#acting choices were made | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

heycarrots · 1 month

Text

There’s been a lot of discourse about the nature of James and Miranda’s relationship. There’s even been a lot of discussion on my podcast about it. One thing I want to make clear is that my podcast is a platform for discussion on all points of view. I’m not going to agree, 100%, with everything that’s said, but it makes the views of my guests no less valid. There’s no right or wrong, here, because this is art and therefore, it is subject to interpretation.

My intent, however, is to attempt to get as close to the original intent of the actors as possible because we look at a show or a film or a play as going through several layers of distillation. Each level purifies the intended narrative leaving its truest essence.

When we make a reduction sauce using an alcohol of some kind, let’s say a red wine, the heat applied to it burns off things we don’t need for flavor. You’re never going to get drunk off of red wine reduction because there’s almost no alcohol left in it. That all gets burned off, leaving only the flavor components, which is what we wanted all along, anyway. We want that extra element that enriches the flavor of the steak, by adding nuance.

So let’s take apart that meal.

We start with the birth of the idea. The story kicks around in an author’s head, trying to get out, growing bigger and more persistent until it outgrows the confines of the mental box inspiration is stored in and has to be let out. That idea, that’s the cow.

The author raises that idea, feeds it, watches it grow, and then, ultimately slaughters it. That sounds awful, but once you have that idea pulsing, growing, evolving and then finally commit the final draft on paper, it is a kind of death. The life of the story comes to an end and it becomes memorialized in a mausoleum. Readers will come to visit, spend time with it, lay down flowers, cherish it, and mourn its passing.

The next level is adaptation. That’s the steak. There are many ways you can slice the story, large roasts encompassing the whole story or a smaller, hyper-focused character study fillet mignon.

A writers room gets hold of the cow and carves it up. They choose what gets cooked and what gets tossed. A GREAT group of writers saves the bones. They take in the entire supporting structure of the piece and while the whole story may not make it onto the screen, they will have slow roasted the bones for a stock. When you watch a show like Black Sails, where themes are introduced that won’t fully be explained or explored until several seasons later, that’s what that is. It is the stock being used to flavor the whole dish. You’ve distilled the entire cow to its purest essence and so every scene, every line of dialogue, every acting choice, encompasses the entirety of the story. A line from episode one is defined by knowledge of the finale and in regard to dialogue, defined by an actors’ knowledge of a character’s backstory. There are many writers rooms who are creating the bones of the story as they go, which means they aren’t starting with a rich stock. You can’t trace back character motivations or choices to begin with because those motivations changed throughout production.

Black Sails, again, isn’t one of those shows. Steinberg and Levine came into the writers room with their stock pot full and sloshing, spilling story everywhere. The richness of the details they were laying can make season one a bit hard to consume unless you are ready for a story on that level. Viewers need to come to the table with some bread to sop up all those character details because we WILL need them later.

Over the course of finalizing scripts and blocking out episodes, the steak is cooked. Like any great steak, this story is medium rare. More juice comes out with every bite. It’s what makes the show infinitely rewatchable. It continues to cook on the plate, but because it wasn’t overdone, it never dries out.

When the actors get ahold of it, that’s the reduction sauce we were talking about. That sauce provides nuance and flavor. That’s the emotion. A line of dialogue on a page is just ink. It’s nothing until it’s spoken aloud. And like any bit of language in this world, it’s subject to interpretation. In this case, it’s the actor who does the interpreting.

I spoke on the podcast about the art of subtext and how huge a role it plays in Black Sails. One example we used is Jane Eyre. It’s one of the most frequently adapted novels in the English language and with each adaptation, we get a new version of our characters. The most volatile and subject to change is Rochester. There are MANY versions of Rochester that I find appalling (including the original beast in the book), but each actor has formed him into something else, based on their performance. Toby Stephens takes Rochester and turns him into a silly tragic romantic, broken many times over by a society he never really fits into, despite the status of his birth. He connects with Ruth Wilson’s Jane because she fully and happily inhabits that space on the fringes that Rochester thinks he needs to climb out of. Jane takes his hand on the outside of the wall, turns him away from the guarded palace and shows him the wild world that was at his back this whole time.

This is what Toby Stephens, Luke Arnold, Louise Barnes, Zethu Dlomo, and really all the actors for whom their subtextual choices make them reflect like prisms, have done with their performances.

In the final distillation, character motivations and emotions are finalized by the actor. Writers can pontificate, the source material lies dead in its lovely tomb, but stories live and breathe by their storytellers.

What we’re left with is Toby’s face telling the world how deeply Flint loves Silver. Every single choice tells this story.

We’re left with Luke showing us how much Silver is repressing in his feelings for Flint. Luke’s face shows us an incredible depth of feeling and a door slamming shut.

We’re left with the incredible intimacy between James and Miranda, which speaks of a decade of shared physical intimacy. There’s an openness, a freeness to it until the moment in episode 3 when Miranda learns that James has found the Urca and is leaving soon to pursue it. She gives some of it away when she says “I thought I’d have you all to myself”. She is mourning the loss of intimacy that she only gets in short windows of time. They aren’t strained because James isn’t attracted to her, but because he’s rarely there. She has him for a few days at a time before he’s off on another hunt. The coldness starts from the moment he tells her he’s leaving in a few days because I believe she thinks he won’t be coming back, that this is the hunt he won’t survive and she’ll finally have lost both James and Thomas. From the moment Richard Guthrie darkens her door, she’s looking for a way to weaponize him and get them out. For her, it’s a race against the clock and she’s willing to sacrifice a bit of her relationship with James in the present to secure happiness for them in the future.

This is also why James still has sex with her before leaving, even though he’s furious for her reading Meditations to Richard. This is how they connect. They connected through physical intimacy in the flashbacks, as well. Him stroking her thumb in the carriage before the kiss. Tactile contact to seal their understanding of each other. Miranda bracing her hands on his chest during important moments in the Hamilton’s home, something she also does to Thomas, to show physical connection, physical intimacy. Miranda thrives on physical touch.

To think that, for 10 years, James is lying there like an object for Miranda to use, is, to me, short sighted. To think that James doesn’t love Miranda outside of a group, is also ignoring the fact that, 10 years on, James will not leave on a hunt (angry as they both are) without physically connecting with her, trying so hard to reach beyond his anger and the wound freshly opened from sight of that book he’s chosen not to look at for probably the better part of those 10 years. The way his hands hover over her back after she comes and he desperately wants to be with her in that moment, like the best of their moments, but he just can’t, speaks to the depth of his love for her.

So many fans of the show point to this sad sex scene as one of the most important character moments for James and Miranda, but I consistently come to the opposite conclusions about WHY it’s important and what we learn from it, because I’m taking my cues from the actor’s choices, not the director or the writers. On the page, in plain ink, he hates having sex with her. Toby and Louise show us, however, that they are trying to recapture a thing that is fleeting, reaching out to each other to patch up an old wound from which the scab has been picked off, leaving it seeping and raw.

From Toby’s performance, regardless of the words he uses years later to describe it, we see not a character who “loves men” or a character who “loves women”, but a character who LOVES. I don’t see Flint defining that love in terms of boxes and parameters. He’s a character who must be coaxed out, but then loves without reason, without a safety net, as he proves with his love of Silver. As was also referenced by a guest on the podcast, he places a sword in Silver’s hand and says “do it”.

Anyway, this post got away from me and took several turns, but the love between James and Miranda being dismissed by so many in the fandom has been bugging me for a while and I just needed to emotionally vomit on tumblr.

104 notes · View notes

add1ctedt0you · 3 months

Text

The Untamed

Nie HuaiSang leaned against the wall beside the door, watching a few sect leaders carry the coffin across the Guanyin Temple’s threshold. He looked down and dusted the dirty mud at the lower hem of his clothes. As if he saw something, he paused. Wei WuXian looked over as well. What had fallen to the ground was Jin GuangYao’s cap.

Nie HuaiSang bent down and picked it up. Only afterwards did he begin to saunter outside.

The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation - Chapter 110- Concealment - Part 4

#nie huaisang #*mgifs #Acting choices were made #But to be fair. imo cql!characters seem just more apologetic than their novel counterpart in general

90 notes · View notes

egophiliac · 16 days

Text

IT WAS ERIC AFTER ALL!!!! I'm so glad we got to meet him (before Vil snaps him away with those Infinity Gauntlets) (can't wait to see what happens when we get the matching Infinity Tiara to go with them, there will be no survivors)

(sorry to be so slow/rough lately, just got a lot of stuff on the ol' brain at the moment! alas, if only I could spend all my time drawing incredibly stupid characters I mean I do but)

#art #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland spoilers #tapis rouge #i know these are not my best but by god i needed to draw ~daddo venue~#he is a treat! can't wait for him to yell at us for screwing up a shoot or whatever the last-minute disaster will be #i am SO HAPPY it turned out to be about movies after all! ...i mean sort of anyway #i'll take what i can get (and i do enjoy twst trying to be all cute about snow whAHEM i mean beautiful queen) (i see you there twst)#(also to be fair it actually wasn't poisoned in historial-revisionism-twstland so i think we can trust this apple. a+ acting eric)#anyway we are still. very solidly in the 'stand around and talk about the wallpaper for three hours' part of the event.#but HEY we got to meet eric! i was not really expecting it to be him so i am VERY pleased #also god help me i did think the shopping montage as portrayed by a rhythmic where they literally SKIP down the street was hilarious #there's a lot of Choices that were made in this event and that was a good one

4K notes · View notes

ronanceautistic · 24 days

Text

nothing in this entire show breaks my heart like nancy wheeler nodding when joyce is saying “it’s okay, i’ve got you.” that poor girl had so little comfort she had to pretend joyce was talking to her.

duffer brothers, natalia dyer, henry creel, you will be hearing from my lawyers

#i feel like on multiple occasions natalia dyer has made acting choices that were never remotely in the script #nancy wheeler #stranger things

315 notes · View notes

galedekarios · 4 months

Text

reading a new interview and seeing larian's lead writer refer to gale as "the guy who annoys everyone" and "constantly eats your most treasured possessions" really explain a lot of things that are in the game tbh

#they also consider the ending where he blows himself up as the 'right' ending #truly a Great Message to send #'you deserve to die after making a mistake and taking someone up on their offer to help you it's just the price you have to pay'#also saying that halsin's quest ended in act ii and now he's just there plus #admitting that you dumbed stuff down and made characters 'nicer' for whiny redditors is... Interesting too #truly Choices were made #ch: gale dekarios #vg: baldur's gate 3 #series: baldur's gate #text: personal #bg3 critical #larian critical

376 notes · View notes

this-is-a-love-story-isnt-it · 5 months

Text

Claudia Black and Ben Browder being captains of their own ship since 1999.

ComicCon 2009 Wintercon 2019 Wintercon 2023

#farscape #john x aeryn #claudia black #ben browder #the show's creator did plan for it to be a love story btwn John x Aeryn #but Ben and Claudia wanted to have as much input as possible to make sure it stayed that way #and the show was very collaborative so they did have a lot of input #and they made a lot of really great acting choices #in 2019 Claudia said there had been a storyline that didn't sit well with either of them #because they felt that John and Aeryn only had their hearts on each other #but it sounds like they were bringing in another woman for John to have a thing with ig #idk if they're talking about Jenavian in LATP #but I know Ben protested against that #but he didn't win that time ugh #the vid from 2019 is mine #sorry for the camera work #i was trying to film with my phone but also making sure I was in the moment #and actually watching the panel with my own eyes and not through my phone screen #so sometimes it went off-center #my gifs #my gifs: farscape

204 notes · View notes

like-sands-of-time · 4 months

Text

And they were dyads

Oh my god they were dyads

#still so shook about how they have some force created soulmate shit going on and we got like the absolute bare minimum building w that #between rey and ben.. other in universe examples and their effects on the pair.. them ever really working together except the one time cmon #what even was that last film #dont get me wrong i didnt hate a lot of what happened but choices were made and they were not correct #also .. i fully see hux as wanting to destroy kylo but no fucking way hes going straight to the resistance with info whaaa #he cares that kylo loses but he absolutely wants to control the first order fleets still dont act like he doesnt #star wars #reylo

122 notes · View notes

gelphiegifs · 3 months

Text

Totally normal way of applying lipstick to the girl you've been friends with for the past 2 minutes

#gelphie #galinda upland #glinda upland #elphaba thropp #wicked #wicked musical #carrie st louis #mary kate morrissey #s: popular #acting choices were certainly made #by both of them #anyway as you can see glinda is a top and.. *i get dragged off the stage*

147 notes · View notes

ellabsbb · 5 months

Text

the way we don’t get a buff abby because they choose someone who’s barley 5 feet and 90 pounds to be not only child ellie but also grown ellie.. season two is gonna be terrible and i won’t be watching 😭

#breaking my month of not posting to complain #as i should #bella ramsey was a terrible casting choice i don’t care #also she was liking noah schnapps zionist ig posts so that officially made me a hater of hers #i think of her doing literally anything tlou2 ellie does and cringe #but its not even just the looks i dont think she has the acting skills to give what ellie is going through in 2 #will still complain abt the looks tho always #lord knows what drugs the casting directors were on to choose bella

86 notes · View notes

brittlebutch · 1 month

Text

actually it's kind of funny how people will say Alex's fatal flaw is that he 'doesn't ask for help' and that it's his determination to handle things on his own that leads to his deterioration and eventual death when his whole introduction to the present-day timeline was a very literal cry for help that simply went ignored

#N posts stuff #like even if you think alex was lying throughout the entirety of season 2 and he was waiting from the Moment jay showed up #JUST to kill him (Which again i don't think makes much sense when he could have killed Tim & Jay immediately instead of #breaking Tim's leg. anyway) EVEN IF alex spent that whole time lying it doesn't actually change the fact that he would have at least #been Pretending to Ask For Help and if he wasn't lying then he was Literally Asking For Help and it doesn't Actually matter #what intention Alex had because the text is Ambiguous about Alex's honesty during season two; what isn't ambiguous is the way #other characters (specifically Jay) respond to him; like yeah - S2 Brian/Tim were never in one million years going to help Alex with shit #so sort of any argument that brings up Tim as someone who asks for/offers help is borderline meaningless in this era of the series #Jay had the 'opportunity' to help Alex (and i'll get back to that in a sec) but DIDN'T - Jay wasn't Interested in actually offering Alex #'help' bc Jay is ultimately curious about Answers and 'Offering Help' and 'Getting Answers' are two Wildly conflicting goals #Jay thinks Alex has answers and when Alex doesn't Offer these 'Answers' to Jay on a silver platter Jay gets pissed off and paranoid #and starts Stalking Alex bc he thinks it's 'Suspicious' that Alex won't give him the Answers (that Alex probably doesn't Actually have)#ANYWAY. ultimately this post is about how it's absurd when people argue #that individual character choices could have made a difference in the way this series played out - specifically wrt Alex #because EVERYONE in this WHOLE series are being affected by influences outside of their control ; including Brian Tim and Jay #so it's silly when people are like 'if ALEX had just made a different choice For Himself this could have all been avoided' WRONG.#bc Ultimately there's not really a way to 'help' someone else out of this situation - Tim tried and failed Repeatedly #the comics proved he even failed with Jessica - like MH isn't a horror situation where you can kill the big bad #'getting help' is a meaningless argument - what would successfully helping or getting help even look like? anyway.#the sub argument of this post is that Alex's biggest 'sin' is that he doesn't perform emotions the way other people want him to #like Alex is a character with a kind of flat affect - instead of LOOKING scared or grieved he LOOKS bored or angry #and everyone judges him based on that - so Alex is 'Suspicious' he's 'Lying' he's 'Guilty' but all of these deductions are predicated #on the belief that Alex isn't reacting to his circumstances the way a 'Normal' person would - so it MUST all be an act and so he's guilty #so everyone treats him like he's guilty until the end of season two when he's like 'Fuck it FINE i'll be guilty then' and so it goes #not a self-fulfilled prophecy but being Cornered Into a prophecy and then Blamed for it - SAD. anyway

36 notes · View notes

boypussydilf · 7 months

Text

okay, so casper and nova, right? the casper and nova game is one big metaphor for simon and betty’s relationship. and the last thing we see in it is: nova tries to sacrifice herself so casper can get what he wants, and the choices are to either go with that, or nova lives but casper forgets her. and it’s obviously meant to parallel simon and betty’s situation in come along with me after they get swallowed by golb: either betty can sacrifice herself to keep simon safe, or she doesn’t but he goes back to being ice king. (um, that is, assuming that she was correct to think they might revert to the forms they had before getting digested after exiting golb. which is not something we have any actual evidence for. it was just a possibility that occurred to her and a risk she wasn’t willing to take.)

UM. EVERY PART OF THAT WAS BECAUSE OF DECISIONS BETTY MADE INDEPENDENTLY?

betty decides to jump through the portal when simon is trying to say goodbye to her, betty decides to fix the crown and then try to find a way to cure him even after he’s told her he’d rather die than be ice king again, betty decides to fucking summon golb, betty decides to push simon out of golb before he can react at all just in case the crown goes back to its former state once it leaves and just in case there’s no way to get rid of golb without its wish magic.

IT WAS BETTYS CHOICES IT WAS BETTYS CHOICES IT WAS ALL BETTYS OWN CHOICES THAT SHE MADE IT WAS BETTY BETTY WAS THE REASON THEY WERE IN THAT SITUATION

#its so so insulting in general to compare them to. a game w a limited amount of choices #and its so insulting to betty to act like… what?#she wouldn’t have made all these choices if *simon* had just ‘considered her more’?#that she simply is completely incapable of controlling herself when simon is involved?#that she doesn’t hold responsibility for the choices she made?#this um. isnt really on simon at all to be honest #what we have are boatloads of examples of simon asking betty to make a different choice and her doing what she wants to do anyway!#‘come take credit for finding the enchiridion with me’ ‘no this is your achievement’ ‘but i couldnt have done it without you’ ‘no ❤️’#‘i can’t be the ice king again i’d rather be dead’ ‘no i WILL do this’#in the bus/confession scene simon is just PARROTING HER OWN WORDS BACK TO HER #she said she wanted to BE BY HIS SIDE so he repeated that to her #assuming it was what SHE wanted because she SAID IT WAS WHAT SHE WANTED.#im gonna blow up. betty im so sorry you got treated like you werent responsible for any of ur own choices #betty im so sorry you got treated like simon should have just ignored the things you were saying you wanted #she got treated like she had no autonomy as if the girl hasnt been doing nothing but Making Choices since day 1 #CASPER AND NOVA IS NOT COMPARABLE SORRRYYYYYYYYYY. THATS NOT WHAT THEIR FUCKINTG LIVES WERE LIKEEEEE WHATTTTTTTT #basilposting #atposting #fionna and cake spoilers

75 notes · View notes

heycarrots · 2 years

Text

Miranda to Flint: 1X07 “The door is open. I’ve opened it for you.”

Flint to Silver: 3X05 “Thank you for opening that door.”

Miranda to Flint: 1X07 “There is a life in Boston. There is joy there, and music, and peace.”

Silver to Flint: 4X10 “I see a life for myself with her, and I will not live it wondering if tomorrow is the day your nightmare finally takes her away for good.”

THE PARALLELS!!!

So most of season two sets up the “strange partners” dynamic with Silver, which lets him step into the Thomas Hamilton space with Flint.

Most people point to season 4 in terms of SilverFlint shipping dynamics, but I’m going to say that the major setup for “romantic sexual tension subtext” was actually in season two, because he’s being directly compared to Thomas.

HOWEVER . . .

Silver is also VERY much Miranda. And throughout season 3, we are shown this parallel, as well. Flint sees it, too. He isn’t haunted by the ghost of Miranda, reminding him what she was to him before telling him that he is not alone. That’s his subconscious. He knows this. He’s telling himself that if he actually wants to live, if he wants a tether, Silver is BOTH his Thomas and his Miranda. He is the balance of the two and it’s why James is so drawn to him, while at the same time, “Flint” is repelled.

Not only was James the undoing of Thomas and Miranda, they were VERY MUCH so, probably even more, the undoing of James. They gave birth to Captain Flint.

Flint sees both in Silver and it’s that internal push and pull, the abject terror of vulnerability and the very real emotional and physical gravitational pull that Silver has that provide much of the dynamic through the mid-section of season 3.

Season 4 . . . Season 4 he’s gone. He’s blissfully in love with Silver. He gives into it, overcoming his fear, in his fireside confession to Silver, and there is peace, FINALLY, peace, that we see in him in season 4. Whether it’s because he’s determined to die in battle, as well, or not, it’s also because he’s decided to give back to make a better world, however naive that notion might be in terms of actual viability, for the person he loves most in the world. Silver.

“You are the best of us.”

He loves him so much and in such a pure, selfless way, it’s almost overwhelming, James’s capacity for it.

That’s it. That’s all. I’m going to cook, drink wine, and cry about it.

#black sails #captain flint #toby stephens #james flint #john silver #long john silver #luke arnold #silverflint #james mcgraw #acting choices were made #black sails meta #I’ve never seen actors more clearly convey affection that Toby Stephens and Luke Arnold #miranda hamilton #miranda barlow

147 notes · View notes

verflares · 25 days

Text

this all being said about the light dragon and how it is definitely the biggest highlight of totk (for me at least), i Do think a lot of the reaction to it Is dependent on botw and zelda's characterisation from that game... a lot of which is kind of lacking in totk because of her more passive role (e.g. you are told about her + see her actions after they have already happened)

like. if you didn't already really like zelda and were sold on her relationship with link (and not even just from a shipping zelink perspective, like. just UNDERSTANDING they have a strong bond from everything they've gone through together) then i'm not sure if any of that stuff in totk would've hit as hard as it did. the game does very little to build on what we already know about them, which i think is both a letdown to new players (which. i am not sure why they are playing the sequel before botw, but that is how totk acts most of the time lmao) and returning ones, and as time goes on it's become harder for me to blame people for not caring for it as much.

what a truly odd game

#which also makes it bizarre that totk treats itself like its Not a sequel. even though it is at the same time #ugh the names are escaping me but i am pretty sure this is a thing thats happened in other Sequel games too #just acting like the first one never happened or only when its convenient. stuff like that #i would loveeee to know how bad covid hit totks plot development or whatever. if anything. else they may have been planning #theyve gone on record saying that apparently the plan was for zelda to Always have turned into a dragon #and assumedly the beginning/ending parallel as well (eg hands and link catching her)#but i have to assume or at least HOPE that the buildup may have been stronger. idk man its so strange truly #ANYWAY SORRY FOR RAMBLING but i do find this discussion intriguing. and i LIKED totk even despite my criticisms #its genuinely some of the most fun ive had in a video game ever and creating content for it and talking about it has made me very happy #this being said. there are some choices that were made and i do not and likely will not ever understand them #because they said nah we're done now. bye <3 #like oh okay. thank you aonuma. can i at least have wind waker on switch now please #personal.txt

20 notes · View notes

tigergendermoved · 5 months

Text

I don't like DDLC'S MC very much on a very petty level but I still wish there was more fic or meta speculation about him. I'm not interested in him as a character, though, because he's barely a character. Literally by the game's standards, he has no inherent "character file." He is the SCRIPT, if anything. All of his thoughts and actions occur within the little text bubble at the bottom of the screen, and so do the characters'. He barely appears in CGs, has no body sprite, and it is through his observations and his thoughts and his call to make choices that the game progresses.

I think that specific trait of MC is fascinating, especially given how deep reaching Monika's manipulation is. During Act 1 he is active, he is talkative, he has a definitive (and yet inconsistent, based on which girl(s) you're speaking to) personality. He has thoughts about just about everything going on. And yet in Act 2 he is reduced to dust. He stops having any kind of commentary and he almost never remarks upon the horrible occurrences around him unless prompted or unless it is something that could plausibly happen in the realm of reality, like Yuri abandoning him for 10 minutes and Natsuki collapsing on him. But even then he's still significantly muted. Yuri and Natsuki have a horrible fight and the only kind of response he tries to throw out is co-opted by Monika. He witness Yuri declare her love for him and talk about how she would love to pull his skin open and crawl inside of him and the only thing he has to say is "yes" or "no" when she asks if he likes her back. And then he physically cannot move or speak or react because the world is so far gone that Yuri's death has damaged him, the script, so much that all he hears is gibberish coming from her lifeless mouth.

And like... that's neat to me. I like that by the end of Act 2 the script is so off the rails and so far gone from reality that MC can no longer really function as a person, because the script is barely functioning. He stops reacting to anything happening around him and most of the conversations he has are just the girls talking at him. Monika has to literally rewrite the script and force Yuri and Natsuki to say things to further her agenda or keep the scene rolling. MC had a clear and very human response to Sayori's death because it was a plausible but horrible (and not forced) event that could happen naturally. Yuri's death was so jarring and away from the scope of the natural order of his world that MC (and Yuri, by extension) can only sit frozen and broken until Natsuki and Monika show up to force new progress.

Like Monika's effect on the girls has been talked to death and it is an interesting topic but I also think what she unintentionally did to the POV character of the game is also something neat. It really adds to the feeling of the world in DDLC being hollow. The MC is a half-character who can only react in incredibly predictable ways, and when the world stops being predictable, he stops being anything more than a walking camera for Monika to speak into.

#ddlc #this isnt even really a character analysis this is just my vague jumbled thoughts on this guy #ive always found mc interesting even if he irritates me #when i was bored and a middle schooler i used to imagine this self insert of mine in his place #what choices would she make if she knew the ddlc world was a farce? what choices would she make if she didnt?#would she be beholden to the game structure and choices written in the game's script?#could she change anything? how would she feel if she knew the girls in a context where they were her normal friends?#these scenarios were of course some random shit i thought about to make PE less awful #but it made me think of how horrible and strange it would be in mc's position #and subsequently how mc himself kind of never gets the chance to BE in his own position in a way #he is fully beholden to the whims of monika and whatever the girls around him are doing at all times in act 2 #even in act 1 his personality and motivations fluctuates constantly depending on which girl u are talking to #mc is the script and the script is mc. he never had a chance to change anything and neither did you #the only way you can do anything in that world is to be a character a .chr a person. and mc is not a person in any meaningful sense #on the topic of 'hey wouldnt it be fucked up to actually experience ddlc as a Thinking Person'#'to your eternity' (anonymous author) on ao3 specifically chapter 1 of it is a cool fic based on that thought #anyways. i know mc mostly just shuts up because it would be lame if every time yuri's eyes bug out he's like 'jeepers creepers!!!'#but i think his dwindling presence makes him an interesting non-character ❤️#doki doki literature club

23 notes · View notes