specific family feelings. WQ wants to protect her family. WN wants to repay his debts. WN is a shy doofus on the surface when we first see him, and he acts flustered around most of the older characters, but this is deceptive. I feel like the most revealing scene is when he pops up at Lotus Pier, ready to grab JC and take on his entire clan. In what universe was this a good idea? What is he even doing there? Why did it actually work???

I wanted a song that encapsulated WN's quiet stubbornness. The trouble is that like 99% of popular music is either about romance or about being a confident badass, and most of the confident badass music is "Fuck you, ex boyfriend, I'm stronger now". I did not want an ex boyfriend song. A bunch of other songs are macho, flexing dudes talking about how they'll win the sports competition. Obviously, that was out. There are a very few songs like Try Everything, but they're awfully perky for covering Wen Ning's entire story, including him getting, you know, gruesomely murdered.

I honestly can't remember how I found the song I picked. I was probably listening to Happy Hanukkah on endless repeat and saw it in the Youtube sidebar. (Look, it's a great song for all times of year. Shut up.) Matisyahu has many amazing songs that build and move in ways ideal for vids.

I then sat on this source/song combo for a year because, well, it sure was a year. But when we got close to Escapade, I realized I wanted to finish it for the con.

Clip choices:

I'm not going to include the full lyrics on their own since they're in English and on every lyrics site. Instead, I'm putting the relevant bits between my explanations of what I chose and why. A lot of it came together quickly. I knew I wanted to include cute WN moments, like him being bullied by kids, and they wouldn't fit in the main narrative, so I had to put them in the intro.

Feel like the world don't love you They only wanna push you away Some days people don't see you You feel like you're in the way

I had a lot of trouble with 'push you away' since, generally speaking, no one does push him away. However, this is a vid from Wen Ning's own perspective, so it felt like an acceptable match to use the part where Wen Qing tries to leave him behind as they go on a hunt. She's objectively correct to do so given what happens, but Wen Ning is clearly upset that she tried. He doesn't want to be protected, especially at the cost of other people's safety.

Today you feel as if everyone hates Pointing their fingers, looking at your mistakes You do good, but they want great No matter what you give they still wanna take

I was very clear from early on that I wanted to use 'mistakes' for what Wen Ning is actually upset about: ruining Jin Ling's life. Of course he feels super guilty about what he did, despite it not being his fault, but the specific fallout Wen Ning is going to care about is a kid's feelings, not the political drama. That gave me the idea for what to do with 'good' and 'great'. More than most characters in the series, WN is not impressed by the power structure or reputations--scared, yes, but not impressed. WN likes bringing people food, at little things that are quietly good, and their society does not value that. (Cf. everything about Jiang Yanli's betrothal before Jin Zixuan catches feelings.)

'No matter what you give' I used for a shot that is probably not going to read as anything in a convention vidshow. He's bruised up, so I was hoping it would read properly visually. The actual context of the shot is WN having been thrown in the dungeon for being a traitor to the Wen. And yet, when the Wen are defeated, does he get a pardon? Nope, ignominious death. It really didn't matter what he did: these factions are all thoroughly corrupt and the entire system is garbage. It's all power-hungry assholes and sanctimonious prisses ripe for manipulation. All that mattered was that he was a Wen, and the Wens were either on top or being exterminated.

Give your love and they throw it back You give your heart they go on attack When there's nothing left for you, Only thing that you can do, say

The next part is WWX being an ungrateful little bitch. He's understandably stressed, but it still cracks me up that he's all up in WN's face and WN is literally only there to help him. WN might feel an obligation, but WWX sure isn't earning it here.

'When there's nothing left' I wasn't sure about. WN hitting rock bottom is arguably when he gets killed or maybe when they're in the burial mounds, but that didn't work with my structure. I chose to put a montage here of all the times that WQ tells him to stay safe by ditching WWX. I sympathize with WQ, but as WN comments in one of these scenes, he's following their own family code that she taught him. WQ cares so much about protecting WN (and the rest of their little part of the clan, but let's be real, it's mostly about WN) that she's willing to collude with a mass murderer just to keep him safe. Maybe it's only because he's a younger sibling, but WN seems to see things a lot more clearly. I laugh every time he's like "Uh huh, uh huh" as she lectures, and then the next scene is him running off to do something dangerous again.

Today, today live like you wanna, Let yesterday burn and throw it in a fire, in a fire, in a fire, Fight like a warrior, Today, today live like you wanna, Let yesterday burn and throw it in a fire, in a fire, in a fire, Live like a warrior

For this round of the chorus, WN is burning his Wen clan membership in a fire, and the heroic thing is running away, living to fight another day. WN has no ego, nor would ego be helpful here.

Buuuut, equally, being an actual warrior means hurting people, and while he was literally mind controlled into murder, that still couldn't have happened if he hadn't been already involved in violence and fighting. Violence you regret is also part of this life, and so is accepting responsibility for your actions. (Sure, he's very literally not responsible here, but WN doesn't know that at the time and doesn't feel that even later.)

There's some things you should let go, They're only gonna pull you down, Just like weight on your shoulder They are only gonna make you drown

I swear The Untamed has the best casting for a variety of face types. I recognized everybody from the moment they appeared… Except for Su She. Whom I forgot entirely and couldn't recognize at all. Doh.

It wasn't till I was clipping the whole series for this vid that I realized that the reason Wen Ning gets possessed here is that he's the only one to notice Su She's plight and go to his aid right away. I think on first viewing, I read it as him just getting possessed before he could get in the air, but that's not what's happening at all. His dumb ass stayed behind to try to help someone. Seriously, fuck Su She. They live in a grotesquely shitty power structure, but WN responds in admirable ways, while Su She just whines that he's not on top.

We all swing high, we all swing low, We all got secrets people don't know We all got dreams we can't let go, We wanna be brave, don't be afraid

WN's secret is that he gets possessed so easily and why. WQ is refusing to tell WWX in this scene, but he has figured out something is up and gives her a talisman for WN, which shows up later in the plot to great emotional effect--though not in this vid, alas.

The butterfly reveal was one of the first things on my timeline as I recall. I have Many Feelings. Also, this is me, so yes, I totally ship them. >:D

WN and WQ showing up to accept responsibility is kind of a dumbass move, but it's definitely brave. I enjoy how WN just keeps barrelling through the plot in a way that should mean he's the cute woobie who dies early on to prove the world is bad… and that instead leads to him being one of the strongest fighters, making it through the series, and finding A-Yuan again. (Though, okay, he did that first thing also. Heh.)

I ended on Jin Ling because I was so struck on rewatch at how the juniors first meet Wen Ning.

I dimly recalled this fight, but it wasn't till I was clipping that I realized just how much focus each of them gets and how WN is literally strangling them and such. I just remembered him fighting people, not who. It's hilarious how quickly after this (in their timeline) we have doofus woobie WN being cute and them being like "He's my murder zombie! ♥"

For this chorus, I focused on that change. WN is rescuing them. "Yesterday" is their scared faces. Here, being a "warrior" is apologizing to JL. And maybe WN doesn't really owe an apology, but JL does deserve one. Almost no one in the series seems to give a shit about how JL is feeling.

And then my favorite scene with my two faves! WN is finally telling JC what he has probably wanted to for ages. WN is a wuss when it comes to himself, but he gets righteously pissed when someone else is being mistreated. The yesterday he's letting burn here is his promise to keep quiet… along with viciously burning down every bit of self perception and hubris JC ever had. Ouch!

Your heart is too heavy from things you carry a long time, Been up you been down, tired and you don't know why, But you're never gonna go back, you only live one life Let go, let go, let go, let go, let go, let go,

Bless the sequel movie for literally being entirely about Wen Ning's internal struggle. The way he breaks free of the bad guy's hold is by accepting the past and letting go of his guilt over things he can't change.

Today, today live like you wanna, Let yesterday burn and throw it in a fire, in a fire, in a fire, Fight like a warrior,

He's just so hot in this movie! This first chorus is him coming out of the hallucination, having beaten his self doubt and then beating on the villain.

Today, today live like you wanna, Let yesterday burn and throw it in a fire, in a fire, in a fire, Live like a warrior

Okay, in actual canon, JL mostly joined them because he was competing with LSZ like the bratty little asshole he is, but I wanted to highlight how JL got over himself enough to join the other juniors on team WN. Also, WN defends both him and LSZ in this scene in ways he couldn't back then.

Today, today live like you wanna, Let yesterday burn and throw it in a fire, in a fire, in a fire, Fight like a warrior,

This I wasn't planning on at all. As I was clipping the whole series, I was thinking that WN's possessed footage here wouldn't be narratively useful since he went and got taken over again, but when I rewatched for visually impressive stuff to use interstitially, I realized that--holy shit--he's defending Jin Ling in this scene. And he succeeds. I included both a shot of Jin Zixuan, which everyone caught in the vidshow, and a shot that nobody mentioned: Wen Ning's bloody fist after ripping JZX heart out to go with Wen Ning's bloody hand on the sword in the present as he struggles to keep it from Jin Ling. Here, fighting like a warrior means keeping the sword off of JL, even if WN can't defeat the spirit or resolve the entire situation himself.

ALSO I HAVE MANY FEELS ABOUT JC JUMPING IN FRONT OF JL.

Today, today live like you wanna, Let yesterday burn and throw it in a fire, in a fire, in a fire, Live like a warrior

Sometimes, WN is not that sweet. He traps this dude in a hell of his own making instead of letting him kill himself because Wen Ning can be a vindictive little bitch. And then he strides off into the matte painting sunset.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Other vidding notes:

I totally wanted to do something with Chinese characters, but there wasn't really space, and after much dictionary-searching and asking, it's clear that Chinese does not use morality metaphors involving a compass pointing true north. But that effort was not wasted since I needed a good font for my other vid.

Vidding The Living Dead turned out to be a pain. I had completely forgotten it was in another aspect ratio. The shots look much more beautiful before one crops them. That said, none of them are that beautiful because the entire film has this atrocious green color filter over it. It's like they're all wading through mud at all times. Ughhhhh. I spent so long trying to fix the color on that final scene to be at least a little pretty for my vid.

Still, the film had exactly the emotional tone I wanted. It very much skewers the fanon that WN is entirely the bashful wimp he appears to be on the surface when we first see him. It makes overt the change that we see over the series. It's also fundamentally different because it's a situation where WN is the senior person and in charge of someone. We've seen him babysit a small child, and we've seen him around the juniors with lots of people of his generation also there, but we've basically never seen him out from under WQ and WWX's thumbs. It's only natural that he's acting more authoritative here. His smackdown of the villain is very much in line with how he treats JC during the golden core reveal. WN is not a forgiving guy when he thinks someone has been selfish and awful.

Throughout this vid, there are shittons of color, speed, and motion effects. I don't normally use a lot, but it turned out to be a lot of fun this time. I should find another project to use effects on.

The vid:

Available on AO3.

#vidding #wen ning

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xoruffitup · 4 years

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TROS (Mis)Characterizations: What Was and What Could Have Been

What started as responding to an anon ask turned into an entire meta... but working out all these thoughts has at least eased a bit of my TROS pain. :’)

From my perspective, TROS managed to destroy not only the characterizations built so far in the sequel trilogy, but also the entire story built upon these characters (mainly Reylo) as we knew them. While talking to a family member about the movie a few days ago and voicing my grievances with the story, he pointed out how someone could watch TFA and skip to TROS without realizing they’d missed much. That’s mostly true and entirely gutting.

Since I had an ask to talk about how TROS regressed in terms of characterization, I’ll start with the most hurtful of defacements: All of the nuanced vulnerability that made Kylo/Ben our most beloved character. We had absolutely nothing in TROS like the complex masterpiece moments of TLJ. Think back to “You are a monster.” / “Yes I am” – delivered with glowering menace as Kylo stalked closer, simultaneous to the tell of fragmented uncertainty in a quivering bottom lip and chin, all while his eyes remained completely riveted on Rey. Think back to “You’re not alone” – delivered with a wet sheen to his eyes in a soft cracked voice, but with self-loathing still smoldering behind his expression. Until the scene with Han, Kylo was shrunk into an entirely two-dimensional cookie cutter “villain” figure in TROS, seemingly more committed to the dark side and the First Order than he ever was to begin with in TFA. (I say “seemingly” because his true motives and interior dilemmas are frustratingly unclear in the entire first half of the movie. Cue me loathing the mask more than ever.)

Though Kylo seems uncharacteristically committed to the Supreme Leader role in TROS, considering he ended TLJ in a supplicating position fixing regretful eyes up towards Rey, luckily TROS did at least maintain the Force bond. …or at least the concept of it, because in execution the Force bond scenes achieved approximately nothing of what TLJ so uniquely excelled at: Creating a sense of intimacy, understanding, and forbidden tenderness between Rey and Ben. Instead of soft-spoken entreaties and promises across the soft glow of a fire or the dappling light of rain (ugh, remember the way light and shadow literally played out in contrasts across Kylo’s face during “I am a monster”? TLJ is a cinematic wonder, pass it on), we get scenes where the two yell and spit spite at each other. Most frustrating is how absolutely out of touch Kylo’s dialogue is with the Ben who was revealed through previous Force bond scenes. In a regression that makes absolutely no sense after Ben’s big proposal of “It’s time to let old things die: The Jedi, the Sith… I want you to join me” – he literally has the most reductive, bland, and meaningless lines such as “I will find you and turn you to the dark side.” ……..? Kylo has literally never been that boring or straightforward ever, not even since the TFA interrogation scene. He offered to be her teacher, sure, but never on terms that simplistic or blatantly combative to Rey’s will.

What I’ve always passionately loved and defended about Reylo is that Kylo never forced Rey to do anything harmful or against her will. Even pushing her to the painful moment of admitting the truth (or so we FUCKIN’ THOUGHT) about her parentage during the throne room scene did, in the end, help her character come to terms with repressed trauma and move forward in her journey of self-determination. (haha look at me, still stuck in my feminist goggles as if they haven’t been ripped off my head by TROS…) The point is: The TLJ Force bond was never a means of threat. It was never a tool for Kylo to say something as blatantly antagonistic as “I will find you and turn you to the dark side.” (Wow, did a Kindergartener write that? Come the fuck on, JJ.) And I was deeply disappointed to see the Force bond reduced to a tool used only to tell a part of the story unrelated to Reylo; rather than being the means of developing their relationship in and of itself.

This feeds into my overall biggest grievance with how Kylo/Ben was handled in this film. Similar to the Force bond – Ben’s character was reduced to a secondary prop piece who mostly served only as a narrative device in advancing the Rey-Palpatine plotline. Look, I imagined for months ahead of TROS the kind of candid Force bond conversations we might hear. Like “No one (knows me)” / “But I do.” (Where the FUCK did that line go?! Apparently JJ doesn’t know her…) Or perhaps Ben apologizing and opening up to Rey about how unhappy he is in the dark, how alone he feels. Instead…. we got shit like “You’re his granddaughter.” Like how dare they disrespect Academy Award Nominee Adam Driver’s talent like that?

Now, looking past the fact for a moment that the Rey-Palpatine addition is insulting, unoriginal, and sexist; there could have been a very interesting dynamic here. We would have the grandson of Vader and the granddaughter of Palpatine feeling very different pulls to both light and darkness, Force bonded together as they struggle with the weight of these legacies. Kylo, I imagine, was probably partially excited when he learned it, because maybe this means that Rey would understand him fully and perhaps this time, once she learned the truth, she would finally be with him. But nope, we don’t get nearly that much of a look into Kylo’s head. He does say at one point “You can’t go back to her (Leia), just like I can’t,” but the line missed the mark a bit for me because TROS still had Kylo appealing to Rey from the perspective of “Join the dark side as if we’ve done away with all that grey morality complexity we introduced last movie” – rather than from the perspective of “Neither of us should feel alone ever again.”

I’m rather unspeakably bitter that we had no exploration into what Palpatine’s return meant for Ben. I imagine he would have gone a bit wild upon learning that the man who was responsible for his grandfather’s fall was still alive. And the revelation of “I have been every voice you’ve ever heard inside your head”? This was enough to bring Ben Solo stans to tears before we even watched the movie, and yet it was treated completely off-handedly. Ben never even gets his own moment of coming to terms with Palpatine’s return. No “My grandfather killed you – how is this possible?” Nothing like that at all – even though he’s the character who would be most affected by his return in terms of legacy implications. Nope; Ben’s first encounter with Palpatine at the beginning of the movie – the same encounter where we learn Palpatine has apparently been behind all of the dark side grooming, manipulation, and isolation Ben has suffered since he was literally in the womb – quickly veers towards “Kill the girl / She is not who you think she is.” Early warning here that Ben Solo as a character in dire need of resolution is about to be treated with utter apathy by this film.

Here’s where I need to pause for a moment of self-awareness. While arguing with my Dad about this movie (he loved it), he threw at me that he thought I was being anti-feminist because I disliked the ending of Rey being alone. I quickly did my best to disabuse him of the idea that feminism = women being forever alone. This did make me think though about the implications of TROS veering away from the dual protagonist story framework that had been established up to this point; in favor of a narrative with Rey as the single and clear protagonist. The two main reasons I had such a knee-jerk reaction against this shift were A) It left a bad taste in my mouth after Rey ended TLJ emboldened by her acceptance of her past and unremarkable lineage; and B) It upended Reylo as the foundation of the entire story – also which we’d been led to expect. And I’m not just talking TLJ – I’m referencing back to JJ’s own Director’s commentary for TFA where he says “Now back to the story we really care about” when the film goes back to Rey and Kylo’s forest battle; who described Kylo as “a sort of prince,” and insinuated “you get the feeling there’s more going on here” when Kylo decided to spirit off Rey on Takodana. JJ set all the fucking clues here and then apparently forgot about each and every one.

However – am I perhaps not being fair to Rey in my disappointment that she doesn’t end the film in domestic bliss with Ben? Was I expecting something beneath her potential? Can I really say it’s a bad thing that the narrative rearranges itself in this film to focus chiefly on her?

The reason it all sits so wrong with me is because Rey’s characterization became bastardized for the sake of her solo narrative. Her character was essentially entirely effaced. The emphasis of her journey thus far pointed towards the crafting of one’s own identify; to the fact that might and greatness can reside within anyone, and it is up to that person alone to decide what kind of life to live with such power. Rey’s development at the end of TLJ indicated she’d found freedom from her past, and was now fully embracing the act of forging her own path without any constraints or shadows. But then, this road she’d been paving for herself was abruptly switched in TROS to one already completed and well-traveled, lined with unoriginal identity struggles and a copout for assigning Rey’s instincts of aggression and passion to the hereditary and ungendered “dark side.” This sudden switch stripped away all of Rey’s unique identity struggles, as well as her agency to define her own story.

Confining Rey to such an unoriginal and unfortunate struggle also required that her own goals and desires be changed as well. When faced with a legacy of evildoers, Rey’s story immediately shifts away from being focused on her, and rather to remedying the mistakes of men who came before. Rey’s own story was about a thousand times more interesting when she was in the center of it. As a twitter post I saw a few days ago but now frustratingly can’t find said very aptly: Male viewers found “Rey Skywalker” satisfying because they see a happy ending as being the “best” or the most powerful. Female viewers see a happy ending as being truly seen, understood, and valued for the person one is. (If anyone knows the source, please let me know...)

Rey used to say she wanted to learn “her place in all this.” That doesn’t indicate a thirst for greatness or power; but rather for belonging and connection. She has spent most of her story so far thinking back to her parents, then spent a solid 2 minutes in TROS looking longingly and smiling at the alien babies on Pasaana, which hello motherhood signaling. She has been happiest in moments when she felt valued and connected to those around her.

The idea of having greatness bestowed upon her by some external entity (aka a man) was already examined and rejected in TLJ. (Read: throne room proposal scene.) But in TROS, this act of external determination is thrust onto her regardless of her will. In so doing, her possession of a legacy rewrites and predetermines all of her goals, battles, and the key facets of her identity. She no longer has the freedom to embrace and cherish her found or chosen family; instead, her goal is to rid herself of the “family” that’s been thrust upon her – making what’s now presumably her happy ending of being disconnected from her assigned family the complete opposite from everything her character previously yearned for. Standing alone in a desert with the company of only half-remembered spirits is likely what filled the nightmares of young Rey of Jakku.

This is, of course, why the dual protagonist/Reylo narrative we expected to see in this film was so compelling. While doing none of Rey’s decision-making for her or removing any agency from the formation of her own identity; her force-bonded relationship with Ben offered Rey belonging, understanding, and purpose. Ben was the only character who could understand how debilitating and frightening it was to feel her Force sensitivity come alive and waver between the light and dark; just as he was the only one who could comfort her in that conflict without infringing on her independence. Once we saw dark!Rey in that D23 footage, I think every Reylo imagined scenes where Palpatine begins to sink his control into Rey’s mind and Ben rushes to her side to pull her back towards the light, because he knows all too well what those voices are like inside his head and he’d rather hear them all again than watch Rey suffer it.

From several perspectives, Reylo fighting and defeating Palpatine together is also the only ending that makes sense from a holistic storytelling perspective. (I mean both of them wielding blue sabers against Palpatine and fighting together in tandem – rather than that single crowd-pleaser shot of them hefting their complementary lightsabers together before Ben gets brushed off into a pit…) While Ben is the legacy character, representing all that our beloved original characters fought and suffered for; Rey is the new-generation character, representing a new age and the banishing of old mistakes which continued to perpetuate conflict. Only these representatives of new and old; of royal legacy and self-made upstart; could truly banish all of the harm committed in the galaxy by Palpatine and remedy all the loss and suffering effected throughout the Skywalker line. To have only a single character recently revealed to be related to Palpatine facing him alone (no matter how “badass” that might make said female character seem by superficial standards), rather than a union with the single remaining descendant of the Skywalker line himself is simply unsatisfactory and directionless storytelling. It is Palpatine’s manipulation towards three generations of Skywalkers that was the sole catalyst for all of the warfare, struggle, and conflict we’ve witnessed throughout this entire 9-film series. To not even engage with Ben Solo-Skywalker’s troubled relationship to that heritage and to completely fail in realizing the emotional catharsis and resolution that stood there waiting is nothing short of infuriatingly shortsighted storytelling. J.J. claimed in several interviews that this film was crafted with the entire preceding story in mind, as a cap to everything that came before. I have absolutely no idea which story he was referring to.

And so, from the perspectives of this film alone, the sequel trilogy, and the entire 9-film saga as a whole – Yes, I do claim that it was a poor decision in terms of story telling and character integrity to reconfigure the narrative to focus solely on Rey. For the reasons just mentioned, it was an utter disservice to Rey’s character arc. To reduce all of the tragedy, charisma, and youthful potential in Kylo/Ben’s character to a secondary narrative device is nothing short of shameful. Not to mention wasting all of Adam’s potential for playing truly heart-wrenching scenes of Ben’s penitent soul-searching. I will never forgive the fact that Ben had literally not a word of dialogue after his quick conversion scene halfway through the movie. Not only does he play no major role in the final battle with Palpatine, but aside from charging in heroically and doing a phenomenal Solo Shrug, he isn’t allowed a single moment of interiority. He has no speech to Palpatine declaring his change of heart and his reclaimed heritage. Perhaps most painful of all – he and Rey never even have their Big Talk where we expected Ben to apologize for the doings of Kylo Ren and for both of them to affirm their desire to be together and their devotion to each other. Adam did a pretty amazing job demonstrating all that in how he cradled Rey’s body and couldn’t even bear to look into her lifeless face (RIP my heart). But no matter how phenomenal and tender the Reylo kiss was, how luminous Rey’s smile was when she said “Ben,” and how achingly loving his eyes were when he looked at her – I can’t help feeling crushingly cheated that their love itself wasn’t what enabled the victory. Rather than the strength they lent to each other through a union that defied light-dark dichotomy (as it should have been and as the story was previously leading towards), it was rather Rey’s miracle heritage that won the day. The fact that Ben never says a damn word when he stands before Palpatine, or when Rey kisses him and he finally realizes she does care for him too – makes both their bond and Ben’s entire character feel like a throw-away prop only there for Rey to wear so long as this feeble story needed it.

I’ve been trying to put my finger on what made TROS’ plot so underwhelming and lifeless compared to TLJ or even TFA. The difference between TLJ and TROS in the simplest terms is that TLJ’s narrative was character-driven, whereas TROS subjected its characters to a narrative. Rather than a huge space battle, TLJ’s biggest moments are Rey and Kylo’s throne room proposal and Kylo and Luke’s showdown on Crait. Both of these moments had huge emotional stakes for the characters involved, which was what made them epic. TROS’ narrative, meanwhile, uses twists like the Rey Palpatine reveal to manipulate its characters in inorganic directions, and builds towards a finale that is unrelated to any of the long-standing challenges our heroes have confronted throughout the story. TROS derided its characters down to mere tools for a superficial spectacle of a story. TLJ, on the other hand, made its characters the story. It’s no wonder I found myself strangely numb and disconnected the first time I saw TROS.

Now, I’m just angry and disappointed. Disappointed that such brilliant, wonderful characters were wasted. Angry that we’ve imagined a hundred endings more appropriate and fair to the characters we hold dear. I am trying to appreciate what I can from the film and hold on to the few beautiful moments, but I definitely plan on writing my own fic version of how TROS might have played out, had it upheld the complexity and integrity of its characters. Even still, I’m quite sure we all know and understand Ben Solo much better than J.J. or Chris Terrio, so in our hearts Ben will find the happy ending he deserves.

#TROS #TROS spoilers #The Rise of Skywalker #Star Wars #Star Wars meta #Reylo #Reylo meta #Kylo Ren #Rey #Save Ben Solo #tros reactions #tros review #TROS meta

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rachelbethhines · 5 years

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So I’m rewatching all of Varian’s episodes in preparation for season 3 and I came across The Alchemist Returns and I just wanted to point out something that’s been on my mind lately...

Varian was justified in taking the flower

Now I’m not saying everything he did was right, nor was his actions afterwards justified, but anyone one else in his position would have done it, including the King who already did.

So here’s the scenario you find yourself in. You’re home has been hit by a natural disaster, everyone is ordered to evacuate, but someone you love has been seriously injured in the event. Now, due to the still on going devastation, no one can immediately come to help. OK it is a scary situation but understandable. But then once the emergency has passed you find yourself waiting and waiting and still no one comes. And all the while time is growing short for the person you love; they may even already be too far gone.

Then someone does arrive. It’s the military. Surely they’ll help. They’re here to rescue people right? Nope. Rather then send in relief or help rebuild, the government has decided that your home and your loved one aren’t worth saving. You and any survivors are ordered to be removed, but you’re injured loved one can’t move! They’re sick! You refuse to go with them and instead leave to go find someone who will help.

Only, no one will. The government has placed trumped up charges against you. You’re deemed a dangerous and violent radical all because you refused to comply. Because said government is trying to hide their incompetence in handling the situation. Few even know about the natural disaster that hit your home, even fewer believe you when you said you were framed.

So you’re now an outlaw, on the run, and trying desperately to find the means to save you’re sick loved one. Then in your search you find out that the government has been hording medicine. The very medicine that could save your loved one. Medicine that could potentially save countless people. Turns out the government has been hiding this life saving medicine for years and no one but you and a few top government officials knows it even exists.

Now you can’t tell anyone about this. No one would believe you; you’re a criminal after all. Further more if the government got wise that you even knew their secret, you'd be good as dead. So you devise a cunning plan to steal the medicine.

And you succeed! Sure the government found out your plans and now the president has deemed you a traitor and public enemy number one. So few will ever know of your true deed and if caught you’ll never live to see daylight again. But who cares? You got the medicine! Your loved one is saved!

Only...only... it doesn’t work! What you stole was just a prototype. The real medicine is still with the government. In fact it’s with someone within the government who you once trusted for help but now believes you to be a criminal same as everyone else. What do you do?! You just threw away your life, your future, your freedom, and your very soul all for this one shot and you blew it! The possibility of ever clearing your good name is now gone forever and you’re loved one is one step closer to the grave.

What do you do?

It’s not a one to one analogy, obviously. But it’s worth pointing out that Varian didn’t go from sweet innocent angel to murderous vengeful villain in one fell swoop. Regardless of when with “Let Me Make You Proud Reprise” happens within the timeline, Varian still is trying non-violent means to achieve his goals. He’s still trying to get Rapunzel to his side, and he only keeps getting ever more desperate as his options are continuously closed off to him.

And with regards to stealing the flower specifically, he was in the right. As with the given scenario above, the King was hording medicine from the public at large. That’s a clear abuse of power. Framing someone so they won’t speak out against you is also a clear abuse of power. And making “treason”, the highest crime in a land, (so bad that it was once thought to doom your mortal soul to darkest pits of hell) to non-violent crimes like stealing or disobeying an authoritarian is just barbaric. There’s a reason why the US’s legal definition of “treason” is so specific and narrow. Because dictators use it as a way of silencing any political revolt and free speech if not strictly defined.

To make matter’s worse, Fredric doesn’t even have a legal claim to the flower. It was found outside of Corona's walls. He stole it same as Varian did, and with knowledge that doing so could harm others later on.

Varain’s actions after stealing the flower are indeed horrible and I’m not defending them. But leading up to that point, King Frederic's actions are so, so much worse. He’s an absolute monarch. An authoritarian with unchecked power over people’s lives. He can kill people with but a word. He can ruin lives with simple inaction and neglect. He may not dirty his hands himself, like Varian, but he’s clearly been shown in canon to abuse to his power, rip families apart with unjust laws, and it’s implied that people have died by his orders. Everyone who knows him, even his family, fears him and the power he welds. So much so they can’t be honest with him, for they don’t know what he may do.

What I’m getting at here is that Rapunzel, and by extension the show itself, shows a clear bias to Frederic over Varian. It’s an understandable bias on her part, but a bias nonetheless. Rather than owning up to all of his misdeeds, Fredric just gives a sob story about how his wife and daughter almost died. Rapunzel instantly forgives him for doing the very thing Varian tried to do, for no other reason then because he’s her father. When questioning why Varian would care about his own dad over that of the kingdom, she herself never bothers to question her own dad. She blindly accepts his laws as “good” and “right” despite the fact that he has given her little reason to trust him at this point. And indeed she seems perplexed and disturbed by the fact that Varian would be so concerned for his dad, despite the fact that saving Quirin is a good enough reason to steal the flower anyways. Saving one life is just as important as saving a kingdom, especially since doing so won’t hurt anyone other then a tyrant’s pride.

I sincerely hope that for season 3 we’re building to some sort of comeuppance for Frederic.That he’s half-assed apology/confession to Rapunzel isn’t the end of his character arc. Because while Frederic is a compelling character with his grey morals and questionable motives, it’s important for a children’s show to challenge authority and those that wield power unjustly. Especially in today’s political climate when wannabe authoritarians the world over are trying to take over our democracies. And the main reason Varian is the most popular character in the show right now is because thus far he’s the only person to actually stand up to said authority and abuse, regardless of how extreme his methods of doing so would eventually become.

#tangled #varian #king frederic #tts #tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure #rta #tangle boi

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yossariandawn · 4 years

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Alirght. Dusk for the ask. I think I know the answers but well see.

my favorite female character: Kate Fuller - Kate is such an interesting character to me. I think she is very unique, both in how she is written as an individual and how she is worked into the broader themes of the the show. I understand she may not be for everyone, but she works so well for me it’s hard to put into words. Long story short, I really like that she is a genuinely good person who cares about people, and who still does selfish things. And she pays for the mistakes she makes too, she’s not bulletproof because she’s nice and has good intentions, bad things happen to her. She has so much agency in the show, and the choices she makes really matter, not just in what happens to her, but in how it effects everyone else too. She may be a symbol of light and love forgiveness, but she is also so much more than that, she’s a person with flaws too, and her flaws are one of the things I love best about her since it highlights the good in her. I’m not someone who believes people who are without the urge to sin are good people, I think that overcoming your darker nature is what makes you good. And the last season may not feature a lot of Kate as herself, but she is still a huge driving force in how it plays out, both in the impact she had on other people, and who she still is underneath Amaru’s control. Plus her faith in God is one of the more honest and nuanced portrayals of someone with a deep faith I’ve ever seen on tv, so that’s pretty neat.

my favorite male character: Seth Gecko - Seth is the perfect embodiment of his type of character, the asshole with the heart of gold. Because the show really does let him be an asshole! He pokes at people, he says stuff he knows will piss people off, he can be intimidating and controlling and bullheaded. But he loves deeply, and really does care not just about the people he loves (who are few) but also about people he sees as innocent, as needing protection. His view of right and wrong is screwed up, but it’s there and it’s strong and it motivates him. And as much as he scoffs at the idea of salvation and redemption, his belief that he is himself damned proves the lie there. He feels deeply responsible (which is one sure indicator of if a character is going to be my favorite, I love characters who feel a deep sense of responsibility) and he really does struggle with how to deal with that, and while sometimes he runs or screws up, he ultimate learns and grows and becomes a big hero who is willing to do the selfless thing when it counts.

my favorite book/season/etc: Season 3 - I think season 3 has the strongest episodes, best pacing overall, and the most interesting character setups and payoffs of the show. The first two seasons were good, but I think the show really hit it’s stride in season 3. Sure, there are still some plot holes and missteps, but they are minor. I wish overall they had more episodes so they could do more with some characters but with only 10 episodes I think they really did a great job keeping it moving towards the big finale, and paid off a lot of Dusks main themes in new and interesting ways. The monster of the week format gave us a lot of new cool mythology, and most of character growth felt earned and like a natural progression of what we’d seen so far. Plus, the Western Genre is a favorite of mine, so the two parter at the end was just so delightful to me.

my favorite episode (if its a tv show) La Llorona - Best monster design, amazing atmosphere, and some really excellent character interactions. Not only do we get the obviously great Seth, Kate and SethKate stuff, but we learn a lot more about who Amaru during the interrogation scene, and see her at her creepiest and most effective as a foil to the characters. Amaru works best for me as a villain for how she corrupts and manipulates people, and we really get to see that first hand this episode. Plus, great Burt backstory, sets up Freddie's arc for the end of the season in a cool way, Richie figuring out how to use his connections to the supernatural to help, and Brandon Soohoo gets some much needed spotlight as Scott gets tortured with his past choices in a very moving way.

my favorite cast member: DJ Cotrona - A lot of the cast seems really great, and like they really like and respect each other, but DJ does stand out as my fave due to his sense of humor, his intense love of film making and character development and just general geeking out about stuff makes him seem so charming. He just seems like a really neat passionate person, who puts a lot of thought into his performance. Plus, he is real easy on the eyes, which doesn’t hurt lol.

my favorite ship: SethKate - Someday soon I hope to finish my ship history meme, and there will be more on this ship, and why I love it so. The chemistry feels natural, and the ship deals with a lot of my favorite themes to explore in fiction, like: how identity intersects with responsibility, the power of love and forgiveness to effect change in ourselves and others, and how loving someone doesn’t make you right, or bulletproof, but it can make you stronger than you thought was possible, strong enough to do the right thing. When I think of Kate and Seth standing at the gate to Hell and drawing enough strength from each other to do the hard thing, the thing that will cost them the most, and smiling at each other so softly and lovingly. That’s the most freaking romantic thing I can think of, honestly.

a character I’d die defending: Scott Fuller - Scott holds a very special place in my heart, and I think he sometimes gets judged more harshly than he should be. Yes, he does a lot of awful things during the course of the show that result in long lasting damage (or death) to other people, but he also starts out as an angry and lost teenager still figuring out who is he, and then given and extraordinary ability to do damage in a world he is just not prepared for. He tries so hard to find a place to belong, and to define himself. Trusts the wrong people at the wrong times, and makes so many mistakes. He learns a ton of very hard lessons along the way, and while he still has a long road to travel, I really love his journey, and want so badly to see what he does next and the man he becomes.

a character I just can’t sympathize with: Sex Machine - Biggest misstep of the show for me, hands down. And it’s not the actual character (or the actor, who plays him really well) so much as how the narrative treats him like he’s comic relief. His treatment in season three as just one of the gang just bugs the crap out of me. I get the show is about morally grey characters, but c’mon man. Did they really need his “expert” advice so much that they could overlook that he was actively preying on his students? He was clearly turning them because he wanted to have sex with them, which is so gross. What layers are there to this man beyond predatory blowhard? Ok I’m going to stop there because I’m probably preaching to the choir, but ugh.

a character I grew to love: Richie Gecko - Richie is the character that grew on me the most throughout the show. He started as someone who was just so unsettling and disturbing, and by the end I really grew to view him as... not that? It’s hard to describe, because truthfully I don’t think Richie had a lot of character growth throughout the show, and he doesn’t really change so much as my view of him shifts, both as we learn more about who he was before season 1, and why he was so uniquely vulnerable to Kisa’s manipulations. But being a culebra actually does balance him a bit more, since him becoming an actual predator makes his story is less about a human wrestling with a very real darkness inside him, and more someone who has embraced that darkness trying to find his humanity. Plus, Zane plays him so perfectly. My favorite Richie is the horchata loving lighter side of him, the part that loves his brother and wants to be viewed as capable, that wants to prove himself and just isn’t very good with people or small talk or social cues.

my anti otp: Freddie/Ximena - They had some cute stuff, and good chemistry, but the romance felt very rushed to me, and just not needed. And they were so doomed from the start! I appreciate that Ximena knew and even vocalized it, but I would have much rather seen a platonic partnership develop where they were both navigating what a Peacekeeper and a culebra working together would have looked like. So, mark me down as anti there. (I’m answering this with canon ships, but I know there are people who ship Kate/Richie, I am just not one of them. I view an actual romantic relationship between them as out of character, and just not supported by what interactions we did get. I do like the dynamic they have in the show though, and would like to see it explored more if the show ever came back. And Seth/Richie seems like a fringe ship but since it does exist out there that’s also a big nope for me. double for Seth/Kate/Richie as an OT3)

Thanks for the ask! 🥰

#ask #so long sorry!#all mistakes and opinions are my own #answered #asks

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chasholidays · 5 years

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bellarke but clarke and murphy have a weird understanding slash ride or die friendship that they don’t admit to

according to my notes, this also coincidentally fulfills @pepperf’s prompt for Bellamy in makeup, so although tumblr will not let me tag you I hope you see this anyway

Before Clarke and Murphy became friends, Clarke didn’t really think Murphy had friends. He was the kid who sat in the back of every class and made sarcastic comments and never seemed to really interact with anyone else. If someone had told Clarke that he just ceased to exist when he exited her line of sight, she would have believed them. He certainly never seemed to do anything with a lasting impact.

And then, he shows up at the first GSA meeting of tenth grade.

As someone who joined thinking she was on the “straight” side of the alliance, Clarke does get that not everyone who joins the GSA is gay, but she has trouble imagining Murphy just showing up to be a supportive ally. Even if he is somewhere on the LGBT+ spectrum, Clarke is still kind of shocked he’s showing up. She didn’t think Murphy participated in groups of any kind.

Not that he really participates in GSA either. He introduces himself only as “Murphy” every time they go around the circle for names/orientations, and then he sits in the back and cracks quiet jokes when the opportunity arises. It’s like having another class with him, except that no one is forcing him to be there. This is what he chooses to do with his time.

“It’s weird, right?” she asks Finn. He doesn’t belong to the GSA, but she gives him the updates.

Finn shrugs. “I guess. Why do you care what Murphy does?”

“I just don’t get it.”

“You don’t have to understand everything, princess,” he teases, and Clarke just rolls her eyes. Obviously she doesn’t have to understand, but she still wants to.

Sign-ups for the group trip to Pride happen in May, and Murphy is behind her in line, so he’s there when Taylor asks, “You’re coming, Clarke?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Pride is for LGBT members, not allies.”

“I’m bi, remember?” It’s still new, saying it out loud, a word that tastes clunky in her mouth, but it feels right. After she and Finn break up, she’d like to date a girl. That’s an experience she wants to have.

“Oh, well, still,” says Taylor, like that’s somehow all he needs to say.

Clarke’s eyebrows shoot up. “Still what?”

“Well, you’re with Finn. I feel like it doesn’t look good for straight-passing people to be in the group.”

Clarke’s jaw drops, and she’s glad it’s anger that floods her veins and not humiliation. Taylor’s never been her favorite person, but even from him, this is a lot.

Defenses crowd her mind, but so do the inevitable counterarguments. She’s had this debate with herself so many times, if she can really be bi if she’s never kissed a girl, how she can know, how she can consider herself a part of the community when she’s dating a guy. She got through all of those things for herself, but if Taylor doesn’t think she’s bi enough for Pride, she doesn’t have any better argument than “I think I am.”

Unexpectedly, Murphy pipes up. “Hey, dipshit, she’s bi, that means she can go to Pride. What’s the holdup?”

“And whybare you going, Murphy?” Taylor shoots back. “I still don’t know why you’re here in the first place.”

“You don’t get to vet people’s sexual orientations,” Clarke says. “We all heard Pride isn’t for allies, so anyone signing up is queer. Like me.”

“I’m asexual,” Murphy says. “Is that good enough for you? I’m genuinely curious,” he adds. “If you think bi girls with boyfriends don’t belong, I’m guessing you’re not real big on letters that don’t even make the main acronym.”

Taylor’s jaw works. “Obviously, if you think you should come, I can’t stop you, I just think you should consider that it’s not entirely appropriate for–”

“You know what? Fine. I’m not coming with you.” Clarke grabs a sharpie from the bucket on the desk, crossing her name out so hard it’s probably going to bleed through to the table. “But I’ll see you there. Because I belong there.”

She’s out of the classroom before she realizes Murphy followed her.

“If I stayed there I was just going to have to talk to Taylor,” he says, with a small shrug. “Didn’t seem worth it.”

Clarke smiles with half her mouth. “Yeah, I guess not. You want a ride to Pride?”

“If you’re driving, yeah.”

And just like that, they’re friends.

Junior year, motivated primarily by spite and a mutual dislike of Taylor, Clarke and Murphy start a Queer Student Union, open to everyone who identifies as queer. To Clarke’s surprise, Murphy not only cares about LGBT issues, he’s actually shockingly informed about them. He identifies as biromantic asexual, although he admits the biromantic part feels a lot more theoretical than the asexual part, mostly because he has yet to meet anyone he likes enough he wants to be romantic with them. But he’s theoretically open to it. He’s done a lot of reading on not only sexuality stuff, but feminism and general activism, mostly because he seems interested in it. Academically, he’s not the greatest, but he’s intellectually curious, likes learning when he’s engaged.

When Finn cheats on her a few months later, he eggs Finn’s car, which is one of those things that Clarke would never approve of and would have told him not to do if he asked, but since he didn’t and she had no idea until several days after it happened, she doesn’t have to even pretend to not be happy.

It feels like the kind of relationship that might not survive college, but they both end up in Boston. Clarke’s at Harvard because she’s that over-achieving legacy kid, and Murphy goes to UMass because Clarke pointed out he could actually get a BA in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies while still avoiding the classes he hates, which is his ideal learning environment.

It turns out he’s a good litmus test for her pretentious Harvard friends, less because he’s a good judge of character and more because it’s useful to see how other people react to him. Clarke doesn’t really care if they like Murphy–Murphy doesn’t care about being liked much–but how and why they dislike him and how they deal with it tends to give her some good insight into whether or not they’re worth befriending. She and Lexa break up in part because Murphy and Lexa never figure out how to coexist, while Murphy and Niylah’s weird friendship is part of why Clarke starts hooking up with her.

“He’s like all the parts of you that you want to pretend you don’t have,” Niylah observes one night, and Clarke frowns.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re supposed to be–The perfect princess. Rich, straight A’s, top of your class at Harvard. And then there’s Murphy, your excuse for not liking people. The scapegoat for all your worst instincts.”

“You have a very weird idea of what makes good pillow talk,” Clarke teases.

“I just think it’s interesting. Have you ever heard the term morality pet?”

“No, psych major.”

Niylah doesn’t bother responding to that. “It’s a concept in fiction. You’ve got a bad character you need to humanize, so they have a morality pet, the sympathetic character that they actually treat well, the one who’s there to make you think the villain isn’t all bad. Murphy’s your immorality pet. He’s the asshole you like because part of you is an asshole too.”

“I can’t believe this is what you think about right after sex.”

Niylah grins, rolls over for a kiss. “I just think it’s an interesting dynamic. The two of you simultaneously make each other better and worse people.”

“That sounds about right,” Clarke agrees, and tugs her closer, ending the talking for a while.

She and Niylah never get quite to being in a relationship, so when they graduate, they don’t break up so much as move apart. Niylah goes back to California, and Clarke stays in Boston in a cheap two-bedroom apartment with Murphy.

Sometimes, she thinks about what her ninth-grade self would think about her life: openly and comfortably bisexual, working in a museum instead of going to med school, living with John Murphy. Even her post-college self has trouble believing it’s real. But it’s good.

After six months of largely successful cohabitation when Murphy comes home late on a Saturday night with a giant bottle of flavored vodka and says, “We need to get drunk.”

Clarke never needs to be asked to drink shitty liquor twice. “Okay.”

Murphy roots around the fridge, frowning when all he finds is Coke and green powerade. “I thought we had lemonade.”

“Nope.”

“Well, this is going to taste shitty with the mixers we’ve got,” he says, frowning at the vodka, which is apparently raspberry flavored.

Clarke grabs the Coke. “If we drink the first one fast enough we won’t taste the second one.”

“Cheers to that,” says Murphy, and pours one generous slosh of booze into his world’s okayest sister mug and another into Clarke’s novelty Pikachu glass.

They’re adults.

After a glass and a half of raspberry-Coke vodka, Clarke asks, “Why are we getting drunk?”

“You need a reason?”

“I don’t, but it was your idea. What happened?”

Murphy makes a face, then drains his drink. “I think I’ve got a crush on a girl.”

It shouldn’t be unthinkable; romantic interest has always been a theoretical possibility for Murphy. He’s always said he could like someone, but Clarke sort of assumed he wouldn’t. It was just hard to imagine what Murphy with a crush would look like, and even harder to imagine Murphy’s type. What does he even like, in a person?

She wants to ask about a thousand questions, but she knows better. Murphy would just shut down. So instead she grabs the vodka, pours him more, and tops it off with what’s left of the Coke. “What girl?”

“She works at the pawn shop.”

John Murphy is probably the only person she knows who, in 2018, not only goes to a pawn shop, but goes to a pawn shop regularly enough to have developed feelings for someone who works there. It’s just so painfully Murphy.

“Is she just being polite to you because you’re a customer?”

He snorts. “She’s not polite to me. She’s an asshole. I keep trying to bring in stuff to sell and she tells me to get better shit.”

“That sounds about right, yeah.”

“So what do I do?”

“Can you just ask her if she wants to get a drink sometime?”

He pulls a face. “Pass.”

“Can you figure out a way to see her outside of the pawn shop without actually asking her?”

“I think she’s in a band.”

“So you got me drunk to agree to go to your crush’s concert with you? I’d do that anyway.”

“Isn’t that weird? Like–going to her concert?”

“How do you know she has a band?”

“She told me.”

“And the concert?”

“There’s a flyer by the register.”

“Did she ever mention it?”

“I asked her what it was and she said it was her band and they were decent.”

“So that seems like a pretty normal way to express interest in someone. You can just say you were curious or bored or whatever.”

“And you’re coming?”

“I’m coming.”

“Cool.” He groans and flops onto his back. “This already sucks.”

Clarke pats his shoulder. “You get used to it.”

Murphy’s crush’s name is Emori and she plays drums in a band called “Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space,’” which seems like a lot of name for one band, but Murphy tells her it’s an X-Files reference, so at least it makes some sense. There are four of them, two other women on bass and guitar, and the lead singer, a guy with messy black hair and sharp black eyeliner who looks too pretty to be a real person. He’s got a decent voice too, deep and kind of rough, an unvarnished kind of sound that Clarke feels down to her toes.

“Do you know any of the other ones?” she asks Murphy.

“Nope,” he says. “She was right, though, they’re not bad.”

“They aren’t.” She pulls her attention away from the lead singer to focus on Emori, taking her in. She’s cute, with a big face tattoo that must have hurt like hell to get, and long brown hair pulled away from her face by a red bandanna. She’s wearing a black tank top that leaves her shoulders bare, showing off more ink that clearly continues under the fabric.

She’s not who she would have pictured for Murphy, but she also doesn’t know who she would have pictured. She’s always thought Murphy’s type was more about personality than appearance.

Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space” are the first of three no-name local bands in the set, and Murphy, being the disaster that he is, wants to just leaveas soon they’re off the stage. But Clarke sees the lead singer making his way to the bar, so she makes a quick decision.

“I’m going to go make friends with the rest of the band,” she says. “If you want to run away, you can go, but you’re own your own.”

She doesn’t give him a chance to respond, but she hears some spluttered protests that let her know he is following her, and bites back on her smile. It’s definitely a little bit selfish, but only a little; Murphy did ask for her help. Sort of.

There’s just enough free space next to the singer for Clarke to wedge herself in, and the guy glances over, mildly curious, but doesn’t say anything. She checks around for Murphy, finds he’s hanging back, and leans in to murmur, “Sorry, I’m trying to force my friend to flirt with your drummer.”

The guy’s eyebrows go up. This close, he’s even prettier, tan skin dotted with freckles, a small scar placed perfectly to bring attention to his lips, the eyeliner the icing on the cake. “I’m not sure how this is helping your friend flirt with my drummer,” he replies, just as low.

“If I’m here, he can’t talk to me.”

“My drummer eats guys alive.”

“I think he’s into that. That seems to be his type.”

“Huh.”

Clarke flags down the bartender and orders a beer. “You guys are really good,” she offers.

“Thanks.”

Okay, so, he’s hot, but aloof, and a little too full of himself, if Clarke is honest. The band is really good, but they’re playing a small venue in Cambridge. They’re not big enough that he should be above talking to people, so it’s probably just a personality trait.

“What’s your friend’s name?” he asks, not looking at her.

“Murphy.”

“He probably doesn’t have a chance.”

Clarke shrugs. “I’ll be proud of him if he just gives it a try.”

“Low standards, huh?” says the guy.

“He doesn’t get out much.”

“So, how long do I have to stay here for this?”

Clarke blinks. “Sorry?”

“You’re hitting on me. How long do I have to stay?”

“I didn’t know you were in a big hurry to be gone. I assumed you were at the bar because you wanted a drink. But I can go hit on someone else. Is your bass player into women?”

That perks him up, because he’s apparently the kind of asshole who thinks girl-on-girl is hot. “Possibly, but she’s got a boyfriend right now. Sorry.”

Clarke cracks her neck as an excuse to look around. Murphy is talking to Emori and she’s smiling, which means Clarke’s work here is done and she can leave the surly asshole alone. It’s always a shame when a hot boy in eyeliner lets her down, but she’ll live. “Oh well. Murphy’s set, so you should have a good rest of the night.”

He looks a little surprised. “Oh, uh, yeah. You too.”

Clarke raises her glass in salute and slides away from him, moving down the bar to a less crowded spot. She doesn’t let herself look back to see if he’s watching her, but she does let herself hope.

It would serve him right.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Murphy doesn’t come up with a better way to flirt with Emori than going to her shows, which means that Clarke is also going to her shows, to be a supportive friend, and getting to know Emori and by extension the rest of the band.

Emori, at least, she likes. She’s quick and funny and takes no shit, which is perfect for Murphy, and despite what the surly singer said, she does seem kind of fond of him. It’s hard to get a great read on her, but she keeps coming to talk to Murphy, and Clarke doesn’t think she’s the type to talk to people unless she actually wants to. Their whole relationship seems to be based on talking shit, but that’s got to be Murphy’s type.

Raven and Echo–the bass and guitar players, respectively–are cool too, easy for Clarke to hang out with while Murphy’s busy with Emori. She likes them all, really. It’s not a hardship.

Except that there’s Bellamy, too.

She does want to like Bellamy, but she can’t get over thinking he’s just kind of an asshole. He’s never really as aloof as he was that first night again, seems to warm up once he’s realized that Emori doesn’t seem to be planning to kick Murphy’s ass, but he’s still kind of cold. And part of her can’t help feeling like she should get over it, that it’s unfair of her to hold a grudge for one night, but she just can’t figure out how to get along with Bellamy.

She does try, but from what she can tell, he doesn’t. She asks him about the band and he deflects, talking about how they’re not really that good, it’s just a hobby. She asks what his real job is and he makes a face, says it’s boring. It’s not as if every conversation is like that, but she always feels like he’s not that interested in the conversation, like he’s waiting for her to just stop talking to him.

“So stop talking to him,” Murphy says, with a shrug. “Who cares?”

“Do you like him?”

“I guess. It’s not like I’m making him a friendship bracelet or anything. Does it matter?”

“You’re my barometer, remember?”

His eyebrows shoot up. “You want to date Bellamy?”

“No!” she says, but it’s too late. Murphy’s running with it.

“I guess he’s probably kind of hot? Not my type, but makes sense for you. And you’re pissed because he’s not interested.”

“I don’t know why you’re acting like this is news.” It seems like a safer tactic than arguing. “I told you I tried to flirt with him the first day, it obviously didn’t work.”

“Yeah, but you’re still pissed,” he says. “So you’re still into him.”

“I want him to be into me.” If she can’t tell Murphy these things, what good is he? “I don’t get why he’s not.”

“Okay, but if you’re not into him, who cares? He doesn’t like you, you don’t like him, no harm, no foul, right? Way better than the alternative.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong. He should like me. At least as a person.”

“I think he’d be good for you.”

That actually does surprise her; she’s not sure he’s ever offered an unsolicited opinion on whether or not she should date someone.

“You do?”

“Yeah, probably. He’s a pretty decent guy and we have fun hanging out. Doesn’t take my shit and gives as good as he gets.”

“But he’s not into me, so I don’t know why we’re having this conversation.”

“Because you wanted to talk about him. You started it.”

“I was complaining.”

“You complain about him a lot.” Murphy groans. “Look, like him, don’t like him, I don’t give a shit. But if you don’t like him, stop caring what he thinks, stop talking to him, and let it go.”

It’s exactly what she should be doing; she flops onto his stomach with a groan of her own. “I hate you she says.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So, I owe you an apology.”

It’s a week after her conversation with Murphy and Clarke has admitted, at least privately, that she still wants to make out with Bellamy and still might kind of like Bellamy, despite all logic and reason.

And now he’s smiling at her, nervous and casual in a t-shirt and glasses at Raven’s game night, and she has no idea what’s happening.

“You do?”

“It’s stupid.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what you’re talking about and we can go from there? Because I’m kind of lost.”

He clears his throat. “So, uh–I didn’t know Murphy’s name was John.”

“And you’re apologizing to me for that?”

“The first night we met you said your friend was flirting with Emori, and I knew she liked this customer of hers named John, so I thought you were distracting me so some asshole she didn’t like could slobber all over her. So I was annoyed.”

“And you only just realized Murphy was her customer crush?” she asks, stuck between amusement and disbelief. “It’s been months!”

“I know! I thought he just got lucky and she liked him, but then she said John was coming tonight and I said I hadn’t met him and the rest of the band made fun of me for like an hour.”

“It kind of sounds like you deserved it.”

He ducks his head, smiling sheepishly, and Clarke smiles too. “Anyway, I feel like–I never knew how to explain without telling you I thought Emori was into someone else. And I still kind of thought you were a dick for trying to distract me with your feminine wiles.”

“I was joking!”

He laughs. “Yeah, uh–anyway. Sorry?”

“You don’t really have to apologize for that,” she says. “It’s not like you were–you’re pretty polite mostly. I thought you had a bad night. And didn’t like me much.”

“Yeah. But I want us to do better, so–can we start over?”

It’s strange, because part of Clarke feels like they never actually started. Like this is actually going to be their first try.

Which makes it easy. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

It should fix all her problems, or at least all the problems she’s admitting she has, but less than two weeks later she slams a bag into the island and says, “I bought vanilla vodka and orange juice and I want it to taste like a creamsicle.”

“Won’t work but okay,” says Murphy. “What did Bellamy do?”

“Who says it’s about Bellamy?”

“Can we skip the bullshit and you just tell me?”

Clarke considers. “Drink first.”

They make it through the first round and then Clarke says, “He likes me now.”

“And you hate him?”

“No, I still want to make out with him.” She sighs. “You were right, I’m totally into him, and now we’re getting along, and everything sucks. He’s really cute.”

Murphy takes another drink of his vanilla screwdriver. “So ask him to make out. At least you’re not trying to tell him you’re into him but not into sex and you’ve never actually dated anyone before. Why are you complaining?”

“Have you figured out a way to mention you’re ace yet?” she asks.

“Nope. It doesn’t really come up in conversation. No one’s like, how much does everyone love sex? They just assume the answer is a lot and don’t bother asking.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. Keep complaining about your thing, that helps.”

She flops onto her back. “He’s just so pretty.”

Murphy pats her leg. “Yeah, that sucks.”

Murphy’s problem seems easier to solve than hers, especially in early May. Clarke gives it a week and then, when they’re out drinking with the whole band, asks, “Oh, is anyone going to Pride? Do you guys need a ride?”

“You’re going to Pride?” Echo asks.

“She’s bi,” Bellamy says, even though Clarke’s never told him that. “Or pan?” he adds, glancing at her for approval.

“I usually go with bi, but as long as it covers no gender preference I’m good.”

“I’m biromantic asexual,” says Murphy. Clarke didn’t warn him, but he’s pretty quick with this stuff.

“We always go to Pride because that’s how we got to be friends. Some asshole in our high-school GSA told us neither of us belonged there because we weren’t queer enough.”

“Jesus Christ,” says Bellamy. “Well, I could use a ride.”

Clarke will admit to startling, just a little. She didn’t really think anyone in the band was queer, had just wanted to give Murphy an excuse to share his sexuality. It was always possible she’d get a taker, but it hasn’t seemed likely.

But Bellamy wants to join them. If he’s gay, that kind of sucks, at least for her. But he’s bi or trans–into women at all and queer, basically–he might be her dream guy.

“I know it’s shitty to ask why people want to go to Pride, but I still want to know,” Murphy says.

“Also bi,” says Bellamy, so, yeah. Clarke wants to marry him. “I’ve never actually been to Boston Pride, though. I don’t like going alone.”

“Then you should definitely come with us,” says Clarke, and he gives her one of his melting smiles.

“Thanks.”

“Can I come along as a supportive outsider who would happily make out with a girl if the opportunity presented itself?” Emori asks.

“Definitely,” says Murphy. “Just don’t talk about ally pride or whatever and we’re good. And kiss a girl if you can, I hear it’s cool.”

Echo’s interested to learn that he’s never kissed a girl, and she and Emori and Raven get drawn into that conversation, leaving Clarke and Bellamy off on their own.

“So, that first day we met,” she says.

Bellamy cocks his head. “What about it?”

“I asked if anyone else in the band liked girls and you kind of–” She shrugs. “I thought you were one of those guys who thinks girls kissing is hot and for your benefit. But you were excited I was queer.”

He laughs. “Shit, I didn’t know you noticed. But yeah, I always like meeting more bisexuals. I was rethinking you.”

“Where did you end up?”

“What do you mean?”

She smiles. “You rethought me, so–what did you end up thinking of me?”

He bites the corner of his mouth, glances over at his band mates. They’re not paying attention that Clarke can tell, but she knows Murphy still has part of his focus on the two of them. The rest of the band probably does too. That’s the kind of group dynamic they have going.

Bellamy must be thinking the same thing. “You want to get another round?” he asks.

“Maybe at another bar.”

He laughs again, this bright, pleased laugh, at odds with his rock-star makeup. “Yeah, that sounds right.”

Outside, he says, “I thought I should have picked you up when I had the chance. I was kicking myself for–I’m still kicking myself for not flirting back.”

Her own smile creeps up, starting small but never stopping growing. “You still could.”

“We could just get a drink at my place.”

“I’d love to.”

“How much do you think Taylor Macdonald would hate us going on a double date to Pride with our straight-passing partners?” Clarke asks.

Bellamy pauses in his application of glitter to Murphy. Apparently he’s as good as makeup as he is because he taught his sister how to do hers, which works out really well. Clarke sucks at makeup; it’s nice that they have complementary skill sets.

“Straight passing?” he asks, dubious.

“His words.”

“Dick.”

Murphy grins. “I figure if I’m pissing off Taylor Macdonald, I’m doing something right. I hope every time I’m happy, he feels like someone walked over his grave.”

Clarke offers her hand and he high-fives her; Emori smiles. “I’m starting to see why the two of you are such good friends. It didn’t quite add up before.”

“Spite and stubbornness,” says Clarke.

“Our main motivations in life.”

“Exactly,” says Emori. “It makes perfect sense.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Bellamy teases, but Clarke just smiles.

“Whatever. We’ve got it all figured out.”

#idleafterthoughts

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travllingbunny · 5 years

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The 100 rewatch: 1x03 Earth Kills

I’m a new fan of The 100, who first binged it last year, August to November. This is my first full rewatch of the show. I was planning to start it anyway and finish it before the season 6 premiere on April 30, and when I saw that Fox Serbia was airing a rerun (Monday to Friday, 40 min. after midnight, with repeats the next day), starting on 1st February, it was a great opportunity to start my rewatch in HDTV on my beautiful new TV. I decided to do write-ups and tag other fans on SpoilerTV website, as I did when I was first watching the show. But my posts turned into full blown essays. So, finally, after over a week, I’ve realized: Why don’t I post them on my Tumblr blog, too? I’ll copy my write-ups of the first 7 episodes, and then I’ll post my rewatch posts after I watch each episode. (The next one, 1x08, is on Monday’Tuesday.)

Spoilers below for all 5 seasons of the show. I go of on a tangents and make a lot of references to future events.

...

Wow, the show actually got good pretty quickly. After how bad much of first two episodes was, full of cheesy teen soapy stuff, I was surprised how solid 1x03 was throughout - I wouldn't be embarrassed to show it to someone to show what The 100 is like. I remember that I found 1x03 and 1x04 a real improvement the first time as well, but I was still unsure about the show till 1x05. I think it's because there's again some teen soapy BS at the end of 1x04, which put me off big time the first time I watched it, since I expected the worst, especially with the Clarke/Finn/Raven love triangle, but now I know that this storyline was resolved in a surprisingly good and not at all cliche way. Still, I was mildly annoyed by the ending of that episode.

Rating: 8/10

The acid fog! I had forgotten that it turned up in the show and played such a significant role so early. The Mountain Men were already killing the Delinquents 10 episodes before they even showed up and interacted with them directly. It killed 3 people - Trina and Pascal (random couple that we first saw just before they died), and Atom. (Atom also has the distinction of bein Octavia's first love interest on the show. Love interests tend to die a lot in this show in general, but in particular, so far everyone who's made out or had sex with Octavia so far has ended up dead.) And then at the very end, in the twist ending, Wells, the first dead main character, killed by another Delinquent, 12 year old Charlotte. I know that they wanted to kill off a main character to show how edgy the show was, but I remember didn't find Wells' death that much of a surprise at the time - that it happened so quickly, yes, that was a surprise, and that a little girl killed him, but I had already been expecting him to die and wondering how long he'd survive, with so many of the Delinquents hating him because of his father. Charlotte has something in common with Clarke, Bellamy, Octavia and Murphy - parents executed by Jaha. Awww, the early season 1 Clarke - so innocent and full of moral certainty, "saying things like "This isn't the Ark, down here every life matters", and pretty open about her feelings, before she started to bottle them up. I loved it when she said to Finn: "Why is it a bad thing that I don't want Jasper to die?" Yes, exactly! It annoyed me so much that he and others were acting like her trying to save a person instead of go around having fun and not giving a damn was so weird. Clarke's speech to Charlotte early in the episode, talking about the traumatic past on the Ark: "All the pain up there... maybe all that is behind us. Maybe now we have a second chance on the ground." Well, that didn't work out But maybe now they will have the third chance on the other planet. Our first flashbacks to the Ark - memories of happy life with the Griffins and the Jahas, before Jake Griffin decided to tell the Ark the truth, and got executed by his friend Thelonius (this is also the first time we see a person getting floated - which reminds me of Battlestar Galactica, which had many scenes like that), and Clarke got locked up for a year. 16-year old Clarke and Wells, and their dads, happily watching some 140 year old tape of a soccer match. Of course, this kind of happy life - while just normal by our standards - was the privilege of the elite on the Ark. In 1x06 we get to see very different flashbacks of the Blake family. Even the living quarters of the Blakes are very different and shabby. But at least they had books - books are always the cheaper entertainment. Finn is probably at his nicest and most likable in this episode. It doesn't last long, but at least in this episode he figures out that Wells is letting Clarke believe he betrayed her father to cover up for her mother. Finn figures it out and makes an effort to fix Clarke's friendship with Wells. Although, if I were to be cynical, I'd say that it's not an accident that he did it only after he had asked Wells if he and Clarke had ever been an item, learned that they had not, and concluded he didn't have to fear Wells as competition. And now that Clarke has realized the truth, we get the beginning of the multi-episode mini arc about Clarke's resentment of her mother for getting her father killed. But to be fair, Abby clearly never expected Jaha to actually execute Jake. Though the first time I watched the show, I didn't understand how she could still be friends with Jaha after that. I guess she could justify his actions by the idea that life on the Ark was tough and they had to make sacrifices etc. The show sort of comes back to this plot in season 4, when (in 4x11, after Clarke and Jaha has stolen the bunker), Jaha expects Abby to be OK with Kane being sacrificed, and Abby is like, nope, not this time. Murphy is getting very obnoxious in this episode, which is kind of a prelude to the next one. Before he was just antagonizing Wells, which was unfair to Wells but to an extent understandable since we know that Wells' dad spaced Murphy's father, but now he spends most of the episode complaining about hearing Jasper's cries of pain and saying he should die already. Meanwhile Bellamy gets to show his sensitive side, naturally, because there's a little girl nearby that he wants to be a big brother/pseudo-father to. It's kind of funny when people try to argue that it was OOC for Bellamy to put a chip in Madi's head so she can be a Commander because she's just 12 and he's protective of kids. He is, but his idea of protecting them is a bit different and consists of, say, giving 12 year old Charlotte a knife and teaching her to defend herself: "You cannot afford to be weak. Down here, weakness is death". Since he was told at the age of 6 that he needed to be his baby sister's protector, his idea of childhood may be a bit different than most viewers'. Monty about Bellamy, earlier in the episode, angry about his comments on Jasper: "Power-hungry, self-serving jackass. He doesn't care about anyone but himself". This is just one of the times in these episodes that people make such comments about him (Finn says Bellamy cares just about himself, after they learn about him throwing away the radio in 1x05), pretty obvious irony as we learn more and more about how his entire life and his motivation is all about protecting his sister. Clarke is also playing an almost motherly role to Charlotte. Both Clarke and Bellamy have this tendency to play a parent to others, including, sort of, to the Delinquents .But this time it spectacularly backfires - Charlotte misinterprets Bellamy's advice to "slay your demons" and uses the knife to kill Wells, and she does it imitating the way she saw Clarke mercy kill Atom, and singing the same lullaby Clarke sang. That moment when Clarke mercy kills Atom is a pretty important one for the development of Bellamy's and Clarke's relationship - earlier on he was doing that thing that characters in post-apocalyptic shows often do, when they say things like "You don't have the guts to make tough decisions", which is usually about killing someone (Kane had similar lines in the Pilot) - or in this case, mercy-killing. He claimed he was going to kill Jasper if he doesn't get better by the morning, but later was obviously finding it hard when faced with the necessity of mercy killing Atom. One more early sign that Bellamy didn't really find it easy to kill people. Clarke doing that instead of him and gently killing Atom after singing him a lullaby is a really good scene, and you can see from Bellamy's face that it's the moment when he really gains new respect for Clarke. Clarke has probably seen her mother do that to patients quite a few times, Sadly, this is not the last time these two will get to have important bonding moments over having to kill people. That's how messed up their lives and the situations they are put in are. To be fair, the show does show a scene of Octavia mourning Atom. Then they have the next episode take place a week later, which is a nice excuse to never have him mentioned again. Also a nice excuse to show just one scene of Clarke mourning Wells in 1x04 and then never have her mention her childhood BFF again.

#The 100 #the 100 rewatch #the 100 1x03 #earth kills #wells jaha #clarke griffin #bellamy blake #john murphy #abby griffin

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kendrixtermina · 5 years

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Thoughts and Feelings about“Change Your Mind”

I really wish I could rewatch this motherfucker somewhere but I have to sleep and go to work

Well on the one hand the main story lines are pretty much done for, on the other, the fallout alone could fill another season, and I’m actually glad that they’re not relegating that to the epilogue but actually going to show it

I assume season 5 will be Steven working with the Diamonds to improve homeworld, explaining things to Jasper, integrating the former corrupted gems on earth, finding out the deal with pink pearl, further developing Steven’s new fusions etc.

Other open questions involve gem origins and peridot’s renewable energy project, but I suppose that will come up as Steven tries to make the Empire less... imperialistic.

I understand why they wanted to air this in one piece, you couldn’t leave the younger viewers hanging with some of these creepytastic scenes and no resolution

There’s various concepts I feel reminded of.

There’s this idea of “tzimtsum” in kaballalistic thought, about how God created the world - In order to create a being apart from himself, he “hid” some aspects of the being, the ones that would seem - So every part of creation reflects one aspect of god, but none shows the complete pictures of it, and because everything has some aspects of god but not others, it is unique - so all humans are made in gods image, but still be different from each other.

Maybe Pink Diamond would be something like Lucifer in this analogy, part of the creation but as far from the god as you can get while still existing, and somehow their antithesis (stretching the analogy here, of course Judaism has no counterpart to Lucifer let alone the positive-ish early modernity interpretions of him - but of course, White Diamond isn’t exactly a benevolent God either. )

First of course Star Trek, like the ep where Captain Kirk is split into what at first seems like his good and evil half but is more like his animal instincts and higher reasoning, or in Voyager, when B’Elana Torres is split into her human and Klingon halves.

I guess Garnet wasn’t completely wrong in his being something in-between fusion and human reproduction, his gem half could be considered A Pink Diamond, but not the same one who created him - He must be fricking powerful to shrug off WD’s beams like that, like how Stevonnie still has “boosted” versions of Steven’s abilities despite Connie being human, Steven’s probably like Pink Diamond, but ‘boosted’.

Steven’s victory certainly showcases how it comes from both sides of his heritage. It involves making WD laugh/embarassed like what Pink used to do, but unlike her, he has the communication skills from Greg - I don’t think Pink ever talked to Blue in that way, she didn’t seem aware of what the other Diamonds were thinking at all, any more than she really understood Pearl’s lingering knot of complexes. It’s just not a skill she could have picked up before Greg - when? From whom?

His responsibility is all uniquely him and due to his upbringing with the CG’s and wanting to help him more, tho, both his parents where free spirit hippy bohemians, but it was Steven who decided “Nope, I WANT to fix it, because I can”, not because he owes it to anybody, even when no one could fault him for running.

Also, Frankenstein (the Novel not the film) - The original Victor was a sympathetic, even admirable character, but somehow he just couldn’t bring himself to have empathy with the monster, though Adam was in many ways alike to him and initially didn’t wish to be his enemy. Because while the gems relate to White Diamond as their goddess and the other Diamonds see her as their mother, she seems to regard them as extensions of herself. Maybe she would, as their creator. Gods are expected to smile benevolently upon their followers and solve their problems, Mothers, while they are flawed humans, are supposed to love their kids as they are and realize that they become their own persons, but artists frequently tear up their own work if they’re dissatisfied with it, because it’s supposed to be a reflection of their existence, so they might hate it for not reflecting them well enough -

i often regret tearing up half my teenage fanfics, but I’m able to view them different now that I’m - Back then, I felt like they reflectzed badly onto me - but if had kids and treated them like my fanfics or crumpled drawings, well, that would scar them for life.

You could certainly see this as a metaphor for narcissism, particularly in the way WD judged everything by how much it was like her, to the point that she would ‘overwrite`’ ppl’s personalities with her ideas of how it ought to be, while lacking a solid identity of her own apart from being “perfect/the best” by default, but that only goes so far because the gems literally are her creations who take their characteristics from various aspects of her being.

She’d have a completely different conceptual framework to anyone else, though she’s certainly not “above it” in any way.

I don’t think she was completely unaffected by Pink’s dissapearence either, if you want to complete the Stages of Grief analogy she would be Denial or Bargaining. Most likely, she was growing increasingly frustrated with her ability to make her empire “perfect” like she ought to and that’s why she started keeping to herself more and assuming that Pink couldn’t be dead.

She seemed like the knowing one when she was as much in denial as anyone else - you can tell they had a complicated relationship because of how White saw herself in her, that might be why she indulged and preferred her, but then again she didn’t always like what she saw and felt that Pink represented parts of her that she didn’t want to see.

It’s not without reason that Steven tells her to “get out of her own head” and try to see the world for what it is rather than her preconceived notions of what it is or means. You could perhaps relate that to

When she realizes that she’s actually dead - that’s when she has her breakdown.

You could even draw a parallel to “Romeo And Juliet”, where the older generation only realizes how much its ways were fucked up when it gets their beloved children killed for just trying to live happy lives.

Cal Gustav Jung would certainly remind us that what irritates us about others are often things that irritate us about ourselves, that we may be liable to “see the world as we are” and never is that more apparent than when we view everything through some skewed belief system, or when we hate - people hate people who blur boundaries because they don’t want to confront the ambiguity within themselves, or act as “superior” and merciless because they’ve rejected their own mortal fragile humanity.

Another observation is that when you set up anything as the “default” you create pressure not to deviate from the norm and prevent its members from experiencing their individuality. (see societal pressure on heterosexual men, or Euro-Americans saying they ‘have no culture to celebrate’ - maybe instead of becoming a devouring plague upon your fellow men, you could actually appreciate European culture? Like, read some books, eat some cheese, learn a language, listen to some classical music, vote for worker protection laws?)

It speaks for PD that she even tried to save other aliens at some point. steven stepped completely out of her shadow the moment he was able to feel sorry for her, like “Geez, she had to live like that? No wonder she turned out the way she did!” he pretty much calls the other Diamonds out at some point, like he gets a secure sense of the differences between them when he realizes how much better off he’s been in his own life. Like, UGH.

For my part, I don’t believe the “best of the worst” thing was true, and more of an “evil cannot comprehend good” moment from White, if not outright projection. (after all, White seems to view all other Gems as imperfect copies of herself) If anything, Pink seemed upset that she got stuck being the leader even as “Rose Quartz” (see the Beach scene in “Greg the babysitter”) - but of course Steven, not being Pink, wouldn’t know whether or not White is right.

Other Thoughts:

In the earlier scenes you could see a lot of parallels to less than ideal family situations, and how people might end up acting as proxies of the problematic person, almost sprouting their words, in the name of keeping the peace, and how people in such an environment may have no idea of how it’s not normal

You CAN talk down such a person (I know of multiple people who made a bona fide job out of talking sense into literal nazis and clansmen, person by person - their tactic was generally to find whatever problem their rage came from), but there’s a difference between “flawed” and “awful” and I do think it came through that White is a piece of work quite unlike, say, Connie’s mother, and that Steven’s dealing with her because he wants to for the good of society, because he’s the bigger person and secure in himself, not because he owes it to her or anything

It seems like they went for “awesome” rather than “beautiful” with Steven’s fusions. The designs are kinda gaudy, but even so, once you getpast the gaudy design, it’s kind of touching how Steven’s and Garnet’s fusion is essentially a motivational speaker who sprouts encouraging advice nonstop. Garnet was always Steven’s Mentor and as well as the main person (besides greg) to teach him morals, as well as generally encouraging & supportive, but Steven of course encourages and supports her too, and both like doing that for others

I love Peridot’s short shorts and that she and Bismuth repaired the ships/ went a-tinkering together. It took me a bit to notice that it’s supposed to be shorts and not just her old outfit with starts instead tho

Voice of Reason!Connieis a gift that keeps on giving

#steven universe #su spoilers #change your mind

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reyneclaw · 5 years

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some considerations from yesterday’s class... i love classes that actually leave you thinking, maybe even thinking outside of what you’re directly studying. she taught us a new term, positional conflict, this is the main underlying conflict which determines and frames the entire story and which, by default, can’t be solved. with buddenbrooks, it’s the idea that they, their family, their values, their way of life, are slowly.. going extinct. that the world is changing, the society is changing and doesn’t allow for them to live and thrive anymore, and there’s nothing to be done about that. in our case.. duh. the point is, what can be drawn from that conflict and where it leads us to. so she basically confirmed my hot take and my idea that, if you can’t have a happy ending, you still can, and maybe should, appreciate whatever happy memories and moments full of warmth you had. and they sure had some. then, either she can read minds, or i’m really that good at lit that we understand each other so well. either way, it was her who brought up the name scarlett. got me, lol. she says alicia is a predatory character, and a strikingly feminine one. she’s damn scared they might call her out and wants to be held and cuddled and reassured, but shhh she’s too proud to admit that. also, any and every female character is free real estate to spark a discussion of feminism and how it applies to them. very simply, even though nobody actually said the word feminism. the idea that women have to handle a triple workload, actual work + housekeeping + beauty routines. dat true for her, and ofc that’s not easy and ultimately leads to burnout. understandable. also, the motive of secrets. and later, oblivion. like. nobody of the three will be remembered. nobody will ever know when how and where. secrets tho... for her, it’s sure scary, yet... gratifying. there’s more about me than you can see, im cooler than you think.. i know something that you don’t.. for J, his main theme is integrity and honesty. shouldn’t have done that shouldn’t have done that, i fucked up, what a mess my whole life is. you can’t choose who you love, you can’t really choose your religion either, and he is blamed for that and has to cope with those accusations while he’s.. uncomfortable with all of that either and would prefer everything to be right and simple and clear, to make sense.. yeah. reality is way more diverse and way more complicated than any rigid values would allow. that’s why i want to find something more to read about life in the republic before the war.. the idea that you must stay true to one woman, even after. that it would somehow be cheating, it would be insulting and just plain wrong. and anyway you can’t find any better than her so why bother. it’s important tho, that he’s not melancholic or a depressed nerd. FFS. nope. he’s just someone with a highly sensitive moral compass and some understanding of art. this decadence aesthetic stating that a poet must, by definition, be both mentally and physically ill. like hanno. i went like disagree, blocked. a poet is as much a part of this world as everyone else, because you know what, the world needs poets. the world needs art. don’t make them weak and misunderstood. whoa this turned into philosophy, as literature does.

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awed-frog · 6 years

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tl;dr: nope

I got a couple of anon asks about this, and I’m also tagging @twist-shout-and-shells because they asked me to, but I have to say - I don’t know anything about comics, I don’t know Marvel at all, so this review is just a meaningless rant. Like, I know so little about this universe that the first superhero movie I ever saw in my life was Thor, and the only reason they got me was because my mythology-loving ass assumed this would be about the actual god, you know?, so that was a very confusing two hours. Anyway - after this, I’m done with them. The ridiculous hype campaign they created around Infinity War actually activated my crow brain, which means I rushed to the theater because I was sort of expecting this would be a shocking masterpiece and any spoiler would ruin it for me, and - yeah. Never doing that again. Because, whatever - they do manage to come up with some good writing from time to time, and Black Panther’s success had made me hope they’d finally recognize that a solid, coherent and meaningful story is really the first thing you need, but apparently not?

Ugh.

Anyway, here are main reasons why I didn’t like Infinity War.

1) No, we don’t need a new plague

Problem number one with this movie is that it fails to take into account that our IQ as a people has dropped about twenty points over the last thirty years (and I’m not even joking) and that means even a guy nicknamed ‘Mad Titan’ is actually given the benefit of the doubt (I don’t remember anyone thinking Hela might have had a point, but then again, women are known to be emotionally compromised at all times, right, so all that rage was probably PMS and crazy bitches, amirite?, can’t live with them, can’t live without them). And here, predictably, is the result:

I even checked Breitbart so you wouldn’t have to and while they seem confused as to whether they should support this movie or not (don’t watch because Captain America is played by ‘Comrade Communism’, do watch because Chris Pratt is a Good Christian Man), it’s still clear to everybody over there that Thanos, “an environmentalist wacko obsessed with salvaging the natural resources of the universe” is “espousing liberal jibberish”.

So, I’m going to keep it short and mostly sourceless because I saw a lot of people discussing this, but just to be clear: yeah, it is worrying that human population has basically tripled in thirty years, but the correlation ‘more people = more damage & fewer resources’ isn’t as clear-cut as some like to think. Also, research shows that women being recognized as human beings - that’s the actual way to solve this problem (see also x, x), which means that if Thanos had meant business, he could have used those frwaking stones to build schools and family planning centres.

2) Your plan against evil can’t be just saying no

This is probably what bugs me the most both in fiction and IRL: saying ‘Trump is a moron’, ‘capitalism is bad’ or ‘genocide is wrong’ is not a political program. It’s a moral stance, and kudos to you, but if you want to make the world a better place, you need a lot more than that. But, nope - IW fell into this trap with such relish I can actually believe no one saw this as a problem - at all. When Thanos pointed out, rather smugly, that decimating Gamora’s planet had led to a new era of happiness and prosperity, she didn’t react in any way. We never saw Tony or Shuri mentioning the outlandish, extravagant idea that better and greener technology could actually save us all. We never saw anyone point out that when the richest 1% own half the world’s wealth, wiping out half of a Nairobi slum isn’t likely to do much for the environment. I guess it wasn’t relevant to the plot?

3) Turning your audience against the good guys = dick move

That said, our planet is objectively in bad shape, and writers and artists who are (or like to think of themselves as) engagés are more than welcome to discuss this - for all her faults, JK Rowling did that to perfection in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, focusing on the importance of conservation and taking a clear stance against animal trafficking. Other movies, of course, went a lot farther than that: my movie rec of the day is Okja, a masterful and soulwrenching look at how capitalism manages food production. But IW, on top of everything else, manages to be an anti-green movement movie? As if that was needed in any way? Apparently comic!Thanos’ goal was to impress Lady Death or something, and maybe they should have gone with that, because to me, movie!Thanos’ plan sounds like an ill-conceived and unfortunate parody of the green movement. In fact, eminent biologist E. O. Wilson’s Half-Earth explores this exact possibility - which is not about killing off 50% of the population, thank you very much, but about improving agriculture and urban structures so we can leave 50% of the world to the rest of the ecosystem. And maybe it’s just me, but isn’t it a bit weird the book came out at about the same time when IW’s script was being written? I try not to be a paranoid nutcase, but come on. Because what the movie does is that it turns Thanos into a sort of green Hitler whose only focus is the environment (“But he was a vegetarian!”), cue the creepy final shot of him going all ‘Schwarzy in the forest’ surrounded by clean-water creeks and happy animals while we are left counting our dead. The metaphor couldn’t be more obvious, and to be honest it is most unwelcome. Time and place, guys? I really haven’t seen something so revolting since I got to the end of the Da Vinci Code and realized atheists were the true monsters all along.

4) Being a hero doesn’t mean saving your friends

So this is starting to become a trend, and seriously, enough. If you’re a hero, then you need to think of something greater than yourself, and this is why your life will suck and suck and suck until your untimely death. Deal with it? And I can understand Loki giving up the Tesseract for his brother, because he’s always been more of an anti-hero than a hero, and his morals are shot to hell in any case, and I’ll forgive Dr Strange because he clearly saw something we didn’t, but what the hell was Steve thinking? Seriously, I keep seeing posts about how Pure and Noble Steve is, and guys, did we even see the same movie? Bringing Vision to Wakanda meant endangering an entire nation, and thousands of people there paid for that choice with their lives. It’s because Steve insisted in not seeing the big picture - or accepting Vision’s own wishes - that Thanos even succeeded in the first place. If they’d destroyed the stone, Thanos would never have gotten his hands on it, and Wakanda would not have been attacked by a horde of alien demons. Sacrificing hundreds or thousands of nameless (black, African) warriors to keep one (white) man safe is not heroism - it’s cowardice. It’s assuming your own feelings and your friends’ lives count more than the lives of strangers, and this is the exact opposite of how a hero should think. Not that I’m surprised, since Steve already condoned the destruction of half of Bucharest to save Bucky, but whatever. Compare and contrast with Tony, by the way, who first tried to destroy the Time stone, then chose to sacrifice himself to save someone he didn’t even like? Yeah, that’s more like it. #TeamStark

5) Every single woman is defined by her relationship to a man

With the caveat that no emotion, connection or motivation is throroughly explored in IW because it’s an action-packed movie during which people never speak an honest word to each other (relying instead on posturing, movie quotes and sarcastic remarks), here is basically what happens: men have things, and women have men. Tony’s journey is mostly about saving Peter and also sacrificing himself for the world. Steve is all about his friends and various heroics. Dr Strange is a sort of ascetic monk playing the long game. Thanos wants to save the universe or something. And Vision is on a quest towards humanity? Maybe? But the women - Gamora is important because she’s Thanos’ daughter. Scarlet Witch is important because she loves Vision. Natasha (I think she’s in the movie? I don’t actually remember if we hear her speak) is on Cap’s side because Cap. Pepper only appears to remind us of what Tony has to lose. Exceptions to this rule include Shuri, whom IW didn’t quite manage to destroy; Loki, who was always female- and queer-coded, so I’m not surprised he ends up dying for the handsome and suitably Aryan hero; and arguably Starlord, who mostly fights for Gamora (what is a virtue in a woman, however, is a weakness in a man, because Starlord ends up fucking up the plan because of his love for her). And I know they probably tried to compensate for the complete lack of women in the movie by highlighting how powerful Scarlet Witch is and focusing so much on Gamora, but I’m an annoying person, so that didn’t work for me. Because, again, Scarlet Witch is a 2D character plucked directly from a Victorian dictionary’s definition of ‘woman’ (while the menfolk around her worry about the possible demise of the Entire Earth, there she is, channelling all her energy in being a good and loyal companion to her robot husband) and Gamora has no more control over her life in this movie than she had as a child? Her main narrative purpose in IW is to make us feel bad for her boyfriend and father, who’re both driven to kill her (for very different reasons) and suffer for her death (and don’t get me started on Thanos suddenly loving someone and what a stroke of luck, the one person in the universe he gives a damn about just happens to be standing next to him on top of a cliff when he needs to kill her). Seriously, why is it that female characters’ concerns still begin and end with romantic love? This trope that romance is the most important thing for every single woman needed to die, like, yesterday.

6) None of that actually means anything

Look, I’m a sucker of time-travel of any description, but I also think time-travel must be done honestly or not at all. Movies like Back to the Future or Arrival both use time bending to great effect, because the stakes are real and painful and there are all sort of complex decisions facing our heroes. But IW doesn’t care about any of that. The existence of the Time stone is not about ethical dilemmas or even turning up the drama to eleven - the one purpose of that thing is to make us hope that our personal fave is not dead after all, so we’ll keep watching this stupid franchise until the end of times. That finale could have been innovative and heartwrenching, and instead we already know it wasn’t. Samuel L. Jackson is apparently confirmed in Captain Marvel, which will be released next year, and we also know they’re working on Spider-Man 2, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Black Panther 2 and Doctor Strange 2. Capitalism has very nearly killed the possibility of creating a well-written and gutting story, because the rule is, If it makes money, it goes the fuck on. Hence TV shows which no longer make any kind of sense but we all keep watching out of nostalgia, affection for the characters or dissatisfaction with our own lives, and also franchises which stretch the plot to new and boring limits (for instance, it beggars belief that Tony and Steve didn’t even meet in IW, and their fight never came up at all: I guess we’ll have to wait for IW 2, or Avengers 37: The One with The Talk). And here, again, studios are so greedy that they willingly disregard the fact audiences will reward ‘complete’ stories: for instance, Logan was critically acclaimed and made tons of money, but the risk of ‘permanently’ killing off a beloved character is still considered too high. And playing it safe actually works: IW costed $320 million, which is about 5% of the studio’s budget, and that investment has already been repaid in full (the movie made double that in the first two weeks).

(Meanwhile, 21st Century Fox gained more than one billion dollars from Trump’s TAX REFORM THAT WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN - probably a disappointing amount of money for owner Richard Murdoch, who has a net worth of 15 billion and is known to use some of that hard-earned cash to support laudable & important causes such as the privatization of public education, but hey, we all need to make do and move on, right? Right.)

So this is mostly it. To be fair, IW was mildly entertaining, and I thought they sort of did a good job in juggling twenty leads - we got no character development at all and no meaningful dialogue, but we saw everybody at least once and their lines were funny? Some moments were genuinely good despite a couple of bizarre plot points (I’m still unclear on why Strange didn’t create a circle of fire around Thanos’ arm, and very tired of the overused ‘Yeah, let’s save the most powerful weapons for last’ trope), so I wouldn’t say this was the worst movie ever made, but as I said, I’m done. I’ve given more than enough money to this franchise, so when IW 2 comes out, I think I’ll be a boring adult and watch it on TV as I’m doing my ironing or something. Good times.

#infinity war #iw #iw review #infinity war review #marvel universe #there you go #i think everyone has seen it by now?#here is my take on it #sorry to be annoying

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skumpitt · 6 years

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Explaining How Fallout 3′s Plot Is Garbage (Again)

Reposted from my comment on reddit.

Well, aside from the horrible world building (or lack thereof), the plot is pretty bare-bones and at times, nonsensical. The farther into the plot you go, the more it becomes apparent that very little thought went into it. The world is a mess, built like a theme park with little to no cohesion between the various factions and settlements. Everything exists independent of everything else, without any detail as to how the Capital Wasteland functions. Where do people get food? What’s the economy like. That sorta thing. Unfortunately, detailed worldbuilding doesn’t seem to be Bethesda’s thing, unless you count notes attached to skeletons as “worldbuilding”.

But where Fallout 3 falls apart is its main quest. After railroading the player into a war that can literally be summed up as “the good guys fight the bad guys, because they are bad”. A big part of the problem is the lack of original ideas introduced in Fallout 3. Rather than come up with something new, they decided to copy-paste the villains from Fallout and Fallout 2 without any actual reason beyond “hey, these guys were in the last game, so we’re totally staying true to the lore”.

But Super Mutants don’t really have any reason to exist beyond Bethesda needing to add in more bullet sponges for the player to shoot. Unlike Fallout, there’s no real conclusive way to deal with the Super Mutant threat. In the original game, they were the antagonists, and they were lead by an actual villain with motivation and like, dialogue and shit. In Fallout 3, Bethesda needed a familiar enemy type to populate similar-looking dungeons.

In Fallout 2, the Enclave are introduced as the new villains. Super Mutants still exist, but aren’t a force to be reckoned with. In fact, you get to talk to a few of them and learn how the events of the last gave impacted them as a society. In Fallout 3, they’re basically orcs with guns that don’t tie in to the plot at all.

So about 60% of the way through the main plot, we’re introduced to the Enclave, who are now taking over as the main antagonists. What they actually want, however, is a mystery. In Fallout 2, they were genocidal maniacs. Pretty cut and dry. But in Fallout 3, it’s not clear what the Enclave’s master plan even is. We know that Eden wants to continue the Enclave’s traditional genocidal values, but he isn’t actually the antagonist. Augustus Autumn is. And what he wants, again, is a mystery.

We know he opposed Eden, but what he actually wants is never elaborated upon. What are his values, his goals, his motivation? What makes him tick? If we don’t even know what the antagonist’s motivation is, that’s usually a telltale sign of bad writing.

Compare this to Fallout: New Vegas, which actually allows you to sit down and talk to every major faction leader (and most, if not all, of the minor ones as well) and learn their story. You can actually sit down with Caesar and have a discussion about the failures of democracy and how he feels the NCR needs to be destroyed to stop humanity from regressing again. You can speak with the citizens of the NCR and learn their values, and why they’re opposed to the Legion. You can listen to House, who will explain to you his plan to save humanity. That’s the common thread in all of the good Fallout antagonists. Generally, they all want what’s best for humanity. Their motivations are directly tied to the series’ central themes of war and progress.

Ashur is a good example of this from Fallout 3. He may have done things that you detest, but you can also understand where he’s coming from, even if you don’t agree with him. Of course, you actually get to choose to side with him, something the main quest in Fallout 3 doesn’t do. Instead, you’re railroaded into siding with the Brotherhood of Steel, who have since been stripped of all moral ambiguity and basically everything that made them interesting in order for them to be generic good guys whose goal is to save everyone. In fact, pretty much everything in Fallout 3 is morally black or white, and that makes for a pretty uninteresting story unless you really ham it up.

And I’d be okay with that railroading if, like Fallout, the main villain was interesting or had any real characterisation beyond “I’m the bad guy!”. But he doesn’t. We don’t know what his plan is, or what he really wants beyond turning on Project Purity. But the thing is, that’s also what the Brotherhood wants! So the big climax ends up being completely pointless because both factions have the same exact goal. But it’s never really stated why the Enclave is so vehemently against the Brotherhood or vice versa.

They could have used this opportunity to talk about how pointless their war is. Maybe they could have worked things out, but are too blinded by their hatred for one another to see that working together would result in a brighter future for the wasteland. In fact, it really seems like the Enclave are the good guys of Fallout 3, considering they also want to turn on the purifier, only instead of just giving it away, they’ll use it as leverage to unite the Capital Wasteland under a single government, finally restoring the rule of law. The Brotherhood, on the other hand, pretty much leave the wasteland in shambles, just the way they found it, except now there’s some more bottled water that’s safe to drink. So what was the point of any of it?

They also could have used the conflict between Eden and Autumn as a jumping off point to change or pre-conceptions about him as a character and actually give him some basic characterisation. But nope. He has about as much depth as Alduin. Instead, he says this. He doesn’t shed any light as to why he disagrees with Eden, and barely has any screen time. Basically, he’s just there so the story can have a villain, and he’s not even a good final boss. He just pops in to stop you from doing the same thing he’s going to do later, then later sabotages the thing he wanted to fix so that can’t fix it. Cause that makes sense.

And here’s where the story really falls apart.. At the last second, Bethesda gives you two choices: either sacrifice yourself for no reason, or let someone else sacrifice themselves for no reason. But because there are three companions who are radiation-immune, Bethesda has to do a complete 180 on these character’s personality.

Fawkes can literally just walk into the fucking purifier and turn it off in like, twenty seconds. And not only would it be easy, not only would no harm come to him, he would actually be healed by this! It’s a win-win! But instead of walking into a room and pushing a button and despite him being willing to do the exact same thing not three quests ago, he insists that you have to go in and kill yourself, because… “destiny”. There’s also Charon, who’s been brainwashed since childhood to obey orders without question. And he’ll do so… until he doesn’t for literally no reason. He just doesn’t feel like it, even though you’ll die. That’s some next level bad writing right there.

In fact, this ending was so bad, they had to retcon it with the Broken Steel DLC. This DLC does another 180 on the characters’ dialogues, with Fawkes basically saying “Yeah, no problem man.” Then you do a couple of fetch quests and shoot your way through faceless Enclave dudes and then it’s over. Not only do we get no further elaboration upon the Enclave, we actually get a mini-campaign with no real plot. You’re just… finishing off the Enclave. There’s not even an antagonist or climactic fight at the end. You just shoot a bunch of Enclave dudes until you reach the last room full of Enclave dudes who, for no reason at all, have decided not to use the instant-win button that’s right there, which would allow them to destroy the Citadel and decisively win the war for the Capital Wasteland.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the problem with Bethesda’s storytelling isn’t necessarily bad writing, but a lack of any real writing in the first place.

#fallout 3 #fallout ramblings

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moonlitgleek · 7 years

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Reading your Robert ask, do you think Jaime can be redeemed or nay?

Talking about Jaime and redemption is like stepping on a landmine in fandom. Let’s do it.

Look, in theory, everyone can be redeemed as long as they are capable of changing. Jaime is capable of change; the person we met in AGoT is not the same one we left off in ADWD. So in the abstract sense, yes he could be redeemed but only if he takes measures to earn that redemption. But is Jaime taking those measures? The answer is a resounding no.

Oh sure he wants to regain his honor. He is not happy with who he has become and wants to change that but the thing that doesn’t often get discussed about this arc is that Jaime’s motivation is centered around him. He is not doing something because it’s the right thing to do or because he actually cares about these people, he’s doing it because he is struggling with his self-image and wishes to improve it. We see this in how he constructs narratives in his head, casts himself in it and merrily ignores the things that do not fit. Any action that Jaime takes in the Riverlands is done so that he can pat himself on the back for it and feel good about himself. Of course there is nothing inherently wrong in finding satisfaction in doing a moral thing, and most redemption arcs often start with a person feeling bad about themselves, but this is fundamentally what Jaime’s arc in AFFC is solely about – feeling good about himself. He willfully ignores the reality of the situation in the Riverlands, and of his own culpability in it, just because it does not fit with the image he wants to construct for himself. Does he try to make up for it, for any of it? Nope.

Yes, he sends Brienne after Sansa, and he tries to prevent additional bloodshed in the Riverrun siege, but even that is about how he feels about himself. He does not send Brienne after Sansa because he cares about Sansa or because he wants to make up for destroying her life, but because Sansa is his last chance for honor. That’s it, that’s his purpose. It’s a very self-centered view that he displays again and again in AFFC.He ends the Riverrun siege without bloodshed not because he gives a damn about these people’s lives, but because he wants to keep the illusion of keeping his vow to Catelyn that he has come to see as a symbol of regaining his honor. Not that I agree with praising him for ending the siege without bloodshed in the first place because I don’t understand why I should commend Jaime for it. I should praise him for…. not committing an additional crime? Is that what redemption is or how it’s earned? He is already validating the Red Wedding and rewarding its culprits but I guess people find it praise-worthy that he doesn’t murder his way into Riverrun to do it. Give the boy a gold star.

The reason Jaime resents that Edmure make him verbalize his threats is because Edmure denies him the illusion of being generous and honorable that Jaime has constructed in his head. Edmure is also forcing Jaime to face the fact that what he is trying to achieve in the Riverlands is not peace but subjugation built on a bloody crime. Jaime is willfully rationalizing his actions and deluding himself into thinking that what he is doing is honorable and that he is doing the right thing and restoring the king’s peace but we are not really meant to buy into his self-delusion, especially since GRRM makes sure to deconstruct those delusions.

Peace and justice, that’s what Jaime would like to think he is doing in the Riverlands, but is it really? Because here’s the justice that Jaime enforces:

No Wodes appeared, nor any of their smallfolk, though some outlaws had taken shelter in the root cellar beneath the second brother’s keep. One of them wore the ruins of a crimson cloak, but Jaime hanged him with the rest. It felt good. This was justice. Make a habit of it, Lannister, and one day men might call you Goldenhand after all. Goldenhand the Just.

Was it justice? The only indication we got to point to these people being outlaws is that….. they took shelter in an abandoned keep? Jaime reflects on the devastation in the Riverlands and on how “scarce a field remained unburnt, a town unsacked, a maiden undespoiled”. The lords and landed knights have abandoned their smallfolk, from old Ser Quincy who barred himself inside his castle and left his smallfolk to the mercy of Rorge and Biter in Saltpans to the Blackfish himself who stripped the land of resources before retreating to Riverrun. So were these people Jaime hanged outlaws, or simply starving and homeless people driven out of their homes by the war and taking refuge wherever they could? Does Jaime spare half a second to consider this?

And what about his oh-so-proud reaction to rescuing Pia? Oh he absolutely was in the right to punish her attempted rapist but like, all of the Mountain’s men have raped Pia. Repeatedly. And Jaime takes them on and adds them to his ranks - the men that he says of “about the best that could be said for Gregor’s men was that they were not quite as vile and violent a bunch as the Brave Companions.”, the men who are largely responsible for why the Riverlands are in such a bad shape, the men who were behind the Raping of the Riverlands, murderers and rapists and despicable human beings all. But Jaime is Goldenhand the Just for punishing one of them? What about the rest? Where’s the justice their victims are owed, or does Jaime get to pick and choose who gets justice and who doesn’t?

What about the victims of the Red Wedding? These people who were slaughtered treacherously while they were guests beneath the Freys’ roof. It’s really rich of Jaime to pat himself on the back for doing “justice” when he is rewarding a bunch of criminals. What grounds does Jaime Lannister have to claim that he is restoring the peace and meting out justice when he is refusing to enforce the law? When he is allowing and enabling the breakage of one of the oldest customs in Westeros that just happens to be essential to the health of the state? What Jaime is doing is the opposite of justice, and it’s no different than what Rhaegar Frey is advocating in White Harbor, just dressed up in gold.

And while Jaime is deluding himself into thinking himself Goldenhand the Just, we get this gem

If the Blackfish would not listen, he would have no choice but to break the vow he’d made to Catelyn Stark. The vow he’d sworn his king came first.

Where do I even being? At Jaime putting the responsibility of breaking his word to Catelyn on the Blackfish who refuses to bow to a violent illegitimate regime, or that Jaime is honestly deluding himself into believing that he is keeping his vows and thus is being “honorable” when he knows that Tommen has no right to his crown? The Lannisters organized a coup and killed everyone who dared speak against it, and Jaime can not even own up to it. He rationalizes the hell out of it to make himself feel like he is being honorable. But he isn’t. What he is doing is legitimizing a crime his family committed and pulling a PR stunt by calling it peace. Of course the only one who buys into said stunt is Jaime himself.

The most basic start for a character to earn redemption begins with owning up to and facing what they’ve done wrong, something that Jaime really has not done. Does Jaime regret his incestuous relationship with Cersei? Only insofar as he could hate her for lying to him and not being faithful to him but does he, at any point, own up or regret that he was one of the main pillars of a violent coup that sent the realm propelling into war? We’ve all argued extensively over the nature of his “peace tour” in the Riverlands and butted heads over whether his actions were honorable or not, but the fact is that Jaime is responsible for all of the shit that went down. The whole situation is of his own creation. Jaime sent the ball rolling when he chose to sleep with his sister, father bastards on her and help her usurp the crown. He committed treason and destabilized the realm by sleeping with his sister but the thing he regrets about it is trusting Cersei.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Jaime and I adore his arc. But one of things I love about it is how it forced me to examine my view of redemption arcs and how conditioned I was to consider an arc redemptive just because an asshole character started to be just a bit less of an asshole. Because I used to call Jaime’s arc redemption. But it’s not. Jaime is not seeking redemption, he’s searching for a new identity. The two things are not mutually exclusive, of course, but I’ve yet to see Jaime do anything to earn redemption. A couple of decent acts do not magically redeem someone, and the road to redemption can not lie in actively trying to emulate a notorious war criminal or upholding his legacy, which is what Jaime does in trying to prove he is Tywin’s kid.

Make no mistake, Jaime is still breaking his vows with his actions in the Riverlands, both his knightly vows that are based on protecting the innocent and defending the weak, and his vow to Catelyn to never take up arms against her family. Threatening to catapult Edmure’s baby if he does not surrender Riverrun goes against Jaime’s vow to Catelyn. Validating a grotesque crime like the Red Wedding by rewarding the people who took part in it goes against Jaime’s vows to Catelyn. Jaime’s obvious distaste for the Freys means nothing when he is enabling their rule. His verbal attack on Sybelle Spicer is hypocritical since his contempt is due to his own father’s scheming and manipulations. Gosh, are we supposed to applaud Jaime for detesting those people for something that his own father orchestrated when he is trying to follow in Tywin’s footsteps? Jaime does not reject Tywin’s methods, he follows and validates them, then despises those who aided Tywin so he could maintain a false moral superiority, even though Jaime’s actions in the Riverlands do nothing but compound Tywin’s crimes. There’s nothing honorable about pushing an illegitimate regime on the region, or in forcing a family to surrender their seat to the people who killed their kin by threatening to catapult a baby. Jaime behaving honorably in the Riverlands is an illusion, just like his “peace” is. His actions undermine the rule of the law, they make a mockery out of justice; what kind of redemption can ever be found in that?

#Anon asks #ask box #asoiaf meta #asoiaf #jaime lannister #jaime's peace tour #redemption

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lou-bonfightme · 7 years

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Toulouse Henri Bonfamille - Character Sheet

if you get sleep or if you get none / the cock's gonna call in the morning, baby / check the cupboard for your daddy's gun / red sun rises like an early warning / the lord's gonna come for your first born son / his hair's on fire and his heart is burning / so go to the river where the water runs / wash him deep where the tides are turning...

Archetype — The Caregiver Birthday — May 10, 1995 Zodiac Sign — Taurus MBTI — ENTJ Enneagram — 3, the Achiever Temperament — Choleric Hogwarts House — Slytherdor Moral Alignment — True Neutral Primary Vice — Pride Primary Virtue — Diligence Element — Earth

Overview:

Mother — Adelaide Bonfamille (nee LaBlanc) (Portia de Rossi FC) Father — Hector Bonfamille (Tony Goldwyn) Mother’s Occupation — socialite Father’s Occupation — politician Family Finances — wealthy Birth Order — oldest child Brothers — Berlioz Bonfamille (Matt Hitt FC, 20, Birthday: June 20, 1997) Sisters — Marie Bonfamille (Olivia Holt FC, 17, Birthday: April 22, 2000) Other Close Family — Maternal Aunt: Duchess LaBlanc Best Friend — Hades Other Friends — Sophie, Daisy Enemies — Roger, Perdita, literally so many people tbh Pets — A cat that is not his. Also his plants. Home Life During Childhood — emotionally manipulative/abusive; argumentative with father; parental disagreements; was put in charge of younger siblings Town or City Name(s) — Paris, France Details of Town(s) or City(s) — loved the river and parks, only place he had refuge What Did His or Her Bedroom Look Like — rather plain, big windows, bright, painted a cream color, not a lot of toys but an easel and paints in one corner, a large desk with art supplies. Any Sports or Clubs — nope, he focused solely on his art. Favorite Toy or Game — didn’t really play a lot of games, but he liked building legos with his siblings, or reading to them. Schooling — did excellently in school Favorite Subject — science (especially biology), though he has a fondness for literature as well. Popular or Loner — loner, but girls liked him alot; he had the broody bad boy thing going on, which annoyed him immensely. Important Experiences or Events — moving to Swynlake Health Problems — undiagnosed manic depressive; some minor PTSD and agoraphobia Culture — french, and proud of it. Religion and beliefs — raised catholic, attending church mainly to keep up appearances, he finds parts of religion very beautiful, but also calls bullshit on most of it; he’s too logical and scientific to really find any sort of comfort in it; respects those who are religious though; has a predisposed inclination to dislike muslims based on rhetoric and a lack of proper understanding about the religion.

Physical Appearance:

Face Claim — Freddy Carter Complexion — pale and freckly! Hair Colour — Russet Eye Colour — Green Height — 6′0 Build — slight and tall Tattoos — none and never will Piercings — none Common Hairstyle — perfectly styled 90% of the time, if you catch him without his hair styled he really likes you. Clothing Style — the Most fashionable, very flamboyant, lots of colour Mannerisms — tucks his hands behind his back when he’s nervous or being respectful, if he’s embarrassed his ears turn red Usual Expression —

Health:

Overall (do they get sick easily)? — not since he’s become a werewolf, but he never really got sick Physical Ailments — none Neurological Conditions — bipolar II Allergies — none Grooming Habits — grooms better than some of my girls lmao. takes very good care of himself--when he’s not in a depressive state, then he has more trouble, but if he’s going out he’ll still go through the motions. Sleeping Habits — terrible sleeper. has really bad insomnia. is up late a lot, sleeps in late a lot. wakes up a lot throughout the night. tosses and turns. has trouble falling asleep. Eating Habits — super picky eater. when depressive/manic sometimes doesn’t eat that much Exercise Habits — lmao what exercise Emotional Stability — off his meds? like a 2/10, on his meds he’s closer to a 6/10 probably. Body Temperature — normal Sociability — very charming, knows what to say to get people to like him. that doesn’t always mean he says those things lol Addictions — none really? Drug Use — smokes pot, doesn’t do other drugs thank god that’d be so bad Alcohol Use — drinks more than he should

Your Character’s Character:

Bad Habits — what habits are not bad habits? Thinking he is right about everything, pointing out people’s flaws, getting in fights, generally believing he knows better than everyone else, not feeling out his emotions, withdrawing when things get tough, not speaking to anyone about things that suck in his life, taking on all challenges alone, i could go on... Good Habits — he’s a good brother, he takes care of his siblings, he takes care of himself, for the most part; he’s an excellent studier; he’s very loyal once you win his loyalty Best Characteristic — his unfaltering loyalty Worst Characteristic — his lack of ability to properly communicate his emotions Worst Memory — all the times he had to hide in the closet, or his father sent him to bed with no dinner and kept him there for hours Best Memory — his siblings being born Proud of — his siblings, his art (sometimes) Embarrassed by — not much, honestly. When people catch him having a proper emotion Driving Style — doesn’t drive but he’d be a total soccer mom Strong Points — his loyalty. It’s unwavering and uncompromising Temperament — volatile Attitude — melancholic. Weakness — not being emotionally vulnerable. Seriously, it would solve so many of his issues Fears — not being good enough, being unlovable, worried that he will always be horribly bitter Phobias — pfft nothING (jk he’s lowkey afraid of storms) Secrets — lmao so many where to start? Mostly that he actually does crave affection Regrets — lol everything; probably the biggest is being so hard on ber during their teen years Feels Vulnerable When — he’s having emotion Pet Peeves — god where do i start? People who dont say what’s on their mind Motivation — protecting his siblings is his main motivation Short Term Goals and Hopes — he doens’t really have any im realizing this rn Long Term Goals and Hopes — also does not have many here Sexuality — grey asexual, biromantic (he could be either rly) Exercise Routine — pfft exercise is for the weak Day or Night Person — night owl Introvert or Extrovert — introverted extrovert lou really does thrive in a crowd but needs a lot of recharge time after Optimist or Pessimist — pessimist highkey

Likes and Styles:

Music — Classics. Classical. Stuff with not a lot of lyrics. Though, he’s also fond of the Opera. He really likes Faust and Don Giovanni. Also, he secretly likes a couple of musicals--Les Miserables and Cats are probably his favourites, though he very rarely indulges in them. Books — Candide by Voltaire is his favourite novel, he’s read it several times. He is a fan of the gothic period, he enjoys books like The Phantom of the Opera. Is not a huge Victor Hugo fan because he finds him a bit wordy, but he does like Hunchback of Notre Dame. He prefers concise language in his novels, but also likes beautiful imagery. He’s an avid reader. Magazines — He reads National Geographic and TBH probably gets a copy of Vogue, as well as a few museum magazines, just to keep up with the art scene. Foods — Lou is not a very big sweets person, he prefers richer foods. His favorite is frozen grapes--red or green, that doesn’t really matter. He’s almost always snacking on grapes. Drinks — Lou loves champagne. He also is an avid drinker of water. Animals — Lou loves birds, they’re his favorite. He’s also a fan of reptiles. And he has a particular interest in dinosaurs. Sports — Lol. Social Issues — Lou takes a bit of a middle road on these issues. There are things that he is rather passionate about--such as LGBTQIA rights (this is a recent development), but he also has some rather...unethical opinions about things like immigration that he usually keeps to himself because he knows that they are contentious subject. Favorite Saying — “Chacun voit midi à sa porte” Translation: Everyone sees noon on his doorstep. Basically, everyone views the world the way that they view it. Color — Ah, he cannot choose--but he does gravitate to warmer, earth colors in his paintings, oranges and reds and browns. Clothing — Lou is extremely fashionable and he always is dressed impeccably. He loves color and very rarely wears dull ones. Jewelry — Not a huge fan of jewlery, I’m sure he has a nice watch though, that his father gave him. Games — Chess. Puzzles. Things that challenge the mind. Websites — Eh, he’s got a tumblr blog, and he’s #instafamous so. TV Shows — Lou doesn’t watch television enough to have favorite shows but he detests reality shows and probably watches them with his brother to make fun of people. Movies — Lou doesn’t watch movies often, but he loves good cinematography. Also, documentaries. Especially nature and historical ones. (Also loves Legally Blonde on the lowkey.) Greatest Want — To be needed. Greatest Need — To learn to embrace his emotions.

Where and How Does Your Character Live Now:

Home — lives at his mother’s home in Swynlake Household furnishings — very modern, aligned with the latest Parisian fashion. Favorite Possession — his art studio, does that count?? Most Cherished Possession — the drawer of arts and crafts that lou kept from his siblings when they were little. Neighborhood — the woods, very posh Town or City Name — Swynlake Details of Town or City — small magic friendly Married Before — to Anita Dearly, long story. Significant Other Before — none. Children — none. Relationship with Family — close with his siblings, though closer with Marie than Berlioz, a bit of a momma’s boy, and has a cordial relationship with his father, is very close with his life-long nanny, Nounou. Car — none. Career — will probably be an artist; should be a surgeon. Dream Career — surgeon he just doesn’t know it yet Dream Life — a successful magical animal treatment center, where he can also practice his art on the side; very little chance of having a family but deep down would love a wife/husband and children, maybe he’ll adopt. (he does not know any of this.) Love Life — a hot mess; tries not to develop feelings for people. Talents or Skills — painting, obviously Intelligence Level — he’s very intelligent and observant Finances — wealthy af

Your Character’s Life Before Your Story:

Past Careers — he’s been a student. Past Lovers — many; mostly one night stands, very few repeats Biggest Mistakes — being so hard on ber in secondary; marrying anita. Biggest Achievements — uhmmmmm his art has hung in several galleries

#character sheet #about #this was p much finished and since #everyone is POSting them #viola

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lindyhunt · 5 years

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Should Your Brand Use Controversial Advertising? 5 Examples to Help You Decide

Two weeks ago, people were tweeting pictures of razors submerged at the bottom of their toilet bowls. No, this wasn’t a wacky teen challenge to make your dad late for work. It was a protest against Gillette’s latest advertisement -- one that confronts toxic masculinity.

Brands that craft controversial advertisements like Gillette’s, however, expect this type of response, at least from some people. Taking any kind of stance on sensitive social issues tends to lead to disagreement. But advocating for the causes you truly believe in usually has more pros than cons.

“Even if publicizing your beliefs may ostracize some potential customers, it also builds deep loyalty for those who share your values -- particularly values like celebrating equality and inclusion, which many people support, regardless of political affiliation,” Joe Lazauskas, the Head of Content Strategy at Contently, wrote in an article after the divisive 2016 presidential election. “The same goes for expressing concern and support for the diverse people who work for you. Loyalty isn’t just a marketing metric; it’s also critical for measuring the internal health of your company.”

Executed properly, controversial ads can be an unexpected, emotional delight that can not only deepen your connection with your core audience, but can also help you reach new audiences. For instance, after Gillette released their ad challenging toxic masculinity, Adweek discovered it actually resonated with women the most.

What Is Controversial Advertising?

Controversial advertising doesn’t aim to polarize an audience. It’s an attention-grabbing technique for stating an opinion, and brands use it to spark productive conversations about certain moral values. In recent years, any stance taken on sensitive social issues can be considered controversial advertising.

The Psychology Behind Controversial Advertising

People usually read and share opinionated content because it aligns with their own values. And by letting the world know about their beliefs, they can solidify an ideal image of themselves within their social circle and their own minds.

Opinionated content also has a knack for making people think and consider other points of view, which builds more loyal audiences because it can teach people something new and help shape their perspective on life.

But while controversial ads can generate more buzz than other types of ads, if executed poorly, they can be detrimental to your brand. For instance, consider SNL’s hilarious skit of ad executives pitching commercial ideas to the snack brand Cheetos.

Although SNL isn’t specifically giving controversial advertising a ribbing, they’re poking fun at the way brands exploit sensitive social issues to peddle their products instead of what they should be doing when covering these types of topics -- encouraging productive conversations.

Creating a controversial ad with an ulterior motive is a one way ticket to receiving Kendall Jenner & Pepsi type of feedback (we’ll cover this later). In other words, it can spark harsh backlash and bad publicity instead of meaningful dialogue.

So how do you avoid this type of negative response if you want to create a controversial advertising campaign? Below, we’ll analyze three controversial advertising examples that work and two that don’t to help you support the causes you genuinely believe in and better connect with audiences.

Controversial Advertising Examples That Work

1. Anheuser-Busch | Born The Hard Way

The United States has conflicting opinions on whether to welcome immigrants with open arms or not, but Anheuser-Busch’s ad about their founder’s origin story makes people realize that something so fundamentally American, like Budweiser beer, can have immigrant roots.

Budweiser is commonly associated with themes of American patriotism, so taking a stance on immigration, which is a controversial issue in the United States, conflicted with some of the brand’s most loyal customers’ political beliefs. But taking this social stance also led to a meaningful dialogue about how immigrants have founded some of America’s most iconic brands.

By telling a gripping and emotional story about the founding of their company, Anheuser-Busch could take a stance on an important issue that’s essential to their brand and connect with the people who understand that the United States is country of immigrants, helping the ad garner more than 21.7 million views in only three days.

2. Nike | Dream Crazy

“Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything” is an accurate life motto for Colin Kaepernick, a professional American football player. In the 2016 NFL season, he stoked controversy by kneeling during the National Anthem before the start of every game as a protest against racial inequality.

Unfortunately, all the controversy associated with him has basically barred him from the NFL -- no team hasn’t signed him since his controversial 2016 season. Yet, admirably, he still advocates for the causes he supported during his protests.

Along with Kaepernick’s story, Nike’s "Dream Crazy" weaves in other narratives of athletes who followed ambitious dreams to eventual success. And Nike made it clear that they want to help Colin Kaepernick achieve his dream of a righteous world, no matter how crazy it seems right now.

"Dream Crazy", while highly controversial, resonated with millions of people. Just days after they released the ad, Nike’s sales soared by 31%, despite videos of their gear engulfed in flames circulating throughout social media.

3. Heineken | Worlds Apart

In Heineken’s “Worlds Apart”, people were paired together and asked to build stools and a bar together. After they completed the activity and developed some rapport with each other, pre-recorded videos starting playing and revealed that their political views were actually the polar opposite of each others. They were then asked if they would discuss their differences over a beer. All of them said a resounding “yes”.

Making an ad where people with such differing political views actually engage in meaningful dialogue and don’t just belittle each other is a risky move. A lot of people have a fiery passion for their political beliefs and won’t associate with people who don’t agree with them. But that’s ultimately why Worlds Apart was met with rave reviews and called “The Antidote to Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner Ad” -- it focuses on putting our differences aside to work for a greater cause together, not Heineken’s product.

Controversial Advertising Examples That Don’t Work

4. Pepsi | Live for Now

If you think long and hard about it, could a can of Pepsi really mend the complex rifts that divide the entire world right now? Nope. Not at all. Even worse, is Kendall Jenner really an integral part of any social justice movement, or was she just there because she’s a famous celebrity who can grab almost anyone’s attention? You probably know the answer to this question by now.

After receiving five times as many downvotes as upvotes on YouTube and a glut of bad publicity and negative reactions on social media, Pepsi removed the ad from their channel only a few hours after posting it.

If you want to avoid this type of response when creating controversial content, don’t emphasize your product more than the issue at hand. All advertisements are technically self-serving, but people can spot overly promotional fluff masquerading as social justice faster than they’ll click exit on a pop-up ad. So if you don’t truly feel convicted to support a specific social cause when creating controversial content, it’s best to not even put pen to paper.

5. Nationwide | Boy

It starts out as an adorable story about a boy who seems to lack self-confidence, but Nationwide’s “Boy” turns shockingly dark when it’s revealed that the main character can’t live a normal childhood because he’s actually dead.

Child accidents are a serious problem that should be addressed, but this ad was criticized for being too fear-mongering and manipulative -- it literally uses the death of children to sell insurance. So even if your ad highlights a prevalent problem, make sure it doesn’t exploit a sensitive issue just to peddle more product. Otherwise, it might get crowned as the worst ad of the year.

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